Saidin. Damiri's security. Tabini had directly suggested Saidin do the picking, knowing, as the paidhi hadn't known at the time, Saidin's nature. It had been a direct invitation to Saidin, a challenge to Saidin, to put one of her people on the Taiben staff — for good or for ill.
The paidhi had been so stupidly blind on that point, knowing, intellectually, that security necessarily went in such places — but he'd come in drug-fogged, had formed his subconscious, subsequently unquestioned opinions on the staff, catalogued Saidin as an elder matron, and never, dammit, asked himself the obvious. He'd gotten fond of Saidin — and Saidin might have assumed he knew what she was; which might, Banichi was right, have changed his reactions, his expressions, his levels of caution, if he'd known what he should have known, what any atevi would have known —
He must have perplexed Saidin no end. And, dammit, he still liked the woman.
There seemed a quality to people the Assassins' Guild let in and licensed. He didn't know why. He didn't know what they had in common, except perhaps an integrity that touched chords in his shades-of-gray soul, a feeling, maybe, that one could do things that rattled one's conscience to the walls and foundations and still — still own a sense of equilibrium.
Banichi was going to teach him about doors. It wasn't what he wanted to learn from Banichi. What he wanted to understand was something far more basic.
When he and Jago had almost — almost — gone over the line, and he'd panicked, maybe it was that integrity he'd felt shaken. That very inhuman integrity. That more than human sense of morality.
That Jago hadn't given a damn about.
Which didn't fit with her character.
If one took her as human. And Mospheiran, at that. Which she wasn't.
She was — whatever atevi were in that department. In that sense he trustedJago not to have put him in a difficult position.
And, dammit, he was thinking about it again. Which had absolutely no place in considerations that ought to be occupying his mind.
They swung around for the runway. The wheels thumped down the pavement and cleared the ground. The familiar roofs slipped under the wings and the noise of one more outgoing jet probably disturbed sleep across Shejidan, making ordinary atevi ask themselves what in hell was going on that took so many doubtless official and unscheduled flights to and from the capital —
They might well ask. And — in the light of recent crises — guess that it involved the paidhi, the foreigner ship, the aiji, and a great deal of security and government interest.
Atevi added very well.
The plane climbed above that altitude regularly jeopardized by atevi small aircraft and into a magnificent view of sunrise above the cloud deck — doubtless the better view was from the other set of windows, where the Bergid would thrust above those clouds, but the paidhi hadn't the energy or the heart to get out of his seat to take a look. He wasn't in the mood for beautiful sunrises. The one he did see jarred his sense of reality. The gray below the clouds had better suited his mood. The unseemly sheen of pink and gold made hope far too easy when so much was uncertain.
But the security personnel began to stir about at the rear of the aircraft, and Jago went back, she said, after fruit juice.
"Biscuits," Bren said, before she escaped. Maybe it was the sunrise, but he began to decide he wanted them — having rushed off before breakfast, into a chancy situation.
And in not too long Jago was back with biscuits, a hot and fragrant pile of them, adequate for healthy atevi appetites, oneof which was sufficient for a human stomach, along with tea and juice he knew was safe.
"Thanks," Bren pronounced, on diplomatic autopilot. He took his biscuit, he took the tea, he took the fruit juice, and reflected that he finally had what he'd wanted all along: hispeople safely gathered for breakfast, well, except Tano and Algini, who were still chasing about the local investigation. They proposed, Banichi had said, to take another cycle of the same aircraft out to Taiben this afternoon.
But he couldn't get Hanks out of his head, and couldn't convince himself yet that things were in hand. One didn't attack the aiji's guest in the Bu-javid and carry her off as of minor consequence to the welfare of the Association. A lot of firepower had gone out to Taiben. Tabini's arrival out there was still to come — if it came. Tabini was stationing security out there in numbers that could repel real force.
And in the excess of feeling that had suddenly, after this assassination attempt but not the other, prompted a deluge of flowers and well-wishes from associates, one had the notion that ordinary atevi took this attempt far more seriously than they took the actions of a single irate man in the legislature.
Thisattempt smelled to them like serious business.
It smelled that way to the paidhi, too.
"Have you heard?" he asked. "Have you any current notion whether the troublemakers will make an attempt on the landing itself?"
"No doubt they'd like any means to make the aiji look weak," Jago said. "An attack on Taiben is fully possible."
"Aimed at Tabini? Or at the whole idea of human contact?"
"One certainly wishes the ship had chosen some other site than that near and convenient to the city," Jago said. "It makes logistics for the conspirators far easier. Direiso andTatiseigi are both in the region."
"Meaning anywhere but Taiben would have been preferable. Then why for God's sake was it on the list?"
"It has its advantages. Access is equally easy for us. And we sit close to the neighbors' operations, which means more readily knowing what they're doing."
"But there're more than nonspecific reasons to worry?"
"There's a suspect association," Jago said. "Local. But powerful."
"Localized geographically?" One neverknew the full reach and complexity of atevi association. Atevi themselves didn't admit the extent or the nature of them, God help the university on Mospheira trying to track them.
"Understand, nand' paidhi, Taiben is one estate of a very ancient area, of very old, very noble habitation — very old households, adjacent, of longstanding uneasiness of relations."
"Meaning historic feud." It was the Padi Valley. It was an old area. Historic.
"No, not feud," Banichi said, "but along this ancestral division of lands — the paidhi may be aware — one has thousands of years of history, among very ancient houses each of whom have powerful modern associations."
Not to say borders. Division of lands. There was a difference.
"An easy neighborhood in good times," Jago said. "But many unsettled issues. In chancy times, very easily upset."
"Meaning," Bren said quietly, "if there was a conspiracy a thousand leagues away, it would most easily nest here, next to Taiben, because of these houses."
"Five households," Jago said. "Before there were humans in the world, there were five principle landholders in the Padi Valley. Historically, all the aijiin of the Ragi have come from these five. The Association at large would hardly be able to settle on any aiji who didn'tcome from this small association. They're all the Ragi families who have everheld power."
"But Tabini's house settled the Treaty. By donating its lands to the refugees, from the war." That was answer number one anytime the primer students heard the question. Unquestionably there was more involved. There was the intricacy of the atevi election process. "They brokered the Treaty."