Damn, the boy not only united the bloodlines of the west— and stood to become aiji in Shejidan—he stood to inherit the keystone to the East, to boot.
Some of Ilisidi’s neighbors weren’t going to like that idea.
And that—God, that didn’t augur as well for the boy’s safety. If negotiations went wrong, if things started sliding amiss—it wasn’t good, was it?
Events were tumbling one after the other. They were in virtual hot pursuit, as it was. There had not been time to analyze everything. But was it possible the west—even Tabini—had been looking through the wrong end of the telescope?
He left his window, moved quietly to settle on the edge of an empty seat by Jago and Banichi.
He said: “The boy, nadiin-ji, is heir to the aishidi’tat. But from the Eastern view, he is heir to Malguri.”
“Indeed,” Banichi said.
His staff had a way of making him feel as if the truth had been blazoned in neon lights for everyone to see—and he always, always got to it late.
Still, he plowed on. “They would have wished the dowager dead, or in their hands. But whatever traitor there was on staff would have advised them she was in Tirnamardi. That left—”
For once, once, he saw a simultaneous recognition go through their eyes. It was a dire little thought they had not had. He had no idea what thought, but it evoked something.
“They would have learned that the paidhi had relocated, as well,”
Banichi said, “and that the aiji had moved in. They would have been fools to take on the aiji’s precautions. His own staff was around him.”
“While Cajeiri’s was mostly the dowager’s,” Jago said, “like the traitor herself.”
“You know specifically who it was, nadiin-ji?” Bren asked.
“A maid. A member of the staff,” Banichi said. “Pahien. The paidhi may remember her.”
“One remembers her,” Bren said. Indeed he did: a woman who found every opportunity to hang about the young gentleman’s quarters. Ambitous, he’d thought, someone who wanted to work her way up in the staff of a young man with prospects.
“She is probably on that plane,” Jago said darkly, and Banichi: “If they controlled the heir to Malguri—and anything befell the aiji-dowager—”
“The dowager may be in greater danger of her life than Cajeiri,”
Jago murmured. “It is entirely in the interest of the kidnappers that he stay alive, in that theory. And the dowager is going to Malguri. One does not approve.”
It was not the conclusion he had drawn from the same facts.
“Possibly they wish to coerce the dowager to take certain measures they favor, nadiin-ji.”
“That would be a dangerous move on their part, Bren-ji.”
To attempt to deal with herc damned certain it was. She was a knife that turned in the hand—her husband had found that out.
“If she were dead, on the other hand, the lord of Malguri would be a minor child—in their hands.”
“Balking the aiji in Shejidan as well,” Jago said. “If the aiji were to disinherit his heir, it would have calamitous effect in the west, and no effect at all in the East. He would still inherit Malguri.”
“Has Cenedi advised her against going? Will she remain inside Malguri?”
“Advised, yes, but by no means will the dowager leave this matter to her security, nandi,” Banichi muttered. “Cenedi cannot persuade her. Our Guild is already in Malguri Township, moving to secure various of her assets, but it is not even certain that our landing at Malguri Airport will be secure. One hopes to have that news before we land.”
He had not thought of that point of danger, but it was good to know the old links were functioning. “Can Guild possibly intercept that plane on the ground?” he asked.
“If Caiti were only so foolish as to land at Malguri Airport,”
Banichi said, “it would be easy. Cie, however, will take time to penetrate. And one regrets we will not have time. Planes fly faster above than vehicles or mecheiti can proceed in the weather there.”
“Then they will land unchecked, nadiin-ji?”
“Very likely they will, Bren-ji,” was Banichi’s glum assessment, “for any effective purposes.”
“Is there any chance of our going in at Cie?”
“They will surely take measures,” Banichi said. “We cannot risk it, Bren-ji.”
The Guild was not given to suicide. Or to losing the people they were trying to protect. Almost certainly there were Guild resources in Cie or moving there, but Banichi was not going to say so: the only inference one could draw was that there were not enough Guild resources there to protect the dowager or to effect a rescue.
He nodded, quietly left his staff to their own devices, and returned to the dowager’s cabin.
There he sat and brooded, among shaded windows, with only his watch for a gauge of time or progress. Eventually, after a long time, the young men moved to rap on the dowager’s door, doubtless by prior arrangment.
Cenedi entered the cabin, then, glanced at that door, then said to Bren: “The plane we are tracking, nandi, has entered descent, not at Malguri’s airport, nor even at Cie, but at a remote airport up at Cadienein-ori.”
“Still Caiti’s territory, nadi, is it not?”
“And a short runway, nandi,” Cenedi said. Cenedi did not look in the least happy, and must have heard something on the com, because he left for the rear of the plane immediately.
The dowager meanwhile emerged from her rest, and settled in her chair.
“The plane will land at Cadienein-ori, aiji-ma,” Bren said.
“One is not entirely surprised,” the dowager muttered. “They must trust their pilot.”
It was a scarily short airstrip for that size jet. Bren knew that much.
He imagined that if the Guild had scrambled to get assets as close to Cie as possible, they were now moving upland by any available means, to get to that small rural airport. One was not even sure roads ran between Cie and Cadienein-ori: in much of the rural East, lords had roads between their primary residence and a local airport, but freight might move entirely by air, these days, and the configuration of the roads was more web-work than grid.
One often had to go clear back to some central hub to go to a place only a few miles across a line of hills from where one was.
Cenedi returned after awhile, and bowed. “They have landed, aiji-ma, at Cadienein-ori. They undershot the runway, attempting to use all of it, and the plane seems damaged and immovable. There is only one runway. And it was iced, with heavy snowfall.”
No way for anyone else to get in, with a large plane blocking the runway. No way for them to land, certainly, except at the regional airport, in Ilisidi’s territory: their going in at Cie was no good, now.
And whatever the Guild had just revised their plans to do was now blocked by a disabled plane.
By accident or arrangement, Caiti had gotten farther out of their reach, and out of reach of Guild intervention. It was not to say that the non-Guild protection the lords of the East had at their disposal was unskilled. Far from it. And now how did anyone get in, with the weather closing in? One hoped that they could land.
“So,” was all the dowager said to that news, except, “Would the paidhi-aiji care for a brandied tea?”
“Indeed,” he said, agreeable to anything that pleased the dowager and settled her nerves.