“If I write the boy a card, with a ribbon, will he go home?”

“I hesitate to reward such foolishness but, if you will write it, nand’ paidhi, I will send it down with one of the juniors. I will not have this boy’s death attached to your name, nadi-ji, and some of the guards imagine him as Guild. Three hotels, paidhi-ji.”

“But you know definitively he isn’t.”

“Not in remotest possibility.”

“I’ll sign the card.” The lady’s office had the more traditional wax-jack. The security office had a highspeed device that didn’t require live flame. He started toward the door.

And missed Jase. Who was not where he’d been.

“Has Jase gone to the interview area?” he asked Jago, who talked to her pocket com.

“The lady’s office. He’s attempted to use the phone, nadi.”

He stopped cold, at a place where an ateva lady felt free to brush close and say, “nand’ paidhi, suchan interesting party, isn’t it? The paidhiin were verybrave.”

For a moment he couldn’t think, not where he was, not where he was going, in a room otherwise filled with people all towering head and shoulders above his head, through a doorway blocked by such people. He wanted air and a sane space for thought, and knew that Jago was following him. He found a gap and went through it and out the door.

“Be careful, nadi-ji,” Jago said, overtaking him in the quieter, cooler air of the hall; she had the pocket com in hand.

“Who is he talking to, Jago-ji?”

“To the station at Mogari-nai. To the ship. But the call didn’t go through. Our office stopped it.”

He was less alarmed. He could use the wax-jack in the little office. The device had a lighter. He could talk sense to Jase in private.

“He’s hung up,” Jago said before they reached the door.

And when they reached the door and walked in, there were blowing white curtains, past the tapestry and needlework side panels that curtained the balcony and the dark.

But no Jase.

Jago moved. He thrust out a hand and prevented her, knowing, he decided in the next heartbeat, that Jase was in a mood, and that atevi intervention might gain compliance, but not a lot of information,

“I’ll get him in,” he said to Jago, and approached the balcony carefully, as Jago would.

From that vantage he could see Jase, in the dark, hands on the balcony rim, gazing up at the sky. And he knewit wasn’t a situation into which Jago should venture. He said to her, “Nadi-ji, please find the card I need,” hoping that Jase would think their intrusion wasn’t directed at him. And he ventured into the dark, knowing Jago wasn’t liking his being near that window, or even near Jase.

Jase gave him only a scant glance, and looked again out over the city.

Jase, who hadn’t done well under the daytime sky. It was, as far as he knew, the first time Jase had stood under the sky since he’d arrived.

The balcony where the party was spilled light and music into the night.

“No stars,” Jase said after a moment of them standing there.

“City lights. It’s getting worse in Shejidan.”

“What is?”

“Haze of smoke. Lights burning at night. Neon lights. Light scatters in the atmosphere till it blots out the stars.”

“You can’t see them on the ship, either,” Jase said.

“I suppose that’s true.” He’d never really reckoned it. He was vaguely disappointed.

“I just—know my ship is up there. And I can’t see it.”

“I have. But it was in the country. No lights out there.”

“From the ocean can one see the stars?”

“I think one could.”

“I want to go there.”

“Come inside. You’re in danger. You knowyou’re in danger. Get inside, dammit.”

There was a long silence. He expected Jase to say he didn’t care, or some such emotional outburst. But Jase instead left the rail and walked with him back into the light of the office, where Jago had the wax-jack burning and the card ready.

“I have to make out a card,” Bren said, and sat down at the desk. He welcomed the chance to do something extraneous to the worst problem, namely Jase’s state of mind. He was glad to offer Jase and himself alike a chance to calm down before they did talk. He wrote, for the boy from Dur,

Please accept my assurances of good will toward you and your house, and my hopes that the paidhiin will enjoy yours. I will remember your earnest wishes for good relations to the aiji himself, with my recommendation for his consideration. From the hand of,

Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, under the seal of my office.

Cards were more commonly just the signature, the seal, the ribbon. This one, with a personal message, was calculated to be a face-saving note the boy could take to his father in lieu of the impounded airplane. He hinted that he might intercede, and that Tabini, who had the power to release the plane, might consider forgiveness for a parental request. He didn’t know what more he could do. He folded it and stamped it with his seal, and gave it to Jago to pass on.

“Now,” he said to Jase. “The interview.”

“May I speak with you, nadi.”

“Jago-ji, will you maintain position in the hall for a moment?”

“Yes,” Jago said, and went.

Which left the two of them, him seated, Jase standing. There was a chair by the corner of the desk and Jase sank into it, pale and tense.

“Bren,” he began, in Mosphei’, and Bren kept his mouth shut, figuring that confession was imminent. He waited, and Jase waited, and finally Jase took to hard breathing and helpless waves of the hand, wishing him to talk.

He didn’t. He sat there. He let Jase work through his wordless, helpless phase.

Finally Jase was down to wiping his eyes surreptitiously and shaking like a leaf.

“Going to foul up?” Bren asked with conscious bluntness.

“Yes!” Jase said fiercely, and not another word for another few moments of hard breathing.

“Going to panic?” Bren asked, wary of an unwarned punch and the fragile antiques around them. He nipped out the wick on the wax-jack with his bare fingers, ignoring the sting of fire and hot wax.

Jase didn’t answer him. He stood up, put the wax-jack in the cabinet where it belonged, and walked to the other side of the little space, psychologically to give Jase room.

“They worked quite a while to choose me,” Bren said finally. “I warned you. I was picked out of a large population, because I cantake it. Can’t find a word, can you? Totally mute? Can’t understand half I’m saying?”

Silence from Jase, desperate, helpless silence.

Jase had hit the immersion zero-point. Nocommunication. Total mental disorganization, for the first time, not for the last.

“I want you,” he said to Jase in Ragi, “to go to that interview, say, yes, lord Tatiseigi, no lord Tatiseigi, thank you lord Tatiseigi. That’s a very simple thing. Do you understand?”

A faint nod. The very earliest words were coming back into focus, yes, no, thank you. Do you understand?

“I want you to go to that room. I want you to be polite. Do you understand?”

A nod. A second, more certain nod. Fear. Stark fear.

“I,” Jase said very carefully. “Will. But—”

“But—”

For another moment Jase didn’t—couldn’t speak, just froze, wordless.

And thatwasn’t going to do the program, the aiji, or the interview any good. Jase had reached that point, that absolute white-out of communication students of the language tended to reach in which things didn’t make sense to him, in which the brain—he had no other explanation—was undergoing a massive data reorganization and stringing new cable in the mental basement, God only knew.

He reached for a bribe. The best he had.

“I want you,” he said, “to do this, and I swear I’ll get you to the ocean. Trust me. I asked that before. I’m asking it now.”

There was no answer. But it was more than a bribe. It was close to a necessity. He knewthe state Jase was in, and he was going to sweat until he’d gotten Jase off the air.