The young man was off like a shot, back toward the main doors, not the nearest, which were probably still secured. His footsteps echoed on the retreat.
“It is a great risk to go down to the village, nandi,” Ramaso said, “a risk for you to leave these premises.”
“Not from them.”
“No, nandi! Of course not!”
Honest distress. They let him run into danger. They didn’t know how to stop him without unraveling everything. He began to see that. No danger fromthe village. But the village couldn’t feel safe. Nobody could, as things stood.
“My guard will keep me safe, I have no doubt. My worry is my attracting attack into the village, Rama-ji, and I know what I ask. Guide me in this. If one asks protection from the aiji in Shejidan, it will be counter to all I hope to achieve. One does not wish to see Najida village dragged into politics with the South.”
“With the South, nandi?”
“The Marid will seek to divide Maschi from Edi, Edi from Korali—wherever they can find a weakness. One believes— one sincerely believes, Rama-ji, that in the aishidi’tat is the best association for all the Western clans. But this needs to be proved—to the Western clans. And it cannot be proved by bringing central clan Guild in here to settle things by force. It was never the power of the aiji in Shejidan that protected this coast. It was the people.”
Ramaso himself was Korali. And Ramaso nodded solemnly and slowly. “The absence of both the paidhi-aiji and the Lord Geigi has been a weakness on this coast. Our isolation from politics protected us. But Najida welcomesyour return, nandi. I am, at least by birth, an outsider, though my wife is from Najida. But I believe the village will heartily welcome your close involvement.”
“One regrets extremely the necessity of my service in space. Najida has deserved better.”
“Najida could not find better than you, nandi. That is your staff’s sentiment. You are—if the paidhi will forgive a political opinion—outside the regional rivalries. You are not Edi. But you are not Ragi. There was a reason your Bujavid staff fled here; there was a reason Najida welcomed them and hoped for your return; there was a reason the Marid found it inconvenient to attempt to take this coast, and the reason was exactly as you say. The resistance in Dalaigi relied on this house to reach Dur; and so we did; and Dur reached the Island, and from Dur we acquired direction and advice at need; and we gave each other assurances that there wouldbe a rising against the new regime. We were not idle in your absence, nandi, even though we counted on no help from Kajiminda—and less from the center of the continent. One must ask the paidhi’s forgiveness—his great forgiveness—for notwarning the paidhi about the situation with Kajiminda, which we did notknow. We did not know Guild had come from the South. We were unwarned.”
“The grass was not mown on the road, Rama-ji. There were so many signs. One laid them all to a decline in trade.”
Ramaso bowed his head, shaking it slowly. “We thought it irresponsibility. We thought it—perhaps—that the house couldnot pay its debts. We thought perhaps the presence of the Lord of the Heavens would bring Lord Geigi’s nephew to a better frame of mind. One feels personally at fault, nandi. Should you wish it—one is prepared to be dismissed from this post of responsibility.”
“Do not consider it. The aiji’s own information failed.”
Ramaso’s face showed rare emotion, a soul greatly disturbed. “This I can say, nandi. I have been in touch with—with the activities of the village council, in matters here and—those things I spoke of—the contacts with the North. And if my knowledge will serve you, nandi, I shall answer to you. Not to the aiji, nor even the paidhi’s distinguished guests. I answer to you.”
He was stunned. He had corresponded with Ramaso before and after his return. He had exchanged observations with Ramaso, and trusted this man, in happier days, to bear with his family, at a close range that would have worried him—were it not level-headed Ramaso. He had not had the least inkling what this man had been, or done, during the Troubles.
“Rama-ji. What can one say?”
The impassive mask resumed, and, with a little quirk of the lips: “Say little, to the aiji, nandi. And little to any of your staff who might report to him. But our records—will be open to you.”
His bodyguard. Who were extremely closely tied to the aiji’s house.
And it wasNajidama Bay he was dealing with, which had had a local tradition of smuggling, and even of wrecking; and there had historically been business enterprises Najida village might not want to have told to the aiji, and there was a time a light up by the Sisters had lured the aiji’s shipping to ruin—
Butc not to tell his bodyguardc
“One even asks, nandi, didthe aiji send his son here, so conveniently?”
“No, Rama-ji. On that point, one is relatively certain, there was no planning in that.”
“No desire, nandi, forgive me, for an excuseto send Guild to the coast?”
“No, Rama-ji. The young gentleman is entirely what he seems. Fluent—in Mosphei’, at least as the ship-folk speak it. He is many things, but not—not orthodox Ragi, nor ever will be. He has associates among human folk. He has a great attachment to the aiji-dowager.”
“One detected that attachment,” Ramaso said, and nodded slowly. “One has readily detected that.” And then Ramaso added: “This coast, up and down, has always respected the grandmothers.”
The same little chill ran through that statement, a chill of antiquity, ancient belief, ancient connections. The people of the coast had owned Mospheira once—the Edi, and the Gan, up in the Northern Isles, were the aboriginal peoples of the island.
The treaty that separated humans onto the island enclave, and atevi to the mainland, where the Ragi ruledc had made those two peoples homeless, refugees on this coast. It had been expedient. It had saved thousands of lives—assured the survival of the human species on the planet.
But it had left the former Mospheirans separated from their sacred sites. Their monuments had gone to museums. Their traditions had been swallowed up.
There had been two particular reasons that Tabini-aiji had appointed the paidhi as lord of Najida, when the clan that had had it went extinct. One reason: that a Marid clan, the Farai, had claimed to succeed the Maladesi, and Tabini didn’t want a Marid clan to get its fingers on Najida—and the otherc
The other reason had been that no central lord could have been accepted on this coast, no more than this coast would accept anyone from the Marid.
“Ramaso-nadi,” he said, “I will notdiscuss inappropriate things with the aiji; you have my word on that. My aishid may be Ragi—but they are in my man’chi, Rama-ji, and as they will not betray me, I will not betray them. I find myself connected here. I had no notion of the indebtedness I would come to feel toward this place. I am far more foreign. I do not feel in the same way, but I feel deeply. I shall become, at whatever time I speak for you, partisan forthis regionc and I shall keep its secrets, whatever of them I learn. And so, if you will forgive me, will that young man under this roof. He is not one who forgets a kindness. And he learns. Enlist him by means of your good qualities; enlist the aiji-dowager, who remembers favors done her great-grandson. These are not inconsequential allies, Ramaso. Tell thatto the village, if you will speak for me. I shall always be a foreigner. But not so much so here, one hopes. One earnestly hopes so.”
“You are alsoan exile from Mospheira, nandi. In that sense, you are one of us.”
True—if not in the same bitter sense as the Old Ones.
“Nadi-ji,” he said to Ramaso, with a little bow. Ramaso bowed. And he walked away, disturbed to the core.