Destroyer

Blink. Hindbrain made conclusions. Realized they had traveled northwest, away from the road. Were going due east from their meeting-spot, aimed at that long, long hedge and fence. They weren’t going in the gate.

Blink, again. Tabini had stopped on Atageini land, paid his visit, played his politics; and the Atageini had stayed firmly bound to the aishidi’tat, not falling in with the Kadigidi, not trusting, so long as Lady Damiri stayed bound to Tabini-aiji, any blandishments of the Kadigidi—because the Kadigidi would never rely on the Atageini lord, not with Damiri mothering Tabini’s heir, Tatiseigi’s kinsman…

Taiben had reason to think the Kadigidi would push the Atageini and that the old man ruling at Tirnamardi would have no choice but to play politics, having no force, no great establishment of security and weaponry such as Taiben had built during Tabini-aiji’s rule.

That mathematics went on in the dowager’s head, no question. No question his staff had understood it in all its permutations, with no word said among them. He began to have his own gut feeling that maybe his suggesting Taiben had never been a bad idea, that the dowager had been inclining in that direction and hadn’t seen quite how to do it… until she pounced on Cajeiri as the key part of the equation, necessary to tip the old man into compliance. Atevi, he had long suspected, didn’t always logic their way through such calculations at ethereal distance: they felt the pull of clan and house and influence, they moved, they acted in a peculiar symmetry, and, cold and logical as the dowager could be—she might have had a piece snapped into place for her, thanks to him. Or had she, damn her, forced a move?

Gut-sense said their little band was going in the right direction now, if not before. Safety was behind them. Chaos was swirling around Tirnamardi, trying to destroy the dowager, to suck the lord of the Atageini right down into it—damned right, the dowager had known the hazard, known that a very key player would be tottering, the more as their arrival onworld shoved hard at the situation—what was Tatiseigi going to think when they came back, if they didn’t come to him and expect his help?

And what, conversely, were the Kadigidi going to assume as fact, when he hosted the dowager? Every atevi involved in this mess had to feel the swing of that internal compass: man’chi. Man’chi applied even to him, as clearly as he had ever had that sense, and the dowager pushing every button she could reach… setting herself right at the crux of the matter and demanding extravagant action. Come and save us—move, if you have any disposition to move, and the hell with waiting for it.

Atevi weren’t given to fighting wars. Not often. But one was certainly shaping up here. Not just the usual skirmish, the usual Guild action, the fall of critical leaders: this was in one sense a small skirmish, but it happened on the dividing line between two forces, and the Guild, such as it was, had begun to engage—his staff, on this side. Kadigidi, on the other… and the only thing Ilisidi hadn’t foreseen was the boy, of all her resources, kiting off to Taiben, following his own developing instincts. Cajeiri had forced every power in play to readjust position… the boy had been under intolerable pressure, seen the situation, and, being his father’s son, he’d moved, damn his young hide, seized power of his own, without consulting his great-grandmother.

Atevi mathematics. Calculations he had to logic his way through. And now the fool human was riding the wave back again, having gathered force enough, he hoped to God—force that looked, by cold daylight, a little less precise, a little more weather-worn, Jago’s hair for once straying a few wisps out of her braid, their uniforms, even their faces smudged with pale trail-dust, frown-lines appearing that did not exist, otherwise. Exhausted. All of them, Deiso and the rangers as well, not to mention the beasts that carried them. It was a dangerous condition, and logic had nothing to do with what they were doing now, except evolutionary logic—mass movement of the forces across the continent, politics on its grandest scale.

They rode, leaving the mechieti that had carried them outward to graze, rest, and wander on their own logic back to Taibeni territory, or to trail after them if they were so inclined. The sun rose. The landscape passed in a haze of autumn grass, low scrub, the rolling hills. No one explained or talked or wondered. They all knew. Even the human did, now. Bren shut his eyes, locked his leg across the beast’s neck, trapped under his other knee, wrapping his arms as close to his center of gravity as he could, and for a few moments at a time he found he could rest, waking in a kind of daze, with no coherent thought beyond a realization that, yes, check of the internal compass, they were still headed east, to Tirnamardi, and, no, he hadn’t fallen off. No one spoke, which suited him, and the thunderous quiet began to seem the whole universe, closer and closer to an armageddon that wasn’t going to involve humans—except this one. There was some solace in that.

Eyes shut again.

Opened. The world had hushed. Stopped moving. He was still in the saddle.

“Nandi.” A ranger was standing beside his right leg, offering him up a canteen and a stick of concentrate. He discovered hunger he hadn’t known he had, wolfed the small bar down, barely a bite for an ateva, and drank deeply before he gave the canteen back.

Awake, this time, fugue-state never having produced specific information, only a general centering where he was, in what course he was taking. He had no interest at all in dismounting and having to climb up again. He was settled. He might die on mechieti-back, somewhere across that intervening distance. At least he wouldn’t have to walk there to do it. Banichi rode alongside for a moment, inquired how he fared.

“Well enough,” he said. “Well enough, Banichi-ji.” He asked no opinions. In the headlong rush of elements in this chaos, there was nothing orderly at all. Jago was near him. Tano and Algini were behind him. That was what he needed. That was what they all needed. It was an atevi sorting-out, as necessary to them as the mechieti moving with their leader. He was the one with the illusion of absolute choice. And where was he? Where his heart led him. Going to get the dowager out of a mess. End of all questions.

And having discovered that, shortly after they set to moving again, he let his head droop and honestly fell asleep—waked, suddenly, as balance changed, his heart skipping a beat. They had hit a long downward slope. A dark bar crossed the meadow ahead, and, bewildering him for the instant, the sun had somehow sunk well down the sky—

God, how had they gotten this far, this late? He both wanted to be closer, and was appalled that they were this close, choices, if there ever had been, steadily diminishing. Was there a better political answer? The paidhi was supposed to find them, if they existed, and he was bereft of other ideas. Was here better than going along that fence, or finding the hunting gate Lord Tatiseigi had said existed? His staff had that expertise, if there was a way.

A smell wafted on the wind, faint scent of disaster, urging they had no time for alternatives, that maybe they were already out of time.

“Smoke, nadiin,” he said. It was not a strong smell. It was wind-scattered, but he was very sure of it, and he was sure they had caught it, too, and drawn their own unhappy conclusions.

“There will have been plenty of it, one fears,” Banichi said. “But there has been no more sound such as last night. Scattered gunfire.”

“They are still shooting?” He took that for hope.

“Sporadically so, nadi,” Banichi informed him, and he cherished that thought as they rode the long slow roll to the crest of the next hill.

From there they had that view they had had on a prior evening, with Atageini farmland to the north, in the distance, and their bar, mostly arrow-straight, resolved as one part of the considerable hedges and fence of Tirnamardi’s grounds.