Inheritor

There was a small silence, a chastened demeanor. “Yes, nand’ dowager.”

“Why now? Why not earlier?”

“Because we didn’t know the aiji might not know. Because if it wasimportant, the aiji should know, nand’ dowager.”

“Going quickly and by stealth through the skies.”

“Yes, nand’ dowager.” The boy bowed his head. “I broke the law. I knew I broke it.”

“And broke it again coming here!”

“No, nand’ dowager. I took the train.”

Rarely did anyone get a reaction from the dowager when she was in thismood. The brows went up and crashed down, hard. “I mean coming through the barriers, young man! How did you know to come here!”

“It’s all over—” The boy took a breath. “All over the province, all over the country, I think, nand’ dowager.”

“You, young man, will go with my security, you will stay in your room, and in the stead of your father, who is in the man’chi of my ungrateful grandson, you will take orders from me, do you hear, or I will shoot you with my own hand.”

“ Yes, nand’ dowager.”

“Take him elsewhere!” Ilisidi said, and members of her staff collected the young man. “See he gets supper.”

The boy put up no argument about it. And Ilisidi, leaning on her cane, rose with a frown on her face.

“By train, indeed. Before we took off this morning, the boy left the capital. And changed trains.—nand’ paidhi.”

“Aiji-ma.”

“Radios. Radios, do you understand?”

“I have heard the rumor.”

A wave of Ilisidi’s hand. “To bed, to bed. Don’t concern yourself with tomorrow. We’ll go riding. Perhaps we’ll have a look at the sea and satisfy this intemperate young man you’ve brought me. He’s begi

He hesitated, then thought better of questioning Ilisidi.

“Aiji-ma,” he said, and turned and went for the steps, thinking that he had to get a few minutes alone with his security.

He heard someone behind him. He didn’t want to look and find out until he reached the privacy of the floor above.

Then he turned.

“Jago-ji.”

“Nand’ paidhi.”

“Nand’ paidhi,” he echoed, in not-quite-mock despair. “ Talkto me, Jago-ji.”

“My room,” Jago said.

He wasn’teager, now, to get himself into interpersonal maneuverings. But hehad a roommate. So did she, but Banichi was downstairs. Jase was in bed, and not, besides, the person he wanted to overhear a frank talk between himself and the aiji’s security about the aiji’s grandmother—besides, twice, his room was probably bugged.

He walked in that direction. She did, and opened the door and let him in.

He stood while she lit a match, and a candle. It was a room no different from his, except for the stack of baggage in the corner, a stack of mostly black objects.

He shut the door. And Jago looked at him, her eyes reflecting a disconcerting shimmer of gold.

“Are we safe with the dowager?” he whispered.

“One believes so, nand’ paidhi.”

Nand’ paidhi. He was vaguely disappointed. About what, he didn’t know, and told himself he was a fool, but he couldn’t but be conscious of her as someone he’d intimately trusted half a year ago; and he felt—he wasn’t sure. Set aside. Something like that.

“The aiji is aware of the situation,” Jago said, and then, straight-faced. “Should we whisper?”

At first he was moved to laugh and then thought of Jase next door.

“Our hearing isn’t that acute,” he said in a low voice. “What’s going on, Jago-ji? As much as you can tell me. I’ll rely on you to care for the rest.”

“In brief, nadi, it’s common knowledge the paidhiin are vacationing in the province. It was a news item yesterday evening, so the boy’s appearance is far from amazing.”

“Tabini is using us for hunting-bait.”

“One would hesitate to put it so inelegantly.”

“But true. Is it not?”

“True.”

“Meaning persons of ill intent will flock here.—Mogari-nai and the earth station are right across the hill, nadi! We’ll draw harm to it!”

A small pause. “Tabini-aiji has considered that proximity.”

Not among things the paidhi should know, then. Gunshots on the lawn.

Or such a lawn as this fallen-down place had.

“Don’t be out of countenance, nand’ paidhi. There is a purpose.”

“What purpose?” He tried not to become emotional, which only set atevi on the defensive with that, and not the issue. “I ask you, nadi, whom I greatly respect, are our interests protected?”

“By us, nadi.”

“I always have confidence in that, but, nadi—” He didn’t know what to say that Jago would understand. After all they’d been through they were back to that, and it was late, and he was not as sharp as he might have been an hour ago, or he was emotionally rattled and trying to think in too many different directions at once.

“What do you wish to say, nadi?” Jago asked.

He looked up at her, in the dark and the dim light that picked out the sparks of metal on her jacket, the gloss of her black skin, the gold shimmer of her steady gaze. And looked down and aside, because there just was no rational approach and the translator had no words. He wanted to ask what Tabini had in mind and he didn’t. He found himself in emotional danger, was what, and he had every reason to be concerned for himself.

“I’d better go,” he said, and reached back to the latch and ran into the door edge on his way out of this room.

“Nadi?” he heard behind him, quietly. Jago was confused, in itself a sign of the dangerous way he was dealing with things.

He went to his own room, and inside. The candle had burned down to half. Jase was in bed, a lump in the blankets, and didn’t react to his coming in.

He stripped down to his underwear in the biting cold from the slit window, was a little conscious of the exposure to that window, and snipers, even as small as that exposure was, and then told himself that there was some kind of electronic perimeter that had warned them of the boy’s approach, and that there was probably one of Ilisidi’s men posted to guard all those windows, which were certainly too small for an adult ateva, so the hell with it, he said to himself. He had to trust the security. He had no choice.

He sighted a line between there and the end of the bed, and blew out the candle. He managed the transit most of the way, bashed his leg on the far corner post of the bed, and drew a deep breath from Jase.

“Is that you?”

“So far as I know,” he muttered, settled from cold air to a cold bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. Jase was a warmth beside him. He shivered and tried not to.

“Find out anything?”

The brain wasn’t primed to work. Other things had been in operation. He tried to recover where he’d left Jase in the information flow. “Kid’s not a threat,” he said. And remembered Jase didn’t know anything about anything except they weren’t at the beach and Jase wanted to go fishing.

God save them.

“I imagine we’ll go riding tomorrow morning. Just be patient. We might ride down to the beach.”

“Can you get there from here?”

“Far as I know. Or we might go up to Mogari-nai. It’s near here. There’s an old site there.”

“Why are we visiting all these old things?”

The question astonished him. But professional judgment cut in and informed him that it might be ship-culture at work.

And where was Jase to learn the value of anything historic, if his world was the ship?

And where was Jase to derive the value of rare species? Or the concept of saving the ecology, if Jase’s view was that of a steel ship and lights that kept a computer’s schedule?

Where did one start?

“Understand,” he said calmly, into the dark above his head, “that the preservation of all life on this planet is of great value, the animals, the plants, all valuable. So is the record of what lies in the past. Accept that this is valuable, not only to the dowager, but to me. Can you imagine that? They’re not just old places.”