The other passenger car was for Nomari and his bodyguard, along with several Guild officials who would be asking Nomari a lot of questions during the trip. There were also a couple of Uncle’s household staff who were doing temporary duty with Nomari—and who might become permanent, so that they would be in a position to observe things . . . Uncle would certainly want to know what Nomari was doing, especially at first.
Then there was the flatcar with nand’ Bren’s bus.
It was the bus that had held them up. They could have been on the way hours ago if he had not strongly insisted to Uncle and to Mother that they had to get nand’ Bren’s bus back to him, that it was a debt of honor—and to his surprise, Mother had actually backed him on it. The damage to the bus had not stopped them using it to get to the train station, but when they had started to load it, there was some part underneath projecting and preventing them getting up the ramp, so they had had to send the baggage truck all the way back to Tirnamardi to get tools to cut something away—then, in the confusion, and to Great-uncle’s displeasure and embarrassment, not the right tools, so there had been one more trip to and from Tirnamardi.
They had sat, and sat, and the Taibeni riders had gotten down from their mecheiti, made camp and had supper in the woods that surrounded the little train station. All of them who were going on the train had had their own supper aboard: the train had arrived with it.
Antaro’s and Jegari’s parents, and three cousins, too, were part of the Taibeni escort, so Lucasi and Veijico had been invited out to the fireside to be introduced all around and to share what the riders had. One was sure they were having a much nicer time. But his older aishid stayed with him, and assured him they were perfectly happy to have supper inside.
It was not that bad. After all the rush and worry of recent days, it had actually been nice to have time to sit and relax and hear nothing but quiet conversation—except Cajeiri worried that nand’ Bren was supposed to arrive soon, and the bus, his bus, would be late.
And nand’ Bren relied on that bus for his own safety.
“We shall get to the capital by dawn, all the same,” Uncle had said, as the evening freight from the much larger township station thumped along past them, the second train to pass them, doubtless with passengers amazed and intrigued to see the Red Train sitting on the siding. Its noise disappeared into the distance, coastward bound with a load of passengers, baggage, mail, and freight. Cajeiri wondered what sort of freight, tried to think what those at one end of the rail would be sending that those at the other end would need, but not knowing the specifics of that train’s route, he could only guess. Nomari would know both the routing and the types of goods. Nomari, because he was Transportation Guild, knew a great number of interesting things, things Cajeiri had never even thought about, before spending time with this newly-found cousin. He grew curious about things he had never even wondered about.
And still they sat, now in the dark, while outside the bus finally roared to life and sounded as if it were moving—positioning itself, perhaps, finally to be loaded up onto the flatcar. How they were going to get that huge bus onto the car was truly a question, and Cajeiri would gladly have gone out to see, but Mother and Uncle would not permit him sightseeing in the woods in the dark, as Mother put it. So he just listened, and after a good lot of banging and thumping, ratcheting of chain and motor-noise, his younger aishid came aboard and shut the door again.
“It has loaded, nandiin,” Antaro reported. “They are securing it with more chains. And the escort is putting out the fire.”
A fire. In the woods. He was alarmed. Sidonin was a precious forest that reached deep into Taiben. But his aishid settled back at the table, assuring him it was a little fire, only small brush near the track, and the Taibeni would be very sure it was out and cold before they left.
Then his aishid, who had watched the whole process, began telling how it was done, while the Red Train began to build up steam, preparing to move.
At the very last, Uncle’s Guild came aboard, announcing the bus secured, and assuring them all that the fire was definitively out and the bus was securely on the flatcar.
Uncle’s Guild-senior tugged a cord to signal the engine, and finally, finally, they began to roll.
“There are days,” Uncle said, “when nothing seems to go smoothly.”
4
An approach in the dark, this late, and at such inconvenience, did send Guild out quietly to query those with Machigi as to the makeup of the company and the intentions.
Word slipped also down to Najida village—Bren ordered it, because the Edi folk had good reason for uneasiness in any visit from the Marid, and he had no desire to have them learn about it after the fact. His message to the Grandmother of the Edi, was simple: We have received a request from Machigi-nandi to speak with us. Indications are that this approach is respectful and will not intrude on village land, nor will it be long in duration. I am present. I shall assure this meeting is appropriate and proper, and that Edi rights are respected throughout.
The fact that every servant at Najida was Edi offered the Grandmother more assurance than that. If Machigi for some reason had wanted to conduct a conversation not overheard by the Edi folk, Najida estate was not the place to hold it.
The Guild unit that had gone out to meet the visitors reported their visitor was on the road headed up to Najida, about half an hour out, and that the party involved one market truck and a load of fishing nets.
The market truck was not utterly unusual. Roads on the mainland were few, trucks capable of navigating the bush served many uses, including moving people about, but the fishing nets were a question. The cargo had provided an answer, perhaps, should anyone wonder at a strange truck on the Great Coastal Road—but fishing was not the reason the lord of the Taisigin Marid was driving at night in a district he had promised by formal treaty to leave alone.
“The man has always done the unpredicted,” Ilisidi said in the long wait. They had changed to tea, and strong tea, since brandy, as the dowager said, was better at promoting honesty than it was at promoting good sense.
Ramaso and others of the staff hurried about arranging the possibility of an overnight stay—word was from Banichi and Cenedi that it was only Machigi and his aishid, themselves only recently recognized by the Guild as entitled to access a limited number of Guild codes and communications, and that after considerable negotiation.
Tonight that access was a great convenience. The servants provided one chair, one cup, and a correct arrangement of the buffet centerpiece for kabiu, a felicitous and comfortable design.
The front door opened. There was a quiet stir in the hall, a brisk tread of several men entering, and as Ramaso opened the sitting room door—there indeed was Machigi and his aishid.
Bren rose. Ilisidi stayed seated. Ilisidi nodded, Bren and Machigi bowed. Two of Machigi’s aishid distributed themselves along the far wall, two to remain outside, northern-style protocol.
“Welcome,” Bren said.
“Nandi.” Machigi, a middling-young man with cold eyes and a scar that raked his chin and jaw, gave a curt bow to him, another to Ilisidi.
“Do sit,” Ilisidi said, “presuming you have come for discussion, Lord Machigi.”
“I have, nand’ dowager.” A second bow, and he subsided into the indicated chair. “I understood that you were here and nand’ Bren was not.” Machigi gave him his lordly title, which some did not. “Forgive the hour. I came through our hunting lands and I shall go back the same way.”
“If it is urgent,” Ilisidi said, “get to it, nandi.”
“The opportunity is urgent. The need is considerable. If I am known to be absent from Tanaja and meeting with you, there might be moves against me. However, I could not let the chance go, nand’ dowager, and I am pleased to have nand’ Bren’s presence. This is an unexpected benefit. Regarding my railroad . . .”
Machigi
’s railroad. Bren hoped his face did not betray bewilderment. There was currently no such thing. The historically problematic railroad link between the central aishidi’tat and the Marid had been a small footnote in the dowager’s prior negotiations with Machigi, a very small footnote, as he well knew, having mediated the agreement. Certainly a rail link of some sort, connecting Machigi’s capital to the main line, was a next step, once the proposed sea route between the Marid and the East began to bring in goods that needed to move on to the west, though there was the short-term possibility of sending them northward by ship, the long route around the coast and up to Cobo. Right now the rail line coming south from Shejidan took a sharp westward bend up at Koperna, capital of the Senjin Marid, north of Machigi’s territory, and headed toward Najida on the coast, where it took a northward turn north to Cobo District and then turned east, back to Shejidan, or on to places east and north.
As for any future rail coming out of Machigi’s district, it was problematic where to send it. The most direct link for any such theoretical construction would go up to Koperna, in the Senjin Marid, where rail served both inland Koperna, and the port at Lusi’ei, but Senjin was allied to the Dojisigin Marid, both having a very dark history with Machigi’s Taisigin Marid and its association.
In what regard, Bren asked himself, could a desire to have a rail connection have become so urgent as to bring Machigi on an exceedingly rough and lengthy wilderness drive to seek an unannounced meeting with Ilisidi at this hour? Certainly it was nothing he wanted publicized.
“Does it bid fair to break out in war,” Ilisidi asked, “or do we have time for tea, nandi?”
“Tea, yes, nand’ dowager,” Machigi said, which put immediate clarification out of the question and gave a mind ample time to process the uneasy possibilities behind this sudden visit.
Marid folk were not Ragi—in fact, they were a remnant of an ancient and foreign culture, one diluted by two thousand years of migration, warfare, and mixing with the southern clans of the mega-continent. The Maridi clans cherished their legendary past, maintained their separate ways, rejected the northern guilds, and disparaged the etiquette and culture of the north, though they were signatory to the aishidi’tat and counted as member clans.
Unfortunately, whatever they had been, poverty and scarcity had been the condition of the Marid. They fished. They traded. They spent most of their energies battling the southern storms and each other, what time they were not trying to take the west coast from the Maschi of the southern plain.
Then they had met the Ragi of the newly organizing aishidi’tat, and it had been war at first encounter—a war which they lost, hence their inclusion in the aishidi’tat, and their nominal governance by the north, which rarely bothered with them.
It was a long, long and uneasy history Machigi’s people had with the Ragi-led north, and if ever there was an ateva prone to rush headlong and bluntly to the point, and to use whatever means necessary to achieve his ends, it was Machigi—Lord of the Taisigin Marid and chief lord of the Association of the Southern Marid, the aishihai’mar.
But he met his match in the Lord of Malguri, the aiji-dowager. Ilisidi herself was not Ragi: she was Eastern, yet another culture, another district in many ways like the Marid, wed to the sea and the mountains, and somewhat disinclined to obey midlands customs. Ilisidi, however, had learned the intricacies of the Ragi-dominated aishidi’tat, had ruled it twice as regent, successor to both husband and son. Machigi had found his match and found reason to sign a trade agreement with her. It was notable in their interaction—and one was certain that the dowager noticed—Machigi never said aiji-ma, always using the honorific of proper degree, but not giving it the -ma syllable of personal connection. This was a man who acknowledged no equals in his region, a man who gave up his position only gradually, demanding this, agreeing to that, only for due consideration, piece by stubborn piece.
Tea suspended discussion. It did not suspend the forceful presence of the man—a very young man to sway what he did. A decade younger than Tabini, and he was working to turn the Marid into a power that could hold its own against the political and economic force that was the Western Association. From the time his father was assassinated, Machigi had had as his stated aim the unification of the entire south, including the all-important shipping townships of Separti and Talida clear over on the west coast, with all the vast territory in between. Once, he had even threatened, possibly to garner the people’s support, raids into Edi territory over the piracy issue—the Edi’s piracy, not his, an issue that had, thankfully, found a more peaceful resolution. Ilisidi had won, in the north, the admission of the Edi to the aishidi’tat and gotten them to forswear interference with shipping.
Though Machigi had sworn away his ambitions on the southwest coast in return for an alliance with Ilisidi’s East, his father had drawn into his circle all the southern Marid—the Taisigin, which he ruled; and the Sungeni of the Isles and the southeastern coast, the Dausigin. After his father was murdered, Machigi had held off the Senjin and the Dojisigin, his northern neighbors, during the brief interlude of Murini’s takeover of the aishidi’tat. The Senjin and the Dojisigin had supported Murini, who had Dojjsigin blood; and when Tabini returned to power, the Dojisigin had become the primary haven for the remnants of the Shadow Guild . . . among various troublesome elements.
But the northern Marid had made a serious mistake in assassinating Machigi’s father. Machigi hated them. He had stood them off, he had claimed the man’chi of all three southern clans, and following Tabini’s return to power, and the containment of the northern Marid, Machigi had found in Ilisidi an ally. He agreed to the aishidi’tat—on a limited basis—and was slowly accepting the northern guild system, choosing, however, which of the guilds he would accept, insisting, among other things, on his own security.
In all of that Machigi and Ilisidi, lord of the East, had a great deal in common. The dowager herself, with her own style of independence within the aishidi’tat, had pried him away from his coastal ambitions by offering him access to her East by sea, if he could reach it. Those were stormy seas, a route deemed commercially impossible—and she’d offered him satellites, accurate weather forecasts, and the resources of the orbiting station—help that Machigi had accepted with more than a hint of Tabini’s own enthusiasm for human technology.
Build great new seafaring ships, supported by designs from the recently opened human archive? Space-based weather forecasting? Machigi’s rivals called that southern sea route a grand daydream. Nothing, in their estimation, could overcome the southern latitude storms. So, also in their estimation, Machigi’s deal with the aiji-dowager must be a cover for some other ambition closer to home.
Now, one had to wonder: were they right? Was he going to go for something his enemies could assuredly see as a threat? A rail line that would give him a direct, land-based connection to the aishidi’tat?
The west coastal districts of the aishidi’tat, those same Separti and Talida districts he’d sought to control, districts whose livelihood depended on the transport of goods between the Marid and the aishidi’tat—by sea—were going to fight that competition. If Machigi was hellbent on pushing rail ahead of his southern sea route, they were going to come out of their lethargy and know he was an imminent threat.
Rail first? God, yes, he needed to think about this one.
But the southwest, Ashidama Bay, with its stubborn antagonism to the Edi, its feuds with Kajiminda, its resistence to the railroad and its several feuding trade houses—that Ilisidi had tried for decades to bring to the conference table?
He saw the gleam in Ilisidi’s eyes. She didn’t need time to consider. She had it figured in an instant, top to bottom, what this railroad might do.
One cup of tea, and half of another, before they could politely discuss business. The dowager set her cup down, definitively. They all followed suit.
“So,” Ilisidi said, “the paidhi-aiji an
d I have been delayed here. And you found this out. We are intrigued.”
“One has sources.”
“And we are still intrigued.”
A moment of silence. “I have agents at the airport. I knew you had landed on the coast, with respect, nand’ dowager, and from there it was a reasonable guess the aim was Najida, and a consultation with the paidhi-aiji. Mine was a considerable trip, by market roads and hunting tracks. One hoped you would remain to meet the paidhi-aiji. The Red Train had not yet made the trip.”
“Ah,” Ilisidi said, as if satisfied. The words Transportation Guild had not quite figured in the explanation. “And would you have pursued us all the way to the capital with this idea of yours? You have been very reluctant to venture there—but this venue can be no more comfortable. I do not recall you willing to exit your own lands.”
“I rely on our agreement.”
“And now wish to alter it. Why this urgency?”
“Because time has become critical, nand’ dowager. One by no means wished to surprise you with our project. But we are beginning—we have, in fact, already begun to review old records—previous surveying for a rail connection.”
There was half a breath of dead silence, Machigi waiting in vain for Ilisidi to break back in.
“May one ask why this has become so urgent?” Bren asked, the most polite and least explosive question he could think of on the fly. Ilisidi was perturbed by the security issue. Ilisidi was fully aware Machigi had dodged her question.
“Because,” Machigi said—fairly cheerfully, for Machigi— “Lord Bregani has had a falling-out with that damnable child in Ajuran. Bregani is in a bad position. He fears the consequences of his misstep. One hopes to take advantage of his situation.”
Child. Tiajo, he meant. Daughter of the Dojisigi lord and de facto ruler of the clan. Not the most stable of individuals on a good day.
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