Invader (52 page)

That Jagp hadn't given a damn about.

Which didn't fit with her character.

If one took her as human. And Mospheiran, at that. Which she wasn't.

She was — whatever atevi were in that department. In that sense he
trusted
Jago not to have put him in a difficult position.

And, dammit, he was thinking about it again. Which had absolutely no place in considerations that ought to be occupying his mind.

They swung around for the runway. The wheels thumped down the pavement and cleared the ground. The familiar roofs slipped under the wings and the noise of one more outgoing jet probably disturbed sleep across Shejidan, making ordinary atevi ask themselves what in hell was going on that took so many doubtless official and unscheduled flights to and from the capital —

They might well ask. And — in the light of recent crises — guess that it involved the paidhi, the foreigner ship, the aiji, and a great deal of security and government interest.

Atevi added very well.

The plane climbed above that altitude regularly jeopardized by atevi small aircraft and into a magnificent view of sunrise above the cloud deck — doubtless the better view was from the other set of windows, where the Bergid would thrust above those clouds, but the paidhi hadn't the energy or the heart to get out of his seat to take a look. He wasn't in the mood for beautiful sunrises. The one he did see jarred his sense of reality. The gray below the clouds had better suited his mood. The unseemly sheen of pink and gold made hope far too easy when so much was uncertain.

But the security personnel began to stir about at the rear of the aircraft, and Jago went back, she said, after fruit juice.

"Biscuits," Bren said, before she escaped. Maybe it was the sunrise, but he began to decide he wanted them — having rushed off before breakfast, into a chancy situation.

And in not too long Jago was back with biscuits, a hot and fragrant pile of them, adequate for healthy atevi appetites,
one
of which was sufficient for a human stomach, along with tea and juice he knew was safe.

"Thanks," Bren pronounced, on diplomatic autopilot. He took his biscuit, he took the tea, he took the fruit juice, and reflected that he finally had what he'd wanted all along:
his
people safely gathered for breakfast, well, except Tano and Algini, who were still chasing about the local investigation. They proposed, Banichi had said, to take another cycle of the same aircraft out to Taiben this afternoon.

But he couldn't get Hanks out of his head, and couldn't convince himself yet that things were in hand. One didn't attack the aiji's guest in the Bu-javid and carry her off as of minor consequence to the welfare of the Association. A lot of firepower had gone out to Taiben. Tabini's arrival out there was still to come — if it came. Tabini was stationing security out there in numbers that could repel real force.

And in the excess of feeling that had suddenly, after this assassination attempt but not the other, prompted a deluge of flowers and well-wishes from associates, one had the notion that ordinary atevi took this attempt far more seriously than they took the actions of a single irate man in the legislature.

This
attempt smelled to them like serious business.

It smelled that way to the paidhi, too.

"Have you heard?" he asked. "Have you any current notion whether the troublemakers will make an attempt on the landing itself?"

"No doubt they'd like any means to make the aiji look weak," Jago said. "An attack on Taiben is fully possible."

"Aimed at Tabini? Or at the whole idea of human contact?"

"One certainly wishes the ship had chosen some other site than that near and convenient to the city," Jago said. "It makes logistics for the conspirators far easier. Direiso
and
Tatiseigi are both in the region."

"Meaning anywhere but Taiben would have been preferable. Then why for God's sake was it on the list?"

"It has its advantages. Access is equally easy for us. And we sit close to the neighbors' operations, which means more readily knowing what they're doing."

"But there're more than nonspecific reasons to worry?"

"There's a suspect association," Jago said. "Local. But powerful."

"Localized geographically?" One
never
knew the full reach and complexity of atevi association. Atevi themselves didn't admit the extent or the nature of them, God help the university on Mospheira trying to track them.

"Understand, nand' paidhi, Taiben is one estate of a very ancient area, of very old, very noble habitation — very old households, adjacent, of longstanding uneasiness of relations."

"Meaning historic feud." It was the Padi Valley. It was an old area. Historic.

"No, not feud," Banichi said, "but along this ancestral division of lands — the paidhi may be aware — one has thousands of years of history, among very ancient houses each of whom have powerful modern associations."

Not to say borders. Division of lands. There was a difference.

"An easy neighborhood in good times," Jago said. "But many unsettled issues. In chancy times, very easily upset."

"Meaning," Bren said quietly, "if there was a conspiracy a thousand leagues away, it would most easily nest here, next to Taiben, because of these houses."

"Five households," Jago said. "Before there were humans in the world, there were five principle landholders in the Padi Valley. Historically, all the aijiin of the Ragi have come from these five. The Association at large would hardly be able to settle on any aiji who
didn't
come from this small association. They're all the Ragi families who have
ever
held power."

"But Tabini's house settled the Treaty. By donating its lands to the refugees, from the war." That was answer number one anytime the primer students heard the question. Unquestionably there was more involved. There was the intricacy of the atevi election process. "They brokered the Treaty."

"Keeping only the estate at Taiben — not alone for its nearness to Shejidan, on the Alujis. Clearly association by residence. But also by nobility. The hunting association. And, very clearly, the association of ancestral wealth."

"And the Atigeini have holdings fairly close to Taiben."

"Thirty minutes by air," Banichi said.

"You think there'll be trouble from them? Is that what you're saying?"

"The relationship with the Atigeini may become clear before sundown. Old Tatiseigi is still the chief question."

"And Ilisidi," Jago said,

"What about Ilisidi? Where
is
she? Does anyone know where she went?"

"Oh, Taiben. But Tabini moved her out last night. Now — we think she's guesting upland at Masiri, with the Atigeini. With Tatiseigi himself."

"Damn," he said quietly. But what he felt gathering about him was disaster.

"Tabini, of course, knew where she would go," Banichi said.

"And proceeded," Jago said. "He will not be pushed, at Taiben.
That
small association is historically sensitive."

"Challenging his enemies?"

"Collecting them, perhaps, under one roof."

He had an increasingly uneasy feeling. But it was empty air outside the window. He was wrapped about by atevi purpose, atevi direction, atevi mission. A trap — a conspiracy, a — God knew what. He'd called down a landing from the ship into the thick of atevi politics, arguing them out of trusting Mospheira.

And the atevi he most trusted — one of those words any paidhi should, of course, flag immediately in his thinking — had let him propose Taiben among the other sites he'd offered to the ship, and hadn't mentioned until now the web of associational relationships around Taiben, which — God, was it only a couple of weeks ago? — hadn't mattered once upon a time in his tenure. He'd no more wondered about local associations before the arrival of the human ship threw everything into uncertainty than he'd asked himself with daily urgency about the geography of the sea bottom.

Atevi associations in the microcosm, which atevi tracked in all their complexities back hundreds of years, weren't something the paidhi could politely ask about, weren't, something the paidhi was well enough informed on to involve himself in, and he didn't. The larger Association was stable. He'd not questioned it. He wasn't even supposed to question it. It had been ironclad Foreign Affairs policy that the paidhiin dealt only with the central Association and kept their noses out of the smaller ones. Reports the paidhiin could get were laced with misinformation and gossip, recrimination, feud histories and threats —

But ask how Taiben's neighboring estates had stood with each other in prehuman times — and, damn, of
course
the Padi Valley associations must be among the oldest: take it for that if only because archaeologists — a new science, a contagion from humans — had established several digs there, looking for truths earlier aijiin might not have tolerated finding.

"There were many wars there," Jago said, "many wars. Not of fortresses like Malguri. The Ragi always prided themselves that they needed no walls."

"Association would always happen among those leaders, though," Banichi said. "And Taiben belonged to Tabini's father-line. The mother-line, two generations ago, was from the Eastern Provinces."

"Hence Malguri," Jago said.

"Which," Banichi said, "to condense a great deal of bloody history, then united with the Padi Valley to marry Tabini's grandfather. Which had one effect: Tabini's line is the only Padi Valley line not wholly concentrated in the Padi Valley — or wholly dependent on Padi Valley families. An advantage."

"So if a new leader tried to come out of the Padi Valley now, he or she couldn't hold the East. Is that what you're saying?"

"There's obviously one who could," Banichi said.

"Disidi."

"She failed election in the hasdrawad because the commons don't trust her," Banichi said. "The tashrid would be altogether another story. Unfortunately for Ilisidi, the tashrid isn't where the successor is named — a profound reform, Bren-ji, the most profound reform. The commons choose. The fire and thunder of the debate was over the Treaty and the refugee settlement, all the lords struggling for advantage — but that one change was the knife in the dark. The commons always took orders how to vote."

"Until," Jago said, "the Treaty brought economic changes, and the commons became very independent. And will not vote against the interests of the commons. The Padi lords used to be the source of aijiin. Now they can't get a private rail line built — without the favor of the hasdrawad
and
Tabini-aiji."

"It's certainly," Banichi said, "been a bitter swallow for them. But productive of circumspection and political modesty — and quiet, most of the time. The commons simply won't elect anyone with that old baggage on his back."

"The Atigeini?" he asked. It wasn't a conversation, it was a rapid-fire briefing, leading to something Tabini wanted him to know — or that his security thought he'd better know — fast. "Does Damiri tie him back to them? The paidhi, nadiin-ji, wishes he had information that helped him be more astute. I suddenly don't follow what Tabini intends in this alliance."

"An heir."

"And an alliance with someone from these families? These very old families? I don't know what you're trying to tell me."

"No other aiji has the history with the commons that Tabini's line has," Jago said, "Tabini-aiji was elected by it; naturally the aiji whose line it favors wishes to keep the democratic system. Certain of the other lords, of course, might wish to change it back. But they'll never secure election. A coup, on the other hand —"

"Overthrow of the hasdrawad itself?" Suddenly he
didn't
like the train of logic. "Change back to the tashrid as electors?"

"Such are the stresses in the government," Banichi said. "One certainly hopes it hasn't a chance of happening. But that Damiri-daja, of the Padi Valley Atigeini, suddenly came into the open as Tabini's lover — was directly related to the appearance of the ship, and to
your
safe return from Malguri."

Stars and galaxies might not be in Banichi's venue. But Banichi was a Guild assassin and very far up the ranks of such people: depend on it, Banichi knew the intricacies of systems and motives that caused people to file Intent.

"
My
return."

"It meant," Banichi said, "ostensibly that she felt Tabini-aiji was likely to be strengthened by this event in the heavens — not overthrown. That the longtime Atigeini ambition to rule in the Bu-javid was best achieved in the bedchamber, not the battlefield."

"Is that
your
assessment of her thinking?"

"The paidhi is not a fool." Banichi had a half-amused look on his face. "Say I ask myself that question often in a day. Exactly. The affair between them — I doubt is sham. They've shown —" Banichi made a small motion of the fingers "— singularly foolish moments of attraction. That, I judge, is real; and staff in a better position than I to judge say the same. That doesn't mean they've taken leave of higher senses; Naidiri has standing orders that propriety is
not
to keep him out — while Damiri has relinquished her security staff, at least so far as her residence in the aiji's apartment: the necessary concession of the inferior partner in such an arrangement, and a very difficult position for her security to be in. Your presence — has been an incidental salve to Damiri's pride, and a test."

"In case I were murdered in my bed."

"It would be a very expensive gesture for the lady — who's made, by both gestures, a very strong statement of disaffection from the Atigeini policies. You should know that Tatiseigi has made a career of disagreement with Tabini and Tabini's father and his father with Tabini's grandfather, for that matter. And Damiri offers the possibility of formal alliance. Not only her most potent self as mother of an heir, but a chance to break the cabal in the Padi Valley — and possibly,
with
Tatiseigi's knowledge… to double-cross the aiji. Or possibly to overthrow Tatiseigi's policies and his grasp of family authority."