“Nand’ paidhi.” It was a conservative member of the tashrid, rising to speak in turn. “What do you believe the ship is doing up there?”
Old, old, lord Madinais, blunt, and very common-man in his approaches. A respected grandfather, he always thought of the man; but that misapprehended the real power Madinais had, through seniority in a network of sub-associations many of which were common-man, broad-based and powerful.
“Lord Madinais, I can only conjecture: I think the ship broke down again. I think they’ve managed to fix it, get it running, and get back to what they hoped would be a thriving human community. It is thriving—but it’s certainly complicated their position.”
Dissident interests, not far from lord Madinais, had tried to kill Bren last week. But there was nothing personal in it.
“What about the trade rules?” a member of the hasdrawad shouted out. “What about the negotiations?”
“I don’t think there’ll be any progress in the trade talks until this ship question is settled, quite frankly, nadi. Although—”
Behind the glare of television lights someone else was on his feet, in the hasdrawad, and that wasn’t by the rules.
Nerves twitched, hesitated at alarm—Fall down, his information told him; but, Possibly mistaken, his fore-brain was saying.
At that moment a body hit him like a thunderbolt from the casted side and a shot boomed out and echoed and reechoed in the chambers.
He was on his side, with a sore hip, a bump on the side of his head where he’d hit the podium, and a crushing atevi weight half on him—Tano, he was suddenly aware. He was grateful, was stunned and apprehensive: he didn’t see Jago. But he didn’t see damn much of anything but the base of the podium and Tano’s anxious face looking out toward the chambers. He didn’t even protest to Tano that he was in pain, Tano’s attention being clearly directed outward for hostile movements—but by the buzz of talk and the tenor of voices in the chamber, he could guess there’d been at least one fatality, and that the crisis was done, meaning the fatality was the person who’d threatened the paidhi.
Confirmed, as Tano began to get to one knee.
The recipient of such devoted guardianship knew he should still keep his head down and better his position only with extreme care. But he hurt. Members and security alike were converging on the podium—Tabini himself among them, which surely meant it was safe to get up, and he began to, first with Tano’s help, then with Tabini’s, and last with Tabini’s security holding his arm and being very careful of his bandages and the cast.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, embarrassed, not realizing the microphone was on. It boomed out over the hall and provoked laughter. Provoked, more, the solemn, unison clapping of hands that was the atevi notion of formal applause—
They hadn’t been sure he was alive. They were pleased that he was. At least—the majority seemed to be.
Clearly there’d been one vote to the contrary.
The network television clip showed Tano’s tackle and take-down, the sight of which sent repeated shocks through his nerves, and a house camera showed the gunman, who’d put a bullet into a thirteenth-century chandelier when Jago had put a bullet through his head. They ran it, ran it back and ran it again and again in slow motion.
Bren, elbow on the counter, put his knuckle in front of his mouth and tried to be objective. He’d seen shots fired before, he’d seen people hit, he’d felt the ground he was standing on jump to far heavier ordnance, and he told himself he ought to take it in an atevi sort of calm, safe as he was in the security station.
He didn’t feel that at all.
The chief of Bu-javid security laid a black-and-white photo on the desk, showing him an older man, a man who ought to have had sense.
“The representative from Eighin,” the chief said, “Beiguri, house of the Guisi. Any personal cause with this man or the Guisi?”
“No, nadi.” His voice came out faint. He sat up, tried to ignore the pain of bruised ribs. “I know him—as politically opposed to the trade cities. He’s never shown any—any such behavior. He’s never been impolite….”
Tabini was out in the chambers, vehemently pressing his point. There was talk of a vote on the paidhi’s representation to the ship, a debate on an initiative to Mospheira. The police and Bu-javid security were rounding up Beiguri’s aides and office staff.
The tape around the ribs was hell. He hoped Tano hadn’t popped stitches, bone, or seams. He hurt. Tano kept hovering, worse than Jago, who hadn’t used him for a landing zone; and Jago—
Jago was suffering the aftermath, he thought: the awareness how easily she might have missed that snap shot. She quivered with unspent energy and anger, she hugged it in with arms clenched across her chest, and she wanted, Bren was sure, to be out there scouring the representative’s office for what the junior security agents were most likely going to lay all too-casual hands on, in Jago’s probably accurate estimation.
Jago wasn’t senior in her own team. She was probably also worrying about Banichi’s opinion. Or Banichi’s whereabouts.
Or knew where Banichi was. And still worried.
More investigators came into the security station, reporting that the death office had taken the body away. A respectable and sensible man, a father of children, an elected representative of his province, had died trying to take the paidhi’s life.
Bren shivered. Tano set hands on his shoulder and argued with the police that the paidhi would be perfectly safe upstairs in his own bed, and should be there.
“The aiji—” the chief of police began.
“We have the aiji’s orders,” Jago said shortly, taking her eyes from the constant replay. “And we have the responsibility, nand’ Marin. It’s been a very long day for him, and yesterday was longer. If the paidhi wishes to go upstairs—”
“The paidhi wishes,” Bren said. He put himself on his feet as a way to accelerate matters. He wanted his room, he wanted his bed, he wanted quiet.
And he’d seen enough of the television replays.
He’d not have given anything for his chance of enduring police questions and playback after playback of the event, which assumed a surreal slow motion in his mind.
But after deciding one impossible thing after the other was the order of the hour, he had to do it, that was all. The next walk, Jago assured him, was only down to the lift—the press was excluded from this area, under special order—Tabini-aiji would handle the reporters in a news conference to follow his speech, and upstairs to his room and his bed was the direct order of business.
He made the lift, found himself with Jago and Tano alone in the car, and gratefully collapsed back against the wall. Tano was quiet; Jago was still in a glum, angry mood.
“Thank you,” he said to her and Tano. He wasn’t certain he had managed somehow to express that.
“My job, nadi,” Jago muttered, somewhat curtly, if a human could judge. If a human could judge, Jago was distracted in her own glum thoughts, maybe about Banichi’s whereabouts, and the fact she’d had to peg a risky shot clear across, God help them, the halls of government. Maybe she’d gotten a reprimand from senior security, he wasn’t sure.
It more than shook him. It whited out his logic about the situation. He realized Jago still had his computer, was still carrying it. Jago didn’t make mistakes. Jago had had custody of his computer in the instant she was killing a man—and hadn’t lost track of it
More than the paidhi could say, who’d lingered on his feet analyzing why a man had risen out of turn—stood there, like a fool, and put Jago to making that desperate shot.
The lift let them out on the third level, and they walked the hall of porcelain flowers: ordinary homecoming, quite as if he were coming back from a day at the office, he thought in dazed detachment, standing at the door which Jago had to open with her device-disabling key.
The other side, in the pale, gilt foyer, the soul of atevi propriety, Saidin was there to take his coat.
“Just bed, nand’
Saidin,” he said. “I’m very tired.” He deliberately didn’t look at the message bowl. He didn’t want to look.
“I think,” he said, ticking down that mental list of things he’d reserved as priority, absolute must-dos, “I think I have to return the dowager’s message tonight. Maybe we’d better talk very soon.”
“You need your rest,” Jago said severely.
“The dowager’s goodwill is critical,” he said. “Tomorrow morning would be a very good time. If there are repercussions—I can’t let the dowager interpret my silence and my absence, Jago-ji. Am I mistaken? I believe I understand the woman.”
Jago thought about it. Still wasn’t pleased. Or was worried. “There is a danger, nadi. You know I can’t go there.”
“I don’t think they’re ready for open warfare. Therefore I’m safe.”
Jago was not happy. Not at all. “I’ll convey your message,” she said. So Jago found his logic acceptable, atevi-fashion. And he thought he was right.
But the visible universe had shrunk to the immediate area of the foyer, and his sense of balance was uncertain—maybe relief, maybe just exhaustion. He felt quite shaky, quite short of breath in the constricting bandages.
“I’ll go to bed, then,” he said. “I think I’ve had a long day.”
“Nand’ paidhi,” Tano said, and accompanied him.
He’d been amazed at his ability just to cross the speakers’ platform without falling on his face.
But the bedroom was close, and he had not only Tano but a handful of female staff helping him, snatching up the laundry and murmuring that they were very glad the paidhi was unharmed. They’d seen the television. They were appalled at the goings-on.
He’d not had a review of his performance. “Nadiin,” he said to them, “did you hear the things I said? Did they seem reasonable?”
“Nand’ paidhi,” one said, clearly taken aback, “it’s not for us to offer opinion.”
“If the paidhi asked.”
“It was a very fine speech,” one said. “Baji-naji, nand’ paidhi. I don’t understand such foreign things.”
Another: “It was very risky for your ancestors to come down here.”
And a third: “But where is this dangerous place, nand’ paidhi? And where is the human earth? And where has the ship been?”
“All of these things, I wish I knew, nadi. The paidhi doesn’t know. The wisest people on Mospheira don’t know.”
A servant lifted her hand, encompassing all things overhead. “Can’t you find it with telescopes?”
“No. We’re far, far, out of sight of where we came from. And there aren’t any landmarks up there.”
“Would you go there if you could, nand’ paidhi?”
He faced a half dozen solemn female faces, dark, tall atevi, some standing, some kneeling, shadows in the light. He was the foreigner. He felt very much the foreigner in these premises.
“I was born on this planet,” he said wearily. “I don’t think I should be at home there, nadiin.”
The faces gave him nothing.
“I regret,” he said wearily, “I regret the matter tonight. He was a respectable man, nadiin. I regret—very much—he died. Please,” he said, “nadiin, I’m very tired. I have to go to bed.”
There were multiple bows, The servants went away. But one turned back at the door and bowed. “Nand’ paidhi,” she said, “we hold to your side.”
Another lingered and bowed, and in a moment more they were all back in the doorway, all talking at once, how they all wished him well, and how they hoped he would have a good night’s sleep.
“Thank you, nadiin,” he said, and began to arrange his nest of pillows to prop his arm as they went away into the central hall.
From which, in a moment, he heard a furious whispering about his white skin and his bruises, which he supposed he had more of, and remarking how he’d joked when Tabini had helped him up, and how he had very good composure.
Joked?
He didn’t remember he’d done so well as that. He’d been scared as hell. He’d had to have Tano’s help to get down the steps. He hadn’t been able to walk up the aisle without his knees knocking—knowing—knowing the attempt was not only against him, who could be replaced, but against the entire established order. Atevi knew that. Atevi understood how much that bullet was supposed to destroy—
Hell, he said to himself, exhausted, so exhausted he could melt into the mattress. But, dammit, the mind was threatening to wake up.
He started replaying the speech, the assassination attempt, the police questions, asking himself what they’d suspected and what they’d meant.
He readjusted the lumpy pillows, stuffed more under his arm and fell back in them, asking himself if maybe aspirin would help.
But that gradually became a dimmer thought, and a dimmer one, as the ribs stopped hurting, having found some bracing against the pillows that kept the tape from cutting in. He wasn’t sure it was sleep, but the thoughts began to be fewer, and fewer, and he wouldn’t move, not while he’d found a place where he actually had no pain.
7
You couldn’t see the orbiting ship in Shejidan. City lights obscured all the dimmer stars—granted a clear sky, which it looked to be, a return of late summer warmth above the city, mountain winds sending a few wisps of dark cloud across a pink-tinged and bruised-looking dawn.
Ilisidi liked fresh air, and ate breakfast on her balcony, here, as at Malguri, and Bren couldn’t help but think of Banichi’s disapproval of the balcony in lady Damiri’s apartment—which, if he looked directly up from the table, he thought must be the balcony above this one.
The venture into hostile territory, as it were, would give a sane man pause, and he’d had more than a twinge of doubt in coming here, but it gave him, too, a strange, fatalistic sense of continuity, things getting back on track, reminding him vividly of Malguri, and now that he was here, the butterflies had gone away and he was glad he’d accepted the invitation. The old ateva sitting across from him was so frail-looking the wind could carry her away—her servants and her security around her; Cenedi, chief of the latter, standing to Ilisidi in the same position Banichi, when he wasn’t standing watch over the paidhi, held with Tabini.
Banichi wasn’t here. Banichi still hadn’t come back; it was Jago who’d delivered him into Cenedi’s hands at the door—and Cenedi who’d delivered him to Ilisidi’s company. Cenedi, who directed every sniper who had a motive to consider the Bu-javid’s balconies, and who, if someone transgressed Cenedi’s direction, would take it very personally: a Guild assassin, Cenedi was, like Jago, like Banichi. For that reason he felt safe in Cenedi’s hands, not at all because Cenedi happened to owe him, personally—which Cenedi did—but precisely because personal debt wouldn’t weigh a hair with Cenedi if he were called on—professionally.
So the paidhi sat down with the aiji-dowager, the most immediate arbiter of life and death, possibly in collusion with the man who’d tried to kill him last night, at a table outside on a balcony he was sure was as safe and no safer than his own upstairs. White curtains billowed out of the room beyond them in a dawn wind that lacked the cold edge of Malguri’s rain-soaked mornings. The wind carried instead the heavy musk of tropic diossi flowers from somewhere nearby, possibly another balcony.
Potential enemies, they shared tea first.
And small talk.
“Does it hurt much?” the dowager asked.
“Not much, nand’ dowager. Not often.”
“You seem distracted.”
“By thoughts, nand’ dowager.”
“This fiancée?”
Damn the woman. There was decidedly a leak somewhere, and there was absolutely nothing chance about Ilisidi’s revealing it as an opening gambit: that she did so might be a gesture of goodwill toward the paidhi.
It was definitely a demonstration of her power to reach inside Tabini’s intimates’ living space.
“Her action is nothing I can complain of, nand’ dowager.” He to
ok satisfaction in giving not a flicker of emotion to a wicked old campaigner. “She was certainly within her rights.”
“No quarrel, then.”
“None, nand’ dowager. I regard her highly, still. Certainly she would have told me—but business, as you know,” (pause for no small irony) “kept me on this side of the strait. That’s certainly the heart of her complaints against me.”
“The woman’s a fool,” Ilisidi said. “Such a personable young man.”
One couldn’t argue opinions with the dowager. And a sparkle of warmth and enjoyment was in Ilisidi’s eyes, twice damn her, the smile on thin, creased lips just faintly discernible.
He said graciously, “My mother thinks so, I’m sure, nai-ji. So does Jago. But I fear both are biased.”
A servant laid down two plates of food—eggs, and game, in season, to be sure—muffins—the muffins were always safe.
“Human ways and human choices,” Ilisidi said. “You have no relationship with this woman they’ve sent?”
“Deana Hanks.”
“This woman, I say.”
“I have none such,” he said. “Not the remotest interest, I assure the dowager.”
“Pity.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, nand’ dowager.” He applied cream to a muffin, or tried to. A servant slipped in a little deft help and he abandoned the effort to the servant.
“Such an inconvenience,” Ilisidi said.
“Lack of appeal in my professional associate—or the broken arm?”
Ilisidi was amused. A salt-and-pepper brow quirked on an impeccably grave black face. Gold eyes. “The arm, actually. When are you rid of that uncomfortable thing, nadi?”
“I don’t know, aiji-ma. They sent me instructions. I confess I haven’t read them.”
“No interest?”
“No time. I’d quite forgotten to read them.” The ice had broken and other topics were permissible. He steered in his own direction. “Your grandson was anxious to have me back.”
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