Inheritor

“Or if this death dissolved essential man’chi,” Tano said, “A wife, for instance. Her clan would be free to act. A set of cousins ambitious to transfer man’chi to theirline. The family could break apart.”

“Would he—” He knew these men well enough to ask about very delicate, ordinarily undiscussed, matters. “Would an ateva under such circumstances feelsuch man’chi to the cousins, say, if they succeeded in transferring the clan’s man’chi to themselves and away from his father’s line?”

“Not necessarily,” Algini said and, rare for him, a dark frown came to his face.

That warned him that perhaps he’d touched something more than theoretical with Algini. Or perhaps just inquired into too delicate an area of atevi emotion. So he asked no further.

And because it was necessary meticulously to inform the ones who guarded Jase: “Jase would like to go back to the ship to assure himself of his mother’s welfare. This he of course can’t do. Hesays he wished to call the ship and was prevented because, he says, he couldn’t get through security to reach me to authorize it. I can only guess. He does follow rules and schedules meticulously. Perhaps this results from living on a ship in space. I don’t know. And he may have been unwilling to face atevi with his emotions out of control—I’ve told him very emphatically not to do that. It may have prevented him from fully explaining his distress to security.” It was a cold and an embarrassing thing, to try to dice human feelings so finely that another mindset could grasp logically what was going on. “I would guess that he was already exhausted, either emotionally upset since I left or trying to achieve a good result—even my approval—on my return; and suddenly an emotional blow has hit him when he was alone, immersed in a strange language, surrounded by strange faces, and under my instruction not to react emotionally with atevi.”

“Ah,” Tano said, and both atevi faces showed comprehension. Of what—God knew.

“Remember,” he said, “that this is a human being, and that this is not trulyman’chi he feels but something as central to his being. Understand that he is under very extreme stress, and he’s trying not to react. But I have serious questions, nadiin, about the propriety of humans on that ship toward him, who may have slighted him in a major way. I want to know whether the ship tried to contact him, I want to know where that message went if someone attempted to contact him, and why he had to hear this bad news finally relayed from the island, from Yolanda Mercheson.”

“To whom has he attributed this failure of information?” Tano asked.

“I would assume, perhaps unjustly, to Manasi himself.” Manasi was one of Tabini’s security, who’d moved in to run the security office when he had Tano and Algini off with him. “He suspects atevi have withheld it from him. This is much more palatable to him than the thought that his people did. But whatever the truth is, whether it leads to atevi or to his ship, I need to knowthe truth, no matter how much truth I later decide to tell him.”

“Nadi Bren,” Algini said, “we will find the answer. We received no call from staff regarding any such matter.”

“Nadiin,” he said, “I have every confidence in you. I have every confidence in nand’ Dasibi and in nand’ Manasi. Please express it in your inquiry—please accuse no one. I leave it all to your discretion.”

Look not to his clerical staff for fault, and not to Manasi, he strongly felt, rather to the aiji’s staff on the coast, at Mogari-nai, where the great dish drank down messages from space and relayed them supposedly without censorship to him and through him to Jase. There had been politics at Mogari-nai, somewhere in the administration of that facility, which had withheld information from him on prior occasions, even against Tabini’s orders. It was a tangled matter of loyalties which one hoped, but not trusted, had been rectified last fall.

Look even—one could think it—to Tabini himself, who might have ordered the interception and withholding of that message for various reasons, including the reason that Bren-paidhi wasn’t at hand to handle the matter and they couldn’t know how Jase would react.

But Tabiniwould certainly have no difficulty reaching Tano and Algini if Manasi thought Jase was about to blow up.

Information stalled in the system? Some message lying on a desk awaiting action? Perhaps. He was sure that the messages at Mogari-nai were gone over meticulously by atevi who could translate—and any personal message to Jase, as opposed to the usual routines, would raise warning flags, and possibly go to higher security, which could appreciably slow down transmission.

“Nadiin,” he said, because he knew the extreme good will of these two men, and the conflict it might pose them, “if this thread should go under the aiji’s door, advise me but leave it untouched. It will be my concern.”

“Bren-ji, one will immediately advise you if that should be the case.”

That from Tano, with no demur from his partner. Their man’chi was to Tabini, to him only throughTabini, and what they said was with the understanding, unspoken, that he knew and that they knew that certain atevi damned well understood Mosphei’ and the dialect of the ship.

He suspected most of all that troublesome elements existed somewhere within the defense organization that protected the coast; and that such might have interfered, again, at Mogari-nai—or here, within the walls of the Bu-javid.

Tabini himself understood more Mosphei’ than he let on. Threads that went under the aiji’s door—or the hypersecret establishment of Mogari-nai—might cross and recross multiple times.

But an information slowdown could allow a critical situation to become a disaster. It also could signal a situation of man’chi; and that had to be fixed.

“That’s all I need,” he said. “And don’t scant your own rest, nadiin-ji. Have some junior person begin the inquiry tonight. Pursue it tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Tano said, accepting orders which Bren feared he would not follow, nor would Algini. They slept on questions no better than he did.

The question was always— howdid atevi interpret what humans asked, and how well did they forecast human actions? The War of the Landing hadn’t happened because both sides had meantto go to war.

So he sat, in the sitting room, in his robe, at a small, fragile desk, writing by hand in the formal court script, for Tabini:

Aiji-ma, Mercheson-daja has informed nand’ Jase of his father’s unexpected death, causes unknown.

Bearing in mind your other imminent concerns—

No, that wouldn’t do. He struck that last line: one left the aiji to the aiji’s concerns and didn’t express opinions on paper regarding Saigimi’s death being anyconcern to the aiji at all.

I have informed my staff regarding nand’ Jase’s normal behavior in such instances and inform you, aiji-ma, that I foresee a time of tension in the household. I am also concerned for meanings behind the failure of that message to get through to him or to me in a timely fashion. It seems to have come to Mercheson-paidhi first, which should not have happened, as Mercheson is not Jase’s superior, as the ship authorities well know. It was embarrassing and distressing to him to have heard such news from a source who should have been less well-informed than he was. If this was the choice of the ship’s officers, there may be implications in their behavior regarding this matter: this could have benign causes, in either too great a zeal to protect Jase from knowledge of his family’s distress or knowledge that I was absent from the premises and therefore that nand’ Jase was alone. Not benign, however, would be the determination of the officers of the ship that nand’ Mercheson should obtain quicker and more up-to-date briefings than they allow to nand’ Jase. These negative implications are certainly possible conclusions he might draw, and I am concerned.

Seeing, however, a third choice, that the withholding of information might be action emanating from your office, I have set my staff to learn the facts so that I may be accurate and prudent in assessments I present to you.

That, to pave the way for Algini and Tano.

Lest you concern yourself regarding nand’ Jase,—

Beyond any doubt, Damiri’s staff reported to her regularly, and Damiri reported what seemed useful to Tabini, right next door: so it was inconceivable she didn’t know by now everything the staff knew; Tabini probably knew, and he was sure both Jase’s behavior and his plus the fact he had called his two chiefs of security in for a conference had been amply reported.

— his behavior considering the extreme stress and my absence has been restrained and circumspect. Laboring under what may be a serious blow, he has nevertheless held himself for days from displaying feelings extremely difficult for a human to repress under far less strenuous conditions, all to obey my order not to display inexplicable emotion near atevi. I am greatly distressed that I was absent at the time and unable to provide advice or assistance to him, but he behaved very well indeed.

He disliked dissecting Jase’s private feelings. He truly disliked it. But he tried to be clinical, for the information of the one man—and the woman—who most needed to understand how well Jase had actually performed: Jase had occasionally upset the serving staff, who had witnessed prior explosions and must wonder what was the difference in the paidhi they knew and the one who came from the ship.

But staff storms settled, once staff was reassured that it was not their fault. Even in that, Jase was doing a very good job. Atevi had never seen the temper-storms even the most well-trained paidhi-candidates threw when language-deprivation set in, back in the university on Mospheira; and they didn’t see it in Jase—Jase’s were mere verbal explosions, restrained perhaps because of Jase’s own upbringing, or because the atevi world around him was so very quiet and void of anger.

But he did hope that Tabini’s good opinion would affect Damiri’s, and that Damiri’s would in turn become the staff’s judgment of Jason Graham. It would certainly make life easier in this apartment. He hoped, too, that it might ease the strain on Jase if he could, through Damiri, encourage the staff to understanding. He knew that information flowed in and out by the servants. And one wanted a good reputation.

Aiji-ma, I should add that he had exhausted himself in study to please me and to meet my schedule, unknowing to what extent news about to fall on him would challenge his self-control.

I should advise you of the normal course of human reaction to such a loss—first to think about past time and missed opportunities regarding his relative. In such a time the future has no map for him; his present is full of responsibilities to relatives which, in his situation, he cannot satisfy. Frustration may well manifest, which may lead to anger with himself or with me, or even with the dead. But this anger will in no wise threaten harm to me or to the staff…

God save us if he threatens the premises, he thought. He had only to look up and about him to see the contents of a veritable museum, the possession and the heritage of the Atageini clan, one of the most critical and dangerous alliances Tabini had forged, expressed in needlepoint draperies, in priceless carvings and fragile porcelain, in carpets which servants cleaned on hands and knees with dust-cloths.

He wishes to visit familiar places. He does not believe in ghosts and he does not believe in their intervention as far as I understand his religious opinions. He is brave and strong-minded or he would not have come down here. I request and hope for answers to my inquiries so that I can provide him some measure of assurance and rapid contact with his mother and other relatives on the ship. I will monitor such conversations and be sure of the content of messages passed.

I stand ready to report to you far better news regarding progress on the ship. Lord Geigi, who treated me as a very honored guest, and the manager of Patinandi in his district have shown me very encouraging progress; and likewise the laboratory at Gioli is making progress on the design of the engines and likewise on the test site. I have some concerns on the recent change of management at Ladisiri.

That was the computer design. The Determinists and the Absolutists were all but going at each other with knives, and the two most talented designers had been literally having tea with each other as two of their aides met in the hall in a set-to that other aides had had to break up by main force.

I have personnel recommendations which may separate and isolate members of the development teams at two sites rather than having discordant persons within the same facility. I do suggest that you assign persons to look into the issues involved, which are beyond my grasp, but which seem bitter and divisive and which are not, by advisements I have received, following the design specifications.

Freely translated, intervene in Ladisiri, aiji-ma, before someone gets killed.

And considering the province was dualistic in philosophy, with no felicitous third, the aiji might threaten to move the research to a rival institution. Thatmight get the attention of the two staffs. Certainly the two senior directors were oblivious to the quarrels, being lost in a probably productive debate on a design that, God save them, might be useful in advanced theory but was not going to fly on this ship.

I also urge, aiji-ma, that the needs of the aeronautical engineers should have precedence over further theoretical research at this time.

I consider this a matter of great delicacy and great urgency, which I shall manage according to your orders or leave to more tactful persons at your discretion.

It was the one truly unmanageable problem they had with the project, give or take a few operational difficulties which were not at that level. This one—the aiji might have to straighten out by calling in the lord of the province and having an urgent discussion with him.

He was, however, finished with letters. He rolled the missive, slipped it into his message cylinder, and sealed it.

And chose to get up and walk the darkened hall to the lighted foyer and security station at the other end of that hall in search of a messenger rather than calling staff to carry it to security. He had no desire to have them disturb Tabini’s evening with it, and he could advise the junior staff to advise Tabini’s staff to that effect. As much as anything, he wanted to see whether the light was showing from under Jase‘’sdoor, to know whether Jase was asleep or awake, and by that—

Well, he didn’t know, entirely, but he wanted to know Jase’s state of mind, whether he was still awake, which might indicate he was still debating matters with himself; and that might indicate he shouldtry to speak to him.

He’d looked in that direction, seeing no light. He looked where he was going and found a towering pair of shadows between himself and the distant foyer light, one very broad-shouldered and notthe willowy silhouette of one of his staff.

He spun and ran for his lighted bedroom and slammed his door. And shot the bolt.

And kept himself from standing in front of the door in doing so. He had a gun. He had it in the bureau drawer. He wasn’t supposed to have it. Surely staff had heard the disturbance. If they were alive.

Came a footstep on the carpet outside. A gentle tap.

“Bren-ji?”

A deep and resonant voice. A familiar voice.

“ Banichi?”

“One is impressed with all your actions, Bren-ji. If you have the gun in hand, kindly put it back in the drawer.”

He had no doubt then it was Banichi. And the other would be Jago.

“Have you been well, nadi?”

“My life has been dull and commonplace.” He said it as a joke, while his heart resumed a normal rate. He thought in the next breath it was true. He was firmly convinced that the day’s events in the peninsula and Banichi’s return weren’t without relationship. And here they were, back with him, and just in shooting the bolt back to let them in he found his hands trembling.

He wanted so much to throw his arms around both of them.

But that would appall Banichi and Jago would be puzzled, and the most wonderful sight in the world to him was as he looked up—considerably—at two atevi in the silver-studded black of the aiji’s personal security.

“One hadn’t meant to alarm the house,” Jago said earnestly.

“Although it would have been better for you to call out an alarm,” Banichi added, “since you were behind the wall—not, one trusts, against the paneled door, paidhi-ji.”

Light had come on in the hall. Servants arrived in nightclothes and robes from the rear halls, along with Algini and a couple of the junior security staff from the other direction in far calmer, knew-about-it attitude. Tano arrived from the same direction as the recently sleeping servants, in a bath towel and carrying his pistol: Tano hadn’tknown.

Jase’s door opened. Jase appeared in his robe, behind the line of servants, looking rumpled and confused.

“It’s quite all right,” Tano said to everyone. “It’s quite all right. No alarm, Jasi-ji. Banichi and Jago are back.”

“Have you had supper, nadiin-ji,” Bren asked, instead of hugging both of them, “or should the staff make up something?”

“We ate on the plane, nadi,” Jago said.

“But being off-duty now,” Banichi said, “and being in the place where we will sleep tonight, one mightsit and talk for a bit over a glass of shibei if the paidhi were so inclined.”

7

Jase had gone back to bed and, one hoped, to sleep. Tano and Algini said they had business to attend to.

Business, at this hour, Bren asked himself; and couldn’t decide whether they were occupied with his request for the message trail on Jase’s business, heating up the phone lines to the earth station at Mogari-nai, or whether it was some new duty Banichi had handed them as he came in, but whatever the case, Tano and Algini kept to the duty station.

That left him Banichi and Jago alone for company, and oh, he was glad to see them. Banichi made him feel safe; and Jago—Jago, so proper and so formal—she was the one who wouldtalk to him with utter disregard of protocols, the one who’d try anything at least once, including intimacy with a human. It hadn’t happened: the time had never been right; but it couldhave happened, that was what he didn’t forget.

Tonight was like picking back up as if they’d never left—and yet he had to realize, truthfully, for all the difference they’d made in his life, they’d been with him just that few weeks of the crisis preceding Jase’s landing. Then they’d been gone again, a reassignment, he’d been told, a fact which had saddened him immensely, and put him in a very hard place with Tano and Algini, who were wonderful people—but who weren’t the two he most—

Loved.

Too valuable to the aiji, he’d said to himself: he’d no right to assume he could keep them in his service. He was damned lucky to have Tano and Algini, whom he also—

Liked very well.

Maybe it was just a visit, maybe just a temporary protection to him during the latest crisis. Maybe they wouldn’t stay. He was halfway afraid to ask them. He wanted to, as he wanted to ask Tabini whether he could have them with him permanently, but he felt as if he would be asking for something the worth of a province, and to which Tabini would have to give a state answer, and think the paidhi had gotten just a little forward in recent months.

They sat, they shared a nightcap in the sitting-room—that, and the warm stove with the window open wide to the spring breezes—the extravagance of the rich and powerful, a waste of fuel with which Bren had never reconciled himself morally, and which in prior and simpler days, he would have reported and protested to the aiji.

But there was so much he had never reconciled with himself—morally.

“Dare I ask,” he began with them, “where you’ve been?”

“One might ask, but we can’t say,” Jago said. “Regretfully, nand’ paidhi.”

He’d come very, very close to going to bed with Jago—well, technically, they’d been init, sort of—a fact that had crossed his mind no few times in the last half year, in the lonely small hours of the winter nights. She’d beenthere, in his imagination, at least.

She’d either be offended—or she’d laugh. He thought she’d laugh, and dared a direct look.

He got nothing back. Atevi reserve, he said to himself. Guild discipline, and just—that she was atevi.

Forget thatfor a starting point and, God, couldn’t one get in a great deal of trouble?

She probably wasn’t even interested any longer. Probably had a new hobby.

“One hears,” Banichi said, “that Jase-paidhi has had unhappy news given him by improper channels.”

“True,” he said. Banichi had a very incisive way of summing things up. And, summoning up the fragments of his wits at this hour, dismissing the question of Jago’s reactions, and meanwhile trying to be as concise: “I’m concerned for three things, one, his human feelings, two, his isolation, three, the way atevi minds might expect him to act. I asked Tano and Algini what was ordinary reaction for an ateva, and it didn’t seem far off the way humans react.” He let that echo in the back of his mind two seconds, added, recollected, revised, definitely under the influence of the shibei, and said: “Four, sometimes when the difference between ship-humans and Mospheira isn’t that apparent, it surprises me. And, felicitous five, complicating things, Jase is trying to restrain his reactions in front of atevi.”

“How is his fluency lately?” Banichi asked.

“Improved just enough that he can get out of the children’s language and into serious trouble. He’s learned the words that pertain to this apartment and to the space program and engineering. His vocabulary is quite good for ‘where is?’, ‘bring me food’ and ‘open the window,’ and for ‘machining tolerance’ and ‘autoclave.’ Still not much beyond that—but acquiring felicitous nuance.”

“One would be hard pressed to join these items in conversation,” Banichi said dryly. “Even with nuance.”

“One would.” He was amused, and felt the unwinding of something from about his heart. Tano didn’t tend to catch him up on the daily illogics of his trade, but Banichi would jab him, mercilessly. So would Jago. He had to revise the rules of his life and go on his guard all the time, or be the butt of their humor. And he enjoyed it. He fired back. “So what didbefall lord Saigimi?”

“One hears,” Banichi said, “someone simply and uncreatively shot him.”

“So. Doubtless, though, it was professional.”

“Doubtless,” Jago said. “Though late.”

So Tabini didn’t trouble to make it look accidental, was his private thought: more dramatic effect, more fear on the part of those who should be afraid.

“Is it quiet in the south?”

“The south. Oh, much more so. But quiet often goes between storm fronts.”

A warning. A definite warning, from Jago. “Is there anything you wish to tell me, nadiin-ji?”

“Much that I would wishto inform you,” Banichi said, with the contrary-to-fact wish, “but essentially, and until we know the outcome of yesterday’s events, please take no unnecessary chances. The situation is quite volatile. Lord Saigimi of the Hagrani had acquired allies, more timorous or more prudent than he, but should any of thoselords fall within their houses, and some more radical members within those same houses rise—times might become interesting. In most instances, understand, the replacements for any of those persons would not lead with Saigimi’s force of will; but one of the lot is worth watching, Saigimi’s daughter Cosadi—a bit of a fool, and an associate of Direiso— femaleconspiracy, entirely impenetrable.”

Jago made a face and shot her senior partner a look. And knowing these two, Bren recognized a tossed topic when it sailed by him. “A woman may be more in Direiso’s confidence. Naturally.”

“I don’t think the junior member of the Hagrani clan is on Direiso’s intellectual level,” Banichi muttered. “And she will see herself eaten without salt.”

Quickly, that idiom meant. The two had fallen to discussion in front of him, but played it out forhim, quite knowledgeably so.

“But considers herself to be Direiso’s intellectual heir-apparent,” Jago said.

“Oh, small chance.”

“An earnest student—capable of flattery.”

“I thought discerning women saw through such frivolity.”

Clearly it was a jibe. Bren failed to know where. But Jago wasn’t daunted.

“They receive thatkind of flattery so rarely, nadi.”

Banichi’s brow lifted. “What, praise? Admiration? I pay it when due.”

Banichi evidently scored. Or came out even.

Jago shot him a sidelong look, and was otherwise expressionless.

“Jago believes she saved my life,” Banichi said. “And will notdecently forget it.”

“Is thatit?” Bren asked. “I at least am grateful, Jago-ji, that you saved his life. I would have been very sad if you hadn’t.”

“I did raise that point,” Jago said, still straight-faced. “He of course was in no danger.”

“None,” Banichi said with an airy wave.

“Guild etiquette does not permit me to state he is a fool, Bren-ji, but he risked himself attempting to preempt mein a position of better vantage.—And I did notrequire help, nandi!”

A wise human sat very still. And ducked his head and bit his lip, because he knew it was a performance for his benefit.

He was appalled to think, then, like a lightning-stroke, that he was hearing details from this morning, regarding a death for which, dammit, yes, these two were directly responsible.

So who had fired? At whom?

Jago? To save Banichi? Jago had killed someone?

Lord Saigimi?

Or his security? That would lack finesse. Banichi would never joke about such an event as that. And did Tabini want such matters communicated to him?

Banichi took a casual pose, legs extended, and had a sip of the liqueur.

“Bren-ji, just take care.”

“I am very glad you’re both safe.”

“So are we,” Banichi said, and gave a quiet smile. “We only said to ourselves, ‘What does it lack now?’ And Jago said, ‘Our lives are too quiet. Let’s find nadi Bren.’ So we climbed back over the wall and took the first plane to Shejidan.”

Not from the Marid airport, Bren was willing to bet.

“One is very glad,” Bren said, “to have you both back. One hopes you’ll stay a while.”

“One hopes.” Banichi kicked a footstool into reach and propped his feet toward the fire, then leaned back, glass in hand.

“They won’t—come after you here, will they?”

A totally innocent look, from golden atevi eyes. “Who?”

“The—” One was being stupid, even to ask. “The owners of the wall.”

“Ah, that.”

“No,” Jago said primly. “One cannot file Intent on the Guild, Bren-ji. Certain privileges the Guild reserves for itself.”

“Needless to say, however,” Banichi added, “if one isone of those points of stability on which other stability rests, it’s always well to take precautions.”

Him, Banichi meant. Or Tabini.

“The project.” He could only think of those remote, scattered facilities. “Has one accounted the safety of that? Even my eyes see possible vulnerabilities in the small plants.”

“Oh, yes,” Banichi said. “Carefully. Constantly. Although it hasn’t been ourdirect concern.”

“But it is at risk.” He had cold chills even thinking of a flaw—deliberately induced. “Nadiin-ji, we have so very much at risk in that project. I don’t know—I don’t know if I can explain enough to the Guild how small a problem can be fatal. I’m the translator. And some things I know by being from the island and having the history humans have—but it’s so important. It’s soimportant, nadiin-ji, and I haven’t succeeded in making enough people understand. All the lives of all the paidhiin before me come down to two things: the peace, and this project. This is what we were always aiming at, in everything we did, in all the advice we gave to atevi—the peace, and this project, was all to give us all the capacity that we lost in the War and in the failure of the station up there. And one act of sabotage, one well-concealed piece of bad work—and the ship we build is gone, lost, perhaps not to be built again. The humans aloft—they can’t build your future, nadiin-ji. They won’t. Atevi could lose everything.”

There was something a little less relaxed in Banichi’s pose. In Jago’s.

“At least,” Banichi said, “one perceives distress. Why, nand’ paidhi? Why are you concerned? Is it a specific threat? Is it a general one?”

“Because if this spaceship fails, Banichi, I can’t call that chance back again. There’s so much at stake. Your governance over your own future is at risk. This is why I stayed and why I wouldn’t go back to Mospheira when my government wished me recalled. I won’t go even for my family’s sake.” He realized he’d reprised at least the feeling of his speech to the workers—that fear was working at the back of his brain, and it had been there since before he’d heard of the assassination of lord Saigimi. Perhaps—perhaps it had been there since he’d seen the ship lying in pieces at his feet, and seen all that devoted effort in those upturned faces.

There was so much good will, and so much desire in so many people; and it was so vulnerable to the vicissitudes of fortune—and a few ill-wishers.

Baji-naji. Chance and Fortune, the interlocked design in the carpetoutside the dining room, the demon and the force that overwhelmed the best of numbers and improved the worst.

“Have you some specific reason to fear?” Jago asked: Jago, who would fling her body between any of her charges and harm; but who was trained to do things far more lethally useful for those within her man’chi.

“Just—nadiin-ji, a single act of sabotage, undetected, might set the program so far behind Mospheira we’d never catch up. And I saw so many plants where people from the towns came in without security checks, where lords’ families had access. And shouldn’t. Not that I want to be rude to these honest people—things are going so well. I think it makes me irrationally fearful.”

“Not irrationally.” Banichi let go an easier breath. “We areaware of the hazards—trust me in this. This is an immensely complex project, with many exposures. But without being specific, let me reassure the paidhi, we are not off our guard.”

Banichi would notsay Guild. This was, again, the man who hadn’t known the sun was a star—nor cared. But what he did care about, he knew about in greater detail and with more forethought than most men could keep up with.

“And,” Jago said with a quirk of the mouth, “lord Geigi has the number-counters contained. Or occupied.”

“One hopes.”

The decanter was on the small table near Banichi. Banichi reached over and poured a finger more; and one for Jago, who leaned forward to present her glass. “Nadi?” Banichi said, offering to him next.

He considered. He’d had one with Jase. But if Banichi was offering information, and it came on such skids, he’d have another: he let Banichi add a bit.

“Did I do foolishly to take lord Geigi’s hospitality?” he asked them.

“Evidently not.”

“I didn’t ask was I lucky? I asked—”

Banichi grinned. “Far more wary, these days, our Bren.”

“Lord Geigi’s philosophical persuasion is one of the most rigorous,” Jago said. “Most, understand, follow less rigorous systems, saying that there is no assurance that anyone has yet come up with right answers. But here are Geigi and his Determinist numerologists actually matching up answers with the universe ashuman numbers also perceive it, and the Rational Absolutists are prowling around this new set of ideas trying to find a problem it doesn’t solve. This folded space business has acquired great credibility, Bren-ji. The numerologists are still gnawing the bone of the faster-than-light idea Deana-ji threw them—” That Deana-jiwas certainly barbed. “But no one dares challenge folded space until they’ve posed certain classic problems—which keeps the ’counters and the Absolutists both out of mischief, at least until they’ve worked out their numbers. A challenge to folded space will be hard, by what I hear.”

“I leave such deep questions to my partner,” Banichi said, and took a sip of shibei. “Geigi’s good will is secure. That secures the numbers of the northern reach of the peninsula, which are the numbers that concern me, pragmatically. Geigi’s penchant for honesty—that and his penchant for inviting guests inside his security—that worries me. Tano says you bade Geigi take precautions.”

“It seemed prudent to say. Possibly excessive.”

Banichi gave a short laugh. “He’ll naturally believe you have special inside information from your security, and he’ll listen to you far more than to any advice his security gives him. I’ve no doubt he will lose sleep over it. A good stroke, nand’ paidhi!”

“What willhappen in the peninsula? Who do you think will take over the Marid?”

“Oh, difficult question. Very difficult, Saigimi’s daughter, Cosadi, being a passionate follower of Direiso and all that lot—and a fool.”

“On the other hand,” Jago said, “Saigimi’s younger brother, Ajresi, who is not resident in the house, and who absolutely can’t tolerateSaigimi’s Samiusi-clan wife, is much more forward to defend himself than he is to involve the house in adventurous actions. As a leader of his house he’s both more and less dangerous. He let Saigimi take the risks. But for want of aggression, to allow himself to be pushed aside in the succession by a willful niece who might take the house even further down the path Saigimi took—I think not, myself.”

“Wise conclusion,” Banichi said. “ Thathouse will have internal difficulties. The wife, too, Tiburi, may take refuge with Direiso; Tiburi is, by the way, related to lord Geigi. That was the plan in driving Geigi into poverty, to slip her into that inheritance.”

“Was thatit?”

“Oh, yes. So thanks to her try at dispossessing Geigi, wife Tiburi of the Samiusi is not only no longer welcome with Hagrani clan—she’s no longer welcome with her distant cousin Geigi. Nor will her daughter Cosadi be welcome any longer with Saigimi’s brother Ajresi, especiallysince Geigi’s fortunes are more and more linked to Tabini’s, and the direction of Cosadi’s man’chi becomes more and more unpredictable. She may claim the Hagrani estate with at least equal right, and certain of Saigimi’s household more loyal to the wife might try to prevent the lordship drifting to the brother’s line, in fear he will toss them out the door. Some say Cosadi has assassins belonging to the Hagrani clan poised to take out Saigimi’s brother and make her the Hagrani lord. Certainly Ajresi also has Guild poised to remove her.”

At this point a man wanted to grab a notepad and tell them to repeat it while he took notes. But it was too late. His head was buzzing. He at least had the critical names to ask them.

“ And,” Jago said, “certain of the Guild who have served Saigimi may now find man’chi lying elsewhere, rather than serve the daughter, who is suspected by some to be a fool and by others to be a mere figurehead for Tiburi, who is noteven Hagrani and who cannot go back to her own clan.”

“It should be an interesting summer in the peninsula,” Banichi said.

“Direiso may attract those Guild members,” Jago added. “And lose a few of her own, who will begin to think it towering folly to have so many targets move in under one roof.”

Bren’s ears pricked up. He wanted to ask, Can one chooseman’chi logically? He had thought it, like love, to be unaffected by common sense considerations of survival during such machimi play sort-outs. Not evidently so.

But if he interrupted the flow of information, he could lose what they were trying, in their bewildering way, to tell him.

“One thinks,” Jago had gone on, “that the Kadigidi themselves—” That was Direiso’s house. “—will spend some time in rearranging loyalties. The son and likeliest heir to Direiso herself is an Atageini on his maternal grandfather’s side—”

“Direiso’s father never sitting as house-head,” Banichi interjected, “due to a dish of infelicitous berries.”

Berries. The paidhi, feeling the effects of alcohol, all but lost the threads.

“Last fall,” Jago continued unflapped, “Direiso’s son, Murini, was a guest in the Atageini house at the same time we have reason to believe Deana Hanks was a guest in Direiso’s house. Mark that, Bren-ji.”

Tag and point. Definitely in Direiso’s house, then. It certainly deserved remembrance. He hadn’t known thatdetail, either, that this son of Direiso’s had been—what, hiding among Atageini withTatiseigi, for fear of his mother’s rash actions? Or had he been go-between, in Atageini complicity in the Deana Hanks affair?

That would mean aiming at overthrowing Tabini, while Tabini was sleeping with lady Damiri, heir of the Atageini.

If there were clear proof of that, he was sure Banichi or Jago would have told him.

It was only certain in what he did know that the Padi Valley nobles, of whom Tabini himself was one, had old, old and very tangled associations. It was the central association of the Ragi, which had produced all the aijiin ever to rule from Shejidan; a little nest of occasionally warring rivals, in plain fact.

None other than lord Geigi and Tabini’s hard-riding grandmother had walked into a house the identity of which was clearly now the Kadigidi house, and taken Deana Hanks away with them, apparently to Direiso’s vast discomfiture and no little breakage of fragile objects in Direiso’s parlor, by what he had later heard about a fracas and the overturning of a cabinet of antiques wherever the event had taken place.

Add to that now the knowledge that Direiso’s son had been in that very moment at the Atageini home, while the Atageini daughter was in bed with Tabini.

Definitely headache-producing. But among atevi, things could be very simple, too.

To find out who was the most likely person to start trouble, and the one toward whom all other atevi players would gravitate, look for the strongest.

Yesterday he might have said, regarding Tabini’s known opposition, that the strongest players were Tatiseigi of the Atageini, Saigimi of the Marid Tasigin, and Direiso of the Kadigidi.

Now with Saigimi dead, he would say it was up in the air between Direiso of the Kadigidi and Tatiseigi of the Atageini, and, hardly thinking about it, that Direiso was more likely to act against Tabini—he didn’t know why he thought so, but Tatiseigi had dropped back from threatening Tabini the moment Saigimi, remote from him geographically, had dropped out of the picture.

Why did he think so? Tatiseigi’s ancestral lands were in the Padi Valley, next door to the other survivor in that group, Direiso of the Kadigidi, his next door neighbor. Direiso had used Saigimias front man for her rasher, more extreme moves.

But it wasn’t loss of courage that would cause him to put Tatiseigi second to Direiso, in his bemused and shibei-overwhelmed subconscious, if Tatiseigi allied with that lady.

No, because Tatiseigi’s niece Damiri was sleeping with Tabini, and might provide Tabini’s heir. IfTatiseigi could recover his dignity as head of clan and ifTatiseigi’s battered pride could be patched up—and bolstered instead of diminished by Damiri’s alliance—that could make Tatiseigi very important in the Western Association, though not aiji, which due to her own ambitions Direiso would not let him become, anyway.

Ah. And ah-ha.

Direisowould see Tatiseigi at that point as threatening her bid to be aiji as much as helping her, because Tatiseigi would see the same set of facts: he would never be aiji; he was elderly; he had notproduced an heir of his own line. That was why Damiri, Tatiseigi’s sister’s daughter, was the acknowledged heir; and Tatiseigi could not be thinking in terms of his own genetic or political continuance if he wereaiji—that was what the subconscious was raking up. Tatiseigi had to reach a truce with Damiri, since he was less and less likely to bring her into line by replacing her. And Damiri was likelier and likelier to produce the next aiji.

Right now, a thorn in Tatiseigi’s flesh, Tatiseigi’s ancestral apartment in the Bu-javid was tainted by unwanted humans, his niece was, to all public perception defying him in bedding down with Tabini—and last year some excessive fool in attempting to state opposition to humans orto embarrass the Atageini had sprayed bullets across the breakfast room and taken out a frieze of elegant porcelain lilies…

Lilies which even now were being restored, angrily, defiantly, by Atageini-hired workmen: the breakfast room secured off from the rest of the apartment by a steel wall installed with screw-bolts, a barrier that let those workmen come and go without compromising the aiji’s security.

The lilies had been broken by someone who’d authorized an attack on the paidhi.

By someone, he was relatively sure, who’d had no idea what he was shooting at, someone blindly bent on shooting up premises which held a human, and possibly bent on compelling an Atageini break with Tabini.

It was an unthinkable botch-up of a job if some Atageini had done it, because those bullets were not just sprayed into anapartment favored by the Atageini, they’d been sent into an apartment filled with priceless Atageini art treasures, and had hit the lilies which were the symbolof the Atageini.

The fact was public. The shame was public. And no Atageini would have been so stupid. Tabini wouldn’t have done it—he had Damiri already and nothing to gain. No, an Atageini ally had done it—someone either wanting to push Tatiseigi into action or (the whisper was) chastise him for inaction in the matter of human influence.

But the result had embarrassed him instead of angering him.

One hellof a dangerous situation was what was left. Either Saigimi had attacked the lilies—or Direiso had, the two likeliest suspects.

And if Saigimi had, and was dead, Tabini had removed a man Tatiseigi now could not get vengeance from. Now, in the aftermath of Saigimi’s assassination, Direiso would have to move against Tabini soon—or die next.

That left the highly embarrassed Tatiseigi with no vengeance available, standing eyeball to eyeball with Direiso, who herself wanted to be aiji of Shejidan at the expense of Damiri, who could weld the Atageini onto Tabini’s line and unite twoPadi Valley lines in a way that might alter the hitherto several-way contest in the Padi Valley forever.

Damn, a man could get a headache, but he was beginning to see through this set of moves of Tabini’s. Diminish allother prospects: it was Direiso that the Saigimi affair was setting up for a fatal fall, and if Tabini could only recover Tatiseigi’s dignity in such a grand gesture as Tabini had made to salvage lord Geigi’s finances, then Tabini had the man and a veryvaluable alliance with the Atageini in his pocket and the potential mother of his heir with her man’chi secure and solid as a rock.

“Are we secure here?” he asked his security, with a notion how very, very much was at stake in the apartment he was occupying. “I mean—staying here. Under the circumstances.”

“One simply watches. Say only that you’re as safe as the aiji himself.”

Ironic double meaning. If lady Damiri betrayed Tabini at this juncture—or if the Tatiseigi matter blew up into violence—they were in real trouble.

IfTabini’s grandmother Ilisidi didn’t take over. Which Ilisidi might do— longedto do, at least, by some reports. God—one wouldn’tsuppose she’dblasted the lilies?

She wasan Atageini ally. And a major power among the Eastern lords around Malguri. It was why Tabini’s grandfather had married her: to hold the East in the Association.

On the other hand—he was running out of hands—considering grandmother—Ilisidi—you couldn’t say she was disposed unfavorably to the paidhi or to humans. If she hadn’t wintered at Taiben, in the open land she preferred, he himself would have passed no little of his scarce free time this winter in Ilisidi’s company.

He likedIlisidi. As he likedGeigi. Human judgment. Which wasn’t, dammit, automatically invalid. No… Ilisidi would not destroy the lilies, the way Ilisidi wouldn’t destroy what was historic, and beautiful. He could never believe such a gross act of her. It was a human judgment, but it wasaccurate.

“Nadiin,” he said, head aching from all this circular thinking, “one has to get to bed, nadiin-ji. I’ve a meeting with Tabini after breakfast. You’re not obliged to be up at that hour—I’m sure Tano or Algini can manage and you can sleep late.”

“This house sets a memorable breakfast,” Banichi said. “Jago may be unconscious and immoveable when the sun rises, but I at least intend to be there.”

“Those who didn’t spend the night on a roof in a rainshower may be drawn out for breakfast,” Jago said. “I may be there, nadi Bren. I may not.”

“It’s so good to see you two.” He rose, took the decanter and poured Banichi another helping, and one for Jago.

“You will corrupt us, nadi,” Banichi said.

“Take it, take it. People who do and who don’t spend the night on a roof are alike due some comforts when they reach a safe place, aren’t they?”

“One is willing to be corrupted,” Jago said, lifting her glass. “At least tonight, Bren-ji.”

So the two of them went out with refilled glasses and, he was sure, headed to the two bedrooms that had been waiting half a year for them, next door to Jase’s.

It had been a long day, Bren thought as he stripped off clothes and prepared for bed. A fine day, a disastrous day—a good day again, in finding Banichi and Jago.

Not a good day for the lord Saigimi. He couldfeel sorry for everyone in Saigimi’s man’chi. He watched the machimi plays on television, in professional curiosity, as paidhiin had watched for years, trying to decipher the codes of atevi behavior. The Saigimi mess was absolutely high classic—the unknown loyalties, man’chi shifting unpredictably even for those most intimately involved with the dead lord.

There was even a chance that Cosadi, the daughter, wasn’t sure where her man’chi rested from hour to hour, self-doubt which was real emotional upheaval, as he began to perceive it, a fundamental uncertainty for the young woman as to which elements in her blood, to use a human expression, were going to pull her which direction, and whether she’d survive the shake-out as the same uncertainty resolved itself for a dozen characters at once.

A new lord, probably Ajresi, meanwhile took control, driving out the Samiusi-clan wife, Tiburi, Geigi’srelative, along with Cosadi, to a household (Direiso’s) involved to the hilt in the dead lord’s conspiracy against the aiji.

Classic machimi, indeed. He’d been fascinated by the color, the banners, the movement of troops, the texture of ancient atevi fortresses.

He was acquainted with one such fortress, at Malguri, on an intimate basis, right down to the classic bathroom plumbing. He’d told himself that as a human he had no business there.

And still he loved the place, and the feelof the windy height and the age of the stones tugged at something ancestral in him. He’d come to grips with what was essentially atevi there. He’d learned lessons he, whose business was words, couldn’t put in words; he’d seen things that sent a lump into his throat and a quickness into his pulse.

Ilisidi had shown him.

Proving, perhaps, that human instincts and atevi man’chi did have something in common, before they diverged and became what they were in the higher branches of evolution.

Or just that—their species both came from planets. Something in both species loved the earth, the stones, the touch of what was alive.

Off went the shirt. It slid from his fingers before he had a chance to turn and deliver it to the servants.

Atageini servants. Who were, one sincerely hoped, loyal to lady Damiri next door, and not to uncle Tatiseigi.

Machimi.

Whose man’chi came first? Which man’chi had become clear to the servants, when they met their human guest—or dealt with Jase, who was having trouble with the earth and dirt and stone aspect of things, and who really, now in a family tragedy, had a profound justification for his winter-long distress.

He’d long since gotten beyond embarrassment in this lady’s household, about this servantly insistence a man couldn’t undress himself or deal with his own laundry. Tano had been stand-in for the staff during the last number of days, Tano and he taking the opportunity to exchange information in that little space of privacy: what they’d done for the day, what they expected on the morrow. And he’d felt more comfortable in that arrangement, and closer to Tano than he’d ever otherwise been.

But they were definitely back in Shejidan, and Tano was no longer accessible. Give or take the one nightcap too many, he found his nerves still buzzing with the information he’d gotten, buzzing so he wasn’t sure he’d sleep easily at all.

Still, bed was calling to him with a promise of satin sheets and soft pillows. The television was over in the corner, his panacea for sleeplessness on the road, and a concession, in this antique bedroom, to the paidhi’s necessity to keep up with the news; and occasionally just to have entertainment or noise to fill the silence.

But he had his staffback with him. He had Banichi and Jago. He had them again.

It was Sasi into whose hands he shed the clothes: she was an older servant with, Sasi had informed him proudly, along with the requisite photos, four grandchildren.

An apostate, far-from-his-culture human chose to believe that made Sasi absolutely professional at seeing people into bed and tucked in, and that she was a decent and sobering influence on the two young maids who stood by and offered and received the exchange of garments, the lounging robe for the sleeping robe, in which one didn’t ordinarily sleep, but there it was, nonetheless, the requisite robe. One just did wear appropriate garments, that was the explanation, even if said robe was immediately, fifteen paces away, to be taken off to go to bed.

It was polite. It was expected. It was what was done. The paidhi had rank in the court, therefore the paidhi’s closet overflowed with appropriate garments which were the pride and the care of his staff on display.

And the paidhi couldn’t, God, no, dress or undress himself, without showing lack of confidence in his Atageini staff.

The paidhi hadgotten the message of the staff over the last year of his life, and had ceased to frustrate the servants in their zeal to please him.

“How arethe repairs?” he asked as Sasi applied a cursory brush to his hair, towering over him the while. The faint aroma of paint and new plaster had been constant. But it seemed fainter this evening. “Nadi Sasi? One heard the painting might be over.”

“All the work is most nearly complete, nand’ paidhi. The tiles are all in place, so we hear. The painters have been at work almost constantly, and now they seem finished.”

And the young servant by the door: “The artisans think—perhaps in a day, nand’ paidhi. So nand’ Saidin says.”

“I believe, nand’ paidhi,” Sasi said, “that they have told the lady so.”

Damiri, in other words. The crews that had been scraping and pounding away down the hall were Atageini workmen, or at least workmen intensely scrutinized by the Atageini lord.

In the thoughts of a few moments ago, one worried.

“Nadi.” One maid produced a scroll from his robe’s pocket, and offered it to Sasi, who gave it to him.

Toby’s telegram. Damn. He hadn’t gotten to answering it.

But he couldn’t do anything about answering it, or about his mother’s condition. She had medical care. He couldn’t help. When they talked on the phone, she grew upset and got onto topics that upset her, like his job, her getting hate calls. It was better he didn’t call.

He laid the scroll on the night table. Then he took off the satin robe and surrendered it to Sasi before he lay down on the sheets of the historic Atageini bed—in which an Atageini had been murdered, oh, some centuries ago, under a coverlet which was a duplicate of that coverlet.

As the lilies down the hall would be exact duplicates of the lilies destroyed by whatever agency.

The Atageini were stubborn about their decor. Their power. Their autonomy. The hospitality shown their guests.

Damiri had had resources to check out the workmen. He’d told himself so for months. That special steel expansion barrier, an ingenious affair with screw-braces that extended and bolted with lock bolts in all directions, had occasioned a fuss over the woodwork; but the security barrier had gone in; and that meant workmen and artisans had to come and go by a scaffolding let down from the roof, under the supervision of Tabini’s guards. So the nearby residents had sealed theirwindows with similar precautions.

“Shall I leave the windows open, nand’ paidhi? Or open the vents?”

“I think just the vents, thank you, Sasi-ji.” He trusted no one was going to make a foray into the apartments from the construction. But the scraping and hammering and the smell of paint and plaster had gone on all winter; and now that it was spring, when neighboring apartments as well as his own had the desire to take advantage of their lofty estate well above the city and the general safety that let these apartments open their windows to the breezes, it had certainly put a matter of haste into the repair job—a need to get the smelly part done, before, as Tabini said, someone declared feud on the Atageini over the repairs.

They were nearing an end of that situation, as it seemed—an end of bumps and thumps that made the guards get up in haste and go investigate, and an end of a major eyesore in the apartment. ‘A few more days’ had gotten to be the household joke, long predating ‘rain clouds,’ but it did sound encouraging.

So they were going to be rid of the barrier, the workmen, the casting and solvent smells wafting in through the balcony windows, and he would have back a room of exquisite beauty, which happened to be hisfavorite place in the apartments, whether for study or breakfast or just sitting and relaxing.

God. Oh, God. The date.

He was supposed to do a television interview on the 14th. Tomorrow. Was it tomorrow? The 14th?

It wasthe 14th. He hadn’t even thought about it since he’d left. He hadn’t remotely considered it when he’d thought about extending his visit with Geigi.

He had no wish whatsoever to tie the business of the space program to the assassination of lord Saigimi in the public mind; he didn’t want to answer questions regarding lord Saigimi, which might possibly come up—the news services, generally well behaved, still occasionally blundered into something in a live interview—live, because some atevi believed that television that regarded politics had to be live for the numbers not to be deliberately misleading.

But he couldn’t, at this date and at this hour, even by coming down with an attack of poisoning, cancelthe news conference, not without having people draw the very conclusion he didn’t want.

He had to get his wits together and face it tomorrow—do it with dispatch and in full control of his faculties. He’d set the interview up fifteen days ago when it had sounded perfectly fine and within his control. He’d had it on his calendar as just after the factory tour. He’d made sure it missed the trip dates. They’d added two days and three labs onto his tour at the last moment and he’d totally forgotten about the damn interview as significant, just one of those myriad things his staff steered him to and out of and on to the next thing on the list, and that Tano would have advised him of the very moment he proposed to them accepting lord Geigi’s offered day on the boat. They’d have been able to do it: they’d have just shunted the event to Sarini Province and set up in Geigi’s front hall, cameras, lights, and baggage, and hewouldn’t have been put out by it except as it affected the fishing schedule.

But, given a choice now, he wouldn’t have done it tomorrow.

Damn! He wouldn’t. But he supposed that nobody, including people who had or had not been atop certain buildings in the rain, had considered the paidhi’s interview schedule when carrying out the assassination of a lord of the Association.

8

Banichi and Jago came to the dining room in the morning, cheerful and clearly anticipating the breakfast that was loading down the two service carts that were waiting along the wall outside.

Jase remained shut in his room. Jase was getting some sleep, madam Saidin said. Staff had quietly looked in on him to be sure that he was resting; and that he was safe; and they would be sure that he ate when he did wake.

“I think that sleep is more important for him,” Bren agreed as he sat down at the table. “Thank you, Saidin-ji.”

Tano and Algini came in for breakfast. And Tano, with a little bow, placed two objects beside his plate as he went to his chair, one a piece of vellum paper folded double, not scrolled as one did with formal messages; and the other a scroll in a gold (but very scarred) case.

In the inquiry regarding Jase-paidhi’s message, the simple folded note said, Tano’s writing, no message was received at Mogari-nai directed to him during your absence. I have verified this by electronic record as provided by Mogari-nai.

Indeed, while he’d been sitting talking with Banichi and Jago last night, others of his staff had been querying the Mogari-nai earth station via levels of the Bu-javid staff that could obtain valid and reliable answers.

So Jase’s ship hadn’t informed him of something that personal and urgent. The question was whythey hadn’t informed Jase; and whythey’d told Yolanda without telling her Jase didn’t know and consequently let her blurt out a piece of news like that. It was stupid, to have set up two agents in the field to be in that situation, and stupidity did not accord with other actions the ship had taken.

Nor did Manasi nor any member of the staff receive any request from nand’ Jase to call the ship, although this would not have been granted. He wished to speak to you personally and this request was denied. Nand’ Jase expressed extreme emotion at this denial and requested no call be made to you on his behalf. Nand’ Manasi expresses his distress at the situation, but he passed the tape of the Mospheira contact to the aiji’s staff with no knowledge it was out of the ordinary and the aiji’s staff has issued no report as yet on the content of that tape. Investigation is proceeding on the matter of timely report.

Meaning the aiji’s staff, probably busy Mospheira-watching on other topics, had the tape of the phone call but hadn’t interpreted it against the background of what else was going on, meaning matters in the peninsula, with which it might have been preoccupied. Manasi, watching Jase, hadn’t known what was going on. Jase had given Manasi a request against his orders and then told Manasi to let the matter drop.

Jase also had that tendency to assume a rule could be neither questioned nor broken, a trait that came of the ship-culture Jase had come from, Bren very much suspected, one of those little points of difference between the ship and Mospheira. He and Jase almostshared a language, and met towering problems centered in wrong assumptions. On one level this had all the irrational feel of one of those.

But the misunderstanding wasn’t trivial, this time.

And it still didn’t answer the question why Jase hadn’t been informed by the ship via Mogari-nai. And it didn’t answer the possibility the aiji’s staff had realized something was wrong and hadn’t informed him. He wasn’t sure Manasi had erred; he wasn’t sure, either, that the staff had held anything back from him, but his instincts for trouble were awake.

Tano’s note went on to a second item of the business he’d laid on his staff last night: I forwarded your note to nand’ Eidi. The aiji asks we advise his staff as soon as you’ve finished breakfast. He said he cannot be precise as to the time the aiji will have available to meet, nor should you be kept from your business(it was the lordly you;Tano never seemed to know what to do with their familiarity on paper.) One may have to wait and that will be arranged.

Also, do you recall that there is a live television interview scheduled today at noon? I asked nand’ Eidi yesterday should it be postponed or taken on tape, and nand’ Eidi says the aiji believes any deviation in your schedule would be interpreted by the public at large not as your legitimate wish for rest but as the Bu-javid security staff’s reaction to the general security alert, an intimation of concern the aiji does not wish to convey.

It is therefore the aiji’s wish that you conduct the interview on schedule. I state the aiji’s words. If we may be of service, we will carry another message.

“Thank you, nadiin-ji,” he said, in the plural, figuring that both Tano and Algini had shared duty last night and lost sleep over the Jase matter; the message to the aiji had been much the simpler case, but pursued before he had even thought of it, thank God for Tano’s keeping his schedule straight.

Then there was the second message cylinder, which staff, presumably, had already opened: the seal was cracked. The scarred gold case had a seal he didn’t recognize, but evidently it was a message the clerical staff as well as his household thought he should see, on a priority evidently equal to the Jase matter.

The message he unrolled, as Saidin was serving the muffins and another servant was pouring tea, bore the written heading of the lord of Dur-wajran. That was the unknown seal.

Thatmatter, he said to himself: the pilot who’d nearly collided with their jet.

Nand’ paidhi, it read in a less than elegant hand, one wishes most earnestly for your good will. The unfortunate circumstance(misspelled) of the encounter was unwished by me because of error and I wish to take all responsibility personally. Please do not take offense at my household. I did not mean to hit your plane. I am solely(misspelled) to blame and offer profoundest regrets at my stupidity.

It was signed by one Rejiri, with a clan heraldry he took for the seal of Dur-wajran.

“This was the pilot? How old is he?”

“Young,” Tano said. “I’d be surprised if he’s twenty. He brought the message to the residential security post with flowers. On policy, they declined the flowers and sent them to the public display area but accepted the message.” Tano added, then, in the manner of a thoroughly ridiculous proposition. “He wanted to come upstairs.”

“What are we talking about?” Banichi asked.

“A pilot brought his plane very close to ours yesterday,” Bren said. “I take it he’s not still downstairs.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Tano said. “They say, however, he was insistent.”

“Young,” Algini said. “One thinks some of his distress may be the impoundment of the aircraft, which may bring his parents to Shejidan. He may wish to ask you to clear the record. I would notadvise you meet with him or to grant that request.”

“He,” Tano added, “has a record of small aerial incidents around the coast near his home. He had no business bringing the plane to the largest airport in the world.”

“True.” He had campaigned for stricter enforcement of the ATC rales. He passed the note to Jago, as the most forgiving member of his security. “I hope they won’t deal too harshly with him.” One could get into a great deal of trouble coming too close to the aiji’s residence during a security alert. “Please have someone advise him I take no personal offense and that the Bu-javid staff has more urgent business.”

“The staff has tried to impress the gravity of matters on him,” Tano said, “and to make clear to him that he should pay closer attention to public events.—One does take the impression that this young man lacks seriousness of purpose.”

“Why is the paidhi involved with this person, nadi?” Banichi wanted to know, and the potential rebuke to junior security was implied in that ‘nadi.’ “And what, in full, happened?”

“An ATC violation,” Tano said. The note went from Jago on to Banichi. “We aretreating it seriously, nandi, at least to be sure there was nothing more than seems. It seems to be a young island pilot—the lord of Dur’s son.”

“Ah,” Banichi said, as if that explained any folly in the world. Banichi reached for more toast and, so supplied, perused the note and looked at the seal.

“A minor thing,” Algini said. “The authorities will advise the parents.—I would advise, nadi Bren, against accepting the boy’s apology. Apology to a person of your rank should come from the lord of Dur first, then the boy.”

“I understand,” Bren said as nand’ Saidin offered him curdled eggs and pastry. Considering the necessity of meeting with Tabini, it might be one of those days mostly marked by waiting. Tabini’s day looked to be one of those unpredictable ones, with various emergencies coming in. “Thank you, nadi. The paidhi would have offended half the world by now, and all the noble houses would have filed on him, if he didn’t have staff to keep him in order.”

“This isa young fool,” Banichi said, laying the note aside. “Don’t concern yourself with him, Bren-ji. This is for other agencies to pursue. Meanwhile we will be trying to solve the other questions you posed.”

The other questions, meaning the situation among the lords, post-Saigimi: atevi politics.

Meanwhile he had a computer and a briefcase full of plain, unadorned work he had to do for the space program.

And he had to deal with Jase personally. His staff said there was no impediment they could locate at Mogari-nai with messages to which they could gain access, which ought to be everything; and they did indicate that Jase hadn’t pushed Manasi to carry his request through channels. The request stillmight not have been granted.

But primarily he had to unravel what in bloody hell was going on inside the ship and why Jase had gotten a message that personal from a source who had apparently been notified by the ship in preference to Jase.

That just damn well wouldn’t do, he thought, not in that personal matter, not, by any stretch of that policy, in other matters regarding the business on which Yolanda and Jason had come down to earth. Therewas the center of the matter, not Jase’s father, however tragic it was on a personal level.

Meanwhile Banichi and Tano and Algini had fallen to discussing the state of building security and whether they were going to need to establish a service alert on the third floor (a decision which rested in the hands of Tabini’s staff, and not their own) regarding the scaffold, which rumor on the staff held was going to be dismantled tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Bren thought, pricking up his ears. What a glorious piece of news. The workmen finished. No more scaffolding.

“No more barrier to the breakfast room?” he asked. “They’re going to take that ugly door down?”

“One hopes, paidhi-ji,” Tano said.

“But,” Jago said, “there’s a Marid lord arriving today to press a claim with the aiji.”

“Or,” Banichi said, “he wishes to escape the politics of his district. Note he hasn’tapplied for an audience.”

“Who is this?” Bren asked.

“Badissuni, by name,” Algini interjected. “And one wonders, nand’ paidhi, whether it’s an honest request.”

“One hardly thinks so,” Jago said. “I vastly distrust it. I would protest that door being removed.”

Banichi had a very sober expression. So, Bren trusted, did he.

“The press says,” Tano said, “that lord Badissuni is escaping the politics of his district. I think the press was handed that information.”

“A fair guess,” Banichi said, and tapped the table with a sharp egg-knife balanced delicately over his thumb. “My bet? He wants the press to say so. But he wants them following the story so if Tabini-aiji tosses him out of his ancestral apartments in the Bu-javid he can make politics at home.”

“So will Tabini do it?” Bren asked. “Pitch him out, I mean?”

“The Hagrani of the Marid have an apartment on the floor below, at the corner,” Algini said. “Quite close, nand’ paidhi. One hopes he doesn’t ask to take up residence. But we fear he will. The balcony is standing open for the paint to dry and the room to air. This is not a good security condition. If they take down the security panel we have the same condition as before, glass doors, a balcony, no difficulty if all residents of this wing are reliable. But it’s not alone these glass doors. It’s the aiji’sapartment next door. This is a serious exposure. Saigimi did not use the apartment. He let it to lord Geigi, who is notin residence, nor will be.”

“The aiji shouldforbid his opening that apartment,” Jago said under her breath. “This man is dangerous. He should be sent home unheard. We’ll have official functions here in the building, we’ll doubtless have windows open. This is an invitation perhaps the aiji is consciously extending. But I protest it when it comes near you, Bren-ji.”

It was sensitively close to this apartment, and close to the aiji, was what Jago was saying. And the glass doors of the breakfast room had already proved a flimsy shield against bullets. That was why they were repairing the lily frieze.

“I’m here to rest,” was Banichi’s pronouncement on the situation, meaning, Bren supposed, and agreed, that they could leave that to others to decide, and enjoy their time in safety.

So Banichi had another helping. And with Banichi, Tano, and Algini at the table, all of them in their uniform black, all in shirt-sleeves so as not to scar the delicate chairs with the silver-studded coats, the paidhi had his favorite breakfast, thought over hisunavoidable problems, and, while the very large bowl of curdled eggs vanished, along with half jars of marmalade and various muffins, listened to his staff discuss in their cryptic way. He pricked up his ears again as the conversation made him absolutely certainthe Saigimi business had come as a complete shock to Tano and Algini and that the orders which had caused it had not come at all unexpected to Banichi or Jago. Banichi wouldn’t have let that much slip, he well knew, if Banichi didn’t trust the entire company, and that had to include madam Saidin.

Or they were setting something up.

Since—he realized at that instant—Saidin herself was doing all the serving.

He was sitting in a room totally occupied by the Assassins’ Guild, including madam Saidin, as shop talk went on about this and that, involving Guild policy on the recent assassination, the configuration of the apartments, and the aiji’s schedule, on the security of which the paidhi’s as well as the aiji’s life and safety depended.

Tiburi, the wife of Saigimi, andher daughter Cosadi, one also learned, had bolted for Direiso’s estate as Saigimi’s brother Ajresi seized power in the Tasigin Marid.

“Don’t count that as the final skirmish,” was Jago’s observation.

“Badissuni,” Banichi said, “may be a messenger from Ajresi to Tabini.”

Queasy thought to have with the breakfast eggs—uncommon discussion to have flowing around him, but he took his own internal temperature and decided he wasn’t nearly as shocked as he ought to be about the recent assassination.

And he’d just thought—maybe it would be a lot better if an accident befell several more people associated with Saigimi.

He wasslipping toward a certain callous view of these things; and did he losesomething by that change in himself, or gainsomething, when he envisioned the fear Tabini could strike ifhe decided to kill the first messenger of peace and by that action to signal (as in the machimi) his wish for Saigimi’s Hagrani clan to remove its own new leadership in order to have peace with the aiji? Clans apparently had done it in the past.

But Tabini wouldn’t make that demand. At least the paidhi didn’t think so. Tabini continually asked the filers of Intent to choose recourse to the courts instead. It would say something very unusual for the aiji who backed judicial resort as policy to choose a second assassination.

Possibly Tabini’s own moderate position on this issue had placed him in a bind and threatened more bloodshed.

And Tabini was dealing with an Edi lord. That was another consideration: the ethnic division. The fact that Tabini wasRagi, and the majority of the peninsula, the most industrialized section of the nation, wasEdi.

There were reasons for moderation, then, rather than touching off ethnic jealousies; and Tabini knew what he was doing first in taking out Saigimi and then in leaving alive a man Jago in her own judgment called dangerous.

Jago clearly wanted the assignment in Badissuni’s case, should Tabini decide to take the harder line.

Don’t count that as the final skirmish, Jago had just said, regarding Ajresi’s seizure of power. Meaning Badissuni was going to take out Ajresi? Banichi said Badissuni was here as Ajresi’s messenger—while the other heir to the Edi lordship of the Marid, Cosadi, the daughter, was currently sheltering in Direiso’shousehold.

Ajresi might not like Tabini, but he’d definitely take alarm at Cosadi running to Direiso. He’d be watching his doors and windows for certain, since Direiso could give Cosadi a springboard to try to take the Marid andthe peninsula from Ajresi.

So damn right Ajresi might send someone to hold talks with Tabini. Jago believed Badissuni was unreliable and didn’t want him near; but Banichi said a) the heirship wasn’t settled yet and b) Badissuni was a messenger.

If Ajresi claimed the clan by force of arms and sat as lord in the Hagrani household, he had nopercentage at all in dealing with Direiso so long as she was sheltering the other Hagrani heir from Ajresi’s assassins, bet on it. Ajresi had, at least for public consumption, detested Saigimi’s previous adventurous dealings with Direiso—the attempt against the paidhiin, which had cost the clan so dearly.

And as a result of Damiri’s association with Tabini, which had gone public in that attack, now Direiso’s association—the Kadigidi, the Atageini, the Tasigin Marid and the lords of Wingin in the peninsula and Wiigin in the northern reach—was threatened. Damiriwas the Atageini heir as well as Direiso’s neighbor, and the day Damiri succeeded her uncle as head of the Atageini clan, Direiso’s days were numbered.

Tabini’s removing Saigimi, whose heir, if it was Ajresi, would take the Marid and Wingin outof her association, meant Direiso was twice threatened. If Ajresi once secured an understanding with Tabini, the two holdings, the Marid and Wingin, wouldn’t become independent from Tabini—they’d never get that—but possibly they’d be held with a far lighter grip. They’d win rights, even economic consideration. Ajresi could win an immense advantage by talking to Tabini early and very politely in his rise to power.

Ajresi might well be talking to Geigi politely, too, and mending fences with another Edi lord increasingly important in the peninsula and high in Tabini’s favor.

He very much hoped so. That could be immensely important to the space program.

As for why Banichi might have been selected for an assignment in the peninsula, Banichi wasfrom Talidi Province, right next to the Marid. His house, whatever it was (and Banichi had never said) was at least well-acquainted with the situation.

“What do you think?” he asked Banichi. “Are we under threat from the south now?”

“Not from the Marid,” Banichi said. “Ajresi isn’t that crazy.”

“If he relies on Badissuni he is,” Jago said.

“Make the man commit in public to serve Ajresi as lord?” Banichi returned. “Badissuni had as soon eat glass. But he hasno choice but represent Ajresi; and he’ll be dead by fall.”

“Do you know that?” Bren was so startled he forgot the softening nadiand spoke intimately and into Guild business at the same time.

Banichi didn’t give a flicker of offense. “Of course Ajresi might be dead by fall, instead, if hedoesn’t move first. So everything Badissuni negotiates with Tabini is also for himself, if he gets Ajresi before Ajresi gets him. I don’t think he will, though. I know who’s working for Ajresi.”

“Simpler for us to do it,” Jago said glumly. “And make Ajresi come in person and beg for himself.”

“I don’t think he’ll beg,” Banichi said. “But a message may already have come from Ajresi signaling Tabini that a public agreement would secure private alliance.”

“Do you know so?” Jago asked, echoing the former query.

“Say that messages have flown thick and fast between Ajresi and Tatiseigi of the Atageini, and I think that Badissuni is the topic.” Banichi finished off his tea. “Dead, I say. Before the snow falls, if Tatiseigi doesn’t join Direiso—and Tabini-aiji is too wise to provoke that.”

Saidinwas in the doorway, and Banichi said that. Bren’s heart gave a thump.

But it did tell him—Saidin was Damiri’s; and Damiri was Tabini’s; as Banichi and Jago were. Conspiracy was thick around them. Warfare was going on. One just didn’t see lines of cavalry and blazing buildings.

And hoped one wouldn’t.

The first order of business after breakfast was, Bren decided, to deal with Jase. The staff said Jase was sleeping; and sleeping through breakfast he accepted.

Jase waking after he’d left and receiving still more information through the staff was a different problem, very like the situation Jase had been presented by Yolanda Mercheson, in point of fact; and that could only add to his distress.

He knocked on Jase’s door. And had no answer.

He walked in, found Jase abed. “Jase,” he said, and stood there until Jase opened his eyes and frowned at him.

Then Jase looked both startled and upset to find him there.

“The phone lines are clear,” Bren said calmly, gently. “At your wish, at any time, call the ship. The staff will assist you, nadi.”

“With or without recordings made?” Jase asked.

“Everything we do is recorded,” Bren said. “I’ve told you that. Never expect differently. There are no exceptions, nadi.”

Jase flung off the covers, got out of bed and reached for his dressing-robe. “I need to talk in private!”

“For your own protection, nadi. If some unscrupulous person should accuse you of wrongdoing—and in this society it can happen—there’s proof of your honesty.”

“Damn this society!” The latter in his language. He shoved his arms into the robe and tied it.

They’d been down this path about the recordings before. And Jase challenged him on it one more time. But the manners were a step too far.

“In this culture—” Bren said patiently.

“Bren, just give me some room. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want privacy to talk to my mother, dammit.”

“I can’t guarantee that. If you’d use your head you’d know if I guaranteed it you couldn’t trust the people I can’t trust, and that’s a long list, none of them with your or my welfare at heart, so you wouldn’t know; they could edit it. So let’s be sure our own people are listening and making a record.”

“Heart, is it? Affection? Are we talking about hearts, here?”

He hadn’t meant to provoke Jase. But Jase was working hard to get a reaction, and it was one thing, with him; it was quite another with the Atageini staff, starting with Saidin, and he hoped to hell Jase hadn’t taken that pose with Saidin while he was gone.

“I can’t trust you,” he retorted. “Is that what you’re saying? Jase, just—for your information, for what it’s worth: no one had any idea, and if you’d told Manasi what was going on, the message might have reached me.”

There was dead silence. No response. No change of expression.

He tried again. Looking for reaction, a fracture, any way past that reserve and into the truth. “Not that I could have found a secure phone immediately. But if I knew there was an emergency here, I’d have found one.”

“Well. I’ll call her. Thanks for checking for me.”

“I’m sorry, Jase. I’m really sorry.”

Jase had his back turned. His bedroom had no exterior windows, just a decorated screen, gilt, beautiful work. In the center was a painting of a mountain, no specific mountain that he knew. Jase stared at that as if it offered escape.

“Yeah,” Jase said. “I know.”

“I have a meeting to go to. With Tabini. I’ll have to go when he calls. But we need to talk, Jase. We need to talk—personally.” He wished to hell he hadn’t come in here for this interview on a fast, in-and-gone-again basis. Assassins talked about a broken-legged contract, where the object wasn’t to kill someone, just to keep them out of action. And, God, such desperate measures did flash through his mind where it regarded Jase’s crisis and the one racketing through atevi affairs right now. “I don’t want you to have to track things secondhand again. I’m sorry. I really am. Please, just take it easy. The staff doesn’tentirely understand. They’re trying to, in all good will toward you.”

“I’ll manage. I’ll call. I’ll talk to you later.”

He couldn’t expect Jase to be cheerful orbalanced, considering the situation; and he tried to desensitize his own nerves to Jase’s jangled reactions with all the professional detachment he owned. Jase had some consideration coming.

Like time to talk, when he could spare it. If he could patch the gulf that had already grown between them. He hadn’t been able to talk. Now he wanted to, and didn’t dare open up the things he had to explain until Jase had weathered this crisis.

But he’d delivered his message. And there wasn’ttime right now. “See you, probably at noon,” he said, and left and shut the door, wishing there were something he could do, and trying to hang on to his own nerves.

Depression, he thought, was very easy from Jase’s present situation. Human psych was part of the course of study that led to his job; he knew all the warnings and all the ways one fought back against isolation, bad news, lack of intelligible information from one’s hosts or one’s surroundings.

Depression: general tendency to want to sleep, general tendency to believe the worst in a situation rather than the better possibilities, general tendency to believe one couldn’t rather than that one could.

And maybe his accepting being told that the phone lines were inaccessible to him without his even objecting to Manasi that it was a legitimate emergency wasn’t just some ship-culture unwillingness to question a rule. Maybe it was a growing depression.

But, dammit, he had problems, too, and didn’t, again, dammit, have time to worry about it right now.

Though he did note, now that he questioned his perceptions, that Jase hadn’t asked him the other critical and obvious question: hadn’t asked if he’d discovered why the ship hadn’t called him first with news of his father’s accident.

Jase hadn’t asked him, second, whether the ship couldhave reached him directly with the information he’d ended up hearing from Yolanda Mercheson via Mospheiran channels—or whether there’d been some communications crash around that critical time.

Jase hadn’t asked, and he realized as he walked away that he hadn’t exactly ended up volunteering the information he had from Tano, either, that Mogari-nai maintained there was nocall to Jase.

Maybe, Bren thought, he should go back and raise the issue. Or maybe the situation would find some rational explanation once Jase had had the chance to talk to his mother at some length and find out what had happened—and he did trust that Jase’s call would get through. It was reasonable that Jase’s mother herself might have asked that the news be withheld from Jase, perhaps wanting to get her own emotions under control before she broke the news to him, perhaps not wanting to distress Jase over something he couldn’t help at a time when she might just possibly know that Jase was alone with only atevi around him. He hoped that that would turn out to be the answer. Maybe that was what Jase was hoping.

“Nand’ paidhi,” he heard from a servant as he trekked back through the area of the dining room, “the aiji wishes you to come meet with him now, please.”

“Thank you, nadi,” he said, and shifted mental gears again, this time for Ragi in all the grand complexity of the court language: a session with Tabini was nothing to enter bemused or with the mind slightly occupied, and he would need to go straight over next door.

Tons of stuff to deliver next door, documents, various things for the aiji’s staff, but he’d sent those ahead. Unlike the situation in the past, when he’d resided still within the Bu-javid governmental complex, but far down the hill in his little garden apartment (and far down the list of Bu-javid officers responsible for anything critical.) He had nothing personally to carry when he spoke with Tabini nowadays. He didn’t appear in audience and wait his turn among other petitioners any longer. When the paidhi was scheduled to meet with the aiji in this last half year, he waited comfortably in his borrowed apartment, on a good day with his feet up and with a cup of tea in hand, while the aiji’s staff and the paidhi’s staff (another convenience he had not formerly had) worked out the schedule over the phone and found or created a hole in the aiji’s schedule.

Today the aiji had passed orders, one suspected, to make a hole where none existed. Tabini was squeezing him into his schedule and he would have understood if Tabini had postponed their meeting a second time or a third or fourth, counting what else was going on. If the ship in Sarini Province hadn’t blown up, Tabini had to reckon him and it at a lower priority.

But that Tabini wanted to see him, of that he had no doubt. He and Tabini on good days made meetings long enough to accommodate their private as well as their official conversation. He and Tabini, two men who had come to office young and who shared young men’s interests, often ranged into casual converse about politics, women, philosophy, and the outdoors activities they both missed. Sometimes Tabini would choose simply to discuss the management of game, not the paidhi’s direct concern. Or the merits of a particular invention some ateva had sent up the appropriate channels—which wasthe paidhi’s concern, but it wasn’t the aiji’s, except by curiosity.

He had the feeling that sometimes they had meetings simply because Tabini wanted someone to talk to about something completely extraneous to his other problems.

But definitely not today. There was the interview at noon.

And meanwhile he had a distraught and grieving human roommate whose conversation with his mother might for all he could predict blow up into God knew what.

He went immediately to the foyer, stopped by the duty station to advise Tano they should go now, and was mildly disorganized in his expectations to find Banichi and Jago, both of whom he’d gotten out of the habit of expecting to see. They’d been very much who he expected to see there, once upon a time.

“I’ll escort the paidhi myself,” Banichi said cheerfully, like old times, and left Jago and Tano and Algini to do whatever had involved a group of Guild close together and voices lower than ordinary.

Curious, Bren thought of that little gathering, not curious that they were talking, but that it had fallen so uncharacteristically quickly silent. If their job was to protect him, it did seem appropriate for them to advise him what they were protecting him from.

But no one had volunteered anything. And it was probable that Banichi and Jago were relaying things pertinent to things the paidhi’s conscience truly didn’t want to know about, down in the peninsula.

Besides, once the aiji had found a hole in his schedule, other mortals moved and didn’t delay for questions.

9

The meeting was evidently set not for the little salon, but for the formal salon of Tabini-aiji’s apartments with, in the many wide windows, the Bergid Range floating hazily above the city’s tiled roofs. The morning overcast had burned off. The air had warmed. It was a pleasant and sensual breeze flowing through the apartment—untainted with the smell of paint, Bren noticed.

Banichi had dropped to the side as they passed the security station in the foyer of the aiji’s apartment, and as the paidhi acquired nand’ Eidi for a guide. Banichi had settled into the security station with Tabini’s security. The lot of them, Bren suspected, would trade information of a sensitive sort, so Banichi was about to spend a profitable few moments, maybe more informative on the real goings-on in the Western Alliance than his own meeting was about to be.

Elderly Eidi (undoubtedly of the Guild as the formerly naïve paidhi began to suspect allhigh lords’ close attendants were of the Guild) poured tea and handed it to him while he stood waiting. “The aiji will be here at any moment,” Eidi said. “He’s been on the telephone, nand’ paidhi, an unexpected call.”

One of those days, Bren thought, thinking of the Badissuni matter, wondering whether it would divert Tabini’s attention completely away from the report he had to give.

But he stood waiting, exercising due caution with the teacup and the priceless rugs underfoot—he had once managed to drop a cup, to his intense embarrassment—and gazing out at the mountains at a view very like the one from his apartment.

Out there, unseen from this range, forest swept up the mountain flanks. Forest reserves and hunting villages existed, an entire way of life remote from the city.

Closer in, the tiled roofs of Shejidan advanced along the hills in their significant geometries, neighborhood associations which defined atevi life. You could belong to several at once; you could belong to two that hated each other and hold man’chi, he had learned, to both in varying degrees. He was looking at associations economic, residential, political, and, he guessed, but could not prove, marital.

And there were those walls that separated a few houses off together in private unity. Those were associations by trade or by kinship within the other associations. The relationships were defined even in the orientation and the age-faded colors of the tiles.

Once the eye knew what it was looking for, it could find information laid out to simple observation in Shejidan. Atevi had never hidden those most intimate secrets from humans. One supposed they took for granted they hadn’t hidden them. But humans had looked right at this view for decades and never grasped what they were seeing. The paidhiin before him had failed precisely to explain the nuances of those faded colors and, no different than his predecessors, he made his own guesses and bet the peace on them.

It damn sure wasn’t a Mospheiran city. You couldn’t forget that, either.

You stood under the same sky, you looked at the same stars, the same clouds, the same sea… but it wasn’t Mospheira where you were standing.

It wasn’t the ship, either. It certainly wasn’t the ship. He felt sorry for Jase. He really did. In the moments he most wanted to strangle Jase, and there had been some, he still knew what a strain Jase was under. And this last stress, the blow to his family, the safe home one left behind and imagined was always inviolate—was extreme.

God, he knew.

“No, no, and no!”

Thatwas Tabini in the hall outside.

“Light of my life, you will not, you will nothave your uncle in the apartment, it will not happen!”

“It’s ourancestral residence!” he heard: lady Damiri’s voice. “What can one do?”

“I knowit’s your ancestral residence! It’s Bren’s life, gods less fortunate! You knowyour uncle! He’s dealing with that damned Hagrani!”

It didn’t sound good. It didn’t sound at all good.

The door opened. Tabini walked in, the aiji of the aishidi’tat, the Western Association, the most powerful man on the planet—far overshadowing the President of Mospheira, who couldn’t rule his own staff, and who didn’t, additionally, command an Assassins’ Guild.

—For which, Bren often thought, thank God.

Damiri came in second, and the respective guards, third through sixth, as servants hurried to catch up. Bren bowed and maneuvered toward the appropriate chair by the window, as Tabini chose one of the pair facing the view.

Tabini and Damiri settled comfortably side by side, the image of felicity and domestic tranquility in a flurry of servants in red and guards in black.

“So,” Tabini said. “Good trip, nand’ paidhi? I received your preliminary report. Gods felicitous, you have stamina.”

“A productive trip, aiji-ma. I’ve left the small data with nand’ Eidi, if you will. As busy as this season may be, I would be happy to expand the account to details in writing—”

Tabini lifted his fingers. “I by no means doubt the accuracy of your general estimations. Damned nuisance that your trip home had to be so hasty. I trust it curtailed nothing of moment.”

“No, aiji-ma.” There was no indication the stray pilot rated the aiji’s notice, and he left the matter silent. “Everything of moment is in the files I’ve made available. And there’s nothing critical. I would claim your generous attention, aiji-ma, to honor certain promises I’ve made.”

A wave of the fingers. “Data for the experts and the sifters of numbers. News of yourself. News of nand’ Jase. What is this about an accident—about the death of Jase-paidhi’s father?”

Atevi had so many delicate words for death. Tabini chose the bluntest, least felicitous. And note that Tabini didknow. At what hour Tabini had known—the paidhi was perhaps wise not to ask.

“I’ve advised him to contact his mother for information,” Bren said, “and that he should by all means use official channels in such emergencies. Apparently the information came to him by Mercheson-paidhi, instead of directly from his mother or his captain, as would have been more appropriate to his relationship and his rank.”

“My spies report the fact of the phone contact between Mercheson and Jase.” Atevi had the devil’s own time with the combinations of consonants in Yolandaand preferred Mercheson, never quite making sense of the protocols of human names. “There was a set of messages from the earth station on Mospheira to the ship and the ship to Mospheira preceding and following the contact between Mercheson and Jase-paidhi.”

“Possibly,” Bren suggested softly, with the definite impression that, yes, Tabini had held this particular piece of distressing news from the paidhi until the paidhi was home to handle Jase, perhaps for fear the paidhi might breach security, alter his schedule, or call the ship himself. “Perhaps this communication between Mercheson and the authorities on the ship was because she realized she’d let out something, aiji-ma, or it might have a less felicitous interpretation. I would imagine, but not swear, that she was distressed to have broken the news and had no idea he didn’t know But beforeJase’s contact with Mercheson—clearly there was one prior call, but several—would be somewhat unusual.”

“The name Deana Hanks has floated to the surface of such messages in the last four days. Deana Hanks has advised. Deana Hanks has said…”

Damn, was the word that floated to the surface of his mind, but one didn’t curse in the aiji’s presence.

“One is far from pleased to hear so, aiji-ma, but I have no means to curtail her activities. I’ll certainly review the transcript of those contacts.”

“I have provided one. My informants say that Jase Graham has taken to his room in high and angry emotion. But that you estimate no danger in him.”

The informants were the entire staff over there, via lady Damiri, who said not a thing.

“He wishes to return to the ship,” Bren said, “—and he knows the way—the only way—lies through his performing his job. I do worry for him. But I believe he already shows signs of recovery from a very profound shock.” That was stretching it a bit. But one never wanted atevi to grow too quick-fingered about their defensive instincts. “Jase is not a dangerous man, aiji-ma. In terms of his knowledge, perhaps, but in terms of deliberate harm to the premises or to any individual, no, my human judgment says no.”

“On your judgment, Bren-paidhi. Do as you see fit regarding security, only so you protect yourself, the staff, the premises. You may have heard—” He slid a glance at Damiri. “There will be an inspection.”

“The lilies,” Damiri-daja said quietly.

“Lord Tatiseigi,” Tabini said, “will tour the restored breakfast room. And there will be cameras—official cameras. Do you think you can keep nadi Jase proper and kabiufor the duration? This is unavoidable timing. And highly unfortunate. But it might be an excuse, if Jase-paidhi were to take to mourning. Perhaps some human custom of retreat. Would it be appropriate for him to take ill?”

God, he wished he could say yes. He felt sick at his stomach, from sheer imagination of the Atageini lord visiting the apartment, ahead of television cameras. A formal reception. Jase, distracted as he was apt to be, in the mood he was bound to be in. He felt verysick at his stomach.

A broken-legged assassination? Dared he?

Maybe they could just slip Jase a sedative. A dose of mildly poisonous tea.

But no, no, then the press would blame the lord of the Atageini. The headlines would banner an assassination attempt.

Perhaps heshould take a double cup of the tea himself, and not have to face this lordly inspection tour.

But that would leave everything in Jase’s hands and thatwas impossible.

“I’ll decide,” he said to Tabini, “based on what I hear from him after he’s talked to his mother. But, in all honesty, aiji-ma, I fear I can’t offer a method. Unless we claimed some custom on the ship. Which—could answer to most anything, I suppose. If it were necessary.”

“I would have avoided this timing,” Tabini said. “But trying to delay it could make a worse problem.”

“One can’t tell my uncle no,” Damiri said, hands folded in her lap, very proper, very demure. “He wishes to see you, nand’ paidhi. And one believes this business on the peninsula has made him that much more aggressively determined.”

Bren drew a quiet breath, getting the full picture: Saigimi’s wife and daughter, relatives to Geigi, had fled to the Atageini’s neighbor, Direiso.

And Tabini entertaining lord Badissuni, the one Banichi said would be dead by fall.

“Not,” Damiri went on to say, “that my uncle will grieve for Saigimi. Nor that he will be displeased to see Direiso discomfited—but he will set great store on beinghere, nand’ paidhi, and in public, and—One relies on your discretion.”

Tabini shifted in his chair and propped his elbow on the arm, his forefinger across his lips as if, unrestrained, he would say something incredibly indiscreet.

The paidhi could well imagine. Tatiseigi would rather double-cross lady Direiso only aftershe’d knifed Tabini.

Failing that, was Tatiseigi’s move a public display calculated to annoy hell out of Direiso andto promote Tatiseigi’s importance in the aiji’s court—as uncle to the aiji’s now publicly revealed lover, and unwilling host to two humans?

Therewas the sticking point.

But meanwhile they’d be civilized. That was the essence of things: civilization. They were the lords of the Padi Valley: Tabini’s house, the Atageini, Direiso’s Kadigidi, and a handful else.

Tatiseigi of the Atageini and Direiso both had encouraged the peninsular lords to rash actions, which Saigimi had undertaken most rashly of all. Saigimi’s death was the means by which the aiji pulled the chain—hard—and reminded them all where authority and force rested.

Hell, it did beat war as a solution.

What he thought of saying was, It’s rather brave of Tatiseigi to walk in next door, considering he’s a logical target.

What he also thought was, God, what kind of Guild members is the old man going to have with him, and what if they break out guns, and shoot at Tabini?

What he did say was, “Would it be wise of me and nand’ Jase both to relocate permanently and allow your uncle possession of the apartment, Damiri-daja? Would that solve the problem? Or we might move for a few days—”

“No such thing!” Tabini said. “Let him be resourceful in his lodging!”

“I’d by no means wish—”

“No, nadi, let my uncle be resourceful,” Damiri said more quietly. “Nadi-ji, he will manage. With the aiji-dowager’s good grace, perhaps he will lodge directly downstairs: he is no stranger to her premises.”

“Is she here? I thought she was bound for Malguri.”

“Oh, grandmother isreturning here,” Tabini said. “She will arrive tomorrow. I’m sureshe stayed on in the western provinces for exactly this show—I mean the matter of the lily porcelains, not lord Saigimi and that nonsense. She’ll amuse herself with the party. Thenshe’ll be off to the east in all haste, mechieti and staff and all. So she promises me.” Tabini had settled back in the chair and folded his hands across his stomach, both elbows on the chair arms, feet out in front of him. “If you have wondered, nand’ paidhi, yes, regarding lord Saigimi. That is all I will say on the matter. And all you should reasonably ask. Grandmother will of course be furious with the affair in the peninsula and verybusy with phone calls all about the Padi Valley. But you have such a marvelous capacity to soothe her tempers, Bren-ji.—And I do trust you to do so.”

“Aiji-ma, I have no such influence, I assure you—”

“Oh, don’t be modest. She dotes on you. You’re civilized. That’s her word. Civilized. And you have, she says, such lovely hair.”

He tried not to flinch or to blush. Tabini was amused and Damiri’s mouth courted dimples one after the other. “So my security tells me,” he returned dryly, and was immediately aghast at himself. He’d twice now gotten direly reckless with atevi lords, but he drew a laugh from Tabini, who’d, in point of fact, challenged him.

In truth, the paidhi sat outside the system of lords and inheritance, and couldn’t possibly challenge Tabini in any sense that mattered.

“My uncle will not lodge with you, nand’ paidhi, be assured so.” That from Damiri-daja, and quite soberly. “Only be very careful. I ask you, be careful of him. He is in some ways delicate in constitution and more delicate in sensibilities.”

“He’s in all ways an unreasonable old man,” Tabini muttered. “It would be indecorous to file Intent on him, but, gods less felicitous! He does try me.—How, by the by, is the peninsular society this season? I hear you took advantage of lord Geigi’s hospitality.”

“He was a very good host and wishes you well, aiji-ma.”

“Well he should. Well, well, I’ll have your report of him. I trust you have it in preparation.”

“My staff does, yes, aiji-ma.”

“The plague of Uncle descends tomorrow—”

Tomorrow! he thought, and did not say.

“—barring rain,” Tabini said, “which I am told prevents the paint from drying completely enough. And the weather report is clear.—If you charm this impossible man, Bren, I do swear I’ll make you a ministerial department.”

“I doubt that I can do so much.” The relationship between the Atageini and the aiji’s house was already such that the aiji himself couldn’t stall the man or his questions, and probably many of those questions (except the peninsular assassination) involved two humans guesting on the property.

He’d enlist the staff to keep Jase and Tatiseigi separated. Saidin might do it. Saidin might have far more luck than the aiji of Shejidan, in that matter.

No one, it seemed, could tell uncle Tatiseigi no—and, technically speaking, he supposed no one could do so legally in the matter of the impending visit. What he had heard of the shouting in the hall indicated something truly beyond Tabini’s control, unless Tabini wished to take extreme action.

The old man was going to push that situation. And Tabini. Which was one thing considering interpersonalrelations. But this was two clans involved. And Damiri.

Wonderful place for two humans to be standing. And impeccable timing. Jase wasn’t up to this.

“One can still wish for rain,” Tabini said. “So. Bren.—What aboutGeigi?”

Now it came down to the matter on which the aiji wished to be informed—officially speaking. It came down to Geigi’s good reputation and the reputation of all the workers in that plant and in all the other labs and plants he’d visited, who relied on him to represent their work, their good will, and all the things they’d tried to demonstrate to him. He tried to collect his scattered wits and represent them well.

“So when will it fly?” Tabini asked him bluntly. Early on, it had been, Willit fly?

“Ahead of schedule, by some few months, aiji-ma, I still maintain so, until and unless we find some problem that delays us the months we allowed for such events.”

“But as yet no such problem exists.” Tabini rested his chin again on his hand and looked satisfied. “It might have arisen, understand. Now such an interruption is far less likely.”

He was so busy thinking of engineering details he didn’t take Tabini’s meaning immediately.

Then he did.

“Saigimi did not want that ship to fly,” Tabini said. “He viewed it as a means to bring down the government. He was wrong. His assassins did not reach Geigi and they did not reach the director of Patinandi Aerospace. So you had a very quiet trip.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.”

“You noticed nothing untoward.”

“No, aiji-ma.”

“Good,” Tabini said. “As it should have been.”

10

The interview with Tabini had gone relatively quickly, and on a day interrupted by phone calls and upsetting news of the Atageini visit—to hisapartment—Bren was hardly surprised.

That left him time to go back to the apartment before the television interview, or, on the other hand, time to visit the office down in the legislative wing and to pay a courtesy call on his staff.

He might, he decided, accidentally interrupt Jase’s phone call if he went back to the apartment: Jase had to make his call either from the library or from the security station, and the library venue had been so hard to predict regarding noise from the reconstruction (hammering would begin at the damnedest times, and the staff would go running, trying to silence the culprits) that he rather imagined Jase would use the security office phone near the front hall out of force of habit.

Which didn’t need the confusion of the front door opening and closing and the servant staff running about.

So he opted for the office downstairs, where his clerical staff maintained a dike against the flood of correspondence. It was a rare honor, the dedication of one of the three available offices inside the Bu-javid, ‘for security reasons,’ as he’d heard, meaning that he tended to visit the clerical office often and that his security and Tabini’s didn’t want the paidhi going to the building that was the other option, down the hill to what was officially called the Maganuri Annex Building. It had been built in haste among the hotels at the foot of the historic real estate, and it probably forecast the trend: the governmental complex was starting to sprawl, and the last rank of intruders, the hotels, were, only since last year, starting to crowd the residential areas, which the Planning Commission wouldn’t have.

So there was to be a new subway link to a hotel district being built on the city outskirts. Tabini’s enemies pointed to the growth of government.

But those same enemies supported the creation of various commissions and agencies that kept the aiji from making autocratic decisions, which was the alternative. And they required more offices and more hotels. He’d warned Tabini against more committees. Tabini had been willing to let the power go last year, saying that certain things needed more study than his staff could give it.

But now Tabini was looking with a very suspicious eye at some of the commercial interests that had crept in with agendas which had no place in the traditional structure, agendas being backed by some of the lords. That office building out there, the Maganuri Building, built to house the study committees proposed by the legislators opposed to the growth of government, was beginning to be plagued by sewer and electrical problems. The opposition blamed sabotage by Tabini’s agents, or by the old aristocracy, a widerange of conspiracy indeed, and no few of the commons avoided it and wouldn’t attend committee meetings there because of the reputed bad numbers.

Others said it was built on a battlefield (it was) and that the dead troubled it. Oddly enough, the surrounding hotels and businesses had never had such difficulties.

So the paidhi was quite glad to be honored by the office he had, and not to have to take the subway down the hill, or to the edge of town—where according to the latest rumors, the construction, since the folded space controversy had set certain numerologists playing with an expanded deck, was also plagued by bad numbers, which might even halt construction.

Certain numerologists were suggesting that the number of state offices be shrunk, and the whole thing be cast back to the system whence it had blossomed, tossing the responsibility for information-gathering back into the hands of lords and representatives, who, in the old days, might suffer personal disgrace if they handed in bad information. The names of lords authoring reports previously had been permanently attached to the measures they proposed and the results, good or bad, had remained theirresponsibility.

Some said the fact that Maganuri had died and that the three local lords (who had been very forward to hire construction agencies within their associations) failed to affix their names to the building ought to be a warning.

Some said that old Maganuri himself haunted the office building on stormy nights, looking for Shimaji, Sonsini, and Burati, the contractors in question, to put them to haunting the building in his place.

So the paidhi was definitely glad not to be down there, in a building some were seriously talking about demolishing before it was fully occupied. As it was, he needed only go to the lower tiers of the Bu-javid complex and, via the security access, walk into his premises, never having broken a sweat.

Secretaries scrambled out of their chairs, rose and bowed as he and Banichi walked in, and nand’ Dasibi, the chief of his clerical staff, came hurrying from his office to bow and receive the paidhi’s personal inquiry into office affairs.

While he was listening to Dasibi’s running commentary, Dasibi walking beside him with his notebook the while, the paidhi took his usual tour down the aisles of the clerical desks, pausing here and there for a word to the clericals who answered his mail, the first line of defense between the paidhi and his more interesting correspondence.

He routinely scanned that, too, or at least the prize pieces. Nand’ Dasibi had established a board on the south wall in which the staff delighted. It recorded, Bren had discovered, the tally of death threats versus marriage proposals, choice crank letters, some proposing how to protect the earth’s atmosphere against pollution from passing spacecraft and one, his favorite, from a husband and wife in the East, regarding the invention of a ray that would convert the ether of space into breathable atmosphere so that airplanes could fly to the station.

The paidhi through his staff had suggested that the proposed spacecraft did have wings for atmospheric operation, so that, if the gentleman and his wife could perfect the conversion ray, it would be perfectly compatible with the current design.

So far there was no news from that province of such a development.

And there was the board devoted to children’s letters: the staff tallied those, too, mostly sweet, occasionally clever, sometimes fearful of half-heard adult conversations. The staff passed on to him the best of the children’s letters and the letters which seemed to represent a trend, and occasionally gave him copies of the really good crank letters and marriage proposals. His security handled the death threats.

But mostly these clericals dealt with the flood of general correspondence, which would have inundated him and taken all his time. They also transcribed his tapes and cleaned up his rough and informal notes into the language most appropriate for the occasion. That small service alone saved him an immense amount of dictionary-searching—not that he didn’t know the words, but he was never sure there wasn’t a better one and never, on an important report, dared trust that the word that popped into his head didn’t have infelicitous connotations that he had no wish to set onto paper. A written mistake might fall into the hands of news services interested in catching the paidhi in such an infelicity. The press daren’t take on the aiji, mustn’t, in fact; but a lord of the Association was a fair target; and in less than a year he’d become such a person—protected, still, in certain ways, but increasingly fair game if he made a blunder that saw print.

Besides, his dictionary was one humans had compiled, of necessity, to equate human words—and sometimes one could make an unthinking glitch on the numbers because counting didn’tcome naturally and even atevi made mistakes. These experienced governmental clericals would, like his experienced governmental security, fling their knowledge between the paidhi and the dedicated number-counters who sometimes sent letters specifically designed to entrap the paidhi into numerically infelicitous statements, which they, in the perverse self-importance of such experts, could then term significant.

As a minor court official, again, he’d been immune from such public relations assassinations. As a major player in affairs of state, he, like the aiji, wasa target of such manipulators, and his strike in return was a standing order for commendations to any clerical who by handwriting, postal mark, or other clues, identified one of these nuisances by name, handwriting, and residence and posted them to others in the pool. The staff shared information with the aiji’s staff and, in a considerable network, with various lords’ staffs: ’counters could be a plague and a pest, and the clericals detested and hunted them as zealously as the Guild hunted armed lunatics.

It made him feel a certain disconnection from the job he’d used to do himself, however, and he feared that he was in danger of losing touch with ordinary atevi as fast as his increased notoriety and importance had gained him the ability to know them. He likedthe atevi he’d met, the elderly couple at Malguri, his former servants in the Bu-javid, the astronomy students at Saigiadi—most of all, people of various staffs he’d dealt with.

And he couldn’t stay in touch with them, and couldn’t allow himself the human softness, either, to reserve a spot for them in that inner limbo where lost and strayed acquaintances dwelled. They were outside his man’chi. They weren’t his. He couldn’t expect them to become his.

And in that one simple example he saw why humans could become so disruptive of atevi society in so short a time, just by existing, and dragging into their likingpersons who really, never, ever should be associatedwith them in the atevi sense.

Humans had created havoc without knowing the social destruction they were wreaking on the foundations of society where people could be badly bent out of their comfortable associations, in that region where man’chi could become totally complex.

In some wisdom the aiji had set himup in the rarified air where man’chi could flow safely upto him—but sometimes he looked with great trepidation at the day when, their mutual goal, atevi might be working side by side with humans on the space station they were diverting the economy of a nation to reach.

In such moments he asked himself what potentially disastrous and crazy idea he’d given his life to serve.

He deliberately didn’t think too deeply into the changes in his personal status he’d encouraged or accepted—or a part of his brain was working on it, but it wasn’t a part that worked well if someone turned on the lights in that dark closet.

Stupid choice, Bren, he sometimes said to himself, when he realized how high he’d climbed and how he’d set himself up as a target. Deadly stupid, Bren Cameron, he’d say, on cold and lonely nights—or standing as he was in the middle of the atevi clerical establishment that, with great dedication to him, for emotional reasons he couldn’t reciprocate, continually and routinely saved him from making a fool of himself.

He could afford at least the question of what in hell was he doing and what did it all mean and where was he leading these people who approached him with the kind of devotion they ordinarily spent on the aiji, who wasworth their devotion.

How did he dare? he asked himself; and Chance and George Barrulin, the answer echoed out of the haunted basement of his suspicions, one of whom, Chance, was the demon in the design of the atevi universe and the other of whom, the President’s chief advisor, was the devil in the design of Mospheiran politics.

Neither of them was fit to be in charge of as many lives as they controlled.

But Tabini, he strongly believed, wasfit: fit by biological processes he couldn’t feel and political processes purely atevi.

To his continual wonderment, Tabini accepted what the paidhi did, double-questioned him on his choices, and threw his authority behind the concept of atevi rights in space, when human authority said atevi might be destroyed by the concept of microchips and nuclear energy.

What atevi did after they were up there in space, that was another matter.

He asked himself, on lonely nights, whether he’d live, himself, to see that ship fly. He could envision himself standing at the side of the runway. But in his imagination he never could see the ship. He’d become superstitious about that image in his mind, even gloomy and desperate, and he wasn’t ready to dig too deeply and learn what exactly his subconscious thought he was doing. He didn’t have a choice; he didn’t currently have a better idea, and what he was doing had to be done before the next stage of worrying.

He came down here when he was scared. As the interview had him scared. He faced that fact now. He’d had it easy in the provinces, on tour. He’d been traveling in the aiji’s plane, under the aiji’s guard, and everybody was glad to see him because he might bring trade and funds.

Here, in the Bu-javid, the predators gathered, and snarled and swarmed after scraps in ways that reminded him very uncomfortably of the situation back home.

He’d discussed it with Tabini.

Now a man was dead, who’d been part of the drive to take the power back to the provinces. It wasn’t just that Saigimi was a disagreeable man with bad numbers: it was that Saigimi was a peninsular lord who’d represented a policy and a movement that didn’t like the influence of the paidhi—that didn’t like the paidhi’s acquisition of this office, this prominence, this kind of loyalty. Or Tabini’s appetite for technology and power.

It was remotely possible that Saigimi had had a point. A rotten way of expressing it, but a point.

And that was one of those items that was going to be seething under the surface of the questions various news services wanted to ask him. The conference was supposed to be about the space program, which he desperately wanted to talk about. But atevi knew there was something very significant going on in the way the space program was being built, and in the way prosperity was being handed out to one lord and assassination used against another.

The answers whether it was a good or bad change in atevi affairs were in those baskets of letters—ordinary atevi expressing their opinions.

“There are a few items difficult of disposition, nand’ paidhi,” Nand’ Dasibi informed him. “One understands there was an untoward incident in the skies on your return. Might one inquire, will the paidhi wish this incident acknowledged if the public inquires?”

“The matter,” Banichi said, his shadow as he had walked through the room, among the desks, and now as they stopped at the head of it, “is still under staff investigation. It was minor.”

“Say,” Bren added, “that I was not hurt and never alarmed. The skill of the aiji’s pilots prevented harm. It underscores the importance of pilots observing air traffic control regulations and filing flight plans… and so forth. You know my opinions on that.”

“One does, yes, nand’ paidhi.”

“There will also be an announcement shortly of a tour of the residence by lord Tatiseigi.”

Brows went up. Dasibi said not a thing.

“I’m sure,” Bren said quietly, “that there’ll be inquiries, and the event will not be open to the public. Don’t comment on the situation in the peninsula unless it’s cleared through the aiji’s staff. The official answer and the real one is that I had a successful tour, enjoyed fine hospitality, and was never threatened by the events to the south. I will forewarn you however that one should not schedule very many staff leaves of absence during the next week or so.”

“We do hope nothing is amiss.”

“One likewise hopes, nand’ Dasibi. Very sadly, one member of my household has received bad news from the ship.” Short guess who thatwas. “A death in his family. But he knew his choice to come down here to serve would separate him from his family as well as his people. Please limit public questions on this matter and assure inquirers that the ship-paidhi is a young man of great courage and resolve who shares my purpose in seeing the atevi ship built.”

“One will do so, nand’ paidhi. Please convey to him our good will.”

“With all appreciation, nadi.”

“There is—another message from lord Caratho. With maps.”

Lord Caratho saw no reason if Geigi was prospering why a space industry plant couldn’t be built in his district. That was the crux of the matter.

The problem was, neither did numerous other lords see why they shouldn’t have the same advantage. Caratho, and four others, had inundated the Economic Commission’s office with figures and proposals. But Caratho alone figured, since various regular channels had turned him down, to deluge the paidhi’s staff with maps and reports promoting such a plant.

Oh, damn, was the thought. Here it comes.

“If the paidhi will allow me to frame a reply,” Dasibi said, “I believe I can create a list of honored supporters of the space program which one might send to the aiji for his information, a list which others may wish to join and include among their honors—providing a disposition for all these reports and offers of resources to the effort. I have consulted the aiji’s staff and they concur. Meanwhile—lord Caratho has no need of such a plant, in the determination of the Economic Commission. He has ample revenues. He has fourteen hundred and fifty-four persons he’s had to write onto his staff because of unemployment in the district, which is not unusual for a lord of his wealth, and these are persons who used to be employed in railway construction, when the spur was being built. Let me apply finesse, if you will trust my discretion.”

Finesse was the same word Banichi would use—biichi’ji—in a strike without side damage.

“I have all confidence in you, Dasibi-ji. Please do what you can. I am notconcerned so much for lord Caratho, but by the persons unemployed. Find out the history on that, via the staff, if you can.”

“Taking a little liberty, nandi, I have, and they are persons who would not be employed by the plant he proposes.”

“Ah. He’s seeking to diminish his obligations.”

“One believes he is collectingthem into his employ, nand’ paidhi, particularly to present appearances and make those rolls larger. I am concerned, nand’ paidhi, that he may have done so with disregard of the welfare of the individuals he claims as dependents.”

“Do you, nandi, believe this is a situation to pass to the aiji’s staff?”

“I would say so, nand’ paidhi.” This last the old man offered with downcast eyes and some trepidation: he was accusing a lord in the reach of a person of rank sufficient to do him harm.

“I would concur,” Banichi said in a low voice, and the old man looked much happier. “And I know the rascal’s reputation: you will not surprise the aiji, nadi.”

“One is very glad to think so.” The old man let go a heavy breath. “And there are two messages from one Rejiri, the son of the lord of Dur, wishing your good will. We have no idea why he sent twice—he mentions a meeting. We are unaware of any meeting with him on your schedule, nand’ paidhi.”

“The pilot of the plane. And I accept his good will. Assure him so. I have no time for a meeting.”

“If not the front door, the back,” Banichi muttered. “He isyoung, nadi.”

“Should I not accept his good will?” he asked.

“Young,” Banichi said. “And a fool. But, yes. Accept it. Nand’ Dasibi advises you very well in everything.”

“And,” Dasibi said, clearly pleased, “a message from the aiji-dowager’s staff, saying there is no need for a response, but that she will conclude her winter season with a brief visit to the capital, and that she will see you, nand’ paidhi, at your convenience.”

“Delighted,” he said, and was, from the time he’d heard it from Tabini, whose protestations about the dowager as a force in politics were frequent, half in jest and half not.

Himself, he’d been very sorry to think of Ilisidi going back to Malguri and particularly of his having no chance at all to see her, perhaps for a very long time, once she settled into the estate she best loved and once she settled deep into the local politics. The most recent turmoil around Malguri had been the dropping of bombs and the launching of shells. They were provincial lords of the eastern end of the Western Association, lords neighboring Ilisidi’s mother’s home—lords whose tangled thesis was that the paidhi, the aiji in Shejidan, andthe human President were all involved in conspiracy to deprive atevi of their rights.

They were the same nuisances who had it that Tabini and everyone involved had known the ship was about to appear.

And some diehard theorists stillmaintained there was not only a spaceship secretly already built on the island of Mospheira, but that it was constantly coming and going—which wasn’t true, but nothing including showing the lords in question the output of the radar dishes that guarded the whole maritime coast would dissuade them from their belief in conspiracy against them. First, they weren’t capable of reading the data; second, they would declare it was being falsified by some technical system so elaborate it would have made building a spaceship all but superfluous; and third, they were determinedto believe it was conspiracy, and therefore it was conspiracy even if they had to invoke secret bases on the moon or mind-warping rays sent down from the station at night. The point was, they wanted to believe in conspiracy and their own political situation was a lot better and easier to maintain if there were one.

The fact that Ilisidi, whom these lords knew well and generally believed had the education to read the data, also had the brains to read the situation in Shejidan and the experience to read the truth in the paidhi had not persuaded the diehards. It had only persuaded Ilisidi, so she’d said to him, that the lords she led were not going to follow her further if she didn’t convince them by the force of her presence. Herpolitics revolved relatively simply on the wish to retain some areas of the world untouched by industry and some aspects of atevi culture untouched by human influence.

Oddly enough she’d found the paidhi an ally in that agenda.

So the woman, Tabini’s grandmother, who’d almost been aiji of Shejidan on several occasions, must, as she’d put it to him at their parting last fall, go pour water into the ocean: meaning she wouldn’t enjoy the work of politics in Malguri. But it was, she’d said, work which needed doing, and it aimed at mending attitudes and regional prejudices which had sadly cost lives and threatened livelihoods. It was work that she could do—uniquely, could do—though he had a great personal regret for seeing Ilisidi spend her efforts on provinces when they needed her as Tabini’s unadmitted right hand on a national level.

Evenif Tabini complained of her interference.

“Tell her—” he began, completely undaunted by the statement no reply was requested. Then he changed his mind a second time. “Pen and paper, nadi, please.”

He had one of his message cylinders in his pocket. He traveled with one. He sat down at a table and wrote, in his own hand,

I am delighted by the prospect you present and would gladly scandalize your neighbors, though I fear by now they have fled the paint and the hammering. Please find the occasion in your busy schedule of admirers to receive me or, at any time you will, please do not hesitate to call upon me.

That would remove any doubt of Ilisidi’s welcome to walk into the apartment at her will, and if uncle Tatiseigi was going to pay a call on him, damn, sheknew the man, and could judge better than he could what might constitute a rescue. She might even intervene: as Tabini had said, she and he did get along, and her presence at any formal viewing might be an asset. Hecouldn’t choose the guests for an Atageini soiree, but let Tatiseigi try to keep Ilisidi from doing as she pleased—as soon try to stop a river in its course.

He had his seal, too, and the office provided the wax. He put the finished message into nand’ Dasibi’s hands, spoke his usual few words to the staff.

“Nand’ paidhi,” Banichi said, attracting his attention. “The news services.”

He had, in some measure, rather deal with Uncle.

But the mere thoughtof Ilisidi had waked up his wits in sheer self-defense, and that was, considering where he was going, all to the good.

It was down the corridor then, and into that area near the great halls of the two houses of the legislature, the commons, which was the hasdrawad, and the house of lords, which was the tashrid. Last year, for the first time on atevi television, a human face had brought into atevi homes a presence which atevi children had once feared and now wrote letters to in the thousands. Last year he’d appeared on tape. This year his press conferences went live. A room across from the tashrid was set up as an interview center—that crowd of microphones and cameras was another accoutrement of notoriety, and of life close to the place where decisions were made. Lines snaked into the little room so that one had to walk very gingerly. The place bristled with microphones surrounding the seat he would take.

He allowed all the paraphernalia he had collected, the computer (which rarely left him) and the notes and the various small items with which he had become burdened in the clerical office, into the hands of junior security, and let Banichi see him to his place and stand near him.

He settled in, blinded by the lights. He waited, hands folded on the table that supported the microphones, until the signal.

“Nand’ paidhi,” the first reporter began, and wended through the convolute honors and courtesies before the question, a circuitous approach calculated, he sometimes thought, to let the paidhi fall asleep or start wit-wandering.

The question when it finally emerged from the forest of titles, was: “Having just returned from touring the plants and facilities supporting the space program, are you confident that atevi and human construction are of equal importance and on equal footing with the ship?”

“I am very confident,” was his automatic answer. It gave him a running start toward: “But not just that we are on an equal basis with Mospheira, nadiin: atevi are well-advanced toward the goal of space flight and may actually be in the lead in the race for space. It’s not a position in which one dares slacken one’s effort. We don’t know what delays may arise. But I am encouraged that we have made vast progress.” He was very glad to report nationally that the aiji’s monumental risk of capital was producing results: success bred stability—and complacency—he had to avoid that extreme, too. “I am very encouraged about the future of the program.”

“On what account, nand’ paidhi, if you would elucidate.”

“I am encouraged by the people, nadi. I have seen the actual elements of what will become the first spacecraft to be launched from this planet. They now exist. I have met atevi workers dedicated to their work, whose care will safeguard the economic prosperity of generations of atevi.”

“What do you say, nand’ paidhi,” this came from a southern service, “to the objections regarding the cost?”

Lord Saigimi’s platform. Notan innocent question. Provocative. It identified the source of trouble. He hoped not to have another question from that quarter, and could not gracefully look to the staff officer controlling who stood up to ask, not without exposing that glance on live national television.

“The rail system on which all commerce now moves was vastly expensive to build,” he said calmly. “Look at the jobs, nadiin, look at the industry. Were we to back away from this chance to lift the people of this planet into authority over their own future, someone else would exercise that authority. By the Treaty, I look out for the peace. And I seeno peace if such an imbalance develops in the relationship that now exists between atevi and humans. That would be more than expensive, nadiin, it would be unthinkable. The program mustgive atevi the power to direct their own lives.”

“Is this within the man’chi of the paidhiin?”

“Indisputably. Indisputably. By the Treaty, it is.” The question had come from the same source. The man did not sit down. And from all his worries about changes in atevi life, he was reminded now of Saigimi’s otherqualities. The same whose associates built shoddy office buildings and who personally tried to ruin lord Geigi in order to own his vote in some very critical measures.

“Did the paidhi feel at all that his safety was threatened in the peninsula?”

That was nota permitted question, by the ground rules that governed all news conferences. He knew that Tabini was going to hit the rafters over that one, and other reporters were disturbed, but he lifted a hand in token that he would answer the direct provocation.

“The paidhi,” he said calmly, and in meticulous Ragi, “has the greatest confidence in the good will expressed to him by honest people.” The news service this reporter represented, whether by one of Deana’s little legacies or a new inspiration of Tabini’s enemies, was attempting to politicize itself—implying (because a retaliatory strike by Guild members would have to follow a line of direct involvement) that the paidhi or lord Geigi had a connection to the assassination. He had no compunction whatsoever about derailing the effort in a rambling, time-using account. Two could play the games of a live, limited-time broadcast.

“Let me recount to you the scene as I left the plant, nadiin, as the goodheartedness of the workers brought a crowd out the doors, brought them carrying flowers toward the cars. When my plane dipped its wing and came about toward Shejidan I saw, beside the cars of my local escort, flowers of the springtime of the peninsula pass beneath us. So, so much generosity of the people, so much care of the vastly important task under their hands and so generous an expression of their belief in their task. Their hope for the future is visible now. Tangible.” They’d edit when bits of this replayed, and after what had been asked, he was careful to give them only positive, felicitously numbered statements. The paidhi did notintervene in atevi internal affairs. That was what they were trying to get him to do, so he played the uninvolved innocent. “I was greatly impressed, nadiin. I tell you, I was impressed so much that I believe as they believe, in the felicity of this project, in the felicity of this nation, in the felicity of the aiji who has been foresighted in making this reach toward space at a moment when all these fortunate things coincide.”

A second reporter rose. “Have you authorized, nand’ paidhi, the direct exchange of messages between the island and the ship-paidhi, in your absence?”

What in hell wasthis? A second out-of-line question?

“I have not forbidden it, nadi.”

“Can you, nand’ paidhi, confirm a death in the ship-paidhi’s house?”

There was a leak. There was a serious leak. It smelled of Deana. If he could figure how—and methods including radio did occur to him.

Damn it, he thought. He’d meant to report it, because with servants aware of something, informational accidents could happen, and he didn’t want speculation getting ahead of all the facts he had. But he’d meant to report it afterJase had talked to his mother. The death on the ship implied infelicity.

And he could either shut down the interview right now on these two rude and unauthorized questions on the very plain point that they violated protocol—he could signal his security to create a diversion; or he could handle the problem they’d posed and then loose security on the matter of who’d put them up to it.

“I can,” he said, “confirm, nadiin, that there is such a sad report; as best I am informed, an accident of some nature. I will try to obtain that information for you. But that is not officially announced, and the release of that information could cause great pain to Jase-paidhi, who has borne the effort and worked honestly to bring good fortune to atevi as well as humans. I’m certain that isn’t your intent.”

Sometimes his own callous response to situations appalled him. Atevi would wish to know. Number-counters would wish to know. All sorts of people would wish to know for good and sensible reasons, for superstitious reasons, and just because they were justifiably curious about human behavior.

The next two questions, which he took from the major news services, were routine and without devious intent. How was the space program meeting the engineers’ expectations and was the design translation without apparent error?

“We are developing a set of equivalences between the two languages which render translation of diagrams much easier. We’re dealing with a scale of measurements which has a scale of directly comparable numbers”—Atevi ears always pricked up at that word—“which renders the operation of translation much faster. Atevi engineers are actually able to read human documents where the matter involves written numbers, and to perform calculations which render these numbers into atevi numbers with all the ordinary checks that these skilled persons perform.”

Not of significance for a human audience, but for an atevi audience a real bombshell of religious and philosophical significance. If the universe was rational and numerical, numbers were a direct reflection of its mathematical dependability; numbers could predict, safeguard, direct, and govern. No project would succeed without good numbers; the ship on which the design was based hadflown, the human numbers were therefore good numbers, felicitous numbers, more to the point—since numbers could be felicitous or infelicitous, leading to success or disaster—and to have the news that atevi engineers could make clear sense of human engineering diagrams was the sort of thing that would actually fight with the peninsular assassination and the death on the ship for space on the news, at least briefly. He’d meant to drop that later, but it was capable of knocking Jase’s tragedy right out of the headlines, and that was, coldbloodedly, what he intended.

He answered four or five questions at the limits of his own mathematical ability, and took his leave of the reporters, with the (he said to himself) not unreasonable notion of the leisure to go back to his apartment and work through the translations he had to have ready before—the next duty he had on his agenda—he briefed the aiji’s aides, who had to go to the various departments to present the paidhi’s arguments before—step after that—the paidhi had to go before the off-session legislative aides to answer questions so that when, step three, the legislatures reconvened, they did it with good information before them.

But there was a far more immediate item on his agenda.

“We have a problem,” he said to Banichi as they walked toward the lift, and as the junior security held the curious at bay, out of ordinary hearing. “I don’t know how that information on Jase’s private business got to them, I don’t know whether there’s a leak somewhere, but my own thought was that either there’s a leak on the aiji’s staff—or ours—or that they’re broadcasting that on the news on Mospheira and somebody on the mainland follows enough of the language to pick it out.”

“Such persons who know Mosphei’ that fluently are all official,” Banichi said under his breath, informing him of something he’d wanted to know, and now did.

“There is,” Banichi added, “nand’ Deana.” One was respectful in a public venue, and accorded a name its honorifics, even when one proposed cutting the individual into fish-bait. “And I can tell you, Bren-ji, there has been illicit radio traffic.”

They’d reached the lift. He gave Banichi a sharp, alarmed look.

“How much else don’t I know?”

“Oh, much,” Banichi said. The door opened. “The names of my remote cousins, the—”

“Banichi, my salad, the truth.”

Banichi escorted him inside and delivered an advisement to hall security above that they were coming up. And Banichi grinned, not looking at him after the salad remark.

“The paidhi is still alive,” Banichi said, “and we keep him that way. But the details are his security’s concern.”

“Not where it regards Hanks!”

“Ah. Humans doproceed to feud.”

“With this woman? Damned right.” The door spat them out into the upper corridor, that with the porcelain bouquets. “Unfortunately the Guild has no offices on Mospheira.—And I need to know this, Banichi-ji.”

“It seemed at the time to involve only atevi, on this side of the strait,” Banichi said, “and Tano and Algini didn’t know. Had Jago and I been here, our rank would have obtained that information for you. Yes, there has been such traffic between Mospheira and the coast, in Ragi, definitively her voice.”

“Nand’ Deana.” Deana, who had had such widespread contact with all the wrong people, until someone had kidnapped her from Shejidan, someone whose identity both Ilisidi and lord Geigi had to this day declined to reveal, nor had he ventured to ask his own staff too closely. The embarrassments of the great houses were a volatile subject.

And when a rival paidhi was at issue, perhaps, he’d decided last of all, they were uncertain how he’d react and whether he’d be able to, in human shorthand, forgivethe atevi responsible.

“Where wasmy female colleague lodged when she was not in the Bu-javid?” he asked Banichi as they walked. “May we now ask officially, and for the record?”

“With lady Direiso.”

He was not utterly surprised. To say the least. “And Geigi simply walked in there?”

“Guns were involved, but not seriously. Direiso-daja had launched her greater hope without guns, simply in her acquisition of Hanks-paidhi.”

“ Shetook her away.”

“Without serious resistance.”

“One thought so. And getting Deana back—was there bloodshed?” That defined a level of seriousness in most quarrels. Not in this, he thought. “Did Direiso resist?”

“No bloodshed,” Banichi said. “Against fear of her own harm, she saw there was nothing left but graceful acquiescence to the aiji-dowager and the hope that Tabini would soon be a dead man. And that you would be. That would leave Deana Hanks as paidhi. And if Direiso’s wishes had proved to have stronger legs, it would have led to herin possession of the ship-paidhiin—which again would have made her powerful. Hence her easy capitulation on the day in question.”

Thatwas a plateful of information. Direiso had folded when Ilisidi, whom Direiso had regarded perhaps as rival andas ally, had walked in at gunpoint and demanded Hanks be turned over to her. Direiso had still hoped to reach the descending capsule and get her hands on Jase and Mercheson-paidhi.

But she hadn’t won that race. Theyhad.

So Direiso had lost Ilisidi’s support (realizing perhaps at the last that Ilisidi would have cheerfully put a dagger in her back, perhaps not even figuratively, rather than see her as aiji.) And now it was possible Direiso was courting the Atageini after an assault on Atageini pride last year, which had destroyed the lilies, perhaps by accident or perhaps not.

“Was not Direiso’s son withTatiseigi of the Atageini at that moment?” he asked Banichi. He recalled hearing that.

“That he was, Bren-ji.”

“You exceed my human imagination. Why?”

“If I knew that for certain, Bren-ji, Damiri might be lord of the Atageini at this hour.”

Serious news. Banichi suspected Tatiseigi of existing on the fringes of Direiso’s conspiracy, and the son’s presence there as not without Direiso’s approval. “You suspect Tatiseigi was withDireiso, at least in the attack against us in Jase’s landing?”

“We suspect everything.” They had reached the doors. “We act on what we know.”

“And she’s still plotting against the aiji. Hence the business in the peninsula.”

“True.”

“And its timing?”

“One can only guess, Bren-ji.”

He was talking to the entity both best and least informed on the matter, the one who’d most likely carried out the strike against Direiso’s ally Saigimi.

While heguested with lord Geigi, who’d seemed Direiso’s ally and then Tabini’s.

One needed a flow-chart. One truly did.

But probably the atevi thought that about humans.

There were things they had never admitted to one another. Radios belonging to the atevi government listening to transmissions. Jamming. On both sides of the strait. Phone lines that went down every time a stray cloud appeared. Banichi had said it once: an old man in a rowboat could invade the island. Or the mainland.

If Hanks had been transmitting to Direiso, there were atevi working for Tabini who would intercept those messages—and Deana and those behind her were just clever enough to plant what they wanted planted: poison, no matter the recipient, poison, whether in the hands of Tabini’s people or Direiso’s.

“Damn,” he said, envisioning listening posts up and down the coast, on which atevi could pick up whatever short-range transmissions the conservative faction on Mospheira wanted to send. It wasn’t just Direiso’s cause such hateful broadcasts might incite, if Deana and her supporters wanted to see bloodshed.

The fact that such conservative humans hated atevi was in no way skin off Direiso’s nose. The fact that Direiso hated her was no skin off Deana’s. Both the conservative atevi that wanted Tabini dead and human technology restricted—and the conservative humans whose varied agendas just wanted humans to stay technologically superior to atevi—shared the same agenda: restrict technology getting to Tabini. Tabini inpower and Bren Cameron inoffice meant a rapid flow of tech into atevi hands. So get rid of one or both.

The door opened. The servants received them. Junior security, having used the same lift on its return trip, overtook them before the doors shut and rearmed. He wasn’t acutely aware of his surroundings.

That Banichi told him what he did was indicative at least that he was being told truth on a high level. Atevi no longer kept the paidhi, who was acting in their interests, more ignorant than other humans, who were working against those interests.

That was useful. It was one step deeper into the situation he was already in.

It didn’t, however, stop Deana Hanks, whose agenda he didn’t believe he entirely guessed—and he couldn’t act upon his suspicions until he could hear exactly what she was saying and what she hoped to provoke.

And there’d been no atevi offer yet to provide him that information.

Damn, again.

11

The matter we were discussing,” Bren said to Banichi as they entered the apartment, as servants converged and he began to undo the buttons of his coat. “Can you prepare me a more extensive report on the problem, Banichi-ji? Andreport to the aiji regarding the reason for my question, regarding the interview? I want the text of what she’s been saying.”

“Yes,” Banichi said in that abrupt Ragi style, which was an enthusiastic yes, and went immediately to the security station, where, Bren said to himself, there was about to be a very intense, very serious session that might well extend feelers next door, and might end in a reporter finding himself in serious dialogue with the aiji’s security. Reporters on Mospheira questioned government agencies with a great deal of freedom and were lied to routinely. But on the atevi mainland, the concept of instant news was under current consideration by the government, the way the inclusion or non-inclusion of a highway system had gone under consideration by the government—and been rejected as socially destructive. Similar airy assumptions that what had worked for humans was good and right for atevi had started the War and killed tens of thousands of people.

In that consideration Bren didn’t like what had happened down in that interview. He saw interests at work that didn’t lead in productive directions for atevi—atevi interests that wanted Tabini dead and someone else installed as aiji.

But the implications of a person like Deana Hanks, a person trained to deal with atevi, working by radio purposely to destabilize the atevi government—that was against every law, every principle of the office. He was on shaky moral ground with the State Department because of the decisions he’d taken, but dammit, he was trying to keepthe stability of Tabini’s regime. His way was sanctioned by the people that had sent him here; and sent him backhere by means so desperate Shawn had secreted the new computer codes under the cast on his arm and hadn’t even told himhe was doing it.

He wanted a Mospheiran newspaper, dammit.

He wanted to know what was happening on the island in details on which the government couldn’tlie.

But in an atmosphere where people were afraid for their lives, as some clearly were on Mospheira, including his mother and his brother and his former fiancee, he wasn’t sure of getting the truth even if he got such a newspaper, or the unrestricted datafeed. So much for Mospheira’s supposedly free press.

The situation scared him, deep down scared him—for his family, for atevi, for everyone on the planet.

And he himself had argued with Tabini-aiji notto detain Deana Hanks on the mainland: to ship her home, safe and sound, mad, and dangerous. If things had gone that wrong, he had fault to bear. He could muster excuses when atevi politics were at fault. In this one, he could by no means blame the atevi government.

He smiled for the benefit of the servants who put away his coat, and he accepted their polite questions soberly: he didn’t lie to his staff, who had to handle touchy situations, and who had to fend away importunate and unauthorized persons of sometimes ill intent. “There was a difficulty at the interview, nadi,” he replied to the question of how it had gone. “A subject which should not have been brought up: nand’ Jase. We know the staff here didn’t release the information, but it is out.”

“One will inform nand’ Saidin, paidhi-ji. One is distressed to hear so.”

“Thank you, Sasi-ji.—How ishe doing?”

“He’s speaking to his mother now, nand’ paidhi.”

“ Thankyou, Sasi-ji.” He went aside immediately to the security station, into the usually open doorway and straight into the monitoring station which lay just inside.

Tano was there with an ear-set, as were Banichi, Jago, and a junior security operator, all listening.

Tano didn’t say a thing, just surrendered his earpiece to him, and Bren tucked the device in his ear.

“—don’t know what else I can do,” he heard, Jase’s voice, speaking the language of the ship, and a long pause followed, where a reply should be.

“ I know,” a woman’s voice said finally, sad-sounding. “ I have no way to help you. I can’t. And you can’t. Except to get back as soon as you can.”

“They say it’s making progress. That’s all I can say.”

“ Can you call again?”

“I just don’t know. I’ll try. I will try.”

“ I love you.”

A long pause, while that human expression hung thin and potent in the air. Then: “I love you, too, mama. I’m fine. Don’t worryabout me.”

Another pause. “ I’d better shut down now.”

“Yeah.—It’s good to hear your voice.”

“ Good to hear yours, Jase. Take care. Please take care.”

“I will, mama.”

There was silence, then. Bren looked at the occupants of the room, tall, black, a collection of alien faces one of whom was a woman he’d almost gone to bed with, all looking to him for reaction.

Some of whom understood enough of what had been said and some of whom trusted him enough to have expression on their faces.

Banichi did. And Jago.

“There’s nothing out of the ordinary in the exchange,” he said. “A son talking to his mother in—” There was no word for affection. There was just no concept. There was no possibility in the faces that stared at him with such good will and acceptance—and worry. “In terms ordinary for that relationship. Jase is concerned for his mother. He fears she is concerned about his mental well-being. She asked whether he could call again. He replied that he wasn’t certain, but he’d try.—He willhave access, will he not, nadiin-ji?”

“There’s no reason to the contrary,” Banichi said.

“The death of his father is attributed to accident,” Jago said. “We do not follow the precise cause.”

It was an offering of good faith in itself, that the most security-conscious atevi he knew let him know how much they understood. The faces came back into ordinary perspective for him. His heart was beating hard in sheer terror and he thought it was because he’d beensomewhere else for a moment, he’d been in human territory, and seeing two people he loved very much—

—not through a distortion, but as the atevi they were, incapable of returning that emotion. Seeing them as incapable of saying, as Jase’s mother said, I loveyou.

Seeing them as incapable of understanding, as Jase had said to a woman orbiting above them, I love you, mama.

Atevi children clung to their parents. But it wasn’t love that made them do that.

Go to the leader. Always go to the leader when the bullets start to fly: rally to the leader.

Could a human feelthe emotional satisfaction atevi got when they responded to that urge and were responded to? No more than atevi could feelwhat Jase meant when a mother and son said, at such uncrossable distance, I loveyou.

But they knew that, held at such distance from the chief of their association, theirprofoundest instinct would find no satisfaction. And on that side of the gulf, one face of the lot was deeply troubled.

Jago said, quietly, “As if she were on the moon, isn’t it?”

It was a proverb for the unattainable.

“Even the moon,” Banichi said, ever the pragmatic one, “will have railroads and television if this ship flies.”

“That it will,” Bren said, with that hollow spot still cold inside him. “And Jase knows it logically.—I’d better talk to him.”

They seemed relieved then, whether to think he could deal with the trouble, or simply to close off the presence of alienness they couldn’t grasp without analogy.

He left them to their discussion of whatever they might discuss—the oddness of humans was his guess. He walked across the foyer and down the hall that led to the heart of the apartment, and to the library, where the phone was, where Jase had to be.

But so were the servants—all the servants, who weren’t standing in knots talking, as his first glance informed him, but arrayed somewhat in a line, and holding each a flower, whence obtained he had no idea; maybe one of the cut arrangements which appeared every few days. They bowed as he walked past in mild confusion, his attention on the same destination, past the dining rooms, past the bedrooms and the baths, alongside the grim steel barrier of the construction and on to the private office where the lady Damiri’s personal phone was.

Jase stood outside, his hands already holding a few blossoms, as one by one the servants came, each solemnly presenting him a single flower, bowing her head and walking away in silence.

Jase didn’t seem to know what to do. He stood there accepting the flowers, one after the other, and Bren stopped, just stopped and stood, as madam Saidin came up beside him, and also waited.

Jase stood there with his arms increasingly loaded, with the load greater and greater on his soul, by the look of him, until his arms were full, and the last servant had passed, given him a flower, and bowed and gone her way.

“If you please, nand’ Saidin,” Jase said with meticulous courtesy, and offered the mass of flowers toward her. “What is proper to do?”

“You may give them to me, if you wish,” Saidin said, and carefully took them, all forty-nine, as Bren guessed there were in that armful of assorted flowers. The whole hall smelled of them. “Shall I personally cast them on the garden pond, nand’ paidhi?” It was Jase she addressed. “That would be appropriate.”

“Please do,” Jase said, looking and sounding very much at the end of his self-restraint. But he bowed correctly. “Nandi. Thank you.”

“We are all sad,” Saidin said, and took the flowers away.

Bren expected to speak to him, and waited.

But as soon as Saidin had gone, Jase violently shoved past him and went toward the front of the apartment, headed, as Bren guessed, for his room.

The opening and slam of a heavy, well-hung door said that he guessed right.

Well, he thought, Jase had done everything in an exemplary fine manner, right down to the shove at him and the door. Which he, personally, would forgive, though his nerves feltthat door shut.

And he could ignore the gesture, and forgive it, and let it pass. It wasn’t the task he wanted when he was still exercised over the news conference: adrenaline started flowing and he couldn’t use it here, no matter what.

But theyhad uncle Tatiseigi visiting tomorrow night, and Jase had to get his reactions either done with or under control, whichever came first.

He was going to have to do something.

Jase hadn’t lockedthe door. That was good—Jase was not sealing himself in. Or that was bad—Jase was in such a state he didn’t think of such things. He pushed the latch and walked into Jase’s bedroom.

Jase was lying on the made bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Jase hadtaken the shoes off, in consideration of passionate atevi feelings of propriety in that regard. Jase was improving, and Jase had stopped to think.

And starting a conversation with a positive statement seemed a good thing.

“That was very well done, Jase.”

Tightjawed, and in Mosphei’: “Did you listen in?”

“I came in late. I heard the close. I’m very sorry, Jase.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I help you?”

“Not unless you fly.”

“I know. I know that part of it. I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. How’s your mother?”

“She’s fine.” A fragile, angry voice. “I’d rather you got the rest of it from the tape. I’m not up to questions right now.”

“Jase.” He was inclined to sit down on the other side of the bed. Jase wasn’t looking at him. And he had seen Jase’s temper boiling to the surface. He didn’t risk sitting. But he risked walking directly into Jase’s field of view. “Jase, this is someone talking who at least knows what you’re going through. Don’t wall me out. Tell me what happened, so two of us know it. Tell me how you’re doing. Tell me if there’s any risk to the ship or station up there.”

“Is that what you’re after? It’s fine.”

“Jase. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t make it better. But tell me what happened and tell me what’s going on as a result of it.”

“It’s not your damn business!”

“It ismy business! I’m in charge of this mission.”

“Who said? My captain? I don’t think so.”

“Sure, fine, you’re in charge of yourself and you can’t speak the language or get across town on the subway. No, Jase. You did all right out there. You did extremely well. And I know it’s your private business, but the paidhiin don’t haveprivate business when it affects the safety of everybody else.”

“What if I wantedto get across town on the subway?”

“What’s that to do with anything?”

“I’m a prisoner here. I’m a prisoner under guard. Is that the way it is?”

“You’re a fragile entity in this culture. You’re not qualified to be out on your own: an atevi six-year-old might get where he was going solo, but I wouldn’t lay odds on your making it tothe subway, let alone elsewhere.—So where do you want to go, or what do you want to do?—Can I help you?”

“I’d like to see the ocean.”

Occasionally conversations with Jase turned right angles. This one went three-sixty degrees.

“The ocean.”

“I’d like to see the ocean. The sea. Whatever the word is. I’d like to stand on the edge of the water and look at it. Is that safe? Is it a stupid request?”

“It’s not a stupid request.” He was no better informed, and understood Jase no better. The question had to be asked, if only to know there was nothing more ominous going on in the heavens. “—Jase, what happened to your father? Staff says it wasan accident that killed him.”

There was a long pause. Several breaths. Jase never varied his position otherwise. “Old seals on the station. Dangerous place. That’s all. Hard vacuum. My father”—several more breaths, eyes fixed on the ceiling—“was blown out into space. That’s all. He was working, and the seal went.”

“It was fast.”

“Yeah. It was.”

“So how’s your mother taking it?”

“Oh—all right.—I mean, she’s upset, what do you expect? And I can’t do anything.”

“I can understand that well enough.”

Jase still lay with his hands under his head, looking at the ceiling.

“So—is your mother off work, nadi, or working, or what?”

“Working.”

“No trouble your reaching her this time? I hope there was no trouble.”

“I had no trouble.” Jase moved his arms, slowly got to his feet. The hair he professed drove him to distraction fell around his face. He shook it out of his way and raked it back. It fell around his ears, on its way to respectable atevi length, but not there yet. “Stupid accident, that’s all. You can’t stop something like that. Can’t plan.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s true.”

“Can you arrange—for me to visit the sea, nadi?”

He didn’t want to point it out, but Jase had had trouble walking when he’d first landed. Jase had had trouble with orientation, particularly with peripheral vision. He wouldn’t see an atevi doctor. He said the world had no edges.

And described, later, a world of only corridors, and small rooms.

“I know a place,” Bren said, thinking that lord Geigi would be surprised to have two guests.

But he didn’t think Jase was ready for a boat. Not quite.

“When? Soon?”

“Soon.” But the world came crashing in. In all its complexity. “Yes.—But there’s something first. Something we have to do. Something you have to do for me. Please.”

“What?”

“There’s a visitor coming. A very important visitor—to see the apartment.”

“Why?” Jase asked. “What?”

“One night. He’ll look at the place. And go. He’s very strict. Very kabiu. The lord who owns this place, understand? It’s important we impress him as proper people.”

“And you want me not to make a mistake.”

“Simply put, yes.”

“Do I get my ocean?”

“If you do that, I’m pretty sure about the ocean.”

“I’ll do it. For that.”

Maybe, Bren thought, it was just something he’d said to himself up in the heavens that he wanted to see. Maybe it was something his father had said he’d like to see. Jase gave him no clue at all.

But Jase was being reasonable, at cost, he could see that. Jase’s color wasn’t good. Jase’s hands shook when he went to the bureau and tried to put his own hair in order.

“Shall I call for tea,” Bren said, “and we can sit and talk and I can explain about the visitor, and the situation?”

“Yes.” Jase transited back to Ragi, and secured his hair, as best it could be without elaborate effort, braiding it from high up and fastening it in a simple clip. “Please do, nadi.”

Impeccable manners. Impeccable, almost, accent. Jase had been practicing.

Bren went to the hall, found madam Saidin andTano not far away, and said, “Tea, please, nadiin-ji,” trusting it would arrive quickly.

The conversation went amazingly easily—at least, Jase listened soberly, objected to nothing, questioned for understanding, and called nothing unreasonable.

In some measure it was sad to see Jase attempting to follow all of it, knowing the load he was under, and knowing how his tendency was to look for absolute orders. In some measure, Bren thought without saying so, he did provide a framework for Jase’s expectations: how to dress, what to say.

But now it had to be dealing with an atevi lord and a lady who was that lord’s chief rival; and how to deal in public and formally with the aiji of Shejidan, whom Jase had met in far less formality, among the first people on earth he had met, with a wildfire burning across the horizon, water pouring into his descent capsule, and the whole world in upheaval.

But Jase brightened when he turned the talk then toward lord Geigi’s balcony—seemed a little taken aback by the description of battling a fish and then eating it; and of a fish big enough to chase lord Geigi’s boat crew across the deck.

But Jase said then he wanted to look at the map in the office, and they walked back to that room, at the rear of the apartment and next to the steel security barrier, to see where they were, and where the sea was, and Mospheira, and where the South Range of Taiben was: the South Range, one of the vast hunting reserves, was where his capsule had come down, and Jase was able to point out that spot on the wall map. He could find that.

Then he wanted books on the sea. Bren took him to the lady Damiri’s library.

“How is he?” Banichi asked him at one point when he was outside and Jase was in the library pulling down books and going through references. “What is he looking for?”

Bren drew a deep breath, having understood, somewhat, this redirection of emotions, but finding it difficult to render into Ragi, particularly for Banichi, who tended to shoot down air castles, even as atevi defined them.

“It’s a human reaction,” he said to Banichi quietly. “He’s suffered a great blow. His emotions are unreliable. Possibly he’s looking for something to distract his thoughts toward something without emotional context, perhaps something approved by the deceased person, perhaps only a personal ambition.”

“To view the ocean.”

“From space, the ocean-land boundaries and the polar caps would be the only easily visible features. I suppose he might have wondered about it.”

“And clouds,” Banichi said. Space photography had made its way into atevi hands even before the War of the Landing. All sorts of space photography had come out of the files prior to the release of the first rocket technology, preparing, the paidhiin had said, the expectation of space travel, never the concept of the rockets in war, directing the psychology of a species toward the sky, not toward armament. It had been a narrow thing for the human race, historically, so the records said; and atevi so readily converted technology to self-defense.

“Many clouds,” Bren agreed.

“So he wishes to go to visit lord Geigi?”

“Something like,” Bren said. “I think he might be ready to make such a venture.”

“He became ill from looking at the sky, Bren-ji. Will it not afflict him again once he goes into the open?”

“I think it’s important to him to prove to himself he won’t be ill.”

“Ah,” Banichi said.

“I’m not sure I understand, myself, Banichi. Please don’t believe I have a perfect idea what’s passing through his mind. But it might mark a place of new beginnings for him, new resolve to do his job.—And it might be time for him to try something difficult. If he’s to be a paidhi in fact, and interpret atevi to the ship-folk, I think it important for him to understand the way atevi look at the world. If security can accommodate it. I promisedhim, Banichi. I assumedsecurity could accommodate it.”

“Certainly a consideration. But there are places of safety, well within perimeters we can guarantee. I think one could find such safety. But Geigi—I am less sure.”

“Would you find that out, nadi-ji, what might be safe?”

“One will do so.—Meanwhile, the other matter—”

Deana. He’d been so rattled he’d forgotten what he’d asked Banichi to do.

“We are producing a transcript, paidhi-ji, of this woman. Tano wishes you to understand, he had no idea that this was going on.—Nor did Jago, nor I, Bren-ji. Wewere of a level to be informed, once we returned, that was one critical matter. Certain agencies between us and the aiji did notwish to distract us with your staff matters. This is not to dismiss the matter of their failure to inform you. And their failure to inform Tano.”

“I have great confidence in all my staff, Banichi. I donot doubt you.”

Banichi seemed to weigh telling him something. Then: “The aiji, nadi-ji, has detected a slight lack of forwardness among certain Guild members to pass along information to higher levels, both times regarding those who monitor transmissions, which are a Guild unto themselves; and both times regarding a transmission of information from that Guild to the house Guard. The aiji is making clear to both services that my absences, whenever they may be necessary, should not constitute a dead end for information. He is, the paidhi may imagine, making this point very forcefully with the Messengers’ Guild, which is the one at issue at Mogari-nai.”

“I accept that as verydefinitive, nadi,” he said, and did. He would not care to be the Guild officer or the Guard who twice thwarted the aiji, either because of a political view opposed to Tabini or simply due to ruffled protocols—some touchy insistence on rules, and routings of requests that were being run over by the needs of a human office placed by the aiji on the list of persons to whom the Guild traditionally gave information.

Definitely he’d just heard more than his predecessors had known about Guild and Guard conflicts.

And bet on it that, one, Banichi told him what he did with Tabini’s full knowledge, and, two, that it was a very necessary warning to him where gaps in necessary information flow had occurred in the past and might occur in some similar crisis in the future: don’t believe that you’ve heard everything from the ship, was what it boiled down to. Don’t trust that all communications aregetting through: there’s a serious, quirky roadblock.

That was as serious as it could get. A Guild not once but twice now had ill-served the aiji. If that was not a fatal offense in Tabini’s book, he feared it was hedging very close on one, that was one thing, and he didn’t want to see a contest of power inside the administration, or Tabini using the Assassins against the Messengers.

But equally serious, that particular information flow, from the ship through Mogari-nai and on to Shejidan—was usually diagrams, data, and handbooks. There were, however, other kinds of information: Jase’s message. God knew what.

He knew there was somebody, at least one person, that was not the ordinary ateva, and probably at Mogari-nai, sitting there and reading what came down. It struck him like a lightning stroke that it wouldmake sense that that person be one of the Messengers’ Guild, not the Assassins’ Guild that regularly guarded the aiji. It was not in his knowledge to whom the Messengers’ Guild reported.

But having delivered that bit of information, Banichi went off about his business.

And Jase, when he went back to check on him, seemed to have focused himself on the library and was working, so he supposed Jase had reached some point of stability.

12

The paidhi had, however, after trying to deal with Jase, an actual routine working day to begin, it being toward afternoon. He had to deal with the records and reports to his own office that he’d brought back from the plant tour, those that hadn’t gone to Tabini’s staff.

He had letters to write, fulfilling promises he’d made in more cities and townships than he could conveniently recall.

He had a computer full of files with unresolved requests, some of which he could perhaps put into other hands, but first he had to sort those things out, at his classified level, to discover what he couldmove on to other desks.

And he had a stack of raw notes he had tried to keep in a notebook, but which had ended up on small pieces of paper borrowed from various sources, a shaggy affair he would have to turn over to the clericals in his office for what they could do for him, once he had been through it to be sure there was nothing tucked into that notebook that didn’t belong to that level of security. He thought he’d retrieved everything, but regarding that particular notebook, which had followed him closely through various sensitive laboratories, he wasn’t sure.

So. The Jase matter was, thank God, at rest. Not settled. But at rest. He’d done what he could; he humanly wishedhe could do more. He wished in the first place that he’d been able to get personally closer to Jase. Jase wanted to keep his own observations and reports to his superiors clear and objective, he was sure, and Jase always held him at arms’ length—so he didn’t have that kind of closeness that would have let him step in and offer… whatever people offered one another at such a time. He was sad about Jase being sad; he was disturbed about it; it made him think uncomfortable thoughts about mortality and his own scattered family; and he was, considering Jase’s temper, uneasy about Jase’s ability to deal with the isolation and the sense of loss together.

Hell of a homecoming, in short. A household in disarray. If he started worrying about it—and about security lapses, information gaps—well, that wouldn’t persist.

Banichi and Jago hadn’t been here. Good as Tano and Algini were, they weren’t asgood, and problems had crept in. People hadn’t told them things they should have known.

Banichi and Jago were on it. Things would getright.

Meanwhile there wasn’t anything more he could do than he’d done, there wasn’t any more he could learn about Jase’s situation than he’d learned, nothing more he could feel than he’d felt, and at this point, if Jase had settled on dealing with it alone, he could just retreat to a distance and be sure Jase was really all right, that was all.

Chasing down the other problems that might impinge on Jase’s situation was Banichi’s business. The files—

—were his.

So he settled into the sitting room, asked the servants to have one of the junior security staff bring his computer and his notes to him, and spread out his traveling office for the first uninterrupted work he’d gotten done since the plane flight.

The simple, mind-massaging routine of translation had its pleasures. There were days on which he likedpushing the keys on the computer as long as it produced known, predictable results.

A servant came in to ask what sort of supper he’d wish. He asked them to consult Jase about what hewanted and to go by that if Jase wanted anything formal, but by his preference he wanted a very light supper: he’d been on the banquet circuit, and he’d gone back to a sedentary life in which he preferred a lighter diet, thank you. Jase, he was relatively sure, was not in a mood for a heavy meal.

To his mild surprise Jase came to the door and said the staff was asking about supper and what would heprefer. He really hadn’t expected Jase to surface at all; but Jase came voluntarily to him, being sociable, and seemed to be holding onto things fairly well, considering.

“I’ll join you, if you like,” Bren said.

“That would be fine,” Jase said, “nadi. Shall I arrange it with the staff?”

“Do, please, nadi-ji.” He had a lap full of carefully arranged computer and notes. He considered a how are you? and settled on “Thank you.”

“I’ll do that,” Jase said, and went away to the depths of the apartment where one could ordinarily find the staff.

So it was a supper with him and Jase alone, the security staff otherwise occupied. Jase was somber, but in better spirits, even offering a little shaky, unfeigned laughter in recounting things that had gone on during his absence, chiefly the matter of a security alert when the lily workmen’s scaffold had jammed and they’d had to get the Bu-javid fire rescue service to get the workmen back to the roof.

“We couldn’t get the security expansion panel down,” madam Saidin added to the account, herself serving the main dish, “because Guild security wouldn’t permit that. So there they were: the workmen had two of the porcelains with them on the scaffold, so they wouldn’t risk those. And the artist came down to the garden below and began shouting at them that they shouldn’t put the lilies in a bucket, which was what the firemen proposed—”

“God.”

“The hill is tilted there,” Jase ventured. He meant the hill was steep: but he was close to the meaning. “And the ladder wouldn’t go there.”

“They ended up letting firemen down on ropes to take the porcelains,” madam Saidin said, “so they could get the porcelains to safety. But meanwhile the artist was locked out of the building and stranded herself on the hill in the garden—she is an elderly lady—and shehad to be rescued, which took more permissions to bring someone throughthe doors below from the outside.”

“Bu-javid security,” Jase said, “was not happy.”

Bren could laugh at that—it was not, he was certain, a story which had amused lord Tatiseigi, whose sense of humor was likely wearing thin; but if an Atageini such as madam Saidin could laugh, then they all could, and he could imagine Damiri involved—from her balcony next door, if security had let her past the door.

But Jase seemed worn and tired, and declared at the end of the meal that he had rather spend his evening studying and turn in early.

“Are you all right?” Bren asked in Mosphei’.

“Fine,” Jase said. “But I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Or the nights before, I’d imagine.”

“Nor the nights before,” Jase agreed. “But I will tonight.”

“Good,” he said. “Good. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to wake me.”

“I’ll be fine,” Jase said. “Good night.”

They’d occasionally talked in the evenings, but mostly it was lessons. Sometimes they watched television, for the news, or maybe a machimi play, which was a good language lesson. He’d expected, with supper, to need to keep Jase busy, and had asked after the television schedule, which did have a play worth watching this evening.

But there was no shortage of work for either of them, and without work there was worry: Bren understood that much very well. If Jase felt better sitting in the library and chasing references and doing a little translation, he could understand that.

Himself, he went back to the sitting room, deciding that he would deal with the correspondence, finally, now that he’d dulled his mind with a larger supper than he’d intended, and now that his brain had grown too tired to deal with new things.

Top of the correspondence list was the request from the pilots, who were trying to form a Guild. The Assassins, the Messengers, the Physicians, and the Mathematicians were Guilds. There wereno other professions, since the Astronomers were discredited nearly two hundred years ago. And now the pilots, who had heard of such a guild among humans, were applying to the legislatures for that status on the ground that atevi could not deal with humans at disadvantage—but they were meeting opposition from the Guilds and from traditionalists in the legislature who thought they weren’t professional. The pilots, who had never enjoyed Guild status, were incensed at the tone of the reply.

On the other side, the legislature wanted justification for the sacrosanctity and autonomy that a Guild enjoyed, when they did nothing that regarded confidentiality, which was the essence of a Guild.

That was one problem. Tossing into it Banichi’s information, there were interface problems with other Guilds, and the question of how such a Guild would relate to, say, the Messengers—who argued at length that the pilots in question might fit within theirGuild structure since they traveled and carried messages.

Like hell, was the succinct version of the pilots’ opinion, as it came to his ears.

To add to the mix, a fact which he knew and others might not, there was serious talk this winter of the Astronomers attempting to regain their position as a Guild, but as Tabini put it, their Guild status had originally been based on their predictive ability, and getting into thatnow-antiquated forecasting function would touch off a storm of controversy among several atevi philosophies, which on one level was ludicrous, but which to believers was very serious and which, to politicians, signaled real trouble.