One could so easily think that, standing on a balcony overlooking the maze of roofs that was Shejidan, with all its convolute politics.
Looking down on the Naijendar, however—one found other perspectives that slammed western suspicions sideways.
Malguri had always played for power. It would do that now. It absolutely would. And Ilisidi’s neighbors hadn’t done what they’d done without the notion they could get something out of it and get away with it.
What? A share of power if they helped her hold the heir for ransom?
It was no more than what they had—a small range of political power for their transport-dependent little provincial centers. One could not even say capitals—provincial centers.
Provincial networks. Mines. The tradition-bound East would not even smelt the ore it mined. They were not industrial, like the west. They refused to be. They made choices that stemmed purely from the desire for raw resources, and the power to move them—or withhold them.
And they had that. If they left their province, they had nothing—nothing that they valued. So what did they want, that could let them deal with Ilisidi and make bargains?
He raked through memory, recalling what mines, what products, what raw resources the several lords shipped from their districts. And unless there was more to the move than three lords, there was no way in hell they could arrange an embargo against the west if things went down to the trenches. Rival lords, their neighbors, would break it, and it would all fall to pieces.
More, Ilisidi could have gotten her great-grandson to the airport herself without breaking eggs, as the proverb ran. She could have snatched him off to the East with his two Taibeni attendants and used them to mollify the wrath of the Taibeni Ragi, who supported Tabini. Such a plot, with her involved, would not be running the way it had, half-assed and losing Jegari out the back of that truck.
Hell, no.
So back up. Retrace. There was no way this effort was going to win Ilisidi as an ally.
But what did the conspirators stand to gain? Overthrow Ilisidi? Embarrass her?
That was about the most dangerous course he could think of.
Lure her East?
They were certainly doing that. If Ilisidi hadn’t been visiting Tatiseigi at Tirnamardi, the kidnapping would have—
—might have involved Ilisidi as well as the heir. The plotters would have had to take on her security, or incapacitate them. They had not gone into the other wing of the apartment to take on Tabini and his guards, who were not a known quantity. They’d gotten in, and out, with some facility they shouldn’t have had, damn it.
Consider: if Ilisidi were no longer in the picture—the East fell apart, it bloody fell apart. That could have been one objective. Chaos. And who benefitted from that? That thought led to some very bad places…mostly in the south.
Except, if, down in that hotel, waiting their chance, the conspirators had heard through their sources that Ilisidi was leaving, and leaving behind the boy—who was heir to—
Malguri itself, as it happened. Cajeiri was not only his father’s only heir—he was Ilisidi’s ultimate heir, the one who would have to succeed her—there was no other choice, since it was damned sure she was not going to cede her power to her grandson Tabini.
Damn, the boy not only united the bloodlines of the west—and stood to become aiji in Shejidan—he stood to inherit the keystone to the East, to boot.
Some of Ilisidi’s neighbors weren’t going to like that idea.
And that—God, that didn’t augur as well for the boy’s safety. If negotiations went wrong, if things started sliding amiss—it wasn’t good, was it?
Events were tumbling one after the other. They were in virtual hot pursuit, as it was. There had not been time to analyze everything. But was it possible the west—even Tabini—had been looking through the wrong end of the telescope?
He left his window, moved quietly to settle on the edge of an empty seat by Jago and Banichi.
He said: “The boy, nadiin-ji, is heir to the aishidi’tat. But from the Eastern view, he is heir to Malguri.”
“Indeed,” Banichi said.
His staff had a way of making him feel as if the truth had been blazoned in neon lights for everyone to see—and he always, always got to it late.
Still, he plowed on. “They would have wished the dowager dead, or in their hands. But whatever traitor there was on staff would have advised them she was in Tirnamardi. That left—”
For once, once, he saw a simultaneous recognition go through their eyes. It was a dire little thought they had not had. He had no idea what thought, but it evoked something.
“They would have learned that the paidhi had relocated, as well,” Banichi said, “and that the aiji had moved in. They would have been fools to take on the aiji’s precautions. His own staff was around him.”
“While Cajeiri’s was mostly the dowager’s,” Jago said, “like the traitor herself.”
“You know specifically who it was, nadiin-ji?” Bren asked.
“A maid. A member of the staff,” Banichi said. “Pahien. The paidhi may remember her.”
“One remembers her,” Bren said. Indeed he did: a woman who found every opportunity to hang about the young gentleman’s quarters. Ambitous, he’d thought, someone who wanted to work her way up in the staff of a young man with prospects.
“She is probably on that plane,” Jago said darkly, and Banichi:
“If they controlled the heir to Malguri—and anything befell the aiji-dowager—”
“The dowager may be in greater danger of her life than Cajeiri,” Jago murmured. “It is entirely in the interest of the kidnappers that he stay alive, in that theory. And the dowager is going to Malguri. One does not approve.”
It was not the conclusion he had drawn from the same facts. “Possibly they wish to coerce the dowager to take certain measures they favor, nadiin-ji.”
“That would be a dangerous move on their part, Bren-ji.”
To attempt to deal with her…damned certain it was. She was a knife that turned in the hand—her husband had found that out.
“If she were dead, on the other hand, the lord of Malguri would be a minor child—in their hands.”
“Balking the aiji in Shejidan as well,” Jago said. “If the aiji were to disinherit his heir, it would have calamitous effect in the west, and no effect at all in the East. He would still inherit Malguri.”
“Has Cenedi advised her against going? Will she remain inside Malguri?”
“Advised, yes, but by no means will the dowager leave this matter to her security, nandi,” Banichi muttered. “Cenedi cannot persuade her. Our Guild is already in Malguri Township, moving to secure various of her assets, but it is not even certain that our landing at Malguri Airport will be secure. One hopes to have that news before we land.”
He had not thought of that point of danger, but it was good to know the old links were functioning. “Can Guild possibly intercept that plane on the ground?” he asked.
“If Caiti were only so foolish as to land at Malguri Airport,” Banichi said, “it would be easy. Cie, however, will take time to penetrate. And one regrets we will not have time. Planes fly faster above than vehicles or mecheiti can proceed in the weather there.”
“Then they will land unchecked, nadiin-ji?”
“Very likely they will, Bren-ji,” was Banichi’s glum assessment, “for any effective purposes.”
“Is there any chance of our going in at Cie?”
“They will surely take measures,” Banichi said. “We cannot risk it, Bren-ji.”
The Guild was not given to suicide. Or to losing the people they were trying to protect. Almost certainly there were Guild resources in Cie or moving there, but Banichi was not going to say so: the only inference one could draw was that there were not enough Guild resources there to protect the dowager or to effect a rescue. He nodded, quietly left his staff to their own devices, and returned to the dowager’s cabin.
There he
sat and brooded, among shaded windows, with only his watch for a gauge of time or progress. Eventually, after a long time, the young men moved to rap on the dowager’s door, doubtless by prior arrangment.
Cenedi entered the cabin, then, glanced at that door, then said to Bren: “The plane we are tracking, nandi, has entered descent, not at Malguri’s airport, nor even at Cie, but at a remote airport up at Cadienein-ori.”
“Still Caiti’s territory, nadi, is it not?”
“And a short runway, nandi,” Cenedi said. Cenedi did not look in the least happy, and must have heard something on the com, because he left for the rear of the plane immediately.
The dowager meanwhile emerged from her rest, and settled in her chair.
“The plane will land at Cadienein-ori, aiji-ma,” Bren said.
“One is not entirely surprised,” the dowager muttered. “They must trust their pilot.”
It was a scarily short airstrip for that size jet. Bren knew that much.
He imagined that if the Guild had scrambled to get assets as close to Cie as possible, they were now moving upland by any available means, to get to that small rural airport. One was not even sure roads ran between Cie and Cadienein-ori: in much of the rural East, lords had roads between their primary residence and a local airport, but freight might move entirely by air, these days, and the configuration of the roads was more webwork than grid. One often had to go clear back to some central hub to go to a place only a few miles across a line of hills from where one was.
Cenedi returned after awhile, and bowed. “They have landed, aiji-ma, at Cadienein-ori. They undershot the runway, attempting to use all of it, and the plane seems damaged and immovable. There is only one runway. And it was iced, with heavy snowfall.”
No way for anyone else to get in, with a large plane blocking the runway. No way for them to land, certainly, except at the regional airport, in Ilisidi’s territory: their going in at Cie was no good, now. And whatever the Guild had just revised their plans to do was now blocked by a disabled plane.
By accident or arrangement, Caiti had gotten farther out of their reach, and out of reach of Guild intervention. It was not to say that the non-Guild protection the lord of the East had at their disposal was unskilled. Far from it. And now how did anyone get in, with the weather closing in? One hoped that they could land.
“So,” was all the dowager said to that news, except, “Would the paidhi-aiji care for a brandied tea?”
“Indeed,” he said, agreeable to anything that pleased the dowager and settled her nerves.
So he waited, full of questions, knowing he would not be the one to ask them, and believing that the dowager herself might not have all the answers. Caiti had most of them at the moment. And at this point they hoped the young gentleman was in Caiti’s hands.
“Thank you, nadi,” he murmured to the servant, and accepted the glass. He took the merest sip and waited for details, if details might come.
In a moment more, Nawari came in, and bowed.
“Nand’ dowager,” he said, and with a second bow, “nand’ paidhi. Three cars met that plane. The emergency slide had deployed. But there was some further delay to remove the luggage from the plane and take it with them in the airport bus. All passengers seem to have left.”
“Effrontery,” was Ilisidi’s comment, regarding the baggage. “Was there sight of my great-grandson?”
“Not that was entirely certain, nand’ dowager,” Nawari said. “Members of the party were shaken up in the landing. And precisely where that car went afterward, there is as yet no report. It left southward, as one would going to the Haidamar or the Saibai’tet. One small bus pulled away from the column, its whereabouts and direction seeming to the southern route, as one would go to the lowlands. It may be Lord Rodi leaving. Or Lady Agilisi.”
“Pish,” Ilisidi said. “We know. We have every confidence my great-grandson is wherever Caiti is.”
“Indeed,” Nawari said, “aiji-ma, it seems likely that he might be. The majority has gone on eastward.”
“Tell Cenedi we will go to Malguri as planned. Tell the staff prepare. Have that car tracked.”
“Nandi,” Nawari said, and went back to deliver that instruction. It might or might not be a diversion…but the dowager’s strength had its limits. They had to believe the boy was there, that he had not been taken off somewhere else. The dowager chose to believe it.
At least, Bren said to himself, that plane was safely on the ground, and if the car had gone south—the direction of either of Caiti’s domains from that highland airport—at least the plane was down, and there had been no ambulances.
Under present circumstances, however, the Guild was not in position to act, and no one could be surprised that the occupants had simply driven away, no one preventing them. There were three minor airports besides that in Malguri province. Cadienein-ori was not the largest, not by a hundred feet of runway…not unless they had improved it since the last time he had sat on the Aviation Board.
So effectively Cadienein-ori was shut down at the moment, with that very large airplane stuck in the snow somewhere on the only runway that would remotely accommodate any airplane bringing Guild to address the problem.
And if the Guild intervened with too much fire and smoke and failed—it would alienate the very people most likely to be of use getting Cajeiri out alive: the neighbors and rivals who most naturally would cooperate to Caiti’s disadvantage. In the East, there were always rivals. Shejidan had grown up in the west and gathered provinces around it, an anomaly of politics and centrality and old history of associations, but it was not a pattern the East had adopted, not to this day.
And one didn’t get anywhere good in the East by forgetting that. If either Rodi or Agilisi had left the party, it might be because that lord had gotten cold feet. And that might be an asset, a chink in the conspiracy that might be useful. Or it might mean something else, including even spiriting the boy away elsewhere. It needed observers in place to know that.
Would Tabini be moving his own agents into the situation in greater force? Was there a second plane behind them? Maybe. But Tabini had already made his opening move, in sending him in with Banichi and Jago. They were the aiji’s eyes and hands in this situation. Aside from them, one reasonably expected everything would work through Cenedi and his men, men who operated here because they came from here and knew the rules. If the aiji did send Guild out under the Shejidan seal, things they needed on the ground would mysteriously break, fail to appear, go missing, or simply fail to reach a destination…that was the way of things. Even Ilisidi would make no heavy-handed moves of Guild in the East, and the few other lords who did employ Guild employed them mostly quietly. Getting her great-grandson out—no lord alive would deny her the right to try, and nod quietly and move to her side if she proved she could do it without annoyance to themselves.
But it was all very delicate. Power rested in the will of a very loose confederation of lords, and she was one of them, but there was no council in the East. There was no legislature. There were no widespread and unifying laws. Every estate of every lord of every province was a feudal holding without an acknowledged central overlord, except the ancient dominance of Malguri. Certainly not all the neighbors would have agreed with someone kidnapping the heir of the lord of the West, as they called the aiji in Shejidan—and if someone disturbed their local way of doing things by bringing war to the region, the ones who did it would gather ire upon themselves. But it was not guaranteed they would get help from anyone at all.
So that plane was down safely. People had left it alive. Good hope to this hour it was not a diversion, and the boy was where they thought, and not handed off via that mysterious car to some plane bound for southern territory. In that, the weather became their ally. Getting anything in or out was not easy.
In the meanwhile he sipped his brandied tea, and Ilisidi gave orders for a light meal all around. Her young men hurried about business in the galley, and soon food issued forth f
rom the galley, going fore and aft. The presentation for him and the dowager was immaculate, the linen spotless, and the sole topic of conversation during what amounted to an extravagant teatime was the weather and the reports of snow at Malguri and across the uplands—much as if they had been planning a holiday, nothing more strenuous in the trip.
One complimented the young chef—who, indeed, was also part of the dowager’s security team: one complimented his choices, one enjoyed tea, and really wished not to have had the earlier drink—fatigue had the brain fuzzing, the ferment of emergency and impending crisis proving just too much after a night short of sleep. They were not that far from Malguri. The paidhi had to think; and he still had no idea whether something was proceeding on the ground, some Guild operation to rescue the boy, or how Jegari was faring, or what Tabini might be up to while they were suspended between heaven and earth—
Or what they were going to do next, if somehow they had missed the boy at the airport, followed a lure instead of the real thing and let Murini’s faction get its hands on Tabini’s son—
The dowager held a conference with Cenedi, after tea, one that named names, notably those of her dinner guests, and inquired about transport, and the reliability of the service at Malguri Airport.
“A bus will be waiting, nandi,” Cenedi assured her.
The bus. God. The bus up to Malguri: that was one tidbit of information, that they were indeed going to the dowager’s stronghold and not the long way around the lake to the other airport—a long trip in; but he had forgotten the upland bus, and that road.
He excused himself aft, looking for more substantial information.
Jegari was sitting up—had had a sandwich, being a resilient lad, though he was a little subdued, and probably muzzy and confused with concussion. Banichi and Jago got up from their seats and proved amenable to questions.
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