The brandy flowed and so did outright gossip. Machigi had a likely accurate account of the lord of the Dojisigi, who had had an enemy slip her grasp and turn up in the Senjin Marid with a load of family treasures and far more details about certain agreements and her personal behaviors than the tyrant liked made public. That hinted that Machigi did indeed have sources in Senjin. And gossip did please the dowager, particularly as it involved Tiajo.
Machigi left with half a case of brandy—and the understanding that he would be free to practice a little chicanery with the dowager’s blessing, given an actual shipment of steel from the East.
But his silence on the matter of the Ajuri heir—lingered after him, and the dowager had entered a thoughtful mood.
“Do you still rely on him, aiji-ma?” Bren asked. “I would think he has multiple things in mind—but the main proposal seems sound.”
“He has not betrayed a former agent,” Ilisidi said. “Or ruined his chances of holding Ajuri. One may be virtue. The other may be . . . well, we shall see. And his darting at this project and that is troublesome. But then, outright paralysis is a problem among other Marid lords. Everybody has taken positions centuries old and nothing moves. We can tolerate Machigi’s sliding about, granted he does not find an association more to his advantage and forget to tell us that matter.”
“He is not likely to find a better position, aiji-ma. One does not believe his thinking is short-term. And there is no one in the Marid that could intimidate him.”
“No,” Ilisidi said, “not that one. He will have his way until someone stops him, and his bodyguard is adequate, we understand. The lord of Senjin would do well to deal with him and the aishidi’tat. Centuries of ties bind Senjin to the Dojisigi—but if Machigi can change that, it would be worth a delay and a load of steel. I may ship him formed rails and ties, to be sure his intent is a railroad, and watch that reaction.”
5
The working of the engine had changed, become the slow and labored chuff that meant they were climbing now, inside the Bujavid tunnel. It was dark, the lights inside the Red Car dimmed to let them sleep, and Cajeiri had found himself a comfortable place against the cushioned wall. He stirred, aware he had slept the whole ride through, hours and hours, slept even through the switching point, a jolt which usually did wake him.
He was not the only one. Antaro was still asleep, and so was Lucasi, and Onami, who received a rough nudge from his partner, Janachi. Mother was awake, but nurse, herself asleep, was holding Seimiro, despite a perfectly fine nest improvised for her on the bench seat at the rear. Uncle Tatiseigi was just stirring.
The train wound its way up the passage, slowly, slowly. He rose carefully and went back to Mother, with a little bow.
“Nomari,” Mother said, just loudly enough for him to hear, “will go under Guild escort to the guest apartments. We shall leave him to his escort and go straight up, ourselves. Your father is waking to receive us, but we should go as quietly and quickly as possible. It is halfway to dawn, and most of the Bujavid will be asleep, do we agree?”
“Yes, honored Mother. Absolutely.” In his mind was the problem of Boji and that huge rattling cage—with Boji himself, who simply would not hush. But he could not help it. Boji could not sit out on the loading dock for an hour—he would be frantic; and Eisi and Liedi certainly deserved to rest in comfortable beds into as much of the morning as they pleased. Everyone did.
He went back to his seat and propped his head on his hands.
A turn or two more and the train braked. Impossible to look out and know where they were, but Cajeiri could put it together in his head. They were on track number one, facing the back wall of the station, and they would disembark to the left in that great echoing space. They would walk quickly to the lifts, himself and Mother and Uncle Tatiseigi and their considerable escort. Nomari and the several people with him would go with Nomari’s own newly-appointed bodyguard, taking a different lift, if he was going to the first level, where the official guest apartments were. It was important to move quickly, not delay the lift, and to be organized.
One of his bodyguard, Rieni, Guild-senior of that unit, went forward, opened the door and jumped out. The steps would have to come down. Rieni would surely see to that, and there would be Transportation Guild roused out to assist the late-arriving train, as well. The rest of his senior ashid exited first, and then Cajeiri realized—dismaying thought—he was not to give precedence to Mother or Great-uncle. They had boarded in a disordered way, since the train had been delayed, but he suddenly thought—they were doing it differently here, in the basement of the Bujavid, and there was nobody in all the aishidi’tat who would take precedence over him except Father, and except Great-grandmother, who had twice been aiji. Mother was, among the other changes she had worked in coming out to Tirnamardi, observing protocols.
Mother giving place to him—that had started at Uncle’s, in little instances, and now it happened here—it forever would.
That was just a little unsettling.
He left the train, stepping down onto the gray concrete siding, and ordinarily he would have made it a jump—because he always had, from the time the step had been too high for him, until now. He just—stepped down, even if it was a high step, and let his senior aishid join his junior one, as Mother’s bodyguard moved up, and then Uncle’s. Nomari came out of the next car with his appointed staff and his bodyguards, and was with them as they went to the lifts.
Mother and Uncle and he and all their bodyguards could not all fit in a single car, but Guild solved that in their own precedence: it was his elder aishid and Mother’s that went up with them to the floor they shared with Uncle and with Great-grandmother. Uncle would follow, but Nomari would take another lift altogether, and get out on the first floor, in the place people stayed when Father called them personally to the capital, supposing their clan had no Bujavid residence. It was a sort of an honor, to be housed there, instead of down the hill in the hotels.
He and Mother exited on the third floor, their floor, which they shared with Uncle and Great-grandmother and nand’ Bren. Nand’ Bren was reported in Najida, but even if he was there, he could not travel yet, because they had the train and the bus. Mani was definitely stranded, having gone to the coast when she could not go to Tirnamardi. He knew he would hear about that.
Mother said not a word. They walked the corridor in silence toward home. The doors opened as they arrived, flung wide, and despite the hour, Father met them in the foyer, even before the major d’ and his aides could take their traveling coats.
“Back and safe,” Father said, with a very happy nod. “Well done.”
That was good to hear. That was very good to hear. It might be the first time Father had been that happy with both of them at once. “The bus will be on its way to the coast, then,” Father said. “One trusts the problem was minor.”
“So they said,” Mother answered him. “There is surely no reason for the paidhi to hurry at this juncture.”
“No reason except Grandmother,” Father said dryly, “who has gone there to meet him.”
“She will be angry,” Mother said, with more concern than Mother usually showed for that situation.
“She is frustrated. She is determined,” Father said. “She is not used to being outmaneuvered. But we shall smooth it over. She will see the advantage in what was done.”
Certain things never could be smoothed over, Cajeiri thought. Grandmother and Mother had quarreled forever. Grandmother had not come to Tirnamardi when they were in trouble because Mother was there. Two courts could not show up on Uncle’s doorstep at once, and it really was two courts. His own little court presence was part of Great-grandmother’s most times, but right then, Mother’s was attached.
And if Great-grandmother had shown up, there would have been problems, and he never could have worked out a peaceful agreement with Mother.
But he was thor
oughly sorry that nand’ Bren was having to deal with mani’s outrage.
Father was paying attention to Seimiro now—Seimiro had no idea: she was sound asleep, but Father did look at her, in nurse Beha’s arms. “Lord-to-be,” Father said, pleased by that, too. “Well done in that, too, Miri.”
One wondered what Great-grandmother would say when she heard that his sister was to have Tirnamardi. Things like that were hard to know, because one never knew all of Great-grandmother’s reasons.
He wished he could just run down to the train station right now and get back on the train and be with it when it picked up Great-grandmother and nand’ Bren tomorrow. He would be able to explain it all in a way mani would understand, and nand’ Bren would keep everything quiet.
But that was out of the question. He simply stood there and quietly surrendered his traveling coat to staff, as Mother did, and as their bodyguards dispersed to the inner corridor that led sideways off the foyer.
Mother had staff to meet her when she went back to her apartment.
His staff was still downstairs trying to get Boji upstairs.
That was a problem for everybody. Boji was always a problem.
But that Great-grandmother was off intercepting nand’ Bren—that was more than a problem. When Great-grandmother was not in the middle of things, she was making her own plans, and planning things in other directions, and her plans would almost certainly involve nand’ Bren, and working herself up to some action or other.
Which only meant Great-grandmother was going to come here and have words with Father and Great-uncle Tatiseigi.
6
Breakfast was quiet . . . quiet and laced with the dowager’s displeasure, since the train was reported not to be waiting at Najida station, supplied and ready for them. It would arrive at noon, they were informed, perhaps a little after, and that meant their own arrival would still be late at night, and well after dinner, a schedule which the dowager detested.
“Well, well,” Ilisidi said, stabbing an egg, “we shall simply have to make do.”
One did not believe the dowager was entirely upset at Machigi’s proposal last night, and in the back of his mind, deeply buried, was a suspicion that Machigi’s visit might not even have been a total surprise to the dowager.
But she had given Machigi every opportunity to mention the small fact that he was acquainted with this Ajuri claimant.
And Machigi had not.
“She is thinking,” he said to his aishid, back in his suite, as they sat taking post-breakfast tea and mulling over events in the midlands and here on the southwest coast. “She is in such a stage of thought as may make our trip to the capital a very quiet ride.”
Ilisidi had indicated previously she would not take a late departure, that she had rather take another day here and go tomorrow morning. She seemed, since Machigi’s visit, to have changed her mind.
“One waited for Lord Machigi to say something last night,” Jago said, “and if he did understand her hint, he avoided the topic.”
“Lord Machigi certainly provides a very interesting life for his bodyguards,” Tano said.
“Self-trained bodyguards,” Algini remarked, propping his feet on a footstool. His aishid and his staff had stood through breakfast. Now they relaxed. Narani and Jeladi sat with them, having worked as hard as any of them during the trip, and now having nothing at all to do but wait for the train to arrive. Banichi and Tano were likewise disposed in large, soft chairs that fit atevi stature. They had all endured too-small furniture and cobbled-together mattresses in Port Jackson. On board Brighter Days, Mospheiran-built, they had cheerfully slept on deck, fortunately under cloudless skies for the crossing. Now they had begun to relax—and would have relaxed altogether in the comforts of Najida—except for the dowager’s presence, with Cenedi, Nawari, and the rest of her security and staff, who of course had volumes of information to offload onto Banichi and his associates. There was information aplenty—except on the matter of the visit last night, in which there seemed to be a dearth of information. It was entirely possible the visit had not been invited or forecast. It was equally possible Ilisidi had asked for it, and that a certain part of the performance was to get certain information delivered matter of factly to the Assassins’ Guild—by way of Banichi and Algini, who had given no indication what they would say.
“We can say there was more good news than bad in Cenedi’s initial report to us,” Banichi said, “Though the dowager is justly concerned about disturbance in the north. They see the naming of the aiji’s daughter as Tatiseigi’s heir as an entanglement for the aiji’s household in midlands politics, but a move that will strengthen Tatiseigi considerably. His rivals can no longer plan so immediately for his replacement.”
“In fact,” Algini said with some amusement, “they may beseech the gods-more-favorable for Tatiseigi’s health and very long life. Having the aiji-consort as regent in Atageini would certainly make a good many people anxious.”
“One day Seimiro will have that post,” Tano said, “and one day her brother will be aiji in Shejidan, with, apparently, an allied lord in Ajuri—a constellation which the aishidi’tat has not seen before. The pressure to name someone to Kadagidi will only mount, now, and certain people may wish to see some lord not so closely tied to this new constellation.”
“If Tabini-aji were to break up Kadagidi,” Algini said, “in the current situation, it would mean there will be no meaningful counterweight at all to Ajuri-Atageini power in the midlands. So that solution would meet opposition.”
Bren’s own thought had been running down those channels equally, but also—“I think Machigi does see it,” he said. “A change in the midlands—and suddenly Machigi wants to change his own relationship with the northern Marid and make an ally and trading partner of Senjin, who is historically the enemy of his district. One does not think this is unrelated.”
“There is a man on Jorida Isle,” Banichi said, “who both detests Machigi—and does not favor the rail going anywhere it does not now go.”
“Hurshina,” Bren said. That was no hard guess. Hurshina was not himself a legislator, but he owned a few of them in the lower house.
The richest man in Ashidama Bay—not a lord, but ruling like one. Shipping, fishing—it all was related, all part of Hurshina’s jealously defended economic empire. Hurshina had made his objections a problem when Najida had passed into a human’s hands. Hurshina had been a lifelong problem where the Edi folk were concerned, no matter what the issue. Hurshina would have hated the Edi even if the Edi had never wrecked a Jorida ship—but unfortunately the Edi had indeed made part of their otherwise difficult living off the treacherous rocks on Najida Point, as ships out of Ashidama Bay, largely under Hurshina’s colors, moved goods from the southwest up to the port and railhead at Adaran. It had been a long battle of wits, weather, and will, and the fact that the Edi had sworn off wrecking and joined the aishidi’tat as law-abiding citizens had not changed the old antagonism.
Hurshina had likewise incited the townships around Ashidama Bay to an outright state of economic war with the Marid over their shipping passing near Ashidama Bay, harassment and interdiction from the bay, which he assumed would force the Marid to use his ships to move goods. Senjin could ship by rail, but the Taisigin and points south could not.
It had not worked. The Marid, all the Marid ports, with ships capable of the stormy southern coast, still sent ships to and from Adaran. They just put riflemen aboard.
Hurshina had been fairly quiet about Machigi’s dealings with the dowager, and Ilisidi’s proposed sea link to the Marid. Nobody believed it could be done, and everybody believed it was all politics and smokescreen aimed at the Dojisigin, now in deep disfavor in the north.
Machigi’s railroad would increase stock in that suspicion, no question, but the north had not settled its own problems yet.
Where it would ultimately lead—was anothe
r matter. There was Kadagidi still lordless.
But say that Machigi, whose own desire for power had included Ashidama Bay not so long ago, was talking to the dowager about a rail link from his capital to the Senjin capital, and might actually persuade Lord Bregani into an agreement—
If that rail line materialized, that changed the picture. Hurshina might well conclude that the sea link was a pretense, that the far East was actually going for a rail link with (in Hurshina’s mind) the greatest threat in the south, and creating a trade route that would bypass Ashidama Bay altogether, ironically, since Hurshina himself had led the opposition to a rail link from Najida down to his territory. He did not want the Marid shipping goods past him on the water—but he assuredly did not want the townships bypassing his ships and getting goods up to Cobo District by rail.
“Hurshina in the west, Tiajo across the Marid Sea,” Algini said, “both have grounds to oppose Machigi’s rail link. And both naturally oppose the dowager’s trade agreement, on the grounds it helps only Machigi. There is bound to be trouble.”
“Does the Guild have specifics as to moves they may make? Can we get information out of Hurshina’s establishment?”
“Less than the Guild would wish,” Banichi said. “But you, Bren-ji, you have a unique asset that may serve in the Marid, and they may be of use—if they are still alive.”
“Momichi and Homura,” Bren had not thought of those names in a while. They were a Guild unit—or half of one. They were Dojisigi, but trained in the Shejidani Guild, and assigned by Shishogi to serve in their own clan—and when Murini’s regime had gone down to defeat, the Shadow Guild had taken their two junior partners as hostages, against their performance as Assassins sent north, assigned to take out Lord Tatiseigi.
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