But such a movement in the capital might throw fear into Murini and start other forces maneuvering, might it not—perhaps recklessly and desperately so in the rebel south coast and the loyal west coast, where armed force might come into play?
And just when had this disaffection begun to whisper through quiet meetings, with nudges and glances and backroom whispers?
Perhaps it had come the moment it became clear the dowager and the heir were back on the mainland and were receiving support from two and three clans.
Perhaps it had begun when it became clear a growing number of dissidents from Murini’s rule were all gathering here, defying calamity, daring Murini to do anything and suggesting by their growing presence that he couldn’t. Maybe the Ajuri represented a power struggle within the Kadagidi clan themselves, increasingly alienated from Murini, the more he tried to be a national leader and compromise their particular interests— that had happened in the past. What was the proverb? Kaid’ airuni manomini ad’ heiji. It is hard to see the provinces from the capital.
“If one might suggest,” Bren said, ever so cautiously, “if there is any phone link possible to the Guild, nandiin, perhaps the aiji might at this moment seize the initiative to inform them—”
“The aiji needs no lesson!” the lord of the Ajuri snapped, cutting him off.
“Grandfather,” Damiri said, a gentle intervention for which Bren was personally grateful, and in the same breath the ferule of Ilisidi’s formidable cane came down hard on the tiles.
“My grandson is no fool, to ignore advice,” Ilisidi said.
Then Tabini, in that distinctive voice that could knife through a parliamentary brawl, said, “The paidhi-aiji has a sensible point.
Hear him.”
A hint? A momentary caution, when favor and disfavor were on a knife’s edge?
The aiji needed desperately to keep the peace and not create difficulty with these clans.
“With most profound regard for the lord’s wise caution,” Bren said, trying not to hyperventilate, “and the aiji being most sensible of the true situation—the paidhi-aiji should go to Shejidan, to present the facts he has brought back from the heavens, namely that, without the mission the aiji ordered, the business with the human settlement would have brought foreign enemies to the world—a threat which—”
Tabini himself lifted a hand, stopping him right there. Bren braked, brimming over with facts and figures Tabini apparently had no interest in hearing or allowing to be heard, not here, not now, or not in front of these witnesses.
“Aiji-ma,” he said, and subsided into silence.
“We understand your position, nandi,” Tabini said with finality.
“Go speak with the staff.”
And do what? Bren asked himself. He had wanted out of the gathering. But he was dismayed to be so unexpectedly dismissed.
And say what to the staff, and learn what? He murmured a courtesy, nonetheless, and rose and bowed to one and all, finding he was truly, absolutely exhausted, frustrated with a situation out of control, and personally out of resources, now that Tabini tossed him out of the gathering, and presumably out of the state dinner as well.
Was it now secrecy from the Ajuri the aiji wanted around that report of his? Why? Did Tabini suspect that Kadagidi connection?
He reached the door, heard a rapid footstep, and found the heir at his elbow, outward bound along with him.
“And where is our great-grandson going?” That from the Ajuri lord.
“He is leaving in good company,” Ilisidi said sharply, and with a blow of the cane’s ferule against the tiles. “We were all awake all night. Doubtless we shall get little rest tonight. We are weary, out of patience, and hungry. Sandwiches, Tati-ji. At least give us sandwiches, or hasten this dinner! No more sugar!”
“Indeed,” Tatiseigi said, ordered about in his own hall, and the dinner discussion proceeded as Bren quietly let himself and Cajeiri out of the room, in among the waiting bodyguards.
“My apologies, nand’ Bren,” Cajeiri said stiffly. “My mother does not agree.” And rapidly, in Mosphei’, a language an heir of the aishidi’tat probably shouldn’t have picked up quite so fluently, but had: “My father’s mad.”
That, Bren himself had picked up, quite clearly.
“I hope not at me,” he said in Mosphei’.
“At Ajuri clan,” Cajeiri said pertly, and, as they gathered up Banichi and Jago, along with young Jegari: “My mother is mad, too.
They’re pushing, is that the word, nandi?”
All these years, and an eight-year-old could read better what was going on in that room. He had suffered his moment of desolation, of being the outsider, at a time when he held some of the pieces that might make a difference—but he had lost all sense of the undercurrents in that room, and Tabini was right: He was being of no help and he had better get out of there.
“One is hardly surprised,” Banichi muttered in Ragi, at his elbow—Banichi and Jago alike understanding more Mosphei’ than they ever admitted. “But pushing whom, young sir?”
At that moment Cenedi caught up to them.
“More buses are coming,” Cenedi said in a low voice. “We have forerunners already at the eastern fence, nandi. We do not know the clan, but we suspect they are from the north.”
More buses. More lives at risk.
“We have had a report,” Banichi said, “that the Kadagidi themselves are bringing clans up from the south to join them at Parai.”
The Kadagidi stronghold. “Coming up by train?” Bren asked, envisioning rival clans having it out at the train station, if Dur came in at the same time.
“Sources say so,” Cenedi answered. Sources. Spies, that meant, perhaps observers inside the other household, or maybe spies at the train station—certainly observers at the estate fence. God knew how word of further movements was getting back and forth to Cenedi, but Tabini’s people had surely brought in far better equipment than Uncle Tatiseigi’s antique establishment owned, and reports were now moving in some security, not only on the estate and within the province, but very probably through channels involving Taiben in the west and north and maybe up into the eastern hills—so he surmised, at least, by the degree of information that Cenedi had gathered. Tabini had been here long enough to have spread out a network, given the usual efficiency that surrounded the aiji, and if that had started into operation, reports of hostile movements might become more specific.
“The aiji said in there that the hill clans are coming,” Bren said, information which did not seem to surprise anyone.
“Tirnamardi cannot hold any more guests,” Jago said. “Or feed them all.They have sent for more supplies from Marim, which also have to be safeguarded, and which cannot be quiet.”
Marim was an Atageini town some forty klicks east.
“Meanwhile,” Banichi said wryly, “there is a quarrel between Lord Tatiseigi’s domestic staff and certain of the aiji’s security as to whether there should be a formal dinner with others still arriving—the kitchen is in utter chaos, and many of the Atageini have come in without supplies, expecting to be fed.”
The kitchen was overwhelmed. So was he. Fatigue might play a part in it. The calculation that everything he could possibly learn now was secondhand and late had its part in it, definitely. He felt every one of his blisters and bruises, and wished he could do something, but clearly staff was well ahead of him and its emergencies were mostly of a practical nature. What would come next—whether the Kadagidi attacked again or waited—wasn’t even anyone’s immediate concern.