Inheritor by C. J. Cherryh

Geigi against all common sense governing use of that deceptive and deadly word, and he
didn't
want to hear from his security that lord Geigi had changed sides again.
    He set foot on the floor of the assembly area and the battalion of reporters tried to reach him. But the frontal assault of cameras failed to breach his security, as Tano and Algini directed him and his entire party aside through the plant manager's office and up against the earnest good wishes of a woman who, like Borujiri, saw fortune and good repute in his visit.
    "Nand' paidhi!" She bowed, and proffered a card with a ribbon, white, for the paidhi, a card which the thoughtful staff had handed out to certain key people. There was the smell of heated wax, a wax-jack waiting in the office for that operation, and immediately lord Geigi and nand' Borujiri, and a number of other officials came pouring through the door with the news services clamoring outside.
    He signed and affixed his seal in wax to cards which would make a proud display on a wall somewhere for not only this generation, but subsequent ones, while his security fumed and clearly wished a quick exit. But there were moments at which haste seemed to create worse problems than apparent lack of it; and they hadn't yet flung him to the floor and drawn guns, so he supposed it wasn't critical.
    "The car is waiting, nand' paidhi," Tano said, the moment the last card was stamped.
    Escape lay out the door: the news services hadn't yet out-flanked them. Algini went out first, surveying the Guild-provided car which procedure had dictated would never leave the personal surveillance of the paidhi's own security. Tano held the door for him, a living shield against what he had no idea.
    For two seconds in that position they were without any locals at all in earshot. "Lord Saigimi is dead," Tano said to him, low and urgently. "Unknown who did it."
    So
that
was the emergency. Bren took in his breath, and in the next firing of a neuron thought it likely that lord Geigi, stalled on the other side of the same door, was getting exactly the same news from
his
security.
    The lord of the Tasigin Marid, the circle of seacoast at the bottom of the peninsula, was dead,
not
of natural causes.
    The lord of the Tasigin Marid, an Edi, was the one interest in the peninsula most violently opposed to the space program. When Geigi had sided with the space program, and when Deana Hanks had provided the bombshell that weakened him politically, lord Saigimi had immediately insisted that lord Geigi pay his personal debts in oil investment in full, which lord Saigimi expected would ruin lord Geigi and force him from power in Dalaigi.
    That had
not
been the case, thanks to Grigiji the astronomer.
    Geigi came out the door, sober, dead sober in the manner of an ateva when expression might offend someone. Not displeased by the news, Bren would wager. Possibly — the thought hit him like a thunderbolt — Geigi was even directly involved in the assassination.
    No. Geigi
wouldn't
. Surely not. Not with the aiji's representative literally under his roof and apt by that to be thought associated with the event.
    "News," Bren said, resolved on his own instant judgment to ignore suspicion and treat the man as a cohort — as in the following instant he asked himself was
Tabini
involved — while Tabini's representative was a guest under lord Geigi's roof. "Nandi, lord Saigimi has just been assassinated. I'm immediately concerned for your safety; and I
must
make my flight on schedule. I fear events have left me no choice but to attend to business, and place myself where I can interpret to the ship in case
they
have questions. But will you honor me and ride to the airport with me, in my car?"
    Geigi's face bore that slight pallor that an ateva could achieve. Indeed, perhaps Geigi — not involved, and fearing he might be blamed — had been about to cancel the proposed fishing trip as inappropriate under the circumstances, and to offer the use