Had it only been this morning he’d left Mospheira, and all that was familiar to him from childhood?

Jago walked behind him, catfooted.

“Mogari reports,” Banichi said, also appearing in the corridor. “Nothing untoward, no messages passed concerning Jase, except expectation of his arrival.” Mogari was the site of the dish, the source of communications from the station.

“Good.” He left all such questions to his security, trusting they could manage it far better than he, and would. “Get some sleep, Banichi-ji. If you can leave it to someone else, do. Tano and Algini, too. This all starts very early in the morning.”

“One does recall so,” Banichi said. Banichi had a new set of systems under his hands in the security station, ones Banichi had helped put together, and he knew Banichi had that for a powerful attraction. “Tano and Algini, however, have gone to meet Jasi-ji in his room.”

“To sleep there?” He was astonished. Did they think someone in the Mospheiran mission might have any designs on Jason’s life?

But they were careful; they were atevi, and they were careful.

“For safety,” Banichi amplified the information, “Replacing two of Tabini’s staff.”

“Where are they sleeping?” he wondered, stupid question.

“Nadi, they will hardly sleep. We will survive lack of sleep.”

“Of course,” he said, as Narani, too, entered the central hall, this inner circle of fortunate encounter. A baji-naji inset was above, below, and several places about. No soft green and blue here: definite, entangling black and white and color that fought like dragons in every design.

“Will you have any late supper, nand’ paidhi?”

“No,” he said. “Thank you, Rani-ji, I can’t manage another bite, and I fear I had at least half a glass too much tonight, with Jase.” His head was light. He’d run from supper to late tea with Tabini, to here, all nonstop.

He turned, saw all the staff together, in various doorways all eyes on him.

He’d been afraid, a moment ago, thinking on the morning. In the moment Jase had left he’d mentally expected he’d be alone, like the Mospheirans; but he wasn’t, he wasn’t ever. They wouldn’t let him be. “Nadiin-ji, thank you, thank you very much for coming.”

“A grand adventure,” Narani said, a man who should be, if he were Mospheiran, raising grandchildren… but here was a model of discretion and experience for a lord’s house. “A great adventure, nand’ paidhi.”

“Your names are written,” he said, bowing his head, and meant it from the heart… meant it, too, for the starry-eyed, enthusiastic young woman, Sabiso, who’d come primarily to attend Jago, for the Atageini who had come, rotund Bindanda, who carried the eastern and old-line houses of the Association into this historic venture.

“Nandi.” There were bows from the staff, deep bows, a moment of intimate courtesy before he went into his bedroom, before Bindanda and Kandana attended him there.

He’d used to think of it as an uncomfortable ritual. Now he took comfort in the habit… carefully unfastened the fine, lace-cuffed shirt and shed it, sat down to have his boots removed, all the items of his clothing from cufflinks to stockings accounted for and whisked away to laundry or whatever the solution might be on this most uncommon of evenings. He didn’t inquire what they’d brought and what they’d left or what they might do with the laundry. If he named a thing they’d left, they’d send clear to the Bu-javid to bring it, and God knew it would turn up.

“Good rest, nand’ paidhi,” Narani said, managing to turn down the bed and to bow, quite elegantly and all at once, as young Kandana, a nephew, hovered with a robe. “And will you bathe?”

“Yes, Nadiin.” He accepted the bathrobe Kandana whisked into place, stepped into slippers… should the paidhi-aiji walk barefoot, even ten meters down the hall? The staff would think him ill-used.

It was a very modern bath… porcelain, far newer than the general age of the fixtures in the Bu-javid, but there was absolutely nothing lacking in the quantity of water in the sunken tub. Bren slid into the soft scent of herbs, slid down to his nose and shut his eyes, while the extra half-glass of vodka seethed through his brain, blocking higher channels.

A shadow entered, a dark presence reflected ghostly on dark tiles: Jago, likewise in her bathrobe.

“Shall I bathe later, nandi?”

So meticulous in slipping in and out of the role of bodyguard. Perhaps they were a scandal. He was never sure. He had no idea how Banichi construed matters, and suffered doubts. He wasn’t sure even how Jago construed matters, except that he wasn’t utterly surprised at her turning up now unasked, after this crisis-ridden day.

“Now is very welcome, Jago-ji.”

Smoothly then she shed the robe, tall and black and beautiful as some sea creature… slid into the water and let it roll over her skin with a deep sigh. In the next moment she submerged and surfaced, hair glistening… still pigtailed: with that propriety alone, she could answer a security call naked as she was born, with never a sign of ruffled dignity: she had done so, on occasion, and so had he, and so had his staff. There was no mystery left, but there was admiration for what was beautiful, there was expectation. One didn’t say lovein dealing with atevi, as one didn’t say friendor any of those human words… but bodies knew that despite differences, there was warmth and welcome and comfort. She might technically be on duty; there was a gun with the bathrobe, he was relatively sure.

But she pursued his welfare here, strong, graceful arms keeping him warm, when all at once he felt the chill of too much air-conditioning above the water surface, and the heat of an atevi body beneath. The water steamed in the refrigerated air, made clouds around them, steamed white on Jago’s bare black shoulder, and on her hair.

Large atevi bodies chilled less rapidly than human, absorbed heat and shed it slowly, simply because they werelarger; and tall as she was, she could pick him up and throw him with not an outstanding amount of effort. But that wasn’t in their dealings, which were mutual. The dark blue walls reflected him more than her. She was always warm, and he was chronically cold. Across species lines, across instinctual lines, their first engagement had been a comedy of misplaced knees and elbows; but now they had matters much more smoothly arranged, and had no difficulty in a soap-slippery embrace. Hands wandered, bodies found gentle accommodation under the steaming surface. She enjoyed it; he did. He was recent enough from Mospheira that he was conscious of the alien, and fresh enough from converse with Jase that he still had his human feelings engaged.

And not knowing to this hour whether these interludes with the source of her man’chi were permissible for her or a scandal to her Guild, he still found no personal strength or reason to say no. He found a gentleness in the encounters that never had been with Barb… his weekends with Barb had been more intense, more desperate, less satisfying. He didn’t know which of them had been at fault in that, but he knew that what he and Jago practiced so carefully respected one another in a way he and Barb had never thought about. There was humor; there were pranks; there was never, except accidentally, pain.

He struggled not to let his heart engage. But his heart told him what he and Barb had called a relationship hadn’t been the half of what his heart wanted to feel. He had asked, or tried to ask, whether Banichi and Jago had their own relationship; and Jago had said, in banter, Banichi has his opinions; and Banichi never managed to take him seriously… never quite answering him, either; and it was not a question he could ask Tabini—how do atevi make love.

He was not about to ask the dowager, who—he was sure—would want every salacious detail.