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The current lady of Cobesthen, Cenedi informed them, used a phone for outward communication, like ordering up vegetables or items of clothing from Malguri Township, but refused any message that came by way of such a device.

Drien did Tatiseigi of Tirnamardi one better in stubborn ecological conservatism, Bren thought glumly. One got the picture, one got it quite clearlyc and one would have wished to ask the dowager why the human in the company was being asked along if they were facing an Easterner with a particularly strong loathing for modernity, humans, and all that came from them.

Because Banichi and Jago were damned good at what they did, was one answer, and they would not leave him behind in Malguri at any order. The dowager surely wanted all the help she could get in this venture, and would therefore risk her neck and his to get it.

That was the conclusion he drew on the matter. He could not foresee any good he could do—his camping outside in the foyer for the duration of the interview might be a good move, once they got where they were going, except that Banichi and Jago would not leave him alone out there, either.

A highland lake lay off the eastern face of Malguri, down a gentle slope. That vast lake, remnant of some past glaciation and an eons-old fracture and uplift of the world’s crust, divided them from Cobesthen, which held the southern lake shore. They were short-cutting a jagged peninsula of the lake, as Bren remembered the geography, to get to Cobesthen, choosing the mecheiti rather than going by boat from the very beginning— from Malguri Fortress itself.

“Why ride?” he asked Banichi and Jago, during one of the rests.

“Why not take the boat across? What is the plan, nadiin-ji?”

They stood near the mecheiti, an isolate knot of warm bodies in a cold winter woods. Banichi lowered his head and answered quietly, “A boat, Bren-ji, could be prevented from landing. And recall Lord Caiti holds land across the north shore of the lake. Almost certainly he expects intrusion. The land is wider and affords cover. The lake while wide—is very flat.”

That was a thought.

“Do you think he would continue to hold Cajeiri there, within the—”

—within the dowager’s reach, he had been going to say. But he said, instead. “Bait?”

“Very possibly, Bren-ji. Continued proximity would make it irresistible.”

And would offer the greatest possible embarrassment to Ilisidi.

Caiti’s holding there was named Haidamar, the summer retreat on the northwest shore. Caiti’s lowland and more frequent residence was down in the lowlands to the west, the Saibai’tet. But the airport at Cadienein-ori served the northern territory, and, by extension, several mining concerns near the north end of the lake and downward—was there, in fact, even a road between Malguri and the Haidamar?

By his memory, there was not. Not on this side of the lake. But, God, he thought, looking out toward the snow-hazed lakeshore, dim through the trees—were they that close to the boy? Was holding him there meant to draw Ilisidi into a trap, to get her to attack across the lake?

She, in effect, had little choice but to move first, move fast, and try to do something; and that meant crossing another lord’s land, by a route that had no roads.

“Are we actually calling on Lady Drien, nadiin-ji?”

“If she will open her gates,” Jago said. “One believes we are, Bren-ji.”

They had, besides him and the dowager, Cenedi, Nawari, Banichi and Jago, and the dowager’s young men, having, one hoped, called in Guild to their assistance and relying on staff to protect the house back on the heights from a flank attack.

And were they going to pay a social call on their way around the lake’s far shore, possibly as a base to move against Haidamar?

Possibly.

And phone or no phone, he would lay a bet that Drien knew they were coming: a stubborn aristocrat who wouldn’t acknowledge messages that came by phone, wouldn’t respond, and hadn’t communicated with her cousin in the years when they had been close neighborsc would not be caught by surprise. The lady would know if something moved on her land, even in the dead of winter.

Her guard might not be Guild, but they could not be that careless, or that lacking in modern abilities.

The question was whether the lady had used that grocery-ordering phone to call the Haidamar and advise Lord Caiti she was being trespassed upon, by a certain number of persons intent on reaching Caiti’s land.

And had it been Drien who had set so-called bandits on the road to Malguri last night? Or might they have been instigated from Caiti’s side?

Ilisidi was uncharacteristically silent and cheerless as she rode, speaking only with Cenedi, and Bren let that situation be. Nokhada typically kept pressing to the fore, but he kept her back, out of the dowager’s way, figuring that if she wanted him, she would signal so. She didn’t, which said worlds.

The sun made a midafternoon appearance through the lowering gray cloud, a small patch of sky as they passed along the lake edge, where a snowy beach and a rime of ice afforded easier going than the woods. That was the warmth in the day, short-lived as it was.

By the time they reached the end of that beach, the gray had wrapped the peaks behind them and erased half the lake, giving the false illusion of a low, endless plain under a misty sky.

That icy mist rolled in off the lake with a sifting of snow, and, leaving the shore, they rode in fog, among ghostly shapes of winter trees, down a local road blanketed in snow. No vehicles had crossed here. The mecheiti’s feet turned up no ruts of wheels beneath the new fall. Even Jago remarked on that fact: they might have stepped back centuries, when mecheiti were the only transport in this district.

It was a lonely, lonely place, Cobesthen. It was isolation, failed prosperity. Ancient anger.

Eventually, around a snowy rock outcrop, they came on an iron grillwork gate, between two lowering and massive towers. Cenedi leaned from the saddle to ring an icicled bell and announce their presence—and one could almost hope the notoriously contrary lady of Cobesthen would open those gates and let them in, unpleasant as the encounter was bound to be. They had been in the saddle all day.

They had their gear to camp out here, but one gathered that the aiji-dowager did not intend to camp in tents outside the lady’s gatec not without taking some action for it.

Time passed. They waited, mecheiti shifting restlessly, nipping and shoving as they tended to do while, incredibly, finally, on the other side of the gate, a band of men rode mecheita-back toward them, a reciprocal force that might have ridden right out of the machimi plays.

Bren let go a long, long breath, facing these messengers, the East at its most obstinate. It was a wonder, in fact, that the lady had not stationed guards out in the old tower, to freeze winter-long on a lonely, outmoded duty.

But the fact she hadn’t said there was more modernity out here than met the eye.

They sat, they waited. The mounted group arrived, the leader asked their identity, and, receiving the reply from Cenedi, “The lord of Malguri,” that leader signaled a man of his who quietly got down and unchained the gate. It ultimately took the help of two others, who dismounted, forced the snow-blocked gate open barely enough to let them throughc no, Bren said to himself, that gate had not seen many comings and goings in recent days. The snow was up over the footing, and carved itself a deep arc when they moved it.

They passed that gate, with their pack train and their spare mounts, and the several locals afoot pulled the gate shut and noisily ran the chain back through, ominous sound in the foggy surrounds, before they got back to the saddle. They had wanted in. They were in. Who else the lady of Cobesthen thought she was keeping out was uncertain. One hardly liked the feel of it.