Don’t bother me, he decided that meant. He stood and looked out the window, which gave him nothing at all.

“Go read if you like,” Jago said.

As if the mind could leap, that quickly, back to ski catalogs. His damned well couldn’t. It didn’t like informational voids; it didn’t like silent guards lurking in his reception room, or the chance there was a reason to need them, possibly slipping up the stairs outside.

Read, hell. He wanted a window that overlooked something but gray. He hadn’t the disposition, he decided. He was far too nervous.

“Nadi Bren. Come away from the window.”

He didn’t think about such things. He was chagrined, to be caught twice, shook his head and walked back—

Jago was staring at him with disturbing worry—set to shepherd a fool, he supposed, who walked in front of windows. “Sorry,” he said.

“Think as one thinks trying to reach you,” she said. “Do them no favors. Go, sit, relax.”

Guild assassin, Banichi had said. Someone Banichi knew. Socialized with.

And didn’t yet know why a man had broken the rules?

“Jago,—how does a person get a license?”

“To do what, Bren-ji?”

“You know. The Guild.” He wanted not to tread on sensibilities with Jago. He was sorry he’d wandered into the territory.

“To be licensed to the Guild? One elects. One chooses.”

It told him no more than before, what pushed a sane person in that direction. Jago didn’t seem the type—if there was a type to the profession.

“Bren-ji. Why do you ask?”

“Wondering—what sort of person is after me.”

Jago seemed to ignore his question then, looking off to the window. Into rain-spatter and nothing.

“We’re not one kind, Bren-ji. We’re not one face.”

None of your business, he supposed. “Nadi,” he said, departing, willing to leave her to her own thoughts, if he could only shake his own.

“What sort becomes paidhi?” she asked him, before he could take a second step.

Good question, he thought. Solid hit. He had to think about it, and didn’t find the answer he’d used to have… couldn’t even locate the boy who’d started down that track, couldn’t believe in him, even marginally.

“A fool, probably.”

“One doubts, nadi-ji. Is that a requirement?”

“I think so.”

“So… how do you vie for this honor? In what foolishness?”

“Curiosity. Wanting to know more than Mospheira. Doing good to the planet we’re on, the people we live next to.”

“Is this also Wilson?”

Dead hit. What could he say?

“You,” Jago said, “do not act like Wilson-paidhi.”

“Valasi-aiji,” he countered, “wasn’t Tabini, either.”

“True,” Jago said. “Very true.”

“Jago, I—” He was up against that word, which only governed salad courses. He shook his head and started to walk away.

“Bren-ji. Please finish.”

He didn’t want to talk. He wasn’t sure of his rationality, let alone his self-control. But Jago waited.

“Jago-ji, I’ve worked all my life, best I can do. I don’t know what else I can do. Now we’ve lost the lights again. I don’t think I’ve deserved this. But I ask myself, nadi, is it my fault, have I gone too far and too fast, have I done Tabini harm by trying to help him, and is someone that damned persistent in trying to kill me? Why, Jago? Do you have the remotest notion?”

“You bring change,” Jago said. “To some, this is frightening.”

“The damned railroad?” The emphasis of the interview bewildered him. Jago was all but a shadow to him, expressionless, unreachable. He made a frustrated dismissal with his hand and walked away toward the sitting room, only to gain a space to think, to sit down and read and take his mind off the day’s bizarre turn, maybe before supper, which she might share, if no one poisoned the cook.

But he stopped again, fearing he might insult her. “If someday,” he said, “this television business ever works out to bring news crews onto Mospheira, I’ll ask for you and Banichi to come visit my family, I’d like you to see what we are. I’d like you to know us, nadi-ji.”

“I’d be most honored,” Jago said solemnly.

So perhaps he’d patched things. He walked away into the sitting room and threw another piece of wood onto the fire, while thunder echoed off the walls. Jago had followed him in, evidently conceiving that as what he wanted, but she said nothing, only took up looking through the sitting room library shelves instead.

There was no interfering with Jago’s notions of duty, or what she might conceive as being sociable. He took up his book, began to sit down.

The lights came on again.

He looked up, frustrated, at the ceiling fixtures.

“It must have been a fuse,” Jago said, from across the room. “That’s good.”

He recalled dusty old wires running beside bare natural gas pipes, along the hall ceiling, and envisioned the whole apartment going up in an electrical disaster. “Malguri needs a new electrical system,” he muttered. “Where do they have that gas tank?”

“What gas?”

“Methane.”

“In the cellar,” Jago said.

“Under the building. It’s a damned bomb, nadi. The place needselectric furnaces. If they’ve installed electric lights, surely electric furnaces can’t hurt.”

“Funding,” Jago said.

“While they’re looking for assassins—do they watch that tank?”

“Every access to this building,” Jago said, “is under surveillance.”

“Except when the power’s out.”

Jago made a small shrug.

“Those windows,” he said, “aren’t watched. I found that out last night, when the power came back on.”

Jago frowned, went close to the window, and ran a finger around the edge of the casement, looked up and around—at what, he couldn’t see.

“How did you find out, Bren-ji?”

“I opened a window to look out. The power came back on. The alarm went off. I take it that’s an old system.”

“It certainly is,” Jago said. “Did you report this?”

“It woke the whole staff.”

Jago didn’t look happier, but what she saw, examining the window, he couldn’t tell.

“Except Banichi,” he said.

“Except Banichi.”

“I don’t know where he was. I told you. We had an argument. He went off somewhere.” He had an entirely unwelcome thought but kept his mouth shut on it, watched while Jago walked to the door, pulled it half-shut, and looked at the wall behind it, still frowning. Security didn’ttalk about security. He doubted an explanation was forthcoming.

“Nadi Jago,” he said. “Banichi wasn’t here. Do you have any notion where he was last night?”

He might have remarked it was raining outside. Jago’s expression never varied. She opened the door again to its ordinary position, walked out and into the reception room.

The lights went out again. He looked up in frustration, then followed her into the other room to protest the silence and the confusion of his security. She was at the window. She unlatched the side panel, opened it and shut it again, without an alarm.

“What in hell’s going on, Jago?”

Jago took out her pocket-com and thumbed it on, rattled off a string of code he didn’t understand.

Banichi answered. He was relatively certain it was Banichi’s voice. And Jago’s stance showed some small reassurance. She answered, and cut the com off, and put it away.

“It did register,” she said. “ Oursystem registered.”

“Yours and Banichi’s?” he asked—but the com beeped and Jago thumbed it on again and answered it, frowning.

Banichi’s voice replied. Jago’s frown deepened. She answered Banichi shortly, a sign-off, clipped the corn to her belt and headed for the door.

“What was that?” he asked. “What’s happening? Jago?”

She crossed back in two strides, seized his shoulders and looked down at him. “Bren-ji. I’ve never betrayed you. I will not, Bren-ji.”

After which she was out the hall door at the same pace. She shut it. Hard.