Inheritor (28 page)

"I
don't know if we have any
." It was half-laughing. Half-scared. Life on Mospheira didn't take crime into account. There wasn't much. There weren't threats. Or had never been, until the paidhi became a public enemy. "
What do I do? "

"Get a pen. I'm going to give you instructions, Sandra."

"For what? What's going on?"

"Because they're threatening my family, they're threatening my brother and his wife and kids, and Barb got married to get an address they couldn't access. I shouldn't have called your number."

"You're serious. This isn't a joke you're making."

"Sandra, I was never more serious. Have you got a pen?"

"Yes."

"I want you to go to Shawn Tyers. You know who he is. His apartment is 36 Asbury Street."

"The Foreign Secretary."

"Yes." The line popped. His heart beat hard. He knew he was about to lose the connection and that it was not an accident. The window he had was closing, the operator had found someone of rank enough to terminate the phone call because they'd gotten into things they didn't want flowing across the strait, and he'd just put Sandra in real danger. "Leave Clarence and Louise on their own, go to a neighbor and get them to take you directly to Shawn. Wait in his lobby all night if you have to. Don't let them arrest you." This was a woman almost entirely without experience in subterfuge. And if they were monitoring, the people who would harm her were listening to what he was telling her to do. "This instant. I'm serious. You're in danger,
now
. They're listening on the line, Sandra. These people could send the taxi if you call one. Get help from people you know or don't know, but not taxis and not government. Get to Shawn. Now! Move fast! Don't go on the street alone — and don't trust the police!"

"Oh, my God, Bren. What's going on? What are you involved in? Why did you call me? "

It's not
me
, he started to say.

But the line went dead.

He stood leaning against the desk. He was gripping the phone so hard his hand was numb. He hung up the receiver knowing he commanded any security help he wanted on this side of the strait — and couldn't get through to his own mother on the other.

Deana Hanks was broadcasting messages to incite sedition on the mainland. That no one stopped her meant no one knew or that no one could get an order to stop her.

That no one in the atevi government including Tabini had told him about Deana meant that, Banichi's protestations aside, either no one had told Banichi or Banichi was covering something — Banichi ordinarily wouldn't lie to him, but there were circumstances in which Banichi
would
lie to him. Definitely.

He'd thrown in the bit about the damn houseplants to cue Sandra he was speaking on his own and now he didn't know but what she didn't take it as some joke.

The stakes had gotten higher, and higher.

And higher.

Maybe he was just so out of touch he was a paranoid fool. But what he could feel through the curtain of security that lay between Mospheira and the Western Association scared him, it truly scared him.

He straightened, met the grave face of an atevi servant who'd, probably passing in the hall, seen him in the office and seen his attitude and paused. Or his own security had sent her. God knew.

"Do you wish anything, nand' paidhi?"

He wished a great deal. He said, for want of anything he could do, "I'd like a glass of shibei, nadi. Would you bring it, please?"

"Yes, nand' paidhi."

Instant power. More than fifty people completely, full-time dedicated to his wants and needs.

And he couldn't safeguard Sandra Johnson and two stupid houseplants he'd put into grave danger.

God! Led by his weaknesses and not by his common sense, he'd made that phone call. Why the hell had he felt compelled to push the matter and try to get information he knew damned
well
was being withheld from him by the whole apparatus of the Mospheiran government and the rot inside it?

What did he
think
was going to respond when he kicked it to see whether, yes, it was malevolent, and widespread, and it had everything he loved in its grip.

The drink arrived in the hands of a tall, gentle, non-human woman, who gracefully offered it on a silver platter, and went away with a whisper of slippered footfalls and satin coat, and left a hint of
djossi
flower perfume in her wake.

He finished the drink and set down the glass. The spring breeze blew through the sitting room, chill with spring and fresh with scents of new things.

He'd had a nice, tame little single-room apartment down the hill, before he'd come to this borrowed, controversy-dominated palace.

He'd had glass doors that opened onto a pretty little garden he'd shared with a Bu-javid cook and several clerks, trusted personnel, persons with immaculate security clearances. Never any noise, never any fuss. Two servants, a small office with no secretary at all.

But someone had broken into his little apartment one rainy night, whether a person of Tabini's staff setting him up, or whether truly an attempt on his life, he didn't know nor expected the persons who might have been responsible ever to say. He would never ask, for his part, since it seemed vaguely embarrassing to say it to persons who if they were human would be friends.

Persons whose turning against him would mean he'd have only duty left.

He was aware of a presence in the shadowed hall. He thought it was the servant spotting an empty glass. They were that good, sometimes seeming to have radar attuned to that very last sip, to whisk the glass away, perhaps zealous to restore the perfection of numbers in the room, perhaps that the night staff had to account for the historic crystal. He had no idea and had never asked.

He turned his head and saw Jago standing there.

"Are you well, Bren-ji?"

"Yes." It was perhaps a lie he told her. He wasn't even sure.

Perhaps Jago wasn't sure, either. She walked in and stood where he could see her without turning his head.

"Is there trouble?" he asked her.

"Only a foolish boy who tried to ride the subway to the hill. One can't reach the hill by the subway without appropriate passes, of course. But he carried identification. When he argued with the guards it rang alarms."

"The boy from Our?"

"He's very persistent."

"He's not hurt, is he?"

"No, no, Bren-ji. But he
is
becoming a great nuisance. Three letters today —"

"Three?"

"Felicitous three." Jago held up three fingers. "Two would have been infelicitous. He was therefore compelled to send a third."

He had to smile. And to laugh.

"One did," Jago said slowly, "listen — to your phone call, Bren-ji."

It was an admission of many things. And she came to him with that as an implied question.

There was a word,
osi
, that had no clear etymology, no relationship to any other word. But when one said it, one wanted a teacup full or a piece of information amplified to its greatest possible extent. He said it now, and Jago said quietly:

"This woman. One doesn't recall her."

"Sandra Johnson? A woman I saw socially, before you came." There was no atevi word for
dated
. Or if there was, it was a set of words for social functions including bed-partners: he was definitely on shaky ground with that vocabulary.

And with Jago. They'd been — interested in each other. Curious, on one level. Aware — on another — that, being what they were, who they were, things being as they were, they couldn't trifle with one another.

The air was suddenly charged. He didn't know whether she felt it. He'd been celibate for almost a year, now, in a household full of women all of whom, including women he knew had grandchildren, acted as if they found him attractive. He'd met with too many memories tonight. He'd endangered a woman he'd slept with, trying to reestablish a connection he'd no business trying to activate. He might even have
killed
Sandra Johnson. He didn't think things had gone that far on Mospheira, on an island where in very many communities people didn't lock their doors — but he was afraid for Sandra, and felt a guilt for that phone call that wouldn't make an easy pillow tonight.

He wanted —

He wanted someone to fill the silence.

Someone like Barb. Sandra hadn't been that way for him. A fun evening. A light laughter. No talk about the job.

But to Barb, he'd told more than he should. And when it was clear he wasn't coming back any time soon, and when his actions had alienated a lot of the population of Mospheira,
she'd
married a government computer expert, whose clearances and whose indis-pensability to the State Department could assure her safety in ways he couldn't.

Jago walked closer to his chair. Was
there
, in the warmth and scent and solid blackness of an ateva close at hand.

"I should have shot Hanks-paidhi," Jago said, stating fact as she saw it.

"Possibly it was the right idea," he said, and Jago's hand rested on his on the arm of the antique chair.

"Nadi-ji."

His heart beat in panic. Sheer panic. He thought of moving his hand to signal no. But a sexual No wasn't what he wanted either, not forever.

"If a person associates with the powerful," Jago said in that rich, even voice, the low timbre only an ateva could achieve, "there are penalties."

"But they never expected the paidhi's job to be that, Jago-ji. I didn't. I
know
you think Barb failed me. But there
is
no Guild for her to appeal to. My family has no clan, no power. She went to a man whose connections in the government are more secure than mine."

"And will Barb-daja help you?"

"If I could get to her —"

"What would she have done?"

"Checked on my mother."

"And rescued her?"

"Barb
can't
, Jago-ji. She has nowhere to go. She has no one to call on. There is no Guild. There's none for Sandra Johnson. There
is
no help."

"I have heard of
po-lis
."

"Some of
them
aren't reliable. And if you're not inside the system you don't know which ones."

Jago took back her hand. And pulled up a chair. "Is this Sandra John-son knowledgeable of such things?"

"Shawn might help her. The Foreign Secretary. He might put her under some sort of protection. I don't know."

"And his superior? What of the President?"

He was suddenly looking not into the face of an ateva he trusted, but an Assassin, a guard in the man'chi of the aiji of Shejidan, asking things he had never quite admitted, like the real inner workings of decision-making. God knew and Tabini knew the President was not quick; but a helpless figurehead, he hadn't quite admitted to.

Matters on the island had never been quite this desperate, either, unless he was a total fool and had scared himself into some paranoid fancy.
Shooting
— at the State Department windows.

"Jago-ji. I'm not sure. I don't
know
who's holding power. Hanks is using a radio transmitter, on an island.
Tell
me they can't find her and stop her. They
know
who's doing it. There
isn't
but one person on Mospheira who can speak fluent Ragi! They aren't that stupid, Jago-ji! Stupid, but not
that
stupid."

"If I see her I
will
shoot her, Bren-paidhi. This is a person doing harm to the aiji's interests and to you."

What did he say? Yes?

"I regard you highly," was what he found to say in Ragi. And what else could he say? Something that evaded moral connection to the ateva she was, and the plain truth and good sense she offered? "You were right, Jago-ji. You were right."

"Yes," she said quietly. "I think so." She rose and towered against the light, and walked to the door. "Banichi says go to bed and sleep."

"Does he?" He was surprised. Then amused at the source of it. At both sources.

"Good night, nand' paidhi."

"Jago-ji." He almost — almost — asked her to stay. No matter Banichi's admonition. But she wouldn't disobey that order, and he shouldn't pose that conflict to her moral sense.

"I am also," she added, "right about Barb-daja. The direction of her man'chi is not to you. She sought another place. — Shall I secure the computer?"

He turned it over to her, and walked out with her. But she went to the left, to the security station, and he went to the right, toward his bedroom, where servants converged and helped him to undress.

Jago's shots were generally on target. Even the man'chi business, which had no human application.

But it
was
true. He and Barb had done each other a lot of damage, the same as he'd done tonight to Sandra.

Barb hadn't — hadn't told him about things. Barb had carried all the load until she couldn't carry it any more. And he loved her for that.

But she'd acted at the last to save
herself
. Jago saw that part, too. Practical of Barb. Maybe even essential.

But —
dammit
— she could have just moved in with Paul. She didn't have to make it legal.
That
said something final to the man she'd been illegal with for years.

It said — a lot of what an ateva had just observed. The drift was in a direction other than toward him.

He sat down on the immaculate bed, and turned out the light and pulled the covers over himself.

He was more tired than he'd thought.

Worried about Sandra. Worried about his mother and his brother, but he'd
been
worried so long he'd worn out the nerves to worry. Things just were. Somebody had thrown paint on his mother's building and the landlord was no doubt mad; it was in the news it was so notorious and somehow the atevi of the Messengers' Guild who monitored such things hadn't told Tano who consequently hadn't told him.

But Banichi indicated they hadn't told Tabini certain things, too, and that heads were about to be, the atevi word, collected.