“Is Topari still coming this morning?” he asked.
“We assume so, nandi,” Narani said.
And Topari, nervous fellow that he was, was going to have questions when he arrived for the signing, a lot of questions—to which there were no ready answers.
Given a fairly fraught situation, and Topari tending to the sort of nervousness Ilisidi constitutionally abhorred, Ilisidi was going to say—paidhi, deal with him. Bren had no doubt of it.
He had had his personal difficulties with the fellow, who did not readily take wait for an answer, who had been both forward and over-energetic in the capital in his pursuit of advantages for his district, and who truly had no idea how to deal with a human within the atevi power structure.
But having seen Hasjuran, its snowy isolation, its unique wooden buildings, its ways and its character, Bren had acquired an admiration for the courage it had taken for this very rural lord to have faced the social complexities of the Bujavid aristocracy. Hasjuran had a difficult and small-scale economy. In a world increasingly dominated by human science and technology, by strange ideas raining down from a space station owned jointly by humans and atevi, Hasjuran saw none of it, only heard, and hoped for some importance in atevi affairs.
For years, all Topari had wanted was to get consideration for his province, his people, their ancient, traditional ways and crafts, and here it had had its chance, hosting the aiji-dowager, a personage of immense consequence in the aishidi’tat. It wanted to show its very best, and Topari had accommodated the dowager in every respect, had not stinted hospitality to the venture. Beyond question he hoped for some sort of substantive gain for his district, but thus far there had been no specificity in his asking or in the dowager’s offering.
This morning, that was due to change. This morning, he was scheduled to sign a significant document: an association with a former enemy, Machigi, and, beyond his wildest dreams, the aiji-dowager, an agreement that could bring that long-sought prosperity to his province.
Could.
The problem was, the new arrangement was not going to set well with Tiajo, lord of the Dojisigi province, who had come to power as a teenager without restraint and who had a nest of willing killers at her disposal. Tiajo had used those killers to wreak havoc in the Marid and terrorize her neighbor, Bregani, into compliance with her various schemes. Topari might be naive about the capital and the politics there, but he was not naive about the Marid’s potential for problems. He knew that another war in the Marid could cut off all through commerce, not a fatal hit, since at least half of Hasjurani trade went north and west to the midlands, but half went south, into the Marid and points westward. Losing that, in potential, would be a heavy blow.
He’d been ready to take that chance—in actual fact, he likely would sign anything the dowager asked him to sign—and the contract was to be Topari’s assurance things would be to his people’s good. But before he could sign, before he had that protection in place, the transformer blew and Hasjuran lost all power to its train station and a third of the town. Accident or sabotage by Tiajo’s Shadow Guild, there had been no warning, and they had no reserve equipment. Even now, they were stringing lines out there in the snowy square to bring up power for public safety, and to keep businesses running, but it would be days before a replacement arrived.
At this point, a very nervous Topari likely hoped simply not to be at odds with Lord Machigi or Lord Bregani, who were both here now, and who had been bitter enemies, and who were, even now, at least as far as Topari knew, accusing each other of the act. He undoubtedly hoped not to have the wrath of Lord Tiajo come surging up the grade to do sabotage and murder—neither of which was beneath Tiajo.
Indeed, one had sympathy for Lord Topari’s situation.
Which was useful, considering it was likely going to be on one Bren Cameron to handle Topari. It would certainly be up to him to inform Topari of the politics aboard the train, where one of Bregani’s bodyguard was in detention, a bodyguard whose family was being held hostage by the Shadow Guild, imperiling Bregani’s compact with the dowager and Machigi. Meanwhile the dowager herself would be unwilling to admit she had no idea what had just run through the station . . . not because Topari would choose any other side than hers, but because Topari’s discretion with information was, by past experience, non-existent.
He would have to provide pomp and ceremony enough to keep Topari satisfied, try to organize a brief gesture from Ilisidi to reassure the man—and above all to make sure nothing else untoward happened.
Given the weather, too, if there was trouble still out there, there was every possibility it might try again to disrupt the proceedings. Topari’s crossing from the great house to the train station was a worrisome thing, given the weather they had had; and they also had to worry about Topari’s situation once they moved on. They had no auxiliary power to heat and light the train if they sent the engine to take Bregani home. They might have to take Bregani to Shejidan instead. And moving on and leaving Topari to deal with whoever had taken out the transformer—that was not an optimum situation, either.
All of which—was his problem, if Ilisidi did not step in to make decisions this morning. And they had no word of her doing that. She likely was trying to get information out of Guild Headquarters. Or perhaps just over-tired. She was extremely old. The environment, the thin air, the complications and the decisions that had to be made . . .
She was busy. He told himself that. She was doing something needful. He was apparently in charge, second in authority aboard, God help him, without knowing what precisely she was doing, what was happening down in the Marid, what Tabini-aiji thought of the mess, or whether Tiajo had realized that, up atop the longest, steepest grade on earth, Ilisidi had just peeled away her chief ally.
For the immediate future, he had to be sure the sentries expected Topari to cross that open square. He had to weigh how much to tell anyone about Homura’s undercover and ill-omened arrival—no way in hell, he thought, that he had just happened to answer his summons here, turning up in a place they never could be expected to be. Either Homura had made the world’s wildest and luckiest guess where to find them, or had business here—or he was back in the employ of the people who held his partners hostage. The fact he was alone and his remaining partner Momichi was not with him—was worrisome. He had said Momichi was down in Koperna, where a person would be if he intended to take the rare train up to Hasjuran.
Of course, it was possible Hasjuran was where Homura and Momichi had been operating, all along, unfindable until now. The high mountains and the villages were a place to be lost, and still pick up news out of the Marid.
Trust Homura, under the circumstances?
Bottom line, one was down to that aspect of human-atevi relations that Bren could not feel and not judge, that emotion that distinguished and often confounded atevi. Man’chi. Homura had given man’chi to him, in debt for his life and freedom. To him and to the dowager, in the same moment. Attachment. Loyalty. The psychological willingness to take a bullet for another person.
He felt ashamed to doubt Homura’s sincerity in that regard—it was a deep and serious gesture Homura had made, in Lord Tatiseigi’s entry hall; but he had to consider that possibility, for the sake of his own aishid, for the dowager, and everybody else. Order Homura found? It could expose an innocent man; or get someone else killed; and they had too many loose ends flying in the wind right now, no surety they would be staying here longer than it took to get Topari’s signature and seal on a piece of parchment.
And bottom line right now, Ilisidi also held hostage Bregani’s man’chi, his authority over Senjin: his dignity, his lordship, his people’s man’chi vested in him. Ilisidi, getting Bregani up here, had told him she would send him back again at his request. She had pledged him her support—but delayed because they needed the engine for power; and now replaced his guard with her own because that guard was turned.
&n
bsp; Now that other train had passed them, of what nature, they still had no word, and in what intent, they had no word, but the train had not bothered to identify itself or ask a by your leave. With the dowager involved—that said something.
They could not go on delaying their own action. He read that well enough. They would go in some direction, either turn around—the station had that capability—or go down. And his own instinct said they would not turn around, not with Ilisidi having given her word.
Court dress, indeed. Bren dressed his lower half, put on his shirt, and did the buttons himself, his preference. Narani came to assist, and stood ready with the bulletproof vest, that stiff and unpleasant defensive item recent events made advisable—blue, this one, matching the coat, and for once he was glad of its extra warmth. But he did not fasten it until he had, with Jeladi’s assistance, put on his boots.
“Bren-ji,” Banichi said quietly. “Regarding the train—we do not yet have a statement, but headquarters has now sent a plain code specifically to us regarding our question. They do not take alarm.”
That was reassuring. He stood up, and made a half-hearted try at the vest. Jeladi intervened and fastened it under the arm. “The train was theirs, then? Or is its owner higher up?”
Of higher up in that chain of command, besides Ilisidi, there was only one.
“Unclear,” Banichi said. “That does not answer for its speed going through here, but Transportation would likely have warned the operator that the signals were not working, and likewise affirmed that the track was clear and that the switches were safely chained and locked.”
Little snowy Hasjuran offered a clearer clear track than one would ever find down in the midlands, where trains wove their way to every village and township and ran tightly interlocked schedules. Up in this lonely little station, trains that came from Shejidan and occasionally from the East picked up and delivered cargo, then reversed and went back down to the transcontinental rail. Two regular trains twenty-three days apart would come here, shed cars in excess of what the switchback descent permitted, and head down to Koperna, the Marid’s only rail connection. A freight would shed cars there, pick up others, and head west to Targai and Najida, then head north along the coast to Cobo, again take on cars, and then leave on the transcontinental line. It was rare that any train ran up the Hasjuran-Koperna rail.
Excepting the very small railyard here at Hasjuran, it was single track all the way from the transcontinental line up into these mountains, and down the hellish grade to Koperna, where there was another, much larger yard. The plan had been, once, to link the Dojisigin Marid with Senjin, welding the two northern Marid provinces into one trade entity, but decades back, Cosadi’s warfare in the Marid had gotten too ambitious, and in the upshot of a brief shooting war, the Transportation Guild had cut the Dojisigin Marid off cold and refused to build their rail, though it maintained the Hasjuran grade and the railyard in Senjin as a useful access to the entire Marid, and as a useful turnaround for trains headed in either direction.
“We cannot get to the Dojisigin by rail,” he said to Banichi. It was a question, because things might have changed since the last map he had seen. “That old line was never finished, am I right? We cannot get to them by train and they cannot get to us.”
“There is a siding,” Banichi said, “and an unfinished spur at the end of the descent. We are told the siding is maintained useable, and is under Transportation control, as Koperna could cease to cooperate without notice for some reason. The spur, such as there is, is reported impassible. They have not maintained it.”
“So that train that passed us could either go on to Koperna, or stop on the siding, if it were so disposed—without blocking our descent.”
Banichi gave a little frown and nodded. “Even so.”
“Has the dowager given any hint of her intention to go down?”
“She has not. But she has promised to get Lord Bregani home.”
“One can only hope she will wait for more clarity on the situation in Koperna. And on the track.”
Banichi looked at him, assessing, as it seemed. Weighing answers. “Guild Headquarters knows what the train is. We do not.”
“It is my guess that the dowager will keep her word, and we are going down to guarantee Lord Bregani’s safety.”
“If it can be guaranteed,” Banichi said. “Which is to say—Cenedi will be very reluctant to move until we have better information.”
Narani had prepared his coat. Bren reached back for the sleeves, and Narani settled it on his shoulders.
“How is the situation in Koperna at the moment?” Bren asked, letting Narani fuss with his right cuff.
“We do not have detail and one would not call it stable. We have sketchy information that sites the government as having moved from the residency area to the broadcast center—we assume this is Bregani’s cousin in that location. We are told the situation is moderately stable.”
So government was being run, effectively, from the broadcast center: it gave the government a voice and placed key personnel in a fundamentally more secure building. But it did not sound like complete tranquility, and it could get worse without notice. The Guild would secure the railyard first; and the station; and secure avenues from that, with a priority of protecting the broadcast center and being sure of the cousin’s safety.
“One would hope they are protecting the records,” Bren said, thinking of the Residency dropping to a secondary concern.
“Those and the utilities,” Banichi said.
They had hoped for more certainty. But the Guild would secure areas before it moved on, certainly leaving nothing of resistance between them and the railyard, logically moving to relieve any pressure on Bregani’s cousin.
Time was when the human from Port Jackson had had a very limited grasp of strategy and tactics, but he had gained something over the years—listening to Banichi.
And staying out of the way. Now—
Now it came to him that Ilisidi might have played this board in a very different fashion. If she had simply sat aboard and not communicated with an increasingly anxious Lord Topari—Topari would have been beyond agitated. But the Dojisigin might have regarded the Red Train’s arrival as a bluff. Or a decoy. Or even an uncommon but not unknown routing. The Red Train had occasionally come through here in the past, stopping briefly in Hasjuran, before going down on a non-stop run to Najida.
“One would think,” he said to Banichi, “that the dowager need not have made her presence aboard known. We made that excursion, all of us, to Lord Topari’s dinner. And if the Dojisigi have agents here, as they surely do—they will have reported it.”
“Indeed.”
“When the Red Train left half its cars and went down to Koperna, they may have suspected she was going there herself.”
“When it turned about and went up again,” Banichi expanded on the hypothetical, “they may or may not have realized Bregani was on it. They may not even have realized it as the Guild deployed down there, and it is remotely possible they still do not realize he is here—though once the Guild deployed, with a declaration it was at Lord Bregani’s request, it would put the mecheita in the dining room, so to speak. And orders have been coming from Bregani’s cousin, purporting to be from him. Now the Dojisigin see another train coming down the grade. They might move to stop it. They might mistake it, in the dark, for the Red Train coming back again, to take control of the action in Koperna—which would be interesting.”
“Sabotage?”
“Say that we are not sitting and waiting for them to try it. The first train down to Senjin deployed agents with cold-weather gear along the route, with better equipment and insulation than the Shadow Guild will have. That is classified, Bren-ji. We retain all options. Should the Hasjuran grade not be an option, we can reverse here and go all the way around the Southern Range to come into Senjin from the west. But that is a good s
even or more days, and the longer Senjin lacks certainty the worse for the situation. We do not want to fight the people of Koperna.”
“So we are going down.”
“I think that is the conclusion the dowager will reach. There are no barriers down on the coast. One bridge. That also will be under our surveillance by now. Koperna has no defenses on the eastern approach—its defense having rested with the Dojisigin even before the Shadow Guild existed, there are not even the remnants of walls. The land is flat and the marsh drainage, save that one river, is to the south of the railroad. This has been extensively planned. I can say that. Cenedi’s briefing covered all points.”
“Except that train just now.”
“Excepting that,” Banichi said. “So we are fairly sure where we will meet it.”
“We are wagering a very great deal on that.”
“If it surprises us, it very likely surprises the Shadow Guild.”
“To our good, in that,” Bren said. He stood in court dress. Banichi in the more armored gear the Guild used in combat. “I am to deal with Lord Topari, assuming he keeps the appointment. I do not think the dowager will be in any mood for it.”
“She will not,” Banichi agreed.
“Do you think Tiajo is not going to survive, this time?”
“I think it was not the dowager’s direct intention. I think it likeliest the aiji is simply moving to protect his grandmother against any unforeseen countermove. It would be foolish to make a try at the Red Train with the aiji’s forces in place . . . but Tiajo is not known for common sense.”
That was true. Tiajo had gotten power as a teenager, and she never could have stayed in power without the Shadow Guild and all its apparatus. They moderated her bad decisions, but they had humored her hates and her tantrums and killed for them with no particular objection. She was manageable and she was feared by her people. That was her function, for them.
Divergence Page 3
