Precursor

But he felt a certain uneasiness, a certain sense of embarrassment, the rooms were so small, the staff pressed so close. The bed required close maneuvering.

“You can’t be comfortable here,” he said. “Don’t wake with a kink in your back, on my account.”

“I have no difficulty,” she said.

He was habitually cold; he wasn’t, while she was in bed. But he truly didn’t want the closeness of the quarters here to create a difficulty.

“Perhaps you should go for other reasons,” he whispered to her. He always felt guilty for the relationship, the event, whatever she might call it. She had a partner. To this hour he had no idea whether her being here represented some allowed breach of that partnership, or what the relationship was between her and Banichi—which was a trust he had absolutely no willingness to betray. They had never been at such close quarters. She’d always assured him Banichi understood, understood, understood, but he was uneasy, tonight.

“What other reasons?”

“Getting some sleep, for one.”

“I might sleep, if nand’ paidhi weren’t talking.”

“That’s not the point,” he said, and felt the tension he created. “The whole staff must know, Jago-ji.”

He felt, rather than heard, her laughter. “One is certain they do.”

He couldn’t bear the evasions any longer. He slid free and rested precariously on an arm near the edge where he could be absolutely face to face with her. “Jago-ji. I will not hurt Banichi. I have every regard for you, and I know youwould never disregard him, but I worry, Jago-ji, I do worry what he thinks.”

“He is amused.”

“I know you say that, but a man is a man, and people are people, and they can say something, but it doesn’t make it so, Jago-ji. I have no wish to offend him. I would be devastated to create a breach between you”

“There is none. There has never been one.”

“ Are you lovers, Jago-ji?”He’d chased that question all the years of their partnership. “Have you been, forgive me that I ask, but this causes me a great deal of guilt and worry—” He was under assault, and he fended it off, determined to get out what he had tried a dozen times to express. “—Guilt and worry, that I ever crossed any barrier that I might not have understood…”

Jago’s body heaved gently. After an instant he knew she was laughing. A callused, gentle hand moved slowly across his shoulder. “Bren-ji. No.”

“What do you mean, no, nadi? Have you been lovers?”

“Bren-ji. He is my father.”

He was stu

Then the thin mattress gave, and the general dim dark gave way to Jago’s outline, her elbow posed on the other side of him, her fingers tracing their way down from his chin.

Amused, she said. Banichi was amused at their carrying-on.

Not disapproving.

But her father?

“Bren-ji. We do not make relationships public, in our Guild. I tell you as a confidence.”

“I respect it.”

“One knows without doubt the paidhi is discreet,” Jago said, and found his ear, found his hands… outmaneuvering Jago was difficult, and he had no interest in trying that. For the first time he had a relatively clear conscience in her regard, and a joke to avenge. He pulled her close, dismissing the proximity of the servants as any concern to them.

They ran unexpectedly out of bed, on the edge, and nearly over it.

Jago simply rolled out of it, taking him and the sheets with her, and laughed.

Chapter 18

Jago was gone before dawn, and he was in bed when he waked, in bed with the smell of breakfast wafting through the hall.

Bindanda and Kandana were a little reluctant to meet his eye. Had he and Jago embarrassed the whole staff, Bren wondered, chagrined. He found nothing to say, and thought he should ask Jago… he truly, urgently should ask someone what the staff was saying. It could hardly be Banichi; he couldn’t envision that conversation. He knew he would blush. Jago might be the recipient of merciless amusement, and she was hardly the one to ask.

He thought perhaps he could speak to Tano… certainly to Tano, rather than staid, dignified Narani. He could manage to do that on the way to breakfast, which otherwise might be a very uncomfortable affair.

He had chosen less than formal wear for a day on which he had no schedule but deskwork: a sweater and a light pair of trousers with an outdoor jacket, about adequate for the chill of the air, after which he dismissed Bindanda and Kandana, opened up his computer, and went through the send-receive with Cl, and through the usual litany of questions, refusing to give up on Jase or Yolanda or on direct contact with the captains, three of whom he was anxious to hear from.

No message from Toby, none from his mother, nothing this time even from Tabini, who was probably considering the last one, or who simply had things to do other than give the paidhi daily reassurances. Two advertisements had slipped into the packet, one for bed linens and the other for fishing gear, and he scrutinized them briefly for any content from the Foreign Office, any hint that someone had sent him something clandestine. It was a north shore fishing gear manufacturer, one Toby used.

But it was simply one of those hiccups of the communications filter. His mailbox on the island received such things, and he had no staff left there to filter them.

A message from the head of the Transport Committee reported on progress in the new spaceport. They were better than their schedule.

He half-zipped his jacket and went out into the hallway in a routine hurry for breakfast.

And ran chest-high into a stranger.

He recoiled, immediate in everything his security had di

Atevi presence on the station was entirely limited, and more, he knew this man: the name escaped him, as his heart pounded, but it was one of the stewards from the shuttle.

“Nand’ paidhi,” the man said with a second bow. “Your pardon. Nojana, of the aiji’s crew of Shai-shan.”

“Of course you are,” Bren exclaimed, taking a hasty breath. “How did you get here?”

He was no longer alone in the hallway. Almost as quickly as he had backed up, the noise of his move had attracted Tano and Algini and Jago out of the security station, and Bindanda from the dining room… which might say something about Bindanda’s Guild associations: Bren noted thatin the aftermath of adrenaline.

“Banichi sent me, nand’ paidhi,” Nojana said. “He wished to confer with the captain.”

“Parijo. The shuttle captain.” There were entirely too many captains in the broth.

“Even so, nand’ paidhi.” Nojana, in fact, was not wearing a steward’s uniform, but the black of the Assassins’ Guild… security’sGuild, and by the height and breadth of the steward, it was Banichi’s body type, Banichi’s muscled arms and shoulders. This was not a man accustomed to passing out drinks and motion sickness pills, but it had not been so evident in his previous uniform.

“And is this youruniform, nadi?”

“No, nand’ paidhi, it is not.”

“And how long have you been here?”

“Since midnight, nandi.”

Bren cast a look at his own security, and, with a feeling of mild indignation, directly at Jago, whose arrival in his quarters, whose determined distraction had left not a shred of attention to the fact the seal-door had opened and closed last night.

Jago, to her credit, met his gaze with a satisfied lift of her chin and the ghost of a smile.

It did beat drugging his drink, he said to himself, and he had no suspicion whatever that Jago had been dishonest in love-making, only that she’d had a considerable ulterior motive.