Intruder

One will be greatly indebted for this service to the aiji, good master Hadiro, and one offers personal gratitude and felicitous wishes for your honored self.

  Signed. Sealed. To be sent in the morning. With the second piece, to be brought to the specific attention of the kabiu master who saw to the exhibits, with the same caution of extreme fragility and value.

He was ready for bedc

God,no, he wasn’t.

His mind had jumped a track. It landed on the one major job he had to do, aside from all the committee meetings, all maneuvering for politics, and atop everything else.

He had started to get up from his desk. He settled and pulled out another sheet of paper, for an all-important note.

Bren-paidhi to Tabini-aiji, with all respects,

Aiji-ma, in prospect of your command to a meeting tomorrow at the earliest, I would be remiss not to send this tonight. This letter was given me by Lord Machigi in parting, with instructions to use it where I might see fit. I therefore send it to you first of all, as I propose to hand deliver another copy to the aiji-dowager on her return. It is sensitive. Its nature I respectfully and in some distress wish to discuss with you tomorrow at our meeting if you chance to have time to read it. There is another cylinder from the same source, directly addressed to the aiji-dowager, and that one I have not opened, as under private seal.

  He opened his briefcase and extracted Machigi’s letter. He made a copy—his office was excellently provided with that capacity. He sealed the letter in his best message cylinder, attaching that cylinder with a wax-sealed cord across the seal of the envelope holding the copy. He rang the bell. Koharu came to the summons, and he gave Koharu his instructions.

And then and there the sheer nervous energy that had driven him through the last few weeks utterly ran out. He was done. His hand was shaking as he pinched out the live flame of the waxjack and got up, heading this time and definitively for his own bed.

His plans were launched. Petals and seeds were all cast to the wind, breakdown of the old relationships and his carefully gathered prospect for the new.

Whether there would come anything good of itche had a moment of bleak doubt, even despair, thinking how radically things had already slipped out of placecthe dowager gone off to Malguri and no chance to consult with her—which saved her reputation if anything should go wrong: no, unfair. It preserved her power to dosomething if something went wrong.

There had been a time when his first communication would have been with Shawn Tyers, on Mospheira; but Shawn wasn’t even in the game, now. Nor was Jase Graham, or any of the ship-captains who ran human affairs.

It was an atevi problem. And it went first of all to Tabini, who might or might not appreciate Machigi’s odd sense of humor.

But given Ilisidi’s departure and the responsibility laid on him, Tabini was where he had to start.

He went to his bedroom and worked his way to the middle of a bed in the heart of the most protected level of the most protected building on the continent, still wondering if he was going to survive the morrow, in the political sense.

He had at least found a warm and comfortable spot for his aching body when Jago showed up, undressed, and slid quietly into the space he had left for her in the dark—or what was total dark to human eyes.

They were longtime lovers, now, he and Jago. They had had far too little opportunity in recent weeks, and truth, given her own bed waiting, and all of them having stood long, long dutyc

“One thought you might prefer your own quarters tonight,” he said to her. “You were so very tired, Jago-ji.”

She gave him a sidelong look he imagined, a familiar movement in the dark, a familiar and much-loved wry humor. “Here is my preference,” she said, and added, “unless you wish to have the bed all to yourself. One can arrange that.”

“By no means,” he said, reaching for her.

He didn’t last long. And in no time at all she fell asleep on his arm, which he could not manage to extract, but that was all right.

He slept, really, blissfully slept, for the first time in weeks, with Jago’s warm presence beside him, and for the first time in many days, notin a just-settled war zone.

6

  There was breakfast. And, imminently, the matter of Cajeiri.

“One is not certain that the young gentleman will have advised his parents of his intentions, Haru-ji, or that he will be able to exit his parents’ apartment,” Bren said to Koharu, while dressing with the intent that Koharu should advise their very young and extremely earnest cook that their guest might not make it. “But it is likely he will. —Has any mail arrived this morning?”

“Not yet, nandi,” Koharu said, adjusting the fit of his coat. Koharu had hardly gotten that out when, some distance across the apartment, the front door opened, and Supani, on duty for visitors, was heard to say, “Welcome, young gentleman. May one show you to the dining room?”

Well, that answered the question whether Cajeiri had gotten out of Tabini’s apartment.

It didn’t answer whether he had done it entirely aboveboard.

So the breakfast appointment was at hand.

The meeting with Tabini was equally certain for midmorning.

And the response of Lord Tatiseigi to the gift and the supper invitation was still in question.

The old man was surely thinking about it by now—studying the porcelain from every angle, with, if one judged rightly, absolutely no doubt about its provenance—and with a great deal of curiosity about the circumstances that brought it to him.

Ilisidi wasn’t here to moderate the old gentleman’s temper. She might not be back in time for the legislature’s opening session. She had her own business in the East.

So the Tatiseigi business was all up to him, and he daren’t foul it up.

Diplomacy, diplomacy.

Jago slipped into the room, dressed for court, leathers smartly polished. “Bren-ji,” she said quietly, which meant his aishid was ready and waiting outside the bedroom. He went out with her, gathered up the rest of them and headed for the dining room, where Cajeiri and his bodyguard would already be seated.

Cajeiri and his aishid all stood up, of course, when he and his came in, and they all settled to a quick service of tea and an opening sweet roll—a very nice move on the part of their young cook, Bren thought: Cajeiri was fond of sweets at any meal.

“So how have you found the apartment, young gentleman?” Bren asked.

“I have a suite, nandi!” Cajeiri said brightly. “One was permitted to pick out furniture.”

“One is glad, young gentleman.”

“Has nand’ Toby reached Mospheira yet?”

“He sailed right on schedule, and one assumes so. We were a little worried about the weather, but he swore it would be no problem.”

“He and Barb-daja are very good sailors, nandi.”