“Yes!” Jill said, so he laid the phone down, told a servant not to hang it up, and headed down the hall to Barb and Toby’s suite.
He knocked once. Pushed the door open. Toby was standing in front of a closed bedroom door, and looked toward him in some distress.
“Toby,” he began.
“I don’t know how she tracked me. Dammit, Bren. It’s Jill, isn’t it?”
“Toby, Julie’s had a cycle wreck.”
The anger drained from Toby’s face. So did the color. “Oh, my God. How bad?”
“Broken arm, broken leg, hit a pothole in the rain. Jill’s still on the line. She wants to talk to you.”
“Damn it!” Toby said. “Damn it! Where’s the phone?”
“My study,” Bren said, and stood aside as Toby left out the door, at a near run.
He was still standing there a heartbeat or two later, wondering whether he ought to go to the study and risk interrupting what those two had to say to each other, and delaying what Toby needed to learn about little Julia—hell, little Julia was a young woman now. It had just been that long sincec
The bedroom doors flew open. Barb stood there, red-eyed. “Where’s Toby?”
“Barb,” he began to say.
“ Where’s Toby?”
“He’ll be on the phone. His daughter’s been in a wreck, Barb. Ease up.”
“Oh, in a wreck! How bad is it?”
“Broken leg, broken arm.”
“Then she’ll live,” Barb said shortly. “How in hell did Jill call here?”
That was a real question. “Probably she phoned Statec Toby works for them, doesn’t he? Or is it Defense?”
Barb scowled at him and started for the door.
“Damn it, Barb, calm down. The kid’s in the hospital. Jill wants advice.”
“Oh, sure, she’s in the hospital. That’s the magic word. And he’ll come running.”
He was appalled. The hell of it was—it echoed Jill herself, when Toby would drop everything for their mother’s every minor crisis. And the last, that hadn’t been minor. It echoed the whole situation that had driven Jill to leave Toby. His warnings to Toby hadn’t mattered then. Wouldn’t matter now. This time he tried logic with Barb. He snapped, “Well, where did youmeet him?”
At the hospital, that was to say, when they’d both, she and Toby, sat up with Mum and started an affair that had led here.
But maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to have said, after all. Barb’s eyes widened and she looked at him as if she’d like to hit him.
So he added, “It’s also where you’ll lose him if you don’t use your head about this.”
She did hit him, right across the face. Fortunately for her, Jago wasn’t there, nor were any of his aishid. He simply absorbed it and looked at her quite, quite coldly.
“You only wish I would break up with him,” she shot back.
“If you think I have any shred of feeling left for you—you’re quite mistaken. It’s what I told you before: hurt him and you’ve got a lasting enemy in me. Other than that, I don’t give a damn what you do in your life, if you make him happy. It won’tmake him happy if you come running to me. Figure it out, Barb.”
Barb stared at him, then renewed her start for the door.
He snagged her arm. “If you don’t want to lose Toby for good and all, don’t everget between him and those kids. He’ll make a choice, believe me, if you put him to it. If he wants to leave here and go to the hospital over in Jackson, you smile and you go with him and you speak nicely and sympathetically to Jill and to Julie, if you have a brain in your head.”
“ Let go of me!”
He did. She massaged her arm in high theatrics and stalked out the door, with sharp, measured strides.
He delayed a moment, asking himself whether he had played that round correctly, but he thought he had. At least he’d told her the plain facts, if Barb had absorbed a single word he’d said. That was always the problem with Barb: somewhere in her head, between her eyes, her ears and her brain, there was some filter that only let through what supported her beliefs.
And right now he was probably the villain. He gave that phase about ten minutes, about as long as it took Toby to tell her something she didn’t want to hear, either. And she was here with no way but Toby’s boat for transport back to the island, so those two would have to work through itc though he wondered for a heartbeat or two if he couldn’t get her on a flight to Mogari, where she could pick up a routine air freight flight or a boat to Jackson, with the canned fish and the sacks of flour that went back and forth in trade.
No. If the relationship really, truly blew up today, somebody would have to escort her—namely him, and he wouldn’t get in the middle of Toby’s problem with her—no way in hell. They’d just have to patch it up and ship back together, speaking to each other or not.
So he composed himself and walked out into the hall, receiving a concerned look from Ramaso, who had watched the drama and had very little information.
“There’s been an accident on the Island, nadi-ji. One of Toby’s children-by-prior-contract is injured and the mother called with information. Nand’ Toby is greatly concerned. Barb-daja—” He hesitated just a heartbeat on a polite lie, and then decided the household needed pertinent facts. “—is disturbed by the notion he may take some sort of escape to void their contract.”
The old man was properly dismayed, and bowed. “One comprehends the distress, then, nandi. Are the injuries life-threatening?”
“No, which is to the relief of us all. You may pass the word on to staff,” he said, amazing himself, he was so completely cold-hearted about his brother’s distress and Barb’s outburst. “They should not accept any blame for the lady’s distress or her discord with nand’ Toby. Likely the decision will play itself out in his decision to stay for the rest of his visit or go to the bedside of his child, which will either please or distress Barb-daja, or him. In either case, it is not your fault, nor can I intervene with a solution. This one is theirs to work out.”
“And repercussions, nandi?”
“None are even possible, regarding this house, nadi-ji, Mospheira having no Guild and neither lady having connections with anyone who would take exception. But if Barb-daja disrespects the staff or other guests in any particular, cease service to her and immediately advise me of the situation. You are not obliged to bear with bad behavior or to carry out any unseemly order. This also extends to nand’ Toby, though from him one hardly expects a problem.”
“Yes, nandi,” the old man said with a deep bow. What the old man thought he very courteously didn’t express in wordsc but if there was one situation atevi did understand it was a marital conflict—to a degree that occasionally resorted to the Assassins’ Guild.
“Where is my aishid at the moment, Rama-ji?”
“Somewhere about the house—one believes, in their rooms. They are not unaware of the disturbance.”
“Inform them, nadi-ji. I wish to have a word with them.” He had the pocket com, but there were times when the deliberation of staff talking to staff and forewarnings being passed— served to calm a situation. Time for things to settle. Calm amid the storm. “And the young gentleman?”
“In his suite, too, nandi.”
Waiting for them. They must have heard about the delay and the family fight, and were just doing the sensible thing and staying out of it. Screaming in the halls in an atevi house—it didn’t happen. Nerves were on edge. His aishid was holding an emergency consultation. The kids had taken cover. Barb’s little scene wasn’t a situation he wanted to explain in detail, not until they had some outcome and he himself could say the dust had settled.