This kept his minor son and Ilisidi both separate from the center of politics. It kept the center of the aishidi’tat very happy, in the absence of their chief irritant, the aiji-dowager, but Valasi’s concentration on trying to keep power out of Ilisidi’s hands had left the west coast of the aishidi’tat embittered: they viewed Ilisidi as their ally, and her departure to Malguri as Valasi’s definitive refusal to deal with their problems.
The west coast clans, notably the Maschi at Targai and Tirnamardi, had been forced to play a cautious kind of politics, balanced between the Edi tribal people, who supplemented their traditional fishing with piracy and wrecking, and the Marid clans, who saw the west coast as naturally theirs. Marid shipping was the principle target of the piracy. The Marid at times pursued their aims with contract marriages in the west, but all the same, given the resentments of the Edi people, unwilling settlers on that coast, and clan wars inside the Marid, all these moves came to was a generally unsettled condition on the west coast. The north coast fared somewhat better, in the happy relationship of the Gan tribal people with their nearest neighbors, also mariners, on the island of Dur—
But the adjacent Northern Association, while not in the same ferment as the south, and somewhat inland, had its own ambitions. The head of the Northern Association, within the aishidi’tat, was the lord of Ajuri clan . . . and he, pressed by a struggle inside his own clan, arranged the marriage of a young relative, Komaji, to an older lady of the ancient Atageini clan—the Atageini lord being one of the closest allies of the aiji-dowager, and at the moment engaged in politics with Valasi-aiji, in a dispute with their nearest neighbors, the Kadagidi.
It was a marriage of great potential value for Ajuri. It proved, however, unfortunate, in the death of the Atageini lady soon after the birth of a daughter, Damiri, under circumstances some called suspicious. Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini, in a heated confrontation with Komaji, handed over the baby to Komaji, thus breaking the association with Ajuri and terminating the Ajuri hope of having a relative in an influential position within the great Atageini house.
Valasi-aiji managed to patch the quarrel between the Atageini and the Kadagidi, and simultaneously prevented the Atageini lord from Filing Intent on Komaji. He also kept the southwest coast out of the hands of the Marid, and had got control of the aishidi’tat back into western hands and out of the hands of the aiji-dowager.
Valasi was accounted a great aiji.
He died unexpectedly, however, with his heir still short of the twenty-three years of age required to be elected aiji.
The aiji-dowager returned to Shejidan with her grandson Tabini and applied to be elected aiji herself, citing the complex business of the aishidi’tat, particularly in view of increasing traffic with the Mospheirans, who were beginning to colonize neighboring Crescent Island, and who were developing industry without restraint—a matter which left the northwest coast of the continent on the receiving end of the smoke and the effluent.
She repeated her argument that several areas of the aishidi’tat remained a problem, since they had been stop-gap arrangements following the War of the Landing; and she also proposed tough new negotiations with Mospheira about the protection of the environment.
The legislature balked . . . on all points. Regional interests did not want pieces of the post-War treaty reopened, for fear of having their pieces of it reopened. The Marid certainly did not want her solution to the west coast problems, and nobody but Dur cared about smoke that was mostly landing on the Gan peoples, since they had never signed on to the aishidi’tat.
Ilisidi ruled as aiji-regent through the last of Tabini’s minority and through the last years of Wilson-paidhi’s service, aided by a Conservative coalition headed by Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini.
Meanwhile Damiri, now a young woman, disaffected from her Ajuri father and angry, deserted a family outing during the Winter Festivity in Shejidan and presented herself to her influential Atageini uncle, asking to be taken in by Atageini clan. Lord Tatiseigi, who had not sought this, and in fact had only resumed relations with Ajuri at all to further the aiji-dowager’s cause, saw in the young woman her mother in her youth. Being himself childless, and the holder of a great political power which teetered constantly on the edge of disaster because of that—he sent a conciliatory letter to the Ajuri lord, saying that he had found the missing young lady, that she was, typical for the child of a contract marriage, having a crisis of man’chi, and that he would be willing to entertain his young niece until she grew equally dissatisfied with the fantasy of life in her mother’s clan.
In point of fact—the observation was not a lie. But Lord Tatiseigi likely had no intention of letting the young lady grow dissatisfied with her Atageini heritage. She was indisputably of his bloodline, she was pretty, she was intelligent, certainly enterprising, and he needed an heir, which, baji-naji, he had not produced. The Ajuri marriage originally had had that consideration. If she came still with an unfortunate attachment to Komaji of the Ajuri, he judged that a surmountable difficulty. The Atageini were richer, more powerful, had a stronger influence in government, and if the young lady attached man’chi to him rather than to Komaji, he might have what he greatly needed.
So things ran for that year. Tabini passed his twenty-third year.
And finally, mustering an unlikely but temporary coalition of the Taibeni, the Kadagidi, the Marid, the mountain clans, and the Northern Association—Ajuri was all too ready to support anybody but the aiji-dowager, who was Tatiseigi’s political patron—Tabini was elected aiji in his own right.
People feared there might be a confrontation—extending even to armed conflict and the breakup of the aishidi’tat if the aiji-dowager would not relinquish power. Some even feared humans would take advantage of such a conflict and attack the mainland. People were storing food in their houses and the requests to the Assassins’ Guild for hired protection in such an event were reportedly unprecedented.
The aiji-dowager and Tabini-aiji, however, appeared together on that new and still-rare medium, television, as well as radio, and the aiji-dowager congratulated her grandson on his election and wished him well.
The aishidi’tat, and indeed, the human population on Mospheira, breathed a sigh of relief. Wilson-paidhi, notorious for granting Valasi whatever he wanted, to the extent the aiji-dowager feared a human plot to undermine atevi morals, withdrew from public life entirely, in deep disfavor with, now, the new aiji, and wanting only to get off the continent alive.
The aiji-dowager retired to Malguri, with occasional visits to her apartment in the Bujavid, visits notable for their tension and difficulty.
Tabini, as aiji, did as he had said he would do: he dropped the environmental matters—telling his grandmother he would revive that negotiation once Wilson-paidhi finally retired, a decision he was trying to hasten. Tabini also conducted several actions designed to protect the west coast from the Marid’s ambition, including a promise to the Marid to protect their shipping from piracy—and he used that as a pretext for an order increasing the size and armament of the Mospheiran navy, incidentally strengthening his position regarding Mospheira.
He needed the Conservatives on board, and found his opportunity to gain the man’chi of the aiji-dowager’s chief ally, Lord Tatiseigi—when he met Tatiseigi’s niece, Damiri.