“Nand’ paidhi, there are people of the dowager’s acquaintance, closely associated people, whose associations with Tabini-aiji are through the aiji-dowager. They don’t accept this piece of paper, this Treaty with Mospheira. Pieces of paper don’t impress them at all, and, quite frankly, they don’t consider the cession of Mospheira legitimate or effective.”
That crowd, he thought with a chill. The conservative fringe. The attack-the-beaches element. He didn’t want to believe it.
“We’ve received inquiry from them,” Cenedi said. “In fact, their agents have come to Malguri requesting you be turned over to them, urging the aiji-dowager to abandon association with Tabini altogether. They argue the Treaty is valueless. That Tabini-aiji is leading in a wrong direction. We’ve arranged a compromise. They need certain information, I’ve indicated we can obtain it for them, and they’ll not request you be turned over to them.”
It was a nightmare. He didn’t know what aspect of it to try to deal with. Finding out where Cenedi stood seemed foremost.
“Are you working for the aiji-dowager, nadi?”
“Always. Without exception.”
“And what side is she taking? For or against Tabini?”
“She has no man’chi. She acts for herself.”
“To replace him?”
“That would be a possibility, nadi. She would do nothing that reduces her independence.”
Nothing that reduces her independence. Ilisidi had lost the election in the hasdrawad. Twice. Once five years ago, to Tabini.
And Tabini had to write that letter and send him to Ilisidi?
“Will you give me the statements I need, nand’ paidhi?”
It wasn’t an easy answer. Possibly—possibly Tabini hadn’t really betrayed him. Possibly Tabini’s administration was on its way down in defeat, and he’d never felt the earthquake. He couldn’t believe that. But atevi politics had confounded paidhiin before him.
“Nand’ paidhi,” Cenedi said. “These people have sent to Maiguri to bring you back to their authorities. If I give you over to them, I don’t say we can’t get you back—but in what condition I can hardly promise. They might carry their questioning much further, into technology, weapons, and space-based systems, things in which we have no interest, and in which we have no reason to believe you haven’t told the truth. Please don’t delude yourself: this is not machimi, and no one keeps secrets from professionals. If you give me the statement I want, that will bring Tabini down, we can be cordial. If I can’t show them that—”
His mind was racing. He was losing bits of what Cenedi was saying, and that could be disastrous.
“—I’ve no choice but to let them obtain it their way. And I had much rather keep you from that, nand’ paidhi. Again: who fired the gun?”
“Banichi fired the gun.”
“Who gave you the gun?”
“No one gave me a gun, nadi.”
Cenedi sighed and pressed a button. Not a historical relic, a distracted corner of his mind objected. But probably a great deal else around Cenedi’s office wasn’t historical, or outmoded.
They waited. He could, he thought, change his mind. He could give Cenedi what he wanted, change sides—but he had Cenedi’s word… and that letter… to tell him what was really going on, and he didn’t believe it, not wholly. Tabini had been too canny, too much the politician, to go down without a maneuver tried, and he might, for all he knew, be a piece Tabini still counted his. Still relied on.
Which was stupid to think. If Tabini wanted him to take any active role in this, if that letter wasn’t to take seriously, Tabini could have told him, Banichi or Jago could have told him—someone could have told him what in hell they wanted him to do.
And he could have called his office, the way he was supposed to, and filed a report.
* * *
X
« ^ »
The door behind him opened. He had no illusions about making an escape from Malguri—half the continent away from human territory, with no phone and no one to rely on except Jago and Banichi—and that was, perhaps, a chance; but out-muscling two strong atevi who stood head and shoulders taller than he did, who loomed over him and laid hands on his arms as he got up from the chair… that hardly felt like a sane chance, either.
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