A rare moment of brilliance, if he did say so himself. Occasionally the words were just there, ready to spring out.
At such moments of overwhelming self-confidence—well to ask an impartial observer. He called Jago, who surveyed it both for felicity and persuasion.
“Excellent,” she said, “excellently worded, nandi.”
“I shall write it out,” he said, and carefully did so, in his most formal script, provided a reading copy for Lord Tatiseigi, a second one for the dowager, and affixed the paidhi’s seal in wax to the actual missive. He weighed it in his hand, looked at the computer screen to assure himself that he had nowhere hinted the darker thoughts of his heart, such as the damnable paralysis of your Guild or your general policy, which arises from willful ignorance, corruption, and scientific illiteracy of certain members. He thought those thoughts. God, he thought them, with such force it seemed impossible they had not branded themselves on the paper in his own handwriting.
But he had been politic throughout. He had flattered. He had told the minimal truth. He had promised—literally—the sun, the moon, and the stars, if they would come to their senses and take authority. The alternatives were not pretty… three bands of humans trying to deal with the aliens they had thus far only antagonized.
He brought the letter and the copies to Jago, watched her take them out the door, and let go a deep breath, wishing every syllable had been perfect, which now he knew was not the case, wishing he had been brilliant, which he was completely dubious was the case, wishing he could miraculously transport himself to the dowager’s vicinity to watch her reaction and answer questions; and to Tatiseigi’s, after that.
And there was the question, the very good question, whether, even if the dowager wished it, the letter would ever get past Tatiseigi’s grounds. The dowager would have to approve it before the next copy went to Tatiseigi, and Tatiseigi would have to approve it to get it out the door.
He walked to the open window, and gazed out on the cultivated fields, the broad expanses of grassland that lay behind the very ineffective walls of the estate.
Beyond those fields, barring the horizon, rose wooded hills; and beyond them the eye could find a faint haze where a range of snow-covered mountains would stand, if the mountains were being cooperative today. Today a stranger who didn’t know such mountains existed would assume that haze was sky, the continent unbarriered. He would think there was no split between east and west.
Would history not have been different, if that were the case? Would history not have rolled over the human landing on this world, if that were the case? The western atevi were an inquisitive progressive lot, exceedingly prone to investigate, to take an oddity in the hand and look at it carefully. Humans had landed on Mospheira, and had ended up on the mainland, briefly. The mainland atevi, the westerners, had been astonishingly outgoing and accepting… until the war. A landing on the other end of the continent—just a little rotation of the world away—and there would have been no human presence left on the planet, in very short order. Ilisidi’s people, Ilisidi’s neighbors’ forebears, would have obliterated any human landing, no great number of questions asked.
That would have kept humans in space, giving no alternative but the ship, and no leadership or authority but the captains who had insisted on going out and exploring further, ostensibly hunting some vantage from which they could figure out where they were—but in fact poking and prodding among likely near stars for further and further expansion of human presence, greater and easier resources.
They’d have touched off the kyo sooner or later, and sooner or later gotten the kyo here with blood in their eye… to the planet’s detriment. And the planet would never have known what hit it or why—if those mountains had not existed, if those mountains had not divided eastern atevi from western and let humans get a safe foothold down here.
Curious thought, that humans might have endangered the world—but the humans down here were the ones who might prevent that danger from coming down on the world.
He had done his best, hadn’t he? No matter it had done damage, it had not done the ultimate damage—had not let war come on the world unawares.
And not all the changes were harmful.
Thanks to his predecessor in the paidhi’s office, and thanks to him, as well, planes had fairly recently rendered that divide much more crossable. Planes had united the two halves of the continent across that mountain divide that rail had found all but insurpassable, and brought the east into the politics of the west… which had brought benefits of peace, of cooperation, a flowering of art, a cross-pollination of atevi cultures. In her youth, Ilisidi had been an exotic foreigner herself, marrying the aiji of the west, arriving by train in what had been, half a century ago, an arduous and epic rail journey.
But darker politics had ridden those rails, too, before Ilisidi’s day. Politics, and a rising resentment of the formation of the aishidi’tat in the west, eastern politics that had once seen that railroad as a means of war against the west, forging an alliance with a few conservative western powers like the Atageini and the Kadigidi, jealous of the aiji’s authority, and most of all opposing a lingering human influence on the mainland, wanting even to take back Mospheira and obliterate human presence there. The east had missed the start of the War of the Landing—and the very knowledge the east might be coming in had led to the war-weary west and the human survivors entering negotiations before things flew out of control. The threat of eastern intervention had led to the ceding of Mospheira to humans and the relocation of the indigenous people of Mospheira to the coast, all before the east could get its chance to get in, and before it could find an excuse to ratchet up the war again.
So war and technology that sent trains across the mountains made peace among atevi, unachievable before there were humans to detest and decry. And from that time there had been paidhiin, trying to comply with the Treaty, leaking technology off Mospheira ever so slowly. Eventually the rail link had led to Ilisidi, an eastern consort for a western aiji. And the modern aishidi’tat was born.
Ilisidi’s Malguri lay beyond that deceptive haze, still a three hour flight away… but only a three hour flight away, which he had made, oh, under varied circumstances, never the train trip. The distance was still difficult—on today’s scale.
And the plainest fact of atevi politics was that the continental divide was still a political watershed as well as a geological one. There were still two very different atevi opinions, and because there was advantage to be had in turmoil, the Kadigidi and the Atageini, sitting in the heart of the west, still played politics with Ilisidi, the eastern consort, who chaperoned a half-Atageini heir of her own bloodline. And lately the Kadigidi had played even stranger politics by allying with south-coastal atevi, namely the Taisigin. And now there was another move, and a Kadigidi claimed to be aiji.
Only over his own dead body… granted numerous people would happily arrange that.
God, there was so much water under the bridge. Planets were so complicated, compared to the steel worlds he’d lived in the last few years.