“Nothing,” Banichi said. “No answer at all. Which is unprecedented, Bren-ji.”
So was all of it. Currents were moving. Big ones. “If Tabini won’t answer our messages, then we have somehow to rattle his doors. If we do it in error, if we disturb what’s afoot—well, that’s a risk. The aiji knows us, that we’re apt to try something. And I think now we have to take that risk.”
“One understands,” Banichi murmured. The two of them took their seats at table, fortunate three. Silver dishes were arranged. Servants stood by to serve, and began with tasty cold jellies in the shape of the traditional eggs. Bindanda had been very clever, and the quasi-eggs were very spicy, and good.
“Excellent,” they agreed, and complimented Bindanda’s handiwork as the next course proved to be a vegetable and nut pate surrounding stuffed mushrooms with small split-nut fins. Bindanda put the station’s synthetic cheese loaf far in the shade.
Could one even think politics over such a breakfast?
Bren did, and he was sure Banichi and Jago did.
Nor were they quite out of touch with Tano and Algini, having their quasi-fish in the informality of the security station.
Banichi murmured, quietly, urgently, at a hiatus in the serving, “A shuttle has just launched. This would be the freight shuttle.”
His heart beat fast. “ Early, isn’t it?”
“A little early,” Jago said.
“A courier to us?” It made a certain sense, when he was trying desperately to decide who of his staff to send down to Tabini.
It was about damned time, was what.
“One has no information,” Banichi said. “Possible that we’ll hear before docking.”
“Possible that there’s a security force aboard?” Bren had his voice down, trying to preserve propriety, but a shuttle: that was a two-edged prospect. “I wish very much that Tabini would consult, nadiin-ji.”
Understatement, twice over. Tabini had tacitly demanded one simple thing of Ramirez in return for his support of the ship: control of the station. The ship maintained an iron hand over personnel’s comings and goings, and over communications, but atevi were set at key physical points of the station. And to Bren’s observation, bothpowers thought they ran things, while Mospheirans thought they ran the business operations and the commerce, such as there was—they did that fairly undisputed.
And everyone had tacitly agreed not to challenge each other, under Ramirez’s command.
Now Ramirez was gone, taking all his secrets with him. And now they had their heaviest-lift shuttle arriving, nearly on routine, but just a worrisome little bit early—while the ship-crew was voting to pull the only starship out of the agreement and go off on a mission to stick their fingers into the most sensitive situation possible.
It took a degree of control to appreciate the next course, and to make small talk with his staff and the kitchen.
And at the time when they often set about their day’s business, Banichi and Jago had another revelation from the security station.
“They’re reporting only routine.”
He had a very strong feeling, all the same. He hated like hell to be taken off his guard.
“Do you know, I think we should arrange to meet the shuttle when it docks, nadiin-ji. I think perhaps we should prepare the third residency, in hopes of putting the aiji’s official answer in a somewhat better mood. If we’re wrong, we can always power the apartment down again. Tell the station and the ship we’re doing some maintenance in there.”
“A very good idea,” Banichi said.
It took a long time to warm up an apartment once it was mothballed—not quite the chill of space, but certainly the walls grew cold and difficult to warm.
“One assumes, at least,” Bren said cautiously, as they entered the study, “that Tabini has taken my advisement and Geigi’s utterly seriously. If it turns out to be several hundred of the Guild, I trust they’ll take care with the porcelains.” Heavy lift as well as antiquity made the decor in the adjacent apartment extravagantly expensive. “But it occurs to me, nadiin-ji, that the dowageris available to him, if it weren’t for Cajeiri.”
Ilisidi had been on the station, understood the station, had met with the living captains, and knew Ramirez face to face.
More, she had authority. Vast authority.
And it was very, very possible, if Tabini had to choose someone for a quick personal assessment of the situation—outranking both the paidhi and lord Geigi—Ilisidi would be a very astute observer. Very powerful. Surrounded by close, armed security.
If he were in Tabini’s place, trying to figure how to get an invasion force onto the station—Ilisidi’s prior welcome on the station might make her very valuable.
“Fosterage wouldn’t stop her,” Jago said. “One doesn’t expect it would.”
“Dare we think?” Bren asked. “I do think I should meet that shuttle, nadiin-ji.”
Ogun and Sabin might take him and Geigi as ordinary obstacles. They’d be damned fools to try the same tactic on the aiji-dowager.
“It would be very bad,” Banichi said, “if Ogun-aiji now decided to remove the ship from the station without staying for discussion with us. But we have only verbal persuasion to apply—without doing damage.”
If the proposition the ship-council reached was to take the ship immediately out of range of negotiation, there was very little the station or the planet below could do about that decision—short of sabotage.
That wasn’t, to say the least, practical—or useful at the moment.
“Dare we call the shuttle?” he asked. “Advise them at least that the ship might be moving?”
“One doubts, for security reasons, they would admit to any presence aboard. We have a number of hours. Is Jase-aiji a firm ally?”
“I don’t doubt Jase. I’m not sure, however, that I dare phone him again.” He thought about that a moment. “Or maybe I’d better.”
“One can carry a message,” Jago said.
“Dare I tell him? Dare we risk there being nothing on that shuttle, after all, but flour and construction supplies?” His security had nothing to tell him on that score. “Maybe I should just tell Jase the truth.” Novel thought. “And let himsuggest what to do about the ship’s schedule.”
“Is there any doubt at this point the crew will vote to go?” Banichi asked.
“I don’t doubt some will vote against it,” Bren said. “I don’t doubt, either, that enough will vote to go. And the aiji’s sending some answer they don’t understand could scare them right out of dock and complicate us into a confrontation. If we take the captains into our confidence, make them our co-conspirators, to give a reasonable answer and calm the situation—”
“Against the aiji?” Banchi thought about it.
“To get them to react the way we should hope they react, Banichi-ji. To directtheir response.”
“Assuming there’s not flour aboard,” Jago said.
“Do youthink there’s only flour aboard?” Bren asked.
“The shuttle disregards its former numbers,” Jago said, that most basic of all considerations.
Something, at least, had changed.
There was one other individual he hadn’t consulted, one who mighthave a clue to proceedings: Yolanda Mercheson, who’d gone past him and gone past Jase to make secret arrangements. And he thought about phoning Yolanda, inviting her in, asking her point-blank what those agreements were—but he thought he was very likely to find out without that confrontation, and without putting Yolanda in a position of breaching confidences of his aiji and her captains, which he very much suspected she would resist.