They’d started at dawn, they were going on past noon—they weren’t going to be back by dark, that became clear as they kept going.
But now that Jase failed to besiege him with questions he began to have questions of his own, no longer wherethey were going: that was, he suspected almost beyond question, eventually, Mogari-nai.
Why should they be going there? Considering the contingent of vans that had moved in behind them, coupled with Tano’s and Algini’s absence, he had a notion, too, of that answer: that Tabini-aiji was not pleased with the establishment at Mogari-nai, or the Messengers’ Guild.
Dared the aiji take on a Guild, and what would happen if he did? The Astronomers had fallen from highest of all the Guilds when they’d misinterpreted the Foreign Star, when the ship had appeared in the heavens the first time and slowly built the station. In the time when the Astronomers had predicted the future, they had entirely failed to know the nature of their universe, and they had fallen.
Possibly the Messengers had failed to know the nature of theiruniverse, and the aiji had resolved to see that his messages flowed accurately. But to take on the Messengers when the political situation was so difficult and so fraught with trouble, with Direiso urging his overthrow and Hanks and her radio broadcasting to atevi small aircraft.
Yet there it was, if he thought about it. The radio.. Another communicationsproblem: another problem that could be laid right in the Messengers’ laps. Radio traffic was a problem of which the Messengers were in charge, which Mogari-nai could have heard, especially situated where they were, near the coast.
If there were difficulty with one Guild, what other Guilds would stand by the aiji most firmly? What Guilds hadstood most firmly by the aiji? The Mathematicians—and the Assassins.
Direiso had benefit in that illicit radio. Shewould stand by the Messengers, if they were turning a blind eye to the problem.
The government had potential difficulties up here. And Banichi and Jago weren’t saying a thing.
Maybe it was Ilisidi’s orders. He had the sudden sinking feeling Ilisidi had found their vacation a fine excuse to be out here, and the paidhiin might be superfluous to her intentions to visit Mogari-nai.
Certainly Jase was.
But dammit, there were things he needed to know too. And he was going to find out, if they could just shake loose some answers.
19
It was a long, long ride at a fair clip after that. Nokhada disliked eating dust and fought to get forward, which Bren fought to prevent, not wishing to leave Jase alone, even if the spacing necessary to the mechieti for their sheer body size made conversation difficult.
That meant that the strangers to Ilisidi’s company all rode in a knot that strung out at times, but never broke entirely apart so long as Bren kept a tight rein on Nokhada, who eventually seemed to resign herself to the notion that due to some failure of ambition or temporary insanity on her rider’s part they were not going to dash forward and attempt to occupy the same space as Cenedi’s mechieta—for maybe this little while.
Ilisidi, meanwhile, ignored them to hold consultation with the armed young men who took her orders, and one or the other would fall back to the rear guard. Bren kept glancing at the horizons, asking himself what was going on. There was no recourse to the pocket coms, nothing to indicate any problem. But something had changed.
There was a wicked, angry streak in this woman, not just in a human opinion but in twospecies’ ways of looking at it. Ilisidi had been genial at the dinner last night; that was the velvet over the steel. Ilisidi was the gracious lady, the lame old woman—and the aristocrat, lord of her scaffold-supported hall. She’d arranged that crystal-laden table simply because it was difficult, and because her staff, too, did the impossible at her whim.
This morning she’d ceased to make things difficult for her staff and, astride Babsidi, whose four strong legs carried her with more speed, agility and strength than any man alive, she began to make things difficult for them. It was her way of saying to the world, he began to think, Those who follow mehave to follow at disadvantage and difficulty. It was the condition of her life. She was notaiji. But those who served her treated her wishes as if she were.
And to the powers around Tabini she said, When you who rejected meas aiji suddenly want my help, damn you all, you’ll bleed for it.
So the aiji’s security (along with the paidhiin, who were excused from the normal considerations of man’chi and courtesies due, but not from the suffering part of it) didn’t get full information from her, either: they were simply supposed to follow in blind obedience whenever fortune and chance, those devils of Tabini’s designs, put his agents temporarily under her instructions.
That was one way Bren summed it up, having seen it in operation at Malguri and again in the Padi Valley.
Or possibly it was nothing of retribution on Tabini at all.
Perhaps it was just the native style of the old-fashioned, unabashed atevi autocrat she was—as old-fashioned in some ways as the fortress of Malguri off in the east—to make them follow her only under her terms.
As if, ateva to the core, she provedthe direction not only of the man’chi of the mechieti she lent them, but that of the men she led.
Bren reasoned his way to that precarious point, while slowly stretching muscles he only used when he skied and when he rode, and bruising points of contact he onlycontacted when he rode. He’d asked for it. He’d asked for it for good reasons, but he’d forgotten how badly one could ache after a ride with Ilisidi.
There was, however, the suffering of the boy from Dur, who now rode with inexpert desperation and, being taller, leaned more, with a more committed center of gravity.
The boy from Dur fell off, and fortunately held to the harness on his way down.
The dowager kept going, as Bren reined in, as the boy’s mechieta tried to keep going, as Banichi and one of Ilisidi’s men reined in and Jago went on with Jase, who had no success stopping Janari at alclass="underline" if the herd was going, Jase was going.
“Bren!” Jase called back in alarm, as if he were being kidnapped.
The boy from Dur meanwhile proved that one of atevi weight and from a standing start (or from upside down with one foot still in the bend of the mechieta’s neck and the other on the hither side of the beast, while hanging onto the saddle straps) could not leap or even crawl back into the saddle. To a likely devotee of television machimi, it was surely an embarrassment.
“I’d get off,” Banichi said dryly, as he, Bren, and Ilisidi’s man Haduni all watched from mechieta-back. “I’d make him kneel and get up from the ground.”
One suspected if anyone could dothe television trick, Banichi might, but the boy from Dur gave up his foothold on the mechieta’s neck and hopped to the ground, whereupon the mechieta decided he was through for the day and decided to wander off.
The boy was clearly mortified, took a swat with the riding crop while holding to the rein and the mechieta bolted, jerking the rein from the boy’s hand and flinging him flat.
Haduni rode after the mechieta, which was on its way to join the herd.
The boy nursed a sore palm and bowed and bowed again.
“I’m sorry, nandi. I’m very sorry.”