“Distressing,” lord Geigi said. “I assure the paidhi that no event will threaten his safety. I should be greatly embarrassed if such were the case.”

“I would never wish,” he said to lord Geigi, “to put my host at risk, and please, lord Geigi, never underestimate the value you represent to the aiji. I know that Tabini-aiji would take strong measures in any action against you or yours.”

It was courtly. It was also true. Geigi was getting that ship built. Geigi was the source of stability and employment in the region.

Then as they came close to the road, well-wishers watching from the plant spied them and their company. The plant doors opened, and a crowd came pouring out toward them, waving and offering flowers, accompanied by the news services and the cameras, at which security, his and Geigi’s, definitely looked askance.

But the plant workers seemed to have no inkling that there was a security alert in operation, and atevi polite, expressionless silence during a speech didn’t at all mean restraint once good will was established. There were cheers, there were bouquets tossed at the hand held rope perimeter which hastily moving plant security established. That the flowers landed on the grass and couldn’t be retrieved in no way daunted the well-wishers. The offering was enough, and atevi were used to tight security: the higher the lord, the tighter and more reactive the guard around him.

Bren darted a few meters from the walk to the lawn, stooped and picked up a bouquet himself, as a lord of the Association couldn’t possibly do, but he, the human, he of the white ribbon, he had no such reservations and no great requirement of lordly dignity. He held the bouquet of flowers aloft and waved it at the cheering crowd as Algini and Tano urged him toward the open car door.

But the good will of the commons was his defense as well, and taking such gambles was in some measure his job. The crowd was delighted with his gesture. They shouted and waved the more. It satisfied the news services, who had a good clip of more than people walking to the cars.

Defending him from the consequences of such gestures was of course Tano’s and Algini’s job, and as he and lord Geigi entered the car from opposite sides, Tano entered to assume hisback-facing seat in the capacious rear of the car and Algini took the front seat by the driver. Cars full of security staff preceded them as they pulled out; and more cars would come behind.

“One still extends the invitation,” lord Geigi said. “I know that fish is laughing at us.”

“I look forward,” Bren said, “to the hunt for this fish. I hope for an invitation in the next passage of this reckless creature. I wishI might have had a try this season. I hope you will remember me in the next.”

“One indeed will. Beyond a doubt.”

Clearly Tano and Algini weren’t going to relax until he was out of the province.

But he trusted they had heard the news of the assassination before the news services had heard, unless reporters of the same news services had happened to surround lord Saigimi at the very moment of his death—and then only if they had the kind of communications the Guild had. His security had heard as fast as they had because the agency responsible (or Saigimi’s guard) was electronically plugged into the Assassins’ Guild, which was able to get direct messages to Guild members faster than the aiji’s personal representatives, who weren’t always told what was going on.

And it wasa Guild assassination, or there’d be real trouble. The Guild was a fair broker and a peacekeeper. It might authorize a contract for an assassination to be carried out by one member but it didn’t withdraw resources from other members in good standing who might be defending the intended target. It most severely frowned upon collateral damage— biichi’ji, finesse, was a point of pride of the Guild in authorizing and legally notifying targets as well as in carrying out contracts—and the Assassins’ Guild did pass warnings where warnings were due in order to prevent such damage.

So, of course, did Tabini-aiji pass warnings of his own intent to his own security, who might not be informed by their Guild—even the aiji filed Intent, as he had seen once upon a time. But lords and lunatics, as Tano had once said, didn’t always file, and defense didn’t always know in advance. If Tabini had taken lord Saigimi down, Tano and Algini might possibly know it from Tabini’s sources.

Unless it was Geigi who had done it. He was very conscious of the rather plump and pleasant ateva weighing down the seat cushion beside him, in this car that held the pleasant musky scent of atevi, the size and mass of atevi. It would certainly make sense. Geigi was not the complacent man he’d seemed, and Geigi had shifted loyalties last year awayfrom lord Saigimi’s plots against the aiji.

It made thorough sense that Geigi, with his new resources, had placed Guild members as near Saigimi as he could get them; it was an easy bet that Saigimi had done exactly the same thing in lord Geigi’s district.

So there was very good reason, in the direct involvement of lord Geigi with past events, for the paidhi’s security to be very anxious about that gesture of stopping and picking up the flowers. Sometimes, Bren thought, he had an amazing self-destructive streak.

Geigi leaving his own security to other cars, to sit beside him surrounded by Tabini’s agents, was a declaration of strong reliance on the paidhi and on the aiji in Shejidan; but it also tainted the paidhi and the aiji with collusion if Geigi had done it.

Damn. Surely not. Tabiniknew where he was and what was going on. Tabini’s security wouldn’t let him make that mistake.

Meanwhile all those reporters who had gathered to cover the plant tour were back there to report his inviting lord Geigi under his protection the length and breadth of the peninsula, not to mention reporting the gesture to all the lords of the Association.

Among them, in the Padi Valley to north, was the lady Direiso of the Kadigidi house, who truly did wish the paidhi dead, and who was alive herself only because the power vacuum her death would create could be more troublesome to the aiji than her living presence.

Direiso. Thatwas an interesting question.

3

The cars of the escort passed like toys under the right-hand wing as the private jet made the turn toward home. A bright clot of flowers, more bouquets and wreaths, showed on the concrete where the plane had stood. Now they surrounded a cluster of black car roofs.

So lord Geigi hadn’t driven off once the plane’s doors had closed, nor even during the long wait while the plane had taxied far across to the east-west runway. Geigi had waited to see it in the air.

Even now, a small number of atevi were standing beside the cars, watching the plane, extravagant gesture from a lord of the Association, in a politics in which all such gestures had meaning.

No word for love in the Ragi language, and no word for friend, even a friend of casual sort. Among the operational ironies of the language, or the atevi mind, it rendered it very hard for an ateva in lord Geigi’s situation to make his personal position clear, once there were logical reasons to suspect his associations—because associations colored everything, demanded everything, slanted everything.

Bren found himself quite—humanly speaking— touchedby the display now vanishing below his window, not doubting the plant workers and the common people of the white-plaster township that came up in his view. They were the offerers of those flowers.

But from this perspective of altitude and distance, he was no longer blindly trusting.

Not even of lord Geigi, except as Geigi’s known and unknown associations currently tended toward the same political focus as his own: toward Tabini, aiji of the Western Association, Tabini, who owned this plane, and the security, and the loyalties of lords and commons all across the continent.