He’d formed some disgraceful habits in the long voyage, he decided, impulses that had flung him out of his seat and after the boy, and habits proper gentlemen might consider far more pernicious than ordering the aiji’s heir about. He’d gotten the very dangerous habit of involving himself in his own security’s affairs, and the very fact that he wanted to be out there right now, giving advice and getting it, where the paidhi flatly didn’t belong—that was a habit he had to break, a shocking breach, for outsiders, doubtless an embarrassment to his own staff.
No matter that Lord Tatiseigi, the least qualified person to be giving orders in that department, was laying down his own set of priorities left and right, including repairs to the foyer, repair and rewiring of outmoded devices in his hedges, and rebuilding the mecheita pen, which would divert hands from more useful occupations.
But Tabini, meanwhile, was up to something entirely deliberate, something that had clearly had time to draw people clear from the coast, and had not yet heard his report. From his vantage at the end of the arc of chairs, he cast Tabini a desperate look and failed to make eye contact—possibly Tabini was ignoring him after that last embarrassment, was reminding him to observe protocols. Clearly the aiji had things better in hand and much farther advanced than he had known.
“Aiji-ma, aijiin-ma,” he asked, clearing his throat, desperate for one critical piece of knowledge, “may one ask—shall we indeed stay here tonight?”
“It seems so,” Tabini said placidly. “Does the Lord of the Heavens have grounds to recommend otherwise?”
Not the warm and familiar ‘paidhi-ji,’ translator for human affairs, but his other office, his capacity as atevi lord, and in that address, he found his window of opportunity. “One has a host of recommendations, aiji-ma.” He got up, remote from the aiji as he was, bowed, received the little move of the hand that meant he could approach, and he did so—bowed in front of the chair, then, undiscouraged, dropped to his knee at Tabini’s very chairside for a quick, private piece of communication, with only Damiri adjacent.
“We met other foreigners out there, aiji-ma, foreigners to humans, too, and, all credit to the dowager and to your son, aiji-ma, these new foreigners are expecting— our whole agreement with them rests on it—to find you in power and able to answer them. We have assured them you sent our mission out to them, to unwind all the mistaken communications between them and humans. We have assured them you are in charge, and will take charge, a situation for which they have reasonably high hopes.”
“We have heard something of the sort.” It could only have come from the dowager. “You have been quite busy in remote space, paidhi-aiji.”
“But there is a grave complication, aiji-ma. These foreigners themselves claim powerful and dangerous enemies, still another batch of foreigners, aggressive and with a bad history, on the far side of their territory. In short, aiji-ma, these foreigners are involved in a situation we do not understand, nothing that threatens us yet, but there are details—everything—in my computer, aiji-ma, including linguistic records and transcripts of negotiations in which the dowager and your son were deeply involved. They will tell you events, but I have a long, long account to give, information which the legislature and the Guild must understand, information absolutely critical to our safety. If one could engage the media, we have a reason it is absolutely essential for you to be safe—”
“We have already heard something of the details,” Tabini said, “which are neither here nor there at the moment. There are more urgent things.”
“We might publish the news, aiji-ma, attack the Kadagidi with information, unseat Murini from the capital. If we were to go back to the hills, we could—”
“Back, nandi? Who said where we have been?”
It was information the paidhi had not been told, precisely the sort of information the paidhi-aiji could never afford to let pass his lips anywhere he could be overheard. The tightly-contained ship-world he had lived in had given him very bad habits, and his staff, even Banichi and Jago, could fall into extreme and deadly disfavor if Tabini suspected they had told him classified matters they had learned from his staff.
“Aiji-ma, your whereabouts was my own guess, unfounded, probably entirely inaccurate. One can only apologize, and urge—”
“A guess, indeed.”
“One unfounded on any particular information.”
“A very clever guess, paidhi.”
“Only a surmise, aiji-ma, knowing that this entire unfortunate business has centered around me and foreign influencec”
“Around you!” Tabini outright laughed at the temerity of his notion. “Around you, paidhi-aiji!”
“Indeed,” Ilisidi said, leaning forward on her stick, as she sat on Tabini’s other side. “Around the paidhi, around this galloping modernity which you promoted far and wide, grandson, from shuttles we needed, to television, which we might—gods less fortunate!—have escaped. Kabiu violated. This modern device become the center of attention.You never would listen to advice.”
“Oh, indeed,” Tabini said, and his position had by now become very uncomfortable to hold, kneeling for conversation with one of the powers of the earth and having another primal force suddenly going at her grandson on the other side, in what could well become a lengthy debate. Bren cast about for a graceful way to get up and back to his chair and found none, none at all.
“So you went up into the high hills, did you,” Ilisidi said, “and settled your presence on the innocent Astronomer, who was bound himself sooner or later to be a target? Our esteemed human had no trouble reasoning out this brilliant move. How long before the Kadagidi approach the same conclusion and do harm to the distinguished man and his students?”
“Aijiin-ma.” Peacekeeper being the paidhi’s job, it seemed time to perform it, urgently so, at the risk of extreme disfavor. “It was by no means an apparent guess, if that was where the aiji indeed resided.”
“The hill provinces sheltered us,” Tabini said, “but no longer.
They will be here, mani-ma, presently, in force.”
My God, Bren thought. The hillmen, a hundred little clans at tenuous peace with each other, and for centuries ignoring the rest of the world—what in all reason could move them to come down to the Padi Valley? They’d detested flatland politics. They’d desperately wanted the University that Tabini had finally built up there, and then argued with its modern advice and advisements once they had it.
Not to mention the Observatory, the precious Observatory, adjunct to the University—all the students there. They were set at risk. The University library and all its generations of work, the center for the space program, the shuttle work, the translations of human-given books, the technical translations, many of which were only available by computer reader manualsc Perhaps the look was transparent. “At the University,” Damiri said, looking directly at him, “there was, this year, a general suspension of classes, nand’ paidhi, by order of the pretender. There was a particular attack on the library.”
The bottom dropped out of his stomach.
“The night previous, warned by computer messages, the students dispersed in all directions,” Tabini-aiji said with evident satisfaction, “and took the new books with them. Some have gone back to their homes, some sheltered in the hills, and no few of them have set up on the coast, taking resources with them, spreading word wherever they go, and establishing their own communications network. They have the portable machines. And we are informed they will be here.”