Divergence

by C. J. Cherryh

  That Ilisidi would take the opportunity to grill the unfortunate candidate for Ajuri about his identity and his suitability for connection to the family all the way to Hasjuran and back—provided she let him return—was a foregone conclusion. And recalling his own encounter with Ilisidi’s investigative process years ago, Bren had thought his own moderating presence might be a good idea.

  If a visit to snowy Hasjuran and a diplomatic contact were all that was at issue. The Red Train, awaiting them in the Bujavid station, had turned out to be, not the usual two cars, not even the four or five entailed in a transcontinental trip, but a long string consisting of five luxury sleeping cars, windowless, armored, for security; two baggage cars, the antique luxury of the Red Car itself, and three state of the art Guild mobile command cars, as well as one well-worn boxcar tagging oddly behind the Red Car.

  Then Machigi himself had shown up at the train station. In Shejidan—which he had never visited. And boarded one of those extra cars.

  Keep her safe . . .

  Easier said. Far easier said.

  They were here in Hasjuran to talk, Ilisidi indicated . . . before she sent the Red Train down to Koperna in Senjin, and invited Bregani to come up, at night, in secret, to join those talks.

  Invited.

  Bren shifted his feet, tucking the blanket against an insidious draft, and wondered what Bregani and his family were thinking at the moment, five cars away, far less informed than he was about that speeding train.

  Bregani had found himself in a vise, no matter whether he boarded that train as the dowager asked, or refused the conference and stayed in Koperna—because either way his neighbor Tiajo would hear that the dowager was communicating with him. Either way, all hell would break loose. And being on the icy heights of Hasjuran when that news broke was the survivable choice.

  So Bregani was trapped, snared, netted, and ruined, so far as his alliance with Tiajo was concerned, leaving Bregani only the dubious safety of the dowager’s whim. Bregani had chosen to board the Red Train, but such was his fear of Tiajo’s agents, he had left home with precautions. He had set a cousin in charge of his capital, and brought his wife and teenaged daughter with him, intending to put them under the dowager’s protection, no matter what happened to him, that being a far safer future for them than remaining in reach of Tiajo’s fits of temper.

  Bregani certainly had not expected to face his old enemy Machigi in a meeting the night before last—or for Ilisidi and Machigi to propose not his ruin, but alliance, Guild protection, and association with the two of them in a rail link, with the promise of increased trade.

  All Bregani had had to do was sign the agreement, officially break relations with Tiajo, in essence—and stay alive—in the interests of which, Ilisidi serenely informed him that the routine freight train currently undergoing service down in his capital was actually hers, a Guild operation, and that if he signed the agreement and asked for Guild protection, those cars would open and a Guild force would immediately deploy to defend his people from whatever elements Tiajo might send in reaction.

  Bregani had signed. What choice had he? With the offer of a pen and an inkwell, Ilisidi had taken a province.

  Now here they sat—Lord Bregani, his wife and daughter; Lord Machigi of the Taisigin; the aiji-dowager, lord of distant Malguri; himself, Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, the chief negotiator for Tabini-aiji or his grandmother over the last number of years . . .

  And felicitous seventh, a young man who had not expected to be invited to an interview with the aiji-dowager, let alone take part in this historic meeting of lords. Nomari, a railway worker, favored candidate to take on the lordship of Ajuri, the aiji-consort’s clan, and become a neighbor to Tatiseigi and a cousin to Tabini-aiji’s wife.

  That, it turned out, was not all he was. Nomari had worked not only for the railroad, but for Lord Machigi during a brief overthrow of Tabini-aiji’s government, spying on the activity in Lord Bregani’s railyard. Machigi, it turned out, knew him. By one source or another—hers were many—Ilisidi knew Machigi knew him, and characteristic of her dealings, had thrown these two together on this lengthy train trip and just watched the outcome.

  Bren had tried to contact a source he knew, a former Shadow Guild operative, Homura, a man who, for a life-debt, had turned so far against the Shadow Guild as to swear man’chi to a human. The man had finally made contact with the train here, at Hasjuran, this tiny town on the inconvenient roof of the world. Tano and Algini had gone outside to meet with Homura, by no means trusting him. Homura had warned them specifically about Bregani’s bodyguard, told them his own partner Momichi was down in Koperna, warned them of changes in Shadow Guild tactics, then appeared suddenly ill at ease, and broke off the meeting.

  Before Tano and Algini had quite gotten back onto the train, the station transformer had blown up, taking out power to the station, and to the great house of Hasjuran, and a section of homes and businesses in the town, while doing superficial damage to the train itself. Tano and Algini had caught the edge of the blast—Tano still suffered from it—and Homura had not been seen or heard from since.

  Had Tiajo gotten Shadow Guild operatives up here that fast? Or had she gotten a message through to agents already ensconced in Hasjuran? If it was a Shadow Guild action, why had there been no further move? Had Homura then taken out their problem?

  Or was he the problem?

  Bregani’s wife’s bodyguard was indeed compromised. That much had proven true. One man of that unit had turned, not because he was Shadow Guild—but because the Shadow Guild had kidnapped the man’s family, exactly the situation and the tactic Homura had warned them about. Tiajo’s agents cared nothing about civilized standards, or honor. The threat used to control Homura’s unit, two partners held hostage to assure their performance, had now turned on others, and intended to have a man betray his own unit and kill the people he was sworn to protect.

  The man had hesitated, and against high-level Guild, he had failed. So that had not happened. But the transformer had blown, they had lost track of a known, if former, Shadow Guild agent, and before all was done, Bregani had had to deal with an unthinkable breach of trust, poor man, all attending his signing an agreement with Ilisidi and Machigi. His guard was under detention, replaced with a four-man unit of Ilisidi’s choosing. He’d gone to bed in a train now running on internal power, and knew that, though he had authorized the Guild to deploy in Senjin, fighting had broken out down in Senjin and the port city. They had that information through Guild communications, routed God knew how, but likely the message had sped around the lowlands and up to the capital before it got to them.

  That was yesterday evening.

  And well before the night was done, Bregani, with the rest of them, had waked to that thundering presence in the dark, uninformed as to what had happened, or what might happen, or what worse threat was headed down toward his province.

  Bren felt his own heart still recovering, and the memory of that passage still in his bones. He was sorely in want of a cup of strong tea. He had no idea what time it was. But it was unlikely anyone anywhere on the train had slept through that howling passage, and if there was action contemplated, there was no going back to bed. He should, he thought, at least send a reassuring message to Bregani and Nomari.

  He wiggled his toes and finding them functional, stood up, walked the few paces to where Jago stood, in a lull in the flurry of communications.

  “There is still no word,” Jago said, to his implied question. “It is still snowing, with a high wind. One can scarcely see, and the sentries have been on extreme alert. There was no warning of this train at all in the system. We have that from the Transportation Guild.”

  That in itself was disturbing. The Transportation Guild ran the rail line. The Transportation Guild employed the engineers and mechanics and the people who kept the signals and the switches all over the system. Communications to and from Hasju
ran were seasonally chancy, partly because of isolation, partly because of the surrounding peaks and weather. The Assassins’ Guild, in force on this train, he understood had communication with their own headquarters back in Shejidan, and they had not expected this train. The Assassins’ Guild as well as Transportation monitored the rails wherever the Red Train went, and that they might have been caught by surprise was almost unprecedented.

  True, the guilds did not always inform each other when security on an operation was extreme—and particularly the Assassins’ Guild did not use regular communications when the Shadow Guild might be at issue. The Shadow Guild had identical equipment, identical communications—had once had identical codes, one having been part of the other not that long ago, in a scheme that reached back decades. There was also, though lessened now, the possibility of sleeper agents in their own network, so that wherever Shadow Guild interests might be drawn into a situation, the Assassins occasionally sent false messages on their regular networks to try to draw out such persons, operating in constantly changing codes.

  That much he knew of their procedures. The Assassins did not generally deploy noisy means—but if somebody was intending to get down from the heights ahead of Bregani’s return, a train was the only way. There were two authorities that might make such a move: the Assassins’ Guild Council, making its own assault on the Dojisigin Marid, and declining to discuss the move with the aiji-dowager—or Tabini-aiji moving forces, either to protect the dowager—or to restrain her from a move that could set fire to the whole Marid. The Hasjuran grade was not the easiest or safest route from Shejidan to the northern Marid, but it was the fastest.

  Granted Ilisidi had not consulted with her grandson nearly as thoroughly as she should have done in advance of this venture.

  Granted Tabini might have some reservations about her mood and the outcome of a mistake.

  Maybe her sending a trainload of Guild down to hold Bregani’s capital had tripped an alarm and set Tiajo to invade Senjin outright.

  That would not be good news.

  Tano, half of the second team of Bren’s bodyguard, left the compartment for the through passage, headed, Bren was sure, for the Guild car forward of theirs. The senior member of that team, Algini, exchanged a hand-signal with Banichi, head of the unit, and went out, likewise on a mission of some kind.

  Banichi along with his partner, Jago, stayed with Bren, while Narani and his assistant Jeladi moved quietly to the galley nook and set water to heating. Tea and wafers would be available.

  Bren went in search of his slippers, that seeming about all that the paidhi-aiji could do about the situation, besides staying out of everyone’s way. If Ilisidi wanted his presence, she would call him, and Bregani and the rest would simply have to wait for information. He found his slippers not where he expected, but close by the rumpled bed, then came back to the little galley to a seat at the adjacent table, a narrow fixture that served them additionally as conference table and office.

  “We just do not know, do we?” Bren said to Jeladi as Jeladi set a steaming cup in front of him.

  “Not yet, nandi,” Jeladi acknowledged.

  “But no one will have slept through that.” He took a sip of hot tea, enjoying the warmth in his hands as Jeladi stood waiting for orders. The whole car, like the cup, like the seat, was scaled for atevi. His feet did not reach the floor. He tucked one slippered foot behind his knee, to finish thawing it. “We should communicate with our passengers, Ladi-ji, that first. Barring some order from the dowager, or a problem aboard, I shall need messages run in a moment.”

  “Nandi.” Jeladi bowed. “I shall get my coat.”

  “I should dress,” Bren said. “But I shall write the notes first.” Another sip of tea. Then he set down the source of warmth and took the writing kit and three sheets of paper from the caddy on the walled side of the little table. A call from the dowager to ask him about the train was not likely: he had no information to give her. But when the dowager moved on to next questions, in particular anything regarding the possibility of her grandson’s actions interfering with her operation, he could not be found sipping tea and doing nothing.

  Keeping their assorted passengers from attempting moves of their own was a start.

  Selecting a sheet, he wrote hurriedly.

  Bren paidhi-aiji to Machigi, Lord of the Taisigin Marid.

  We were also startled by the passage of the train and as yet have no explanation. We are secure here, we are amply defended, and the aiji-dowager will be seeking an answer. It is possible, though only my own theory, that the aiji may just have put additional forces at the dowager’s disposal.

  That was the entirely optimistic interpretation. They were days out from the capital. If anything had been launched from there, it was not due to recent developments.

  Please stay where you are and rest if possible. We have no appearance of local danger and certainly right now the descent to the Marid is unavailable to us, so long as that train’s whereabouts and the track conditions are unknown. I shall inform you the moment I have additional information.

  It was essentially the same message in all three notes, one to their ally Machigi, one to Bregani, and one to Nomari—the latter being Transportation Guild himself—and likely with a more specific image of what could possibly be going on, at least as regarded the way down to the Marid.

  To Nomari, instead of the last paragraph, he wrote: Advise your bodyguard if you have any insight into the situation of the train that passed us, who it may be, or any technical problem it may cause us if ill-intentioned. Your aishid will relay it where useful.

  And he added, as an afterthought. At some time this morning, granted my schedule has not yet materialized, I should welcome a conference with you regarding conditions on the descent. I have questions.

  Bregani had been supposed to go down that route last night. Ilisidi had promised him as a condition of his coming up here that, if he came, he would be given safe transport back again, possibly soon enough that no one would have realized his absence. That expedited return had not happened. Prior to the signing of the agreement of association with Ilisidi and with his old enemy Machigi, there had been dinner. There had been further negotiations. Details to work out. By the time the signing was completed, it had been very late. Rumors had spread through Bregani’s capital and the repercussions had begun. Bregani’s acceptance of Guild assistance had set protections in place and begun a sweep for hidden problems, but Bregani’s return had been delayed awaiting an all-clear from the Guild.

  Too, there was the matter of courtesy to their host, Topari of Hasjuran. For all Hasjuran and Senjin were neighbors, give or take a hazardous rail link, these two had never met. Topari, lord of Hasjuran, smallest and least of the provinces in the Western Association, of which they all were members, had not been party to the signing of the previous night’s agreement. He was not a man used to conference rooms and delicate maneuvering, and being firmly counted as a lord of the aishidi’tat, he could not wish to entangle himself and his people in the politics of the Marid.

  Economically, however, his tiny province stood to benefit greatly by the new agreement, and to that end he would soon, if all went well, sign a separate agreement, forming an association with, specifically, Ilisidi and her associate, Lord Machigi. That agreement would create an additional felicitously three-way agreement. In it, Topari was promised increased trade—and a large warehouse to handle the increased trade. Machigi’s link would bring far more traffic into the system—entailing jobs, and fees and recognition of the district within the aishidi’tat, all of which were very welcome with Topari and Hasjuran.

  Of innocents involved in all of this scheming—and there were few—Topari was the central one, and he had wakened to the same uproar this morning, poor man. Now he would be faced with more questions from his town, and was likely wondering whether the whole situation had changed, or whether, which could be the unfo
rtunate case, he had become unwitting host to an attack on the Marid.

  He meditated a note to Topari, as well, but risking someone to take it across the square, no; and sending information through the airwaves was a Guild decision, not his.

  Bren folded the notes, to have no wax, no cylinders since they were short and straightforward, requiring no reply. He gave them to Jeladi, as Jeladi reported back dressed for the nighttime chill of the passage. “Be particularly sure of the addressee,” he said, and knew Jeladi took the cue that they were not identical. “Are we still secure?” he asked Jago, with a glance over his shoulder, not about to send Jeladi out even into the through passages if there was any doubt of his safety.

  “At the moment,” Jago said. Banichi was still listening to the information flow, standing, a looming black figure, beside the passageway door.

  “If anything happens, take the nearest shelter, Ladi-ji. Do not attempt the passage in that case.”

  “Yes.” Jeladi said, took the three notes and left, with a waft of icy air from the passage that communicated up and down the train. Jago and Banichi were meanwhile consulting quietly, and Jago tapped the earpiece she wore, listening to something, but nothing either of them shared. Narani set down a second cup of tea, which Bren sipped slowly, cradling it between his hands to warm them.

  “Is it daylight?” Aboard the train, absent a clock, it was impossible to tell.

  “An hour before,” Narani said. So it was no good trying to rest.

  Bren finished the tea and, finally warm enough to trust his feet, visited the accommodation. He blinked into the mirror, shoved his hair back and gave it a twist to keep it there, then shaved in the dim light, an operation he usually did after his hair was in its habitual queue, but nothing on the trip had been in ordinary order. By the time he returned to the common area, Narani had made up the bed, and had clothes ready for him—his best, Narani’s own estimation of the day’s requirements.