There was silence around him. He supposed they didn't know what to say. He didn't either, except, "Hold the rest of the messages, Tano, please, I'll deal with them in the morning. The aiji-dowager's — is not that urgent."

"Was this expected?" Banichi asked him, not, he was sure, regarding the dowager.

He shook his head. Then remembered with a little trepidation where he was and to what a dangerous agency he was speaking. "No, nadi. But she's quite justified."

Another small, uncomfortable silence. He supposed he'd passed their professional limits. He didn't know. Then Jago said harshly, "She was notjustified."

"Jago-ji," Banichi said. "Go set up for the night with Security. The paidhi is retiring. The aiji was right. We shouldn't have delayed."

"Yes," Jago said, and quietly took herself off into the apartments, pocket-com in hand, back stiff, braid swinging, while Banichi waved a hand in the same direction, toward the inner apartments.

He'd never seen Jago blurt out anything so uncontrolled. But Jago was Banichi's business, and he was more than willing to take Banichi's direction and go to bed, where he hoped he was exhausted enough to fall immediately into a sound sleep. He couldn't take any more physical or emotional jostling.

He went with Banichi and Tano through the sitting room and on to the inner chambers. The rest of the rooms were a geographical jumble in his mind, but he knew where the bedroom was.

"Will the paidhi want a bath tonight?" Banichi asked. "Or had the paidhi rather go directly to bed?"

"Bed, nadi. I'm very tired." He was grateful that Banichi had reverted to formality, Banichi's cure for too much intimacy, perhaps: it cooled the air and quietly distanced him from the problems of the world, the most important of which certainly weren't the paidhi's botched-up personal life, the paidhi's nonexistent personal life.

The paidhi had had a lot else on his mind for no few days prior; Barb had probably been trying to reach his office in Shejidan time after time without getting him — chasing him down with a telegram at his Mospheira office had probably been her last resort. Barb wasn't an ungracious person — was a very kind, very gentle person, in fact, which was what he was most going to miss, and he hoped that Paul Saarinson appreciated what he'd won. He hoped there'd be a chance to take them both to dinner and wish Barb well.

The gracious thing. The civilized thing to do. God knew he was civilized. He took his losses with entirely professional perspective.

But, dammit!

"Nadi," Tano said, and wished to help him with his shirt cuffs. He'd never felt comfortable letting servants, or security only masquerading as a servant, dress and undress him. It was the one atevi convention he'd evaded.

But he was the prisoner of a cut-up, taped-together shirt, a human-style shirt the Department must have come up with, because the one he'd arrived in at the hospital had been a total loss, and the hospital had turned up the next afternoon with this, which they'd cut to accommodate the cast.

He didn't, come to think of it, know how he was going to get into a shirt in the morning, or how he was going to bathe except with a sponge. For God knew how long. He was numb.

It hadn't, he knew, quite sunk in yet about Barb.

It hadn't altogether sunk in yet about what Tabini had pulled, and what he'd done downstairs, either. It kept coming back to him in flashes, snatches of what he'd said and what Tabini had said, like a recurring nightmare.

He managed the trousers on his own, kicked the shoes off, and intended to sit down on the bed just as a female servant, arriving out of nowhere, flicked down the covers. He was so tired he flinched at the whisk of coverlet and sheets from under him and sat down suddenly, jolting the arm.

A servant tried to kneel — he bent to cope, one-handed, with the socks, before she took that over. He was appalled, locked, he began to realize, in an atevi lady's female household, with servants accustomed to do things he'd never wanted servants to do for him, and no provisions at all for a man's privacy.

"I'm terribly tired," he said in a wobbly voice, an appeal to Banichi for peace, for quiet, for some kind of guard against a troop of women relentless in their hospitality. "Please," he said. "I'd like a small light left burning, Banichi-ji. I've been in too many strange rooms lately, and I'm afraid if I have to get up, I'll walk into a wall."

"Perfectly understandable," Banichi said, though one was certain Banichi would never do such a foolish thing; Banichi passed the requisite orders with more fluency than the paidhi could manage at the moment — and the women absconded with his clothes, shoes, socks and all.

"The shirt will be a problem in the morning." Small obstacles preoccupied him, looming up as insurmountable. He turned querulous, close to tears, for no sane reason. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

"The staff will have them adjusted, nadi," Tano said. "It's all taken care of. We'll manage."

"They gave me a folder for the doctors. — Pills. I'll want my traveling case by the bedside. Water."

Such things arrived, from one source and another, servants going hither and yon. He fumbled together a nest of pillows, there being no scarcity of them in the huge bed, and stuffed them about him to rest his arm and his shoulder, while Banichi and Tano and random female servants hovered over him.

"Do you want your medicine, nadi?"

"Not right now," he said. The arm ached — but he'd been moving about, and he hoped it would ease without it. He'd regretted taking the painkiller this afternoon. They hadn't warned him it would make him dim-witted. He'd made one mess of things this evening. He didn't want to wake up stupid in the morning.

As much as anything, he didn't want to move from where he'd settled, not until daylight, not maybe for the next five days.

Banichi laid a pocket-com on the table in front of his face.

"What's that for?"

"In case, nadi. Don't go wandering about if you need something. Please call. One of us will come, very quickly. Don't walk into a wall."

"Thanks," he said, and Banichi and Tano found their way to the door — put out the lights, but left the one he'd requested.

Barb was married. Well, he thought — hell. They'd talked about marriage, in a couple of foolish moments when, early in his career, he'd thought his life would be so routine he could arrange regular trips to Mospheira. But she'd said no, said she didn't want marriage — and she'd probably known he was dreaming.

Paul Saarinson was stable. Solid. Paul would be there, all the time.

The one thing he for damn sure couldn't give her. He was the occasions, the events, the flying trips onto the island for a glittering weekend on a far from modest, saved-up salary — then off again, with promises and dates that somehow didn't turn out to be available.

She was right. You couldn't build a life off weekends. He knew that. He guessed Barb just had never told him what she really wanted.

He blinked. The dim light shattered, rebuilt itself. You could get used to pain.

Part of the job, wasn't it? He seemed to have made himself a hero to the atevi around him. Theyappreciated him in their way, which hadn't anything to do with the sense of human companionship he had from Barb; but it wasn't a bad thing, if you couldn't have other things, to be appreciated by the people you most associated with.

Appreciated, hell, tell that to Tabini. Tabini appreciatedhim. Tabini appreciated him the way an atevi lord appreciated any useful, entertaining, personally pleasant resource you could put on the spot and get solid value out of.