Peacemaker

He gained a few moments of quiet, however. He stood and tried to think of the missing words. He tried—

Then his father called him to meet an elderly lady from the northern coast, up where the world froze, and she asked him questions, and all the while the minutes were ticking down toward their shift to the Audience Hall.

· · ·

A nine-year-old’s birthday party, Bren thought. And the majority of attendees were over sixty. The three young guests flitted fairly sedately under Jase’s control, in quest of interesting things in the cases and trying very properly to keep their hands off the glass. The honoree of the day, meanwhile, remained bravely proper, still meeting and talking with elder guests, while his parents and great-grandmother did the same, while his great-uncle sat signing ribboned cards and likely discussing pottery glazes.

There were all these wonderful things to explore and Cajeiri could not even come near his own three guests, who did not rank high enough to stand by him, nor even see the exhibit. He’d become one, along with the rest of his family.

Poor kid.

“And these guests,” one elderly lady asked of Bren. “What will they report in the heavens? What will the ship-aiji say, with all these terrible goings-on at Tirnamardi?”

“Jase-aiji is a strong ally of the aiji, and he and his bodyguards have reassured the children—not forgetting at all that these children are very strongly loyal to the young gentleman.”

“To the young gentleman himself, more than the ship-aiji?” another lady objected.

“To the ship-aiji, yes, they are obedient; but the young gentleman has their loyalty.”

“Yet humans do not, do they,” an old man objected, “truly have man’chi. How can they feel?”

“Yet I feel, nandi,” Bren said patiently, finding himself back in an old, old role. “And one hopes my loyalty to the aiji is not in doubt.”

“By no means, nand’ paidhi. One hardly meant—but they are so young!”

“Indeed, nandi, one takes no offense at all: you are right to question. For us, a childhood association is not a trifle. These children are part of a population rescued from great danger, taken from their home and moved to the station above us. On that voyage, they met the young gentleman. He was their only comfort in a strange and harsh existence, and they attached to him in the strongest possible way. His generosity, his curiosity, and his kindness attached them to him, clearly in a way a year’s absence has not dimmed, and though they are all, despite their size, older than he is, he leads. He always has. Do accept my assurance that these three have, just as atevi youngsters do, many caretakers, atevi and human, all of whom have the strongest possible concern for their good character.”

“Wise,” an old lord said, nodding. “Wise proceedings.”

Flattery? Politics? The old man had six grandchildren. There was a warmth about his expression.

“They seem interested in the exhibits,” a woman said.

“Nandi, they are. The color, the images, the representations are all very exciting to them.”

“Commendable,” the old man said. The conversation dwindled to courtesies, and the old gentleman meandered off among the lighted displays, talking to his bodyguard.

“Well done,” young Dur said, who had turned up by his elbow.

“One hopes so,” he said. Adrenaline was absolutely on the ebb. He had put out too many fires this evening, already, in what was supposed to be a relaxed social event, and had three hours of a far more important court function yet to go.

Two of the Liberal Caucus lay in wait near a red figured vase, with questions about the tribal bill. “Your vote will secure the west,” Bren assured them, “and prevent another dispute with the Marid. That will remove the need for a strong naval presence, and direct the funding toward merchant shipping.”

“It will work,” he assured another such inquirer, at the next turn. “The Southern Ocean is not impassable. We have vastly improved weather reports, vastly improved technology, vastly improved navigation and stabilization in heavy weather. I have a report upcoming in the Transportation Committee this session, on the ship technology.”

“Assistance from the ship humans. What, nandi, can ships in the great ether understand of ships at sea?”

“Ah. It is not the ship technology we are borrowing, nandi, but their vantage point. They can see the storms coming. They can declare a safe route.”

“Even through the Southern Ocean?”

“They have an excellent view, nandi, and are learning from us, as well. They can steer ships around hazards. But first the tribal bill. The tribal bill is key to everything.”

Another lord, a Conservative, approached and asked: “One has heard a rumor, nand’ paidhi. What is the truth on the upheaval in the Guild? And why this damnable malfunction in Guild equipment tonight?”

He was intensely conscious of Banichi and Jago, right at his shoulders, and of the lord’s own aishid, considerably lower in Guild rank, right behind him.

“It is a technical matter,” he said, “about which one has very little information. But the Guild has promised extensive reform of the system, which has created confusion, especially in recent weeks. The aiji is extremely optimistic.”

“Indeed, nand’ paidhi?”

“Very much so. He entirely supports this change, and I do not doubt he will say so in coming days.”

“You are still backing the tribal bill, one hears.”

“Definitely, nandi, with complete enthusiasm.”

He escaped, half a step, when another accosted him with: “Nand’ paidhi. You are backing the bill.”

“As is Lord Tatiseigi, nandi, as is the aiji-dowager.”

“That she will is no news. But Lord Tatiseigi—”

“He stands with the aiji-dowager.”

“One imagines there might be agreement,” the second said dryly. And the first:

“What of the removal of Lord Kadagidi? One would hesitate to believe the rumor, that this attack was arranged by the Liberals, and that this concession is the price of the tribal bill.”

“One would call that removal not a concession, but a correction long overdue, nandi,” he said firmly, then lowered his voice conspiratorially. “One vital to the security of the aishidi’tat. Lord Aseida, nandiin, was not ignorant of circumstances behind the coup. The Guild will be investigating.”

“Indeed, nandi!”

He knew these two. He knew their tactics . . . the two worst gossips in the midlands. “There will be abundant proof of the entire exchange at Asien’dalun, nandi. The aiji is in possession of evidence, and I shall be pleased to show you and anyone else who asks all the proof they could wish, both of what happened and what almost happened, which is far worse; it involves the arrest of several hidden agents. You are unaware, no doubt, that Lord Aseida in recent days threatened the aiji-dowager, the young gentleman and his guests. Lord Aseida claims ignorance of the plot, but the intention behind it was clearly to harm the administration.”

“That can be proven, nand’ paidhi?”

“To the satisfaction of any who wish to see the photographic evidence. Minor children, nandiin. Foreigners who, as guests, have now witnessed an illegal act on the part of a lord of the aishidi’tat. This was assuredly not the way the young gentleman hoped to impress his guests.”

“So the young gentleman was not at Malguri,” a newcomer observed.

“No. He was not. He was at no time at Malguri. For security reasons, he was a guest of his great-uncle at Tirnamardi.” Again he lowered his voice, so the second lord had to lean forward to hear. “The Kadagidi lord’s own bodyguard received orders from a remnant of the Murini faction to help Assassins from the south eliminate Lord Tatiseigi. Possibly they neglected to tell their lord about their illegal actions, or the purpose of southern Guild arriving in the household. There is a little doubt. That is why Lord Aseida will likely be asked to resign the lordship. As the aiji inquires more deeply, there may be more evidence tying Lord Aseida himself to some of these decisions—and he would be very wise to take that offer while it is available, especially since this all unfolded to the annoyance of the aiji-dowager, whose patience is very short, and whose influence is considerable. The Guild will be going through papers recovered from Lord Aseida’s own office.”

“Indeed,” that lord said quietly. And that ended that line of questioning.

“One regrets,” Banichi said with a deep sigh, “that that problem reached you.”

“We are neither one as agile as we might be. How are you faring, Nichi-ji?”

“Not too badly,” Banichi said.

The doors were all open, now, and some attendees had found their way back out into the cool hallway. Lord Tatiseigi had passed out all the cards, and joined Ilisidi in a walk about the cases, Lord Tatiseigi personally commenting on his treasures to a number of interested attendees. Tabini, Damiri, and Cajeiri were still conversing with elderly guests, while Jase and the youngsters were off in a side hall, with the Reverence Statues.

It was almost time. Tabini was, at the moment, a bit apart from Damiri, who was listening to an older woman who was casting disapproving glances back at Cajeiri’s guests—who were doing absolutely nothing amiss at the moment. Cajeiri was not frowning—Cajeiri was too well-brought-up for that; but Cajeiri’s shoulders were stiff and his hands were mangling a program sheet behind him.

Tabini cast one of those glances that was as good as a summons.

Bren moved closer, gave a little bow. “My wife,” Tabini said in a low voice, “is pursuing her own course this evening, pressing her own notions of the Kadagidi succession. She will not have her way.”

Damiri trying to interfere in politics could not please Tatiseigi. And had he heard right? What had Damiri to do with the Kadagidi succession? The Ajuri one made perfect sense. But had she notions about both?

“I have advised my grandmother not to vex my wife on this occasion,” Tabini said curtly. “Stay with the family. Please attend my grandmother in the assembly, and assist Lord Tatiseigi to keep those two apart.”

“Yes,” he said, wondering how, precisely, he was going to do that.

A soft horn sounded, out in the hall, a strange rising and falling note, audible from the open doors. The kabiuteri had cleared and opened the ceremonial hall, and the premises were arranged for the start of the evening. The Audience Hall was opening: non-participant guests and the public—of which there were none, this evening—were to take their place behind either of two red satin ropes in the main hall.

The red ropes ordinarily marshaled the attendees into a small stream entering an event. In this case, it would let the aiji and his guests enter the premises through the central door of the five, walk along a clear aisle between the ropes, and take their places in the Audience Hall ahead of the crowd. One had not planned to be in that elite group—one had planned to join Jase and the youngsters and reunite his aishid.

Tabini, Damiri and Cajeiri passed him at a sedate pace, with their bodyguards; Ilisidi and Lord Tatiseigi followed, with theirs; and Bren dutifully fell in after, with Banichi and Jago, leaving Tano and Algini to assist Jase getting into the hall.

His job was, he gathered, to engage the aiji-dowager and keep her apart from Damiri; and possibly to try to divert Damiri, if it came to that.

Four of the museum’s doors were open, and people were exiting, a brisk movement into the two areas roped off. The central door remained shut until Tabini’s approach, at which point it opened, affording the family that easy crossing past the observing crowd toward the center door of the Audience Hall.

All but one of its doors were shut. The centermost, between the ropes, was open, welcoming the family into what, compared to the hall, was lamplit darkness.

They reached the doorway, their eyes just beginning to adjust—and suddenly a bank of lights blazed at them, painting them all in white glare, as much as one could see at the moment.

Television cameras. The lights were near the dais, cameras focused, at the moment, toward the open doors and the incoming notables. They blinded security: that was a problem. But Kaplan and Polano were somewhere in this room, and after the initial rush of adrenaline, Bren reassured himself with that thought.

They were safer than usual in the Audience Hall: they had not the general public, just the museum event attendees lined up at the red ropes outside, and they went at a sedate pace, with knots of Guild black separating the glitter of the notables, and there was a gracious atmosphere about their progress, nods from the family—excepting Damiri, who walked in her own world—to the family’s particular supporters and associates the other side of the rope.

There was a buffet set up—the smells were in the air; there was Bujavid staff, shadows over on the right. There was a long table, likely for the cards.

There was, at the end of the room, the dais, and the chair Tabini used for audiences in this room. The cameras were set up right at the corner of those steps.

And that was where everybody stopped except Tabini and his bodyguard, who kept going up the steps. Bren stopped. So had the dowager, and Lord Tatiseigi, and Damiri, and their bodyguards. The doors behind them were opening—he heard the thump, and the muted noise of the crowd suddenly louder, and when he turned to look he saw someone—likely Tano and Algini—had gotten Jase and the children to the fore, so they were first through those doors, at a sensible pace: it was not the inclination of atevi lords to push and shove. The cameras were on them, all the doors were open, and a great number of notables and their bodyguards came into the hall from all four doors . . . more, he realized, than had been at the museum event: they had acquired a larger crowd, a much larger crowd.

Security was wound tight . . . and only a few of the Guild were getting much in the way of communication—he had no idea what kind of information had passed: information that the system would be down, perhaps, perhaps an urging to report anything worrisome, perhaps the assurance a few of the senior Guild were getting information steadily, and that more would be brought online as the evening progressed.

Hell of a situation they had. In this case—it wasn’t the lords’ rank that determined when that would happen—it was the seniority and reputation of their bodyguards, a team at a time, and it would, one guessed, be ongoing.

Out in the city, in crowds, most of the Guild keeping order out there were running dark, with no communication even with each other.

The crowds wouldn’t know it. The news service wouldn’t know it.

The young gentleman’s bodyguard was among those not informed. The boy was being very quiet, very proper—standing with a frowning Damiri at the foot of the steps; and Lord Tatiseigi was, one was glad to see, between them and the dowager’s part.

Tano and Algini arrived, with Jase and the youngsters, and by now Jase and the youngsters had other guards—Bren had seen them, too, as he turned, right by the doors, one on a side, two white-armored figures that had attracted a little curiosity from the attendees at the back of the room. They might be statues. They intended to be. They had gotten into position before anybody, even the news crew. And they were not going to move, not a light, not a twitch, until the room was deserted again.

“Kaplan and Polano are back there,” Bren said to Jase—the atevi crowd cut off all view of the back of the hall. And to the children: “Quite the show, isn’t it?”

“What’s next, sir?” Gene asked.

“Quite a lot of speeches, likely. Be patient.”

“They will be,” Jase said, his hand on Gene’s shoulder. Atevi etiquette was the order of the evening, however, and Jase let his hand fall. “Are we all right to be where we are?”

The youngsters were the only children in the hall: at the front was the only place they could stand, and be able to see.

“You’re fine,” Bren said. “They’re with you. There’s a service door right over to the left. If I disappear for a while, that’s where I’ll be. If there should be any problem—that’s where to go.”

“Understood,” Jase said, and that was one problem he could put from his mind.

Damiri was clearly not in good sorts this evening, arms crossed and locked, face set in a scowl. God only knew what sort of exchange she had had with Tabini to prompt Tabini to ask him to intervene—but it could not be good. The crowd in the museum had not been the sort of crowd to cause problems of a rowdy sort in a place like that. But in the Audience Hall, after a certain time, with alcohol involved . . .

With the political surprise the aiji intended . . .

With the Guild running dark and most of the members unable to communicate . . .

God, he wanted this evening over with.

· · ·

Mother was not happy. She gave Great-uncle a sharp answer when he asked her if anything was the matter, and Cajeiri had said, very quietly, “Honored Uncle, I shall stay with her.” It was not what he wanted to do. He had far rather get a moment to go over to his guests, but he was on best manners, and he was afraid even to look at them right now, because they would likely wave, and he could not answer them, and then they would think they had done something wrong.

Maybe it was the television cameras his mother disapproved. His mother had sworn when the lights had gone on in their faces. She had said a word he had never heard her say. And she had had words with his father in the museum, too—he had not heard what they had said, but his mother had been upset about something.

Nobody had told him there would be television cameras, either, or if someone had—he had not been paying enough attention. But he was more worried than angry.

He had gotten through meeting people in the museum. He had leaned heavily on the system of clan colors—which were also the relationships and the history, the way new clans built off old ones.

But sometime before midnight he was supposed to make that speech.

He had to remember that missing line, that was what. And there were television cameras, and he had to get it right. It was one word. One word, and if he could remember that, he could remember the whole rest of it.

He thought he could, at least.

They were using the old-fashioned oil lamps, besides the electrics, the way they did for evening parties, and probably once everybody was in place they might dim the lights again and leave only spots of light. The place smelled of food: there was a buffet set up, and his stomach noticed that, too. He had only pretended to eat lunch. If they did dim the lights, he thought wildly, if nobody was paying attention, he might get away for a few moments to find Gene and Artur and Irene at the buffet. Usually buffets were not that formal. But—

With television cameras on them—how could they? If he so much as moved, television cameras were likely to go right to him.

He could not think about those things. He just had to concentrate on remembering the speech. If he embarrassed his father by being a fool with the speech, it was not just his mother who was going to be in a bad mood.

The first line was—

The first line started, all speeches did, with Nandiin, nadiin . . .

No. It did not start that way. That was what confused him. It started with I thank my family . . .

He could just not get beyond that.

Why did it have to start differently? Why did he have to forget one word right in the middle of the beginning? He could remember everything after that, if he could just remember the first part.

He would not say anything infelicitous. That was the main thing. He would say something polite, and he would avoid infelicity. There were seven kabiuteri on the landing of the dais, just a little below where his father was sitting. You could never mistake them, with their square, brimless white hats and their white robes. And they were there to keep the felicitous gods happy and the infelicitous ones out of the hall. Even if his father called it nonsense.

The lights dimmed down, and one of his father’s bodyguards came down the steps, a moving shadow, coming for him, he began to realize. The camera swung toward that man, and that man came down to the third step and bowed to him.

The television lights were on him, white, like giant eyes.

“Young gentleman,” his father’s bodyguard said, and wanted him to come up. He started that way. His bodyguard did, on either side of him.

Then the lights left him and swung up to where his father was coming down the steps. He could hardly see in the sudden dark. He could not stumble. He took the steps very carefully, felt Antaro’s hand at his elbow, ready to help him, but he managed on his own, and climbed to the place where his father stopped, up in the light, where his father’s black brocade glistened like Guild leather; his own coat blazed with metallic red.

Drummers and string-players started up from somewhere in the dark edge of the buffet, and the kabiuteri banged their staffs.

At the foot of the dais, where the light barely reached, his mother stood watching; and he saw Great-grandmother, Lord Tatiseigi, and nand’ Bren. They were right at the steps, his mother and Lord Tatiseigi and nand’ Bren all a spot of brightness, and mani’s black lace drinking up the light.

There were far more people than had been in the museum. The whole hall was full, and just people moving created a noise.

A horn sounded. One was not supposed to gawk, but every head turned. He supposed he was permitted.

A kabiutera’s assistant on the steps had the horn, and blew it three times in all, until the voices and the echoes died away.

Then the senior kabiutera lifted his hands and intoned something in a language that hardly even seemed Ragi. He had heard it before, he very dimly recalled, when he was very small, maybe five. Maybe six. It was spooky-sounding, the whole thing. But when he looked past the kabiutera, in the television lights, he finally spotted nand’ Jase, and where nand’ Jase was, Gene and Irene and Artur would be—just there, right beside nand’ Bren.

He saw something else, too, far, far back near the doors—two hazy whitish shadows, like massive marble statues in the reflection of the floodlights: Kaplan and Polano were on guard, as tall as Banichi when they were in armor, and he was amazed. Ordinarily there were little flashing lights and sometimes light inside the masks so you could see their faces, but nothing showed right now. They could really be statues. People might think they were statues.

But they were safe, were they not? Everybody had to be safer since nand’ Bren and Banichi had straightened out the Guild.

He wondered whether his mother had refused to come up here with them. Or what his parents had been fighting about.

His mind was going in every direction, with the noise, and the people, and the sights. He needed to be thinking. He needed to remember . . . because he was sure his father was going to make his speech, and then he would have to.

He was out of time. The missing words might come back to him if he was less scared. He had not planned on being scared. But right now his mouth was dry and his heart was pounding faster than the drums.

· · ·

The boy looked, somehow, taller tonight—shining black and red brocade, which as the light hit it, blazed glints of fire, the smaller image to Tabini’s own solemn, shining black. Bren took in a breath, watching the boy become what he had always been intended to be—about to watch the boy he knew become . . . something he hadn’t expected him to become yet.

A heavy load was about to land on very young shoulders. It was going to be one more burden on a boy who already had had his childhood curtailed . . . whose dearest possessions had been, oddly enough, a world map and a little notebook of drawings of a spaceship, a boy who had wanted to be a musketeer, and hoped to see dinosaurs.

Cajeiri had grown tall, for nine. His shoulders were getting broader, a fact that coat made evident. He would look a lot like his father when he was grown, Bren thought, and that would be no bad thing at all.

Their Cajeiri.

His. His aishid’s. They had helped get him here. He felt more than a little possessive, though he was very far from saying so.

Ilisidi would not hesitate to state her claim, not in the least. But she had not said a word tonight. She had been uncharacteristically quiet, apparently content to watch, with a certain—was it a smile?—on her countenance at the moment. He had rarely seen her in such a sustained good mood.

The vacancy of the dais, instead of all the family together, the appearance of father and son together, alone, on the most fortunate of birthdays, with the television focused on them—

People throughout the hall took in the sight, and there was an undertone of comment—how the boy had grown; how much like his father he looked; and then the horn blew again, and kabiuteri moved out to various posts in the room, clashing their staffs on the floor, a racket echoing throughout the still assembly.

The steady drums and the music of the strings—stopped, leaving an embarrassed mutter of comment that quickly died away.

“Be you still!” the senior kabiutera shouted out from the dais, banging his staff on the floor. “Be you still! Be you still!”

They were going ahead with it.

With the whole city, the whole nation following it on television.

· · ·

* * *

· · ·

Cajeiri’s father laid a hand on his shoulder. “Son of mine.”

Cajeiri looked up. “Honored Father.”

His father maintained that grip. A staff hit the floor another three times, louder than mani’s cane, impossible as that seemed, and a silence descended on the hall, in which the stir of a single foot seemed apt to echo.

“The numbers have been counted,” the oldest kabiutera proclaimed, “and this gathering is felicitous. This time is the right time.”

“Nandiin, nadiin,” his father said, his voice ringing out over the shadowy hall. “This is my son. With you as witnesses, I pronounce him my heir, grandson of my father and mother, great-grandson of my grandfather and grandmother. I call on the tashrid and the hasdrawad, at the appropriate time, to proclaim Cajeiri son of Tabini as aiji of the aishidi’tat, heir of all my titles and rights. I call on my kin and my associates to support my heir’s claim and to give him their man’chi.”

There was a murmur, then the ripple of a shout, so loud it made Cajeiri’s heart jump. He did not flinch. His father’s hand kept him from that.

The staff struck the floor three more times, restoring silence so deep he could hear himself breathing.

His father’s heir. That was odd. He already knew he was that.

But the man’chi of all these people? His mind started scrambling after names, colors, relationships.

He really wanted to give his speech later. After he had remembered the missing line.

“Son of mine,” his father said aloud, and touched his elbow. “Speak loudly,” his father said under his breath, “and keep your head up.”

Keep his head up. He could do that much. But he was not certain he could get enough breath to his lungs to make anybody hear him.

He had the first part. If he just plunged ahead, the connecting word might pop into his head.

“Thank you, all my family, all my associates, all my allies, all my family’s allies . . .”

And there it stalled. The missing bit did not come to him.

The quiet persisted. Someone down in the gathering cleared his throat and it sounded like thunder.

“. . . I am fortunate nine, today, and I thank you for coming.”

The back part was just gone. Not just the back of the sentence. Everything after that. He was facing all these important people and they were going to think he was a fool. Worse, the kabiuteri would be upset with him and they could call the whole evening, his whole year, infelicitous.

He could not just stand there. Keen in memory, his right ear stung as if mani had thwacked him for forgetting. Keep going! she would say as he sat at her feet, aboard the starship. Think, boy! Think faster!

Banichi would say, Practice until your body remembers.

He was supposed to tell people what he had learned since he was infelicitous eight, and he was supposed to talk about his family and thank people, that was what.

And his great-grandmother and his mother and nand’ Tatiseigi and nand’ Bren were all at the foot of the steps waiting for him to get his wits about him and do that. He had to say good things about everybody, especially his mother. He could not make her mad, especially in front of everybody.

He had to say something. He had to do it his way.

“I thank my father, who is not afraid of anybody. I thank my mother, who has done her best to guide me. I thank my great-grandmother, who has defended me. I thank nand’ Bren—” He realized he should have said the paidhi-aiji, and he should have put Great-uncle after his great-grandmother, and worse, it was infelicitous four: he plunged ahead to find five. “—who saved my life. And I thank Great-uncle Tatiseigi who taught me the traditions.” He could not stop there. He could not leave out semi-felicitous six and seven. “I thank Lord Geigi and Jase-aiji, who taught me about things in space.” Unlucky eight. “I thank the Guilds for the things they do.” And nine: nine was the felicity he had to reach to match his years. “And I thank my tutor for teaching me why things work. I know the geography of the world and I know every clan and their colors by heart. I know why it rains and how airplanes fly and I know where comets come from and I know why tides and storms happen. I am learning kabiu.” He said that for the row of kabiuteri, in their patterned robes, who were standing there looking worried. Promise everybody something, his father had told him. And he remembered something mani had once said. “. . . Because the traditions and the harmony make art, and art makes things beautiful, and we all are better and kinder and wiser when we live with beautiful things. We become better when we know why things are beautiful. I want to know everything I can and learn as much as I can and do as much as I can and meet as many people as I can. I shall try very hard in my fortunate ninth year.” He had to get in everybody else, and talk about the aishidi’tat, and not take too much time about it, because people had a right to get restless in long speeches. He wanted to end with a felicity. “I want my father to be aiji for a long, long time. And I wish everybody to have a good time, whether you came for my father or if you came for me or if you came for the aishidi’tat. Most of all the aishidi’tat is important, because the aishidi’tat is our home, and we have to make our home the most beautiful place there is. Thank you, nandiin, nadiin.”

He gave a little bow. It all had sounded good to him when he was saying it, but increasingly toward the end, he had realized he was letting his ideas run over each other, the way mani had told him never to do.

Now there was just silence. He thought he had sounded stupid and his father was going to be upset that he had not given the right speech at all. The kabiuteri were going to find an infelicity. He truly hoped that he had not just done something really, really terrible to his father in that regard.

Then he heard Great-grandmother’s cane strike the floor. Once—twice—three times. “Long life and good fortune!” she shouted out. And then everybody shouted out, almost together. “Long life and good fortune!”

He drew in a whole breath. And felt his father’s hand on his shoulder.

“Did your grandmother write that speech?” his father asked him ominously.

“No, honored Father. I—lost the paper. I had it memorized. Almost. And then I forgot it.”

His father’s fingers tightened. His father looked at him long and hard and seriously, and then laughed a little. “The kabiuteri passed the speech I sent you. Yours will pose them at least a three-candle question. They will be at it all night.”

“Did I do wrong, honored Father?”

“You had the Recorder scrambling, the poor old fellow—he all but overset his ink pot. He will at least have it down in shorthand. And if he fails, there is a recording. There we have innovated. And there can be no future debate of what was said and done.”

The television. He had not even thought about the television once he was talking. But now the lights for the cameras began to wink out, one at a time, so that the room was going darker and darker and their eyes by lamplight could make out people, rows and rows of people.

“The city will have the news now,” his father said quietly. “But nowadays it will not travel by rail to the outer provinces. The whole aishidi’tat will know it at once. You are legally, formally, as of now, and forever, my heir.” His father began to walk him down the steps, carefully, since they had just been in brighter light and everything still looked dim. “Mind your step. Feel your way and make no mistakes. A runner will be going down the Bujavid steps in the traditional way, by torchlight, carrying the proclamation on parchment, with its seals. I signed that this afternoon He will go all the way to the Guilds, ending at the Archives, where he will file the declaration of Investiture.”

“Nobody told me!”

“This was done for your benefit, son of mine. It is now done for the first time since your great-grandfather’s Investiture, from before the East joined the aishidi’tat. The kabiuteri are extremely pleased to have the custom renewed—ecstatic, to put it plainly—and they will find felicity in every syllable of your speech. Between us, the longer the speech, the more adorned with fortunate words and well-wishes, the more easily kabiuteri can find good omens in it. We have just resurrected a tradition one hopes you will maintain in your own day. And you may be quite proud of the distinction. Your great-grandmother is delighted.”

He supposed it was a great honor. He was glad if he had done well: he had tried to name nine people and give something good to everybody, the way his father had advised him, but he could hardly remember anything he had said except in generalities. Ever since Assassins had turned up at Great-uncle’s house, he had felt as if he was being shoved from every side in turn, scattering every thought he had—

Mani would not have forgotten everything she had just said. Mani never grew scattered. Mani always knew what mani wanted. She never forgot a thing.

So what had he said? He mostly wanted everybody to live for a long time, he wanted no more wars, and he wanted the world to be beautiful and peaceful . . . it was stupid that some people wanted the world neither beautiful nor peaceful.

He thought it was likely the same people his father and his great-grandmother wanted to be rid of.

So he supposed his mother was right, that he really was his great-grandmother’s, more than anybody’s.

“There will be cards to sign,” his father said, steering him off the last step and, yes, toward a long table set with flowers, where there were candles, one of which belonged to a waxjack: it was now lit; and there were rolls of ribbon and stacks of cards, and they were not going to get to eat.

“Shall I be signing, honored Father?”

“That you shall, a card for every person here. The ones given out in the city, some twenty-seven thousand of them, will lack a signature, but they will have a stamp and ribbon . . . you may sit beside me and sign your name first.”

He wished he had practiced his signature. He was still not satisfied with his signature and he was not used to doing it. He wanted a chance to change it someday. And maybe now he never could. And he had no seal ring, nothing like his father’s, which could make a seal official: he always used just a little wi’itikin stamp he had gotten, but it was a trinket, not a real seal, and he did not even have it with him. His pockets were empty. Just empty. It was a condition he was not at all used to.

He reached the table, where secretaries and officials bowed to him and his father, and their bodyguards took up position without being asked.

The oldest secretary, a man whose hair was all gray, arranged a little stack of cards to start with . . . in front of the black-draped chair at the end of the table.

“You need only sign here, young aiji, and pass the card to your father. He will sign it. Then we shall apply the seal and ribbons.”

His father said: “Take your time. Speak to the people.”

“Yes, honored Father.” He sat down on the edge of the seat. He tested the inkwell and the pen on a piece of blotting paper, and was glad the table was covered in black, so if he spilled ink, nobody would know.

And the first person in line was mani herself.

“We do not, as a rule, collect cards,” she said solemnly. “But we shall be very glad to display this one. Well done, Great-grandson.”

“Mani,” he said, and ducked his head: he hardly knew what to say. He signed his name and passed the card carefully to his father, who said, “Honored Grandmother,” and likewise signed it, passing it on to the secretaries, who would sand it and finish it with an official seal and red and black ribbons.

The next in line was Lord Tatiseigi. And the third was nand’ Bren. It was all very strange.

It was even stranger, when he signed a card for Jase-aiji, and a card apiece for Gene and Artur and Irene. “These are to keep,” he explained to Gene. “To remember.”

“We shall remember,” Gene said, and very shyly said, when his father signed the card next. “Thank you very much, nand’ aiji.”

It was the same with Artur and Irene. And then young Dur, Reijiri, came to the table.

“One is very glad you could come,” Cajeiri said, and meant it.

And to the elder Lord Dur: “It is a great honor you could come, nandi.”

“You are a credit, young aiji, you are a great credit.”

They were calling him not young gentleman, but young aiji. Were they supposed to call him that? His father had always said he was his heir. But was that somehow truer than it had ever been? Was that what his ninth birthday festivity meant, just because it was the fortunate ninth? Or was it because of that paper a messenger was carrying through the city?

Nobody had told him his ninth birthday would change everything.

Was he going to have to be like his father, now, and be serious all day, and sign papers and talk business to people? He wanted to go back to Great-uncle’s house and ride with his guests. That was what he wanted, more than anything . . .

But he was supposed to be thinking about people right now, being polite to lords his father needed him to impress, all these people in the hall, as many as he had ever seen in this hall at once.

And he smiled at those he knew and those he knew only by their colors. He was careful not to miss anybody. He thanked them for their good wishes, and meanwhile he could smell the food and knew everybody who left with a card was now free to go over to the buffet and have something to eat. He had not really eaten since breakfast, and a very little at the formal lunch.

But neither had his father. That was the way things were, if you were aiji.

It meant looking good, even if your stomach was empty.

· · ·

Was one justified in being personally just a little proud of the boy? Bren thought so.

Lord Tatiseigi was walking about with a glass of wine in hand and a smile on his face, and Ilisidi—Ilisidi was talking to the head of the Merchants’ Guild, very likely getting in a word or two about the Marid situation, doing politics as always, but looking extraordinarily relaxed and pleased.

Jase and the youngsters had been through the buffet, with small, safe cups of tea and a few safe sweets—the buffet would hold out for hours, and the alcohol had started to flow. Bren took sugared tea and a very manageable little half sandwich roll, stationing himself where he could watch the individuals he needed to watch.

Damiri had a cup of tea, and a congratulatory line of people—that could go on, and presumably it was going well. She had no part in her husband’s or her son’s card-signing, no formal part in the ceremony, but that was the way of things—the aiji-consort was not necessary in the inheritance. She was, legally speaking, not involved in the question.

One noted Tabini had mentioned his own mother in his address, and that was a first—a Taibeni woman, never acknowledged, never mentioned, not in Ilisidi’s favor, and for what he knew, no longer living. But if Ilisidi had taken any offense at that one mention, it was not in her expression at the moment.

Politics. Tabini had mentioned his Taibeni kinship tonight. The Guild, which had so obdurately found every excuse to ignore his Taibeni bodyguards . . . had just undergone a profound revision. Lord Keimi of Taiben was in attendance tonight: Cajeiri’s other great-grand-uncle had just, after two hundred years of war, signed a peace with Lord Tatiseigi.

The aiji-consort’s clan was as absent as the Kadagidi, the proven traitors. Cajeiri had been the one to acknowledge his own mother—Tabini had not mentioned her; but then, by the lines of inheritance he was reciting, no, he not only had not, he could not have mentioned her. It just was not the way things were done. It was up to her son to acknowledge her.

And he had. Thank God he had. Had Tabini urged him to it?

Likely. Tabini was trying hard to keep Damiri by him, no matter the increasing problems of that relationship. Tatiseigi likewise was doing his best by that relationship, ignoring Damiri’s flirtation with Ajuri.

The Ajuri banner had been prominent at the side of the hall tonight, for anyone who looked for it. The Kadagidi banner was not present. And there was only one person who could have made the decision to allow the Ajuri banner, given Lord Komaji’s banishment.

Tabini.

The banner had been here; but Damiri had not worn its brilliant red and gold this evening, just a pale green pleated satin that accommodated her condition, a color not quite saying Atageini, but suggesting it. Her choice?

Perhaps it had been her choice, on an evening where she had no official part. It was at least—politic. Damiri stood in a circle of lamplight, attended by Ilisidi’s guards, wished well by her husband’s associates, on the evening her son received sole title to her husband’s inheritance. And nowhere in Ragi culture did a lord’s consort, male or female, have any part, where it came to clan rights and inheritable privilege—it was just the way of things.

Tell that to Ilisidi, who had stepped forward twice to claim the regency, and to sue before the legislature simply to take the Ragi inheritance as her own. He had never quite appreciated the audacity of that move.

But then—Damiri had not been running half the continent before her marriage, and was not in charge of the spoiled, immature boy Valasi had reputedly been at his father’s death, a boy who had never, moreover, had an Investiture . . . nor allowed one for Tabini.

One could see . . . a decided difference in situations: Ilisidi, already ruler of half the sole continent, versus Damiri, the inconvenient offspring of a peacemaking interclan marriage gone very wrong—in a marriage some were saying, now, was becoming inconvenient.

Damiri, carrying an inconvenient surplus child, with her father’s clan very close to being dissolved for Shishogi’s treason, was not in an enviable situation, should Tabini divorce her. The only thing that prevented a public furor about another of Ajuri’s misdeeds was the Guild’s deep secrecy: it would swallow the person and the name of Shishogi so very deeply not even Ajuri clan might ever know the extent of his crimes—or even that he had died in disgrace.

Just a very few people inside Ajuri had to be asking themselves what they were to do with what they knew, and where on earth they would be safe.

Tabini didn’t want her taking on that lordship, for very good reasons. And there went her one chance of becoming a lord in her own right, setting herself in any remote sense on an equal footing with Ilisidi.

“Bren-ji,” Jago said, and nodded toward the east corner.

There was the service corridor. And Tatiseigi was positioned nicely by the dowager’s side, not likely to leave her now, and Damiri was fully occupied with well-wishers. The major ceremony was past. It was a good time to go aside and take a break—most of all to let Banichi take a rest, he thought. He yielded and went in that direction: the door was open, the hallway only dimly lit, letting people supplying the buffet and bringing back dishes get in and out of the hall without a disturbing flare of light.

The promised chairs were there. It was, indeed, a relief. He sat down. Banichi dutifully did the same.

“How are you faring?” he asked Banichi.

“Well enough,” Banichi said. “There is, indeed, no need.”

“Of course not,” Jago said.

Bren let go a long, slow breath. “He did very well, did he not?”

“He did excellently well,” Tano said.

“How is the city faring?” he asked, wondering if information was indeed getting through channels.

“Very well,” Tano said. “Very well indeed . . . a little damage here and there, simply the press of people. A bar set a television in a window, and attempted to serve drink on the walkway, and there was a complaint of disorderly conduct—it was nothing. The cards are still being distributed, from several points, and those lines are orderly.”

It was nothing. That was so much better a report than they could have feared. Algini scoured up a carafe of tea, and they kept themselves out of the way of serving staff coming and going.

“The runner has reached the Archive,” Jago remarked, listening to communications. And then: “Attendees in the hall have become curious about Jase’s bodyguard. They have stayed quite still. Cenedi has sent guards to protect them.”

One could only imagine, should Kaplan or Polano grow restless and switch on a light or two. Or move. “Jase says they can rest in there fairly comfortably,” Bren said, “with the armor locked. One cannot imagine it is that comfortable over time.” He drew a deep breath. “And I should get back to the hall, nadiin-ji. Banichi, can you not sit here with Jago a while? There is absolutely no problem out there.”

Banichi drew a deep breath. “Best I move, Bren-ji.” He shoved himself to his feet and drew a second breath.

“We may find an opportunity to quit the hall early,” Bren said, “all the same. We have done what we need to do.”

He walked out into the hall, and indeed, Tabini-aiji and Cajeiri had finished their card-signing and finally had leisure to talk and visit with well-wishers.

“Bren.” Jase overtook them, and Bren turned slightly, nodded a hello to Jase and Cajeiri’s young guests.

“So,” he said in ship-speak, “are you three managing to enjoy yourselves?”

“Really, yes, sir,” Gene said.

“We love the clothes,” Irene said. “And we got our own cards.”

“Treasure them,” he said. “You won’t find their like again in a lifetime. Onworld, they’re quite valuable.”

“Do we call him Cajeiri-aiji now, sir?” Artur asked.

“That is a question,” Bren said, and glanced at Banichi. “What does one call our young gentleman now?”

“‘Young gentleman’ is still appropriate,” Banichi said, “but Cajeiri-aiji, on formal occasions; or nand’ aiji, the same address as to his father.”

“Can we still call him Jeri?” Gene asked.

“Not in public,” Bren said. “Never in public. Never speaking about him. He’ll always be Cajeiri-aiji when you’re talking about him. Or the young aiji. Or the young gentleman. But what he is in private—he’ll define that.”

“Yes, sir,” Gene said. And bowed and changed back to Ragi. “Nandi.”

“Jase-aiji.” Bren gave a little nod and walked on toward the dowager, who had gotten a chair, likely from the other service passage, and who was quite successfully holding court over near the dais, with a cup of tea in her hands and a semicircle of attendance, including Lord Dur and Lord Tatiseigi.

Protected, still. He was satisfied. He turned the other direction, to let that gathering take its course, and to let that pair pursue necessary politics, and saw, at a little remove, Lord Topari.

That was not a meeting he wanted at the moment. He veered further right.

And found himself facing, at a little remove, the aiji-consort and her borrowed bodyguard.

She was looking right at him. Eyes had met. Courtesy dictated that he bow, then turn aside, but when he lifted his head, she was headed right toward him with intent, and etiquette demanded he stand there, bow a bit more deeply as she arrived, and offer a polite greeting.

“Daja-ma,” he said pleasantly.

“Are you pleased?” she asked outright.

“One is pleased that your son is so honored, daja-ma. One hopes you are enjoying the evening.”

“Is that a concern?”

She was set on an argument, and he was equally determined to avoid it. He bowed a third time, not meeting her eyes, not accepting a confrontation.

“My question was sincere, daja-ma. One apologizes if it gave offense.”

“Who killed my father?”

He did look at her, with a sharp intake of breath. “I did not, daja-ma, nor did the aiji-dowager, nor did Lord Tatiseigi, who would have received your father had he reached Tirnamardi. It is my unsupported opinion, daja-ma, that Tirnamardi is exactly where your father was going, and that the most likely person to have prevented him getting there was his uncle—your own great-uncle. Shishogi.”

Her eyes flashed, twice, luminous as they caught the light. “What do you know?”

“A question for us both, daja-ma: what do you know of him?”

“That you killed him.”

“I never met him. Nor did my aishid, in that context.” He saw her breathing very rapidly. “Daja-ma, are you well? There is a chair in the servant passage.”

“Why would he kill my father?”

“Do you know, daja-ma, who your uncle was?”

“That is a very strange question.”

He was acutely conscious of his own aishid, of the dowager’s men at Damiri’s back, of a crowded hall, though they were in a clear area. “There are things that I cannot discuss here, daja-ma, but that your husband surely knows.”

“Did he assassinate my father?”

“Daja-ma, your husband believed he protected you in dismissing your father, who was under pressures we do not accurately know. But to my knowledge the aiji did not wish his death. Your father may have discovered things he may have finally decided to pass to Lord Tatiseigi, as the closest to the aiji he could reach.”

“I am weary of riddles and suppositions! Tell me what you know, not what you guess!”

“Daja-ma.” He lowered his voice as much as possible. “We are not in a safe place. If you will discuss this with some person of close connection to you, one suggests Lord Tatiseigi.”

“The dowager’s closest ally!”

“But a man of impeccable honesty, daja-ma.”

“No! No, I insist on the truth from you. You advise my husband. And I am set at distance. I am told I shall not be permitted to leave the Bujavid. I cannot claim the Ajuri lordship. I cannot go to my own home!”

“Daja-ma, there are reasons.”

“Reasons!”

“Your great-uncle, daja-ma.” He kept his voice as low as possible. “I believe he did order your father’s assassination. If you wish my opinion of events, daja-ma, your great-uncle plotted a coup from the hour of your son’s birth. When the aiji sent him to the space station, out of reach, and in the dowager’s keeping, it so upset your great-uncle’s plans he launched the coup to remove the aiji, and possibly to appoint you to a regency until the succession could be worked out. But you fled with your husband.”

Her look was at first indignant, then entirely shocked.

“You had no idea, did you not, daja-ma?”

“This is insane! My great-uncle. My great-uncle is in the Guild.”

“He was in the Guild. Exactly so. And not of minor rank.”

“Ajuri is a minor clan!”

“That is no impediment. What would you have done, daja-ma, if the Guild had separated you from your husband and asked you to govern for a few months—or to marry—in a few months, for the good of the aishidi’tat.”

“You are quite out of your mind!”

“Did anyone approach you with such an idea, daja-ma?”

“Never!”

“Perhaps I am mistaken. But I am not mistaken about your great-uncle’s support—with others—of a Kadagidi with southern ties, to take the aijinate. And one is not mistaken in the subsequent actions of your great-uncle, whose subversion of the Guild created chaos and upset in the aishidi’tat, setting region against region, constantly hunting your husband, and then trying to seize your son. A great deal of what went on out on the west coast was aimed at removing me, and the aiji-dowager—and, again, in laying hands on your son. We had no idea at the time. Your husband declined to bring his son back to the Bujavid, preferring to confront these people in the field rather than in the halls of the Bujavid. What he feared in the Bujavid—I do not know. But it was substantial.”

She stared at him in shock, a hand to her heart. And he was sorry. He was intensely sorry for pressing, but it was, there in a quiet nook of her son’s Investiture, surrounded by his aishid and the dowager’s men, the same question that had hung over her marriage, her acceptance in her husband’s household.

“Your father had just become lord of Ajuri,” he said, unrelenting, “in the death of your uncle. There were, one fears, questions about that replacement which I had not heard—about which your husband may have been aware. The Guild was even then systematically withholding information from your husband’s bodyguard, on the excuse that he had appointed them outside the Guild system. The heads of the Guild knowingly put your household at risk with their politics, of which, at that time, your great-uncle was definitely part. The Guild also withheld information from my aishid—more than policy, I now suspect, in a deliberate act which put my life in danger and almost killed your son. There was a great deal amiss on the west coast . . . but the threads of it have run back to the Guild in Shejidan. Realizing that, the aiji-dowager’s aishid and mine began to ask questions, and to investigate matters inside the Guild, which, indeed, involved your great-uncle. He is now dead. Unfortunately we do not believe all his agents in the field are dead. So there is a reason, daja-ma, that the aiji has forbidden you to take the Ajuri lordship. There is a reason he, yes, questioned your clan’s man’chi and wanted your father and his bodyguard out of the Bujavid, and you safe within it. And you should also know, daja-ma, that the aiji has since then strongly rejected all suggestions that your marriage should be dissolved for political convenience, insisting that you were not complicit in your great-uncle’s actions. More, by retaining you as his wife, he has now placed you in a position which, until now, only the aiji-dowager has held. The aiji-dowager has questioned your motives. And I have begun to incline toward the aiji-dowager’s opinion—that you are independent of your late great-uncle, independent also of your father, your aunt, and your cousin, and also of your great-uncle Tatiseigi. You never courted power. But power may someday land in your hands. And at very least, throughout your life, you will find not only your son, but your daughter besieged by ambitious clans. You have strongly resisted the aiji-dowager’s influence. But, baji-naji, you could one day become her. Do not reject her or her allies. Learn from her. That is my unsolicited advice, aiji-ma. Now you have heard it.”

She was breathing hard as any runner. She stared at him wide-eyed in shock, saying nothing, and now he wished he had not thrown so much information at her, not all at once, not here, not—tonight.

“One apologizes, daja-ma. One truly does.”

“You are telling me the truth,” she said, as if it were some surprise. “You are telling me the truth, are you not, nandi?”

“I have told you the truth, daja-ma. Perhaps too much of it.”

“No,” she said, eyes flashing. “No, nandi, not too much. Finally, someone makes sense!”

“One at least apologizes for doing so here, daja-ma. Understand, too, your husband held these matters only in bits and pieces. None of us knew until a handful of days ago.”

“Paidhi,” she said, winced, breathing hard, and suddenly caught at his arm.

“Daja-ma!” He lent support, he held on, not knowing where or how to take hold of her, and Jago intervened, flinging an arm about her, holding her up.

“I think—” Damiri said, still somewhat bent. “I think I am having the baby.”

“The service passage,” Banichi said. “Gini-ji, advise security; advise the aiji.”

“What shall we do?” Bren asked, his own heart racing. “Is nand’ Siegi here?”

“Call my physician,” Damiri said, and managed to straighten. “I shall walk. There will be time. First tell my husband. Then call my physician.”

“Two of you stay with her,” Algini said to Damiri’s security: “The other go privately advise the aiji and stand by for his orders. Bren-ji, stay with us.”

Never complicate security’s job. He understood. They walked at a sedate pace, Damiri walking on her own, quietly taking Algini’s direction toward the service passage, past a number of people who gave their passage a mildly curious stare.

No one delayed them. They reached the doorway of the service passage, met servants exiting with food service, who ducked out of the way, startled.

“There is a chair, daja-ma,” Bren said, “should you wish. You might sit down and let us call help.”

“No,” Damiri said shortly. “No! We shall not stop. Call my maid. Call my physician!”

“Security is doing that, nandi,” Jago said quietly. Banichi continued to talk to someone on com, and Algini had eased ahead of them—he was up at an intersection of the corridor, giving orders to a uniformed Bujavid staffer, probably part of the kitchen crew.

“We have a lift car on hold,” Tano said.

“I am perfectly well, now,” Damiri said. “I shall be perfectly fine.”

One hoped. One sincerely hoped.

· · ·

They had finished the cards. Cajeiri’s fingers ached, he had signed so many, and toward the end he had begun simplifying his signature, because his hand forgot where it was supposed to be going.

He wanted to go find his guests and at least talk to them, and ask how they were doing; and he wanted to go over to the buffet and get at least one of the teacakes he had seen on people’s plates, and a drink. He very much wanted a drink of something, be it tea or just cold water. His throat was dry from saying, over and over again, “Thank you, nandi. One is very appreciative of the sentiment, nandi. One has never visited there, but one would very much enjoy it . . .” And those were the easy ones. The several who had wanted to impress him with their district’s export were worse. He had acquired a few small gifts, too, which his bodyguard said he should not open, but which would go through security.

Mostly he just wanted to get a drink of water, but the last person in line had engaged his father, now, and wanted to talk. He stood near the table and waited. And when his father’s bodyguard did nothing to break his father free of the person, he turned to Antaro and said, very quietly, “Taro-ji, please bring me a drink of something, tea, juice, water, one hardly cares.”

“Yes,” she said, and started to slip away; but then senior Guild arrived, two men so brusque and sudden Antaro moved her hand to her gun and froze where she stood, in front of him; the other three closed about him.

It was his father the two aimed at; but his father’s guard opened up and let them through, and then he realized, past the near glare of an oil lamp, that they were his mother’s bodyguard.

“They are Mother’s,” he said, which was to say, Great-grandmother’s. And they were upset. “Taro-ji, they are Mother’s guard. Something is wrong.”

“We are not receiving,” Veijico reminded him, staying close with him as he followed Antaro into his father’s vicinity.

“Son of mine,” his father said, “your mother is going upstairs. It may be the baby. She has called for her physician. We are obliged to go, quickly.”

“Is she all right?” he blurted out.

“Most probably. She has chosen not to go to the Bujavid clinic. She is giving directions. Nand’ Bren is with her. Your great-grandmother has heard. She will make the announcement in the hall.” His father set a hand on his shoulder. “Do not be distressed, son of mine. Likely everything is all right. We must just leave the hall and go upstairs.”

“My guests,” he said.

His father drew in a breath and spoke to his more senior bodyguard. “Go to Jase-aiji. Assist him and the young guests to get to Lord Tatiseigi’s apartment. Advise my grandmother to take my place in the hall. She may give the excuse of the consort’s condition. —Son of mine?”

“Honored Father.”

“Will you wish to go with nand’ Jase, or to go with us?”

He had never been handed such a choice. He had no idea which was right. Then he did know. “I should go where my mother is,” he said. “Jase-aiji will take care of my guests.”

“Indeed,” his father said, and gave a little nod. “Indeed. Come with me. Quickly.”

He snagged Jegari by the arm. “Go apologize to my guests. Tell them all of this, Gari-ji.”

“Yes,” Jegari said, and headed off through the crowd as quickly as he could.

Only then he thought . . . What about Kaplan and Polano?

· · ·

* * *

· · ·

The Bujavid staffer guided them through a succession of three service corridors, to a door that let out across from the lifts, in an area of hall cordoned off by red rope, and Guild were waiting beside a lift with the doors held open. Recent events still urged caution—but, “Clear,” Banichi said, and they went, at Damiri’s pace, which was brisk enough.

“We are in contact with the physician,” Tano said in a low voice, “but he is down in the hotel district, attempting to get to the steps through the crowd. Guild is escorting him. They will activate the tramway to bring him up.”

It was moderately good news. “Should we,” Bren ventured to ask Damiri, as they entered the lift, “call nand’ Siegi in the interim, daja-ma?”

She drew in a deep breath. They were all in. The door of the car shut, and Tano used his key and punched buttons. The car moved in express mode.

Damiri gasped and reached out, seizing Bren’s arm, and Algini’s, and they reached to hold her up.

“I think,” she said, “I think—”

“Daja-ma?”

“Get my husband!”

“We have sent word,” Bren said. “He is coming, daja-ma.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, and gasped as the car stopped. “Paidhi, he is not going to be in time.”

“Just a little further,” Banichi said. “We can carry you if you wish, nandi.”

“No,” she said, and took a step, and two. They exited the car into the hall, with a long, long walk ahead.

“Tano-ji, go to nand’ Tatiseigi’s apartment,” Bren said, still supporting Damiri on his arm. “Tell Madam Saidin to come. And nand’ Siegi if you can find him.”

Damiri opened her mouth to say something. And kept walking, but with difficulty. One truly, truly had no idea what to do, except to help her do what she had determined to do.

Banichi, who did not have use of one arm, moved to assist on the side he could, and Algini gave place to him. He said, quietly, “We are in contact with your staff, nandi, and Madam Saidin is on her way. So is your physician, at all speed. Here is nand’ Bren’s apartment. We could stop here, should you need. He has an excellent guest room.”

“No,” she said, but quietly, in the tenor of Banichi’s calm, low voice. “I shall make it. I can make it.”

“How long has this been going on?” Banichi asked, and after a deep series of breaths, Damiri said,

“Since yesterday.”

“Since yesterday.”

“I would not spoil my son’s festivity.” Deep breath, and in a tone of distress. “With him, I had two days.”

“It can be sooner.”

“I think, nadi, it could be before I get to the doors.”

Halfway to her apartment. “We are approaching,” Bren heard Algini say. And his ears told him, too, that someone was coming behind them, likely Madam Saidin. “The hall is secure. You are clear to unlock the doors.”

The doors ahead did open, wide, and the major domo and Damiri’s personal maid came hurrying out in great distress, ran to them and paced along beside as, behind them, indeed, Madam Saidin came hurrying into their company.

“One can assist her, nandi,” Madam Saidin said, easing herself into Bren’s place, while Damiri’s maid took her arm on Banichi’s side.

“I am no great assistance in this,” Jago said, “but I can at least provide communications.”

“Go,” Bren said. “Stay with her as long as need be.”

Tano arrived at a near run, from behind them. “Nand’ Siegi says he has not done this in thirty years, but he is coming, Bren-ji.”

“Well done,” he said. He thought perhaps he should go back to his apartment and wait there for news, but he was one person who could give orders if something had to be decided, and someone who could at least answer questions and explain to Tabini, when he got here—if protocol would let him get here—and he was determined to stay. He followed, stopped in the foyer with the major domo as Madam Saidin and Damiri’s maid assisted Damiri down the inner hall, toward her own suite, with Damiri’s two bodyguards and Jago following. Servants were hurrying about, everyone hushed and trying not to make a commotion.

Bren just stood there, with his aishid—with Banichi, who by the sound of his questions knew more than the rest of them put together regarding Damiri’s situation.

“One had no idea what to do,” he said to his aishid, a little out of breath.

“One cannot say Jago has,” Banichi said. “But she will tell us what she can learn, and the dowager’s men will not go past the sitting room.”

“Do you need to rest?” he asked. “Nichi-ji, do not hesitate.”

“One has no desire to add to the commotion,” Banichi said. There was a small bench built into the foyer wall by the major domo’s office, not an uncommon arrangement, and he quietly took it. “You might sit, Bren-ji.”

“I am too worried to sit,” he said, but he did sit down, for fear Banichi would get up again. “I precipitated this. I was too harsh with my answers. I was far too blunt. I upset her.”

“You gave her answers, Bren-ji. They were not pleasant answers, but they were answers. And she seemed to have wanted them.”

“Still . . .” he said, and saw by the sudden doorward look of everyone in the foyer that someone was coming. Human ears picked up nothing yet; but Algini took it on himself to open the door, hand on his pistol as he did so.

“Nand’ Siegi,” he said, and held the door open until the old man arrived, with an assistant carrying two cases of, one supposed, medical equipment and supplies.

“Where?” the old man asked, out of breath, and Tano showed him and his assistant down the inner hall and into the direction of the major domo, before Algini even began to shut the outer door.

But Algini stopped, and held the door open. “The aiji is coming,” he said.

Banichi used the bench edge to put himself back on his feet. Bren stood up, and the major domo arrived back in the foyer, from down the hall, agitated and worried. Algini ceded him the control of the door as numerous footsteps approached.

Tabini arrived, with Cajeiri, with his double bodyguard, and Cajeiri’s, too many people even to get into the foyer conveniently.

“How is she?” Tabini asked at once.

The major domo said: “Well, aiji-ma. She seems well. Nand’ Siegi is here.”

“Paidhi!” Tabini said, shedding his coat into the major domo’s hands, and there was no assistant to provide another. “Take care of my son.”

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, and Tabini, in his shirt sleeves, and with only his junior bodyguard, headed down the long inner hall, toward his wife’s suite.

Cajeiri cast a worried look after him, then looked Bren’s direction. Worried. Scared, likely, and trying not to show it.

“Your mother walked to the apartment,” Bren said, “and she seems well enough. Nand’ Siegi just arrived.”

Nobody had taken the boy’s coat. The major domo had gone back down the hall in a hurry, following Tabini. Guild was talking to Guild, meanwhile, exchanging information partly verbally, partly in handsigns, and there was a general relaxation.

“I think we could do with a cup of tea,” Bren said quietly. “Can we arrange that?”

“Yes,” the Guild senior of Tabini’s guard said, and headed down the same hall, while Bren steered Cajeiri, Cajeiri’s bodyguard, and his own three toward the sitting room, the civilized place to wait.

“Sit,” he said to them, in consideration of Banichi. “Everybody sit. We are not in an emergency now.”

“Is she really all right, nandi?” Cajeiri asked.

“She seemed quite in command,” Bren said. “Madam Saidin is there; Jago is, and now nand’ Siegi.” There was another small commotion in the foyer, even as he spoke. “That may be her own physician—he had to come up from the hotel district.”

“Jago reports your father is with her, young aiji,” Tano said, “and she knows you are here.”

“My father says I should not go back there,” Cajeiri said unhappily.

“There are so many people,” Bren said. Two of the kitchen help were making their tea, over at the side of the room: there was not a senior servant nor a woman to be seen, when ordinarily a handful would have flitted through, checking on things, being sure the fire was lit, the chairs were set. “I think that is your mother’s physician who just arrived.” He could see an older woman and a younger pass the door. “Everyone who needs to be here is here.”

“My father sent word to nand’ Jase,” Cajeiri said, “and he is going up to Great-uncle’s apartment. I think my great-grandmother has taken charge of the party.”

“That was well-thought,” Bren said.

“But Kaplan and Polano . . .” Cajeiri said. “How do they get upstairs?”

That was a question. The poor lads were down there for security. “One believes Jase will give them orders; and they were prepared to be there until the party ended. They will be there for your great-grandmother, and, one supposes, Lord Tatiseigi’s safety, as well. And your guests will be upstairs, able to get out of these fancy clothes, so one supposes they are more comfortable than we are.”

“Is she going to be all right, nandi?”

“There is nothing that indicated anything to the contrary, young gentleman. She simply knew it was time, and she had us all escort her upstairs. Apparently,” he added, because the boy and his mother were too often at odds, “she has been having pains since yesterday, but she wanted you to have your festivity without the disruption of her taking to her bed. She thought she could get through the evening.”

“She did?”

“She is quite brave, your mother is, and she knew it was a very important evening.”

Cajeiri just stared at him a moment. “I wish she had said something.”

“But your father would have worried. And you would have worried.”

“She is going to be all right?”

“Baji-naji, young gentleman, but your mother is too determined a woman to do other than very well.”

“I am glad you call me young gentleman. I am not ready to be young aiji.”

“You had no idea your father would do that?”

“None at all, nandi!”

The boys were standing by, awaiting a nod before setting the cups down. Bren gave it, and took the teacup gladly enough.

Cajeiri put sugar into his. And drank it half down at one try.

“Did you ever get to eat?” Bren asked him.

“No, but—” Cajeiri began, when there was a sudden noise of footsteps from down the hall, and the major domo came hurrying in, to bow deeply in Cajeiri’s direction.

“Young gentleman, your father sends for you.”

Cajeiri set the cup aside, looking scared.

“Is it good news?” Bren asked sharply, startling the man, who bowed again.

“The aiji-consort is very well, nandi. The young gentleman has a—”

Cajeiri bounced to his feet and headed out the door at a run, taking a sharp right at the door, his young aishid rising in complete confusion.

“—sister,” the major domo finished, and bowed in consternation. “Please excuse me, nand’ paidhi!”

The major domo hurried after. Cajeiri’s bodyguard stood by their chairs, confused.

“As well sit and wait, nadiin,” Banichi said, as Tano and Algini looked amused. “There is no use for us back there.”

Bren let out a slow breath, and took a sip of tea, affording himself a little smile as Cajeiri’s young bodyguard settled back into their chairs, deciding there probably was no further use for their presence, either.

But they might as well finish the tea.

· · ·

Mother was propped with pillows, and her hair was done up with a ribbon. Father was in a chair at her bedside. And there was a white blanket in Mother’s arms, just the way it was in the machimi. It all seemed like a play, like it was somebody else’s family, somebody else’s mother and father, on stage.

But he came closer, and Mother smiled at him, and moved the blanket and showed him a little screwed-up face that hadn’t been in the world before.

“This is Seimiro,” Mother said. “This is your sister.”

He looked at his father, who looked at him; he looked at his mother. He looked at the screwed-up little face. He had never seen a really young baby.

“Is she asleep?” he whispered.

“She hears you,” his father said. “But she cannot see you yet.”

“Can I touch her?”

“Yes,” his mother said.

He put out his hand, touched her tiny fist with just one finger. She was unexpectedly soft, and warm. “Hello, Seimiro,” he said. “Hello. This is your brother.”

“Do you want to hold her?” his father asked.

She was so tiny. He knew he could. But she was so delicate. And his mother would be really upset if he made a mistake. “No,” he said. “I might do it wrong.”

“Here.” His father stood up, and carefully took the baby, and carefully put it in his arms. She was no weight at all. She made a face at him. He could hold her in one arm and touch her on her nose, which made her make another face, and made him smile. But it was a risk, all the same: he very carefully gave her back to his mother, who took her back and smiled, not at him, for doing it right; but at her.

Well, that was the way things were going to be. But she was new, and he could hardly blame people for being interested.

He just said to himself that he had a long, long head start on Seimiro, and she would have a lot of work to catch him.

There were a lot of things he could show her.

Even if they had sealed up some of the servant passages. There were still ways to sneak around the Bujavid.

· · ·

Jase made it back: Madam Saidin had gotten home, and taken over, and Jase was willing to trade news over a glass of brandy.

Kaplan and Polano were still stuck in the hall, being statues, but they were comfortable enough, and there were atevi guards standing near them who knew what they were, and who had orders to get them back upstairs once the festivity had broken up.

Everybody was in the sitting room. Everybody was sitting, Bren, Banichi and Jago, Tano and Algini, even Narani and Jeladi, all indulging in a modest brandy, and everybody debriefing, in safe privacy. Even Bindanda came in, their other plain-clothes Guildsman, to get the news straight from those who were there.

“The baby’s name is Seimiro,” Jago said. And: “Damiri-daja had no trouble at all. And well we hurried. The baby was there before nand’ Siegi was.”

Jase said, “The youngsters were a little worried when they saw everybody leaving—so were the guests. But the dowager took over and explained the situation, and I took the youngsters right on up to Lord Tatiseigi’s apartment: the guests were headed for the wine and brandy, very happy.”

“One wishes the youngsters could have had a better time,” Bren said.

“Oh,” Jase said, “they had fancy dress, they had the museum, they had all the lords and ladies, and seeing Cajeiri and the ceremony—they were very excited. They asked me more questions than I could answer. Then the baby coming—they knew why they had to go upstairs, and then with Madam Saidin helping deliver the baby—they were very excited.”

“One hears the city is going wild,” he said. That was, at least, what his bodyguard reported, and he had no doubt of it.

“The printing office is calling in staff,” Algini said, “and they are preparing another release of cards for tomorrow: the birth announcement.”

“And no trouble?” Bren asked.

“None,” Algini said. “One hopes our remaining problems are busy relocating, and where they have been, we may be interested to learn. For tonight, at least, we can relax.”

Relax. With a glass of brandy, good company, and everybody safe and well. It was a special occasion.

· · ·

“Will you want to stay here tonight?” Father asked, in the hallway. Mother and the baby were asleep, though Father said they would probably have restless nights for quite a while.

Cajeiri gave a little bow. “One has guests waiting, honored Father, and if I may, I should go to nand’ Tatiseigi’s apartment and explain everything. If I may.”

“Yes.”

The enormity of everything struck him then, and maybe, he thought, he should have said something special—about the inheritance and all that. And the ceremony. And the surprise. He gave a deep, deep bow.

“Thank you, honored Father. Thank you very much. And one is very sorry for forgetting the speech.”

“You did very well this evening. One was quite proud of you.”

He straightened up, heat rushing to his face. He could not remember his father saying that. “I shall not be a fool. I shall study. But I do not want to be aiji for a long, long time.”

“You are a good son. A very good son. One is twice proud. Go. Behave yourself. Enjoy the day.”

He did, instantly about infelicitous four paces down the hall before he remembered, then, to make a grown-up exit, and turned and bowed deeply. “Thank you, Father.”

“Indeed,” his father said, and nodded, and Cajeiri walked sedately all the way down the hall, collected his aishid, and walked a little more briskly outside and up the hall past nand’ Bren’s apartment.

“Her name is Seimiro,” he said, thinking of it.

“Is she pretty?” Lucasi asked.

“Wrinkled,” he said, making a face, and laughed.

“Babies are like that,” Antaro said. “I saw my cousin after he was born.”

They were in the hall with no other escort, no guards at the end. They came up on Great-uncle’s door, and it opened, Madam already having gotten a signal from Antaro, and in they came, Madam very happy to have them back.

“Come right on in,” Madam said, “into the sitting room.”

He had a little suspicion when Madam did not take his coat, and when Madam showed him straight to the sitting room, that his guests had not gone to bed.

Indeed, they were all three waiting, in their court dress, with, in the midst of the side table, a very large—cake. It was iced like a teacake. But it was large enough for everybody and the staff. And there was a candelabra beside it and beside that, three boxes wrapped up in brocade fabric.

“Happy birthday!” they all said at once.

He laughed, he was so surprised. And they insisted he open the boxes, one after another: there was a little handwritten notebook from Irene—“A lot of words you could use,” she said; and he saw words he had never seen before, with the rules for pronouncing them. And from Artur there was a little clear shiny marble that lit up. “Just set it in any light,” Artur said, “and it recharges.”

And from Gene there was what looked like a pocket-knife, but it unfolded in screwdrivers and picks and a magnifying glass.

They were wonderful gifts. And then Madam lit the candles and they cut the cake, and all had some—Madam said they had made another cake for staff, and his guests had told them how such a cake had to be—it was iced like one piece, but inside it was in layers and pieces, and Great-uncle’s cook had made the icing orangelle-flavored, his favorite, in clever patterns.

They had fruit drink, and cake, and told stories until it was past midnight and Great-uncle came home, asking whether he had seen his sister, and how his mother was.

“My sister is fine and my mother is, Great-uncle. My father is very happy.”

“Excellent,” Great-uncle said. “Excellent. Such a day this has been! Congratulations, young aiji.”

“Nandi.”

“A fortunate day, indeed. Your ninth year and your sister’s first—all on one day.”

He stood there a moment, realizing . . .

He had a sister. And she was born on his birthday.

His birthday was her birthday. Forever.

Nobody had asked him about that. Worse—his next fortunate birthday would be his eleventh. And from zero, which was today, the very same day would be her infelicitous second: they were always going to be out of rhythm, and nothing could ever fix it.

Except if they celebrated each other’s fortunate day with a festivity.

He had to make a deal with his sister about birthdays. There could be a sort of a festivity every year.

“Is there a problem, Jeri-ji?” Gene asked.

He saw Great-uncle venturing a taste of his extraordinary cake, and very definitely approving.

“No,” he said, and felt mischief coming on. There were so many things his sister needed to learn, not to turn out as stiff and proper as people could want her to be. “No. Not a one.”

Lord Geigi, Lord Regent in the Heavens: His History of the Aishidi’tat with commentary by Lord Bren of Najida, paidhi-aiji

i

Before the Foreign Star appeared in the Heavens, we, on our own, had reached the age of steam.

We had philosophically and politically begun to transcend the clan structure that had led to so many ruinous wars.

We had eleven regional associations which agreed to build a railroad from Shejidan to the west without going to war about it.

Within the associations, there had been artisan guilds for many years. But during the building of the first railroad, many guilds, starting with the Transportation Guild and the Builders, had not only transcended the limits of clan structure, Transport and the Builders ended by transcending the regional associations. They were the first political entities to do so.

Clans had long formed temporary associations of regional alliance and trade interest. These were associations of convenience that often broke up in bitter conflict.

That was the state of things when, three hundred years ago, the Foreign Star arrived in the heavens.

It appeared suddenly. It grew. Telescopes of the day could make out a white shape that seemed to reflect light instead of shining like a star. The Astronomers offered no one theory to account for it. Earliest observers said it was a congealing of the ether that conveyed the heat of the sun to the Earth. But as it grew and showed structure and shadow, the official thought came to be that it was a rip in the sky dome and a view of the clockwork mechanism beyond.

The number-counters agreed it was an omen of change in the heavens, and most said it was not a good one. Some tried to attach the omen to the railroad, for good or for ill, and for a whole year it occupied the attention of the lords and clans.

But it produced nothing.

And under all the furor, and with a certain sense of something ominous hanging above the world, the railroad from Shejidan to the coast continued. Aijiin, once warleaders elected for a purpose, were elected to manage the project, holding power not over armies, but over the necessary architecture of guilds, clans, and sub-clans, for the sole purpose of getting the project through certain districts and upholding the promises to which the individual clan lords had set their seals.

Empowering them was a small group which itself began to transcend clans and regions: this was the beginning of the Assassins’ Guild, and their job was to protect the aijin against attack by others of their profession serving individual lords.

The Foreign Star harmed nothing. The railroad succeeded. If the Star portended anything, many said, it seemed to be good fortune.

The success of the first railroad project led to others. Associations became larger, overlapped each other as clans and kinships do. And significantly, in the midst of a dispute that might have led to the dissolution of these new associations, the Assassins’ Guild backed the aiji against three powerful clan lords who wanted to change the agreement and break up the railroad into administrative districts.

We atevi have never understood boundaries. Everything is shades of here and there, this side and that. It had not been our separations and our regions that had brought us this age of relative peace. It was associations of common purpose, and their combination into larger and larger associations, until the whole world knew someone who knew someone who could make things right.

And now this one aiji, backed by the Assassins’ Guild, had made three powerful lords keep their agreements for what turned out to benefit everyone—even these three clans, who collected no tolls, but whose people benefited by trade.

That aiji was the first to rule the entire west. The first railroad and the power of the aiji in Shejidan joined associations together in a way simple trade never had. Now the lords and trades and guilds were obliged to meet in Shejidan and come to agreement with the aiji who served and ruled them all. This was the true beginning of the legislature and the aishidi’tat, although it did not yet bear that name.

And without lords in constant war, and with the Assassins enforcing an impartial law, townships sprang up without walls, not clustered around a great house, but developing in places of convenience, with improved health and new goods. Commerce grew. Where conflicts sprang up, the aiji in Shejidan, with the legislature and the guilds, found a way to settle them without resort to war.

Shejidan itself grew rapidly, a town with no lord but the aiji himself. It attracted the smaller and weaker clans, particularly those engaging in crafts and trades. And those little clans, prospering as never before because of the railway, backed the aiji with street cobbles and dyers’ poles when anyone threatened that order. The guilds also broke from the clan structure and settled in Shejidan, backing the aiji’s authority, so that the lords who wanted the services of the Scholars, the Merchants, the Treasurers, the Physicians, or the Assassins, had to accept individuals whose primary man’chi was to their guilds and the aiji in Shejidan.

The Foreign Star had become a curiosity. Some studied it as a hobby. Then as a village lord in Dur wrote, who lived in that simpler time . . .

One day a petal sail floated down to Dur from the heavens, and more and more of them followed—bringing to the world a people not speaking in any way people of the Earth could understand. Some were pale, some were brown, and some were as dark as we are. Most landed on the island of Mospheira, among the Edi and the Gan peoples. Some landed on the mainland, near Dur. And some sadly fell in the sea, and were lost.

For three years the Foreign Star poured humans down to the Earth, sometimes whole clouds of them. Their small size and fragile bones and especially their manner of reaching the Earth excited curiosity, and won a certain admiration for their bravery. Poets immortalized the petal sails.

These humans brought very little with them. Their dress was plain and scant. They seemed poor. Wherever they landed, they took apart the containers that had sheltered them, and used the pieces and spread the petal sails and tied them to trees for shelter from the elements. They tried our food, but they sometimes died of it, and it was soon clear they could eat only the plainest, simplest things. They were a great curiosity, and one district and another was anxious to find these curious people and see them for themselves. Some believed that they had fallen from the moon, but the humans insisted they had come from inside the Foreign Star, and that they were glad to be on the Earth because of the poverty where they had been.

There was no fear of them by then. They spoke, and we learned a few words. We spoke, and we first fed them and helped them build better shelter. We helped them find each other across the land, and gather their scattered associates. We were amazed, even shocked, at their manners with each other. But they seemed equally distressed by ours.

—Lord Paseni of Tor Musa in Dur

The Foreign Star, as the man from Dur wrote, had for years been a fixture in the heavens. The Astronomers had long ago proclaimed that it had ceased growing, and that, whatever it was, it did not seem to threaten anything.

Then humans rode their petal sails down to the west coast of the continent and the island of Mospheira. They were small and fragile people and threatened no one. With childlike directness they offered trade—not of goods, but of technological knowledge, even mechanical designs.

The unease of the man from Dur might have warned us all. But some humans learned the children’s language, which allowed them mistakes in numbers without offense.

The petal sails kept falling down, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, until there were human villages. They brought their knowledge. They built in concrete. They built dams and generators: they built radios and other such things which we adopted . . .

And finally they stopped coming down.

The last come were not as peaceful as the first.

We had no idea why.

But the ship that had brought the humans and built the Foreign Star had left. It was of course the space station they had built in orbit above our Earth.

And the last to come down were the station aijiin and their bodyguards, armed, and dropping pods of weapons onto the world.

ii

<> The origin of the Foreign Star was a human starship, Phoenix, which had as its original purpose the establishment of a station at a star far removed from this world. They held all the knowledge, all the machines, and all the seeds and plans that would let the ship orbit some moon or planet as a temporary base for four thousand colonists to live aboard. The colonists would build a station core and outer structure and set it in full operation.

Another ship would follow Phoenix, with more colonists. That second ship would bring equipment which would let the orbiting station eventually set down people and build a habitat on a world far less hospitable than the Earth of the atevi.

But something happened. The ship-folk believe that the ship met some accident and was shifted somewhere far off its intended course. The ship tried to find some navigational reference that would tell it where it was. The fact that reference stars were not visible where they should be indicated to them that something very drastic had happened.

Phoenix gathered resources such as it could and aimed toward the closest promising star. It saw, among its several choices, a blue world much like humans’ own ancestral Earth. The world had the signature of life—which meant they would indeed find resources there. The world had no artificial satellites. They picked up no transmissions. This informed them there was no space-faring civilization there.

They ended up in orbit about the Earth of the atevi.

They saw, below them, towns and villages. They saw technology of a certain level—but not high enough to come up to them, and their law, remote as they were then from any law but their own conscience, ruled against disturbing the world, even if they had had an easy means to land and ask help . . . which they did not.

The colonists had come prepared and trained to build an orbiting station. They gathered resources from asteroids, manufactured panels and parts and framework, enclosing themselves from the inside out and housing more and more workers. This became the core of the station. They built tethers, and began the construction of the station ring, to gain a place to stand. Barracks moved into the beginnings of the ring. The first children were born. Spirits rose. They were going to survive.

Phoenix crew was supposed to have supported the colonists this far and then move on. The ship-folk were spacefarers by trade and nature and had no desire to live on a colonial station. But now that the colonists were safe, and now that the ship was resupplied and able to leave—it troubled the ship-aijiin that the ship now had no use and nowhere to go next. They had only one port, and clearly the station was not where they wanted their port to be. The blue planet had exactly the right conditions and everything they needed . . . but it was owned, and the ship-folk’s law said they should not disturb it.

The ship had long argued against the building of any elaborate station in orbit about the planet. They wanted the colonists to leave off any further development of the station they had, use it as an observation point and a refuge should anything go wrong, and build another, larger station out at Maudit. They should, the ship-aijiin said, leave the inhabited world alone until, perhaps, they might make contact in space some time in the future.

The colonists, born aboard this station, and with all the hardship of the prior generations, had no desire to give up their safety and build again—least of all to build a station above a desolate, airless world. They wanted the world they saw under their feet. They wanted it desperately.

The station aijiin also argued against building at Maudit. They needed their population. They needed their workers—and they wanted no rival station. They absolutely refused the ship’s solution.

The argument between station authorities and ship-aijiin grew bitter. Phoenix, now hearing these same officials claiming authority over the mission and the ship itself—decided to pull out of the colonial dispute altogether. They considered going to Maudit with a handful of willing souls and building there, then trying to draw colonists out to join them in defiance of the station aijiin—but that idea was voted down, since the colonists even at Maudit would still be in reach of that living planet, and the crew was vastly outnumbered if it came to a confrontation on the matter. By now the ship-folk did not entirely trust even the colonists they considered allies, with the green planet at issue.

The ship’s crew voted to take aboard those colonists who wanted to leave, and go. They went a year out into deep space, to a star with resources of metal and ice. There they set up a station they called, optimistically, Reunion.

From Reunion, the ship continued its exploration, through optics, and by closer inspection. The crew no longer hoped to find their own Earth, but they did hope that by increasing the human population at Reunion, then, from Reunion, establishing other colonies at planets or moons of some attraction—they could then revisit the population they’d left at the Earth of the atevi and convince them there was an alternative to landing.

Alternatives, however, did not immediately present themselves. The station at Reunion grew. But there was no suitable world. More troubling still, in one direction, they found the signature of another technological presence.

Back at the first station, from the week of Phoenix’s departure, the authorities had begun losing control. All that had stopped the colonists from going down to the Earth in the first place was the simple fact that, among the colonists or on the ship, there was nobody who knew how to land in a gravity well, or fly in an atmosphere, with weather and winds. Phoenix itself had been fairly confident that the colonists would, without the ship’s crew, have to agree among themselves to survive, and that the solution would not involve experimental manned landings on the planet.

But the colonists had a considerable library. And in those files they found a means within their capability to build, to aim, and to operate.

They pointed it out to the station aijiin.

They demanded action.

The station aijiin gave in. They built machines that would land in undeveloped land, and explore. If those reported well, they would build a craft to land by parachute, that would carry a scientific team, such as they could muster.

Those would go first.

All went well down to the second stage. The team, composed of names still honored by place names on Mospheira, met the tribal peoples . . . and after a brief period of good report and apparent progress—they vanished, with no clue, even to later generations.

The program was shut down, and remained shut down, for a long time. But dissatisfaction grew, in claims the station aijiin had been too timid. There were other places. There was empty land, even on the island. There was a whole other shore. There were extensive forests. There were vast plains where no one at all lived. There was a very large island south of the main continent.

Station authorities tried to silence the idea. The population had increased, but the space station had not. The ship had taken away the machinery that might have let them add more room easily. And then supplies began to disappear.

Small conspiracies assembled simple life-support for small capsules, shielded against the friction of the atmosphere, and provided with only one button, which would blow the shield off the parachute in the event the sensors that should do that automatically—failed.

By twos and threes they launched these fragile capsules toward the gravity well, and parachuted down.

When colonists learned the first capsules had come down safely—and more, that they were welcomed—more and more groups fled the station. The station-aijiin attempted to find and destroy these efforts, and the desperation of the colonists only increased. Workers refused to work. Groups stole materials in plain sight, and threatened anyone who tried to stop them. And the station grew more empty, and shut down, second by section. Those manufacturing materials said openly what they were for, and a small group exercised discipline enough to keep the effort going despite the objections of station aijiin.

Their technicians deserted. Station maintenance suffered. At the very last there was no choice for the administrative and systems managers but to join the movement. They mothballed the station, set the systems to maintain stable orbit so long as they could, and parachuted their armed bodyguards and themselves to the planet.

The last sudden band of humans, who emphatically resented being there and did not want to adapt to the planet in any way, changed everything.

Atevi suddenly attacked, for no reason humans understood.

In fact atevi had long since been pushed past the limit, and when they met the managers and the large load of weapons, they had finally pushed back.

iii

<> Characteristically, we reacted to this threat in our clans, our guilds, and our associations. Offense to one of us triggered others, to the dismay of the humans.

Coastal associations responded. Then the aiji in Shejidan moved to assert control, and took over leadership in the War of the Landing: this absorbed the last western clans still holding apart from the aishidi’tat, and eventually brought the Marid in as well.

The aiji formed a strategy to contain the problem reasonably rapidly: to push the humans off the continent and onto Mospheira, where the greatest number of humans were already living. Mospheira was the home of the Edi and Gan peoples, who had first met the humans, and who were part of the bloodiest action, but they were not part of the aishidi’tat, and were not Ragi, nor of the same customs. They persisted in attacking the humans on their own, with disastrous results.

The aiji offered the tribal peoples refuge from the fighting, in two small areas of the west coast where they could pursue their traditional ways and their livelihood of fishing. Without attacks coming at them on the island, humans found it a place of safe retreat, and centered their non-combatants there—which left only the most aggressive humans on the continent, exactly the situation the aiji wanted. The humans on the mainland could now be attacked and maneuvered into small pockets that could be cut off.

The War of the Landing ended with the humans on the mainland cut off from supplies, with no way back to the space station, and with no prospect of rescue from the island, or even of retreat to it, since the forces from the Marid held the strait. The aiji in Shejidan offered these groups a choice: extermination, or a way out. Humans might have ownership of the large and rich island of Mospheira, the conditions being first, total disarmament—the weapons they had were to be taken out to sea and sunk.

Secondly, and this was why the aiji was so generous: surrender of the technology. In return for an untroubled sanctuary, the humans were to send a paidhi to Shejidan to live, to translate, and to supervise the gradual turnover of all their technology to the aishidi’tat—namely to the aiji . . . and they were not to build or use any technology that was not approved by the paidhi.

The desperate humans had a very limited understanding of what a paidhi was. They understood that he was to mediate, translate, and that he would be their official in the aiji’s court, so they picked the most fluent Ragi speaker they had, hoping to stall off any demand for their weapons technology.

That was very well, the aiji said to them, through the paidhi they sent. There would surely be areas of agreement, and very useful things would serve.

That any knowledge could be turned to other purposes, and that atevi scientists were already finding out the secrets of foreign machines they had captured, was something the aiji failed to mention.

That there was still a starship the humans hoped would someday return was a matter humans had failed to mention, on their side.

But that agreement brought sufficient peace: this was the Treaty of the Landing, on which all our dealings with humans have been based. The Foreign Star, empty, continued to orbit the world.

Humans, vastly outnumbered, set about transforming Mospheira to suit themselves.

The aiji in Shejidan argued convincingly that the association atevi had formed to defend themselves should not be dissolved, since who knew if there were more humans to arrive from the heavens?

The allied association of the Marid had joined the aishidi’tat at the last moment, and would not accept the guilds: it maintained its own. Likewise the East was not yet part of the aishidi’tat in any permanent way.

But in the same way atevi had built the railroads, they had found pragmatic ways to work together—and the number-counters found fortunate numbers in the suggestions of an extension of the association—so it was felicitous that the Western Association, which was no longer just western, should stay together to respond quickly to any further difficulty from the humans on Mospheira.

The lords of the outlying clans and the regions, the aiji said, all should sit equally in the legislature in Shejidan, and they should all have a say in the laws of the aishidi’tat, the same as those born to the cental region.

The aiji further divided the entire continent into defensive districts, and these became provinces, with their own lords, also seated in the legislature. This added a few extra votes to critical regional associations, to balance the dominance of Shejidan: this pleased the lords.

The aiji then went to the guilds with another proposal: that, as they had all worked across regional lines during the War, they should continue after the war, adding a special privilege and formal principle. The guilds of the expanded aishidi’tat should have no respect for clan origin in candidacy for membership or in assignment: in fact, the guilds of every sort, like the Assassins, like Transport, should become their own authority, assigning members to posts only based on qualification, officially now without regard to kinship, regional association, or clan. This placed all power over membership into the hands of the guild masters.

The heads of the various guilds, interested in maintaining the power they held under war conditions, saw nothing but advantage in the aiji’s proposal. The idea was less popular with some of the regional associations, who still held apart from the guild system—but in the main, it became the rule, not by statue, but by internal guild rules, and there was nothing the regional associations or the newly created provinces or the clan lords could do about that—if they wanted guild services.

The Assassins’ Guild, in private conference and at the aiji’s request, agreed to one additional rule, that no one of their guild could seek or hold a political office or a lordship. They received a concession in exchange: that, as they were barred from politics, they would have certain statutory immunities from political pressure. Their records could not be summoned by any lord, their members would testify only before their own guild council, and the disappearance or death of any member of that guild, granted the unusual nature of their work and the extreme discipline imposed on the membership, could only be investigated by that guild and dealt with by that guild, by its own rules.

There were other, more detailed, provisions in that Assassins’ Guild charter, and there were peculiar ones, too, in the regulation of other guilds, and also in privileges granted the residents of Shejidan, to have their own officials, independent of any clan.

It was a tremendous amount of power the aiji let flow out of his hands.

But it also meant the aiji in Shejidan gained the support of the city and all the guilds, and now outvoted any several regional lords.

And from that time, the Assassins, freed of political pressure, became not only the law enforcement of the aishidi’tat, but the check and balance on every legal system, the unassailable integrity at the heart of any aiji’s rule.

The new principle of guild recruitment across clan and regional lines had an unintended consequence. It brought ideas into contact with other ideas, and fostered a flowering of arts and skills, invention and innovation—a cross-pollination that within a few years ended one major cause of wars. Even the domestic staffs that served a clan lord might be from different clans, different regions, and different philosophies, all working together.

It was, in that sense, an idyllic era of growth, discovery, and change—with occasional breaches and dissonances, true—but the clan feuds grew fewer, and more often bloodless, to the wonder of those who thought in the old ways, and distrusted the new.

There were two exceptions.

There had once been a great power in the southern ocean, which had conquered and colonized the Marid before the Great Wave had destroyed all the seaboard cities on the Southern Island. The Marid, of a culture separate from the north, had been reaching for the west coast before the petal sails had begun to fall . . . and while it had cooperated with the aishidi’tat during the War of the Landing and remained officially a member after the Treaty was signed, it refused to allow what it called the Shejidani guilds to make any assignments in the Marid—and it did not have all the guilds. It maintained its own recruitment and training centers for the Assassins, the Treasurers, the Merchants, the Artisans, the Kabiuteri, and the Builders, as well as some unique to their region. The five clans of the Marid united only infrequently, maintained their seats in the legislature of the aishidi’tat, and their disputes frequently resorted to warfare among themselves.

The Eastern Association, headed by Malguri from the time of the War of the Landing, was the second isolate entity, a vast territory walled off from the west by the continental divide, and by the storms of the Eastern Ocean. Its small clans and its three cultures had united with the West for the first time in the face of the threat from the heavens. But after the Treaty, as before, Easterners hunted, fished, and worked crafts, never having formed the guilds that were so important in the rest of the world.

They were, however, fierce fighters, and one guild had gotten a toehold in the East during the War of the Landing—the Assassins. They had organized their own training, their own guild hall, and ran their own operation in the East during the War. The Eastern Assassins’ Guild affiliated itself with the Guild in Shejidan. It allowed certain of their members to be assigned by the Guild in Shejidan—but allowed no outsiders to come in. They were good, they were impeccably honest, they were in high demand because of their reputation, and recruitment was easy because of the general poverty of the East. But the East was otherwise separate from the guild system of the aishidi’tat . . . until Ilisidi, aiji in Malguri, was courted by the aiji in Shejidan.

Ilisidi-aiji brought a great deal to the marriage. She joined the vast territory of the East to the aishidi’tat. She had her own opinions, and voiced them, and being widowed, she continued to voice them in support of a list of causes including opposition to human presence, opposition to industrial encroachment, support for the environment, and concern for the unresolved west coast situation in the regions facing Mospheira. She maintained a considerable and independent bodyguard, larger than any other lord in the East or the west, and when widowed, she refused to give up her young son to the aiji’s maternal grandfather.

She maintained control of the Bujavid, made herself aiji-regent, since she did not succeed in having the aishidi’tat accept her as aiji in fact—and she simultaneously refused to leave Shejidan—while she kept an iron control of Malguri. She continued well into her son’s majority to have her own agenda, and her own very large bodyguard, which by now had extended her authority over the entire East, and which maintained her safety, even in annoying a number of the powers of the aishidi’tat in Shejidan.

Her son, Valasi, finally succeeded in establishing his own authority as aiji in Shejidan, with the help of the Taibeni clan of the Padi Valley, his grandmother’s clan, and others of the north and mountain regions. He was twenty-seven by the time he made his bid for power, and Ilisidi conceded to him, finally, as he gained sufficient votes in the legislature.

Valasi made a contract marriage with a woman of the Taibeni, quickly produced an heir as insurance, and found it convenient to follow that contract marriage with several others, of whatever region he needed to draw more firmly into his hands. This bedroom diplomacy solved several petty wars.

He also gained several important technological advances through his partnership with Wilson-paidhi, including aviation and early television, and in all, had a strong grip on power, while he avoided having his eldest son in the hands of his various wives by putting young Tabini into Ilisidi’s hands and urging the aiji-dowager to keep Tabini safe in her own estate at Malguri.

This kept his minor son and Ilisidi both separate from the center of politics. It kept the center of the aishidi’tat very happy, in the absence of their chief irritant, the aiji-dowager, but Valasi’s concentration on trying to keep power out of Ilisidi’s hands had left the west coast of the aishidi’tat embittered: they viewed Ilisidi as their ally, and her departure to Malguri as Valasi’s definitive refusal to deal with their problems.

The west coast clans, notably the Maschi at Targai and Tirnamardi, had been forced to play a cautious kind of politics, balanced between the Edi tribal people, who supplemented their traditional fishing with piracy and wrecking, and the Marid clans, who saw the west coast as naturally theirs. Marid shipping was the principle target of the piracy. The Marid at times pursued their aims with contract marriages in the west, but all the same, given the resentments of the Edi people, unwilling settlers on that coast, and clan wars inside the Marid, all these moves came to was a generally unsettled condition on the west coast. The north coast fared somewhat better, in the happy relationship of the Gan tribal people with their nearest neighbors, also mariners, on the island of Dur—

But the adjacent Northern Association, while not in the same ferment as the south, and somewhat inland, had its own ambitions. The head of the Northern Association, within the aishidi’tat, was the lord of Ajuri clan . . . and he, pressed by a struggle inside his own clan, arranged the marriage of a young relative, Komaji, to an older lady of the ancient Atageini clan—the Atageini lord being one of the closest allies of the aiji-dowager, and at the moment engaged in politics with Valasi-aiji, in a dispute with their nearest neighbors, the Kadagidi.

It was a marriage of great potential value for Ajuri. It proved, however, unfortunate, in the death of the Atageini lady soon after the birth of a daughter, Damiri, under circumstances some called suspicious. Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini, in a heated confrontation with Komaji, handed over the baby to Komaji, thus breaking the association with Ajuri and terminating the Ajuri hope of having a relative in an influential position within the great Atageini house.

Valasi-aiji managed to patch the quarrel between the Atageini and the Kadagidi, and simultaneously prevented the Atageini lord from Filing Intent on Komaji. He also kept the southwest coast out of the hands of the Marid, and had got control of the aishidi’tat back into western hands and out of the hands of the aiji-dowager.

Valasi was accounted a great aiji.

He died unexpectedly, however, with his heir still short of the twenty-three years of age required to be elected aiji.

The aiji-dowager returned to Shejidan with her grandson Tabini and applied to be elected aiji herself, citing the complex business of the aishidi’tat, particularly in view of increasing traffic with the Mospheirans, who were beginning to colonize neighboring Crescent Island, and who were developing industry without restraint—a matter which left the northwest coast of the continent on the receiving end of the smoke and the effluent.

She repeated her argument that several areas of the aishidi’tat remained a problem, since they had been stop-gap arrangements following the War of the Landing; and she also proposed tough new negotiations with Mospheira about the protection of the environment.

The legislature balked . . . on all points. Regional interests did not want pieces of the post-War treaty reopened, for fear of having their pieces of it reopened. The Marid certainly did not want her solution to the west coast problems, and nobody but Dur cared about smoke that was mostly landing on the Gan peoples, since they had never signed on to the aishidi’tat.

Ilisidi ruled as aiji-regent through the last of Tabini’s minority and through the last years of Wilson-paidhi’s service, aided by a Conservative coalition headed by Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini.

Meanwhile Damiri, now a young woman, disaffected from her Ajuri father and angry, deserted a family outing during the Winter Festivity in Shejidan and presented herself to her influential Atageini uncle, asking to be taken in by Atageini clan. Lord Tatiseigi, who had not sought this, and in fact had only resumed relations with Ajuri at all to further the aiji-dowager’s cause, saw in the young woman her mother in her youth. Being himself childless, and the holder of a great political power which teetered constantly on the edge of disaster because of that—he sent a conciliatory letter to the Ajuri lord, saying that he had found the missing young lady, that she was, typical for the child of a contract marriage, having a crisis of man’chi, and that he would be willing to entertain his young niece until she grew equally dissatisfied with the fantasy of life in her mother’s clan.

In point of fact—the observation was not a lie. But Lord Tatiseigi likely had no intention of letting the young lady grow dissatisfied with her Atageini heritage. She was indisputably of his bloodline, she was pretty, she was intelligent, certainly enterprising, and he needed an heir, which, baji-naji, he had not produced. The Ajuri marriage originally had had that consideration. If she came still with an unfortunate attachment to Komaji of the Ajuri, he judged that a surmountable difficulty. The Atageini were richer, more powerful, had a stronger influence in government, and if the young lady attached man’chi to him rather than to Komaji, he might have what he greatly needed.

So things ran for that year. Tabini passed his twenty-third year.

And finally, mustering an unlikely but temporary coalition of the Taibeni, the Kadagidi, the Marid, the mountain clans, and the Northern Association—Ajuri was all too ready to support anybody but the aiji-dowager, who was Tatiseigi’s political patron—Tabini was elected aiji in his own right.

People feared there might be a confrontation—extending even to armed conflict and the breakup of the aishidi’tat if the aiji-dowager would not relinquish power. Some even feared humans would take advantage of such a conflict and attack the mainland. People were storing food in their houses and the requests to the Assassins’ Guild for hired protection in such an event were reportedly unprecedented.

The aiji-dowager and Tabini-aiji, however, appeared together on that new and still-rare medium, television, as well as radio, and the aiji-dowager congratulated her grandson on his election and wished him well.

The aishidi’tat, and indeed, the human population on Mospheira, breathed a sigh of relief. Wilson-paidhi, notorious for granting Valasi whatever he wanted, to the extent the aiji-dowager feared a human plot to undermine atevi morals, withdrew from public life entirely, in deep disfavor with, now, the new aiji, and wanting only to get off the continent alive.

The aiji-dowager retired to Malguri, with occasional visits to her apartment in the Bujavid, visits notable for their tension and difficulty.

Tabini, as aiji, did as he had said he would do: he dropped the environmental matters—telling his grandmother he would revive that negotiation once Wilson-paidhi finally retired, a decision he was trying to hasten. Tabini also conducted several actions designed to protect the west coast from the Marid’s ambition, including a promise to the Marid to protect their shipping from piracy—and he used that as a pretext for an order increasing the size and armament of the Mospheiran navy, incidentally strengthening his position regarding Mospheira.

He needed the Conservatives on board, and found his opportunity to gain the man’chi of the aiji-dowager’s chief ally, Lord Tatiseigi—when he met Tatiseigi’s niece, Damiri.

Wilson-paidhi retired. Tabini-aiji was far from a technophobe, and had always a deep interest in technology of every sort, different from Valasi-aiji, who had primarily pressed Wilson-paidhi for things his advisors thought might lead to better armaments—wires were one such development. And in this he differed from Ilisidi, who deeply distrusted and despised everything human, and who had mostly treated Wilson-paidhi as an adversary—one she had to force to carry her ecological concerns to human authorities, and whom she considered utterly and foundationally unreliable.

There was had a crisis looming in the Marid, and a report of a suspected fracture in human politics—possibly worse if fed by what Wilson-paidhi could say, once he began to talk to his superiors and possibly to persons less discreet. Nobody had ever trusted Wilson-paidhi. No one could tell whether Wilson-paidhi was having a good day or not. After Wilson-paidhi’s decades on the continent—as a translator—nobody on this side of the straits could tell what Wilson-paidhi thought, what he felt, what he was reporting to his government, whether it was accurate or whether Wilson-paidhi even knew whether it was. No one had been able to tell, especially lately, whether Wilson-paidhi was, in fact, an enemy or outright unbalanced. Some of his actions had given the latter impression . . . and in fact there had been some suggestion that the wisest course for Tabini-aiji to take on Wilson-paidhi’s retirement was to have Wilson-paidhi meet an accident while he was still in reach, and before a madman reached the island enclave and began to report imaginary wrongs and insane plots.

He might be served the wrong sauce at dinner, perhaps, or tread on a waxed marble step. The man was fragile as porcelain, and moved like it. He had no bodyguard. He was entirely undefended, and Tabini-aiji personally doubted the humans on Mospheira would raise too great a fuss about losing a man who was, after all, on his way out and more than a little strange.

Tabini-aiji made up his mind, however, to send Wilson-paidhi home unscathed, and not to begin his new relationship with humans, about whom he was intensely curious, with an assassination—or to initiate a crisis which might have the humans declining to send a paidhi without certain assurances. That could lead to a serious crisis in international affairs, and if he ever granted any assurances, it would set a very bad precedent. A diplomatic standoff would not be a good beginning at all . . . not for an aiji who wanted concessions from humans.

Tabini-aiji even assigned two of his personal bodyguards to get Wilson-paidhi safely onto a plane, against the not-too-unlikely chance that some other power—such as the aiji-dowager—might decide Wilson should not report all the details of his dealings with her.

Tabini-aiji could not be sure what humans would send him: another old stick of a man like Wilson-paidhi. A determined ideologue. A person with an agenda of his own.

He was absolutely delighted to have a paidhi his own age. And one who spoke, more to the point, without writing things down and consulting his dictionary.

Before, however, any sort of relationship could develop, given the situation Tabini-aiji was hearing about on Mospheira, and the situation in the Marid, and his own contemplated relationship with Lord Tatiseigi’s niece—he needed to enlist Ilisidi, who had reared him, not as his potential adversary, but as an ally.

She had retired to Malguri, that ancient fortress, holding occasional meetings with her Eastern neighbors, meetings regarding him, he was sure.

Someone made an attempt on the new paidhi’s life.

Tabini-aiji was far from surprised that would happen. He had assigned the new paidhi bodyguards. He had given the new paidhi a very illegal firearm and seen to it the new paidhi had at least rudimentary instruction in using it and hitting a target.

Tabini-aiji had made himself look as innocent of any harm to the paidhi as he could possibly look, inviting the paidhi to a retreat at the Taibeni lodge he favored for brief holidays, making him a personal guest—which would signal most people inclined to make a move against the paidhi that they would have him to deal with.

His grandmother had, however, said she would like to talk to the new paidhi. His grandmother was undoubtedly expecting Tabini to keep his word and open a discussion with Mospheira about the smoke.

And if there was one person who could breach his grandmother’s private fortress at Malguri—and convince his grandmother that they were dealing with somebody very different from Wilson-paidhi—it was the person about whom she was most curious.

He attached bodyguards—and sent the new paidhi to the aiji-dowager.

He knew his grandmother very well. He had gained her attention.

She knew what her grandson was up to. And she came back to Shejidan of her own will, intensely engaged—suspicious, but engaged. And Bren-paidhi was, for his part, likewise engaged.

That engagement completely changed the political landscape. It drew Lord Tatiseigi, however reluctantly, into Tabini’s camp—which was doubly convenient. The match with Damiri became possible . . . and that was a more than political matter, which could be done with a contract marriage with or without an heir produced. Tabini-aiji wanted Damiri-daja, not as a contract marriage, but in a way lords rarely arranged their relationships, as a lasting marriage and a lifelong ally.

It complicated matters that Damiri had, predictably, had her differences with her uncle Tatiseigi and gone off to her father now and again. Ajuri was a minor clan, and it was the matter of a little unfortunate public attention. He sent Damiri-daja a letter. He sent one to her father and to her uncle. He wanted her to take up residence in Shejidan, with him, he wanted a reconciliation of Ajuri clan with her uncle, and he wanted a formal marriage—

Unwise, his advisors said, pointing out that the Northern Association was not the best bargain on its own, being small and frequently divided into factions, and that Lord Tatiseigi had enemies among the aiji’s strong supporters, some of whom had perfectly eligible daughters for perfectly sensible contract marriages.

Besides, such a strong affiliation with Lord Tatiseigi would smell strongly of his giving in to the aiji-dowager and falling under her control. Damiri-daja’s youthful actions had gained notoriety, and painted her as a creature of flightiness, shallowness, and hot temper.

Tabini-aiji ignored all of the advisors and married her. The quarrels with his wife matched, in reputation, his quarrels with the aiji-dowager—a fact which leaked out by the ancient sources—servants—and not, thankfully, the news services on the television the Conservatives so despised.

As aiji, he did request restrictions on emissions on Mosphei-ra and Crescent Island. He also instituted air traffic control, greatly antagonizing the number-counters, who were powerful especially in certain regions of the aishidi’tat, and powerful among the Conservatives. He clamped down on the Messengers’ Guild, which had developed some internal problems and was under accusation of graft and other misdeeds. He supported regional lords against encroachments by neighbors, stating that land questions had been settled definitively by the charter of the aishidi’tat and he was taking that as the final answer.

He attempted to exert Shejidan’s authority over the Marid, which remained a problem. He established a peaceful relationship with the East, under Ilisidi’s governance of Malguri.

He gained all sorts of minor concessions from the new paidhi and greatly annoyed the Conservatives by sending blueprints of numerous trivial machines to the Scholars’ Guild.

He refused to allow Filing on any monetary matter, until he had had testimony from officials of the Treasurers’ Guild. The Assassins’ Guild protested its own prerogative. He maintained his position, and the rule held.

And he gained Bren-paidhi’s cooperation in increasing his communication with the Mospheiran government, despite the rise of anti-atevi sentiment by certain groups in the island enclave.

iv

<> One reason for the stir among the radical groups on Mospheira was precisely the improved relations between the mainland and Mospheira. The radicals wanted separation, not cooperation—and they were increasingly upset by the paidhi’s actions. They always made their greatest political gains by alarming the public, and elements of that party took to the airwaves with a campaign of rumor mixed with sufficient facts to make people uneasy. The paidhi at times ran a certain risk in his visits to Mospheira, but Mospheiran tradition forbade any overt display of protection.

v

<> Things were going fairly well, however . . . until without any warning the starship Phoenix arrived at the space station. The Mospheirans suddenly found the authority of the ship over their heads and the Phoenix captains found that all the humans that should be on the station were down on the planet.

Tabini-aiji suddenly doubted every assurance the Mospheiran government had given him.

vi

<> Phoenix made radio contact with Mospheira. Liberals were extremely anxious—having no wish to have another argument with a ship authority which had no understanding of them or the atevi.

Radical groups on Mospheira were literally dancing in the streets. They wanted instant access to space—they called it rescue—and they wanted Phoenix to threaten the aishidi’tat and remove the Mospheiran government.

The Phoenix captains, being no fools, took a look at the cities on both sides of the strait. Their prosperity surpassed any expectation, but their cultural difference was clear, even from space. Phoenix received a rational though cautious response from the Mospheiran government, asking who was in command and what their condition was and whether they needed help.

The ship-aijiin overheard the demands of the radicals in their monitoring. They saw nothing on the planet to indicate hostilities except in the radicals themselves.

The government of Mospheira was certainly deeply perturbed at the entry of a new power into their affairs, but they were reassured that Phoenix accepted the situation, was not in imminent distress, and was anxious not to involve itself in local politics.

Phoenix was upset that the station was in serious decay—the captains were very anxious to see it operating again. Their interests, they assured Mospheira, were only in their ship and its safety. Phoenix wanted a port.

The Mospheiran public, and in fact the government, remained a little fearful that the ship might try to become their government.

That was what the radicals wanted to happen. They saw a return to space as everything they wanted . . . including access to advanced weaponry.

The Mospheiran government was equally determined that the people it should send to space, if it could send anyone, would be those most worried about the ship’s intentions, the most determined to secure Mospheiran control of the station.

By no means did they want to let the radical groups get into direct association with the Phoenix crew.

vii

<> We were highly upset with the sudden turn of events, and suspicion still ran deep. Bren-paidhi assured Tabini-aiji and the aiji-dowager that the Mospheiran government had not expected the return of the ship, and that Mospheira was determined to gain control of the station, preventing the ship from doing so. Mospheira, he said, was determined to prevent the radicals getting to space or laying hands on advanced technology.

He said further that the only way to preserve atevi rights in this situation was for atevi to speak to the ship-folk directly, invite them to negotiate, and make it clear that the local authority was the aishidi’tat, not Mospheira. They should in fact offer to ally with the Mospheirans in their demands for complete control of the station, and be prepared to share that authority with them.

There was one drawback to everybody’s plans, of course, and it was an old one. None of the starship pilots knew how to fly in an atmosphere. None of the atevi or Mospheiran pilots, who well knew how to fly in atmosphere and gravity, knew how to fly in space.

There were no ship-construction facilities at the mothballed station, which had no population and no workers.

And critical natural resources necessary to build a spacecraft were available only on the mainland. Mospheira had been trading for them—but the mainland could cut that off cold at any time.

Phoenix had the blueprints—the complete library in the data storage of the starship. But atevi had the mines, the factories, and the resources.

Negotiation and unprecedented cooperation between Mospheira and the mainland built a small fleet of shuttles.

Negotiation with the Mospheirans and Phoenix gave half the station to atevi, half to humans.

Tabini would ultimately set an atevi lord, myself, Lord Geigi of Maschi clan, to be in charge of the half of the station.

But before that day came a great upheaval.

The technology that came with the shuttle plans brought massive change to the economy of both Mospheira and the mainland. It required new materials, computers, new plants—it brought all manner of things that poured new goods into the hands of Mospheirans. Of course denial of access agitated the radicals of Mospheira, who most wanted to be lords of space—a situation neither the liberal Mospheirans nor any ateva ever wanted to have happen.

But on the mainland, among us, the shock was as much cultural as economic. For two hundred years the paidhiin had carefully brought technology onto the mainland—items like telephones, and, lately, airplanes, plastics, and transistors. These were benign in most ways—beneficial, unless one asked the older folk.

Then the space program poured new materials and new concepts down from the sky, advice telling us where to mine, with new ways of doing so, telling us how to manufacture, and offering us modern ceramics, and even dropping down certain materials from space.

All this challenged us philosophically. Traditional numbers-causality and the mediaeval concept of astronomy met starfaring equations and a universe that clearly did not consist of a clockwork sky dome and an ether that surrounded the sun and planets. That realization upset the Conservatives . . . and the paidhi-aiji had to open a clerical office simply to answer the letters from people asking, for instance, if a shuttle taking off would let the atmosphere escape.

And there was the politics of it all, which fell on Tabini-aiji. Some districts where the ecological impact would be minimal or which had transportation advantages were awarded manufacturing facilities, rousing resentments from those equally deserving who did not get such facilities—and of course there were areas that wanted none of it, and bitterly resented the economic advantage to those who had such industry.

The fractures in atevi society began to multiply.

On both sides of the straits, people found the whole world changing.

Then the ship-captains admitted the existence of another colony out in deep space, their Reunion Station, which they had never mentioned. This was especially disturbing to the Mospheirans. Phoenix next confessed that their reason for coming back to the Earth now was a need to put the Reunion population somewhere.

Why? the world asked.

Then Phoenix made a third and terrible admission: they had, they said, met hostile strangers in space, who might attack Reunion.

Some on both sides of the strait were inclined to tell Phoenix that they regretted the distress of these people very much, but they were not going to give permission to bring the Reunioners to this world.

Then Phoenix made yet another admission, the infelicitous fourth—that, in its own library, Reunion Station had the location of the atevi sun, and if Reunion fell—the Earth of the atevi might see these hostile strangers arrive here.

viii

<> In the urgency of building the shuttle fleet, the mainland had seen change after change, wealth had poured into places of poor land that had not had wealth, and society had become increasingly unstable, but the alternative—having decisions taken in the heavens without atevi participation—was insupportable.

Tabini-aiji had already pushed the citizenry to the limits of their patience when he found out what the ship-folk had confessed. He was angry. And now he was suspicious that neither atevi nor Mospheirans had been given the truth. He decided to take strong action to find out the situation in space, and be sure that things were as the Phoenix captains said they were. He charged Bren-paidhi, who knew humans, and the aiji-dowager, who would not be put off with lies, to go find out the truth. And because he now knew that the news of the ship’s deception would bring his household increasingly under threat, he sent his son, both to learn the new knowledge, to understand humans, and to be taught by the woman who had taught him.

It was a desperate dice-throw, with no knowledge of the scale of the universe, or the fact that the ship could not communicate across that distance, or how hard and dangerous it would be.

ix

<> Tabini-aiji made a decision that shocked the aishidi’tat and revised all calculations. He set all his scattered household out of reach of his enemies: his son, the aiji-dowager, who had ruled the aishidid’tat more than once, and the paidhi-aiji, who could understand humans.

He had also set a technologically adept atevi population in the heavens, governed by Lord Geigi, who had the ability to reach the Earth if he were given a target and an order.

If he himself were to die, Tabini-aiji reasoned—his grandmother and his son would gain power in the heavens, come back, and take back the aishidi’tat. If they failed to return, then Geigi and the atevi in the heavens would declare an aijinate, contact reliable lords on the Earth, and reshape the aishidi’tat in whatever way it had to be shaped to preserve atevi control of the world.

Tabini-aiji did not, however, intend to die. He had reduced his household by two. He became more cautious, was far less frequently in transit, far less exposed to threats from unstable persons. He had not been advised of any Filings against his supporters, nothing of the sort, even though he daily expected it. He had begun to suspect something was being organized, but if it was, it was not behaving in any legitimate way. It had the flavor of the Marid—but the Marid was troubled by none of the issues that troubled the rest of the aishidi’tat.

He asked the Guild to investigate, and they reported only the usual persons, the usual statements, the usual activities, none of which reached to Shejidan. He relied on the information he was getting from the Guild—and from the ship-paidhi Yolande Mercheson—who may have failed to understand one quiet warning, from a source who did not sign the letter.

The ship left the station. The aiji-dowager, the heir, and the paidhi-aiji went with it, not to return for two years.

But—perhaps it was the note given the ship-paidhi that had alarmed the conspirators, or perhaps the indications that the aiji was taking precautions and might discover who they were: rumors grew more frequent than fact. Some believed humans had kidnapped the dowager and the heir. Some said the ship had never left and they all were dead.

Within the year, the conspirators moved. They intended to assassinate Tabini-aiji in his residence. They discovered he was not there. They correctly guessed he might have gone to Taiben, and they attempted to strengthen their assault there—but that entailed some confusion. Murini of the Kadagidi had already proclaimed himself aiji, and Tabini was not dead. The attacks were simultaneous, to control all means to reach the heavens: the shuttles, the airport at Shejidan, the dish at Mogari-nai. The conspirators seized the shuttles being serviced. And they seized the radio station. They believed that Lord Geigi had thus been removed as a threat, with no means to replace the shuttles or to threaten the world, because they believed there were no mines in the heavens and that there would be no communication with the heavens because they held Mogari-nai.

Tabini and Damiri narrowly escaped from Taiben, but their bodyguards did not.

Rather than go to the neighboring Atageini estate and bring Lord Tatiseigi into danger, too—they crossed the Kadagidi’s own territory and used the skills Tabini-aiji had learned in Malguri to hunt and survive, making no contacts at all for a year.

The conspirators were hunting them everywhere they could think of. The last place the Kadagidi expected Tabini-aiji to be was on their own borders.

The atevi on the space station meanwhile began to plot what they could do with only one shuttle, and there was a question of whether to land it on Mospheira and send a mission to contact Tabini-aiji.

But Lord Geigi received repeated assurances from the humans that the aiji-dowager, the heir, and Bren Cameron were going to come back on a certain date, or close to it . . . and he argued against risking the one shuttle still in their control. He instead communicated with Mospheira, and with the assistance of Shugart-nadi and other humans, began to build communications and to position certain relay stations, made fearsome and self-defending, to unsettle the regime.

x

<> Phoenix had reached the Reunioners—and ended up facing an alien species, the kyo, bent on destruction of the human station which they viewed as an invasion. Nobody on Reunion had a clue how to open communication with foreigners of any sort. Neither, as happened, had the kyo themselves any concept of negotiation with outsiders. But having aboard Phoenix two species in cooperation, a skilled translator and diplomat, as well as a revered elder—the aiji-dowager; a child—the aiji’s heir; and ship’s personnel who had been living with atevi for a year—all this was persuasive. Two species working together as we did completely amazed the kyo. The kyo were willing to ask questions, particularly by the cooperation of a kyo who had come to communicate with the aiji’s young son. From this small beginning, each side found out what the other wanted.

It was agreed the Reunioners would be removed and transported out of kyo territory.

Phoenix did this, partly by force, partly by agreement of the Reunion population. The library was stripped, the population was removed, and Phoenix set out for the Earth of the atevi. The young gentleman, the aiji’s heir, achieved an education far beyond what the aiji envisioned in sending him: he dealt with the kyo authorities, became acquainted with the ship-aijiin, and also with several young Reunioner-folk, while pursuing his other studies under the personal supervision of the aiji-dowager—a teaching both traditional and thorough.

xi

<> Phoenix returned to the world, and in the same hour the aiji-dowager learned what had happened in her absence, that Tabini-aiji had been overthrown.

She did not delay. Lord Geigi urged her to all possible speed, fearing that Earth-based telescopes would show the ship docked at the station, and that once their enemies on the planet knew that the ship was back, they would expect the shuttle and know who might be on it.

The aiji-dowager, the aiji’s son, and Bren-paidhi took the shuttle which Lord Geigi had kept ready for their return. They landed on Mospheira, then with Mospheiran assistance, crossed onto the continent and went to Taiben and with Taibeni help, went on to Atageini territory.

Lord Tatiseigi opened his doors to them. Murini-aiji had instilled terror in the citizenry, but Lord Tatiseigi aided them with all his resources as the news of their return spread.

Tabini-aiji and Damiri-daja were not far away. They received word and arrived at Lord Tatiseigi’s estate.

Terror might have aided Murini at the first, but it had gained nothing but resentment from the citizenry. Once word spread that the aiji and his household were alive, that the humans had kept their word, and that the station aloft and the humans on Mospheira were indeed their allies, the people gained the courage to rise up in their hundreds of thousands and support Tabini-aiji and the aiji-dowager.

Unfortunately it was easier to restore the aijinate than to undo the damage Murini had done.

1. Geigi’s narrative is appended: see the Table of Contents.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17