Bren kept from meeting any eye, not encouraging the dowager to find another, plainer quote from her considerable repertoire. And Tatiseigi immediately rose to the social challenge, quoting from a better known and safer author, something about “their tents arrayed across the plain,” and “drinking rivers dry,” with a mournful reference to his ravaged house grounds, one was sure, and then to the enemy “lurking in the east.” “to come down with the gathering night.” That at least added up to a welcome, Bren was sure, parsing through the references, although the part about the enemy in the east raised a little uneasiness among the Ajuri.

“You expect yet another assault, nand’ Tatiseigi?”

“We have taken precautions,” Tabini said in his deep, attention-getting voice. “We have set out alarms and given orders to the foremost of this unlikely assemblage of buses—the vehicles are refueling.”

“Refueling,” the Ajuri lord echoed him uneasily, settling on a fragile chair, his son next to him. He accepted a cup of tea, and a plate of cakes appeared on the table between the two Ajuri, like the smaller stack that arrived, with a portable table, at Bren’s elbow.

Bren found no appetite for the teacakes, and they went untouched, but the Ajuri lords washed down several apiece. The Ajuri were some distance from home, and if they had come all the way by bus, avoiding the trains, they had certainly been traveling since dawn.

They might expect this snack as a prelude to supperc to which they expected to be invited, one was sure. “To what purpose, may we ask, aiji-ma?”

At last, that aiji-ma, that personal acknowledgment of the head of association. No one twitched. But if human nerves reverberated to it, Bren was sure atevi ones did. Ajuri had not wriggled sideways, not for a moment, and committed.

Good, he said to himself, and in Tabini’s answer, that they had to be ready for anything, talk came down to specifics: The current state of the roads, Murini’s likely response to the increasing gathering of support here, the placement of patrols on the estate and out across the border between Atageini clan and the Kadagidi, and all manner of things the paidhi could be very certain were also the topic of conversation outside the door among the various guards, who would have far better specifics on Tabini’s intentions.

But what a listener could gather just inside this room drew a vivid enough picture: That Tabini was determined to make a stand here, to have the buses for heavy assault vehicles if need be, or mobile fortification to prevent an incursion into the grounds.

It might be the most convenient place to rally supporters— but this house, with wide-open rolling meadows and fields around it, was hardly a protected position. And with Tabini-aiji’s supporters swarming over this and the adjacent province to reach Tirnamardi, they were concentrating themselves into an increasingly attractive target in the process.

A human would do things atevi wouldn’t, he reminded himself.

But, God, it felt chancy, relying oh so much on atevi notions of kabiu and acceptable behavior, in apparent confidence that Murini absolutely would not use aircraft and bomb this buildingc simply because it was not kabiu.

For a listening human, straight from space, and having the concept of defense in three dimensions fresh in mind, this gathering added up to a very queasy situation, one in which he kept reminding himself, no, no, no, human nerves did not resonate at all reliably. No, atevi truly would not expect certain things to happen, for a complex of reasons, some of which were simply because, instinctually, atevi would not, could not, sanely speaking, go against the bounds of kabiu and would not breach the bonds of aishi , that indefinable instinct of group, of obligation, ofc There was just no human word for it, beyond a comparison to mother-love and so-named human decency. A sane ateva just didn’t do certain things, didn’t attack the head of his own association, for starters, while aishi held. He didn’t attack the remoter associations of his association for the same reason— and it was beyond didn’t: It was all the way over to being in his right mind, couldn’t think of it.

Unlessc Unless the ateva in question was that odd psychological construct, an individual to whom man’chi flowed, who didn’t particularly think he owed man’chi upward to anyone else. That psychological construct added up, in atevi terms, to being born an aiji. A born leader. Or at least an ateva who by birth or experience was immune to constraints that applied to others. In human terms, a psychopathic personality.

Among atevi such a person, at the top of the pyramid of responsibilities, made society work. He actually prevented wars by his very existence, in the best application of man’chi. He stopped wars cold, by preemptive action, and his assurance of having followers enough to carry out his objectives.

Tabini was certainly one such personality, trained from infancy to expect man’chi to flow upward from others, taught to drink it down like wine, in judicious sips, not wholesale gluttony. So, one day, everyone expected Cajeiri to be that sort of leader.

But dared one remember such a personality was also capable of going way out on an ethical cliff-edge? A strong enough aiji was capable of taking himself and his followers over that aforementioned edge of behavior the followers would by no means risk on their own, and the only possible brake on the situation was when enough followers simultaneously came to their senses and decided the person they’d followed was not a good leader. That was ideally how the system worked. A bad leader lost followers, someone turned on him, someone stuck a knife in his ribs, and another leader rose up from among the group. Atevi instincts somehow triggered that change of opinion at the right moment.

Logically, things began to balance again, and sane people en masse adjusted the situation until the group found itself a new leader.

But in the meantime people died. Sometimes a lot of people. And sometimes things ordinarily unthinkable did happen.

It was no comfort at all to be human and thinking quite readily of the physical possibilities of a massed target out in that driveway, an attraction for bombs, planes, poison gas grenades, or anything else a murderous and over-vaunting intention could come up with.

But one thing he knew: Setting forward the possibility of someone doing such things, in this conservative company, could only convince Tatiseigi and these suspicious Ajuri aristocrats that humans were depraved beyond belief and just naturally bent toward bad behavior. He was not the individual who could lead them over such a brink.

Give Tabini the benefit of his advice—hell, yes. Tabini had frequently asked him such dark questions, in privatec and might now, if they ever could achieve ten minutes’ guaranteed privacy in this place.

What would a human do? Tabini had asked him in the old days, before the voyage. What things would you warn against, if it were your own people, paidhi-ji?

It always gave the paidhi-aiji a queasy feeling, answering that question honestly, worrying that he might be giving Tabini ideas—the same way he’d worried when he counseled Tabini to mercy and moderation in the face of treason. Maybe he’d generated ideas he never should have let loose among atevi. Or maybe too much mercy was the key damage he’d done, urging Tabini not to slaughter his defeated enemies. They were sitting here under assault, because certain people had remained alive. They’ll concentrate your opposition, he’d argued; you can keep an eye on them. Leave them alive.

So here he sat under siege by those same enemies, wishing Tabini would ask him for advice one more time, and fearing he would give the wrong advice one more time if Tabini did that.

And meanwhile, roiling about in the basement of his mind, was that other application of kabiu, that word which ordinarily applied to the room arrangement and those flowers in a green vase over on the table: Kabiu, that meant fit or decorous or appropriate, if one was setting a table. Kabiu could also apply to battlefields.