He'd not had a review of his performance. "Nadiin," he said to them, "did you hear the things I said? Did they seem reasonable?"

"Nand' paidhi," one said, clearly taken aback, "it's not for us to offer opinion."

"If the paidhi asked."

"It was a very fine speech," one said. " Baji-naji, nand' paidhi. I don't understand such foreign things."

Another: "It was very risky for your ancestors to come down here."

And a third: "But where is this dangerous place, nand' paidhi? And where is the human earth? And where has the ship been?"

"All of these things, I wish I knew, nadi. The paidhi doesn't know. The wisest people on Mospheira don't know."

A servant lifted her hand, encompassing all things overhead. "Can't you find it with telescopes?"

"No. We're far, far, out of sight of where we came from. And there aren't any landmarks up there."

"Would you go there if you could, nand' paidhi?"

He faced a half dozen solemn female faces, dark, tall atevi, some standing, some kneeling, shadows in the light. He was the foreigner. He felt very much the foreigner in these premises.

"I was born on this planet," he said wearily. "I don't think I should be at home there, nadiin."

The faces gave him nothing.

"I regret," he said wearily, "I regret the matter tonight. He was a respectable man, nadiin. I regret — very much — he died. Please," he said, "Nadiin, I'm very tired. I have to go to bed."

There were multiple bows. The servants went away. But one turned back at the door and bowed. "Nand' paidhi," she said, "we hold to your side."

Another lingered and bowed, and in a moment more they were all back in the doorway, all talking at once, how they all wished him well, and how they hoped he would have a good night's sleep.

"Thank you, nadiin," he said, and began to arrange his nest of pillows to prop his arm as they went away into the central hall.

From which, in a moment, he heard a furious whispering about his white skin and his bruises, which he supposed he had more of, and remarking how he'd joked when Tabini had helped him up, and how he had very good composure.

Joked?

He didn't remember he'd done so well as that. He'd been scared as hell. He'd had to have Tano's help to get down the steps. He hadn't been able to walk up the aisle without his knees knocking — knowing — knowing the attempt was not only against him, who could be replaced, but against the entire established order. Atevi knew that. Atevi understood how much that bullet was supposed to destroy —

Hell, he said to himself, exhausted, so exhausted he could melt into the mattress. But, dammit, the mind was threatening to wake up.

He started replaying the speech, the assassination attempt, the police questions, asking himself what they'd suspected and what they'd meant.

He readjusted the lumpy pillows, stuffed more under his arm and fell back in them, asking himself if maybe aspirin would help.

But that gradually became a dimmer thought, and a dimmer one, as the ribs stopped hurting, having found some bracing against the pillows that kept the tape from cutting in. He wasn't sure it was sleep, but the thoughts began to be fewer, and fewer, and he wouldn't move, not while he'd found a place where he actually had no pain.

CHAPTER 7

You couldn't see the orbiting ship in Shejidan. City lights obscured all the dimmer stars — granted a clear sky, which it looked to be, a return of late summer warmth above the city, mountain winds sending a few wisps of dark cloud across a pink-tinged and bruised-looking dawn.

Ilisidi liked fresh air, and ate breakfast on her balcony, here, as at Malguri, and Bren couldn't help but think of Banichi's disapproval of the balcony in lady Damiri's apartment — which, if he looked directly up from the table, he thought must be the balcony above this one.

The venture into hostile territory, as it were, would give a sane man pause, and he'd had more than a twinge of doubt in coming here, but it gave him, too, a strange, fatalistic sense of continuity, things getting back on track, reminding him vividly of Malguri, and now that he was here, the butterflies had gone away and he was glad he'd accepted the invitation. The old ateva sitting across from him was so frail-looking the wind could carry her away — her servants and her security around her; Cenedi, chief of the latter, standing to Ilisidi in the same position Banichi, when he wasn't standing watch over the paidhi, held with Tabini.

Banichi wasn't here. Banichi still hadn't come back; it was Jago who'd delivered him into Cenedi's hands at the door — and Cenedi who'd delivered him to Eisidi's company. Cenedi, who directed every sniper who had a motive to consider the Bu-javid's balconies, and who, if someone transgressed Cenedi's direction, would take it very personally: a Guild assassin, Cenedi was, like Jago, like Banichi. For that reason he felt safe in Cenedi's hands, not at all because Cenedi happened to owe him, personally — which Cenedi did — but precisely because personal debt wouldn't weigh a hair with Cenedi if he were called on — professionally.

So the paidhi sat down with the aiji-dowager, the most immediate arbiter of life and death, possibly in collusion with the man who'd tried to kill him last night, at a table outside on a balcony he was sure was as safe and no safer than his own upstairs. White curtains billowed out of the room beyond them in a dawn wind that lacked the cold edge of Malguri's rain-soaked mornings. The wind carried instead the heavy musk of tropic diossi flowers from somewhere nearby, possibly another balcony.

Potential enemies, they shared tea first.

And small talk.

"Does it hurt much?" the dowager asked.

"Not much, nand' dowager. Not often."

"You seem distracted."

"By thoughts, nand' dowager."

"This fiancee?"

Damnthe woman. There was decidedly a leak somewhere, and there was absolutely nothing chance about Ilisidi's revealing it as an opening gambit: that she did so might be a gesture of goodwill toward the paidhi.

It was definitely a demonstration of her power to reach inside Tabini's intimates' living space.

"Her action is nothing I can complain of, nand' dowager." He took satisfaction in giving not a flicker of emotion to a wicked old campaigner. "She was certainly within her rights."

"No quarrel, then."

"None, nand' dowager. I regard her highly, still. Certainly she would have told me — but business, as you know," (pause for no small irony) "kept me on this side of the strait. That's certainly the heart of her complaints against me."

"The woman's a fool," Ilisidi said. "Such a personable young man."

One couldn't argue opinions with the dowager. And a sparkle of warmth and enjoyment was in Ilisidi's eyes, twice damn her, the smile on thin, creased lips just faintly discernible.

He said graciously, "My mother thinks so, I'm sure, nai-ji. So does Jago. But I fear both are biased."

A servant laid down two plates of food — eggs, and game, in season, to be sure — muffins — the muffins were always safe.

"Human ways and human choices," Ilisidi said. "You have no relationship with this woman they've sent?"

"Deana Hanks."

"This woman, I say."

"I have none such," he said. "Not the remotest interest, I assure the dowager."