The apartment was quietly, constantly, depressingly astir with servants packing and rearranging. He didn’t ask special favors, not even tea near bedtime.
But Jago came while he was undressing for bed, to his great surprise. “News?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Welcome,” he said, and she lay down beside him. She was as tired as he was, he was well sure, but there was brief love-making, a release of nerves, a little rest for both of them.
The thoughts, the problems, however, wouldn’t leave him alone. He slept briefly, then waked, fearing that that was all the sleep he could get. His mind traveled upstream doggedly, vexingly, back to complete awareness and a new assault on yesterday’s problems.
Jago stirred beside him. Sighed. Drew a knee up, to judge by the motion of the bedclothes.
“Are you awake?” he asked.
“Yes,” she.
“Is there trouble with Cenedi? I never did ask, nadi.”
“No, Bren-ji. It was routine.” She kept things from him—she and Banichi did, being charitably aware that the paidhi’s mind approached overload. The interview with Cenedi might encompass a good many things that would worry him, if he asked too closely.
Today there’d been a good many changes. Worrisome changes. And information shifted value. And he hadn’t thought through the new configurations as far as he wished he had time to do.
“Have I done well with Mercheson-paidhi?”
“Indeed.”
“Once she contacted us—she did contact us?”
“Yes.”
“Once she did that, it seemed a good thing. Far safer for her to be here. I don’t think her own people would move to restrict her. Or understand how to protect her. I amworried about Mospheiran influences. More—I’m worried about her own captains. I know I’m right to break her out of the crew.”
“One does agree.”
“You heard about the tape.”
“Yes.”
The conversation with Mercheson kept nagging at him. Her worries about Jase—worries approaching serious doubts—nagged at him.
And more…
“When I went down to the planet,” he said, “that trip drew our concentrated attention there. Did it not, nadi-ji?”
She was a greater than usual warmth beside him—or he was colder than usual. There was only the least hint of light, to his eyes—but to hers, quite enough.
She rolled suddenly onto one elbow. He knew the pose, when his eyes failed to find her.
“It did,” she admitted, increasingly keen and aware.
“We suspected nothing, then.” There was no illusion of sleep, now. No possibility. “Persons might have moved up here, Jago-ji. Even Guild could have come aboard without us knowing. Is it possible?”
“We have a list of everyone on that shuttle that came up with you,” she said. “And every shuttle flight previous. Thus far we’ve found no suspect.”
His security had not been idle. Never, ever think it.
“So you have suspicions.”
“It’s our tendency, is it not?”
“Who will replace us here?” he asked. “Who is Cenedi leaving? I take it he’s leaving some staff.”
She named two men, Kalasi and Mandi.
“I don’t know them that well,” he said.
“They’re very good,” she said. “Of the dowager’sman’chi, unquestioned.”
“Not precisely Tabini’s, that is to say.”
“Hers, Bren-ji. Unquestioned.”
Wake up, paidhi. Listen to your staff.
“Will Tano and Algini be safe, staying behind, Jago-ji?”
He felt Jago draw a long and thoughtful breath. “Cenedi’s men will assist lord Geigi. In that decision, we are outranked, Bren-ji. Our own staff—”
“We are Tabini’s. Is that a difficulty?”
“One hopes otherwise.”
Oh, he’d hoped for a denial on that score. “But the politics of it—”
“While the Association stays stable, our staff can ally with Cenedi’s men. As Geigi’s can. Under Ogun, things will likely change. Predictions fail us.”
A low-level and chilling thought, often dismissed, kept nagging him. “ Lord Geigiwouldn’t have killed Ramirez, Jago-ji. Surely not.”
“It’s not his disposition. Although—”
“Although?”
“Lord Geigi has his own dealings with the aiji, Bren-ji. That isn’t to discount.”
“Through Tabini? Acting as the aiji’s agent?” It wasn’t a comfortable notion at all, that Tabini would have finally decided to take Ramirez out—but that theory satisfied so many other conditions, and filled so many holes, and agreed so well with things he’d found out from Yolanda. The timing. The horrid question of timing.
That trip.
Getting the paidhi-aiji offthe station. Out of play.
Getting Banichi and Jago, what was more, off the station and out of play—because those two were the most likely of anyone to detect critical movements of atevi staff.
“Or acting for the aiji-dowager. Thereis the close association, Bren-ji. Lord Geigi has long been in her association.”
Ilisidi?
“Do you, even marginally, think it?” He almost asked—where is her motive to attack Ramirez? But he’d been thinking far too many hours in human terms.
“They didenter closed conference, the moment she arrived, Bren-ji. You have not been invited to her table tonight—yet Geigi was. Ihave been invited to conference with Cenedi, but at no time was I in position to overhear her and Geigi. One suspects something stirs there. But one still doubts her motive against Ramirez on her own behalf. There simply is no evidence.”
“It might have been natural causes. There are coincidences. But one, unfortunately, has to suspect every direction exceptnatural causes.“
“Coincidence is the rarest beast, Bren-ji. Its tracks look like so much else.”
“But with Tabini behaving oddly—oddly, Jago-ji. Oddly toward me. Oddly toward the whole association.”
“Yes,” she said, one of those enigmatic of courses, agreeing with him: shewas puzzled.
So must Tabini have been—puzzled, or something like it.
By what Yolanda had indicated this evening, Ramirez, against all warnings from everyone who knew better, had opened direct communication with the atevi lord of the known world.
And while Tabini was the most enlightened, the most modern, the most interculturally aware of rulers, he was also atevi, and Ragi atevi, to boot—which meant he counted the expenditure of one man a very enlightened economy versus the need for troops, or wars, or invasions, all of which were as rare as coincidences in atevi dealings.
Tabini wanted a space station: he damned near had it. He wanted a starship: they were building it, and Mospheira had very few illusions as to who was going to get his hands on it once it flew. It wasan atevi world, and rulers in Shejidan long before Tabini had been conducting a steady campaign, usually quiet and bloodless, to maintain atevi authority over it. If Ramirez had said the wrong thing, and if Tabini had become convinced that it would advance his interests to remove Ramirez—it was possible. And if Ramirez had been tottering near death, in Tabini’s perception—if there was a real and increasing possibility of Ramirez’s making mistakes and dropping stitches—far from eliciting the sympathy a Mospheiran might expect, that would have alarmed Tabini. It might have convinced an atevi mind accustomed to weigh one life against many that someone had to take charge smoothly and quickly… that it was the ethical, reasonable choice, even for Ramirez’s own good.
There it bloody was. The whole reason for man’chi. Such things didn’t happen in polite atevi circles because polite atevi circles werecircles, inclusive, overlapped, interconnected.
It was so damned dangerous to deal with an atevi power from outside the circles.
He’d warned Ramirez. Shawn Tyers above all others knew the hazards, and hadn’t been going past him, but Ramirez had engaged Yolanda as his own, wrenched her tightly into his orbit and played his own game.