Inheritor

He finished the drink and set down the glass. The spring breeze blew through the sitting room, chill with spring and fresh with scents of new things.

He’d had a nice, tame little single-room apartment down the hill, before he’d come to this borrowed, controversy-dominated palace.

He’d had glass doors that opened onto a pretty little garden he’d shared with a Bu-javid cook and several clerks, trusted perso

But someone had broken into his little apartment one rainy night, whether a person of Tabini’s staff setting him up, or whether truly an attempt on his life, he didn’t know nor expected the persons who might have been responsible ever to say. He would never ask, for his part, since it seemed vaguely embarrassing to say it to persons who if they were human would be friends.

Persons whose turning against him would mean he’d have only duty left.

He was aware of a presence in the shadowed hall. He thought it was the servant spotting an empty glass. They were that good, sometimes seeming to have radar attuned to that very last sip, to whisk the glass away, perhaps zealous to restore the perfection of numbers in the room, perhaps that the night staff had to account for the historic crystal. He had no idea and had never asked.

He turned his head and saw Jago standing there.

“Are you well, Bren-ji?”

“Yes.” It was perhaps a lie he told her. He wasn’t even sure.

Perhaps Jago wasn’t sure, either. She walked in and stood where he could see her without turning his head.

“Is there trouble?” he asked her.

“Only a foolish boy who tried to ride the subway to the hill. One can’t reach the hill by the subway without appropriate passes, of course. But he carried identification. When he argued with the guards it rang alarms.”

“The boy from Dur?”

“He’s very persistent.”

“He’s not hurt, is he?”

“No, no, Bren-ji. But he isbecoming a great nuisance. Three letters today—”

“Three?”

“Felicitous three.” Jago held up three fingers. “Two would have been infelicitous. He was therefore compelled to send a third.”

He had to smile. And to laugh.

“One did,” Jago said slowly, “listen—to your phone call, Bren-ji.”

It was an admission of many things. And she came to him with that as an implied question.

There was a word, osi, that had no clear etymology, no relationship to any other word. But when one said it, one wanted a teacup full or a piece of information amplified to its greatest possible extent. He said it now, and Jago said quietly:

“This woman. One doesn’t recall her.”

“Sandra Johnson? A woman I saw socially, before you came.” There was no atevi word for dated. Or if there was, it was a set of words for social functions including bed-partners: he was definitely on shaky ground with that vocabulary.

And with Jago. They’d been—interested in each other. Curious, on one level. Aware—on another—that, being what they were, who they were, things being as they were, they couldn’t trifle with one another.

The air was suddenly charged. He didn’t know whether she felt it. He’d been celibate for almost a year, now, in a household full of women all of whom, including women he knew had grandchildren, acted as if they found him attractive. He’d met with too many memories tonight. He’d endangered a woman he’d slept with, trying to reestablish a co

He wanted—

He wanted someone to fill the silence.

Someone like Barb. Sandra hadn’t been that way for him. A fun evening. A light laughter. No talk about the job.

But to Barb, he’d told more than he should. And when it was clear he wasn’t coming back any time soon, and when his actions had alienated a lot of the population of Mospheira, she’dmarried a government computer expert, whose clearances and whose indispensability to the State Department could assure her safety in ways he couldn’t.

Jago walked closer to his chair. Was there, in the warmth and scent and solid blackness of an ateva close at hand.

“I should have shot Hanks-paidhi,” Jago said, stating fact as she saw it.

“Possibly it was the right idea,” he said, and Jago’s hand rested on his on the arm of the antique chair.

“Nadi-ji.”

His heart beat in panic. Sheer panic. He thought of moving his hand to signal no. But a sexual No wasn’t what he wanted either, not forever.

“If a person associates with the powerful,” Jago said in that rich, even voice, the low timbre only an ateva could achieve, “there are penalties.”

“But they never expected the paidhi’s job to be that, Jago-ji. I didn’t. I knowyou think Barb failed me. But there isno Guild for her to appeal to. My family has no clan, no power. She went to a man whose co

“And will Barb-daja help you?”

“If I could get to her—”

“What would she have done?”

“Checked on my mother.”

“And rescued her?”

“Barb can’t, Jago-ji. She has nowhere to go. She has no one to call on. There is no Guild. There’s none for Sandra Johnson. There isno help.”

“I have heard of po-lis.”

“Some of themaren’t reliable. And if you’re not inside the system you don’t know which ones.”

Jago took back her hand. And pulled up a chair. “Is this Sandra John-son knowledgeable of such things?”

“Shawn might help her. The Foreign Secretary. He might put her under some sort of protection. I don’t know.”

“And his superior? What of the President?”

He was suddenly looking not into the face of an ateva he trusted, but an Assassin, a guard in the man’chi of the aiji of Shejidan, asking things he had never quite admitted, like the real i

Matters on the island had never been quite this desperate, either, unless he was a total fool and had scared himself into some paranoid fancy. Shooting—at the State Department windows.

“Jago-ji. I’m not sure. I don’t knowwho’s holding power. Hanks is using a radio transmitter, on an island. Tellme they can’t find her and stop her. They knowwho’s doing it. There isn’tbut one person on Mospheira who can speak fluent Ragi! They aren’t that stupid, Jago-ji! Stupid, but not thatstupid.”

“If I see her I willshoot her, Bren-paidhi. This is a person doing harm to the aiji’s interests and to you.”

What did he say? Yes?

“I regard you highly,” was what he found to say in Ragi. And what else could he say? Something that evaded moral co

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I think so.” She rose and towered against the light, and walked to the door. “Banichi says go to bed and sleep.”

“Does he?” He was surprised. Then amused at the source of it. At both sources.

“Good night, nand’ paidhi.”

“Jago-ji.” He almost—almost—asked her to stay. No matter Banichi’s admonition. But she wouldn’t disobey that order, and he shouldn’t pose that conflict to her moral sense.

“I am also,” she added, “right about Barb-daja. The direction of her man’chi is not to you. She sought another place.—Shall I secure the computer?”

He turned it over to her, and walked out with her. But she went to the left, to the security station, and he went to the right, toward his bedroom, where servants converged and helped him to undress.