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"office,"
not
attributing the hospitality to anything personal, an instinctively diplomatic distinction which seemed to touch the lady's fancy.
    "The aiji's guest is my guest," she said, and made a little bow to him, to Tabini, and left with some quiet word to Eidi.
    "Assure her, please," Bren said. "I'm utterly in awe of the apartment. I swear to be careful."
    "She's very curious about you," Tabini said, giving no cue whatsoever how much Damiri had just tried Tabini's patience, or added opposition support to his questions, or acted in any wise by his consent. "Quite in touch with her staff, I warn you. But only from curiosity."
    Possibly a signal of the situation. Certainly a warning. "Then I hope they report well of me."
    "I've no doubts. Is it chill for you? A front moved through this afternoon. One could easily light the heater."
    "No. Not at all. It's quite pleasant. Thank you, aiji-ma."
    "Is there pain?"
    "Some. Fever. I think that's normal."
    "I'm very glad to see you safe, nadi. How glad you cannot imagine."
    "I should have stayed in Shejidan, aiji-ma. I'd no idea anything was in imminent motion. I earnestly wish you'd told me. I'd have stayed and talked to the hasdrawad immediately."
    "I wanted you treated by your own doctors. That demanded I send you to the island. But I was extremely anxious, nadi. I swear I was anxious until I heard your plane was safely in our airspace."
    "Aiji-ma." He was somewhat surprised, even touched by Tabini's expression of personal concern — and held himself mentally and emotionally still on his guard, not least because he was glad to
be
back and had to put the brakes on that warm little human reaction that answered
no
questions whatsoever that bore on atevi motivation.
    Like — whether the Western Association was holding firm around Tabini.
    Like whether all hell was continuing to break loose in the eastern regions of the Association, provinces where Tabini was most politically vulnerable. There'd been bombs dropping there as late as two days ago, to which he could personally attest — bombs that had killed men he knew. He didn't know to this hour how that set-to had come out, or whether the provincial lords, reacting to a strong move by Tabini and a shift of certain lords to Tabini's side, had taken a wait-see as he hoped had happened.
    The side-switching could include the Atigeini, but he had no information whether or not lady Damiri had courted assassination by her own family for siding openly with Tabini, whom her association had at first opposed and then only coolly supported; and whether her family supported her in lodging a human guest in rooms hallowed in Atigeini history — when, for all he knew, his broken shoulder owed something to Atigeini suspicions of Tabini.
    And he couldn't ask. He daren't ask until he knew more. There were conventions of politeness worth one's life.
    "This ship above us," Tabini began.
    "Yes, aiji-ma?"
    "Mospheira is carrying on conversation with it. What's the general news? Were you able to hear anything?"
    "Just that, as I understand, aiji-ma, there's no doubt in anyone's mind it's the same ship that brought us here. Where it's been for a hundred and seventy-eight years — that's a serious question. Someone on Mospheira may know the answer. I don't."
    "Where do you guess it might have been?"
    "Aiji-ma, all I know is what I've been told since I was a child, which is that it went out looking for the auspicious guide stars to find out where we are."
    "Easy question. Here is
here
."
    "Not from their view. As I understand. There's much more to it than that, but I confess, aiji-ma, as a student I didn't study the business about the ship with anything like the attention I should have. It just wasn't expected that the ship would ever come back."
    "So. And what opinions are officials debating, now, in the high offices of Mospheira?"
    The questions, besides being something he didn't know, tended a step over the edge of the aiji's need-to-know. The paidhi