Don’t romanticize, his predecessor had told him. Don’t imagine. See and observe and report.
Accuracy. Not wishful thinking.
Lives relied on the paidhi’s accuracy. Billions of lives relied on the truth of his perception.
And relied equally on his representing both sides accurately to each other.
But, he thought, how much have we forgotten about them? How much have we encouraged them to lose? How much have we overridden, imposing our priorities and our technological sequence over theirs?
Or are those possibilities really forgotten here? Have they ever wholly been forgotten?
They rode to the very end of the ridge. Clouds were rolling in over the southern end of the lake, dark gray beneath, flashing with lightnings, brooding over slate-gray waters. But sunlight slanted over the blue peaks to the east, turning the water along the Malguri shore as bright as polished silver. A dragonette leapt from its nest among the rocks, crying protest to the winds, and thunder rumbled. Another dragonette was creeping back up the mountain the long, slow way they must, once they’d flown, wings folded, wing-claws finding purchase on the steep rocks.
Dragonettes existed in Shejidan. Buildings near the park had slanted walls, he’d heard, specifically to afford them purchase. Atevi still valued them, for their stubbornness, for their insistence on flying, when they knew the way back was uncertain and fraught with dangers.
Predator on the wing and potential prey on the return.
Ilisidi turned Babs about on the end of the trail, and took a downward, slanting course among the rocks. He followed.
In a time more of riding, they passed an old and ruined building Cenedi said was an artillery installation from a provincial dispute. But its foundations, Cenedi said, had been older than that, as a fortress called Tadiiri, the Sister, once bristling with cannon.
“How did it go to ruins?” he asked.
“A falling out with Malguri,” Cenedi said. “And a barrel of wine that didn’t agree with the aiji of Tadiiri or his court.”
Poison. “But the whole fortress?” he blurted out.
“It lacked finesse,” Cenedi said.
So he knew of a certainty then what Cenedi was, the same as Banichi and Jago. And he believed now absolutely that his near demise had embarrassed Cenedi, as Cenedi had said, professionally.
“After that,” Cenedi said, “Tadiiri was demolished, its cannon taken down. You saw them at the front entrance, as you drove in.”
He had not even been sure they were authentic. A memorial, he had thought. He didn’t know such things. But the age of wars and cannon had been so brief—and war on the earth of the atevi so seldom a matter of engagement, almost always of maneuver, and betrayal, with leaders guarded by their armies. It was assassination one most had to guard against, on whatever scale.
And here he rode with Ilisidi, and her guard, leaving the one Tabini had lent him. Or was it, in atevi terms, a maneuver, a posturing, a declaration of position and power, their forcing him to join them? He might have found something else unhealthful to drink, or eat. There were so many hazards a human could meet, if they meant him harm.
And Banichi and Cenedi did speak, and did intrude into each other’s territory—Banichi had been angry at him for accepting the invitation, Banichi had said there was no way to retrieve him from his promise—but all of it was for atevi reasons, atevi dealing with a situation between Tabini and his grandmother, at the least, and maybe a trial of Banichi’s authority in the house: he simply couldn’t read it.
Maybe Ilisidi and Tabini had made their point and maybe, hereafter, he could hope for peace between the two wings of the house—Tabini’s house, Tabini’s politics with generations before him, and paidhiin before himself.
Diplomacy, indeed, he thought, falling back to Babs’ tail again, in his place and deftly advised of it.
He understood who ruled in Malguri. He had certainly gotten that clear and strong. He supposed, through Banichi, that Tabini had.
But in the same way he supposed himself a little safer now, inside Ilisidi’s guardianship as well as Tabini’s.
VII
« ^ »
In a courtyard echoing with shouts and the squeals of mecheiti, Nokhada extended a leg at his third request, mostly, Bren thought, because the last but her had already done the same.
He slithered down Nokhada’s sun-warmed side, and viewed with mistrust the mecheita’s bending her neck around and nibbling his sleeve, butting capped but still formidable tusks into his side as he tried to straighten the twisted rein. But he wasn’t so foolish as to press on Nokhada’s nose again, and Nokhada lifted her head, sniffing the air, a black mountain between him and the mid-morning sun, complaining at something unseen—or only liking the echoes of her own voice.
The handlers moved in to take the rein. He gave Nokhada a dismissing pat on the shoulder, figuring that was due. Nokhada made a rumbling sound, and ripped the rein from his hand, following the rest of the group the handlers were leading away into the maze of courtyards.
“Use her while you’re here,” Ilisidi said, near him. “At any time, at any hour. The stables have their instructions to accommodate the paidhi-aiji.”
“The dowager is very kind,” he said, wondering if there was skin left on his palm.
“Your seat is still doubtful,” she said, took her cane from an attendant and walked off toward the steps.
He took that for a dismissal.
But she stopped at the first step and looked back, leaning with both hands on her cane. “Tomorrow morning. Breakfast.” The cane stabbed the air between them. “No argument, nand’ paidhi. This is your host’s privilege.”
He bowed and followed Ilisidi up the steps in the general upward flow of her servants and her security, who probably overlapped such functions, like his own.
His lip was swollen, he had lost the outer layer of skin on his right hand, intimate regions of his person were sore and promising to get sorer, and by the dowager’s declaration, he was to come back for a second try tomorrow, a situation into which he seemed to have opened a door that couldn’t be shut again.
He followed all the way up the steps to the balcony of Ilisidi’s apartment, that being the only way up into the castle he knew, while the dowager, on her way into her inner apartments, paid not the least further attention to his being there—which was not the rudeness it would have been among humans: it only meant the aiji-dowager was disinterested to pursue business further with an inferior. At their disparity of rank she owed him nothing; and in that silence, he was free to go, unless some servant should deliver him some instruction to the contrary.
None did. He trailed through the dowager’s doorway, and on through the public reception areas of her apartment, tagged all the way by her lesser servants, who opened the outermost doors for him and bowed and wished him good fortune in his day as he left.
Good fortune, he wished them, in his turn, with appropriate nods and bows on their part, after which he trekked off down the halls, bruised and damaged, but with a knowledge now of the land, the provinces, the view and the command of the castle, and even what was the history and origin of the cannon he could see through the open front doors.
Where—God help him—several vehicles were parked.