Текст книги "Inheritor"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

And a live reception in a premise of the Bu-javid where cameras had never been, with a guest list that included Tabini andhis favored lady, who was contesting Uncle for supremacy in the Atageini clan?

Machimi plays couldn’t possibly touch it.

All of a sudden hisstomach knotted up in panic.

“Nadi,” Banichi said, briskly coming from the same direction as the camera crew. “It’s all on schedule. The aiji’s party is arriving in short order. Entry will be by precedence andtenancy. They just settled it: simultaneouslylord Tatiseigi will arrive at this door and the aiji and Damiri-daja will arrive from next door.”

The mind refused to grasp what convolutions of protocol and argument thatstatement had settled.

“I’m going to forget,” Jase muttered under his breath. “I’m going to forget his name. I’m going to forget all the forms.”

“You won’t,” Bren said. “You’ll be brilliant. Just, if I have to go off with someone, stay with your security: Dureni will be with you– he’lldo the talking.”

Banichi was off down the hall talking to Saidin, who was keeping a stern eye on the camera crew and the gilt woodwork. Junior security was down there standing by with grim expressions. Dureni and his partner Ninicho had come from the security station, junior, very earnest, and they stood by, attaching themselves directly to the paidhiin at a time when Banichi and Jago were apt to have their hands full or be distracted to a critical duty at any given moment.

Jase was saying to himself, “ Hamatha ta resa Tatiseigi-dathasa. Hamatha ta resa Tatiseigi-dathasa. Hamatha ta resa Tatiseigi-dathasa.”

Madam Saidin was talking furiously with the cook. One of the maids ran– ran, to the rear hall. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone run in the household.

The steel security barrier was gone. They’d taken that out while he was getting dressed for the occasion and he still hadn’t seen the breakfast room, though he’d heard relief that the woodwork and the plaster was intact. Carts were coming from the kitchen, he heard them rattling. There was, for which he was infinitely grateful, no formal dinner, just a reception, at which guests, too many to seat, were going to be straying back and forth between the formal dining room and the breakfast room.

No one was stated to be a security risk except the lord who owned the apartment.

The rattle came closer. It and the maid must have met and dodged. There was a momentary pause: then a continued rattle.

Something evidently wasn’t on schedule.

Jago passed them, coming fromthe breakfast room and from a brisk pause for a word with Banichi. She was resplendent in a black brocade coat with silver edgings. He’d never seen her in formal dress. She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

“They’re coming,” Jago said to them, and delayed for one more word with a servant. “—To the foyer, nadiin-ji, please!”

“Calmly,” Bren said, and with Jase, walked to the foyer, which smelled of the banks of springtime flowers, and sparkled with crystal and gold and silver. Mirrors multiplied the bouquets, and showed a pair of pale, formally dressed humans. Saidin overtook them, and so did Jago, and they made a small receiving line.

The door opened. Tabini and Damiri were there, Tabini in a brilliant red evening-coat; Damiri in Atageini pale green and pink, both escorting an elderly gentleman with an inbuilt scowl and a dark green coat with a pale green collar. Atageini green, like Damiri’s.

Saidin bowed, Jago bowed, they bowed to the lordly arrivals. Tabini wore his cast-iron smile, Damiri had hers stitched in place, and Tatiseigi—Bren had no doubt of the gentleman’s identity—came forward with jutting jaw, folded hands behind him, and looked down at them with unconcealed belligerence as a black and red and dark green wall of atevi security unfolded into the foyer, transforming the place from bright floral pastels to a metal-studded limiting darkness.

“Lord Tatiseigi,” Bren said, as he had prepared to say, “thank you for your”—he had meant to say gracious, and gravely edited it out—“presence on this occasion.”

Tatiseigi said, “nand’ paidhi,” in glacial tones, and turned an eye to Jase, who said with an absolutely impeccable bow, “Felicitous greetings to your lordship.”

Tatiseigi stood and stared. Jase stood his ground, bowed his head a second time, briefly, a trick of courtesy he had—thank God—correctly, but verging on impudence, recalled.

Miming him, dammit, Bren thought. It put the onus of courtesy on Tatiseigi.

“Nadi,” Tatiseigi said. Not the rank: Nand’ paidhi. Not the respectful: Nand’ Jase. But the more familiar and in this case slightly supercilious nadi, as acknowledgement and finality on the matter.

And looked at Tabini and Damiri. “I’ll see the room.”

Tabini had an eyebrow that twitched occasionally. It never boded well. “That way,” Tabini said with a negligent wave of his hand toward the hall, as if the lord of the Atageini didn’t know the way under his own roof.

“Tati-ji,” Damiri said, snagged the old man by the arm and whisked him off down the hall.

Tabini cast a look at them, drew a deep breath, and before there could be courtesies, followed as if he were going into combat.

Bren found himself with an intaken breath and a rise of temper he hadn’t felt since he’d last dealt with the Mospheiran phone network. And he was still politely expressionless as he said to Jase, “You took a chance, Jase.”

“What was I supposed to do?” There was a touch of panic in the half-voice. “He was staring at me!”

“Don’t flinch. Don’t stare back. You did the right thing. Just don’t risk it again with his lordship. Wait for help.”

“From who?”

“Whom.”

“Dammit, whom?”

He had his own quirk of an eyebrow. He gave it to Jase, who shut up, shut down, and lowered his voice.

Just as the door let in the aiji-dowager.

And he couldn’t– couldn’tresist Tabini’s grandmother. Ilisidi, diminutive and wrinkled with years, with her lean, graying chief of security, Cenedi, beside her, cast an eye about, leaned her stick on the polished stone of the floor, and snapped, in the face of noreceiving line but him, Jase, Jago, and Saidin, “Well, well, if my grandson won’t stay to meet me, at least the paidhiin have manners. Good evening.”

“Nand’ dowager.” Saidin bowed, Jago bowed, he bowed. And looked up with no need to mask his delight to see the old woman.

“Nand’ dowager,” Jase said. “I’m honored.”

“He’s improved,” Ilisidi said with a nod at Jase. “Hair’s grown. You can understand him.”

“Yes, nand’ dowager.”

“So where’s my damn grandson? Here to meet me? No? Lets his grandmother wander about without directions? Where are these fabled porcelains?”

“Nand’ dowager, we would most willingly show you the restorations.”

“Manners. Manners. You should teach my grandson. Andhis neighbor. Weshould have stayed at Taiben, for all the courtesy we have here.”

Cenedi never cracked a smile. But, veteran of many, many such maneuvers, Cenedi caught Jago’s eye and stayed, along with the rest of the abandoned security who had gone into the security station to talk, as Saidin and Jago stayed to greet the rest of the guests.

Ilisidi was bent on viewing the interior of the apartments. Bren offered his arm, and Jase walked on the other side, as the aiji-dowager went.

“I haven’t been here in ages,” Ilisidi said. “Gods felicitous, the old man hasn’t moved a stick of furniture in twenty years, has he?”

“I’m only a recent guest, aiji-ji.”

“Tatiseigi has no imagination. Noimagination. I’d have thought young Damiri would at least be rid of that damn vase.” This, with a wave of her cane narrowly missing the vase in question. A servant flinched. “The old woman hated that thing. Tatiseigi’s motherhated it. But no, they shoot the lilies, never the damn vase. Next time someone tries to shoot you, Bren-ji, promise me, havethat vase in the room.”

“One will remember, aiji-ma.”

They reached the back halls and the formerly walled-off doorway that let into the brightly lit breakfast room, where lordly guests and armed security, notably Banichi and Algini, in formal knee-length coats, stood before buffet tables laden with fantastical food, Cook’s supreme and sleepless effort since yesterday’s notification of Uncle’s chosen menu.

There wouldbe a kitchen tour, Bren was quite sure.

“ Thereyou are!” Ilisidi said in the felicitous three mode. It was Tabini, Damiri, andTatiseigi she headed for; and it was time for the paidhiin to beat a judicious retreat from potential in-law negotiations.

“Is there going to be trouble?” Jase asked as they ducked out and back toward the foyer.

“Only if they get in ’Sidi-ji’s way,” Bren said, in high spirits for the first time in two days. “And don’t call her that! I don’t. Certainly not here.”

Jase had met her before. And knew, at least, the aiji-dowager’s abrupt manner; but lasttime he hadn’t been able to understand a word except Felicitous greetingsand My name is Jason. Don’t shoot.

They reached the foyer again, and enjoyed a few moments alone with Cenedi, Jago, Saidin, and the flowers, before another party turned up at the door, the lord of Berigai and his entourage, early, while Bren was sure the company in the breakfast room was still engaged in preliminary negotiation and had hardly gotten to the general walking tour the staff expected.

But he knew that Berigai, in whose province Grigiji the astronomer emeritus lived and taught, was well-disposed to him; and by extension, to Jase or whomever the paidhi wished to introduce him to—the Grigiji affair having brought good repute to the observatory and prosperity to the region. It was a very auspicious start to the party which would begin in the formal dining room with a few tidbits and a glass of spirits until it had gathered numbers.

And until the business in the family was settled.

More guests showed up. Jase was bright-eyed, and stayed with hot tea—they both did, as some of the guests also chose to do. There was nothing on the menu, Cook had promised them, except any dish with the red or the purple vegetable, that was harmful to humans. There were a couple of noble guests clearly in the Tatiseigi camp who spent a great deal of time in the corner looking toward them, and discussing matters in private behind the floral arrangement.

Then another arrival, who created some movement among the quiet security presence, and brought Cenedi to consult with Tano, quietly, just outside the dining room. Another lord walked in, unescorted.

Algini slipped to Bren’s side.

“Nand’ paidhi, Banichi wishes you to know that lord Badissuni is in the company this evening.”

Badissuni, Bren thought, looking at the thin, grim-faced lord who broke into a pasted smile as a servant offered him a drink, then coasted up to the lords and ladies around the dining table. Conversation there staggered, took note, and lurched forward valiantly.

Algini had gone, doubtless on some business known only to security. The business in the Marid had just walked in, had a drink, and smiled its way around the table with the occasional flat, wary glance atevi gave to the novelty of humans.

“What’s the trouble-in-the-house?” Jase asked in a low voice, and this time the noun was entirely appropriate.

“Badissuni, from the peninsula. Messenger to Tabini. Don’tget involved with him.” The doorway electronics, he was sure, contained a metal detector of some kind. His mind was busy adding up Badissuni as a guest while the relatives of the man Badissuni was serving (and wished to kill: dead before autumn, Banichi had said) were guesting in the house of the lady Direiso, who was Tatiseigi’s ally last year when Tatiseigi was plotting against Tabini—who was back on the kitchen tour with Tatiseigi and Damiri looking for contraband in the vegetable bins, God save them.

Badissuni smiled at everyone but him and Jase: the smile was still there, but it went rigid and unpleasant when his gaze fell on either of them, and Bren avoided staring back. Jase was staring—and he moved between Jase and the view of trouble.

“Don’t look at him, nadi. You invite trouble.”

“He doesn’t like us here.”

“No,” Bren said. “He doesn’t like us anywhere.”

Jago appeared from the doorway and definitely kept a watch on the situation. Cenedi had gone back to keep an eye on the dowager and no doubt to pass a message, but Jago tracked them, and eased up next to him.

“That is Badissuni, Bren-ji. Don’t come close to him.”

“Is he armed, nadi?”

“No one brings weapons past the door save the three authorized security present: the aiji’s, the aiji-dowager’s, and lord Tatiseigi’s, one assures you, nadi.”

Which counted his own among the aiji’s and Saidin technically among Tatiseigi’s, to be sure.

“Danger?” Jase asked.

“Be careful, nadi,” Jago said to him. “Only be careful. He is an invited guest.”

“Who invited him, nadi?” Bren asked.

“The aiji,” Jago said—Jago who’d wished for the contract on that lordling’s life, and who’d already occupied a rooftop vantage in the Hagrani estate. Jago was, he was sure, armed; and that coat surely concealed body armor. “Don’t stand near him, nadiin-ji.”

“Nadiin.” Madam Saidin appeared and spoke in a clear voice. “The host suggests the party adjourn to the breakfast room.”

They lingered with Jago, letting the lords and ladies exit, Badissuni among them. The party left a table of serving platters mostly down to crumbs by now, and a clutter of abandoned glasses which the servants hastened to gather up on trays.

“What’s happening?” Jase asked.

“Just be calm,” Bren said, and they drifted in the wake of the others toward the restored rooms, which rapidly filled shoulder to shoulder with guests admiring the lilies, praising the workmanship, gossiping about the event last year which had necessitated the repairs. There was applause, and lights glared as cameras pretended to be unobtrusive, creating the effect of sunlight across the lilies and the blinded guests. Security was tense in that moment, and Naidiri himself, chief of Tabini’s security, set himself in their path and moved the traveling cameras definitively out of the room.

The camera lights went out. Music began, a simple duet of pipes played by two of the servants, who were quite good at it. Talk buzzed above the music and grew animated.

The two humans found refuge against the restored frieze and simply listened to the conversation, as Tatiseigi and two other provincial lords discussed the menu, and Tatiseigi looked at least marginally cheerful, except the looks he threw Badissuni.

“Doing all right?” Bren asked.

“I think,” Jase said. He looked tired, and it wastiring to keep up with a high-speed translation problem. Jase had gone into it on the edge of his nerves.

“So tell me,” Ilisidi said, coasting up, one of the few atevi present not too much taller than a human, “how do you find life on Earth? Different than the ship, nand’ paidhi?”

Jase cast him a desperate look.

“Answer,” Bren said. “nand’ dowager, I did tell him be careful with his language.”

“Different,” Jase said. “Thank you, nand’ dowager.”

“Vastly improved,” Ilsidi said, leaning on her stick, creating a small space around them by her presence. “The last time I saw you, you and those two human women were boarding a plane for Shejidan, and they were bound for the island. How arethey faring, nand’ paidhi?”

“I hear from my companion from the ship, nand’ dowager. She fares well, thank you.”

“And nand’ Hanks?”

Nand’ Hanks, hell. Ilisidi neverused honorifics for Deana Hanks. Bren’s heart rate kicked up a notch and weariness with the noise went sailing on a sea of adrenaline.

“I don’t hear from nand’ Hanks, nand’ dowager.”

“Does your companion?”

“Aiji-ma.” Bren took a deep breath. “How do you find the lilies?”

Ilisidi broke into a grin. “I was wondering how to get you off to yourself, Bren-ji.” She snagged his arm and drew him aside, and he could only go, trusting Jase to the security watching both of them.

“Neighbors will talk, aiji-ma.”

“Become a scandal with me.” She leaned on his arm and directed their steps toward the windows. “Ah, the city air. You should come back to Malguri.”

“I wish that I could, aiji-ma.”

“I think, if the schedule permits it, I shall invite the astronomer emeritus for a weekend at midsummer. Thatshould prove interesting, don’t you think?”

“The last I saw they were shooting at strangers, aiji-ma.”

“They neednew ideas. I would delight to have you at the gathering, nadi. Do consider it. Malguri in summer. Boating on the lake.—You should,” the dowager added, with a wicked grin, “bring this nice young man. He has possibilities.”

“Should I assist a rival to attain your interest, aiji-ma? I am devastated.”

“Oh, but one hears that youhave favored a certain member of your own household, nand’ paidhi. Should I not take offense?”

He was appalled. Did she mean Barb, perhaps, or—God help him—Jago?

Dangerous territory. He was nevercertain whether Ilisidi’s romantic fantasies were a joke, or just a hazardous degree serious.

“Aiji-ma. No one could possibly rival you. I’ve so missed our breakfasts together.”

Ilisidi laughed and squeezed his arm. “Flatterer. I shall steal you away alone to Malguri in a lightning raid and simply not return you to my unappreciative grandson at all.” Curtains billowed around them, and Ilisidi’s face went grave. “So would Mospheira lock you away. Bewarethat woman.”

“Hanks?”

“Hanks!” It had as well be an oath. “I warn you, beware her.”

“1 do. I do very much.—May I dare a question, aiji-ma? Should I also beware the lord of the Atageini?”

“Presumptuous, Bren-ji.”

“I am very aware, aiji-ma. But I have never known you to lie to me.”

“I’ve loaded your arms with lies, nadi! When in our dealings have there not been lies?”

“When I have relied on you for advice, aiji-ma. When I have truly cast myself on the truth inside your mazes you have neverleft me lost, aiji-ma.”

“Oh, you thief of a woman’s better sense! Flatterer, I say!”

“Wise woman, I say, aiji-ma, and cast myself utterly on your tolerance. Should I beware the lord of the Atageini?”

“Beware Direiso. As hemust. As that scared fool Badissuni must.”

“I entirely understand that.”

“Wise man. Would that Tatiseigidid.”

He almost threw into the mix a similar and equally urgent question about lord Geigi’s current relations with Direiso, and with Tatiseigi, and instantly thought better of it. Geigi had ridden beside Ilisidi to the rescue, after Ilisidi had repeatedly and forcefully called Geigi a fool. He believed that in her riddling reply about Tatiseigi needing to beware of Direiso, Ilisidi had just told him the unriddling truth on three points: that something was going on, that Tatiseigi was still uncertain in his man’chi, that Direiso was very much a problem.

But regarding the matter of Geigi’s relation to Ilisidi, Geigi might be a fish best left below the surface of that political water, where he could swim and conduct his affairs unseen.

It was Direiso on whose affairs Ilisidi might have information she was willing to share with him. In specific, she had signaled she would talk about Hanks, but he prepared a question, a simple, But what ofDireiso and Tatiseigi—skirting around the fact of the departed Saigimi’s wife’s relationship to Geigi andto Direiso.

Badissuni and Tatiseigi were at the moment in converse, the topic of which seemed grim and urgent.

“Nand’ paidhi,” a servant came to him to say, and placed a note in his hand.

A male human on the phone, it said. Something wrong with his mother, was all he could think; and his face might have gone a shade paler. He might have looked as blank and stunned as he felt for a moment, blindsided out of a totally different universe.

14

Difficulty?” Ilisidi said to him.

“Forgive me. It’s a phone call from Mospheira. It can wait.” He was watching Badissuni and Tatiseigi as they spoke briefly, then moved apart, Tatiseigi instantly surrounded by the curious and less restrained, and people gazing in speculative curiosity at Badissuni, whom—God!—Tabini snagged for a small exchange.

And his mother—dammit, he needed to know.

“Go, go, go,” Ilisidi said, “attend your phone call. Come back to me. I’ll gather the gossip. Your mind is clearly distracted.” Ilisidi’s face betrayed no concern whatsoever. But her tone of command, sharp and absolute, told him he’d slipped his facial control and let things through he would rather not have allowed to the surface.

But he wantedthe phone call. Ilisidi gave him leave. And might learn more than he could—or than she could with him attached.

He cast a worried look around for Jase, who was quietly in the corner, talking to his security and having no difficulty. Jago was watching him, and he coasted past Jago on the way to the door. “A phone call’s come from the island,” he said. “I’m going to the office. I’ll be right back.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and tailed himas far as the door, when he’d been so bothered he hadn’t even twigged to the possibility of a set-up to draw himto disaster. She stayed close, stationing herself in the hall as he went the short distance to the private office, at the door of which the servant stood.

He went in and picked up the phone. “Hello?” he said. “This is Bren Cameron.”

“ Bren, this is Toby.” It was a tone of voice he almost didn’t know. “ I thought I’d better call.”

“Damn right you’d better call. How are you? How’s Mother?”

A pause that said far too much. “ Heart attack. Small one. How are you?”

It was better than his worst fears. His knees weren’t doing so well. He sat down. “I’m doing fine. Tell her that. Listen. I want you to call Barb and have her call me.”

“ No. No! You get yourself home, Bren. You want your damn business carried on, you come do it, andyou come back and take care of the things you need to take care of! Stop asking your family to put up with this kind of crap! Mama’s having surgery this week. She wantsyou, Bren. She wants you to be here.”

“I can’t.”

“ I can’t be up here in the city, either, but I’m doing it! I can’t leave my house and my business, but I’m doing it! Jill can’t answer the phone without lunatics harassing her! We’ve had to leave home and all come up here, and I can’t let my family go down the street to the park! You know what put mama in the hospital, Bren? You did. People throwing paint on her building, the landlord saying he wants her to move—”

He tried to think through the things he didn’t want to hear to the things he hadto hear—while remembering agencies on both sides of the water were recording everything. “Toby. Call my office. Ask Shawn—”

“ I’ve done that! I can’t get through! None of the numbers you’ve given me work any more, and I don’t even know whether Shawn’s in office this week, by what I’m hearing in the papers!”

“What’s in the papers, Toby? They don’t exactly—”

“ No, no, no! I’m not doing your work for you! I’m yourbrother, not a clerk in the State Department! And I want you back here, Bren. I want you back here for mama! One week, one miserableweek, that’s all I want!”

“I can’t.”

“ The hell you can’t! Tell the aiji your mother coulddie, dammit, and she’s asking for you!”

“Toby—”

“ Oh– hell, I forgot. You can’t explain feelings, can you? They’re not wired for it. Well, what about you, Bren? Is it all the office, and nothing for your family?”

“Toby.”

“ I don’t want your excuses, Bren. I’ve covered for you and covered for you and not told you the truth because it’d upset you. Well, now I’m telling you the truth, and mama’s in danger of her life and I can’t take my family home, and I’m scared to death they’re going to burn my house down while I’m gone!”

“Just hang on, Toby. Just a little longer.”

“ I can’t! I’m not willing to, dammit! I’m tired of trying to explain what the hell you’re doing! We can’t explain it toourselves anymore– how inhell do we make it make sense to the neighbors!”

“You know damn well what the score is, Toby. Don’t hand me that. You knowwhat’s going on in the government and what game they’re playing.”

“ What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Bren? Thatwe’re the enemy, now?”

“I’m saying call Shawn!”

“ I’m saying Shawn’s number doesn’t work anymore and the police won’t answer our emergency calls, Bren, try that one! You’re not damn popular, and they’re taking it out on my family and our mother!”

“Wrong. Wrong, Toby! It’s not the whole island, it’s a handful of crawling cowards that on a bright day—”

“ These are ourneighbors, Bren. These are myneighbors that aren’t speaking to me, people I’ve known for ten years!”

“Then get yourself a new set of friends, Toby!”

“ That doesn’t work for mama, Bren, that doesn’t work in the building she’s lived in for all these years and now they don’t want her any more. What does thatdo to her, Bren? What do you say to that?”

“It’s a rotten lot of people you’ve fallen for.”

“ What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Bren? I don’t understand you.”

He grew accustomed to silence on his feelings. He was a translator, a technical translator, by necessity a diplomat, by cooption a lord of the atevi Association. And he spoke out of hurt and anger on the most childish possible level, maybe because that was the mental age this argument touched, the last time he and Toby hadaccessed what they felt. Toby had moved out to the coast. He’d thought then, and still thought, it was to put space between Toby and their mother. He’dgone into University, and aptitudes had steered him toward what the job was supposed to be, which hadn’t been this.

“Tell mama I love her,” he said, and hung up on his brother.

That little click of the receiver broke the vital connection, and he knew there wasn’t a way to get it back. The training didn’t let expression reach his face. The training didn’t let him do anything overt. He just sat there a moment, with an atevi lady’s office coming back into focus around him, and the sounds of the party going on above the silence that click had created, and with the knowledge he had to get up and function with very dangerous people and go be sure Jase was all right.

And he had to finish his talk with Ilisidi, somehow, get the wit organized to regain that mood and that moment and do his job.

If you couldn’t do anything about a vital matter, you postponed it. You put it in a mental box and shut the lid on it and didn’t think about it when there was a job to do.

And once he’d done that, damn it! He was mad at Toby, who knewthings about the government Toby could have told him, critical things, and Toby hadn’t, wouldn’t, no matter whether peace or war could hinge on it. Toby’s peace was unsettled, Toby’s life was put out of joint, Toby came at him with personalgrievances of a sort the family had once known to keep away from him—which Toby could have been man enough to hold to himself this week and handle, dammit, since there wasn’t and wouldn’t be anything he could do from where he was.

But it had been a succession of weeks. Toby was getting tired of holding it.

Jago appeared in the doorway. She had her com in hand. Had been using it, he thought, maybe even following the conversation via a relay from the foyer-area security station. Surveillance here, in these premises, was always close, and lately it was overt, just one of those jobs his staff did to be up on things without having them explained.

Sometimes that was a good thing.

“The aiji is aware, nadi-ji.”

Not Bren-ji, not the familiar; but the still-remote formal combined with the personal address. Jago was being official. He was grateful for the professional distance. It was a damn sight more consideration than his brother managed.

“My man’chi,” he said, going to the heart of what he was sure would worry atevi, “is still to the office and the aiji, nadi. You may tell him that.”

“He wishes to speak to you, but cannot leave the breakfast room without notice nor speak to you intimately there. He says, through your security, that though he has said so before, now he urges your acceptance of his offer: at any time of your choosing, you may bring your household to the mainland and he will establish a place and lands for them, nadi-ji, as fits the house of a man of your stature. If you ask, he will make strong request to the Mospheiran government to secure their immediate passage across the strait, with all their goods and belongings. He is aware of the demands of those of your house, and your difficult position, nadi-ji, and is willing to take the strongest action to secure their safety.”

“Tell him—” The last time Tabini had moved to secure something from the Mospheiran government, he had threatened to shoot Deana Hanks if they didn’t get himback in twenty-four hours. Tabini’s offer was not without international consequences. And not without force behind it, though he didn’t know what human official Tabini could tell them he’d shoot this time. “Tell him I am grateful. Tell him—I hold his regard as the most important, even—” He almost said—above my family’s good opinion; and knew that circumstances and duty had made it true. Now anger and bitter hurt almost confirmed it. “Even above my life, nadi. Tell him that. And I will come back to the gathering when I have composed myself, which should be only a moment.”

“I shall tell him that, nadi.”

Jago was gone from the doorway, then, giving him the grace of privacy, but he was sure she’d gone no further than the hall outside to relay the message. And to achieve that composed manner he tried to widen his focus, to remind himself how very much was at issue, for three nations counting the ship Jase represented; and what a very extraordinary honor Tabini had offered him.

It was done for state reasons, he had to remind himself. For the same damn reasons of state that had put him in the position he was in.

He’d hung up on his brother.

And wouldn’t be home.

Fact. Fact. Fact. There was nothing that could change it, nothing that would get the barrier between peoples down any faster than the things he was doing. So it was two deep breaths and back to work.

He got to his feet and walked out into the hall, where as he expected, Jago was waiting; and where, in the distance, the television interviews were going on, with a scatter of the guests down there in the bright lights. He walked with Jago back into the crowded breakfast room, in which alcohol and alkaloids as well as the sweets were beginning to be a factor and the simple noise of conversation was beginning to sound like the subway below the building. Jase was still safe where he’d left him; and, not willing at this moment to talk to Jase or answer human questions, he tended toward Tabini, who was with Damiri, with Banichi, too.