Precursor

And he would not call down his senior staff in front of a stranger, or in front of the servants. He simply composed himself, smiled, nodded acknowledgment of a successful operation, namely deceiving the paidhi, and getting Banichi outside without consulting him—and directed his inquiry to Nojana.

“And have you had breakfast, nadi, and will you join us?”

“I had tea at my arrival, nandi, and I thank the paidhi for the kindness of his offer, nothing since. I would be very honored.”

“Do join us, then,” he said, and surrendered Nojana to the guidance of Tano and Algini, with a single glance.

Jago he stayed with a lowering of his brows.

“How in hell?” he said in a half-whisper. “How did he getthere? Did they come after him…” He could envision that the shuttle crew might have some sense of the station: this was not their first trip. “… or did he use the map?” Even with that, it was a risk, not least of ru

“He wishes to be sure the shuttle is on schedule.”

“Have we established that?”

“Nojana says yes. There’s been no difficulty at all. Nominal in all respects. It might leave early, except for small details.”

“I’ve no need to have it leave early, or is there something going on I don’t know?”

“One wishes to be certain. Banichi has been concerned about the behavior of the captains.”

Hewas concerned, in that regard. But to go off across a trackless maze of corridors…

“What if he’d been stopped?”

“He would have been surveying for the station repairs, on his own initiative.”

As a lie it was a decent one. “And what if he’d just gotten lost?They’ve done alterations since the charts we have, Jago-ji! How did Nojanaget here? You surely didn’t ask Kaplan.”

“No,” Jago said pleasantly, with a little shrug. “By no means Kaplan. They’ve not made signs, you think, so that the Mospheirans might lose their way.”

“So that we would lose our way. You’re saying you don’t.”

A second small shrug. “We walkedfrom that area, Bren-ji.”

It was rare these days that an atevi-human difference utterly took him blindside. He drew in a breath, replayed that statement, and it came up meaning what he thought. “You mean you don’t lose count of the doorways.”

“Yes,” Jago said cheerfully, that disconcerting Ragi habit of agreeing with a negative. “Do you?”

When he thought about it, he thought he might have a fair notion how to reach Kroger’s section: he countedthings he saw; he’d trained for years to do that, from flash-screens at University to desperate sessions in real negotiations, real confrontations. He’d learned to have that perception, and yes, he saw how a mind that just natively saw in that way might have a better record than he did. The captains’ precautions against invasion were simply useless against atevi memories for sets and structure. It was the same way atevi had taken one look at computer designs that had served humankind for centuries and critiqued their basic concept in terms of a wholly different way of looking at the universe.

“Amazing,” was all he could say. “Really amazing. He shouldn’t get himself in trouble, Jago-ji.”

He didn’t say a word about the diversion last night. He couldn’t say whether if Banichi had come proposing an excursion to see whether the shuttle was safe, he might not have said no. He was very careful with Banichi and Jago in particular… as he supposed they were with him, and he couldn’t deny that they had their reason, that he was a damned valuable commodity to have up here, and that in a certain sense it was folly to have him here.

But he couldn’t become paralyzed by the notion of his own worth, either; he had to dohis job to bevaluable, and that was the bottom line.

Banichi sent him Nojana, and he meant to get the most out of the transaction.

“This is worth the walk, nand’ paidhi.” Nojana enjoyed the food: one could hardly blame him. “Very much worth it, and I am honored.”

It wasn’t quite proper to ask an ateva his Guild if it wasn’t apparent or if the information weren’t offered, but Bren had his notions, looking at Nojana’s athletic build. Arms completely filled out the borrowed uniform. There was a little slack across the chest, but hardly so. The height might be a little more: the sleeves were not quite adequate.

And Nojana was a member of the Assassins’ Guild, members of his staff knew Nojana very well from before this: it was a small and very well-placed Guild, and generally supportive of the aiji, with rare and balanced exceptions. Into Guild politics the paidhi had no entry, and he thought it wise to seek none, as the aiji himself sought none.

He certainly had a healthy appetite.

“How long will you stay?” Bren asked, and reserved What in hell is Banichi up to?for a moment with his own staff.

“One isn’t sure, nand’ paidhi.”

That was a fairly broad answer, warning the habituated that the ateva in question was hedging, and if pressed, would hedge more creatively… being too polite to lie unless cornered.

One took the answer and shut up, and asked Jago later, pulling her within his room.

“I don’t know,” was Jago’s response.

“All right,” he said. “But I don’t know if I’m going down with the next flight. That’s within my judgment.”

“One worries,” Jago said. “Staff can manage this. Someone less valuable can manage this.”

“Less valuable to the aiji because such a person might do less. If I can secure a meeting with the captains, I shouldsecure it. If I can hold Ramirez to agreements personally, even if there’s dissent, I should do it. If I can free Jase, I should free him. In the meantime, Jago-ji, I will prepare dispatches, if I have more than a few hours.”

“One has more than a few hours. I should say quite a few hours, nadi.”

“What is he doing?”

“One can’t say.”

“Well,” he said distressedly, “well, show Nojana what he has to know and I’ll prepare the dispatches. Give me at least an hour’s warning when he leaves.”

“I don’t know that I can do that,” Jago protested.

“I know you can work wonders,” he said. “I believe that you will.—And you’re not to risk yourself, Jago-ji! You’re not to leave this place unless I say so.”

“I can’t take such orders,” Jago said, but added quickly, “but I see no reason to go at the moment.”

“An hour’s warning,” he insisted, and went off, precaution against surprises, to give the same instruction to Nojana, that he had dispatches that had to go to Tabini, and that Nojana should carry them.

That meant putting his notes in order and some sort of coherency, and more, committing them to an ephemeral card, which he habitually carried since the bad old days of Jase’s descent and Deana Hanks’ attempt to land on the mainland. It had a button that simply, physically, with a caustic element, destroyed the media beyond reading, not something he liked using—he had a dire image of the thing going off while he was producing it; and his scenario for needing it involved a situation in which he might want to destroy his whole computer storage, but this was a good deal less dire, simply to hand Nojana the record and to instruct him to give it personally to the head of the aiji’s security.

“Only to him,” Bren said emphatically. “This tab, do you see, must remain intact unlessyou think there’s a danger of it falling into other hands. Once you tear it off, this record will be destroyed. If an unauthorized machine attempts to read it, the result will be bad for both.”

“One understands,” Nojana said fervently. “The record will reach the aiji’s guard.”