Ilisidi had been aiji-consort before her two administrations as aiji-regent. The aishidi’tat had been under her governance longer than any single aiji had ever served. She was showing her age, and even some of the conservatives began to talk of what came next.
Ilisidi swore her health was fragile. She still rode, she still hunted, she was a dead shot, but now and again she walked with a cane. She suffered from myalgia and she had palpitations.
Of course she had palpitations and myalgias— every time a minister had a presentation she disapproved. She had headaches. She had indispositions. When she did listen— she listened to what already pleased her, and those who confronted her often found their prepared speeches dwinding away in confusion in the face of her interruptions and her questions. Anyone who brought a proposal with which Ilisidi did not already agree had better have his facts and arguments in good order.
She was the canniest, the most dangerous politician ever to hold the aijinate, and a gambler would not lay odds even her grandson knew every stew she had had a finger in, or what she had promised this and that supporter under what conditions.
Popular? Still wildly so in some quarters. And the traditionalist number-counters who tracked horoscopes and the numerology of the world maintained that she would have a long, long rule.
He had added his own numbers, in his own way, putting no more real credence in the ‘counters than Ilisidi did. His personal numbers now completely excluded Wilson-paidhi, who had refused to meet with him. He would remember that. The moment he took the aishidi’tat, Wilson would be on his way back to Mospheira— if Wilson was lucky. Let the Mospheirans worry how they were to talk to the aiji in Shejidan, since their last man had become offensive and untrustworthy.
He saw before him an opportunity resting primarily on the promises of allies who thought they could control him— old lords and ministers who might suspect he meant to wield the power they would pretend to give him— but confident he was too young to get the better of them.
He meant to show them differently: to wield power firmly, and wield it with exactly what his grandmother had— an understanding of the real numbers of the world, unobfuscated by the self-important ‘counters and the kabiuteri— numbers about trade, and industry, numbers about the clans, and finance, numbers about clan lords who had always known they would someday have to decide in his favor or his grandmother’s—
But over time, youth won. Youth ultimately won.
What he had not made entirely evident to the world was his attention to his grandmother’s lessons. He was, in every minute detail, his grandmother’s student, and he did not forget. Believe the ‘counters prophecies and plan things by their numbers? He was no more superstitious than she was.
Believe the promises of political allies? She had taught him history she had witnessed.
Make black be white and day be night in the same speech, dependant on the hearer? She had taught him that art, too.
“I shall make my claim tomorrow,” he said at last, “nadiin-ji. Tell my grandmother’s aishid so.”
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“He says, aiji-ma,” Cenedi reported, “that he will announce for the aijinate tomorrow.”
Interesting, Ilisidi thought. As early as tomorrow.
And she smiled.
Cenedi stood waiting, hands folded behind him, black-clad, all impassivity. Cenedi would do whatever she ordered. Cenedi would bend the Guild itself, if he had to. He waited, in formal stance, not looking at her. She said, still in her formal dress at this hour, sitting in the upright square lines of a chair that predated the War of the Landing— “We are not surprised.”
He waited, still. And she said, “Taiben will support him.”
“So will the north,” Cenedi said. “And the Marid, and the lesser lords of the coast.”
It was a strange alliance that backed her grandson, an alliance of lords who would not occupy the same room in peace. It was the old issue, the tribal peoples, displaced from the island of Mospheira when the aishidi’tat had had to find somewhere to settle the humans. It was a two-hundred-year legacy of trouble, having moved two culturally distinct populations onto the mainland, settling them in areas where they could make a living from the sea and preserve their ancient ways. It had sounded wise. The aishidi’tat had found a solution to humans having dropped from the heavens— and it had only cost backward tribesmen a relocation to very rich fishing grounds. Tribal peoples could practice whatever they pleased in their new home. They were not part of the aishidi’tat. They would be represented by lords who were.
She had insisted that the settlement had been a bad idea, and that the arrangement should be altered. She insisted on assimilation— a vain insistence, since it had never happened; but her insistence had stirred up the tribal peoples, the Edi and the Gan, who had no vote in the aijinate— and their vexation, carried to the extreme, had managed to vex the coastal lords, who had never wanted the tribal peoples settled next to them. And the fact that the Edi people had taken to wrecking shipping had simultaneously vexed not just the west coast, but the central south, the Marid, who had always wanted to slaughter the coastal lords and take the whole territory. Now Marid ships, too, were being wrecked by people deliberately tampering with warning buoys.
Alienating all three of those districts at once was a rare accomplishment. Unifying them on a single point was unprecedented. It was a question whether she had done it— or her grandson had— but unified, yes, they were, and entirely upset with her.
And the Northern Association had now apparently defected to her grandson on the very eve of his majority— because they hated Tatiseigi. Personally. Ajuri clan was central to the Northern Association, and an Atageini-Ajuri marriage had gone very bad indeed.
Valasi had patched up that feud a few years ago. Shejidan’s Winter Festival had offered him a chance, when an angry young daughter of the Northern Association had stormed off from their tents, lost herself in the crowds, and a banner had caught her eye— the white lilies of Atageini clan, her deceased mother’s relatives, powerful in the Padi Valley Association.
That had been a moment. A minor child had planted herself in Lord Tatiseigi’s camp, taking refuge under the lily banner. Ajuri clan had called a meeting of the Northern Association right in mid-festival— and things could have gone very bad indeed, if Valasi had not sent the Guild in to negotiate on both sides. Valasi had gotten the two sides calmed down, and the unhappy daughter had amicably settled in Lord Tatiseigi’s house for a few seasons.
But one heard she had now gone back to her father’s clan, being equally upset with Tatiseigi.
Well, it had been an agreement just waiting an excuse to unravel. And the Ajuri now thought they would fare better with her grandson. That was amusing.
“My grandson gains the north,” she said. “There is an uneasy bargain for him. Reasonable, given he is half Taibeni— but that association will undoubtedly rise up to trouble him. Will he make a try at us tonight, do you think, ‘Nedi-ji?”
Cenedi turned his head, looked down at her, asked, with deadly implications: “What do you wish done, aiji-ma?”
What did she wish done?
What was more important— the aishidi’tat, or her grandson?
She could, without Tabini’s flirtations with the liberals, settle the fractious lords. If her grandson died tonight, there would be a few weeks of upset and shouting, and then, lacking any other credible claimant to the aijinate, the liberal and the conservative lords would come to the sane realization that nothing done in haste would last. Choosing one of them to rule the others would dissolve the aishidi’tat in civil war, which could even bring in the humans on Mospheira. Disorder gathered more disorder, from snowball to snowslide to avalanche.
And no one wanted that. The Guild would stop it their own way, start eliminating key lords, defusing any action— unless some lord was so intemperate as to assassinate her.
Then—
Then she had to fear for the aishidi’tat. For all civilizati
on. The Ragi atevi, that little center of the west, including her husband’s clan, and Valasi’s, and Tabini’s, had become necessary to the peace. They had always ruled, since there had been an aishidi’tat. If they ceased to rule...and power were left to the strongest...
Chaos followed.
She had kept the East separate from the west, behind its mountain walls. Malguri was a plain, stone-walled fortress, looking much as it had looked when humans had first descended to the world. Electricity was an afterthought, a convenience for the Guild.
And should she and her grandson go down, the Eastern Guild would hold together whatever of civilization could be held...the traditions, the history.
But recover it? Bring back what they had, in the aishidit’at?
Without the Ragi atevi, the aishidi’tat would come apart. And the East did not hold the knowledge of, say, a Tatiseigi— the connections, the influence— the industry, or the wealth.
The East did not have the rail system, did not have the phone system— much as she detested the thought, the East did not have the history with humans. Or the knowledge how to deal with the paidhi-aiji, offensive creature that he was— but— he was a pressure gauge, in a way of speaking, that would warn an aiji of trouble.
None of these assets existed on the other side of the continental divide.
No, the East would not rule the aishidi’tat. It would pull away. The world she had united, by marrying her husband, would fall apart again.
And if only humans were united, then who knew what could result?
Humans needed resources Mospheira lacked. That had kept them in check. The aishidi’tat limited what it sold them, but sold them enough to keep them complacent and content. That was another thing in which the East had no experience. If humans one day decided they had to have those resources— and there were no aishidi’tat to stop them— it would be a dark, dark day indeed.
“Tell my grandson,” she said to Cenedi, “that we need not take the world apart. Tell his aishid---we shall defend, but not attack.”
“Aiji-ma.” Cenedi nodded without further comment, and left her, to convey that message.
It offered nothing to reduce the tension. It said nothing to reassure anyone who might have spies in her household— except that she would not precipitate a crisis tonight.
She— and this chair— were the center of the civilized world at the moment. A little piece of Malguri. Like her. Like her bodyguard. All of them. Standing fast.
The East had not accepted the western guilds. But Malguri had.
Her predecessor in Malguri, her grandfather, had received the emissary from the aiji in Shejidan, asking him to use his influence to install the guilds in the provinces of the East. He had not been the only Eastern lord thus approached, in what was surely a ploy to bring the East under western influence, and governance. Her grandfather had been the only one to agree to receive the Guild emissaries— the Assassins, the Treasurers, the Craftsmen, Trade, Commerce, the Kabiuteri, the Engineers...
He had refused some Guilds, seeing no use for them. But the Assassins, the Craftsmen, and the Engineers and others— he had installed, to learn from them, he had said— it had been a trial.
And in her day— she had found the guilds in Malguri Township a very useful asset. The clans of the East were of a different sort than the clans of the west. They hunted, fished, and worked crafts. Some guilds to this day seemed too western to gain any footing there.
But the Assassins had brought skills— important skills.
The Assassins that served her grandfather had made Malguri powerful over its neighbors. But she had given them the benefit of a guildhall, a training facility she had established, and they had found no dearth of recruits. The guildhall had organized their own training, and subsequently allowed certain of their members to be assigned to the Guild in Shejidan— but the East had allowed no outsiders to come into their guildhall. The west found in them a source of Guild Assassins with no western clan affilitations, no man’chi scattered into places near them, and the Eastern Assassins’ Guild came into high repute as reliable and skilled.
She had, of course, her own bodyguard. And more Guild that had spread out into various lesser halls, in strategic places. Malguri had not attacked its neighbors in her time. It had not needed to be heavy-handed. Malguri’s interests were all it served. But Malguri occasionally stepped in to settle disputes. It was very different from the western guild, that had its guildhall in Shejidan.
She had grown powerful. She had been aiji of the East, with no legislature, no other government to consult.
Then the new aiji in Shejidan, never having met her, had sent her a proposal of marriage— to bring the two halves of the continent into agreement, he had said, to share the benefits of trade, and— which he mentioned in a minor way— to unite the west and the east by rail.
The proposal was one of marriage, not merely of contract marriage. It offered a lifelong union, exclusivity, and a rail link would breach the continental divide, a permanent route for western ideas to enter the East.
She understood what her proposed husband did not: that while her power was extensive, she could not guarantee the other lords’ acceptance of a railroad...and access to mines in the East.
But— from Shejidan, with her extended bodyguard guaranteeing, if not peace, at least everyone keeping their borders in the East, she might find leverage on those lords, who were also amenable to rewards for their agreement. And her prospective husband need not know that.
She would produce an heir— or not— at her pleasure. That was another sort of leverage— over the west. Was the prospective father intelligent? He was reputed to be. And had he not had the vision to see her situation in the East, and to know more than the Eastern mines were an asset?
Was he apt to produce a handsome child?
He had sent a picture, a painting. There was a little softness about the eyes. That did not appeal. But perhaps the painter had hoped to make him more personable. The face was handsome enough.
Had he a good reputation among his servants? She had her sources, in the Assassins’ Guild in Shejidan. He was reputed to have a temper, but he had been proper with his servants.
Did he hunt? He did. Often. So he could ride. He was, then of a healthy consitution, and not a sitabout.
She agreed. She set her affairs in order, set her household in order, and set about what was then, by mechieta, an entire summer’s journey from Malguri to the nearest railhead. She had had ample time, she and Cenedi and her hand-picked bodyguard of handsome young men, to reason through their plans, their precautions, and their intentions— if she had needed to return to Malguri, in some dispute with her intended, she had arranged her resources in the Guild, and there was every possibility, if challenged, that her defenses could deal with his.
In fact— twenty years later— with Valasi a boy of five— they had done exactly that.
She had put up with a great deal from that husband. She had brought a great deal to the marriage, and she had had opinions. When her opinions diverged from his, the arguments had sent the servants into the deeper halls. When he grew intransigent, and attempted to order her regarding Malguri, and her son— her husband had fallen ill, and died, thereafter, not quickly. He had been insensible most of the last season of his life. Lords came seeking this and that---and she had been knowledgeable of their problems. She had offered solutions, she had invited them to dine, and proposed alliances. She had helped certain lords, and now that the rail link had penetrated the East, she had been able to shift assets to bolster certain allies— assets and wealth the depth of which somewhat dismayed the Guild in Shejidan. There was a little fuss about her holding audience, and conducting the court sessions, which brought her into the public eye. But Cenedi had dealt with that.
Her husband died, four months after the onset of his illness, and Valasi’s maternal grandfather had meanwhile conceived ambitions to be aiji and made certain arrangements. So had three of her husband’s cousins.
But by then certain lords of the west knew that she was their ally. They knew that little Valasi would grow into a western aiji, and were assured he would have western tutors. The claimants were persuaded, all but one, to retire. It went to the legislature, and there— certain lords strongly argued there was no need to see the aiji-consort return to the East.
Most especially there was no need to have her, offended, pull the entire eastern half of the continent out of the aishidi’tat.
The legislature would not name her aiji, but they named her aiji-regent, proxy for her son Valasi, inventing the office on the spot. She had ruled the aishiditat for twenty-two years afterward. She had held off the human presence. She had strictly controlled human access to critical materials. She had dealt sharply with their industrialization, that had sent smoke across the straits in the north. She had attempted to resolve the west coastal situation...she had warned the western lords they would have the Marid to deal with if they did not resolve it. Unhappily the last had not been a success.
She ruled with a coalition of conservatives and traditionalists, with certain regional interests. Cenedi returned to Malguri from time to time, but she rarely did: to have removed Valasi to Malguri even for a season would have stirred up a firestorm, oh, indeed it would have.
Valasi grew from rowdy, willful youngster to a handsome young man with far too keen an interest in willing ladies. There had been a scandal with a maidservant, another with a minor lord’s daughter...
Valasi became a difficult young man, and managed, with his ungovernable temper, to offend Lord Tatiseigi, which stirred up an entire nest of difficulty. The liberals had seen their chance in his pursuit of curiosities, ladies, festivity, and human technology, and began to court the lad. So did the Taibeni, who were his grandmother’s clan. The north and the mountains joined in the courtship of Valasi...at a time when bad harvests, bad fishery reports, and a dispute between southern clans had made a difficult year—