“I had none! I was an innocent bystander!”
“Do not mistake me! I shall walk out of this room and leave others to persuade you to tell me—not the first truths that occur to you, but the deepest of the truths you own about this affair and those you even imagine! Do we understand each other? Who else in this district is helping Machigi? Who are his associates?”
“I have told you everything, nandi! I have written it down in those papers—”
Baiji started to get up and Banichi slammed him right back down.
“I have no doubt these papers are as carefully crafted as those letters of yours in my office upstairs. I have seen your answers. And the effrontery of your writing a letter to the aiji under these circumstances tells me I am dealing with someone too convinced of his own cleverness to everbelieve he can be brought down permanently. You are down here laying plans for a future in which you hope to deceive everyone all over again and protect your remaining places of influence. You are so very clever, are you not?”
No answer. No answer became sullen defiance, more than Baiji had yet shown.
“Now I believe you,” Bren said. “Now you show me your real face, and not a pretty one. You had your own plan for the future of this coast. Tell me howyou planned to stay alive, granting you had the least inkling that you were bedding down with very dangerous people. Whowas the support you counted on? There was someone else, was there not?”
Baiji sweated. His face was a curious shade. He towered over Bren, but Bren had the all but overwhelming desire to seize him by the throat and strangle him.
“There was someone who supported you,” Bren said, “and one doubts this moral support was among the Edi. Who were your other recourses?”
“I—”
So, Bren thought—he was right. And considering Baiji’s natural resources, ones he owned by birthright, there were not that many.
“This person should have been at the top of the list, should he not?”
Baiji did not well conceal his discomfort.
Baiji stared at him. Just stared, grimly saying nothing, but sweating.
“Jago-ji,” he said, looking to the side, “you and I will go inform nand’ Geigi we have no more doubts. It would be well, nadi,” he added, addressing Baiji, “for you to dress. One believes you will get no more sleep tonight.”
“Do not leave me with him!” Baiji cried, with a glance upward at Banichi. “Nand’ paidhi!”
“Banichi-ji, would you ever harm this person?”
Banichi smiled darkly. “Never against your orders, nandi.”
“So,” he said, silently collected Baiji’s documents, then left by the door Jago opened, and headed upstairs.
Upstairs was not calm, despite the hour that should have seen only the household assembling for breakfast.
There was a small turmoil, a little gathering of the staff at the front door—a gathering in which Cenedi himself was involved.
Jago said, quietly, in communication with operations. “The Grandmother of Najida has just arrived, Bren-ji. She asks to speak with the aiji-dowager. Cenedi is agreeing.”
Ramaso was involved at the doors, and spotting them, cast a worried and querying look Bren’s way. Bren signed yes, and Ramaso ordered the doors opened, which admitted a small crowd of persons into their secure hall.
The Grandmother of Najida it was, indeed, a little out of breath, and flanked by two of her older men. Others crowded about. Bren made his way in that direction, walked up to the situation quietly, and gave a little bow.
The Edi were, at depth, a matriarchy, when it came to negotiation. They were fortunate to have the dowager accessible— and in no wise was the paidhi-aiji going to intrude into that arrangement.
“Please accept the hospitality of this house, honored Grandmother, ” he murmured with a little bow, and heaved a deep sigh of relief as Cenedi showed the lady on toward Ilisidi’s suitec and one problem, at least, landed on someone else’s desk.
He wantedto go sit by Toby, continually to reassure himself the only kin he owned—excepting a no-contact father somewhere on Mospheira—was still breathing at this hour. He wanted to stay there for days, until Toby was better, and he could get Toby onto his boat, call in a continental navy escort and get Toby the hell home.
But Shejidan’s largest train station had less traffic than Najida estate at this hour, he thought glumly. The Edi were not going to be happy to have failed in their guarantees—and fail, they had, conspicuouslyc which was probably why the Grandmother had come up here personally to speak to the dowager, if the dowager had not called her here in the first place.
Tano and Algini and Geigi’s four bodyguards were still over in Kajiminda, meanwhile, relying on Edi to hold the perimeters if another attack came, and he, at Najida, was about to pass an order to allGuild components under his control and Geigi’s to come back to undertake a mission eastward—and that was going to leave the Edi in Kajiminda on their own, against God knew what. Kajiminda would be completely exposed, Najida considerably weakened. He was not a tactical thinker. Banichi and Jago were.
“Are we doing rational things, Jago-ji? One intends to pull all Guild from Kajiminda. One sees no alternative.”
Jago’s face was calm and unworried and he suddenly knew his was not. “Cenedi advises us,” she said quietly, “that the dowager has indeed contacted Tabini-aiji. He is apparently sending Guild in some numbers, Bren-ji, to be under Cenedi’s management. The dowager is going to make this situation clear to the Edi.”
That was notgoing to make the Edi happy. But the Edi, dammit, had just failed them, and knew it. The whole ground underfoot had shifted, neither he nor his team had had significant sleep, and decisions had to be made—which Ilisidi had been making for them, left and right.
Calls to the aiji for some reinforcement—routine. But in some numbers?
Alarm bells rang. He had left Ilisidi in charge of Najida, with the implements to make secure calls. And Ilisidi had an agenda that, par for Ilisidi, ran solely on Ilisidi’s opinion. The Grandmother of Najida, with her agenda, had been dealing with a past master. So had he. Dammit.
Likely the Grandmother of Najida didn’t know yet that there were Ragi foreigners coming into the district. That was what she had come here to learnc probably at Ilisidi’s pre-dawn summons.
And somehow—he was not going into that room for anything—Ilisidi and the Grandmother of Najida were going to have a meeting with reality and necessity and consider the rearrangement of power on the lower west coast. God knew, there were already Marid foreigners here. The Grandmother of Najida had notbeen able to deal with them alone.
The aishidi’tat could.
The Grandmother of the Edi was then going to have to explain those facts to her people.
Not to mention what Geigi was yet to find out—which he would lay odds Geigi was learning in bits and pieces.
He knew the name Baiji had not given them. He was sure of it even before Jago said, quietly, relaying it from Banichi, “Pairuti of the Maschi, Bren-ji. Banichi is getting it in writing.”
14
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There was a lot going on. Even nand’ Toby knew it, and asked, or seemed to, what was happening outside.
“I’ll find out, nandi,” Cajeiri said, and sent Jegari out with orders to ask questions and eavesdrop.