Pretender

A mammoth job. One wondered whether, as with his old staff, the aiji’s surviving staff had begun to come out of concealment, and whether, as with the university students making off with the vital books and papers from their library, the aiji’s old staff had been able to preserve certain record books. It would be ever so helpful if they had.

The faces of those legislators present were very solemn.

“Yes,” they said, almost in unison. “Yes, aiji-ma.”

“Be it absolutely clear,” Tabini said, in that same low tone. And then: “This is my grandmother’s table. I will have no more to say.”

“Indeed,” Ilisidi said, and gave a slight move of her hand. “We are weary. We are quite weary, nandiin. We shall present the traditional brandy in the parlor, but one is quite certain there will be no notice taken should certain of our guests depart to urgent duties.”

Dared one assume it was time to go? It was a delicate decision—a political decision, whether to take his human presence into the parlor and mix his controversial self into very fragile atevi business, or to consider himself dismissed to quarters, bring up his computer, and hope to God he could find a viable printer in the household.

He decided on the latter course. The company rose, some to the parlor with their security, some to the foyer for a good-bye to their host, and he managed to slip aside and to get a glance at Banichi, whose sense of these things was usually much more reliable.

“One thinks we should go to our rooms,” he said under his breath.

“We have papers to prepare.”

“Yes,” Banichi said simply, confirming it was a proper thing to do—whether the other would have been proper, Bren had no idea.

But he was glad to get back to his own small refuge in Ilisidi’s suite, and to shed the formal clothes, and to put on a dressing gown for a late session over the computer, a hunt, a final hunt for exactly the right words.

He was aware of movement about the apartment, was aware of some sort of consultation between Banichi and Jago, and some sort of communication flowing to the outside. A crisis didn’t take the night off. People were moving, he was quite sure—planes were flying, trains were rolling, legislators were spending a night on the move, huddled in small groups, discussing in advance of more specific information. And worrying how the measures they had taken to survive Murini’s seizure of power might look now—there were bound to be very worried men and women on their way to the capital at this hour, and a certain number trying to figure out whether they should run to the farthest ends of the continent or still back Murini, or whether it was indeed, all up for the revolution.

Blood had already flowed within the Kadagidi house. There were bound to be other realignments in progress.

He worked until the letters blurred. He refined. He memorized.

And a request to Ilisidi’s staff brought a small plug-in printer, a machine capable of taking a format his computer could deliver, and a great stack of packaged paper. He loaded it, he set it to work, he informed the knowledgeable servant of his requirements and, with paranoid misgivings, left it to print and several servants to collate and convey it to a copy machine which would, they assured him, run much more rapidly than the printer.

He was, at that point, exhausted, and realized he had only taken the first sip of the brandy staff had poured hours ago. His hands and feet were like ice. His eyes blurred on ordinary objects. He sat in his bedroom, warming the brandy and his hands together against his middle, and studying his feet, seeing whether concentration could send blood down to warm them, or whether that would have to await his going to bed.

And he was very, very far from sleep at the moment. Far from sleep and needing every minute of it he could manage. Perhaps a second brandy. He didn’t want to take one of his few pills—they lingered, and he couldn’t afford to be fuzzy-brained facing— He didn’t want to imagine it.

Jago dropped in, not on her way to bed, clearly: She was in uniform and armed—she was only looking after him. “Will you not sleep, Bren-ji? Staff is asking.”

Staff had been too wary of his glum mood to enter the door, he read that.

“Sleep does not come, Jago-ji. The mind will not sleep.” At the moment the mind was half elsewhere, mistaking the shadow of a dim bedroom for the deep dark of space, nights that went on forever and ever, measured only in the deep folds of a ship’s progress. He was there. He was here. He wandered between, trying to assemble his arguments for a planet that viewed him as a traitor—on both sides of the strait: Humans because he served the atevi aiji, atevi because he had set burdens on them and left them. A thick mist seemed to settle about him, and then to give way to an atevi room with Jago in it. “How is the staff faring?”

Jago hesitated a moment. Then: “I am the staff, at moment. Tano and Algini are in a special meeting at the Guild. They have asked for Banichi to attend. We would not both leave you.”

“If he needs you—”

“One believes they are arguing for cancellation of certain Filings once accepted.”

“Against me?”

“Against you, among others, nandi.”

“Not nandi.” He felt uncharacteristically fragile at the moment.

“If they come to any harm, Jago-ji, if they come to any harm over there—” What did he say, what threat was enough, against the Guild itself? “I will go after them.”

The slightest of smiles. “We believe Tano and Algini will return after the meeting. This is a duty they owe. But it is very likely they are in the act of reporting facts they have observed, and resigning any man’chi but that to this house.”

That, he thought, might not be the wisest thing. “Perhaps they should wait until tomorrow for that,” he said.

“Then it would hardly matter, would it?” She settled on the substantial footboard of the bed. “I have remained to protect you from any untoward business in the dowager’s house, which we know will not happen, and Cenedi is a

It was humor, as Jago saw it. He managed a faint smile for her effort. And felt better for it.

“So,” he said, “we are in no acute danger. Nor is the house.”

“If there is danger, at this point, it would come from the Guild, or from individual members acting within their man’chiin.”

“So, but Murini is in the south. Perhaps on a fishing boat headed for the remote islands. Anyone acting for him must surely consider that acting for the Kadagidi would be better, and they would not let him land.”

“True.”

“So have a brandy. Come to bed. Banichi will surely not disapprove.”

A quirk of a smile, a downcast look, and she shrugged out of her jacket and its armor.

It was not exactly lovemaking, but she was warm, warm enough to take the chill out. He drifted off to sleep, waking only when Jago, who had never taken the earpiece off, slipped out of bed and left the room.

He got up, put on his dressing gown, shivering with chill, and got as far as the door before she came back again and put a warm arm about him.

“Banichi is back,” she said, a shadow above his head, “and says Tano and Algini will be here before morning. They have a matter to attend.”

“What?” He was half asleep and too chilled and worried for indirection. His mind pictured Guild business, a shadowy and bloody business, but Jago’s powerful arm folded him close and held fast, while her breath stirred his hair.

“Back to bed, Bren-ji.” The old way of speaking, that Bren-ji: Our so-easily-shocked paidhi, that tone said. Don’t ask, don’t wonder, don’t be concerned. This is not your business.