Destroyer

“Not the answer, boy. They are out of touch with kabiu. Their hearts are dead. They have lost touch with the earth, with the seasons. Like humans. They practice flower-arrangement as if that was the be-all, and conceive that I would help them.”

“Nand’ Bren understands kabiu,” Cajeiri said, seizing on the casual slight, ignoring the central issue. “Much better than any Kadigidi.”

“Does he?” Tatiseigi’s pale gold eyes swung toward Bren, questioning, hostile, and Bren, wishing for invisibility, gave a little nod to the old lord. “Do you, paidhi?”

“Enough to know flower-arrangement is a manifestation of respect for the earth and the numbers of life, nandi, and that the mind and the heart surely improve with a deeper understanding of such issues.” He had no wish at all to debate the old man, or to become the centerpiece of argument, but Cajeiri had taken him for a shield… hell, for a weapon. “As, for instance, your arrangement, the three sprigs, fortunate in number, honor yourself, the dowager, your young kinsman, the evergreen lasting in all seasons.”

“Ha!” Tatiseigi said, caught out in his little grim humor. “He knows by rote. Like my great-grandnephew, who has doubtless read all the books. Where does one learn kabiu up in the ether of the heavens? Where are flowers, where are stones, where is the sun?”

“One sees the stars,” Cajeiri said firmly. “Which behave together, all co

“Ha,” Tatiseigi said again. A wonder if Tatiseigi knew or cared that the earth went around the sun. “Stars, indeed. Can you say your seasons, youngster? Or do you even remember them?”

“We could say the seasons when we were six!” Cajeiri said, leaning forward, and using that autocratic pronoun. “And we have also seen very many stars, nandi, and have a notebook with their numbers and their motions.”

“And the numbers of the earth, young sir, and the numbers even of this room? Can you declare those?”

“The small wildflower in the arrangement, sir, is surely because of my mother, as if she were at the table, since lilies are not in season. But I see nothing here for my father. My great-grandmother, and nand’ Bren, and I are at this table for him, fortunate three, and since Bren has no representation at all, perhaps the addition of a remembrance for him would have upset the favorable numbers of our breakfast—since you are at the table, and you clearly do not count yourself for my father, sir, which would make it four, without amelioration in the bouquet, which you did not add. Am I right, mani-ma?”

The only trace of the child, that last appeal to his great-grandmother, who arched her brows and pursed her lips.

“Precocious boy!” Tatiseigi was a

“One has noted the arrangement,” Ilisidi said, and no, the paidhi could not have read that much of it, except that lilies were out of season, and that in this kabiu household nothing out of season would appear out of a hothouse.

“Damned precocious. Is this disrespect your teaching, or the paidhi’s?”

“I told you I would not neglect the graceful arts, Tati-ji.”

“And courtesy? Where is respect of his elders?”

“I am very respectful, nandi,” Cajeiri said. “And offer regret for the patio.”

The mechieti incident, with the wet cement.

“Precocious, I say!” It was not a compliment. Profile stared at profile across the table, that Atageini jaw set hard—on both sides of the equation.

“Where are my mother and my father, nandi? If you know, we request you say.”

It was the uncle who broke the stare and looked at Ilisidi, whose face was perfectly serene.

“Have we an answer to give the child, nandi?”

“No, we have not an answer. Your grandson offered me none. Likely he failed to tell my niece, either. They kited off into the night without warning or courtesy.”

“Afoot, nandi? In a vehicle?”

“On mechieti, as they came.”

“Ha.” Ilisidi nodded sagely.

Mechieti meant an overland route, off the roads, which made them hard to track by ordinary means.

Aircraft, on the other hand…

“For all I know,” Tatiseigi said, “they crossed the corner of Kadigidi land and headed for the high hills.”

Not impossible. But dangerous. Deadly dangerous.

“Excuse a question, nandi.” Bren felt he needed to ask. “Have there been planes up?”

“Not over Atageini land, we assure you! Noisy contraptions. Not over our land.”

So they could not track Tabini by that means, not close at hand, and that might have let him get into the hills—or even circle back into Taiben. He might have been there, and the people of Taiben would not have betrayed his presence, not until he had given personal consent, which their hasty passage might not have allowed.

It might be wise for Ilisidi and Cajeiri to set up here and let Tabini come to them, if he could—if they could keep the peace with Uncle Tatiseigi in the meanwhile. But there might be lives already at risk on the coast. A counter-revolution would be a delicate thing, easily crushed, unless something busied the Kadigidi very quickly, and stirred up maximum trouble.

The paidhi, in that regard, had a job to do. He had to overcome the Kadigidi arguments, had to prove that Tabini was not wrong to have relied on his advice. And if he could not convince this old man, who had accepted him under his roof, he had no chance at all in places where he might be less favorably regarded.

“One wishes cautiously to advance a plan of action, nandiin.” Bren’s throat constricted unexpectedly, and his hands sweated. “I feel I should not impose my presence here overlong. That I should go to the capital, to the Guild, to present the case for our mission, to say what we have found, to justify my advice to the aiji, which it seems I must do.”

“Suicide,” Ilisidi said sharply.

“Is there a justification for bad advice?” Tatiseigi retorted. “Is there any justification for this overthrow of kabiu, this intrusion of belching machines and smoke into our skies? Is there any justification for this general corruption of our traditions, setting our young people grasping after human toys, is there any justification for television and rushing across the country in an afternoon, scaring the game and ruining perfectly good land with racketing airports?”

There it was in a nutshell. Justifiable, considering all that atevi had already let slip, precariously close to forgetting certain imperatives. For a moment he saw no argument on his side at all. What had been done in the heavens, humans could have done.

He could have done. If he ever could have gotten into space without atevi industry behind him, and could not have had that without Tabini’s strong backing, and that had been the begi

There was a chain of justification. Difficult as it was, the reasons were unavoidable, if egocentric—because there was no one but a person skilled in cross-species logic who could have seen the problem.

And it had taken a seven-year-old atevi prince to make the kyo believe their intentions.

“With the aiji-dowager’s leave,” he began, “I do wish to justify it, sir, and beg your indulgence to begin under this roof.”

“No,” Ilisidi said sharply. “You will never convince him. He is set against it. He is convinced I have lost my senses and soared off to the heavens with my great-grandson, intending to corrupt him and turn him human.”

“Well?” Tatiseigi asked, with a jut of that Atageini jaw. “And you bring him back here with two ragamuffins from Taiben, no less—Taiben! No doubt they have poached in our woods, and now eye the household silver.”

“I am Ragi,” Cajeiri’s higher voice said, “and you are my great-great-uncle, and great-grandmother is Malguri! And you should not speak badly of my father and my mother!”

There was a small, shocked silence.