The paidhi was out of his element in martial affairs. What his bodyguard was doing up there was certainly more constructive than what he was doing, sitting back, fretting, and nursing his indigestion. High time he opened his computer and set about his own reasonable preparation, raking up details of officials on Mospheira, recalling those in various offices, down to their contact numbers and home addresses. He did that, reminded himself of accesses to certain lords on the mainland, then unbelted and drifted up near the dowager. Floating there, tucking down somewhat into a vacant seat, he asked her in detail about various lords on the mainland, with her estimation of their web of man’chi, and that of their households, to whom they paid allegiance, and of what history, with what marriages and inheritances, reestablishing his command of that mathematics of trust and old grievances.
Certainly young Cajeiri listened with more personal interest than a human child might have mustered, absorbing a set of old, old feuds and seemingly pointless begats, marriages, and business dealings of people he’d never met, most of them now dead. His young lips clamped tight on questions he by now knew not to ask, wisely declining to interrupt the conference of his elders, eyes sparking at this and that name he might remotely know, or a light of understanding dawning at a particular reason this clan avoided that one.
When Ilisidi began enumerating the members of the Atageini household, and included two sisters of Cajeiri’s mother, and an illicit affair and illegitimate child in the extreme youth of Damiri’s youngest sister, Lady Meisi, his young eyes grew as round as moons.
“Who, mani-ma?”
“Deiaja.”
“She is my cousin, mani-ma?” Cajeiri exclaimed—Cajeiri having resided under great-great-uncle Tatiseigi’s roof, not so long before their mission launched.
“And being half Kadigidi, and ill-advised, she is a scoundrel of a youngster,” Ilisidi said darkly, “and a thoroughly bad influence, I have no doubt.”
“She brought me cakes,” Cajeiri said, “when great-uncle said I had to stay in my room. I never heard she was my close cousin.”
Ilisidi had lifted a brow at the business of the cakes, and actually seemed to muse on that small point for an instant before she frowned darkly. “One may read the winds of decades in a tree. Young, it bends to every fickle breeze. Old—it leans increasingly to the persistent summer winds of its growing seasons. Have you never marked this tendency in trees, young aiji?”
“I never have, mani-ma.”
“Do so in future,” Ilisidi said sharply. “Consider the winds that continually blow in the Atageini household, from what direction, and how strong. Grow wise.”
“I should rather have had Artur and Gene come down with me! I might rely on them more than the Atageini, at any time!”
Oh, damn, Bren thought, inwardly bracing himself for a very wintry wind, indeed. That small rebellion was certainly not well considered, coming amid Ilisidi’s remarks about childhood and growing.
“And so you do not trust Deiaja as much these days as once you did.”
“You say we should not rely on her. But the Atageini… ”
“The Atageini remain questionable.”
“Not my mother, mani-ma!”
“Children arrive into such difficult situations. Being born to patch a rift, one necessarily spends years at the bottom of it, looking up and seeing far less of the landscape than one might otherwise see. A wise child will take the word of those with a wider view.”
A young jaw clenched. “Can I not trust my mother, mani-ma?”
“Do you trust me, young sir?”
“You are the aiji-dowager. I suppose you are still the aiji-dowager, mani-ma, even if my father is—my father is—”
“I remain the aiji-dowager and shall remain, so long as I draw breath, young sir. As you will be the sole occupant of that untidy rift so long as you live: plan on it, and get as many reports from those who saw it form. As you grow taller, you will see more of the landscape. Do you understand me? Need I make it plainer, and leave less to your imagination?”
“No, mani-ma, one need not.” A duck of the imperial head, a momentary downward glance. And up again, with a thrust of the bottom lip. “But I could absolutely rely on Artur and Gene, mani-ma. They are very clever.”
“They are humans, boy.”
“You rely on the paidhi-aiji, mani-ma, so I could rely on them!”
Time for the paidhi-aiji, a bystander, to duck his head, cling to his seat, and above all not to think unhappy thoughts about what grief the dowager’s reliance on him had brought to the world.
“Impertinent youth, to dare compare two untried boys with the paidhi-aiji.”
“They may be reliable, mani-ma, when they grow up,” Cajeiri protested.
“When they have grown up,” Ilisidi said, “and when you have acquired an adult mind, great-grandson—then give us your mature opinion. Until then, profoundly apologize to the paidhi-aiji.”
Bren looked off toward the staff consultations, quite sure he would surprise an unseemly sulk if he glanced toward Cajeiri. He waited for the dutiful, soulless, “One apologizes, nandi.”
And didn’t hear it.
“Bren-nandi was eight, once, and he grew to a more fortunate year, mani-ma. So even did my great-grandmother.”
“Impertinent boy!”
“But it is true you were eight once, and you grew up wise and clever. So they might, and I might.”
“Too impertinent by far,” Ilisidi said. “Wait until we stand again on solid ground, young gentleman. Then we will see if substance accompanies that sauce.”
“Yes, mani-ma,” Cajeiri said, and added, under his breath and with a forward glance: “One does respect the paidhi-aiji at all times.”
“One is grateful, nandi,” Bren ventured to murmur, as Ilisidi waved the imitation of a blow toward Cajeiri’s ear.
“Intolerable,” Ilisidi said. “And growing more impertinent by the day. We shall be glad to deliver him to his father.”
Fortunately phrased, auspicious wish. He personally took heart from the notion that the dowager, knowing her own people, and with her own ambition, had not given up on finding Tabini alive.
Nor, apparently, had she given up supporting him.
But he had gathered all he was going to for the moment. The mood was broken.
And somewhere in the exchange of names, the gathering of reference points and names he had not thought of in years, he found himself sunk back into those referents as he went back to his seat. The dowager’s analogy of standing in a rift was apt. He had been brought in to bridge a rift of his own—and was it entirely his fault if even Tabini, who had a thoroughly atevi set of instincts, had misjudged a situation in relying on him so much? They’d known what they were doing was dangerous, hastening the trickle of technology into a spring flood in response to trouble on the island, incursions onto the mainland, and—and the arrival of the ship from its centuries-long absence. In the press of events, a good number of atevi had come to agree with their actions. Even the dowager, prominent among the environmentalist and traditionalist element, still approved what they had done, to the extent of going into space herself and attempting to assert atevi authority over their own world and its surrounding space.
He found himself traveling down old, old mental channels instead of meeting blank walls. This lord and that lord might be relied upon to thus and such a degree, as in past crises, and if that lord stayed loyal to the Ragi atevi, so would this other lord, very likely, give or take a cousin married across a certain dubious clan boundary—
It all grew familiar to him again, like putting on an old, comfortable coat. They weren’t advancing into unreadable chaos. They were coming home—home, whatever its current condition, and there were resources he would be so busy laying his hands on, he wouldn’t have time to panic. They had resources with them, for that matter, and if saving the mainland government meant setting Ilisidi at the head of the aishidi’tat until they could find Tabini, there were northern and central and eastern lords that would approve that stopgap measure in a heartbeat. There were lords he was sure that would approve any aiji at all who wasn’t a usurping duplicitous Kadigidi backed by detested southerners. There was a solid center to the aishidi’tat that would accept compromises of every sort to gain the reestablishment of a solid, known power in place of Murini, who had no majority, only a coalition of powers that sooner or later would cut his throat and fight for power of their own, taking everything down to chaos with him.