“Daja-ma,” he said pleasantly.
“Are you pleased?” she asked outright.
“One is pleased that your son is so honored, daja-ma. One hopes you are enjoying the evening.”
“Is that a concern?”
She was set on an argument, and he was equally determined to avoid it. He bowed a third time, not meeting her eyes, not accepting a confrontation.
“My question was sincere, daja-ma. One apologizes if it gave offense.”
“Who killed my father?”
He did look at her, with a sharp intake of breath. “I did not, daja-ma, nor did the aiji-dowager, nor did Lord Tatiseigi, who would have received your father had he reached Tirnamardi. It is my unsupported opinion, daja-ma, that Tirnamardi is exactly where your father was going, and that the most likely person to have prevented him getting there was his uncle—your own great-uncle. Shishogi.”
Her eyes flashed, twice, luminous as they caught the light. “What do you know?”
“A question for us both, daja-ma: what do you know of him?”
“That you killed him.”
“I never met him. Nor did my aishid, in that context.” He saw her breathing very rapidly. “Daja-ma, are you well? There is a chair in the servant passage.”
“Why would he kill my father?”
“Do you know, daja-ma, who your uncle was?”
“That is a very strange question.”
He was acutely conscious of his own aishid, of the dowager’s men at Damiri’s back, of a crowded hall, though they were in a clear area. “There are things that I cannot discuss here, daja-ma, but that your husband surely knows.”
“Did he assassinate my father?”
“Daja-ma, your husband believed he protected you in dismissing your father, who was under pressures we do not accurately know. But to my knowledge the aiji did not wish his death. Your father may have discovered things he may have finally decided to pass to Lord Tatiseigi, as the closest to the aiji he could reach.”
“I am weary of riddles and suppositions! Tell me what you know, not what you guess!”
“Daja-ma.” He lowered his voice as much as possible. “We are not in a safe place. If you will discuss this with some person of close connection to you, one suggests Lord Tatiseigi.”
“The dowager’s closest ally!”
“But a man of impeccable honesty, daja-ma.”
“No! No, I insist on the truth from you. You advise my husband. And I am set at distance. I am told I shall not be permitted to leave the Bujavid. I cannot claim the Ajuri lordship. I cannot go to my own home!”
“Daja-ma, there are reasons.”
“Reasons!”
“Your great-uncle, daja-ma.” He kept his voice as low as possible. “I believe he did order your father’s assassination. If you wish my opinion of events, daja-ma, your great-uncle plotted a coup from the hour of your son’s birth. When the aiji sent him to the space station, out of reach, and in the dowager’s keeping, it so upset your great-uncle’s plans he launched the coup to remove the aiji, and possibly to appoint you to a regency until the succession could be worked out. But you fled with your husband.”
Her look was at first indignant, then entirely shocked.
“You had no idea, did you not, daja-ma?”
“This is insane! My great-uncle. My great-uncle is in the Guild.”
“He was in the Guild. Exactly so. And not of minor rank.”
“Ajuri is a minor clan!”
“That is no impediment. What would you have done, daja-ma, if the Guild had separated you from your husband and asked you to govern for a few months—or to marry—in a few months, for the good of the aishidi’tat.”
“You are quite out of your mind!”
“Did anyone approach you with such an idea, daja-ma?”
“Never!”
“Perhaps I am mistaken. But I am not mistaken about your great-uncle’s support—with others—of a Kadagidi with southern ties, to take the aijinate. And one is not mistaken in the subsequent actions of your great-uncle, whose subversion of the Guild created chaos and upset in the aishidi’tat, setting region against region, constantly hunting your husband, and then trying to seize your son. A great deal of what went on out on the west coast was aimed at removing me, and the aiji-dowager—and, again, in laying hands on your son. We had no idea at the time. Your husband declined to bring his son back to the Bujavid, preferring to confront these people in the field rather than in the halls of the Bujavid. What he feared in the Bujavid—I do not know. But it was substantial.”
She stared at him in shock, a hand to her heart. And he was sorry. He was intensely sorry for pressing, but it was, there in a quiet nook of her son’s Investiture, surrounded by his aishid and the dowager’s men, the same question that had hung over her marriage, her acceptance in her husband’s household.
“Your father had just become lord of Ajuri,” he said, unrelenting, “in the death of your uncle. There were, one fears, questions about that replacement which I had not heard—about which your husband may have been aware. The Guild was even then systematically withholding information from your husband’s bodyguard, on the excuse that he had appointed them outside the Guild system. The heads of the Guild knowingly put your household at risk with their politics, of which, at that time, your great-uncle was definitely part. The Guild also withheld information from my aishid—more than policy, I now suspect, in a deliberate act which put my life in danger and almost killed your son. There was a great deal amiss on the west coast . . . but the threads of it have run back to the Guild in Shejidan. Realizing that, the aiji-dowager’s aishid and mine began to ask questions, and to investigate matters inside the Guild, which, indeed, involved your great-uncle. He is now dead. Unfortunately we do not believe all his agents in the field are dead. So there is a reason, daja-ma, that the aiji has forbidden you to take the Ajuri lordship. There is a reason he, yes, questioned your clan’s man’chi and wanted your father and his bodyguard out of the Bujavid, and you safe within it. And you should also know, daja-ma, that the aiji has since then strongly rejected all suggestions that your marriage should be dissolved for political convenience, insisting that you were not complicit in your great-uncle’s actions. More, by retaining you as his wife, he has now placed you in a position which, until now, only the aiji-dowager has held. The aiji-dowager has questioned your motives. And I have begun to incline toward the aiji-dowager’s opinion—that you are independent of your late great-uncle, independent also of your father, your aunt, and your cousin, and also of your great-uncle Tatiseigi. You never courted power. But power may someday land in your hands. And at very least, throughout your life, you will find not only your son, but your daughter besieged by ambitious clans. You have strongly resisted the aiji-dowager’s influence. But, baji-naji, you could one day become her. Do not reject her or her allies. Learn from her. That is my unsolicited advice, aiji-ma. Now you have heard it.”
She was breathing hard as any runner. She stared at him wide-eyed in shock, saying nothing, and now he wished he had not thrown so much information at her, not all at once, not here, not—tonight.
“One apologizes, daja-ma. One truly does.”
“You are telling me the truth,” she said, as if it were some surprise. “You are telling me the truth, are you not, nandi?”
“I have told you the truth, daja-ma. Perhaps too much of it.”
“No,” she said, eyes flashing. “No, nandi, not too much. Finally, someone makes sense!”