“With adequate security for her residence here,” Geigi said quietly, “that above all. She would be an immediate target of our neighbors in the Marid. So would her child.”

“The Edi will be establishing their own house somewhere neighboring both Kajiminda and Najida,” the dowager said. “And one does not doubt they will become a force to be reckoned with.”

“But is that a certainty?” Geigi asked. “One believed it would still be under debate in the legislature.”

“Oh, pish,” Ilisidi said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “My grandson has a brain. He will agree with me, given the other circumstances. And he will see that the legislature agrees. The arrangement gives no great advantage to any single westernhouse, which would be the greatest sticking-point. So it will pass.”

It wasn’t going to be as easy as the dowager said, but with the possibility of a renewed set-to with the Marid looming in the immediate future, and another round of Marid-directed assassinations aimed at destabilizing the aishidi’tat, then counter-moves by the aiji, the house of lords might be inclined to give in and support the proposal. Even the hidebound traditionalists of the center, like Tatiseigi—who was a staunch ally of the aiji-dowager on other points—might be persuaded. One had the feeling of watching a landslide. Boulders were coming downhill, in the dowager’s planning, and damned little was going to stand in her way.

Certainly not one young bookish girl in—what was the clan? Calrunaidi. Nobody in the west had ever heardmuch of Calrunaidi.

But one had certainly heard of Ardija. That, tied closely to Malguri, and involving relatives of the aiji-dowager, was a bloodline of some potency.

And that alliance would tie the west coast firmly to Malguri, which was Cajeiri’sinheritance, until he produced an heir for it.

God. On the chessboard of politics, that was a potential earthquake. The great houses employed not only numbers experts, they employed genealogists to track this sort of thing. They would see it—but they likely would give way to it, in the interests of peace.

“One would agree,” Geigi said, “if this can be arranged.”

“Good, good,” Ilisidi said. “So you may think on it and tell me your thoughts when you have had time to mull it over. Perhaps we should have our last round and let you get to your bed, Geigi-ji. You must be exhausted.”

“One admits to it,” Geigi said. “And I shall indeed think on your proposal, ’Sidi-ji. I shall think on it very favorably.” He turned then to Toby and Barb, and said, in very passable ship-speak: “We discuss politics. Unavoidable. One wishes a more tranquil conversation.”

“An extravagant honor, nandi,” Toby said, one of his courtly phrases of Ragi. “One is gratified by your notice.”

He got it out without saying orange drink, a close thing, with the word notice. Bren was astonished.

But then—Toby had spent the last couple of years running messages between the Resistance and the Island, and his vocabulary hadn’t exactly rusted.

“You speak a fair amount of Ragi, nandi,” Geigi said.

“About boats, navigation, hello, and goodbye, nandi.”

“- se,” Bren tossed in, the felicitous false-one, since Toby had given a list of infelicitous four. It was natural as breathing.

“- se,” Toby added in the next breath. “We hear, but do not talk, nandi.”

Geigi laughed. “ Verywell done!” And continued, in ship-speak: “The station knows you as Frozen Dessert.”

Toby and Barb both laughed.

Frozen Dessert? Bren wondered.

“Our code name,” Toby said to Bren, “when the authorities had to refer to us.”

Bren translated that for the dowager, and for Cajeiri. “That was the word referring to them and their boat, during the Resistance, aiji-ma, young gentleman. When they were running messages.”

“And bravely done!” Geigi said. “The enemy would appear and the dessert would melt in the sun.”

“Little boat,” Toby said in Ragi. “Hard to spot.”

“Very good work,” Geigi said in ship-speak, and in Ragi: “Tell them that they will be welcome as my personal guests in Kajiminda, when I have done a little housecleaning.”

“He says you’re welcome as his guests at Kajiminda when he has things there under control,” Bren said, thinking the while that Geigi could not possibly follow through on that, and, please God, would never have to give up his station post to do so. But there was another round of polite sentiments, all the same.

Then a tap of the dowager’s cane. “We must let this gentleman get to his bed, paidhi-ji.”

“Indeed, aiji-ma.” As host, he made the suggestion. “Geigi-ji, please let my staff escort you to your rooms.”

Geigi’s bodyguard, among other things, had to be bone-tired, exhausted, after standing the last while, and those two still needed to brief and debrief with the rest of his aishid, and with the aiji-dowager’s people. Theyhad several more hours to go before they saw their beds.

“We are quite weary,” Geigi said obligingly, and in a series of small signals, the dowager gathering up her cane and signaling Cenedi; and Bren, as host, making a sign to Banichi and Jago, Geigi gathered his considerable bulk up from his chair, everyone got up, and there were goodnight bows all around as he left. Cajeiri and Barb and Toby hung back until the dowager and Geigi had gotten out the door.

For Bren, exhaustion came down on him, not just for this day, but for several days before. He waited while Cajeiri joined his bodyguard on the way out; and then heaved a deep sigh, feeling the effects of just about two sips too much brandy. “So sorry you have to hike down to the boat,” he said to Barb and Toby. And added: “Very well done, extremely well done. Frozen Dessert.”

They laughed, assured him an after-dinner hike wasn’t at all a hard thing for them, and he walked them to the door.

Then, in an attack of unease, and thinking of that long, dark set of steps amid the scrub evergreen, and that exposed dock below, he said to Banichi and Jago: “Nadiin-ji, one hates to ask, but would you go with them?”

“Yes,” Banichi said. “Let us pick up some equipment, and we shall be glad to do so.”

“I hate to bother them,” Toby protested. “Surely just house staff—”

“—is in no wise equipped to take care of untoward situations,” he said. “Indulge me. Geigi’s just arrived, with all that means. If our enemies aren’t asleep or more disrupted than we think, they’ll know he’s here, they’ll know meetings are going on, they’ll want more than anything to know what we’ve said, and I’m almost inclined to move out some more staff and house you two in the basement with Baiji tonight. Frozen Dessert, indeed. You’re too well informed. Scarily well-informed. And I don’t want the Marid getting their hands on you.”

“Is thatall?” Toby laughed. “I thought it was brotherly concern.”

“That, too, is somewhere in the stew. Just take the protection. And if you’re harboring any moresecrets, bring me up to date on them.”

“Oh, you knew we were running messages. Most of the time we didn’t have a clue about the content. At least on thisside of the water.”

“But you did know what Mospheira was up to.”

“Nothing not well-known now.”

“The Marid may not think so. You’re just a bit more fluent than makes me comfortable, brother. Unguessed talents.” That Toby had never outright told him how fluent he was getting— that bothered him; but Toby worked for Shawn, the President of Mospheira, the way he himself had once worked for Shawn in the State Department, and there were secrets and secrets in government employ.

“It’s getting better,” Toby said lightly. “I haven’t been around people talking before. I’m starting to pick out words. Figure out others.”

“I still can’t put a sentence together,” Barb said. “Toby’s far braver about that. But we absorb things. I’m picking up a lot about the boat from the work crews.”