Divergence

by C. J. Cherryh

  That had not been quite the end of it. The problems had flowed right down into the Marid, which never had been really attached to the aishidi’tat. The Shadow Guild had pushed people in the Marid around and assassinated the lord of the Taisigin Marid. But that lord’s son, Machigi of the Taisigin Marid, had not only held out against the Shadow Guild, he had gained the man’chi of the southern two-fifths of the Marid: the Dausigin and the Sungenin.

  And now he was allied with mani.

  That was not a stupid move on Machigi’s part. It had made him safer, but not richer, than the northern two-fifths of the Marid, which consisted of Senjin and the Dojisigin. Tiajo, only infelicitous sixteen, had taken over in the Dojisigin and put her own father in prison with Shadow Guild help. She had let all of Murini’s people flow right down that mountain wall into her domain and terrorize her own people.

  That was where things had stood when mani had reached out and made an association with Lord Machigi, offering him a way to build ships, steel ships, able to travel the Southern Ocean, guided by the space station, with Lord Geigi’s help—ships that could reach mani’s own eastern provinces and carry cargo on schedule, despite the storms.

  Most everybody thought that was an empty agreement, that it was just a way to explain their alliance to the rest of the world, when mani’s real aim was to push the Guild system into the Marid and start to push back at the Shadow Guild—that was what Father said she was really up to. Keeping Machigi alive was a major part of mani’s plan. Getting the Assassins’ Guild to recognize a Marid state’s bodyguards as official and bring them into the Guild system was a major move, too.

  And it was true that Tiajo and Bregani would have to think twice now about assassinating Machigi, because of mani.

  But mani kept saying the association with Machigi was not an empty agreement, that the ships would be built, that these ships could survive the storms, guided by the space station; and that it would bring industry into the Taisigin Marid. Why not planes? he had wondered. And mani had looked at him in silence for a moment and then said . . . would the aishidi’tat be safer right now with Marid planes coming and going overhead?

  No. It would not. That was a scary thought.

  But ships—ships made from designs from the human archive, could work, with the station watching over them and guiding them, the Taisigin and their allies would grow accustomed to cooperating with the station, and with Lord Geigi, and eventually they would do something about the Dojisigin Marid—eventually.

  Eventually seemed to be sooner than he had thought.

  Machigi and mani were up to something that was really dangerous. Lord Tiajo was not going to like having Bregani snatched from her association, the Shadow Guild was going to get into it, and something was going to happen. They had already murdered Aunt Geidaro up in Ajuri and tried to burn the house down, to take out records of Ajuri’s past dealings. They very likely wanted Nomari dead, and mani had taken him right to their doorstep. Nomari was not even there because he was needful, so far as he could guess. He was there because mani was upset with Mother, because Mother had taken the Red Train and gone to Uncle to settle the problem with Ajuri even while mani was flying back from her own province to deal with it herself. Mother had just left mani stranded, with people watching, which nobody dared do.

  And Mother and Great-uncle had nominated Nomari, nearly a total stranger, a railroad worker, to head Ajuri, without consulting mani or Father or even running security checks.

  Which might sound foolish to someone who had not been there. He had been there, and his opinion on the matter had been regarded by both Mother and Uncle, and he had been quite certain, before he added his voice, sure of Nomari’s man’chi . . . to both Mother and to himself. Nomari was smart. And brave. He’d proved that, and Father would never actually ratify a nomination without running his own security checks, no matter who made the nomination.

  So, well, that might be in process, Nomari was up for appointment, and mani was mad, truly mad at Mother and upset at Great-uncle. He had thought originally that mani, about to take the train east, was going off to her own district, intending to consult with nand’ Bren and find out all she could about Nomari, keeping him away from the capital so it would delay his being appointed to Ajuri. Cajeiri had believed that—until his aishid had reported seeing Lord Machigi down at the train station.

  He had been smart for once. He had gone to Father to tell him what his aishid had seen and Father had rewarded him by telling him what was really going on. Or at least as much of it as Father had found out himself, which with Great-grandmother was not always everything.

  Nomari was with her, that was sure, and mani was promising Machigi a railroad, but Nomari being along was certainly not because he knew something about railroads . . . and the train going to Hasjuran was not because they had taken a wrong turn halfway and gone south by mistake. Mani had her own plans underway. She was headed down to the Marid to upset the Shadow Guild, and she did not want Nomari confirmed in the meantime.

  Which actually led back to Ajuri in a tangled way: an old man in Ajuri clan had created the Shadow Guild, which had supposedly killed Nomari’s whole family. Except Nomari.

  Cajeiri believed it. Nomari had the support of hundreds of Ajuri who had had to go into hiding because of the Shadow Guild. He was certain Nomari was his cousin, his associate, and Nomari had given him his man’chi.

  But Mother had nominated him for the lordship; and mani and Mother had been at odds forever, and after Mother stealing the train, mani’s temper was up.

  It was not the nicest side of mani. But it was thoroughly mani. He knew that. People were afraid of her—with reason.

  Father stood up to her. Father . . . and sometimes Uncle, and sometimes nand’ Bren. They could stand up to her.

  He never had tried. He had never had reason. He was only fortunate nine.

  He was not even angry at mani, because in the end she was generally right, or came to be right, and would settle down and do justice. She always did.

  But in the meantime it was not fair that she ran risks, it was certainly not fair that she stirred up something that could get people killed. It was not fair that she treated Nomari badly, and she was risking herself and nand’ Bren by going down there. Machigi was not a person to trust. He was sure of it.

  And that only said to him, because things did not make sense, that there were pieces missing, things he did not understand, and two of the pieces most out of place were cousin Nomari, and Lord Machigi. They just did not make sense, if mani was taking on the Shadow Guild. And he had no way to reach her and ask questions. If Father knew, Father was not saying.

  But . . .

  His senior bodyguard had access on all levels.

  That was a thought.

  His senior aishid was new. They had only been with him since the Nomari business, and they were terribly senior in the Guild. They were retired instructors, and if anybody had clearance to get Cenedi’s attention, or Banichi’s, or even find information all the way up to the Guild Council, they could. They had that capability. Maybe nobody had asked them to use it.

  Maybe he could mess things up by asking, and let word leak in places that could be dangerous. Not so long ago there had been trouble in the Guild, and his bodyguard said it was still not certain they had gotten all of it cleared out.

  He could not think of all of it, he could not reach far enough. He could give orders, and some people would obey, but he was not thoroughly sure where his senior guard might take something he asked.

  He wished—he desperately wished he had his human associates with him now, Gene and Irene and Artur. His own thoughts made more sense to him when he had to explain things to them. They thought differently. Their minds went in unexpected directions. What he needed . . .

  The office door opened very quietly.

  Jegari was there, second-senior of his younger bodyguard—h
is senior bodyguard, in terms of time served with him. Jegari and his sister Antaro had been with him almost from the day he and mani and nand’ Bren had come back from space. They were Taibeni clan, with a man’chi to him beyond any question, ever.

  He could escape mani’s senior guards. He had done it. But not them, the four . . . counting Veijico and Lucasi . . . who lived with him.

  “I was not sleeping well,” he said to Jegari. The way he suspected his bodyguard could hear his absence, he could already hear the question that Jegari—standing there in his nightrobe—wanted to ask . . . the question that probably Lucasi and Veijico were back there in the dark with Antaro, waiting to understand.

  Jegari asked, then, “Have you heard anything?”

  “No,” Cajeiri said. “Have you?”

  The way Jegari frowned and looked down, preparatory to saying anything, told him Jegari had nothing cheerful to say. “Last word, Jeri-ji, is that fighting has broken out in Koperna. It has started. But the Red Train is still in Hasjuran.”

  The Guild, that meant to say, had engaged. In the city at the foot of the mountain wall. In Lord Bregani’s capital. But mani and everybody would be in Hasjuran, still. He was glad to know that.

  There is fighting, but no word which way it was going. Jegari had put on more than his nightrobe. The device in his ear was tapped into Guild communications, which had no stand-down hours: through that network Father’s bodyguard, down the hall, kept in touch with all the other guilds and even the station aloft. But not everything came on that network, which the Shadow Guild could tap.

  “Is Rieni awake?” he asked. That was the senior of the new bodyguard.

  “He said there was nothing they could do here,” Jegari said, “so they would be informed in the morning.”

  Nothing they could do here. He could ask them to try to talk to Cenedi. But it sounded as if an operation was in progress, and since the Shadow Guild had all the old codes and might still have agents in place able to get the new ones—nothing important could come that way.

  His senior bodyguard had made their decision to go to bed and let events just happen, far away, beyond their reach. Do they know about the fighting? he wondered. Should we wake them and tell them?

  But what, indeed, could they do? What he lacked was the seniors’ ability to lie abed and not imagine all the things that could go wrong.

  “I want to know,” he said quietly, “every detail of everything that the seniors can find out in the morning, and if they think I would not understand, I want to be made to understand. Tell the seniors that, in the morning, I want to know what my father knows.” It was in an uncommonly grim humor that he said what he had used to say lightly, and to win childish forbidden things. “Tell them it will be educational.”

  3

  It was a breakfast set in the cozy warmth of the dowager’s car, not the edge-of-dawn chill of the dowager’s breakfasts on her own apartment balcony. The paidhi-aiji could at least appreciate that.

  But rarely had a breakfast been more fraught.

  It would have been no good showing up and asking questions. Ilisidi had her own agenda. She sat at a somewhat larger let-down table in formal black lace, a darkness from head to foot, gold eyes full of her own thoughts. Silver streaks on her gray-black head glimmered in the Red Car’s golden lights. The same light sparked off the rubies of her jewelry, and gilded the dark planes of her face.

  She sat on one side of the table, with her Guild-senior, Cenedi, standing, a similar darkness beside her: two of the senior powers of the aishidi’tat, in their separate realms . . . politics and protection.

  Bren, unescorted, had the seat on the other side of the table, uncommonly conscious of that same golden light on his own pale hands, on white lace, and modest—pale—brocade. The paidhi’s color was, officially, white. No-color. No-clan. As such it was completely impossible to be inconspicuous in court dress, even at times when he earnestly wished to fade into the background. He was the arbitrator, the translator, and quite often the messenger between parties. His role was always, no matter what the distress, to maintain a quiet tone, a quiet manner, and generally to observe in silence unless he was actively representing a position. The dowager was his frequent employer and she was generally his ally, even in the worst situations, but being what he was, he never trespassed recklessly into the dowager’s territory or offered unsolicited opinions.

  She could order him to go to Amarja, capital of the Dojisigi province, and take a message to the Shadow Guild. It would likely be the end of him, the Shadow Guild having no intention of honest negotiation and a great deal of curiosity about things he had witnessed. She could do that . . . but he was relatively sure that was not her intent.

  And breakfast came first. No matter the constraints, in atevi etiquette practiced end to end of the continent, one never discussed business over meals, particularly with cutlery in evidence.

  Food was extravagant. There were eggs and sauces, with breads. There was seasonal fish, likely from the Mospheiran Straits. Across the little table there was absolutely nothing but small talk—the hope that the new transformer would appear on a train that did not rush madly through the town, the weather—the quaintness of the town, the hope that children were staying warm despite the crisis.

  One duly observed that the town, most of which did have light and heat, was faring well in the interim, and that the older houses on the square, which shared power with the train station, would be able to heat and light themselves in good order by the old methods, live fire and oil lamps.

  Usually by this point in one of the dowager’s more stressful breakfasts, a human’s teeth were chattering and his muscles locked with cold, but the Red Car was by no means arctic chill despite the lack of power from the station. It was, in fact, a little warm by now, by atevi expectations, and considering their dress.

  A condition which in no wise affected the dowager’s appetite. A number of eggs disappeared, along with helpings of other dishes. Bren had two small eggs, with a slice of toast, and delayed about it so as to finish somewhat in time with the dowager, who took a cup of tea to finish, savored most of it slowly, as Bren did his, and then abruptly set it down. Click.

  “We believe we are shortly to receive Lord Topari,” Ilisidi said, “and we are not in a humor to hear his personal apologies for the power outage or his questions about our intentions.”

  The suggestion was clear and no more than he’d expected. “I might receive him and secure his signature,” Bren said. “If you wish, aiji-ma.”

  “That would be preferable,” Ilisidi said.

  A silence ensued. And went on.

  “Oh, ask it!” Ilisidi snapped.

  Bren drew in a deep breath. “Was it, aiji-ma, your grandson or the Guild who waked us this morning?”

  Ilisidi stared at him, eyes like molten amber. “Both. I am well sure, both. So you did not have warning of this.”

  “None, aiji-ma. Absolutely none. Your grandson spoke to me before we left, and told me I should go with you. Protect her, he said.”

  Ilisidi snorted.

  “But he told me nothing of his view of the agreement, aiji-ma, nor did I have any knowledge from him as to what you meant to do. Nor do I know who sent the train, though I can guess, as may you.”

  The stare continued for a moment. Then Ilisidi drew a deep breath and blinked. “This has to be settled.”

  “The business in the Marid, you mean, aiji-ma.”

  “The business in the Marid, for a start, yes.”

  “For a start” on what, one had to wonder, and declined, at the moment, to ask. Instead, one said, quietly:

  “Your grandson’s orders were to provide you such assistance as I can, aiji-ma. I shall do that.”

  “Begin by dealing with our guests and with Lord Topari this morning, as soon as you can stir him forth. We have already signed, so you may have the documents
we shall leave for him to send to the capital, and he may know we are dealing fairly. But we have no time for extensive festivities. It is very likely, paidhi, that we shall go down to Koperna today, if our grandson’s addition to the confusion has not fallen off the mountain or stopped to block the tracks. Particularly be careful of Lord Machigi this morning. Be gracious to him.”

  Gracious and Machigi in the same sentence was a stretch.

  “Do we have any notion, aiji-ma, what that train passing us is actually about?”

  A sharp frown. “There are several possibilities, one of which is that that young fool Tiajo is moving a major force to intervene in Koperna, but that would be a happy event.”

  Not in everyone’s estimation. Not even in hers.

  “But that train,” Ilisidi continued, “surely came from Shejidan, and had to have left not that many hours behind us. I surmise that my grandson cannot keep his fingers off the situation.”

  “His concern is for your safety.”

  “We are certain of it,” she said. She was smiling, now, an expression which one could hardly call beneficence. “I at least do not think my grandson will have countermanded my specific orders. It would look like indecision. And now he has sent us a train, and means to park it—one does wonder where.”

  “I have absolutely no knowledge, aiji-ma. I am told there is a siding where it could wait. In all honesty I heard nothing from him but to go and advise you as best I could.”

  “We are attempting to communicate with it. It has been observed by Guild at various critical places along the downward route: it is going down the switchbacks, if one of my emplacements does not blow it off the rails by mistake. And where will it stop and make clear its purpose?” Ilisidi drew a deep breath. “We are going down to Koperna, paidhi. And if we come down, that train will take the available siding and get out of our way, or we will both sit, disturbing politics across the northern Marid for as long we must, disputing in public, and I doubt my grandson would care to have such a confrontation viewed by our enemies. Koperna is currently occupied by my forces, so it will be very clear we will not back up. And if that train wishes to sit and wait for the Dojisigin response, I am perfectly content.”