第4节

palace at Sara-kusa that a wheel-boat supplying the new outstations on

Lake Mi-shiga had been lost with all hands during a violent storm? To

reveal the truth - or part of it - would place Yoritomo under an

obligation to impose further sanctions.

Ieyasu was reluctant to increase the pressure on the family. The death

of Domain-Lord Yama-Shita and the exposure of the plot to resurrect the

Dark Light had strengthened the position of the Toh-Yota. Its most

powerful rival had been humbled, but they still commanded a great deal

of covert support. Applying more sanctions would be seen as an attempt

to completely destroy the family - a move that would arouse suspicion

and resentment among the other domain-lords.

In their eyes, the deaths of the named conspirators and their closest

relatives and the harsh fines had expunged the family's guilt. Any

further attempt to crush the YamaShita would be seen as a threat to all

those who supported its progressive ideals. No one wanted to create

conditions that could lead to another civil war. As the first among

equals, the Toh-Yota had to be strong but not too strong.

And since it could not singlehandedly sweep all opposition aside, it

had to maintain the balance of power by a mixture of skilful government

and skulduggery - two areas in which Ieyasu was the acknowledged

master.

After lengthy reflection, Ieyasu decided to say and do nothing. He

would, for the moment at least, leave the dilemma posed by his

relationship with Karlstrom unresolved. He had not lost all sense of

honour. It was simply that his self-esteem was of minor importance

compared with the maintenance of the Toh-Yota shogunate.

As long as he, Ieyasu, was alive, Yoritomo could be left in charge of

the moral high ground. His task was to underpin the succession by

ensuring that the opposition remained fragmented. His legacy would be

to imbue Yoritomo with the determination to gradually reduce the

YamaShita to penury, redistribute their lands and drive them into

political obscurity like the once-great Da-Tsuni.

To aid Yoritomo in this task, Ieyasu's successor needed to retain

access to the same alien devices that had enabled the present spy

network to function so efficiently.

The links with AMEXICO would not be severed but, equally, they would

not be extended and the existing arrangements would have to be more

tightly controlled.

Karlstrom would have to understand that the indiscriminate killing of

high-ranking Iron Masters by outlanders - no matter what the

circumstances - could no longer be countenanced.

The presence of a Mute witch among the team of saboteurs at the Heron

Pool and this latest action against the wheel-boat in defence of a clan

of Mute fisherfolk were discordant notes in what until then had been a

harmonious relationship. Similar, in many respects, to the trading

contacts built up by Iron Master and Mute over several decades;

contacts which had subsequently received the covert blessing of

AMEXICO.

Having invested a great deal of time, money and effort, the Iron

Masters regarded the Plainfolk Mutes as their own milch cow. These

illiterate animals could never be allies but they had been accorded the

status of auxiliaries.

That was why they had been armed instead of being enslaved in the hope

they could slow down the northwards advance of the Federation. But had

the ground rules changed? Were these two disquieting incidents the

product of another 'understanding'? Another secret protocol signed by

one or more of the competing Mute bloodlines and the smooth-tongued

head of AMEXICO?

Only time would tell.

In the palace-fortress of Sara-kusa, built on the site of the

pre-Holocaust city of Syracuse, N.Y, Aishi Sakimoto, acting Regent of

the Yama-Shita family, had been asking himself more or less the same

question and believed he now knew the answer.

In the normal cour