Inheritor

He just wished he hadn’t hung up on Toby. Their mother’s surgery was this week. And he wouldn’t hear. He just wouldn’t hear. He’d resigned himself to that.

Hard on the relatives, the job he’d taken, the job Jase had volunteered for, never having been out of the reach of family and familiarity in his life.

He sipped his fruit juice. Jase eventually remembered to drink his.

The plane took a turn toward the west. Jase braced himself and looked at the window as if he expected to see something.

“It’s all right.”

Jase took a deep breath. “Can you see the water as we come in, nadi?”

“We’re starting descent. You should be able to see it. You should have a good view.”

He didn’t know why Jase had taken the ocean as his ambition. He was only glad that Jase had taken something that easy for his goal, something hecould deliver.

He got up briefly and spoke to Banichi.

On the paidhi’s request and the local tower’s willingness, the plane made a very unusual approach, swinging low and slow over the water’s edge, then flew out over the sea and the large resort island of Onondisi, which sat in the bay, affording the ship-paidhi a view. Bren stood up to see, with his hand on a safety-grip, mindful of island pilots, standing and looking over Jase’s shoulder at a pleasant rock-centered island with bluffs to the north and sandy beach to the south, where the resorts clustered.

“Melted water,” Jase said in a tone of awe. “All that melted water.”

Now and again Jase could utterly surprise him.

“Melted it is.”

“Is it warm?”

“About the temperature of a cold water tap.” He reached past Jase to point at the hotels that clustered among trees on the heights of the island. “Vacation places. Hotels. You stay there and go down to the beaches.”

“Ordinary people go there?” Jase asked.

“And lords, nadi. And whoever wants to. The ordinary consideration is security, for the lords, so usually the high lords stay on the south shore of the bay. A lot of private beaches over there, but not as fine as these.”

“Other people, they don’t have to worry?”

“No.—Except if they’ve made somebody very, very angry. And even then they know whether they have to worry.”

“Are they scared with this assassination going on?”

“The Guild won’t touch a common man without a Filing of Intent. Even then the Guild has to be convinced there’s a strong and real grievance, so,” he said, with an eye to all the tiny figures on the beaches, wading the surf, “unless someone’s done something really outrageous enough to get a Filing approved—they’re safe, down there.”

“But not lords?”

“Lords have Guild in their households,” Jago said, standing close. “And the Guild doesn’t necessarily have to approve a greater lord moving against a lesser if right can be demonstrated later.”

“And a lesser against a greater?” Jase asked.

“It must approve that. And with common folk, it must. And often,” Jago said as an afterthought, “we mediate between common folk. Many times, a feud among folk like that doesn’t draw blood. We see many, many situations that common folk think extraordinary. We can bring perspective to a matter.”

One suspected (Tano had hinted as much, and he’d observed it on the daily news) a commoner-feud usually went quite slowly indeed if the Guild suspected mediation would result. Sometimes, the paidhi strongly suspected, the Guild did absolutely nothing for a few months, expecting its phone to ring with an offer to the opposing side, once the targeted party grew anxious.

Jago didn’t volunteer such information, however; and the plane swept on over water, this time with the view of Mospheira a distant blue haze past the rolling hills.

“That’s the island, nadi. Theisland. Mospheira.”

The wing tipped up, hiding it, as they were obliged to veer off along the invisible boundary.

“I didn’t see it,” Jase said.

“It’s just hazy out there. It wasthe haze.”

“I didn’t see it, all the same.” Jase sounded disappointed.

“Well, I’ll point it out to you when we’re on the ground. I’m sure we’ll be able to see it.—The hills closer to us, that was the height of Mogari-nai.”

Behind them now lay the rocky coastal bluffs that photographers loved, along with those of Elijiri which were near Geigi’s estate, further inland. Mogari-nai was set, one understood, on the aiji’s land, well back from the scenic areas, in a zone dedicated once to firing ca

Now Mogari-nai faced a periodic barrage of electronic interference launched from Mospheira, and that opposing shore was lined with radar installations.

Ask about that interference in a protest to the Mospheiran government, and naturally the problem immediately spread to the phone lines.

“ Will one wish another pass, nandiin?” That was the co-pilot. “ We have the sky to ourselves.”

“No, thank him, nadi,” Bren said, and Tano, standing near the intercom, relayed that information.

“ We will land, then, nandiin. Please seat yourselves comfortably and safely.”

Bren sat down and belted in. Jase fastened the belt and drew a long breath.

“Routine landing,” Bren said, and talked Jase a second time through the process of landing, and whyplanes stayed in the air and how they got onto the ground.

Jase seemed very much more relaxed, just three deep breaths as they were approaching touch-down, and a grin as they did so exactly when Bren predicted.

“A lot better than parachutes, nadi,” Jase said. They’d begun with a scared, withdrawn passenger and ended with one smiling and joking—one who’d been able to look out his window even during a steep bank, only occasionally clinging to the seats.

This was a good idea, Bren thought, this trip was a very good idea.

The plane taxied to the terminal of what was, for defense and seasonal tourist reasons, a fair-sized airport. The transport vans were waiting.

“We’re here, nadiin-ji!” Bren said cheerfully, and was not quite first on his feet, but close.

Vacation, he was thinking. It wasn’t quite the hoped-for chase after yellowtail, but Banichi was right: Geigi’s estate, just on the south shore of Onondisi Bay, was peninsular, and going there at this precise moment might send some unwanted signal and interfere with the aiji’s politics with that region.

Taiben, the aiji’s summer retreat, the other possibility—that was in the Padi Valley, and that was, again, politically sensitive right now, as well as dangerous, being in lady Direiso’s own front yard.

There’d been Malguri, which he’d most wished, but that was three hours by air into a set of provinces seething with intrigue.

So the aiji’s lands, meaning the public defense zone near Mogari-nai and the Historic Site near Saduri Township, that became the fallback. They couldn’t use the public resorts. The good one got out of being an atevi lord was mostly limited to a lot of ancestral knick-knacks you didn’t own, by his own observation; and the bad one got was that the more politically active you were and the more resolutely you did your job for the people you represented, the more true it became that you couldn’t ride regular airlines or go into pretty public resorts like Onondisi or go into the tourist restaurants he’d dearly love to go to—if he weren’t the paidhi-aiji, and a human to boot.

But, well, rank had other privileges. Supper tonight with Ilisidi could make up for the restaurants.

They didn’t have to gather up baggage. That was another good part of being lords. They let their security handle it and the moment the ladder was in place and the moment Banichi had been down to make direct contact with Ilisidi’s people, who were in charge of ground security, they could go.

“I’m fine!” Jase a