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He
had his dinner party with the mountain lords.

And a railroad deal of great importance to the dowager's trade proposal with the Marid hanging in the balance.

T
he dinner party small talk was, alas, and as Bren had feared, an indelicate series of business questions insinuated at table, and the affair extended into completely blunt questions during brandy afterward.

But one could consider it a moderate success.

Far too much brandy proved to be the answer. When voices rose and the objections of private interest became wildly unreasonable, Bren signaled and staff kept pouring until the conversation descended to incoherency, and sober bodyguards—two apiece—took the befuddled guests safely down to the Bujavid train station and back to their hotel, probably confused as to whether a deal had been made.

Lord Topari's enthusiasm for the project had, however, only increased.
He
was the one who had begun a heated argument with his neighbors and—in Lord Topari's evident opinion—subordinates, and he had seemed to be winning his points. That the argument might continue back at the hotel seemed very likely.

Twice in the days following the dinner party, Lord Topari positioned himself beside the only door of the Transportation Committee conference room, to pounce when Bren exited the committee meeting, wanting this and that addition to the agreement.

Two four-man bodyguards stood at right angles to such encounters, one Guild-trained, the other composed of leather-clad high country hunters armed with pieces of, Banichi said dryly, a caliber hard to come by in Shejidan's shops.

“Have you heard from the aiji-dowager?” was the daily refrain, referring to Lord Topari's new requests: he wanted to extend roads from
his
domain into those of his neighbors, making the rail station in
his
district the center of a hitherto primitive transportation network.

It was not an unreasonable notion. It was even desirable—but a road was still a lower priority, a matter to be dealt with once the station itself was approved and underway. It was, however, a moment at which Topari had gotten the agreement of his neighbors—and Topari wanted the matter included and attached to railroad finance in the original proposal.

Topari might act the country novice, but he wisely wanted an agreement set in stone, sealed, filed in the national archive, and the agreement removed from his local politics, so that his neighbors could not change their minds.

 • • • 

“I have something for you, indeed,” Bren was able to say, finally. He had anticipated the encounter, and had a member of his secretarial office in attendance
with
a set of papers. He smiled, showed Topari into the now-vacant conference room, and beckoned the young man with the briefcase.

The young man set it on the table, opened it, and drew out five, fortunate five packets, laying them in a fan on the table.

“For each district affected,” Bren said with some satisfaction in his handiwork, “indeed, nandi, anticipating that we
might
meet today, I have prepared a plan,
with
the requested road work, and there will be an adequate warehouse,
and
a Transportation Guild establishment in the station. You recall—”

“Foreigners are not acceptable!” was Topari's immediate and negative response.

“Ah, but the Transportation Guild, in agreement with other changes going on within
all
the guilds,
will
recognize your local offices. Representatives of that guild will induct five local residents, one from each of your districts, train them, and then assist them to train other candidates for their guild, setting up a model establishment for others—completely local—to be set up in other districts across the Southern Mountains and southward into the Marid. The original representatives will return to Shejidan when training is complete, leaving your own people in absolute authority over operations at your station. And this office is budgeted in
with
the road-building, to be sure of that standard you ask.”

Local authority would be indoctrinated, trained, educated, and bound by Transportation Guild standards, regulations, and procedures—including road width. It was a training process that might take years, but he neglected to mention that. He pointed out for the lord, who was not adept with legal language, the salient points of the agreement.

“Local control,” he said, pointing to a paragraph of fine calligraphy. “Local authority—in your office, which will be the first and senior Transportation Guild office in the district, supervising all offices that later exist. You will have complete local control, and there will be no running to Shejidan for approval for matters involving the rail in your district. Your rail center will communicate decisions to subordinate stations, which
you
may decide to set up, or not. Your rail center will become, in fact, a central office.”

“Central of what?”

“Of whatever you instruct them to be, nandi. As the foremost clan of your local association, and as lord of the territory where the rail office is located, you may choose to negotiate a Transportation office in each of your member districts, but one assumes you will choose to keep the
regional
Guild office in your rail center, bound together by the several roads.”

He could see the glitter in Lord Topari's eyes.

“They will be in direct communication with Transportation Guild Headquarters here in Shejidan, so you can be confident any matters
you
deem important enough to report will go straight to the highest level of the Transportation Guild in Shejidan, at the speed of modern communications—that is to say, instantly. And your report will go from them to the aiji, should there be any problem they cannot resolve. Any of your neighbors' difficulties will be routed to your
local
office before being relayed to Shejidan.”

Topari listened to that, and his eyes began to sparkle. “Direct from Halrun to Shejidan.”

“At a simple phone call,” Bren said. “As will be the case, of course, with any other guilds you yourself deem useful to your district. Establish a local office in your district, and establish minor offices reporting to it from other members of your association, and you will be the center of such operations. One would recommend that the Builders' Guild be among the first to operate on that level. Likewise the Trade Guild might be useful to you. I see that you are amply defended by your bodyguard. But perhaps the Treasurers would be useful, to be sure every report and record is proper and to the established standard. Many districts have found the Treasurers a great convenience, eliminating any confusion about accounts.”

“We are not on the gold standard!”

“Absolutely,” he said. Topari's folk, poor in that resource, dealt in a mishmash of equivalencies and direct barter of everything from furs to foodstuffs. “Which is all the more reason to have
your own local people
in the Treasurers' Guild, trained to deal with exchanges, knowledgeable enough to agree on fair values locally—and to be certain your standards are being observed when the value of items is translated to Shejidani currency.”

A worried and calculating look.
“One
of my associates will not favor that.”

“Each may have whatever offices he wishes to admit, under your authority—though of course if they want the full advantage of the system—ultimately—they all
must
deal with the offices in your district, nandi. It will be an advantage to them to have their offices directly connected to the rail office, and to the warehouses we shall build there; and to have them on site where the goods meet the rail in Halrun. So perhaps your lone objector will find the system to his advantage after all, as the operation progresses and profits flow. One is certain he will not want to be left out of your road system—and when he finds that your commerce is proceeding without delays and inquiries, he may wish to participate. Meanwhile your station will gain from rapid processing of exchanges, and if Halrun makes it most convenient for traders, Halrun will get the most benefits. Fortune and geography have settled a great benefit on your home district, nandi, and, as a coastal lord, I can add that with the improvement of the Najida spur, as the dowager and Lord Machigi intend, you will find those warehouses full of goods going not only north-south, but also coming up from the west coast. And of course your local products will always have direct shipment to the Marid and the west coast, rather than going down to Shejidan for packaging and shipping. Your district will derive a fee from goods in storage in those warehouses—fees which have hitherto gone to Shejidan. An efficient operation in your district, perhaps with additional warehouses, as lords become aware of the advantage of a central distribution point, can be very, very profitable.”

“Excellent
creature!” Lord Topari exclaimed.
“Excellently
done!”

And Topari was out the door and off down the hall with his guard.

Bren drew a deep breath, aware of his own aishid around him, doubtless suppressing the strong desire to open fire.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said, choosing amusement, and experiencing a certain satisfaction, “your restraint is admirable.”

“You have inserted an Assassins' Guild office into that territory,” Banichi said, in that dry tone of on-duty humor. “Manners must soon follow.”

“Creature!”
Jago repeated.

“Views will change,” Bren said, “slowly. The man may even realize his slip—and worry about it later. Or his guard may.”

“It is important his guard know the problem, however,” Algini said, and Banichi nodded.

“Indeed,” Banichi said. “Tano.”

Tano left their company on his own mission, to pass a word to Topari's bodyguard, namely that the paidhi had magnanimously forgiven the small slip in protocol, but that the paidhi's guard strongly suggested that a reconsideration of vocabulary in private might prevent future incidents in public—lest he make that reference in the hearing of the aiji-dowager, or with some of the more conservative lords.

“A good lunch at home,” Bren said quietly, and started the three walking toward the main hall and the lifts.

The dispersing committee had long since moved on, thank God.

And attitudes toward humans
had
shifted to the positive during his tenure. Attitudes were still shifting, penetrating areas they had never reached. And change was now reaching the mountains, or Topari would not be dealing with him in the first place. Attitudes would change. A moderation of the language would follow.
Excellent creature
was already relatively benign as a description.

“I have concluded,” he remarked to his aishid in the privacy of the lift, “that Topari is, whatever his faults, an
honest
fellow.”

“But he is still a fool,” Banichi said, which was, unfortunately, true. And because he was a fool, unfortunate things would continue to happen in Lord Topari's dealings with the great and powerful of the aishidi'tat.

The best they could do for Topari as a political ally was to insulate him, keep him safe in his mountains, between small experiences of the larger world, and keep him happy to
be
in his mountains. Of all the several mountain lords who could rise to head that association—Topari, who had the exploitable advantage of that tiny wide spot in the mountains, was also the most adventurous, the most willing to brave the modern world and its ways, and equally likely, Bren surmised, he was the one lord the others agreed couldn't tell them a lie.

It was a time of opportunity in the aishidi'tat, a time of opportunity that a brave few were beginning to recognize. The shakeup in the Assassins' Guild was proliferating scarily fast through other guilds, which had felt the pressure regarding regional guilds for decades and staved it off, saying there was no way to change the system. Things were suddenly possible that had not been possible since the foundation of the aishidi'tat.

Which was all the more reason to couple the Assassins' move to space with his trip up to the station, and give that ancient guild a little peaceful time to settle in and learn the environment, so they could advise and temper the guilds that would come up behind them.

The new Guild office on the space station—which would quickly have to understand an array of technical issues and precautions—was part of a very large picture indeed.

Change was coming, and if they could just achieve internal peace long enough to see it all work, they were going to knit the Marid, the East, and the southern coast into the Western Association—and now the station—in a way that Tabini's predecessors had only dreamed of doing.

Boundaries had always been vague in the atevi world. A common language across the continent, local trade and intermarriages and leaders based on that biological determiner, man'chi, worked against such absolutes. The formation of the aishidi'tat had fundamentally shifted that balance with a vast number of independent clans recognizing a central authority, the aiji. Man'chi, yes, was involved, but laws and the new guild systems reinforced that union, providing regularized commerce, communication—and peacekeeping based on efficiency and surgical precision, not numbers and brute force.

The aishidi'tat became a thing apart . . . until the marriage contract between Tabini's grandfather and Ilisidi brought the Eastern Association into an uneasy alliance, and the boundaries began to blur once more. Thanks to recent efforts, those boundaries might soon all but disappear, as the political leaders of these four highly independent regions recognized the benefits of cooperation, and sought a compromise of Guild structure that would enhance their strengths and minimize their vulnerabilities.

The real change wrought since Tabini's return to power was not in boundaries. It was in the lines of
control
that had, from the outset of the Western Association, centered so rigidly in the capital, in the form of the Assassin's Guild. In the earliest days of the aishidi'tat, clan loyalty had made unity impossible. But arising from, of all things, the building of a railroad, guilds arose that transcended clan interests, that demanded man'chi to themselves, to the aishidi'tat, and ultimately to the aijinate. The Assassins were the first, the oldest of guilds—taking in applicants from any clan, but insisting on man'chi to itself and renunciation of any other loyalty. The Assassins assigned bodyguards to various leaders they wanted to protect . . . and removed those they wanted out. And the aiji in Shejidan, by one move and another, sheltered them, used them, bestowed their services on those
he
wanted to survive.