Inheritor

He found it.

It said, Bren, mother’s out of surgery. They said it was worse than they thought. But she’s going to be all right. I tried to call. The lines went down. I hope…

The line blurred and he blinked it clear.

… hope you get this. I hope you’re all right. I was sorry we were cut off. I shouldn’t have said the things I did, and I knew it, and all that other crap came out. I wanted to say I love you, brother. And I said that nonsense.

His hand shook uncontrollably. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t think for a moment, except that it wasn’t allowable for him to show disturbance in front of a roomful of atevi, in the service of the dowager. Too much was at issue. He had too much to do. He shoved his way out of the seat, told himself a restroom might give him a moment to get himself together without anyone being the wiser if he just moved slowly and showed no distress. Livesrode on his composure. He couldn’t become the subject of gossip or disgrace to the dowager.

“Jago-ji,” he said. His eyes were brimming and he tried not to blink. “It’s a little warm. Where’s a restroom, please?”

“Nandi.” Jago moved past Jase and, thank God, between him and the rest of the room. “This way.”

“Bren?” Jase asked him.

“Stay there!” he said to Jase, and found he could talk, and if he could get privacy enough to clear his eyes without making a fool of himself, he’d be fine and back before anyone questioned his reactions.

Jago, meanwhile, brought him to the side hall, and to a restroom door, and inside, all the while one could have heard a pin drop outside.

“Bren-ji?”

“It’s all right.” There was a wall basin, and he ran cold water and splashed it into his face. Jago handed him a towel. Atevi restrooms had no mirrors. He trusted he hadn’t soaked his hair. He’d gotten his eyes clear but his gut was still in a knot. “Jago-ji, I’m sorry. I’m fine. How do I look?”

“Ill,” Jago said. “What did you read, Bren-ji?”

He tried to frame an answer. Good newsseemed a little extravagant. He truly wasn’t doing well.

The door cracked. Jago held it with her hand, protective of him. Jase said, “Bren?”

“In a moment, Jase.” Adrenaline surged up, a

“I have to talk to him, nand’ Jago. Please.”

“Let him in, nadi-ji,” Bren said, thinking by the tone of Jase’s voice he might have found something urgent in the record. Jago let the door open and Jase slipped in, while he knew the room outside would be concluding something was direly wrong.

“I need to talk to you,” Jase said. “I read the message. I need to talk to you. Alone.”

He didn’t understand. He damned sure didn’t want to discuss his personal life. He had a great deal else weighing on him.

But part of that great deal else was Jase’s cooperation.

“Jago,” he said.

“I will not leave you, Bren-ji.”

Nor should. Jago took herself to the side, however, and back a pace to the wall.

That left Jase as alone as he could manage in a tiny space; and Jase ducked his head and took a breath in the ma

That took several heartbeats to listen to. And a few more to try to figure. Yolanda Mercheson, Jase’s partner from the ship, was going to leaveMospheira?

“Why?” was the only thing he could say, not When? Not How? which were backed up and waiting, but at that point, Cenedi opened the door.

“Nandiin. Is there a problem?”

“We’re all right,” Bren said. His nerves were still wound tight, and he realized that the dowager was being kept waiting. “A moment, Cenedi-ji. Please excuse me to the dowager for just a moment.” One didn’t dosuch a thing; but he did. “Jase. Why? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know the details. I just know she’s coming here. It’s her judgment she can’t work with the island.”

Giving up on Mospheira? The ship was writing off the human population.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “And we’re going to have to explain this to the dowager. When is she doing this?” Jase’s sudden passion for the seashore began to nag at the back of a mind grown suspicious, over the years, of every anomaly. “Where did you make contact? When?”

“On the phone,” Jase said in a faint voice; and Jase was white-faced and sweating. “We had it arranged before we came down, that if one of us found the place we were in impossible, if demands were being put on us that we couldn’t accept, we’d cross the water somehow. And she—called me on the phone and that was how I knew. I knew I had to come at least to the coast. And then if she made it I was bound to find out about it if I was with you, so I could get her—get her to the capital. But I didn’t know it was so big out here. I didn’t know it—”

“Jase, that story’s got so many holes in it—”

“I’m not lying.”

“You were just going to flit over to the coast and pick her up—on what? A boat? A plane? Or is she going to hike over?” He was too shaken right now to be reasonable. Temper was very close to the surface. “How did you know? And don’t tell me you made a phone call I don’t know about. Anything that came into the apartment I doknow about, unless it walked in on two legs.”

“No. It didn’t. We had it arranged, Bren, we didn’tknow what we were putting ourselves into, and we knew there was a potential for problems with the atevi side; we knew there was a potential for problems on the island, too, but we really thought if things broke down they’d break down here, not there. So we said—if we had to signal trouble—one of us would say—would say there was a family emergency. We figured it was the one thing even atevi might understand and let one of us reach the other. And whoever—whoever had to run for it, it was going to be the other one who had somebody get sick. Or die, if it was a life and death situation. She said my father died, Bren. She’s in real trouble.”

He mighthave let expression to his face. He wasn’t entirely sure. He was angry. He was embarrassed, and angry, and had a clear idea Jago followed most of it. He’d been through the entire government with Jase’s lie. He’d intervened in an already touchy situation with a Guild half of whose local members had fled the site they were standing in.

“I didn’t know the atevi,” Jase said. “I didn’t understand the way things are set up here. I didn’t know you had realproblems yourself, and then I did know and I didn’t know how I was going to make it work and get her to the mainland when you had far worse troubles than I could claim to and you weren’t getting your family out. I knew it wasn’t going to work the way we’d pla

“You know,” Bren said, with far better control of his voice than he thought he’d have, “you know I could take about any of it, piece at a time. I could understand your lying to me. I could accept you had to. But you took after meabout lying, Jase. You went all high and holy about mylying, and you wanted meto apologize to you, when you damned well knew it was the other way around, Jase, that’s what I can’t understand.”

“I didn’t know I could believe you!”

“And now you can.”

“Now I do,” Jase said.

“Wasn’t the plan that we’d sendfor her? Or was this something else, Jase? Are we hearing one more story?”

“I didn’t want to call for her to come over here into something worse than she was in. And I didn’t dare give her a come-ahead. I was with strange security. I couldn’t get you for four days, Bren. I couldn’t ask the staff. You said be careful with them. By then it was too late. My call to my mother—the ship hadn’t heard from Yolanda. Not in four days. And I didn’t know what to do.”