“Both, actually,” Uncle said dryly, “though do not ask your mother how that relationship ran. Ajuri is a little clan, even if you add in its subclans. It has had very little distinction since the War of the Landing, except in the last six decades, through Shishogi, who was very well-reputed, once. Then he slipped into the shadows, so to speak, as Guild do who rise into administration. He never came back to Ajuri, but he never left them, either. He exerted a control over that clan tighter than any clan lord, and without check. He proposed, and the lords of Ajuri were told what they should do, where they should send funds, who they should contract with, and who they should not, all quietly—and those of any rank who moved contrary to Shishogi’s wishes—died.”
“My grandfather, too?”
“Very probably your grandfather. I am not certain that your grandfather even knew who in the Guild gave orders, or what reason they had. He did know, surely, from a young age, that he would live his life under orders. He was in good repute when he met my sister, your grandmother . . . and our father, then lord in this house, was reluctant to countenance the flirtation. It went on for five years and more. Our father died, I became lord here, and my sister refused other contracts, no, she affianced herself to your grandfather and asked my consent only when I flatly refused to let him continue his visits without formalities. I was certain old Benedi, in Ajuri, would oppose it—the contract granted no land-use, any rights of inheritance requiring my seal, and any offspring to be resident here at Tirnamardi—but he agreed, young Komaji and my sister were contracted, signed and agreed. They had their quarrels, but they did seem to get along, and my sister—her name, your grandmother’s name—was Mureino. There were many years I did not speak that name.”
What did one say? One simply sat still. Listening. And Uncle took a sip of brandy. “I had not spoken Komaji’s name, either, except after his return to assist your father. And his entry into your house. I had chosen not to speak it. But we try to be modern, where possible. Your grandmother and grandfather occupied the suite you have taken, that your great-grandmother usually takes.”
That was a spooky thought.
“For the last year of her life they seemed happy. But he . . .” Another sip of brandy and a moment of reflection. “You met your grandfather. You may have noticed he had strong opinions.”
“He did.”
“And when he wanted his way, he was very determined.”
“Yes.”
“So—especially considering our uninvited guest downstairs, who claims some kinship with you, you should understand the descent. Before your mother was born, a man called Areito was lord of Ajuri, having inherited the lordship from his brother Benedi, whose demise may also be linked to Shishogi—who was Benedi’s cousin. Benedi had four children, your grandfather Komaji, a daughter, Geidaro, and by his first wife, two other sons, Kadiyi, who became lord, and Basari, of no current consequence. During Areito’s lordship, young Komaji was quite the fellow, handsome, with many followers. That was the sort he was.
“While he lived here, he was constantly informing staff how to proceed, constantly interfering in the stables. And he and my sister were often enough at odds, especially as regarded her mecheita and her management of her staff. There was one loud three-day quarrel for which I cannot even recall the reason, but it upset the staff.
“There were constant other quarrels, even when your grandmother was pregnant with your mother. Komaji wanted her company out and about the roads. He was an adequate rider. That she was better he would never accept, and he was constantly telling her how to manage. He was constantly about the stable. His notions led to two infelicitous breedings—one of my sister’s mecheita. He and I certainly did not get on well. And we particularly did not get on well when, during the month prior to your mother’s birth, he kept wanting my sister to be out at the stables at risk of her safety. I flatly forbade it, we quarreled, and my sister and I quarreled. She absolutely insisted to be out there, involved whenever he was. I only later learned that your grandfather had entered into a flirtation with one of the groundskeepers, and I think she drove herself to be out there, and to be involved with the mecheiti, to keep watch on him.
“Komaji had also, in the last month, decided that despite the contract, your mother should be born in Ajuri, and he wanted my sister to press for it—for reasons which I now suspect may not have been Komaji’s own. His family may have been pressured . . . even threatened. That was how Shishogi worked. The motive seemed then and now to get a potential Atageini heir under their roof, brought up Ajuri or with special ties to them. Taking advantage of that would take getting rid of me . . . but that might have seemed easier then than now. Your great-grandmother was aiji-regent at the time. We were not, at that time, close. I had little protection. The scheme had possibilities.
“Not being smitten with Komaji, however, far from it, I had seen a threat in Komaji, one I wanted to deal with. So I had my sister, though not without a bitter quarrel and words I to this day regret, specifically renounce any inheritance in Atageini lands without my written and sealed grant—not my successor’s—mine.
“We were not speaking at the hour your mother was born. Komaji attended and I did not. The birth went well. My sister seemed well. She insisted she was well, and she insisted on being out and about with Komaji, whenever he was down at the pens. Five days after giving birth to your mother, my sister got up on a nicely mannered last-tier mecheita and accompanied Komaji about the grounds. Beyond that, no one but Komaji witnessed. I was in my office when staff came running, reporting that Komaji had come riding back, that my sister had taken a fall out on the west grounds.
“I did not see Komaji. I ran out the front door, nearest, with a quirt I kept by the front entry—I saw three of the herd out there. I found her dead—untouched by the mecheiti. It was a skull fracture. And then the servants reported Komaji, with most of the herd, had gone out the gate, which, no, we had not secured. Servants inside the house were injured. Komaji had knocked them down the stairs close by the room—one an elderly woman. And your mother was gone. Komaji had taken her, taken his mecheita, and loosed the herd from the pens.
“My bodyguard took the estate truck and went in pursuit, but they found the mecheiti coming back, including the one Komaji had taken. Of him and of your mother there was no trace, but vehicle tracks on a little-used road near Taibeni lands. Someone had met them with a car, or truck, someone who knew to meet them.
“Clearly we were meant to blame Taibeni, with whom we were known to be in a state of war. I did not blame the Taibeni. All the evidence blamed Komaji.” Uncle’s face was frighteningly grim. He had never thought Uncle could be scary. But he was. “Over the years, things changed. One year—at Winter Festival—your mother, a young woman, left Ajuri, and came to our banner, asking to be Atageini. I fear I bear some responsibility for her going back again. I did blame her father for her mother’s death. I was intemperate in my remarks. I fear I disappointed her hopes of an easy cure for the matters between our clans. I could not stand with her and reason with her regarding her father; least of all could I reconcile with her father—all those things a young woman might ask of her uncle. I wanted her to stay with us, I would not hear her arguments. And she wanted not to be trapped between her father and me.”
“I do not think Mother feels that way. I think she has great regard for you, and far less for her father.”
“I would hesitate to say your mother fears anything. But I may have been too forceful. I may have set her at a distance neither of us can ever quite cross. Which is more than unfortunate. I have no heir. You, young nephew, would have been my first choice.”
“I am honored, Uncle, I am very honored. But—”
“But you are your father’s, and I would not wish otherwise. So someone must manage Atageini someday. And for reasons of that close Ajuri tie, your mother has divided loyalties that might put her in doubt. I would hope—I am saying this
for the first time—that your sister might inherit.”
“Seimei.”
“Is that what you call her?”
“For short.” Her name was Seimiro. “But Seimei is Mother’s. Mother lost me. Father promised her—”
“And so she should ever be. But your mother as lord-regent—would be of a different character. Your mother as lord would be half Ajuri. But your mother as regent for your sister—that Damiri would look out for Atageini interests, as fiercely as she would defend her daughter.”
That was a thought. He could see it. He truly could.
“I would defend her, too,” he said, and meant it. “But, Uncle, you will be lord of Atageini for years and years to come.”
“One hopes to be. And I shall be a less lonely old man, if I have a nephew and a niece to brighten up the halls. I trust your parents, you know that I trust your great-grandmother, and I trust you. I think one day I shall trust your sister, too.”
“I shall see that she knows,” he said. “I shall whisper it to her, so she grows up knowing it. I shall tell my mother, if ever I find the chance. But I shall watch out for my sister.”
A momentary silence. “I should like that. We are in ruins here in the north. We have had a long, long run, but we have become like a mecheiti herd too long isolated. We need new blood. We need new ideas. One wishes an exceedingly uncomfortable afterlife for Shishogi. His actions poisoned three generations, and Kadagidi’s flirtations with the south nearly ruined us all. We have to repair Ajuri. We have to bring Kadagidi back under sane leadership. We cannot, with the dangers in the heavens, act like brawling youths.
“I fear too many of strong will have done the same, sensing an impossible situation brewing underneath it all, thanks to the Kadagidi influence. Your own relatives, lad, are questionable. Komaji’s sister, Geidaro, married the traitor Murini’s cousin, Ajechi. They had a daughter, Caradi. After he was made lord of Ajuri, Komaji contracted with another woman, producing Meisi . . . your mother’s half-sister, and she, Meisi, contracted a marriage with another Kadagidi, Muso, and produced Dejaja, who is a sweet child, with the sense of a—well, but at least she is not ambitious. Geidaro is. Be wary of that woman or anything she has touched. If there is another Ajuri as venomous as Shishogi, it would be Geidaro. You should know these things.”
“What about that person downstairs? Do you have any idea, Uncle?”
“I have no idea. But I find it interesting someone has been so stirred up as to try to penetrate our defenses—while upsetting Taiben, which either says that he has operated along that border, or that he wishes us to think he has. I have not had the most cordial relations with the Dur sub-clans or their allies in the north, but I cannot think they would make such a move, offending you, nephew.”
“I cannot think it either. Dur has been our ally forever.”
“So we are led to think mid-coastal, or southern—not to forget our two acquaintances of this spring, who arrived from the Marid under Kadagidi auspices. They, however, declared man’chi to this house. Their missing partner is a possibility—I have not heard they have found him—but I cannot connect that so closely to the Ajuri nomination. And this young man gives us a name, Nomari, and claims kinship to you. Convenient. It at least obliges me to dig deeper.”
It was scary, what a clan lord was within his rights to do, if someone threatened the house. He could not foresee Uncle just letting this Nomari go with a promise not to come back. Involving the Guild was likeliest, and his own aishid and mani’s and Father’s was likeliest to take this person back to the city, to answer all sorts of questions, until some clan lord stepped in to take responsibility for him.
But this man, if he was Ajuri, had no clan lord to step in for him. No clan lord and no guildmaster to speak for him and get him out of his predicament.
“So what will happen to this person, Uncle? He has no lord but maybe Mother.”
“That would be true,” Uncle said. “In fact, considering the circumstances and the manner of his visit, I am quite curious about him. I am curious about names and relationships. Does he frighten you?”
“Not as things are,” he said. “I would not like to have met him in the hallway. But I am not afraid of him being downstairs.”
“Suppose that you were to talk to him.”
“I would,” he said. He was as curious as Uncle, who this person was claiming relation to his mother and to him. “I would, with my bodyguard.”
“Definitely with your guard. All your guard. I would like to know what he might tell someone he calls cousin. But let him simmer a little. Let him be comfortable, and cared for, and let him rest a bit with no one to talk to, tonight, possibly all day tomorrow. Let us see what he attempts to ask, say, the servants. Or my bodyguard. Then you shall see what he has to say.”
• • •
“I heard about Woodenhouse,” Shawn said quietly, in the hall near the Francis House dining room, a little gathering of fortitude, before walking in to the official state dinner, in the official Francis House dining room. They lingered in the drawing room, waiting for the last individuals to arrive.
“It was unfortunate,” Bren said. “But the man simply would not stop.”
“He has that reputation. Let me say Dean Caputo, as Chair, was not wholly your friend when the session started. He was more than a little put off when you came over as atevi, not a Mospheiran, but you won him over entirely when you set Woodenhouse down. So he says. In point of fact, he understands now what you came here saying, that the job has changed while we weren’t looking—or at least, we weren’t expecting it ever could change from our end. The slow surrender of the Archive was always a messy, frankly embarrassing business—and that the atevi feel they don’t need it in the old sense. . . .”
“It was an embarrassing process on the atevi side, too. They won the War, but the idea that they couldn’t cope with the tech . . . that concept worked so long as atevi connected human tech with human strangeness. That atevi have managed to swallow as much as they have, and keep their own ways—more, find new validity in their ways—has been one change atevi didn’t see coming. At a certain point, in the coup, old ways rose up, but the leaders of the coup found the people weren’t in agreement. People wanted their televisions and their space program and they saw themselves as embarrassed by the rebels, in a way. And angered by the rebels’ reprisals against political enemies. Tabini was reported dead, his family missing on a ship that might never return, and the rebels said that space only served humans, and that the whole program had been Tabini’s imposition on the people—but when Tabini’s family came back with the ship, safe, in partnership with humans, and Tabini turned up alive, and saying there had been a good outcome, and there was a future, and a universe out there atevi should participate in—then the old ideas began not just shifting: the walls came crashing down. People used to ask if the air would leak out of the world because of the shuttles piercing the atmosphere. Now—they know there’s something beyond the Earth. They know about other worlds. They know this is an atevi world, and, post-Murini, hearing how Mospheira had actively helped them during the takeover, they choose to share the world with humans. Humans didn’t attack them in their moment of overthrow. Humans actively helped the Guild resist. Geigi, on the space station, had at least enough cooperation with humans—even Tillington—to do what he did. Maybe it was because Tillington wanted the shuttles out of the hands of the rebels, and to get them flying again, but it was at least cooperation, which, honestly, should be a plus on Tillington’s side of the balances, whatever he did later, with the Reunioners . . .”
“He’ll get credit for that,” Shawn said. “Not for the rest, but for that, at least—at my direct orders.”
“You’re another reason for the atevi’s change of attitude—now and again humans may elect a George Barrulin—and promote a Deana Hanks; but atevi understand those types. They watched those go down, and watched
your administration reassert itself. They’re happy with that. Tabini is perfectly content to trust you with the Reunioners’ science, whatever it turns out to be, with the simple understanding that my old job is finished, that you’re not agonizing over what tech to trust atevi with next, and that atevi aren’t embarrassed by your having to reckon whether or not they’re advanced enough not to blow the planet up. We both admit blowing the planet up isn’t a good idea, we put on a great show of unity for the kyo, and, God, if one of us conquered the other, we now understand that we just can’t biologically live with one of us adapting to the other’s emotional structure, so we sensibly don’t try to convert each other. You and I won’t feel man’chi, but we can be pretty decent human beings, and we won’t have to cope with atevi trying to make associations with human beings that push them too far, emotionally, either. How much we’ll ever live together at close quarters, I don’t know. I think we’ll always want places that are purely human, and purely atevi, for our own mental health. But after all that’s changed in our lifetimes, I won’t say some may not find a way. I know—if I had to make a choice—well, I suppose I have made the choice, haven’t I?”
There was quiet for a moment, quiet, with the distant sounds of a gathering entering the dining room. They needed to go there. They had politicians to meet, industrialists to meet, representatives of this and that organization, a quiet dinner for about fifty, so that even distinguishing faces at the end of the table would be difficult.
He had a speech to make, explaining what he’d learned from the kyo, and what had happened on the station . . . and it had to be attuned to the mood in there, develop with it, and bring that varied group along with it.
“I’ve never asked you,” Shawn said. “Are you happy? Are you happy, where you are, as cut off from the island as you’ve become?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
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