“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.”
“And he cannot. If the hasdrawad would not elect the dowager, they would never elect him.”
“The hasdrawad may have suffered changes in membership, during the present troubles.”
“That is so.”
“The boy, however, with him as regent—would have far less trouble being confirmed. If his father were dead, and Damiri being Atageini—Tatiseigi would indeed rise in importance. This move of the dowager’s, bringing us under his roof, is fraught with hazards.”
“Do you think, Jago-ji, that the dowager herself might be in more danger than she thinks?”
“Possibly.” A frown creased Jago’s brow. “Possibly so, Bren-ji. Sometimes, lacking certain instincts, you do see astonishingly clearly.”
“Not lacking my own species’ instincts, I assure you, and this hazard is understandable. Can we not talk her out of it? Can you reason with Cenedi?”
“Cenedi has tried to persuade her: he wishes to settle her in Taiben and then venture against the Kadigidi himself. Cenedi himself knows the risk, knows your man’chi. He would not blame us for withdrawing from this venture and trying to find Tabini. Nor, I think, would the dowager herself blame us.”
It was an absolute wilderness, the forest of atevi emotions, atevi decisions, atevi snap judgments, all rooted in urges humans didn’t feel at that depth, at that intensity. “She is counting, is she not, Jago-ji, on the boy having a strong emotional force with his uncle?”
“Counting very heavily on her own, one believes, nandi, considering the boy’s last emotional impact on his uncle was set in a wide expanse of concrete.”
He was caught off guard. Laughed, a brief sneeze of laughter, despite the grimness of the situation. Tatiseigi was a notorious curmudgeon, who had suffered considerably from public amusement at the incident in question. And one did fear Tatiseigi would not find Cajeiri that much improved, not from his conservative point of view—a sober thought which instantly killed the laughter, and did nothing to form a rational conclusion. If Jago was perplexed, caught between two loyalties, he was caught in his own. He had their welfare at heart, and the boy’s. And Tabini’s, granted the aiji was still alive. And he had the whole outcome to consider, and the whole human-atevi-kyo problem to weigh into the equation.
While Ilisidi, damn her, had always been an incredibly nervy, canny player in atevi politics, and he had no wish to undermine her best effort, if she could shock the fence-sitting lord into alliance. There he met his own division of common sense and emotion. She might be making a monumental mistake. Or a very smart move.
But at the bottom of the stack, on the scale at which they operated, he had no right to choose personal safety. He was a resource, a resource of information and defense for the fallen regime, one it could no more afford to lose than it could afford to lose Ilisidi or Cajeiri, if Tabini himself was alive. But in order to be useful, he had to be active and get the information public in the most credible way. He had his own reputation to restore, and if he could not defend their mission and its outcome to one fairly civilized old man under Ilisidi’s influence, he stood precious little chance of persuading the rest of the continent.
“One cannot hide in the bushes,” he said. “We did not come back from space to do that, Jago-ji. One has no real idea how to find Tabini. One rather thinks he may find us if we can make just a modest amount of noise and if Atageini territory is open to him. And the things that Tabini did that were right, that were essential—that succeeded—these things have to be vindicated to the public at large, do they not, Jago-ji? If I were to separate from Ilisidi, I, as much as you, need to go to Shejidan. I need to speak to your Guild, and to the legislature. I need to give people the information I have. I have to defend Tabini’s decisions for everyone to hear. Words, Jago, words are my whole defense. Words stand a chance of changing minds. I have to gain what respect I can recover, starting, one supposes, with this very influential lord.”
A moment of silence, then, Jago’s gold gaze steady and honest. “You are not necessarily wrong, Bren-ji.”
“Good.”
“So,” Jago said, “our way from here—”
“Lies through Atageini territory,” Bren said. “So our intent may have diverged ever so slightly from the dowager’s, but our path logically does not.”
“One concurs, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “I shall tell Banichi.”
She did not go back to the conference. She went and sat apart from that gathering, on a rock, arms on her knees, waiting. In a little time Banichi came and squatted near her.
Bren continued fussing with his lace and dusting his boots. The conference at the fireside broke up, and the young people, who had been settled in their own conspiracy over near the mechieti, began to look for saddles. Cajeiri was limping a little this morning. He didn’t complain overmuch about it, doggedly maintaining his dignity, one suspected, particularly in front of the two older youngsters, who were inured to the saddle, and who had likely never in their lives felt this particular pain.
Ilisidi had to be helped up to her feet, but she walked and stood, somehow, shaking off assistance, and ordered Nawari to saddle her mechieti.
Bren figured he had best go see to his own gear. He thought he could tell which mechieti he had ridden yesterday, and which was its tack, and no one else objected to his selection of gear. Tano and Algini left consultations and hurried to help him. He decided he was very grateful for that, having disgraced himself last evening, and having no wish to contest the creature’s tusks, as sore as he already was.
Meanwhile the small side conference between Banichi and Jago had broken up fairly inconspicuously, as Banichi and Jago sought their own tack and Banichi found the means to talk to Tano and Algini.