Inheritor

Besides, once the aiji had found a hole in his schedule, other mortals moved and didn’t delay for questions.

9

The meeting was evidently set not for the little salon, but for the formal salon of Tabini-aiji’s apartments with, in the many wide windows, the Bergid Range floating hazily above the city’s tiled roofs. The morning overcast had burned off. The air had warmed. It was a pleasant and sensual breeze flowing through the apartment—untainted with the smell of paint, Bren noticed.

Banichi had dropped to the side as they passed the security station in the foyer of the aiji’s apartment, and as the paidhi acquired nand’ Eidi for a guide. Banichi had settled into the security station with Tabini’s security. The lot of them, Bren suspected, would trade information of a sensitive sort, so Banichi was about to spend a profitable few moments, maybe more informative on the real goings-on in the Western Alliance than his own meeting was about to be.

Elderly Eidi (undoubtedly of the Guild as the formerly naïve paidhi began to suspect allhigh lords’ close attendants were of the Guild) poured tea and handed it to him while he stood waiting. “The aiji will be here at any moment,” Eidi said. “He’s been on the telephone, nand’ paidhi, an unexpected call.”

One of those days, Bren thought, thinking of the Badissuni matter, wondering whether it would divert Tabini’s attention completely away from the report he had to give.

But he stood waiting, exercising due caution with the teacup and the priceless rugs underfoot—he had once managed to drop a cup, to his intense embarrassment—and gazing out at the mountains at a view very like the one from his apartment.

Out there, unseen from this range, forest swept up the mountain flanks. Forest reserves and hunting villages existed, an entire way of life remote from the city.

Closer in, the tiled roofs of Shejidan advanced along the hills in their significant geometries, neighborhood associations which defined atevi life. You could belong to several at once; you could belong to two that hated each other and hold man’chi, he had learned, to both in varying degrees. He was looking at associations economic, residential, political, and, he guessed, but could not prove, marital.

And there were those walls that separated a few houses off together in private unity. Those were associations by trade or by kinship within the other associations. The relationships were defined even in the orientation and the age-faded colors of the tiles.

Once the eye knew what it was looking for, it could find information laid out to simple observation in Shejidan. Atevi had never hidden those most intimate secrets from humans. One supposed they took for granted they hadn’t hidden them. But humans had looked right at this view for decades and never grasped what they were seeing. The paidhiin before him had failed precisely to explain the nuances of those faded colors and, no different than his predecessors, he made his own guesses and bet the peace on them.

It damn sure wasn’t a Mospheiran city. You couldn’t forget that, either.

You stood under the same sky, you looked at the same stars, the same clouds, the same sea… but it wasn’t Mospheira where you were standing.

It wasn’t the ship, either. It certainly wasn’t the ship. He felt sorry for Jase. He really did. In the moments he most wanted to strangle Jase, and there had been some, he still knew what a strain Jase was under. And this last stress, the blow to his family, the safe home one left behind and imagined was always inviolate—was extreme.

God, he knew.

“No, no, and no!”

Thatwas Tabini in the hall outside.

“Light of my life, you will not, you will nothave your uncle in the apartment, it will not happen!”

“It’s ourancestral residence!” he heard: lady Damiri’s voice. “What can one do?”

“I knowit’s your ancestral residence! It’s Bren’s life, gods less fortunate! You knowyour uncle! He’s dealing with that damned Hagrani!”

It didn’t sound good. It didn’t sound at all good.

The door opened. Tabini walked in, the aiji of the aishidi’tat, the Western Association, the most powerful man on the planet—far overshadowing the President of Mospheira, who couldn’t rule his own staff, and who didn’t, additionally, command an Assassins’ Guild.

—For which, Bren often thought, thank God.

Damiri came in second, and the respective guards, third through sixth, as servants hurried to catch up. Bren bowed and maneuvered toward the appropriate chair by the window, as Tabini chose one of the pair facing the view.

Tabini and Damiri settled comfortably side by side, the image of felicity and domestic tranquility in a flurry of servants in red and guards in black.

“So,” Tabini said. “Good trip, nand’ paidhi? I received your preliminary report. Gods felicitous, you have stamina.”

“A productive trip, aiji-ma. I’ve left the small data with nand’ Eidi, if you will. As busy as this season may be, I would be happy to expand the account to details in writing—”

Tabini lifted his fingers. “I by no means doubt the accuracy of your general estimations. Damned nuisance that your trip home had to be so hasty. I trust it curtailed nothing of moment.”

“No, aiji-ma.” There was no indication the stray pilot rated the aiji’s notice, and he left the matter silent. “Everything of moment is in the files I’ve made available. And there’s nothing critical. I would claim your generous attention, aiji-ma, to honor certain promises I’ve made.”

A wave of the fingers. “Data for the experts and the sifters of numbers. News of yourself. News of nand’ Jase. What is this about an accident—about the death of Jase-paidhi’s father?”

Atevi had so many delicate words for death. Tabini chose the bluntest, least felicitous. And note that Tabini didknow. At what hour Tabini had known—the paidhi was perhaps wise not to ask.

“I’ve advised him to contact his mother for information,” Bren said, “and that he should by all means use official cha

“My spies report the fact of the phone contact between Mercheson and Jase.” Atevi had the devil’s own time with the combinations of consonants in Yolandaand preferred Mercheson, never quite making sense of the protocols of human names. “There was a set of messages from the earth station on Mospheira to the ship and the ship to Mospheira preceding and following the contact between Mercheson and Jase-paidhi.”

“Possibly,” Bren suggested softly, with the definite impression that, yes, Tabini had held this particular piece of distressing news from the paidhi until the paidhi was home to handle Jase, perhaps for fear the paidhi might breach security, alter his schedule, or call the ship himself. “Perhaps this communication between Mercheson and the authorities on the ship was because she realized she’d let out something, aiji-ma, or it might have a less felicitous interpretation. I would imagine, but not swear, that she was distressed to have broken the news and had no idea he didn’t know But beforeJase’s contact with Mercheson—clearly there was one prior call, but several—would be somewhat unusual.”

“The name Deana Hanks has floated to the surface of such messages in the last four days. Deana Hanks has advised. Deana Hanks has said…”

Damn, was the word that floated to the surface of his mind, but one didn’t curse in the aiji’s presence.

“One is far from pleased to hear so, aiji-ma, but I have no means to curtail her activities. I’ll certainly review the transcript of those contacts.”