“No, one rather thinks he is the one who left the note.”
The custard was not sitting very well at the moment. “There is Homura, and there is Momichi. They hid in Uncle’s basement, and they were supposed to assassinate him. They came over from the Kadagidi estate, through the hedge, and they were supposed to kill Uncle, but I was there, with my associates; and nand’ Bren, and Great-grandmother, and they turned themselves in. The Shadow Guild was holding their partners hostage. They said they were sorry and Great-grandmother and nand’ Bren let them go. They swore man’chi to nand’ Bren.”
“And one may have been true to that,” Father said. “The dead man was not Dojisigi. And he was not Homura. We are trying to identify him—or the Guild is. He may have been who sabotaged the transformer.”
“And Homura killed him.” Mani was fond of saying there were no coincidences in politics, just reasons that stood close together. There was too much here trying to stand on the same paving-stone. “Why was he there?”
“A good question,” Mother said. “But a lot of very strange things have come out of the Ajuri basement. People are related who might not seem to be related, and people were maneuvered into positions they might not want known. Blackmail and threat go far, far back, before your grandfather’s time.”
That was his Ajuri grandfather, who had been clan lord for a time, before he was assassinated.
“Son of mine,” Mother said, “for more than a hundred years, even before Shishogi took office, there was a problem in Ajuri, much the same as took your grandfather. And my mother.”
There was a gentle rap at the door. Father’s major domo interrupted, saying, “Aiji-ma, there is a call wanting you.”
That was how things always ended.
But Father said, “Take the message. I shall deal with it.”
And Father stayed, saying, “Son of mine, your mother has a thing to say tonight, and we should both hear it.”
“This,” Mother said. “Ajuri has a great deal to make up for and needs a leader who will take that as a personal charge. Nomari may become that leader, but he will need help, and advice. He cannot be left alone to deal with Ajuri’s problems, and he will need experienced protection. Trouble will try its best, and he cannot be handed that office and left to survive on his own. He needs Uncle’s advice, which he seems disposed to take. He will need your father’s. And he will need your great-grandmother’s.”
“I hope he is all right with Great-grandmother. I hope she is not too hard on him.”
“She will question him and she will push him hard, I have no doubt. And I am glad she is testing him.”
That was not what he expected from Mother, not at all. “You do believe him.”
“I believe who he is. Yes. But she will not. She will show him what he is getting into until he shows her what he is. Listen, son of mine. When I was young, like you, I had a fair sense for things not as they should be. And when I was growing up, like you, I stood on the outside of doors that I dared not open. I sat in rooms where people cast looks at each other that I could not read. I know how it is when threat invades the sitting room, when you cannot name what it is that people are talking about, but you have the sense that things are very wrong. I was absolutely excluded from that basement when I was there. But I knew, I knew that answers to my life lay on the other side of that door. And I am learning things now that make sense of those years. I know that my mother, your grandmother, Uncle’s sister, was indeed murdered. That my father was complicit in bringing her to the spot where she died. Oh, I think he knew what he was doing. He regretted it, but he did it. He stole me, a new-born, and took me to Ajuri. He told me lies about Uncle, which I now disbelieve. I have, I know, a reputation as, to say the least, as weak, flighty, light-minded . . . no, do not interrupt me, son of mine. I was back and forth between Ajiden and Tirnamardi, once I could ride . . .”
“You can ride?” It burst out. He had had no idea.
“In those days . . . it was freedom. Ajiden or Tirnamardi, I could not be at peace. Everybody wanted me to be what they wanted. I quarreled with Father, I quarreled with Uncle, I detested Aunt Geidaro, but who did not?—and finally, at the winter festival here in Shejidan, I was being pressured to enter contract marriage with a Kadagidi, and promised freedom if I did. It did not look like freedom to me. So I ran again. In a snowstorm. I saw Uncle’s banner above his festival tent, right ahead of me, all lit up from below in the night, and I decided then and forever that Uncle was the best choice. In those days he was all strict starch and tradition, oh, you would not believe how strict, but there were no looks in his sitting room, no silences when I would walk in. I came to winter court with him, my first chance to wear Atageini colors, and I met your father . . .”
“She was a vision,” Father said. “We talked. I will tell you, son of mine, we could not stop talking. Politics. Art. The aishidi’tat. And technology . . .”
“We ran off,” Mother said.
“Lord Tatiseigi was going to have a fit. And we were not through . . . talking.”
“It was a scandal.”
“It could have been,” Father said, “had I not proposed marriage. But she rejected me.”
“I held out,” Mother said.
“Grandmother was upset. She was giving a little ground before your mother insisted on a life-marriage . . .”
“And outraged when you agreed.”
“I was in fear for my life,” Father said.
“He is not serious,” Mother said. “Mine, however, might have been in jeopardy.”
“She would not have,” Father said.
“You underestimate your grandmother,” Mother said.
“No, now, no, the truth. I upset her.”
“Well, and I ran home to Uncle the next month,” Mother said. “Which absolutely confirmed everything she thought.”
“You told her she was wrong,” Father said. “You said that a contract marriage would give Ajuri a foothold in the aijinate, once you and your child were back in their control. Grandmother insisted that you would be protected, and you stood there and told her . . . told her things I never thought anyone would dare say to her. And told me the same, afterward, when I told her we could renegotiate the contract later, if we just agreed with Grandmother for a start . . .”
“The point needed to be made. I was through being anyone’s pawn. Not my father’s, not my uncle’s, and not your grandmother’s.”
“Considering what we have found in that basement, you had ample reason. But at the time, son of mine, permanent marriage seemed a very big step, until your mother began packing to leave Shejidan. Then—I drew up the papers. We drew them up—which set everything off. Then Lord Tatiseigi told Grandmother she was wrong and they did not speak for a month.”
“Uncle detested technology,” Mother said. “He absolutely detested television. And airplanes. And Wilson-paidhi. When your father began to deal with nand’ Bren, Uncle was furious. Even more so after your great-grandmother had decided he was acceptable.”
It was a world he had not lived in. Clearly.
Then Father turned completely serious. “Understand always,” Father said, “that despite the quarrel with your great-grandmother, your mother values her good judgment. They respect each other. They just do not express it well.”
He was not sure whether it was a joke. He was not sure why they were telling him this.
“Understand your mother,” Father said. “And your great-grandmother. I know you admire her. This situation which Grandmother has taken in hand, this young man from Ajuri, is still under investigation. She often operates afield, which I cannot do, asks questions I cannot ask. But this time . . . she and I are not in agreement on Ajuri, and we are not in agreement on her timing in this move south. She is not taking advice from her usual sources. Lord Tatiseigi is worried. Even Cenedi advised her against this venture.”
“Nand’ Bren will tell her the truth.”
“As she lets him see it. She is making a major move on Machigi’s advice. The recent situation on the human side of the space station, and the problems with the refugees . . . all this has worried her. The refugees have to be moved down as soon as possible, which she sees as apt to cause instability in Mospheira’s government—and if human affairs are soon to claim my attention, all the momentum we have gained against the Shadow Guild could be lost, and it has become her problem. That is what is driving this. She believes if we do not stop the Shadow Guild now, the aishidi’tat is in danger. Most of all, she feels she is running out of time.”
“She is not sick, is she?”
“She is old, that is all. And things she thought she had settled keep rising up again and again, to her personal frustration. Understand, son of mine, she is the great architect of the aishidi’tat as it is today. While I may have had something to do with the peace we have—I take pride in that—I would never have had the chance without her. And the south of the continent, even more than her native east, is her great concern—that it will not settle, and that its unrest and its trafficking with the Marid comes back time and again to unsettle the whole continent. The south was her focus both times she was regent, but she could never gain the support of the legislature, whose attitude was to let the south and the Marid fight it out amongst themselves. And what do we get from that neglect? A widening of the problem, now that the Shadow Guild has exploited it.”
“But was she not right?”
“Absolutely she was right. I have supported her actions with very few exceptions. She knows it. She expects it. At times she has taken ruthless advantage of that support. She was initially against Lord Geigi’s appointment to the space station because it left a gaping vacancy in the center of the west coast, and there was a Marid lordship—the Farai—trying to claim Najida. Nand’ Bren’s appointment to Najida settled that matter. Getting Lord Geigi’s larcenous nephew out of his estate and nand’ Bren involved in stabilizing it helped, but the southwest coast, Ashidama Bay, lordless and resistent, remains a problem. We do not even mention the tangle that is the Marid. And here is where the Ajuri basement comes into it.”
“The records, honored Father?”
“The records of cargoes. Maritime cargoes to the southwest coast. And records of Guild appointments in various areas, including the appointment of failed or allegedly deceased Guild as plainclothes guard services on the southwest coast, and others in eastern Senjin and in the Dojisigin.”
“The Shadow Guild.”
“Exactly. Their very foundation. They are connected to the Marid, and to the Kadagidi in the north, while the Kadagidi have married into the Marid. When Shishogi went down, in the Guild, when his office and his records system literally went up in flames, we suspected that there might exist such a treasure-trove of dealings off the books, so to speak, things that had to be remembered, but that he did not want sitting in Guild Headquarters. And yes, the Ajuri basement has given us a wealth of information. Your great-grandmother is aware of much of it. She believes that the Shadow Guild in the Dojisigin can be isolated, deprived of vital materials until enough pressure on them and a strong association of the rest of the Marid can bring Tiajo’s regime down. But the records we have found indicate otherwise, and we fear that they are prepared to melt away again, destroying records, this time, so that we will be years finding them. The fact that the Shadow Guild has taken to a new tactic, kidnapping of family members, threatening and controlling otherwise honorable officials, guards, records-keepers . . .”
“Homura and Momichi.”
“Exactly. Like them. Your great-grandmother feels they will remain hidden and not take the field again; and I agree. In their present condition they cannot. But this is not a battle line we are facing. It is the outbreak of a disease, a way of thinking and operating that has no moral restraint. She has set up in Senjin, assuring the Marid states that we are not going to be heavy-handed about this, but in doing so, she has set the Shadow Guild in motion. They are already moving. I have consulted Lord Geigi. And we are about to go in.”
“To go in. To the Dojisigin?”
“We will be looking for the Dojisigi equivalent of the Ajuri basement: to get the records. I will give her all the support I can, but I want you to know, son of mine, we are defying her wishes. We have to. And she will find that out very soon.”
“But,” Cajeiri said, and then could not find a way to proceed.
“We have a besetting problem in this family,” Father said, “that we are not always forthcoming with the right words at the right times. I have spoken to her, directly. Our move down there, and Geigi’s, protects her, and brings our communication up to a new standard. I have talked to Cenedi, and he has indeed persuaded her to keep out of the city. Nand’ Bren, who is in the city, is surrounded by a major concentration of Guild, and his aishid will not let him take a breath outside their immediate observation. We are taking precautions for their safety. What we may not be able to protect is ourselves, from your great-grandmother’s reaction once the Guild moves into the Dojisigin. But that will be as it may. She will be even less happy when we ask her to leave Koperna.”
“Do you think she will do it?”
“I hope she will. I do not want her in a war zone. The lander is one assurance of her safety, but I shall feel better to have her departing the Marid entirely. Without Machigi.”
“So would I, but I do not think she will go.”
“Uncle can reason with her, sometimes better than nand’ Bren.”
“I have not taken Lord Tatiseigi fully into my confidence, unfortunately, and it is late to do it. He is too tightly connected to her.”
“I can talk to him. Mother can.”
“Not as well,” Mother said. “You are in a special association with him. But I do not know that you want to involve yourself in this, son of mine. That is a difficult, long-running issue, Uncle’s working with her. His man’chi is to her, and conflicted, now, with his to you; and your great-grandmother’s temper is unpredictable.”
“I can talk to him. And to her.”
“Son of mine,” Father said, “you have never seen them fight. If you take a position in this, it will be a question of whether you can claim his man’chi as strongly as she can; and avoid upsetting her. Your mother cannot enlist him against Grandmother. And I certainly cannot, where it comes to a power Grandmother and I have both had—she, twice, and for longer. I want her to leave this hunt. I want her to take someone’s advice. I want her to come back and bring a good section of the Guild’s special forces back with her—for the good of the aishidi’tat, since we have the landing of humans imminent and also needing attention. I know your respect for your great-grandmother. But if you can influence Lord Tatiseigi to influence her and call her home from this effort, yes. Do. If we can lay hands on the records in the Dojisigin, your great-grandmother can come back and settle down and let the Guild do its work with the details. She will take it as disrespect, but I do not. I want her safe. That is not my only priority—it cannot be. But I do not think we can totally expunge the Shadow Guild in this decade and maybe not in the next. I want her to leave this to the Guild to do, as they should, and come back here. Build a theater. Design a park. Whatever pleases her, for a long number of years. But I also do not want you estranged from Lord Tatiseigi, or feeling that I set you against your great-grandmother.”
He had never been handed such a choice. He sat for a long moment looking at his hands. He had a scar, from the time he and mani and nand’ Bren had crossed the straits, coming home from space, to go fight the Shadow Guild and put Father back in charge. He had been a child then, really a child. Everything right and wrong had been absolutely clear.
Now it was not. Nor ever might be again.
“I shall talk to Uncle,” he said. “I shall tell him he has to talk to her, no matter what. She
will not listen to me. Sometimes not to nand’ Bren. But I shall talk to Uncle.”
* * *
• • •
Priority had been given, where it came to opening residential areas, involving apartments whose owners were present in the building. Particularly the two residential halls off the assembly hall had seen the advent of Guild with an impressive cartload of equipment, going from one room to another, searching and testing literally down to the wiring and the light sockets and vents. Residents were allowed back into cleared areas, but with absolutely minimal staff. Bregani could well have set himself as first priority, but he declared that the elderly lords of Senjin and Farai should get their rooms first. He had continued as he was, holding modest court at the table with his wife and daughter, in possession of a plate of Bindanda’s special teacakes sent up from the kitchens. His and Bregani’s were no longer the only tables. An enterprising senior servant had unlocked a store room and they had now a wealth of tables, from one end of the hall to the other, for the general comfort. There was a place to lean elbows, set teacups, set plates, and write notes.
It was going smoothly, considering the situation. Messages both by phone and paper were getting across the city. People had found one another, and in two cases that had caused some concern, lost children had gotten to their frantic parents. Pharmacies, allowed to open, were delivering medications. Physicians were dealing by phone. A water main break had been repaired. It was not a bad afternoon’s work, Bren thought, and, the process of residential clearance finally having concluded in the righthand hallway, he sat and watched as Bregani and Murai and Husai went back with their Guild escort to inspect their own apartment.
It seemed a time for a cup of tea and a sandwich for supper. Bren took the tea sugared, and with a little orangelle, and heaved a sigh as Jago joined him.
“Well done,” he said. “Truly well done. Have we heard anything from the dowager or Cenedi?”
“Cenedi has been busy. The first navy ship is in harbor, moored behind the two Dojisigi vessels, and a deck cannon has been unshrouded.”
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