Jago, however, elected to come in with him.
He walked in, made the motions of a little bow, without putting his head too far out of vertical, and received the wave of Tabini’s hand that meant sit down. “Aijiin-ma,” he said inclusively, and carefully settled.
His late arrival meant a round of tea and, gratefully, a cessation of the argument for a moment.
“You have had a physician’s attendance, surely, paidhi,” Tabini said.
“This morning, aiji-ma. Thank you. And one thanks the aiji-dowager. Banichi and I are doing very well this morning.”
“Your color is shocking,” Ilisidi said.
“I would not risk the best tea service, aiji-ma,” he said, and murmured, to the servant, “more sweet, nadi, if you will. Twice that.” Ordinarily he preferred mildly sweet, but this morning he had an uncommon yen for the fruity taste. And salty eggs. Electrolytes, his conscious brain said. “And do stay near me, nadi. Please take the cup from my hand immediately if I seem to drift.”
“You should not have come,” Tabini said. “You might have declined, paidhi-ji.”
“I could not keep this all morning,” he said, regarding the ring on his hand. He drew down a sip of tea, which did taste good, and faced the quandary of courtesy versus prudence—tea delayed the necessity to get up and return Tabini’s ring . . . he thought so, at least. He was just a little muddled about priorities. And about too many other things. And thoroughly light-headed, and not thinking well, since the exertion of coming here. “In just a moment, aiji-ma.”
“Fool paidhi.” Tabini set down his cup, got up, and came to him and held out his hand.
“Aiji-ma.” Bren had set down his cup, eased the ring off and dropped it into Tabini’s warm hand, which closed, momentarily on his.
“Cold,” Tabini said.
“The tea helps, aiji-ma.”
“Fool,” Tabini said, crossing the little space to sit down again. “Fool. You shielded your own bodyguard last night. I have every suspicion of it.”
“I truthfully cannot remember what I did, aiji-ma. We just sat against the wall, and there was a great deal of racket.”
“Ha,” Ilisidi said. “Racket, one can well imagine. We have had a lifelong curiosity to see the inside of that place. You have cheated us of the sight.”
“I did not get beyond the Council chamber, aiji-ma. And this morning I am losing little details of what I did see there. Which likely will suit the Guild well. But one does understand we came out with everyone alive. Is that true?”
“True,” Tabini said. “One is glad to say, it is true.” Tabini set his cup down, and now conversation could shift. “We have the old Guildmaster back, we hear. The dead have risen up, the missing have returned, the retired have rescinded their retirement, and a handful of high officials installed this last year have proven difficult to find. We hoped that the Council meeting would have had all of them on the premises, but we missed five individuals, we understand. The restored leadership is interviewing members, starting with assignments to the Bujavid, ascertaining man’chi, kinship, past service, asking for references, and any other testimony that may apply. Meanwhile we have a matter arising which will regard the paidhi-aiji, and if you are able to hear it, paidhi, it would be good to set your staff on it this morning.”
“One waits to hear, aiji-ma,” he murmured—hoping it was a small problem.
“The matter of Lord Aseida,” Tabini said, “is a storm blowing up quite rapidly, if predictably. The lords are all uneasy in what happened, and we are particularly concerned that the action may set your good name in question.”
“That fool Topari,” Ilisidi said, “is the one pushing this.”
“Topari is irrelevant,” Tabini said. “Of Tatiseigi’s enemies, he is the very least.”
“The man thinks in conspiracies,” Ilisidi said. “He will argue against the television image if we provide it. He understands such things can be edited. I have it on good authority, he will be the problem. The others will let this fool put his head up and see what the answer is. He is exceedingly upset—the arrest of a lord is his issue—so he claims.”
Topari. A lord of the Cismontane Association, south of the capital—a rural district even more conservative than the Padi Valley Association. It was a Ragi population, in the watershed this side of the Senjin Marid, and running up into the highlands.
That district, one readily recalled, detested humans on principle, did not support the space program, and Topari was part of that little knot of minor lords that, geographically speaking, sat between the Marid and the aishidi’tat. Regarding his relations with Tabini—Topari had not been signatory to Murini’s coup—but likely only because that region rarely joined anything.
The brain was working. The head still hurt, but he felt the little adrenaline surge.
“You can do nothing with him, paidhi,” Tabini said. “And we still say he will not be the principal problem.”
“Leverage,” Ilisidi said, “is his entire motive. Aseida could catch fire and he would care nothing for the man. But Topari sees a way to make a problem to our disadvantage and cause a problem.”
A problem aimed at the aiji-dowager, Bren thought. And asked: “What, aijiin-ma, is his position?”
Right question. Tabini looked very annoyed, and Ilisidi had a quick answer.
“He is currently in a lather over our agreement with the Taisigin Marid,” Ilisidi said. “That is the entire business.”
“I am not about to take issue at a Ragi lord for objecting to the removal of a Ragi lord,” Tabini said. “That is not the approach I can make to this situation, especially with my grandmother as one of the principals in this affair!”
“The paidhi asks the right question. What is his position? Nothing to do with Lord Aseida or lordly prerogatives. We are his real target. He objects to our trade agreement with the Taisigin Marid because he sees it as affecting the Senjin rail line which his grandfather built. He envisions the southern treaty as replacing his precious railroad—the only privately constructed rail still functioning in the aishidi’tat. Because of an imagined danger to his rail segment and his little slice of use-fees on shipments to Senji, he has made me his enemy—I believe tyrant was the precise wording when he discussed my character. And while a reasonable man might have retreated from his rhetoric of several decades past, he views the whole world as an absolute set of numbers. He views negotiation as a fault and a weakness. He calls me fickle, and changeable, but will apparently not believe I can back off from an inconvenient feud which never mattered greatly in the first place! That, Grandson of mine, is his entire concern with the fate of Lord Aseida, but I will wager you he will present a resolution calling for an investigation, and if he has his hand on it, it will be a resolution extravagant in its blame of us and Lord Tatiseigi for attacking that Kadagidi whelp who was trying to kill us!”
“You are not worried about your reputation,” Tabini said.
“Of course not!”