Protector: Foreigner #14 by C.J. Cherryh

back passages was all he needed. He stripped down, flung on his bathrobe, and headed out, with Banichi, whose route to his bodyguards’ rooms, next to the servant quarters, lay in the same direction.
    “Truly it can wait?” he asked Banichi, in the dim hallway outside the servants’ bath.
    “It was an interesting meeting,” Banichi said quietly. “Not surprisingly, the matter involves Ajuri.”
    God. It was very possible he’d stepped squarely into the middle of that situation, intervening with Damiri tonight.
    “One hopes not to have caused a problem tonight, Nichi-ji. The dowager made a gesture of peace toward Damiri. One attempted to intervene on the side of reconciliation, for good or for ill. One has no idea of the outcome. Tabini-aiji suggested, in private, that Damiri may try to take Ajuri as lord and he would oppose it.”
    “An assessment he has also given us,” Banichi said. “The consort taking Ajuri would sever her from the Atageini, even if she then makes peace with them. There are things we do not believe either the dowager or the aiji yet know, Bren-ji.”
    “About Damiri?”
    “About Ajuri,” Banichi said, which widened the range of possible ills by at least a factor of two, and assured he was not going to get a restful sleep tonight. “Jago will tell you. Be extremely careful where you discuss any of this.”
    “Get some rest,” he said to Banichi.
    “Things did not go that badly,” Banichi said to him in parting. He was sure it was for his comfort.
    “One hopes not,” he said. “I have learned things from Geigi I should mention, too.”
    “Your bodyguard knows,” Banichi said, and Bren blinked. Of course there was monitoring. He hadn’t expected it to go on that late, with Geigi. But it was a relief to him that they
had
heard. Reconstructing it all, tired as he was, was beyond him.
    “Good,” he said.
    “We shall just have a cheerful trip tomorrow,” Banichi said, “and discuss the weather throughout. Leave Geigi’s briefing to Geigi’s bodyguard once they launch. None of it affects him. Have your bath, Bren-ji. And rest.”
    Bath. It was a shower. He no more than scrubbed and rinsed, threw his bathrobe on, and was on his way out the door when Jago came into the servant bath, in her robe.
    “Jago-ji.”
    Jago folded her arms and shut the door. “We can talk,” she said. “Narani and Jeladi have been extremely careful.”
    Not all Guild went in uniform. Narani, that elderly, kindly gentleman, was an example. Bindanda, the cook, was another.
    And if Jago said the area was secure and Narani had kept it that way, it was secure.
    “One asks,” he said. “One does not even frame a specific question, for fear of misdirecting the answer. Tell me what I need to know, Jago-ji.”
    “First, dealing with any aspect of it can wait until we have seen Lord Geigi into orbit.”
    “He
is not involved,” he said. He would bet his life on Geigi’s integrity. He had made that bet. Repeatedly.
    “He is involved as an ally. But if we told him everything we know, we might not get him off the ground. We have briefed his aishid: they will brief him.”
    “One understands.” He did. Perfectly. “And the aiji?”
    Jago drew a deep breath. “By the Guild Charter, we
can
inform the aiji directly of whatever touches his security and the security of the aishidi’tat, and what he then chooses to tell his bodyguard is not regulated—which has been our route for this and other matters.”
    Since the last Guild-chosen bodyguard had attempted to kill him, Tabini had hand-picked four young distant relatives within the Guild. He had done it over conservative objections, bitter regional objections, and very heated Guild objections; and the Guild now had constantly to maneuver around that stone in the information flow at the very highest levels. It
would
not grant the aiji’s bodyguards a higher ranking or higher clearance until they certified higher. And that temporarily left the aiji-dowager