“One simply, nandi, guesses. That is all we ever can do.”
“I am nine. I am not stupid. Neither are you. You can say it so I will understand.”
Nomari gave a deep nod. “Then I most earnestly beg your pardon, young aiji. I was about three when your grandfather brought your mother to Ajuri, and I was not supposed to ask about that. There were always a lot of things no one was supposed to ask. I grew up with those rules. I was never supposed to talk about certain people. I was never supposed to ask questions about anybody except inside, with the doors shut, and then my parents would say I would know when I was older. By the time I was your age, I began to think not every clan was like ours and I began to think my parents were afraid of something. I had no idea what they feared, but I was shut out of discussions, and when I asked my brother, he said I should not ask questions, that if I ever needed to know something, our parents would tell me. My brother said everything was safe unless I brought trouble down on us with too many questions, or if I went listening at locked doors.”
That was scary, Cajeiri thought. He well understood listening at closed doors—or having his bodyguard or staff do it—and hearing far too many worrisome things.
“Until I came here,” Nomari said, “Shishogi was a name no one mentioned—ever—in the family. Ajuri were in the Guild. In many guilds. And still are. And people said we had a powerful man somewhere in the Guild. But I never heard that name mentioned. People would say, ‘there is a whisper’ that this should happen, or that ‘there is a whisper’ that something should not. People would say, ‘we have eyes high in the Guild,’ and people would say that if Ajuri wanted something done it could be done, that though we were a small clan in size, we could dictate to other clans who would be lord, who would marry and not, but we should never say who had done it. I thought—at a certain time I thought myself wise and cynical. I thought it was just our small clan trying to be important. But when my father heard me saying that, he said I was a fool, that I should be quiet and do what others did and not draw attention to our household, that we had troubles enough, and people who were too independent disappeared. That scared me, but I asked my father why we put up with such things, and he said that I was not old enough or wise enough to know what I was saying. That was one thing. I found out later—” A little breath. “I found out later that my father had tried to support Lord Benedi, and when Lord Benedi went down—so did my house. And I ran, and became one of the clanless, and tried to be wiser.”
“Where was my mother, then?”
“She also left. That winter.”
“What did you know about her?”
“From the first, that she came with secrets around her, things I should not ask, and I was supposed to avoid association with her.”
“But you knew her.”
“I did. She was younger. I watched out for her as we got older. I was afraid she would get hurt. Your grandfather kept her very close, but she was good at getting out past the precautions.”
That was interesting. He thought he might have gotten that talent from Father. But no, then. From Mother.
“How did my grandmother die?”
Nomari went very still for a moment, wary. “I do not know, nandi. In all truth I do not know. She had just given birth. Why she was out riding, what prompted that decision—is a question to which I have never heard the answer. It is my understanding she fell. How—I have never heard either.”
Cajeiri let the question lie there a moment more, and Nomari said:
“Nandi, your grandfather was a cipher to everybody. He was difficult. He came back with his newborn daughter in his keeping and with Lord Tatiseigi angry at all Ajuri. First there was an alliance. Then there was a lasting feud. Your grandmother was dead, Lord Tatiseigi was an enemy, and your mother was brought up Ajuri.”
“Explain it. Explain everything, Cousin. This is important.”
Nomari went expressionless for a moment, then let his face show worry. “I am no judge. I was a boy myself, too young to understand. Understand, I am only three years older than your mother, so my memory around the events is very slight.”
“Explain to me what you know. Or what you have heard.”
“This, then, nandi. Komaji-nandi was never expected to be lord. He was sent to marry out, for an alliance, a contract marriage with your uncle’s sister. The agreement was to produce, first, an Atageini child—an heir, your uncle having had no luck in that way; and a second child, an heir for Ajuri clan, a tie that would firm up the associational ties. But you know what happened. . . .”
“I do not! That is the difficulty. My uncle does not! Do you?”
“Whisper is,” Nomari said, “that that name in the Guild—Shishogi—sent orders. That the match was his plan. That your uncle had no children, likely would have no children, and that the Atageini bloodline would fail, excepting Lord Tatiseigi’s sister. The politics of the time—Atageini always dominated Padi Valley politics . . . being a larger clan, being constantly involved with Kadagidi and even Dur, and feuding with Taiben, while Ajuri, being small, simply got along as best we could. Ajuri—the plan was, as Ajuri in general knew it, to assure that a future lord of the Atageini would have Ajuri blood, and conversely that there would be an Ajuri with Atageini blood, to tie us more closely to Atageini, in the heart of the Association. By what Ajuri has ever said about the affair, that was the intent. And it might have been a good idea. But—what I have heard, what I hesitate to say—is that the marriage was a deception from the start. That it was never Shishogi’s intent to supply your uncle an heir. That he ordered Komaji to bring your grandmother and the child to Ajuri. And that Komaji, unable to persuade her, killed her, and took the child, your mother.”
He had hoped for better. “So Grandfather killed her.”
“One is not certain of that, nandi. It is well possible that he did not kill her, even possible that there really was an accident, but more likely Shishogi had those in place who would kill her. At that point, Komaji, your grandfather, was suspected of the act. He had no place of refuge but Ajuri, and no way of escape but to take the child while the house was in turmoil and run for Ajuri, rather than face your uncle. How he passed the gate, how he managed to escape—it is possible there were indeed persons other than your grandfather involved and that he had help. It would have been difficult, however it was done, but he did arrive in Ajuri. Lord Tatiseigi at that point might have had less enthusiasm to recover a half-Ajuri child and acknowledge a legal tie that your grandmother’s death had already broken. Your uncle hated Ajuri from that time. There was no peace—until your mother found her own way back. She ran away from Ajuri in Shejidan, at the Winter Festival. She went to your uncle’s tent, and forswore Ajuri.”
“For a few years.” He knew that part. “Then she ran away and went back to Ajuri, but she did not stay. She left again. Why?”
“Perhaps,” Nomari said, “it was man’chi for her father that brought her.”
“She had none.” He was relatively sure of that. “But she had also quarreled with Uncle. One has no idea over what, except Uncle’s rules.”
“Perhaps it was confusion. Perhaps there were too many stories about what had happened. I would not venture to guess, nandi, I would not, in that matter. And all that I have said—all this is what I heard inside my family, not in the clan at large. One never said these things aloud. Only in bits and pieces and whispers.”
“My grandfather,” Cajeiri said, “was assassinated. That is a fact.”
“Yes,” Nomari said. “I have no doubt.”
“He was coming in this direction. Uncle thinks he might have been coming here. But he could also have been trying to reach the Kadagidi.”
“I would not think it was the Kadagidi.”
“Why not?”
“Shishogi’s chief ally was in charge there.”
It fit. Everything fit with what he remembered.
>
“Do you think,” Cajeiri asked, “that there are still Shishogi’s people operating inside Ajuri?”
“I think they recently came to call, nandi.”
Great-aunt Geidaro. And, regrettably, Meisi, Dejaja, Caradi, all the house, families deeply entangled with Kadagidi, in all senses.
One last question. “If Uncle were to back you, and Father were to name you lord—how would you take the lordship?”
“I would not walk into the hall and expect Geidaro’s welcome,” Nomari said. “I would hope to have Guild help . . . honest Guild help. I would take their advice. I would establish safety for well-meaning people within the house. I would ask Guild help to extend that over villages and towns, but that is much slower coming.”
It was not bad. It was what he would do. But he was nine. He was almost moved to say, “I think you should talk to my great-grandmother,” but that would not be a good idea. Mani could keep him alive and shake Ajuri to its foundations.
But Mother was the one with an interest in the Ajuri lordship, and by what he had heard on the phone, Mother would never forgive mani if she did interfere.
About Mother’s safety—or her ability to deal with Ajuri and stay safe—he was far from certain.
He was far from certain he had even yet gotten all the truth in Nomari’s answers. But they were out of time.
His whole bodyguard had heard . . . including Guild so senior they could call right to the Guild Council and check out any story as fast as people could possibly move. He already knew there were holes in the account about his grandfather, but then—so many people had died, and left everybody to figure out what had really happened. Even Uncle had not been in the house when Grandfather had doubled back and stolen Mother from her crib. None of the servants had questioned. They had thought Grandmother was dying out by the gate and had asked for her baby.
Grandfather had been such a man—who could have murdered Grandmother. Grandfather, at very least had breached the contract of the marriage and stolen Mother from the clan that should have brought her up.
It sounded like Shishogi’s doing, to be sure that the only heir Uncle had was brought up Ajuri, so that they could play politics twenty years on, and little Ajuri clan could gain a voice of influence in Atageini, the largest clan and the oldest in the midlands. He believed that part. He frankly did not think Grandfather ever thought more than three moves ahead. Great-grandmother would have slaughtered him at chess. He wished it all had been done on a chessboard, and wished he could have met his grandmother, and wished that Mother had not had so much unpleasantness to find out about her father.
“Do you think,” he asked Nomari, “that my mother was happy with her father?”
“I think,” Nomari said, “nandi, that she was less happy as she grew older. Komaji protected her. I know that. He was very particular who came near her, but she—hated being confined. She excelled at finding ways to slip out. We did talk, now and again. She always asked me things about goings-on in the house—cross-checking what she was told, I always thought, and she would never argue with what I said. She just listened, and sometimes she frowned. I never called her father a liar. But I was afraid for my own house if I told her some things. She thought Lord Tatiseigi had not wanted her. That he had blamed Komaji for her mother’s death, and that he had been so bitter he had threatened Komaji’s life and sworn he would give your mother to the Assassins.”
“To the Guild, you mean. To be Guild.”
“To be Guild and not to know what her clan was.”
It was a way that unwanted children could be handed off, and the Assassins were a refuge of the clanless. So was Transportation, the other oldest Guild besides the Merchants. It was an outrage to do that to someone, to make them wonder all their lives.
It was a lie, what Komaji had said about Uncle, but what could Komaji say? That she was stolen from Atageini? She would have set out walking. Mother hated secrets—when other people had them.
It rang true. It truly made sense.
He stood up. He had a moment ago gotten a slight signal from Antaro, who was keeping track of the time.
“We should go down to dinner,” he said to Nomari. There was, as there had been often in the last few moments, a muttering of thunder in the west.
8
“Their fluency is greater than most of the professors,” Bren said to Tom Lund, regarding his three young visitors. Jeladi poured the after-dinner brandy. Tom Lund, portly, immaculate, and every inch the corporate power, had come to an on-premises dinner with Ben Feldman, whose slight untidiness, slight nearsightedness, and tweed coat looked to be anything but corporate power. Technicals, computers, plots: that was Ben, and no sane corporation would try to fit him in a suit. The two of them had been key to everything that had gone on in the early station restoration. They’d been partners with Gin and Kate, and were among the very first people he’d called on in the recent emergency.
So they’d walked away from corporate money and gone to work—again—for the President. For Mospheira. For the planet.
And right off, Tom had sent him—well, an interesting set of translators.
“I’m glad,” Tom said. “I thought—they’re either faking it, or not, and you’d know. There’s apparently quite the little underground group going on, not happy with the Linguistics Department. As the Linguistics Department is not happy with them. They have meetings. Atevi dress, what I hear, is the option at meetings and events. And they haven’t confined their membership to Linguistics students. They take all comers.”
Including a baby sister. That was just a little scary, for a linguist who’d come up through the system. There was another time in history in which humans, newly arrived on the planet, had become enamored of all things atevi—had tried to be atevi. That had indeed led to massive miscommunication, and the Linguistics Department had long preached the doctrine that attempts to communicate to an alien biology had led to a war that had nearly wiped humans off the map.
But it was other attitudes, he was now convinced, that had done the deed, the presence of humans who, last down, had brought weapons into the equation, and worse, believed that they could take over and administer a situation that the first-arrived had been managing inexpertly, to their way of thinking. In so doing, they had unknowingly voided all agreements the first-arrived had made with the atevi lords.
Theirs had been a way of thinking not unrelated, in the modern Mospheiran mind, to the Reunioners who’d bollixed up alien contact and wanted a share of their station, their own having been taken over.
In some measure it was true: Reunioners were responsible for much of what had happened in alien contact. But it was not an attitude unique to Reunioners. He was surer of that than he was of sunrise.
And he was equally sure not all the early mistakes had happened on the human side of the map, just as humans hadn’t made the only mistakes in the Reunioners’ dealings with the kyo. By no means.
A war because of trying to communicate?
Not in essence. A war because of a lot of things that would have been worse had they not been able to talk. And it had taken two hundred years of foot-dragging on both sides of the strait before they’d decided to communicate, really communicate.
But there were indeed some words humans shouldn’t take lightly or use carelessly with atevi, and vice versa.
“I did caution them against involving the Reunioner kids anywhere near their organization,” he said, “and I hope that caution holds. Even against the kids’ own wishes. The object of having them here is to make the children Mospheiran.”
“Then being Mospheiran has to be equally attractive,” Ben said. “Granted Mospheira has a lot to offer, in terms of tweaking the right instincts. But honestly, Bren, aren’t they another step over the line? Won’t they be? Someday they’ll be making the decisions. They’ll hop over any barriers we set.”
“Just let’s
not have the three students throw the gate open prematurely. The group scares me a little. I could wish we did understand each other better. But in a crisis, in a fit of emotion, we still do things for different, gut-deep reasons than atevi do—it’s not the thinking part of the brain that makes the decisions. And on both sides of the strait, there are people who just don’t see that there’s another way to react . . . some that can’t accept that there’s not one true way for everybody that’s a proper being. And there’re always some that just don’t spend that much time thinking.”
“Type A predominates in Linguistics,” Ben said wryly. “There’s going to be a lot of resistance, a lot of upset experts. God, they do hate change over there.”
“I’ve noticed that,” Bren said wryly.
“Ultimately, however,” Tom said, “change will happen.”
“Best in space,” Bren said. “That’s the place where, if ever the lines come down, they will come down safest, the way they’re coming down in Central, where people have to work together doing the same job, for the same reasons, even if they don’t meet. But atevi don’t want it to happen down here, and that’s their right. And regarding the dress, the more humans look like atevi, the more atevi expect reactions humans don’t have, and vice versa. That part we always have to be aware of, and allow for, in people who have their right to their own feelings.”
“That man’chi business,” Ben said.
“That man’chi business. That friendship business. That romantic love business. Parental love. With atevi, man’chi seems to cover most everything and clan covers the rest. I understand man’chi. I just don’t feel the directionality of it, though Jago informs me if I attempt to shield my aishid from gunfire again she will personally shoot me, which does make sense. Intellectually.”