“We have taken precautions,” Tabini said in his deep, attention-getting voice. “We have set out alarms and given orders to the foremost of this unlikely assemblage of buses—the vehicles are refueling.”
“Refueling,” the Ajuri lord echoed him uneasily, settling on a fragile chair, his son next to him. He accepted a cup of tea, and a plate of cakes appeared on the table between the two Ajuri, like the smaller stack that arrived, with a portable table, at Bren’s elbow. Bren found no appetite for the teacakes, and they went untouched, but the Ajuri lords washed down several apiece. The Ajuri were some distance from home, and if they had come all the way by bus, avoiding the trains, they had certainly been traveling since dawn. They might expect this snack as a prelude to supper…to which they expected to be invited, one was sure. “To what purpose, may we ask, aiji-ma?”
At last, that aiji-ma, that personal acknowledgment of the head of association. No one twitched. But if human nerves reverberated to it, Bren was sure atevi ones did. Ajuri had not wriggled sideways, not for a moment, and committed.
Good, he said to himself, and in Tabini’s answer, that they had to be ready for anything, talk came down to specifics: The current state of the roads, Murini’s likely response to the increasing gathering of support here, the placement of patrols on the estate and out across the border between Atageini clan and the Kadagidi, and all manner of things the paidhi could be very certain were also the topic of conversation outside the door among the various guards, who would have far better specifics on Tabini’s intentions.
But what a listener could gather just inside this room drew a vivid enough picture: That Tabini was determined to make a stand here, to have the buses for heavy assault vehicles if need be, or mobile fortification to prevent an incursion into the grounds.
It might be the most convenient place to rally supporters—but this house, with wide-open rolling meadows and fields around it, was hardly a protected position. And with Tabini-aiji’s supporters swarming over this and the adjacent province to reach Tirnamardi, they were concentrating themselves into an increasingly attractive target in the process.
A human would do things atevi wouldn’t, he reminded himself. But, God, it felt chancy, relying oh so much on atevi notions of kabiu and acceptable behavior, in apparent confidence that Murini absolutely would not use aircraft and bomb this building…simply because it was not kabiu.
For a listening human, straight from space, and having the concept of defense in three dimensions fresh in mind, this gathering added up to a very queasy situation, one in which he kept reminding himself, no, no, no, human nerves did not resonate at all reliably. No, atevi truly would not expect certain things to happen, for a complex of reasons, some of which were simply because, instinctually, atevi would not, could not, sanely speaking, go against the bounds of kabiu and would not breach the bonds of aishi, that indefinable instinct of group, of obligation, of…
There was just no human word for it, beyond a comparison to mother-love and so-named human decency. A sane ateva just didn’t do certain things, didn’t attack the head of his own association, for starters, while aishi held. He didn’t attack the remoter associations of his association for the same reason—and it was beyond didn’t: It was all the way over to being in his right mind, couldn’t think of it. Unless…
Unless the ateva in question was that odd psychological construct, an individual to whom man’chi flowed, who didn’t particularly think he owed man’chi upward to anyone else. That psychological construct added up, in atevi terms, to being born an aiji. A born leader. Or at least an ateva who by birth or experience was immune to constraints that applied to others. In human terms, a psychopathic personality.
Among atevi such a person, at the top of the pyramid of responsibilities, made society work. He actually prevented wars by his very existence, in the best application of man’chi. He stopped wars cold, by preemptive action, and his assurance of having followers enough to carry out his objectives.
Tabini was certainly one such personality, trained from infancy to expect man’chi to flow upward from others, taught to drink it down like wine, in judicious sips, not wholesale gluttony. So, one day, everyone expected Cajeiri to be that sort of leader.
But dared one remember such a personality was also capable of going way out on an ethical cliff-edge? A strong enough aiji was capable of taking himself and his followers over that aforementioned edge of behavior the followers would by no means risk on their own, and the only possible brake on the situation was when enough followers simultaneously came to their senses and decided the person they’d followed was not a good leader. That was ideally how the system worked. A bad leader lost followers, someone turned on him, someone stuck a knife in his ribs, and another leader rose up from among the group. Atevi instincts somehow triggered that change of opinion at the right moment. Logically, things began to balance again, and sane people en masse adjusted the situation until the group found itself a new leader.
But in the meantime people died. Sometimes a lot of people. And sometimes things ordinarily unthinkable did happen.
It was no comfort at all to be human and thinking quite readily of the physical possibilities of a massed target out in that driveway, an attraction for bombs, planes, poison gas grenades, or anything else a murderous and over-vaunting intention could come up with.
But one thing he knew: Setting forward the possibility of someone doing such things, in this conservative company, could only convince Tatiseigi and these suspicious Ajuri aristocrats that humans were depraved beyond belief and just naturally bent toward bad behavior. He was not the individual who could lead them over such a brink.
Give Tabini the benefit of his advice—hell, yes. Tabini had frequently asked him such dark questions, in private…and might now, if they ever could achieve ten minutes’ guaranteed privacy in this place.
What would a human do? Tabini had asked him in the old days, before the voyage. What things would you warn against, if it were your own people, paidhi-ji?
It always gave the paidhi-aiji a queasy feeling, answering that question honestly, worrying that he might be giving Tabini ideas—the same way he’d worried when he counseled Tabini to mercy and moderation in the face of treason. Maybe he’d generated ideas he never should have let loose among atevi. Or maybe too much mercy was the key damage he’d done, urging Tabini not to slaughter his defeated enemies. They were sitting here under assault, because certain people had remained alive. They’ll concentrate your opposition, he’d argued; you can keep an eye on them. Leave them alive.
So here he sat under siege by those same enemies, wishing Tabini would ask him for advice one more time, and fearing he would give the wrong advice one more time if Tabini did that.
And meanwhile, roiling about in the basement of his mind, was that other application of kabiu, that word which ordinarily applied to the room arrangement and those flowers in a green vase over on the table: Kabiu, that meant fit or decorous or appropriate, if one was setting a table. Kabiu could also apply to battlefields.
To honor. To proper behavior.
Kabiu, on this occasion, he divined as the reason otherwise sensible people, even the Ajuri, had to set themselves in a target zone, making their statement for this aiji over the other, declaring for civilized behavior, and most of all—maintaining the degree of civilization that underlay atevi culture even in conflict. Man’chi was driving it, an instinct as fatal and as basic an attraction as gravity.
And if, in a great ebbing tide, man’chi left a leader like Murini of the Kadagidi, he was done. He would have no prospect for long life, considering his numerous enemies, and he would find himself instead of well-received under many roofs, suddenly with nowhere in the world to go.
And what answer would Murini the man deliver to this passive attack on his rule? Fatalistic acceptance? Tame surrender?
One didn’t think so. No. He had been a man of subterfuge and connivance, but that didn’t mean he’d go out quietly, nor would th
ose more violent sorts who had supported his claims.
Would the Kadagidi clan, seeing the tide starting to turn against Murini, itself make some redemptive gesture, and fall away from their own lord, who was absent in Shejidan, to keep armed struggle away from their territory?
Murini, as aiji of the whole country, had to leave his own clan and go to Shejidan to rule, expecting the Kadagidi, ironically left leaderless, to stay steadfast in man’chi while the man who should be attending their interests was off claiming the whole continent—was that not the way Tabini-aiji and his predecessors had dealt with Taiben, leaving the clan loyalty behind and hoping for man’chi to survive?
The whole arrangement among the Kadagidi was still new enough that Murini had likely retained control of the Kadagidi in his own hands and not fully allotted clan authority to a strong subordinate. Such adjustments, such as Tabini had with Keimi of the Taibeni, took time, and one could imagine such relationships were sometimes troublesome, and fraught with second thoughts. It took time for reward to repay sacrifice of a clan’s own interests. But it all seemed queasy logic for him to follow, answers wired to buttons that didn’t truly exist in the paidhi’s instincts. He constantly made appeal to analogs and like-this and like-that-but-not, and, in the outcome, found himself utterly at sea, still trying to find the reason all these people were all sitting here waiting for dark and likely attack.
All right. All right. For a moment accept that all these well-dressed people weren’t crazy, accept that the Kadagidi wouldn’t bomb the grounds or attack a dozen clans at once for very practical reasons, like public opinion, or for moral reasons like kabiu, a virtue Bren didn’t for a moment believe Murini possessed…he’d shown damned little sense of it before now.
For a moment assume that the Kadagidi would be sane, middle-tier atevi and that they would make a rational atevi response. What would be a sane and kabiu response from their side of this contest?
Scaled response. Targeted and scaled response rather than a general assault with massive loss of life and subsequent blood-feuds. That was how the Assassins’ Guild was supposed to function, and that was what was anomalous in this whole upheaveal. The silence, the non-involvement of the Assassins’ Guild, the leadership of which was presently sitting in Shejidan deadlocked and refusing to take either aiji’s side, when it should have stepped in immediately to protect Tabini’s household and to prevent the coup in the first place. Now it categorically refused to budge. It had lawyerlike procedures, like a court. It had to hear evidence, receive petitions. An assassination to be obtained involved a Filing of Intent and might see counterfilings on the other side: There were Guild members just like Cenedi, or Banichi and Jago, or a hundred others under this roof and out on the drive—members whose man’chi was to a particular lord, a particular house, above all else. So Guild members would be on both sides of a Filing—but likewise they took a dim view of wildcat operations, movements without Filing and particularly movements that destabilized, rather than stabilized, the government of a region.
Could the Kadagidi, without Filing, move an Assassin into a neutral clan’s territory, and take Tabini out personally? Wipe out the ruling family, down to the youngest? They had tried—at Taiben, when they had hit the lodge and attacked the residency in Shejidan—and the Guild had taken no official action. It had been proven that Tabini had survived the move, and had gathered force, when he had gone out toward the coast, toward Yolanda Mercheson—and the Guild had done nothing to support him.
That had to be troubling Banichi and every other Guild member on the continent. What in hell was going on at Guild Headquarters? Ordinarily, lords didn’t undertake wildcat operations against one another, precisely because the Guild and the aiji in Shejidan would alike take a dim, lethal view of that behavior. But had it become clear to the Kadagidi that the Guild was not going to act, that there was no argument or Filing that was going to protect Tabini at all?
That would encourage actions far more profitable to the Kadagidi than a frontal assault on a neighbor’s land.
That indicated one action that began to make sense in this situation, one delicate, surgical action that would fragment this gathering and bring down the hopes of restoring the Ragi clan to power. And all the fire and fury might be intended only to mask the process of getting an Assassin into position.
And these various people who had assembled to protect Tabini by their presence and position had incidentally brought an impressive attendance of Guild Assassins as their own bodyguards. The Guild might be neutral, deadlocked, and stuck in Shejidan, but local man’chi was healthy and thriving, and, at the moment, armed to the teeth and sitting on Tatiseigi’s lawn, and probably on the Kadagidi’s front porch, at the same time, if they could get a view of what was happening beyond the hills. Both sides were furnished with Guild enough to spend some time infiltrating and manuevering at this stage—but in the nature of things, Tabini, for his part, had, at every reception, to bet his life that none of these arrivals of other villages, towns, clans, masked some Assassin whose man’chi was secretly to the Kadagidi.
That was surely what the conference outside the door was dealing with, among other things Bren wished he had a clear picture of. They were screening every Guild member who came through the door, and seeking information on every Guild member who might be on the grounds: “Do you know that man, nadi? Did he come with the lord’s wife’s clan?”
He had been in space too long, Bren said to himself. As long as he’d been in atevi society, he had encountered such blind spots in his vision, dark spots, situations where he just didn’t automatically draw the obvious conclusion without asking Banichi or Jago—and even then their plain answer didn’t always evoke all it should. But he had known that very certainly staff was vetting everyone who got past that door: they always did. The Guild in some respects was a sort of exclusive lodge, and the senior members, the really dangerous ones, knew each other by sight, in and out of uniform.
That was why Tabini’s loss of the staff who had protected him so long was such a heavy blow—not alone the emotional loss at their murder, but the practical consequences of new staff not knowing things that had gone to the grave with the previous holders of their offices. The well-oiled machine that had operated so smoothly to protect and inform Tabini was suddenly gone—replaced by new people who had attached themselves to him during his exile; and one only hoped the current chief of Tabini’s personal bodyguard, Ismini, knew his men as well, and that information flowed through that staff with something like the old efficiency. Banichi and Jago had had ties in the aiji’s old household, but they were at least two years out of the loop, and perhaps underinformed and unconnected for much longer than that: they couldn’t reconstitute it. Ismini—Bren had no idea where he had come from, or who these men were who surrounded Tabini these days.
The whole situation conjured all the machimi he had ever seen, disasters which involved breakdowns of Guild actions, the sort of thing that laid bodies in heaps on the stage, when what should have been a neat, kabiu action, or a sure deflection of an attempted assassination—turned out a real damn mess thanks to new men filling positions they ill understood or outright pursuing divided loyalties, their ties to other agencies imperfectly severed.
The whole train of thought upset his stomach, as if the encounter on the steps wasn’t enough. But the dust around the Ajuri arrival settled in a round of courtesies and sips of tea, never mind the rural Ajuri were themselves a wild card—bringing in a collection of somewhat lower-level Guild that weren’t necessarily as well known to the aiji’s men, or to other staffs. They got in. It would have been a major incident, if Ismini and his men had not let Ajuri in to protect their lord—but bet that they were asking questions out there, and sending runners out to ask among those who might have connections to the Ajuri.
Meanwhile, in the general easing of courtly tensions, at least, Tatiseigi began, inanely enough, to propose a formal supper—trying to put a patch on the fact that, no, the house didn�
��t have any suitable room for the Ajuri, who were going to have to lodge downstairs in what Tatiseigi extravagantly called the Pearl Room, which one understood would be cleared of records and desks and provided with beds. The Ajuri were not happy. And Tabini meanwhile took the chance to request a special buffet for the staffs, allowing the individual bodyguards the chance to eat on duty and discuss, discussion which would never do at table, oh, no, never, ever discuss business at a proper table, even when the lawn was full of impromptu militia…but most of all, find out what the Ajuri had brought in, and try to resurrect some of the knowledge which had died with Tabini’s original head of staff, investigating, too, the connections the Atageini might know about—since the marriage that had produced Lady Damiri herself, under this roof.
Meanwhile Tatiseigi rattled on, went on to propose the menu, God help them, in meticulous detail, and to recommend a special game delicacy of the region, with a glowing description of the pepper sauce.
Bren laced his hands together across his middle and tried to look appreciative and relaxed instead of grim, desperate, and increasingly anxious about the proceedings—an attack of human nerves, he said to himself, and meanwhile he knew Tatiseigi himself was no doddering fool, and that this performance was purposeful. The dinner in question was going to be one of those formal affairs where meaning ran under every syllable, and where, granted no one was poisoned at the table, atevi felt one another’s intentions out. But he himself wasn’t up to it. He didn’t want to attend a formal supper with the Ajuri. He didn’t want to sit there eating custard and sauce and wondering what was going on in the woodwork, while staffs were just as energetically trying to parse loyalties and connections running back decades if not centuries.
Most of all he wanted, dammit, just five short minutes, in all this expenditure of valuable time, one short chance to talk to Tabini privately for a single interview outside this carefully monitored gathering. He wanted to turn in the report he had risked his life developing, and he thought he deserved that chance…never mind Ilisidi’s staff had doubtless done their briefing, not an unfavorable one, he was sure, and never mind his own report, coming from a human mind when all was said and done, had probably become superfluous in the press of time and threat, at least in Tabini’s estimation. Tabini probably thought it a headache he didn’t need at this point, raising questions he wasn’t ready to deal with—but it wasn’t, dammit, superfluous. He wasn’t sure by any means that Ilisidi would have covered all the essentials the way he would have wanted: He wanted the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted with Tabini, he had spent two years picking his words carefully, choosing very precise ways he wanted to set out certain facts of the outside universe to Tabini, and dammit, he was going to have that report riding his mind and weighing down his conscience until he could offload it and say he had done his best.
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