"What's happening?" Jase asked.
"Just be calm," Bren said, and they drifted in the wake of the others toward the restored rooms, which rapidly filled shoulder to shoulder with guests admiring the lilies, praising the workmanship, gossiping about the event last year which had necessitated the repairs. There was applause, and lights glared as cameras pretended to be unobtrusive, creating the effect of sunlight across the lilies and the blinded guests. Security was tense in that moment, and Naidiri himself, chief of Tabini's security, set himself in their path and moved the traveling cameras definitively out of the room.
The camera lights went out. Music began, a simple duet of pipes played by two of the servants, who were quite good at it. Talk buzzed above the music and grew animated.
The two humans found refuge against the restored frieze and simply listened to the conversation, as Tati-seigi and two other provincial lords discussed the menu, and Tatiseigi looked at least marginally cheerful, except the looks he threw Badissuni.
"Doing all right?" Bren asked.
"I think," Jase said. He looked tired, and it was tiring to keep up with a high-speed translation problem. Jase had gone into it on the edge of his nerves.
"So tell me," Ilisidi said, coasting up, one of the few atevi present not too much taller than a human, "how do you find life on Earth? Different than the ship, nand' paidhi?"
Jase cast him a desperate look.
"Answer," Bren said. "Nand' dowager, I did tell him be careful with his language."
"Different," Jase said. "Thank you, nand' dowager."
"Vastly improved," Ilsidi said, leaning on her stick, creating a small space around them by her presence. "The last time I saw you, you and those two human women were boarding a plane for Shejidan, and they were bound for the island. How are they faring, nand' paidhi?"
"I hear from my companion from the ship, nand' dowager. She fares well, thank you."
"And nand' Hanks?"
Nand' Hanks, hell. Ilisidi never used honorifics for Deana Hanks. Bren's heart rate kicked up a notch and weariness with the noise went sailing on a sea of adrenaline.
"I don't hear from nand' Hanks, nand' dowager."
"Does your companion?"
"Aiji-ma." Bren took a deep breath. "How do you find the lilies?"
Ilisidi broke into a grin. "I was wondering how to get you off to yourself, Bren-ji." She snagged his arm and drew him aside, and he could only go, trusting Jase to the security watching both of them.
"Neighbors will talk, aiji-ma."
"Become a scandal with me." She leaned on his arm and directed their steps toward the windows. "Ah, the city air. You should come back to Malguri."
"I wish that I could, aiji-ma."
"I think, if the schedule permits it, I shall invite the astronomer emeritus for a weekend at midsummer. That should prove interesting, don't you think?"
"The last I saw they were shooting at strangers, aiji-ma."
"They need new ideas. I would delight to have you at the gathering, nadi. Do consider it. Malguri in summer. Boating on the lake. — You should," the dowager added, with a wicked grin, "bring this nice young man. He has possibilities."
"Should I assist a rival to attain your interest, aiji-ma? I am devastated."
"Oh, but one hears that you have favored a certain member of your own household, nand' paidhi. Should I not take offense?"
He was appalled. Did she mean Barb, perhaps, or — God help him — Jago?
Dangerous territory. He was never certain whether Ilisidi's romantic fantasies were a joke, or just a hazardous degree serious.
"Aiji-ma. No one could possibly rival you. I've so missed our breakfasts together."
Ilisidi laughed and squeezed his arm. "Flatterer. I shall steal you away alone to Malguri in a lightning raid and simply not return you to my unappreciative grandson at all." Curtains billowed around them, and Ilisidi's face went grave. "So would Mospheira lock you away. Beware that woman."
"Hanks?"
"Hanks!" It had as well be an oath. "I warn you, beware her."
"1 do. I do very much. — May I dare a question, aiji-ma? Should I also beware the lord of the Atageini?"
"Presumptuous, Bren-ji."
"I am very aware, aiji-ma. But I have never known you to lie to me."
"I've loaded your arms with lies, nadi! When in our dealings have there not been lies?"
"When I have relied on you for advice, aiji-ma. When I have truly cast myself on the truth inside your mazes you have never left me lost, aiji-ma."
"Oh, you thief of a woman's better sense! Flatterer, I say!"
"Wise woman, I say, aiji-ma, and cast myself utterly on your tolerance. Should I beware the lord of the Atageini?"
"Beware Direiso. As he must. As that scared fool Badissuni must."
"I entirely understand that."
"Wise man. Would that Tatiseigi did."
He almosfthrew into the mix a similar and equally urgept^question about lord Geigi's current relations with Direiso, and with Tatiseigi, and instantly thought better of it. Geigi had ridden beside Ilisidi to the rescue, after Ilisidi had repeatedly and forcefully called Geigi a fool. He believed that in her riddling reply about Tatiseigi needing to beware of Direiso, Ilisidi had just told him the unriddling truth on three points: that something was going on, that Tatiseigi was still uncertain in his man'chi, that Direiso was very much a problem.
But regarding the matter of Geigi's relation to Ilisidi, Geigi might be a fish best left below the surface of that political water, where he could swim and conduct his affairs unseen.
It was Direiso on whose affairs Ilisidi might have information she was willing to share with him. In specific, she had signaled she would talk about Hanks, but he prepared a question, a simple, But what of Direiso and Tatiseigi — skirting around the fact of the departed Saigimi's wife's relationship to Geigi and to Direiso.
Badissuni and Tatiseigi were at the moment in converse, the topic of which seemed grim and urgent.
"Nand' paidhi," a servant came to him to say, and placed a note in his hand.
A male human on the phone, it said. Something wrong with his mother, was all he could think; and his face might have gone a shade paler. He might have looked as blank and stunned as he felt for a moment, blindsided out of a totally different universe.
* * *
CHAPTER 14
« ^ »
"Difficulty?" Ilisidi said to him.
"Forgive me. It's a phone call from Mospheira. It can wait." He was watching Badissuni and Tatiseigi as they spoke briefly, then moved apart, Tatiseigi instantly surrounded by the curious and less restrained, and people gazing in speculative curiosity at Badissuni, whom — God! — Tabini snagged for a small exchange.
And his mother — dammit, he needed to know.
"Go, go, go," Ilisidi said, "attend your phone call. Come back to me. I'll gather the gossip. Your mind is clearly distracted." Ilisidi's face betrayed no concern whatsoever. But her tone of command, sharp and absolute, told him he'd slipped his facial control and let things through he would rather not have allowed to the surface.
But he wanted the phone call. Ilisidi gave him leave. And might learn more than he could — or than she could with him attached.
He cast a worried look around for Jase, who was quietly in the corner, talking to his security and having no difficulty. Jago was watching him, and he coasted past Jago on the way to the door. "A phone call's come from the island," he said. "I'm going to the office. I'll be right back."
"Yes," Jago said, and tailed him as far as the door, when he'd been so bothered he hadn't even twigged to the possibility of a set-up to draw him to disaster. She stayed close, stationing herself in the hall as he went the short distance to the private office, at the door of which the servant stood.
He went in and picked up the phone. "Hello?" he said. "This is Bren Cameron."
"Bren, this is Toby." It was a tone of voice he almost didn't know. "I thought I'd better call."<
br />
"Damn right you'd better call. How are you? How's Mother?"
A pause that said far too much. "Heart attack. Small one. How are you? "
It was better than his worst fears. His knees weren't doing so well. He sat down. "I'm doing fine. Tell her that. Listen. I want you to call Barb and have her call me."
"No. No! You get yourself home, Bren. You want your damn business carried on, you come do it, and you come back and take care of the things you need to take care of! Stop asking your family to put up with this kind of crap! Mama's having surgery this week. She wants you, Bren. She wants you to be here."
"1 can't."
"I can't be up here in the city, either, but I'm doing it! I can't leave my house and my business, but I'm doing it! Jill can't answer the phone without lunatics harassing her! We've had to leave home and all come up here, and I can't let my family go down the street to the park! You know what put mama in the hospital, Bren? You did. People throwing paint on her building, the landlord saying he wants her to move —"
He tried to think through the things he didn't want to hear to the things he had to hear — while remembering agencies on both sides of the water were recording everything. "Toby. Call my office. Ask Shawn —"
"I've done that! I can't get through! None of the numbers you've given me work any more, and I don't even know whether Shawn's in office this week, by what I'm hearing in the papers!"
"What's in the papers, Toby? They don't exactly —"
"No, no, no! I'm not doing your work for you! I'm your brother, not a clerk in the State Department! And I want you back here, Bren. I want you back here for
mama! One week, one miserable week, that's all I want!"
"I can't."
"The hell you can't! Tell the aiji your mother could die, dammit, and she's asking for you! "
"Toby —"
"Oh — hell, I forgot. You can't explain feelings, can you? They're not wired for it. Well, what about you, Bren? Is it all the office, and nothing for your family?"
"Toby."
"I don't want your excuses, Bren. I've covered for you and covered for you and not told you the truth because it'd upset you. Well, now I'm telling you the truth, and mama's in danger of her life and I can't take my family home, and I'm scared to death they're going to burn my house down while I'm gone!"
"Just hang on, Toby. Just a little longer."
"I can't! I'm not willing to, dammit! I'm tired of trying to explain what the hell you're doing! We can't explain it to ourselves anymore — how in hell do we make it make sense to the neighbors! "
"You know damn well what the score is, Toby. Don't hand me that. You know what's going on in the government and what game they're playing."
"What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Bren? That we're the enemy, now?"
"I'm saying call Shawn!"
"I'm saying Shawn's number doesn't work anymore and the police won't answer our emergency calls, Bren, try that one! You're not damn popular, and they're taking it out on my family and our mother!"
"Wrong. Wrong, Toby! It's not the whole island, it's a handful of crawling cowards that on a bright day —"
"These are our neighbors, Bren. These are my neighbors that aren't speaking to me, people I've known for ten years!"
"Then get yourself a new set of friends, Toby!"
"That doesn't work for mama, Bren, that doesn't work in the building she's lived in for all these years and now they don't want her any more. What does that do to her, Bren? What do you say to that?"
"It's a rotten lot of people you've fallen for."
"What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Bren? I don't understand you. "
He grew accustomed to silence on his feelings. He was a translator, a technical translator, by necessity a diplomat, by cooption a lord of the atevi Association. And he spoke out of hurt and anger on the most childish possible level, maybe because that was the mental age this argument touched, the last time he and Toby had accessed what they felt. Toby had moved out to the coast. He'd thought then, and still thought, it was to put space between Toby and their mother. He'd gone into University, and aptitudes had steered him toward what the job was supposed to be, which hadn't been this.
"Tell mama I love her," he said, and hung up on his brother.
That little click of the receiver broke the vital connection, and he knew there wasn't a way to get it back. The training didn't let expression reach his face. The training didn't let him do anything overt. He just sat there a moment, with an atevi lady's office coming back into focus around him, and the sounds of the party going on above the silence that click had created, and with the knowledge he had to get up and function with very dangerous people and go be sure Jase was all right.
And he had to finish his talk with Ilisidi, somehow, get the wit organized to regain that mood and that moment and do his job.
If you couldn't do anything about a vital matter, you postponed it. You put it in a mental box and shut the lid on it and didn't think about it when there was a job to do.
And once he'd done that, damn it! He was mad at Toby, who knew things about the government Toby could have told him, critical things, and Toby hadn't, wouldn't, no matter whether peace or war could hinge on it. Toby's peace was unsettled, Toby's life was put out of joint, Toby came at him with personal grievances of a sort the family had once known to keep away from him — which Toby could have been man enough to hold to himself this week and handle, dammit, since there wasn't and wouldn't be anything he could do from where he was.
But it had been a succession of weeks. Toby was getting tired of holding it.
Jago appeared in the doorway. She had her com in hand. Had been using it, he thought, maybe even following the conversation via a relay from the foyer-area security station. Surveillance here, in these premises, was always close, and lately it was overt, just one of those jobs his staff did to be up on things without having them explained.
Sometimes that was a good thing.
"The aiji is aware, nadi-ji."
Not Bren-ji, not the familiar; but the still-remote formal combined with the personal address. Jago was being official. He was grateful for the professional distance. It was a damn sight more consideration than his brother managed.
"My man'chi," he said, going to the heart of what he was sure would worry atevi, "is still to the office and the aiji, nadi. You may tell him that."
"He wishes to speak to you, but cannot leave the breakfast room without notice nor speak to you intimately there. He says, through your security, that though he has said so before, now he urges your acceptance of his offer: at any time of your choosing, you may bring your household to the mainland and he will establish a place and lands for them, nadi-ji, as fits the house of a man of your stature. If you ask, he will make strong request to the Mospheiran government to secure their immediate passage across the strait, with all their goods and belongings. He is aware of the demands of those of your house, and your difficult position, nadi-ji, and is willing to take the strongest action to secure their safety."
"Tell him —" The last time Tabini had moved to secure something from the Mospheiran government, he had threatened to shoot Deana Hanks if they didn't get him back in twenty-four hours. Tabini's offer was not without international consequences. And not without force behind it, though he didn't know what human official Tabini could tell them he'd shoot this time. "Tell him I am grateful. Tell him — I hold his regard as the most important, even —" He almost said — above my family's good opinion; and knew that circumstances and duty had made it true. Now anger and bitter hurt almost confirmed it. "Even above my life, nadi. Tell him that. And I will come back to the gathering when I have composed myself, which should be only a moment."
"I shall tell him that, nadi."
Jago was gone from the doorway, then, giving him the grace of privacy, but he was sure she'd gone no further than the hall outside to relay the message. And to achieve that composed manner he
tried to widen his focus, to remind himself how very much was at issue, for three nations counting the ship Jase represented; and what a very extraordinary honor Tabini had offered him.
It was done for state reasons, he had to remind himself. For the same damn reasons of state that had put him in the position he was in.
He'd hung up on his brother.
And wouldn't be home.
Fact. Fact. Fact. There was nothing that could change it, nothing that would get the barrier between peoples down any faster than the things he was doing. So it was two deep breaths and back to work.
He got to his feet and walked out into the hall, where as he expected, Jago was waiting; and where, in the distance, the television interviews were going on, with a scatter of the guests down there in the bright lights. He walked with Jago back into the crowded breakfast room, in which alcohol and alkaloids as well as the sweets were beginning to be a factor and the simple noise of conversation was beginning to sound like the subway below the building. Jase was still safe where he'd left him; and, not willing at this moment to talk to Jase or answer human questions, he tended toward Tabini, who was with Damiri, with Banichi, too.
Tabini's regular security was at the moment hovering much closer to Tatiseigi, who was talking to Ilisidi.
"Aiji-ma," Bren said quietly with a slight bow. "I heard your generous offer. I will present it at my first opportunity, but —" His wits unraveled. "I don't know how to persuade them, aiji-ma. I wish that I could."
"It seems to me," Damiri said, "that this is a trap, nand' paidhi. They wish you to become concerned and to go there. This attack on your mother's residence is not unrelated to this pressure on the Association and the outrageous behavior of your government. I even suspect the death of Jase's father, but I know no design to make of it."
He felt himself increasingly in shock, and willing to make patterns where possibly none existed. He dealt with atevi. And to the atevi mind there were patterns he could see, too, dire and threatening patterns; but he dealt so deeply in the language now he feared his own suspicions. "I know none, either, daja-ma, but I shall certainly think deeply on it."