“A pretty, pretty speech, nandi. And where is Murini?”
“Coming here, if Caiti told the truth—coming to ascertain Caiti does have your great-grandson.”
Ilisidi rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and down again, a gesture of exasperation.
“The truth, nandi, the truth this time!”
“Caiti is a fool!” Agilisi cried.
“So he will invite Murini under his roof, and demonstrate he has my great-grandson. And Murini, in awe of this astonishing fact, will obligingly leave my great-grandson in his hands while he goes off to become a target for my grandson’s forces. What do you think we are, Agi-daja? Equal fools?”
“Nandi, so he told Lord Rodi and me! And Lord Rodi went with him to the Haidamar, but I slipped back and my guard got me away—to come here, to consult with Lady Drien, to find some middle ground—some means to unite the independent neighbors in protest of this lunacy— Clearly, neither I nor my people were respected, to be brought there ignorant of all plans, to be confronted with this—we are innocent. I and my people are innocent!”
“A fine story. And all this plan was to get through our door in Shejidan, to make face-to-face contact with a traitor on our staff, carry out this monstrous idiocy, and we, of course, were to come rushing obligingly into ambush in the Haidamar.”
Across the lake, Bren thought: the image leaped up of a force from Malguri coming in by water, instead of overland, all exposed, and vulnerable. The dowager would not have done it.
Murini would have known that. Murini had some sense of tactics.
But did Caiti, whose people had faced Malguri across the haunted lake and quarreled about its isle for generations— did he think the dowager would be where she was at present, not at Malguri plotting to sail across, but overland, and past the jut of the south end cliffs to make peace with a splinter of Malguri itself?
Without that peace, Malguri might have found difficulty to cross that land quietly. There might have been alarms.
Certainly it was noisy enough to have drawn Agilisi in, claiming she had come to appeal to Drien.
And Drien, fresh from her acquisition of the disputed land, had said not one word to back her. That had to worry the woman.
“How can I prove my favorable disposition?” Agilisi asked—in truth, in a desperate situation. “How can I make Malguri understand that my district has nothing to gain here?”
“How indeed?” Ilisidi said darkly. “Except you tell the truth, every particular of this truth. When? How? Why? And with what force does this southerner invade the East at Caiti’s invitation?”
“Caiti plans to double-cross him, one believes.” Agilisi’s lips formed the syllables carefully, distinctly. “Nandi, we are betrayed, we are all equally betrayed.”
“Oh, one doubts equally, Agi-daja. One very much doubts equality in this treason. So you dared not go home. Who are his people in your household? Name them.”
“My nephew,” Agilisi said faintly. “But one pleads for him. He is young. He is associated with a Saibai’tet girl, a young fool. The one—the one to fear is his mother, Saibai’tet and resident with my brother. That onec that one I freely give to you.”
“Your brother? Or the Saibai’tet woman?”
“The woman, nandi. My brother’s wife. My brother is in a sad state of health, incapable of knowing what she signs, what she appoints, what staff she brings in to attend him.”
“Is this an accident, this indisposition? And do we attribute it to the wife—or his sister?”
Agilisi’s mouth hung slightly agape. She was not, Bren thought, a very clever woman—or her fabrications were not.
“One would justly have been suspicious,” Ilisidi said. Bang! went the cane. Cenedi moved up beside her chair. “I think this lady should have been far more suspicious. One needs more fingers than the gods gave us to count the betrayals. She fears to go to her domain. Clearly, she is in want of protection— granted we find out the truth in the next quarter hour.”
“Nandi!” Agilisi cried, looking from left to right. “Dri-daja!”
“This boy whose welfare is at issue is my youngest cousin,” Drien said coldly, “and has been shamefully treated by associates with whom you have willingly sat at table and connived, nandi. And now you bring your difficulties under my roof? We are offended.”
“The lady’s guard is resting below,” Cenedi said quietly, “nandi.”
Stripped of protection, her guard incapacitated, and the dowager as coldly angry as one was ever likely to detect—the unfortunate lady darted glances from one face to another, quick, reckoning, fearful glances.
“The truth, woman!” Ilisidi snapped. “Your ailing brother, indeed! You are the lord of Catien! You have permitted or not permitted this infestation of Saibai’tet servants and this woman under your roof, am I mistaken? Talk!”
“We were threatened!” Agilisi protested. “Malguri has done nothing for our region since you left! Who was there, nandi? Who was there on whom we could rely to sustain our independence? The aiji in Shejidan was lost—there was only the Kadagidi and the Taisigin! There was only them! I never chose to accept a Saibai’tet wife under my roof—but I had no power to resist, I had no great store of weaponsc”
“And Caiti did?”
“Caiti had the backing of the Kadagidi!”
“Ah,” Ilisidi said, and indeed, in that, a certain number of things made sense. “The backing of the Kadagidi. And was this maneuver Caiti’s idea—or Murini’s?”
“Caiti—” The woman seemed short of breath, as if there was not enough air in the room to get out what she had to say. “One suspects Caiti intends to double-cross Murini. Clearly— clearly—Murini is fallen and falling fast. He will surely go down.
But with his help—” She ran utterly out of breath, and drew in another. “Caiti means to take the East out of the aishidi’tat, build an Association here, holding the child—the child hostage against his father. He intends you should come there. He knows you will never negotiate, nandi.”
The plane that took off simultaneously for the South, the lord with the convenient excuse, a diversion, Bren thought, ticking off one southern lord who needed dealing with.
But they had plenty on their hands where they were.
“We shall not negotiate,” Ilisidi said quietly. “Nand’ Bren.”
“Nandi? We shall go wherever we need go.”
“One has no doubt,” Ilisidi said.
“Can either of these ladies open those gates?” he ventured to ask.
Agilisi glanced at him, clearly taken aback. Drien looked disapprovingly down her nose at his impertinence. Ilisidi, however, had raised that dangerous brow.
“Answer the Lord of the Heavens,” Ilisidi said, leaning chin on fist. “You can find your way back into Caiti’s good graces, can you not, lady of Catien? One is certain you can at least get the gates open—if only for their desire to know what sudden turn of events brings you back.”
“One might venture it,” the lady said. Gone, all her prim assurance. It was a straw, and with whatever motivation, she grasped at it. “One might, with your favor, nand’ dowager.”
“We shall hold my favor in abeyance, woman. You have walked into it and you know your life is sinking low, low indeed, in my present plans. Redeem it. And rest assured this is your one chance.”
“Agilisi is my associate, cousin,” Drien said, “and courted by lords Caiti and Rodi, as was I, as all the lords of the lakeshore and eastward. Her house was, indeed, infiltrated.”
“Is yours?” Ilisidi asked bluntly.