Inheritor

His roommate, however, was neither clairvoyant nor briefed on matters, and the last statement he’d heard uttered regarded lord Geigi and a boat.

Ilisidi never batted an eye as she looked in Jase’s direction and said, “Perhaps.”

Oh, God, Bren thought, feeling that the conversation was going down by the stern. He tried to catch Jago’s eye, or Banichi’s, and got nothing but a stare from Cenedi as uninformative and sealed as Ilisidi’s was. He looked the other direction down the table, at Algini, and Tano, and a cluster of the dowager’s young men, as she called them, all Guild, all dangerous, all doubtless better informed than he was.

“I would like the Onondisi bay, nand’ dowager,” Jase said. “I’ve heard a great deal about the island. I saw it from the air.”

Ilisidi quirked that brow that could, were the Guild under such instructions, doom a man to die, and smiled at Jase.

“We may, I say, go north, nadi.”

Bren dropped his knife onto the stone floor, necessitating a scramble by servants to retrieve it.

“Foolish of me,” Bren said with a deep bow of his head, and allowed its replacement with a clean one without comment. “Perhaps it’s the drink, nand’ dowager. May I suggest my associate go to bed now.”

“Early start tomorrow,” Ilisidi said. “These young folk. Cenedi-ji, were we ever so easily exhausted?”

“I think not, aiji-ma,” Cenedi said quietly.

“This modern reliance on machines.” Ilisidi made a wave of her hand. “Go, go! No one should leave the table before he’s done, but get to bed in good season, else I assure you you’ll pay for it tomorrow!”

Jase at least comprehended it was a dismissal and, Tano and Algini clearing the bench for him, he was able to extricate himself. Bren worked his way out, having been similarly freed by two of Ilisidi’s security. The two further benches rose in courtesy to the departing paidhiin.

“Go, go,” Ilisidi said to the offered bows, and gave another wave. “In the morning, gather at the front steps.”

“Nand’ dowager,” Jase said with a further bow, and not a thing else. Bren escorted him from the hall, up the steps, to their room, and inside, into the candle-lit dark and chill of an unheated room.

Jase turned. Bren shut the door.

Jase said, humanwise: “Trust you, is it?”

“What’s the matter with you? Were you tryingto foul things up or was it your lucky night?”

At least Jase shut up, whether in temper or the mild realization that things might be more complicated than he thought.

“Do me a great favor, if you please, nadi. Go to bed.”

“Are you coming back?”

“I assure you. Take whichever side you wish, nadi, and I will gladly take the other.”

“Where are yougoing?”

“To try to patch up the dowager’s good regard and find out what the boy from Dur is doing here, at the real risk of his life.”

He might have been mistaken by candlelight; but there was a little reckoning of that latter statement on Jase’s part, and maybe a prudent decision not to ask a question he had in mind.

“Will they tell you that?” Jase asked.

“They’d have told youif you hadn’t set the evening on its ear. You do notquestion the dowager and you do notquestion her arrangements! Jase, what in hell’s the matter with you? This is your associate here, me! This is the person with an equal interest in seeing that ship fly! What are we fighting about?”

He expected an explosion at least of equivalent magnitude. “Nadi,” Jase began in Ragi, and then again, “What do I have to do to have you on my side, nadi?”

“I amon your side!” He dropped his voice, moved close and seized Jase by the lapels long enough to bring his lips to Jase’s ear. “Bug,” was all he whispered, and Jase went wooden in his grip and very quiet.

“Just stay here,” Bren said aloud and let go.

And left.

Downstairs again, toward their makeshift banquet hall, where nothing had much changed except most of the security was on their feet, the servants were cleaning up, and Ilisidi was still seated, her cane, however, in her hands, and her chair angled at forty-five degrees to the table.

“Well,” Ilisidi said, as if he satisfied expectations by appearing.

“Tano-ji,” he said in passing, though it was an act of temerity to give orders to Tano, or to give orders to anyone in Ilisidi’s hall, “keep an eye on Jase, please.”

“Yes,” Tano said as Bren came to Ilisidi.

“Dowager-ji,” Bren said, “first, forgive my associate his lack of understanding.”

There was a nod, with amiable quiet.

“And forgive me mine. But, nand’ dowager, is there anything I may ask in confidence?”

“What do you wish to know, nand’ paidhi?”

“Why is that boy here, aiji-ma?”

Ilisidi braced the ferrule of her cane against the irregular stones of the floor and leaned forward. “A good question. Cenedi-ji, whyis this boy here?”

“He is young, he is intemperate, he lacks all finesse, and he believes he alone holds vital information about a threat to global peace.”

He guessed, then, what that information might concern: a dweller on the island, near the runaway transmissions.

“Well-intentioned, then,” he said.

“One believes so.”

“Nandiin,” Algini said quietly, Algini, who tended to pick up the small details, “he has repeatedly attempted to reach the paidhi—or the aiji. He seems not at all particular.”

“Well, well,” Ilisidi said. “Let’s have a look at him. Nand’ paidhi, do you wish to hear the matter, or not?”

“I shall gladly hear it,” he murmured, “aiji-ma.” His brain was racing meanwhile and he had Jago but not Banichi or Tano within the field of his vision. He thought that if there were a problem developing between him and Ilisidi he would see Jago’s signal to withdraw once Ilisidi said that.

But at a certain point he had to rely on them and theirman’chi to Tabini. He had never quite so much realized what it might be to stand in the middle of a sort-out of atevi loyalties, blind in his human heart of hearts to what might be going on in atevi; but knowing emotionally, human-fashion, that his heart was with Banichi and Jago, that his duty insisted on Tabini, and that friendship, yes, friendship, wanted Tabini and Ilisidi both to listen to him and not tear the world apart.

Stupid, stupid, to have it any other way, and he would not believethat Ilisidi was ready to make such moves, or that Tabini had so misread his grandmother in sending them out here.

Cenedi had made a call on his pocket com, and in not very long black-uniformed security came in from the front door, among them Banichi and several of their own, among Ilisidi’s; and with them, a figure in black—the fool, Bren thought—handcuffed and disheveled, and looking for all the world like a scared kid.

“Nand’ paidhi!” the boy said.

“Young fool,” Ilisidi said, and had his attention—at which point said young fool seemed to realize (surely he’d known the paidhi was here when he invaded the place) that he was in far deeper trouble. The boy grew quiet, and bowed as respectfully as one could in handcuffs and being restrained by two of the largest of Ilisidi’s young men.

“The paidhi-aiji has a question for you,” Ilisidi said. “Perhaps you will give him the courtesy of an answer?”

“Aiji-ma, yes, if it please your ladyship.”

“Nand’ paidhi?”

“Nand’ Rejiri of Dur-wajran?”

“Yes, nand’ paidhi.”

“Why did you—?” Attempt to fly into my plane? That was surely not the intent. That was just a pilot inexperienced at that airport. “—come to Shejidan?”

“To tell the aiji there’s treason.”

“Then why pursue me?”

“Because your lordship could tell the aiji I wasn’t a fool!”

Therewas a circular argument.

“I truly never expressed to the aiji that you were one.” But the case was clear to him, now: the boy, humiliated, his plane impounded after near collision with the aiji’s own plane, couldn’t even hope for a hearing that wouldn’t involve a plane, the ATC, and his father, a lord of the Association.