Pretender

A little tug at his coat cuffs, lace straightened. He hoped his face didn’t show the sense of panic he felt.

And he was very glad to pick up Tano and Algini in the hallway, the two not conspicuously armed, but very likely quite well-equipped beneath their leather jackets. Cajeiri turned up with his two young bodyguards in court dress, not, as would perhaps have roused regional hackles, in Taibeni green and brown. Tasteful, quiet, a little lace at collar and cuffs, hair done back in green ribbon. Cajeiri’s queue, more disciplined than ever in his young life, was tied up in complex red and black, the Ragi colors, and his coat was deep Ragi red, with black vines stitched subtly across the fabric—quite, quite splendid, with black lace. The dowager was in ordinary splendor, black and gold with just a hint of red. The paidhi felt quite overwhelmed in comparison, a lack of conspicuousness he judged his best and safest statement. Lord of the Heavens, Tabini had named him; but it was the paidhi-aiji, the aiji’s interpreter, who had to render his account.

The doors of the dowager’s residence opened, with an immediate unfolding of security outward, and about them, and behind. Bren fell in behind the dowager and the heir, with Jago beside him, and Tano and Algini behind. He was content to be deeply buried in the entourage of a legitimate lord of the Association. Underfoot were the priceless hand-knotted silk ru

Of Murini, they had no further word, but the danger was not past—would not be past, if this meeting failed to achieve reunification, or if Tabini failed to pull a coalition together. The whole thing could break down again with a new claimant, or three or four, fracturing the Association into districts, with no single voice clear enough to prevail. If that happenedc He tried not to let his thoughts scatter. They had just passed the lift, the dowager choosing to take the stairs down, stairs which had their own security provisions, and which provided solid footing all the way down. They were in no great hurry. The dowager proceeded at her own pace, the ferule of her cane tapping the steps at measured intervals, and only once Cajeiri lifted his voice to ask if the lift was broken.

“No,” was the dowager’s clear response, and no further information. But it was utterly in character for the holder of Malguri to disdain the lift, to choose her own way down— And to have her security fling the doors open onto the main floor hallway, secure themselves a standing place in a place thronged with legislators, mostly gathered down by the lifts— gentlemen and ladies with their own entourages, who, by this maneuver, were set at a distance from the dowager’s arrival, and set off-balance.

Bang! went the dowager’s cane when a hubbub rose and a few started to surge forward to take possession of the dowager. “We need no assistance!” she declared, her voice echoing hard on the impact. “We are here for the joint assembly. Where is my grandson?”

“Not here yet, nandi.” It was Tatiseigi who turned up among the legislators, with the Ajuri close at hand, and the lord of Dur with his son. The Atageini lord gave a stiff and slight bow, but when Ilisidi extended her hand, the old man’s expression changed, and the second bow was deep and gracious, before he took that offered hand—took it and joined their processional, the Ajuri and Dur sweeping in with them, the point of an advance that split the crowd of senators and representatives— The more so, since certain lords of the tashrid, not to be outdone, swept in beside the Atageini and Ajuri and Dur, in the vanguard as they headed down the hall to the legislative chambers. Advance, hell, Bren thought. It was a processional, a rivalry to be as close to the dowager as possible, a sweeping of the hall of every damned member of the house of lords, who were not going to linger to politic around Tabini. The dowager, notorious for her conservation of the east, not even a member of the Western Association, which was the clear majority here, had swept up the west in a rush to claim precedence, and likely—Bren did not gawk about to see—no few of the hasdrawad might press after.

The door wardens opened the double doors of the hasdrawad assembly, and the dowager and her security and her allies marched in, and down the sloping aisle toward the dais, climbing the steps. A number of seats had been brought in, old and ornate chairs set on either side of the dais, in the well, in rows of fortunate seven, and the lords nearest Ilisidi claimed the foremost, the hindmost having the back seats, and, indeed, Bren saw, a sizable number of the hasdrawad had flooded in after them, with more arriving by the moment. There was a growing buzz in the chamber as the dowager mounted the steps and took a seat arranged for her, with cushions of Malguri’s colors, and Bren hesitated, wanting to take his seat on the steps, if he had had his way, but on the dowager’s left was a seat with white cushions, a white that glared unmistakably in the muted light of a hundred ancient lamps. The paidhi’s colors. The aiji’s orders—no damned way those colors had been set there in any misunderstanding; and he had no choice but climb the steps and take his place.

“We have the computer,” Jago said at the last instant. “We will be at the right.”

“Yes,” he said, finding oxygen in short supply, and climbed up and sat down, for the first time having a view of the entire assembly—the tashrid with very few vacant seats, the hasdrawad’s own desks rapidly acquiring occupants, though clots of consultation lingered in the aisles. The chairs reserved for the aiji and his consort were dead center, still vacant; but a small commotion had arisen in the hall outside, and he was by no means surprised when a second wave swept in, this incursion headed by Guild security, a great deal of security. Members of the hasdrawad cleared the aisles.

Members seated rose, and the seated members of the tashrid rose, and suddenly Tabini and Damiri were present, walking down the right-hand aisle toward the dais.

11

Bren rose and stood. Cajeiri did. The dowager gathered herself up last with a slow and apparently effortless move not using the cane, painful as it might have been, and they all stood as Tabini and Damiri moved down the aisle, and up the steps, and took their places in the speaker’s circle, all this in an undertone of comment, voices blurred and mixed in the vast echoes of the chamber. For the first time since their encounter in Tirnamardi, Tabini stood arrayed in court splendor, a black coat glistening with black woven patterns, not quite animal nor quite pure design, with black lace at his cuffs, and a spray of rubies glittering on his lapel—a shadowy eminence with those pale, pale gold eyes raking the assembly.

Bren felt lightheaded, grateful when first Tabini-aiji and then Damiri and Cajeiri and the dowager sat down. He took his seat simultaneously with the rest on the dais, and saw at that moment a commotion near the doors, as, yes, amid the milling about of members seeking their seats, the dowager’s household staff arrived, carrying stacks of papers.

The report. His report.

He let out a breath, seeing at least a part of his duty discharged.

The treaty with the kyo was in those pages, no matter what happened hereafter. Photographs were there to convince the skeptical, everything to make the report credible, if even the dowager’s word failed to persuade the diehards to reasonc But these in attendance were not the rebels, he told himself.