“Curious, nand’ dowager, about your purpose here.”
“Ah.” Dark was coming down on them. “Curious. I thought you might be. What do you thinkwe’re doing out here besides pasturing the mechieti and enjoying the sea air?”
“Annoying Mogari-nai.”
He took a chance. He was relatively certain of that much.
And he amused the dowager, whose shoulders rose and fell as she leaned upon her silver-headed cane. “The earth station, they call it. This unsightly great bowl. An offense, I say.”
“A shame they put it on such a lovely view. But how else could it also watch Mospheira?”
They sat crosslegged. On ground still cold and damp with spring. And ate fish sandwiches.
“Do you think so?” Ilisidi asked, and he had the feeling that it was no casual, habitual challenge, but a question very much to the point of the hour. “Let me tell you, nadiin, before the aijiin sat in Shejidan, before humans were a suspicion in the skies, before foolish atevi had made stupid smoking machines to run on rails across the country and frighten the creatures that lived there, and before that eyesore of an earth station existed or a petal sail had dropped down to annoy us, there was war in this place. Where we sit, there was death and bloodshed.” Ilisidi held out her hand for a refill of her cup, and a young man ducked close and low to refill it. “Bones probably underlie this very hilltop. And do you know why, heir of Dur?”
“The island of Dur,” the young voice said, “was held by the heresy of the Gan, and they used to send ships up and down the coast to collect gold and grain, and they killed anybody that opposed them. They held the whole coast and they raided on Mospheira. But aijiin from several townships began to follow the aiji of Wiigin, and they raided the island and set up—set up our line.”
“Wiigin it was,” the dowager mused. And pointed a dark forefinger. “Source of this traitorous tower, this hotbed of conspiracy.”
“But now,” the young man said, “nand’ dowager, we follow the Barjidi.”
“Since the War of the Landing. That now. Two hundred years of now.”
“Since the War, nand’ dowager.” The boy had become very quiet, very wary, sensing that he was being stalked, Bren was sure, and asked himself to what end Ilisidi was proceeding.
“The petal sails came down on Mospheira,” Ilisidi recalled, “the wandering machines tore up the land and the stones of the Gan, and for a time that was convenient for Barjida-aiji, that the last stronghold of the Gan should fall to such an unforeseen threat. The grandmother stones were downed not by fleshly hands, but by these reeking machines. Machines struck down the heresy.”
“Yes,” the boy said. “And all the atevi on Mospheira left and settled on this coast.”
“Foolish politics,” Ilisidi said. “The Gan lords attempted to deal with what they thought were men descended from the moon. And it killed them. Did it not, nand’ paidhi?”
He did not want part of any quarrel, ancestral or otherwise. The atevi of the coast held just reasons for dislike of humans: many of them had moved off Mospheira to escape human contact, human ways; more had moved off when the War of the Landing had ravaged the island; the last had left when the Treaty of Mospheira had given the land to humans, the whole of a vast and once prosperous island.
“We did each other great harm, nand’ dowager.” A gust battered them.
“A good night to be under canvas,” Ilisidi said. “And a strong wind rising. But what would you tell our guest from Dur, regarding humans? Should he fear them?”
Loaded question. Very.
“Yes, nand’ dowager. At least one should remain prudent.”
“Are all humans on the island reasonable people?”
“Some are, nand’ dowager. Some are very well disposed to the peace. And I have discovered some are not.”
It was an infelicity of two, unbalanced, positive and negative. It could not be allowed to stand. It was, in its way, a question. But by inviting the posing of two, the dowager had encouraged it. Thiswas the difference between competency and fluency: thiswas the line he’d begun to cross in his off-the-cuff negotiations, the line across which humans who’d dared it had frequently blundered. Hefelt a kind of elation, aware of what he was doing as Wilson-paidhi never had figured it, aware the dowager was getting responses with which shecould know she was understood.
And with a twist of her mouth, as at some sour taste, the dowager added,
“The Kadigidi are fools.”
“I agree.”
“It lastingly troubles me that I did not shoot that woman.”
Direiso was a possibility. But he knew that womanhad one meaning to Ilisidi. “Hanks-paidhi, aiji-ma?”
“Hanks.” Definitely a sour taste. “Melon-headed, my ally, did I tell you?”
Jase had to wonder about his vocabulary.
“Lord Geigi?” Bren asked.
“One had an excellent chance to shoot Hanks-paidhi,” Cenedi interposed. “And Geigi protected her.”
“Melon-head,” Ilisidi said.
“So what didhappen, aiji-ma?” It was a point of his extreme curiosity. “One hears that there was breakage of small objects.”
“Nothing of taste,” Ilisidi said. “Oh, it was easy for Geigi to gain admittance to Direiso’s estate. Direiso had offered Geigi money to pay off a certain”—a waggle of Ilisidi’s fingers—“oil investment gone bad. Saigimi had the extreme impatience to call it due immediately. Saigimi’s wife is, you may have heard, Geigi’s cousin. And sheheld the financial note on the house at Dalaigi. She had no idea that Geigi dared come to me with the matter.” By now a smile was tugging at Ilisidi’s lips. “Silly mistake. And of course Direiso had involved herself with that detestable human woman who had embarrassed them all. Saigimi had taken her from the capital, so my sources say, and brought her to Direiso’s estate somewhat against his will.”
One hadto be aware of the lord of Dur’s son, who was sitting still as a stone. And themselves, Tabini’s for certain, when Tabini himself had not been able to discover the things Ilisidi was saying.
Ilisidi held out her cup, and more tea arrived in it.
“Well, well, and having taken her from the capital before she spoke any more such foolishness and proposed death rays coming from the station,” Ilisidi said, “he was of a notion to take her to his house in the Marid, from which she would only speak at his permission. Covering his embarrassment over the faster-than-light notion, as happened. When you were able to explain the paradox, it was clear that houses would topple, and notGeigi’s. Meanwhile Direiso had gained Hanks as her guest. She called Geigi’s cousin, Saigimi’s wife, up to her house in the Padi Hills, and things were moving very rapidly. Murini, Direiso’s heir, had gone to the Atageini— hisnerve was weakening when it came to such an outrageous provocation of the aiji; but Tatiseigi locked him in a storeroom and refused to deal with him. Tatiseigi phoned mesaying he had apprehended vermin in his cellar, meaning that he had some prisoner, of course, and was notifying me, and thatwas when that fool Saigimi shot up the lilies.”
He felt his heart beating faster and faster.
“To be rid of me?” he asked in the silence the dowager left for a sip of tea.
“The action would at one stroke have embarrassed the Atageini, whom Saigimi saw as dangerous, and if it had eliminated you, who were seen as in my grandson’s man’chi, it would have elevated the value of the human woman. They were planning an attack on nand’ Jase at the landing site, and would thus have all the paidhiin, a situation which looked quite impressive.
“At this point I approached them to contest with Direiso—as Direiso privately thought—to try to take leadership of her movement, and sent Geigi as my emissary, having myself paid his debts not an hour before.