Trust at least when his staff slept, they would sleep, under ranger guard, far more soundly than he would, with half-formed speculations and useless plans swarming through his head.
“But they will come here now, nadiin,” he heard Banichi point out. “They will not ignore our landing. They must suspect our route.”
Comforting, Bren thought to himself. He shifted onto his back and stared at the branches moving gently above his head, against a sky ragged with cloud. A wind was getting up, that line of cloud, perhaps, that they had seen at sea, now reaching the mainland. It might rain.
He heard the distant voices of Banichi’s conference, heard small rush of water flowing, and, nearer at hand, eight-year-old Cajeiri astonishing two teenagers with the account of how he had gone aboard an alien spaceship, and how their kyo had been extremely fond of Bindanda’s teacakes…
Far too much information to be scattering around the countryside. Information, in strictest sense, that should be classified. Information that he could use to his own advantage.
But it was late for that now. And as Cajeiri told it, the kyo, who could slag a space station with their weaponry, were in fact capable of reason. The boy had helped find that aspect of them. He was a hero in his own right, and was certainly basking in the admiration of his audience. Would he cheat the boy of that, with a request to keep it all quiet?
No, he would not.
He shut his eyes, still alive—he reminded himself—still alive after the shuttle ride, still alive after a very remarkable stretch of hours in which their only rest had been slow baking under the tarp, and slow freezing on blocks of ice, and a long ride on a very uncomfortable saddle, all in the fear of being shot or captured. The ground still felt as if it was moving under him, still with the thump and clack of the rails, or the thump and heave of the boat cutting through water, or the shuttle’s tires rolling rapidly down the pavement.
Just too damned much moving in the last few days. And too little real sleep. At the very edge of oblivion he forgot where he was, except he was down, and they’d landed, and the wind was moving, and atevi voices were around him. Jago was close by. And the mechieti were ripping the leaves off trees.
He could trust that, he decided. The solid earth was reliable. He finally let go all defenses, and did sleep, deeply.
He waked by daylight, with people moving about, with breakfast cooking, an aroma of crisping meat. As sore as he had anticipated being, he took three more pills, then set himself to rights, straightened his by now disreputable queue, shaved the old-fashioned way—no servants to comb his hair, dress him, all the quick attentions that had started most of his days in recent years. He missed Narani and Bindanda—missed their society and their quick briefing on everything in the household. But he found something morally refreshing, being sore in very inconvenient places, sitting on a rock beside a gurgling spring.
Jago brought him hot tea, his one special attention, and dropped to her haunches in front of him.
“How are you this morning, Bren-ji?”
“Very well, really. Will we ride today?”
“We must, Bren-ji,” she said.
“If the dowager can do it, nadi-ji, I certainly have no cause to complain.”
Jago folded her arms across her knees and leaned close. “We have a plan, Bren-ji, a dangerous plan. The dowager wishes to inquire at Tirnamardi.”
Tatiseigi’s country estate, about half a day’s ride out of Heitisi, the cluster of medium-sized towns that was the economic center of the Atageini holdings. Dangerous didn’t begin to describe it. “I heard, last night.”
“There is a relatively safe approach,” Jago said, “through the hunting reserve, which is contiguous with this woods, which both Taiben and the Atageini manage.”
As the animals they hunted were in common, so certain territory overlapped, and game-chase became a matter of hazy rights and who protested—civilly, at least modestly civilly, recently. One hoped it persisted.
“From there,” Jago said in a low voice, “we may be able to reach our Guild.”
Oh, now it got dangerous.
“By phone?” he asked, doubting it.
“It would be far better, Bren-ji, if we were to go ourselves.”
He didn’t like it. She knew he didn’t like it. He reserved a thought to himself: If you go, I go, and he was sure they’d try to outmaneuver him unless he strictly forbade it.
“What do you think, Jago-ji? Is venturing to Shejidan a good idea?”
Jago looked at the ground, then at him. “We consider this a risk, and we have reservations as to whether to attempt Tirnamardi, or to bypass Atageini territory and keep within Taiben. The whole question is where Lord Tatiseigi stands in the current crisis. The dowager is firm in her notion. Cenedi has doubts, too.”
“Cajeiri will be at risk.”
A second hesitation. “Not from Lord Tatiseigi,” she said. “Nor, we think, would the dowager be. You, on the other hand, Bren-ji—”
“Have no particular favor in his sight. I know. I enjoy very little favor from the majority of the population of the mainland, at the moment, one would think.”
He had never been particularly acceptable to this very conservative lord, who disliked human influence and all modern intrusions.
“There is misperception, perhaps.”
Loyally put. He did not think, however, that he had yet reached the foundations of Jago’s thinking.
“Do you, personally, think that Tabini-aiji is dead?” he asked.
“We have had no proof,” she said, and that was a delicate, revelatory matter: they had seen no proof they accepted, and therefore had no emotional disconnection of man’chi. They were, she and Banichi, still functioning as if their highest man’chi of all was intact, and that opinion would color all others, affect all other decisions, define all other logic—whether to go to the Guild, whether to bend every effort to empower Ilisidi, whether to agree to this mission entering Tatiseigi’s lands.
“If I were not with you,” he said—delicate, delicate, to probe an ateva’s man’chi too deeply—“would you now leave the dowager, Jago-ji?”
“Unlikely that we would,” she said. “But what she is doing, Bren-ji, places the heir and all his aspirations in Lord Tatiseigi’s hands. That notion has to be reckoned with. If Tabini-aiji is alive, this risk is a serious consideration, and we are not able to prevent the dowager doing it.”
He hadn’t quite seen through to that unhappy fact.
“Tatiseigi has,” he developed her thought, “every personal interest in seeing Cajeiri sit in Shejidan.”
“And that means he has proportionately less interest in seeing Tabini alive.”
“God.” In Mosphei’. He loosened the wilted lace at his throat. “But his interests cannot involve alienating Cajeiri by attacking his father. That move the boy would never forgive.”
“That would be one constraint on him, nandi—besides the operational difficulty of such a move, the fact that the camp opposing the aiji does not place any reliance on him, and, perhaps, whatever regard he holds for Lady Damiri. There is a complex of reasons. Also, Tabini would move to get Cajeiri back, if Tatiseigi were to take him in his charge, and Tabini-aiji with his guard is no small threat. If Lord Tatiseigi made a move to lay personal claim to the heir, then everyone would take sides. Violently.”
The denouement of the machimi, the moment in the play where loyalties suddenly came crystal-clear, and atevi had to act.
“Tatiseigi’s ambition is abated, not dead, Bren-ji. This is our thinking. He has always aspired to rule.”