Inheritor

He expected nothing but the polite attention atevi paid a speaker, followed by the formal, measured applause.

“Nand’ paidhi!” he heard instead, and then a shouting from throughout the facility. “Nand’ Bren!”

Thatless than formal title had gotten started in the less reputable press. He blushed and waved, and stepped away from the rail, at which point Tano and Algini closed between him and the crowd, a living wall.

“Nand’ paidhi,” lord Geigi said, and wished him with a gesture to go down.

“A wonderful expression.” Nand’ Borujiri was clearly moved. “I shall have it engraved, nand’ paidhi. A marvelous gift!”

“You are very kind, nand’ director.”

“A passionate speech,” lord Geigi said, and kept close by him as they descended. “If the aiji can spare you, nadi, pleaseaccept my personal hospitality and extend your visit to a few days at Dalaigi, at a far slower pace, in, I assure you, the most wonderful climate in the country. The yellowtail will not wait. The paperwork will always be there. And if you provide my cook the fish and a day to prepare it, nand’ paidhi, I do assure you the result will be an exquisite, very passionate offering. He so approves your taste in your brief experience of his art last evening.”

It was partly, he was sure, formality and a desire not to have Borujiri suggest the same; it was likely, also, a truly honest offer, repeated, now, and he understood from Algini that the cook was extremely pleased in his requests for a local specialty last evening. The man was an excellent cook: Geigi’s relationship with food was unabashed and the cuisine of the household was deservedly renowned.

He was weakening. He was about to request his security to inquire of his office whether he could possibly manage one more day.

But he felt a sharp vibration from his pocket-com as they started down the third tier of steps, and that flutter signaled him his security was wanting his attention or advising him to the negative—the latter, he decided, when Tano cast him a direct look and no encouraging if the paidhi would preferregarding that invitation to a change in flight schedules and a return to the lord’s residence.

“I fear, nandi,” Bren sighed, “that my schedule back in the capital precludes it.” He had no warning in that small vibration of imminent danger. He took it for his staff’s warning against lingering in public view or a simple advisement he was, with more urgency than anyone had yet communicated to him, expected elsewhere. “But if the invitation were extended again through your kindness, perhaps for some other seasonal game, I would be more than pleased, nand’ Geigi, very truthfully.”

God, he wantedthat holiday, and he liked-liked-likedlord Geigi against all common sense governing use of that deceptive and deadly word, and he didn’twant to hear from his security that lord Geigi had changed sides again.

He set foot on the floor of the assembly area and the battalion of reporters tried to reach him. But the frontal assault of cameras failed to breach his security, as Tano and Algini directed him and his entire party aside through the plant manager’s office and up against the earnest good wishes of a woman who, like Borujiri, saw fortune and good repute in his visit.

“Nand’ paidhi!” She bowed, and proffered a card with a ribbon, white, for the paidhi, a card which the thoughtful staff had handed out to certain key people. There was the smell of heated wax, a wax-jack waiting in the office for that operation, and immediately lord Geigi and nand’ Borujiri, and a number of other officials came pouring through the door with the news services clamoring outside.

He signed and affixed his seal in wax to cards which would make a proud display on a wall somewhere for not only this generation, but subsequent ones, while his security fumed and clearly wished a quick exit. But there were moments at which haste seemed to create worse problems than apparent lack of it; and they hadn’t yet flung him to the floor and drawn guns, so he supposed it wasn’t critical.

“The car is waiting, nand’ paidhi,” Tano said, the moment the last card was stamped.

Escape lay out the door: the news services hadn’t yet out-flanked them. Algini went out first, surveying the Guild-provided car which procedure had dictated would never leave the personal surveillance of the paidhi’s own security. Tano held the door for him, a living shield against what he had no idea.

For two seconds in that position they were without any locals at all in earshot. “Lord Saigimi is dead,” Tano said to him, low and urgently. “Unknown who did it.”

So thatwas the emergency. Bren took in his breath, and in the next firing of a neuron thought it likely that lord Geigi, stalled on the other side of the same door, was getting exactly the same news from hissecurity.

The lord of the Tasigin Marid, the circle of seacoast at the bottom of the peninsula, was dead, notof natural causes.

The lord of the Tasigin Marid, an Edi, was the one interest in the peninsula most violently opposed to the space program. When Geigi had sided with the space program, and when Deana Hanks had provided the bombshell that weakened him politically, lord Saigimi had immediately insisted that lord Geigi pay his personal debts in oil investment in full, which lord Saigimi expected would ruin lord Geigi and force him from power in Dalaigi.

That had notbeen the case, thanks to Grigiji the astronomer.

Geigi came out the door, sober, dead sober in the ma

No. Geigi wouldn’t. Surely not. Not with the aiji’s representative literally under his roof and apt by that to be thought associated with the event.

“News,” Bren said, resolved on his own instant judgment to ignore suspicion and treat the man as a cohort—as in the following instant he asked himself was Tabiniinvolved—while Tabini’s representative was a guest under lord Geigi’s roof. “Nandi, lord Saigimi has just been assassinated. I’m immediately concerned for your safety; and I mustmake my flight on schedule. I fear events have left me no choice but to attend to business, and place myself where I can interpret to the ship in case theyhave questions. But will you honor me and ride to the airport with me, in my car?”

Geigi’s face bore that slight pallor that an ateva could achieve. Indeed, perhaps Geigi—not involved, and fearing he might be blamed—had been about to cancel the proposed fishing trip as inappropriate under the circumstances, and to offer the use of hiscar for security reasons.

He had, however, just placed the shoe on the other foot.

Offered the man dessert, as the atevi saying went. Meaning the next dish afterthe fatal revelation at di

“Nand’ paidhi,” Geigi said with a decisive nod of his head, “I shall gladly ride with you, and be honored by your company.”

It also was, most definitely, a commitment mutually to be seen in such company: Geigi was casting his lot with the aiji in Shejidan, in case the neighbor lords of the interlaced peninsular association should think of a

Geigi walked with him down the concrete path to the car, a quiet progress of themselves and their respective security perso

“We have passed that advice to building security,” Tano said as they approached the cars, the centermost of which was his, with others close about it. Tano would in no wise leave him. And somehow Tano had advised building security indeed, probably through Geigi’s security, Gesirimu, while he was signing cards, without him ever noticing. Thatwas how they’d forestalled the news services getting to the outside door.