Jago's fingers brushed his shoulder. "Bren-ji, we can carry you to the car if you wish."
The van braked to a halt. "No," he said, and remember ing that these two afforded themselves no weakness and rarely a sign of pain, he opened his eyes and tried to drag himself back to the gray concrete and echoing world. "I'll manage, thank you, nadiin, but, please, let's just wait for my luggage. I have every confidence in Tano. But it's only a single case. It has my medical records."
"We've orders, nadi," Banichi said.
Tabini's orders. No question. No dawdling even in a secure area. Possibly there had been some filing of Intent against his life, but most likely it was simply Tabini's desire to have the paidhi in place, under a guard he trusted, and to have one more ragged-edged problem off his mind.
Banichi opened the door and stepped down to the pavement, Jago got out after, taking the computer, and Bren edged across the seat and stepped down with less assurance, into their competent and watchful care.
The subway had its own peculiar atmosphere: oil, cold concrete and echoes of machinery and voices — like any station in the city system, like any in the continent-spanning rail that linked to the city subway; a connection which argued there could be a small risk of some security breach, he supposed, but no one came into this station without a security clearance, not the baggage handlers, not the workmen: cars didn't stop here.
Which meant there was no burning reason now, in his unregarded and probably uninformed opinion, that the paidhi couldn't stand about for half a minute and wait for his luggage — but considering the wobble in his knees and the disorientation that came buzzing through his brain with the white noise of the echoing space, he let himself be moved along the trackside at Banichi's best limping pace.
A pair of Bu-javid guards, standing outside on the platform, opened the door of the car — seemingly a freight-carrier — that waited for them. They were guards he didn't know, but clearly Banichi did, sufficiently that Banichi sent Jago into the car for no more than a cursory look before letting Bren inside.
It was residential-style furnishing inside the car, false windows inside curtained in red velvet. It was the aiji's own traveling salon, plush appointments, the whole affair in muted reds and beige, a complete galley, soft chairs — Bren let himself down in one that wouldn't swallow him in its cushions, and Jago, setting the computer down, went immediately to open the galley, asking him did he want fruit juice?
"Tea, nadi, if you please." He still felt chilled, and his ears had felt stuffed with wool since the change in altitude. Tea sounded good. Alkaloids that atevi metabolisms didn't mind at all in ordinary doses were especially common in herbal teas and concentrated in some atevi liquor, a fact he'd proved the hard way: but Banichi's junior partner wouldn't make mistakes like that with her charge. He shut his eyes in complete confidence and only opened them when Jago gently announced the tea was ready, the train was about to couple the car on, and would he care for a cup now?
He would. He took the offered cup in his hand, as Banichi, having made it aboard, shut the outside door and went on talking to someone, doubtless official, on his pocket-com.
Jago cradled her cup against the gentle bump as the coupling engaged. "We're a three-car train," Jago said, settling opposite him.
"Tano's made it on," Banichi said as he came up and joined them. "Station security wouldn't let him in this car. I did point out he's in the same service, little that penetrates the minds in charge."
Bren didn't worry that much about his luggage at the moment. Climbing up the high step to the car had waked up the pain in his shoulder.
But after half a cup of tea, and with the train approaching the terminal in the Bu-javid's lower levels, he recovered a wistful hope of homecoming, his own bed — if security afforded him that favor.
"Do you think, nadiin, that I'll possibly have my garden apartment back?"
"No," Banichi said. "I fear not. I'll inquire. But it's a fine view of the mountains, where you're going."
"The mountains." He was dismayed. "The upper floor? — Or a hotel?"
"A very fine accommodation. A staunch partisan has made you her personal guest, openly preferring the aiji's apartment for the session."
A staunch partisan. Tabini-aiji's staunch partisan. Tabini's apartment.
The train began braking. Jago extended her hand for the cup.
Damiri?
Tabini's hitherto clandestine lover? Of the Atigeini opposition?
My God. Damiri had declared herself. Her relatives were going to riot in the streets.
And a humanfor Tabini's next-door neighbor, even temporarily, lodged in an area of the Bu-javid only the highest and most ancient lords of the Association attained?
A human didn't belong there. Not there — and certainly not in a noble and respectable lady's private quarters. There was bound to be gossip. Coarse jokes. Detriment to the lady and the lady's family, whose regional association had openly opposed Tabini's policies from the day of his accession as aiji-major.
Slipping indeed. He must have let his dismay reach his face: Banichi said, as the brakes squealed, "Tabini wants you alive at any cost, nand' paidhi. Things are very delicate. The lady has made her wager on Tabini, and on Tabini's resourcefulness, with the dice still falling."
Baji-naji. Fortune and chance, twin powers of atevi belief, intervenors in the rigid tyranny of numbers.
The car came to rest.
The doors opened. Banichi was easily on his feet, offering a hand. Bren moved more slowly, promising himself that in just a little while he could have a bed, a place to lie still and let his head quit buzzing.
Jago gathered up his computer. "I'll manage it, Bren-ji. Take care for yourself. Please don't fall."
"I assure you," he murmured, and followed Banichi's lead to the door, down again, off the steps, into what he assumed was tight security — at least as tight as afforded no chance of meetings.
"Bren Cameron," a voice echoed out, a female voice, sharp, human and angry.
" Deana?" Deana Hanks didn't belong in the equation. She'd been out of communication, the fogged brain added back in; he'd asked that her authorizations be pulled by the Foreign Office, and he'd assumed — assumedshe'd gone home. His successor had nolegitimate business on the mainland.
Had she?
Things had moved too fast today and she was late for the airport. Mad, he was sure. Technically she should have met him at the airport, giving the plane just enough time to fuel and take on cargo, and be airborne inside an hour.
All of which was at the rear of his mind as he extended a friendly left hand, glad she was all right. "This is a surprise. Thank you for the backup."
"Thank you, hell!"
One didn't take a hostile tone around atevi. Guards' hands twitched toward pockets, inside coats, both her security, and his.
"Hata-mai," he said quickly, It's all right, and lapsed back into the atevi language. "Deana, nadi, may we be a little softer, please? I'm sure the plane will wait for you."
"Softer, is it?" She was a dark-haired woman, pale-skinned, flushed about the face most times that he ever dealt with her. She wore an atevi-style coat and had her hair in the court braid, the same as he did. Her atevi escort made an anxious wall behind her. "Softer? Is the government caving in to blackmail now? Is this the best answer they could come up with? They deliver ultimatums and we jump?"
"Nadi, if you please —"