Inheritor

“Factions.” Jase knew that word.

“Factions. She’s saying that Saigimi’s wife was trying to get lord Geigi’s land and title, and she prevented it. So Geigi helped herget Deana away from lady Direiso. Tabini let Deana go. Now Deana’s behind some radio broadcasts to Direiso’s followers, talking against Tabini. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, sometime during our trip, we don’t go up to Mogari-nai and express the aiji’s andthe dowager’s discontent with them losing our mail and not acting aggressively to prevent those broadcasts. That’s a huge electronics installation. If it’s letting some little handheld radio communicate with the mainland—” Thunder cracked and Jase jumped, his face stark and scared in the lightning flash. “—it’s not doing its job very well.”

“Will they shoot?”

“Mogari-nai? No. That’s not their job. The Messengers’ Guild holds Mogari-nai. The Assassins’ Guild is with Tabini. Open conflict isn’t going to benefit the Messengers’ Guild, I can tell you that. Better get inside.” He’d seen Banichi leave the brief conversation and go out into the dark, possibly for nothing more than call of nature; but he wasn’t sure. “I’ll be there in a minute. Don’t worry about the thunder. Lightning’s the threat. But it hits the tallest thing around. Keep lower than the tent roof and you’re fine.”

It wasn’t true. But the mechieti were in more danger.

“Where are you going?”

“To talk to our security, nadi. Go inside. Don’t worry about it.” Wind was battering them, ruffling and snapping the canvas. A fat, cold drop splashed down on him as he went to that endmost tent.

Jago had seen him coming. She waited for him in the pelting early drops of rain.

“Is everything all right?” he asked, fearful, despite the assurances he’d given Jase, that there might be more going on than he knew about.

“Yes,” Jago said, and caught his arm, pulling him toward the inside of the tent. “Come in out of the rain, Bren-ji.”

It was their tent. Hers and Banichi’s, compact for atevi, affording her no room to stand. It was warmer, instantly. Softer than the ground, insulated by an inflated bottom fabric. Black as night. He couldn’t see a thing. Possibly she could.

“You did very well,” Jago said in a hushed tone. “You did verywell, Bren-ji.”

“One hoped,” he said.

“She wished to say such things in the boy’s hearing, and you afforded her the audience she needed. You asked about Deana’s kidnapping. Did it occur to you to ask about your own?”

The thought had crossed the depths of his mind, while Ilisidi was confessing to things Tabini’s security had worked hard to learn. “I feared it might divert us. I take it that it isa second matter.”

Lightning showed her shadow against the dim fabric of the tent. Something hard and dangerous and metal met his hand. His hand closed on a pistol grip. “This is yours, Bren-ji. I took it from your luggage. Keep it inside your coat.”

His heart was beating fast enough to get his attention now. “Are we in such danger?”

“Do you remember the getting of this gun?”

“Tabini gave it to me.”

“No. Banichigave it to you.”

It was true. He couldn’t tell one from the other. On holiday at Taiben, he and Tabini had shot at melons and broken Treaty law—before he’d ever met Ilisidi.

Tabini had given him a gun he shouldn’t have, by Treaty law; and he’d been anxious when he returned to Shejidan. He’d not known what to do with it in his little garden apartment, with two servants who were not—he understood such things far better now—reliably within his man’chi. He’d tucked it beneath his mattress.

He’d fired it at an intruder that had appeared at his curtained door, in lightning flashes, on such a night as this.

Banichi and Jago had replaced his security that night. Banichi had replaced the gun—in case, Banichi had said, an investigation should link it to Tabini.

Banichi and Jago had taken over his apartment, wired his door, replaced his servants, and brought in Tano and Algini, whom at that time he hadn’t trusted.

From that hour forward he’d been in Jago’s and Banichi’s care.

And immediately Tabini had sent him, with Banichi and Jago, to Malguri, to Ilisidi’s venue.

He’d been in danger of his life. He believed that then. He believed it now, sitting in this tent with Banichi’s gun tucked into his jacket.

And he went back to the simplest, most ground-level question he had used to ask them: he, the paidhi, the expert. “What should I know, Jago-ji?”

“That in the matter of Deana Hanks, Ilisidi did very well, and has only credit. But the night the intruder came to your bedroom, one of her faction had exceeded orders and attempted to remove you. We did find out not the name but the man’chi. And that you, yourself, bloodied this reckless person; that was a profound embarrassment to the dowager. She had refused Tabini’s offer to negotiate until that happened and until, against her expectations, Tabini declined to expose the author of the attack and asked again for her to accept you in trust. But before he sent you to Malguri, he filed Intent against persons u

“Meanwhile Ilisidi was trying to determine whether she would believe Tabini’s urgings that neither he nor humans had betrayed the association—or whether she could agree to lead an attempt to remove Tabini from office. Some eastern conspirators believed her assessment that you were honest—and some were convinced by questioning you.”

“Was thatwhat that was?”

“The matter in the cellars? Yes. We could notprevent it. The rebellion was going forward. A certain lord moved without the dowager, attempting to overthrow her, and she brought down Tabini’s forces on their heads. Here, in the west, however, the situation was exactly as you apprehend: there was a fear ofhumans, and once that was allayed—Tabini was more popular than before with the commons, as was the prospect of even closer cooperation between humans and Shejidan, a deluge of technology from the heavens, and more centralized power to Shejidan. Direiso and others who want to sit in Tabini’s place, and the peninsular lords who don’t want a centralized government, all saw that if they didn’t move soon, they’d never dare. So they approached Ilisidi in the theory she might have been coerced into returning you. And Ilisidi acted to rescue the paidhiin and keep them out of Direiso’s hands. That much was clear. Ilisidi does not want Direiso as aiji. But where does Ilisidi herself stand? The answer, nadi-ji, was out there tonight. I suspect Saigimi, from the peninsula, attempted to get Ilisidi to overthrow Direiso—who isfrom the Padi Valley, as Ilisidi is from the remote east.”

“Can we rely on her? It pains me even to ask, Jago-ji, but dare we rely on her? Or is there some thirdchoice?”

There was silence out of the dark. Lighting showed him Jago, elbow on knee, fist on chin. And a break of that pose in that flicker of an instant.

“The aiji tested herby sending you to her at Malguri. Now she tests himby demanding both paidhiin in her hands. Thatis where we sit tonight, Bren-ji. And we don’t knowthe answer.”

“I asked her to bring us here.”

“Not as Cenedi told me the story.”

It was not, he recalled now, accurate. “I asked her to go with us to Geigi’s house.”

“And she then suggested Saduri.”

“She did.”

“And Geigi had invited you to his house.”

“He did. He had.”

“Geigi is within her man’chi, Bren-ji. Tabini’s maneuvering helped him pay his debt to Ilisidi. But she had already rescued him financially. However—you—whom the dowager favors—and who have man’chi to Tabini, as you have stated, saved his reputation. Geigi is in an interesting three-way position.”