“May one ask, young gentleman,” Bren said, “what you have just decided not to say?”

A flash of the dowager’s eyes, which quickly settled on Cajeiri.

“One fears one may have caused a serious accident to a man on the roof. One hopes they were the enemy.”

“What time was this?”

“Right at dusk, nandi. He was on the roof. He probably fell off.”

“Good,” the dowager said, taking a drink. And added: “Hereafter, you will have your own security.”

“Antaro and Jegari, mani-ma—”

“You are beginning to think independently. These young people will benefit from senior Guild constantly attached to you, young man. This should have been done before now.”

“Not Great-uncle’s! One asks, not Great-uncle’s!”

“No,” Ilisidi said, “ notAtageini. Nor Ragi. Malguri.”

Oh, that was going to be an explosion, once Tatiseigi heard hisgreat-nephew was dismissing his Atageini guards; and once Tabini andthe Taibeni heard that the senior pair in his son’s bodyguard was not going to be Ragi atevi, from the center of the aishidi’tat, but Easterners—that explosion would be heard end to end of the Bujavid, and Ilisidi’s opinion might not, for once, prevail.

The paidhi was going to stay well and truly outof that argu—

Quick footsteps sounded in the halls. One of the serving staff came in, breathless, bowed once to the dowager and once to him. “Nandiin. Movement is reported across the road.”

He cast a worried look at Ilisidi, whose face remained impassive. He swallowed the bite he had and with a little bow, got up from table.

The dowager likewise rose, Cajeiri offering his hand beneath her elbow as she gathered up her cane.

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, “one would suggest the office, which has no windows: there is a comfortable chair, and the staff might provide an after-dinner brandy.”

“An excellent notion, paidhi-ji.” One earnestly hoped the dowager would provide sufficient psychological anchor for her great-grandson to keep his burgeoning personality from flaring off down the halls to help them out. Clearly, the paidhi had not been adequate to keep him from picking his own course. Cajeiri had been looking for cover when the shooting started, not looking for direction from the paidhi-aiji. So write the paidhi off as a governance. Write off the boy’s most earnest promises: one suspected he was hitting an instinct-driven phase.

“Go,” Ilisidi said as he lingered, ready to assist her. “Go, nand’ paidhi. We are just moving a little slower this evening.”

“Aiji-ma.” He bowed, then left with the anxious servant, asking,

“Where are Tano and Algini at the moment, Husa-ji?”

“In the security office, nandi, one believes.”

In most houses, that was near the front door. In this one, by revision, it was a comfortable nook in the suite his bodyguard used, a left turn at the intersection of halls.

“Carry on, nadi,” he said to the servant, “with thanks. Check the garden hall locks. Put the bar down.”

“Nandi,” the servant murmured, and diverged from his path.

That beautiful glass window offered a serious compromise to house security. That was why there was a very stout mid-hallway set of doors to close the garden hall, with deep pin-bolts above and below and a sturdy cross bar that resided upright in the back of the right-hand door. The two doors that led off that hall, one to the kitchens and the other to the staff rooms, had equally stout single doors, as solid as if they were opposing the outside worldc which, being next to more fragile sections, they were counted as doing.

The last of staff was on their way to defensive stations or to cover. Those last doors were about to shut. Kitchen would not be gathering up the dishes. They would be sealing themselves in from both sides.

He turned his own way, his bodyguards’ door being wide open. He entered without knocking, into the little security office where Tano and Algini had set up their electronics, black boxes of all sorts, and a low-light monitor screen.

No need to tell them what was going on. And if they had wanted that door shut yet, they would have shut it.

They acknowledged his presence with nods of the head, that was all, eyes fixed on their equipment, and he slipped into the nearer vacant chair and watched the monitor. He didn’t see anything but shrubbery and a small tree. The view changed to the front door. The garden, and the damaged arbor.

“Have you contact, nadiin-ji, with the aiji’s forces?” he asked.

“Cenedi has,” Tano said, and added, after a moment, “Banichi has now missed a report, Bren-ji. We are not greatly alarmed, but we are obliged to say so.

He didn’t want to hear that. He bit his lip in silence for a moment, and forbore questions. Their eyes never left the equipment, with its readouts and its telltales.

“The roof still reports all quiet, but movement on the perimeter,” Algini said. “We remain wary of diversionary action. Two of Cenedi’s men are interrogating Lord Baiji. And names are named.”

“Report as you find leisure,” Bren murmured, meaning he would not ask for a coherent report, busy as they were. He was in the nerve center of their defenses. Some of those lights represented certain points of their defense. The monitor showed a view of the stone walkway that led down to the harbor and the boat dock.

Movement somewhere, though it didn’t show at the moment.

“Where is the dowager, Bren-ji?” Tano asked.

“The office,” he said, “with Cajeiri. Staff hall doors, garden doors, front doors, all shut and secured.”

“Tano-ji,” Algini said sharply, calling for attention. Both brows furrowed, and the pair exchanged looks, a shake of the head. Bren sat very still. Didn’t ask. They were busy, both of them, at their specialty, and Cenedi’s men were out and about, including on the roof, including down toward the dock, and some likely in the village. Right now, having been left in charge of his safety as well as their regular duties, they needed no divided attention: needed to know where he was, and that he wasn’t in need of their help. That door to the hall was open, but it, like the other secure doors, was steel-cored, capable of being shut and security-bolted.

What they had in that console, whether it was officially cleared, he had no personal knowledge, didn’t technically understand, and frankly hadn’t asked—deliberately hadn’t asked. Tano and Algini had spent the last couple of years on the space station. While the planet below them had broken out in chaos, they’d spent their time becoming familiar with equipment the paidhi, who was responsible for clearing new tech to be generally deployed on the planet, had never clearedc and under the circumstances of their return from space, he hadn’t asked.

Hypocritical? He had no question it was. But maybe he should have—considering that Captain Jules Ogun, in charge of the space station, had decided to drop relay stations on the planet. Maybe he should have asked what part Tano and Algini had played in that decision, whether they hadadvised Lord Geigi, governing the atevi side of the station, that this communications system was a potential problem.

Mogari-nai, the big dish, had been their sole contact when they’d left for deep space: now, with the proliferation of satellites—God knew what was going to be loose in the world.

Things that threatened the operation of the Asassins’ Guild, which hadn’t had to worry about locators. Or cell phones. There was a time they hadn’t had night-vision, or a hundred other items he suspected his own security staff and Geigi’s now had—and he hoped no one else did.

But hehad been out in space for two years, leaving the job of determining what technology ought to go to the planet largely to Yolanda Mercheson, essentially an emissary of Captain Jules Ogun. More, once the coup had happened, she’d interfaced—not even between Mospheira and the atevi—but mostly between the humans of her own ship and Lord Geigi, whose eagerness to snatch whatever tech he could lay hands on was only surpassed by that of Tabini-aiji himself.