Intruder

"Intruder" by C.J. Cherryh

To Jane, for always being there

and always coming through.

1

Spring in the southwest, and the heavens had opened—not the gentle rains of the summer, but a sheeting deluge that warped the spring landscape beyond the tinted windows of the bus.

Inside, warm and dry, working on a tray table almost sufficient for his paper notes, Bren Cameron enjoyed a sip of tea from a scandalous plastic cup. He had the four-seat executive arrangement to himself at the moment, and his briefcase lay open on the adjacent seat. His four-person bodyguard had all gone to the rear of the bus to converse with the young contingent of Guildsmen they’d been handed for protection, and that left him room to work.

Lightning flashed just uphill from the bus. Thunder cracked—worrisome for electronics, but he wasn’t working on his computer this trip. That machine had far, far too much in its storage to be bringing it into Taisigi territory, and he’d sent it on to the capital with his valets and significant items of furniture, the computer itself to be hand carried and guarded every step of the way. The spiral-bound notebook was enough for him, along with a stack of loose-leaf work and printouts and, within the briefcase, a folder of very official papers, vellum with red and black wax seals and carefully preserved ribbons.

A dark presence moved down the aisle, loomed over him and switched out the vacuum-thermos teapot on his little work surface. Jago was not a servant—the sidearm attested to that. So did the black leather of the Assassins’ Guild. She stood a head taller than any tall human, black-skinned, golden-eyed—atevi, in short, native to the world, as humans were not. She was half of the senior pair of his atevi bodyguard—a bodyguard, and his lover, moderately discreetly, of some years now.

He was the sole human on the bus, a single individual of fair hair and pale skin and pale civilian dress in a company of black-uniformed atevi. He was the sole human on the mainland, by now, and his personal world had gotten back to the atevi norm, where he looked up at everyone he talked to and struggled with steps and furniture. He was not a small man—as humans went. But here, even a small teacup meant a generous pouring, and the seat he occupied, scaled for atevi, accommodated human stature with a footrest.

It was his bus. And it had such amenities. He was dressed for court, lace at the cuffs and collar, a pale blue vest. His coat, beige brocade, hung behind the driver. He had his fair hair braided, and the ribbon that tied that braid was white, the badge of the paidhi-aiji— translator for the aiji, the ruler of the aishidi’tat, the Western Association. The white ribbon meant peace and nonviolence, the paidhi’s job being that of an intercessor in the affairs of lords.

The white ribbon was supposed to mean peace and nonviolence, at least, and the gun he usually carried in his pocket was in the luggage this trip. The bulletproof vest was only a precaution.

Jago made a second trip forward to advise him, leaning on the seat back across the aisle. “We have just crossed the border, Bren-ji.”

The border out of Sarini Province, that was.

So they were now in Taisigi district, in what had been hostile territory for centuries—a place he never would have contemplated entering. Not on his life.

But he’d already been there. He’d negotiated with the lord of the Taisigi. He’d gotten out in fairly good shape, despite the efforts of some.

And he was coming back, to finish what he’d started, now that the Assassins’ Guild had taken “supportive control” of Tanaja, the capital of Taisigi clan.

“Will you want lunch, Bren-ji?” Jago asked him. The galley on their well-appointed bus was in operation. A pleasant aroma had informed him of that some while ago.

“A light one, Jago-ji, half a sandwich, perhaps.” There was no knowing whether they were going to attend a formal dinner tonight—or a firefight. Although the odds were considerably against the latter, one still never quite bet on anything, not where it regarded the lord of the Taisigicwho had just a little reason to be upset about recent events. “Have we made contact yet?”

“With the Guild, yes,” Jago said. “Not yet with Lord Machigi’s staff.”

“Let me know when you have, Jago-ji.”

“Yes,” she said, and went back down the aisle.

He poured another small dose of tea, sipped it, reflexively saved his papers from a spill as the bus hit a hole, and took a fleeting note: Road improvement, Targai-Najida to border—for a time when relations might be easier. They were still on the Sarini plateau, but the road—which on the atevi mainland meant a strip of mud, gravel, or mowed grass leading somewhere the railways didn’t go—would start descending hereafter, headed for the heart of the Marid, an arm of the wider sea that was its own small world.

The Taisigi whose lord he proposed to visit were one of the five clans of the Marid.

Lord Machigi of the Taisigin Marid had become the last man standing of the three most powerful Marid lords. The three lords had plotted, each in his own way, to take over the west coast of the aishidi’tat; unfortunately, one Bren Cameron, whose country estate lay on the West Coast, on Najida Peninsula, had decided to take a vacation right in the middle of the territory in question.

The Marid, immediately seeing something ominous in his presence, had attempted to assassinate him and his young guest, Cajeiri—who happened to be the eight-year-old son of Tabini-aiji, the ruler of the aishidi’tat.

That had brought in the lad’s great-grandmother, not the quiet sort of great-grandmother, but the lord of the East and notthe power to cross if one wanted a long life.

Hence the paidhi’s current trip to Tanaja, in a shiny red and black bus, with his own bodyguard and ten junior Guildsmen. His bodyguard hadn’t been sure the juniors were an asset—more apt to need protection than to provide it, in Jago’s words; but they were the guard the Guild had come up with on short notice, the Guild having deployed almost all its senior assets in the recent Marid action, and when all was said, ten additional Guildsmen with equipment certainly looked formidable.

So the younger contingent came along—in case absolutely everything he’d worked out with the young lord of the Taisigi had gone to blazes overnight. Which, in the volatile politics of the aishidi’tat, was not impossible.

Go talk to Machigi, the aiji-dowager had said—Ilisidi, the aiji’s grandmother and young Cajeiri’s great-grandmother. Get Machigi to give up his claim on the West Coast and ally with us. In turn, we shall stop the Guild from assassinating him. That was the order that had sent him to Tanaja the first time.

Socin the upshot of it all, two Marid lords who hadn’t won Ilisidi’s favorable attention were now dead, their houses occupied by the Assassins’ Guild, who were busy going through their records and finding out a host of things the deceased lords would not have wanted published to the worldcor to their own clans.

And here he was back in Lord Machigi’s territory for the second time in two weeks. Machigi’s premises were also being occupied by Guild forces, but in a theoretically benevolent way.

Tabini-aiji, back in the capital of the aishidi’tat, in Shejidan, was still watching the operation in some curiosity—rather in the manner of one watching two trains run at one another, as Bren saw it. Tabini could have vetoed the notion. He hadn’t. He’d let his grandmother run the operation, backing her up as neededcand possibly intending to let any adverse events bounce back on Ilisidi, not on him.

But Ilisidi’s plan was apparently still going smoothly.

The potential in the situation had been damned scary for about three very unsettled days, in which the Assassins’ Guild in the capital had met to consider a massive operation against a sizable portion of its own membership—a faction of the Assassins’ Guild which, three years ago, had overthrown Tabini’s rule for two significant years and then fled the capital when Tabini had come back on a wave of popular support. The Assassins that had supported the usurper, Murini, had run southcand reorganized.

Worse, Guild internal secrecy had covered the problem. It had covered it so damned well that not even Tabini-aiji had known—because Tabini, who had replaced his Guild-approved bodyguard with men of his own clan, who were not high up enough in the Guild to suit the Guild leadershipc. had somehow fallen off the list of persons to be informed of certain maneuvers.

Politics, politics, politics. The Guild had started running its own operation, trying to mop up their recent split, not advising Tabini of everything it knew—

Like the fact that the splinter group had moved beyond organizing in the Marid—that they had turned the two northernmost lord of the Marid into puppet lords, putting the two clans at theirdirection.

Tabini still hadn’t been told, because his bodyguard, who should have informed him, had ties and relatives not approved by the Guild leadership.

The aiji-dowager’s bodyguard hadn’t been told, either—first because she was in close company with the aiji, and second because she had been a guest of a lord with notoriously lax security, who might innocently have blown the Guild operation.

So secret were the inner workings of the Guild that the paidhi’s high-ranking bodyguard hadn’t been told, either, and hisbodyguard contained at least one person who was tapped into the Guild at highest levels. Algini, partnered with Tano, had reasonably expected information he hadn’t received.

Why not? Because hislord, the paidhi-aiji, was working closely with Tabini and the aiji-dowager, and somebody high up in the Guild was in the final stages of planning a strike against the renegades in the south and was absolutely not confiding in the messy households of people who actually lived lives outside the rules of the Guild, and who were running around near the sphere of action at the time.

And what then happened?

The Guild’s enemies tried to assassinate the paidhi-aiji, because he’d walked into theiroperations, unadvised.

Then they’d gone on attacking, because the aiji-dowager and Tabini’s young son had added themselves to the target zone.

Just run over to Tanaja and get Machigi to join uscthat had been Ilisidi’s approach to the situation that had landed on them at Najida.

And that had tripped up the Guild’s maneuvering for good and all, since Machigi had been the first target the Guild had been putting the pressure on.

An ignorant intervention?

One didn’t quite think so. The hellIlisidi’s bodyguard hadn’t started to get information that the Guild hadn’t been willing to give to Tabini, once bullets had started flying, and the hellthe aiji-dowager hadn’t made threats and promises to get it out of them—the aiji-dowager’s chief bodyguard, Cenedi, probably allying with Algini to get accesses. The paidhi-aiji knew the smell of politics when it wafted past him. Cenedi had started finding things out, and then Alginihad started finding things out, as the machinery started to move.

Now the Guild in Shejidan had the shadow-Guild on the run. The average citizen in the northern Marid might know that his own lord had died, yes. That they were also missing a minister or two might take longer to notice. The sudden appearance of uniformed Guild in the halls of government would be the only sign—and that would get to the flower market and the fishmonger by the city rumor millcthat and certain government offices opening under the direction of lower-level officials, senior officials having had the sense to resign and go tend their personal businessc

That was the pattern in Senji clan territory, north of here, the other side of the Maschi district. It was the same across the Marid Sea, in Dojisigi clan, where most of the shadow-Guild had clustered—and where some of the nastiest fighting had gone on.

The Guild had told Tabini, finally; the Guild had been in communication with Ilisidi, and right now the paidhi’s bodyguard was in radio contact with the Guild authority, and everybody was talking to everybody else.

Going into Taisigi territory was still a scary proposition. But it certainly beat the last trip. He had packed hiking boots this trip. He’d sworn to himself he would never go anywhere again without hiking boots.

And—theoretically—this time the Guild would courteously warn them if they were heading into a trap.

He had his lunch while lightning broke around them, while from time to time the windshield went awash with water. It was a typical spring front, coming in off the straits. But with luck, the worst of the weather would blow past them and be off across the Marid Sea by the time they got to Tanaja, on the coast.

Meet with Machigi and then call and arrange a secure flight from the airport over in Sarini Province, a bus ride back to the airport, and on to Shejidan. For business. A lot of business.

His guests had all departed from Najida. Young Cajeiri had flown back to Shejidan yesterday—Tabini-aiji had insisted on a plane flight, no more train rides. Young Dur had flown his own plane home yesterday, too, ahead of the storm. Dur’s father, going home by sea as of two days ago, would have had a rougher trip, at least at the outset.

Ilisidi and her security team would have taken off hours ago, just ahead of the incoming front, the last of his guests to leave. She would change planes at Shejidan, not delaying for pleasantries, and continue on to her own estate, Malguri, across the continental divide. She was taking Lord Geigi’s traitorous nephew Baiji with her—under close guard. Baiji was a fool, but he had his uses—primarily in begetting an heir.

Lord Geigi himself was still over at Kajiminda, the estate neighboring Najida, lingering to straighten up some last-moment business there, before catching the next shuttle back to the space station and getting back his real job.

So the construction crew would be moving in tomorrow to repair Najida’s main hallway and the roof with more than the patches that currently kept the rain out. And to do some major renovation while they were at it.

He loved that little estate. He wanted to stay and supervise the construction and be consulted for small decisions.

But he had a promise to keep. And a duty to perform.

And if he succeeded, the world would change.

2

It was going to be goodbye for good to the little bedroom in Great-grandmother’s apartment, and Cajeiri was not happy. It had been home ever since they had gotten back from space, but where they were going next was their real homecwhich they had not been able to go back to until now.

It was repaired, since the coup. The bullet holes were patched. It was repainted.

But in Cajeiri’s view, his room there was going to be only one more room in the Bujavid.

Where Cajeiri had rather not be in the first place.

He had only been infelicitous six when he had last seen his parents’ real apartment in the Bujavid.

Oh, it was a fine place, the Bujavid. His father had his offices and his audience hall here. Here the legislature sat, and here was the national library. Here almost all the most important lords lived when they were in town, and the halls were full of important and historic things, and all that.

But his father’s newly painted apartment was so—clean. So white. So—modern. He had had a look through the doors yesterday, only that. And it was just—white. Which was actually the way he remembered it, from long, long ago.

He had only really lived in that apartment when he was a baby. He had, since then, lived in Great-uncle Tatiseigi’s house; and then he had gone up in the shuttle and lived on the starship, and he had flown on the starship farther than anybody on earth could imagine; and he had traveled back to the space station—which he had had to leave in a hurry, leaving all the people he had met in space.

And then he had flown back down to the world with nand’ Bren and Great-grandmother, because his father had been overthrown and enemies were in control of the capital, and they—he and Great-grandmother and Father and nand’ Bren—had had to fight their way from Uncle Tatiseigi’s house back to the Bujavid again and set his father back in power.

So he had come to live in this room, in Great-grandmother’s apartment, which had stayed safe during the Troubles. His father and his mother had lived here, too. And he had been almost a whole year living in this warm little bedroom. And taking lessons from his incredibly boring tutors—well, except for one small incident. Or two.

His father had of course become aiji again, so his father was obliged to live in the Bujavid and, as soon as he could, to have his own apartment back. They were cramped, living with Great-grandmother.

But hehad rather live with Great-grandmother or with nand’ Bren, which was where he had just been—at Najida—even if he had only gotten to go out in a boat once.

Well, twice, if one counted the accident. But that had not exactly been a proper boat.

And everything was better at Najida now, and just when there was a real chance nand’ Bren could have taken him out every day on his boat, or nand’ Toby could have—his parents wanted him back in Shejidan, and told him he had to fly home.

Great-grandmother had gotten to stay in Najida. And now she was coming back, but she was not even going to come in from the airport. She was taking that fool Baiji to meet the girl he was going to have to marry.

So he did not even get to see her.

And now everybody was running around in excitement because they were moving back to their own apartment, as if that was good news.

They were moving there tomorrow.

And that was where he would have to live.

Forever.

With a boring tutor giving him boring lessons.

He had ever so much rather have his lessons from Great-grandmother, even if she did thwack his ear for mistakes.

Or from nand’ Bren, who had taught him all sorts of things.

Or from Banichi, who was Guild, and incredibly scary and very kind and understanding. Those were his best teachers. Ever.

When they had been on the starship, nand’ Bren had given him vids from the human archive, about dinosaurs and musketeers and horses. He never got those any more. He scarcely ever got to spend time with nand’ Bren and Banichi.

And worst of all, Great-uncle Tatiseigi was back in residence in the Bujavid, now, and they would probably have to have dinner with him once a week once they had a dining room.

Then his mother’s Ajuri clan relatives were coming in, because the legislature was about to meet, and they would take anyexcuse to come visit. The aunts were not so bad. But Grandfather was appalling.

Mother was about to have a baby, that was the problem. That was a lot of the problems. The Ajuri were all excited about it, as if his mother did not already have him.They were probably saying that thisbaby would never be exposed to nand’ Bren, and they would far rather a baby that theycould rule—

They would certainly rather have somebody theycould influence. He had had far too much to do with Great-grandmother and with humans. That was what they thought. He was sure of it.

Great-grandmother would come back when she had gotten Baiji married off.

But by then he would have moved out of this apartment, with his parents, with all sorts of rules.

In theirapartment, he would have a whole lot of theirstaff watching him. A lot of his parents’ staff who had not been killed in the coup had been off on paid leave since his father had come back to power because there was just no room for them in Great-grandmother’s apartment.

But his father’s staff would be all over the new apartment, and he would not be able to make a move without somebody reporting it to his father or his mother.

It was just dismal.

Pack, they had told him. Or would you rather the servants did it?

He most certainly did not want the servants going through his things. They would hardly know what was important. The things they could handle were in the closet—which was a lot of clothes—and what was not clothes was in the boxes on the floor, which were his drawings and his notes.

And then there were the important things in his pocket, where he kept his slingshota, along with three fat perfect rocks from Najida’s little garden, which he never ever meant to shoot where he could lose them. They were more precious to him than anything but the slingshota itself.

It was not very much to own for somebody who was the heir of all the aishidi’tat. But it was all he really cared about keeping. Not counting the clothes. Which he personally did not count. The servants could move those.

He was just short of his felicitous ninth year, and in one more day he was going to be miserable for the rest of his life.

He had his own bodyguard now, at least: Antaro and Jegari, who were not Guild yet, just apprentices. They were sibs, from Taiben, and they were almost grown, but they understood him better than anybody in the Bujavid.

And now there were Lucasi and Veijico, another brother and sister team, who were real Guild and carried weapons and wore the black uniforms and everything. His father had assigned them to him. His father was not thoroughly pleased with them ever since Najida. But they had learned a lot, and improved. So they were his, and he would not let them go.

His parents had promised him his bodyguard would have rooms of their own in the new apartment. And he would have a little suite. Which was good. He had not even been interested in looking at it when he had had a chance to look in on the apartment.

They had told him no, there would be no windows where they were going, not in his suite; he had not been surprised, but he was not happy about it, either. Ever since coming back to the Bujavid, he had felt closed in. Mani’s apartment had not just a window, but a whole balcony you could sit on. But his father’s bodyguard would not let him go out there.

So for the rest of his life, he would just have to sit in his windowless little suite and do homework and ask the servants to do anything that was remotely interesting. He had wanted this morning to go to the library and look up things about the Marid, because he had gotten interested in it, but his father’s bodyguard would not let him out of the apartment.

That was a forecast, was it not? It was just what things would be.

He was bored and angry, and went disconsolately from one thing to another, he tried to read the book nand’ Bren had lent him and wished he still had the vids from the ship that he had grown up with.

He wished even more that he had his companions from the ship, humans his age. He really wished there were someone, anyone, his age that he could talk to. But he was the aiji’s son, and who got to be associated with him at all was a political question, and important, and so far there was no boy his age in the whole world that his father approved of.

And if ever his father approved, he still had to get his mother to approve, and Great-grandmother, and Uncle Tatiseigi, and his Ajuri grandfather.

It was just grim here.

And it was going to be grim. Forever. His mother and his father and his grandfather and Uncle Tatiseigi had his whole life planned.

He sat down at his little desk, took a pad of paper and a pen, which had come with the desk, and, still furious, drew Najida estate the way he remembered it. He put in the rocks at the turn of the walk that led down the hill to the harbor. He put in nand’ Bren’s boat, and nand’ Toby’s. He ran out of paper for the little rowboat he had borrowed.

He ruined that, and drew it again on another sheet of paper. He constantly tried to draw things, to remember them when he had to move again. And he kept his drawings secret, among his Important Things, in that box on the floor.

Then it occurred to him he should draw this room, because once he had moved out, there was never any guarantee he would be back, or that the room would stay the way it was, once he had no say in the matter. So he drew it next, the tassels on the bedcover, the desk he was using, the hangings on the wall, the tapestry with the picture of a boat, and, most important, his big map of the whole of the aishidi’tat.

Veijico knocked and came in. “Nandi. A message from your mother. She wants you.”

Damn, he thought. And thought it twice. And again. He was not supposed to say that word out loud even if it was ship-speak and nobody had any idea it was swearing. Damn. Damn. Damn.

Maybe it was a security lecture coming. His father had already had the security lecture with him. The legislature was going into session and there were controversial bills going to be on the floor, which brought out crazy people, who had any citizen’s right to be on the bottom, public floor of the Bujavid, so he must remember that.

And there could be people who were much more dangerous than simply crazy. There could be elements of the renegade Guild that they had not caught yet. The shadow-Guild, nand’ Bren called it. And theywere scary.

So he was supposed to stay in the apartment.

He knew about defense. He had been with mani and Cenedi and nand’ Bren and Banichi over at Najida, in all the shooting. He had defended the house, had he not? He had defended mani.

And those people had been armed and bent on killing everybody.

He had killed somebody—more than one somebody in the course of things, though it upset him to think about it, and he sometimes dreamed about it; he did not want to say that to his bodyguard, whose job was to save him from situations like that. He had things he remembered and kept all to himself. Grown-up things.

But his parents never gave him credit for knowing anything at all.

He had no choice about going to his mother, now, however. He got up and put on his coat, with Veijico’s help, and when he went out the door of his room, the rest of his aishid was waiting for him. They were probably curious, being as bored and shut-in as he was, and with the same things ahead of them. So they were going to go with him and watch him get in trouble. He hardly blamed them. But:

“You can all stay outside,” he said, annoyed with it all. “One expects a security lecture. And you know all of that.”

“Yes,” Antaro said, speaking for the aishid; so they would stand outside the door, waiting for details.

His mother, three doors down the hall, didn’t have any of her bodyguard on dutycwhat with her guard, and his father’s, and his, the bodyguards all bumped into one another in the halls, and his young aishid had their own hard time, dealing with senior Guild, whose business was always more important and who always got the right of way.

He reached his mother’s door, and Antaro knocked, once.

His mother’s major d’, Lady Adsi, opened for him and let him into his mother’s borrowed little sitting room.

“Your mother is expecting you, young gentleman,” Lady Adsi said, and left him to stand there facing nothing in particular while she disappeared through the inner door of his parents’ suite.

In a moment more his mother came through that door. She was very pregnant, but she was always beautiful. Today she had on a blue drapey coat and a lot of blue and white lace, and she smiled at him. That was supposed to be reassuring—but it was not entirely a reassurance, if one knew his mother.

He bowed. She bowed. She smelled like flowers, she always did. She waved a lacy hand toward her desk and went and sat down there, slightly sideways, to face him.

He came closer, folding his hands behind his back, and waited, wondering what kind of report about him could have come in, from what place, and how much trouble he was in.

“So, are you packed, son of mine?” she asked.

“Yes, honored Mother,” he said quietly, properly, though sneaking a glance over the papers she had out on the desk. One looked like a building plan. He thought it might be Najida. But it looked different. The rooms were all wrong.

It was, he realized, the new apartment, showing how the rooms were laid out. And she drew from under it another diagram that might be just an enlarged part of that plan, with several rooms attached.

“This is your suite,” she told him, and he looked hard, and tried to memorize it on the spot. It was a proper suite, the way he had had at Najida—well, except the hall it opened onto would not be the main hall of the Bujavid, but a hall inside the larger apartment, where there was no hope of getting outside unobserved.

But it had its own sitting room and a second little room for some purpose, and there was a master bedroom and closet, and beyond that a little hall, and a pair of rooms next to the bedroom, each, he decided, with closets. That pair of rooms would be for his aishid.

And she did not take the diagram away. She turned it so he could better see it.

“This will be your suite,” she said, and pointed out the numbers on the sides of the room. “These are the dimensions. You will have your own little office, do you see, for your homework.”

The extra room was about the size of the closet in the bedroom, but if it was an office, it would be a place for his projects, and that was excellent. His things would not be in danger of being stepped on. And he would have a table. And bookshelves.

“But you do not have enough furniture to fill it, son of mine,” she said.

One had supposed furniture would just turn up. Furniture always had turned up. He never had any choice in it.

His mother pulled out another paper and laid it atop the plan, a paper which had official-looking printing and a red stamp with the Ragi crest.

“This is an authorization,” she said, “for you to go down to the storerooms.”

“Storerooms. Downstairs?” The Bujavid had a lot of levels, and most of them were storage, all the way down to the train station. But he had never been there. Outside the apartment. Outside the apartment was an exciting notion.

“There is a warehouse office on the fifth level, which your aishid will have no trouble finding by this number.” She pointed it out, at the top of the paper. “Give the supervisor this paper. I have a copy. You are old enough now to have some notion what you would like. Your father and I thought you might like to apply your own energies to this matter. So in storeroom 15—it says here, do you see? —is your furniture from when you were a baby. Some was damaged in the coup; some was not and has been warehoused since. But one is sure you will have outgrown that. You have the floor plan, with its dimensions, do you see? This will show you what will fit, and you may ask your aishid for their help, but you must notshow this paper to the supervisor: Everything about the new apartment is classified and not in his need to know. He may see thispaper, which has the general dimensions.” Another paper, with little written on it. “You and your aishid may pick out any furnishings you please. They simply have to fit the space you have.”

“Anything?”

His mother briefly held up a forefinger. “Within the bounds of size and taste, son of mine.”

“A television?”

“No.”

“Honored Mother, it is educational!”

“When one has a good recommendation from your tutor, one may consider it. Not until then.”

He sighed. He was not in the least surprised. Even mani had not let him have a television.

“One day, son of mine. Not now. And because you are young, there must be a few other restrictions. You may pick antiquities, but they must be only of metal or wood, nothing breakable, nothing embroidered, and nothing with a delicate finish or patina.”

“One has never broken anything! Well, not often. Not in months.”

“One trusts you would not willingly be so unfortunate. But if your choice of furnishing is breakable, if it can be stained or easily damaged, it must notbe an antiquity or a public treasure. And do not overcrowd your rooms, mind. Listen to the supervisor’s advice. And note too that a respected master of kabiu will arrange what you choose in a harmony appropriate to the household, so do not give him too hard a task. You will make a list of the tag numbers of those things you wish moved to your suite and deliver that list back to the supervisor. Or you can take back any of your old furniture you would like.”

“One would ever so prefer to choose new things, honored Mother!”

“Then do.” She handed him the paper and the plan. “So go, go, be about it!”

“Yes, honored Mother!” He sketched a bow and headed for the door at too much speed. Great-grandmother would have checked him sharply for such a departure. He checked himself and turned and bowed properly, deliberately, lest he offend his mother and lose a privilege just granted. “One is very gratified by your permission,” he said properly. “Honored Mother.”

A very faint smile lay under her solemnity. It was his favorite of her expressions.

“Go,” she shaped with her lips, smiling, and gave a little waggle of her fingers.

He left quietly, shut the door, and let a grin break wide as he faced his aishid, fairly dancing in place.

“We get to go down to the storerooms and pick out furniture!” he said. It was the best, most exciting thing since he had gotten here. He held up the papers. “And you can pick, too!”

The papers with the Ragi seal on them meant they had permission to go to the lifts. By themselves. And Lucasi and Veijico, in uniform, had their sidearms with them, and Antaro and Jegari had the small badges which meant Guild-in-training. The guards at the lifts made no objections at all to such a proper entourage, with proper papers. And Lucasi had a lift key, which he used once they got in. “So nobody can stop the lift,” he said importantly, as the lift clanked into motion.

They went straight down for a good distance; the lift stopped and let them out in a very officelike corridor that showed other, dimly lit corridors. The place was significantly deserted. Spooky. Their steps echoed.

Lucasi had the paperwork, but did not so much as check it, not since his first look; he said something obscure to Veijico, she said, “Yes, one agrees,” and they kept walking down the hall, arriving at the supervisor’s office, having contacted the supervisor as they walked.

And the supervisor very politely rose as they entered, looked at the official paper, bowed, then took up a stack of white tags with strings and a little roll of tape, which he brought with him. Veijico gave him the permissible paper with the room sizes. And the supervisor personally led them out and down the hall to a long, long dimly lit side hall, past doors with just numbers on them. He opened the one marked 15 and turned on the lights inside.

It was a huge, dim, cold room full of furniture that made shadows, shadows upon shadows, more than the lights could deal with. The whole room smelled of something like incense, or vermin-poison. And it held the most wonderful jumble of beds and chairs, some items under brown canvas, some just stacked with pieces of cardboard or blankets between.

“One might show you first what is already tagged for you, young lord,” the supervisor said.

“One wishes to see it, nadi,” Cajeiri said, and followed the man to a set-aside area with a little bureau and a little bedstead and a rolled up carpet. The bureau and the bed had carved flowers. And he almost remembered that bureau with a little favor.

But it was undersized. Baby furniture. It was downright embarrassing to think he had ever used it.

And there were far more wonderful things all around them.

“We are permitted to choose different ones,” Cajeiri said.

“That you may, young lord. If one could ask your preferences, one might show you other choices.”

“Carving,” he said at once. He had seen better carving on a lot of furniture around them, some with gilt, some without. “A lot of carving. With animals, not flowers, and not gold. The most carving there is. You would not have any dinosauric”

The man looked puzzled. “No, nandi. One must confess ignorance of such.”

“Well, big animals, then. With trees. Except,” he added reluctantly, “we are not permitted to have antiquities.”

“I know several such sets,” the supervisor said, and led the way far down the aisle between towering stacks of old furniture.

The first set was all right, dusty, but the animals were all gracefully running, more suggestions than real animals. The second one had animals just grazing. That was fine. But not what he wanted.

The third, around the corner, had fierce wild animals snarling out of a headboard and a big one with tusks, staring face-on from a matching bureau with white and black stone eyes. “This one, nadi!” he said. “And this!”

So a tag went on that set. And he had most of the bedroom. It was a big bed. Bigger than the one he had in mani’s apartment.

“You will need chairs for a sitting room, young gentleman; we have a suggestion for seven chairs. And a table. A desk for an office. Carpet for three rooms. All these things.”

“And my aishid will have their beds and carpets,” he said. “And they can choose for themselves. Whatever they want. But we favor red for ourselves.”

“Red. One will strive to find the best,” the supervisor said.

There were five wonderful chairs. Mani would approve. They were heavy wood and tapestry had the most marvelous embroidery of mountains in medallions on the backs and seats, each one different. There was a side table of light and dark striped wood that was almost an antique. And for his office there was a desk that had a picture of a sailing ship, an old sailing ship, with sails. He liked that almost as much as the bedroom set. It reminded him of Najida.

There was a red figured carpet that was fifty years old and hedging on antiquity, too, but the supervisor said if it was in the bedroom, it would surely not be spilled on; and it was a wonderful carpet, with pictures woven in around the border of a forest and fortresses and animals, with a big tree for most of the pattern, but the bed would cover that.

Then his aishid picked out beds and side tables and chairs for their rooms: Lucasi and Veijico liked plain furniture with pale striped wood, and Antaro and Jegari liked a dark set that had trees and hunting scenes like Taiben forests, and they agreed to mix it up, because Veijico and Antaro had one room and Lucasi and Jegari had the other. But that was all right, too: Mother had said there would be a master of kabiu to sort all that out and put vases and hangings and such that would make it felicitous, however they scrambled the sets.

It was a lot of walking and pulling back canvas covers and looking at things. He thought they would all smell of vermin-poison by the time they got out of the warehouse.

But they were only half done. The supervisor showed them a side room and shelves and shelves of vases and bowls and little nested tables and statues and wall hangings. The supervisor pulled out several hangings he thought might suit, and Antaro wanted a hunting one that he rejected, himself. He took one that was mountains and lakes and a boat on the lake, and Veijico took another that was of mountains, while Lucasi and Jegari took hunting scenes and another mountain needlework.

And there was, in this place, a marvelous hanging that was all plants, and all of a sudden Cajeiri saw what he wanted for the whole room, the whole suite of rooms. “I want that one, nadi,” he said. “But I want growing plants, too. I want pots for plants, nadi.” He and his associates on the ship had used to go to hydroponics, and nand’ Bren’s cabin had had a whole hanging curtain of green and white striped plants, and just thinking about it had always made him happy. He suddenly had a vision of plants in his rooms. Hisrooms. And plants were not antiquities, and they could not possibly be outside the rules.

“One will make a note of that, young lord,” the supervisor said, and was busy writing, while Cajeiri peered under an oddly shaped lump of canvas. “One will notify the florists’ office.”

One was sure it would happen. He paid no more attention to that problem. He saw filigreed brass. And there proved to be more and more of it as he pulled on the old canvas, canvas that tore as he pulled it, it was so old.

The brass object was filigree work with doors as tall as he was, a little corroded and green in spots, and it took up as much room as two armchairs. It was figured with brass flowers that made a network of their stems instead of bars. And it had a brass door, and brass hinges, and a latch, and a floor with trays.

He worked to get all the canvas off.

“That is a cage,” the supervisor said. “From the north country. It is, one fears, young gentleman, an antique, seven hundred years old.”

“But it is brass, nadi!” He wantedit. He sowanted it. It was big, it was old, and it was weirder than anything in the whole warehouse. It was the sort of thing anybody seeing it had to admire, it was so huge and ornate. And he wanted it to stand in the corner of his sitting room, whatever it was, with light to show it up, with plants all over. “I am not to have fragileantiques,” he said. “Brass is different. My mother said I might have brass.”

The supervisor consulted his papers. “That exception is indeed made, young lord.”

“Parid’ja, nandi,” Lucasi said quietly. “In such cages, people used to keep them for hunting. They would go up in the trees and get fruit and nuts. And they would dig eggs. That is what this cage was for. To keep a parid’ja.”

“It is wonderful,” he said. “One wants it, nadi, one truly, truly wants it!”

“It is quite large,” the supervisor said. “It really does not fit easily within the size requirements.”

“I still want it, nadi,” he said, and put on his best manners. “One is willing to give up two chairs or the table, but I want it. It can even go in my bedroom if it has to.”

“In your bedroom,young gentleman.”

“It can stand in a corner, can it not? I shall give up the hanging if I must. I want this above all things, nadi!”

The supervisor took a deep breath and gave a little bow, then put a tag on the cage and noted it on the list. “One will run the numbers, young gentleman, and assign it a space, if only doors and windows allow.”

“We haveno windows, nadi!” For the first time ever, that seemed an advantage. “And not many doors!”

“Then perhaps it will fit, withyour chairs and hanging andthe table. Allow me to work with the problem. One promises to solve it. Meanwhile, search! You may find small items which may delight you.”

“One is pleased, nadi! Thank you very much!” He used his best manners. He hurried around the circular aisle, taking in everything. Brass meant he could have old things. He picked out a brass enamelware vase as tall as Lucasi. “For the sitting room,” he said.

That was the last thing he dared add. It was big, but it was big upward,and it went with the cage. He was satisfied. “May one come back again, nadi,” he asked, “if one needs other things?”

“Dependent on your parents’ wishes, yes, young lord, at any time you wish to move a piece out or in, we are always at your service. We store every item a house wishes to discard from its possession. We restore and repair items. We employ artists and craftsmen. Should any of these things ever suffer the least damage, young lord, immediately call us, and we will bring it down to the workshop and make whatever repair is necessary.”

He bowed, as one should when offered instruction from an elder. “One hears, nadi, and one will certainly remember. But we are very careful! We are almost felicitous nine, we are taught by the aiji-dowager and by our parents, and we are very careful!”

A bow in return. “One has every confidence in your caution, young lord. Rest assured, I shall have staff move these things to the staging area, give them a little dusting and polish, and you shall have them waiting for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you, nadi!” he said with a second bow, and they all walked back to the entry and took their leave in the brighter light of the hallway.

He was all but bouncing all the way to the lift, imagining how marvelous his suite was going to be and where hewould put things. Hewould put things. Hewould have a choice.

He had seen vids about animals. Horses. And elephants. And dogs and cats and monkeys. He had wanted a horse. And a monkey and a dog and a cat and a bird and a dinosaur. He had wantedcoh, so many things he had seen in the vids on the ship. But humans had not brought any of them with them. He had been verydisappointed that there were no elephanti or dinosauri on Mospheira.

He thought of things one could keep in a cage like that. He had instantly thought of several varieties of calidi, that laid eggs for the table—but calidi were scaly and had long claws and were not very smart. Parid’ji were spidery and furry, and moved fast and ateeggs. Like monkeys. He had seen vids. They were a lot like monkeys, but they belonged to the forests, and he had never thought of bringing one to the Bujavid.

Oh, his whole mind had lit up when they had said the cage was for that.

And when they were waiting for the lift, where nobody could hear, he stopped and said, “Can you find a parid’ja, nadiin-ji?”

His aishid looked worried. All of them.

“One can find almost anything in the city market, nandi,” Antaro said. “Or at least—one can ask a merchant to find what is not there. But one is not sure one should, without permission.”

“They are difficult to deal with,” Lucasi said. “Your father would not approve.”

“I want one. And you are not to say anything! Anyof you! I can prove I can take care of it. I have never asked you to do anything secret but this. Find me one, and leave it to methat I shall get my father’s permission for it. I am his son. He will approve things for me that he would not if you asked him.”

There was a second or two of deep quiet. And very worried looks.

“One will try,” Antaro said. “One has an idea where one might find a tame one. It may take me a while.”

“Then you shall do it,” he said as the lift arrived. And ignored the frown Veijico turned on Antaro.

He could hardly contain his satisfaction. He had the cage. He was going to have a monkey. Well, close to a monkey. He had something that was going to be fun.And he would have something alive that was going to be hisand not boring, because it thoughtof things for itself and it was not under anybody’s orders.

He had been sad ever since he had had to leave Najida, and sadder since he knew he was going to have to live in a room with no windows and just white paint.

His room would not be all white. His room would be interesting.He could not go back into space. But he had his beautiful furniture, he had his own aishid, and he had that beautiful ancient brass cage and he would have a room full of plants like nand’ Bren’s cabin on the ship. And he would have something to do unexpected things.

He had dreaded the move. Now he could hardly wait.

3

The rain never let up. The view of Tanaja and its busy port was gray and watery as the bus reached the improved gravel road, where there was at last no worry about bogging down. It was largely thanks to the skill of the driver that they had gotten out of their one difficulty in the highlands, and nobody had had get out in the downpour and push. It was, Bren thought, a very excellent bus, if extravagant. Power to all wheels was a very good idea.

It was gravel roadway now, and generally solid all the way down the hill to the first city pavement.

Tanaja was laid out as a bowl set in a hillside, and bottommost was the harbor. On a hillock overlooking the harbor—a height that the histories said had once commanded the waterside with cannon—sat the Residence, partly composed of the old fortress which had stood here but mostly, Bren understood, of the scattered stones of that fortress. Gunpowder had exploded, that being the business of gunpowder, when a Dojisigi ship with a monstrous unwieldy cannon had scored a chance hit on the Taisigi powder magazine.

The fortress had fallen, and Dojisigi clan had taken over the Taisigi lands until the Dojisigi lord had injudiciously eaten a dish of berries a Taisigi serving girl had provided.

A cannon shot from a heaving deck and a dish of berries: both had caused the city to change hands.

A Taisigi lord of that day had then built the Residence out of the rubble and thrown a great chain across the harbor, from the breakwater to the treacherous midharbor rock, that bane of careless captains, and then to the promontory that ended the harbor deep. That had saved them from the second Dojisigi attempt.

The Residence had stood safe on the hill from that time. Taisigi clan had prospered, in Dojisigi’s decline. They had had Sungeni and Dausigi and Senji for allies and were bidding fair to take Dojisigi clan as well.

Then humans landed from the heavens, and the north had accepted human technology, which left the Marid in the dust.

Worse, a war had started that had ultimately caused the evacuation of atevi from the island of Mospheira and the ceding of the whole island to humans.

And the settlement of those displaced island clans on the west coast had changed everything. The aishidi’tat, with its capital up at Shejidan, had fought the war and now controlled the west coast. The Marid had no strength to oppose the united strength of the North. And the Dojisigi and Senji snuggled closer to the aishidi’tat, playing politics for all they were worth.

The attempt to unify the Marid fell apart. The Taisigi, pent up in the bottle of a smaller sea that was the Marid, joined the aishidi’tat, in name at least.

Every generation replayed that struggle, in one form or another—Dojisigi and Taisigi, with Senji clan rising to partner, generally, Dojisigi, and the impoverished southern clans of the mainland faithfully allying with Taisigi, knowing that Dojisigi and Senji would swallow them up in an instant, if it were remotely convenient to do so.

That was the last two hundred years of history in a nutshell.

It was an ambitious undertaking, to try to shoulder history out of a deep, deep rut.

Bren folded up the notes which proposed to do exactly that and tucked them into his briefcase as the view in the front windshield became buildings and city streets.

The streets were sparse with rain-soaked foot traffic, a few trucks were out and about. One truck stopped in midturn at an intersection, doubtless to get a look at the huge red and black foreign vehicle rumbling through the ancient streets of the harbor district, causing a little delay and causing Jago and Banichi both to come forward in the bus, with Tano and Algini behind. But the truck went on, and the bus no more than slowed.

Bren drew an easier breath, and his bodyguard went back to give orders.

The Assassins’ Guild had come into Taisigi district in force a handful of days ago, with none of its usual finessecprotecting Machigi, who hadn’t been in town to be protected, but never mind that. The Guild had taken over Taisigi territory. It removed several high-ranking officials in the first hours.

It had landed far, far harder up in Senji and Dojisigi territory, taking out the lords and several others and now controlling the capitals of those districts while operatives went down into Dausigi and Sungeni clans with far more finesse.

The Guild here in the Taisigi capital were nominally under young Lord Machigi’s authority now—they had declared themselves in support of him, at least. But they had very little to restrain them should another objective occur to them.

Lord Machigi could not be easy with the situation. Neither could the citizenry of the capital and the countryside. The whole damned situation was a house of cards of the dowager’s construction.

And what was supposed to stabilize it rested in that briefcase Bren folded up and set beside him.

He breathed shallowly—hadn’t realized he had been doing it until the bus began the slight climb to the Residence hill. He watched as the bus pulled into the circular drive where it had sat the last time. Rain positively sheeted down, hammering the potted plants along the driveway, veiling the front doors. Nature was not cooperating.

Banichi and Jago came forward, and Banichi settled into the opposing aisle seat—a golden-eyed darkness against the pale grays of the rain.

“We are in contact, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “We have spoken reasonably with Lord Machigi’s aishid, as well as the Guild. They indicate you will be asked to stay the night here. Shall we offload baggage?”

At least they had the surface elements of courtesy. “Yes,” he said. He didn’t ask whether the ten juniors with them had their orders: that was Guild business, and Guild would arrange whatever they would do out here while he and his bodyguard were inside. But they were going to go into that doorway, at the mercy of whatever situation was inside, and they were going to settle business and drive back tomorrow, given good luck.

So, yes, he said, about the baggage, and he did. Banichi stood up, Tano and Algini came forward from the back. Bren put on his brocade coat, court garb, taking care to arrange the lace at the cuffs. Jago had taken a rain cloak from the overhead and helped him put it on, protecting his clothes. His bodyguard was due to get soaked—but cloaks on Guild made other Guild nervous, so Guild habitually endured such situations, that was all. The uniforms shed water—up to a point.

Bren took his briefcase under the cloak and got a firm grip on the cloak edges as his bodyguard talked to someone not present. It was, of course, blowing a gale out there, just for their arrival.

Black-uniformed Guild came out to meet them, themselves getting wet, and with no great desire to linger long, it was sure. The bus doors opened. Banichi and Jago descended first, rifles in hand, and Bren followed, with Tano and Algini at his back. Guild-signs flew one side to the other, indecipherable, generally, as they headed directly for the doors. His aishid was fully armed. Not so the Guild who met them, as he noted. But he was the traveler, so that was allowed.

Like the rain cloak, with its hood. The lord was not supposed to be armed. And he wasn’t—this time.

He kept himself as dry as possible on the way into the building, as contained as possible within the living wall of his bodyguard. Servants were waiting, one to take the dripping cloak, others hastening to mop the water off the marble entry. A lightning flash illumined the foyer from the open door as servants hastened to shut those heavy doors.

Then they stood safe from the wind and the tail end of the thunderclap—just a little clatter of rifles being shifted and the busy noise of mops.

“Welcome, nandi,” the receiving Guild-senior said, dripping water. “Lord Machigi is expecting you.”

It was a few steps up from the entry, through other doors and onto the dry, polished main floor. His bodyguard still shed rain as he walked among them, dry now, and clad in court finery, brocade and lace.

And he was very glad to see the historic hall had not suffered in the recent upheaval. The two great pillars of porcelain sea-creatures towered serene as if nothing had ever happened here.

More uniformed Guild opened the doors between the pillars and let them into the gilt-furnished audience hall. Guildsmen across the room immediately opened the polished burlwood doors on the far side, those to the map room.

That was a good omen. Machigi had chosen the more intimate setting for the meeting.

Bren walked on through. Tano and Algini stayed outside, within the audience hall. Banichi and Jago went with him.

The far walls of the map room were massive gilt-arched windows with a view of the storm, the dark clouds, the rain-battered harbor below the heights. The opposing walls supported huge framed maps, and shelves and pigeonholes were full of map cylinders, many of evident antiquity.

Machigi rose from a chair before the massive windows. Near those windows, Machigi’s personal bodyguard stood in attendance on him, men they knew. Thatwas a great relief to see.

Bren bowed on arriving in that area. Machigi bowed slightly. He was a handsome young man. The scar of an old injury crossed his chin and ran under it. He wore a subdued elegance—dark green brocade and a sufficiency, but not an excess, of lace. By such things, one measured a man and his circumstances. Machigi was a lord. A ruler in an occupied house.

And he did not look delighted.

“So,” Machigi said, doubtless taking Bren’s measure, too, the attitude he struck, the degree of humility—or lack of it—in the bow. “Whose are you thistime, paidhi?”

“In this venture,” Bren said quietly, “I now represent the aiji-dowager.”

Not the aiji. The aiji-dowager. That was perhaps the answer Machigi had hoped to hear. The nod of his head revised suspicion into acceptance, and he waved a hand at the opposite chair, offering Bren a seat, and sat down himself. Bren set his briefcase on the floor and took the chair, a practiced effort that placed him somewhat gracefully in furniture crafted to atevi stature.

“Tea,” Machigi said to the servants, and beyond that, there could only be polite talk, a ritual settling of minds, before serious conversation.

“Your old rooms are prepared, nand’ paidhi,” Machigi said. “One trusts you came with luggage.”

“One did not presume to bring it in from the bus without direction, nandi, but it is ready.”

“Have it brought to the rooms,” Machigi said, and Bren said, quietly, “Nadiin-ji.”

Banichi, in the edge of his vision, nodded, and it was a certainty it would be done.

“You will share dinner tonight, of course,” Machigi added. “One rejoices to see you fully recovered, nandi.”

“Indeed,” Bren said. “And the same, nandi, one rejoices to see you safely recovered, as well.”

“As fully recovered as we may be, with a foreign occupation in our streets.” That verged uncomfortably on business, before tea was done. “And how does Najida fare?”

“In less happy state than this house,” he said, “but repairs are in progress.”

“And Kajiminda?”

“Has its porch now restored and is busy inventorying its collections.” A sip of tea, a slight shift of topics. “One is certain Lord Geigi’s nephew sold certain things.”

A shift Lord Machigi declined, with: “And Lord Geigi himself? How does he fare?”

That was no easy interface: Geigi and the Taisigin Marid were old allies turned enemies, now turned allies again.

“Well. Quite well, nandi.”

“And does he approve your venture here?”

“He needs not, but in fact he views it quite favorably, nandi. He has, one assures you, no wish to continue hostilities which were largely fomented by others.”

The fact that Machigi had actually been in charge of the agents who had fatally poisoned Geigi’s sister—it was questionable, since those agents had betrayed Machigi, as to which authority had ordered it. It was one of those sorts of questions which, for the peace, had to be set aside, no matter Lord Geigi’s personal feelings. Or Machigi’s innocence, or lack of it.

Thank God tea was about to be served.

The servants had brought a tray, offering a beautiful tea service of the historic, irreplaceable blue porcelain. Courtesy dictated silence while tea was poured and served, and Bren received the atevi-sized cup in both hands, finding the warmth comforting after the rainchill and a conversation that had veered toward a dangerous, dangerous edge.

“One is extremely honored,” he said. “One is honored even to seethis beautiful service.”

Machigi saluted him with his cup and took a sip, as Bren did, from a porcelain that could no longer be made. “One was glad to find it intact,” Machigi said, in the former vein, and then, in wry irony, as lightning from the windows cast everything in white, “Lovely weather for a visit, is it not? Do we take it for an omen?”

“Spring in the west,” Bren said with calculated lightness. “But one enjoys the storms.”

“And did you seriously propose to take the bus back to Najida tonight in such weather? One would hope not.”

“Worse,” Bren said, “my destination is the airport, and one would be glad to have better weather.”

“You will go to Shejidan? Or Malguri?”

“Indeed, Shejidan. For the legislative session. One hopes the weather will have blown past by tomorrow and that we will not be delayed by weather.”

“You mean to leave from Separti?”

“No, no, once we are on the road, we will call for the plane, and it should be there long before we are. We shall be in Shejidan faster by small plane than going from Separti. It is enough.”

Sip of tea. “Then one wonders the more at your determination to visit today, in a deluge.”

“The legislative session, nandi. Not to mention our own business. And the necessity to move residence. I shall have my old apartment back this session. They inform me it is ready.”

“Just so.” A little grim amusement. “You are avenged, nand’ paidhi. The Farai lord is dead.”

“One regrets—” It was disingenuous to say that one regretted the Farai lord, who had usurped his apartment, among other offences, was gone. “One regrets the loss to his relatives, at least. But not that he is removed from my premises. Had he not been there, nandi, I would never have come to the coast and we would not be sitting here. So things worked to our mutual advantage.”

“You are leaving, however,” Machigi said, then set the teacup down. “And the aiji-dowager?”

Business. Short and sharp. Bren set down his own cup.

“One hopes you have at no point doubted the dowager’s will to stand by agreements, nandi. The dowager has stated that she will deal with you once you are lord of all the Marid. To her observation, you have become that, or are on the verge of becoming. She will be extremely pleased to deal with you.”

“And where is she? We have information the dowager has left Najida and not landed in Shejidan. That she is at this hour flying on to the East. And we stillhave no agreement on paper.”

“It is no impediment to the agreement, nandi. She will be back in Shejidan for the session.”

“In Shejidanand as good as on the moon.”

“Realistically, nandi, it would be very awkward to host the signing of so important an agreement at my estate, which is in disarray at the moment—we are in no position to manage security. So—”

“You mean your neighbors and allies are still inclined to shoot Taisigi on sight.”

“The Edi, indeed, nandi. One by no means denies the old enmity poses a problem. Yet once the agreement is signed, once you are an ally of the Edi’s ally, everything will change.”

“So you assure us.”

“When the agreement is made and signed, nandi, and I am working toward that.”

“You are heading off to Shejidan. Sheis heading for the opposite end of the continent—”

“One would expect she has arrangements to make in the East, particularly involving the agreement. As the highest lord of the East, she will not wish to proceed without at least consulting with her brother lords. She will be quite busy. As will I in Shejidan. And before the legislative session opens, one hopes that there will be a signing.”

“And will she come here? Will she come to Tanaja to sign this agreement?”

“If it is signed here, there will be side issues. Signing in Shejidan will have the full attention of all the provinces; it will have the smell of something the aiji at least countenances, and thatwill be valuable in negotiating our way further.”

“So you are asking me to leave my people in a crisis, occupied by foreigners, and go off to Shejidan for a holiday, in hope the aiji-dowager will see fit to arrive and honor her promises?”

“You will not have to wait that long, nandi. And a face-to-face agreement, with access to the news media in Shejidan, will be seen in every village throughout the aishidi’tat, with the status of fact, not rumor. Television is very powerful in Ragi lands, where most people have access. It is, for situations like this, extremely useful. People will see you. People will see you and the dowager at one place, acting with one accord, and they will watch your expressions and hear your voices, and then they will believe it is a real agreement.”

“I repeat: I have foreign Guild walking the streets of Tanaja. I have country folk afraid to go out into their own fields, believing they may be shot. I have inbound ships querying us about the safety of the ports. Not to mention I have lost two ministers to assassination and have their departments in completely disarray. I cannot leave my capitol to be seen attending the Ragi aiji in festivities in Shejidan.”

“This agreement does not involve the aiji in Shejidan, and absent your request to speak to him, there will be no meeting. But before you arrive, send a proxy to set up an office, manage Marid affairs and arrange things to your satisfaction; come to Shejidan only when he indicates he is satisfied about the situation. You can then return to the Marid as soon as the ink is dry—or stay as long as pleases you. The aiji-dowager is staking her reputation and her political influence on the success of this agreement, far from putting it at a low priority; and in the coming session she means to put this alliance directly in the minds of legislators who will vote to reshape policy in various directions. It willaffect perceptions. It will change the Ragi perception of the Marid. You are young, you are well-favored, and you will televise very, very well. It isimportant you gocand it will be useful, should someone ask, that you personally support the dowager’s plan for the West Coast.”

“Oh, nowwe get to it! My appearance assists her cause, confirms the Edi claim and what does it do for the Marid? I shall be seen as ceding the West Coast, to no profit to my people at all!”

“If you, of all people, back this state for the Edi, then it will pass the legislature despite the central clans’ objection—and there will be some objection, one is sure of it, persons who want to keep the status quo. Your appearance and agreement will shock them into rethinking what they believe of the west and south. Once the west coast plan passes, that will strengthen the dowager’s credit when she puts forward the rest of her program—which directly involves her trade agreement with you, nandi.”

“So far, the advantage and the gain are all hers, since our ships are in this port, a long way from hers, and if I agree, shehas the entire West Coast in her pocket!”

“Hear me out, nandi. Let me say that Lord Dur has guaranteed support on both parts of her proposal, that for the West Coast, and that regarding the Marid. And so has Lord Geigi.”

“ Geigi,do you say?”

“I have his very solemn word on it. For the dowager’s sake, and for mine, he willsupport you and deal with you. He is her firm ally, and mine, and he will not pursue any possible bloodfeud. Let all that business at Kajiminda recede into the past. As he will. The West Coast will have two new lords in the tribal states, and theywill also support you if you support them: I have the word of the Grandmother of the Edi, and Her of the Gan, that if you do support the West Coast plan, and if they get their seats in the legislature, they will vote for the dowager’s agenda despite their past relationships with the Marid.”

“And the moon will turn green. This is a house of glass, paidhi! Every piece of it is poised on spit and promises.”

“It has been difficult to build, nandi, but it stands because the benefit to all parties is clear. Foremost of these promises are yours and the dowager’s. She has staked a great deal on this. And on theirfirmness and fairness, all other things rest.”

“I have staked my life,paidhi, and the lives of my officials—as you well understand. I cannot do more.”

“As do I,” Bren said, “in coming here, considering the feelings in this region. But I judge the risk of your lifeis not what troubles you, nandi. I do not think you can be frightened by threats. What is at stake is one’s power and reputation. I lay mine on it. The dowager has laid hers on it, no less difficult of recovery, at her age, than is yours, given your region’s situation. We are all at risk. But you are not the man to retreat from a challenge, nandi: I saw that from the first. And I would have advised both sides of this agreement far differently if I in the least doubted your courage or your good sense. By allying with the renegades from the Guild, your neighbors to the north fell into a trap that you were smart enough to avoid. And you have the vision they lacked. Spend a handful of days in Shejidan and sign this agreement, nandi, and you can do more good for the people of the Marid than any leader has done for them in two hundred years. They will protest at first—”

“I shall be lucky if I am not assassinated forthwith!”

“You have now allied with the Guild proper and have their advice and protection. They will defend you with all their resources, nandi, and that includes the law itself. More, I have brought more with me than distant promises. I have brought proposals of a very specific nature, which may help your people understand the safety in this agreement and the prosperity right behind it; I have brought a letter of committment which the aiji-dowager has signed. I have brought a signed statement from Lord Geigi, and a detailed proposal of my own, which the dowager has heard with favor but not yet signed. I have them with me, and I will give them into your possession, for legal record of what we say and do here.”

Machigi regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then suddenly nodded. “We shall hear them.” He snapped his fingers, and Tema, the head of Machigi’s bodyguard, took a step forward. “The ministers should hear this, Tema-ji.”

“Aiji-ma,” Tema said, and Machigi said to the waiting servants, “More tea.”

Talk was ceremonially ended for a space. Any organization of thoughts had to be suspended in favor of reflection and calm for the space of a pot or two of tea.

Bren drew a slow breath and revised his own notions of how to proceed—calmly, securely, within a hospitality proven reasonable and reasonably generous. Machigi was, he thought, as worried as a man should be with his region fallen into the hands of its longtime adversary, the northern Guild, and someone proposing, as a condition for solving his difficulty, that he come to a city he did not trust, commit himself to the hospitality of the man who had lately Filed Intent on him, and trust that it was not an elaborate plot the aiji-dowager had contrived to embarrass him and his clan in the view of millions.

Hardly surprising that Machigi was perturbed. But Machigi was also in a serious bind, and might have been dead by now, by decree of the same Guild Council, if not for the aiji-dowager’s offer. Instead—the dowager offered him power over the whole district and Guild backing in holding it. Damned right Machigi was perturbed. But he was also keenly interested in the proposition.

Words passed through Guild channels, and, not too surprisingly, the ministers in question had not been far from Machigi’s summons. The doors to the audience hall opened again, and five officials entered, at which Bren rose politely, and bowed. Servants brought up chairs from the sides of the room, more bodyguards took their places at the edges of the room, and more servants hastened to remove the priceless blue tea service and bring in a new service, this one of figured porcelain in high relief, with seven cups.

The five officials took their places, and of the lot, Bren recognized only one, Gediri, Machigi’s personal advisor.

“Nand’ Gediri you know,” Machigi said, after the first sip of tea. “The minister of war, nand’ Kaordi; the minister of trade and commerce, nand’ Disidri. The minister of agriculture, nand’ Maisuno. The minister of public works, nand’ Laudri. These are the full council as it stands. Nandiin, the paidhi represents the aiji-dowager of the aishidit’tat.”

“Nandiin,” Bren said with a polite nod all around. And not a word of business would pass before the round of tea was done.

“We have brought out the sun,” Machigi said, indicating the window to their side, and indeed, a hole in the storm clouds let in a ray of sun that shafted down toward the rainy harborside. Light sparkled off the iron-gray water and picked out an old freighter’s bow.

“A felicitous sign,” Laudri said, “let us hope, nandiin.”

“Let us indeed,” Trade said.

Bren put on a pleasant expression for the positive sentiments, feeling somewhat better about the audience. It was not going badly—at least far as the ceremonial tea was concerned.

Now he had to engage these various interests as well as Machigi’s. Andstill talk Machigi into coming north.

Machigi coming north to sign the agreement was, for one thing, important protocol. Unspoken was the fact there was no way in hell the aiji-dowager of the aishidit’tat was going to come south to pay court to young Machigi, as the surviving warlord of the Marid.

No, Machigi had to come to her, and this proud young hothead now realized he had been pushed into a move he had never intended to make—he knewIlisidi wouldn’t come here; and Najida was under repair, and Kajiminda was the seat of his longtime enemy, Lord Geigi, so both were out of the question. That left Shejidan. In full view of the media.

There was gracious discussion of the weather, the paidhi’s healthc

“One is fully recovered, nandi, thank you,” Bren said.

And of the dowager’s departure from the region.

“The dowager is currently pursuing business in Malguri, to which she had been en route before affairs on the coast diverted her,” Bren said. “She will return very quickly.”

“To Shejidan,” Machigi muttered. “She is requesting a signing inShejidan.”

“A brief affair,” Bren said quickly, before any of the ministers could respond, “but very public. Televised. If one is going to change the world, nandiin, best not have it done by rumor, but publicly, so that there is only oneversion of what happened, and as great a number of witnesses as possible. But I shall wait to explain that matter.”

“He wants us to support the Edi grant of a lordship,” Machigi muttered, drank all his tea at once, and set the cup down.

That drew frowns. And other cups, drunk to the last, clicked down onto side tables.

Bren set his own down carefully. There was no way he could drink it all at a gulp. They were at serious business, now. Mortally serious business.

“It is the dowager’s most dearly held plan,” he said quietly, “to see conditions in the south and the west considerably altered, for reasons of peace. That it benefits citizens of those regions is a necessary part of the plan: It is her view that prosperous people have far less reason to risk it all in conflict. It also offers you advantages. Note that once the Edi hold a seat in the legislature, they will have one vote in the hasdrawad and one in the tashrid, and they must obey the law. The Marid, as a district, will have fivelords, and more than five seats, becoming an important bloc, even weighed against the power of the Padi Valley clans up north. You will become a bloc other interests will court, to your advantage.”

“We shall have all five votes,” Machigi said. “Is that agreed within these documents?”

“Not within the documents,” Bren said carefully. “But there having been five Marid clans, from antiquity. By my knowledge of the law of the aishidi’tat, when she says that you should be lord of all the Marid—you would hold all five votes. That is another factor in my urging that you go to Shejidan at once and usethose votes, by signing into this session of the legislature, to make that point. In all the other furor, that will likely go marginally noticed, with no argument prepared against it, and you will have laid down the precedent.”

“Machigi-aiji would be at risk of his life by going to Shejidan,” Gediri said. “He has hereditary enemies on the west coast and in the central regions. They will be lined up at the gates to find an opportunity.”

“He will be under massiveGuild protection, nandi, at all hours, daylight and dark, coming and going. Likewise, every minister of your cabinet will be under heightened Guild protection. I am assured the Guild is backing this move of the dowager’s, and anyone who attempts to destabilize the situation will meet intense Guild opposition. I also have Tabini-aiji’s undertaking that he will silently back these efforts, remaining diplomatically quiet during this visit so as not to confuse the issue; this agreement is specifically between you and the aiji-dowager. Once you are her ally, then relations with the aiji in Shejidan will be on that basis, and you will have her support, as you will support her—not in an over-hasty rush to alter everything, but step by step, as trade develops. Meanwhile, you will have those five votes, nandi, and you will find yourself courted for them. One has every confidence that you will use that leverage for the betterment of your people. You will not needto go to war to secure more advantage for your region. You are being offered it. And supported in it.”

The ministers looked marginally happier, perhaps at their inclusion in high security.

But Machigi frowned. “Still, you ask me to leave matters at a crisis and go off to Shejidan to sign away the West Coast. You are all promises, thus far. You say you bring offers. Let us see them.”

“Indeed, nandi.” He brought his briefcase onto his lap, opened it, and extracted a thick stack of papers, with tabs between. “If one could, with the assistance of your staff, distribute thesec”

Machigi snapped his fingers. Servants hurried to assist, and Bren quietly distributed the packets, first to Machigi and then to Machigi’s ministers.

“The copies are identical, for reading at your leisure,” he said. “The original documents Lord Machigi holds in his hands are personally signed by the aiji-dowager, an assurance of intent to complete the agreement, and by Lord Geigi, supporting her negotiations: duplicates exist in the hands of other parties. There are likewise documents from the new lord of Maschi clan and signed letters from the heads of the Edi and the Gan peoples, stating their intent to support the aiji-dowager’s negotiations on their behalf and to support the outcome of the alliance between the aiji-dowager and the leader of the Marid.”

A massive riffling of papers among the ministers. Machigi sat, not examining what he held.

“Such documents are indeed here in facsimile, nandi,” Gediri said.

“The last of the documents, nandiin,” Bren said, “is economic in nature, and it is mine. One proposes that there be a representative of Lord Machigi in Shejidan as quickly as possible to secure a residence, to set up an office, to prepare a safe place, with Guild assistance, for Lord Machigi to do business. One further proposes that as soon as Lord Machigi signs an agreement with the aiji-dowager, the representative of Lord Machigi sign an immediate trade agreement with the Merchants’ Guild in Shejidan—the papers are routine and can be ready within hours—and set up, on the same premises, a trade office in Shejidan. Your porcelains, for instance, have not appeared in the northern collectors’ market in a century.” There had been a boycott, initiated from the south, which, typically, had actually hurt the south more than the north—he did not mention that matter.

“Is this the dowager’s proposal?” Machigi asked

“This is my own idea, nandi. The beauty and the quality of the work I have seen here—not alone the pillars, which of course one can never forget—are bound to attract interest. Northern museums hold fragments of Marid work. A tea service is highly valued. And I believe an exhibit of state gifts would immediately catch the attention of very influential collectors. The public can be encouraged to view the artistic heritage of the Marid, particularly the southern Marid, which has been very much in the background in recent decadescand this will utterly change the perception many hold of the Marid as more rural. I myself had no idea of the existence of such things until I came here.”

“State gifts, you say.”

“I do not demand, nandi. Far from it. But if one could request a sample of such wares, which can be displayed in the public area of the Bujavid—something representing what can be traded—in the character of a good will gift from the Marid to the people. It will touch popular sentiment. And generate excitement among the wealthy—among the influential and the fashion-setters, the very people who will be voting on further measures—and supporting the first steps in trade.”

“And generating resentments among competitors,” Gediri said. “Is this considered?”

“Porcelains of the north are distinctive, as these are. And desired. And traded. But they are not similar. Within a decent time, when you widen the trade to more common work, those goods, too, will have a name for quality and fashion, so yes, there will be competition, but it is more likely to stimulate interest in collecting. Through this trade, you will form a relationship with the Merchants’ Guild, who will guide you and assure you do notcome up against such problems—besides providing, in their offices, a place for contact with other districts. They have no enforcement arm, as you may know, and are only advisory.”

“Porcelains,” Machigi said, not enthusiastically. “They are not an immediate economic benefit.”

“Bluntly, they are a good that threatens no one,” Bren said. “A first step, designed to create a demand for Marid goods. Your porcelains, your craftwork, will open the door and change opinions favorably. Your trade in other things—textiles and foodstuffs—will follow and expand.”

“Where in this is our access to the East Coast?” Machigi asked.

“That begins in the hour of the signing of that agreement,” Bren said. “Immediately after that signing, a representative of Taisigi clan whom you will also appoint will fly to the East Coast with the cachet of the aiji-dowager and yourself to meet with representatives of the aiji-dowager in Malguri district, and guides from there will enable a safe journey to the coast. Included, one would suggest, should be Merchants’ Guild officials, in an advisory capacity. They can serve as fair brokers between yourselves and the inhabitants of the East Coast. You will be proposing the building of a new port, and you will be establishing a trade office. There will be no rail link. How long will it take a ship to appear in those waters?”

“A ship has to be outfitted, paidhi. It has to have a port when it gets there.”

“What would be the one-way trip, however? One has no idea.”

Machigi thought about it in silence. “Say—thirty-three days, with felicity. Given the cooperation of the weather. Given some sort of port facility.”

“The first ship should carry construction supervisors and skilled workmen. The dowager will provide the financing. She will negotiate with you on what items are to be supplied locally and what must be imported; the general notion is to hire locals, which will put money into their economy, buy food from them, more money, and buy local materials. These are not rich villages. The appearance of textiles and goods that they will be able to afford with their new found money will bring favorable opinions. Fair work. Fair wages. Fair trade. They in turn will offer trade in leather, in furs, in wood, and in fuel for your ships—it will have to be sent in. The details are yet to work out. But that is the generality of it.”

There was a lengthy silence. “Of what nature are these people, nandi?” War asked. “Are they civilized?”

“They are much like the smaller villages of the Marid, nandi—hardworking, generally honest, a little suspicious of outsiders. Hence the representatives from Malguri district. The dowager is well-reputed on the coast.”

A further silence.

“Dreams,” Machigi said. “Hinging on this meeting in Shejidan.”

“Even so, nandi. And one urges this go forward with all speed. Your representative first, then yourself.”

“One just walks in,” Machigi said. “And there is security at the train station.”

“Let me outline what is proposed, nandi: you may come by train or by air—let me suggest Najida Airport, with your own security. At whatever facility you arrive, the dowager will provide a bus and additional Guild security to take you and your company to the residence your representative has established. You will be under the Guild’s close protection in that house and in every venture to the Bujavid, and every other venture you may choose, until you are safely back in Tanaja.”

“And the aiji’s opinion of this?”

“One does not speak for him, at present, nandi, only for the aiji-dowager, who has his assurance he will not intervene. One senses he will prefer to watch from a certain distance, and my sense is that he hopes for a good outcome for his grandmother. He regards certain of the reputations at stake as his personal assets, and he would by no means wish to see this go badly for her. He has extended himself that far.”

“Indeed.” Machigi rested his chin on fist. “We shall read these papers you provide. We shall talk together. We shall see you at dinner, nand’ paidhi.”

“Nandi.” That was a dismissal, and a reasonable one. He had time to go upstairs, settle in, try to get his nerves together, and dress for a formal dinner.

It wasn’t going badly. There was no guarantee it wouldn’t. There was no way to know what the ministers were going to argue in private, but they had to have that chance. He stood up, the ministers all rose and bowed, he bowed, collected his bodyguard, and left, on a familiar route, with two of Machigi’s servants leading the way.

It was surreal to be back in the suite he had occupied before the Guild action. The white, ornate furniture was entirely familiar, and the phone they had asked for was still on the table. The bed in which he had spent very uncomfortable hours had the same ornate coverlet. He might never have left.

And of all things—his lost shaving kit was sitting on the bureau. His clothes, recovered from luggage left behind in a desperate escape, were all in the closet.

He was particularly delighted about the shaving kit, which he could not replace this side of Mospheira, and about the personal items: his mother’s locket, a pocketknife his brother Toby had given him, an informal and very comfortable coat, and a well-broken-in pair of dress boots. It was a very welcome surprise.

Similarly, his aishid found items, all cleaned and proper. They met in the hallway to compare notes, and indeed, everything they had left behind in the van on the road was here.

“A kind gesture,” Bren said, and his bodyguard avowed themselves uncommonly pleased and, for once, surprised.

Machigi’s servants arrived to help them dress for dinner, and this time Bren did not decline the help. He had professional assistance with the dress coat and with the braid, which had wilted a bit from the weather, and he changed to the comfortable boots.

It felt a little chancy, having Machigi’s servants about, but there was not a single item with them this visit that they had to hold in secret—all of the sensitive items were already sent on to Shejidan.

And with the staff’s help, they were very quickly in order for a formal dinner. Banichi and Jago to go stand dinner duty, while Tano and Algini nominally to guard the room—but one doubted they would only be sitting and watching the furniture. They would very likely, Bren thought, have Guild visitors in his absence, people with things to report and to ask—conversations in which no civilian was welcome and which had very much to do with the future of the Marid, from quite another viewpoint and involving quite another power.

So downstairs he went with Banichi and Jago, this time into the dining hall, where he met, immediately, Gediri, the one minister he knew, the four other ministers he had just met, and relevant spouses, to whom he was introduced. There were, besides them, several notables, with spouses, to whom he was also introduced, all this quite properly accomplished before Machigi arrived. They were a table of twelve as they took their seats.

Twelve became felicitous thirteen as Machigi came in alone, filling the last chair. The mood was light over an excellent pastry, as Machigi chatted easily with the ministers and the other guests.

“The paidhi,” Machigi said, somewhat violating the no-business rule, “has brought us interesting proposals and, more, a signed intention of the aiji-dowager and several others of interest. We are well on track this evening to see this bargain completed.”

That definitely produced a happy mood at the table—not least in the paidhi-aiji. The advisors were not frowning. A decided plus.

It was small talk, then, chatter about impending weather, shipping to the Isles, the seasonal ban on hunting and the consequent rising price of the better fishcwhich happened to be the menu of the evening.

Then there was a quiet invitation to after-dinner discussion, which included only Gediri and the minister of trade without his spouse. That meant serious business about the agreement. They repaired to an adjacent sitting room and settled to talk over brandy.

“So. We are down to the actual agreements,” Machigi said. “We are definitely to assume, nandi, that the dowager will return within the month?”

“Easily within the month, nandi,” Bren said.

“And you assure us that we shall be welcomed in the legislature.”

That was irony.

“You will meet some opposition, and I know who will lead it. But, nandi, I know this man quite well, an elderly gentleman, very, very traditional—a staunch ally if you can gain his approval. A respectful approach, a personal approach—that would be a good beginning with him.”

“One closely associated with the aiji-dowager?”

“Indeed, nandi.”

“Tatiseigi.”

“Indeed. Lord Tatiseigi.”

“There is no dealing with him!”

“Yet you have things in common, nandi.”

“Do we? Enlighten us!”

“You are both patrons of the arts—you, from a region which produces extraordinary works in porcelain. He is a collector, a great admirer. And an expert. If anyone will be looking at the exhibition with a knowledgeable eye, it will be nand’ Tatiseigi. And his sense of kabiu is quite respected.”

A moment of silence. Machigi rested his chin on a crooked finger, running it over the old scar, and his eyes sparked with thought. “You are suggesting—”

“It is an avenue of approach. I have a specific plan, nandi. Iam in a situation of personal debt to Lord Tatiseigi—who sheltered me during the Farai occupation of my apartment. Granted it was a favor to the aiji-dowager. But one is still indebted. He is head of a group that is most likely to oppose this agreement. And ifone, with great delicacy, chose just the right gift—”

“Porcelain.”

“—then opening a conversation on Marid imports andthe agreement with the aiji-dowager would be so much easier. Enlist him regarding trade with the Marid, in precisely this commoditycand we might sway his opinion on other matters, even in a face-to-face meeting.”

Machigi heard this, gave an almost silent snort, and took a sip of brandy. “Gods unfortunate, paidhi, you can put a fine gloss on the most amazing situations. You want my agents to scour up a second exhibition piece. A gift for this man.”

“At my expense, nandi. Though I have no shortage of funds, it should not be embarrassingly extravagant. I am not of his rank. And one wishes to keep these pieces attainable in trade.”

“Understated,” Machigi suggested with a circular wave of his hand.

“Of that nature, yes. Tasteful. And understated.”

“You are a scoundrel,paidhi-aiji. One would like to hear your description of a proposed assassination. We hope to bribethe head of the opposition.”

“We hope to adjust his view of the south, nandi. As I think will happen if he begins to concentrate on the cultural opportunities in the agreement.”

“Diri-ji, can you arrange it? Price will be no object. Quality is paramount. Deliver it with the other to the paidhi’s bus.”

“Yes,” Gediri said, making a note in a small book. “Would the paidhi wish to examine the items before they are crated?”

“One would by no means doubt the quality of your selection, nandi,” Bren said. “I shall utterly trust your choice, since the lord of the Marid entrusts the matter to you.”

“So we please the lord of the Atageini,” Machigi said with an airy gesture. “We cast our collective lives on the willingness of the aiji-dowager to turn up from her holiday in due season. We cast our reputations, nand’ paidhi, on yourpromise for an exchange of votes between us and the Edi. One had as soon expect the sun to rise in the west, but you have a gift for turning things on their head, so I should not wager on that event, either, if you had a finger in it. Now on what date, nand’ paidhi, may I expect the Guild to begin to obey my orders?”

Change of line. A very dangerous one. Fast thinking and, very carefully, no change in expression. “Again, nandi—”

“Upon signature on the line, do I take it? Or at some future date?”

“One cannot speak for the Guild, nandi. What my aishid would tell me, I know: make a request through your own aishid, and you should find that the Guild responds now, through them. Each of you who have Guild protecting them should feel no hesitation in making requests. And this will be the case with allthe Guilds. Your local Guild members should represent you.Always.”

That drew at least a thoughtful stare from Lord Machigi, and attention from the others.

“One urges, once the master document is signed,” Bren said, venturing further, “that the Tasaigin Marid become signatory with allGuilds of the aishidi’tat. The same with the other Marid clans. If Dojisigi and Senji had accepted the Guilds before Murini’s coup, they would have gotten much better advice. If they had taken a proper cue from the Guild in Shejidan, nandiin, and understood that they were not gaining recruits, but harboring an outlaw splinter of the Guild, they would have asked for help and gotten it. But they were otherwise inclined. Which is why Lord Machigi—” He paid a little nod of respect toward Machigi, who sat stone-faced. “—is now in authority over the whole of the Marid. And why he will remain so.”

“The East does not bow to the Guild,” Trade said grimly.

“The Dowager does not bowto the Guild. But she has them at her right hand. Now so do two of her neighbors, to their benefit. Others are considering it. The Marid is ahead of the East, in that regard. And will profit from it. She envisions the Marid as having the same status as the East: signatory, but a separate district.”

Machigi had his chin on his fist. Extended two fingers, intent to speak. “This is new.”

“It is in line with the dowager’s proposal, nandi. I have no hesitation to say it. Her district has not entirely trusted the aishidi’tat as it was first constituted. But the independence of the East has kept the aishidi’tat honest. She sees in your regional strength reinforcement for the independence of the East. She has kept it from becoming an entirely Ragi institution. You are not Ragi. And if you both employ the Guilds and put your own young people into the Guilds, you gain a voice in the Guilds, forming policy and enforcing the law in the aishidi’tat.”

“Interesting,” Machigi said, and dropped the hand and leaned back.

Bren said, quietly, “I represent the dowager’s proposals, nandi. And I have never known her to go back on what she said she would do.”

“More than can be said of her husband when he ruled,” Machigi said in a low voice. “But then, there are rumors, are there not, regarding his demise?”

“One could not comment, nandi.”

“We shall sign her agreement,” Machigi said with a glance at the others. “We shall sign it in Shejidan. And you may now partake of the brandy you have been pretending to drink, paidhi. You have won our agreement. We shall see how it goes. Lighter topics, if you will. What about these porcelains?”

Bren risked an actual sip. Two and three. The rest of the session was brief, more about trade, and porcelains, and the Isles.

It was a vast relief when Machigi signaled the end of the session, and Trade and Gediri took their leave.

A guest of the house routinely left last; Machigi stepped between Bren and the doorway, not threateningly, but definitively.

“You will be at breakfast,” Machigi said.

“One would be honored, nandi,” Bren said.

And still Machigi did not clear his path.

“You are not pressed for time tomorrow, are you?”

A test? A challenge? Reminding him that he left the premises when Machigi was willing to let him leave?

“I shall be in no haste, nandi. I shall not call for a plane until I am on the road, and it will still make it to the airport before I do. I shall leave at your convenience.”

Machigi nodded. “Well enough,” Machigi said, and let him pass.

It was curious, Machigi’s last actioncthe insistence on making a personal impression, part threat, part—whatever it was. Banichi and Jago had not seemed alarmed. Tema and his partner had not been.

Bren thought about it on the way up to the suite, in company only with Banichi and Jago. He likedthe man, that deadliest and most mistaken of human reactions toward atevi, who had their own attaching emotion, man’chi, quite as strong—strong as life and death—but notquite what humans called love or even liking, and it was a basic mistake ever to start using that word with atevi, in any degree. Machigi was potentially a scoundrel himself, aiming at whatever he could get in excess of the agreement, but who, in Machigi’s place, would not have to be, if only for the sake of those with man’chi to him? Machigi was as alone as an ateva ever tended to be, for one thing. Machigi’s relatives were mostly dead, his attachments all fallen to assassination, his immediate circle disrupted. His clan was around him, but members of his immediate family had been casualties of the feud with Dojisigi clan—a fact Machigi had been pragmatically ignoring in order to work with Dojisigi clan, to survive and keep Dojisigi from moving in and taking over Taisigi.

That indicated that Machigi knew how to make critical compromises. He feltman’chi to no one. That was characteristic of an aiji, a leader, and there was a reciprocal emotion, which, oddly enough, atevi rarely discussed or attempted to define. He receivedman’chi from two clans besides his own, and it stayed with him through gunfire and threat. That indicated he had character and attractiveness. And he reciprocated adequately, making the best of the best of his people stand by him, for the sake of theirconnections.

But things had changed. Machigi potentially had power over the Dojisigi, who had made his life hell, and over everything and everybody in the Marid. The Guild wasn’t going to give up its position of advantage and let things swing back to normal for the Marid. No, they were going to be at the shoulder of every minister andMachigi himself. And thatwas going to be interesting: Machigi’s face had shown just a little emotion when he’d made that remark about Machigi’s own bodyguard being his best link to the Guild proper.

Maybe he’d surprised Machigi a little, informing him that the four bodyguards he had trusted would get authority—an authority that was only going to increase, as the Guild found Tema and his men had the brains and the guts to bethe bodyguard of a lord of the aishidi’tat. And the Guild would find exactly that. These four knew their district as outsiders did not. They, working practically solo, had kept their lord and their district out of the hands of Guild that they had, on their own, decided were up to no good—they’d been entirely right— andthey’d organized a resistance to that movement that had kept their lord alive and free, while the Guild in Shejidan delayed taking action.

Brains. And guts. They’d become a major target of the shadow Guild, right along with their lord, and they’d stayed alive.

What he hadn’t said was that that very smart foursome had decided, long before Machigi had, that if push came to shove, they would have to link with the Guild in Shejidan, and hope.

That probably had happened one particular evening when he had arrived in Tanaja the first time. The Guild in Shejidan had likely told Machigi’s bodyguard to talk to Algini—and they’d done it, possibly without a real clue what Algini actually was.

He’d love to have thatstory out of Algini. But the Guild buried such details; and just knowing what the channels had been at any given time was more information than one normally ever got out of the Guild.

He’d been entirely accurate in what he’d just told the ministers, however. He was sure of it—as he was sure Tano and Algini had been talking to half of Machigi’s bodyguard while he’d been having brandy with Machigi.

He was veryglad to see the rest of his bodyguard in good spirits as they reached the suite. Hand-signs flashed. That sigh and relaxation as Banichi sank into a comfortable chair and leaned back said everything.

They were in. They were safe. Machigi was going to survive this and have the Guild behind him if Machigi used half the sense that had gotten him this far. He was protected by four very remarkable men—and the aishidi’tat owed those four a debt it probably never would repay.

Algini sat down, too, in a state of relaxation. Tano generally looked pleasant and cheerful. When Algini let a sparkle get to his eyes, it was outright celebration.

Jago—Jago just took his coat, and said, in prim formality, “The household servants wish to attend you, nandi. Shall they start the bath?”

Mmm, yes. They were bugged. Anybody in this room was bugged. Maybe now it was Shejidan Guild doing the listening. Or maybe it wasn’t. Any great house was complex.

“One understands,” he said. “Yes. That will be good, Jago-ji.”

The servants came in, bringing a rolling cart with a small buffet for his bodyguard. They had had neither food nor drink yet under this roof. And they would still enjoy it two at a time.

A servant went into the back hall to start a hot bath running. And he could take off the damned protective vest and relax. All indications were that their follow-up mission was going well, so far.

Oh, that was good. That was very good.

“Work it out,” was all Tabini had given him in the way of instruction, aside from what Ilisidi had told him. “If you can make this mad scheme of my grandmother’s work, do so.”

His job was onlyto bring an eighth of the continent under a central authority it had resisted for centuries.

His job was, besides that, to nudge the very traditional, generally backward Marid into the current century, and get all the Guilds and their regulations accepted in the south, which had no habit of education outside the parents’ trade at all, and no institutions of higher learning except the esoteric college of kabiu.

One step at a time, he told himself. It was miracle enough that they were here and that Machigi had just figured out that he did actually command the Guild, if he only used it creatively within Guild regulations.

First somebody had to educate Machigi in what those regulations were—and that would have to be Tema and his men, once theyfigured out the figurative rule book as it now existed in Shejidan.

All of that was somebody else’s job. Tano and Algini, not to mention the Guild assigned here by the Guild in Shejidan, might have already made a start on it.

Meanwhile, the paidhi-aiji was going to take a long, soaking bath. And go to bed.

Morning came none too soon, in a discreetly solitary bed and with far too much to think about to lie there for long. The servants had arrived—it was an even earlier start to their day—and one was very glad to get moving on what was, however it turned out, going to be a long day’s agenda. One hoped it was going to be a day ending in Shejidan. But that might depend on how breakfast went.

It was at least not the formal dining room for breakfast, with ministers and spouses and all. It was an intimate breakfast room decorated in white porcelain tile and a table set, thank God, only for two.

Machigi came in, which signaled the kitchen, and for a time thereafter it was a conversation confined to the dishes, which were numerous and delicate, though small, and every dish considerate of a human’s dietary restrictions.

One had to do the meal proper courtesy.

“Your remarks about the Guild,” Machigi said at last, over tea.

“Nandi.”

“My aishid reports an encouraging expression from the Guild this morning.”

“Excellent news, nandi. One hopes to see a good outcome. The center of local Guild authority will be here, in this building— in the architecture one hopes to see established. But that will be yours to establish. The Guild, quite naturally, prefers notto see its members set at each other when there is a more reasonable answer.”

“We want to see the final draft of this promised document, nandi. And mind, we shall not tolerate last-moment surprises, especially in public.”

“It will be exactly as you have seen it, nandi. And once that all-important association exists—and this is the best news from Shejidan, which I have particularly wanted to tell you in some privacy, nandi—”

“Say it.”

“Tabini-aiji will recognize the new Marid association as an official region of the aishidi’tat. That will require a realignment of Guild structure and a formal agreement with the new regional structure—that is to say, you,nandi. The various Guilds will each present more papers, which you may or may not sign, but which the dowager will strongly suggest you signc”

“A region.”

“Just so.”

“What do youadvise, paidhi?”

“One advises you sign them as they are crafted. These will be organizational and routine, recognizing you as the aiji of the Marid Association: it is all the same language as the ordinary agreements, nandi, but words in this case that have power to revise reality. As the executive of the Marid, you will be the channel for all Guild applications, down to every scrap of paper. One recommends the establishment of clerical offices to deal with it. One recommends, in fact, computers.”

“Computers. We do not have phonesin the villages, paidhi.”

“You will have both in fairly short order, in fact, as you admit the Messengers’ Guild. They will bring them in.”

Machigi frowned and rested his chin on his hand. “Computers. And who will run these machines?”

“Foreigners, until you educate Taisigi youngsters in their use. Which you can do if you allow the Academicians’ Guild to establish a school.”

“Computers. Schools. Guilds. Are we to becomeShejidan? We are notShejidan, paidhi! Nor are our fishermen going to send their sons to a school! You have no idea!”

“They may, however, send their daughters.”

“You are speaking of the utter overthrow of custom.”

“You will never become Shejidan, nandi, but you willbe the Marid, a modernAssociation within the aishidi’tat, and your people will have hospitals, schools, phones, and, one hesitates to say, television.”

“We have not bargained for the utter overthrow of tradition.”

“You will sign what seems logical to you to sign, and the Guilds must present their case to you for each of these changes. Things will change at whatever pace you decide, and your leadership, nandi, one is quite confident is equal to the task. When your people prosper, you will have their man’chi, one has no question. And your sons anddaughters will, one predicts, be working in space, beside Ragi and Maschi, Edi, Easterners—and humans. One would be dishonest to claim things will stay the same. But you will not have people dying of sickness a local hospital could cure with a single dose of medicine or of injuries a surgeon could heal. You will not have villages festering in situations one single phone call to your offices could relieve. That is power,nandi. That is power no lord in the Marid has ever wielded. Computers. Phones. Satellites to warn your ships of weather. Within the Marid, you will have the same authority the aiji-dowager has over the East and Tabini has over the Ragi and Lord Geigi has on the space station; and when you visit Shejidan, you will do so with the ceremony and respect of a regional lord. But, nandi, one first needs the guilds to make these things happen. And one needs at least a few schoolscnot for everyone. But schools there must be. Your urging can populate them.”

“You will get me assassinated.”

“You will need Guild protection, I have no doubt, but you have it. I have been threatened by persons claiming the shuttles pierce the sky and may let the planet’s atmosphere leak away into the ether. I have been personally attacked by an individual claiming his telephones are spying on him at nightcthese things will happen. You will not find it advisable to walk on quayside without your bodyguard, I regret to say. You will not find it advisable at any time to ignore your bodyguard’s warnings. That I can promise you, from personal experience. There are dangers. Not everyone will be pleased at every step of the way. But there are compensations.”

Machigi gave a long sigh. “You need not tell me about threats. But to have them coming from my own people—”

“The perception that I am harming the atmosphere is now confined to a very few of limited education or unstable mind, and the Guild will not accept a Filing on such grounds. I understand your hesitation, nandi. I understand it very well. At times I have caused great distress, and I have suffered from it. In my worst fears, Iam responsible for the disturbance that led to Murini’s rise. But I feel—I feel very strongly—that I have done what had to be done for people to live good lives—and long lives, safe from hazards that come from above the earth as well as on it. Baji-naji, it is terrifying to bethe flex in the universe. A very few cando it. The aiji-dowager has wagered heavily on your having the intelligence and the courage to be one of the few. You are far too intelligent to keep your people at a technological disadvantage. And I think your nerve will not fail you.”

“If I were that intelligent,” Machigi said glumly, “I could think of another answer.”

“ Youwill shape the Marid, nandi. You will influence the Guild in dealings with other clans. You will influence the succession in those clans. The Guild will accept advice. Make your choices well disposed to you. And agreeable.”

“Of the good will of Dausigi and Sungeni, one has no doubt, at present,” Machigi said. “The doubtful thing is to keep that good will, with the things you propose.”

“Use the Guild, nandi. Wrap it around you. In this one thing, you must benorthern. Everything else is adjustable. You have to stay alive, or everything falls back to chaos.”

A short, sharp laugh. “Paidhi, it is decent advice.”

“Tell me: with your knowledge, nandi—what would you advise the north now, about the succession in the northern Marid? Is the Guild moving in the right direction?”

“One is less concerned for the new lord in Senji: Bridai is old, and quiet. He will cause no trouble to me, and if the Guild is truly capable of being persuaded, I can steer his choice of a successor. Thenthere is Dojisigi. And Mujita.”

One hardly liked to hear that assessment, but one already knew it. Hisintercession had saved the man, perhaps his daughter. A child. A child as humans reckoned it. But not necessarily so.

“Mujita is a fool—but his daughter, Tiajo, is dangerous. One has come to know that child all too well, and her father will be lucky if he dies of old age. Nand’ Gediri thinks Ishould marry the girl and set an heir in place over Dojisigi. But I’ll not have her serving mytea. Or teaching any of mysuccessors.”

“Again, —” he began.

“—advise the Guild.” Machigi concluded, and leaned back. “So. They guard her. They guard me. Who prevails.”

“She will have to deserve the man’chi offered her. To the death. That is not so easily done, by a person of bad character.”

“She is an attractive little baggage. She would use that gift to the utmost.”

“The Guild does not train fools,” Bren said. “If she is what you say, she must convince the Guild she is the better ruler, or take her aishid down with her to ruin. And one suspects in her instance, the Guild may frustrate her inclinations and withdraw support entirely—which would not be a comfortable situation for her orher father.”

“What was the Guild’s position when they replaced Tabini-aiji? One is curious. One is quitecurious.

Blunt question. Very blunt question. And maybe a test of honesty.

“What is not widely stated, but what I do know—and in confidence, nandi—there was a coup, with bloodletting, inside the Guild, shortly before there was one inside the aishidi’tat. There was a countercoup, when the will of the people put Tabini-aiji back in power, and those we now call the renegades fled south, a number at first and then a slow trickle of those less exposed. A handful of those of ill intent came into Shejidan from outside, to use force; and force ultimately resettled the matter at Tabini-aiji’s return. It is unfortunate that Dojisigi sheltered these people. It cost them and everyone else. But you may now have confidence that the trouble has solved itself and that the Guild in Shejidan has declared man’chi to Tabini-aiji.”

“You say so.”

“One has great confidence in the persons who assured me so.”

“And who are they?”

“One is constrained from saying, nandi, but one does believe them.”

“Nand’ paidhi,” Machigi said. “You are one of the most curiously honestindividuals I have met, yet you represent two of the most devious alive! I am very reluctant to let you go. You will become corrupted by them.”

Bren gave a little bow of the head. “I shall be the same. I shall never forget our recent association, nandi, and I shall try to find a mutually agreeable course, fair to you and fair to the aiji-dowager. Standing between is my value in a situation.”

“Dispense with subtlety and give me your best advice. What would you advise in the next number of days?”

“Dispatch the representative to Shejidan as soon as possible—there will be curiosity from all Guilds, once they know the Assassins’ Guild has achieved agreement. Sign with the Merchants’ Guild first; they are reasonable people with a reasonable objective. Transport will have a standard agreement. Be cautious with the Messengers’ Guild, and read their agreement carefully. Bargain hard with them, and ask the Merchants’ Guild if you distrust a clause—they will give you an honest answer. Sign the agreement with the aiji-dowager, and move on all convenient programs. Immediately loose rumors of a great trading venture contingent on that agreement.”

“And then?”

“Simutaneously be ready to send representatives to the East to set up a trade office on the coast; and outfit an expedition by sea. Within the Marid, establish clinics in key places: that will immediately see benefits to the people. Sign with the Academicians and establish a small school in Tanaja with high prestige and technical assistance from the Engineers’, the Messengers’, and the Physicians’ Guilds; concentrating first on those three disciplines and having a relationship with those Guilds. Erect windmills for power in the villages, not neglecting Senji and Dojisigi. The Engineers’ Guild will assist at your request, and Shejidan will assist you in that effort with materials and technology. The Messengers will provide broadcast radio for every village, each village to have at least one receiver, and let that network inform the villages for you. Speak to the people on a fixed schedule and inform them on progress and new programs and how to access them. Rumors in the Marid will then become scarcer than fact. Once people see benefits from change, their opinions will become more favorable—not universally, but with medical care and more prosperity, they will be more favorable. And thatwill secure your future.”

Machigi laughed softly. “Paidhi, you have it all laid out in your head, do you not?”

“One has thought about it, nandi. One has thought about it incessantly, in a desire to have the most benefit the fastest. That is what will make this work.”

“I shall miss you, paidhi, indeed. My ministers have no sense of humor.”

“I shall, I hope, see you again, nandi. I am more than willing to bridge gaps for you and to convey messages in, one hopes, a delicate way.”

“I have gifts for you,” Machigi said, “on which I have labored personally.” Machigi drew two small cylinders from his pocket, and offered it to him. “Use these as you see fit.”

“Shall I open them?”

“One is a polite letter for the aiji-dowager, which you only need deliver, and the other is reading for your journey.” Machigi stood up. The guest was obliged to do the same. The meeting was over. “I shall bid you farewell now, paidhi. The requested items will be aboard your bus by now. Staff will have carried your belongings down, and your small army of Guild will, I am told, be going back to Najida, to keep it safe from—whomever. I shall see you soon in Shejidan, nand’ paidhi.”

Bren slipped the two cylinders into his own pocket and bowed. “One will look forward to that meeting, nandi, not alone officially.”

“Flattery.”

“Yet true.” A second bow. “Baji-naji, nandi, we shall do this.”

He was done—sooner than he had expected, as well. The meeting could have gone far longer, or taken days, had the discussion gone wrong.

But it had not. They were both satisfied.

And it was time to get the hell out of the district and let the Marid take care of the Marid for a while without his interference rousing controversy.

He gathered his aishid, Tano and Algini conveniently arriving on the main floor with their own luggage and three servants carrying the rest. No expressions changed. No expressions betrayed any satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the proceedings. His bodyguard was on strictly formal behavior, communicating with short-range, and if there was any authority on the premises besides Lord Machigi—such as a local Guild officer—none appeared to wish them good travel.

Outside, under gray skies and a light sprinkle of rain, the bus stood waiting. The last baggage went aboard as they lingered at the bus steps.

Then the cargo doors shut. Bren caught the hand grip and climbed the first tall step, with Jago right behind him.

But someone hadnow appeared, in an official capacity: Tema, Machigi’s senior bodyguard, with his partner. Banichi delayed and joined Tano and Algini in that conversation outside the bus.

Jago put the briefcase on the seat and awaited his coat. Bren extracted the cylinders from his pocket before he slipped it off and offered it to Jago to hang for him—ostensibly servant duties, but at no point did his bodyguard leave him to fend for himself under still-questionable circumstances.

He settled in. The air in the bus was a little chill yet, but a welcome chill, considering the heavy vest his bodyguard would not let him omit. He set his briefcase on the floor by his feet, the driver started the engine, and the meeting at the bus steps ended with a fast exchange of signs, apparently cordial.

The rest of his bodyguard got aboard in uncommonly good spirits for the situation, the door definitively shut, and the bus rolled, meeting a light spatter of rain on the windshield as it left the wind-shadow of the building.

Communications would be going out from the bus about now on long-range equipment, a summons for the plane to meet them at Najida airport, a communication with the local Guild that they were on the move and that they would be passing through the streets.

Bren let go a long sigh, sheer relief to have gotten things this far, with Machigi’s general agreement. On the other hand, one hesitated to rejoice too soon.

The ink had not yet landed on the bottom line. There was a lot, lot more to attend to before that happened.

Banichi and Jago sat down in the seats facing his. Tano and Algini hung on in the aisle as the bus negotiated the downslope of the driveway.

“So, nadiin-ji?” he asked them.

“We found good agreement,” Banichi answered him. “His aishid is troubled at so much responsibility falling in their laps. But the Guild is carefully loading them with what they can bear, instructing them in procedures, assisting them with modern equipment. He was fortunate in them. He was very fortunate. You advised him well, Bren-ji.”

“One hoped one would receive a sign, if not.”

“Well-spoken, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “At all points.”

Bren let go a slow breath and melted back into the seat. “One is gratified by your confidence, nadiin-ji. Terrified at the scope of it all, but gratified. —Tano-ji, how are you holding up?”

“Quite well,” Tano said. Tano had taken it in the arm not so very many days ago. He was doing rehabilitation in between standing duty. Banichi and Jago and Algini had lasting scars— from keeping the paidhi-aiji in one piece despite his very best efforts to get himself killed.

“Rest,” he said. “Let the juniors manage the details for the rest of the trip. I have absolutely no needs. But,” he said, “one imagines you would care to read what Machigi has said.”

“One would be a little curious,” Banichi admitted.

“So am I,” he said, and uncapped the cylinder addressed to him, while they were still making their way through Tanaja’s streets. “Unbearably so.”

4

Machigi lord of the Marid to Bren-paidhi, salutations.

The Dojisigi and the Senji agreed together to back Murini of the Kadigidi in a coup against the Ragi Association to overthrow Tabini-aiji.

The plan was presented to me. Their scheme seemed to me no more likely to succeed than what their predecessors had done in every generation, but if it failed, and if we did not actively participate, I judged that Tabini would likely content himself with removing only the most active aggressors. In our perception of the situation, saying yes would delay a problem with Tori of the Dojisigi. So we said yes—but delayed lending any forces to their effort, expecting any day to hear that the plan had come down on their heads and that they were dead by Guild action.

When Murini’s coup actually succeeded and Tabini-aiji was thought dead, we were at once appalled and alarmed, expecting retaliation now to come down on us from space. But since the speed of Murini’s takeover had stranded two of the shuttles on the ground, it had thus, we thought, prevented intervention from orbit. We faced a very different situation from that we had anticipated. We knew that the third shuttle was still capable of return, and we estimated that retaliation might take a different form—that Lord Geigi himself might attempt to overthrow Murini-aiji. This, however, seemed distant—until the reports began, later, that strange machines were landing in various parts of the continent.

But from the very outset, when Murini immediately began to take apart the political alliances of the north, we began to worry that we had a far more dangerous situation than under Tabini-aiji. He was creating chaos in the north and tightening his hold in a merciless assault on those who spoke against him. The Dojisigi and Senji, since they had been more actively involved in his accession, were higher in his favor, and we were sure neither Dojisigi nor Senji would hesitate to move against us and all the southern Marid.

But Senji and Dojisigi themselves grew uneasy in their ally. Murini’s measures were bloody. We understood that he was purging the Guild itself of any support for Tabinicbut there were rumors, relayed through my own aishid, that certain Guild elements had gotten away to the wilderness and would begin to move against Murini-aiji, that a counterrevolution would begin with assassinations in remote areas—and that, my aishid thought, might mean a strike at me.

Murini-aiji meanwhile gave no appearance of stability or coherence in his governance or his personal behavior. Excess ruled. Temper and whim governed. And no one was safe. If Murini-aiji noted a slight to himself, someone died.

Dojisigi and Senji began to think, one supposes, that the harsh measures taken in the north might in due time come south and that they had allied with a fool and a bully. They wanted to know Murini’s plans in that regard. That was the impetus for Farai of the Senji, invoking an old inheritance, to lay claim to your vacant apartment in the Bujavid. Murini-aiji had occupied Tabini’s apartment; your apartment shared a wall and they risked a great deal in this move— which was successful. Their spying gave Senji and Dojisigi some oversight of doings in Murini’s apartment, but my aishid thought information was possibly being fed to them, since while Murini was sunk in drink and abandon, the Guild that had put him in power was not.

Then Senji began to say that the Farai had deserted the man’chi of Senji and begun to follow Dojisigi, and that they were in fact attempting to curry favor with Murini—utterly betraying their own subclan and attaching their actions, whether or not detected, to Dojisigi.

At the same time Senji moved into Maschi territory to our north. The Maschi lord, with Lord Geigi stranded on the space station and Murini-aiji seeming to favor the Senji lord personally, far above Torii of the Dojisigi, accepted a secret alliance with Senji and would not receive our representative. Lord Pairuti was more terrified of Senji than of us—and we dared not press too hard for fear our approach to Pairuti would get to Murini’s ears. And Pairuti’s alliance with Senji meant a lord under Senji influence sat directly against our border.

We know now what we suspected then, that Senji was moving agents into Targai, completely taking over the Maschi authority in the north.

At this point, we dared not confront Senji directly. Instead we approached the southern Maschi—Lord Geigi’s sister at Kajiminda, who now had great reason to worry about her future. We offered her alliance if she would marry at our direction.

Immediately the Senji sent a representative toward Kajiminda, which we forcefully prevented. And as we hoped, Murini was too busy at that moment with the situation on the northeast coast to divert attention to a mere Marid squabble over an estate bordering Taisigi territory. He would let us quarrel among ourselves and then devour the survivor: that was his pattern with situations in the north.

I sent to Lord Torii of the Dojisigi, who were not pleased to find Senji abed with Murini. I offered him a close alliance in our enterprise at Kajiminda, reasoning as follows: Lord Geigi posed a great threat to Murini’s regime. Geigi held the vantage of the space station, he was allied with the humans in space, he was alleged to be closely allied to the human enclave on Mospheira—who did not need a space shuttle to pose a threat to Murini—and we were entirely prepared to pull the trigger on that threat if Murini made a move toward us. It was my private notion to marry the lady of Kajiminda. This would have given us a position with Lord Geigi to wipe out old feuds, and we were convinced that Lord Geigi’s intervention was no empty threatcthat, in fact, it would ultimately happen.

But the lady died. So did several of my agents. I cannot prove what happened. The Edi were high on our list of suspects. It was poison. They had opportunity. Hatred of us was certainly a credible motive. But most embarrassing, the agents I now most suspect of the murders were old in my service. I relied on these men. It is personally embarrassing to say, and one hesitates to claim blindness as an excuse, but one suspects they had been reporting directly to the Senji for years. They revealed themselves only in their recent attack on you and their subsequent cooperation with the renegades.

At the time, we were caught at a loss. I have no marriageable relatives at my disposal. But Torii of the Dojisigi suggested we immediately approach young Baiji with an offer to marry young Tiajo, my cousin, on my mother’s side, a close relative of Torii. It would create an avenue to negotiation with Lord Geigi, it would give Murini-aiji pause in coming at me or at Lord Torii, who thus would be reassured, and it had one other benefit: the offer of Tiajo quietly worsened the rift between Senji and Dojisigi—so much so that the Dojisigi thereafter had to pay the Farai with bribes to be sure their information from inside Murini’s regime was accurate and frequent.

Senji then found out about the bribe—I personally confess to that indiscretion—and the Farai began to snuggle even closer to the Dojisigi for protection. That gave us an inroad into Senji and Murini-aiji when we might care to use it.

Meanwhile, it was not expected that you would return, since your absence stretched on beyond all expectation. The skirmishes against Murini-aiji continued in the north.

Then Lord Geigi began taking actions that troubled the regime—landing mysterious machines of war in certain districts. We feared it might be a precursor to landings of a different sort, and we would have to negotiate with Lord Geigi.

But Baiji had contrived every excuse to delay the marriage. Worse, he had proved an utter fool, squandering the estate, indulging himself; the Edi had deserted the place. And Baiji had, in an exchange of messages we did not commit to paper, wanted money, a great deal of money. We feared he could at any moment swing toward Murini or the Senji—he knew it, and redoubled his demands. We found ourselves dealing with a thorough, shallow-minded scoundrel who was as apt to go one direction as the other, and who had no sense about what should be committed to paper. Should Geigi descend from the heavens with force, Baiji would swing to any prevailing wind: we saw that. Worse still, he had squandered estate money, and his servants had left. We attempted to carry the marriage forward in greater haste, to put Tiajo’s father’s servants in charge of the estate before it was entirely ruined. Simultaneously we knew the Dojisigi were already scheming to move us out of the way once that marriage to Baiji took place—but so long as it was not Senji or Murini, at the moment we were satisfied. We simply planned to take Baiji into our keeping.

This was the situation at the time of Murini’s greatest power. We assumed that should the dowager ever return from her voyage, the dowager would either ally with Geigi, or oppose him in a battle for the aijinate on the station, and we might not know it until the winning side made a move on earth. I was still betting strongly on Geigi coming down from the heavens, perhaps landing on Mospheira and gathering human allies for an invasion of the mainland. And if that happened, I was prepared to hand Kajiminda and his nephew over to him, as intact as I could manage.

Your return was a shocking surprise. Your survival after you landed seemed impossible. You did none of the expected things, and once the aiji-dowager burst the bubble of Murini’s claims of man’chi from the Padi Valley, and once Tabini’s return brought the former Guild out of hiding, it was all over in the north. Murini’s power melted away like ice in the sun. They made their best try at assassination, and lost. Murini’s advisors counseled immediate retreat.

And that fool Lord Torii, still believing reports from the wrong people that Tabini could never take the capital, accepted Murini and his staff in his territory, which allied him with Senji and left me with the unresolved mess at Kajiminda.

We know now that Torii’s staff and advisors had been well infiltrated with Murini’s Guildcas Senji’s long since had been. Thanks to the common sense of my own bodyguard, they had at no time allowed Murini’s people close to mecwhich was why I was on the outside of all this connivance, and I was not receiving bad intelligence—I in fact was receiving very little intelligence. Things settled. Murini left. And died. It seemed the situation was stable, with Tabini-aiji back in power.

But things in the Marid were not stable. And here is where we had made our mistake: I believed Lord Torii was still giving orders, and now I know that the renegade Guild had not followed Murini to destruction.

I was quietly advised, after Murini’s death, that Dojisigi would negotiate with me directly regarding an alliance against Senji, but my aishid advised me against accepting such talks with them—they flatly warned me to temporize with that offer by whatever excuse I could muster and not to go to any conference with Dojisigi—who refused to come to Tanaja.

We strongly suspected that the problems in the Baiji operation were due to the Dojisigi. My aishid, at the same time they advised me to avoid going to Dojisigi territory, also advised me that the Baiji operation had to continue, that it was exceedingly dangerous at this point to betray our knowledge that it was infiltrated, and that we should deal with it as if we knew absolutely nothingcas if, under Tabini-aiji’s rule now, we would allow that marriage to go forward, and then let Tabini-aiji sort it out. My aishid warned me that I must give Dojisigi no chance to break officially from our agreement, that the polite fiction of our alliance served to keep things quiet for the while. I personally resisted my bodyguard’s strong suggestion to retreat to the Isles. I would not detach myself from my people: if my bodyguard and I were going down, we would go down fighting for Taisigi land. So we simply closed our borders so far as we could and stalled any appointment for negotiation with the Dojisigi—still thinking that it was Lord Torii giving the orders in that district.

My bodyguard was now isolated. They could not rely on any allies except Sungeni and Dausigi, who rely on us for protection, not the other way around.

My bodyguard had not contacted the new Guild leadership in Shejidan, they say that they had discussed doing so. But they did not want to stir that pot and find attention coming on us—from either the Guild in Shejidan or from Dojisigi, since we felt Shejidan’s interest was purely in seeing war between Dojisigi and Taisigi.

We decided that if we stayed very quiet, Dojisigi might yet make a move that drew action from Shejidan, which was our best hope: that Tabini-aiji would send agents there and not to us.

My enemies in Dojisigi were not, however, idle. They began a campaign of rumors. They blamed me as the power that had backed Murini from the start. It was not at all difficult to persuade Tabini that I was a problem and the son and grandson of a problem. Indeed, it was not a coat that fit that badly. I had no man’chi for Tabini-aiji and if I at that point had had an approach from the Dojisigi Guild that would not threaten to kill my bodyguard in the process, yes, I would have taken it, not even understanding their existence at that time. If I could have taken out Lord Torii, I would have, because I could never trust him, not given our relationship.

That was where things stood when you arrived on the west coast and walked into ambush at Kajiminda.

Possibly the people the Dojisigi had put there were convinced that you were there to reconnoiter, with inside information that I might have provided you. Possibly their own suspicion of plots under every hedge sprang their trap prematurely.

Baiji, being the fool he is, immediately panicked; ran for shelter with you, likely because you are an ally of his uncle, and things blew up. The aiji-dowager became involved. Tabini arrived, invaded a Dojisigi operation in Separti, and the survivors there delivered intelligence, blaming, of course—me. And promptly the Guild in Shejidan was debating having me assassinated. Tabini had already Filed Intent.

We were at a crisis. If I could avoid being assassinated, and if Dojisigi agents could take Najida, which was a very soft target, they would gain hostages, in you, the aiji’s own son, and the aiji’s grandmother—and that would be the stupidest thing they could do, but I thought it was Lord Torii in charge. I was sure the aiji-dowager and the aiji’s son would be out of there by sunrise, that somehow the aiji’s forces would get at least one live prisoner, or that you would get something incriminating out of Baiji.

But the aiji-dowager and the aiji’s son stayed, and Tabini let them—refusing to seem to retreat. You fortified Najida. And that gave the renegade Guild a grand opportunity. They escalated the conflict, and so doing, laid the bloody dagger at my door.

The Guild in Shejidan met to declare me the targetcnot, one strongly suspects, that they did not know the truth about the operation—but if I were out of the way, Taisigi territory became the most logical base, adjacent to Sarini province and Senji. They would take the Marid by force and install a Ragi authority. Which you must admit, they came close to doing.

The dowager somehow got intelligence of what was going on within the Guild—I strongly believe it—and contacted me directly, in direct opposition to the intentions of her grandson and of the Guild in Shejidan. She made an offer.

I do not hesitate to accept it. The benefit to me is direct. The benefit to the Marid is direct. I am under constraint, but I have no motive to resist this plan, which offers me the Marid, accommodates the aiji-dowager, and, one now believes, may ultimately bring her grandson into agreement with the situation.

You may assume that I am lying in some of this. But it will be a useful truth that may mend situations for you. None of us like to be used by third parties. We deeply resent such things.

I will never tell you which parts are lies. But I promise to base my future actions faithfully on this document as if all these things were true.

And that, paidhi, is the most significant truth that has ever passed between us.

“Damn!” Bren said when he had finished it. He passed it across to Banichi and Jago, who could share the document, and settled back with arms folded.

“Is something other than what was represented, Bren-ji?” Tano asked.

“Lord Machigi is what he is,” Bren said. “You shall see, nadiin-

ji, when you read it. This man is full of turns. But so is Tabini. And so is the dowager. One is not sure what one has loosed into the aishidi’tat. He is a man of qualities. One is simply not certain in what direction they tend.”

In due time Banichi finished reading—clearly so. He let expression show—a little perplexity in a lift of the brows. And Jago, half a beat later: “The Dojisigi and the renegades together did not find a way to attack this man directly. One should remember that.”

The paper went to Tano and Algini, who read it together.

“He did say,” Banichi said, “that you should use this paper as you see fit.”

Banichi and Jago had been there in the breakfast room when the statement was made.

“One believes both the dowager and Tabini-aiji should see it, nadiin-ji. With all it entails. One does not want to inflame the situation. But they do need to see it, do they not?”

“The question is, at all odds,” Jago said, “whether he will keep his pledge to stand by this version of the truth.”

“Is it not?” Bren said, and thought—in Ragi, which was the only safe way to think on the topic, There is no one in the world more unhappy than a solitary ateva. Machigi said it: he has no relatives in his own district. His aishid is all he has. His clan is virtually wiped out, except a contract marriage to a Dojisigi, and he himself has not yet married. He has taken no risk of that sortcand begetting a child is a risk for him. He says he was about to marry a woman fifteen years his senior. But that is all politics.

And it may, like every other statement in that letter, be a lie.

Machigi is young to have landed in such a position. He does not admit to fear. Possibly he feels none, since he has never known a time when he was not a target.

For a young man, he is scarily short of good advisors. But the four closest to him are extraordinary, at least in combination.

He vividly remembered having a gun leveled at him—in Machigi’s hands. And with equal vividness, he recalled Machigi’s immediate and easy change of tactics when he had not spooked. Machigi had become sarcastic, sullen, then increasingly outgoing and cheerful. Shift of masks. One after the other. And which was real?

Yet—I shall miss you, Machigi had said.

Right before handing him this outrageous document, a flat-out warning that no one should investigate the truth who did not want to find out things that would be very inconvenient for their future relationship.

I promise to base my future actions faithfully on this document as if all these things were true.

The scoundrel, Bren thought. The outright scoundrel. Jago was right. Two dangerous neighbors, Murini and the shadow Guild alike, had hesitated to take on this young man.

And once the Shejidan branch of the Guild had moved into his land, Machigi had advanced straight toward Najida, dodging fire, slipping right through the zone of conflict and helping deliver a death blow to the shadow Guild.

With what intent? To protect the dowager?

Or to attack her, if the Shejidan Guild didn’t stand by its word?

If Machigi had intended simply to run for safety, any ship in his harbor would have carried him to far safer territory in the Isles with far less effort. No. Machigi had come straight for Najida. He had gone for Ilisidi, pursuing, presumably, not her life, but the alliance that she offered him against the Guild renegades—perhaps because he saw that the scales were rapidly tipping toward the dowager as a powerbroker, and he had her offer dangling in front of him.

Machigi had, damn him, likely done at least half the things he was accused of.

So did they waste time in investigating what he haddone, or proceed as the letter said, from a fresh start based on what its creator clearly said was a fabrication?

And might not be a fabrication at all, only a truth cast in the most defiant way possible. Deal with me, but do not debate me. I shall not answer your questions.

At times being human was a real difficulty in dealing with atevi politics.

Algini said, having read the letter, “He is taking the advice of his bodyguard. Good.”

He didn’t read the second letter, the one addressed to Ilisidi, which was sealed with the wax seal of the Taisigin Marid. He did worry about it.

He had a drink of fruit juice from the well-appointed galley on the bus, then settled down in the quiet his aishid afforded him and began to work on his notes for the upcoming report to Tabini-aiji.

His brother Toby and Barb had sailed for Port Jackson, worrisome in the weather, but they were good, experienced sailors. They’d enjoy the storm that had swept across. That was Toby’s attitude.

Najida was about to undergo a major renovation in addition to the repairs. He’d asked an architect to design a new wing, from his sketches. Getting the main hall in order was a priority. He’d promised a wedding venue to a village girl, in payment for a dress, and that promise, among others, had to be kept.

Cajeiri was presumably safely back in his parents’ care and not apt to leave it until they let their guard down, which would not be soon.

And the Edi were busy staking out the ground where they would build a new center, on land donated by Lord Geigi out of his estate lands. A new Grandmother Stone would go up there, marking something very, very important to the Edi people.

Jago came up the aisle to say they had just heard from Lord Geigi, in fact: Lord Geigi had wanted to be notified when they were headed for the airport—which meant, diplomatically speaking, when they had gotten safely away from Tanaja with everything in order, and knew that they were getting out in one piece. Geigi had been just a little worried about the visit.

“Lord Geigi wishes you a safe flight, Bren-ji, and will see you in Shejidan.”

“Thank you, Jago-ji.”

Guild was talking to Guild, routine exchange of information. The bus had long-range communications that let them do that. Hecouldn’t use itcnot being Guild. For a brief while during the last mess, he’d thought fondly of having modern communications installed on the bus. He’d come out to the west coast to do a little work on a bill to allow cell phones, which were all the rage over on Mospheira—to allow them at least in limited general application on the continent. It was his job, among others, to oversee the surrender of human tech to the aishidi’tat, by terms of the treaty that had settled the War of the Landing—

But just occasionally, when such a release of technology was proposed, it was his job to say a firm no.

He had bled over the lack of personal communications on that last mission. And much as he had wanted a phone—he had to admit it would have made matters worse.

The traditionalists among atevi were all up in arms over the impending billcwhich had been scheduled to be a main feature of the upcoming legislature. It was a given in all the reports that the paidhi-aiji was going to support it. Numerous people wanted it, not remotely concerning what it meant but sure it was going to be important and modern. The Messengers’ Guild was interested but dubious. But more to the point, Tabiniwanted it.

Where it regarded introduction of human tech to the mainland, the paidhi-aiji had an absolute, though rarely used, veto, and the aiji would have to dismiss him from office to get past it.

He had learned, in that recent conflict, the reason for the ban on lords talking to lords in a combat area. He had thought naively that it might serve to straighten things out and stop a fight.

But God! it could so easily go the other way. Whatever took fine control of a messy situation out of the hands of the Assassins’ Guild, who had their own system of keeping a firefight out of civilian areas, could not benefit reason and order. Not on the mainland.

And two lords in the field talking back and forth under fire were not likely to improve anythingceither understanding or attitude. He only needed think of personalities. Pigheadedness. Party affiliations. Clan loyalties.

Outright fools giving away their position and getting their own people killed. He only needed think of Lord Tatiseigi’s communications system, which had leaked like a sieve. It had nearly cost them their lives and the country its leadership.

No, the Assassins’ Guild hadn’t publicly stated their position on the cell phone issue. But he knew now of a certainty what they thought of it. And why.

So God help him, the paidhi-aiji, whom the conservatives believed was in favor of unbridled excess and the systematic overthrow of all tradition and culture, was about to come down on the same side of an issue as the archest conservatives in the aishidi’tat, the number-counters, people who believed the numbers of a situation dictated the outcome and affected the cosmic harmony. Including people who thought the space station upset the universe.

The same people were going to have an apoplexy when they considered the Edi and Gan gaining seats in the legislature and a lordship apiece.

They’d think he’d changed his vote on the cell phone issue to placate them about the other matter. That it was a sign of weakness.

Hell. Maybe he could offer to vote against the cell phone bill if they’d drop their opposition to the Edi and Gan issue. And then actually do it. That would be underhanded.

It was reasonably certain that Tabini was going to be upset about his vote. He had to warn Tabini before he did it. And before his veto, if the thing passed.

Ilisidi had picked a nice time to leave town.

He already wanted her back. God,he wanted her back.

The plane was another world after the long drive to reach it. It was no jet, but it was appointed like one.

And finally, having packed off their far too eager junior Guild escort back to Najida and Separti Township, they all could relax, in an arrangement of five seats and a small table, and be served by the plane’s steward.

There were no other passengers, no freight or mail on the outbound leg of the flight, and there were no delays in prospect. The plane climbed, westward at first, and made its ascent over Najida peninsula in a red sunset. A steep bank showed them Najida below, and yes, Jago reported, there were trucks outside the house. Workmen.

The sun speared across the cabin as the plane finished its turn, nosed off to the east, and headed for Shejidan, its altitude giving them a second lease on daylight.

“When we see Najida again,” Bren said, “it will be about twice as large as it was before. And we shall no longer have to play politics for the bath.”

That brought a little amusement. And the steward arrived with drinks, a little alcohol for him, plain fruit juice for his bodyguard, who would count themselves on duty until they got where they were going and the door shut behind them.

A good supper, however—that was perfectly within the rules.

Homeward bound, this time, really home—or what should be home: he had, after all, spent a significant portion of his life in the Bujavid. But his heart, he discovered, was still within the little villa they were leaving behind.

And it would, indeed, not be the same quiet little place when he got back. It would be better, more able to accommodate several high-ranking guests with numerous servants. Not to mention there would be no line-up for the bath or, worse, the accommodation.

And he was going to have windows overlooking the harbor, no longer wasting that beautiful view with a blank wall and a garage. It was a tactical riskcbut he was betting on the world he was trying to build—one in which those big windows would be safe, and farmers and hunters would not find dead men in their fields.

A world where—in his dreams—people would understand that their neighbors were inevitably going to share the planet, and that the planet as a whole was going to have to get along with other people and places it had never bothered itself to imagine.

Was the world, was the universe, big enough to accommodate everybody in decency and prosperity?

Maybe it was a crazy dream that people would finally see that it was. But he bet on it. He damned sure meant to try to make it happen.

He was going to have those windows.

And—inevitably—Guild protection went with the windows. His own bodyguard was going to have to be have help when they were there, until the world was quieter. And there would be electronic surveillance.

But he would go on working toward not needing it.

He would miss the Najida staff. He had gotten used to them in his short visit, and they to him. But they belonged to Najida. They needed to be there, to supervise the construction, to lead their lives close to the land and their clan—in peace.

A few of Najida village, however, had gone to Shejidan to work for him. They were already in the Bujavid, waiting for him, and more—also of Najida—were coming down from the space station, where they had been stranded for three years apart from family and all the luxuries of planetside living. They were also coming back to serve in the Bujavid, his apartment on the space station going on lowest maintenance until he got back to that residence—and all the problems hanging fire in the heavens.

Well, but they were hisplaces. Home, each of them, in a different way.

A handful of weeks ago he’d been living in Lord Tatiseigi’s apartment on Lord Tatiseigi’s charity. Ilisidi had gotten him that favor that and well, nand’ Tatiseigi’s curiosity had probably given a little push, too, since it was certain staff had reported to the old man on a regular basis, and the old man, who detested humans and every variance from tradition, was insatiably curious about what he deplored.

So his volunteers from Najida had taken the train to Shejidan three days ago, bringing with them furnishings that staff had rescued from the apartment in the coup. What the Farai had brought into the apartment when they had occupied it—security had taken that furniture out, and then gone over the place, stripping the walls down to bare stone—even rearranging the division of rooms in the process—so he understood. They’d found bugs—God knew which agency had planted them—the Farai, or the Maladesi, who had preceded him, or Tabini, or Murini. He somewhat doubted the Maladesi, since his own bodyguard would have found those, and probably they would have told him had Tabini been listening. So it was likely one or both of the other two. They’d even x-rayed the furniture, so tables and chairs and small carpets and vases that had been in the apartment when the Farai vacated might be turning up piecemeal. Bujavid Security, in fact, had passed him photos of the items and asked him to declare which were originally his and which the Farai had moved into the place.

Senji clan treasures—maybe there were a few of those. It was only fair and civilized to return those to the Farai or put them in storage, even though nobody cared particularly what the Farai thought at the moment. They’d betrayed the Senji, their own ruling clan; they’d certainly been ready to betray the Dojisigi. Next they’d be trying to snuggle up to Machigi as long lost relatives—which they were. But thatwouldn’t get them far.

Couldthings ever go back to what they had been, before the coup?

His job at the moment, his whole trip to Tanaja, had been to make damned sure they didn’t go back to status quo ante.

Among the hardest heads he had to deal with in that regard—count his former host, Lord Tatiseigi, who led a formidable collection of conservative interests.

Everybodyin the Bujavid was a close neighbor. It was the snuggest possible collection of people in power on the planet, and most everybody in the Bujavid was going to be asking everybody else—What did the paidhi have to negotiate with that scoundrel Machigi? What is he up to? What is the aiji-dowager up to? Why is Machigi still alive?

And, most significant to most in the Bujavid:

Where does Tabini-aiji stand on all this?

5

Nand’ Bren was coming back to Shejidan. His plane was in the air. Cajeiri had it from the best source, from his father saying it to his mother, so it was definite.

They had been moving in all day, into their new apartment—or their remade old one. They had had their last supper in Great-grandmother’s apartment, where they had been staying, because, Mother said, they were still unpacking the kitchen in the new place, and the staff would be working through the night to assure they could cook breakfast in the morning.

So the official move was after supper, but Father had said emphatically they were going to be in the new apartment today, and today it must be—because now that they had sent the boxes over after lunch, there was nothing they owned left in Great-grandmother’s apartment, and all their clothes and things were being set up in the new apartment.

So at last they officially moved—simply walking to the new apartment, with their bodyguards and some of their staff, all together like a procession. It seemed to Cajeiri it ought to be sort of an occasion, and in fact when they reached the apartment and Father’s bodyguard opened the door, there stood a gathering of servants Cajeiri did not remember at all, all of them lined up to welcome them to what was now home for the first time since they had fought their way back to Shejidan and his father had taken the government back.

The door to the sitting room stood open, past the reception line of servants, and the servants brought them immediately inside, offering Mother and Father brandy and him his favorite fruit drink. There were very good little cakes for the occasion, so Cajeiri began to feel it really was a party. There were a lot of flowers, and everyone was smiling. Servants came and bowed to his parents, conversing for a moment, and then came and bowed to him, and introduced themselves, and said embarrassing things about having taken care of him when he was a baby.

Well, he was not a baby. He had left the Bujavid when he was a baby. He had lived with Uncle Tatiseigi mostly. He had gone to space with Great-grandmother, and when Great-grandmother had decided to go with nand’ Bren into the great void and go get the stranded humans, well, she had decided against sending him back to his father, and he had not wanted to go, either.

Which was a good thing. Because the rebels had shot up the apartment and killed a lot of the old staff, and then they had shot up the lodge at Taiben and his parents had had to run for it. If he had been a baby and slowing them down, probably none of them would be alive to get back here.

But they were. And the servant staff, some of them, were old servants, and knew how things needed to be, his mother said.

He did not remember any of them, try as he might. And he did try. The cakes were especially good, and there were plenty of refills of punch. The only immediate bad thing was that the whole place smelled of paint and new varnish under the flower smells, and that was going to be unpleasant to live with, but it was just the repairs.

He had gotten a look at the place while they were painting it, and it looked bigger with furniture and carpets. It was bright and new. But it was white. It had white walls and nearly white tile in the foyer, and a lot of white furniture in the sitting room made it worse, in his opinion. He would have preferred dark wood like mani’s apartment. But no one had asked him. He just hoped his furniture had not been painted white.

After the cakes came a tour through the heart of the apartment, Father’s office, which was very fine, a little darker walls, with polished wood, and beautiful old carpet and porcelains on pedestalscit was not as nice or as cozy as Great-grandmother’s office, in Cajeiri’s opinion. But it was fancy, and he liked it. There was the library, also comfortably dark and full of books.

His mother’s room was white with pastel greens. And the nursery, which came first, had windows, three of them, and the room was brilliant yellow—the only color in the whole apartment, and the only windows.

The dining room had been white. The bath was white tile. Even the towels were white.

It was just—not fair that the baby was going to have all the windows.

But he was on best behavior. And he had to stand still and bow and say the white bath was beautiful, and he had to listen respectfully while the staff pointed out the phone, which was in a cabinet on which one could raise the lid, and the light switch, as if one were too stupid to find a light switch in the bath, and a button to call staff, which was, of course, beside the light switchc

Then Father said, unexpectedly, “You may go see your rooms, son, if you wish. One is certain that more interests you.”

“Yes!”he said and half-turned to go, and then decided it was politic to be quiet and far more grateful. “Thank you, Father. Thank you, Mother. Nadiin-ji.” He bowed, including the staff, then collected his bodyguard, who, like all the rest of Father’s and Mother’s staff, had tagged after them and crowded into every room they were in, and escaped with them.

He took off into the inner hall that led to the other rooms—that was a new security trick, because you had to go through separate halls to get to Father’s hall and Mother’s hall, and yet another direction to get to his door. It was a security arrangement: there was a foyer past the foyer, and the first pick would get you Father’s security station, which was also—white.

He and his bodyguard went back up the hall to the first door on the left, just past the servants’ access door, and he pressed ahead and opened the door to his suite himself, he was so excited and hopeful.

The door opened directly into his sitting room, and the place smelled of paint and it was, yes, white.

But redeeming that fault, there were plants everywhere: dark green ones, and light green ones and leaves with pale borders, and blue borders and yellow borders, each with bright lights to support them.

And there was his table, and the chairs with the animals, all polished up like new. With the red tapestries.

Best of all, nearly hidden behind potted plants, and behind a gnarly tree trunk that was also, cleverly, several shelves for more plants—there stood the big brass cage, dusted off, still with a lot of corroded green, but clean, and intricate, and old. He went immediately to see it and make sure it was what he remembered.

And its door worked, and everything.

There were no windows in his rooms at all: that was the biggest fault with the whole place, so far as he was concerned. But everywhere, on the walls, on stands, in pots on the floor, sat potted plants. Even the air smelled better in here than out there, a lot better.

And when he went back further into the suite, down a little hallway with two rooms for his bodyguard, there was his little office, with the desk, and everything, and still more plants. His office had shelves, and the books he had packed were on them, two that he had borrowed from nand’ Bren, and his own books, his atlasescand his map, his precious huge map, that he had had hanging in his bedroom in mani’s apartment: his world map, with all the towns and cities and harbors and rivers and mountains, that he had studied until he could draw whole pieces of it, and they had kept all his pins, which marked places he wanted to think about and places he had been.

There was the west coast, where he had just been. And Malguri, far across the mountains, where mani was. He had a black pin at Malguri, for Great-grandmother. He had a white one at Najida, for nand’ Bren. He put another white one halfway between the west coast and Shejidan. That was nand’ Bren’s plane, coming here to Shejidan, to get his apartment back, which would be just the other side of his father’s office wall.

The kabiu master had made his map the center of the wall, easily in reach, and there were tall plants on either side, but not in front of it, because it was not an ordinary hanging. The master had understood. His office was right. It felt right.

And across the little foyer from that, his bedroom was full of plants, each with its light, and there were the red and blue hangings he had picked out, and the wonderful carved bed with the snarling beast-head, and the bureau that matched it. The bed had figured red pillows and a red tapestry bedspread with green leaves winding over it, and a picture of mountains in the middle of it. There was the red and green carpet, all fresh and clean, and another red and gray hanging he did not remember ordering, but it was all of leaves, and the drapes all along the short wall, as if there were windows, even if he had none, with plants at either corner—those were red, wonderful red, so one could drink down the color and be happy.

It was the most splendid place. It was his.He had as many plants as he could possibly want, all different kinds, and the cage, and the dark animal furniture that was warm and old and just the sort of thing he liked. He threw himself on the bed and bounced, and sat up and looked at his aishid, who had come from admiring their rooms to admire his.

“Mani would like it,” he said, and his aishid agreed with him. “She would,” Antaro said.

And that the kabiu master who had arranged everything would have understood exactly what he wanted and made everything feel right, right down to the plants and the cage and all of it—that felt good, as if the man had understood how he saw things and respected him. That was what kabiu masters did. Mother’s and Father’s rooms would fit them, and the white sitting room had to impress important people and make them sit still and be solemn, but this was a place for him to be comfortable and at home, and for him to think about things, and for him to imagine things, with the mythical beasts and the real ones and the ones from the human archive all mixed up. In real life, he enjoyed open places, with animals running around. He had enjoyed the ship, too, which was all bare and plastics, with, here and there, plants growing wall to wall, to help the air—and the most marvelous tunnels to get into, dark, cold, secret places.

And this place had a little of all of it. And, as on the ship, the lights would keep the plants growing, and, well, the servants would water themc

The servants.

Thatwas a problem.

He went sober all of a sudden, in that thought. He had plans. He had secrets about his map and his books. He had things in his baggage that mani would understand, but some people would not.

His mother would not, in particular. He could not imagine that she would.

He could ask her if he could have a servant. But then she would ask why.

“Is something the matter, nandi?” Veijico asked.

He had his little office. He had a sitting room all his own, the same as at Najida. He was so proud of it. But it was not his,while he had no staff to keep it. And he could not ask his bodyguard to do household things.

He only wished—

He thought, I will have to account for everything.

And he thought about the cage.

And all those plants that had to be taken care of, because the Bujavid had no such systems as the starship had, to keep them healthy.

“Nandi?” Antaro asked.

Best if there were young servants, at least as young as his bodyguard was.

But there were no young people on staff. There were never any young people. There had not been that many even in Najida. Though he had seen one or two on staff—they had never met. They would not presume to introduce themselves and he could never be so undignified as to run over and introduce himself—

Certainly not when he was with Great-grandmother, with all those people watching. He would have embarrassed the servants terribly.

It was just as hard to make bargains with anybody on staff. Except—

A plan began to come to him. He said, “Nadiin-ji, Eisi.”

“Eisi?” Jegari asked. Eisi and his cousin Lieidi were not the youngest servants. But he was one that had come from the eastern mountains, like Veijico and Lucasi. Most of the household staff was from Taiben, like Antaro and Jegari, and his father’s bodyguard, and the major domo, and their cook and kitchen staff; and the rest of the staff was from the north, his mother’s clan, Ajuri, and two young maids from Great-uncle’s clan, Atageini, which was his mother’s otherclan. Eisi and Lieidi had come in from where Father and Mother had been hiding out during the coup, and they were very trusted, but they also were very minor on the new staff, where the Taibeni major domo ran everything.

Servants had politics, just the same as everybody. Pay attention to the servants, mani had told him. Pay attention. Servants are your first defense, before a matter gets to your bodyguards.

“Tell Eisi and Liedi I want to see them,” he said.

“Now, nandi?” Jegari asked.

“Now will do,” he said. “Or later. I want to arrange for the plants to be watered.”

That drew a curious look from his bodyguard, but not a word of question. They had gotten close, he and his bodyguard, after everything that had gone on in the west. They might have figured out exactly what he was thinking.

“Yes,” Lucasi said, and left his bedroom and was gone a while.

Cajeiri set to looking into all his drawers and finding out where things were. Antaro and Jegari and Veijico set to doing exactly the same thing in their own quarters. Cajeiri cleared the middle drawer of his bureau, moving underclothes to the next drawer down, and opened one of his boxes, and moved his collection of curious sticks and rocks and such, and a perfectly good but bent spoon, a plain teacup with a chip in, and various other things he had gotten here and there. A sparkly pin mani had given him. It could be emeralds. He was not sure. But he took special care of it, and kept it in a little box. He had a ring he had outgrown, from when he had been a baby, and he had a shirt button, which he had liked when he was much younger. It was only a shirt button, but it had a pretty design in the glass. He had half an agate, which looked like a view across a bay. He had a stone from Malguri’s front walk, which he had picked up to remember mani’s home in every detail. He had one from Taiben, and he had left Great-uncle’s Tirnamardi in too great haste to have one, but he had several from Najida, three of them for the slingshotahe carried in his coat pocket—well, on less formal occasions.

He had arranged everything when he heard the outside door open, and he went back into the sitting room, with his bodyguard catching up to him at a fairly sedate pace. It was Lucasi, with Eisi, just Eisi.

“Nandi.” Eisi bowed. “One understands you wish to see us. Lieidi is with Cook at the moment, but Lucasi-nadi said I should just come.”

“One is gratified,” Cajeiri murmured with a little answering nod. “Eisi-nadi, I have a whole suite, and I have no staff. Would you be willing to take care of everything? One very much wishes you would be my staff, and nobody else, and I would arrange it with Siedi-nadi, so you would onlyhave my rooms to take care of, as if you were mymajor domo, and Lieidi would be your assistant.”

Eisi was a smallish young man, not a particularly handsome one, and he had no particular household skills, neither he nor his cousin.

“One hardly knows what to say,” Eisi answered. “One would be—one would be very pleased if Sieidi-nadi allowed it. If your father the aiji approved.”

“One hardly thinks there would be any trouble,” he said, “and I shall ask Siedi-nadi myself, if you will just do it. There are a lot of plants to take care of.”

“One understands a garden!” Eisi said. “One would be extremely attentive to it! So would my cousin!”

“Then you both shall be mystaff,” he said—he was very well aware it was a responsibility and that if he took them, he would have to take care of them forever, and they might not be the best or know everything they should. But he felt comfortable with them, more than with any of the staff, precisely because they did not have the fine manners and the high expectations of everybody else. He really, truly meant to do the very best for them and to expect man’chi, once he won it from them. They were country folk. Like nand’ Bren’s staff. And he was determined, now.

Sieidi-nadi, Father’s major domo, was out conducting the tour and supervising staff. So he said, “Wait here, nadi,” and he took Lucasi with him and went out and located the majordomo; the tour being over, Sieidi-nadi was supervising staff assisting in the kitchen and was very busy.

He called Sieidi-nadi over to a relatively quiet corner, with Lucasi standing by, and said, with a little bow:

“Nadi, I have so many plants, I need a staff.” He saw Sieidi’s look, just a little distracted, a very busy man presented just one more complicated thing to do. “And I have found staff who know what to do,” Cajeiri said quickly, “and they have agreed. Eisi and Lieidi were gardeners. They wantto do this. I have asked them to be my staff. I would like them to be official, and to be the onlyones to take care of my rooms, always, so no one will make a mistake. But one has to ask you, nadi, and one hopes you will say yes.”

“Of course,” Sieidi said. “Of course. An excellent opportunity for them, young gentleman, but they are country folk, knowing nothing of protocols.”

“But I am only a child,” he said, “and we shall all learn together! I am very glad, nadi, if you will do this!”

“Nandi,” Sieidi-nadi said, and bowed. “I shall make that assignment.”

“Thank you,” he said, “thank you, Sieidi-nadi!”

He went back to his rooms. Hisrooms. And hisstaff.

“Eisi-nadi,” he said triumphantly, “I have the major domo’s approval! You and Lieidi-nadi both are assigned to me, and you are to be the onlystaff, and you will keep the plants and do just a little tidying-up—we are really very neat, my aishid and I! My Great-grandmother would hit me if I left clothes about. You will just deliver laundry to the staff and hang my clothes and help me and my aishid dress and that sort of thing—I will explain when I need things. But when I ring, youare the ones to come, and nobody else! Ever!”

“Yes, nandi!” Eisi’s eyes were wide. He looked very happy. Very, very happy.

Cajeiri found himself happy, too, and feeling safein a way he had not been even in mani’s apartment, because mani’s servants were always snooping, and if not mani’s, his mother’s.

Now he had a place to be that was his, and whatever he wanted, two grown people would try to do, and he had his aishid, and he had his plants, and his furniture, and for only infelicitous eight going on felicitous nine, things were looking up.

And while Eisi was in the back rooms getting more particular instruction from his bodyguard and things about their belongings and about security in the place, he happily looked over the brass cage, and worked its doors, and slid the window of it up and down, just because they worked, and they were clever, how they were made. It made him happier still to imagine a parid’ja living in it—because that was one reason he had wanted just his own servants tending the room.

It was all just splendid. The huge brass vase, its surface cut with sparkling lines, was in the other corner.

And on the message table, the kabiu master had added a set of stones, three in number. Three was a felicitous number, and he was sure this particular type of stone, inky black, meant something special, and somebody would tell him that sooner or later.

He had no bath: he would share the household bath with his parents.

And there was no dining room, nor breakfast nook. But his own servants—that was excellent!

He thought now that he could be happy here. People had been killed in this apartment, in the coup, and died right in the front hallway. Murini the traitor had lived here after killing Father’s servants and guards. But all that unhappy history was washed away and repainted, and now there were growing plants. Living things. Space was wide and black and colder than anybody could imagine.

But plants made a room alive. And this one was.

If he could not live with Great-grandmother or have his own apartment all to himself, this was not too bad.

The baby, when he was born, would have windows.

Damn, he thought. He would have been perfectly, perfectlyhappy with what he had, until he knew the new baby had windows.

Had he? He tried to remember when he was a baby, and if that room was where he had used to live, but the first thing he could really remember in his whole life was the old sitting room, just in bits and pieces. And since the rebuilding, it was as if somebody had taken his memory and shaken it into pieces, where it regarded this place.

He could remember Great-uncle Tatiseigi’s place. And the porcelain lilies in the front hall, from long ago, before they been shot up and they had had to replace them.

He could remember a dark, deep place with a lot of real flowers. And spooky noise and echoes from far underground. He thought it was a funeral he remembered. But he could never remember where that was, except going down high, stone steps underground, and that he had been with his father, and ultimately closed in by the shadows over very many people.

But he never could remember where that place was.

Mostly, in his very earliest memories, more vivid than the lilies, he could remember Great-uncle’s place and being told to stay away from the mechieta pen.

Oh, they had been so tall and wonderful, the mecheiti.

He remembered being hauled off a mechieta, and it had been standing in bushes, which he now knew were Great-uncle’s driveway hedge, and the mechieta had gone right across the wet pavement and left tracks, so they had had to pull up all the concrete and start over. No one ever let him forget that one.

He was happy to remember the space station. And the starship, oh, he remembered that so clearly sometimes it hurt, and he waked up at night thinking he was there.

He remembered faces of his associates who lived there. Sounds. Voices. Those were fading. He had used to be able to remember them so clearly. Now they were hard to recall at all. And the thought struck him that the faces and the voices would be different now. They would be a little older. As he was.

He did not want to be mad at anyone or anything. Not today.

He had his cage.

And his plants.

And he had his aishid with him. He would always have them,so long as they all lived.

He had just taken a staff. He could manage who came and went with histhings.

And he had allies.Was that not what nand’ Bren and Great-grandmother and Lord Geigi had been doing out at Najida, after all? They had been collecting allies, and associatingthem into organizations that were going to be powerful.

And they had been very careful to include him in the meetings, as Father never did, because theyplanned for him to matter a great deal, not just eventually, but right now. He was not just a baby. He was important.

He had nand’ Bren, and Great-grandmother, and Lord Geigi, for a start. The new baby might try to get to Great-grandmother and become her favorite, but he was there first.

The new baby would have to try hard for nand’ Bren and Lord Geigi: they were solidly his.

He had Great-uncle Tatiseigi, and he knew more how to keep Uncle happy than any baby would arrive knowing, and that was not easy to figure out.

And not to forget Dur. The baby would never have met Dur or seen that yellow plane when it arrived out of the skies in the midst of a very bad situation.

And there was Taiben and the deep forest, who were his—not just because his father was so closely related and associated there, but because two of his aishid were Taibeni and had important parents, close to the lord of Taiben, almost cousins.

And the other two of his aishid were from the mountains, which he had yet to visit, but he would, someday; so there was that, too. Lucasi and Veijico had to have relatives who would be in favor of him.

His associations reached north and south and east and west, to the height and width of the aishidi’tat, and that was not so small a thing, was it?

He drew a deep, deep breath and went back to the map in his office. He pulled out all the pushpins that represented where he had already been.

Now he put them in for where he had allies.

He put a black pin in Dur, up in the northern Isles, and a second one for the Gan people who lived next to them—he had met the Grandmother of the Gan at Najida, when she had been visiting the Edi, and she had been very interested in him.

He put a black pin in the mountains where Lucasi and Veijico came from; another in Port Jackson, clear across the strait on Mospheira, for nand’ Toby and Barb-daja.

He put a black pin in Najida estate, which was Lord Bren and all his staff. He put one in Najida village, where he had met the Grandmother of the Edi and all her people, and was sure they favored him.

He put a pin at Kajiminda for Lord Geigi, who was especially nice to him, and another near Kajiminda, where the Edi were building a new estate, which had to be counted in the future.

And another black pin at Taiben, to the north of Shejidan, for Antaro and Jegari’s relatives and his father’s relatives, too. Taiben was as sure as it was possible to be.

Then there were his other relatives: a reluctant black pin in Ajuri territory, northwest of Taiben, where his mother’s father was lord. One very certain pin way across the continental divide, in Malguri, which was Great-grandmother, and one just next to it, that was Lady Drien, who was Great-grandmother’s cousin and a close ally through Great-grandmother. She was old, and old-fashioned, but she was influential.

One important one went just north of Shejidan, in Atageini clan territory, and next to Taiben: that was Tirnamardi, for Great-uncle Tatiseigi of the Atageini clan.

There was no way to get a pin that represented the space station, but he set one in the margin, for five associates up in orbit—and for Lord Geigi.

That was thirteen pins, a felicitous number, but he decided to be honest and not to stop counting. He stuck another, number fourteen, in the margin. That was for Jase-aiji, up on the station; Jase-aiji was one of the ship-captains, and Jase-aiji would stand by him.

Fourteen, however, was infelicitous and full of omens of division. Fifteen was not much better, and sixteen was infelicity stacked on infelicity. Seventeen was the most stable felicity until nineteen, and he did not know how to reach it unless he counted some pairs separately, and that had infelicities in itself.

Doggedly then, and with confidence in Lord Bren, he stuck a second pin right in the left coast of the Marid for Lord Machigi. He had never met Lord Machigi, but he would meet him, he was certain; when he did, he would get Lord Machigi on his side somehow.

Well, that bettered the count, but he desperately needed two more pins. Two more to felicity and stability, and he did not know where to get them.

Two more, and the numbers might make him safe from the impending baby. And he could not think where to get them, in the heavens or on earth.

Right now the numbers were unstable: fourteen was fortunate sevens, multiplied and divisible by two: the omen was bad, especially counting the second offspring due in the house.

But his relationships covered all the continent and extended onto Mospheira and clear up to the space station, including humans and two tribes and six clans. The new baby was going to have Ajuri and Taiben and Atageini by birth, but the rest were not so easy to get.

He might get the Atageini even more to his side if he was particularly nice to Uncle Tatiseigi. A younger brother was bound to make mistakes that would make Uncle mad. He had begun badly with Uncle, but he was sure he looked better to Uncle Tatiseigi right now than any runny-nosed baby would look for years and years. Uncle was not that fond of babies.

And he could put adult manners on whenever he wanted to. He had had Great-grandmother for a teacher. He knew how to impress anybody he wanted to impress.

He put in white pins for the baby’s sure interests. Taiben, for Father; Ajuri for Mother; Tirnamardi for Uncle; and a white one in Malguri, too, he supposed, which made an infelicity of fourcand then he thought: the baby will not have grown up being taught by Great-grandmother. So she will always prefer me.If she ever has to choose, she will prefer me.

There is his first infelicity. I am first, I was on the ship with mani, she thumped me on the ear—a lot—and Mother and Father will never let her teach him in anything like that way.

There were many, many more black pins than white. Both counts ended on infelicity—but the baby’s far more so.

Could the baby possibly get a five, for nand’ Bren? That was a worry. Nand’ Bren was softhearted toward everybody. But nand’ Bren would not prefer the baby: nand’ Bren did not turn away from his associates. That meant no fifth pin. He was first.The baby would be born with only four.

He was much, much happier with that thought.

And he had no fear anyone was going to come in here and read the calculations of his map. It was not that evident what it represented, that was one thing, and he had just secured his rooms, with the loyalty of two servants whose future—it was not stupid to think—lay most securely with him,even if he was only infelicitous eight.