Текст книги "Invader"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

"Unless someone's stopped it. The lady's office. I laid the receiver down."

"I'll see to it," Banichi said. "Are you all right, Bren-ji?"

"I'm fine. Who wasthat out there? Who's done this?"

"I'm not certain. I don't think I hit anyone."

"Ilisidi —" he said. He hadn't thought, until then, of Ilisidi's apartment below his – of the possibility of Ilisidi's danger – or – he suddenly realized – Ilisidi's involvement.

But that was too crazed. An attack like this, lacking all finesse – Cenedi wasn't like that. Cenedi didn't need to blow walls down.

The Atigeini themselves were a possibility. Damiri's outraged relatives might count doors cheap if they could get a human presence out of their ancestral residence, and get their name clear with the conservatives with whom they had more than slight ties —

Two – very good – very alarming – possibilities. And he could hope it was the Atigeini – he could earnestly hope it was the Atigeini – or even the Guisi. The man who'd fired on him in the legislature, the man Jago had killed – his relatives might have planned a retaliation, except —

"The matter against me," he said to Banichi, "didn't pass the Guild. Did it? Or is there another? These – reckless as they are – -don't feel like amateurs, Banichi."

"No," Banichi said, to which associated question was uncertain. But it covered the matter. And left him with a chill despite the sultry evening.

"Where's Jago? Is she all right?"

"Roof," Banichi said shortly.

Jago was in condition for that kind of gymnastics. Banichi, with his currently game leg, wasn't. And Banichi wasn't pleased, he picked that up. Jago was the junior in the partnership, Jago wasn't the one Banichi would ordinarily have in that position.

But there was in nottoo long a time a shadow against the curtains, and an exchange of some kind with a hand signal – Banichi waved to someone he could see from where he sat – and the affair dragged on in nervous silence, maneuvering or scouting going on, but he didn't want to chatter like a fool into Banichi's ear while Banichi needed his attention for business. What it meant was a power struggle going on in the Bu-javid, a quiet, discreet shifting of position among lords' protective security; a matter of fencing, he guessed, arms clenched on a nervous stomach, as various lords tried to figure out exactly who'd moved, where they'd moved, why they'd moved, and what side they were on^or who was winning in-this unannounced shadow-war.

Ludicrous, on one level. Grimly humorous. And not. Atevi historically didn't engage in vast conflicts, when little ones would do. But important people and ordinary ones could end up quite effectively dead.

Eventually a faint voice spoke from the pocket-com, and whatever the verbal code said, Banichi judged it safe to stand up – hand holding the edge of the door, which Banichi ordinarily didn't need, so the leg was bothering him, considerably; Banichi had taken a heavy jolt himself, in that tackle, and Banichi wasn't in a happy mood.

"Get back," Banichi said to him, no politeness about it, and Bren got up cautiously and moved through the dark room in the direction Banichi pointed him, steps breaking already broken glass where the panes had come in, a shot from outside, Bren judged. There was nothing but empty air out in front of that balcony, until one got a very distant vantage from the ell of the distant roof of the legislative halls: the lower roofs weren't at any useful angle for someone trying to get a shot into the apartment.

The legislative roofs. A very good shot with a very good sight.

Or someone rappeling down from the roof above. Where Jago was. He was worried about her safety up there in what was a very high-above-the-courtyards world of what didn't look like safe tiles. But he had no desire to harass Banichi away from necessary concerns, and he was sure Jago was one of the most urgent.

Banichi shepherded him out into the corridor, out into a darkness farther-reaching than it had been when he'd gone down into the area – more lights were off, and Banichi took him as far as Damiri's dark office before he turned on a very dim penlight, picked up the recording cassette from the phone, and pocketed it.

"This," Banichi said, "was well thought. Thisgives us a chance."

Praise could turn a man's head – and distract him from the other information Banichi gave him by that: that the attack on Hanks might have caught Tabini and the Bu-javid staff totally by surprise.

Which left a broad range of the offended and the ambitious for suspects, if Hanks was the principle target.

But it didn't explain what they'd meant by attacking the third floor, which they couldn't remotely reach except from the roof.

And then carry off a human, granted he was the size of an atevi nine-year-old, over the roofs, with Tabini's guard in pursuit?

Maybe carrying him off really hadn't been the objective.

Maybe dead would have satisfied them quite well.

That thought didn't settle his stomach.

He stayed close to Banichi on the way through the equally darkened sitting room and into the brightly lighted center of the apartment where the servants had gathered in an agitated cluster in the protected, window-less area. There Banichi was all business, giving orders to the servants, answering nothing extraneous – he ordered all passages the servants used shut and locked, ordered no one to move in those passages on any excuse until further notice, and the servants listened in solemn attention.

"Damiri," Saidin said, arriving from the foyer, "says no attack came against them. Are you all right, nand' paidhi?"

"I'm fine. I fear the breakfast room isn't."

"Stay here!" Banichi said, and more quietly, "nand' Saidin."

An attack specifically on the paidhiin. An attack – perhaps on the institution, not the personalities: the institution that made negotiation possible between human and atevi. He found himself increasingly shaken, even protected in the flurry of atevi security precautions and communications between various entities that watched over him. Banichi said they should move to the foyer where they could find Algini, and they went that far, with madam Saidin trailing them.

"Nand' paidhi," Algini began – disheveled clothing seemed to tell the tale, and "I'm quite all right," Bren said, then realized he had sparkles of shattered glass on his trousers and coat and couldn't decide where to dust himself off that people wouldn't track it every which way. Meanwhile Banichi went to the desk inside the foyer security office and called Bu-javid headquarters, at least that was what it sounded like: he heard Banichi report the existence of the tape.

Then Banichi put the tape to play at high volume on their own security office phone system, looking for sounds, names, God knew what. Bren drifted in behind Algini, lost behind a solid wall of tall atevi bent over the machine, and heard only bumps and thumps, a sound that could have been Deana's voice, or furniture being moved. Then a closing door.

Then what sounded like muffled gunfire, he wasn't sure. He hoped not. Banichi began to replay the tape, louder.

Tano wasn't available. Jago was somewhere up on the many-angled roofs. Banichi could look for information, and Saidin could give orders to the servants, but the paidhi had no job and no distraction in the crisis: he finally went out to the foyer, cradling an aching arm, worrying helplessly about Tano and Jago and, disturbed, he was forced to admit it, at the memory of Deana's alarm. Banichi and Algini had made another phone call, in the security station, and straying near the door, he overheard with a sinking heart that not one but two of Tabini's agents were dead.

Killed by someone with skill enough to go against the level of Guild members Tabini employed; and not just one, but two of them. No contract was out, Banichi had said so. It surely wasn't amateurs, this time. It wasn't legal, either. That meant Guild-level assassins on private business – which happened, he knew that; but it didn't make the Guild happy.

And whatever Banichi had found, rapid-scanning the audio tape, whatever information Algini was still searching for in his continued phone-calling, Banichi started up a converse now with various posts via the pocket-com and paced the foyer and the security station alike with a predatory glower, wantingto be more directly involved, and clearly frustrated in what other searchers had found or hadn't found.

"Nadi," Banichi said at one point, into the com, "don't tell me. Doit!"

Someone had just caught the edge of Banichi's exasperation; and the paidhi judged it a good time to stand very quietly against the wall of the foyer and not be in Banichi's way or Algini's, the both of them hampered by injuries and in no pleasant reception of what they were hearing from elsewhere in the Bu-javid.

"There's no sign of Hanks-paidhi," Banichi finally said with a sharp glance in his direction. "This is difficult to achieve in the quarantine of the lower courts."

"Someone who knows the area?" Bren asked. "Inside? Servants' passages?"

"Few such passages, none to that area. Knowledge of the area, yes, and, one suspects, the silence of the victim."

"Dead?"

"Why remove a body?"

"She doesn't weigh much. They could tuck her up in a box, a serving carrier —"

"A possibility. One we're investigating. But so far no one noticed. And that —"

Came a signal at the door of someone wanting entry, and Algini, who had just that instant been on the pocket-com, ordered the door opened, which said, apparently reliably enough for Banichi, that he knew who was there.

Naidiri was wanting entry, Tabini's security – withTabini himself, and Damiri and an accompanying crowd of uniformed security personnel and Bu-javid police.

"Bren-ji," Tabini said, as the visitation flooded into the foyer.

Saidin was quick to welcome Damiri-daja – Tabini was quick to disperse his staff and the police to various points of the foyer, the security office, the apartment and the servant corridors.

Meanwhile Tabini laid a hand on Bren's shoulder, fortunately not the one that ached like very hell.

"You're safe, nadi? One hears there was a window shot through."

"Doors, aiji-ma." He didn't know why now, in all that had gone on, he should suddenly have the wobbles back in his knees or the flutter back in his stomach. He still had the gun in his pocket, and wished, with Tabini's security suddenly everywhere around him, that he had put it back where he'd gotten it, in his bedroom drawer. Tabini knew he had it – or on principle, Tabini knew – but his security might not; and even Tabini might not explain it to the hasdrawad. "I fear there's serious damage to the premises. The breakfast room. I don't know how bad. I'm very sorry. I haven't seen it with the lights on."

"One can hardly hold you responsible," Tabini said.

Not responsible and not entirely useful in the investigation. Did you see anything and did you hear anything? were the obvious questions from Naidiri, and, No, was his lame answer, Nothing except a few words before what's on the tape from the telephone, which Banichi was able with some satisfaction to produce; and graciously attributed its existence to the paidhi's quick Slinking.

He quoted Deana's outcry, gave his interpretation of it – and his memory of where Deana would have been standing in that apartment if the furniture was where he'd last seen it.

Then ensued another attempt to hear the background noise – atevi hearing being quite acute, they seemed to pick up something of significance or interest, but they were unclear what. He heard nothing at all, and there wasn't agreement, except to turn the tape over immediately by junior officer courier for Bu-javid security technicians to refine.

Meanwhile the paidhi found it prudent to stay out of the argument of trained security personnel and out of the general traffic: he leaned against the wall, amongst the flowers that had come in earlier that evening, wishing to get out of his glass-impregnated clothing, wishing for a chair, and acutely wishing Banichi had been a little more gentle in falling on him, though he by no means preferred the alternative. He was still trying to think how he could manufacture an excuse to return to his room to rid himself of the incriminating gun, in itself a fracture of Treaty law, a cause of considerable diplomatic flap if even some well-meaning someone happened to notice the weight in his pocket.

And what could he plead then? Tabini gave it to me, when Tabini's position and relation to humans was already being questioned by atevi conservatives bythis very attack?

Someone else would have to take the blame, and that someone would clearly be Banichi, whose gun it actually was, thanks to a trade they'd made before Malguri, and who was loyal enough to Tabini to take whatever consequences the law or the hasdrawad or Tabini's enemies demanded. If he asked to go back to his room even to change clothes he foresaw some security person going with him for fear of assassins lurking in the shadows, and if not that, at least a handful of servants and maybe Saidin, which had the same result, so it seemed the better part of discretion to stay where he was, to look occasionally interested to excuse his presence underfoot, and to try to remain otherwise as invisible as possible, with the telltale pocket turned to the nearest large vase.

Tabini and Banichi and his senior security began to talk about probable motives: thatwas worth the listening. He strained through the occasional noise from other debates and questionings of the servants to gather where various potential suspects in the Bu-javid had been associating and where certain loyalties were reckoned to lie; who might be exonerated, absolutely, and who might have been tacitly or financially in on the proposal against the paidhi in the Guild, the motion that had failed the vote – a matter in which Banichi and Naidiri knew the specific names and even Tabini, evidently, did not, nor inquire – but there were generalities passed that involved the obvious names, the heads of the conservative clans, not, one noted, studying the floor tiles, the Atigeini, but it wasn't a name to raise with Damiri in the vicinity.

Then notification via pocket-com came in to Tabini and his security chief about the progress of the search through the lower court, where Hanks had disappeared – nothing encouraging so far, and the paidhi, feeling wobblier and wobblier, could, finally, only ask himself whether they were right in suspecting something against the established order and whether it was not instead the paidhiin's doings, placing the atevi universe-concept under attack.

Grigiji's mathematics.

His visit to the observatory.

Ilisidi hadn't read the paper and then gotten angry: Ilisidi had grown colder and colder, once that paper landed on her table and its implications landed in the delicate equation of atevi politics.

Which might mean – another perusal of the floor tiles, which had brown squares and brass inclusions in a floral pattern – the paidhi had stuck his good intentions into atevi affairs and atevi debates Ilisidi was already familiar with, come back with a theory that wasn't as new as he thought, or that was somehow controversial in ways a human didn't easily twig to.

Certainly possible when the math came far too esoteric for the paidhi to unravel, when the search after ultimate rationality that atevi had made over thousands of years was bearing atevi results and things proposed to them were going to break down very, very basic beliefs such as – God knew – might set off psychological, political, sociological earthquakes.

The paidhi could only ask himself in that light how much else could come undone today, and how much of it he might have caused, and what subtleties he should have long since guessed. All well-meaning, he'd brought that theory of Grigiji's to the city, he'd let it loose in blind hope that atevi argument might make sense to atevi, and maybe not known enough – as no human was able to know – what other bombshells might lie buried in the document. Hanks had tossed FTL into the dialogue and he'd called her foolish. He'dgone into that meeting to Ilisidi in blind faith in her numerical agnosticism, never once considering that Ilisidi herself might hold some well-concealed articles of faith Grigiji could challenge.

He kept playing and replaying the breakfast meeting in his mind, how strange it had seemed to him then that Ilisidi hadn't looked at the papers, that she hadn't deigned to take them – I

Dammit, he didn't yet understand Ilisidi's reaction, except to conclude that she disapproved what he was doing, or distrusted what he was doing – or disapproved unread what he had brought her. He didn't think Ilisidi herself would flinch from intellectual challenge, but she would take offense if she thought he was being a gullible fool or if his actions indicated he took her for one.

All of which still left Ilisidi among the suspects. He hadn't heard Tabini bring up the name, but he suspected she was on Tabini's short list. And failing Ilisidi – I

"Show me," Damiri said, "show me where these fools attempted, Saidi-ji. I want to see. I'm tired of waiting. We've chased them, we're surely clear by now."

"Nandi," Naidiri began to say.

"I am notgoing to cower in the foyer, naiin-ji. This is Atigeini territory, this is myhouse, and myorders, fact; this is mywindow that was broken, fact; and my security and the paidhi's security has things in hand, fact. – So may we quit discussing theory in my house, please, and have a look at factbefore we loose the Guild?"

"May we discuss factbefore we rush into the line of fire?" Tabini retorted. "We have too many willing suspects, not all of whom are outside this house."

"I suspectnothing! Look to your own relatives!"

"My relatives? Myrelatives? Give me an heir, woman, and we'll discuss our relatives. Meanwhile kindly don't walk in front of windows."

"Heir, heir, heir, of course the heir! Any moment, nai-ji, perhaps tonight, nai-ji, and in the meantime —"

"In the meantime, take orderslike a lady, nai-ji, and make less of a target, fortunate gods, woman!"

At a certain point one decidedly found the floor tiles preoccupying and, as the paidhi reflected that, while it was an honor to be treated as part of the household, along with security and the servants, he had much rather —

"Fortunate gods, inform me why I chose an Atigeini!"

"Intelligence. Resourcefulness. Our distinguished history. My breakfast room, nai-ji, if you please, with my servants, with your security if you've such doubts of my relatives."

"Gods least favorable, let's see your damn doors," Tabini muttered, and waved a gesture toward the recesses of the apartment. "Naidiri! Have a care to the windows, the lot of you. Damn!"

Forthwith there began an expedition, Saidin in the lead, along with Algini, a crowd of security and police, even certain of the servants, to let Damiri assess the damage to the doors and the breakfast room. The paidhi found nothing quite graceful to do but tag f | along as, at least, a witness to the destruction. He hoped for a chance along the way past his bedroom to duck in and put the gun away; but there was security before and behind, and no lingering invited. Someone at least had closed the inner shutters in the study as they passed, and the servants who lined the way were all very quiet, very subdued and worried, bowing like grass in the storm of Damiri's passage and doubtless staring at their backs after they'd gone.

Lights were on throughout the apartment, now; they passed scattered police, scattered security guards, especially in the area of the breakfast room.

And the damage there proved appallingly worse than Bren had feared: not only shattered glass from the doors, but shattered wall tiles where the shots had raked the walls and splintered antique porcelain reliefs that one only hoped restorers could repair. He felt a physical shock, realizing the small size of the fragments where porcelain had met high-powered bullets – some of it might be the dust on his clothing, and he asked himself if they could possibly recover enough chips of porcelain to reassemble or recreate the bas relief of flowers and vines —

"Gods damnthem!" Damiri said.

Saidin – Saidin looked absolutely devastated.

"Damiri-daja," Bren felt it incumbent on him to say, perhaps foolishly, seeing the thunderous frown on Damiri's face. "Nand' Saidin – I am inexpressibly sorry. I wish – I wish – if I was the target – I'd stood somewhere far less delicate."

Damiri whirled on him so suddenly he feared she meant to hit him. But all the violence in her scowl and the lock of her arms, one in the other, scarcely reached her voice. "Nand' paidhi," she said, "this affront to my house will have an answer. This attack on my guest and my staff will have a severe answer. This willful destruction will have blood. There are those who will carry that answer with or withoutthe Guild, with or withoutother Atigeini approval."

"'Miri-ji," Tabini said reprovingly.

"Don't caution me! This is intolerable! Our human guest can express his shock – so wherein can civilized atevi accept such goings-on? I do not, I donot, aiji-ma! Fire at random into the premises? Shoot the servants wholesale along with the target? Naidiri, Sagimi, is this Guild work or is it not?"

"It is not," a man said, and Naidiri echoed, "Not possibly."

Certainly not Cenedi, Bren thought, then, finally finding a landing place for the doubt that had been buzzing around his brain. Not Cenedi. Not any of the men who worked for Ilisidi. He wanted desperately to believe that that was the truth, and on that thought, he wanted to know for certain that Ilisidi was safe.

Not to mention Jago and Tano and his own household.

He listened to the arrangements for restorationists to come in to assess the damage, without, Damiri said, disturbance to the paidhi.

" Iwill not," Damiri declared, still hot, "let this insult happen and not retaliate. They have meto deal with, if they trust in your forbearance, nai-ji. They hope to provoke my uncle. They hope to send a signal. Well, they've certainly sent one." She bent and picked up a shattered flower, a three-petaled lily. "Look, lookat this destruction. I want my uncle to see this, aiji-ma. I want the whole world to see it, I want it sent out to the news services, along with the advisement the paidhi is quite well and undisturbed by this foolishness. He can sleep in my own bedroom and have breakfast with my staff and with me in this breakfast room. I tell you I will notbe intimidated."

"No, no, no, 'Miri-ji," Tabini said softly. "I'd rather far less publicity until we find them and eliminate this problem. Thenuse the television, yes, and all the pictures. On the other hand – ifyou wish to send the image of this handiwork to your uncle —"

Damiri cast Tabini a silent, sidelong look.

"Send him a piece of the porcelain," Tabini said. "The lily… would do quite well. One believes possibly someone exceeded orders. On the other hand, perhaps they wished to signal their contempt of Atigeini claims to command by using this as a diversion."

There was a positively fierce enjoyment in Damiri's eyes. "Your plane."

"At your disposal. But I want it back by morning. And it doesn'trefuel there. – Bren-ji, you're quite safe, one assures you, in whatever bedroom you choose tonight. Don't let 'Miri-daja bully you. It's a damn stiff mattress."

One could well blush. "Tabini-ma." The ache in the shoulder made his teeth hurt, he had never yet found the chance to be rid of the gun, and he tried consistently to keep that side and that pocket away from atevi eyes. Especially those of the Bu-javid police. "I only, earnestly, regret that I attracted such difficulty to this house, and I'm quite content with my bedroom."

"The paidhi is very gracious," Damiri said, and offered her hand, expecting his: he gave it, perforce, compelled to look up to a straightforwardly curious stare, a very solid handclasp. "Scandal, scandal, scandal. I think it's a very nice, a very honest face, myself, and my aunt can swallow her salacious and doubtless entirely envious suspicions. – You're so exquisitely polite, nand' paidhi."

"I – hope to be, daja-ma."

"I may never get my staff back. They're quite besotted."

"I – hope I've done nothing improper, daja-ma."

"Bren-paidhi. They dreamnightly of you doing something improper. I've heard the reports."

"Daja-ma —"

Tabini rescued his arm and his hand and walked him a little distance away. "Atigeini internal politics be damned, the lily porcelains are notthe question, Hanks-paidhi is. The attack on your residence might have been quite serious, but I doubt they expected to succeed: it was likely intended as a diversion from the real objective, and my prospective wife's relatives will nottake this lightly, not the attack, certainly not the collateral damage, least of all the slight of such damage being a mere diversion, no matter how they've regarded your tenancy here on other principles. Have you any personal suspects in the kidnaping of Hanks-paidhi, Bren-ji?"

"I – no, aiji-ma, discounting that it was anyone of the Guild, no, all my suspects vanish. Except – someone who wanted revenge. Or someone who —" the thought nudged its way to the center of his apprehensions "– who wanted both: her in their hands and me dead – leaving no paidhi between you and Mospheira at this juncture. For whatever reason."

"If they could achieve that. Which they surely don't expect."

"I would not say," Damiri interjected, having overtaken them, "that this attempt evidences great intellect. Desperation. But not great intellect."

"Or carelessness of Atigeini disposition."

"Stupidity," Damiri said. "Aiji-ma."

"The fact that one doesn't care what your uncle thinks is not necessarily evidence of stupidity. – Daja-ji."

"The fact Iregard the lilies as myholding and the artist however dead as in my man'chishould have them sleep less at night. If my uncle demurs, I demand satisfaction!"

"One will have it, lily-daja, but the paidhi's safety is in my own, and you will notinitiate actions that jeopardize Bren orthat disagreeable woman whose life I foolishly agreed to protect."

"One has no wish to jeopardize Bren in any way." Damiri laid a hand on Bren's sore shoulder: a very gentle hand, of which he was glad. "Have I ever shown such an inclination?"

What did one do? Flinch from under the aiji's lady's hand? One stood still, aware of the double entendre, and said, solemnly, "By no means, nai-ma."

"Aiji-ma." It was Algini in the doorway, bidding for Tabini's attention, with: "The ship is asking for Bren-paidhi. Forgive the intrusion."

The mind – wasn't ready for one more extraneity, not for Mosphei', Mospheiran politics, or foreign negotiations. The mind was on shattered porcelain, Damiri's not-entirely joking threats, and the intricacies of atevi association: that, and Ilisidi, and the Guisi, and politics 11 and the disappearance of Hanks-paidhi, which, outside its atevi impact, was going to play very badly in certain Mospheiran circles – let alone aboard a ship contemplating sending personnel down to them.

The ship mustn't find out. The associations within the Association had already absorbed all the strain the bonds of man'chiwould bear. Tabini could notbear any reneging on the landing, no matter the reason for caution.

"If I could guess," Algini said, as he headed for the doorway, "it's a young man, nadi-ma."

"Jase," he said.

"The landing," Tabini said, tagging him close. "Possibly."

"Very possibly," he said, on his double train of thought, trying to gather up the lost threads of the Jase Graham affair: like why the ship hadn't called the mainland for two days, and what Mospheira had been trying to argue with the ship, latest, in the meantime, and what he had to say as a contingency to the ship trying to back out for reasons that might have nothing whatsoever to do with assassination attempts.

At least one answer to matters held in suspension – or news that another deal was collapsing – was waiting for him on the phone.

CHAPTER 19

" Hello ?" Jase's voice was cheerful, perhaps, Bren thought, to put the best face on a change of mind. " Bren? Is that you?"

He refused to be seduced. But answered the tone. "It better be, since nobody else here can talk to you. How are things up there?"

"Doing fine, actually. How are things below?"

"Oh, fine." He was taking the call in Damiri's office, standing, because otherwise the crowd overwhelmed him: Tabini, Damiri, Banichi, Naidiri, Saidin and two of Naidiri's aides. Which fairly well accounted for the wall space and all the standing room except the small area by the desk that he maintained, holding the phone. "Just kind of waiting for your call."

" Well, sorry about that. Things just proceeded slower than I thought. I hope I didn't worry anybody, but just getting through the notes you sent up and talking to the captains– meetings, chain-reaction meetings, I suppose it's no different where you are."

"No, no, unfortunately not. One of those things that seems to go with air-breathing biology. – So how's the process running?" He didn't wantto sound short of breath, he tried to keep his voice cheerful and light, and all of a sudden his hands were shaking so he feared he couldn't keep the tremor out of his voice, either. "Sorry. A little out of breath. Had a bit of rush to get here down the hall. Are we agreeing or disagreeing?"

"Agreeing, actually, pretty well. We've picked Taiben for a landing. What's your assessment?"

He cast a look across at Tabini before it dawned on his shock-numbed brain that Tabini didn't understand. "Taiben," he echoed, and looked in vain for a reaction. "It's convenient, easy to get to and from. Has a jet-port, wide, wide flat with no trees, no likely complications, at least." He got a sign from Tabini, finally, that told him that Tabini understood the choice and accepted it. "Fine with us."

" I've been practicing. How'sDai ghiyi-ma, aigi'ta amath-aiji, an Jase Graham?"