“I do. And I expect a good outcome. Work to keep you young and sharp, nadi-ji. An excellent job, at all times. Thank you.”
He signed off and sat staring at the crisis-littered desk.
He’d saved two strangers and two allied houses from a difficult situation, if they’d accept it, as likely they would. For them he’d worked a divine intervention.
Less fortunate gods seemed to preside over his communications with Tabini, such that he had to ask himself if he had become inconvenient, if his persistent attempts to warn Tabini were only exacerbating a situation Tabini wanted to keep away from his assembled funeral guests.
When were they going home?
When was Tabini going to get back to routine answers to things like, It seems to me, aiji-ma, that the whole alliance is about to explode, and that aliens are going to come and destroy the lot of us?
He got up and went to the security station.
“I’ve sent. I suppose you followed that.”
“One did, yes,” Tano said.
“I’ve done everything I can think of. I confess I’m in some despair of getting through. I did try the staff in the Bu-javid.”
“We are trying elsewhere,” Tano said, “and the message went down. More, we don’t know.”
“I keep telling myself Tabini isn’t going to be pleased with my constant battering at his doors.”
“That there is nothing,” Algini pointed out, “and no quiet message from the aiji’s staff, considering your repeated attempts, is extremely puzzling. Your security is now worried, Bren-ji.”
He was not reassured to learn that.
If Tabini had directly ordered silence… why?
And at a hellishly bad time. Incredible timing.
Which circumstance in itself, after long dealings with atevi, nagged at the nape of his neck and promised no rest until he knew. Coincidence might operate freely down in the byways of Shejidan, but it only overnighted in the Bu-javid’s well-guarded halls.
And what reasonably could Ramirez’ death and Tabini’s silence have to do with one another?
The Assassins’ Guild—one of theiroperations?
Station security, the entire situation of station security, was a sieve. The world sent up workers by the shuttle-load, vouching for them, giving them papers that were as real and true as the two governments wanted them to be, with care and attention as intense as two governments had time and budget to apply.
But it wasn’t only the two governments that could slip some agent into a work crew. Any one of the dissidents, the factions opposed to Tabini, to Shawn Tyers, diehards opposed to the concept of space presence, old enemies against the atevi-human association—they could.
And could they eliminate some random lunatic in the work force, some individual from whom the Assassins’ Guild would never take a contract, some lunatic Mospheiran of clever bent and demented purpose?
The thought, foolish as it might be, U-turned him from the study back to the security station, where now Banichi had turned up, with Jago—discussing the communications silence, it might well be: did they have another crisis occupying their attention?
“Nadiin,” Bren said from the doorway, “I know it would be possible someone assassinated Ramirez.” Assassination, for some of their enemies, was an art form, and infinitely various and subtle. “But what if Tabinidid it?” He could see it happening if Tabini felt betrayed in his arrangement with Ramirez. And if thathappened, there were two agencies besides Tabini’s own that might carry out the order.
He was talking to one of them.
“An interesting theory,” Banichi said.
“We have had assurances from the Guild as late as this day,” Jago said, breaking that secretive Guild’s rules left and right, “that no Guild member is here without our knowledge.”
Unprecedented straightforwardness. He was glad someonegave him truth enough to work with.
No Guild member outside his staff.
And Geigi’s.
But that didn’tanswer the central question. He was back down the hall toward the study before he sorted that out. For all he knew, the Assassins’ Guild had established a regional office on the station, one his staff knew about. Once he thought of it he could not imagine the all-seeing Assassins’ Guild failing to take that step.
Damn, of coursethat Guild was here. But how long they had been here and what their activity had been—or how closely his own staff had been in touch with such an entity—there was no use retracing his steps to ask that second question, which would only make his staff uncomfortable. There were some degrees of truth he simply could not expect.
He knew, for instance, that Bindanda was Assassins’ Guild, one of uncle Tatiseigi’s men, with him for years. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Geigi’s staff held such small, known, surprises. Such infiltrations kept the great houses informed, and man’chi stable.
But it was downright stupid of him not to foresee. He’d experienced the increase in number of workers and the increase in complexity of worker management so slowly that the increasing possibility of various atevi institutions making their way up here too just never had taken shape in his overloaded human brain.
Of course, of course, of course—his own security never had told him. If he were ever under duress, would they wish him to know everythingthey could do and allthe resources they had?
But damned certain there would never be another Tamun rebellion, no more instances where the station dissolved in chaos and bloodshed.
So the paidhi shut up and asked no more questions, but he didn’t think it likely Ramirez had died of Guild action. That wasn’t the signal he was getting from a staff that wouldsignal him if they thought he did need to know.
It still didn’t answer the question of Tabini’s silence.
Defeat. Just defeat. He wasn’t accustomed to running out of resources. He wasn’t used to being out of ideas.
He sat down at his desk, started to key on his computer.
Quick footsteps sounded in the hall.
“Bren-ji.” Jago signaled him with a hand-motion from the doorway. “Toby-nadi. On the phone.”
His brother. Finally. Thank God. He went to the nearest wall-unit and punched in on the lit button. “Toby?” His heart was beating triple-time. “Hello?” He tried to reorganize his thoughts into Mosphei’, his mind into a different universe, and far more personal problems.
“ I take it by the location I’ve just reached that you’re not coming.”
Oh, Toby was not happy with him. Not at all.
“I can’t come. Toby, how’s mother?”
“ Dicey. Really dicey. I don’t honestly know.”
“Hospital?”
“ Hospital? Intensive care since midweek. Since you were down here, damn it, and didn’t call, or answer your mail.”
It wasn’t cause and effect, his presence on the planet, their mother’s crisis. Intensive care didn’t take maybes, didn’t take mothers assuring their sons were in reach.
And a weak, years-chancy heart did what it did for medical, not karmic, reasons.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Toby.”
“ Sorry?”
“I want to be there. Toby, I wantto be there, and I can’t, the way things are.” Incredibly, one conniving part of his brain said: Ask Toby what’s in the papers; take the temperature of the island; find out what’s public—while another, more sensitive voice, said, For God’s sake, Cameron, this is your mother, your brother. Forget the damn intelligence report and ask your brother the right questions. “It’s one of those bad moments, Toby. I can’t explain. You have every right to punch me out when I get down there. I know that. Take me on credit right now. I have to ask it of you.”