“One waits to hear, aiji-ma,” he murmured—hoping it was a small problem.
“The matter of Lord Aseida,” Tabini said, “is a storm blowing up quite rapidly, if predictably. The lords are all uneasy in what happened, and we are particularly concerned that the action may set your good name in question.”
“That fool Topari,” Ilisidi said, “is the one pushing this.”
“Topari is irrelevant,” Tabini said. “Of Tatiseigi’s enemies, he is the very least.”
“The man thinks in conspiracies,” Ilisidi said. “He will argue against the television image if we provide it. He understands such things can be edited. I have it on good authority, he will be the problem. The others will let this fool put his head up and see what the answer is. He is exceedingly upset—the arrest of a lord is his issue—so he claims.”
Topari. A lord of the Cismontane Association, south of the capital—a rural district even more conservative than the Padi Valley Association. It was a Ragi population, in the watershed this side of the Senjin Marid, and running up into the highlands.
That district, one readily recalled, detested humans on principle, did not support the space program, and Topari was part of that little knot of minor lords that, geographically speaking, sat between the Marid and the aishidi’tat. Regarding his relations with Tabini—Topari had not been signatory to Murini’s coup—but likely only because that region rarely joined anything.
The brain was working. The head still hurt, but he felt the little adrenaline surge.
“You can do nothing with him, paidhi,” Tabini said. “And we still say he will not be the principal problem.”
“Leverage,” Ilisidi said, “is his entire motive. Aseida could catch fire and he would care nothing for the man. But Topari sees a way to make a problem to our disadvantage and cause a problem.”
A problem aimed at the aiji-dowager, Bren thought. And asked: “What, aijiin-ma, is his position?”
Right question. Tabini looked very annoyed, and Ilisidi had a quick answer.
“He is currently in a lather over our agreement with the Taisigin Marid,” Ilisidi said. “That is the entire business.”
“I am not about to take issue at a Ragi lord for objecting to the removal of a Ragi lord,” Tabini said. “That is not the approach I can make to this situation, especially with my grandmother as one of the principals in this affair!”
“The paidhi asks the right question. What is his position? Nothing to do with Lord Aseida or lordly prerogatives. We are his real target. He objects to our trade agreement with the Taisigin Marid because he sees it as affecting the Senjin rail line which his grandfather built. He envisions the southern treaty as replacing his precious railroad—the only privately constructed rail still functioning in the aishidi’tat. Because of an imagined danger to his rail segment and his little slice of use-fees on shipments to Senji, he has made me his enemy—I believe tyrant was the precise wording when he discussed my character. And while a reasonable man might have retreated from his rhetoric of several decades past, he views the whole world as an absolute set of numbers. He views negotiation as a fault and a weakness. He calls me fickle, and changeable, but will apparently not believe I can back off from an inconvenient feud which never mattered greatly in the first place! That, Grandson of mine, is his entire concern with the fate of Lord Aseida, but I will wager you he will present a resolution calling for an investigation, and if he has his hand on it, it will be a resolution extravagant in its blame of us and Lord Tatiseigi for attacking that Kadagidi whelp who was trying to kill us!”
“You are not worried about your reputation,” Tabini said.
“Of course not!”
“Well, his resolution will fail, when its own caucus fails to support it. And if the paidhi-aiji will simply supply Lord Tatiseigi with the record Jase-aiji has—you may have the satisfaction of publicly embarrassing Lord Topari.”
“And creating a firestorm around our rail extension!”
God. Railroad politics. Trains were not only vital to the southern mountains, they were the only transport in the southern mountains, besides local trucks on roads that would daunt a mecheita. It was all going to start all over again. One saw it coming, everybody south of Shejidan wanting advantage to their own clan in the routing of the rail extension.
And Topari was the man to start it all sliding.
“Perhaps,” Bren said quietly, “perhaps I can get ahead of the situation, before anyone proposes an investigation.”
“You are wounded, paidhi!”
From Tabini, it was downright touching. Bren lifted a hand, a gesture to plead for a hearing of his point. “I recall the incident of the name-calling.” The old man had, in a legislative session some years ago, called Tatiseigi ineffectual and Ilisidi an Eastern tyrant. Tatiseigi had, in turn, called him greedy, which, within the Conservative Caucus, had seen charges flying about graft and the siting of rail stations. Tatiseigi had emerged from the squabble with perfectly clean hands, since he had fought to keep rail out of his district, not to bring it in. “As I recall, his quarrel with Lord Tatiseigi also dates from the railroad dispute.”
“Absolutely,” Ilisidi said. “Absolutely that is behind his stirring this up.”
“He is not the only one stirring this up,” Tabini said.
“He is the one poised to be a cursed inconvenience,” Ilisidi shot back.
“Tatiseigi can deal with him,” Tabini said, “as deftly as he did the last time.”
“Or I can deal with him,” Bren said, and in the breath he had, with the room somewhat swimming in his vision: “Lord Tatiseigi has human guests at the moment. And Lord Tatiseigi’s complaint is our justification against the Kadagidi, so he cannot take an impartial stance. I have actually exchanged civil words with Lord Topari in the past, unlikely as it may seem.”
“Negotiation with the man?” Tabini asked. “It may only make him a worse problem. He is not accepting of humans.”
“But I sit on the Transportation Committee,” Bren said quietly. “I have not been active on it since our return—but in fact, I will have influence in the plan for the south, and I am the negotiator with the Taisigin Marid, all of which will directly affect his district. My intentions may greatly worry him.”
“The bill on which you and my grandmother have staked an enormous risk—is still not voted on. The whole linked chain of the tribal peoples, Machigi’s agreement, the whole southwest coast, gods less fortunate! is postponed, and may be postponed further, awaiting a resolution of this mess of the succession in two clans. If you make Lord Topari in any wise part of the Aseida stew, it may well spill into the west coast matter, and if those two become linked, every lord and village will take a personal invitation to argue their own modifications to the west coast compromise. We cannot rescue you from that situation, if it goes awry. If you do lend this mountain lord any importance on these grounds or start negotiating with him before the west coast matter is voted on and untouchable, the Aseida matter can blow up into a storm that will take the west coast and the southern agreement with it.”