Defender

“Gini-ji. Get Paulson.”

“Yes, nandi.” Algini moved, then signaled him the call was through.

“Hello? Paulson?”

“ Mr. Cameron?”

“Paulson.” The relief was a cold bath. “Rumor’s running the halls. C1’s not responding. I think we need a little extraordinary security out there. Keep workers on their shifts. No shift-change, do you agree? Restrict the bars and rec areas. Call it a funeral.”

“ You’ve heard the rumor.”

“What have you heard?”

“ ThatPhoenix lied to us.”

That wasn’t the construction he’d like to put on it. But that was certainly a Mospheiran gut-reaction—a mild one, considering the history of lies the ship had told the colony from the beginning, and the distrust there still was, on the planet, among those whose ancestors had parachuted into a gravity well to escape Phoenix’iron grip.

“We don’t know all of it. We don’t even know a legitimate source, unless you’ve got better information than we do. As far as we know, it’s just loose talk that’s gotten started.”

“ We’ve already put the word out: we’re holding employees at posts, we’ve canceled all breaks until further notice and shut down private calls. Supposedly somebody overheard something in the infirmary. Some worker. When Ramirez died.”

Paulson wasn’t the sort of director who heard rumors. No one told Paulson anything. Except now it seemed as if someone had. Someone had told everyone.

A worker had come into the infirmary with a cut hand. And been treated in the area where Ramirez died.

“What did they hear?”

“ Ramirez told Graham that the station out there is still operating. Still has crew on it.”

Ramirez himself. He was stunned at the indiscretion. But maybe a dying man hadn’t had choices.

And what did he say to that?

“Can you find that worker? It’s got to be in infirmary records.”

“ It’s not all, understand. Ramirez ordered Graham take no extraordinary measures to keep him alive. Said that he wanted to die. The ship was fueled and he was ready to die. That’s what’s being said around.”

He didn’t doubt the details. Now he wasn’t sure he doubted the central rumor. A deep and volatile secret had broken out of confinement.

At worst construction, they were betrayed—and not for the first time. His ownMospheiran heritage welled up in him, in deep, angry suspicion.

He shut it down. Tried to think instead of react.

“We don’t have all the facts,” he said to Paulson. “I’m asking, keep your workers exactly as you have, out of places where they can gather and theorize. I’m applying to ship command for a clarification. Talk to that worker if you can. Let’s find out the truth.”

“ When you know what’s going on, I’d appreciate a call.”

“Deal.”

Still no answer to the beeper, and no help from C1. Bren punched out on Paulson and looked at his security team.

“Did you follow, nadiin-ji? Ramirez-aiji in dying said to Jase-paidhi that there were indeed people left behind on the other station and that at that time it was operational. He said, at the same time that he had fueled the ship and that he was ready to die.”

“Perhaps we should visit Jase,” Banichi said. “Jago and I.”

If they were on earth, they would have other recourses—they might well have sent a messenger from the Guild. They weren’t on earth, and hadn’t, and he didn’t want to start a war with the ship-crew.

“We’re going to have to advise the aiji,” Bren said. “That on a priority. Put another call through, Gini-ji, to Eidi, to anyone you can get.”

“Put on the vest, Bren-ji,” Tano said ominously, meaning the projectile-proof one that restricted his movements and his breathing, and no, he didn’t at all want it, one more ferocious inconvenience in an already maddening hour—but under the circumstances and with what was riding on the lives of a handful of critical personnel, he had no choice but agree.

“I shall,” he said. “I shan’t forget it, Tano-ji.”

“Jase is calling back,” Algini said suddenly, and Bren snatched up the ear-set.

“Jase?”

“ Bren. I have a page from you. I’m on my way to a meeting.”

“Jase. I don’t know if you know, but whatever Ramirez told you—it got out. That the other station wasn’tdestroyed, for starters. Is that true?”

There was a slight pause. Possibly command hadn’t known rumors were flying. He had the impression that, wherever Jase was, he had just stopped dead in his tracks.

“Is the rumor true, Jase?”

“ Bren—” A short pause. Desperation in the tone. “ Bren, I can’t talk about this here.”

He lapsed straight into Ragi. “You’d better know it’s not secret. It’s being talked about among the workers. My staff knows. It’s being reported on the planet.”

“ Thecrew doesn’t know, Bren. We don’t know. Don’t let it out.”

“It is out. I understand what you’re telling me…” That… God, the crew had not a clue and the captains had lied to them. That possibly Jase had had no clue either, and that was why Ramirez had told him: he could believe that Jase was innocent. “Is that the truth, Jase-ji?”

“ He said so,” Jase admitted. “ I was afraid the techs had heard.”

“I don’t know if a tech heard, but a worker in for treatment overheard. It leaked to the Mospheirans, Jase, and there’s no stopping it.”

“ I can’t say more than I have right now. Bren, I’m asking you, don’t call Tabini yet.”

“I haveto call Tabini. Every Mospheiran with a phone link, every corporate officer and the communications techs—they’ve already been talking. If you don’t want a bigger crisis than we already have at this point, Jase, don’t cut me off from Tabini. If merchants know it on the North Shore waterfront, damned sureI’d better advise the aiji very soon that we have a problem.”

“ Bren, I can’t say— I don’t know— I think Ogun has something to say about this. I have to get to the meeting. Wait. I ask you. Wait.”

All over the station-ship hookup, communications that shouldn’t get out of a security folder were flying back and forth like mad. “Jase, you know where my loyalties are. Tabini ignorant is far more dangerous than Tabini informed.” Jase, damn it all, hadn’t given an official order in all the years he’d warmed that fourth seat. And didn’t want to start now. “You were fourth seat and maybe it didn’t matter. But now you’re third. Like it or not, somebody who knows had better make a decision. You keep channels open for me to Mogari-nai. You know Tabini. You know the consequences, dammit, if he should be surprised, especially now, especially now, with critical meetings going on. You know that.”

“ I know. I know. I’ll hold your channel open. I can do that. But that’s all I can do— I can’t go rushing around giving orders right now, I can’t, under these circumstances. Tabini misinformed isn’t damned good either, Bren, is it?”

“Somebody in command knows the truth. Somebody in ship-command damned well betterknow, Jase, and—hear me on this—there had better not be any surprises.”

“ There won’t be. Bren. Trust me. We’re about to address the crew on intercom. Get everybody out of the corridors. Secure all stations. We’re asking the same of crew. Wait for Ogun. That’s all I ask. One favor. Communication silence until then. One favor. Please.”

“You know what you’re dealing with. You know. We’re secure out there as we’re likely to be. But don’t lie. Absolute truth to these people. They deserve it. Once in several centuries, they deserve it. Hear me?”

A small pause. There was desperation on the other end of the link. “ I didn’t know, Bren. I didn’t know. Crew didn’t know. I’m not even sure Sabin knew. Now I think we’re going to find out. Be patient. I’ll talk to you tonight.”

Historically, it wasn’t only the colonists the Pilots’ Guild had lied to, and lied to habitually, as if the truth was the automatic last recourse of any situation, the one commodity always to be kept in reserve.

“Tonight,” Bren said. He at least believed Jase—whose mangled Ragi had contained half a dozen egregious and inflammatory mistakes. He filled in the blanks, filled them in with knowledge of Jase, where nothing else would serve.

And Jase punched out to go to his meeting.

He sank back in the chair, dumbfounded—speechless for the moment.

We’re going to find out, Jase said.

Hell, Jase, worse for the crew this time than for Mospheirans. They set up the station out there. Wasn’t it their ancestors who crewed it?

And assuringus the aliens couldn’t have gotten any clue to let them track the origin of that station back to this star— oh, well, again, just a little cosmetic exaggeration. Don’t worry. It’s notthat likely.

Likely they won’t come here and blow the planet up.

Bloody hell, what excuse isPhoenix command going to tell us all this time, Jase?

He couldn’t let the distress reach his face—first lesson of diplomacy among atevi: never look upset. He looked at the ceiling a moment, away into white-tiled space, drew a deep breath, then faced solemn atevi stares with as much calm as he could muster.

“Well, Jase and I have had a lively discussion. As you heard.”

“One heard,” Banichi said.

“Jase says the captains will soon address the crew, nadiin-ji. Jase says he didn’t already know what Ramirez is alleged to have told him, so I suppose if we’re patient we may hear at least as much truth as the other captains have to admit. I’m notpleased, I may say, and I’m doubtful how much truth we may yet hear. Jase says we’ll have Mogari-nai available.”

“What measures shall we take?” Banichi asked him—Banichi had to ask, in matters involving humans. On the planet, among atevi, Banichi was inclined to know.

This one, unhappily, was up to the paidhi to figure out.

But once lied to— wheredid people start believing again?

“One wishes one knew, Banichi-ji. One waits to see what issaid, one supposes, and then one tries to determine whether we’ve now returned to the truth… or whether there’s only a new lie.”

“Does this entail a quarrel among the human associations?”

“One isn’t sure where the lines are,” he said. “One isn’t sure whose side certain individuals may be supporting.”

“The ship being refueled,” Algini said, “they can choose to leave.”

It wasn’t the first time his staff had raised that point. The last time had been in deep concern when Tabini had agreed to the refueling in the first place.

“There would seem to be very little we can do about it,” Bren said.

“We have studied the matter,” Banichi said, “and there might be something we can do about it, if we take certain key points within the ship.”

Why was he not surprised his staff, independently and quietly, had come up with a theory of how to do it?

And he had to decide, quickly, whether to let them try.

But what was next on Ramirez’ agenda? Or what might Ramirez have known? What might be coming in?

Dared they risk damage to the only ship they had—when they couldn’t, themselves, operate it?

“We know more than we did, nadiin-ji, but we don’t know what Ramirez knew. Before we make such a move, I hope I have time to talk to Jase. And I hope Jase comes to visit us with answers.”

Chapter 8

“Shipmates: the captains regret to report very sad news, Senior Captain Stani Ramirez has passed away suddenly of natural causes, much mourned and missed by us all.”

Funereal music had prefaced the announcement. The meeting—Jase’s meeting—had produced, officially, an official announcement on every channel, one, channel 2, given over to a captioned translation into Ragi—Jase’s, Bren strongly suspected. There was one ill-omened error of numerology.

“ Services are set for 1800h in the crew recreation area stationside. All but critical personnel will have the choice to attend.”

Phoenixfroze her dead—for disposition later, the word had always been. At some time Phoenixwould send her departed crewmen to a rest that forever escaped gravity wells, but it hadn’t happened yet. One assumed that for Ramirez. But they were hurrying to hold the memorial, no preparation. They had an hour.

“ This concludes the funeral announcement. A security bulletin follows.”

Damned well time, Bren thought.

“ A rumor has arisen which has raised alarm among our allies. The captains have accordingly released the following accurate information. …”

Be truthful. For God’s sake, be truthful, Jase… and be accurate.

“ Certain information regarding the station at Reunion was kept secret due to the necessity of duplicitous negotiation among the allies—”

God, Jase, actomen’shi, not eshtomeni?

“ Reunion exists. It suffered extensive damage and loss of life during alien attack. A small number of survivors decided to stay on the station, maintain a general communications silence and effect repairs such as would give them the capacity to refit and refuel Phoenix for a further, longer voyage, only should Phoenix find no resource here.

“ In the event of a second alien attack or imminent disaster to Reunion, Reunion staff is to destroy the station with all personnel and all records.

“ Phoenix command has pledged to Reunion volunteers that Phoenix will return as soon as possible to their relief.

“ A list of known survivors will be available via C1, appended to this bulletin.

“ The Council of Captains reminds the crew that we have no information as to current conditions at Reunion. There has been no communication with Reunion since, for the protection of all persons.

“ This is Captain Graham. I ask our allies be tolerant of my foreignness and make all utterances respectful and fortunate in your minds. It is the intent of the ship-aijiin to work closely and frankly with our allies.”

Well done. Well done, Jase.

As well done as could be, give or take a few glitches and one piece of accidental honesty—or maybe Jase had thought it best to tell the whole truth.

Jago was back. The whole staff assembled at the security station, leaning in the door, not venturing further into the small room.

The content was explosive enough with the crew—who couldn’t be damned happy with what their captains had done in maintaining secrecy. No democracy on the decks, that was sure. No debate about a decision to leave Reunion personnel in place… but Phoenixwasn’t a democracy and never had been.

The list of survivors rolled past. He didn’t personally know the names to look for, but he recognized crew surnames. There wereliving relatives—how close, and how emotionally viable the ties that bound them to ship-crew might be debatable, but the names told him there were ties, and the list numbered over two hundred individuals…

Two hundred individuals to keep a station alive.

But ask, even so, whether thatlist was definitive or not, or whether even Ramirez had known all the list or all the truth. The history of lies and half-truths was just too old, too long, too often.

And in all his career he doubted he had met a situation as disillusioning and as disturbing.

“I think one may transmit to Mogari-nai,” Bren said. Eidi still hadn’t gotten back to him, or acknowledged the second call, which might mean that Eidi had had to leave the Bu-javid to carry his message—or it might mean that Tabini had heard the first one and wasn’t going to acknowledge a subordinate so disorganized as to chase one message with another within minutes. It wasn’t for the aiji in Shejidan to beg details. It was for the paidhi to compose his information in logical fashion and send, and he sent. He dropped his information, piece by piece, into the gravity well and waited for some echo, any echo, to tell him how Shejidan was reacting, what Tabini was thinking, what Tabini wanted him to do about the unfolding situation.

Tabini wouldn’t rush to judgement or to action. Not in this. Silence meant that the subordinate in question should act as wisely as he understood how to do, and silence meant if the subordinate fouled up—the aiji in Shejidan could change everything in a heartbeat.

Jase, sending, would likely get no better reaction.

So Bren let it be Jase—didn’t package the information under his own name, didn’t revise word-choices into felicity and good grammar—the aiji knew Jase, and he wasn’t superstitious.

But two stations— twowas one of those damnable numbers that ran cold fingers down atevi spines no matter how modern and enlightened the hearer: twohadn’t even been in consideration when they were considering building another starship: threewas the plan as atevi laid it down, and twowas only a stage they would pass through on their way to three.

Trust atevi personnel to weld a piece of the next frame only to say there was a fortunate third under construction.

He sent his own commentary:

Aiji-ma, this is the official statement of the ship-aijiin on information overheard by a Mospheiran worker and rumored afterward by crew and Mospheiran workers throughout the station.

This forebodes policy changes of some nature. I have received reassurances from Jase-paidhi— and will accept them in your name, aiji-ma— that the treaty stands, pending further information.

In everything that came out, he believed that Jase hadn’t known, or Ramirez wouldn’t have had to tell Jase on his deathbed.

And wherewas Tabini?

Engaged in delicate negotiations, and relying on the steady progress of the space program to convince the skittish east to add their earnest effort to the west. Of course we can trust the ship-folk. Trust me, I know what I’m doing. I know what I’m asking of you. All of it will be worth it. We have a firm alliance.

If Ramirez had set out deliberately to sabotage atevi-human relations and the aishidi’tat at one stroke, he’d have had to study hard to pick a more delicate, more telling moment—granted the paidhi had any true idea what Tabini was up to at the moment.

Now Tabini had to be shown taking control of a situation with the ship-folk, strongly advancing atevi positions, asserting atevi authority over the program—all through the paidhi, who was supposed to do something about it all… the way the paidhi-aiji was supposed to have been a reliable source of information.

And in spite of the quick shut-down of private station communication, he knew the shut-down hadn’t been fast enough, and that it might be the worst thing to do: it might be better just to let the most stupid speculations go out, because at least information would flow. Rumors would be circulating through the island as fast as two cousins on north shore and south shore calling one another on the phone.

“Keep our line flowing to Eidi,” he told Algini.

So the messages went down, minute by minute.

And the paidhi had acute indigestion.

Might Damirisomehow get a message, before Tabini did? Might he suggest it, if he could ever get hold of Eidi again? He was down to considering uncle Tatiseigi, and maybe blowing Bindanda’s cover and asking Bindanda to contact himdirectly.

Damn the luck. DamnRamirez’ timing.

Other information was flowing. He had plenty of messages from station offices, from Ginny Kroger, from Paulson, from Geigi, the latter saying, We have sent to Eidi, but Eidi seems to have left.

He sent appropriate messages to those individuals on the station: yes, he was going to the funeral service on the station, yes, it was entirely appropriate for atevi to attend.

By all means, the most stringent adherence to forms and politeness, while everything that was going on at official levels stirred echoes—oh, very definitely the deception echoed in his Mospheiran soul—and he was one of the Mospheirans struggling hardest to make this alliance work.

“Is there any protocol in specific we should know?” Jago came to ask him on behalf of herself and the rest of the staff, regarding the funeral. It was given she and Banichi would attend, in their uniform best.

“Solemn faces and silence,” he said, “will offend no one. Respect, Jago-ji. We still don’t know any other course. I still haven’t heard from Tabini. I assume Eidi got the information to him, but I daren’t assume everything is all right down there at the moment.”

“One might safer assume that,” Jago ventured, “than assume things will be peaceful here, if Mospheirans are also in attendance. Tano advised you wear the vest, Bren-ji. All of us are in accord.”

“I shall, with no argument. Assure Banichi.”

Bindanda and his assistant had laid out full court dress, lace-cuffed shirt and brocade coat, boots and all, and he dressed, had his hair braided. It was a funeral held, to the suspicious Mospheiran mind, much too soon, but he knew it was the ship’s procedure, supposed if it was the deceased’s choice to be frozen, it certainly provided a corpse for autopsy if questions came later. Concealment couldn’t be the motive.

Geigi would be there, with no less honor… probably, too, with bullet-proofing, and an urgent desire to get information out of the captains about future steps. So with Paulson. Ginny would attend, without official status.

At least Jase was now a third of that council, and Sabin, the cipher among the captains, the one he least trusted, could not outvote Ogun and Jase. And Ogun… Ogun could rely on Jase’s vote, if he represented Ramirez’s policies, at least until Ogun forced an appointment of someone of their liking to the fourth seat and enabled a tie vote.

It was toward suppertime, and he urged the household staff to eat. His own supper was a packet of crackers, a cup of tea, and an antacid.

There was still no answer from the planet.

At 1740 hours he slipped the bulletproof vest on, put his coat on and exited the apartment with Banichi and Jago in their formal attire—in their profession, that meant armed and wired to the teeth, the formal attire made especially to accommodate the tools of their trade.

Safe, he told his nerves.

They met lord Geigi and his bodyguard likewise leaving their apartment, and joined into a single delegation on their way.

They met Paulson and Ginny Kroger, with Ben Feldman and Kate Shugart, the translators, when they reached the appointed area. There were a handful of section chiefs, a few corporation heads who were probably chiefly responsible for the phone calls down to the planet.

Crew constituted most of the mourners, crew dressed in the blues that were the ordinary for work assignment and an unused set being the best clothing most common crewmen had. They gathered in the dimly lit rec hall… no benches, only tape lines marking the rows, and they found their own places, atevi and Mospheirans constituting two rows next to one another. There was no casket, no deceased. That, too, was ship-folk custom.

It was 1755h. They waited quietly, respectfully. The hall by now was packed.

There was a screen on the forward wall. The row of lights on that end was on, the sole source of light. Ogun came from a side door, Sabin next, and Jase. Their images lit the screen, so that everyone in the hall had a view.

No flowers. No incense. But it came to Bren he’d beenin this scene and learned absolutely nothing.

Ogun advanced a pace to the fore. Light from overhead fell on his shoulders, sparked on insignia, silvered white, tight-curled hair above a dark, grim face. “We’re here to honor Stani Ramirez,” Ogun said, and drew a breath as one might for a recital. “Born aboard Phoenixin Big System, the year we began Reunion. He saw Deep End, and lived through Good Hope. He piloted a refueler there, and ran operations at Hell’s Acre. He took the fourth captaincy there, when Munroe died.”

Bren listened intently, taking mental notes on events in the history of Phoenixas he’d learned it. His staff understood some of it. Geigi himself did, though the names and the imagery might elude them.

Sabin had her say. “He was an able navigator and a fair judge.” Cold, rational praise of a man who had been a good administrator and a good captain. “He resurrected the station here and stood against the Tamun Mutiny.” Sabin had backed Tamun’s appointment to a captaincy. That small fact passed in polite if knowledgeable silence. “The details are in the log. Captain Ramirez always understated his part.”

Last, Jase spoke, a quiet voice, hesitant. “Stani Ramirez knew there’d be critical changes here: and he created paidhiin for the situation without ever having met one. That’s why I was born. That’s why Yolanda Mercheson was born.”

Bren didn’t see Yolanda. Hadn’t seen her in the crowd.

“If he hadn’t foreseen there might be communication problems,” Jase said, “if he hadn’t trained personnel in languages we never even expected to meet, we could have been in deep difficulty. We could be fighting each other instead of working together. He saw things ahead and he laid a course and he saw the ship through it. Taylor did that to get us here.”

Taylor. The pilot that had rescued Phoenixfrom its predicament.

“Ramirez made us able to survive here,” Jase said. It was a daring comparison. If the ship had a saint, it was Taylor—and Jase’s status, one of Taylor’s Children—had the place very, very quiet. Nobody expected much out of Jase in decisions.

But he’d hit them with words. He’d said things no one else could.

He’d mentioned Yolanda, when no one else had remembered her.

And Jase was right. The man who’d refueled the ship and died leaving them a hellish mess—had had the foresight to create Jase and Yolanda to study languages and cultures that had no possible relevancy to the ship; and whether he knew it or not—to make themselves different-minded enough that they could bridge that soft-tissue gap between ship-thinking and whatever they might meet on the planet.

That was Ramirez’ doing… when most of the ship’s crew couldn’t conceive that the colony they’d left behind could possibly look at things differently… and Jase was right, Ramirez was one chief reason they were standing here, because the alternatives, the pitfalls they could have walked into—were a guarantee of disaster.

For creating Jase and Yolanda, and for listening to them, Ramirez deserved a monument.

And that led to one difficult thought.

Would the man who was that foresighted, that awareof time, distances, and change—then do something so damnably stupid as to lie to them all about Reunion and plan to desert them?

Why? That was the question. Whyhad Ramirez held Reunion secret?

Whyhad the whole Reunion business not come out when Pratap Tamun tried a coup against Ramirez?

Had Ramirez—unlikely thought—been the onlycaptain who knew?

Tamun, the newcomer to the captaincy—he hadn’t known.

Ramirez had waited until his last breath to tell Jase—as if Ogun and Sabin couldn’t. A way of putting a stamp of approval on Jase? The ticket to legitimacy in the office which Jase had fought every step of the way?

Well, for damned sure Ramirez hadn’t intended to be overheard.

The paidhi, better than most present, understood Ramirez’s position. Damned if he didn’t. In that light, he understood every maneuver the man had made. As a sovereign cure between strangers, truth was vastly over-rated.

Jase finished.

“The company is dismissed,” Ogun said.

“ What about Reunion?”

The shout came from out of the crowd at Bren’s back. Shocked silence followed—about two heartbeats.

“This isn’t the place or the time,” Ogun snapped, and Ogun had the microphone. The tone went straight to the bones.

But: “ Why?” a female voice shouted out, and in that breathless hush, didn’t need a microphone. Faces were obscured in the dark. Someone else, male, shouted: “ What happened out there?”

“Nandi,” Banichi wanted his charge out of harm’s way, and wanted him to move to the wall.

But Bren stood still, even when Banichi nudged him. “I want the answers,” he said. Geigi also stood fast, since he did, both of them being fools, and lord Geigi’s security was also hair-triggered and worried.

Ginny and Paulson stood still, wanting answers, too.

And Ogun stood under the light, visible to everyone on the screen, his dark face frowning. Jase and Sabin were at either shoulder.

“ Why?” the crew had begun to chant. “ Why? Why? Why?”

Ogun held up an arm. Held it until, slowly, there was silence.

“One of you,” Ogun said, “one of you with the guts to step into the light—come up hereand ask me.”

There was silence a moment. Then a single man moved into the light. Kaplan, of all people. One of Jase’s displaced guards.

“With all respect,” Kaplan said, his voice breaking. It cracked, twice, and he managed to say, picked up by the mike, “with all respect to the captains, apologies from the crew. But—” Kaplan got a breath. “We’re with you, captain, we always have been with you, and we go into the dark with you, no question, but here we’re being told things different than makes sense to us, and we don’t want to leave here with any doubts.”

Kaplan had learned something, being with Jase. It was a solid piece of diplomacy, a door through which crew and captains could fit together, if Ogun would just take the invitation and pick up the olive branch.

And Kaplan wasn’t alone. Polano and Pressman were discernible in the shadows behind him.

“Mr. Kaplan, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Phrase your question.”

“I’d rather ask the captains if they can explain better ‘n we can ask, sir, because we don’tknow.”

“Better than you can ask,” Ogun said. “Better than you can ask, Mr. Kaplan. Answers are in that list of survivors posted on C1, channel 2. That’s as best we have it.”

“ It’s not enough!” someone shouted from the back, and Ogun drew an angry breath.

“All right. You want to know the truth, cousins and friends, the truth is, we didn’t make the choice, we didn’t havethe choice. Now there isa choice to make, a last piece of business from the Old Man, and what we do about it, that’s a question before the Council. Every man and woman of you, get to a com station, personally, read the list. That for a start. Then if you can’t take orders and accept the discipline that’s kept the ship alive, get a parachute and join the colonists. But if you cantake orders, if you remember who you are and what you are and what your job is, then you know why you don’t question an order except through channels. Right now my mailbox is stuffed with legitimatequestions, which I haven’t gotten to, in the heat of the hour, and no, I don’t have all your answers. The Old Man didn’t, either. But I’ll tell you flat, I’m not going to have answers coming out piece by piece and individual by individual to be speculated on in the corridors out of context and with half the facts. So, Mr. Kaplan, seeing you’ve asked a general question, I’m going to respond to those legitimateletters of inquiry right now, in full. Stand to attention!”

Human bodies stiffened, unthought, automatic. Noise stopped.

Visitors stayed still, whether or not lord Geigi understood enough of what was going on. Bodyguards were ready for anything.

“First question,” Ogun said. “Are there any survivors who aren’t on the list? Answer: we don’t bloody know. If there is any other name, and a few could have been born and half grown by now, Reunion’s in a position to know. We’re not.

“Second question: do the aliens out there know where we are now? Answer: we hopenot, but you know and we know there’s optics, there are antennae, and anybody looking in the right general direction could already have this star in their sights.

“Third question: why did we keep it quiet? Answer: it wasn’t our idea. But the fewer people that know, the fewer can tell—if we were so unlucky as to be asked by the intruders out there. So forget you know.

“Fourth question: why didn’t we take Reunion personnel off that station when we had the chance? Answer: that wasn’t our choice, either.

“Fifth question: what are we going to do next? Answer: that’s an issue under debate. Written suggestions will be considered. Turn them in, cousins and crew. We’ll listen.

“End of statement. I’ve disposed of a stack of memos. Don’t expect a written answer. For the rest, consider Captain Ramirez in light of what I’ve just said, and honor himfor saving our necks and doing the damn best he could.

“ Dismissed.”

There was utter silence. Ogun turned and walked off into the shadows. No one moved for a moment, and then crew began to murmur and to stir and to file out the doors.

Not our choice. Not our choice. Not our choice. Bren found his heart beating double time. Banichi and Jago wanted him to move. Lord Geigi was moving. But he felt his legs all but paralyzed.

Not our choice.

Damn!

He moved. He overtook Geigi, outside the door. “One can render what was said, nandi,” Bren murmured, head ducked, voice down. “In essence, there’s a hint there’s a higher authority on Reunion Station that ordered Ramirez to keep quiet. There is more. Shall we meet?”

“Immediately,” Geigi said. This most inquisitive, agile-minded of lords had seen enough to have the picture. “Will my offices suffice?”

Geigi wasn’t the only one disturbed. There was Paulson. There was Kroger. He edged past Banichi to reach Ginny on the other side of the door.

“Ginny. We need to meet.”

“Damned right.”

“You and Paulson? About an hour? Geigi’soffices?” It gave him and Geigi time for discussion.

But it wasn’t only them he wanted. He dived down the hall, Banichi and Jago taking full strides to catch up. He’d hoped to catch all the captains. As it was, Jase saw him coming and waited for him in the crossway of the corridor, all the while the outflow of mourners passed them on either hand.

“I didn’t know,” Jase said, first off. “I had no idea until the Old Man told me.”

“I believe that,” Bren said. “I’m meeting with Geigi. Do we get an official presence? It would be useful, Jase-ji. It would be damned useful.”

“I’m notone of the captains. I’m a fill-in. I’ve always been a fill-in, you know that. I don’t know if I can get Ogun—”

“You tell me this. Why did Ramirez tell you the truth? Why were youon his list to inform? And did Ogun and Sabin know?”

“Ogun knew,” Jase said, telling him volumes about relations between the captains.

But the point might finally, accidentally, have hit.

“Jase. Ramirez is dead. He didn’t letyou resign. At the last, he told you because he wanted you where you are. Can’t you figure it?”

“I can’t make a decision for them!”

“You’d better,” he said, and Jase looked desperate. “That’s what you’re finally for, Jase. It wasn’t just a translator Ramirez wanted. You werepaidhi. That wasn’t it. That didn’t satisfy him. He named you a captain, and navigation and administration damned sure weren’t your talents. He knew that. But he wanted someone on the captains’ council who could promote understanding. So will you do it? Will you come? Use your voice, negotiate with Ogun, finally wieldwhat Ramirez handed you? Dammit, Jase, you’re the swing vote when they deadlock. And Sabin backed Tamun. I’m betting they deadlock. Will you come?”

“ Yes,” Jase said, and on half a breath—“ Yes. I’ll come.”

They all met around the conference table, behind three closed doors and under the watchful eye of Geigi’s internal security in the reception area outside. Their own security stood around them, a row against the walls. Jenrette was there with his partner Colby, Jenrette and Colby just having seen their captain to rest. They came now in the service of the most dubious captain to hold the office, but come they did, dutifully and soberly: Ramirez’s men, representing that policy. Polano, Kaplan and Pressman were there, officially displaced by Jenrette and his partner, but still in attendance on Jase—one assumed, at Jase’s orders, maybe because Jase wanted them under his protection after Kaplan’s speech in the assembly. Jase had learned his politics not only on the ship, but in Shejidan, and Jase knew the value of a supporting man’chi, even among humans.

Impressive contingent. From no power, all of a sudden Jase came in with a solid, determined presence.

So did the aiji’s wing—tall, dark, and armed. While Paulson and Kroger arrived with no more than Paulson’s secretary, a nervous man in a suit, who set a recorder on the desk and ducked back. Paulson was evident and touchingly anxious about his record-keeping. Everyone else, depend on it, was wired as well as armed.

Small use that was going to be in a mostly atevi meeting. But there was a keyboard, and Bren took it for himself, being a fast typist and the only one completely fluent. There was a single screen, above a low cabinet.

“You first,” Bren said in Ragi, and tested the keyboard. “Jase-ji, if you don’t mind. You have the answers the rest of us want. I’ll be translating, one language to the other, back and forth.” The alphabets weren’t at all the same, but the keyboard had a fast switch. He waited to see which language Jase would use.

“Nandiin-ji.” Jase looked into infinity for an instant, then locked onto the here and now. It was Ragi. Bren toggled the Mospheiran symbol-set and typed. “I honored Ramirez-aiji. I continue to honor that man’chi. Ogun and Sabin may vote me out at this hour—and, nandiin-ji, let them. But Ramirez is gone, and I have to do now as I see fit. And I’ll give you what I know, respecting the treaty Ramirez made with the aiji in Shejidan.”

I honored Captain Ramirez, Bren typed concurrently in Mosphei’. I continue to honor him. Ogun and Sabin may vote me out of my post at any time, and I will not contest that. But Ramirez being gone, I have now to do as I see fit. I’ll tell you what I know, honoring the treaty Ramirez made with the aiji.

Therewas the Jase he’d known on the mainland. Thank God.

“And the other captains?” Bren asked.

“Ogun-aiji will stay by agreements,” Jase said, “and I vote with Ogun, generally. In that light, I don’t think they will appoint a fourth until Ogun and Sabin can resolve their differences, because I can prevent it, if I vote with one or the other.”

“And these differences, nand’ Jase?” Geigi asked.

Jase considered. Bren tried hard to think, typing between species-separate languages. Hindbrain was completely occupied, and the rest of the brain just listened, hoping for peace in the room and no repercussions outside, down the line.

“Differences in style,” was Jase’s answer. There it was: stone wall. Jase didn’tdiscuss internal ship politics. That was probably wise, Bren thought. And stopped typing to gather a thought, a necessary question of his own.

“What agreements, nandi?” he asked Jase in Ragi. “And what prevented Ramirez-aiji from removing station personnel from Reunion at that time?”

“I don’t know,” Jase said, and said it in ship-speak. Toggle-flip. Mental shift, to another world, another entire logic-set. And likely, at the core of his being, Jase hadn’t wholly noticed he’d switched. He was thinking shipnow, and spoke its language.

Bren knew that kind of transaction, at gut level, he knew.

“Ogun knows that answer if anyone does,” Jase said further. “I don’t.”

“Are those remaining on Reunion… Guild?” Bren asked bluntly.

“It may be,” Jase said faintly.

Pilots’ Guild. Bad word with the Mospheirans. Very bad word. Kroger’s face and Paulson’s said it.

“It’s likeliest that’s who’s in charge,” Jase said. “Some portion of the old Guild, at least. Someone or some group of it. Ogun says he isn’t sure what passed between Ramirez and station leadership. If he does know anything beyond that, I’m not sure Sabin does. Which is reasonable. She came to her post during the voyage.”

“And Tamun didn’t know.”

“Logically, no. Tamun would have used the information in a heartbeat, if he’d known. He’d have torn the crew apart.”

“One believes so,” Bren said in Ragi. It was the strongest argument that Sabin hadn’t known—Tamun having been her protégé. He saw a frown on Geigi’s face—perplexity displayed for Jase as an intimate, the dispassionate atevi mask momentarily dropped… perhaps on that very point. “Let me add, too, in explanation for Lord Geigi,” Bren interjected, “that Gin-ji and nand’ Paulson have a bitter history and an ancestral anger with this Guild, because of past deeds.”

“Be assured I’m not Guild,” Jase said, flatly, in ship language. “As for Guild being on the ship… if it didn’t all transfer to the station at Reunion, if there’s any vestige of it left on the ship, the majority of us aren’t aware of it being here. I think Ramirez intended, by creating Yolanda and me—especially in appointing me where I am—that we break with the past. The whole ship has no illusions what the Guild did. We know the responsibility it bears for the way it dealt with the colonists. Guild leadership dealt badly with crew, for that matter. And for us, for us, in terms of our making our own decisions, the Guild’s become just a name on a remote record. A thing captains might still belong to as a matter of course and never think about or reference when we’re away from the leadership. What the crew wants right now is an answer why we went off and left people who probably didn’t have any choice about being left under Guild authority. In that sense, they don’t like or trust the Guild any more than you do.”

“Second question.” Bren interrupted his typing. “What happened out there at Reunion, Jase-nandi, and was it the Guild’s fault?”

“The official story,” Jase began—that story was in the reports out for years: probably even Paulson and Ginny Kroger knew it inside and out, but Jase laid it on the table, in Ragi, once for all and with recent events factored in. “We’d made some sort of tenuous contact—more a sighting—aboard Phoenix, in a certain solar system, and we left and reported it immediately to the station. We did set instruments to listen and watch in that direction, but no attempt to contact these strangers. They turned up again, or what we thought might be them, at another solar system. We watched about thirty-six hours. We left. We looked at another near star, found nothing. When we went home to Reunion to report, we found it destroyed. Or what we thought was destroyed. We were there just long enough to take on a fast fuel load. Thatwas still there, untouched. What we now know, of course—that wasn’t all that was left there, and they’d maintained that fueling port and safeguarded the fuel, but crew thought then it was just simply blind luck the refueling port still worked. We thought we were just very lucky to get out of there and travel on toward this system as our refuge. We don’t know why the attack happened. If Reunion did anything to provoke it, we don’t know. The station couldn’t have reached outside its area except by communications. It didn’t have any vessel but mining craft available to it. We don’t know what happened during the attack, and it turns out it wasn’t the devastating blow the crew looking at the station exterior assumed it was. If someone survived inside and intended to stay, clearly they survived with enough resources to assure we could fuel, and they had enough food production to assure they could survive at least two years for us to come here and report back to them. It’s been far more than two years, and we didn’t show up, and Captain Ramirez didn’t tell us there was any time agreed on for us to come back. So maybe there wasn’t an agreed time, and they won’t be surprised we’ve delayed here.”

“Two years,” Bren said.

“Travel time,” Jase said. “Round trip.”

Bren typed, in Ragi.

“One sees a difficult situation,” Geigi said. “And a dearth of answers. Jase-ji.”

“Nandi.”

“What of dangers to this station?” Geigi asked. “Is it only against eventualities that Ramirez-aiji wished the ship refueled, or does he foresee these aliens coming here?”

“I don’t know,” Jase said. “I truly don’t know, nandi. I don’tsee that our interests have diverged that far. The crew does feel obliged to you and to this place. This has become—it’s become our port. And that’s a matter of man’chi. But at the same time, there are so many unanswered questions, questions they should have known. If Ramirez-aiji left instructions beyond what he told me, those records aren’t within my authority to access. Ogunsucceeds to Senior Captain. Heknows, if anyone does. And he hasn’t told me. But the gist of it is this—Captain Ramirez did want to go back. He didn’twant to leave those people behind in the first place, but he didn’t know what he’d find here. And when he got here, of course he didn’t have the resources behind him that we have now. That’schanged. Ask the whole planet to trust him, ask you to work so hard fueling the ship—to send it back to the other station in return for some unprovable promise given here—I think he saw from the start that that wasn’t going to work. You had to have something of advantage in the exchange. And we had to have something for ourselves.”

Among the human faces at the end of the conference room, Jenrette, and Colby, who had been with Ramirez for decades, who might have been with him that long. There was wisdom in shifting the oldest staff to the newest captain on the council. There was, in Jase’s whole bearing at the moment, the burden of knowledge Jase might not have had an hour ago.

“The Guild, when it was in power here, wanted to establish this station to support the ship,” Jase said. “And when the station rebelled, it wanted to set up elsewhere, at Maudette. When the rebellion became louder and more widespread among the colonists, the Guild wanted to go farther out, to a place they’d spotted only by instrument. That didn’t work out. But there was a second choice. And there they stopped to mine and build, nandi. They called their station Reunion. Reunionof all humankind was what they meant. Reunionunder one rule.”

“Well, that’snot going to happen,” Paulson said, the first word from either of the Mospheirans in what was a deeply troubling—but not damned secret—admission. Mospheirans knew. Mospheirans had broken with the ship over that one point.

“As I said—we don’t support it, either, sir,” Jase said. “The Guild meant to build and multiply until they’d far outgrown anything that might happen here—and I suppose at the start they hoped to come back and simply absorb all the building and resource that might have developed at this planet, and have their way. They always wanted to have numerous stations, numerous colonies.”

“And they would wish to take the mainland for humans without struggle,” Geigi observed.

“They’re not interested in planets, as such, nandi. They don’t regard planets as important to them. They’ve long dismissed any attachment to any world except as a convenient way to aim and anchor their ship. The resources of a planet, if they can be gotten into space, they’re quite keen to have—but only on their terms. Always on their terms.”

“They believed they could get all they want elsewhere,” Paulson said, “if they had population enough to risk in the mining. But we threatened their authority, and rather than see our ideas create a general disaffection, they left.”

“And for this we build a ship?” Geigi asked, when that came into translation.

Jase looked as if he had something caught in his throat. “Ramirez-aiji wanted that ship built. And one also believes, nandi, that the aiji in Shejidan has been aware of the situation at Reunion and that he has other plans for that ship, himself. The aiji in Shejidan— andthe President of Mospheira.”

Geigi sat back, confounded, Bren was sure, both by the information, and that Jase laid it on the table.

Tabini knew. Tabini knew.

“And what,” Bren asked quite calmly, remarkably calmly, “what do the other captains think?”

“Ramirez knew that the aiji had plans. I think Ogun and Sabin do… but I don’t think they care that he takes the first other ship, nandiin-ji. I’ve said I don’t think they take Guild orders any longer, but I couldn’t absolutely swear to that.”

“And you don’tswear to it.”

“I said I don’t take Guild orders, nor ever will. I wasn’t bornto take Guild orders.”

“Ship-aiji,” Geigi said. Only aijiin had no upward man’-chi—no attachment above themselves: among atevi, it was a biological imperative—only a very, very few had all association in the world flowing toward them.

Fewer still feltno upward loyalty. Even Geigi would not claim as much for himself, or not claim it in anyone’s hearing—independent as he was, and capable of going into space and operating more or less independent of the whole Western Association andTabini’s authority.

While Jase, their modest, quiet Jase, claimed to have no authority above him. Still, he was human, and that maverick separation didn’t mean the ability to use authority.

“Understand,” Bren interposed, “nandi, his lack of man’chi is not innate.” It was a debate even among atevi as to whether aijiin were born or taught. “But I think you understand that he’s taken a strong position, bringing Mr. Jenrette here, and demonstrating Mr. Kaplan, who spoke bluntly to Ogun in assembly, to be within his man’chi. This is notrequired. But he’s made that clear.”

“What was the full gist of Kaplan’s speech?” Geigi asked. “A challenge?”

“A challenge to the silence, nandi,” Jase said. “To the secrecy. And a declaration that Ramirez’s policies go on and that they won’t change them.”

“And the aiji, and the Presidenta, Jase?” Bren asked in Ragi. That admission was what still rang through his nerves, and what he was sure was percolating through Mospheiran suppositions in very alarming fashion—if not through Geigi’s atevi soul as well. “ Whatdid they agree?”

“That the world will have the next starship,” Jase said with deliberate obliqueness, “and the ship would get the fuel. Not quite the exact agreement they’d published. Not the reassurances they’d offered that there was no way the aliens could get information out of Reunion’s wreckage.

“All those years,” Ginny said. “All those years we’ve been led along with one story. And now what? What are we supposed to do about this situation?”

“Jase,” Bren said. “What arewe supposed to do?”

Leave the situation as it stood, just betray the people at that remote station, never come back—and coincidentally leave the Pilots’ Guild sitting out there on the touchiest frontier imaginable, free to call the shots with an alien enemy, free to create situations that others here at this station had to deal with by their blood and their sweat.

Or find it unexpectedly on their doorstep. There was that possibility, that could no longer be dismissed with assurances.

That station out there had records of the ship’s origin at this star. And given a decade or so, an enemy might extract all sorts of information.

There were certain understandings that never had gotten clarified—not as chance would have it, but as discretion would have it… little details the atevi establishment never had gotten around to discussing with their Mospheiran associates. But this one—Tabini knew?

Tabini knew, and the captains up here knew, and he hadn’t heard of any agreement?

He had a lot of trouble—personally—dealing with that one.

“There will be pressure from the crew to go back,” Jase said. “And Ramirez assuredly intended to. But I think he meant to take control of Reunion. That the aiji in Shejidan and the Presidenta ally with him, if they have ships—and if there was fuel.”

He’d forgotten to type. He felt as if the proverbial ton of bricks had landed.

“What’s he saying?” Paulson asked. Folly, perhaps, to have held this multi-language meeting. At the worst moments, the translator, personally involved, lost all his threads.

Not a single tit-for-tat, secrecy and refueling in exchange for a ship. It was a whole structured, years-old alliance. With an agenda that stretched from here to forever.

“He’s saying Tabini and the President, and I assume the State Department, agreed to refuel Phoenixin exchange for title to the second, and I assume third, starship as they’re built. I assumethis is an alliance.” He’d never felt what he felt at the moment, this charge of adrenaline that had his hands shaking. Anger, it might be. Humiliation, along with it. And where was his right to be so shocked? He should have known. Friend, agent, translator, diplomat, in whatever capacity, Jase or Tabini or even Shawn shouldhave damned well told him, but he had the wit to have dug it out, if he’d been alert enough. “I assumethis all happened without me.”

“And without me,” Jase said, exploding the single most natural theory in a word, denying he’d been the intermediary.

“Might you translate, paidhiin-ji?” Geigi requested reasonably.

“ Yes, nandi. We’re speaking of an extensive agreement between Tabini-aiji, Ramirez-aiji, and the Presidenta, an agreement that both Jase and I deny making, but which Jase says indeed existed.”

“Yolanda,” Jase said, as if it just occurred to him who had, if neither of them had.

Yolanda.

Damn!

“We seem to have agreements in place.” Bren typed Mosphei’, furiously, while he spoke Ragi. “Yolanda Mercheson is the most likely intermediary who could have done this without our knowledge. We have reasonable suspicion now that the Guild is out at Reunion doing as it pleases, and Ramirez-aiji, commanding the only ship, the only mobile human agency, decided to come here and gain a solid base before challenging Guild authority. As it now seems Tabini-aiji, Ramirez-aiji, and Tyers’ office all concurred in this fuel agreement, and in an alliance the terms of which we still do not fully understand. Now we have the robots we’d been wanting, Ramirez is dead, and the ship’s been fueled. Jase doesn’t know how these elements intersect, but they do clearly intersect, and he and I are both taken by surprise by these events. Understand—I’m speaking without consultation. I haven’t been able to get through to Tabini. But above all, in this situation, Mospheirans and atevi need to assert our share of control. We’re not going to be dictated to, pardon me, Jase, by the Captains’ Council. We want—”

An equal say? That wasn’t the half of it. The whole vista , spread out in his mind of a sudden, one of those dizzying down-mill perspectives, safe spot to safe spot down a hillside while gravity tried to kill them all.

“We want,” he said, “more than one more patched-up promise atop promises that didn’t work the last time. Ramirez knew what he knew and he wanted certain things: he wanted the agreement. He wanted the station refitted. He wanted the ship refitted. And he created someone to contact the planet.” Also the truth. “So the Guild doesn’t have any desire for planets. Fine. We do. We care about our lives, the lives of the people we represent here, and the aiji in Shejidan. We represent the atevi, who exist only here in the whole universe—while, pardon me, humans have a homeworld somewhere none of us exactly remembers. The atevi don’t give a damn what Ramirez cared about and didn’t care about. They came up here to take care of their own business, as Mospheirans did, because Mospheiranshave also gotten fairly attached to the planet they live on. I’m speaking for the aiji, now, officially, and this is what I say.

“Number one, and not negotiable: this is the aiji’splanet—which he’s chosen to share with humans on a lasting basis. So the ship can talk all it likes about theiroptions, theirchoices and theirproblem, but they’re doing it on the aiji’s tolerance and inside the aiji’s consent, and endangering the aiji’s interests in this quarrel they’ve picked out there far remote from us.”

“A year or so remote,” Jase muttered, and Bren inserted that in the record without a flutter.

“The problem doesn’t go away,” Jase said. “You can’t wish it away. You have to deal with it. We have to deal with it. Ramirez lied to us, but it turns out he didn’tlie to the leaders of the planet. So it wasn’t that he didn’t care about the planet’s future. But the ship is fueled, and we’re supposed to go bring Reunion under our collective authority—”

“And disrupt our lives, our futures,” Paulson said.

Bren stopped typing. Lost the thread. Found his argument, Mospheiran to Mospheiran. “Is it only our lives? It may not be our trouble now, but when their trouble spills onto our doorstep, won’t the people you represent be very much in favor of having a say—and the power to speak for their own futures? I’m not that surprised to be left in the dark: the aiji has that power, and he’s used it. But it’s much harder to maintain secrecy on the island, Mr. Paulson, as you know—still the President managed it. Hard to keep a secret on a ship, I’ll imagine, too. And Ramirez did. We were all hit. But you know what? In the last ten years, we very different people have developed the same interests, and we’ve come to work together, and thanks to that secrecy and not knowing any better, we’ve spent ten years together building resources we now have to use.”

Paulson, by his expression, wished he were rather on the North Shore, fishing, at the moment. Paulson was essentially a labor administrator, a financial officer with a background in town planning, who honestly imagined if he did go to the North Shore and went fishing someone else would solve the alien problem. It was Ginny Kroger, the non-official, that he was talking to and hoping for.

And Ginny, rock-solid Ginny, God save her, simply nodded, thin-lipped and resolute—probably thinking of the politics of getting a phone call through channels to the President, past Paulson’s legitimate right to do it first and officially.

Trust Mospheira to have trammeled up their lines of action. Nevertrust putting anyone in office who’d act rapidly, and never approve anyone who’d ever let responsibility for a mistake sit an hour on his doorstep. That was the wisdom of the Mospheiran senate, as long as there’d been a senate. They wanted a stainless manager who wouldn’t do anything startling or sudden. They put in Paulson.

Ginny’s job, in Science, wasn’t a senate-approved post, which was how shesurvived. Why she’d come…

He suddenly had a bone-chilling surmise that Ginny was Shawn Tyers’catspaw, Ginny andher robots—not briefed on all of it, likely, but not as deeply shocked as he was.

“We will inform the aiji,” Geigi concurred. That was, give or take a phone system that worked, a one-step process, and an atevi lord who didn’ttake quick responsibility for a situation would find Tabini calling him.

And what would either of them say? We now understand, aiji-ma?

No. He didn’t. He didn’t understand at all.

Chapter 9

“Has any message come?” Bren asked of Narani, safely in the foyer of their own residence. Banichi and Jago ordinarily found business of their own to attend on a homecoming, usually in the security station, but not at the moment. After the funeral, after the unprecedented meeting they’d just attended, they lingered. Tano and Algini, who’d heard both the meeting and the funeral, had come out into the foyer.

“One regrets, no,” Narani said to him.

Nothing from the aiji.

Well, but it reasonably took a certain amount of time for Tabini to ponder the situation, and Tabini was likely still in the information-absorbing stage and hadn’t an answer for him yet. Tabini would have gotten his message by now—he didn’t doubt Eidi would use his considerable resourcefulness, and very unorthodox channels, if he had to, right down to the several guards that stood between Tabini and a bullet, guards who were linked to Tabini’s staff by electronics as constantly as Banichi and Jago were in contact with their own local system. And if everything else on the planet went wrong, it was reasonable to think Eidi might call him back on his own initiative.

“Banichi-ji. Both of you. Tano. Algini.”

“Bren-ji.”

The five of them went into the security station, and Bren found the accustomed seat by the door while Banichi and Jago disposed themselves next to Tano and Algini. In the background the boards carried on quiet blips and flickers, which his staff understood. He never pretended to know, and he assumed if any of them did involve the answers he wanted, they would tell him.

“It was a satisfactory meeting,” Bren said first, for Tano and Algini, in case they entertained any remaining doubts. “It was an extraordinary meeting. But it left us needing answers we can’t get, except from the aiji.”

“Is there any threat you perceive, Bren-ji?” Almost without precedent that Jago had to ask him that. But they were in a thicket of human motives and deceptions, and on the station, hewas the best map they had.

“What likelihood, for instance,” Banichi asked, “that the ship-aijiin will take action against Jase-paidhi, or Kaplan? One hardly understood everything he said in the ceremony, and less of what others may have thought, but words, indeed, came through.”

“Kaplan has qualities,” Bren said. “I’m frankly surprised he was the one to stand up and speak.”

“Might he have spoken for Jase?”

There was a thought. “I doubt Jase would have asked him to do it—risking Kaplan’s personal reputation, if nothing else, though I can understand Kaplan taking the order if Jase asked. I can’t explain what they feel; I’m not sure I understand it myself, but ship crew and ship officers are a family association, far closer to atevi in that regard than they are to Mospheirans: I just can’t envision what you might call a filing of Intent inside the crew. Tamun—” He saw the question in their eyes. “Tamun was a rogue. He drew people apartfrom the crew. He struck at authority. And some went with him. Some weren’t certain of the authority, whether it had integrity, or whether it protected their interests—and by all we’ve learned there may have been reason for crew to have that perception. There is a division of interests between command and crew—they’re full blown sub-associations, so to speak, and that’s how the schism could develop at all. Kaplan spoke very eloquently about that schism today. He spoke as common crew. He spoke as common crew who felt the aijiin hadn’t seen to their interests and hadn’t trusted them as they might have expected their own aijiin to trust them.”

“True, is it not?” Jago asked.

“Quite true. And Tamun reasoning did exist in the crew, and dissent and anger may still exist in a few places. That’s why the aijiin didn’t want to tell the crew the truth—as they reasonably ought to have done. Kaplan, not Tamun, is the man who stands in the breach now. Jase ought to have accepted Jenrette and Colby as his aides and let Kaplan and Polano go on to whatever fourth captain the council appoints… that’s the way they traditionally do things. Instead, Jase took Jenrette and Colby and not only didn’t dismiss Kaplan and Polano from his man’chi, he took on Pressman, who’s actually a mechanic, not a security man at all. But a friend of Kaplan’s and Polano’s. This is a major disturbance of the way the captains have done things in the past. I chided Jase for not taking up the authority Ramirez-aiji gave him, but I may have been unjust in that assumption. Jase seems to have made preemptive moves of his own—whether Kaplan forced the issue, and spoke without Jase’s foreknowledge, or whether Jase had a hand in it. I rather think the former. And Kaplan spoke passionately and as if it were his own argument. I think Kaplan represents a faction among the crew that’s very upset, and Ogun-aiji was smart enough to see he had to answer it right then or see the schism between captains and crew open up again. Personally, I’m glad Kaplan spoke up. I think Ogun is glad he did—maybe even glad the issue blew up then, into the open. Because they aren’t atevi, I doubt that the matter goes into a third layer of complicity, with Ogun setting Jase up to set Kaplan to what he did, but it at least turned out to be in everyone’s interest for Kaplan to speak.”

“Still,” Tano said, “Jase-ji has taken Kaplan andhis associates, even Pressman.”

“More true, I suppose,” Bren said, “that he didn’t reject Jenrette and Colby and wouldn’t cast off Kaplan and his associates. One might ask him, I suppose, but here we have the least senior captain with a security staff outnumbering the rest. An arms race among the captains, one supposes. It’s a delicate moment. And possibly Jase took Kaplan under official protection not to save him from Ogun or Sabin, but to keep him out of crewpolitics. Now I think of it, that’s the most likely answer. Jase just wants him able to say, I can’t talk. I can’t answer that.”

“Very strange, these humans,” Banichi said.

“Mospheira, on the other hand, working with Tabini—did anyof you know?”

“We did not, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “I assure you of that.”

“Do you know anything? Do you guessanything?”

“About humans?” Banichi said. “No. That Tabini-aiji might conclude a secret agreement… it would by no means be the first.”

It would certainly not be the first. And much as the aiji prized initiative on the part of his officers, he would not welcome being found out by one of those officers. Most particularly he would not welcome the whole thing blowing wide in the view of outsiders.

“I don’t see what more we could do,” Bren said. His security staff was no happier in being in the dark than he was. “I don’t see that we were invited to know this, and I have the uneasy feeling that if we walk about too much in the dark we may do damage. But we still have no contact with Tabini. And news has to be all over Mospheira by now. Leaks are bound to start on the mainland. Something’shappening down there—that’s what worries me. But I don’t know that we ought to try too much harder to make contact. Things seem to have stabilized here, pending a decision on the part of the captains, and I fear that decision is going to take the ship, the pilots, and Jase and all his resources out of our reach.”

“Back to this other station,” Jago said.

He hadn’t entirely assembled that scenario. But when he did, it either left Jase with them, on this station, and the ship going off to deal with a situation that had flummoxed it before; or, nearly as bad, Jase going out there with the ship and trying to deal with a Guild intransigent and without that sense of loyalty that held the crew together.

In historical times, people had opposed the Guild and met with accidents. A few had been shot, and declared mutineers.

He didn’t like either decision.

“If they take the pilots with them,” Banichi said, “who will keep this agreement and train ours?”

“Good question, in itself, nadi-ji.” He’d fought indigestion for hours. He had a recurring bout. “I don’t like what I see. But I don’t know what I can do about it, except advise Tabini as I’m supposed to do, and advise Jase as much as I can, and right now I’d say sit for a year and let’s think what to do about this. We’ve beenhere for years. It’s not as if it’s suddenly an emergency decision.”

“Ramirez has made it so,” Jago said. “Ramirez has pushed this thing by refueling the ship.”

“We can do very little more to contact the aiji,” Banichi said, “except to use our last resources—which I will do, if you truly wish to gain the aiji’s attention. This is your decision, nandi. Shall we?”

“Contact through the Assassins’ Guild?”

No one spoke, but since they didn’t deny it, he understood.

“I think we have to move very quickly,” Bren said, “and not for atevi reasons. For crew reasons. Most of all for Mospheiran reasons. Ramirez lied. He lied with reason, he lied judiciously, he went through topmost authorities, as atevi understand. Mospheirans accept being lied to in little things, but this isn’t a little thing. They could take the Pilots’ Guild being in charge on the ship. They almost suspect that’s the case. But finding out the ship isn’tunder Guild authority, but that Guild authority survived on Reunion—the most universally detested authority that ever existed, as far as Mospheirans are concerned—that means Ramirez wasn’t really making the decisions, or never really was in charge, as they see it.”

“Is it true, Bren-ji?” Jago asked.

“Certainly his authority was questionable in direct confrontation with the Guild. And that puts Mospheiran authority into a game far bigger than they bet on. Now we learn the Guild gave Ramirez-aiji orders to come here, maybe to create a base, maybe to prepare a defense—or maybe to gather force to come back and fight some general war against some alien enemy we never wanted to offend in the first place. Who knows now? If Ramirez lied in one thing, in their minds, he could lie in another. Maybe Ramirez-aiji didn’t follow all his orders, and didn’t intend to. Unless Ramirez wrote his orders in the ship’s records, or passed them to Ogun, it’s possible no one under this sun knows what the Pilots’ Guild wanted Ramirez to do. Jase doesn’t know. Ogun hasn’t appeared to know. And if Ogun and Sabin don’t know—this whole crew doesn’t even know that basic a thing—whether they’ve been following Guild orders all along—or actively rebelling against them. They don’t know the most basic facts of their situation—and it’s not sure to this hour that even Ogun or Sabin has possession of the truth to give them. I say that on one fact alone: Sabin backed Tamun into a captaincy, and if she’d known what Ramirez knew and toldTamun the truth, Tamun could have used it. Tamun didn’t, even when he was losing. So he didn’t know. He grabbed Ramirez. But Ramirez didn’t talk. So either Sabin didn’t know, or she didn’t talk. If she knew and didn’t talk, she didn’t back Tamun in the mutiny. If she didn’t know—she didn’t have the chance to back him, and backed out and let him take the fall. In that case we can’t really trust Sabin, and we don’t know as much about Ogun as we wish we knew. So that’s an ongoing question, one we’re not likely to find the facts of until we’re far deeper into this mess than we’d like to be.

“Second point: the longer we sit waiting for an official decision, the more the conspiracy theorists are going to have a run at this, on the island and on the mainland, and even up here among the crew, who ordinarily aren’t disposed to speculate. If you can use your contacts to get a message through, Banichi-ji, I think this is the time to do it.”

Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance. It was widespread—suddenly the most abundant commodity in the universe.

“One will manage,” Banichi said. “Will you compose a message, nandi?”

As if he could come up with a clear, coherent explanation to give Tabini, regarding all the human motives and actions around him, when the last hour hadn’t done it.

But he had to try.

Aiji-ma,

Information has come to light at Ramirez’ death regarding the survival of personnel at the distant station, and agreements the gist of which we now possess. We request your immediate personal assistance. The Mospheiran leaders on the station agree to stand together with myself and lord Geigi. We regard Jase-paidhi as our spokesman and channel of information among the ship-aijiin and have confidence in him.

Regarding these agreements, we are at a critical point of decision and request your personal communication immediately, aiji-ma. I cannot sufficiently stress the urgency of this request.

Your silence has made me question the integrity of the channels through which my messages travel. Please relieve my concern, aiji-ma.

He notified Tano and Algini. They achieved a link through C1 to the big dish down at Mogari-nai.

He sent.

And while he still had a link with that dish, he made a scrambled phone call to his own absentee household within the Bu-javid’s walls.

There he reached an excellent and refined gentleman, Narani’s second cousin, a man who moved very slowly, but who found shepherding a skilled servant staff in a long-vacant, perpetually waiting estate his ideal retirement job.

“Nadi-ji,” he said to this elderly gentleman, “have you noted any unusual circumstances lately in the aiji’s household?”

“No, nandi.” The old man was slow, but he had instincts honed in a very dangerous school. Immediately his tone was all business. “ Shall we take precautions?”

“Rather a small piece of needful intrigue, nadi-ji. Have you been out of the apartment recently?”

“ Not I, nandi, but numerous of the juniors.”

“I wish you personally to carry a message to the aiji’s apartment. Insist to speak to the aiji himself, or to the aiji-consort, or to the chief of security, or to Eidi, in that order, in my name, have you got all that?”

“ Yes, paidhi-ma.”

“Say directly to any of those individuals that I have not received any communications from official channels, nor has lord Geigi. Tell Tabini that I have sent repeatedly and beg him call me immediately to consult on business that absolutely cannot wait. If I don’t hear some response I must send a courier down on the next shuttle, and I’d rather use all my resources here and not expose my staff to hazard—do you have all that, nadi-ji?”

“ Yes, nand’ paidhi.” The good gentleman had never failed him in lesser responsibilities, and was no fool. “ I will go this very instant.”

“I’ll wait on the line.” He had no wish for another of his messages to fall away into silence. And he added, “Be cautious. If your mission can’t be accomplished in safety, come back instead and report the hazard to me immediately. I’ll keep this link open, meanwhile. Put on one of the staff to talk to me.”

“ Yes, nandi!”

Another pebble cast into a pond that thus far showed no ripples. He sat, chatted nicely with a middle-aged servant whose knowledge of the estate was limited to the premises. This involved an inventory of linens and an incursion of worms in the kitchen—dubious flour—while the future of the planet followed an old man’s lengthy trek down the hall, into the lift, down another hall to the aiji’s residence.

“Have you heard any rumors, Dala-ji?” Bren asked the servant. “Any interesting gossip at all?”

Unfortunate question. It involved a bitter, complex intrigue involving the servant staff of lord Tatiseigi and the servant staff of a southern lord, an illicit romance and a threat of invoking the Guild.

It wasn’t what he wanted. But the dramatic recital filled the time, step by step through a disastrous and in fact stupid encounter—an affair between rival staffs had to be potent to convince otherwise rational people to create an absolute imbroglio of rival and irresolvable interests.

“So have they resolved the matter?” he asked.

“ I think they’ll attempt to leave their employ, nand’ paidhi,” Dala said. “ Because their man’chi is confused. But where will they go? Where will these lords that don’t agree allow them to go, since they do know details of the households. Neither will let the other have his servant. Neither will let an ally of the other have his servant. And I don’t think anyone else will wish to employ them with these two lords at odds and not trusting them.”

It wasa royal mess, that was sure, a tragedy for the couple, a disaster for the two lords, who didn’t want to be villains, but who couldn’t have privileged information spread to houses outside the bounds of man’chi: and he was one of a handful on speaking terms with both… one of those cases of a matter chasing up the stream of man’chi until it finally hit someone of ability to absorb it.

Did he want two lust-driven fools on hisstaff?

But at that moment, for good or ill of the fate of the two fools in question, the old man came back, a little out of breath.

“ Paidhi-ma, nandi—” A gasp for breath. “ I delivered my message myself to the aiji’s major domo, who answered that there is no answer at present.”

To Eidi, that was. And Eidi replied that there simply was no answer for him.

Had Eidi delivered the content as he saw it, but not the specific wording?

Had he somehow failed to make himself understood?

He could hardly shout from space, Your conspiracy with the President of Mospheira has come to light, aiji-ma, and the ship-council is in crisis.

Or, Aiji-ma, how am I to do my job when you go past me and keep secrets with unskilled persons?

Am I in disfavor?

It by no means seemed the case when the aiji and the aiji-dowager separately invited him for intimate dinners during his sojourn on the planet.

Nothing made sense to him. Nothing at all.

He signed off with the good gentleman, remembering to say, “Dala-nadi told me a sad story, nadi-ji. It does occur to me that I include the two houses in good relations. If you can tender my offices in mediation, and find a place for two fools, perhaps on the country estate, it would be a good service to both houses.” Meaning he would gain favor with both. That was his recompense for agreeing to support the two fools and make use of their labor. “Surmising that they aren’t of highest clearance, or Guild.”

“ One knows the circumstances the foolish woman gossiped,” the good gentleman said. “ We might solve it. Forgive Dala for bothering you with the matter, paidhi-ji.”

“I do. And I expect a good outcome. Work to keep you young and sharp, nadi-ji. An excellent job, at all times. Thank you.”

He signed off and sat staring at the crisis-littered desk.

He’d saved two strangers and two allied houses from a difficult situation, if they’d accept it, as likely they would. For them he’d worked a divine intervention.

Less fortunate gods seemed to preside over his communications with Tabini, such that he had to ask himself if he had become inconvenient, if his persistent attempts to warn Tabini were only exacerbating a situation Tabini wanted to keep away from his assembled funeral guests.

When were they going home?

When was Tabini going to get back to routine answers to things like, It seems to me, aiji-ma, that the whole alliance is about to explode, and that aliens are going to come and destroy the lot of us?

He got up and went to the security station.

“I’ve sent. I suppose you followed that.”

“One did, yes,” Tano said.

“I’ve done everything I can think of. I confess I’m in some despair of getting through. I did try the staff in the Bu-javid.”

“We are trying elsewhere,” Tano said, “and the message went down. More, we don’t know.”

“I keep telling myself Tabini isn’t going to be pleased with my constant battering at his doors.”

“That there is nothing,” Algini pointed out, “and no quiet message from the aiji’s staff, considering your repeated attempts, is extremely puzzling. Your security is now worried, Bren-ji.”

He was not reassured to learn that.

If Tabini had directly ordered silence… why?

And at a hellishly bad time. Incredible timing.

Which circumstance in itself, after long dealings with atevi, nagged at the nape of his neck and promised no rest until he knew. Coincidence might operate freely down in the byways of Shejidan, but it only overnighted in the Bu-javid’s well-guarded halls.

And what reasonably could Ramirez’ death and Tabini’s silence have to do with one another?

The Assassins’ Guild—one of theiroperations?

Station security, the entire situation of station security, was a sieve. The world sent up workers by the shuttle-load, vouching for them, giving them papers that were as real and true as the two governments wanted them to be, with care and attention as intense as two governments had time and budget to apply.

But it wasn’t only the two governments that could slip some agent into a work crew. Any one of the dissidents, the factions opposed to Tabini, to Shawn Tyers, diehards opposed to the concept of space presence, old enemies against the atevi-human association—they could.

And could they eliminate some random lunatic in the work force, some individual from whom the Assassins’ Guild would never take a contract, some lunatic Mospheiran of clever bent and demented purpose?

The thought, foolish as it might be, U-turned him from the study back to the security station, where now Banichi had turned up, with Jago—discussing the communications silence, it might well be: did they have another crisis occupying their attention?

“Nadiin,” Bren said from the doorway, “I know it would be possible someone assassinated Ramirez.” Assassination, for some of their enemies, was an art form, and infinitely various and subtle. “But what if Tabinidid it?” He could see it happening if Tabini felt betrayed in his arrangement with Ramirez. And if thathappened, there were two agencies besides Tabini’s own that might carry out the order.

He was talking to one of them.

“An interesting theory,” Banichi said.

“We have had assurances from the Guild as late as this day,” Jago said, breaking that secretive Guild’s rules left and right, “that no Guild member is here without our knowledge.”

Unprecedented straightforwardness. He was glad someonegave him truth enough to work with.

No Guild member outside his staff.

And Geigi’s.

But that didn’tanswer the central question. He was back down the hall toward the study before he sorted that out. For all he knew, the Assassins’ Guild had established a regional office on the station, one his staff knew about. Once he thought of it he could not imagine the all-seeing Assassins’ Guild failing to take that step.

Damn, of coursethat Guild was here. But how long they had been here and what their activity had been—or how closely his own staff had been in touch with such an entity—there was no use retracing his steps to ask that second question, which would only make his staff uncomfortable. There were some degrees of truth he simply could not expect.

He knew, for instance, that Bindanda was Assassins’ Guild, one of uncle Tatiseigi’s men, with him for years. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Geigi’s staff held such small, known, surprises. Such infiltrations kept the great houses informed, and man’chi stable.

But it was downright stupid of him not to foresee. He’d experienced the increase in number of workers and the increase in complexity of worker management so slowly that the increasing possibility of various atevi institutions making their way up here too just never had taken shape in his overloaded human brain.

Of course, of course, of course—his own security never had told him. If he were ever under duress, would they wish him to know everythingthey could do and allthe resources they had?

But damned certain there would never be another Tamun rebellion, no more instances where the station dissolved in chaos and bloodshed.

So the paidhi shut up and asked no more questions, but he didn’t think it likely Ramirez had died of Guild action. That wasn’t the signal he was getting from a staff that wouldsignal him if they thought he did need to know.

It still didn’t answer the question of Tabini’s silence.

Defeat. Just defeat. He wasn’t accustomed to running out of resources. He wasn’t used to being out of ideas.

He sat down at his desk, started to key on his computer.

Quick footsteps sounded in the hall.

“Bren-ji.” Jago signaled him with a hand-motion from the doorway. “Toby-nadi. On the phone.”

His brother. Finally. Thank God. He went to the nearest wall-unit and punched in on the lit button. “Toby?” His heart was beating triple-time. “Hello?” He tried to reorganize his thoughts into Mosphei’, his mind into a different universe, and far more personal problems.

“ I take it by the location I’ve just reached that you’re not coming.”

Oh, Toby was not happy with him. Not at all.

“I can’t come. Toby, how’s mother?”

“ Dicey. Really dicey. I don’t honestly know.”

“Hospital?”

“ Hospital? Intensive care since midweek. Since you were down here, damn it, and didn’t call, or answer your mail.”

It wasn’t cause and effect, his presence on the planet, their mother’s crisis. Intensive care didn’t take maybes, didn’t take mothers assuring their sons were in reach.

And a weak, years-chancy heart did what it did for medical, not karmic, reasons.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Toby.”

“ Sorry?”

“I want to be there. Toby, I wantto be there, and I can’t, the way things are.” Incredibly, one conniving part of his brain said: Ask Toby what’s in the papers; take the temperature of the island; find out what’s public—while another, more sensitive voice, said, For God’s sake, Cameron, this is your mother, your brother. Forget the damn intelligence report and ask your brother the right questions. “It’s one of those bad moments, Toby. I can’t explain. You have every right to punch me out when I get down there. I know that. Take me on credit right now. I have to ask it of you.”

“ Bren, Bren, it’s not me. I’m not the issue. Have you possibly got that picture? Mother’s really bad. Really bad. She’s asking for you and I’m sorry, right nowI won’t do. She wants you here, andI can’t deliver.”

Toby didn’t say, You’re her favorite son, but that accusation was in there, right along with, I’ve given her all I can give, and I haven’t got any more.

“What she says, Toby, is all well and good, but when I was there, youwere the perfect son and Iwas the vagrant.”

“ That’s not the point, Bren! She needs you, she needssomebody and she won’t be content with me!”

“If you were the one out of reach, she’d be asking for you. That is the issue. It’s always been the issue, and when you’ve had any sleep at all you’ll know that fact of the universe. I know what you’re going through—”

“ I don’t care what the issue is, Bren. I don’t care about those games and I don’t care about mainland politics. It doesn’t change. It’s always something, and I’m not playing. The plain fact is, she’s really sick, and she’s not faking it. She’s not faking, this time. You think I’d call you with a lie?”

Toby was losing his self-control. And in that realization the negotiator who dealt between Tabini and the ship-humans sucked in a breath and made himself hard and cold as ice. “That may be. It may be true. But you listen to me, Toby. You say you’re not playing. I’m convinced. I believe she’s not. But you listen to me. She has a way of getting all you can give. When she’s well, she wants her way. When she’s sick she shuts down to just one priority, and that’s getting everyone she wants as close as she can get us. No, I’m nother favorite son when I’m there. Then you’re the best and I’mthe son that ought to quit my job, get a haircut, and settle down in reach—and you know that’s the truth. Toby, brother, you know it’s never going to be perfect and you can’t ever make her happy. If you need that to satisfy you, you’re in for a big hurt. She’s just the way she is, and we do what we can, but there’s a limit.”

“ Bren, I’ve given her my wife and my family. What more is there?”

Bad news. Repeated bad news. “Where’s Jill?”

“ I don’t know.” Toby’s voice conveyed utter misery. “ At a certain point I don’t give a damn. Some hotel somewhere. With friends. I don’t know.”

“Damn. Go find her.” He didn’t belong in Toby’s private life, but he’d had a front row seat for this disaster for the last ten years. And this time he said it. “Mother doesn’t have a right. She doesn’t have a damned right to your life. Let Barb take care of Mother. You get out of there. Go find Jill.”

“ If Jill wants to go off in a fit, that’s her choice.”

“Jill’s had plenty of provocation, brother.”

“ You’re talking about things you don’t know about, Bren.”

“And I’m telling you—you and Jill haven’t put in all this time to lose it now. Fix it!”

A small, wounded silence. “ Whose the hell side are you on?”

“Yours. Your life. Your life, damn it, which you had going right, and Mother gets sick and there you are.” God, it was autobiographical. “I want you to get out of there and go find Jill.”

“ And I’m telling you I don’t give a damn!”

“You listen to me. The kids probably know where Jill is. You know Mother—just make her mad: she’ll go miles just on the adrenaline. It’s good for her, just like medicine.”

“ It’s not funny, Bren. This time it’s not funny.”

“I’m not in the least joking. Go find Jill. I don’t care where she’s gone or how well she’s hidden or how hurt your feelings are. Just walk out of there, go find her—”

“ There’s just too much gone on.”

“There are too damn many broken promises, Toby. There’s too much someday and not enough right now. I don’t care if you get mad at me. You need to get mad at somebody besides Jill. Get mad at Mother. Get the hell out of there and live your own life. You want the truth, Toby? The absolute truth? I didn’t call when I was on the mainland because I’veresigned from the emergency squad. I’m not willing to have my emotions yanked left and right by my family, not by Mother… and not by you. I wouldn’t believe in a cosmic connection, but it seems to me that this particular crisis happened right after I’d made a public appearance and just when Mother had to have found out I’d been there…”

“ Bren, this isn’t something she manufactured. It’s not a trick. The doctors—”

“It may not be fake, but it’s still something she does to herself. Now she’s got you waiting at her doorstep and she’s got me upset and pretty soon she’ll get well, if she hasn’t done it to herself for good and all this time.”

“ Damn it, Bren, this is critical.”

“Oh, I believe you. And you said it: if you divorced Jill and moved in with Mother, you know she’d only have half of what she wants—and so help me, Toby, she’s not going to get what she wants from me, and I don’t want you there, either. She’s got Barb, hasn’t she? They’ve got each other. Tell Barb. Tell Barb I’mcalling in a favor. Then go call Jill, call her? I don’t care what you have to go through to get to her or how much you have to take. Jill understands this situation better than you think she does… believe me, she understands. She’s had this all figured out for the last ten years, long before we did. Now you’relearning Mother’s tricks, aren’t you? Youwant me there. And I can’t give you what you want. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

Another silence, one of those absolutely unarguable, unreachable countermoves.

He let it sit there, well knowing Toby wouldn’t breach the silence first, but waiting, letting Toby get past the family temper.

Then Toby pulled the only trump card, and simply hung up on him.

Damn, he thought. He was sure he was right, so far as facts went—but not sure he’d handled it at all well, least of all sure that he’d been right to take that last shot.

Damn.

Well, there was nothing he could do and the agenda stayed, his, their mother’s, and Toby’s, and only the last was still mutable. In the best of situations Toby would let the advice percolate through his hindbrain and get up and make a few phone calls.

Maybe heought to call Barb. She’d written him a note. Opened the door. Maybe he ought to patch up an old friendship land ask his own favors.

He looked to the door of the study, and saw a row of solemn dark atevi faces.

“My mother is ill,” he said. “My brother has left his wife to go to her—or his wife has left him.” They knew. Little as they understood human customs from the gut level, they knew this was not the desired situation. “I urged him see to his wife. I have some hope that Barb-nadi will be attending my mother. Tano-ji, will you make calls and attempt to locate Barb? She may be at the hospital in my mother’s neighborhood.”

“Yes,” Tano said.

“I’ll compose a brief letter. Send it when you have her whereabouts.”

“Yes, paidhi-ji.”

Oh, so slightly formal.

Jago had offered to file Intent on Barb. But Barb had her virtues. A devotion to his mother was one. He tried not to figure it out. It led places he didn’t want to imagine.

But the staff left him in peace, having a mission to accomplish.

He composed his letter at the computer, brief as it was:

Barb, I think you surely know Mum’s in hospital. I think you know too that Toby’s been with her but he’s had a crisis. Whatever’s between us, personally, I know you’ve been incredibly good to my mother, and Mum needs someone right now. I’m asking, without strings, on your friendship with her, and thank you for sending word

— Bren

He sent it over to Tano, and tried to remember where he had been in business that involved millions of lives.

But that was an equally precarious wait-see. Fate wasn’t going to give him a quick resolution. Things weren’t up to him to decide. Maybe this time he’d lose his mother. It had been close, from time to time. He’d tried to distance himself from situations he couldn’t help, but the grief was still there. He could still remember the woman who’d taken him and Toby on vacations and who’d backed him, however humorlessly, driving her sons in her chosen directions—he forgave that. When he most doubted himself, she’d say—You can do it, Bren. Don’t be lazy. Just keep going.

Good advice, mum. Really good advice. Just keep going.

It saved a lot of thinking. Autopilot. Too stupid to kill. Too ignorant to see a defeat staring you in the face.

Sometimes you just ended up beyond the crisis-point not knowing how you’d lived.

Narani had said something about breakfast. Bren found his mind at one moment far, far distant, with a space station that ought to have died and hadn’t—and local at the next moment, with a captain who shouldn’t have died, and had; and then planetbound, with his staff’s warning about Assassins’ Guild activity on the station, and Eidi, who he believed had faithfully carried his messages.

And not to forget that incongruous ceremony for Valasi, a funeral years late for a father Tabini had probably had a hand in assassinating.

And the chance that Ginny Kroger was working for Shawn Tyers, who’d landed in the Presidency after years of spy-chasing in the Foreign Office.

No. It was a chase around far too many bushes. Ramirez had been in lousy health since the Tamun mutiny, had been downright frail for months. It took no outside agency to explain why a man with one foot in the grave—so to speak—tipped right over at a bad moment.

He hadn’t had that much sleep.

“Nandi,” Algini said from the doorway. “Jase-paidhi.”

God, he thought. What else?

He’d slept in his clothes, doubtless to his staff’s distress. He got up and took the call.

“ Bren,” Jase said.

“I’m here.” He already knew it wasn’t good news. Jase sounded exhausted. Far from exuberant.

“ The council has voted,” Jase said, and chose a slow, considerate ship-speech. “ We’re going out to the other station. Imminently. I moved to delay for a month. I argued. I was voted down.”

The ship was leaving dock. Leaving the planet.

Chasing after a problem they all, some less willing than others, had in common.

Deserting them.

“Without consultation? Jase, I still haven’t been able to get through to Tabini.”

“ The proposition’s going to the crew in general council. In about an hour. Ogun’s wasting no time at all.”

With the crew suspecting a double-cross, fast movement on some course of action was the best thing. In that sense it was a good thing the council had decided—but the decision was far from the balanced outcome he wanted.

“I’m not upset they’re going. But they’re moving without a response from the aiji. He may agree, but he has to give his agreement. I know he’s stalling, but there are other issues down there. This is dangerous stuff, and it’s going to create ill will.”

“ I know. I argued that point. Ogun listened, and he and Sabin still voted together. Departure’s imminent… granted the crew agrees. And they will. All they have to do is send essential personnel to stations and flip the master switch. They’ll run tests. But the ship’s in running order. There’s not going to be that long a delay. Then there’s no more debate.”

“Are you going? Or are you staying here?”

A small pause. “ I want to stay. It would make some sense. You and I can work together. But on this one, I’m not sure whether Ogun will vote with me, either. I’m not sure he wants someone here who cooperates that easily with you and Tabini. I know Sabin wouldn’t like my being left as liaison. But I’m damn little use in operations. I’m putting our conversation into the log, by the way.”

If Jase was speaking his own dialect, overhearing was always a possibility, and he hadn’t said anything he wouldn’t say in captain’s council.

“That’s fine.”

“ I’ll be talking to Ogun and Sabin, if I can, trying to argue them into leaving me here. Here, I’m useful. It’s the best outcome I can think of.”

“It shows good faith to Tabini, for one other cogent argument.”

“ That’s a point. I’ll use it. I’ve got to go, Bren.”

“Thanks. Thanks for the advisement.”

Thanks for the advisement.

Was he surprised? Not that surprised.

Breakfast was all but on the table. He’d upset Bindanda if he let it go cold. He saw the maidservant hesitating just beyond the door, an earnest young face, too good sense to interrupt the paidhi in a phone call: she advised him simply by her waiting presence.

“Yes, nadi-ji,” he said. He was cold. “My indoor coat, if you please.”

She hurried to the foyer closet and brought it back. He slipped it on, unrumpled, morning ritual, calming to jangled nerves. One day and the next. Routine. The cosmic carpet was about to go out from under them, but they observed the amenities. And he’d gotten about two hours’ sleep.

Banichi and Jago had likewise turned up for breakfast, black-uniformed, informal and comfortable—armed. They always were. And they probably hadn’t slept either.

“We may have to send a courier down to Shejidan,” Bren said. “Can we hurry the shuttle? Immediate launch? There’s reason to ask.”

“One will learn, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Tano?” Banichi had his earpiece in, and listened, and gave a little inclination of his head. “Tano will inquire during breakfast.”

“The ship’s going,” he said to Banichi and Jago. “They’re holding a vote of the crew, but I have a notion it’s going to pick up and go. One has to ask still how much of a presence they’re going to leave here. We need technical people to continue with the ship-building and train atevi personnel to manage it. So now we learn, one supposes, whether Ramirez-aiji meant us to have a starship at all, or whether it was all show, to get his ship fueled. That’swhy we need a courier. The ship is about to power up, preparatory to leaving. And the aiji doesn’t answer me. Has there been any response from the Guild?“

“Nothing,” Banichi said. “No answer at all. Which is unprecedented, Bren-ji.”

So was all of it. Currents were moving. Big ones. “If Tabini won’t answer our messages, then we have somehow to rattle his doors. If we do it in error, if we disturb what’s afoot—well, that’s a risk. The aiji knows us, that we’re apt to try something. And I think now we have to take that risk.”

“One understands,” Banichi murmured. The two of them took their seats at table, fortunate three. Silver dishes were arranged. Servants stood by to serve, and began with tasty cold jellies in the shape of the traditional eggs. Bindanda had been very clever, and the quasi-eggs were very spicy, and good.

“Excellent,” they agreed, and complimented Bindanda’s handiwork as the next course proved to be a vegetable and nut pate surrounding stuffed mushrooms with small split-nut fins. Bindanda put the station’s synthetic cheese loaf far in the shade.

Could one even think politics over such a breakfast?

Bren did, and he was sure Banichi and Jago did.

Nor were they quite out of touch with Tano and Algini, having their quasi-fish in the informality of the security station.

Banichi murmured, quietly, urgently, at a hiatus in the serving, “A shuttle has just launched. This would be the freight shuttle.”

His heart beat fast. “ Early, isn’t it?”

“A little early,” Jago said.

“A courier to us?” It made a certain sense, when he was trying desperately to decide who of his staff to send down to Tabini.

It was about damned time, was what.

“One has no information,” Banichi said. “Possible that we’ll hear before docking.”

“Possible that there’s a security force aboard?” Bren had his voice down, trying to preserve propriety, but a shuttle: that was a two-edged prospect. “I wish very much that Tabini would consult, nadiin-ji.”

Understatement, twice over. Tabini had tacitly demanded one simple thing of Ramirez in return for his support of the ship: control of the station. The ship maintained an iron hand over personnel’s comings and goings, and over communications, but atevi were set at key physical points of the station. And to Bren’s observation, bothpowers thought they ran things, while Mospheirans thought they ran the business operations and the commerce, such as there was—they did that fairly undisputed.

And everyone had tacitly agreed not to challenge each other, under Ramirez’s command.

Now Ramirez was gone, taking all his secrets with him. And now they had their heaviest-lift shuttle arriving, nearly on routine, but just a worrisome little bit early—while the ship-crew was voting to pull the only starship out of the agreement and go off on a mission to stick their fingers into the most sensitive situation possible.

It took a degree of control to appreciate the next course, and to make small talk with his staff and the kitchen.

And at the time when they often set about their day’s business, Banichi and Jago had another revelation from the security station.

“They’re reporting only routine.”

He had a very strong feeling, all the same. He hated like hell to be taken off his guard.

“Do you know, I think we should arrange to meet the shuttle when it docks, nadiin-ji. I think perhaps we should prepare the third residency, in hopes of putting the aiji’s official answer in a somewhat better mood. If we’re wrong, we can always power the apartment down again. Tell the station and the ship we’re doing some maintenance in there.”

“A very good idea,” Banichi said.

It took a long time to warm up an apartment once it was mothballed—not quite the chill of space, but certainly the walls grew cold and difficult to warm.

“One assumes, at least,” Bren said cautiously, as they entered the study, “that Tabini has taken my advisement and Geigi’s utterly seriously. If it turns out to be several hundred of the Guild, I trust they’ll take care with the porcelains.” Heavy lift as well as antiquity made the decor in the adjacent apartment extravagantly expensive. “But it occurs to me, nadiin-ji, that the dowageris available to him, if it weren’t for Cajeiri.”

Ilisidi had been on the station, understood the station, had met with the living captains, and knew Ramirez face to face.

More, she had authority. Vast authority.

And it was very, very possible, if Tabini had to choose someone for a quick personal assessment of the situation—outranking both the paidhi and lord Geigi—Ilisidi would be a very astute observer. Very powerful. Surrounded by close, armed security.

If he were in Tabini’s place, trying to figure how to get an invasion force onto the station—Ilisidi’s prior welcome on the station might make her very valuable.

“Fosterage wouldn’t stop her,” Jago said. “One doesn’t expect it would.”

“Dare we think?” Bren asked. “I do think I should meet that shuttle, nadiin-ji.”

Ogun and Sabin might take him and Geigi as ordinary obstacles. They’d be damned fools to try the same tactic on the aiji-dowager.

“It would be very bad,” Banichi said, “if Ogun-aiji now decided to remove the ship from the station without staying for discussion with us. But we have only verbal persuasion to apply—without doing damage.”

If the proposition the ship-council reached was to take the ship immediately out of range of negotiation, there was very little the station or the planet below could do about that decision—short of sabotage.

That wasn’t, to say the least, practical—or useful at the moment.

“Dare we call the shuttle?” he asked. “Advise them at least that the ship might be moving?”

“One doubts, for security reasons, they would admit to any presence aboard. We have a number of hours. Is Jase-aiji a firm ally?”

“I don’t doubt Jase. I’m not sure, however, that I dare phone him again.” He thought about that a moment. “Or maybe I’d better.”

“One can carry a message,” Jago said.

“Dare I tell him? Dare we risk there being nothing on that shuttle, after all, but flour and construction supplies?” His security had nothing to tell him on that score. “Maybe I should just tell Jase the truth.” Novel thought. “And let himsuggest what to do about the ship’s schedule.”

“Is there any doubt at this point the crew will vote to go?” Banichi asked.

“I don’t doubt some will vote against it,” Bren said. “I don’t doubt, either, that enough will vote to go. And the aiji’s sending some answer they don’t understand could scare them right out of dock and complicate us into a confrontation. If we take the captains into our confidence, make them our co-conspirators, to give a reasonable answer and calm the situation—”

“Against the aiji?” Banchi thought about it.

“To get them to react the way we should hope they react, Banichi-ji. To directtheir response.”

“Assuming there’s not flour aboard,” Jago said.

“Do youthink there’s only flour aboard?” Bren asked.

“The shuttle disregards its former numbers,” Jago said, that most basic of all considerations.

Something, at least, had changed.

There was one other individual he hadn’t consulted, one who mighthave a clue to proceedings: Yolanda Mercheson, who’d gone past him and gone past Jase to make secret arrangements. And he thought about phoning Yolanda, inviting her in, asking her point-blank what those agreements were—but he thought he was very likely to find out without that confrontation, and without putting Yolanda in a position of breaching confidences of his aiji and her captains, which he very much suspected she would resist.

Touchy enough, his relationship with the third paidhi—touchy as Jase’s, who was her ex-lover, and who hadn’t gotten along with her.

Or maybe secrets had driven the wedge.

And secrets had been going on for years.

“I’ll try phoning Jase,” he said to Jago, and got up and did that.

“ Mr, Cameron,” C1 said. “ Hold on. You’re on priority to Captain Graham.”

Well, thatwas improved.

“ Bren?” A moment later.

“Jase, we’ve got a shuttle inbound. Anyone notice?”

A small pause.

“ If you’ve called to say so,” Jase said, being quick, “ I take it there’s some concern.”

Chapter 10

Time enough to prepare. Time enough to advise allies about a conjecture of a conjecture.

Time enough to open the aiji-dowager’s former residency, set a vase with hothouse flowers on the foyer table, and arrange a welcome with a small flourish.

For once, Bren said to himself, he had gotten the edge on Tabini.

At least he hadn’t been caught with the ship just pulled out and that armed starship facing the shuttle with a disproportional balance of power. The crew had voted. The foregone conclusion was concluded. The ship would move.

But Jase had presented a possible intervening fact—and Ogun, quite unexpectedly, had given a series of small preparatory orders, maintenance checks, numerous of them. And inventory of ship’s stores. Dared one suspect cooperation?

The action of an alliance—in which Ogun might be better informed than any of them?

Ilisidi, if it was the dowager en route, had been figured out, anticipated, and factored in with astonishingly little fuss, considering all that was at stake—Ilisidi, if it was she, having a considerable lot of credit with the ship’s crew as well as the station.

No publicity yet. The shuttle wasn’t talking about passengers and the ship, busy with its mysterious inventory, hadn’t inquired.

Not even certain, while Bren anxiously fidgeted away the final minutes, that it wasn’t simply flour and electronics.

But they were ready when the call came that the freight shuttle would use bay 1, which was personnel.

Time to put coats on, gloves in the pockets this time, servants from Geigi’s household and his to give a final touch to the third residency.

Bay 1 was manned and ready.

And they had an entire delegation—himself, lord Geigi, and Jase, with their respective security riding up in the lift, while station operations went through the customs routine, as if there might be simple workers to process.

Bren thought to the contrary.

Definitely political. Incredibly expensive in terms of fuel and wear on the equipment and the cargo the shuttle oughtto have been carrying, on its regular schedule… but the aiji in Shejidan used what he had to use, and had with increasing certainty gotten his messages.

They waited in the warm territory of the third deck while the docking approach was in progress. Jase met them there, with his own escort, and brought communications tied to the ship.

“Ogun certainly thinks it’s her,” Jase informed them. “Whether he’s had a communication or not, I don’t know, but there’s every indication there’s a passenger.”

They took the lift up into the cold and zero gravity of the core, exited into that vast dock where light never seemed enough.

There they floated, hovering near the residual warmth of the lift shaft. Gloved fingers made patterns in the frost on the handgrips.

The doors down in Bay 3 were capable of receiving anything the freight shuttle could hand them—objects the size of a railway car, easily, and the big cradles were capable of receiving, maneuvering, offloading contents to various sorting areas.

As it was, if they needed more confirmation, workers had rigged the hand-lines for personnel. Theyhad instructions from C1.

And they waited. Freezing.

Bren personally tried not to look up, or down, or whatever it was. For the sake of his stomach, he mostly stared at the railing near them and the yellow safety-ropes the workers deployed between them and the shuttle hatch. Jase cheerfully drifted slightly sideways to him, Kaplan and Polano and Colby loosely maintaining position along with him: lifelong spacers, confident of the lines.

“High-ranking,” Jase said. “Definitely. There’s been an advisement to customs for a wave-through. You’re right, Bren. I think you’re entirely right. The personnel rig is ready. Dockside has confirmed it. Engaged. They’re in.”

Jase moved out along the safety line. Bren followed gingerly, with Jago and Banichi, and likewise Geigi and his company.

They were most of the way there when the shuttle’s personnel hatch opened… a little in advance of the human workers reaching it.

There—there indeed was Ilisidi, in warm furs. Trust the dowager to devise something stylish for the event.

Elegant, she drifted in the hatch along with Cenedi’s formidable, protective presence.

A smaller figure left the hatch past her right hand, too far—too fast—and drifted right off the platform.

And off beyond the lines. Trying to swim, in space.

A child.

A boy.

A protocol disaster.

Bren held his breath as workers scrambled, on hand-jets.

Ilisidi reached with her cane, and almost had the boy. But Tabini’s son and heir, someday lord of the aishidi’tat, indignantly kicked free and attempted his own salvation. He twisted and kicked in an attempt to reach the door of the shuttle, and banged the edge of the hatch with an unfortunate booted foot.

He sailed off quite spectacularly out of reach—but not quickly enough to arrive anywhere useful anytime soon.

It was chilling cold. The boy was suited only for the brief transit to the lift.

Jase took a hand-jet from a worker and moved out among the rest, while the dowager, who cast an exasperated glance at the boy’s trajectory, glanced at Bren, maintained a grip on the line with the grip of her cane and lifted the other hand in a tolerant, benevolent welcome.

“Well, well. Bren-paidhi. So my grandson told you after all.”

“Not exactly, aiji-ma.” It was hard not to be distracted, with a desperate rescue proceeding above their heads, if there was an abovein this steel cavern. But if there was one thing more hurtful to the situation, it was more notice. One only hoped it would not be on public reports. And what did one say, under the circumstance? Did you have a nice flight? “Welcome. Welcome from the staff and from the aijiin.”

“Did you guess, then?”

“I learned of the early shuttle launch, and who else of such overriding importance would divert a shuttle to visit us?”

He managed to please her, in spite of the incident. An angry shout—the family temper—punctuated the icy air above them. No, Cajeiri had no wish to be hauled down ignominiously by human workers. No, clearly he wished to use one of the jets for himself, small chance there was of the workers or Jase allowing that.

Was it possible Ilisidi winced?

“Geigi-ji, too,” the dowager said, however. “So clever, the lot of you. I trust I’m in time for the ship.”

“For the ship, aiji-ma?”

“Do you think they may bring the boy to the lift in time for us, or shall I leave one of my companions?”

Bren gave a desperate look up—or out, or whatever it might be—since propriety forbade the dowager gazing after this youthful error. By now Jase had the boy by an arm and was towing him down.

“They have him, aiji-ma,” Bren said, quite familiar with the dowager’s iron notion of propriety. “Jase-ji.” He reached out a hand himself to steer Jase down, holding firmly to the safety line.

The boy was near enough. Ilisidi reached out with the crook of her cane and snatched the aiji’s heir close, past her elbow, back into her chief of security Cenedi’s hands and Cenedi very smoothly attached Cajeiri’s gloved hand to the safety line. Jase braked, not showing off a bit, no, and stayed free-fall in escort of their party, workers hovering on the other side of the line—in event of other escapes, one surmised.

Cajeiri meanwhile was shivering—being smaller, and chilling even after his burst of furious exertion, but no one shamed him by noticing.

They reached the lift car.

“ Thatwill become the floor,” Ilisidi said as they entered the car, and gave the proposed lift deck a stamp of that formidable cane. “Set your feet there, boy! Can you manage that? Thank you!”

Cajeiri turned himself as the adults did and youthful feet went there, just so, with no mistakes this time. It must be Cajeiri’s earnest desire not to be noticed for hours and hours.

Court etiquette forbade noticing the event. Security forbade their discussing business of other kinds, so conversation simply and inanely regarded the dowager’s flight, the launch weather, the weather in the far east of the Association, which was the dowager’s domain—and, in one of those strange drifts of converse, to the hatch of wi’itikiin in recent years.

“Fourteen chicks,” the dowager said proudly, as they rode down past third level, “this spring. All living. Those on the higher cliffs we surmise do as well.”

“One is glad to hear it, aiji-ma.” He truly was glad. It was amazing to him. Ilisidi came here turning their lives upside down even if they’d seen her coming, and told him chicks had hatched on the cliffs of Malguri, making what had been a cold, strange station feel the winds of the world. “One is extremely glad to know it.” What is this about the ship? he wanted to ask, but this was hardly the place for it, in a lift where station security often monitored.

Cajeiri, likely, himself, destined for Malguri after this sojourn of Ilisidi’s on the station, kept meekly quiet, family temper having had its expression—family survival sense having come to the fore.

Tatiseigi’s being the boy’s first lessons—what wonder the boy was grim, Bren thought to himself. No companions. No play.

Now diplomatic missions, God help the boy.

And what was this, In time for the ship?

And why did his heart beat double-time, and why did he reckon suddenly Jase should have heard, and hadn’t, because Jase had been out of range.

“This is Jase-aiji, one of the ship-aijiin, who has extended you considerable courtesy. Thisis the paidhi-aiji, whom you surely remember favorably. This is Lord Geigi, whom you have yet to meet formally.”

“Ship-aiji,” Cajeiri said in meek tones. “Thank you. Paidhi-aiji, Lord Geigi. I’m gratified you came.”

“One is equally gratified by your courtesy, aiji-ma,” Jase said smoothly, in the smooth tones of practice. Thatphrase he knew in his sleep.

“Young aiji,” Geigi said.

“See you deal well with these men,” Ilisidi said, and nudged Jase with the head of her cane. “Well done.”

“Aiji-ma. Thankyou for coming. We know it’s an arduous journey.”

“Nonsense. But from a handsome young man, acceptable.”

As their feet found the floor with increasing solidity and a slight rotational queasiness.

“This isn’t right, grandmother-ji,” Cajeiri protested. “Are we safe?”

“Safe? Safe? Do you see these gentlemen distressed?” Ilisidi asked, and stamped the deck with the ferrule of her cane. “Conditions to become ordinary to your generation—one is certain, and far too soon. But well that you notice. Well that you notice, all the same.”

“ Yes, grandmother-aiji.”

“This generation,” Ilisidi said. “Will it be wiser, Geigi-ji?”

“One has hope, nand’ dowager.”

“Thus far, I doubt it. But I venture, hear? I do venture.”

How did one query the dowager when she was in that mood? And where was there time for thoughtful conversation?

And what was this, In time for the ship?

The lift stopped, let them out in the ordinary station halls, but instead of customs and station security, standard procedure when a shuttle with passengers came into dock—Ogun met them.

With Merchesonbeside him.

Yolanda Mercheson, who avoided eye contact, bowing to the dowager.

“Dowager,” Ogun said in the Ragi language. “Welcome to the station.”

“Aiji-ma,” Yolanda said. “We understand your quarters are ready.”

Ordinary workers, mostly Mospheiran, passed by on their various errands—and stopped to stare at a meeting of the paidhiin and atevi aristocrats, and one the widely famous Gran ‘Sidi, with her silver-haired chief of security, Cenedi.

And an atevi youngster.

Movement in the hall outright stopped. People stood. A few bowed.

Ogun took out his pocket com and spoke in his own language: “C1, clearance through the halls. Gran Sidi’s in residence. Advise the council. Intentions as yet unspecified.”

C1 answered, a simple acknowledgment of the orders.

“Nand’ dowager,” Ogun said then—he had learned that phrase in the dowager’s last tenancy. But he gave only a passing glance to the boy—not in as much dismay as confusion, as Bren saw it. Ogun might have heard about the unfortunate incident at the dock, or not: he said nothing, simply bowed slightly, stiffly—never a shipboard or a Mospheiran grace—welcoming the aiji dowager to the station as if this was no surprise at all.

“Her discretion,” Ogun said, passing everything atevi to the dowager and to them, and about that moment Ilisidi’s cane came down smartly on the deck, the end of her patience.

“Translate,” she said.

“A welcome, nandi,” Jase said immediately.

“ She’sthe representative,” Ogun said.

Jase skirted an infelicitous mispronunciation rendering that. One forgave him: the dowager seemed to. She uttered a short, sharp hiss.

“Of course. Does anyone believe we sit in those wretched seats and come to such a frozen desolation in the heavens for our health? A chair. One assumes there will be a chair in a warm place. And supper. I insist on supper. When is the ship leaving?”

“The dowager says yes,” Jase rendered it for Ogun, “and wants to know when the ship is leaving.”

“Ma’am,” Ogun said, a courtesy, “nand’ dowager, we have to go through power-up.”

This arrived in the Ragi language as get it running.

“Get it running,” Ilisidi echoed the translation. “One hopes it runs, nadiin, with some reliability. We expect not to break down. Shall we move temporarily into our quarters?”

Not to break down. Weexpect not to break down.

Bren cast Jase a look and Jase seemed no more informed than he was. He cast one at Yolanda Mercheson, too.

“ ‘Sidi-ji,” Geigi said. “What is this? Are we informed?”

“Geigi,” Ilisidi said, and laid her hand on Geigi’s arm in a very intimate way. “Immediately. Your welcome is appreciated, Ogun-aiji—say so, girl! and be done. My bones ache. I want my chair!”

“Yes, aiji-ma,” Bren said—she was hisresponsibility, not Jase’s—and damned sure not Yolanda Mercheson’s, if he had a choice in it. “Captain, she’s anxious to be through the festivities and into a comfortable chair, and if there’s anything going on I don’t know, I hope I willknow in short order.” What’s this about the ship? was what he ached to ask, but court proprieties kept him from asking outright. “With your permission, sir.”

“The dowager proposes to be a passenger on this voyage,” Ogun said. “With her entourage. The schedule is under construction at the moment. We’ll notify her. We willinspect baggage: we have safety restrictions.”

“I daresay you should have Cenedi there if you do inspect baggage, sir.” He was accustomed to playing along as if he was utterly in the know, but this was the utmost, the most extravagant state of ignorance. A passenger on the ship, hell!

And Mercheson mediating when hewas present?

“Well, he’d better come along, then, soon as the baggage is offloaded,” Ogun said.

“Banichi, Cenedi will wish to supervise the inspection of baggage for safety. Jase, can you possibly attend that inspection?”

“I will,” Jase said. No better informed, Bren was convinced—no complicity in what Ogun clearly knew. The lot of them acted as if, of course, no surprise, no concern, they’d known from the start; but he improvised at high speed, and disposed someone who knew station regulations, someone who spoke Ragi and ship-language, to attend on security checks to prevent armed conflict.

Meanwhile he kept close with Ilisidi, intending to stay close until he understood at least the general outline of what was happening. Geigiwas as much in the dark as he was, he caught that from what outsiders might not perceive as an expression. Geigi himself was taken aback by this, and Geigiwas deeper than he was in Ilisidi’s confidence.

Mercheson and secrets and Tabini’s silence figured in what was going on—he was sure of that. This washis looked-for answer from Tabini, and it was a potent answer.

But, God, send Ilisidioff to the remote station for a look-around?

Have her travel alone?

She couldn’t speak to them. The ship’s crew couldn’t speak to her—except Jase. And Cajeirihad no place in a situation as fraught with danger as that. Was he supposed to babysit an atevi six-year-old?

What in helldid Tabini think he had set up? And with whom? With Ramirez, with Ogun’sknowledge?

“Dowager-ji,” he said, however, as blandly as if they were off to a garden walk, and showed Ilisidi and her party ahead down the corridor, leaving Ogun and Yolanda, Jase and Banichi behind—

Where Jase could find out something, Bren earnestly, desperately, hoped.

“On the ship, is it?” Bren asked, once they were clear of eavesdroppers.

“Sidi-ji,” Lord Geigi said at the same time, “this is a recklessventure.”

“Perhaps it is,” Ilisidi said. She had Geigi on the one hand and him on the other, Cajeiri safely in Cenedi’s hands at the moment. “But my grandson has taken this silly notion that nothing will do but that he know what happens in this far place, and he needs someone of sense, I suppose, to make a fair finding. A great inconvenience, I may say.”

“A very hard journey, Sidi-ji,” Geigi said.

And Bren: “This is no shuttle trip, aiji-ma. This is far, far more than that.”

“Pish.” Ilisidi struck her cane on the decking twice in a step. “And a shuttle trip is far, far more than the inconvenient and uncomfortable airplane I use between here and Malguri. Everything is degree, is it not?”

“The scale of this, aiji-ma,” Bren began. “If you please to—”

“Pish, I say. It has to be done. Don’t complain for me, Bren-ji. You’regoing.”

His heart went on quite normally two beats. Skipped one, as he believed he had heard what he had heard and the import of it came home. “Go with you? I’ve heard no such thing, aiji-ma.”

“You hear it now.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.” There was, with official orders, only one thing to say, and he said it, calmly, with dignity, though he found breathing difficult.

Go from star to star, into a situation—

—this delicate?

It made a certain terrible sense. But—

“May I inquire, aiji-ma—I do trust the aiji knows your intention.”

“And would you question my order, paidhi-ji?”

“Certainly I must, aiji-ma, to leave a post Tabini-aiji…”

“Ha!” The cane stamped the deck. “Constant as sunrise. My grandson knows, I say. And he sends you to see to matters. I’mto be in the party to provide the requisite authority.”

“Then I shall go,” he said meekly. Scarcity of air made his head light. His hands were still cold from the foray into the cold. Now his whole body lost ground, inward chilling. “If I can arrange this with Ogun-aiji, who governs the ship, aiji-ma.”

“All arranged,” Ilisidi said. “I have my baggage. I do suggest you pack quickly.”

All arranged!

He had to talk to Ogun. He had to talk to Jase. Jasewas a fair representative of atevi and planetary interests with the ship’s command. Jase’sskills as an insider, able to deal with the ship authorities, the station authorities, the Pilots’ Guild—that was indispensable. Jase natively had all the information, and the cachet as one of Taylor’s Children. In Ramirez’s intentions, he suspected—it was the other half of what Jase was born to do; and he couldn’t let decisions remove that asset from the mission.

Tabini had clearly made his own arrangements.

Tabinihad been dealing—with Ramirez—through Yolanda—behind his back.

He had a difficulty. He had a very great difficulty on his hands, if power was flowing into Yolanda’s hands.

He had the aiji’s heir and a parcel of very different culture being dealt with by a novice. As well send Kate Shugart to negotiate—with the best will in the world, but no resources. No experience.

“And I?” Geigi said. “And I, ‘Sidi-ji?”

“My pillar of resolution,” Ilisidi said, “the wellspring of my confidence. I shall see you privately. We have matters to discuss.”

Geigishould meet with her. But he heard no word about the paidhi-aiji being privy to such a meeting—and in the rapidity with which events were moving, and in the dowager’s agenda Bren doubted there was a chink left for an objection, or any change in plans.

At the last moment she might say—of course. Of course come with me. That had to happen. Surely.

Jago was taking it all in: no need to brief her. He was relatively sure Banichi had heard, and he was certain beyond a doubt that Tano and Algini had picked it up through Jago’s equipment. They would be taking their orders through what he’d already said. They would be considering resources and making plans much as if they had overheard a casual order to run down to the planet for tea with the aiji. If he didn’tget a further briefing from the dowager, or if he did, the one thing certain was that planning was already in progress among his staff.

But, God, what was Tabini thinking?

Send an elderly lady to deal with the Guild?

And what was Cajeiri doing here?

A transfer to Geigi’s custody, it might be, leaving him on the station, a place of relative safety from assassination, where the boy might gain, instead of the antiquity of Malguri, the modernity of the cutting edge. Thatmade a certain sense.

But to ask Ilisidi, at her age, to make this kind of flight—

He tried to calm himself—telling himself that the flight, however distant, was an ordinary operation of the ship, that the time it took, while measured in years, was measured in a year or so, not a decade, not a lifetime. Jase had traveled farther in his life. The ship was meant to do such things, and do them safely. It was routine for the ship.

And there was actually very good sense in sending the aiji’s best negotiator, and backing him with the aiji’s personal representative, to settle what a diplomat might be able to settle. If the ship-folk had a weakness in negotiation, it was their blindness to outsiders, their gut-deep certainty that the whole universe was like themselves. The ship had already had that illusion shaken, in dealing with atevi: they were a great deal wiser now than they had been when they came into the solar system.

But they weren’t the only humans at issue. The station-folk at Reunion likely thought foreignness described the ship’s crew, and that diplomacy and negotiation described an administrative meeting.

Not to mention—not even to mention the Pilots’ Guild, which had been a thorn in the side of every colonial decision since the accident that sent the ship off its original mission—notorious in every legend of colonial operations since.

And hewas supposed to deal with that situation?

Was, on the other hand, Jasegoing to deal with it alone? Or worse—Yolanda?

Ilisidi had said something. He sweated. One didn’t ever asks the dowager to repeat herself.

But he had to.

“Aiji-ma? I was thinking on the necessities.”

“Taken care of, I say. Pay attention, nand’ paidhi!”

Pay attention. Pay attention. It meant everything. Use your wits. Use your resources. Hear what I’m saying and use your imagination.

“I rarely admit to confusion, aiji-ma.” He knew her, at least. “Forgive me. This is an immense surprise.”

“Surprised you indeed?” Ilisidi was not displeased by that notion.

“Yet your quarters are ready,” he said, “aiji-ma, for at least brief stay in comfort. Once I heard the shuttle had launched, I said to myself, well, I should be ready.”

“Very well managed,” she deigned to say, when he knew he had failed other marks—critical ones. “One expects it of such clever men.”

As Jago opened the section door, admitting their party to a different, warmer light, and more humidity.

And a corridor within their own security.

“Ramirez is dead,” Ilisidi said sharply, stopping just within the zone, the door shutting on the instant. “And this was anticipated. Ramirez-aijiknew he would not live to arrive at the remote station, and therefore made certain decisions: unity of one, that the ship-fueling must happen. Infelicitous two and transitional three, that the powers of the earth must be reckoned with. Precarious four, that the aijiin of the world must be admitted to plans. Stable five, that he must prepare a very difficult matter for other hands to deal with after his death. Prepare for change, nandiin. Geigi-ji. And you—” This with a thrust of the formidable cane toward Bren. “Your message is long since received, paidhi-aiji. Andanticipated.

“That Ramirez woulddie,” the dowager continued, “ anticipated. That he would refuse medical help, anticipated. That he would likely do so before his aim was achieved, again, anticipated.”

“There was no assassination, then.”

Cajeiri’s eyes were wide, his face starkly apprehensive as he looked from one to the other. But the dowager was accustomed to such familiarity from the paidhi-aiji.

“An old man’s choice,” Ilisidi said. “Fully his choice. He knew it was likely. So he broached the matter with my grandson, if one can believe that part of the account.”

Approached Tabini without him. Tabini had, years since, understood far more of Mosphei’ than he ever admitted. And Ramirez had found his opportunity.

“Among essential matters,” Ilisidi said, “my grandson demanded the new ship be under construction. I’m told that parts and pieces of it exist up here.”

“You passed them while docking, aiji-ma.”

A tap of the cane against the decking. “Ramirez wanted the original ship fueled, and this my grandson allowed, knowing Ramirez meant his successor to take the ship and do what he shouldhave done in the first place: remove all inhabitants from the other station. This is essential to do. In the meantime,” the dowager said further, sharply as the crack of a whip, “ in the meantime, nadiin-ji, my indolent grandson proposes to accelerate production, stirthe island’s recalcitrant inhabitants to consider their own survival, and simultaneously hope for common sense in the hasdrawad, a wonder I shall regret missing, if it transpires. Mercheson-paidhiwill become paidhi-aiji, as pleases my grandson. Shewill substitute at court and on the station, she and Kate-paidhi and Ben-paidhi… students, but adequate students, and Mercheson-paidhi has seemed adequate in these transactions.—Geigi-ji, my grandson has specific requests of you. You’ve become essential.”

“ ‘Sidi,” Geigi protested. “Stay? I should stay, while you go?” Geigi was not happy.

“Do invite me in, nadi-ji.” The dowager made a slight gesture toward Geigi’s apartment, nearest.

“Of course, aiji-ji.” Geigi motioned toward the doors, which his security hastened to open.

“Good day to you, paidhi-ji.”

She left. She simply walked in. He was not invited. Cenedi, sending the boy inside, shut the doors himself, shutting Ilisidi's security inside with Geigi and his security, shutting them out in the process.

There was nowhere to look but at Jago.

“I am completely chagrined,” Jago said. “We were outmaneuvered, Bren-ji.”

“I think we were all outmaneuvered,” he said. “ Yolandaset this up. It must be. Ramirez’s agent.”

“At his instigation, paidhi-ji. We can’t penetrate the aiji’s closed communications.”

“Nor would I ask it, Jago-ji.” They were still outside their own quarters. “We should go home.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and they walked down the corridor to the end, where Narani welcomed them, without any intimation of having heard.

“Rani-ji,” Bren said, “I think we shall be taking a trip.”

“I have heard so, nandi, at least, so Tano-ji just said.”

That fast.

“Pack for me.” He made a quick estimation. “For Banichi, Jago, and staff for us. Tano and Algini will manage here, as if we were simply on the planet. But we will need attendance.”

“And provisions, nandi?”

“Assuredly.” Years. Years, and the exigencies of atevi diet. They more than favored alkaloids: they needed a certain amount for good health. “We hope the dowager, who is going with us, has taken some note of our needs, Rani-ji, but we will need a very great amount of provision—I don’t know what we’re to do.” He tried not to allow distress into his voice, or his planning. “I suppose we can draw on station stores.” The number of workers aboard meant a backup supply of goods. “Furnishings. There are so many things, Rani-ji.”

“For the ship,” Narani said.

“You didn’tknow.”

“Not until Tano’s information, nandi, but we shall manage, never worry.”

Never worry. A slight giddiness possessed him as he slipped aside into the security station with Jago. Tano and Algini were at their posts. Surely Banichi was completely aware.

“We’ve been surprised,” Jago said immediately, in a low, reasonable voice. “We need to move quickly. Tano, Algini, you will maintain here. The dowager is surely prepared, but we’ll want our own gear.”

“Yes,” Algini said, and entered something on his console—which might, for what Bren knew, communicate with the kitchen, or Geigi’s staff, or station supply.

Tano was sending, too. He was surrounded by staff with immediate objectives: secure, pack, provide. What they needed to know was the numbers. Who was going? Who was staying? How many, how long?

“Can Banichi talk to Jase?” he asked and, assured that Banichi could: “Ask him, in Ragi, nadi-ji, how long the trip, and how great the space allowable for us and for the dowager—and if he isn’t now aware of the dowager’s intentions to go on this voyage, make him aware, without setting objections in motion. Ogun seems to know the dowager’s intentions, but we don’t know how much he knows.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and proceeded to speak to Banichi in a rapid Guild jargon that Bren only partially followed, and that only because he knew the content.

There was a pause, in which Banichi perhaps spoke to Jase, or tracked him down.

All arranged, Ilisidi had said.

Ground… so to speak… was rapidly sliding out from under his feet.

But Jago had a message for him. “Jase says Ogun-aiji has called an executive meeting and Jase urgently wishes your attendance, Bren-ji.”

One wondered if Ogun had contacted Ilisidi—or if Yolanda was not now the primary contact in the information flow he had always managed solo, and if certain things Ramirez had arranged were flowing one to the next, under a dead man’s hand.

Damn Yolanda. He hadn’t had to wonder about Tabini’s intentions for years; but for years, apparently, he definitely shouldhave wondered. Ogun might not be in favor of Ilisidi’s arrival. Sabin surely wouldn’t be. And both of them trying to handle that situation through Yolanda— assuming, perhaps, that they could argue with the aiji-dowager and the aiji once publicly committed.

Assumption, assumption, assumption—fastest way to lose a contest one assumeddidn’t reasonably exist… and this wasn’t personal pride. It was global safety. Species survival.

The alliance could blow up before Phoenixever cleared the dock. The aishidi’tat, if thwarted, could bring matters to confrontation, with all the station’s supply at issue.

“We’ll go,” he said to Jago. “Banichi should meet us there.”

The game had changed beyond recognition. He had to gather up the overthrown pieces off the floor and get some order in his universe.

Fast.

Chapter 11

Banichi waited to join them in the executive zone, in that stretch of station corridor where Phoenix’s officers maintained executive offices. The captains’ active presence was in plain evidence—the number of aides and security outside those offices, along the lighted row of potted plants—a number including Kaplan, Polano, and Jenrette, at the end of the corridor.

Banichi, who’d followed it all by remote, didn’t say a thing as they met. Only a look passed between him and Jago.

Our Bren’s gotten us into the worst mess yet, Bren imagined that glance to say.

Had Banichi and Jago volunteered to be going where Tabini proposed to send them?

Could sane planet-dwelling folk even contemplate what they were now supposed to do?

The discontinuity of previous and future reality was so great it just made no sense to a reasonable brain, Bren thought to himself. He himself didn’t yet feel the total shock—hadn’t had time to feel much of anything but the pressure of a requisite series of urgent actions.

And he hadn’t formed a position—in effect, since Tabini had spoken through other agencies, he found he didn’t have one, except that of a subordinate taking orders. And he wasn’t used to blind compliance. It didn’t feel right.

“Mr. Cameron.” Jenrette opened a door and let them in, all three. The aiji and the captains had hammered out the inseparability of a lord and his bodyguard in less pressured times, and no one questioned, now, that Banichi and Jago should enter with him.

Jase and Ogun and Sabin occupied three of the four seats at the end table—Ogun’s dark face as glum and sorrowful as it had been during the funeral, Sabin’s thin countenance set in the habit of perpetual disapproval. Yolanda was there, whether as staff or as interviewee. And Jase—

Jase didn’t look happy at all—not happy to know that all he’d trained for was shifting, that was the first thing: Bren translated that from his own gut-feeling. Not happy to be dealing officially with Yolanda, either, Bren imagined—Yolanda was looking mostly at a handheld unit and not looking at anyone.

The other two captains, Ogun and Sabin, couldn’t be happy about anything that had happened lately: not Ramirez’s death, not the duty that had just landed on their shoulders; not with the information that had suddenly hit the station corridors.

And had Sabin even been in on the post-Tamun plans until Ramirez dropped dead and Ogun had to tell her? There was no way for an outsider to know exactly what had transpired between those two, or what the state of affairs might be. It didn’t look warm or friendly, and Jase’s expression gave him no warnings.

“Mr. Cameron,” Ogun said. “I trust the dowager’s informed you of the situation, and the reason for her presence here. We’re not wholly content with it, but the aiji in Shejidan had an agreement with Captain Ramirez that’s come into play. It was bound to, once certain information reached the aiji—shall I spell out the terms of it?”

Necessary to switch to ship-language. Necessary to switch to human thinking, to the captains’ thinking, in particular, which might figure that heheld special information theyneeded.

That might be true, if the aiji or the aiji-dowager were including him in their conferences. Perhaps he ought to say at the outset that they weren’t including him. Perhaps he ought to admit that he was in the dark.

Pride trammeled up his tongue. And tangled up his thinking, which said, don’t state any change to be the truth until you know it’strue.

“What the aiji intended me to know,” he said, “I knew. Apparently he wished me kept in the dark, captain, so I wouldn’t make decisions outside my arena of responsibility. It’s useful for you to know that, but it wouldn’t be correct to extrapolate while things are in flux. The dowager says I’m going with you.”

“Are you?” Ogun’s tone was flat, but Bren judged that might have been a surprise to them.

“Decision of the aiji. I’m forced to abide by it, sir.”

“Decision of our brother captain,” Ogun said. Meaning Ramirez, who was dead and not available for argument. And Ogun was frustrated. “So the ship has you, and it has the dowager, and her staff.”

“And it has mine, sir. I’ll have a staff with me.”

Ogun remained thin-lipped. Disapproving. “Sealed orders, Mr. Cameron. Mine to deal with. But by their terms, by what Ramirez set out, in this mission when it might come, the aiji chooses his personnel and his risks.” Dared one think that the captains might have sneaked Phoenixout of dock without fulfilling Ramirez’s pledge to include atevi?

Certain of the captains might have wanted to do that. Jase would have surely said, in that meeting, that that would guarantee very serious trouble.

“We don’t know what situation we have at Reunion,” Ogun said. “We don’t know but that it’s gotten worse—we don’t know the aliens haven’t come back. We can’t communicate, not knowing who’s listening. We can’t guarantee they’ve got the fuel for us, out there. So we needed robot miners to refuel us out at Reunion in case the situation’s gotten far worse. And we couldn’t strip this station of robots, either. That’s solved.”

Ginny’s robots.

“We weren’t prepared to have the aiji’s grandmotheras his agent. We’d asked, in fact, for you, or for his officer in charge of station operations. The word was—apparently—” A shift of the eyes toward Yolanda and back. Had communications been flowing freely even after Ramirez’ death, through her, and not him? Probably, he thought in distress. “—the word was apparently that the aiji wanted family to represent him. We’re concerned. We’re extremely concerned about the choice that’s turned up. What’s your opinion of this choice, Mr. Cameron?”

“My opinion, sir, is that the aiji will do what he does. She has authority next to his. I understand that the travel itself isn’t that strenuous… I hope it isn’t.”

“There’s some strain. She’s brought the aiji’s son, as I gather.”

“Cajeiri. Yes, sir. In her care.” He dared not argue. It wasn’t his place to argue.

“Captain Graham judges her health up to it.”

“I’d defer to his judgement in that.”

“He also says you can deal with Gran ‘Sidi. That you’re an asset.”

Better than I’ve been here, evidently.

His own bitterness surprised him. And hurt feelings had no place. He jerked that reaction up short.

“I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“The fact is,” Ogun said, “we have an agreement for atevi and Mospheiran participation in the station andin the mission.”

“Mospheira has its representative on this mission?”

“Ms. Kroger.”

Kroger. The ride up. The miraculous appearance of the robots… the President’s personal intervention in the production schedule.

Dared one even think that Ramirez’s death was timed?

Or self-selected…

“Yes, sir,” Bren said.

“We have an agreement,” Ogun said, “to maintain the station, to continue ship construction and training—and to provide for local shelters. Bomb shelters, Mr. Cameron, on the planet. To provision them. To contribute advanced materials to be sure there’s something left here if the situation goes to hell.”

Bomb shelters. For the whole population?

He thought of the Bu-javid. Of the hallways of fragile porcelains and priceless work. Of the culture and civilization of two species. Thousands of years.

And Malguri’s stone walls, reared against mechieta-riding invaders. Would there be bomb shelters to save what was there? The wi’itikiin on their cliffs—those delicate nesters, their hatchlings—the blue seas and bluegreen hills? Where were shelters for that?

“The situation remains what it was,” Ogun said. “We don’t know how safe Reunion is, and we can’t risk communications to find out. Command considered an agreement to communicate in event of attack—or imminent destruction—but there was a general fear that if they did transmit, the enemy would know for certain to look for another site, and we don’t want them looking. That remains the decision. There’ll be no communication. If Phoenixgets into trouble—there’ll be no transmission. We’ll go there, get them to abandon the station and get out of there. That’s the mission. You’re along, Mr. Cameron, in case we encounter something other than the Guild. We take it you would be a resource.”

Aliens, that was. He hadn’t even polled his own nerves to know what he thought. He was numb—completely numb. “Yes, sir. Probably I would be.” Someoneat least would have the concept of thinking in another language, inside another, non-human skin.

“If it goes well, you’ll have an idle trip. We’ll depopulate the station, destroy any clue of the direction we’ve gone, and hope for the best. Unfortunately, of planet-bearing stars in the vicinity, there aren’t that many. Of life-bearing planets, this one. Only this one.” Ogun leaned back. “So if I were an alien looking for an origin-point for my enemy, I wouldn’t have that far to look. And we can assume their optics and their instruments are adequate for starflight, which means adequate to find this star, this planet, if they haven’t already done it. And this is our dilemma. If we go back there and pull back our observers, I doubt we conceal a damned thing. But we do send a signal. Don’t we, Mr. Cameron?”

“Yes.”

“What will we be saying?”

“The point is, sir, we know what we’ll be saying. But we don’t know what they’ll be hearing. We won’t know that until we encounter themand get a sample of their thinking.”

“Ideally we won’t encounter them. Ever.”

“I’d agree.”

Ogun considered that.

“If we’re lucky,” Sabin said, “they’ve gone off. If we go back there and stir things up again, we’re likely to provoke what we’re trying to avoid.”

“Also possible.”

“We’re not ready,” Sabin said. “Another hundred years at this star and we might be. But right now we’ve got two stations, one ship, and no defense. Bomb shelters won’t save us.”

“Nothing we’ve got will save us,” Ogun said, “if they take Reunion and come after us. Reunion is sitting out there as a provocation.”

“We don’t know what they think,” Sabin said. “We’re assuming.”

Sabin happened to be right. Not necessarily in her conclusion, but in her reasoning.

“We don’t know either way.” Bren contributed his unasked opinion. “They may be waiting for a signal we don’t know how to give. They may think they have peace. They may not know what peace is. They may not know what war is and may not know they may have provoked one. We don’t know. But we shouldn’t go into their territory looking for them.”

“Cameron’s said it,” Sabin said shortly. “My vote is to put a stop to this whole thing and stay the hell out. If Reunion falls, we still have a fifty-fifty chance they won’t come after us.”

He couldn’t swear to the math. But he agreed with the theory.

“We already have the crew’s vote,” Ogun said. “It’s settled.”

“It’s onlythe crew’s vote,” Sabin said. “And it’s not settled if we decide to the contrary.”

“Reunion is almost certainly repairing,” Ogun said, “and building. They’ll get noisier over time, and they’ll outgrow the situation as it is. They won’t stay hidden. And whatever they do, they remain ours, our fault, whether or not they make good choices and whether or not they can deal with the aliens out there.”

“Or if they build one ship, they can come here,” Jase said out of long silence. “And they can come here with resources, and ships, and orders we don’t want to take.”

There was a thought. More than a thought—a nightmare none of them had talked about.

“We don’t have to be idle here,” Sabin said. “We’re building ships of our own.”

“So what do we have?” Ogun asked. “A human war on the atevi’s doorstep?”

“We don’t need to be sticking our nose into Reunion before we’ve built enough here orthere to be able to defend ourselves against whatever that situation produces. I’m not saying don’t go. I’m saying don’t go yet. Ramirez’s brought atevi and the Mospheirans in on it all, trying to force the issue, complicating the situation, complicating decision-making on what’s ourbusiness, not the aiji’s, complicating the issues, giving us these damned observers, and all of a sudden I’m seeing a hellbent rush away from patience, away from prudence and headlong into a decision to rip authority away from Reunion and try to bring it all here, under ours.”

“We’d better,” Ogun said. “Captain Graham has the right idea. We’d better bring the decision-making here, before they bring their decisions here.”

“And I say wait.”

“You’re outvoted.”

“I know I’m outvoted, as long as Captain Graham says yes on cue. I’m outvoted and we’ve got a mess. We’ve got the aiji’s grandmother, and now it all involves prestige and power on the planet and could bring the government crashing down if we don’t take this woman out there to interfere in our internal affairs. Am I right, Mr. Cameron?”

“Yes, ma’am. You’re absolutely right about the going. But I resist the characterization—”

“And what the aiji thinks affects how efficiently we get supply. Isn’t that always the threat?”

“The aiji’s stability does affect things,” Bren said. “Agreements made, are agreements, and have to stand. But the question is—and I’m asking, in the aiji’s name, agreeing with you, Captain Sabin—is this the best decision?”

“Hell, no,” Sabin said.

“It is the best decision,” Ogun said. “And it’s the decision we’ve already made.”

“Sir,” Bren said. “Captain Sabin. Excuse me. If we get two, then three, then four decision-makers involved here, pretty soon it can happen that they’re not thinking is this a good idea? They’re thinking, how can I make sure my party’s represented in the outcome? That worries me. It worries me exceedingly. I wasn’t consulted. Ramirez never consulted me…”

“That was rather well your aiji’s option, wasn’t it?” Ogun asked.

Score. “Yes, sir, it was.”

“Stupidity,” Sabin said, “and Ivote for keeping quiet, building one, two, three ships, as many as we can—”

“Two, three, and four ships still won’t match what a hostile species who’s had the nerve to blow hell out of an alien outpost may have,” Ogun countered. “We can’t knowwhat they’ve got. We can’t ever know when what we’ve got is adequate to protect ourselves.”

“We can’t know,” Sabin shouted at him, and pounded her fist on the table, “because you want to go out there and pull our damned observers out!”

“Observers who can’t transmit to us without bringing all hell down on their heads,” Ogun retorted in a quieter voice. “And who don’t give a damn for us over them. As well not have them. As well get the provocation out of there, now, while it looks like our choice, an exit with dignity, and not us running for our lives. The decision’s made. You can stay here, or you can take the mission.”

“It’s not official if Graham changes his vote,” Sabin said.

Tabini couldn’t go back, just withdraw his representatives and say to an already nervous Association—oh, well, we changed our minds. Jase Graham voted no, and we’re turning back.

He looked at Jase.

Jase didn’t look at him. Jase looked only at Ogun, then at Sabin. And voted. “It stands.”

Dammit, Bren thought to himself. But not a whole-hearted dammit. Only a sane wish this had gone differently—that he’d been in the loop a long, long time ago.

And how could Tabini do this to him?

He didn’t know where Jase got his decision—whether obedience to Ramirez and Ogun, whether the sense that once the dowager reached here, there was no going back, but effectively—what could they do?

He tried to think of something. He tried frantically to think of something.

“In a nutshell,” Sabin said, “you mean now crew’s involved. They know command’s lied—and we can’t deny that. The atevi have gotten into it. The onworlders have gotten into it. So the mission’s launched, foolhardy as it is. Cameron’s told you we’re crazy. But we’re going hellbent ahead with what never was a good idea, because it was Ramirez’s idea, and he committed us to this mission. And now it’s all mine.”

“I’m sure you’ll carry it out with intelligence and dispatch,” Ogun said. “I’ve never doubted that.”

“I’ll carry it out. And it’s going to be ourdecision.”

Sabin. Who didn’t trust atevi.

And, Bren thought, he had to work with her.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Captain Sabin, somewhat to my own surprise, I’ve taken your side in this. I’m in a similar position: events have gone very far down a track that I can’t retrace either. Since we’re committed to getting what you now admit to be a Pilots’ Guild authority off what you claim to be a wreck of a station, quietly, we hope they’ll listen to reason. But let me ask thisquestion: where do you stand, relative to them, in making future decisions? Bluntly put, are you going to defer decision-making to them, considering they outrank you—or are you going to retain command of the situation, over their objections?”

Silence met that question. Then: “You know I’m a bastard. I’m in command. And we won’t surrender that authority.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“We’ll talk, if that’s possible.”

“More reassuring, Captain. Thank you.”

“I’ll be staying with the station,” Ogun said, “to carry out agreements, to get the shipyard in operation. Captain Sabin will command Phoenixand the mission. That’s the way it will be. Each to our talents.”

Sabin’s left eyebrow twitched. Sabin was brilliant with numbers, had a first-rate instinct in emergencies, and set off arguments like sparks into tinder wherever she walked into a situation. She’d backed Tamun. She didn’t work well with people. Damned right she wasn’t handling the station situation.

“I’ll go with the mission,” Jase said. “With your permission.”

“Well,” Sabin said, “well, well. So we havean opinion. And we want to be helpful. You want to stay with your atevi allies?”

“I believe I can be useful.”

“Mr. Cameron?” Ogun asked.

His decision? God.

“I’m sure Captain Graham would be an asset in either post.”

“Are you up to it?” Sabin asked. “How do you suppose we’regoing to get along?”

Jase—Jase with the devil’s own temper—didn’t blow. He composed his hands in front of him, as carefully, as easily as Sabin’s laced fingers. “What I want and what you want, ma’am, neither one matters against the safety of all aboard. A second opinion might be useful. Someone is likely going to do something or propose something to the detriment of the agreements we have back here at this star. I know those agreements, I know the ship’s needs, the station’s needs, and I have an expertise that’s more critical there than here.”

“You have an expertise. We’ve got a translator, in Mr. Cameron.”

“That’s not what he does. As a ship, we don’t see what he does. We don’t understandpeople who aren’t under the same set of orders for the last several hundred years. Diplomacy—diplomacy, captain. Negotiation. Mr. Cameron’s good at it. So am I. And I can sit here on this station, helping Ms. Mercheson translate, as I assume she’ll stay in that capacity, or I can go out there, giving you a backup, helping explain to Mr. Cameron and the aiji-dowager how the crew works and how the Guild works. And helping arrive at a reasonable conclusion.”

Sabin didn’t say a thing, only listened, hands still clasped, still easy. “We’re not negotiating my orders, Captain Graham. We’re not having any other orders.”

“We don’t know what we’ll meet. And I know routine operations.”

“Let’s hope for routine,” Sabin said glumly. “Keep the dowager quiet, and you’ll be a use.” Sabin’s cold eyes shot straight at Bren. “So you’re going. What kind of space allotment do you need?”

On the spot? Without calculations? “Myself, two security, four staff. The dowager—she has triple that.”

“No outside equipment,” Sabin said, “be clear on that. No electronics independent of our boards. That’s a safety issue.”

“We exist within the station without disruption and my staff is well aware of the issues. I’m sure we can exist within the ship. These are extremely skilled personnel, captain. An asset, in the remote event diplomacy doesn’t work. Of all else you leave behind, I’d advise you take all of our equipment you can lay hands on, along with our specialized staff and our weapons, that we know how to use with very great expertise. And they’ll be at your service, should you need them.”

Ship’s security was electronically difficult to penetrate. Personally—ship’s security had met Banichi and Jago, who were listening to scraps of all that was going on, and didn’t prevent them doing what they did.

“Under whose orders?” Sabin asked. “I’ll have thatsettled, Mr. Cameron. Yours? Or a planet-dwelling grandmother with a notion she gives the orders?”

“The dowager’s security talks to my security, and won’t do anything that risks the safety of the ship—or that contradicts a ship-aiji’s orders. There is a respect for aijiin on staff, Captain. A profound respect for orders. Ship-safety is in your hands. Safety of outside accesses, while you’re docked—I’d frankly recommend your people take advice from mine in establishing a barrier against intrusion. We’re better than yours, at that.”

He took a chance, but he’d spent significant time dealing with Sabin, and one couldn’t insult a woman whose god was objectivity. She listened, absorbed, analyzed.

“Appearances,” Sabin said.

“We can be discreet. Freeing other personnel on your side.”

“Son of a bitch,” Sabin said. Then: “The whole colonial residency’s vacant on this mission. You won’t be cramped. Your whole station residence couldn’t even make a blip on the ship’s fuel needs or add that much to its mass. Take anything you want.”

“It won’t be that extensive,” he said.

“Kroger will have an establishment. Technicalpeople. Certain number of robot support techs. Gear. A lot of it. Herstaff has bulk.”

He didn’t, personally, want to spend the rest of a shortened life sitting at some remote star, reduplicating the plight of the ancestors. He was very, very glad Kroger and her robots were available.

“Station’s fuel needs will be attended to,” Ogun said, “with the older robots. We’re committed to keep building here. Ms. Mercheson will be liaison with the atevi authorities, and with the President.”

“I’d advise splitting that job, sir. Tom Lund would be very good on the Mospheiran side.”

Ogun knew Lund.

“Reasonable recommendation. I’ll talk with the authorities down there.”

“It’s going to be dicey with Shejidan,” Bren said, took a breath. “I’ll advise one thing, Captain Ogun, with all good will: that you take Mercheson’s advice and tell the absolute whole truth at least to her.” He saw the resentment building in a basically honest man, and plowed ahead. “Captain, if you make those leaders down on the planet look as if they don’t know what the truth is, you’ll not only killany hope you have of dealing with those governments, you’ll likely bring both governments down and have chaos down there that three hundred years won’t fix, noworkers, nofuel, nosupplies at all, ever. I can’t stress enough how precarious the situation can turn and how fast. And I am so relieved the ship is leaving you here to take charge of it.—Ms. Mercheson, you understand me.”

He’d changed from questioning Ogun’s expertise to praising it so fast that Ogun was still absorbing it. And wasn’t coming to a conclusion. Yet.

“Yes, sir,” Yolanda said, scarcely audible, and cleared her throat. “Yes, sir. He’s right.”

“We don’t take threats,” Sabin said.

“Captain,” Bren said, “excuse me, but as the workers put it—gravity doesn’t care. Gravity doesn’t care, nor do the facts that govern the planet. If you want supply, tell the truth to your translators and let them figure out how to translate the situation in terms the people will understand. Conversely, listen when they say they can’t say a certain thing, and suggest something that will be better understood. Most of all set a course and keep it. That’s my condensed advice. Ramirez surprised us once. About one more lie injected into the situation is going to exceed the possibility of leaders ever explaining anything to them.”

“Is the truth going to make them happier?” Ogun asked.

There was a deep-seated Guild-engendered conviction behind that question, a philosophy that had never done the ship any favors.

“You’d be surprised, Captain. Most Mospheirans—most atevi, for that matter—won’t ever care about anything political until their own supper’s threatened. Once it is, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people each with ideas and no disposition to compromise until their needs are satisfied. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s whymy ancestors had rather trust an untested parachute capsule than trust one more rational argument from the Pilots’ Guild. People don’t give a damn what you’re doing as long as they’re confident where you’re going. Atevi are fonder of intrigue than Mospheirans, but you’ve hit your limit of surprises with Tabini, no question. They’ll accord you a certain credence as a new leader for the station, but they’ll be watching. Both island and continent will be watching, and watching each other. You have to be even-handed, and you have to be right. Their belief that things must still be running all right because you two are left in charge is very important to their ability to work with each other. It’s a confidence I share or I’d be telling Tabini and Tyers both to get the hell out of this arrangement and protect their own interests separately, and I’m reasonably confident that, even out of the loop as I’ve been, they’d both listen in a heartbeat. Instead I’m going to throw my support to you both and tell them both to trust you. You’re both reputed as the absolute best at what you’re each going to handle, so I haven’t any objections, only my condensed, impolite, and urgent advice on things I think you already know. I’m done. I’m perfectly confident in both of you.”

It was a piece of bald-faced flattery at the end, but was true, too. Ogun didhave a knack for handling the truth with tongs and getting it safely delivered. Sabin could manage sticky operational situations and get out alive—related skills, but in completely different arenas.

Sabin was the hardest to reckon with. “You take orders, Mr. Cameron.”

“On ship? I’d be a fool not to.”

“Are you ever a fool, Mr. Cameron?”

“I’m alive. Most of my enemies aren’t.”

That struck Sabin’s fancy. Delighted her, in fact. She almost laughed. And didn’t.

“Chain of command, Mr. Cameron. Observe it. I’ll take your atevi. You keep them happy. You keep their equipment out of my way. You keep them out of my way. I’m first shift, Captain Graham’s third shift. Pilots will serve in the intervals. I want your primary hours on mine, Mr. Cameron. Say that I want the benefit of your opinions when they do occur. Or if I ask you.”

“I understand you.” No collusion with Jase. He very well understood that implication.

“Good,” Sabin said.

“Any further words, Captain Graham?” Ogun asked.

“No, sir,” Jase said.

Sabin’s hands had returned to their interlaced calm. “Then make your arrangements, Mr. Cameron. That’s all I need from you. That’s all I hope to need.”

“How much time?” he asked.

Sabin cast a glance at Ogun, glanced back again. “Three days to power up from rest. Three weeks to do this in decent shape. But three days will do.”

Three days.

God.

Chapter 12

“Three days,” Bren said to Banichi and Jago on the way back to their section.

“Three days,” he had them relay to lord Geigi and to the aiji-dowager even before they reached the security of their own hall. He wondered if Kroger knew, and if Tabini knew, and suspected the dowager already did.

He stopped personally at Geigi’s door, and learned from Geigi’s major domo that the dowager had already departed to her own quarters—small wonder, since she was straight from a long and difficult journey, and the place was warm.

He stopped there as well. Cenedi himself came to the door to take the message.

“One apologizes for the short notice,” he said. “Cenedi-ji. The ship-aijiin seem to believe that the ship will somehow make that schedule.” He fished shamelessly. “Perhaps their preparations were already advanced.”

“One understands, nandi.” Cenedi completely refused the hook.

“We hope it affords reasonable comfort for the dowager.”

“Understood, nand’ paidhi. We are not surprised.”

Not surprised. No. And therefore prepared? Was that his answer? Three days’ notice?

If that was the case, no one was surprised but those of them who lived here.

Meanwhile a small figure appeared to Cenedi’s left, wide-eyed and apprehensive in the visitation.

Cenedi, too, had followed that minute diversion of his eye, as if someone in Cenedi’s profession hadn’t been aware all along of the boy’s presence ghosting up on him, curious and likely wanting information.

“And the aiji-apparent?”

Cenedi gave a little lift of the brow. A motion of the eyes in the appropriate direction. “What of him?”

“Where will he be, Cenedi-ji?”

“The aiji’s heir, nand’ paidhi, accompanies the dowager.”

“With all respect, this is an extremely dangerous voyage.”

“Yes,” Cenedi said.

What had he left to say or to object?

“I understand,” he said, but he didn’t understand. He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He’d desperately hoped the boy would go to Geigi. And he’d hoped the dowager would have some sort of information for him, but nothing was shaping up as he wished. “Thank you, Cenedi-ji, if you’ll advise her that I came as soon as I had news.”

“I shall, nandi,” Cenedi said to him—not coldly, but firmly.

So that was that. Feeling shattered, he walked on toward his own apartment, in Banichi’s and Jago’s company, asking himself how he’d let things come to such a state of affairs—and how Tabini could have sent the boy on such a venture even with other family members, and how Tabini could so have distrusted him as to go to Mercheson, or how he could ask his own staff to risk what they couldn’t readily conceive as real—

Banichi hadn’t known the sun was a star when the whole space business became an issue.

He had believed Tabini almost grasped the universe at large, but now, with Tabini’s sending the dowager and the boy up here as if this was a short-term venture to another island, he was no longer sure Tabini did know.

He wasn’t sure, among other things, that the aiji-dowager herself particularly cared about stars, or knew this wasn’t the next planet over, despite her association with the Astronomer Emeritus, and he wasn’t wholly sure Cenedi had a grasp of the geography—or lack of it—either.

Granted it wouldn’tbe that long a trip, at least as perceptions made it. The ship folded space— folded space, as Jase put it; and outraged mortal perceptions just didn’t travel well in that territory.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said to his companions as they walked, “understand, if the sun were a finger-bowl in the aiji’s foyer, then where we’re going would be as far distant as…” He didn’t know. But it was far. “As far as another such bowl in my mother’s apartment. Almost as far as a bowl on the dining table at Malguri. Do you see?”

“Quite far,” Banichi said.

“And once we get there, there may not even be a station. This is not a mission to a station like this station. Nothing so comfortable. This is a ruin. This is an area of conflict and destruction, with unknown enemies that might simply blow up the ship before any of us know we’re in danger. And Tabini’s sending the dowager, and a boy who won’t see the sun, won’t see the sky, won’t have any freedom aboard—” He was about to say they had sufficient time to make other arrangements and to persuade the dowager against bringing Cajeiri. But Banichi was quick to answer.

“Then he will learn the discipline of the ship, nadi-ji. He will learn.”

“And risk his life, Banichi. Is it worth it? What can he learn? What can a child do?”

“If he were a potter’s son,” Banichi said, “he would learn clay. Would he not?”

Among atevi, yes. A child would, if he was among potters. If he were among potters he would not be fostered out to every powerful lord in the Association.

“Yes, one assumes so.”

“So being the aiji’s son, he will learn thisclay, will he not? He will learn these leaders. He will learn these allies.”

What was there for the paidhi to say to that? He foresaw he wouldn’t make headway on that score.

And where wasthe proper school for an energetic, somewhat gawky boy who had thus far damaged an ancient garden—where was the school for a boy who would someday succeed the architect of the aishidi’tat, and for whom, all his life, even now, any untested dish on the table, any careless moment at a party could turn lethal?

Was he in greater danger here, where all the staff was vouched for? Or down there, in a time of Associational uncertainty?

“I’d hoped a safer life for him,” Bren said forlornly. “For everyone on the planet, for that matter, nadiin-ji.” They had reached the door. “I suppose the ship-children won’t stay on the station, either.” He’d held that discussion with Jase, theoretically, and in a safer time—how the ship had always voyaged with its children. How very fortunately they hadn’t left them on the station, which despite appearances had turned out to be the riskiest place of all. The universe isn’t safe, Jase had said at the time.

The universe seemed downright precarious for children at the moment.

But from the viewpoint in Shejidan, if the heir were absent, out of reach of assassins, and would presumably return—one hoped—older, backed by potent allies, and by that time possessed of unguessed true numbers, what was more, why, then dared any enemy of Tabini’s make too energetic a move, with so many numbers in the equation unknown and unreachable?

In a sense—no. An atevi enemy was far less likely to move against a boy one day to appear out of the heavens with potent allies and gifted with mysterious new numbers.

Never say Tabini was a fool. Not in this, scary as it was—and not in other decisions Tabini had made. Neither a fool nor timid in his moves.

Neverget in his way: hadn’t the paidhi known that among first truths?

Jago opened the door. Narani was there, in the foyer. Of course Narani was there to meet him. Bindanda was. Several of the others attended, with worried faces.

“We have begun packing,” Narani informed him with a bow. “One trusts court dress will be in order, to meet distant foreigners.”

“Very good,” he said, and felt as if a safety net had turned up under him. Of course information flowed on the station. They knew. “Rani-ji, there is a choice to be made, staff to stay, staff to go with me. I want this establishment to stay active. There’ll be specialized needs. Mercheson, Shugart and Feldman will be operating out of the station. They’ll be translating for the court. They’ll need extensive expert help.” Tano appeared at the door of the security station—Tano and then Algini, who had been following as much as they could, passing things along where appropriate. Thanks to them in particular, things ran smoothly. And he had to make a decision very unwelcome to them. “We have to have security staff remaining here, too.” Narani, too, elderly and fragile, and very, very skilled at keeping the household running—ought to stay here, out of danger. “Rani-ji, I set you in charge of the household while I’m gone.”

“Yes, nandi,” Narani answered.

“Tano, you and Algini, you have to run matters here. You’ll be in charge of Associational security on this station, right next to Lord Geigi’s staff. Directly linked to the aiji, as I expect, too.”

“Yes, nand’ paidhi,” Tano said quietly. He might already havea direct link to the aiji’s staff—more than possible, that, all along.

“One hopes to be with you, nandi,” Bindanda said, uncharacteristically setting himself forward: Bindanda, who made his own reports to the aiji’s uneasy ally, uncle Tatiseigi. “I ask this favor. Who else can cook for you?”

“I’ll weigh the matter, certainly, Danda-ji. You’re of extraordinary value in either place.”

Listening staff. Worried staff. They hadn’t foreknown, at least, no more than he.

And he still hadn’t personally absorbed the shocks of the day—he proceeded on automatic, doing what he thought had to be done, but he knew he shouldn’t be deciding things on the fly, disposing of people’s lives like that, treating their loyalty as something to pack or leave…

But given three days, God, what could he do?

He stood there in the foyer, having shed his coat, and felt a distinct chill—the ship secretly prepared to move, Tabini aware of the mission for months, years, and bypassing him—

He questioned his situation, and realized he was looking at Bindanda, knowing at base level that his own household, like any household, had leaks to certain ears. He had to take the distress in stride. It was inevitable Tatiseigi and the conservatives would hear any faltering, any hint of weakness.

And did an ordinary human, however honored—set up for a decoy, perhaps—expect Tabini to tell him everything, once Tabini had gained a certain fluency in the language?

No. Not even reasonable. Everything in Tabini’s character had advised him to watch himself.

And Ramirez.

Dared he say his human feelings were, personally, hurt?

That hefelt cast aside?

So he made similar decisions regarding his own staff. Could he forget that?

“Your service,” he said to Narani, when, immediately after, he caught Narani alone in the hallway, “your service, Rani-ji, is of inestimable value to me, either here—or going with me. I spoke just now in what I thought your best interest, in proper honor, and knowing the household will need a skilled hand. Or, Rani-ji, if it were your wish, you might also retire—with a handsome pension, I might add, and my profound gratitude. But—”

“Retire I shall not, nand’ paidhi.” Rare that Narani ever interrupted him. This was extreme passion.

“One hardly did ever think so,” Bren assured him in a low voice. “But despite all I said, I urge you choose, Rani-ji, and settle the household either with yourself or another of the staff, and I trust that choice absolutely. I do want you to choose staff to go with me, to the number of four or five servants: I leave the fortunate numbers to your discretion. Security will be Banichi and Jago. I do think Bindanda might be of great use.”

“Then if the choice is mine, nandi, I shall go with you, myself, for one, and I shall prefer Bindanda, if you agree.”

He was not sure he had ever quite, quite broached the subject of Bindanda with Narani. He considered, then took the plunge. “One knows, surely, Rani-ji, that he isGuild.”

Narani lowered his gaze ever so slightly and looked up again with the most clear-eyed, sober look. “So am I, nandi.”

He was absolutely astonished.

“In my man’chi, dare I ask, Rani-ji?” He almost asked now if there was anyone on his staff who wasn’tin the Assassins’ Guild. But he politely refrained from requiring Narani to lie.

The good gentleman lowered his eyes and bowed, ever so slightly. “As tightly so as your security is.”

Dual, then, one of Tabini’s own—it made perfect sense. As Bindanda was within Damiri-daja’s man’chi, and within Tatiseigi’s. And thatbound up within his household the same potent alliance as bound very important elements of the Western Association.