Intruder

  Then Senji began to say that the Farai had deserted the man’chi of Senji and begun to follow Dojisigi, and that they were in fact attempting to curry favor with Murini—utterly betraying their own subclan and attaching their actions, whether or not detected, to Dojisigi.

  At the same time Senji moved into Maschi territory to our north. The Maschi lord, with Lord Geigi stranded on the space station and Murini-aiji seeming to favor the Senji lord personally, far above Torii of the Dojisigi, accepted a secret alliance with Senji and would not receive our representative. Lord Pairuti was more terrified of Senji than of us—and we dared not press too hard for fear our approach to Pairuti would get to Murini’s ears. And Pairuti’s alliance with Senji meant a lord under Senji influence sat directly against our border.

  We know now what we suspected then, that Senji was moving agents into Targai, completely taking over the Maschi authority in the north.

  At this point, we dared not confront Senji directly. Instead we approached the southern Maschi—Lord Geigi’s sister at Kajiminda, who now had great reason to worry about her future. We offered her alliance if she would marry at our direction.

  Immediately the Senji sent a representative toward Kajiminda, which we forcefully prevented. And as we hoped, Murini was too busy at that moment with the situation on the northeast coast to divert attention to a mere Marid squabble over an estate bordering Taisigi territory. He would let us quarrel among ourselves and then devour the survivor: that was his pattern with situations in the north.

  I sent to Lord Torii of the Dojisigi, who were not pleased to find Senji abed with Murini. I offered him a close alliance in our enterprise at Kajiminda, reasoning as follows: Lord Geigi posed a great threat to Murini’s regime. Geigi held the vantage of the space station, he was allied with the humans in space, he was alleged to be closely allied to the human enclave on Mospheira—who did not need a space shuttle to pose a threat to Murini—and we were entirely prepared to pull the trigger on that threat if Murini made a move toward us. It was my private notion to marry the lady of Kajiminda. This would have given us a position with Lord Geigi to wipe out old feuds, and we were convinced that Lord Geigi’s intervention was no empty threat…that, in fact, it would ultimately happen.

  But the lady died. So did several of my agents. I cannot prove what happened. The Edi were high on our list of suspects. It was poison. They had opportunity. Hatred of us was certainly a credible motive. But most embarrassing, the agents I now most suspect of the murders were old in my service. I relied on these men. It is personally embarrassing to say, and one hesitates to claim blindness as an excuse, but one suspects they had been reporting directly to the Senji for years. They revealed themselves only in their recent attack on you and their subsequent cooperation with the renegades.

  At the time, we were caught at a loss. I have no marriageable relatives at my disposal. But Torii of the Dojisigi suggested we immediately approach young Baiji with an offer to marry young Tiajo, my cousin, on my mother’s side, a close relative of Torii. It would create an avenue to negotiation with Lord Geigi, it would give Murini-aiji pause in coming at me or at Lord Torii, who thus would be reassured, and it had one other benefit: the offer of Tiajo quietly worsened the rift between Senji and Dojisigi—so much so that the Dojisigi thereafter had to pay the Farai with bribes to be sure their information from inside Murini’s regime was accurate and frequent.

  Senji then found out about the bribe—I personally confess to that indiscretion—and the Farai began to snuggle even closer to the Dojisigi for protection. That gave us an inroad into Senji and Murini-aiji when we might care to use it.

  Meanwhile, it was not expected that you would return, since your absence stretched on beyond all expectation. The skirmishes against Murini-aiji continued in the north.

  Then Lord Geigi began taking actions that troubled the regime—landing mysterious machines of war in certain districts. We feared it might be a precursor to landings of a different sort, and we would have to negotiate with Lord Geigi.

  But Baiji had contrived every excuse to delay the marriage. Worse, he had proved an utter fool, squandering the estate, indulging himself; the Edi had deserted the place. And Baiji had, in an exchange of messages we did not commit to paper, wanted money, a great deal of money. We feared he could at any moment swing toward Murini or the Senji—he knew it, and redoubled his demands. We found ourselves dealing with a thorough, shallow-minded scoundrel who was as apt to go one direction as the other, and who had no sense about what should be committed to paper. Should Geigi descend from the heavens with force, Baiji would swing to any prevailing wind: we saw that. Worse still, he had squandered estate money, and his servants had left. We attempted to carry the marriage forward in greater haste, to put Tiajo’s father’s servants in charge of the estate before it was entirely ruined. Simultaneously we knew the Dojisigi were already scheming to move us out of the way once that marriage to Baiji took place—but so long as it was not Senji or Murini, at the moment we were satisfied. We simply planned to take Baiji into our keeping.

  This was the situation at the time of Murini’s greatest power. We assumed that should the dowager ever return from her voyage, the dowager would either ally with Geigi, or oppose him in a battle for the aijinate on the station, and we might not know it until the winning side made a move on earth. I was still betting strongly on Geigi coming down from the heavens, perhaps landing on Mospheira and gathering human allies for an invasion of the mainland. And if that happened, I was prepared to hand Kajiminda and his nephew over to him, as intact as I could manage.

  Your return was a shocking surprise. Your survival after you landed seemed impossible. You did none of the expected things, and once the aiji-dowager burst the bubble of Murini’s claims of man’chi from the Padi Valley, and once Tabini’s return brought the former Guild out of hiding, it was all over in the north. Murini’s power melted away like ice in the sun. They made their best try at assassination, and lost. Murini’s advisors counseled immediate retreat.

  And that fool Lord Torii, still believing reports from the wrong people that Tabini could never take the capital, accepted Murini and his staff in his territory, which allied him with Senji and left me with the unresolved mess at Kajiminda.

  We know now that Torii’s staff and advisors had been well infiltrated with Murini’s Guild…as Senji’s long since had been. Thanks to the common sense of my own bodyguard, they had at no time allowed Murini’s people close to me…which was why I was on the outside of all this connivance, and I was not receiving bad intelligence—I in fact was receiving very little intelligence. Things settled. Murini left. And died. It seemed the situation was stable, with Tabini-aiji back in power.

  But things in the Marid were not stable. And here is where we had made our mistake: I believed Lord Torii was still giving orders, and now I know that the renegade Guild had not followed Murini to destruction.

  I was quietly advised, after Murini’s death, that Dojisigi would negotiate with me directly regarding an alliance against Senji, but my aishid advised me against accepting such talks with them—they flatly warned me to temporize with that offer by whatever excuse I could muster and not to go to any conference with Dojisigi—who refused to come to Tanaja.

  We strongly suspected that the problems in the Baiji operation were due to the Dojisigi. My aishid, at the same time they advised me to avoid going to Dojisigi territory, also advised me that the Baiji operation had to continue, that it was exceedingly dangerous at this point to betray our knowledge that it was infiltrated, and that we should deal with it as if we knew absolutely nothing…as if, under Tabini-aiji’s rule now, we would allow that marriage to go forward, and then let Tabini-aiji sort it out. My aishid warned me that I must give Dojisigi no chance to break officially from our agreement, that the polite fiction of our alliance served to keep things quiet for the while. I personally resisted my bodyguard’s strong suggestion to retreat to the Isles. I would not detach myself from my people: if my b
odyguard and I were going down, we would go down fighting for Taisigi land. So we simply closed our borders so far as we could and stalled any appointment for negotiation with the Dojisigi—still thinking that it was Lord Torii giving the orders in that district.

  My bodyguard was now isolated. They could not rely on any allies except Sungeni and Dausigi, who rely on us for protection, not the other way around.

  My bodyguard had not contacted the new Guild leadership in Shejidan, they say that they had discussed doing so. But they did not want to stir that pot and find attention coming on us—from either the Guild in Shejidan or from Dojisigi, since we felt Shejidan’s interest was purely in seeing war between Dojisigi and Taisigi.

  We decided that if we stayed very quiet, Dojisigi might yet make a move that drew action from Shejidan, which was our best hope: that Tabini-aiji would send agents there and not to us.

  My enemies in Dojisigi were not, however, idle. They began a campaign of rumors. They blamed me as the power that had backed Murini from the start. It was not at all difficult to persuade Tabini that I was a problem and the son and grandson of a problem. Indeed, it was not a coat that fit that badly. I had no man’chi for Tabini-aiji and if I at that point had had an approach from the Dojisigi Guild that would not threaten to kill my bodyguard in the process, yes, I would have taken it, not even understanding their existence at that time. If I could have taken out Lord Torii, I would have, because I could never trust him, not given our relationship.

  That was where things stood when you arrived on the west coast and walked into ambush at Kajiminda.

  Possibly the people the Dojisigi had put there were convinced that you were there to reconnoiter, with inside information that I might have provided you. Possibly their own suspicion of plots under every hedge sprang their trap prematurely.

  Baiji, being the fool he is, immediately panicked; ran for shelter with you, likely because you are an ally of his uncle, and things blew up. The aiji-dowager became involved. Tabini arrived, invaded a Dojisigi operation in Separti, and the survivors there delivered intelligence, blaming, of course—me. And promptly the Guild in Shejidan was debating having me assassinated. Tabini had already Filed Intent.

  We were at a crisis. If I could avoid being assassinated, and if Dojisigi agents could take Najida, which was a very soft target, they would gain hostages, in you, the aiji’s own son, and the aiji’s grandmother—and that would be the stupidest thing they could do, but I thought it was Lord Torii in charge. I was sure the aiji-dowager and the aiji’s son would be out of there by sunrise, that somehow the aiji’s forces would get at least one live prisoner, or that you would get something incriminating out of Baiji.

  But the aiji-dowager and the aiji’s son stayed, and Tabini let them—refusing to seem to retreat. You fortified Najida. And that gave the renegade Guild a grand opportunity. They escalated the conflict, and so doing, laid the bloody dagger at my door.

  The Guild in Shejidan met to declare me the target…not, one strongly suspects, that they did not know the truth about the operation—but if I were out of the way, Taisigi territory became the most logical base, adjacent to Sarini province and Senji. They would take the Marid by force and install a Ragi authority. Which you must admit, they came close to doing.

  The dowager somehow got intelligence of what was going on within the Guild—I strongly believe it—and contacted me directly, in direct opposition to the intentions of her grandson and of the Guild in Shejidan. She made an offer.

  I do not hesitate to accept it. The benefit to me is direct. The benefit to the Marid is direct. I am under constraint, but I have no motive to resist this plan, which offers me the Marid, accommodates the aiji-dowager, and, one now believes, may ultimately bring her grandson into agreement with the situation.

  You may assume that I am lying in some of this. But it will be a useful truth that may mend situations for you. None of us like to be used by third parties. We deeply resent such things.

  I will never tell you which parts are lies. But I promise to base my future actions faithfully on this document as if all these things were true.

  And that, paidhi, is the most significant truth that has ever passed between us.

  “Damn!” Bren said when he had finished it. He passed it across to Banichi and Jago, who could share the document, and settled back with arms folded.

  “Is something other than what was represented, Bren-ji?” Tano asked.

  “Lord Machigi is what he is,” Bren said. “You shall see, nadiin-

  ji, when you read it. This man is full of turns. But so is Tabini. And so is the dowager. One is not sure what one has loosed into the aishidi’tat. He is a man of qualities. One is simply not certain in what direction they tend.”

  In due time Banichi finished reading—clearly so. He let expression show—a little perplexity in a lift of the brows. And Jago, half a beat later: “The Dojisigi and the renegades together did not find a way to attack this man directly. One should remember that.”

  The paper went to Tano and Algini, who read it together.

  “He did say,” Banichi said, “that you should use this paper as you see fit.”

  Banichi and Jago had been there in the breakfast room when the statement was made.

  “One believes both the dowager and Tabini-aiji should see it, nadiin-ji. With all it entails. One does not want to inflame the situation. But they do need to see it, do they not?”

  “The question is, at all odds,” Jago said, “whether he will keep his pledge to stand by this version of the truth.”

  “Is it not?” Bren said, and thought—in Ragi, which was the only safe way to think on the topic, There is no one in the world more unhappy than a solitary ateva. Machigi said it: he has no relatives in his own district. His aishid is all he has. His clan is virtually wiped out, except a contract marriage to a Dojisigi, and he himself has not yet married. He has taken no risk of that sort…and begetting a child is a risk for him. He says he was about to marry a woman fifteen years his senior. But that is all politics.

  And it may, like every other statement in that letter, be a lie.

  Machigi is young to have landed in such a position. He does not admit to fear. Possibly he feels none, since he has never known a time when he was not a target.

  For a young man, he is scarily short of good advisors. But the four closest to him are extraordinary, at least in combination.

  He vividly remembered having a gun leveled at him—in Machigi’s hands. And with equal vividness, he recalled Machigi’s immediate and easy change of tactics when he had not spooked. Machigi had become sarcastic, sullen, then increasingly outgoing and cheerful. Shift of masks. One after the other. And which was real?

  Yet—I shall miss you, Machigi had said.

  Right before handing him this outrageous document, a flat-out warning that no one should investigate the truth who did not want to find out things that would be very inconvenient for their future relationship.

  I promise to base my future actions faithfully on this document as if all these things were true.

  The scoundrel, Bren thought. The outright scoundrel. Jago was right. Two dangerous neighbors, Murini and the shadow Guild alike, had hesitated to take on this young man.

  And once the Shejidan branch of the Guild had moved into his land, Machigi had advanced straight toward Najida, dodging fire, slipping right through the zone of conflict and helping deliver a death blow to the shadow Guild.

  With what intent? To protect the dowager?

  Or to attack her, if the Shejidan Guild didn’t stand by its word?

  If Machigi had intended simply to run for safety, any ship in his harbor would have carried him to far safer territory in the Isles with far less effort. No. Machigi had come straight for Najida. He had gone for Ilisidi, pursuing, presumably, not her life, but the alliance that she offered him against the Guild renegades—perhaps because he saw that the scales were rapidly tipping toward the dowager as a powerbroker, and he had her offer
dangling in front of him.

  Machigi had, damn him, likely done at least half the things he was accused of.

  So did they waste time in investigating what he had done, or proceed as the letter said, from a fresh start based on what its creator clearly said was a fabrication?

  And might not be a fabrication at all, only a truth cast in the most defiant way possible. Deal with me, but do not debate me. I shall not answer your questions.

  At times being human was a real difficulty in dealing with atevi politics.

  Algini said, having read the letter, “He is taking the advice of his bodyguard. Good.”

  He didn’t read the second letter, the one addressed to Ilisidi, which was sealed with the wax seal of the Taisigin Marid. He did worry about it.

  He had a drink of fruit juice from the well-appointed galley on the bus, then settled down in the quiet his aishid afforded him and began to work on his notes for the upcoming report to Tabini-aiji.

  His brother Toby and Barb had sailed for Port Jackson, worrisome in the weather, but they were good, experienced sailors. They’d enjoy the storm that had swept across. That was Toby’s attitude.

  Najida was about to undergo a major renovation in addition to the repairs. He’d asked an architect to design a new wing, from his sketches. Getting the main hall in order was a priority. He’d promised a wedding venue to a village girl, in payment for a dress, and that promise, among others, had to be kept.

  Cajeiri was presumably safely back in his parents’ care and not apt to leave it until they let their guard down, which would not be soon.

  And the Edi were busy staking out the ground where they would build a new center, on land donated by Lord Geigi out of his estate lands. A new Grandmother Stone would go up there, marking something very, very important to the Edi people.

  Jago came up the aisle to say they had just heard from Lord Geigi, in fact: Lord Geigi had wanted to be notified when they were headed for the airport—which meant, diplomatically speaking, when they had gotten safely away from Tanaja with everything in order, and knew that they were getting out in one piece. Geigi had been just a little worried about the visit.