Defiance, page 2
Had she known that? Surely she had.
But to deal with Koperna—if that had been her real objective—this was the route.
He sighed, had a sip of tea, leaned his head on one hand, and turned a page in the book he had brought from the capital, trying to bring his tired mind to concentrate and sift currently relevant information out of accounts of early clan warfare in the north—interesting, but fairly irrelevant, as it turned out, involving no clan that had survived to the current day.
He had a pocket watch. It was spring-driven, encased in elegantly etched gold, an atevi creation. It kept excellent time . . . but in the press of things he had forgotten to wind it.
Turning on his computer could tell him.
Asking Narani could tell him. Narani kept up with everything.
But if he were honest with himself, he had been avoiding counting the hours—unable to affect events inside or outside the train. The whole south of the aishidi’tat was in jeopardy, with damn-all he could do about what was behind him or what lay ahead, involving people he cared about, until someone, anyone gave him some options.
Or until Cenedi let him have one of the special com units.
Only hours before their arrival in Koperna, they had gotten those. Lord Geigi, up on the space station, had diverted himself from his own pressing problems to set down the last of his somewhat mobile lander-relays on the border between the Senjin and the Dojisigin Marid. This relay tower, one of several devised years ago and scattered throughout the continent, had joined with its fellows and created their new and, better yet, uncompromised communications network, which the Shadow Guild absolutely could not penetrate.
He and his aishid had had two of those new communications units during their short time in Koperna, in Senjin province, and they had been beyond useful. But Cenedi, without explanation, had confiscated the units before they got back on the train—so one assumed they were dear indeed, possibly urgently required for the Koperna forces to coordinate with Tabini’s, who were operating in the neighboring Dojisigin. He had no idea.
Given access to that unit for ten minutes . . . five . . . he could consult with Tabini-aiji in Shejidan. He could have all his answers. Could establish his priorities and options. He could arrange protection for Najida . . . even over the aiji-dowager’s objections . . .
And get some sleep despite the condition of the track.
But Cenedi was not leaving the dowager’s car. And requests for brief use of one of the units went unanswered. That was the returned message.
It was not just the fate of Najida that hung in the balance. Given one of those units, he could also reach the space station where Geigi’s crisis—five thousand humans too many on the space station—had reached criticality, even before the dowager had coopted him for her “little train trip.” He personally was supposed to be in the north right now, on the other side of the mountains, preparing to meet the first shuttle load of Reunioner humans coming down: an unprecedented landing of humans on the atevi mainland, politically sensitive as hell.
And he did not want to go on to that crisis before he did something about Najida. The Edi people were not supposed to have weapons. They did, which was beside the point—they could not be taking on their own defense and shooting random intruders. The aishidi’tat was, by treaty, obliged to keep the peace—their peace, as well as everybody else’s; and defending them from their ancient feud with the legitimate power of Jorida Isle as well as the illegitimate threat of the Shadow Guild, who truly wanted to work harm on their lord—namely Bren Cameron—was a fairly ceremonial obligation turned suddenly very real.
The Shadow Guild, fleeing the Marid, had gathered up their sole claim of legitimacy, Lord Tiajo, their nominal employer—and run for the boats, leaving the rank and file to stand against the legitimate Assassins’ Guild. One need not feel sorry for them. They had made their choice. But their own leadership had certainly served them the way they had served the aishidi’tat—underhandedly and with no thought of their honor. That ship had run for it while the Red Train was still up in Hasjuran—and that ship had several days’ head start on them.
Possibly the dowager was actively planning how to deal with that—granted the silence back there was her choice. But it did not feel right. She had been perfectly communicative when they left Koperna, even cheerful and outgoing—Ilisidi at her most approachable. And then—this.
Was she angry? He doubted it. Was she unable to respond? She was old, fragile, it had been a hellish trip just getting to Koperna, and the head of her aishid, Cenedi, in command of the whole operation, would go to whatever length it took to protect her—personally, and figuratively; and to protect her power and the public perception of her. But if there was a division of opinion—if that communicator that Cenedi had and Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, advisor to Tabini, did not—produced orders from Tabini with which Ilisidi would not comply—
That was one possibility.
The other was—
If she were seriously ill, then Cenedi might want to get her back to Shejidan. Her physician was always with her; rode in her car, with her aishid and her staff. But there could be a need of resources only available in Shejidan.
Meanwhile a sensible order could halt the train and order that Guild force detached at Najida, along with the extra cars. The train, whittled down to just two or three cars, on good track, would make far better time getting her back to the capital.
There was that, in the worry about her health.
And there was the matter of the documents behind the war in the Marid, documents they had left up in Hasjuran, signed by her, by Bregani of Koperna, Lord of Senjin, and by Bregani’s erstwhile enemy and southern neighbor Machigi, the young lord of the Taisigin Marid. The documents said first, that Bregani would join the aishidi’tat, the Western Association. Secondly that Bregani would extend Machigi a railroad connection to Koperna. And other things, pulling strings that would gather the entire Marid into a favorable relationship with the north, define the Marid’s internal relationships, and end the several hundred years of war and near-war with the north.
All that had to be filed, formally filed in Shejidan while all signers were living for it to be legally binding. Which—Ilisidi’s state of health put in question.
It was not just the documents. Not just the Marid. Not just the escaping ship and the question of where they were going to detach the Guild force.
She had no appointed heir. Well, she had Tabini, of course, for interests in the aishidi’tat. But the entire East, a province of very few people but great wealth of metals and timber—half the entire continent—had no appointed heir.
God.
He truly should rest. He could order night whenever he pleased. He could turn out the lights in the car. He had a bed, if he let it down. He had every luxury the Red Train could provide—and given what the Red Train was, a luxury far beyond ordinary—except the damned overstuffed benches; but for days now, sleep had been a great deal of lying flat with his eyes closed, and a mind that jolted awake with each bump, to questions that had no answers.
She had told him at Koperna that she and Tabini had settled their differences.
They had discussed the Dojisigi lord, Tiajo, agreed it was past time to settle the south as a whole—which statement on Ilisidi’s part might have been rhetorical, except one troubling sentence.
I do not build for my grandson. I build for his son. And my time to accomplish these things is somewhat less than I want.
She had seemed well enough in that last meeting. Certainly in good appetite.
God, he could not think about that last sentence. He found his place in his book and tried to keep his mind there . . . without much luck.
• • •
I have obligations, he had protested, to the idea of accompanying the dowager to Hasjuran. Five thousand refugees, strangers to the entire world, had to be gotten off the space station, a necessity shortages and their own riots had made urgent. None of these humans spoke Ragi, they were terrified of atevi, they were hostile to other humans, they had never been on a planet, and they were needing to come down to this one to live. The Mospheiran shuttle was in for repairs. Atevi had a shuttle fleet that could handle the job, but for various reasons, the aishidi’tat was not keen to land and service a shuttle at Port Jackson airport: they wanted to land at Cobo-nai, the atevi spaceport north of Cobo—but atevi law, dating to the War of the Landing, had pronounced all sorts of ceremonial and religious infelicity to any region that permitted an unsanctioned human to set foot on atevi soil.
Well, thank the basic sense of religious atevi who always left a loophole in grand prohibitions and permissions. A priest could religiously sanction the lot of them and get them down—not without some furor about it all; but legally—solved. So they were getting humans. The paidhi-aiji, the aiji’s interpreter, needed to be there to interpret, escort, reassure, and deal with it.
The dowager had needed him for a short trip to Hasjuran.
They would be back in time.
Hasjuran led to Koperna and Koperna to days on the worst track in existence—with a war in the Marid and a crisis developing at Najida.
Things had gone so well in Hasjuran.
Until Homura had shown up.
Then a bomb had blown up the local transformer, a clear indication the Dojisigi both knew and were upset about the situation.
One still worried who had planted the device.
They still had Homura. And his partner Momichi. Former Shadow Guild agents—they swore “former.” Homura and Momichi, who had a Guild detachment of their own, polite, but a guard, not an aishid. They were only two cars ahead, just the other side of Nomari. They were half of a former Shadow Guild unit, their two partners, so they claimed, being held hostage by the Shadow Guild to force them to assassinate Lord Tatiseigi, in a very critical northern association.
Their try at Tatiseigi had not gone off—but they had gotten terrifyingly close. And when, rather than being shot on the spot, they had found themselves offered protection and help, they had sworn man’chi to the dowager and to Bren.
Trustable, to this day?
Was that not the unknowable question? They were tracking the same ship that was carrying Tiajo and the Shadow Guild leadership. And they were three cars removed from the dowager. He was not happy about that. He was very sure her security was not.
But Ilisidi, for reasons she had yet to disclose, had allowed them aboard.
They had been sources of information.
Maybe she was just doing them a final favor. Maybe she had asked them for one.
Meanwhile the thing Ilisidi had set in motion had not delivered the paidhi-aiji up to Cobo-nai to deal with the shuttle—and Lord Geigi himself had diverted his attention from the ills of the space station long enough to launch the last of his mobile landers as a relay for the communicators Ilisidi’s force already had aboard the Red Train—which said something about the degree of preparation that had gone on for Ilisidi’s train trip, and anyone who believed that that trip was extended to the Marid coast on the spur of the moment was not paying attention.
There was a damned lot that had not been communicated to the paidhi-aiji in that invitation to snowy Hasjuran.
Ilisidi, before ever starting the trip, had diverted two of the three naval vessels on eternal watch in the Mospheiran Strait—to sail for the Southern Ocean and the Marid Sea, to meet her at Koperna harbor.
As one of Geigi’s landers descended onto the border between Senjin and the Dojisigin.
Of course it was all unexpected.
Like hell.
Citizenry throughout the northern Marid had taken shelter and let Guild fight Guild, as Tabini then diverted one of Ilisidi’s—actually his own—naval vessels to move against the Dojisigin capital of Amarja—striking at the headquarters of the Shadow Guild, anxious to preserve records. He wanted to lay hands on the Dojisigin lord, Tiajo, as vicious a young woman as one could imagine, and most particularly—to take down Suratho, a woman they now knew fairly reliably as head of the Shadow Guild.
Both of whom were headed now for Marid Strait having sailed right past the inbound naval vessels at some point—not even Lord Geigi had spotted them, not as if Lord Geigi did not have other things to distract him on the station. Dojisigin ships were hardly an anomaly in the Marid.
Now they knew, however. So onto the train the dowager went, not even staying for courtesy with Bregani. She had snatched up several boxcars of Guild equipment, a number of Guild units not immediately needed in Koperna, and taken Homura and Momichi—Nomari was, well, an afterthought.
And on they went, on this catastrophe of a rail. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. At times a man walking afoot could keep pace with it.
They had dropped off one uneasy companion in their hasty departure from Koperna. Machigi had left the Red Train to return to his capital, Tanaja, in the Taisigin, in case any of the mess in the north spilled in his direction.
Bren was just as happy not to have Lord Machigi involving himself on the west coast, and happy to have him back in his capital and out of trouble.
So they were confident nothing would be storming down the track behind them to cause them trouble.
They had stopped for refueling halfway, at Targai, the Maschi clan capital, but there had been no visit to the Maschi lord at his estate, though Targai was an important, an essential ally. It had been in that silence at Targai, when she had chosen to forgo the sort of gossip-filled dinner that ordinarily was her delight—that Bren had truly begun to fear something serious was going on with the dowager.
How many years had he lived elbow to elbow with atevi—held his aishid and his staff as his nearest and dearest—and right now he was, he admitted it, in emotional isolation, having his own personal reaction to the situation with Ilisidi, and not being able to figure it.
Worst—not being wired to figure it. The closest persons in the world to him, his aishid—right at the end of the car: they had no answers, even for their own relationship. He could never use that word friend with them.
They would throw themselves between him and trouble because they were attached that way and it was a deeply, profoundly satisfying arrangement to them, especially as he was attached to a power they were attached to—namely Tabini—and the whole world spun on that axis. At times he looked at them and thought he could cross that barrier, there was such a feeling he had about them . . . but that was dangerous territory, to try to go there: a human just was not quite wired for it; and they were, and they were happy.
As he was. Absolutely happy, never to leave them, absolutely never to do what his predecessor had done, and leave the mainland for good. His predecessor had formed no such relationships. But he—had. He was involved way past all intention, as attached as he could be, in his way. He understood extremes and anomalies. He trusted them. And he felt his way through situations. He understood how terrible was the situation that Homura and Momichi claimed to be in: loss of connections, loss that would never heal while there was a chance their partners were alive, to make them kill . . . in violation of their code.
The machimi, the historic dramas, several times invoked that nameless condition. The Ragi language had words for all sorts of mental states, but not for that one . . . though God knew it was a staple of the dramas. A retainer bereaved . . . gone anchorless, mentally. That was his own word for it.
Why in hell was he thinking down this dark alley, here in the dark, with the rail for an ominous heartbeat . . . what was his brain trying to resolve?
Cenedi? Greyer than Ilisidi was, with narrow gold eyes that never ceased their suspicion except when she was his focus. What state was he in, if she was sick?
And what if his man’chi went suddenly anchorless? Cenedi, who had the ability, perhaps even the mandate, to wield Ilisidi’s power on her posthumous objectives . . . ?
That was about worth a shiver, thinking that if Ilisidi had no appointed heir, Cenedi would continue to wield that power. And he could not, somehow, bring himself to discuss that with his own aishid, not on this trip, not with Banichi necessarily serving as Cenedi’s second-in-command, handling the things that had to be handled.
But not in charge of the decision to camp at Najida. That had to come from Cenedi.
Or Tabini.
The protocols grew muddy when it came to whose province, whose authority relative to Tabini’s, and who was directing this entire force, with the dowager not seeming to be in charge at the moment. The paidhi-aiji had no military power. His aishid did, Banichi being high-ranking in the Guild; while Cenedi’s authority was complicated—being Eastern born, Eastern-trained, never even coming through Guild Headquarters, holding what he had by reason of Ilisidi’s authority . . . it grew very complicated, were Ilisidi to—God help them—die. The paidhi-aiji, not even atevi, could end up the highest official on the train.
His own bodyguard, his aishid, his four companions, with whom he shared things he would say to no one else—he did not feel like asking them that question. Not here. Not in this dark place. When they were in the field with Ilisidi’s aishid, Banichi deferred to Cenedi. It was not always a comfortable dynamic, as Ilisidi’s orders were not always compatible with Tabini’s, but overall it had worked.
God, he did not want to be thinking these thoughts.
No. Until he had absolute proof to the contrary, he would trust Ilisidi was there, awake, and planning. She had something in mind. She, through Cenedi, could be in current consultation with anyone who had one of the new units—Geigi. Tabini. Probably the Guild commander in the Marid. Likely the Guild commander who was on this train.
He wished his brain would quit, give up, go to sleep. He was tired, sore, and short of sleep, having found a point of discomfort in every seat in the car. And he had napped earlier and now only he and Narani were awake, Jeladi drowsing peacefully in the chair by the door, his aishid having curled up in a knot of black uniforms and shadow at the other end of the car. He was on his own. Frustrated.
