Ilisidi’s pale eyes rested on him, impassive as Banichi’s could ever be—she was annoyed, perhaps, at his changing the subject back again.
But he hadn’t changed her proposition, not entirely.
“They’re bandits,” Ilisidi said.
“Irreplaceable,” he said.
“Vermin.”
“The past needs the future. The future needs the past.”
“Vermin, I say, that I choose to preserve.”
“The paidhi agrees. What do you call them?”
“Wi’itkitiin. They make that sound.”
“Wi’itkitiin.” He watched another scaled and feathered diver, and asked himself if Earth had ever known the like. “Nothing else makes that sound.”
“No.”
“Reason enough to save it.”
Ilisidi’s mouth tightened. The grimace became a hint of a laugh, and she spooned up several bites of cereal, put away several thin slices of breakfast steak.
Bren kept pace, figuring one didn’t speak to the aiji-dowager when she was thinking, and an excellent breakfast was going to get cold. Cooked over wood fire, Cenedi had said, when he wondered how there was anything hot, or cooked. He supposed they managed that in the kitchen fireplace, if there was a fireplace in the kitchen. The thumping Jago had called the generator had stopped sometime during the night. The machine was out of fuel, perhaps, or malfunctioning itself. Maidingi Power swore on their lives and reputations that Malguri would have power, as soon, they said, as they had restored power to the quarter of Maidingi township that was dark and chill this morning.
Meanwhile the castle got along, with fireplaces to warm the rooms and cook the food, with candles to light the halls where light from windows didn’t reach—systems which had once been The System in Malguri. The aiji-dowager had ordered breakfast set outside, on the balcony, in a chill mountain summer morning—fortunate, Bren thought, that he’d worn his heavier coat this morning, because of the chill already in the rooms. The cold had steam going up from his tea-cup. It was nippishly pleasant—hard to remember the steamy nights that were the rule in the City in this month, the rainstorms rolling in from the sea.
And with the candles and the wood fires and the ancient stones, it was a blink of the eye to imagine, this misty morning, that he had come unfixed in time, that oared vessels with heraldic sails might appear out of the mist on the end of the lake.
Another dragonette had flown, with its eye on some prey. Its cry wailed away down the heights.
“What are you thinking, paidhi? Some wise and revelatory thought?”
“Thinking about ships. And wood fires. And how Malguri doesn’t need anything from anywhere to survive.”
The aiji-dowager pursed her lips, rested her chin on her fist. “Aei, a hundred or so staff to do the laundry and carry the wood and make the candles, and it survives. Another five hundred to plow and tend and hunt, to feed the launderers and the wood-cutters and the candlemakers and themselves, and, oh, yes, we’re self-sufficient. Except the iron-workers and the copy-makers to supply us and the riders and the cannoneers to defend it all from the Unassociated who won’t do their share and had rather prey on those who do. Malguri had electric lights before you came, nadi, I do assure you.” She took a sip of tea, set the cup down and waved her napkin at Cenedi, who hovered in the doorway and mediated the service. He thought the breakfast ended, then. He prepared to rise, but Ilisidi waved a hand toward the terrace stairs.
“Come.”
He was caught, snared. “I beg the dowager’s pardon. My security absolutely forbids me—”
“Forbids you! Outrageous.—Or did my grandson set them against me?”
“No such thing, I assure you, with utmost courtesy. He spoke very positively—”
“Then let your guards use their famous ingenuity.” She shoved her chair back. Cenedi hastened to assist, and to put her cane under her hand. “Come, come, let me show you the rest of Malguri. Let me show you the Malguri of your imagination.”
He didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t an enemy—at least he hoped she wasn’t, and he didn’t want to make one. Tabini, damn him, had put him here, when he’d known his grandmother was here. Banichi was all reproach for the invitation he’d accepted without having Banichi’s doubtless wise advice—and there was nothing the paidhi saw now to do, being committed to the dowager’s hospitality, except to fall to the floor moaning and plead indisposition—hardly flattering to an already upset cook; or to get up from the table and follow the old woman and see what she wanted him to see.