“One would not expect it,” Banichi said. “Nor should we discuss our opinions of his whereabouts under this roof.”
“Indeed,” Jago said. They were speaking for eavesdroppers’ consumption. Listening devices. Jago had confirmed it, and she might well be the one of the team carrying electronic means of knowing for sure. Tatiseigi favored antiquated lighting—but this said nothing about Guild members in the household, who, one reasonably presumed, would not use centuries-old equipment.
But this news—this news, if it was true and even if Tatiseigi only believed it to be true—this affected how they dealt with the old man, and the turns things might now take. He was keenly aware that he himself had become an issue, because of his advice to Tabini, and that it was likely a very hot issue under this roof. He personally had two choices, as he saw it—personally absorb the blame for everything Tabini had done, which left Tabini looking weak and reliant on bad advice—or vindicate himself, and thereby vindicate Tabini in the eyes of a lord who had voted against the space program, decried the shift in economy, hated modern technology, human culture, foreigners in general, and had taken a position in those regards, publicly and loudly, for years.
“Would it be possible,” he said to his staff, putting the final touches on his lace cuffs, “rather than us trying to go personally to Shejidan, for us to urge members of nand’ Tatiseigi’s staff to go for us, and notify the Guild that we are intent on reaching them—even ask them to put a hold on Guild actions until we can arrive?”
It was a legal question, on one side of the coin. It was a question of lordly opinion on the other, as to whether Tatiseigi would honestly cooperate with an effort on Tabini’s behalf—and, presumably, Damiri’s.
“It would be technically possible,” Banichi said, “legally possible. Tatiseigi certainly has standing in the question, as a relative.”
“It might save lives,” Tano said. “Through them, we might obtain a safe conduct for the paidhi. If he asked that, it might work.”
“Saving our own lives, among others,” Jago said.
“The Guild, debating its course of action,” Banichi said, “is only doing so as a subterfuge. They wish not to support Murini as legitimate, not to support Tabini-aiji either, until questions are resolved. They will debate, at all hours of session, if someone has to stand and recite poetry to continue the flow of words—as I imagine they must have read several volumes in by now. All this is a way of remaining neutral, and it will be impossible for them to dissolve the session until they can vote one way or the other, if the question has been put—they will be reasonably anxious to find some resolution. The traitors have not persuaded them to end debate, and one suspects that now the Kadigidi themselves are urgently raising their offers and making promises they would not make otherwise, ceding portions of their authority to the Guild—which the Guild seems to have been wise enough to ignore. If we convince them to send for the paidhi to testify, this would represent a break of a sort ominous for the other side. They might try to do something about it, at very, very great risk of offending the Guild.”
Bren asked, out of his own musings: “Might Tabini himself have asked them to stalemate, knowing he could not carry the vote until we came back?”
Banichi thought about that. So did all his staff. “It would certainly be a canny move,” Banichi said. “His own staff has evidently taken a heavy strike. It would have impaired his ability to take direct action. Worse, he may have suspected treachery from the inside.”
Who, possibly, would be a traitor on Tabini’s staff? Bren asked himself, and dared not ask aloud, nor did Banichi’s glance at the peripheries of the room encourage another question—not in the very house that was most suspect. If there had been treachery, he would lay odds it would never be one of the men who’d been with Tabini forever, not those Guild members born into his man’chi. No. It had to be someone who’d come into the household from outside. Staff acquisitions were rare.
Except—except most of Tabini’s own original staff were male. A lady needed female staff; Ilisidi’s preference for ‘her young men’ was the scandalous exception, since her husband’s death, since she had achieved the status of aiji-dowager, and moved in staff from Malguri, and gave not a damn for propriety.
Damiri’s staff, on the other hand, was Atageini and, proper to a lady, female. Staff from her own home, persons close to her, had come with her when she married Tabini… Bindanda, of his own staff, was one of the handful Tatiseigi had sent, and he knew it, and by now he was sure Bindanda knew he knew…
And, God, if only, he thought, if only the dish at Mogari-nai were up, and Bindanda were able to report to Tatiseigi his experiences directly—things might be much easier.
But as for spies in Tabini’s house, and ways information might have flowed, and those by whom a lethal strike might have been organized—
This house, this province, had bordered the Kadigidi since medieval times. And who knew how many and how deep the cross-connections of all sorts that had grown between Atageini and Kadigidi, over centuries?
That certainly wasn’t a topic he wanted to raise where they might be overheard.
It could mean Tatiseigi himself was in danger, a life the Kadigidi could take at any time, a life preserved from assassination in the specific hope he would serve as a magnet for intrigue, and maybe in the hope he might be a lure to draw Tabini in. Their coming here, their welcome, could tilt a delicate balance.
Tatiseigi had not apparently suffered any Kadigidi attack here, even when Tabini had been here—if he had, it would surely have made conversation last night, in Jago’s hearing. Which could also mean that the conspirators had not been able to get a spy back into this house from Shejidan in time to advise them of Tabini’s presence here, before he was gone again.
Or—it could mean that the initial coup that took Tabini from power had Atageini fingerprints somewhere around the edges of it, and things were not so safe here as they seemed. He could not believe that Tatiseigi would have ceded political control to an upstart like Murini. He could not believe Lady Damiri herself would ever have betrayed Tabini—in the machimi, betrayal from a previously well-disposed spouse was absolutely classic, but she had no motive, and her man’chi to her great-uncle had always been more a case of exasperated tolerance—her parents were dead, her great-uncle was her clan head, and she had been his ward, which had put her in constant contention with the old man as she reached her majority—and her own more modern opinions.
Besides, Damiri being the mother of the heir, and factually outstripping her uncle in power in the nation at large, she had no motive to strike at the very power she shared with Tabini…
No motive, that was, unless she had taken violent offense at Tabini shipping their child out on a starship, to be thoroughly taught and indoctrinated by his conservative great-grandmother Ilisidi on the way.
Had Tabini even consulted her in that move? He would have believed Tabini would not act without her, on that matter, but—
Tatiseigi, on the other hand—dismissing treachery originating from Cajeiri’s mother—Tatiseigi had a massive array of unsatisfied ambitions, and a family history of desire for rule. His surest path to power logically involved setting Cajeiri in power in Shejidan, and that was already the appointed succession, if Tabini only stayed in power, and it was nowhere in the picture if Murini established his own line. Tatiseigi’s other concerns must involve keeping Damiri from supplanting him inside the clan—which she had never pressed to do, likely having no wish to be encumbered by clan affairs and a populace which shared its lord’s attitudes toward technology.