Pretender

Tabini’s highly protective guard was.

“What has the dowager’s staff been able to tell Tabini’s guard?”

he asked Tano, as the one of his staff who at least looked unoccupied. “What success have you had passing information to them?”

But Tano answered: “Algini would know better, nandi,” and quietly replaced Algini in control of the black box, freeing Algini to come and confer with Bren.

“What information has Cenedi relayed to Tabini’s staff on our mission?” he asked, for starters. “And what are they saying?”

Algini hunkered down by his chair and, staring into space in the ma

And all coherently organized, more the marvel, carrying the agreements, the persons present at the negotiations, the representations made on both sides, exactly as he would have outlined it—though not the reassuring content he would have wished. The aiji’s guard had given no reaction to news that there were more foreigners out in space, and as to what the dowager had said to Tabini himself, only Tabini’s staff had witnessed that—and Tabini’s security staff was not talking to them.

After all these years, he was still amazed at the detail, the precise picture of who had been standing where and overheard what. He began, in some despair, to fold his computer away. The essentials had come out. Tabini had not wanted his report.

His movement interrupted the flow. Algini, rare gesture, touched his hand, preventing him. “Our accounts are necessarily missing some detail, nandi.”

“Clearly it misses very little,” he said, and decided to consult Algini, who rarely talked but who seemed communicative at the moment. “The aiji has men about him who seem commendably protective of him, Gini-ji. But Cenedi is not pleased. What would his former guard have said?”

“We are meeting obstacles in communication,” Algini said bluntly. “One ca

“Their man’chi?”

“One detects very faint ties to the hills, and perhaps to the south.”

“To the south.” Alarming. “And the aiji has accepted that knowingly?”

“Certain of us question, Bren-nandi, how much the aiji knows of those ties.”

Twice alarming. “Who truly knows these men, Gini-ji?”

A very slight hesitation, half a breath, if that. Algini’s gold eyes flicked into rare direct contact at so blunt a question. “Various of us have formed independent impressions of the situation. Certainly the aiji and the consort have slept safely under their guard.”

“So their objective, whatever it may be, is consonant with the aiji recovering Shejidan.”

“One believes they do oppose Murini, and the aiji has continually been the strongest opposition available. Your return and the dowager’s have created somewhat of a stir: Your renewed influence challenges them.”

Clearer and clearer. “There is no likelihood this opinion of me will improve.”

“The paidhi and the dowager represent an arrangement of new numbers,” Algini said, “bringing in Lord Geigi and the establishment in space, as well as other coastal folk, who are now arriving here in considerable number to add their voice to the discussion.”

The coast and the hills had never been united before the aishidi’tat. There was still conflict of interest. The middle south and Lord Geigi, up on the station, had never been allies in policy except, again, as the aisihdi’tat united them.

“It would seem then,” he paraphrased the subtext, “that the elements of the aishidi’tat who are against the Kadagidi, but who have not been favorable to me or the dowager, have been the primary refuge of the aiji in this time of need, and they are greatly dismayed to see us returning easily and moving back into our former position, snatching away the influence they feel they have justly earned.”

Algini’s gaze flickered just slightly. “That would be one theory, nandi, and generously phrased.”

“Would they ultimately mean the aiji ill?”

“The elements we suspect have never favored the aishidi’tat’s establishment, and may use it now only as a convenience. To see all central organization fall apart would well suit some of the hill lords, and some of the south.”

“Disaster, in dealing with the ship-humans.”

“Your staff thinks so. The dowager thinks so. But the aiji’s staff is limiting what information reaches him.”

“Painting a picture in which their advice is wise and politically safer.”

“Exactly so, nandi. And the Ajuri themselves are seeking a position of more importance through their co

“They thoroughly detest me.”

“The heir, their grandson, is a critical matter. They wish to see him with their own eyes, to establish his man’chi, where it lies and may lie in future. He departed as a child. He returns having been under your influence and the dowager’s for two formative years. He speaks fluent Mosphei’. This fact will shock them immeasureably.”

“His fondness for pizza and ice cream will not help us either,”

Bren said wryly, so great was his confidence in his staff that he had not questioned Algini discussing these things aloud with him, in this lowest of voices, but now his heart gave a thump and he remembered where they were. “Dare we say these things, Gini-ji?”

“One knows now exactly who is doing the monitoring and why,”

Algini said.“We have established ourselves. We have installations in several rooms. We are secure.”

The black box. The monitoring. And “installations.” God knew how installations had gotten into other rooms.

“Downstairs, too?”

Algini’s face became incredibly hard to read, and Bren broke off, assuming his staff’s secrets were not for him to penetrate.

“So must we approach the Ajuri in a conciliatory way?” he asked, and seemed to have startled Algini for once in their association. It was as if he had hit a nerve.

“One should not, by no means,” Algini said, “but rather trust that they will swing to the prevailing wind. They are not a ruling clan.

They have not the heredity. Yet.”

“They need Cajeiri.”

“They need his good will,” Algini said, “if they have any hope of prominence. They are ours because it is not in their interest the heir should perish.”

Cajeiri being their only claim to power and prominence.

Politics made strange bedfellows indeed. And Tatiseigi let the Ajuri under his roof and into his hospitality when other, higher ranking claimants to that hospitality were likely to sleep on bare ground or in their buses tonight. The Ajuri lord had certainly been caught off guard, meeting him and Cajeiri on the steps, as if they were there solely to confront him and prevent him reaching that goal. The old man had not recognized the heir, in his borrowed coat, but he had certainly recognized and affronted the paidhi—only to be set straight by an eight-year-old. Ajuri had been thoroughly discommoded, and hit Tatiseigi’s hall not in smooth advance, but in a fit of embarrassed outrage.

A delicious moment, if he had had the hand in pla

“Interesting,” he said. The member of his staff that had been sitting here at a table all afternoon proved to be a fount of information on everything in the house, while Banichi and Jago had been busy keeping him safe and Tano had been back and forth in the room, ru