Deliberations: A Foreigner Short Story Read Free Page B

Northern Association had now apparently defected to her grandson on the very eve of his majority— because they hated Tatiseigi. Personally. Ajuri clan was central to the Northern Association, and an Atageini-Ajuri marriage had gone very bad indeed.
    Valasi had patched up that feud a few years ago. Shejidan’s Winter Festival had offered him a chance, when an angry young daughter of the Northern Association had stormed off from their tents, lost herself in the crowds, and a banner had caught her eye— the white lilies of Atageini clan, her deceased mother’s relatives, powerful in the Padi Valley Association.
    That had been a moment. A minor child had planted herself in Lord Tatiseigi’s camp, taking refuge under the lily banner. Ajuri clan had called a meeting of the Northern Association right in mid-festival— and things could have gone very bad indeed, if Valasi had not sent the Guild in to negotiate on both sides. Valasi had gotten the two sides calmed down, and the unhappy daughter had amicably settled in Lord Tatiseigi’s house for a few seasons.
    But one heard she had now gone back to her father’s clan, being equally upset with Tatiseigi.
    Well, it had been an agreement just waiting an excuse to unravel. And the Ajuri now thought they would fare better with her grandson. That was amusing.
    “My grandson gains the north,” she said. “There is an uneasy bargain for him. Reasonable, given he is half Taibeni— but that association will undoubtedly rise up to trouble him. Will he make a try at us tonight, do you think, ‘Nedi-ji?”
    Cenedi turned his head, looked down at her, asked, with deadly implications: “What do you wish done, aiji-ma?”
    What did she wish done?
    What was more important— the aishidi’tat, or her grandson?
    She could, without Tabini’s flirtations with the liberals, settle the fractious lords. If her grandson died tonight, there would be a few weeks of upset and shouting, and then, lacking any other credible claimant to the aijinate, the liberal and the conservative lords would come to the sane realization that nothing done in haste would last. Choosing one of them to rule the others would dissolve the aishidi’tat in civil war, which could even bring in the humans on Mospheira. Disorder gathered more disorder, from snowball to snowslide to avalanche.
    And no one wanted that. The Guild would stop it their own way, start eliminating key lords, defusing any action— unless some lord was so intemperate as to assassinate her.
    Then—
    Then she had to fear for the aishidi’tat. For all civilization. The Ragi atevi, that little center of the west, including her husband’s clan, and Valasi’s, and Tabini’s, had become necessary to the peace. They had always ruled, since there had been an aishidi’tat. If they ceased to rule...and power were left to the strongest...
    Chaos followed.
    She had kept the East separate from the west, behind its mountain walls. Malguri was a plain, stone-walled fortress, looking much as it had looked when humans had first descended to the world. Electricity was an afterthought, a convenience for the Guild.
    And should she and her grandson go down, the Eastern Guild would hold together whatever of civilization could be held...the traditions, the history.
    But recover it? Bring back what they had, in the aishidit’at?
    Without the Ragi atevi, the aishidi’tat would come apart. And the East did not hold the knowledge of, say, a Tatiseigi— the connections, the influence— the industry, or the wealth.
    The East did not have the rail system, did not have the phone system— much as she detested the thought, the East did not have the history with humans. Or the knowledge how to deal with the paidhi-aiji, offensive creature that he was— but— he was a pressure gauge, in a way of speaking, that would warn an aiji of trouble.
    None of these assets existed on the other side of the continental divide.
    No, the East would not rule the aishidi’tat. It would