He had those inquiries—and letters from a handful of persons seeking appointment. He had a dinner invitation for five days from now from the Lord of Dur, who wished, with the mayors of several coastal towns and villages, to host a celebratory banquet in the paidhi’s honor. Even five days from now was still early for too provocative celebrations of the defeat of certain powerful interests—the relatives of whom were still at court. Human influence at court was a touchy topic in many quarters, and it was a delicate matter to accept or refuse the honor, not least because he owed Dur considerably, and might be expected to reciprocate with some signal favor to that district that he could bestow in turn. And he had no way to swing that influence, nor ought he to try…not being atevi. That was one thing riding the back of his mind.
For another matter, he was reluctant to bring Dur in as egregiously supporting the paidhi before he was entirely sure the paidhi had a future in his present post. Politics might yet have him replaced, at least as related to his current status as the aiji’s personal interpreter. Tabini-aiji still favored him, and Tabini’s word was ordinarily law, but there was contrary pressure from a number of disgruntled southerners (granted that, as the source of the recent coup, they had limited expectations of being heard, and some of them were lucky to be alive), but there was, in fact, an alternative. Yolanda Mercheson, over on Mospheira, had held his post for the last two years. Yolanda had rather walk barefoot through fire than come back to the mainland, and only wanted to get back to orbit; but that had no place in the calculations of atevi who would cheerfully see Tabini divorced from the adviser many blamed for economic troubles. There were, for that matter, certain people who wished the paidhi dead, so Yolanda would have to come back.
So he hardly knew what to tell the good people of Dur about the dinner.
He passed through his little sitting room, designed for a guest, not a full-fledged office, on his way to the bedroom, and rang for the servants. Jago had gone on to her own quarters, adjacent and down the short inner corridor. This was a safe place. There was hardly any safer in the entire continent.
That fact did not, however, protect him from the towering stacks out there. At the very least he had to answer his hourly-growing backlog of letters and queries, some of them from very serious people with very difficult questions.
And in the meantime, he had to prepare for a series of legislative hearings on the restoration of the regime and the distribution of appointments. He would sit on several of those legislative committees, whose work was waiting, pending location of various people who had fled the capital to save their lives.
He had another set of inquiries of lesser import, including requests for interviews, and several requests for commemorative notecards from well-meaning individuals.
And meanwhile various people ambitious to gain space within the Bu-javid saw no reason to allot any precious room to a human official.
He had sent a desperate request in for proper offices downstairs in the Bu-javid, and if he could locate enough of his old staff to start sweeping up the debris of data and records, he might start his own work with skilled help—he hoped the specific office space he requested would be a reasonable balance between security and modesty.
Top priority on his agenda—he had, sometime in the next day or so, to get a call through to the island, to the President of Mospheira, who, thank God, happened to be his old bureau chief, Shawn Tyers. The atevi Messengers’ Guild, in charge of all mainland communications, had concentrated its repair efforts on land lines and claimed the big dish at Mogari-nai was near resuming service.
Once that was up, the continent would have communication with the station in orbit—and calls could be relayed with a great deal more reliability to the island. But there had been, all along the coast during the troubles, a perfectly adequate unofficial radio network. He had, yesterday, sent a report to the Messengers’ Guild and requested the transmission of the bare facts to Shawn by means less publicly known: we’re alive, we’re safe, Tabini’s back in power. It was the sort of wide-open communication that anyone could read—and he was sure that spies of every sort had; the Messengers’ Guild was a little looser in its membership than was the Assassins’ Guild—but if Shawn failed to know they were back in power, Mospheiran agencies were completely asleep at the switch.
For formality’s sake, he had said: We’re alive and safe. The aiji is back in authority over the mainland. And then the key part of the message: Tell Jase and Yolanda that the shuttles on the mainland are in fairly good condition, and the pilots and crews have survived—they’re going to have to catch up in training and service, but we are in far better shape than we dared hope….
Maybe Shawn knew, being in communication with the station. Maybe not. So they proceded a lot in the dark about what this side and that knew. It had been five days since the shooting stopped. They had had time to do a bit of mopping-up, some of it bloody, and they had done a bit of repair—and now messages flowed. Air service resumed, though it was sporadic. The trains ran. True, the Assassins’ Guild had its own wireless network—and that functioned…but one did not ask to send even official messages through those channels. One just did not. The Guild did what the Guild did.
The dowager’s servants arrived to take his coat. He assumed a lighter one, and went back to his makeshift office. The servants offered tea, which he declined, having had tea up to his eyeballs. He sat down at his desk, shifted papers into stacks he mentally tagged “critical,” “dire,” and “maybe in a few days.”
Jago returned, and stood, immaculate in Assassins’ black and silver, looking particularly inscrutable at the moment.
“These visitors of the dowager’s tonight will certainly be spying on us,” he remarked, making a slight guess as to what occupied her mind.
“One assumes so, nandi.” She would have heard every word that passed between him and the dowager, so there was absolutely nothing he needed to tell her about the invitation, or about the impending move. She would be with him tonight, at that table, parsing every lifted eyebrow and watching every dish that came and went—even in this household.
But she had been alone this morning, extraordinary as that was. Her partner had not been with her; nor had Tano or Algini.
“What is Banichi’s business this morning, Jago-ji?” he asked. He had not had time to ask before now, at a place and in a privacy from the dowager’s servants. He had kept assuming Banichi would turn up, but he had not, and when he had reached the dowager’s vicinity, the numbers of the dowager’s guards had turned up compensatory. That was mildly troubling. But asking what Jago had not volunteered seemed to require some little space for communication, a commodity which had not been available yet this morning, nor on the walk back. Now the servants left. In those diminishing footsteps, they had perhaps five minutes of sure privacy.
“He was called to the Guild, nandi. Tano and Algini are with him.”
He had somewhat concluded that. And more footsteps passed the open door, and diminished in the distance.
“They may not be back this evening,” Jago added, entirely gratis, once those footsteps were gone.
He returned a worried stare, wondering what she was trying to tell him in that further, unsolicited information. It was unusual that Banichi stay that long at a Guild meeting, but at this juncture his Guild was in turmoil, Guildsmen had died, and one suspected there was a thorough shake-up going on, even yet. His own staff, particularly Algini, as it turned out, was very high up in that secretive guild—so if Tano and Algini were with Banichi, he felt a little better about the situation, but he hoped Banichi was not in some difficulty for actions he had recently taken in the paidhi’s cause…and he hoped that Algini himself had not seen his position weaken. Guild infighting was scary beyond all comfort. “If Banichi needs your support,” he began.
“I am not to leave you, nandi-ji,” she said.
“Nevertheless…one could promise to lock oneself into the bedroom and not come out until you get back. If Banic
hi needs you, Jago-ji, that is my priority.”
Solemn as she was, a ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “And what would you do about the dowager’s dinner party?”
“Hell,” he said in Mosphei’, which she also understood perfectly well. “But I personally value Banichi’s safety, nadi-ji, and yours, above any protocols.”
“I am assuring that safety, Bren-ji, by staying here. I by no means trust these dinner guests.”
The dinner and the dowager’s motives for asking him were not the main area of his concern. But it was certainly a valid concern. The guests had come from the eastern half of the continent, Ilisidi’s home territory—and come in a time of unrest. He very vividly remembered a broken arm and a very rough few days, early in his tenure, both thanks to Easterner politics, not to mention having been deliberately poisoned by the great lady who was his host. “I shall stay as close as I can to plain tea and bread tonight, Jago-ji. I shall be extremely discreet and stay entirely out of trouble, I promise you. I do remain extremely worried about Banichi.”
“Spare your concern for him, Bren-ji. He would wish you to have your mind on business. And one is assured the dowager’s cook will take pains to provide you a safe dinner at the dowager’s table. Only mind anything passed to you. Do not take such favors from any hand but the dowager’s staff.”
Atevi thought alkaloid poisons quite flavorful, hence their prevalence in sauces, in particular. Atevi cooks in the dowager’s employ knew he had special considerations in that regard, and no, he had no desire to offend the hard-working cook, or the devoted serving staff.
“Well, then one will rely on the cook. And on you, Jago-ji. And Banichi.”
“Indeed, Bren-ji.”
He thought, and he delayed the question, and then he asked it, Guild secrecy or no: “Dares one ask—are they voting tonight, Jago-ji?”
Jago’s face went instantly impassive, remote. “The paidhiaiji might not be incorrect to surmise so.”
Enough asked, enough said; she breached her Guild’s rules to advise him. Lives and fates were being decided tonight. The Guild, having had a crisis in leadership, was electing a new Guildmaster, he very much suspected, and whether the previous Guildmaster had actually lived through the coup, he was unable to determine—nor would he press Jago on the point.
So it was far more than window-dressing that kept Jago close by him tonight. It was a very dangerous time, an unhinged evening for everyone who sat in government, and the paidhi-aiji, the aiji’s human translator, was one of the most conspicuous targets of discontent in certain quarters—the human translator being a safer focus of discontent than the aiji himself. There was some word in servants’ gossip that the old Guildmaster had returned to the Assassins’ Guild, but in what condition or capacity, outsiders still did not know. Granted the first piece of gossip was true, there was also some hint he might step down soon.
And by what Jago hinted, he must have done so—if he was alive, and not merely represented by the action of a proxy.
“I have letters to write,” he began to say, and intended to invite Jago to sit and relax in his room while he worked, since she insisted on watching him; but at that moment someone rapped at the outer door.
Jago went immediately to investigate, and he followed at a more leisurely pace, into his makeshift office, in time to see one of the dowager’s men hand Jago a silver wire basket of cylinders.
She set it on the table and shut and latched the door.
Messages. Letters. Half a dozen of them. He uncapped the most tempting, a plain steel cylinder, a case such as the Messengers’ Guild provided for unjacketed phone messages, and drew out the little roll of paper. He was hoping for word from the island.
It proved to be a message not from the island, however, but from his estate. His major domo there reported the staff in high spirits at his return, and the whole seaside community—a small village attached to the lodge—putting things to rights. They hoped he would visit his estate soon. They promised his boat was now in good shape despite, their words, “an untoward incident during the troubles.” And, indeed, Moni and Taigi had quit the employ of the estate some lengthy time ago. Why did the paidhi inquire?
Because Moni and Taigi had shown up here and gotten through security, was what. Perhaps they had returned to him in some sense of man’chi, perhaps not. He had ordered them released, to go where they liked. Where they were now was a matter his staff knew. He didn’t ask—yet. So many things were uncertain. So much suspicion had fallen on old acquaintances, a great deal of it perhaps undeserved. The fate of those two—or their potential shift of man’chi—worried him. The two had served him well, years ago. He had thought so, at least.
He did long to see his coastal home, where he so seldom set foot that he knew it was inexcusable extravagance to maintain it, for his own sake; but closing that establishment would throw all those good people out of work and depress the village economy. The whole district relied on him, and took pride in his prominence at court. He was indeed their lord, more than he was Lord of the Heavens, that ostentatious title Tabini had bestowed on him. He had responsibilities there, not least among them to see Moni and Taigi settled, somehow, if he could get all his staff back, and find the resources to do a reasonable investigation. And he owed all those many people, those very good people, in his district.
Truth be told, his little estate was the home he had thought about when he was in space. It was as much of a home as he had nowadays, apart from the Bu-javid—since he had no home left on Mospheira. His mother had been the focus of his visits, and now his mother was gone, his brother Toby divorced, and he had lost track of all his old University contacts, the people who had worked with him, and worked for him. A man destined to be paidhi was all job, no social life, and it had only gotten worse. Now not even his brother’s house offered a refuge for him on the island any longer.
Well, there was that, and the fact that Toby had taken up with the one woman on earth he most wanted to avoid…even that tie was in jeopardy, and that troubled him.
And, more troubling, Toby was out at sea on a boat that hadn’t put into any port, not since he had used Toby’s help in his return to the mainland, in a maneuver that might have brought Toby into harm’s way. If that boat had gotten to any port, he had no message from his brother yet—but the lines had been down; and, well, failure to phone—that was an old pattern with Toby, too. Likely Toby, hearing that Tabini was back in power, as the rumor likely was over there, had just concluded he had no more part to play and had settled in with Barb, never even thinking of a phone call. Toby cherished his private-citizen status. He didn’t insert himself into international agendas.
Well, well, but Toby would surely report in once he could get a convenient and routine message to the mainland. He was all right.
And as far as losing contact with Toby over Barb, hell, if Toby and Barb did make a couple…
If they did, hell, sure, he’d invite them to his estate.
No, he wouldn’t. He didn’t want Barb making a play for him, was what. And she would. She hadn’t omitted to do that on the boat crossing the strait—he’d had a damned uncomfortable feeling about what she was doing.
Damn and damn. One more connection with humanity starting to fray…and he’d let the connection go cold before he’d hurt Toby. The last family connection he had, and Barb was in the middle of it.
But what could he expect? Go off to space for two years…and the world just got along, was all. He’d become a ghost, a revenant, in the spaces he’d used to call home.
His home here in the Bu-javid—well, that was gone. He was upset about it: he was still trying to track various of his staff, scattered to the winds in the troubles.
But nand’ Tatiseigi’s court residence had suited him before, and would suit him again, and it was a handsome offer from the old man. He did hope that Tatiseigi would leave the staff intact rather than remove them with him to his provincial estate—he truly did like the staff of that establishmen
t, supposing that Madam Saidin was still in charge, and more, that staff knew him, knew all his ways. In all the changes, he had learned, it was the staff that made a place home, and if the Atageini staff should have been broken up in the troubles or pulled home to Tirnamardi with Lord Tatiseigi now, leaving him the furniture, but not the soul of the place…
A sigh. Well, if that happened, he would have to be writing to the coast to pull people in from his estate to serve in Shejidan…and that without even visiting it, without even taking a tour on his boat. That would be a terrible reward, would it not, for the people who had risked their lives to save that tranquil nest from armed rebels? He honestly didn’t see how he could do that without at least visiting and praising their efforts there. He had to go do that, as soon as it was safe to travel. As soon as he got Banichi and Tano and Algini back.
And had he not promised Cajeiri one day to go sailing?
They’d made plans for that trip while they were in the intervals of folded space, on the ship. Cajeiri, his young eyes shining, had said that if he could learn to handle the yacht it would show him something about big ships.
He’d laughed, then, imagining the boy’s next outrageous ambition—in those innocent days before they’d gotten home and found the world in chaos.
But they’d set it right. They’d begun to, at least. And that promise ought to be kept.
Now, with Tabini back in power, and a flood of letters from returning loyalists reporting the slow restoration of order, he did look to keep that modest promise—to the boy, and to Jase, too, for the long-postponed fishing trip. It would be good for his soul to do that. He could combine Cajeiri’s trip, maybe, with the needed courtesy call on the estate. The staff would be thrilled to host the aiji’s son—and it would be some promise he could hold out to the boy when he left the premises.
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