“No. If Barb can’t, I won’t,” Toby said, his arm around Barb at the moment.

“Probably best,” he said. He felt better as he went back to his chair, sat down, and took up his brandy. They did the same, chairs near each other. Peace was restored, despite Barb’s best efforts to the contrary.

And maybe—maybe he’d actually won a lasting truce and settled something.

“So where did you come in from?” he asked Toby conversationally, and listened comfortably and sipped his brandy— pleasant to hear someone else’s adventures instead of having them, the thought came to him. They’d been worried sick about Toby at one point, after Tabini’s return to the Bujavid, but he’d turned up, out at sea, doing clandestine things for the human government over on Mospheira, part of a communications network, for one thing, and probably that boat out there still had some of that gear aboard.

His own had a few nonregulation things aboard, too—or had had, before he’d left for space. That was the world they lived in, occasionally dangerous. He hoped for it to stay calm for a few years.

He was abed before Jago came in. Abed, but not asleep: he kept rehearsing the dinner, the business with Barb. He lay in his own comfortable bed, between his own fine sheets, and stared at the ceiling, until Jago was there to improve the view. She stripped out of the last of her uniform and stood there, dark against the faint night light. Rain spattered the windows, rain with a vengeance, hitting the glass in sharp gusts of wind.

“One greatly regrets,” he said to that silhouette, unable to read her, but reading the hesitation. “One ever so greatly regrets that unpleasantness this evening, Jago-ji. Barb is, unfortunately, Barb.”

“Her man’chi is to you,” Jago said, her voice carefully without inflection. “One understands. She places you in a difficult situation. Am I mistaken in this?”

Oddly enough, the atevi view of things said it fairly well. “You are not mistaken,” he said. “Very like man’chi. She gravitates to me every time she gets the least chance. But there is anger in it, deep anger. I offended her pride.”

“Would it mend matters to sleep with her?” Jago asked.

“Far from it. It would encourage her and make my brother angry. And I feel nothing but anger toward her. Come to bed, Jago-ji.”

Jago did settle in, to his relief. Her skin, ordinarily fever warm, was slightly cool, and he rubbed her arm and her shoulder to warm it.

“I might speak to her,” Jago said. “Reasonably.”

“I shall hold that in reserve,” he said. “I think I may have to speak to my brother if this goes on. If she causes him griefc”

“It seems likely she will,” Jago said.

“Very likely,” he said, and sighed. “Barb has good qualities— at best advantage when I appear nowhere on her horizon. Her man’chi, given, is very solidc”

“Except to your brother,” Jago said.

“Except when I appear,” he said.

“Conflicted man’chi,” Jago said. “The essence of every machimi.”

The dramatic heritage of atevi culture. Plays noted for the quantity of bloodshed.

“Let us try not to have any last act,” he said with a sigh. “Not on this vacation.”

Jago laughed, soft movement under his hand.

And slid her arm under his ribs, around him, a sinuous, fluid embrace that proved the chill had not gotten inside—a force and slight recklessness that advised him Jago was in a mood to chase Barb right out of the bedroom, in no uncertain terms.

Reckless to a fine edge of what was pleasure, but never over it—and deserving of a man with his mind on her, nowhere else in the universe.

He committed himself, with that sense of danger they hadn’t had in bed in, oh, the better part of a year. The storm outside rumbled and cracked with thunder, making the walls shake, and they came together with absolute knowledge of each other—not quietly, nor discreetly, nor even quite safelyc but very, very satisfyingly.

Chapter 5

« ^ »

He slept. Really slept. And in the morning he had a leisurely breakfast—Toby and Barb slept in, but he and Jago were up with the sun, and being joined in the dining room by Banichi, and Tano and Algini, they all five had a very ample country breakfast, absolutely devouring everything on the plates.

“You should consider this your vacation, too, nadiin-ji,” he said to his staff over tea. “Arrange to fish, to walk in the garden, to do whatever you like as long as we are here. No place could be safer. I have my office work to do. My brother and his lady will be engaged with me when they finally do wake. I promise not to let them free to harass the staff.”

There was quiet laughter, even from Jago, who frowned whenever Barb’s name came into question. But Banichi proposed they should go down to the shore and inspect the boat, and see how it was, and Bren said they should do it by turns, because he very well knew that his bodyguard wouldn’t consider all going at once.

“Manage to take a fishing pole or two,” he said to them. “Catch us our supper, why don’t you?”

“And shall you be in your office all day?”

“Oh, I foresee walking in the garden with our guests, or maybe down to the shore, or sharing tea in the sitting room. Nothing too strenuous.” In fact, he had some sore spots from last night, and regretted not a one of them. “Just amuse yourselves. I shall assign two servants to the hall, to forestall you having to escort either of them. Just relax. Trust even me to find my way, nadiin-ji. I shall just be going between bedroom, dining hall, and my study.”

He sent them off with a gentle laughc sure that, since Banichi and Jago were going to the shore, Tano and Algini were going to be close about, probably finding a place to sit and work on things that interested themc and still within call, supposing there should be some sort of emergency. They never quite relaxed. But he tried to encourage it.

He had, first on the agenda, a meeting with the major domo, Ramaso, who brought the household accounts, all balanced and impeccably writtenc the old man never had taken to the computer, but the accounts were simple. The village and the household both sold fish, they bought food and medicines and items for repair, clothing and rope and tackle, they had shipped a boy with a broken arm and a pregnant woman down the coast to medical care, which the estate had paid for, as it bore all such expenses for the village.

All the history of the past months was written in that arithmetic, and told him that the place had prospered, and made do, even during Murini’s regime. They sold to neighboring districts, they shipped an increasing amount to Shejidan, recovering the trade they had once enjoyed before the coup, and they maintained a good balance in the accounts.

“Very well done,” he said to Ramaso. “Come, nadi-ji, call for tea, sit with me, and tell me all the gossip of the district.”

The old man was pleased, and a man brought the tea in an antique and very familiar service with a mountain scene on the teapotc there was no end to the things his enterprising staff had smuggled out of Shejidan during the collapse.

“Extraordinary,” Bren said. “I greatly enjoy that tea set.”

“The staff is pleased, nandi.” A sip of tea. “Please visit the storeroom. The moment the irregularities are worked out in the capital, you will have the great majority of your furnishings returned. The Farai got very little of historic value.”

He had not been inside that apartment since his return. He had understood the staff had gotten a great deal of his property away, but now that he had reached Najida, there were surprises at every turn, items forgotten and rediscovered. “One is very pleased, very pleased, nadi-ji. Not least to see the faces of staff. One has not forgotten.”

“I shall relay that, nandi.”

“Thank them, too, for their understanding regarding my brother’s companion last night. Her customs are informally Mospheiran. She has no education in the manners of an atevi house. Such actions would rouse no great stir on the island— they are not entirely appropriate to formal occasions, to be quite frank, but they are not, there, scandalous, nor did she understand the nature of the dinner.”