Destroyer

They’d have touched off the kyo sooner or later, and sooner or later gotten the kyo here with blood in their eye… to the planet’s detriment. And the planet would never have known what hit it or why—if those mountains had not existed, if those mountains had not divided eastern atevi from western and let humans get a safe foothold down here.

Curious thought, that humans might have endangered the world—but the humans down here were the ones who might prevent that danger from coming down on the world.

He had done his best, hadn’t he? No matter it had done damage, it had not done the ultimate damage—had not let war come on the world unawares.

And not all the changes were harmful.

Thanks to his predecessor in the paidhi’s office, and thanks to him, as well, planes had fairly recently rendered that divide much more crossable. Planes had united the two halves of the continent across that mountain divide that rail had found all but insurpassable, and brought the east into the politics of the west… which had brought benefits of peace, of cooperation, a flowering of art, a cross-pollination of atevi cultures. In her youth, Ilisidi had been an exotic foreigner herself, marrying the aiji of the west, arriving by train in what had been, half a century ago, an arduous and epic rail journey.

But darker politics had ridden those rails, too, before Ilisidi’s day. Politics, and a rising resentment of the formation of the aishidi’tat in the west, eastern politics that had once seen that railroad as a means of war against the west, forging an alliance with a few conservative western powers like the Atageini and the Kadigidi, jealous of the aiji’s authority, and most of all opposing a lingering human influence on the mainland, wanting even to take back Mospheira and obliterate human presence there. The east had missed the start of the War of the Landing—and the very knowledge the east might be coming in had led to the war-weary west and the human survivors entering negotiations before things flew out of control. The threat of eastern intervention had led to the ceding of Mospheira to humans and the relocation of the indigenous people of Mospheira to the coast, all before the east could get its chance to get in, and before it could find an excuse to ratchet up the war again.

So war and technology that sent trains across the mountains made peace among atevi, unachievable before there were humans to detest and decry. And from that time there had been paidhiin, trying to comply with the Treaty, leaking technology off Mospheira ever so slowly. Eventually the rail link had led to Ilisidi, an eastern consort for a western aiji. And the modern aishidi’tat was born.

Ilisidi’s Malguri lay beyond that deceptive haze, still a three hour flight away… but only a three hour flight away, which he had made, oh, under varied circumstances, never the train trip. The distance was still difficult—on today’s scale.

And the plainest fact of atevi politics was that the continental divide was still a political watershed as well as a geological one. There were still two very different atevi opinions, and because there was advantage to be had in turmoil, the Kadigidi and the Atageini, sitting in the heart of the west, still played politics with Ilisidi, the eastern consort, who chaperoned a half-Atageini heir of her own bloodline. And lately the Kadigidi had played even stranger politics by allying with south-coastal atevi, namely the Taisigin. And now there was another move, and a Kadigidi claimed to be aiji.

Only over his own dead body… granted numerous people would happily arrange that.

God, there was so much water under the bridge. Planets were so complicated, compared to the steel worlds he’d lived in the last few years.

And why did he think of such things? When his mind went into involuntary fugue, there was, damn it all, something bubbling down in the depths of his consciousness that was trying to surface, something that might be urgent, something that had been bothering him ever since breakfast, and he had sent that letter out, to what fate he now had no way of dictating.

For one thing, that landscape out there drew his mind down to planetary scale, down to the distances riders and trucks and trains could cover in a day, and reminded him how ordinary folk thought, and why they thought that way.

That view reminded him of the resources Tabini had had when, leaving here, one supposed he had headed for deeper cover, taking his Atageini wife with him.

But without an airplane or extraordinary determination with the cross-continental train, he could not have gotten much beyond those hills—nor would he have had much motive to exit the west, where he had some allies. In the east, yes, as the grandson of the lady of Malguri, he did have some cachet—but feuds predominated in that district and no outsider could exert any authority. No. Tabini would not lean to Ilisidi’s side of the family. Tabini—

Tabini was waiting. Tabini expected the ship to come back. Tabini, once he heard of their presence on the planet, would not sit idly by and wait…

Not Tabini. No. It wasn’t in his character.

A little stir near the door drew his attention. Algini had come to sit near it, just waiting, perhaps resting, in those odd moments that his staff caught rest.

Or watching him. Wondering why the paidhi stood staring out the window.

Everything became part of the fugue. Even the least talkative member of his bodyguard. Even a room in which they still dared not speak too much truth.

“Tell me,” he said, to Algini’s golden, impassive gaze. “If the aiji were to hear of our presence and come in unexpectedly, could he arrive safely in this house, ‘Gini-ji? And would there be prearranged signals between him and the staff that we also should learn—if they exist?”

Algini was as rare with his smiles as with his words, and this smile was rarer still, a gentle one. “Your staff has indeed asked this question of the household,” Algini said, managing not to make the paidhi feel too much the fool. “This staff will not confide to us any such signals, if they exist. They ask us to allow them to deal with any untoward event.”

So much for complete trust.

“Does Damiri-daja know them, and is there a possibility she knows them and has not told Tabini-aiji?”

“One can by no means say,” Algini said. “But we have considered that possibility, too.”

A small look at the ceiling, at the peripheries, thinking of bugs, and a sober look back at Algini. “And the message, ‘Gini-ji? Have you a clue how the dowager has heard it?”

“We have given the paidhi’s message to Cenedi, and it may by now have passed into Lord Tatiseigi’s hands, possibly further, into the hands of his staff. The rest depends on whether the messengers will go, and whether they will go by rail, which will bring them to Shejidan very quickly, or whether they will go in stealth, nandi. We ca

The dowager had more credit with Tatiseigi than he did. That was for very certain.

But it was worth remembering that Cenedi himself would have visited this house when Ilisidi had been, for extended periods, a guest, perhaps a lover, of the Atageini lord… possibly even while her husband was alive, if certain nefarious whispers were true, in the days after the birth of her son and during the dark days when the whole nation had tottered in uncertainty and suspicion, as to whether the eastern consort, namely Ilisidi, would steal away the heir and go to her own stronghold in Malguri to attempt to raise a rival power. In those days, the legislature in Shejidan had seen it as, yes, extremely possible that Ilisidi herself had come to the Atageini, gathering support among the more conservative central lords to seize power in Shejidan.