Deliberations: A Foreigner Short Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

Kadagidi.
    They indicated that things could only go so far before something had to be done...that the coalition that had supported Valasi’s claim was showing cracks. And that they could do nothing immediate, but that something ultimately had to be done.
    But— Valasi stayed in power. She had her reports, from visitors, and from within the guilds in Shejidan. His bullying of Wilson, his threats of embargos, brought a flood of minor technological conveniences that turned out to be far, far more than expected— and required more exotic materials. Frozen food, which the kabiuteri abhorred. The building of airfields at key points across the aishidi’tat. She had one built, herself. The Eastern guildhall acquired electricity, and installed the most modern equipment.
    Valasi’s reputation improved with prosperity. He had become unassailable despite his indiscretions.
    He died unexpectedly, however, after only fifteen years of rule, still a relatively young man, in a world changed by his rule.
    Tabini had been a bright, good lad, who rode, hunted, and took readily to books and ciphering.
    And she had brought him up with strictures she had never been able to apply to Valasi. Her grandson had grown up a stranger to electric light, to western conveniences, to airplanes and to television. She had taught him the history and heraldry of every clan in the aishidi’tat. She had spent evenings by the fireside, telling him, after dinner, the stories of the War of the Landing, and the changes it had brought, good and bad. She had taught him poetry, and the nature, use, and location, of the mineral resources Valasi traded.
    She had read him the machimi, and questioned him on his understanding, assuring he understood the finer points in those lessons.
    She had shaped him as she would have sharpened a weapon— a ruler-to-be, an asset his father had carelessly discarded. She had known wherein the tutors’ permissiveness with Valasi had encouraged bad tendencies. She was dealing with that heritage, and with a half-Taibeni, a reclusive, suspicious clan that had been too stubborn to settle a peace— no, they had rather carry on a state of war with their neighbor for two hundred years. That was the disposition she was dealing with, not to mention her own heritage— ice cold resolution combined with the unbridled temper of his western heritage.
    That could be good. Or that could be bad.
    It could be particularly bad on the day she would have to pass the aishidi’tat into his hands.
    She had brought him back to Shejidan when Valasi died. She had gathered her supporters and again applied, with little hope, to be elected aiji in her own right, naming Tabini as her heir.
    The legislature would have none of it. They had appointed her, for the second time, only aiji-regent.
    Well, she had had eight years’ more rule, until this night. She had dealt with the imports and exports issue, with Mospheira. She had set Wilson-paidhi on notice about environmental concerns— either shut down the smoke affecting the northwest coast across the Strait, or find needed materials in short supply.
    Wilson-paidhi had not been pleased.
    That was well enough. She had not been pleased.
    And seeing her grandson’s twenty-third year looming, she had made one more try at settling the west coast situation, the tribal peoples issue— this time with the help of certain of her grandson’s supporters, and of certain of the conservatives, notably Lord Tatiseigi, using his influence to draw the Kadagidi into the support column. The Taibeni, surprisingly, also favored the notion...on what they called moral grounds. The coastal clan of Dur joined the movement.
    But the legislature’s lower house balked, on all points. Regional interests did not want pieces of the settlement Treaty reopened, for fear of having their own pieces of it reopened. The Marid did not want Shejidan to settle what they called regional problems, and nobody but Dur cared about smoke that was mostly