The lights went out again. He looked up in frustration, then followed her into the other room to protest the silence and the confusion of his security. She was at the window. She unlatched the side panel, opened it and shut it again, without an alarm.
“What in hell’s going on, Jago?”
Jago took out her pocket-com and thumbed it on, rattled off a string of code he didn’t understand.
Banichi answered. He was relatively certain it was Banichi’s voice. And Jago’s stance showed some small reassurance. She answered, and cut the com off, and put it away.
“It did register,” she said. “Our system registered.”
“Yours and Banichi’s?” he asked—but the com beeped and Jago thumbed it on again and answered it, frowning.
Banichi’s voice replied. Jago’s frown deepened. She answered Banichi shortly, a sign-off, clipped the corn to her belt and headed for the door.
“What was that?” he asked. “What’s happening? Jago?”
She crossed back in two strides, seized his shoulders and looked down at him. “Bren-ji. I’ve never betrayed you. I will not, Bren-ji.”
After which she was out the hall door at the same pace. She shut it. Hard.
Jago? he thought. His shoulders still felt the force of her fingers. And her footsteps were fading at a rapid pace down the hall outside, while he stood there asking himself where Banichi had been last night when he’d set the alarm off.
If there was another system—Banichi had known about him opening that window, if Banichi had been monitoring it. And for whatever reason—Banichi hadn’t come back when the general alarm went.
Maybe because Banichi had already discounted it as a threat. But that wasn’t the Banichi he knew, to take something like that for granted.
It was craziness, from breakfast with the dowager to the television crew arriving in the middle of a security so tight he couldn’t get a telephone. He didn’t like the feeling he was having. He didn’t like the reasons that might make Jago go running out of here, saying, in a language that didn’t have a definite word for trust—trust me to take care of you.
He double-checked the window latch. What kind of person could get in on the upper floor overlooking a sheer drop, he didn’t know, but he didn’t want to find out. He checked the outer door lock, although he’d heard it click.
But what good that was when everyone on staff had keys to the back hall of this place—
He had a sudden and anxious thought, went straight to his bedroom and, on his knees by the bed, reached under the mattress.
The gun Banichi had given him… wasn’t there.
He searched, thinking that the Malguri staff, making the bed, might have shifted it without knowing it was there. He lifted the mattress to be sure—found nothing; no gun, no ammunition.
He let the mattress back down and arranged the bedclothes and the furs—sat down then, on the edge of the bed, trying to keep panic at arm’s length, reasoning with himself that he had as much time to discover the gun missing as they thought it might take him, before they grew anxious; and if they hadn’t devised visual surveillance in the rooms he didn’t know about, whoever had taken it didn’t know yet that he’d discovered the fact.
Fact: someone had it. Someone was armed with it, more to the point, who might or might not ordinarily have access to that issue pistol, or its caliber of ammunition. It was Banichi’s—and if Banichi hadn’t taken it himself, then somebody had a gun with an identification and a distinctive marking on its bullets that could report it right back to Banichi’s commander in the Bu-javid.
No matter what it was used for.
If Banichi didn’t know what had happened—Banichi needed to know it was gone—and he didn’t have a phone, a pocket-com, or any way he knew to get one, except to walk out the door, go violate some security perimeter and hope it was Banichi who answered the alarm.
Which was the plan he had. Not the most discreet way to attract attention.
But, again, so long as he called no one’s bluff—things might stay quiet until Banichi or Jago got back. The missing gun wasn’t a thing to bring to the staff’s attention. He could probably trust Tano and Algini, who’d come with them from Shejidan—but he didn’t know that.