“You’re saying you weren’t at fault.”

“I’m saying atevi weren’t, either. I believe that.”

Cenedi tapped the fingers of one hand, together, against the desk, thinking, it seemed. Then: “An accident brought you to us. Was it a mistake of numbers?”

He found breath scarce in the room, perhaps the oil lamps, perhaps having gone in over his head with a very well-prepared man.

“We don’t know,” he said. “Or I don’t. I’m not a scientist.”

“But don’t your numbers describe nature? Was it a supernatural accident?”

“I don’t think so, nadi. Machinery may have broken. Such things do happen. Space is a vacuum, but it has dust, it has rocks—like trying to figure which of millions of dust motes you might disturb by breathing.”

“Then your numbers aren’t perfect.”

Another pitfall of heresy. “Nadi, engineers approximate, and nature corrects them. We approachnature. Our numbers work, and nature doesn’t correct us constantly. Only sometimes. We’re good. We’re not perfect.”

“And the War was one of these imperfections?”

“A very great one.—But we can learn, nadi. I’ve insulted Jago at least twice, but she was patient until I figured it out. Banichi’s made me extremely unhappy—and I know for certain he didn’t know what he did, but I don’t cease to value associating with him. I’ve probably done harm to others I don’t know about,—but at least, at least, nadi, at very least we’re not angry with each other, and we each knowthat the other side means to be fair. We make a lot of mistakes… but people can make up their minds to be patient.”

Cenedi sat staring at him, giving him the feeling… he didn’t know why… that he had entered on very shaky ground with Cenedi. But he hadn’t lost yet. He hadn’t made a fatal mistake. He wished he knew whether Banichi knew where he was at the moment.

“Yet,” Cenedi said, “someone wasn’t patient. Someone attempted your life.”

“Evidently.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

“I have noidea, nadi. I truly don’t, in specific, but I’m aware some people just don’t like humans.”

Cenedi opened the drawer of his desk and took out a roll of paper heavy with the red and black ribbons of the aiji’s house.

Ilisidi’s, he thought apprehensively, as Cenedi passed it across the desk to him. He unrolled it and saw instead a familiar hand.

Tabini’s.

I send you a man, ’Sidi-ji, for your disposition. I have filed Intent on his behalf, for his protection from faceless agencies, not, I think, agencies faceless to you, but I make no complaint against you regarding a course of action which under extraordinary circumstances you personally may have considered necessary.

What is this? he thought and, in the sudden, frantic sense of limited time, read again, trying to understand was it Tabini’s threat againstIlisidi or was he saying Ilisidi was behindthe attack on him?

And Tabini sent him here?

Therefore I relieve you of that unpleasant and dangerous necessity, ’Sidi-ji, my favorite enemy, knowing that others may have acted against me invidiously, or for personal gain, but that you, alone, have consistently taken a stand of principle and policy against the Treaty.

Neither I nor my agents will oppose your inquiries or your disposition of the paidhi-aiji at this most dangerous juncture. I require only that you inform me of your considered conclusions, and we will discuss solutions and choices.

Disposition of the paidhi? Tabini, Tabini, for God’s sake, what are you doingto me?

My agents have instructions to remain but not to interfere.

Tabini-aiji with profound respect

To Ilisidi of Malguri, in Malguri, in Maidingi Province…

His hands shook. He tried not to let them. He read the letter two and three times, and found no other possible interpretation. It wasTabini’s handwriting. It wasTabini’s seal. There was no possible forgery. He tried to memorize the wording in the little time he reasonably had to hold the document, but the elaborate letters blurred in his eyes. Reason tried to intervene, interposing the professional, intellectual understanding that Tabini wasatevi, that friendship didn’t guide him, that Tabini couldn’t even comprehend the word.

That Tabini, in the long run, had to act in atevi interests, and as an ateva, not in any human-influenced way that needed to make sense to him.

Intellect argued that he couldn’t waste time feeling anything, or interpreting anything by human rules. Intellect argued that he was in dire and deep trouble in this place, that he had a slim hope in the indication that Banichi and Jago were to stay here—an even wilder hope in the possibility Tabini might have been compelled to betray him, and that Tabini had kept Banichi and Jago on hand for a reason… a wild and improbable rescue…

But it was all a very thin, very remote possibility, considering that Tabini had felt constrained to write such a letter at all.

And if Tabini was willing to risk the paidhi’s life and along with it the advantage of Mospheira’s technology, one could only conclude that Tabini’s power was threatened in some substantial way that Tabini couldn’t resist.

Or one could argue that the paidhi had completely failed to understand the situation he was in.

Which offered no hope, either.

He handed Cenedi back the letter with, he hoped, not quite so obvious a tremor in his hands as might have been. He wasn’t afraid. He found that curious. He was aware only of a knot in his throat, and a chill lack of sensation in his fingers.

“Nadi,” he said quietly. “I don’t understand. Are you the ones trying to kill me in Shejidan?”

“Not directly. But denial wouldn’t serve the truth, either.”

Tabini had armed him contrary to the treaty.

Cenedi had killedan assassin on the grounds. Hadn’t he?

The confusion piled up around him.

“Where’s Banichi? And Jago? Do they know about this? Do they know where I am?”

“They know. I say that denial of responsibility would be a lie. But I will also own that we are embarrassed by the actions of an associate who called on a licensed professional for a disgraceful action. The Guild has been embarrassed by the actions of a single individual acting for personal conviction. I personally—embarrassed myself, in the incident of the tea. More, you accepted my apology, which makes my duty at this moment no easier, nand’ paidhi. I assure you there is nothingpersonal in this confrontation. But I will do whatever I feel sufficient to find the truth in this situation.”

“What situation?”

“Nand’ paidhi. Do you ever mislead us? Do you ever tell us less—or more—than the truth?”

His hazard didn’t warrant rushing to judgment headlong—or dealing in on-the-spot absolutes, with a man the extent of whose information or misinformation he didn’t know. He tried to think. He tried to be absolutely careful.

“Nadi, there are times I may know… some small technical detail, a circuit, a mode of operation—sometimes a whole technological field—that I haven’t brought to the appropriate committee; or that I haven’t put forward to the aiji. But it’s not that I don’t intend to bring it forward, no more than other paidhiin have ever withheld what they know. There is no technology we have that I intendto withhold—ever.”

“Have you ever, in collaboration with Tabini, rendered additional numbers into the transmissions from Mospheira to the station?”

God.

“Ask the aiji.”

“Have those numbers been supplied to you by the aiji?”

“Ask him.”

Cenedi looked through papers, and looked up again, his dark face absolutely impassive. “I’m asking you, nand’ paidhi. Have those numbers been supplied to you by the aiji?”

“That’s Tabini’s business. Not mine.” His hands were cold. He worked his fingers and tried to pretend to himself that the debate was no more serious than a council meeting, at which, very rarely, the questions grew hot and quick. “If Tabini-aiji sends to Mospheira, I render what he says accurately. That’s my job. I wouldn’t misrepresent him, or Mospheira. Thatis my integrity, nadi Cenedi. I don’t lie to either party.”