“Ah, so you have taken account of the difficulties . . . which are, of course, the same local difficulties that presented themselves in my grandfather’s lifetime: a little smuggling, occasional piracy, and a thorough desire to see the aishidi’tat broken apart! The Edi program is not that different from the aims of the Marid!”
“Your grandfather was wrong then, he is still wrong, and I am right about the Edi, grandson! And if you will use good sense we shall come out of this with the arrangement we should have had fifty-three years ago.”
“Ha!” Tabini gave a shove at the mantel. “This is no venue in which to debate the matter, honored grandmother. Say that our regime owes responsibility to all districts of the aishidi’tat. Say that we are determined to maintain the balance of powers within the aishidi’tat, and as usual, you have set a finger on the scales. You came here to see to my son, who has been reckless. But do you restrain his career? No! First you send him and the paidhi off to a meeting with Southern agents and a fool! Did you intend that? I think not! So do not pretend you are infallible!”
Ilisidi’s jaw set. “Whose advisors made excuses for Baiji the fool when he failed to come to court this last session? Whose advisors, when we contacted your office regarding him before we thus dispatched the paidhi-aiji and my great-grandson, assured us there was no security problem in Kajiminda?”
It was the first Bren had known that Ilisidi had phoned the capital before sending her great-grandson on that ill-starred visit. It made him feel not quite so bad about walking into the trap himself . . . since the dowager’s accesses were highest level, and outside the capital, and his were not.
Tabini retorted: “Things on this coast were under surveillance!”
“Ha!”
“And quiet, until you came here! We cannot solve every problem in the aishidi’tat in one legislative session. We have important measures coming before the hasdrawad and the tashrid!”
“While the Farai camp in a sensitive area of the Bujavid and attempt to take the whole west coast! How would the paidhi’s assassination affect your session? One would consider that a certain embarrassment!”
“So now,” Tabini retorted, “after meeting with a hostile clan on your own, you present me a new province and an unsettled condition, not just in two estates, but on the entire coast! Gods less fortunate, woman! We do not want a war with the Marid at this juncture!”
“When better? What will provoke you, if not this situation? When are your enemies to judge the aiji will act?”
“When he pleases. Whenever he pleases, woman, and do not push me.” A small silence descended. One could not be sure of Ilisidi’s expression, but it was probably smug. Tabini’s was a scowl.
“So you singlehandedly removed Baiji’s titles,” Tabini said quietly.
“Do you wish to restore them?” Ilisidi asked sweetly. “You can, of course. He would not be the only fool in the legislature. He might even show up for court this year. In gratitude to you, of course.”
Tabini scowled back. “The fool’s distinguished uncle is on his way back from the space station.” A glance toward Bren. “Lord Geigi will land in Shejidan on the fourteenth and fly directly here.”
That was tomorrow. Bren had not heard. And where in hell were they going to put Geigi, with Geigi’s estate swarming with Tabini’s agents?
“Well,” Ilisidi said. “That will be a pleasant visit. Another reason for us to remain. We long to see Geigi.”
“Have you other adventures in mind for my son?” Tabini asked, sharp turn of subject; and not. “Or shall I take him back to his mother? His great-uncle has arrived, and is highly agitated. He is threatening to come here.”
God, Bren thought. Tatiseigi. The old man, central clan lord of the prickliest sort and by no means an asset in negotiating with the west coast Edi, had arrived in the capital. Lord Tatiseigi, who would have been beyond upset to discover his great-nephew was not in the capital to meet him, now had to be told his great-nephew had nearly been killed while in the paidhi’s care.
Upset? Oh, yes, Tatiseigi would be somewhat upset.
“You will simply have to keep Tatiseigi in the capital with you,” Ilisidi said to Tabini with a casually dismissive wave. “As for the boy, we have need of him.”
“Need of him!”
“It is useful,” Ilisidi said, “for him to attend these events.”
“It is useful for him to stay alive!” Tabini retorted.
“You have sent your two guards to watch over him,” Ilisidi retorted. “These two children!”
Everybody under thirty was a child in Ilisidi’s reckoning. The two children in question were twentyish and reputed, Bren’s own bodyguard informed him, to be quite good in the Guild, if notoriously arrogant.
“They may at least keep up with him.” Tabini struck his fist against the stonework. “If you take responsibility for my son, honored grandmother, you know what you are taking on.”
“None better,” Ilisidi said, and added: “At least we know where he is.”
The aiji’s own guard had lost the boy. Repeatedly. It was a remark calculated to draw fire.
It drew, at least, a furious scowl from Tabini. And Tabini’s guard had to be wincing inside.
“Do not be overconfident, woman,” Tabini muttered ominously. “Nobody has been faultless in overseeing this inventive child.”
“The boy is remarkably prudent,” Ilisidi said, “where the danger is clear to him.”
“He is a year short of felicitous nine, and mostly at home in the corridors of a spaceship! A number of dangers in the world do not seem clear to him!”
“He has comprehended the ones in this locality,” Ilisidi said smoothly, “even the ones emanating from the Marid, and he will now employ his cleverness in good directions. It is useful for the heir to form associations in this uneasy district.”
“And to observe his great-grandmother meddling in affairs that do not remotely concern the East?”
“Affairs that do concern the East,” Ilisidi shot back, “since we have in mind an excellent solution for Baiji the fool: a marriage, heirs for the Maschi that Baiji will not have a hand in rearing!”
“Oh, do you?”
“We do, and we shelter a hope that the intelligence and industry of his uncle’s line reside somewhere in his heredity, though neither has manifested in Baiji himself. We are busy mopping up the untidiness in this province for you, grandson of mine, we are dealing with matters we shall never remind you are precisely those matters we argued should have been settled in your grandfather’s time! And we have found excellent prospects for a settled peace in this district while discomfiting the highly inconvenient Marid! So we shall oh, so gladly hear your expressions of filial gratitude for our good offices!”
“Gods less fortunate! Your interference goes too far, and you have recklessly involved my son in all of it!”
“Interference, dare you say? Involved your son? Who lost track of my great-grandson in the halls of the Bujavid?”
“While you distracted the staff!”
“Oh, a far reach, that! Who allowed my great-grandson and the paidhi-aiji to enter a district rife with Marid plots, without advising them or apprehending the danger?”
“Yours was not doing so well in that, woman!”
“Your staff,” Ilisidi said, “has been remiss!”
“So why did you not dissuade the paidhi-aiji from his venture to this coast, your own intelligence of course being faultless?”
“No one informed me of the paidhi’s intentions to visit this peninsula in the first place!”
“Then where, honored grandmother, was the attention of your staff, since you knew full well Tatiseigi would request the paidhi-aiji to vacate his premises on his return to the capital? Where else would the paidhi go but his residence on the coast? And if you were in receipt of such remarkable intelligence regarding instability on this coast, why did you not inform my staff, who might have informed the paidhi’s bodyguard in some timely fashion s
o he would not be here? Why did you not say to him, ‘Nand’ paidhi, do not call on the young fool next door. He is overrun with Marid agents.’ No, you did not know. You had no idea, no more than we did!”
That brought a small instant of quiet.
A standstill. Bren drew very small breaths, wanting not to become involved, far less to become the centerpiece of that debate.
In point of fact, one had in the past been able to rely on the aiji’s being well-informed on every district, and one would have expected his proposal to go to the coast to have met an immediate advisory of local problems. But information since Tabini’s return to power was not wholly reliable, and there were small pockets of resentment in the aishidi’tat, where the brief accession of a Padi Valley Kadigidi to the aijinate had unsettled certain issues long dormant.
In point of fact, second, it was incumbent on anybody apt to be a target of assassination not to make assumptions and not to rely blindly on old associations. He had certainly assumed he was safe, when he had divided his bodyguard—Algini had been nursing a sprained left hand that day; but now Jago had stitches and Banichi had scrapes and bruises to match, thanks to his judgment. His domestic staff had hinted of difficulty, but not been forward enough and had not managed to mention that the neighboring staff had left the premises months ago. That had been the epitaph of more than one lord of the aishidi’tat: domestic staff refusing to meddle in what they considered the Guild would know; and worse, with the Edi disinclination to discuss Edi matters with outsiders.
But the ones who would take this fingerpointing most to heart were precisely their respective bodyguards, his and Tabini’s, and the dowager’s, who no longer had ready recourse to what had been an excellent and constant fact-gathering organization, before the coup had totally fractured the network, and that lay at the heart of the problem. They were reconstituting it as fast as they could, but speed was no asset in establishing trusted sources.
So in two destructions of records, one when Tabini’s staff had fled the Bujavid in the face of the coup, and one when the usurper Murini’s allies had attempted to cover their tracks when Tabini retook the capital, there were now distressing gaps of knowledge in some hitherto reliable places: Baiji’s flirtation with the Marid was a case in point. No one would ever have expected treason in staunch Geigi’s house—he certainly hadn’t—but there it was. The aiji’s forces had now taken possession of that estate and turned up new problems clear down in Separti Township.
The aiji-dowager, meanwhile, had not accepted the assignment of blame for bad intelligence. The cane thumped against the unoffending carpet and she levered herself to her feet, standing chest-high to her formidable grandson and scowling.
“We are perfectly settled here,” Ilisidi said, “in possession now of the intelligence we need. So you may go your way and let us manage matters.”
“Impossible woman!” Tabini flung up his hands and turned to leave. “I shall go reason with my son.”
“You will not take him! His presence here is to his benefit—and yours!”
Tabini turned about. “I shall reason with him, I say, since reason is one art he is not learning from his great-grandmother!”
“Ha!” Ilisidi cried, and a wise human just stood very still, while Tabini peeled his bodyguard out of the row by the wall and headed out the door.
“Where is my son?” resounded in the hall. The staff doubtless provided Tabini a fast answer. Bren hoped so, for the honor of his house.
As it was, he had inadvertently made himself and his guard part of the scene. Getting out of the dowager’s immediate area might be a good idea at the moment, but it was not that easy to accomplish.
“Are we unreasonable?” the dowager asked him, not rhetorically, turning a burning gaze on him, and either answer was treasonable.
2
“Your father is here,” Jegari had reported some time past, warning enough, and a wise son who did not wish to be flown back to the capital and confined to his father’s apartment with his tutor for the rest of his life had immediately taken the warning and improved his appearance.
Cajeiri had on his best brown brocade coat, and his shirt lace was crisp and immaculate. His queue was tied with the red and black Ragi colors—his father’s colors, politic choice of the four, even five heraldries he could legitimately claim. His boots were polished, his fingernails were clean, and he had, after the rush of preparation, quietened his breathless hurry and achieved a serene calm even his great-grandmother would approve of.
He had, besides, accepted his father’s choice of bodyguards: he had already had Jegari and Antaro, a brother and sister out of Taiben province in the Padi Valley—those two were not properly Assassins’ Guild yet, and could not wear the uniform, so they looked like domestic staff, but they were his senior bodyguard. He insisted so. And his junior staff, the ones his father had just sent—Lucasi and Veijico, another brother and sister, really were Guild, and actually five years older. They were in their formal uniforms, black leather and silver, and looked really proper.
So he could muster a real household, and there was no laundry tossed over chair backs and no stray teacup awaiting house staff to pick it up (nand’ Bren’s staff never let things sit around) so the premises was immaculate, too. He was well ahead of his father’s arrival when he heard the commotion of an approach outside.
His father’s guard knocked once—ordinary procedure—and did not have to fling the door open themselves, since Jegari did a majordomo’s job and beat the man to it. The door whisked open, Jegari bowing, and there was the bodyguard, and his father.
The guard walked in and disposed themselves on either side of the door. His own bodyguard, official and not, came to formal attention. His father walked in and stopped, looking critically about the room—which actually looked like a real household, Cajeiri thought, bowing with particular satisfaction, even a little selfassurance at his own arrangements. Father had not caught him at a disadvantage. For infelicitous eight going on fortunate nine, he had not disgraced himself, or Great-grandmother, or nand’ Bren.
“Honored Father,” he said respectfully, completely collected.
“My elusive son,” his father said.
Bait. Cajeiri declined it, simply bowing a second time. Arguing with his father from the outset would not get what he wanted, which was to stay exactly where he was, in nand’ Bren’s house. He did not want to be dragged back to the capital and locked away in his rooms with his tutor. He had made mistakes, but he had remedied them. He was in good order. Surely his father was not going to haul him off in embarrassment.
“Your great-grandmother thinks you should stay here,” his father said. “You have worried your mother, who is not pleased, not to mention you have set off your great-uncle, who has had to be restrained from coming out to the coast . . . need I say with what detriment to the delicate peace in this whole district?”
That was a threat. Uncle Tatiseigi was not inclined to be polite to anybody who was not of very high rank, and attached to the clans and causes he personally approved. There was a long, long list of people Uncle Tatiseigi did not approve of.
“That would not help nand’ Bren or Great-grandmother, honored Father.” A third, smaller bow. “We understand. We are attempting to be quiet and useful.”
“By stealing a freight train and a sailboat?”
A fourth bow. “My honored father exaggerates the freight train. But we admit the sailboat. We deeply apologize for the sailboat.”
His father let go an exasperated sigh and walked over to the desk and the darkened window, which was stormshuttered because of snipers, which were still a constant possibility. Out in the hall, and faintly even in here, one could still smell new lacquer, where they had fixed bullet holes.
So it was not quite safe. His father surveyed the room—then, embarrassingly, as if he were a child, flung open the inner door and had a look in the bedroom. The bed in there was made and there was nothing out of place. He was very glad they had not
just tossed stray items in there.
His father walked back again, set fists on hips and looked down at him. “The staff is keeping you in good state.”
“Nand’ Bren has a very good staff,” he said. “And we try to be no trouble to them at all.”
“Ha.” His father had been arguing with Great-grandmother. He was still mad. That was clear. But he was not being unreasonable.
Then his father asked: “Do you have the least notion what is at stake on this coast?”
He did know that answer. He had listened when his elders talked, because it was important. “The Edi people are connected to the Gan, up the coast in the Islands and the north coast. The Edi and the Gan both used to live on the island of Mospheira, before the humans landed, and now because we Ragi gave the island to humans, they live on our coast, which the Marid used to think they owned.”
“Did they own it?”
He knew that answer, too. “No, honored Father. The Marid claimed the whole southern half of the west coast, but an association of local clans owned it. The Marid had tried to bully all the clans that were here. Then the Edi came in, and the Edi got along with the local clans well enough, especially since the Edi helped throw the Marid out and back into their own territory. Then the Edi fought among themselves, mostly, until Great-grandfather put a Maschi clan lord in charge of the coast and created Sarini Province. And now that Lord Geigi of the Maschi has been in space all these years and his nephew has turned out to be a total fool, the Marid thinks they can get back onto the west coast, which is what nand’ Bren and Great-grandmother just stopped. And the Edi are all upset with the Marid, but they are grateful, too, to nand’ Bren and Great-grandmother, which is why they wanted to talk—nand’ Bren is their neighbor, and they feel an association there, and they really respect elder people, especially elder ladies, and, besides—” He was getting too many “ands,” which Great-grandmother said was undignified, so he tried to amend it. “Besides, Great-grandmother has influence with you, she is an associate of Lord Geigi, too, and her own province is on the other side of the world, so she would be a very smart alliance for them. They know she would not want their land. And she is associated with nand’ Bren, so there is a local connection.”