Текст книги "Precursor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

His hands were shaking. He wiped sweat off his face and confronted Jase, who looked as shocked.

“Did you know the dowager was coming?” It was a question spoiling for a fight, damned mad, and not quite over the edge yet.

“No, I didn’t know! This is her style of dealing; this is how she’s damned well survived a century of goings-on like this, while the rest of us have heart attacks.”

“There’s a stack of messages,” Jase said. “Almost since you left.”

“I’ll damn well bet there are. Jase, do you know where Ramirez is? Can you remotely guess, that might be worth going after?”

“Isn’t that what they want us to do?”

“I know it is. But knowing wherehe is might be the best thing, right now.”

“I know they’d have moved him.”

“And where?”

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”

There was a slight commotion at the end of the corridor, where a handful of lingering humans attempted to protest the annexation of the matching section across the hall, and made no headway against thirty or so armed and determined atevi.

“This is the best we can do,” Bren said anxiously. “We can’t house herin what contents us. We have to establish an exterior guard, if we can’t secure that intersection… which I presume they have to use.”

Jase shook his head. “They can work around. They’ll reroute. Take it. This is notthe fanciest accommodation they could have managed.”

“Captains get that, do they?”

“Captains and techs. Bren, we’ve got a potential problem…” Jase gave a nervous laugh, as if he’d only then heard himself. “A rather major problem. If they pull the ship off station… it’s armed. And they can stand us off.”

“No, they can’t” Bren said, just as madly, just as irrationally as he’d argued the rest of his case, and he knew it. “They needus, remember?”

“Tamun’s crazy. He’s stark raving crazy.”

“Well, thus far, he has company in that affliction, doesn’t he? Dresh, Sabin, Ogun? They’ve all lost their minds.”

“I’ll still bet on Ogun,” Jase said on a breath. “Bren, get to him. Get to him.”

“We’re not getting to anyone until after supper. The dowager wants dinner, didn’t you hear her? And I’ve got that stack of messages. I trust some of them came with ‘Sidi-ji. At least one of them. I needto hear from Tabini… I need that most of all.”

Chapter 26

Mattresses were going to be an issue: Bren very much feared so.

He very much feared they weren’t the only issue.

“I fear they’re rather put out with us,” he said to Ilisidi, who awaited supper in what had been his room, the best they had, the warmest, and the most comfortable. Even she, however, had to rely on Jago’s mattress, which Jago had gladly contributed, while Sabiso, assigned to the dowager’s fearsome demands, had explained the workings of the shower. “I can by no means foretell what may happen to the cargo before we can free it.”

“Our cargo,” Ilisidi said, seated, hands bare now, both clasped on the head of her cane, “our most valuable cargois still aboard the ship. Another fifty of the Guild, serving Lord Geigi.”

He was not seated. He had a sudden impulse to sit down, and had no available chair. “Aiji-ma, are they inthe shuttle? They’ll surely freeze! They may have frozen already.”

“Not so readily.” Ilisidi waggled fingers atop the head of the cane, as if to say that was quite a negligible risk. “They’re prepared. But so we must have rapid resolution of this matter, or there will be far harsher action than these ship-folk will like. I have a message from my rapscallion grandson. He says, Bren-ji… he did say Bren-ji, I distinctly recall it: these modern manners!”

“I am overwhelmed.”

“He said, To Ramirez we cede rights to come and go at the station, which we regard as within our association, and to anyone Ramirez deems fit, so long as the aishidi’tat, in lesser association and cooperation with the government of Mospheira, holds the earth of atevi and all that come within its grip.

“These are our reasonable conditions, as you have stated, so we state; as you have promised, so we promise; as you declare, so we declare, to which the hasdrawad and the tashrid set their approval…”The usual sort of thing,“ Ilisidi concluded with another waggle of her fingers. ” So! Paidhi. Associate of my rascal grandson, that thief, that brigand, my grandson. What do you propose we do to find Ramirez?”

“I’ve asked the crew to find him,” he said, “which I believe certain ones well know how to do. Jase and his mother have contacts.”

“Allow four hours,” Ilisidi said.

“Four hours.”

Ilisidi reached to her coat, a far lighter one for the anticipated dinner, and drew out a watch, an old-fashioned sort of elaborate design. The multiple cylinders were of gold, beyond any doubt, and set with pale stones. “We certainly have that long to unload before we need do anything unpleasant. My grandson has extraordinary confidence in your powers of negotiation, Bren-ji, but allow me to say, if these unpleasant people do not rise to a civilized level of welcome very soon, we are prepared to take what we justly demand. I have not come on this extraordinary journey to sit in a windowless room and dine in haste. I am too old to sit on unreasonable furniture and to see my essential baggage delayed by bureaucrats with absolutely nothing to gain but inconvenience. I detestpointless obstruction. Do you not, Bren-ji?”

“ Ido detest it myself, nand’ dowager, but there are numerous innocent parties whose very air and warmth might be adversely affected…”

Another waggle of the fingers. “If I have cast myself among utter fools, then let us wait no longer. But I rather think that the paidhi who has served us so well is not the only human with powers of reasoning. Use your ingenuity, paidhi-aiji. In the meanwhile, send me Cenedi, and let us see how to use the devices and the records and the maps your security has so elegantly established.”

He knew when he was being pushed to the wall. He knew how and when to push back, and he went to his small parcel of belongings by the door and returned with a small mag storage.

“More than the maps they have made, nand’ dowager. These are the charts the makersmade. Here is every conduit and switch and component of the entire foreign star, if the dowager will accept this modest offering.”

Ilisidi’s aged lips twitched in restrained mirth. She reached for it with a flourish. “So! Am I ever mistaken?”

“I have yet, nandi, to observe an error of taste orjudgment,” Bren said. “Begging excuse from supper, I shall attempt what I can do.”

It became a more sober smile, even a gentle one. “You are excused the supper, nadi. I shall entertain this uncommon set of guests. I cede you your security; mine is adequate for my needs, or nothing is.”

“ ‘Sidi-ji,” he said quietly, and bowed, and paused again on a second thought. “Take charge of this machine of mine. Tano and Algini know how to read it, and know the codes. They would be an asset, if they were not mine.”

“They would indeed,” Ilisidi said. “As any resource of mine is within your reach, paidhi-ji.” A wave of the hand. “Go! Go, damn your flattery! Out, out, and kindly use your wits, nand’ paidhi!”

“Geigi has sent men,” he explained the situation to his staff, and to Jase, in close conference in what they now styled the olddining room, in Ragi. Cenedi sat in their midst, advisor; and Tano was with them, while Algini refused to leave the monitoring, the parameters of which he knew intimately, where Cenedi’s men could not replace him. “There is force to be had, aboard the ship,” Bren said. “But it won’t be enough, either, to secure the entire station without destruction, not to mention the hazard to the shuttle. On such short notice, I have notinvolved Yolanda or Tom, though I regret it. She doesn’t speak well enough to understand this situation, Tom doesn’t speak at all, and I won’t say what I have to say in Mosphei’. So here it is. We have a handful of hours to act before you, Cenedi-nandi, will act. Is that so?”

“It will not be finesse,” Cenedi said with a downward, deprecating glance. “But it will be forceful.”

In earlier days, Jase would have flared up, sure no one would consider his view, but at this hour, included in this conference, he had no doubts what he was to represent.

“Within that necessity,” Jase said quietly, “if we could reach Ramirez, and have his support with us, then we might convince a number of the crew they are not threatened.”

“Yet, forgive me, Jase, you say the crew will not admit a truth when it stares them in the face,” Bren said in utter frankness. “And will do anything and suffer anything to preserve the captains. We will threaten Tamun, indisputably, we will threaten Tamun.”

“Dresh is an improvement,” Jase said somberly. “Save him. To hellwith Tamun.”

“Yet, finesse,” Banichi said. “Finesse, Nadiin-ji, amid such fragile equipment. We have the access tunnels. We canmove and we canreach the captains, and various other places.”

“They may have established surveillance in those accesses,” Jase said. “Tamun has reason, and increasing reason. Let us go, myself, my mother, Yolanda, all of us that have been involved in this. We may be able to find where Ramirez is. If we could do it quietly, we could bring him here.”

“Can we breach communications?” Tano asked, the sensible question.

“Can we avoid Cl,” Bren rephrased that, “and get to people directly without risking our necks?”

“Everything goes through Phoenixcomm,” Jase said. “We can’t.”

“Does that gear the guides carry?” Jago asked.

Jase blinked. “That goes differently,” he said. “That reaches security on a direct link. We don’t want security, nadi-ji. They’re most likely to stay by the captains.”

“Ogun,” Bren said. “Captain Ogun. The new senior. He seems to me not participant with Tamun. He seems to me to have rammed the practicalities of the agreements down Tamun’s throat, when without him, Tamun might have abrogated all the agreements.”

“Ogun’s a puzzle,” Jase said. “He’s hard to read. Disciplinarian.” Jase used a single word in Mosphei’, to express what Ragi could not. “The crew does not favor him, for his harsh measures. Ramirez breaks customs for good reasons. Ogun is conservative as any lord of the west.”

“Sabin?”

“Ogun’s partisan. The two of them have made it difficult for Tamun to have his way completely.”

“Do they favor Tamun?”

Jase frowned. “They have supported him. In his objections against Ramirez’ ventures, they have supported him. Now they have power and Tamun is under them, and ambitious for power… one would wonder how they view him now.”

It was a discouraging portrait, one in line with Jase’s previous notes on the two. But he had a hope in Ogun, and gave it up only reluctantly. “Have they struck at Ramirez, nadi?” he asked Jase.

“Not directly,” Jase said. “I don’t think so.”

“And might they be looking at Tamun anxiously?”

“Now? Sabin, I don’t know.”

“And Ogun?”

“Thinks he can manage Tamun.”

“But supports the rules. Supports the agreements once made. Sat besideRamirez when we had our negotiating session. At least appeared to be consenting to all we said.”

Jase drew in a breath and leaned back, seeming to go into himself for a moment. Then he let out the breath. “I can imagine him doing that,” Jase said. “And likewise supporting the agreements.”

“So dare I go to him?” Bren asked. “Dare he come here!”

“Ogun would dare what suited him,” Jase said. “This man is an aiji, in a way Ramirez is not, if he could gain the man’chi of the crew. Humans prefer to liketheir aijiin, nadiin-ji.” The word ineluctably drew amusement from Banichi and Jago and Tano—who understood the relationship between salads and human emotions—and bewilderment from Cenedi. “But failing to likehim, we still know he deserves man’chi, while Tamun… Tamun only desiresman’chi, and promotes fear of aliens, fear of weakness, fear of everything, all to gain his followers.”

“We know this man,” Cenedi murmured in a low voice. “This machimi we do well understand.”

“So do I,” Bren said, fervent in hope of a path through their situation. “Machimi indeed. Confront Ogun with Ramirez, with wrongs done himby Tamun’s spite.”

“If you can reach him” Jase said, “on hisshift. Which ought to be in a few hours.”

“We have no leisure to wait,” Cenedi said, “Nadiin-ji, except as the shuttle crew can maintain excuses to delay. They are to move, either at our order, or reaching a point where they can no longer sustain themselves in the shuttle.”

“Is there anyway to get to him?” Bren asked. “Do you know where he lodges?”

“I don’t know if he’s taken Ramirez’ cabin,” Jase said. “He might. He would take it to make the authority clear to the others—but to get there…”

“They guard against one another,” Bren asked, “to that extent, in a population of fifteen hundred human beings?”

“They didn’t,” Jase said, “but we didn’t shoot each other, either. I don’t know what he’ll do. I don’t know what I thought I knew about these people, and I was born here. But if you wish to reach Ogun, if you think he might do something… I’drisk it, I, personally, I’llmake a try at it.”

“You find Ramirez. You’re more able at that, if you can climb a ladder with those ribs.”

“I can do it.”

“Not a question of wish. Can you do it, without breaking something? Maybe Yolanda.”

“No. She gets disoriented in heights and the tunnels spook her. Better if I go.”

“I shall go with him,” Tano said. “I can carry you if need be. How far need we climb?”

“Only one level. Maybe a transverse. I know, at least, where to start looking, as I don’t think Yolanda does.—I also know where Ogun sleeps and where his office and Ramirez’s offices are, but I’m afraid there’s no access near there.”

Bren shrugged. “An access takes too long. I shall walk, nadiin, down the middle of the corridor. I have an appointment.”

“With the crew below, tomorrow is too late,” Banichi said.

“I lie,” he said. “I lieto the guards and claim a misunderstanding. I see no other course. If we run out of time and Geigi’s men break out, we three can deal with that distraction. It will create a few moments of confusion, will it not?”

“The guards will not likely believe you are there by error nadi-ji.”

“They have to ask before acting. Can you deal with them without killing?”

“One will do one’s best,” Banichi said, and still had a worried look. “ Youwill take the gun, nadi.”

“I’ll take the gun,” Bren conceded. He planned not to use it. Carrying it into a meeting after one assassination attempt on the ship was in itself a guarantee of trouble, if someone noticed the fact. At the very least, it would rouse distracting objections and put one token on Ogun’s side of the table in any negotiations. It didn’t make himfeel safer.

But conceding that made his security far happier.

The ship-folk had never yet questioned how his security breached doors and walked about as they pleased, and one did rather think the ship-folk had noticed. Probably the ship-folk very well guessed howthey routinely activated the locks, but found no percentage in doing anything about it.

So they went, brazenly, right down the main corridor, into the more trafficked area. There a handful of curious young women, who seemed ordinary crew, simply stared at them, wide-eyed; and a pair of guards in Kaplan’s style of gear, the sight of whom sent Bren’s heart rate up a notch, let them pass down the hall and through the intersection with only a close look and a consultation, perhaps, with Cl.

Turning their backs on that potential threat was hard. Bren kept thinking of shots coming at them, of a solid wall of guards turning up to cut them off… a situation he would have to talk their way out of.

But they kept walking, unchallenged, as if the guards who observed assumed they had orders. They reached the corner, turned, finding a bare corridor. No one followed. Banichi and Jago were listening all the while, Bren was sure, to every slight sound, much of it below his level of sensitivity.

They walked that corridor unmolested.

Jase and Tano meant to dive into an access… might be below their feet at this very moment, for all they could know.

One hall and the next, no one challenged them.

At the third, an ordinary woman stood to the side to let them pass, and said quietly as they did so, “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” he said, and kept walking, heart beating hard. Good luck? What in hell did the crew want? Or how much did they know?

Or what were they walking into?

“She wished us luck,” he said, in the unlikely chance his security hadn’t understood that remark.

“Baji-naji,” Jago said, the reciprocal atevi expression. The world upside-down, pieces landing as their inherent numbers let them… which led to the new and more flexible order, once things had gotten bound up and stressed to the limit.

It didn’t guarantee the survival of the pieces.

Another turn.

They took the lift, alone, no one stopping the car. They had time to exchange silent glances, to express with the eyes what was imprudent to express in words: it was the diceiest of situations. They hoped. They didn’t know. They couldn’t guess the eccentricity of the crew’s behavior, except, Bren said to himself, in a population who feared its leaders. In this case, they feared fortheir leaders.

Or maybe it was both.

They exited, reached the region of better-designed corridors, the spongy, sound-deadening flooring, that row of glossy-leaved potted plants.

Even a numbers-blind human recognized the landmarks here: the tendriled green-and-white plant, the large-leafed one.

Turn right at the green-and-white one.

“Third door,” he remembered, all on his own, from Jase’s description. That was Ramirez’s cabin. If Ogun wasn’t in it, at least no one else should be, that was how he reckoned it. What could they access with least chance of touching off a general alarm.

He pressed the button to signal the occupant there was a visitor. Banichi and Jago waited just behind him, whether ready to fire he did not count it his business to see.

The door stayed shut.

“No one home,” he said with a deep sigh. That had been their best hope: that Ogun might answer, hear his concern for the ship, immediately agree to rescue Ramirez, arrest Tamun, and honor the agreements.

That proved a dead end. He counted doorways from that, two, and moved down to what was Ogun’s office: no help there.

Then Ramirez’s old office, where Ogun, acting as senior captain, might be trying to find loose bits of business.

No answer there, either.

“I fear Ogun knows we’re here,” he said. “Or maybe Ogun himself has met misfortune.” It was one of those moments of not-quite-logic, one of those moments that had to do with estimating human beings, but it was a rational hypothesis.

Banichi and Jago said not a word, only maintained a wary watch on their surroundings, trusting absolutely nothing.

He wantedto take to his heels and put distance between himself and this slowly sealing trap. But they had a shipload of atevi whose choice was to freeze to death, surrender, or come out shooting.

And for good or for ill, they had the dowager on their hands. Baji-naji. There wasno way to unravel that design. Pieces were going to shift and settle, or break.

“We’re down to Ogun’s cabin,” he said quietly, and moved to that one and buzzed it.

No answer.

“Sabin’s our next hope,” he said, counting doors. “If they haven’t retreated to the ship, which is far less comfortable lodging.”

No answer, at either Sabin’s office or her cabin. The hour it was now had been Tamun’s watch, according to the schedule Jase had given him; but now that ought to have shifted to Dresh, the new man, if nothing else had changed. The higher the captain, the more mainstream the watch that captain took. It was status… and he read Tamun as likely to grab it with both hands.

If anyone was alone in the conference room, it would likely, at this hour, then, be Dresh, who would not be good news.

“Why do they not investigate, nadi?” Jago asked. His security was growing more and more anxious.

“Perhaps because they don’t need to investigate,” he said. “My guess is, they know we’re here. They very likely are armed, they very likely have already gathered security about them.” The second risk was the worse, and he spelled it out for nonhuman minds. “They greatly fear losing all skilled pilots and captains at once. They may have separated. One captain may stay and serve as bait for adverse action, or we may simply walk into a trap consisting solely of security.”

“Then shall we trip it?” Banichi suggested. “The conference room seems likely.”

It was an outrageous action, and yet they were running out of time. They might walk in on an odd-hours meeting of all the captains, for what they knew. Or an ambush.

It was the last door that might possibly lodge someone sympathetic. The very last chance of a peaceful outcome to their effort.

He reached for the button. Jago prevented his hand, drew them both aside from the door opening, and pushed it with a piece of flat plastic.

The door opened. Ogun stood behind the conference table. Four armed security, in eyepieces and backpacks, arrayed two in a corner, held rifles aimed at them. There were likely two apiece in the corners they couldn’t see, those nearest them.

But in for a little, in for the whole pot, he said to himself. He walked in, heedless of the display of threat from the man they’d come to see, and he bowed just the same as he would in Tabini’s court, with far more lethal, less equipped security… bowed as if there were nothing particularly unusual in the leveled rifles. “Captain Ogun,” he said calmly. “Just the man I hoped to find. Call them off, if you please. We’re not here to cause trouble. I hope you’ll be glad to know Ramirez is alive.”

Ogun’s expression, forbidding by habit, varied not at all at that news. Still, he lifted a hand, waved it, and rifles lifted just slightly out of line.

“Where is he?” Ogun asked.

“I don’t know. I know those who know those who may.”

Ogun stared at him in glowering silence for a moment. Banichi and Jago had not come in, and remained a potent threat, one Ogun could not ignore.

“Jase is very much his partisan,” Ogun said. “Some say he shot Ramirez. I don’t happen to believe it. But my priority is the safety of the ship. We all have to be pragmatists. Go back and pretend you didn’t come here. If Ramirez is alive, leave him to crew and leave our matters to us. We don’t need your help.”

“I wish it were still that simple,” Bren said, “but now the aiji-dowager has come up. She’s old, she’s infirm, she has a temper as well as a soft spot, and she’s immensely influential. If she doesn’t like what she sees, all we’ve talked about is undone and all to do over. On the other hand, she’s agreed to meet with you, personally… a considerable concession. I might arrange a personal meeting over drinks, in our section, right now. You’ll be perfectly safe and free to leave. And if Ramirez should by some incredible chance decide to show up sometime during this meeting, you might even have a chance to talk to him, and find out what hemay know. I’ll just about bet you don’tknow what happened. And he does.”

“No games. Go back to your zone. If Ramirez were there, he’d have simply called in from your section.”

“ If heshould attend, I said. You have the power to command security. If we had assurance of his safety, we might arrange for him to be there. If I’m right about your place in all this, you didn’t consent to Tamun’s move against him, but Tamun can’t do away with everyone at once. Yet. The ship and the station are in danger, you are, the whole agreement is. I know it takes a degree of trust to walk back with us and protectyour chief ally on the Council of Captains. You’re wondering if we have the resources to keep you alive so much as an hour, and I’ll assure you your guard can be right outside, armed, no problems. Tamun hasn’t come at us. He won’t, if he’s wise. Come with us. Take the chance.”

Ogun’s expression never altered, not even at those provocations. “I stand with the ship,” Ogun said. “Go back to your zone, Mr. Cameron. I’ll advise you now the meeting with this woman is likely to be moved back, perhaps indefinitely, for her safety, and I’m not about to commit myself to your guard. If she’s all that valuable, which I think she may be, I suggest she stay in her station and keep her head down, because your aiji of all the atevi can’t do a damned thing up here. You have fifteen days until the shuttle’s ready to go down. Safer for you andher to be on it. Safer, too, for you not to be in the corridors until then. We have our internal differences. You’ve come up here without invitation, at an embarrassing time. I understand why you did it. I don’t particularly care. What you have to do now is to leave.”

“By what I’ve seen, any moment we arrived would have precipitated this fight. Any moment Ramirez invited us up here would have precipitated it. Any moment there seemed to be a deal would have done it, because Tamun doesn’t give a damn whether what we offer is good for the ship; he knows the fact we can deliver power to Ramirez is bad for him, bad for his ideas about getting the Mospheirans back, bad for his ideas of running things to his liking. Your ability to do anything about him is eroding. When we were on our way, people in the corridors wished us luck. Yousent us Jase Graham, which I take for a bid to protect him from Tamun, and we thank you for that. But you won’t walk out into the corridors, take a handful of these fine gentlemen with their supposedly functional rifles, and get the crew’s help while they’re still able to give it. I know Jase’s version of this. He reports you as an honest man, and what I see confirms it. Use the help you’ve got at hand.”

“Take my advice,” Ogun said. “Don’t tell me how to manage my responsibilities. Take care of your own, and protect your high official before she gets killed. I won’t ask you a third time. Leave.”

“You’ll let Ramirez die. You’ll go on trying to finesse this, and Tamun’s not playing that game. Ramirez dies, and that’s one ally down.”

“I’m not his keeper. I have the ship’s interests to look out for. Contact me from the planet, when you get there. We’ll talk at that safe distance, when I’m not having to protect your lives. Not otherwise.”

“Very good,” Bren said. “I’ve made the offer. You’ve made your choice. We’ll go back now.”

“I’ll send an escort with you.—Frank, walk them back.”

There was just a little hesitation, a little worry in the glance the man named Frank exchanged with his captain, but there was no disobedience.

His own estimate of Ogun was dead-on right, Bren thought; these men were worried about Ogun; these men protected their captain as the only force likely to keep a very bad choice out of power, and Ogun meanwhile thought there was some danger to them in walking the corridors, a danger that one man walking with them might abate or shame into good behavior.

And by all he’d seen of the crew’s attitude, it wasn’t any danger from the crew in general. That meant Tamun. That meant a very good likelihood of Tamun growing much less secretive about his actions.

What was it Jase had said, that the crew would know things and not mention them or do anything about them until there was just absolutely no choice about it?

“Nadiin-ji,” he said quietly to Banichi and Jago, who had remained somewhat behind him, just outside the door: and yes, there were four more men at the rear of the room, at either side. “Nadiin-ji, these reliable men have man’chi to Ogun, he relies on them, and he sends one man to protect us walking back. Whatever the threat to us in the halls, Ogun believes this one man can avert it by his presence and the threat of Ogun’s displeasure. Ogun-aiji will not join us, apprehends he is himself in danger, but insists his man’chi is only to his ship, so he will not compromise his authority even by visiting us. Our arrival here touched off action against Ramirez. It remains a point of contention.”

It was useful to Banichi and Jago to know the situation as fully as possible, predigested for atevi comprehension: he did what he could to make it understood in shorthand, and he gave a second, reflexive bow of respect to a man of pragmatic combativeness and considerable virtue.

One who wasn’t prepared, however, to cast his people’s fortunes on strangers or turn loose of his power to do something yet on his own terms.

He backed out the door, surer and surer that he had read Ogun right, and that Ogun was equally sure he was himself the next target on Tamun’s list.

The guard who joined them outside also knew the score, and had no wish to leave his captain, not for a minute.

“Ogun is in danger,” Bren said to that man as they walked down that aisle of potted plants. Then he asked the most critical question: “Do you trust Sabin?”

“Can’t say, sir.”

“Well, it’s damned certain Tamun will lead you to disaster if anything happens to Ogun,” Bren said. “Tamun will get you no repairs, no help. He’s about to offend the aiji’s grandmother, which is a bad mistake. But I don’t have to tell you that. You’re Ogun’s man.”

“Can’t discuss that, sir.”

“Cousin of his?”

“Can’t discuss it, sir.”

“From what I see, the crew in general isn’t happy with this situation, are they? Ramirez was already head-to-head fighting Tamun when we came up here. And rather than let Ramirez win that argument and take what he wanted to take from the aiji in Shejidan, Tamun shot him.”

“Can’t say that for sure, either, sir.”

“So now Tamun’s got a small but pretty damned well armed set of helpers, probably cousins, who’ve all gone just one step too far, and probably are just a little dismayed at what’s developed, but they know there isn’t a way back to good grace for them now. They can’t pin it on Jase Graham, their lie is leaking out faster by the hour, everybody knows exactly what they did, and it’s getting hotter and hotter, isn’t it?”

There was no more denial, only a silence, and he hoped Banichi and Jago were following this, at least marginally.

“So the only reason Ogun hasn’t shot Tamun is because you resourceful fellows can’t get to Tamun to blow him full of holes.”

“I honestly couldn’t say that, sir.”

“So what isthe reason against it?”