But the aiji-dowager and the aiji’s son stayed, and Tabini let them—refusing to seem to retreat. You fortified Najida. And that gave the renegade Guild a grand opportunity. They escalated the conflict, and so doing, laid the bloody dagger at my door.
The Guild in Shejidan met to declare me the targetcnot, one strongly suspects, that they did not know the truth about the operation—but if I were out of the way, Taisigi territory became the most logical base, adjacent to Sarini province and Senji. They would take the Marid by force and install a Ragi authority. Which you must admit, they came close to doing.
The dowager somehow got intelligence of what was going on within the Guild—I strongly believe it—and contacted me directly, in direct opposition to the intentions of her grandson and of the Guild in Shejidan. She made an offer.
I do not hesitate to accept it. The benefit to me is direct. The benefit to the Marid is direct. I am under constraint, but I have no motive to resist this plan, which offers me the Marid, accommodates the aiji-dowager, and, one now believes, may ultimately bring her grandson into agreement with the situation.
You may assume that I am lying in some of this. But it will be a useful truth that may mend situations for you. None of us like to be used by third parties. We deeply resent such things.
I will never tell you which parts are lies. But I promise to base my future actions faithfully on this document as if all these things were true.
And that, paidhi, is the most significant truth that has ever passed between us.
“Damn!” Bren said when he had finished it. He passed it across to Banichi and Jago, who could share the document, and settled back with arms folded.
“Is something other than what was represented, Bren-ji?” Tano asked.
“Lord Machigi is what he is,” Bren said. “You shall see, nadiin-
ji, when you read it. This man is full of turns. But so is Tabini. And so is the dowager. One is not sure what one has loosed into the aishidi’tat. He is a man of qualities. One is simply not certain in what direction they tend.”
In due time Banichi finished reading—clearly so. He let expression show—a little perplexity in a lift of the brows. And Jago, half a beat later: “The Dojisigi and the renegades together did not find a way to attack this man directly. One should remember that.”
The paper went to Tano and Algini, who read it together.
“He did say,” Banichi said, “that you should use this paper as you see fit.”
Banichi and Jago had been there in the breakfast room when the statement was made.
“One believes both the dowager and Tabini-aiji should see it, nadiin-ji. With all it entails. One does not want to inflame the situation. But they do need to see it, do they not?”
“The question is, at all odds,” Jago said, “whether he will keep his pledge to stand by this version of the truth.”
“Is it not?” Bren said, and thought—in Ragi, which was the only safe way to think on the topic, There is no one in the world more unhappy than a solitary ateva. Machigi said it: he has no relatives in his own district. His aishid is all he has. His clan is virtually wiped out, except a contract marriage to a Dojisigi, and he himself has not yet married. He has taken no risk of that sortcand begetting a child is a risk for him. He says he was about to marry a woman fifteen years his senior. But that is all politics.
And it may, like every other statement in that letter, be a lie.
Machigi is young to have landed in such a position. He does not admit to fear. Possibly he feels none, since he has never known a time when he was not a target.
For a young man, he is scarily short of good advisors. But the four closest to him are extraordinary, at least in combination.
He vividly remembered having a gun leveled at him—in Machigi’s hands. And with equal vividness, he recalled Machigi’s immediate and easy change of tactics when he had not spooked. Machigi had become sarcastic, sullen, then increasingly outgoing and cheerful. Shift of masks. One after the other. And which was real?
Yet—I shall miss you, Machigi had said.
Right before handing him this outrageous document, a flat-out warning that no one should investigate the truth who did not want to find out things that would be very inconvenient for their future relationship.
I promise to base my future actions faithfully on this document as if all these things were true.
The scoundrel, Bren thought. The outright scoundrel. Jago was right. Two dangerous neighbors, Murini and the shadow Guild alike, had hesitated to take on this young man.
And once the Shejidan branch of the Guild had moved into his land, Machigi had advanced straight toward Najida, dodging fire, slipping right through the zone of conflict and helping deliver a death blow to the shadow Guild.
With what intent? To protect the dowager?
Or to attack her, if the Shejidan Guild didn’t stand by its word?
If Machigi had intended simply to run for safety, any ship in his harbor would have carried him to far safer territory in the Isles with far less effort. No. Machigi had come straight for Najida. He had gone for Ilisidi, pursuing, presumably, not her life, but the alliance that she offered him against the Guild renegades—perhaps because he saw that the scales were rapidly tipping toward the dowager as a powerbroker, and he had her offer dangling in front of him.
Machigi had, damn him, likely done at least half the things he was accused of.
So did they waste time in investigating what he haddone, or proceed as the letter said, from a fresh start based on what its creator clearly said was a fabrication?
And might not be a fabrication at all, only a truth cast in the most defiant way possible. Deal with me, but do not debate me. I shall not answer your questions.
At times being human was a real difficulty in dealing with atevi politics.
Algini said, having read the letter, “He is taking the advice of his bodyguard. Good.”
He didn’t read the second letter, the one addressed to Ilisidi, which was sealed with the wax seal of the Taisigin Marid. He did worry about it.
He had a drink of fruit juice from the well-appointed galley on the bus, then settled down in the quiet his aishid afforded him and began to work on his notes for the upcoming report to Tabini-aiji.
His brother Toby and Barb had sailed for Port Jackson, worrisome in the weather, but they were good, experienced sailors. They’d enjoy the storm that had swept across. That was Toby’s attitude.
Najida was about to undergo a major renovation in addition to the repairs. He’d asked an architect to design a new wing, from his sketches. Getting the main hall in order was a priority. He’d promised a wedding venue to a village girl, in payment for a dress, and that promise, among others, had to be kept.
Cajeiri was presumably safely back in his parents’ care and not apt to leave it until they let their guard down, which would not be soon.
And the Edi were busy staking out the ground where they would build a new center, on land donated by Lord Geigi out of his estate lands. A new Grandmother Stone would go up there, marking something very, very important to the Edi people.
Jago came up the aisle to say they had just heard from Lord Geigi, in fact: Lord Geigi had wanted to be notified when they were headed for the airport—which meant, diplomatically speaking, when they had gotten safely away from Tanaja with everything in order, and knew that they were getting out in one piece. Geigi had been just a little worried about the visit.