“We have seen two servants,” he said. “Are they yours, daja-ma?”

“They are persons we know, at least,” Damiri said, “They are not Guild, nand’ paidhi, but they are reliable in man’chi to the Atageini house.”

“Then the paidhi-aiji accepts them,” Bren said, “with all confidence and gratitude, daja-ma.”

“Our Ajuri cousins will arrive this evening,” Damiri said, “with additional personnel, most domestic—but not all.” Ajuri was Damiri’s mother’s clan, a small fact from the basement of the paidhi’s knowledge, one he raked up into memory. He had met Damiri’s mother once, at a social occasion: the Ajuri were a small clan to the north of here, a postage stamp of a territory, but a rich one, within Dursai Province, and almost within the Padi Valley.

“Local construction companies are assessing the damage to the house and making urgent repairs,” Damiri said further. “Certain of my husband’s staff have just come in.”

Those would be likely more arrivals from Taiben province, Taibeni clan. Ragi, the aiji’s own clan, by ethnicity, like most of the central regions. “One is extremely glad to hear,” Bren said with a bow of his head. Everything was, on the surface, good news—hasty, too hasty perhaps, the moves of these ordinary citizens arriving as if the skirmish was a single incident, the construction companies coming in as if they were sure the fighting was at least at a long pause, and as if there was no likelihood at all that the Kadagidi would come sweeping in with airplanes and bombs in the next round. He certainly wanted to believe they were safe from further attack. But bombs were not the only danger.

And the arrival of the Ajuri, marginal outsiders to the district, added more than one more clan to what was gathering here; it added intrusion from another association, a situation which, among atevi—given atevi instincts—did not seem to diminish the tension.

Modern atevi didn’t generally fight wars, knowing they were hard to stop. But this situation was widening.

“We have had at least a preliminary report about your voyage, nandi, the things done, things seen. Clearly our son has grown. And learned new things.” There was a mother’s regret in that, he sensed it: two years of her son’s life had passed in which his mother and father had had no part at all. “You did extremely well for him, nand’ Bren. And you risked your life for him, latest. We shall not forget.”

He felt heat in his face. “One made every effort, daja-ma.” She had graciously not added that his influence over the heir had become a serious liability in this backlash of atevi resentment against human influence in the court. “But he is in all respects your son, and acted as he saw fit.” He gave her back a son who’d grown up on The Three Musketeers and shared tea and cakes with an enemy alien. A son who longed for dinosaurs and devoured pizza with a circle of human playmates. All these innocent passions had become a liability to the boy and a puzzlement to his parents.

“We have heard things here and there,” Damiri said, “that you did at great risk. Things the aishidi’tat must know, nandi.”

Support. But he needed it not only for his own sake. He needed desperately to make things understood, and he seized on it, perhaps too recklessly. “We hope to give a wider report, daja-ma.” With thoughts of the computer lying in its concealment. “We have evidence. We have profound reasons to argue that your husband must be the one in authority.”

“Our confidence in you is justified,” Damiri said, not a yes and not a no. She added, in a pragmatic vein, “Anything that you may require, nandi, ask of Timani.”

Timani. Whom they had deeply and deliberately shocked. God, Bren thought. And that act of his might reach the lady’s ears, if staff gossip had not embroidered it already.

“Thank you. Our deep gratitude, daja-ma.”

She gave a little nod, then turned, gathering her own bodyguard, and left.

This was the house in which she had spent her growing years, in which her Atageini father had died, assassinated. It was the house in which she, a minor child, had come under her great-uncle Tatiseigi’s governance—and played childish pranks, so one had heard, faintly. It was a tradition her son had certainly carried on.

She was not the lady of the house; she was somewhat greater in power, or had been, until the overthrow.

And every keen golden glance of her eyes had surely noted the deficiencies of her great-uncle’s hospitality to a visiting human. He had a feeling that a list was accumulating, between the lady and Timani and Adaro, not least of which must be the lack of separate bedrooms and bath for female staff which the old lord had clearly known was in the party—from that major detail down to the lack of a message tray in the foyer, the sun-fading and mustiness of the bedspread, not to mention the drapes, which had rips in the lining through which the afternoon sun shone in patches, with a few more rents in the rotten, dusty fabric since bullets had come flying past last night. He was sure the suite the aiji occupied and that accorded to the dowager and to the heir were immaculate and kabiu—but the paidhi-aiji had been tucked into a room unrefurbished for, oh, two or three decades, if not a century or so.

“I fear I was very indiscreet,” he muttered to Banichi, who, towel and all, had never acted for a moment as if he were caught at a disadvantage.

“One is sure the aiji’s consort is very well aware of your personal arrangement.”

Could he blush any hotter? “The servants will tell it through the staff, Banichi-ji. It will reflect on Jago and one fears it will reflect on the consort. Clearly, association with me is bad enough without—”

“Do you think you have to cause to be ashamed, paidhi-ji? Do you think you have any reason at all to hide? The discredit is Lord Tatiseigi’s, not yours.”

He looked up at a man who had cast his lot with him for good or for ill for more than a decade, and whose man’chi would, he was sure, last to the end. Like Jago’s. Like Tano’s, and Algini’s, and so many othersc it was absolute.

“I shall try to deserve you,” he said with a small catch in the throat at that moment, and probably embarrassed Banichi and greatly upset the order of Banichi’s universe into the bargain, but he didn’t stay to debate his human improprieties, only went to find his change of linen, at least, until Timani and his partner might bring him clothes proper to wear for the remainder of the day. He was still intensely embarrassed at his lapse of judgment, his small fling at an insulting reception. It was going to be an effort to face Timani, let alone the rest of the household staff. They had been sent, Timani had said; the man had made no mention of Damiri.

But they were a loan Damiri had specifically engineered, a gift bestowed on him, and he had not done well, not in the least, at a time when his judgment was already questioned in far larger matters, in all the advice he had ever given. He had been in space too long. He had forgotten the ways of the court and the great houses. He had lost touch, was what. And he had to relocate himself in old habits, and mend his rebellious thinking, fastc his position advised decorous quiet, and cleverness, and he had been neither quiet nor clever this afternoon.

Banichi meanwhile took black shirts and linen from the closet and went back to the bath. Bren had time to dress, at least far enough to preserve decency under the towel, before the outer door opened, and Timani, indeed, and Adaro with him, arrived bearing his remaining shirt, his coat, his trousers, everything immaculately pressed, besides, in Adaro’s hands, a vase of seasonal branches, bare with autumn, whether arranged for them or hastily snatched from some hallway.

“One is ever so grateful, nadiin,” he said, newly respectful and grateful for their help. He bowed. They bowed. Adaro unburdened her hands, set the vase on a bare table, and began energetically stripping the bed, while Timani hung his clothes in the closet.