“Half the channels are off.”
Jago looked at him, bent over, examining the box that held one end of the wire. “The storm last night, perhaps.”
“They were working this morning.”
“I don’t know, nadi Bren. Maybe they’re doing repairs.”
He flung the remote down on the bed. “We have a saying. One of those days.”
“What, one of those days?”
“When nothing works.”
“A day now or a day to come?” Jago was rightside up now. Atevi verbs had necessary time-distinctions. Banichi spoke a little Mosphei’. Jago was a little more language-bound.
“Nadi Jago. What are you looking for?”
“The entry counter.”
“It counts entries.”
“In a very special way, nadi Bren. If it should be a professional, one can’t suppose there aren’t countermeasures.”
“It won’t be any professional. They’re required to file. Aren’t they?”
“People are required to behave well. Do they always? We have to assume the extreme.”
One could expect the aiji’s assassins to be thorough, and to take precautions no one else would take—simply because they knew the utmost possibilities of their trade. He should be glad, he told himself, that he had them looking out for him.
God, he hoped nobody broke in tonight. He didn’t want to wake up and find some body burning on his carpet.
He didn’t want to find himself shot or knifed in his bed, either. An ateva who’d made one attempt undetected might lose his nerve and desist. If he was a professional, his employer, losing his nerve, might recall him.
Might.
You didn’t count on it. You didn’t ever quite count on it—you could just get a little easier as the days passed and hope the bastard wasn’t just awaiting a better window of opportunity.
“A professional would have made it good,” he said to Jago.
“We don’t lose many that we track,” Jago said.
“It was raining.”
“All the same,” Jago said.
He wished she hadn’t said that.
Banichi came back at supper, arrived with two new servants, and a cart with three suppers. Algini and Tano, Banichi called the pair, in introduction. Algini and Tano bowed with that degree of coolness that said they were high hall servants, thank you, and accustomed to fancier apartments.
“I trusted Taigi and Moni,” Bren muttered, after the servants had left the cart.
“Algini and Tano have clearances,” Banichi said.
“Clearances.—Did you get my mail? Someone got my mail.”
“I left it at the office. Forgive me.”
He could ask Banichi to go back after it. He could insist that Banichi go back after it. But Banichi’s supper would be cold—Banichi having invited himself and Jago to supper in his apartment.
He sighed and fetched an extra chair. Jago brought another from the side of the room. Banichi set up the leaves of the serving table and set out the dishes, mostly cooked fruit, heavily spiced, game from the reserve at Nanjiran. Atevi didn’t keep animals for slaughter, not the Ragi atevi, at any rate. Mospheira traded with the tropics, with the Nisebi, down south, for processed meat, preserved meat, which didn’t have to be sliced thin enough to admit daylight—a commerce which Tabini-aiji called disgraceful, and which Bren had reluctantly promised to try to discourage, the paidhi being obliged to exert bidirectional influence, although without any veto power over human habits.
So even on Mospheira it wasn’t politic for the paidhi to eat anything but game, and that in appropriate season. To preserve meat was commercial, and commercialism regarding an animal life taken was not kabiu, not ‘in the spirit of good example.’ The aiji’s household had to be kabiu. Very kabiu.
And observing this point of refinement was, Tabini had pointed out to him with particular satisfaction in turning the tables, ecologically sound harvesting practice. Which the paidhi must, of course, support with the same enthusiasm when it came from atevi.
Down in the city market you could get a choice of meats. Frozen, canned, and air-dried.
“Aren’t you hungry, nadi?”
“Not my favorite season.” He was graceless this evening. And unhappy. “Nobody knows anything. Nobody tells me anything. I appreciate the aiji’s concern. And yours. But is there some particular reason I can’t fly home for a day or two?”