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 s.p.a.ce program.

As for why Banichi might have been selected for an a.s.signment in the peninsula, Banichi was was from 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. from 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 gla.s.s. But he has has no choice but represent Ajresi; and he'll be dead by fall." no choice but represent Ajresi; and he'll be dead by fall."

"Do you know that?" Bren was so startled he forgot the softening nadi nadi and spoke intimately and into Guild business at the same time. and 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 he he doesn'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." doesn'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."

Saidin was in the doorway, and Banichi said that. Bren's heart gave a thump. was 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 a.s.sist 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."

"d.a.m.n 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 h.e.l.l Jase hadn't taken that pose with Saidin while he was gone.

"I can't trust you 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 h.e.l.l he hadn't come in here for this interview on a fast, in-and-gone-again basis. a.s.sa.s.sins talked about a broken-legged contract, where the object wasn't to kill someone, just to keep them out of action. And, G.o.d, 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't doesn't entirely understand. They're trying to, in all good will toward you." entirely 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 or or balanced, 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. balanced, 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't wasn't time 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. time 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 could could have 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. have 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 no no call to Jase. call 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, doc.u.ments, 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 pet.i.tioners 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 pa.s.sed 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 was was the paidhi's concern, but it wasn't the aiji's, except by curiosity. the 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 G.o.d 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 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.

CHAPTER 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 pa.s.sed 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 naive paidhi began to suspect all all high 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." high 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 embarra.s.sment - 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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociations by trade or by kinship within the other a.s.sociations. 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 d.a.m.n 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.

G.o.d, he knew.

"No, no, and no no!"

That was Tabini in the hall outside. was Tabini in the hall outside.

"Light of my life, you will not, you will not not have your uncle in the apartment, it will not happen!" have your uncle in the apartment, it will not happen!"

"It's our our ancestral residence!" he heard: lady Damiri's voice. "What can one do?" ancestral residence!" he heard: lady Damiri's voice. "What can one do?"

"I know know it's your ancestral residence! It's Bren's it's your ancestral residence! It's Bren's life life, G.o.ds less fortunate! You know know your uncle! He's dealing with that d.a.m.ned Hagrani!" your uncle! He's dealing with that d.a.m.ned 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 a.s.sociation, 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 a.s.sa.s.sins' Guild.

- For which, Bren often thought, thank G.o.d.

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. G.o.ds 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. d.a.m.ned 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 did did know. At what hour Tabini had known - the paidhi was perhaps wise not to ask. know. 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 Yolanda Yolanda and preferred and preferred Mercheson 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."