He expected an explosion at least of equivalent magnitude. “Nadi,” Jase began in Ragi, and then again, “What do I have to do to have you on my side, nadi?”
“I amon your side!” He dropped his voice, moved close and seized Jase by the lapels long enough to bring his lips to Jase’s ear. “Bug,” was all he whispered, and Jase went wooden in his grip and very quiet.
“Just stay here,” Bren said aloud and let go.
And left.
Downstairs again, toward their makeshift banquet hall, where nothing had much changed except most of the security was on their feet, the servants were cleaning up, and Ilisidi was still seated, her cane, however, in her hands, and her chair angled at forty-five degrees to the table.
“Well,” Ilisidi said, as if he satisfied expectations by appearing.
“Tano-ji,” he said in passing, though it was an act of temerity to give orders to Tano, or to give orders to anyone in Ilisidi’s hall, “keep an eye on Jase, please.”
“Yes,” Tano said as Bren came to Ilisidi.
“Dowager-ji,” Bren said, “first, forgive my associate his lack of understanding.”
There was a nod, with amiable quiet.
“And forgive me mine. But, nand’ dowager, is there anything I may ask in confidence?”
“What do you wish to know, nand’ paidhi?”
“Why is that boy here, aiji-ma?”
Ilisidi braced the ferrule of her cane against the irregular stones of the floor and leaned forward. “A good question. Cenedi-ji, whyis this boy here?”
“He is young, he is intemperate, he lacks all finesse, and he believes he alone holds vital information about a threat to global peace.”
He guessed, then, what that information might concern: a dweller on the island, near the runaway transmissions.
“Well-intentioned, then,” he said.
“One believes so.”
“Nandiin,” Algini said quietly, Algini, who tended to pick up the small details, “he has repeatedly attempted to reach the paidhi—or the aiji. He seems not at all particular.”
“Well, well,” Ilisidi said. “Let’s have a look at him. Nand’ paidhi, do you wish to hear the matter, or not?”
“I shall gladly hear it,” he murmured, “aiji-ma.” His brain was racing meanwhile and he had Jago but not Banichi or Tano within the field of his vision. He thought that if there were a problem developing between him and Ilisidi he would see Jago’s signal to withdraw once Ilisidi said that.
But at a certain point he had to rely on them and theirman’chi to Tabini. He had never quite so much realized what it might be to stand in the middle of a sort-out of atevi loyalties, blind in his human heart of hearts to what might be going on in atevi; but knowing emotionally, human-fashion, that his heart was with Banichi and Jago, that his duty insisted on Tabini, and that friendship, yes, friendship, wanted Tabini and Ilisidi both to listen to him and not tear the world apart.
Stupid, stupid, to have it any other way, and he would not believethat Ilisidi was ready to make such moves, or that Tabini had so misread his grandmother in sending them out here.
Cenedi had made a call on his pocket com, and in not very long black-uniformed security came in from the front door, among them Banichi and several of their own, among Ilisidi’s; and with them, a figure in black—the fool, Bren thought—handcuffed and disheveled, and looking for all the world like a scared kid.
“Nand’ paidhi!” the boy said.
“Young fool,” Ilisidi said, and had his attention—at which point said young fool seemed to realize (surely he’d known the paidhi was here when he invaded the place) that he was in far deeper trouble. The boy grew quiet, and bowed as respectfully as one could in handcuffs and being restrained by two of the largest of Ilisidi’s young men.
“The paidhi-aiji has a question for you,” Ilisidi said. “Perhaps you will give him the courtesy of an answer?”
“Aiji-ma, yes, if it please your ladyship.”
“Nand’ paidhi?”
“Nand’ Rejiri of Dur-wajran?”
“Yes, nand’ paidhi.”
“Why did you—?” Attempt to fly into my plane? That was surely not the intent. That was just a pilot inexperienced at that airport. “—come to Shejidan?”
“To tell the aiji there’s treason.”
“Then why pursue me?”
“Because your lordship could tell the aiji I wasn’t a fool!”
Therewas a circular argument.
“I truly never expressed to the aiji that you were one.” But the case was clear to him, now: the boy, humiliated, his plane impounded after near collision with the aiji’s own plane, couldn’t even hope for a hearing that wouldn’t involve a plane, the ATC, and his father, a lord of the Association.
And this was a very upset young man, as shaken and as distraught as he’d ever seen an ateva become. “So,” he said to the young man, “the aiji-dowager is listening to every word. What will you say, regarding this treason?”
And hope to God the treason wasn’t something Ilisidi was involved in. The boy couldn’t know, any more than he could, unless his information accidentally involved Ilisidi’s associates or activities, which he truly didn’t think.
“Radios,” the boy said. “And humans, nand’ dowager. I’m not making it up.”
“Go on about these radios and humans,” Ilisidi said, seated like an aiji in court, indeed, with her silver-headed cane in her wrinkled hands and her yellow eyes sharp and absolutely uncommunicative. “What do you say, nadi?”
“That—” Having gotten permission, the young man lost all control over his breathing. “That a plane keeps going out and flying over the ocean, aiji-ma, and you can hear it talking with somebody who speaks Ragi, but who sounds like a human.”
“Female, nadi?” Bren asked.
“On the radio—I don’t know. I think it might be, nand’ paidhi. One—one would hesitate to say—”
Bang! went the cane on the paving-stones. “And you were where, when you heard these things?”
“In my father’s plane, aiji-ma.”
“So you immediately flew to Shejidan and scared hell out of the aiji’s pilot.”
“Aiji-ma—” The young man was rattled. Badly.
“Could you not have made a phone call?”
“I was afraid—I was afraid it had to go through somewhere—”
“You could have told your father, young man.”
There was a flicker of fear, real fear, in the young man’s expression. “I stole the plane, aiji-ma.”
“Keeping your father out of the notoriety, are you, nadi? The hell you stole it!”
“Aiji-ma, I stole his plane.”
The paidhi himself would not like to have been the recipient of that look, in that position; and he had been, both.
“So,” Ilisidi said, “what else do you know? Notfrom this plane. From your own sense and the gossip of your elders, what do you know?”
“The man’chi of my house is to the descendants of Barjida, nand’ dowager.”
That was a neat piece of evasion—to the Barjidi, meaning Tabini’s line at the time of the War. Ilisidi was marriedinto that line, not born to it, and it was a man’chi predating the present Ragi aiji but including him. He was in a damned machimi play and the kid was doing a piece of footwork either his father regularly did or that he’d seen on television, the classic cousin-to-the-line who turned out to have a knife on his person.
But it wasn’t television, and the smile Ilisidi gave him was a dangerous, dangerous thing, while—the human tumbled to the fact slowly, being dead to atevi emotions— hewas in exactly the same position, appointed and protected by the Barjida’s descendant, Tabini-aiji.
Who had sent him here. Who had sent—God! Banichi and Jago—here.
The same team the aiji had sent to kill Saigimi—here, inside Ilisidi’s defenses. He’dseen this game before, the extreme gesture, this insertion of someone deadly dangerous as Banichi and Jago along with the very vulnerable paidhi inside Ilisidi’s defenses—challenging the dowager to make an overt move against him.