It was the immaculate clothes and proper form. It had to be. He straightened his shoulders.
“Nothing in particular,” he said to Cenedi. “One came to be very quiet, and to learn. We are not to meet the bus and we are not to interfere with nand’ Bren and nand’ Geigi. But surely we can be very quiet and listen.”
Cenedi looked him up and down, looked at Antaro and Jegari—and showed him right in.
Maybe it was the fact Lucasi and Veijico were not with them. Was that not a thought?
He set himself in the lesser chair by the fireplace, and Jegari and Antaro properly positioned themselves, standing, along the wall.
So! They were in. And he would be particularly on his best behavior when Great-grandmother laid eyes on him—absolutely proper. Great-grandmother would be sure, just the same as Cenedi and Nawari, that he was bursting with curiosity, and that sometimes annoyed her. But that was not all that it was. He had very serious matters to deal with, himself, and no one had figured that out and told him what to do.
Or had he figured out Great-grandmother’s riddle? He was not supposed to meet the bus. He was not supposed to be outside.
But he was admitted here, in his proper best clothes, to hear things the lords said.
Just getting here had been—his father’s lately favorite word—educational.
6
The bus pulled up under the portico and made a quiet stop—its soft, powerful sigh very much more impressive than their thirty-year-old estate bus, which had always come in gasping and squealing. And the staff did Najida proud: they turned out in their party best to welcome Najida’s long-absent neighbor.
But not just staff had come in, Bren saw as he descended, with Banichi and Jago, and with Geigi’s two senior guards. Clearly defying the risks of travel in the district, a whole truckload of festively dressed Edi people had arrived up from the village, all resplendent in their bright colors, pouring in to wonder at the bus and to welcome Lord Geigi, who was their lord and longtime protector. In Edi eyes, things were surely looking up, and power lately had descended on Najida—in the form of the aiji’s visit, the aiji-dowager’s residence, the local victory over the Marid intruders, the fall of the detested Baiji, and now the return of the Lord of Sarini Province from orbit. Geigi descended the steps to a great deal of applause.
Geigi looked about him, at that, and indeed, despite the grey hairs, not much changed from the Geigi who had left all those years ago. Geigi’s two-man guard had moved in to be close to him: that was of course as it should be.
But one absence was remarkable.
Cajeiri was not outside to meet them. That was downright worrisome.
“One does not see the young gentleman, nadiin-ji,” he remarked to Banichi and Jago, while waving to the assembled onlookers and smiling.
“The young gentleman has set up to be with his great-grandmother,” Jago said—his aishid was in contact with each other short-range, information likely pouring back and forth. “He has assigned his two new guards to be with Tano and Algini. Antaro and Jegari are with him.”
“Well,” Bren said in some surprise. The young gentleman declined a noisy, exciting event in order to be strategically positioned and in on everything important. There was a little advanced thinking, when the boy of not too many months ago had achieved strategic thinking only in his lulls between motion.
“Indeed,” Jago said dryly, clearly in the same train of thought.
Ramaso stood to the fore of the staff, and Geigi made clear to him he would say a few words. Ramaso held up his hands, and a silence descended on the happy gathering, starting with house staff and extending to the visiting Edi.
“My welcome here at Najida,” Geigi said, looking about him, “is a great comfort to the distress of Kajiminda. So many things remain to be done, but with the help of good neighbors I shall do them in short order. I have heard the aiji-dowager’s proposal and shall be hearing more details. I shall be sending to Maschi clan and consulting with them, with the aiji-dowager, with my neighbors, and certainly with the people of Kajiminda, a meeting one most earnestly desires at the earliest. One hopes to meet with the Grandmother of Najida: one hopes to do that tomorrow, if at all possible. Only bear with me today: I have had a long journey, however rapid, and I am still catching my breath. But tomorrow I shall get down to business, with the kindness of my neighbors. One hopes to do the best possible for Kajiminda and to restore the good relationships Kajiminda has always enjoyed with Najida. Thank you very much for your welcome. One thanks you with all depth of feeling.”
He gave a little bow to the crowd, and Bren bowed in gratitude, too, before he directed Geigi inside, into the quiet and shadow of the inner halls.
“Be welcome,” he said, the formula. “Geigi-ji.”
“One is dazed, Bren-ji, simply dazed. One thinks of things on the planet proceeding slowly, but the changes I see have been astonishing.”
“Not all to the good, one fears. We have been very fortunate in the aiji-dowager’s presence. One cannot estimate what might have happened here at Najida were it not for the reinforcement her visit entailed. Our enemy’s plans would have been quite adequate to have disposed of either or both of us—without her fortunate intervention. Is the dowager ready for us, nadiin-ji?” he asked his bodyguard, and Banichi nodded in the affirmative. “Then we shall go to her for a start. Have you need of anything, Geigi-ji?”
“We are perfectly prepared,” Geigi answered him.
“Excellent,” he said, and Banichi and Jago led the way to the dowager’s door and knocked. Cenedi, no great surprise, opened it for them.
“The dowager is expecting you, nandiin-ji,” Cenedi said, and that often-sober face lighted with an honest smile for Geigi. “Welcome, nandi.”
“Indeed, indeed, Cenedi-ji,” Geigi said. “You know my senior guard: Haiji and Cajami.”
“One knows and welcomes them,” Cenedi said, and made room for them to pass, all of them, inside.
Which was a fair complement of Guild, besides Antaro and Jegari, who stood quietly in the far corner.
The dowager had the fire going in the fireplace, and had her chair there. Cajeiri sat with her, and got up immediately to bow and offer his hand to his great-grandmother, in lieu of her cane, since she elected to stand to meet an old ally—an honor she paid to very few.
She took her cane in hand to walk forward to mid-room to meet them, stopped there, leaning on the cane, nodded deeply and said, “One is pleased to see you, Geigi-ji. How are the legs?”
“Oh, holding me up, ’Sidi-ji. They are, still. But the far horizons all are flat! It is so strangely disconcerting.”
“One is sure your eye will adjust in a day or two,” she said. “Come, sit with us. Will you take tea?”
The dowager became the hostess in whatever house she lodged, a matter of rank and custom, and Bren needed not even signal his own staff—Ramaso had come into the room, and Ramaso had quite naturally anticipated the order. They had scarcely found their seats near the fire—Cajeiri moved to the farthest, to make room for Geigi next to his great-grandmother—when the servants came in bearing enough tea for the purpose.
The talk then was all of the journey, the rush to make space on the shuttle—several commercial loads would be a week late, and probably all that the human companies knew of reasons was that the highest-ranking atevi lord had taken a yen to visit his estate, with no hint of the urgency involved. Secrecy had been invoked, and the four captains on the station were in Geigi’s confidence, but the information did not go much lower than that.
“One wishes it truly were a whim that brings this visit,” Geigi said over their second round of tea. “One wishes, indeed, that I had made this visit while my sister was still alive.”
“One cannot mend the past,” Ilisidi said sternly. “And you never got along with her, Geigi-ji. Remember it accurately.”
“Well, true, true, ’Sidi-ji, we fought. And a good part of our disagreement was her perpetual doting on that boy.
One knew, one knew when news came that she had died, that the estate would be in trouble, but there was nothing I could do from the station. If I had used the very first opportunity after the shuttles were flying again to come down here—”
“That graceless brat’s associates would have assassinated you on your very doorstep,” the dowager said bluntly, “as they likely assassinated your sister, one regrets to say. We do not at all wish you had come down here before now. What we do regret, in the general scarcity of good intelligence—that scoundrel Murini having utterly disrupted the Guild’s networks—is that my own information was just as lacking as my grandson’s. Cenedi.”
“Nandi?” Cenedi answered.
“You have taken an unacceptable blame for the paidhi’s situation and my great-grandson’s near calamity—when the fault lies in the Guild itself, in its concentration on the central clans since the Troubles. That is how our very competent security received bad information. ‘Is the district quiet?’ One is certain my Cenedi asked that question of Guild headquarters, as he would ask of any district. And what answer did you get, Nedi-ji?”
A slight bow of Cenedi’s head. “That there was no hint of trouble in the district, aiji-ma.”
“And when Banichi asked?”
“The same,” Banichi answered, with the same slight bow, “aiji-ma.”
“And when we asked my grandson’s office if there was a difficulty regarding Kajiminda?”
“The same,” Cenedi said.
“So,” Ilisidi said definitively. “You see the state of affairs. Do not take the word of either the Guild or my grandson’s office.” Click went the dowager’s teacup onto the marble side table. “Well, indeed. There is blame to go around including to my grandson, who went off to Taiben while the Kadagidi were plotting their coup in the first place: it saved his life, however, and Damiridaja’s. Baji-naji, we in this room are all alive when our enemies wish us dead. That is a cheerful point, is it not?”
“Indubitably,” Geigi said firmly.
“So, well, Geigi-ji, and in consequence, we are holding your nephew, to whom we refuse any title or courtesy. We reserve all such titles and honors for you, whom we greatly esteem. And we damn him to our great displeasure. We are settled on the fate of Kajiminda, understand. And on the fate of your nephew. Will you hear it?”
“We shall certainly hear it, aiji-ma.”
“You yourself, esteemed ally, will be of greatest use where you have been. And we should not reward you for your service by settling Kajiminda estate on any other person, and we will not support such a notion should it ever be made. Kajiminda should remain in Maschi hands, tied to the aishidi’tat. The treaty is valuable, particularly now. You will, however, cede the seaward end of the peninsula to your Edi neighbors, as I shall ask the same of Najida.”
“Readily, aiji-ma,” Bren said. “One anticipated such a request.”
“The same, yes,” Geigi said, “but I am getting older, and with this disaster, I have no successor, aiji-ma. You know my disposition. Even in my own clan—”
An impatient tap of the cane. “Oh, pish, with that boy, you had no successor! And we shall find you better prospects. What is old and tested under adversity should not be yielded up to a momentary situation. Our disposition of your misbehaving nephew is direct to that point. His marrying began this crisis. His marrying can settle it. We have a girl in mind, a strong-minded Eastern girl, of a family we approve. Ardija clan.”
“Ardija,” Geigi echoed in some surprise. Bren had not heard the name in that context either. Ardija was a neighbor of the dowager’s own Malguri holdings, a tiny clan, but one with historic ties to the dowager’s line.
“We know the young lady well, a strong-minded young woman, well-bred and intelligent. The East would be salutary for your nephew and keep him out of trouble until there is a child. After that contract produces a child, we care little where he lives, so long as Ardija clan has the upbringing of the offspring, who may spend some time under your tutelage on the station or at Kajiminda when he—or she—reaches an appropriate age. Maschi clan will get its heir out of a politically advantageous line.”
Geigi listened through all of this and finally drew a deep breath. “You have spent considerable thought on this, ’Sidi-ji. Your solution, an Eastern tie, will shake Maschi clan to the roots.”
“Do not be modest. It will shake the aishidi’tat itself, linking the west coast with the East. Your Maschi clan has occupied a delicate position, poised between the Marid and the west coast. They were dutiful enough, and they have paid all courtesies to my grandson on his resumption of power. But we have remarked their curious silence regarding your nephew’s flirtation with the Marid. Not a word of warning came from them—and we assume they were surely not ignorant of the situation. Or should not have been.”
“This has indeed crossed my mind, aiji-ma.”
“Then we agree on that suspicion.”
“One cannot say with any certainty. I have no current knowledge of my own clan, embarrassing as it is to say so. First my long absence, then the year without communication with the world at all, and all the changes since . . .”
“Do not apologize. It was incumbent on them to approach you. Let them feel the weight of your hand, Geigi-ji. We greatly suspect the quality of their leadership and we suspect the head of Maschi clan of doing much what your nephew has done, neither joining the Marid in its schemes nor reporting them to my grandson. If you wish to know the real fault that allowed your scoundrel of a nephew to continue his flirtations with the Marid, look to the failure of Pairuti of Maschi clan to be forthcoming to my grandson.”
That was news. So communication in the southwest had broken down in a major way. The old web of information had not totally reintegrated after Tabini’s return to power. That was a fact. Maschi clan leadership sat poised between the Marid and the coast, supposedly communicating with the capital. And had Tabini been getting no alarms from them?
A thump of the cane on the floor punctuated the dowager’s assessment. “The aishidi’tat has never solved its problems in this district. Your leadership, Geigi-ji, your personal efforts, brought peace and laid the foundations for an association on this coast. And the world may have urgently needed your talents on the station, where you have done remarkable things for us all; but with your departure to that effort—a keystone fell out of the association here. Your own clan has grown weak, at best, and we fear, at worst, quite as much as your nephew, Maschi clan has been playing both sides of the recent civil disturbance.”
My God, Bren thought, and two and three pieces of the situation clicked into place. Not just the nephew. The clan seat . . . poised physically between Kajiminda and Marid territory.
“One is appalled,” Geigi said somberly. “Their communications to me have been routine.”
“So have their communications to my grandson in the capital. It does not say those communications have been truthful.”
“Aiji-ma!”
“Pish, Geigi-ji. Where is ’Sidi-ji?”
“ ’Sidi-ji, forgive me. But one is—appalled, entirely. Thunderstruck. Embarrassed, extremely. Pairuti—before the Troubles, he was a dull fellow. He collected sisui figures. That is absolutely the only distinction he had. He kept meticulous books. He—”
“—is absolutely dutiful in attending court sessions, for both Murini and my grandson, of course. Whoever has been in power, yes, Pairuti has been obedient and attended court. But his proximity to the Marid during such uneasy times has required more talents than collecting porcelain miniatures. And what troubles me, Geigi-ji, is that he has not distinguished himself lately in providing information. Cenedi-ji?”
Cenedi said, “Nandiin, a query to Shejidan has not produced any but routine, formal communications of a mundane nature from Lord Pairuti to the aiji since his return. Guild communications are equally sterile, reporting everything in the district tranquil, and the district prosperous throughout. There is no fluctuation in the provincial tax records, be it Murin
i or Tabini-aiji in Shejidan.”
“One would expect something more of disturbance,” Ilisidi said in a low voice. “Considering the situation in this district of the province, which we have turned up inside only a few days’ residence, its mundane character becomes entirely damning.”
“Gods,” Geigi said. Geigi, the Rational Determinist, who relied on reason. “Gods. I know the tone of his letters, up and down. Pairuti discusses his acquisitions. His figurines. He offers his felicitations on whatever good fortune has attended, his sorrow for any ill—of course his willingness to be of service, when he is so remote he knows he will never be called upon in the least. I have dealt with him for years. He is the most boring man in the aishidi’tat.”
“He surely called you on the station, once my grandson returned to power.”
“He did. He did. Never an indication of Marid pressure on Sarini Province, no hint of the nest of Marid lurking in Separti. He offered condolences for my sister’s death—he promised to look in on my nephew. I took it in the way of every promise from him, something one means very well, but one never intends to get around to . . . unless he should extend his travel a little on his way to the airport, for winter court. And one was all but certain he never would actually do it. Those are my correspondences with Pairuti. But his people thrive. He has been a decent administrator. His extravagances are all for his collections.”
“And he has written faithfully to Tabini-aiji,” Cenedi said. “Nothing suspicious at all—except we know situations in this district that the lord of the Maschi should have known.”
“The Edi did not inform him,” Banichi said, “that we know. But he did not inform himself of the situation at Kajiminda and at Separti and Dalaigi? With whom is the man trading?”
“With whom, indeed?” Ilisidi muttered. “Is this the pattern of a man who keeps good books and succeeds in the markets? He was at winter court, making excuses for your nephew, Geigi-ji. He was either ignorant, or complicitous in the situation here, nandi, forgive my bluntness.”