The table was set in the light, half onto the balcony, against that prospect. And Tabini was having breakfast.
Tabini made a hand-sign to his servants, who instantly procured two more cups, and drew out from the table the two other chairs.
So they were completely informal. He and Banichi sat down at the offered places, with the Bergid range a misty blue and the City spread out in faint tile reds below the balcony railing.
“I trust there’s been no repetition of the incident,” Tabini said.
“No, aiji-ma,” Banichi answered, adding sugar.
“I’m very distressed by this incident,” Tabini said. A sip of tea. “Distressed also that you should be the object of public speculation, Bren-paidhi. I was obliged to take a position. I could notlet that pass.—Has anyone approached you in the meetings?”
“No,” Bren said. “But I do fear I was less than observant yesterday. I’m not used to this idea.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Disturbed.” He wasn’t sure, himself, what he felt. “Disturbed that I’ve been the cause of so much disarrangement, when I’m here for your convenience.”
‘That’s the politic answer.“
“—And I’m very angry, aiji-ma.”
“Angry?”
“That I can’t go where I like and do what I like.”
“But can the paidhi ever do that? You never go to the City without an escort. You don’t travel, you don’t hold entertainments, which, surely, accounts for what Banichi would counsel you as habits of the greatest hazard.”
“This is my home, aiji-ma. I’m not accustomed to slinking past my own doors or wondering if some poor servant’s going to walk through the door on my old key… I do hope someone’s warned them.”
“Someone has,” Banichi said.
“I worry,” he said, across the teacup. “Forgive me, aiji-ma.”
“No, no, no, I did ask. These are legitimate concerns and legitimate complaints. And no need for you to suffer them. I think it would be a good thing for you to go to Malguri for a little while.”
“Malguri?” That was the lake estate, at Lake Maidingi—Tabini’s retreat in early autumn, when the legislature was out of session, when he was regularly on vacation himself. He had never been so far into the interior of the continent. When he thought of it—no human had. “Are yougoing, aiji-ma?”
“No.” Tabini’s cup was empty. A servant poured another. Tabini studiously dropped in two sugar lumps and stirred. “My grandmother is in residence. You’ve not encountered her, personally, have you? I don’t recall you’ve had that adventure.”
“No.” He held the prospect of the aiji-dowager more unnerving than assassins. Ilisidi hadn’t won election in the successions. Thank God. “Aren’t you—forgive me—sending me to a zone of somewhat more hazard?”
Tabini laughed, a wrinkling of his nose. “She does enjoy an argument. But she’s quite retiring now. She says she’s dying.”
“She’s said so for five years,” Banichi muttered. “Aiji-ma.”
“You’ll do fine,” Tabini said. “You’re a diplomat. You can deal with it.”
“I could just as easily go to Mospheira and absent myself from the situation, if that’s what’s useful. A great deal more useful, actually, to me. There’s a load of personal business I’ve had waiting. My mother has a cabin on the north coast…”
Tabini’s yellow stare was completely void, completely implacable. “But I can’t guarantee her security. I’d be extremely remiss to bring danger on your relatives.”
“No ateva can get onto Mospheira without a visa.”
“An old man in a rowboat can get onto Mospheira,” Banichi muttered. “And ask meif I could find your mother’s cabin.”
The old man in a rowboat would notget onto Mospheira unnoticed. He was willing to challenge Banichi on that. But he wasn’t willing to own that fact to Tabini or Banichi for free.
“You’ll be far better off,” Banichi said, “at Malguri.”
“A fool tried my bedroom door! For all I know it was my next door neighbor coming home drunk through the garden, probably terrified he could be named an attempted assassin, and now we have wires on my doors!” One didn’t shout in Tabini’s presence. And Tabini had supported Banichi in the matter of the wires. He remembered his place and hid his consternation behind his teacup.
Tabini sipped his own and set the cup down as Banichi set his aside. “Still,” Tabini said. “The investigation is making progress which doesn’t need your help. Rely on my judgment in this. Have I ever done anything to your harm?”
“No, aiji-ma.”
Tabini rose and reached out his hand, not an atevi custom. Tabini had done it the first time ever they met, and at rare moments since. He stood up and took it, and shook it solemnly.
“I hold you as a major asset to my administration,” Tabini said. “Please believe that what I do is out of that estimation, even this exile.”
“What have I done?” he asked, his hand still prisoner in Tabini’s larger one. “Have I, personally, done something I should have done differently? How can I do better, if no one advises me?”
“We’re pursuing the investigation,” Tabini said quietly. “My private plane is fueling at this moment. Pleasedon’t cross my grandmother.”
“How can I escape it? I don’t know what I did to bring this about, Tabini-aiji. How can I behave any more wisely than I have?”
A pressure of Tabini’s fingers, and a release of his hand. “Did one say it was your fault, Bren-paidhi? Give my respects to my grandmother.”
“Aiji-ma.” Surrender was all Tabini left him. He only dared the most indirect rebellion. “May I have my mail routed there?”
“There should be no difficulty,” Banichi said, “if it’s sent through the security office.”
“We don’t want to announce your destination,” Tabini said. “But, yes, security does have to know. Take care. Take every precaution. You’ll go straight to the airport. Is it taken care of, Banichi?”
“No difficulty,” Banichi said. What ‘it’ was, Bren had no idea. But there was nothing left him but to take his formal leave.
‘Straight to the airport,’ meant exactly that, evidently, straight downstairs, in the Bu-javid, to the lowest, inner level, where a rail station connected with the rail systems all over the continent.
It was a well-securitied place, this station deep in the Bu-javid’s heart, a station which only the mai’aijiin and the aiji himself and his staff might use—there was another for common traffic, a little down the hill.
Guards were everywhere, nothing unusual in any time he’d been down here. He supposed they maintained a constant watch over the tracks and the cars that rested here—the authorities in charge could have no idea when someone might take the notion to use them, or when someone else might take the notion to compromise them.
What looked like a freight car was waiting. The inbound tram would sweep it up on its way below—and it would travel looking exactly like a freight car, mixed in with the ordinary traffic, down to its painted and, one understood, constantly changed, numbers.
It was Tabini’s—cushioned luxury inside, a council-room on wheels. That was where Banichi took him.
“Someone haschecked it out,” he said to Banichi. He’d used this particular car himself—but only once annually on his own business, on his regular departure to the airport, and never when there was any active feud in question. The whole proceedings had a surreal feeling.