Not with Tabini, no.
Not with a man who confided in him, who told him official secrets he didn’t, out of respect for this man, convey to Mospheira… “How many people live on Mospheira?” Cenedi asked.
“You asked that, nadi. About four million. Four million three hundred thousand.”
“We’ll repeat questions from time to time, just to be sure.—Does that count children?”
Question after question, then, about support for the rail system, about the vetoes his predecessor had cast, about power plants, about dams and highways and the ecological studies, on Mospheira and on the mainland.
About the air link between the island and the mainland, and the road system in Mospheira’s highland north and center. Nothing at any point that was classified. Nothing they couldn’t find out from the catalogs and from his private mail, wherever that was going.
Probably they had found it out from his mail, long before the satellites. They might have, out of the vacation catalogs, assembled a mosaic of Mospheira’s roads, cities, streets, might have photographed the coastal cities, where regular cargo flights came in from Shejidan and flew out with human-manufactured electronics, textiles, seafood and pharmaceuticals.
“Do you have many associates on Mospheira, nadi? What are their names?”
“What do you do regularly when you go back to Mospheira, nadi? Surely you spend some official time…?”
“You had a weapon in your quarters, nadi. What did you plan to do with it?”
Admit nothing, he thought. There was no friendly question.
“I’m unaware of any gun.”
“An object that size, under your mattress.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it arrived and departed the same day.”
“Please don’t joke, nadi. This is an extremely serious business.”
“I’m aware it is. But I assure you, I didn’t bring it here and I didn’t put it under my mattress.”
“It appeared spontaneously.”
“It must have. I’ve no other answer. Nadi, what would I do with it? I’m no marksman. I’m no danger with a gun, except to myself and the furniture.”
“Nadi. We know this gun didn’t originate in Malguri. We have its registration.”
He looked elsewhere, at the double-edged shadows on the wall. Maybe Tabini had lost politically, somehow, in some way that mandated turning him over to a rival entity. He didn’t know who he was defending, now, in the matter of the disappearing gun, whether Tabini from his rivals or Banichi from prosecution, or whether Banichi’s substitution of that gun had muddied things up so badly that everyone looked guilty.
But he had no question now where the gun had gone.
And, as for lying, he adopted his own official line.
“Nadi,” Cenedi said. “Answer the question.”
“I thought it was a statement, nadi. Forgive me. I don’t own a gun. I didn’t put it there. That’s all I can say.”
“You fired at the assassin in Shejidan, nand’ paidhi.”
“No. I raised an alarm. Banichi fired when the man ran.”
“Banichi’s aim is not, then, what I’d expect of him.”
“It was dark, it was raining, and the man was running.”
“And there was no one but yourself in the room.”
“I heard a noise. I roused the guard.”
“Banichi regularly stands guard by your door at night?”
“I don’t know, I suppose he had some business in the halls—some lady. I didn’t ask him.”
“Nadi, you’re lying. This doesn’t help anyone.”
“Only three people in the world know what happened that night: myself, Banichi, and the man on that balcony—who was surely not you, Cenedi-ji. Was it?”
“No. It’s not my method of choice.”
That was probably a joke. He didn’t know whether to take it as one. He was scared, and sure that Cenedi had information from sources he didn’t know about. Cenedi was building a case of some kind. And while there were laws against kidnapping, and against holding a person by force, there were none against what Tabini had done in sending him here.
“You have no idea how the gun got there,” Cenedi said. “You state emphatically that you didn’t know it was there.”
“Yes.”
Cenedi leaned back in his chair and stared at him, a long, long moment.
“Banichi gave you the gun.”
“No, nadi. He did not.”
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