But there were longer sections that followed his emergency notes, because some things weren’t just lists of names. Some things had to be understood in sequence . . . and ideally in Ragi, from the Ragi point of view.
There was, notably, a new section he had, over recent days, rated important enough to include in the handbook.
He’d gotten a lengthy and very secret file from Lord Geigi of Kajiminda, the day before Geigi had left for the station. Geigi himself figured in the account . . . in the third person. Geigi was far too modest, and far too generous, and definitely underplayed his own importance in events.
“Understand, it is not formally written. It is only a private memoir, very private, and far too blunt. I have not been discreet or courteous, nor even used the honorifics of very great people I would by no means offend. Were it to fall into any hands but yours in this state, I would resign in mortification. But some record needs to be made, by someone who knows things no one of this age will admit.”
“One perfectly understands.”
“You play some part in it. Please fill in anything missing. Correct my misapprehensions of human understanding: that is the important thing. And next time we meet in person, Bren-ji, I shall be very glad to receive your notes to add to mine.”
Geigi had added then, somewhat diffidently, “I may someday, in my spare time, put all these notes into order. I have even thought I might write a book—though one far, far more careful of reputations and proprieties. I would hold your view of events very valuable. I know where I transgress regarding my own customs; but if I violate yours, please advise me.”
It was a remarkable, a revealing narrative—scandalously blunt, by atevi standards. He profoundly trusted Geigi—and it was in an amazing amount of trust that Geigi wanted him to read it. He had taken it with him in the thought that a vacation would give him time to add the promised notes from a human perspective. And he had done a little of that writing, before the vacation had turned out to be other than a vacation.
Today . . . today definitely had not been.
But at the moment, almost as sleep-deprived as Banichi and unable to come down from the events of the morning, he wanted Geigi’s comforting voice, the accent, the habitual wry understatement.
The occasional poetic bent.
His ally was safely in the heavens.
On Earth, after all the events Geigi’s narrative described, things were not quite as stable.1
2
None of them were, in fact, supposed to be on this train. The train belonged to the northern districts of the aishidi’tat. It was bringing a few spare cars southward toward Shejidan. No one should be on board.
And they were supposed to be hosting the preliminaries for young Cajeiri’s birthday party up north, in Atageini territory, at Lord Tatiseigi’s Padi Valley estate, with Jase Graham and the three human children from the space station—Cajeiri’s personal guests.
In uncommon haste, the aiji-dowager had swept up the entire birthday party and headed them all back to the capital. She hadn’t yet notified Tabini-aiji they were coming . . . but then, their bodyguards weren’t trusting outside communications channels of any sort this morning.
With a continent-spanning rail system that ran on a very precise timetable, it would have been impossible and dangerous to keep the movement of their high-priority train completely a secret from other trains on the tracks. So for the benefit of everybody who needed to know anything—including the Transportation authorities—this train was still running empty, its window shades down, a typical configuration for cars out of service. The story they’d given out to Transportation was simple: a legislator in the capital had a family emergency in the north. On legislative privilege, that lord, with his staff, needed a pickup at the Bujavid station in Shejidan at mid-afternoon, and this was an already composed train that could do that handily. That was the story they had fed to Transportation: the train, composed as it was, an older train and coming from the north, could accomplish the pickup in the capital and return to the north to resume its regular operation this evening with no great disturbance to the system.
The track they were using required no routing changes, and one doubted that Transportation would do any checking of the facts behind the order . . . such things happened when a lord had to attend to unexpected business. The dowager’s staff had found an engine on the northern line deadheading one surplus passenger car and three empty boxcars back to a regional rail yard where normally they would have dropped off the passenger car and picked up freight. It had not been that far from Lord Tatiseigi’s little rail depot at the time they had found it—an older, short-bodied train, moreover, and headed in the right direction. Perfect choice.
It was perfectly credible that a legislator in Shejidan might want to get home quickly, given the current political emergency in the north. The rail office had obliged a quiet and high-level Guild request and cleared that train from the northern line to come all the way up to the Bujavid station for that pickup—being a short-bodied train, it could do it—and they would immediately turn it around and send it back up north. One freight shipment would have to be rescheduled for a later train, but it was nothing that needed any special notice to district directors.
The train had made one very brief stop in its passage, a matter of Lord Tatiseigi’s own privilege, a pause which would have attracted no great notice from the Transportation Guild, either—so they hoped. Such small stops, a request for the next passing train to delay for a small pickup, usually involved a crate or two, or even an individual letter, on a clan lord’s privilege—a practice that came down from a slower, less express-minded age, that occasionally caused a small delay in traffic, but it was a lordly and district prerogative the legislature had been unable to curtail.
That old custom served them now. Their other choice would have been to bring the armored Red Train up from the Bujavid to let them travel back in style, in the aiji’s personal car—and that would not only have cost precious hours, it would have excited notice. Armor plate was a good thing. But it was far better not to need it.
The last thing the public had known of the dowager and the foreign visitors’ whereabouts was that the dowager’s plane had taken the dowager and the heir, and possibly Lord Tatiseigi, off across the continental divide to the East, to await the birthday guests at her estate at Malguri . . . about as secure an estate as there was anywhere. The public knew that the space shuttle had landed earlier than anticipated, bringing down three human children who would entertain the heir preceding his official birthday in the Bujavid—and by now the public probably knew that Jase Graham, one of the four Phoenix captains, had accompanied the children on their flight—a perfectly understandable arrangement. Jase had spent no little time on the planet and had a previous appointment in the aiji’s court. It was perfectly logical he should come down for a visit, and perfectly reasonable, too, that he and the human children would bring human security with them . . . so if that had been reported, it was no serious issue.
And as for where Bren-paidhi had entered the picture, the paidhi-aiji would quite logically have stayed behind the dowager’s party and met that shuttle to assist the foreign guests . . . and escort them across the continent to Malguri.
If the news services had reported, however, that the foreign guests and the paidhi-aiji had not flown east at all, but had been conveyed to Lord Tatiseigi’s estate at Tirnamardi, to meet the dowager and Lord Tatiseigi there, people would have said the news services had gone slightly mad. Of course it was a ruse, and not a very clever one. Of course the visiting humans and the paidhi-aiji had gone on to Malguri, most probably by plane, since the transcontinental journey by rail was brutal.
Humans—visit Tatiseigi’s estate at Tirnamardi? Impossible. Lord Tatiseigi was head of the Conservative Caucus, which routinely deplored human influence and supported traditional ways against the encroachment of human technology and mores. It was
barely conceivable that that elderly and conservative lord would be joining the dowager and meeting a collection of human guests at remote Malguri. Host them at his ancient estate? No.
The news services might have found out by now that there was news happening at Lord Tatiseigi’s estate. Taibeni clansmen with their mecheita cavalry and with trucks and supplies, had moved into the estate’s extensive grounds some days ago, while Lord Tatiseigi was still in the capital. That strange report might foretell another skirmish in an ancient war, since Tatiseigi’s Atageini clan and the neighboring Taibeni clan had been technically at war from before the foundation of the aishidi’tat.
Mere days ago, however, in the capital, Lord Tatiseigi had signed a formal peace with the Taibeni lord by proxy. If the news services had phoned either Lord Keimi of the Taibeni or either of Lord Tatiseigi’s residences, neither source would have confirmed it.
And if the news services had by now gotten wind of the treaty, they would still be astonished to see that Taibeni had been allowed within the ancient hedges and onto Tirnamardi’s well-kept grounds. Lord Tatiseigi might have maintained two hundred years of technical unity with his other neighbor, the Kadagidi, while shooting at them on occasion, and vice versa, in periodic clan warfare—and one might be brought to believe that, after all this time, Lord Tatiseigi might finally have admitted the Taibeni clan to the same status as the Kadagidi, creating a framework within which business between the clans could occasionally be arranged . . . but . . . on the estate grounds?
Was there possibly more to it? Could there be an Atageini move in concert with Taiben, against the lately-disgraced Kadagidi?
Considering the Taibeni were blood-relatives of the aiji, signing a peace treaty with Taiben was a politic move for the Atageini, if a few centuries belated.
And the secrecy of it, or at least Tatiseigi’s keeping the matter low-key? Oh, well, the Conservatives never liked to change their mind in public.
But Taibeni campfires making two columns of smoke inside the famous Tirnamardi hedges? Was that permitted? Had Lord Tatiseigi, who was supposed to be off across the continent at Malguri, any inkling there were Taibeni camping on his grounds, with mecheiti? Was there some sort of double-cross in progress?
Taibeni guards would not have let the news services disembark at the local rail station, not yesterday, not today, nor would they on any day in the foreseeable future. If any news services were ever to get to Tirnamardi, they would have to bring their equipment in from some other stop, such as the first Kadagidi station, taking a truck overland—and likely the Taibeni would stop them on that approach, too—betraying another puzzling situation, since the Taibeni were still technically at war with the Kadagidi, and should not be keeping track of traffic on Kadagidi land.
But perhaps the news services had not yet noticed the two—now three—Taibeni camps, despite the campfires.
Perhaps the news services had sent all their personnel buzzing around the airport in Malguri district, clear across the continent, trying to find out the truth of what was going on up at Malguri fortress—in a township without many modern conveniences, let alone good restaurants or hotels, in a town a day’s flight removed from Shejidan.
This morning, however, another column of smoke had gone up in the green midlands, this one from Tatiseigi’s neighbor, the Kadagidi estate. And since early this morning there could be no question the Kadagidi township was upset, and no more concealing the reports that the Kadagidi lands had been invaded.
Oh, there would be protests flying far and fast . . . quiet, at first, but passionate. And those would reach the news.
By now one could assume the news services would be frantic for answers, increasingly suspecting they had been diverted off a major news event that had nothing to do with the young heir’s birthday party. And by this hour, they would likely begin to get their answers . . . not from the Kadagidi estate itself, which was under Taibeni occupation at the moment, but from the aggrieved household staff, who had been sent down to the Kadagidi township after being ejected from the manor house at Asien’dalun.
Within hours, that situation would surely overshadow not only the heir’s birthday preparations, but the assassination of the heir’s grandfather, and the impending birth of another child to the aiji in Shejidan.
The aiji-dowager and her great-grandson had been intended to carry on the birthday preparations quietly, out of the way of politics in the capital and out of reach of the news services—but, in truth, Bren now suspected, even he had been misled—distracted by all the preparations it had taken to set up the Malguri story and then to divert the entire birthday party to Tirnamardi. It was very possible the dowager’s primary intention in setting up the Malguri story and visiting Lord Tatiseigi instead, had not been so much to deceive the news services, as to separate the Shadow Guild’s two prime targets: herself—and Tabini-aiji—and get good intelligence on the Kadagidi.
Their Shadow Guild enemies, lately pressed to prove they could still reach out and commit acts of terror against the aiji’s authority, had been on the move, too—but they had clearly been running behind. They’d launched a complex assassination attempt based on their estimation of where Tatiseigi would be, in their absolutely correct estimation of the effect the loss of Tatiseigi would have on the dowager’s influence with the Conservatives.
As happened, the two efforts, the Shadow Guild assassination plot and the dowager’s several-pronged plot to confuse her enemies, had bumped into one another . . . purely by accident, the kind of accident that might befall two opponents circling one another in the dark.
Inevitable, under the circumstances, that they would collide—but one could suspect that the dowager still knew more than she was saying.
3
The curtains were not supposed to be up, because the train was supposed to be empty, so Cajeiri and his guests could not even sneak a look outside.
And it was not a rule to hedge on or cheat. Cajeiri was still only infelicitous eight, but he had the part about no cheating very clear, because people were dead this morning—nobody on their side, but a few on the other side, people who had been shooting at nand’ Bren and nand’ Jase; and they still had enemies loose. It had been a long night, and that was why even Guild who ordinarily would be on duty were almost all sleeping on the train. It was because they were exhausted and there might be more fighting once they got to Shejidan. It was certainly not because everybody felt safe.
Mani, Great-grandmother, had ordered a regular train to come to Tirnamardi’s rail station to pick them up, and it was interesting to see what an ordinary passenger car looked like inside—brown mostly, mostly enameled metal, and the seats were not nearly as comfortable as the red car his father kept. There were sets of seats, too, with tables between; he and his guests had one such set; his bodyguards, across the aisle, had another such set. But none of the seats had cushions.
The car was not armored, either, which was another reason they had to keep the shades down.
And while mani had told him they would all just go back to the Bujavid and go upstairs and have dinner in Great-uncle Tatiseigi’s apartment tonight—things were far from normal. Every promise was subject to change, and though they were trying to pretend things were normal, his three guests all knew there was trouble.
It was almost his birthday, he was almost nine, he should have had two more days at Tirnamardi, riding mecheiti and doing whatever he liked; and that had lasted about one whole day. He didn’t know exactly what danger was out beyond those window shades—except that Kadagidi clan was definitely upset, except that Banichi was hurt and some of Great-grandmother’s young men were, and except that they had the Kadagidi lord a prisoner in the next car, along with two Dojisigi Assassins, who had come to kill Great-uncle and had apparently ended up turning on the Kadagidi lord instead.
It was all about the Shadow Guild, which was scary bad news. He had so much rather it was just two
lords fighting.
Mani had said everything was going very well—and he almost believed that, considering that they had apparently won, but mani had been very grim when she said it. And she had not wanted to wait for the safer, armored Red Train to travel out from the Bujavid—because speed was apparently more important than security. Or speed was security. The adults had not told him which. He almost had the feeling it was speed his great-grandmother wanted right now, not because she was running, but because she had somebody specific in her sights. She had that look she took on when she had a target. But he had no idea who that might be.
He, meanwhile, was in charge of his birthday guests, while the grown-ups did their grown-up business and laid plans and kept secrets. He had to explain the situation to his associates from the space station, and he—and his bodyguard—had to be very sure they didn’t sneak a look out past the window shades. Going out to Tirnamardi they had been more relaxed and they had done a lot of looking from the bus—but on the Red Train, they had had no windows to look out once they were aboard: its walls had only fake windows. In this car, there were just woven fabric shades between them and outside, and the temptation even for him was extreme. His guests were missing a chance to look at trees and the whole world that they had come down to see.
But along the way, among those trees, there could very well be Assassins waiting to shoot at them, because, as his bodyguard had told him, trains ran on tracks, and anybody could tell the route they were going to take.
Anybody could guess, too, that the Shadow Guild was going to be very upset about what had happened to some of their people this morning.
Had they left anybody behind who would be chasing them? His bodyguard said it was possible, but the senior Guild was not telling them that.