Narani, at least, had sent him out the door with professional satisfaction. Banichi and Jago had very naturally come with him, and met the senior bodyguards of the dowager’s staff with wary cordiality. They’d saved one another’s necks repeatedly, and had as friendly a relationship as their slightly divergent man’chi allowed.
Tano and Algini had brought Jason there, and avowed they had observed nothing untoward. The curious fact remained that Jason hadn’t mentioned the visit… though human interactions were like that; in the hour they’d had, everything but what was human had fallen out of their minds.
Jason to this hour might be thinking, My God, I forgot to tell him…
But that Tano and Algini had not… thatwas more likely because they deferred to Banichi and Jago, and theyknew there was something afoot that the paidhi needed to figure out for himself. They couldn’t, psychologically couldn’t, fight Tabini. He was on his own in that; but they were worried about the footing he was on, trying to guide his steps as accurately as they could through what was shaping up as a maze of intrigue.
“Nand’ paidhi.” The head of the dowager’s security, Cenedi, met him in the dowager’s entry, accompanied him from the foyer to the hall… and from there on into, thankfully, the dining room, not the cold fresh wind of the balcony, where Ilisidi, accustomed to fresh air and disdainful of assassins, had been known to serve meals.
The dowager waited for him instead in the warm heart of her apartment, a woman slight with age—for her species—leaning on her cane, beside a glittering dinner table centered with crystal, flowers, and candles. There was no grand entry, no keeping him waiting. This was the approach afforded intimates.
“Nand’ dowager,” Bren said with honest fondness.
“Well, well, so formal, are we?”
“ ‘Sidi-ji,” he amended that, but only on indication she welcomed it. “I received your invitation and came immediately as I reached my apartment.”
“Sit, sit, flatterer.” Ilisidi advanced a step toward the table, and her bodyguard whisked her chair into position. She sat; the cane went to the bodyguard’s hand with never an interruption of movement, and Bren sat down in a chair as deftly moved and reset by Cenedi’s partner. “I support your vices. I have imported vodkafrom the island.”
“It’s very good of you,” he said. He was pleased. A measure of the times and the current size of his office. A subordinate must have passed it, so that she could actually surprise him with an import. His job had grown far, far beyond stamping import manifests.
“With appropriate fruit juice?”
“Thank you,” he said, as a glass… with unseasonable ice, decadence in the dowager’s opinion… turned up in a servant’s hand, and settled in place in front of him.
Another servant presented a glass of the dowager’s own preference, one of those alkaloid stimulants that could kill a human, or make him wish it had. “So, so, nand’ paidhi, how fares your mother?”
“Well. Very well. Complaining of my desertion on a holiday.”
“The Independence Day.” Ilisidi showed herself amused, and well-informed. “Independence from us. What a curious holiday, under the circumstances.”
“A historic, a traditional occasion.” The inference belatedly dawned on him, that there was in that human ship overhead another threat to Mospheiran independence. “Equally, Mospheirans secured their independence from the Pilots’ Guild all those centuries ago by flinging themselves onto the planet in parachutes. I assure you… there’s certainly no national urge even yet to rush into the arms of the Guild. Even those who wanted to go back to space have their doubts.”
“When you first landed, atevi thought you’d fallen from the moon. Now the sun’s a star and the morning star a planet. What a strange world we’ve made! Try the relish. It’s from the garden at Malguri. I did inquire of its safety.”
“A fond memory.” He did help himself. Relish and other pickles were exceptions to the rule of propriety, of kabiu: nothing but what grew or was customarily hunted during the season was kabiu. What was preserved as a condition of its recipe and served during a subsequent season was acceptable: such were liquors and other products of time and fermentation, which had no season but readiness. Likewise smoked or pickled meats.
And the dowager would not be wrong about the alkaloid content. If she flatly meant to poison him, she would never, on a point of honor, assure him of its safety beforehand.
The relish was, if peppery, quite good with the egg, that standard of atevi appetizers.
“The sun is a star,” the dowager reprised, serving herself another two eggs and a dollop of relish, “and the Pilots’ Guild so mistrusted by the Mospheirans has now offended another species. So they say.” Old, old news; but in that statement the dowager set the topic of the encounter. She knew about the human mission; she was well-briefed. He formed the hypothesis she’d come across the continent to have supper with Jase; and now with him; and that Tabini couldn’t prevent her three-hour flight or her interference, but might not be pleased with it.
“We don’t know that it was an offense the Guild committed, nand’ dowager. This strange species may have attacked the Guild for its own reasons.”
“Ha. Simply ill-natured, do we believe? Humans launch out from their own star, lose their way, and come here—such is our great good fortune. They fall on our heads. Now they go out looking for their own misplaced planet and manage to offend unidentified neighbors. Given their record, I doubt it was simple bad luck.”
“The Mospheiran government, frankly, shares that opinion. Though logically, one can’t exclude bad luck.”
“They have no sense of felicitous design. Baji-naji.” That was to say, chance and fortune could overset the pattern, however good or bad. “And this frantic exchange of paidhiin? Acceptable to you?”
“I’d like to hold Jason.” They were on diplomatic and personal thin ice. Tabini hadn’t asked yet. ‘Sidi-ji asked, for her own reasons, which she had not divulged. He tried to deflect closer questioning on the exception he was about to advance with Tabini… if he could find a way through Tabini’s door. The dowager might be a resource, or fuel on a fire. “I’ll mourn his departure. I need his help down here.”
“They don’t present us a successor. Just this fellow Cope, who’s made a nuisance of himself. Will they?”
“I don’t know what they intend. One may come down with the next launch.” It was what they’d done with Mercheson.
“They’ll debrief our Jason before they send the next one.”
“I think that’s their intention.”
“Understandable in them. Dare we take that motive for what it seems?—More to the point, do you take it that these ship-folk have interests in accordance with yours? I shall never expect they accord perfectly with ours.”
“My interests don’t diverge far at all from those of the associations, and I don’t know, nand’ dowager, in all truth. Mospheira doesn’t know, either. No one does, not me, not Jase, no one but the officers of the Pilots’ Guild… and possibly even not all of those.”
“Hereditary officers. Lords of their association. Ramirez?”