More to the point, Ilisidi’s chief of security, Cenedi, and Ismini, head of the aiji’s guard, had just disappeared into that room, to have a quiet word with their lady and lord doubtless, and to advise them of the confrontation outside. Cajeiri went in on their heels.
And if the dustup between the great-grandfather and Cajeiri continued in there, and involved Ilisidi—well, that would frost the cake, as his mother used to say, and threaten agreements that had been made with dynastic purpose. The whole trembling association was at risk of fracture, the consort’s relatives on one side and Tabini and the heir and the aiji-dowager on the other.
Not to mention Uncle Tatiseigi, whose lawn was being parked upon, now, by a heavy bus of a clan nominally his ally by marriage, but clearly a clan with notions of special privilege, notions derived from Damiri’s parentage and their rival connections to the aijinate.
He had no choice, he decided. He left Banichi and Jago, passed the doors. The Ajuri lord, Benedi—that was the name, thank God he finally recalled it—who at the moment was being received by his granddaughter Damiri—cast a look over his shoulder and let a scowl escape his impassive mask. Damiri’s face still preserved a grimly-held smile, for him and for her father’s surviving brother.
Bren, for his part, avoided all eyes and gave a private nod of gratitude to the Atageini servant who quietly slid a chair into position near him, at the very bottom of the social order. He sat down there in silence, sat through the slight exchange of formal courtesies between the Ajuri, Tabini, and Ilisidi, and finally listened through the Ajuri’s extravagant praise of Tatiseigi, who perhaps had not looked outside since dawn. The family was making some effort to keep the peace, at least.
But the conversation immediately took a sharper edge as Ilisidi, hard upon Tatiseigi’s pleasant greeting, quoted a very obscure machimi writer about, “late to the contest, ah, late and bringing flowers to his kin.” Bren studied his hands, racking his brain in vain to remember the rest of the line, which came from some rarely-performed machimi they had had on tape on the voyage. An Eastern playwright, from Ilisidi’s end of the civilized world. He was sure the next line was something less than complimentary, something about sailing this way and that and arriving to his lord’s aid long after his lord’s enemies had slaughtered the household.
One only hoped the Ajuri were not conversant with obscure Malguri poets.
And, God, need they have Ilisidi start a war, as if they lacked all other impetus? Ilisidi had Cenedi at the back of her chair, Guild threat lurking in very senior form, and Ilisidi’s expression was sweet, familial malevolence, as if she truly hoped the Ajuri lord did understand her. Cenedi had been leaning near Ilisidi a moment ago, and he was now convinced Ilisidi had gotten the story of events on the step outside, particularly including the brusque treatment of her cherished great-grandson. Cajeiri meanwhile had settled, politically savvy for his years, right between his parents, and sat there like a young basilisk, regarding his maternal relatives with still smoldering ire and looking very satisfied with his great-grandmother. Cajeiri knew the quote, damned right he did, part of two years under Ilisidi’s tutelage.
Bren kept from meeting any eye, not encouraging the dowager to find another, plainer quote from her considerable repertoire. And Tatiseigi immediately rose to the social challenge, quoting from a better known and safer author, something about “their tents arrayed across the plain,” and “drinking rivers dry,” with a mournful reference to his ravaged house grounds, one was sure, and then to the enemy “lurking in the east.” “to come down with the gathering night.” That at least added up to a welcome, Bren was sure, parsing through the references, although the part about the enemy in the east raised a little uneasiness among the Ajuri.
“You expect yet another assault, nand’ Tatiseigi?”
“We have taken precautions,” Tabini said in his deep, attention-getting voice. “We have set out alarms and given orders to the foremost of this unlikely assemblage of buses—the vehicles are refueling.”
“Refueling,” the Ajuri lord echoed him uneasily, settling on a fragile chair, his son next to him. He accepted a cup of tea, and a plate of cakes appeared on the table between the two Ajuri, like the smaller stack that arrived, with a portable table, at Bren’s elbow.
Bren found no appetite for the teacakes, and they went untouched, but the Ajuri lords washed down several apiece. The Ajuri were some distance from home, and if they had come all the way by bus, avoiding the trains, they had certainly been traveling since dawn.
They might expect this snack as a prelude to supperc to which they expected to be invited, one was sure. “To what purpose, may we ask, aiji-ma?”
At last, that aiji-ma, that personal acknowledgment of the head of association. No one twitched. But if human nerves reverberated to it, Bren was sure atevi ones did. Ajuri had not wriggled sideways, not for a moment, and committed.
Good, he said to himself, and in Tabini’s answer, that they had to be ready for anything, talk came down to specifics: The current state of the roads, Murini’s likely response to the increasing gathering of support here, the placement of patrols on the estate and out across the border between Atageini clan and the Kadagidi, and all manner of things the paidhi could be very certain were also the topic of conversation outside the door among the various guards, who would have far better specifics on Tabini’s intentions.
But what a listener could gather just inside this room drew a vivid enough picture: That Tabini was determined to make a stand here, to have the buses for heavy assault vehicles if need be, or mobile fortification to prevent an incursion into the grounds.
It might be the most convenient place to rally supporters— but this house, with wide-open rolling meadows and fields around it, was hardly a protected position. And with Tabini-aiji’s supporters swarming over this and the adjacent province to reach Tirnamardi, they were concentrating themselves into an increasingly attractive target in the process.
A human would do things atevi wouldn’t, he reminded himself.
But, God, it felt chancy, relying oh so much on atevi notions of kabiu and acceptable behavior, in apparent confidence that Murini absolutely would not use aircraft and bomb this buildingc simply because it was not kabiu.
For a listening human, straight from space, and having the concept of defense in three dimensions fresh in mind, this gathering added up to a very queasy situation, one in which he kept reminding himself, no, no, no, human nerves did not resonate at all reliably. No, atevi truly would not expect certain things to happen, for a complex of reasons, some of which were simply because, instinctually, atevi would not, could not, sanely speaking, go against the bounds of kabiu and would not breach the bonds of aishi , that indefinable instinct of group, of obligation, ofc There was just no human word for it, beyond a comparison to mother-love and so-named human decency. A sane ateva just didn’t do certain things, didn’t attack the head of his own association, for starters, while aishi held. He didn’t attack the remoter associations of his association for the same reason— and it was beyond didn’t: It was all the way over to being in his right mind, couldn’t think of it.
Unlessc Unless the ateva in question was that odd psychological construct, an individual to whom man’chi flowed, who didn’t particularly think he owed man’chi upward to anyone else. That psychological construct added up, in atevi terms, to being born an aiji. A born leader. Or at least an ateva who by birth or experience was immune to constraints that applied to others. In human terms, a psychopathic personality.