Thisattempt smelled to them like serious business.
It smelled that way to the paidhi, too.
"Have you heard?" he asked. "Have you any current notion whether the troublemakers will make an attempt on the landing itself?"
"No doubt they'd like any means to make the aiji look weak," Jago said. "An attack on Taiben is fully possible."
"Aimed at Tabini? Or at the whole idea of human contact?"
"One certainly wishes the ship had chosen some other site than that near and convenient to the city," Jago said. "It makes logistics for the conspirators far easier. Direiso andTatiseigi are both in the region."
"Meaning anywhere but Taiben would have been preferable. Then why for God's sake was it on the list?"
"It has its advantages. Access is equally easy for us. And we sit close to the neighbors' operations, which means more readily knowing what they're doing."
"But there're more than nonspecific reasons to worry?"
"There's a suspect association," Jago said. "Local. But powerful."
"Localized geographically?" One neverknew the full reach and complexity of atevi association. Atevi themselves didn't admit the extent or the nature of them, God help the university on Mospheira trying to track them.
"Understand, nand' paidhi, Taiben is one estate of a very ancient area, of very old, very noble habitation — very old households, adjacent, of longstanding uneasiness of relations."
"Meaning historic feud." It was the Padi Valley. It was an old area. Historic.
"No, not feud," Banichi said, "but along this ancestral division of lands — the paidhi may be aware — one has thousands of years of history, among very ancient houses each of whom have powerful modern associations."
Not to say borders. Division of lands. There was a difference.
"An easy neighborhood in good times," Jago said. "But many unsettled issues. In chancy times, very easily upset."
"Meaning," Bren said quietly, "if there was a conspiracy a thousand leagues away, it would most easily nest here, next to Taiben, because of these houses."
"Five households," Jago said. "Before there were humans in the world, there were five principle landholders in the Padi Valley. Historically, all the aijiin of the Ragi have come from these five. The Association at large would hardly be able to settle on any aiji who didn'tcome from this small association. They're all the Ragi families who have everheld power."
"But Tabini's house settled the Treaty. By donating its lands to the refugees, from the war." That was answer number one anytime the primer students heard the question. Unquestionably there was more involved. There was the intricacy of the atevi election process. "They brokered the Treaty."
"Keeping only the estate at Taiben — not alone for its nearness to Shejidan, on the Alujis. Clearly association by residence. But also by nobility. The hunting association. And, very clearly, the association of ancestral wealth."
"And the Atigeini have holdings fairly close to Taiben."
"Thirty minutes by air," Banichi said.
"You think there'll be trouble from them? Is that what you're saying?"
"The relationship with the Atigeini may become clear before sundown. Old Tatiseigi is still the chief question."
"And Ilisidi," Jago said,
"What about Ilisidi? Where isshe? Does anyone know where she went?"
"Oh, Taiben. But Tabini moved her out last night. Now — we think she's guesting upland at Masiri, with the Atigeini. With Tatiseigi himself."
"Damn," he said quietly. But what he felt gathering about him was disaster.
"Tabini, of course, knew where she would go," Banichi said.
"And proceeded," Jago said. "He will not be pushed, at Taiben. Thatsmall association is historically sensitive."
"Challenging his enemies?"
"Collecting them, perhaps, under one roof."
He had an increasingly uneasy feeling. But it was empty air outside the window. He was wrapped about by atevi purpose, atevi direction, atevi mission. A trap — a conspiracy, a — God knew what. He'd called down a landing from the ship into the thick of atevi politics, arguing them out of trusting Mospheira.
And the atevi he most trusted — one of those words any paidhi should, of course, flag immediately in his thinking — had let him propose Taiben among the other sites he'd offered to the ship, and hadn't mentioned until now the web of associational relationships around Taiben, which — God, was it only a couple of weeks ago? — hadn't mattered once upon a time in his tenure. He'd no more wondered about local associations before the arrival of the human ship threw everything into uncertainty than he'd asked himself with daily urgency about the geography of the sea bottom.
Atevi associations in the microcosm, which atevi tracked in all their complexities back hundreds of years, weren't something the paidhi could politely ask about, weren't, something the paidhi was well enough informed on to involve himself in, and he didn't. The larger Association was stable. He'd not questioned it. He wasn't even supposed to question it. It had been ironclad Foreign Affairs policy that the paidhiin dealt only with the central Association and kept their noses out of the smaller ones. Reports the paidhiin could get were laced with misinformation and gossip, recrimination, feud histories and threats —
But ask how Taiben's neighboring estates had stood with each other in prehuman times — and, damn, of coursethe Padi Valley associations must be among the oldest: take it for that if only because archaeologists — a new science, a contagion from humans — had established several digs there, looking for truths earlier aijiin might not have tolerated finding.
"There were many wars there," Jago said, "many wars. Not of fortresses like Malguri. The Ragi always prided themselves that they needed no walls."
"Association would always happen among those leaders, though," Banichi said. "And Taiben belonged to Tabini's father-line. The mother-line, two generations ago, was from the Eastern Provinces."
"Hence Malguri," Jago said.
"Which," Banichi said, "to condense a great deal of bloody history, then united with the Padi Valley to marry Tabini's grandfather. Which had one effect: Tabini's line is the only Padi Valley line not wholly concentrated in the Padi Valley — or wholly dependent on Padi Valley families. An advantage."
"So if a new leader tried to come out of the Padi Valley now, he or she couldn't hold the East. Is that what you're saying?"
"There's obviously one who could," Banichi said.
"Disidi."
"She failed election in the hasdrawad because the commons don't trust her," Banichi said. "The tashrid would be altogether another story. Unfortunately for Ilisidi, the tashrid isn't where the successor is named — a profound reform, Bren-ji, the most profound reform. The commons choose. The fire and thunder of the debate was over the Treaty and the refugee settlement, all the lords struggling for advantage — but that one change was the knife in the dark. The commons always took orders how to vote."
"Until," Jago said, "the Treaty brought economic changes, and the commons became very independent. And will not vote against the interests of the commons. The Padi lords used to be the source of aijiin. Now they can't get a private rail line built — without the favor of the hasdrawad andTabini-aiji."
"It's certainly," Banichi said, "been a bitter swallow for them. But productive of circumspection and political modesty — and quiet, most of the time. The commons simply won't elect anyone with that old baggage on his back."