Rush to arms en masse to overthrow authority? That was not the atevi style. But lend a slight helping hand to tip the balance in favor of a Ragi prince while professional Guild sorted out their internal struggle?
That would start a chain reaction of minor disobedience that might become an avalanche. It had started, when a few brave members of the tashrid had decided to get contagiously ill at Murini’s summons. Had they known where Tabini was when they did it? Had they signaled their support through the Ajuri lord?
Now, when it looked as if the whole Padi Valley except the Kadagidi was coming in to support the father of a prince of mingled Valley and Ragi heritage, it remained to be seen whether the tashrid would still sit at home with sore throat or answer Tabini’s summons to assemble a quorum. Now that the dowager was back from space, Tabini could provide the aishidi’tat his evidence—never mind the economic mess the paidhi had counseled Tabini-aiji into, the advice that had started this mess. Now it was apparent that an upstart Padi Valley lord, in a bloody overthrow of the existing order, had taken his primary support from the detested south—that would never sit well with the Sheijidan Ragi or the Taibeni, under the most favorable of circumstances, once it became clear to them.
Murini’s seizure of power might have gotten their acquiescence early on, when it had seemed part of a general tilt of the whole Association away from Tabini’s policies and toward a restoration of things-as-they-had-been, but once the Padi Valley peeled away from the Kadagidi, led by the Atageini, and once the Taibeni Ragi joined them, and once the mixed-blood prince came home from space, along with Ilisidi, she of the eastern connections, then, God, yes, the whole picture had changed. The north had repudiated Murini.
The islands had repudiated him, in the person of Dur. The coast, under Geigi, had never supported Murini at all. The east had never been anyone’s but Ilisidi’s.
Now the very center of the Association, the Padi Valley and Ragi highlands districts, had turned soft—turned soft, hell, they were in full career toward Sheijidan to make their opinions heard: there would be the dicey part. Loss of the center and the east of the aishidi’tat left Murini clinging only to the south and his own Padi Valley clan, which was now itself isolated in its violation of neighboring Atageini territory— Murini was in deep trouble. That exhilarating chain of assessments dimmed all the world around him, leaving vague just what anyone was going to do to reunite the individual pieces of this avalanche into a stable structure. The avalanche was pouring down toward the capital. Murini would have increasing trouble mustering any support whatever, and the self-appointed Guild head who had entered Tatiseigi’s estate to bring their agents in position for a surgical strike had done so perhaps foreseeing that the gathering would move on the capital and that only taking out Tabini could stop it without shattering the aishidi’tat beyond repair.
Now that man was dead, along with, one hoped, every agent he had brought with him.
Nasty thought—that there might be other agents scattered through the buses, maybe on this bus, still intent on stopping them.
Presumably, however, the lord of Dur knew his own and Banichi and Jago could vouch for any others. That might not be the case on more motley vehicles, those that had piled on people from various villages.
The thought drove him up from his seat again, pressing past a bemused Cajeiri, to find Tano, where he had gone.
“One had a thought, Tano-ji, that perhaps on some of the trucks, some of the Guild operatives might still pose a threat.”
“There are cautions out, nandi,” Tano informed him. “One has advised other buses to take careful account of passengers and quietly report any suspicions at the next fueling stop. Rely on us.”
“You heard the radio operating,” he said. “You know the dowager is using it.”
“One has heard,” Tano said.
The bus engine coughed to life. They started to roll. Those of their people who had been outside scrambled aboard as the bus moved, and the doors shut. One hoped Banichi had made it. One saw a tall man talking to the driver, and to Lord Adigan, silhouetted against the light outside.
He went back to his seat as the bus rocked onto level road, eased past, and dropped into it.
“How far can we go on a single tank, nand’ paidhi?” Cajeiri asked him.
“One assumes a very large tank, could now that it is full, take even this vehicle most of the way to Shejidan.”
“See?” Cajeiri bounced to his knees, his whole human-adult-sized body impelled to impose itself over the seat back, to win a bet, one supposed, with his bodyguard. “We can get most of the way there on one tank.”
“The lord did not say ‘all the way,’ ” Jegari retorted; the debate continued and the paidhi, who had other concerns on his mind, thought about going back and taking Tano’s seat by Algini, where there was quiet.
“How much of the way?” Cajeiri asked him, quite familiarly and quite rudely abrupt, as happened.
“What would your great-grandmother say, young sir?”
“Nandi,” came the amendment.
“Indeed, young sir. But I have no precise answer for your question. Excuse me.”
He gathered himself up and slipped back into the aisle, an escape from innocence and good humor. It was Banichi’s and Jago’s company he wanted at the moment, and information, information of any sort, as much as he could get.
He found them together, up by the large front windows. The view was of dust-veiled taillights, not so many of them as before, and the bus shot along a gravel road, throwing rocks and receiving them in equal number. The windshield had taken several hits, and had lost chips.
He came armed with the youngsters’ question. “Can we make it to Shejidan, Banichi-ji, on what fuel we have?”
“Possibly so, Bren-ji. We only topped off, is that not the expression?”
“How is the dowager faring? Did you hear?”
“There was no opportunity to overtake her, Bren-ji,” Jago said.
“So we hear, Tatiseigi has taken the loan of that automobile from the mayor of Diegi, who has habitually driven to and from the trains in a notoriously reckless rush. Murini, with the fuel shortage, has forbidden the driving of such private cars. The mayor is delighted to lend it in this cause, and accompanies them, personally.”
One seat given up to another non-Guild. So only Cenedi was with them, give or take the man riding with the driver.
And a fuel shortage at the pumps, which meant chancier supply for their convoy. Nothing had been working right, in this anti-technology reversal of policiesc in the flight, as they had begun to hear, of certain notoriously human-influenced, technologically-skilled occupation classes into obscurity and inaction.
So town lords, on their way to the capital to answer calls to the legislature, had evidently been compelled to take the usual truck or bus to the stations. And Lord Tatiseigi’s coming to meet them in his elegant automobile that night had itself been a political gesture, it now seemed, a gallant statement, if they had been aware how to read it. The old lord had had a touch of the rebel about him from the start, downright daring in his reception of the dowager and the heir, and in the style of it. One might somewhat have misjudged himc failed to realize how deeply Murini had offended the old man.
Or how strongly the old man was inclined to commit to the dowager. There was a thought.