The latest delivery people understood their restrictions and simply laid the bouquets within sight of his window, a mass of pastel color in the grayed and cloudy dawn. He felt walled off from his well-wishers, lonely, seeing the bouquets abandoned to the weather and the wind from the engines, comforted by the gesture, though, and also appalled, thinking how expensive some of those bouquets were, from clericals who didn't make all that lot of money. He tucked the cards one and all into his document case, the ones with plain citizen ribbons, the ones with heavy noble seals, to answer when he could. He vowed to send at least a small floral recognition along with each one of them to the clericals, who, he was confident, hadn't missed any warning. No, dammit, not a blossom or two — real bouquets, and put it on the paidhi's florist bill, which went right to the State Department, with notations to bounce it back to him if State balked.
Another van. Another bouquet arrived, a huge, extravagant one. The delivery agency wished vehemently to board with it. He watched the argument through the window. But his security was adamant, called Banichi, and Banichi himself brought the card aboard and gave it to him, clearly the price of the agreement.
"An importunate well-wisher," Banichi said, and the first glance determined that it and the bouquet were lord Geigi's.
Nand' paidhi, it said, wiser heads than I are studying the answer which you have returned in regard to my question, at unanticipated personal effort. I deeply regret that your absence in pursuit of this answer may have given opportunity or motive to some person or persons to attack the paidhiin, an action in which I realize that I am necessarily suspect, but which I personally deplore. I have written under separate seal to Tabini-aiji, and hope that you will also confirm my good wishes to your associates of whatever degree. I also hope for the safety of Hanks-paidhi and will bend whatever efforts I and my staff can make to assure that no harm comes to her.
"Do you believe this gesture?" he asked Banichi.
Banichi took the card, read it, lifted a brow. "One would never question." And added: "Nor accept the bouquet from this source under one's roof."
"Surely it doesn't contain bombs. They've been fueling out there. The truck —"
"One doesn't know what it doesn't contain. Gambling is not a passion with me. I'll convey your politic appreciation. I've already suggested they move the fuel truck, and pull us away from the area ahead of schedule."
"Jago isn't aboard."
"Jago is coming," Banichi said, "at all possible speed. If she should miss us, she'll come out this afternoon with Tano and Algini. I agree with you. I increasingly dislike this accumulation of good wishes near our fuel tanks. Especially the latest."
"Have you any word yet on Hanks?"
"They're still looking."
"Jago —" He could see, past Banichi's shoulder, the aiji's other security preparing to shut the door.
And a running figure coming from the building and headed for the steps.
The men inside evidently saw her, too. They waited. In a moment more Jago was through the door, the door shut, and the crew outside was pulling the ramp back.
"Have they found anything?" he asked as Jago, smoothing her uniform to its usual impeccable state, came down the aisle to join them.
"One doubts. Would you care for a snack after takeoff?"
"Just word on Hanks."
"None. Are you sure? I'll be having fruit juice, myself."
"The same, then. Thank you." He cast a look at Banichi as Jago passed him down the aisle. "I thought the new policy was to tell the paidhi the truth."
"No. One resolved to brief the paidhi on matters regarding his safety. Not on operations."
"Dammit, Banichi!"
"Information which might tempt him to assist. Or make impossible his innocent reaction to other information. You have such an expressive face, Bren-ji."
The engines grew louder. The flowers and the fueling truck passed out of view as the plane turned and moved out toward the runway.
Banichi and Jago sat down with him and belted in. Other security moved from the door to the cluster of six other security agents at the rear, men and women who talked together in voices that didn't carry above the engines and held no humor at all. The servants had gone on the last flight, before daylight; servants in the number that Saidin had determined as fortunate.
Saidin. Damiri's security. Tabini had directly suggested Saidin do the picking, knowing, as the paidhi hadn't known at the time, Saidin's nature. It had been a direct invitation to Saidin, a challenge to Saidin, to put one of her people on the Taiben staff — for good or for ill.
The paidhi had been so stupidly blind on that point, knowing, intellectually, that security necessarily went in such places — but he'd come in drug-fogged, had formed his subconscious, subsequently unquestioned opinions on the staff, catalogued Saidin as an elder matron, and never, dammit, asked himself the obvious. He'd gotten fond of Saidin — and Saidin might have assumed he knew what she was; which might, Banichi was right, have changed his reactions, his expressions, his levels of caution, if he'd known what he should have known, what any atevi would have known —
He must have perplexed Saidin no end. And, dammit, he still liked the woman.
There seemed a quality to people the Assassins' Guild let in and licensed. He didn't know why. He didn't know what they had in common, except perhaps an integrity that touched chords in his shades-of-gray soul, a feeling, maybe, that one could do things that rattled one's conscience to the walls and foundations and still — still own a sense of equilibrium.
Banichi was going to teach him about doors. It wasn't what he wanted to learn from Banichi. What he wanted to understand was something far more basic.
When he and Jago had almost — almost — gone over the line, and he'd panicked, maybe it was that integrity he'd felt shaken. That very inhuman integrity. That more than human sense of morality.
That Jago hadn't given a damn about.
Which didn't fit with her character.
If one took her as human. And Mospheiran, at that. Which she wasn't.
She was — whatever atevi were in that department. In that sense he trustedJago not to have put him in a difficult position.
And, dammit, he was thinking about it again. Which had absolutely no place in considerations that ought to be occupying his mind.
They swung around for the runway. The wheels thumped down the pavement and cleared the ground. The familiar roofs slipped under the wings and the noise of one more outgoing jet probably disturbed sleep across Shejidan, making ordinary atevi ask themselves what in hell was going on that took so many doubtless official and unscheduled flights to and from the capital —
They might well ask. And — in the light of recent crises — guess that it involved the paidhi, the foreigner ship, the aiji, and a great deal of security and government interest.
Atevi added very well.
The plane climbed above that altitude regularly jeopardized by atevi small aircraft and into a magnificent view of sunrise above the cloud deck — doubtless the better view was from the other set of windows, where the Bergid would thrust above those clouds, but the paidhi hadn't the energy or the heart to get out of his seat to take a look. He wasn't in the mood for beautiful sunrises. The one he did see jarred his sense of reality. The gray below the clouds had better suited his mood. The unseemly sheen of pink and gold made hope far too easy when so much was uncertain.