Here was a youth in near-absolute power. Perhaps in the way of youth, he was touchy about his prerogatives and a shade wary of intimacy, feeling a need to set staff at some distance, lest anyone presume, or lose their fear of him. Or there just was no attachment.
One had no information of any woman in the picture, either, nor even, now, any close relatives except the newly deceased uncle: Machigi was a survivor of bloody years in the Marid and several skirmishes with Tabini-aiji and the aiji-dowager.
He was alone. Angry. And alive.
While he himself had just made an emotional commitment to this man that left him entirely uneasy, as if the whole world had broken up in moving bits, and he didn’t know what situation he was going to be in when—when he went back to Ilisidi.
And worse, ultimately he was going to have to go back to Tabini to explain his reasoning in offering this young troublemaker the whole east coast of the continent, and a ticket to the space station.
Machigi didn’t talk while they waited for the tea. He didn’t. Their respective bodyguards had repositioned themselves. And the serving staff, after what seemed an interminable interval, came back with tea. Serving it took time. Drinking it took much more time.
He could not be comfortable in the situation. He could not even be comfortable with Banichi and Jago staring at his back wondering what in hell else a human was capable of doing, seeing what he had already done.
And he dared not show anything he felt.
Click! went Machigi’s empty teacup onto the side table.
Bren set his down with a softer click and settled his mind to business.
“So, paidhi,” Machigi said, “now that the aiji-dowager has made us a target of all the rest of the Marid—what is your advice?”
“That you take her offer, aiji-ma. One greatly doubts her offer has changed your enemies’ plans from what they always were. One surmises you were aware when you made strong early moves to exert influence outside the Marid that you were going to disturb your neighbors. There is no evidence you consulted either of your northern neighbors in your moves on the west coast. The two southern clans will have acquiesced, since they follow your lead. One observes you offered young Baiji the hand of Tiajo-daja, a daughter of Badissuni’s line over in the Dojisigin Marid. One has no idea whether Badissuni’s house attempted to get a ride aboard your plan—you backed it. But one doubts you would have let that marriage go forward.”
Machigi rested his elbow on the chair arm, chin on his fist, gold eyes focused entirely on his. “Go on. We are amused.”
“They were too busy with their own problems to interfere further in your moves to take the west coast. And Tabini-aiji’s driving Murini out was more inconvenient to them than to you. Events kept your Marid enemies off balance. They fortified themselves against any retaliation from Shejidan; they plotted to get inside Tabini-aiji’s defenses. My own arrival on the coast was not quite unrelated—your kinsmen the Farai had appropriated my residence in the Bujavid, giving me little choice but retreat to my estate. One hesitates to attribute to them the foresight to know I would go to the west coast as a result of their holding my apartment, but it is not impossible. I can assure you I had no orders from Shejidan in going to Najida, no advance knowledge at all regarding your dealings here. I walked into—dare I say, your operation at Kajiminda?—entirely by chance. I somehow doubt you expected, either, that Guild within that operation would attempt my life.”
Machigi opened that fist, a brief, dismissive gesture. And smiled. The eyes did not.
“So,” Bren said. “You did not know then, but do know now, that the aiji’s son is at Najida. That was planned by no one, least of all his father or his great-grandmother. But it did heighten the impact of that attack. The successive attacks. It brought the aiji-dowager in. And it brought Geigi home from the space station. It exposed your operation, it brought Baiji down, and it brought the Edi into the conflict. One can imagine you did not authorize that attack.”
“The attack was unauthorized,” Machigi said. “And information was limited. Your people had the phones tapped from the moment you arrived on the peninsula.”
“Indeed,” Bren said. The wiretapping was news to him. “And might one suppose you did not authorize the attack on Najida?”
“Go on,” Machigi said.
“The Guild operating in the vicinity of Kajiminda then flagrantly violated Guild policy and laid the bloody knife at your door. In their theory, neither the dowager nor the Guild would wait to ask questions.”
“Go on,” Machigi said again, increasingly darkly, and Bren kept going:
“The Farai are too small to swing the entire Marid by the tail. The Farai lord has kept the Senji lord at arm’s length by courting the Dojisigi; and one strongly suspects it was the Dojisigi who set them at the same tactic inside the Bujavid, to gain information about Tabini-aiji’s movements. You were to be eliminated, which would benefit the Dojisigi lord and the Senji. And it would be a race then to see whether the Farai tried actually to deal with Tabini-aiji and ally with your successor in the Taisigin Marid, thus getting the better of the Dojisigi and the Senji, or whether the Dojisigi would simply squash them overnight and then make a move to install their own candidate in the lordship in Tanaja. The fact the Dojisigi had offered a daughter to meddle in your plans for Baiji indicates they were already taking aim at you.”
Machigi sat silent for a moment, then gave a silent, short laugh. “For a human, you present a reasonably accurate assessment.”
“One has attempted to learn, aiji-ma. The plot against you leads only to the aishidi’tat doing all the work and the Farai, in their imagination, getting all the benefit. The Dojisigi then turn on them, or turn them on the Senji. Except for one thing—a Guild presence that is plotting its own course in the Marid. One has no exact knowlege to match the dowager’s, one is quite sure. But one strongly suspects that there is an infelicitous sixth power in the Marid, and, on evidence I observe—they do not favor you. What was an ordinarily complicated piece of Marid politics now has taken a very alarming turn, and one begins to understand it is not the Dojisigi or the Senji at work. You have not cooperated with the Guild renegades. One believes the aiji-dowager has convinced the Guild you are a point of stability in this region. One is even moved to suspect the Guild in Shejidan launched its deliberation on outlawry as—between the two of us—a diversion.”
That brought a sharp, angry glance.
“So. What else do you surmise?”
“That your own bodyguard is extraordinarily adept, or you would not now be alive.”
Angrier yet. And not, necessarily, at him.
At persons closer to him. Intimates, of which this dangerous young man had very few.
“So. Are we to be flattered by the aiji-dowager’s estimation that we have difficulties?”
“She has no pity for fools. She is convinced you have uncommon qualities as a leader, or I am quite confident there would be no offer, and I would not be here. She seems to believe that those qualities have alarmed your northern neighbors to the point of desperation.”
“And of course she would never encourage that situation.”
“Not, aiji-ma, not when the situation is entangled with the problem I have named.”
“The dowager has a reputation, paidhi. She takes what she wants.”
“Yet she has never taken so much as a village, aiji-ma. Territorially, she is not ambitious . . . not in her own district, where other lords view her as a good neighbor.”
“She collects man’chi as some people collect minatures!” Bren said with a little bow: “Indeed, she has drawn uncommonly diverse man’chi to her. But she does not as a rule offer alliances.”
There was a reason the legislature had feared to make her aiji.
The fist was back under the chin, Machigi’s favorite contemplative pose. The gold eyes were calculating, estimating him, since he was the only available target. Machigi said nothing for a moment.
But the muscles
around the eyes held a little quirk of something that had not been there before. Intense concentration.
“You are different from my reports,” Machigi said, “and difficult to read. One understands a human has no man’chi. Yet you do favor her side of the table.”
“We have another quality,” he said, “something akin. We are capable of loyalty. We are even capable of dual loyalty.”
Quirk of the eyebrow. He’d said it with forethought—in utter honesty. Which Machigi probably had not expected but ought to recognize.
“Divided loyalties,” Machigi said.
“Dual loyalties, aiji-ma. She knows it. I am advising you with your interests foremost at the moment.”
Machigi gave a small disparaging laugh. “She has learned to wield your two-edged talents to her advantage, has she? How well do humans lie?”
“Some better than others,” Bren said. “I have lived a long time on the continent, and everything I have done has a record. I have reserved truth when it served. I have not based a negotiation on a lie. Ever.”
That was a smile. A small one, almost a laugh, and this one lighter than before. Machigi was either letting his emotions show now, or while talking about lying, he was lying and had turned very deliberately deceptive.
“We have broken with the Farai today,” Machigi said. “My uncle moved too much to the Farai side of the balances: so my bodyguard informs me. We also understand divided loyalties, nand’ paidhi. But you know that. Baji-naji, all things adjust. Balance matters. My uncle played both sides of the board. That had been his value.”
“One very much takes the warning, aiji-ma.”
“Well played, paidhi.” The hand fell to the chair arm. “You have proposals for me, do you? Let us hear them. I will listen.”
Machigi had dropped the mask, then, a little. And was not in a good mood today: was genuinely sorrowing after the uncle, it might be. Had quarreled with his aishid, it might be or taken a long look forward and backward.
One needed to keep it succinct and direct. “The documents I have given you have names, aiji-ma, specifics of the eastern seacoast, small towns—several promising areas for a port, and in my estimation, the dowager’s backing would carry weight. Local rail could be established, with negotiation: the Eastern lords are highly traditional, reluctant to see modernization go through their lands.”
“Nothing to match mine.”
“Yet villages will be reluctant to see economic advantage flow to their neighbors and not to them. Rail is a way to spread the benefit. When seen in that light—”
“You were an advocate for the railroad.”
“Far less disruptive than roads, aiji-ma.”
“You are building a railroad, paidhi, and we have not yet built a port.”
“Or yet sailed a ship there, aiji-ma, true,” Bren said with a shrug. “But I believe this can work.”
“We build your town. Sooner or later Shejidan will push a rail connection all the way to the east coast—to take business from our ships.”
“Ah, but, aiji-ma, they cannot gain right of way through eastern lands if the eastern lords object. And if these lords profit, you will have allies, because they have held themselves stubbornly independent of Shejidan. Ports grow into cities. And this port will have industry of its own, and fisheries, and it will thrive. The undeveloped land of the East one day will greatly resemble the view out that window.”
“You dream, paidhi. The East is a rocky coast with treacherous currents and storms.”
“Your ship captains will grow expert, and the orbiting station can warn you of weather with an accuracy unavailable to your ancestors.”
Back went the chin onto the fist. “You dream, paidhi.”
“The potential and the energy I see out that window is huge. You thrive, in relative isolation from outside ports, only with a limited trade to the north. Your industry and your inventiveness are evident. But the west coast is locked in a balance difficult to move, between Mospheiran interests across the strait and the sensitivity of the straits between. Let Shejidan manage that problem. You now have a far better offer on the table. Let your shippers hear of new ports, new markets, and they will race to get there. The Senji and the Dojisigi will doubt, at first. They will scoff. They will suspect you are up to something. And then they will be up in arms because advantage is coming to you and not them. And that is the point where your own force and leadership can bring the Marid under one clan, one authority.”
An index finger lifted from beside the mouth. “The easier for the ‘one clan, one authority’ in Shejidan to snap up and swallow.”
“Ah, but you will be an associate of the aiji-dowager. The East may be within the aishidi’tat, but the aishidi’tat is not within the East. The aiji-dowager hammered out that distinction to the displeasure of the Guilds in Shejidan. There is no Assassins’ Guild there, except what surrounds her. There is limited rail there . . .”
“Which you mean to change.”
“What is not imposed by Shejidan meets much more interest in the East. You will find you and the aiji-dowager, aiji-ma, have a great deal you could discuss.”
Tap-tap-tap went the finger beside the mouth. And a frown gathered on the brow. “You are quick, paidhi. But are you accurate ? Can you deliver these things?”
“One knows these resources and the situation, aiji-ma. And I have some influence of my own, at least that of my office.”
“The white ribbon.”
“I take my office seriously, aiji-ma. I am of no clan, of no region. I have displeased every lord I have dealt with at some point or another, but to the lasting displeasure of none that I have served.”
“I shall personally read your proposals,” Machigi said with that same level stare. “I shall see for myself what you ask—and what you give. And then we shall estimate whether these proposals of yours will possibly appeal to me—or to the dowager.”
“I ask no more than that, aiji-ma.”
“You cost me, understand,” Machigi said sharply. “You have already cost me certain assets that may not be easy to replace!”
“One understands that without needing the details. I have disrupted the peace here.”
“Peace.” A dour laugh. Machigi propelled himself out of the chair and looked down as Bren got up more slowly—painfully.
And stuck, half way, his back locked up.
Banichi moved. Machigi’s guard moved. Jago moved, one step, her hand on her gun.
Bren held up a hand. Fast. “I can stand. I am perfectly well. A moment. Please.”
He gave a shove at the chair arm with the other hand and straightened. He had to. He drew himself up to his full height—about to Machigi’s shoulder—and got a breath. The situation among the bodyguards slowly relaxed.
“We must arrange, aiji-ma,” Bren said, on a careful breath, “not to shoot each other.”
Machigi laughed—laughed aloud, and a slight grin remained when he waved a casual stand-down to his guard, who moved back, not without misgiving glances at Jago, whose hand had not left her gun.
Bren declined to give any such signal. His bodyguard was at disadvantage already, and he opted not to interfere. He only said, “My profound apologies, aiji-ma.”
“You are not to die,” Machigi said, as if it were an order. “We offer the services of our physician. We insist. You shall not die under our roof!”
It was the last damned thing he wanted.
“I am far from dying,” he said. “It is only a bruise, improving on its own.”
“You ask me to rely on you,” Machigi said. “Rely on me and do as I say. Give me time to read these papers. Fro-ji.” This to his guard. “Take the paidhi to nand’ Juien. And give his bodyguard latitude. One assumes they will wish to be with him.”
Well, there was nothing for it, on that basis. He was far from happy to turn himself over to a physician to whom a human’s physiology was uncharted territory. He didn’t want to take any medications.
But he wasn’t happy w
ith his own body at the moment. Tano, the field medic in his aishid, thought nothing was broken, but it had hurt like hell while Tano had made his investigation. Damn, he thought. If he could just get a brief leave back to Najida—
But that wasn’t going to happen. He cast an unhappy look at Banichi and Jago as he joined them on his way to the door, but they had their official faces on, and there was nothing to tell him what they thought of it, or of his shift of allegiances, or anything else that had happened in this interview.
“Perhaps Tano should come downstairs,” he suggested.
Banichi said, as they exited to the audience hall, “He assuredly will, nandi.”
8
They gathered downstairs, in a well-equipped clinic, crowding the little examination room. Nand’ Juien was clearly a man of some professional standing and a few gray hairs. He listened and nodded while Tano, who had witnessed the event in question and who had a medical vocabulary, described the incident, the quality of the armor, his own observations of the injury, and the treatment.
One listened. One didn’t know all the words that went back and forth, an entire vocabulary that Bren didn’t have in any language, he strongly suspected. The physician approached him, respectful, cautious in feeling over his head and neck. “The discomfort is in my back,” he said at one point, since the discussion had centered for quite a while on the fall, and the condition of his skull, whether or not there had been concussion—mild, Tano said—and on his upper shoulders, which were sore but not acutely painful.
From apprehension, the situation dwindled down to a lengthy technical discussion and then to a discussion of the similarities in human and atevi anatomy, involving a great deal of attention to his upper back.
The pain is in the ribs, Bren wanted to say. My shoulders are fine. But Tano was doing the talking, most of it in medical terms he didn’t follow.
More discussion. And finally nand’ Juien asked to take x-rays, and wanted him to go to the other room. That took more time and entailed shedding the coat and vest and shirt and lying on the table for a prolonged time while Tano talked to nand’ Juien, then to Banichi and Jago. The talk was technical, but it seemed obvious. “No fracture,” Bren heard, distinctly, and which yes, he was glad to know. So he wasn’t broken. Just sore as hell.