“I am at your disposal, aiji-ma. Such service as I can do, I am willing to undertake. I am hopeful that when that train has reached its stopping point it will communicate in whatever way the Guild can manage such things.”
“Well, well,” Ilisidi said, frowning, “since it has not done the courtesy of dropping off a message in passing, we shall simply carry on as planned, however late. Setting Lord Bregani back securely in charge of Senjin may present some difficulties, if this intervention from Shejidan does delay us in the process. But we shall see.” A flick of her fingers. “Go. Go. Deal with Topari. Keep him calm. We have signed the documents. We want his signature. Arrange something. I have every confidence in you.”
* * *
• • •
Arrange something. Locating the document of association, which was in the dowager’s staff’s possession, was no problem. Narani was able to deal with that, and Jeladi likewise scoured up the requisite waxjack and ribbons of appropriate colors.
The next question was the time—and Ilisidi’s intent to move. “Urge Lord Topari to come to the Red Car at his earliest opportunity,” Bren said to Narani. “And tell Banichi take whatever measures we can to assure his safety.”
So that problem ran through channels.
Meanwhile they were shut in a windowless train, separated from each other in most instances by cars devoted to Guild operations and personnel, with two Marid lords and the candidate for Ajuri each attended by bodyguards, in separate cars. They had had less sense of isolation aboard the starship.
Machigi had ordered breakfast. So he was awake and waiting. But Bregani and his wife and daughter were reported still abed, nor was Nomari stirring in his car. At least some of them had managed to get back to sleep this morning.
But the day had to start. The sun must surely be up. There was a damnable scarcity of clocks aboard.
“Wake everybody,” was his instruction to staff. “Absent the dowager, we should put on as much formality for Lord Topari as we can manage. Ask our passengers to turn up as for a court appearance and let us give Lord Topari the chance to meet his nearest neighbors in this business. Do we have word on his schedule yet?”
In his apartment in the Bujavid, he would have had an abundance of staff and phone lines to solve such problems. Aboard, now, he had only his bodyguard, whose business was to protect him; and only three others—one of them his cook—to arrange the signing and seating and appropriate refreshments, and then arrange to get Topari safely across the square and back again, because he was determined that his aishid would not go out there.
Narani, his major d’, rapidly managed to learn, from what source one had no idea, that Topari was ready and only awaiting word . . . that he would gather his guard and be there in short order, under careful attention from the sentry positions that guarded the train.
One had to think sooner was better than later, both for Topari’s nerves, and for the unstable situation in general.
“Advise all our guests we have a meeting within the hour,” he said to his staff, and things began to move.
Meanwhile there was the other matter that wanted tracking, granted Ilisidi’s determination to go down. Leaving with an ex-Shadow Guild assassin on the loose and his situation unresolved meant leaving either a protection or a problem in Topari’s capital, and he had no sure knowledge which.
“Homura,” Bren said. “One is reluctant to take him, reluctant to leave him, and we have had no word whether he is alive.”
“We are still attempting,” Banichi said, “to get a response from him. We can add a signal of urgency as well as invitation, which may tell observers that something is afoot, but that is all we can do. We do not know whether he can respond. We do not know there are not operatives out there looking for him.”
“And Topari’s guard may not be adequate protection against his skills, if he has turned.”
“Until he moves,” Banichi said, “we do not have the means to find him. He is emitting no signals and doing nothing. We cannot even swear that he is alive. He told Tano and Algini he was answering your summons, and that he had come up from Koperna. He said he was uneasy about the meeting, feared that they might be observed, regretted that Tano and Algini would not go with him elsewhere, and he wished us to contact him later, said that he would signal again for a better meeting. Then the explosion. No signal has come. If the train this morning did not rouse him out, I do not know what will. And we cannot verify anything he said—except the problem in Lord Bregani’s aishid.”
“I take my aishid’s advice,” Bren said. “Not being a fool. Do not risk any of us in the effort. I hope we have not attracted a problem into this town. Topari’s people support him. But they are in no wise able to deal with the dowager’s sort of enemies.”
“Best to spend our resources protecting those aboard. We cannot search for him.”
“No,” he said, agreeing. “No. If he sends a message, I will hear it, but if we are to move, we cannot delay about it, and if what passed us this morning has not informed the Dojisigi that something is going on up here—they are not listening.”
“They will certainly be listening,” Banichi said. “They likely have been listening since Machigi disappeared from his province, and certainly since this train took a turn toward Hasjuran. And given we now know that Lord Bregani’s bodyguard was compromised, we are sure he will not have left Koperna in secrecy, either. We have to assume the Dojisigi know exactly where he is, and if Homura is turned, or if there are other agents in Hasjuran, then they will likely know precisely who is here. That will not bring any comfort to Tiajo.”
“What are the odds Homura was responsible for the transformer?”
“Someone in this town was. Tano is charitably disposed to believe the man is honest. The others of us, less so.”
It was Tano who had been caught in the edge of the explosion. It was Tano who generally took a charitable view.
“At this point,” Bren said, “I can only say I am human. I lack both the instincts and sufficient information.”
“Information is our continuing problem,” Banichi said. “If we take Homura with us, we may remove an agent protecting Hasjuran from his enemies. But if we fail to take him, we may be leaving an agent capable of taking Lord Topari down. The enemy is holding two of his partners, maybe three: Tano directly asked him about Momichi and had no answer except that he had stayed in Koperna. Hostage-taking may be as old as the machimi . . .” Which was to say, ancient history. “But the Shadow Guild’s target is now ignoring the lords and attempting to subvert the Guild with this tactic, and this has to stop. The Guild pointedly has to stop this, by suffering personal losses if need be, even of the innocent. Our enemies may think they have found something new. They may instead rouse something very old. I urge you, turn your back to this man’s problems, Bren-ji, and do not ask further.”
“We called him here, Banichi. I called him.”
Banichi returned a flat stare. “Coming here is, Bren-ji, in most sincere regret, his decision. And if he does not know what he risks under current circumstances, in approaching you and the aiji-dowager, he is part of a generation that will have to learn late the law these outlaws have invoked by their actions. I think he well knows that we can have no tolerance of him in proximity to the dowager and these two lords. I think he is reluctant to answer because he knows he has arrived at a critical position, while his man’chi cannot but be engaged with at least two partners he cannot find. We have appointed him one means of contacting us safely. If he does not advantage himself of that, if he does not trust Guild signals from the dowager’s own bodyguard, there is no more we can give him.”
Which said things, in itself. One understood that.
“I shall not argue,” Bren said. “I have learned that much. Keep me advised. I shall certainly not try to contact him.”
“Meanwhile,” Banichi said. “We expect Lord Topari
, and the dowager’s staff is arranging the Red Car for the second signing. Our guests have responded, Machigi included. It will be complete attendance, except the dowager.”
“Do we have a schedule, Nichi-ji?”
“Within half an hour for the signing,” Banichi answered, and added: “Within two hours, we expect this train to be moving, with or without word from Homura.”
4
Nomari was the first of their passengers to arrive in the Red Car—a good-looking young man with callused hands and a shy demeanor, a habit of caution. Two of his four bodyguards, Guild-assigned, came with him, trustworthy people. Machigi arrived soon after—as different from Nomari as night from noon: Machigi, a lean, scarred young warlord with three provinces at his command; and Nomari a rail worker, who had been a spy for Machigi in Bregani’s capital.
Bregani was aware of that. And the two had met. Nomari’s history might have been an embarrassment for a young man of, as yet, no standing—had Lord Bregani wanted to make an issue of it. But everybody spied on everybody in the aishidi’tat: even allies spied on allies. It was how things were verified, among other social uses. Genteel spying was how word was passed delicately, and how provinces communicated with each other, at times when, say, radio communication with the capital might be intercepted. Servants gossiped. Shopkeepers gossiped. Spies took note.
Bodyguards were another matter, bound by man’chi. And it was that assumption of unbreachable trust which had failed Lord Bregani, corruption of his bodyguard, far more personal and concerning on this trip than an encounter with a former employee of his railyard. Bregani’s bodyguard, his aishid, was in protective custody at the moment, relieved of duty, and Guild under the dowager’s command now provided Bregani’s personal security, not people he knew, not people with connections to him.
So it was no surprise that Lord Bregani brought his wife and his daughter to the signing with him this morning, not leaving them with strangers, no. The wife, Murai, had at least an interest in the proceedings, being of a border clan through whose territory the rail passed; while the daughter . . . well, teenaged Husai was simply caught in the midst of it all, a girl too young to sign anything, but safer here than down in Koperna at the moment, and due to go back with her family today. One even thought of suggesting the young lady stay here in Hasjuran, under Lord Topari’s roof, but one could not swear that would be safe, either, if the Shadow Guild was up here, and saw her as a target.
Nomari had left his own house at a young age, when Shadow Guild had killed his older brother and his parents. Maybe it was that memory that had him looking often at Husai, a young woman likewise caught in a situation she could not control. Or maybe it was that Husai had been looking back at moments, and glancing down and pretending not to have looked at all.
But as they moved closer to the table, their gaze collided, at arm’s length from Bren, as happened. One saw—indeed a time-stopped moment, which Husai’s parents also might have seen.
Nomari’s shyness suddenly evaporated. Nomari looked at Husai, Husai looked at Nomari, nothing to do with politics, treaties, and Nomari’s history as a spy—or maybe everything to do with that, in a handful of heartbeats. Nomari looked flustered, which he rarely did, and gave space for Husai to join her parents at tableside. Two gazes met a second time.
Briefly.
It had perhaps begun before this session: last night, during the dinner, Bren had seen a slight exchange of glances here and there, strangers assessing one another. Machigi might have looked with interest, but a young woman of a hostile clan looked at him with, well, apprehension: nothing new for Machigi, who had a dangerous, even piratical, reputation.
But the young candidate for Ajuri, who seldom spoke, but watched everything?
That looking and not-looking had gone on all evening, until a moment ago that two glances intersected, and stayed. Nomari, having recovered some gentility, gave a respectful little nod and let the moment fall.
Husai kept staring for a heartbeat.
Oh, one was not blind. They both were attractive young people, Nomari was a young man who, after a life on the run, stood to gain a province . . . and Husai, a young woman whose family was in danger of the sort Nomari had narrowly escaped.
Bren saw it. And being, himself, more than a little concerned with connections, negotiations, alliances, and powers of the aishidi’tat, he had to ask himself what to do about it, or whether the dowager had noticed it as a possibility at last night’s signing.
That was hardly a question at all. Ilisidi loved intrigue and scandal, she was an inveterate matchmaker, and she lived and breathed politics. Had she noticed last evening a prospective lord of Ajuri possibly forming yet one more connection of the midlands lords with a troublesome house down in the Marid, kin of Cosadi, the very connection that had created the situation they were going down to the Marid to deal with?
Oh, one would bet that she had noticed.
Whether and how Ilisidi could use that connection was another matter—while plainly enough, this second agreement, her absentee signing of a special agreement with Topari and Machigi, was fortifying an ally, and Bregani’s invitation to witness it was making a point with Lord Bregani, that she intended protection for the smallest of her allies in the move she was making.
Would another connection of the lords of Ajuri to the troublesome house of the Dojisigin and Senjin lords be any sort of asset in her thinking? Or an absolute disqualification?
Should he do something in Ilisidi’s absence? Should he warn Nomari on what ground he was treading?
But if Nomari could not see or had not informed himself of the politics behind his family’s assassination and some twenty years of his young life on the run, he was little qualified to run Ajuri. That was the whole of it. A provincial lord had requirements to consider, responsibilities far ahead of his personal wishes.
So, absolutely, did that young lady, Bregani having no other heir, and his district being under continual threat from one side or another. Any indiscreet alliance could lead very dangerous places.
And the question was—was Nomari trying to assure connections in the south for his own preservation, should he not be confirmed, or was he simply casting about for any favorable link he could make?
One had access to Nomari, at least.
Bren used it, approaching the young man at tableside, in the general serving of drinks before Topari’s arrival—mere fruit juice, considering there was official business yet at hand and they were not yet seated. “Nadi,” he said very softly—atevi ears were keener than human.
“Nand’ paidhi.”
“Only bear in mind your future must be in the north, nadi.”
Nomari looked down at him, frowning slightly, and said not a thing for a moment. Then, eyes not quite meeting his:
“Is it at all likely I shall be in the north, nandi?”
“It is not at all unlikely, nadi. The dowager is, after all things settle, fair. Be confident of fairness. But do not test it. Or complicate it. Be aware.”
There was no answer. Nomari’s expression was troubled, and he flashed one look toward the young lady, then back again.
“Nand’ paidhi.”
Bren walked off, and Nomari found occupation in another direction. “I have advised him,” Bren said to Banichi and Jago, who had never been far from him in the encounter. “Too much is uncertain. She is a stranger in a foreign and hostile place, and Nomari is very much the same.”
“This may be a ploy of her father’s,” Banichi said.
“Or just youth,” Bren said.
“Or a plan,” Jago said. “Bregani and his daughter are Cosadi’s line, Bren-ji.”
The situation was atevi. A human could read it intellectually, but feel it, no, never. Love was assuredly not in it, but certainly attraction was. Biological attraction worked chaos in atevi lives as effectively as it did in human ones. A one-candle nig
ht, as Banichi had once put it, creating a hundred-year problem, and a problem for far more than the two young people in question. Cosadi, now deceased, had had blood ties to Kadigidi, and Kadigidi to Atageini and Ajuri in the midlands, as well as to the Dojisigin, and to Senjin in the Marid. Cosadi’s alliances and ambition for rule still tangled lines of descent in ways that lay behind a host of current troubles. The north did not want another round of it.
“Lord Topari is on his way,” Banichi said quietly. Banichi was, in point of fact, the highest-ranking Guild officer present, Cenedi having opted for absence, along with the dowager, so Banichi was in charge and it was all the paidhi-aiji’s ceremony . . . and would be the paidhi-aiji’s problem, should anything go wrong.
Narani was likewise in charge of the documents, the waxjack was in place, as were the appropriate ribbons. There were a number of commemorative cards to be signed and ribboned as favors for all present, particularly for little Hasjuran to display along with a copy of the agreement, a memento for local pride in generations to come. They had not done that gracious addendum on the previous signing: it would have been a little strange even to consider congratulatory card-signing, with the threatening undertones of that event.
But Topari’s district, Topari’s capital, and Topari’s house were all innocent of the goings-on down in Senjin district, whatever those might be today, and a little festivity was due.
The mood on the train this morning might be nervous, but it was definitely lighter than had prevailed last evening, when Ilisidi had been forcefully persuading Bregani that she was his best ally, and that continuing his hostilities with Machigi was not the best route for his district.
Divergence Page 6
