He weighed the next offer very carefully. But all the Transport members but Kabisu were solidly Tabini's: that committee was an area of minimal potential damage. "I could set you up with some committee time, if you'd like to have a meeting. I'd do setup with aides first, let them know what you're going to want."
"So what's the catch, chief?"
"None. I see no problem. Fix your vocabulary list in advance. Don't embarrass us."
" Cameron—"
"— Or be an ass."
" I didn't say anything."
Definite improvement in the temperature level. "I'll set it up."
"When?"
"I'll see the minister tomorrow, at least I hope to, barring other glitches. A lot of these committees are running on limited sleep these days. But Commerce, Trade, Transport, any and all of them — they're pretty well staffed, and it's an important piece of work. Just no damn politicking, Deana."
"Don't tell me —"
"— Deana. — All right?"
"All right."
He let go a clenched-up breath. "I want to tell you —"
"Yes?"
"Deana, I appreciate the cooperation. You had a damn hard landing on the job, I'm realizing that. I just wanted to tell you —"
"Let's not drown in sentiment, here."
"No danger of that. Can we just —"
" I know — God! — oh, God! — Baighi? Baighi?"
"Deana?"
Something popped, dim and dull. Baighi was security. He heard the phone fall, he heard Deana's voice, muffled — he had the presence of mind to push Record — and to leave the phone open as he ran out into the hall. "Algini!" he yelled, and ran as far as the center hall, with servants staring in shock.
"Nand' paidhi!" Algini met him halfway to the foyer, gun in hand, servants gathering all around. "What's happened?"
"Hanks-paidhi's in trouble. Something's happened. Get security down there. I think it was gunfire. I was on the phone with her. Hurry!"
Algini didn't ask — Algini ran back for the security station and he turned back from the dining room through a gathering of anxious, frightened servants.
"Just stay inside," he said to them. "Doors locked. Where's Banichi and Jago?"
There was a babble of answers, wide, frightened eyes. No one seemed to know. Tano was out on business. Algini was by himself. Saidin arrived, late and anxious. "Nadi," he said to her as calmly as he could, "an armed attack on Hanks-paidhi. Call the aiji. Warn him. Check all the doors to the hall." He wanted to go back to the phone again and hear what he could — but there was no assurance where the attack was aimed or where it might aim; he ducked into his bedroom, flung open dresser drawers, one after another, desperately searching beneath stacks of clothes for the gun Banichi had told him was there.
Sixth drawer on the left. He pulled it out from under sweaters, checked the clip as Tabini had shown him, his hands starting to shake as he shoved the clip back in. He stood up, tucked it in his coat under the bad arm, and exited his bedroom, headed down the hall to the private rooms, where he'd left the phone open to Hanks' apartment.
Security the aiji could relax at will. Jago had said that. He remembered it as he reached the office and picked up the phone.
The line sounded dead, now. He couldn't tell. He stayed on a moment, thinking of the arrest order he'd courted — looked toward the half-darkened hall. Light stopped where he was, at the office. The rest, toward the lady's personal apartment, was dark.
He laid down the phone, left the recorder going. The apartment around him resounded faintly to doors opened and closed, servants hurrying presumably wherever they had to perform security checks. He went back out into the hall, light to his left, darkness to his right — covering darkness, darkness that didn't cast a shadow. He longed to take a fast look from the balcony down toward the garden courts where Hanks' apartment was to see whether it was a single attack or anything wider going on — wider, meaning an action against the established order. Or failing that — to ask Algini if he'd found out anything. But it was a risk even crossing the wide-windowed rooms in the lighted section of the halls to get back to the foyer where Algini was.
The other direction offered, for someone confident of the furniture and knowing his way in the dark, a chance to look out without silhouetting himself against lights, a chance to spy down from the height at least to see if there were lights below, and where, and if the search was tending higher or lower on the hill.
More — it struck him that none of the servants had come this way. The balcony doors to the rear, the ventilation for the breakfast room, were most probably securely locked — one expected that at this hour — but the servants were all checking the public, more trafficked areas of the apartment, he couldn't call the servants back without risking them passing doors or windows that might make them targets, and it suddenly seemed urgent and incumbent on him to be sure of those balconies. That the doors were shut, granted: he didn't feel a breeze — but whether they were locked was altogether another question, granted also the lady's servants might not have been through two recent attacks — or have any weapon more deadly than carving knives.
He walked briskly down the hall — found the breakfast room as he expected, all dark, the white gauze curtains resting still, in moonlight and the general city nightglow. He took his hand with the gun from under his coat and walked directly and with some dispatch along the wall, taking the lack of draft or movement in the curtains as proof that the doors were closed — the room was almost always drafty and airy otherwise.
He moved them aside, assured of his invisibility there. Light showed, reflected among the lower roofs, not lights that belonged there, he was well sure. One such light even while he watched moved along the roof line; someone carrying a light, he thought — he could see it from the side of the room as he followed the wall.
Then he felt a draft — saw the curtains move, then, and realized to his dismay the farther door was open.
He stopped. He didn't knowthe doors hadn't been open all along. He almost retreated, then thought that was what he'd come for: he had to shut and lock that door.
He went to it, moved to shut it and felt a faint presence on his side of the room — he couldn't see it, he couldn't identify it… he couldn't swear it was there. Panic sweated his palms.
Don't acknowledge you're awake, Banichi had told him. It was like that. He moved slowly away with the gun in hand, asking himself what now, what next — he didn't know it wasn't his imagination, he didn't know it wasn't one of his own — he didn't know what to do.
The glass doors near him burst in gunfire, curtains billowed, glass fell in shards, and the presence he'd felt hurtled out of the dark, knocked him stunned to the floor, scrambled over him. The gun had left his hand. Weight crushed him to the tiles. A second burst of gunfire punched the curtains back, and lights swept the balcony. An atevi body lay breathing hard atop him as shots flew over their heads, raked the walls, showered them with plaster and porcelain until the shots stopped.
Then the ateva got up to a crouch and went out the shattered doors, leaving him a second to scrabble across a dark and fragment-littered floor after the gun — he found it in the dark, but the floor and his head had collided in that fall, his arm ached with a mindful fury and his knees buckled as he tried to get up.