Divergence

by C. J. Cherryh

  Could her recklessness push the Shadow Guild into a desperate move, and into a Guild trap?

  On the one hand it was a wonderful prospect—seeing the last of the Shadow Guild go down.

  On the other hand one did not want to be a close observer to that event. The Shadow Guild was entrenched in the folded landscape of the inner Dojisigin. They had lost heavily in the last set-to with the Shejidani Guild, who had outfought them in the field. Now Ilisidi had just stripped away the province that was Tiajo’s last ally. Ilisidi was directly threatening them, daring them to risk more of their assets to come after her.

  “Let me know,” Bren said, “whatever you can find out. And have breakfast, Nichi-ji. Let us take whatever we can while we can. We are not at all certain about supper.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Narani laid out all the stores of teacakes they had without access to the galley, with toast and preserves, and pots of tea; and they had, at least, breakfast before them, on the inadequate table. It was set as a standing buffet, and Algini poured tea in a row of cups.

  Tano came back just then, quietly entered the compartment. “There are messages besides the replies,” Tano said, and offered a small, cord-wrapped bundle of four cylinders and a bare paper roll.

  One of those cylinders was the dowager’s. One had Bregani’s colors. The third had Machigi’s. The fourth had Topari’s. The bare paper roll was likely Nomari’s.

  It was no question which missive to read first. He took a deep breath and drew out Ilisidi’s message.

  Your presence is required at breakfast immediately.

  Well—that settled the question of his own breakfast. And maybe one not of a flavor he would wish.

  Narani had shed the casing of the other notes, and handed them to him in order.

  From Nomari, who knew something of trains, to say the least: If I can be of service please call on me. Thank you for the message, nandi.

  From Bregani: We are deeply concerned. We appeal to the paidhi’s office to inform us what is happening here and down in Senjin.

  From Machigi: Whose was the train?

  And a formal parchment message from outside, from Topari, in a nervous hand: Shall I still come to sign the document? Is everything well? Please advise me, nand’ paidhi.

  One did not delay about the dowager’s summons. But he cleared the edge of the food-laden table and, standing, dashed off a quick note of his own:

  Bren, Paidhi-aiji

  To Topari lord of Hasjuran.

  We hope to have information soon. Expect to come as planned, but be ready to come sooner if called. Take strong security precautions while crossing the square. This message without my seal, as I am in haste. I am about to meet with the aiji-dowager and I shall know more soon. Please be assured the welfare of Hasjuran is equal with all other matters in the dowager’s concern and you will be protected as a bastion of the aishidi’tat.

  He passed the rolled note to Tano, who was waiting for answers. “Case that. Seal it. Do not leave the train yourself, Tano-ji. Call in a local messenger to carry it, and then come straight back here, sit down, and have breakfast.”

  “Yes,” Tano said, and went off again.

  Bren shook back his lace cuff, bent to the table again and wrote, in three rapid instances, I am about to meet with the dowager and will have some answers shortly. We believe the train in question is ours. Please be patient.

  “The breakfast will await your arrival, nandi,” Narani reported. And, more precisely: “The dowager is at table.”

  “Nadiin-ji,” he said. “Have breakfast. All of you. That is an order. I can travel the passage safely enough.”

  “Bren-ji,” Banichi said.

  “I shall be in Cenedi’s territory in fortunate seven easy strides, nadiin-ji. And I am armed.” He had felt the weight in his pocket when Narani had settled the coat about him. “Breakfast. Please.”

  2

  Cajeiri opened his eyes on a windowless dark bedroom, his room, in his father’s apartments, in the Bujavid, awake not for the first time in a long and uneasy night, and not wanting to get up—because if he did, his younger bodyguard, asleep in their two rooms opening onto his, might also wake, and once they woke, then Eisi and Liedi, his major d’ and his doorman would wake—and then his senior bodyguard, and then everybody, including the new servants. Which was not fair. And it did no good for them to be awake.

  It did no good for him, either, and he could not say why he had waked twice before in the dark. Even Boji was asleep—which was a good thing. Boji would be curled on a branch in his filagree cage in the sitting room, a furry blacker knot in a very deep dark. At times he wished he could be Boji, and not wake thinking about things that had no shape and no reality.

  Most of all, Boji spent no time in his day worrying about things.

  And he once had been like that. But no longer.

  He was fortunate nine. He was halfway to decisive ten, that number fraught with choices, two lucky threes, two extremely infelicitous twos, and a number perfectly divisible into an infelicitous two of equally chancy fives, in which lucky three won over the infelicity of two by a perfect unity of one.

  Ten was that kind of number, delicately balanced, either to set one on a good course to indivisible eleven, or to become that sort of boy nobody trusted.

  Father said, “Regard the truth of the numbers, expect others to believe in them, but do not expect that everybody will believe, and do not be afraid to take a chance. The forces that move the world are not all atevi. But you know that.”

  He did. Humans had terrified the world when they arrived because the numbers had not foretold their coming. Nobody expected them to have dropped in, as people had once thought, from the moon.

  They had actually come from much, much further away, in a great ship that sat now just off the space station. And they had built the Foreign Star in the heavens, when atevi had only just invented railroads. Humans had landed in petal sails, and brought amazing technology with them.

  But for a time the Foreign Star had faded into legend and no one had seen it except in telescopes, until it had miraculously reappeared in the heavens. He understood why—he understood a thing that a great many adults did not remotely understand, how the station had moved back into geostationary orbit. That was a word most adults did not know. But he did. He was proud of that.

  Only a handful of atevi had left the solar system and come back again. And he was one of them. So was Great-grandmother. He was extremely proud of that distinction.

  And nand’ Bren, of course, had gone with them. He had never been afraid of humans, nand’ Bren having been part of the household since he could remember. And on the voyage he had gained human associates besides nand’ Bren, associates of his own age who had grown up in faraway space and survived a terrible attack on their space station. They had only just recently been able to come down to the island of Mospheira to live, and learn how other humans lived. Now they were only a plane flight away, living in a building that sat on the grounds of the Mospheiran University, and studying with tutors to learn things they needed to know to be Mospheiran, things they had never known, having been born far off in space. So close—only across the straits from the west coast—and one day . . . soon, he hoped . . . they would come to visit him again in Shejidan, or better yet, they would come by boat rather than plane, and he would meet them at nand’ Bren’s estate of Najida, where they could fish and go out in nand’ Bren’s boat, and do all sorts of things.

  That was now. That was real. And it was a good thing. But sometimes, in bed at night, he dreamed about the ship, and the tunnels where they had used to meet as the great ship raced between stars. And sometimes, too, he dreamed about the station, and about Hakuut an Ti, who was another associate of his, a kyo, and as different from atevi or human as one could be. The kyo had almost been enemies. But now they were not.<
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  He had been so many places. Dangerous places.

  He had been in such situations, always, with mani, Great-grandmother—and with nand’ Bren. And with Cenedi and Banichi, and all the rest. He had been with them in all sorts of dangers, and met his human associates, and the kyo, and learned all sorts of things, things he never would have known, had he not left the world.

  But now he was back from the stars, and like his human associates, he had to learn to be something different from what he had been all his life. Someday all those things he had learned in space, all those associates he had made . . . would matter, but in the meantime, he was officially Father’s heir, and as such he had to learn things about trade and supply and demand and clan histories and old wars. And because the security of the aishidi’tat would one day, some time in the far future, rest on him, he had to stay in the Bujavid. Where it was safe.

  Too safe.

  And while he rested here, being safe, mani was off with Lord Machigi, who was scary all on his own; and with Lord Topari, who was stupid, and who insulted nand’ Bren; and, if Father’s information was right, they had met with Lord Bregani, who was a cousin of Lord Tiajo, who was a wicked woman who murdered people in her fits of temper, and who was right across the Marid’s northern coast from Bregani and Lord Machigi.

  It was a dangerous place to be in, Lord Topari’s Hasjuran, which was a little town at the top of the only pass that went down to the Marid plain. Which was a stupid place to build a railroad, but politics made reasons to do stupid things. Wars with the Marid were the reason they had started, and wars were why they had stopped. They had settled those wars, mostly, but only temporarily, and Tiajo would be the reason if they broke out again.

  Of course mani, Great-grandmother, had taken nand’ Bren, who was going to have to deal face to face and be pleasant to Lord Topari, who was not respectful of him, and deal with these people in the Marid, who had mostly been at war with each other.

  Meanwhile mani had kidnapped Mother’s cousin, Nomari, apparently because she did not trust Nomari and wanted to have a chance to question him before he made any more bargains with Uncle Tatiseigi, who was not stupid, and who was trying to settle peace in the midlands.

  It was all complicated. It always was. Mani was Uncle’s ally and associate, and mani knew Uncle’s intentions were good, but mani had never gotten along with Mother, and mani had not gotten to have a voice in the Ajuri succession. Mother had just said Nomari was her cousin, and had a right, and that was that.

  Nomari had been respectful of Uncle and he had been very brave, turning up when he did. If he became lord of Ajuri, he would try to be a good one, which would be a great improvement over Grandfather, and particularly over Aunt Geidaro, who had just been murdered—but not murdered by Great-grandmother. He was fairly sure of that. It had almost certainly been Shadow Guild who had killed Aunt Geidaro and set fire to the basement of the great house, trying to destroy records.

  The fire had not worked. People had moved quickly enough to put it out, and the Guild was going through the records.

  But the politics of who would be lord of Ajuri was all still in confusion. And now mani had dragged Nomari away from the midlands, and he was on the train with her and nand’ Bren and Lord Machigi.

  It was all a confused mess of people who ought not to be trusted with people who ought not to be put at risk—in Hasjuran, a tiny place which had the poorest communications of anywhere in the whole aishidi’tat. And it was supposedly all because Machigi wanted a railroad, and wanted it right now and right across Lord Bregani’s territory.

  Right across from Bregani’s province of Senjin was the Dojisigin Marid, and Tiajo, who had sent assassins into Uncle Tatiseigi’s house with no provocation, and who let the Shadow Guild do anything it wanted in her province.

  So it was very likely she was going to make trouble when she knew Great-grandmother was sitting up in a little town that had no defenses except its bad weather and thin air. She would find it out, Cajeiri had no doubt. Shadow Guild were ex-Guild, and they were good.

  He was not getting sleep tonight. A number of people had come to meet with Father today, and given Father’s office was right across the hall from his own little suite, and given he had staff and bodyguards to report to him whatever was going on, he knew that Uncle Tatiseigi had come to talk to Father, and so had elder Dur, and a number of western lords, all of them concerned about what was no longer much of a secret, that Great-grandmother’s negotiations with Lord Bregani involved moving trainloads of Guild down into Lord Bregani’s province and waiting for the Shadow Guild to attack them, while Lord Bregani had been drawn up to wait at the top of the world, in Hasjuran, in the middle of a snowstorm.

  Everybody had been afraid of another war with the Marid, sooner or later. And now mani seemed to be touching it off on purpose.

  Over a railroad that nobody used much. And another railroad that might never even be built.

  He slipped out of bed, walked barefoot across cold marble floors and opened the door to the sitting room, quietly, ever so quietly, so as not to wake Boji, whose cage was in there, against the long wall. He moved cautiously, opened the door to his office and shut it behind him just as carefully before he turned on the light.

  It was his place. His books. His notes.

  His map, that he had kept from his childhood up, that spanned half the wall. It had three pinhole scars among the colored pins, pins that represented people he knew, people whose man’chi he could rely on. He had used to collect those pins with a cheerful sense of growing up and learning things—until he had lost those three pins, and he had begun to understand the future was not all happiness and gain. One of the scars, Ajuri, was recently refilled . . . meaning that there he had lost Grandfather, but now he had a new ally, or would have if Father and the legislature confirmed Nomari to have Ajuri. He thought Father would. But it was going to be trouble with Great-grandmother.

  There were neither pins nor pinholes around Hasjuran, into which he had never set any pin to denote a lord well-disposed to him. Across the map, he used black for a lord whose man’chi he was sure of, like Dur and Uncle Tatiseigi, and of course, Malguri and Najida. He used red for a lord whose man’chi might possibly come to him. Topari had neither black nor red, and because of his insulting nand’ Bren, was nowhere on his list of potential allies.

  From Topari’s Hasjuran, with no pin, the rail went down to the Marid and turned west, running from Koperna in Senjin clear across the south, past Targai—a black pin there, for Haidiri, who was someone favorable to nand’ Bren, and a very agreeable fellow, though Cajeiri had no personal contact with the man; over to Najida—certainly a black pin there, for nand’ Bren, and another on the peninsula just to the south of Najida: that was Lord Geigi’s Kajiminda, an estate which nand’ Bren was taking care of while Lord Geigi managed the aishidi’tat’s operations on the space station. Lord Geigi was extraordinary—one of his very, very favorite people.

  After Najida, the train followed the coast, going north to Cobo, which was the main seaport of all the aishidi’tat, and there the main rail turned east again toward Shejidan, completing a huge oblong circle, and starting the transcontinental line, which, ignoring the line going south to Hasjuran, ran on east, over the continental divide, clear to mani’s territory of Malguri.

  Very few trains ever went up that spur that went to Hasjuran, because it was steep, the weather was always bad, and most trains had to turn around there rather than go down to the Marid, first because most of the Marid trade went north either by ship or by the lowland railroad over to Najida and up. He knew that much. Most times, trains going to Koperna turned around at Koperna rather than climb up the mountain rise to Hasjuran, even though the lowland route to Shejidan was twice as long. They had only used to do it, really, when the Kadagidi had been trading with the Marid.

  But now the Kadagidi lordship was vacant, too, which was another of t
hose scars on the map. The lord was banished, and the Guild was managing that clan, whose great house was almost in sight from Uncle Tatiseigi’s back lawn. After Kadagidi had gone down, for very good reason, the trains from there to Koperna no longer ran at all. He knew that, the way he was supposed to study trade and regions and clans and know who exported and imported.

  The mountains atop which Hasjuran sat, where mani and nand’ Bren were at the moment, were the wall that kept the Marid separate from the rest of the aishidi’tat—which was generally, in his opinion, a good thing. The Marid was always trouble. There had been wars and a lot of skirmishes, and the trouble that had temporarily overthrown his father had come out of the Marid—well, and out of the Marid’s allies in the north—particularly Kadagidi.

  That had happened while he and mani were off in space—and when they had come back from space, and when Uncle Tatiseigi threw off his pretense of neutrality, Father had just taken a train back to Shejidan and taken back control, well, with a little more trouble than that. But it had happened very fast, and with very little fighting.

  He had accepted it then as luck, and thought people’s common sense had told them this was a good chance to throw out the usurper, Murini, and all his allies. But he was older now—and began to understand that he was part of the reason people had thought it was time and why things had turned around so quickly. He had not been Father’s appointed heir then, but once people knew that he and mani were both alive, and Father did have an heir, and, as much as any of that, that space was a real place people could venture into and come back from—people decided Father had been right. It was not just a waste of all the resources they had poured into matching the humans and getting into space, and humans had not betrayed them when they had the chance. So people’s thinking had shifted into belief that Father had been right to do what he had done, and that there was a future and they could work with humans.

  Murini, the Kadagidi traitor, had replaced Father, but the whole north had just risen up, shaken Murini and his lot off their backs, supported Father and mani and him in their homecoming to Shejidan, and the problems had all flowed out of the aishidi’tat proper like some foul drain emptying.