Inheritor

And he didn’t know how he was going to explain it. The truth was going to have repercussions. There was no way it wouldn’t.

“I have duties,” Jago said, and deserted him.

“Bren?” Jase said.

“Good morning, Jasi-ji. Sorry about the change of arrangements last night.”

“The rain. I know.” Jase rushed past that item. “Where are we going? nand’ Rejiri says west. West, am I right, nadi? Mogari-nai? Not fishing. Not down to the sea?”

The boy from Dur looked as if a glimmering had reached him that he had just possibly said something out of line. And Bren tried to recall what he’d told Jase on the other side of a mountain of new information.

“You promised me the ocean,” Jase reminded him, “nadi. We were going to go fishing. You said political problems at Mogari-nai. Nand’ Rejiri says his father should bring guns there and I should ask you to ask the dowager if he can go to his father and bring guns.”

“Ask the dowager,” Bren said to the boy, “nadi.”

“One has asked, nand’ paidhi. But she won’t rely on me.”

“Possibly she has other reasons, nadi, such as intentions she holds in secret, and I would suggest that you remember she is old because some of her enemies are dead.”

Rejiri’s face grew quite sober. “Nandi,” he said.

While an aggrieved roommate with a good deal more than that on his mind waited to have hisquestion answered.

“Jase,” Bren said, “we are going to Mogari-nai, and I am increasingly certain we have a difficulty.”

“We are not on vacation.”

“I do not think we are on vacation, no, Jase.”

“Where were you last night?”

The boy was there, all ears.

“Talking,” Bren said.

“But not to me,” Jase said, and walked off.

“Jase!” he said, but Jase kept walking down what had been a line of tents and now was a set of bundles of baggage.

He couldn’t run after after Jase in front of the whole camp. He couldn’t start a quarrel. Jase was nota diplomat. He didn’t know how far it would go, or where it would end if Jase blew up, and blew up at the wrong people.

Meanwhile Ilisidi was up on Babsidi and she and Cenedi were bringing the herd in to the place where the gear waited.

“I suppose I talked too much, nand’ paidhi,” Rejiri said shamefacedly.

He’d never dealt individually with atevi youngsters. Certainly not with a boy verging on independence.

And he had no wish to humiliate the boy, who had probably heard his faults enumerated by Banichi. “Did nand’ Banichi give you advice?” he asked.

“Yes, nand’ paidhi.”

“Was it good advice?”

There was a moment of silence. “Yes, nand’ paidhi.”

“He’s a wise man,” Bren said. “I take advice from him, frequently. Even the aiji does. I’d watch himand do what he does.”

He wasn’t thinking about the boy. He was thinking about Jase, and how to patch his own mistakes, and maybe it was a little revenge for Banichi’s jokes to aim the i

“ Thankyou, nand’ paidhi,” and set off in Banichi’s direction.

He wondered what he’d just done; and then it struck him that Ilisidi and all her men were eastern, and he and Jase were the only officials here whose man’chi was really clearly Tabini’s. He’d just confirmed to the confused lad that, indeed, he could rely on Banichi, and recommended he do so.

At least it was the truth, and he hadn’t misled the boy or done any harm to the situation.

If he could only be so lucky with his own species.

Jase didn’t look at him as he walked up. The camp was a snarling confusion as the dowager’s men saddled the mechieti.

“Well, well, well,” Ilisidi said cheerfully, as Babsidi moved up to tower against the gray-ribboned sky, “good morning, nand’ paidhi.”

Was she upset? Bren asked himself. Did she know?

Ilisidi knew every sneeze in her vicinity. And that courtship game they’d played, he and Ilisidi. Did it mask real possessiveness? An old woman’s real inclinations?

Disaster?

“You inspire so manyquestions,” Ilisidi said from her height of vantage, and signaled Babsidi to go past him. Nokhada was saddled. So was Jase’s mechieta, and there was no place to talk, no timeto talk with the mechieti waiting for riders and the men who were doing the saddling wanting to get riders up and out of their way.

He made Nokhada bend down for him, got himself up with that unique pain of the second day in the saddle. Jase was no better, he was well certain. He was sure the only ones immune were Ilisidi and her men.

He kept Nokhada under tight rein and knew he wasn’t going to have a chance to talk to Jase in anything like the length and complexity of topic that could calm Jase down.

Jase knew he’d been lied to. Not by intent, maybe, but he deserved Jase’s anger at being left literally in the dark last night. Banichi would be good-humored and a quiet bedfellow, veryquiet, meaning Jase would not have gotten any information out of him. He’d indicated he’d come back. Lie number one.

He’d not told Jase where he’d been. Lie number two, at least by omission, and he hadn’t remotely thoughtabout Jase’s state of mind in terms of anything but the storm and the lightning he knew Jase feared, Banichi wasn’talways good at reassuring a man, Banichi and his jokes. Banichi had probably given him the statistics on people hit by lightning on camping trips.

He had to get his wits together. He couldn’t treat Jase that way. He was solidly in the wrong this time, because he’d been distracted by personal affairs, and it was just too damn serious a matter to say I forgot.

The last of the company mounted up. The sea was a misty gray beyond the cliffs. The island of Dur showed indistinct in a morning haze.

Ilisidi kept it on her right as she led off at a fast clip. They were headed west. And they clearly weren’t going fishing.

The clouds kept blowing overhead from some inexhaustible source beyond the horizon, wave after wave driven by stiff winds aloft; but the sun began to win the battle toward midmorning, and light and shadow played on the velvet-textured rolls of the land.

Beautiful. A distracted mind couldn’t but notice.

Bren said as much to Jase as they rode, trying to set up a friendlier mood for the rest stop he knew was coming, when he hoped to have a chance to talk.

“Yes,” Jase said; but nothing more, and when they did get their stop, and did get down, Jase listened to his “I’m sorry,” and said, “Where is the truth, nadi? How do I tell the truth?”

“I was with Jago,” he said in the lowest voice that would carry. “I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking! I was stupid! Will you listento me?”

“Go ahead.” They weren’t that far from Banichi. But that meant they weren’t far from the boy from Dur, who’d attached himself exactly as he’d said. And Jase’s tone didn’t invite confidences.

“There’s a rumor Deana Hanks is coming to the mainland. I suspect Mospheira is going to try an independent deal with Direiso of the Kadigidi to peel the northern provinces outof the Western Association, but I’m not sure I can make atevi see entirely what Hanks thinks she’s doing: it’s too foreign to their instincts. The whole east is shaky, held mostly by Ilisidi’s influence. Do you follow me?”

“Is that what you discussed in bed?”

“ Yes, dammit, among other things. Listen to me. We’ve got a problem a hell of a lot larger than my mistake. I admitit was a mistake, all right, I was a damn fool, but I was trying to find out the situation last night—”

“Among other things.”

“Yes, among other things.” He was getting madder. He was so mad already his muscles were shaking, and his breath was short, and it didn’t help communication. He shifted to Mosphei’. “Can you for God’s sake quit keeping score on who’s wrong and who’s right and hear what I’m saying?”