Ambassador 4: Coming Home (13 page)

“For this place, yes, it’s a nice effort.” He nodded. He was aware that I didn’t like to do subordinate greetings and today didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

“Have you seen your grandson yet?”

“Not yet.”

I had been going to ask why he’d come to see me, but put the pieces together: Thayu had spoken to him yesterday and he was going to offer transport for us, Kando Luczon and his companions to look at Asto from orbit. He trusted Kando Luczon as little as I did.

“We’ll go and find Nicha.” After breakfast, I had seen him potter about the apartment with the baby.

He was just coming up the stairs, carrying his son in a sling that hung over one shoulder. The baby was awake, looking around with a slight frown on his little face. His skin was no longer wrinkled, but full and soft. His hair was a soft fuzz on top of his head, slightly blue-purple metallic-looking already, but still light in colour.

Asha nodded at his son. “Well done. What’s his name?”

“Ayshada.”

The name seemed to please Asha.

Nicha held the baby up to his father. Asha stroked the little boy’s head with a hand that looked massive in comparison with the baby’s head. He was so tiny, and looking around so peacefully, that it was hard to believe that he had kept everyone awake last night.

“He’ll be a handful of trouble,” Asha said in a rare personal comment. “Take good care of him.” Then he nodded, signalling that the time for chat was over. He met my eyes. “I need to talk to you.”

“That would be a good idea. I think Eirani is about to serve dinner. Why don’t you stay and we can have our discussion afterwards?”

“It’s . . . sensitive. I’d like to go somewhere else. Just the two of us.”

That was interesting. “I guess we could go to one of the eating houses.” Eirani would not be impressed, but it wouldn’t be the first time that I didn’t attend dinner at short notice.

“I’d like to go to a place where we can disappear in a crowd, not be recognised and pointed at.”

“We could go into town.” He would definitely be recognised on the island.

“All right.” This was getting ever more curious.

I had to make some preparations. One simply did not catch the train into town with a guest of this calibre. I asked if I should bring guards, but Asha said his guards were shadowing us all the way. They were bringing Evi and Telaris along, and anyone else would be notified if we weren’t returning at the agreed time.

Devlin called a water taxi, which we caught from the jetty at the back entrance to the building. It was one of those flat-bottomed marsh boats with a jet engine at the back. It had three benches for passengers. In past trips I had learned that the back row was where you wanted to be if you didn’t intend to get wet. Asha and I sat down next to each other on this bench. The driver, a young Pengali man, asked if we were ready, and when I said we were, gunned the engine. As we pulled away from the quay, I couldn’t see any guards, but they would be there, even if I had no idea where they hid.

The trip was fast, windy and noisy and left no opportunity for talking. As the outline of the
gamra
island receded in the distance, I had a strange feeling that Asha might be trying to get me alone on some kind of journey. The resemblance with the manner we’d been whisked away to go to the Aghyrian ship was eerie. Maybe there was trouble at the siege area, where a fleet of Asto’s military ships surrounded the sleeping giant that was the Aghyrian ship. I might not come back here tonight.

But in that case . . . wouldn’t Asha have insisted that Thayu and Nicha or Veyada and Sheydu come as well? And last time he had told me to pack a bag.

Asha’s face looked no different from the way it usually did: stern but otherwise unemotional, while the warm wind and occasional spray of water battered our faces and strands of hair blew in our eyes.

I had asked the driver to drop us at the airport jetty which was next to the station.

From there, it was a short walk up a slight incline, past the fence where you could see the craft on the tarmac. Asha’s familiar unmarked craft sat at the far end. A plainly dressed guard stood next to it. I didn’t miss the bulges of guns in the sleeves of the jacket. I didn’t miss the broad shape of the shoulders and judged the soldier to be female. Did Natanu have a sister?

A train had stopped at the station soon after our arrival and we walked up the hill, mingling in the crowd. We chatted about innocent things. The weather, the building activities in town, whether or not I was going to get that pilot’s licence that I’d promised Ezhya to get. Every time the subject changed, I expected him to mention any of the serious issues we faced, but he did not. Maybe it was because it was quite busy on this path, maybe because of something else. I didn’t know. I wished those Inner Circle people would stop doing this. Maybe he only wanted to talk about his family and the Azimi problem, but if so, why did he need to make me so nervous over going out to a private dinner?

It was almost dark by the time we came out onto the main square. The place was busy with people milling about and choosing which place to eat at, people sitting at eateries, people lining up at the popular places. The air was full of chatter and cooking smells. Of course one could not make a fire in Barresh, but electrically-fired oil burners were a way that stall-holders had found around that, and deep-frying just about anything was very much in fashion. Much of the food smelled heavenly and contributed a lot towards expanding waistlines. Mine, too, I was afraid.

We walked past all that activity and chose a small Pengali-run eating-house in the quiet end of Market Street. It seemed a casual decision, but I had no doubt that Asha had planned to go here and already had his guards stationed at strategic positions where they would have been scouting out the surroundings for most of the afternoon.

We sat at a little table under the giant trees that lined this part of the street. He commented on the trees, and I told him how the entire street used to be lined with these trees down to the square, but that the ones closer to the airport had been blown over in a terrible storm.

A tiny little light in a jar of pink glass stood on the table. Not glass, of course, but real Pengali-cut diamond. There were whole cliffs of this stuff at the escarpment, waterfalls running over cliff faces made of pure diamond. Most windows in Barresh were made of it, as were drinking glasses and bowls. There was the regular clear variety, there was pink, there was yellow and amber and a kind of purple-blue that was the most expensive variety. The Pengali had developed ancient, time-consuming processes to cut it.

This eating-house was a Pengali place, proudly run by an all-Pengali staff with uniforms that allowed for their tails, singlets that showed off the patterned skin on their shoulders and a variety of exquisite artwork on the walls. Whenever I came here, I resolved to learn more about these ancient people, and somehow, that wish got lost in the bureaucracy and other “more important” things that crept on my to-do list.

All around, people were talking to each other in keihu or Pengali. Locals mostly, some of whom gave us curious glances. At one point, I spotted Telaris in a corner, in the company of a Coldi woman in dark clothing. Just letting me know he was there, I thought.

A waiter came to bring our orders in clear bowls with little metal tongs. It was Pengali fare: fish, noodles, mushrooms, all grown and harvested locally. Asha thanked the waiter in a gesture unusually friendly for him. Then he fixed me with a serious gaze, and I knew that we had arrived at the important part of what had so far been a strangely relaxing outing.

“We must discuss the Azimi case. That woman has to be one of the most terrible drama queens I have ever had the displeasure of coming across. I gather she complained a lot when she was in your household?”

“She was not very nice to the staff even if they tried their best to please her.”

“She has also been complaining since she got home. The clan elders have told her that she’s wrong.”

“Delegate Ayanu is still in Barresh.” Even if she lost much of Ezhya’s favour and the race to become Chief Delegate. “She hasn’t spoken to me about it.” In fact, she hadn’t spoken to me since we had rescued Reida from being locked up in her office. “Is she still the clan leader?”

“She is. I don’t know how much she agrees with Xinanu, but there
will
be a complaint.”

“What is there to complain for
them
? Xinanu is the one who didn’t stick to the contract.”

“She says she had reasons not to. Frankly, I think it’s best not to wait for their complaint and lodge one of your own. That’s what I’d like you to do.”

“Do I have to? To be honest, I’m glad that she’s gone. I don’t want her to come back to fulfil the rest of the contract. We can manage between the three of us.”

“I understand that, but the point is, she offended us when she broke her contract. You must ask for compensation on behalf of the Domiri clan. This is important because the Azimi clan must not think that they can get away with this. They know it’s coming and they are already formulating their response.”

I sighed. Veyada had told me as much. It seemed the matter was unavoidable. “What if the Azimi clan has a valid counter-claim?”

His eyebrows rose. “Do they?”

“I took Reida from them. He was captured in Delegate Ayanu’s office because of a claim they had against him. I intervened and freed him. More recently, I used their network bugs.”

He shook his head. “Disputes of property are not clan matters. They won’t try to offset your relationship contract claim against theirs. They can’t. Different parts of the law.”

“Can this wait a while? No one seems to be in any great discomfort, and there are a lot of other things going on that require my attention.”

“Preferably not. With clan situations, the longer you let a thing fester, the worse it gets.” He went on to tell me how to compose and lay out a claim document. He had me type it up on the awkward keyboard projector of my reader, which projected the keys over the surface of the table, my glass and part of my bowl. The table just wasn’t big enough.

To my human mind, making the claim was an extraordinarily petty thing to do in the light of the situation. Xinanu was home, we were happy, we didn’t want her back and there was so much more important stuff to do.

But he insisted.

I had to redo the whole thing three times before he was satisfied with it. “Send it.”

“Now?” It seemed a strange thing to do while at a relaxed dinner.

“Why not?”

So I did. While watching the message disappear off my screen with a kind of trepidation, I asked, “What do I do with the response when one comes in?”

“It should be pretty straightforward. Veyada should be able to help you with most of it, although he is better versed in
gamra
law than clan law. If you run into trouble, ask me.”

I registered that he had not asked me why I had used my personal account instead of my
gamra
one.

We were silent for a bit, watching the other diners. Then he insisted on paying for the meal.

In all, I thought the evening had been quite amicable and for once, I was happy with the way I had remained in control of events. I needed help with this clan claim, and he had given it. I could handle it now. That certainly had to be a step forward from being dragged out of my house on some goose chase where I was only informed at the last minute what it was all about. I was sure that he knew many things that would be of benefit for me to know; but for once, he didn’t appear to want to talk to me in order to use me as vehicle for his aims.

Maybe I was getting the hang of this father-in-law thing after all.

We left the eating-house and walked back in the direction of the airport, but we hadn’t gone far when he stopped in the shade of one of the big trees.

I stopped too. “Is anything wrong?”

For a while, nothing moved except his eyes, studying the street where, as fas as I could see, nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Just the usual evening crowd going about their leisurely business.

“Not yet,” he said. “But I might have to ask you for a fairly large favour. I’m hesitant about this and haven’t mentioned it yet tonight, because I think I finally understand what you’re about, and what I’d be asking would be contrary to your philosophy. I’m hesitant because I respect you.”

“Well,” I said, and my voice sounded high. Did I say anything about the evening having gone well? “If you don’t ask I can’t say yes or no. So why don’t we have a drink and you tell me about it?”

“A drink is good. But understand: there is no saying no.”

I looked into his eyes a knew that the entire night had been a smokescreen, even the bit about the Azimi claim.

When dealing with Asto’s military, you were never, ever, on safe ground.

I hesitated.

At some point in my life, I was going to turn a corner where I knew so many secrets that I would become a representative of Asto. Maybe that point had already been reached. I’d been let into military secrets that no one knew. But so far, knowing those secrets had helped establish peace for
gamra
as a whole. I suspected that he was now asking me to assist in an act of war, which
would
turn a corner for me.

On the other hand, a strong Asto presence preserved the peace. I’d hate to think what would happen if Asto’s hold on
gamra
diminished. We’d have Barresh Aghyrians,
zeyshi
Aghyrians, Damarcians all fighting for control and a largely ineffective bureaucracy that never decided anything in time.

If he—and through him, Ezhya—thought it was important that they get me on side with this slightly less peaceful thing—whatever it was—then perhaps I should trust them that it was for the better.

I took a deep breath. No saying no, huh? “All right. Let’s go.”

I
LED HIM TO
one of my favourite bars: located in a secluded, tree-covered courtyard surrounded by commercial buildings that were closed and dark at this time of the day. As was almost mandatory for Barresh, there was a fountain in the courtyard, with little tables surrounding it. I half-expected him to say that the venue was not secure enough with all the balconies overlooking the courtyard, but his guards must have judged security adequate because he said nothing about it, although he did appear distracted for a little while, probably listening to a report via his feeder.