Inheritor

He’d enlist the staff to keep Jase and Tatiseigi separated. Saidin might do it. Saidin might have far more luck than the aiji of Shejidan, in that matter.

No one, it seemed, could tell uncle Tatiseigi no—and, technically speaking, he supposed no one could do so legally in the matter of the impending visit. What he had heard of the shouting in the hall indicated something truly beyond Tabini’s control, unless Tabini wished to take extreme action.

The old man was going to push that situation. And Tabini. Which was one thing considering interpersonalrelations. But this was two clans involved. And Damiri.

Wonderful place for two humans to be standing. And impeccable timing. Jase wasn’t up to this.

“One can still wish for rain,” Tabini said. “So. Bren.—What aboutGeigi?”

Now it came down to the matter on which the aiji wished to be informed—officially speaking. It came down to Geigi’s good reputation and the reputation of all the workers in that plant and in all the other labs and plants he’d visited, who relied on him to represent their work, their good will, and all the things they’d tried to demonstrate to him. He tried to collect his scattered wits and represent them well.

“So when will it fly?” Tabini asked him bluntly. Early on, it had been, Willit fly?

“Ahead of schedule, by some few months, aiji-ma, I still maintain so, until and unless we find some problem that delays us the months we allowed for such events.”

“But as yet no such problem exists.” Tabini rested his chin again on his hand and looked satisfied. “It might have arisen, understand. Now such an interruption is far less likely.”

He was so busy thinking of engineering details he didn’t take Tabini’s meaning immediately.

Then he did.

“Saigimi did not want that ship to fly,” Tabini said. “He viewed it as a means to bring down the government. He was wrong. His assassins did not reach Geigi and they did not reach the director of Patinandi Aerospace. So you had a very quiet trip.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.”

“You noticed nothing untoward.”

“No, aiji-ma.”

“Good,” Tabini said. “As it should have been.”

10

The interview with Tabini had gone relatively quickly, and on a day interrupted by phone calls and upsetting news of the Atageini visit—to hisapartment—Bren was hardly surprised.

That left him time to go back to the apartment before the television interview, or, on the other hand, time to visit the office down in the legislative wing and to pay a courtesy call on his staff.

He might, he decided, accidentally interrupt Jase’s phone call if he went back to the apartment: Jase had to make his call either from the library or from the security station, and the library venue had been so hard to predict regarding noise from the reconstruction (hammering would begin at the damnedest times, and the staff would go ru

Which didn’t need the confusion of the front door opening and closing and the servant staff ru

So he opted for the office downstairs, where his clerical staff maintained a dike against the flood of correspondence. It was a rare honor, the dedication of one of the three available offices inside the Bu-javid, ‘for security reasons,’ as he’d heard, meaning that he tended to visit the clerical office often and that his security and Tabini’s didn’t want the paidhi going to the building that was the other option, down the hill to what was officially called the Maganuri A

So there was to be a new subway link to a hotel district being built on the city outskirts. Tabini’s enemies pointed to the growth of government.

But those same enemies supported the creation of various commissions and agencies that kept the aiji from making autocratic decisions, which was the alternative. And they required more offices and more hotels. He’d warned Tabini against more committees. Tabini had been willing to let the power go last year, saying that certain things needed more study than his staff could give it.

But now Tabini was looking with a very suspicious eye at some of the commercial interests that had crept in with agendas which had no place in the traditional structure, agendas being backed by some of the lords. That office building out there, the Maganuri Building, built to house the study committees proposed by the legislators opposed to the growth of government, was begi

Others said it was built on a battlefield (it was) and that the dead troubled it. Oddly enough, the surrounding hotels and businesses had never had such difficulties.

So the paidhi was quite glad to be honored by the office he had, and not to have to take the subway down the hill, or to the edge of town—where according to the latest rumors, the construction, since the folded space controversy had set certain numerologists playing with an expanded deck, was also plagued by bad numbers, which might even halt construction.

Certain numerologists were suggesting that the number of state offices be shrunk, and the whole thing be cast back to the system whence it had blossomed, tossing the responsibility for information-gathering back into the hands of lords and representatives, who, in the old days, might suffer personal disgrace if they handed in bad information. The names of lords authoring reports previously had been permanently attached to the measures they proposed and the results, good or bad, had remained theirresponsibility.

Some said the fact that Maganuri had died and that the three local lords (who had been very forward to hire construction agencies within their associations) failed to affix their names to the building ought to be a warning.

Some said that old Maganuri himself haunted the office building on stormy nights, looking for Shimaji, Sonsini, and Burati, the contractors in question, to put them to haunting the building in his place.

So the paidhi was definitely glad not to be down there, in a building some were seriously talking about demolishing before it was fully occupied. As it was, he needed only go to the lower tiers of the Bu-javid complex and, via the security access, walk into his premises, never having broken a sweat.

Secretaries scrambled out of their chairs, rose and bowed as he and Banichi walked in, and nand’ Dasibi, the chief of his clerical staff, came hurrying from his office to bow and receive the paidhi’s personal inquiry into office affairs.

While he was listening to Dasibi’s ru

He routinely sca