Pretender

We have not seen it. We have not influenced it. We have not forbidden or suggested any part of it. Judge!”

Tabini swept an unexpected hand sidelong, toward Bren.

And stepped aside.

It was his moment, his turn to speak. He hadn’t his notes. Jago quietly walked into range and gave him the computer case, and said, quietly, “We have taken the images, nandi, from the printing and Tano is prepared to show them at your request.”

Thank God. Thank Jago and Tano. He walked to the center-point of the dais, the speaker’s point, and had the presence of mind to bow to the aiji, to the dowager, the heir, and independently to the hasdrawad at their desks and the tashrid sitting down in the well, all the while his mind was juggling the pros and cons of trying to open up his computer and bring up the records, or just get to it before the audience grew restless.

He set the computer case on the ground against his leg. Bowed again, to gain time to collect his thoughts, and to try to focus his wits on the numerical intricacies and pitfalls of courtly expression.

Setting up—was impossible. He would lose them.

“Nadiin, nandiin,” he began, trying to overcome a little buzz of comment from the chamber. “The case for or against the paidhi-aiji rests on whether or not I have properly served the aiji, the aishidi’tat, and the people of this continent, and the report is in your hands; one need not repeat it verbatim. We never misled you: We reported to the aiji our apprehensions that without atevi presence in the heavens, decisions would be taken by humans aloft and on the planet, decisions that would profoundly affect your welfare.” The buzz simply would not die. He had grave doubts that people at the back of the chamber were hearing him, and it set him off his rhythm. He wished he had delayed to turn the computer on.

He wished he had some control over the visual presentation that he could evoke.

“Nadiin, nandiin,” he said again, and restored a little quiet. “The paidhi-aiji urged extreme and upsetting haste; he by no means denies that. And in fact an action was about to be undertaken, since the ship-aiji Ramirez had preserved a secret that came out only at his death: That humans in the far depths of the ether had contacted foreigners, and that they had abandoned a populated station out in the depths that would be in dire danger of foreigner hostilityc that there was great danger of foreigners taking that station and deciphering records which would lead them to attack this world.”

The buzz rose up again, and someone shouted out, as the hasdrawad would, with speakers of lesser rank, “This we know! Go well beyond this, paidhi!”

“Nadiin.” He bowed, to cover his confusion.

“And why risk the heir on this adventure?” someone shouted.

Another murmur, loud and long.

A movement brushed against him, unheard in the racket. The young gentleman himself had gotten to his side, and what the dowager or Tabini or Damiri was doing in the background, Bren had no idea. Cajeiri could move like lightning when he was motivated.

But it was no time for a gesture of the heir’s solidarity with his influence—it was the worst thing.

“Because if we had stayed here in our apartment we might be dead,” Cajeiri shouted. “Because Murini would have killed all of us if he could reach us. My father wanted me to go out and learn everything I could about the humans, to see and to make sure they were telling the truth! And it was indeed the truth! We saw what happened—we saw nand’ Bren deal with the station, we saw him rescue the people, we saw it all, we talked to the foreign humans, so did my great-grandmother, and we know nand’ Bren is not a liar.

He did everything my father asked and saved all sorts of people!”

It was a shocking declaration, particularly from an eight-year-old. It was, one suspected—except the lapses in grammar, the mingled negatives and the confused symmetry of numbers—the dowager’s own words. That young voice shocked the chamber at least enough to diminish the buzz of exchanges, probably while adults added the items and took into account whether the three-part we was the singular, the regal we, or the number of persons acting.

The lord of Dur stood up, in the tashrid seats. “Did the paidhi not just go to the aiji’s defense?” Dur shouted out, and Bren’s heart went thump and the warmth drained from his face.

Go to the aiji’s defense. Never mind the assassin had been aiming at him.

Go to the aiji’s defense—like the mecheiti after the herd leader, fences and barriers be damned. Go to the leader—like everything native to the world. He’d outright flattened the aiji of the aishidi’tat —he’d afflicted Tabini’s dignity and simultaneously made Tabini a target in the process. But Dur’s statement produced a racket of debate in the chamber that did not die away.

And what did he then say if the assembly took that move of his for proof of that deep atevi emotion? Use as fact the misapprehension paidhiin had spent generations denying, that there was, after all, an atevi sense of man’chi operating in a human? Claim that the two species felt things exactly the same, when what he’d felt most was a desperate sense of priorities, a visceral outrage that one shot could take out the one man who could knit everything together?

The War of the Landing had started on such a convenient misconception, allowed to bubble along in the subtext.

“Nand’ Bren came to rescue me!” Cajeiri shouted out at the assembly. “And nand’ Bren saved everybody in the foreign station!

And we met new foreigners who were angry at us, and we ended up talking to them on their own ship, because nand’ Bren rescued one of them, too! His name is Prakuyo an Tep and he is very respectful of my great-grandmother!”

There was the matter, inside out and hind end foremost, but the new item in the mix created two breaths of bewildered silence, in which first Tabini-aiji and then Damiri moved near their son. Then, with a crack and a measured tap of her cane, Ilisidi rose and came forward to stand by Cajeiri, a solid front, the entire leading family of the Ragi clan.

He bowed, clearly become an extraneous particle in this line, willing quietly to cede the floor to authority and postpone any explanation while atevi sorted out their own business.

Bang! went Ilisidi’s cane, silencing every murmur, and every head in the chamber turned toward the dais, in a moment of breathless silence. Bren respectfully froze in place.

“A fool would urge us to stay out of matters in the heavens and let humans dictate such things as they understand,” Ilisidi said. “A fool would argue we could build the necessary machines with no fleeting disturbance to our social schedules, not a ripple in our occupations and our attention to the numbers of this world. But we are not fools, and we know the one is not wise and the other is not possible. No, this generation is not a generation of fools! It has sacrificed! This generation has secured its command over this world, an authority which the ship-aijiin and even the Presidenta of Mospheira acknowledge. The ship-aijiin appointed a ship-paidhi to consult with Tabini-aiji on all matters, acknowledging that nothing of value comes from this world but that the aiji in Shejidan sends it.

Were you aware of that? But the rebel attacked and tried to kill her, as he attacked the aiji himself. Are you aware that the foreigners we have met in the farthest distance of the ether have acknowledged the authority of my grandson as governing, binding, and safeguarding our world? If Murini failed to tell you such things, why, it was surely not because he would wish to conceal the aiji’s success from you. It was because he, being only a shortsighted upstart and ignorant of every needful activity of educated governance, had appointed no observers aloft. He had constituted no authority in the heavens, he wielded no authority in affairs of dire import to the world, and he not only proved utterly ignorant of the numbers of the wider world, he even failed to govern the continent or satisfy the reasonable requests of its regions and associations, sowing only discord and jealousy, and attending to not even the proper benefits of his own region! Bad numbers, false numbers, nandiin, nadiin, inevitably lead to wider error. Baji-naji, the universe does not tamely bear a fool on its back! We, on the other hand, know the numbers that do exist, numbers as wide as the distance we have traveled. More, we have numbers reported by foreigners who have voyaged still farther, into territory as yet unexamined and unaccounted—numbers contained within the records of our voyage. We have reported all these numbers to the Astronomer, whose records his devoted students rescued from fools bent on destroying themc” A mild buzz, quickly suppressed by a crack of the cane. “Ask the paidhi-aiji why they would so urgently wish to destroy these numbers.”

God. Bren’s mind went blank, utterly blank, in that second.

Then snapped back into focus. He took a step forward, found breath enough to make himself heard over the murmur.

“Truth,” he said, “is in those numbers, nadiin, nandiin, and those numbers clearly favor the government which has led atevi through these delicate points of balance. Peace is possible, through the outcome of a mission planned by Tabini-aiji and supported by this body. Knowledge brings to this world the true numbers of the universe, and baji-naji, the universe still orders itself, caring nothing for fools. You have the greatest opportunity and the greatest danger. The ship-humans, through a series of mistakes, had made these foreigners their enemies. The dowager and the heir themselves gained the respect of these foreigners, who are encouraged to know that their kinsman is in charge of an association of such wide-reaching power, and they have ignored the offense of the ship-humans, concluding the error is now corrected.

They may well visit this world to pay respect to such an authority.

One has every confidence they will be met by a strong and impressive association which will assure the integrity of its own territory. Nadiin, nandiin, you have the report of the voyage.

Images are provided within the document.”

Now let the murmur loose. Now let legislators look at one another and flip through the pages of the document, but before they could get to the back, where those pictures werec Seize the moment, Bren said to himself, and aloud: “Tano.”

A breath later the chandeliers dimmed and two of Ilisidi’s men, as smoothly as one could wish, brought a screen up on the dais, set it beside the aiji and his household, and unfolded it.

Light flared, then, and an image flashed up which drew a collective gasp: Prakuyo an Tep, gray and huge—and emaciated, as one would not realize, who did not know the kyo. Difficult to apply scale to the first images, until the picture of an improbable afternoon tea, and that huge, gray face bent close to Cajeiri’s, in every intimation of benevolent exchange.

Murmuring in the chamber became a racket. Someone stood up, shouting: “What is this creature?” And someone else shouted: “Quiet!”

“That is nand’ Prakuyo,” Cajeiri’s high voice declared, its pitch rising over the thunderous murmur. “And he is now an associate of ours!”

One was ever so glad photos of Gene and Irene and Artur were not in the file, too, Bren thought distractedly, feeling the whole business suddenly spinning out of control. A human voice could not carry over that racket. His carefully prepared presentation went to the four winds. But Cajeiri’s light voice rose above the racket.

“Prakuyo was a prisoner of the wicked station-aiji, but nand’ Bren went in and got him out. Nand’ Bren figured out how to talk to him, and so did I! Nand’ Prakuyo is very respectful of my great-grandmother. All the kyo are!”

Bang! went the cane. “There is a tradition among the kyo,” Ilisidi interjected, a calm dose of orderly information, at which Bren’s racing heart somewhat caught its beat, “of entirely decent respect for elders. More to the point, nandiin, nadiin, the kyo confess to us they are not the only foreigners in the region. This is the primary reason they were so very ill at ease when humans came trespassing in their territory. They are themselves not adept in dealing with foreigners. They do not know how to conduct reasonable relations in such situations. Neither, in fact, do the ship-humans, who have never dealt with any authority but their own. Our expertise, and that of the Mospheirans, in the manner in which we share territory, was very useful in sorting out these previously mismanaged relations, and our skills may prove even more valuable in the future.” Another murmur from the assembly, and Ilisidi’s cane banged the hollow floor like thunder. “Like it or not, nadiin, the universe contains other people of independent will and means.

We have met two others. If we had not put our noses out there, the kyo still would have found us, sooner or later, and what then would they have found? Persons adept and capable in the wider universe, or not? Would they, in their inept management of foreign matters, have fallen on us with weapons instead of the humans’ petal sails?

We have suffered one ill-planned incursion and dealt with it in long experience. We have become much wiser, since. Let us deal with the next encounter at the safe distance of our station, where we and our human residents can establish our authority, take sensible charge of negotiations, and keep human fools and atevi fools—and we each have them in numbers!—from dealing with these new foreigners, who doubtless have fools of their own. They will not land, as humans did. We have that assurance. The kyo will not seek residence even on our station. They may indeed visit us to express their sentiments of respect, and it is imperative that they and territories beyond them be met with the unshakeable and reasonable authority they expect, or they will call us liars. Their arrival may come within the year, or not for several years. But come it will!”

“Indeed,” Tabini said, himself somewhat taken aback by the vehement direction of Ilisidi’s address, a tone that had utterly shocked the chamber to silence. On the screen, where images had stopped cycling, was the image of Prakuyo and two of his kind, two very well-fed kyo in their robes, entities who could not possibly be mistaken for atevi or human.

“We have said,” Ilisidi declared. “So has our great-grandson.”

Thus stifling any more commentary from Cajeiri, who, with Ilisidi’s hand on his shoulder, was obliged to keep silent.

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said after a breath, completely off his balance, “I have by no means finished the detail of my report, but the dowager seems to have covered the essence of it very well.”

“The paidhi may usefully confirm it,” Tabini said. “Take the floor, nand’ paidhi.”

Bren bowed—shaken, and with a flood of other, more dangerous knowledge racing through his brain, knowledge that Ilisidi had only brushed by, in that remark about fools in abundance. He had no wish to complicate Ilisidi’s good effect by telling the assembly that there was trouble out in deep space, but he had no wish to compromise the future by letting the assembly assume a peace that was not true, either.

“Nadiin, nandiin,” he said, standing on the speaker’s spot, and bowing. “It is a wide and complex universe, the numbers of which we have begun to know with far greater accuracy. It was a wise decision that sent the aiji’s son out to see and understand these things—it was a very wise decision, because the aiji’s heir now is favorably regarded by these individuals. We have made a fair beginning of dealing. There is word of other foreigners, unknown to us—” A small murmur that quickly faded as he continued, “—but there will always be foreigners. The universe is very large. The more we know, as a world, the more authority we have.”

Ruling the solar system posed a decided problem to a governing body at this very hour struggling to rule its south coast, a governing body with only earth-to-orbit transport at its disposal, and with part of its citizenry still debating the wisdom of being in space at all. He knew what he was dealing with. He saw the shocked looks, heard the stubborn murmur of discontent that wished to take all the unhappy surprises the universe had handed them and lay them at the paidhi’s door.

“The only conveniently habitable world in the solar system is yours,” he said. “Human authority in the neighborhood will leap up to speak for itself if you do not claim your own sovereignty over any further visitation, and one humbly urges the aishidi’tat to assert overriding authority in the very near future and see the shuttles flying again. One has no doubt that Mospheirans and ship-humans alike will respect an atevi assertation of rule, since each has found atevi authority reasonable and sure in their representations. When other foreigners pass through the heavens, as they will, as the aiji-dowager has so clearly put it, meet a sensible, strong authority on the atevi station; they will deal with the aishidi’tat up above, and not intrude onto this world.” For one dizzy moment a weary brain simply whited out, all order gone from his thoughts as he lost his place. The dowager had taken over his speech and done it very well, covering the point that should come next. He could only complicate matters by going on. He needed simply to end it and sit down before he undid everything. “Wherein the paidhi’s haste to bring atevi into space has caused distress to districts and individuals, the paidhi accepts all blame. The aiji will be your source of justice. As for my report, you have it in your hands.”

It seemed enough to say, if lame. He bowed, backed off the speaker’s circle, and for a moment was so disoriented in the dark and glare of the projector and the screen he had doubts where his chair was. He blinked, found a hazy navigation point, and backed a few steps toward it, casting a human shadow on the image of the heir and Prakuyo an Tep at tea.

Tabini took the speaker’s circle.

“This assembly will stand adjourned until the morning,” Tabini said. “We will all read the paidhi’s report.”

Thus preserving the aiji’s impartiality and a deniable distance: so Jago had said. Bren located his chair, but only in time to stand in front of it as others rose. The assembly in the shadows rose, bowed, and the murmur this time was subdued and dim in his ears.

He had not done at all what he hoped. From the attempted assassination to the dowager’s taking over the core of the information, things had not followed the script, and he had lost all his threads, absolutely lost them. But maybe it had gone well enough, except his ill-conceived dive at Tabini.

The dowager went for a few words with her grandson. Cajeiri went to talk with his mother. The chamber lights went up. Bren hesitated, then decided to collect his security about him and get back to the dowager’s apartment as quietly and quickly as he could.

“Paidhi.” Tabini spotted him, and crossed the small distance in a couple of strides, to which he could only bow and try to explain his actions.

“Aiji-ma.”

Tabini seized his arm in an atevi-strength grip. “We will remember,” Tabini said, which was what one said in accepting a personal debt; and then it dawned on him Tabini meant his presumptuous dive for the floor, that atevi instinct could only construe as great devotion, the most charitable construction Tabini could put on matters—knowing the paidhi had been the target. But it was still a human reason: Tabini of all people should know that; and he couldn’t have Tabini starting to think otherwise, not even in the most secret and illogical depth of his heart.

“Aiji-ma,” was all he dared say, and bowed desperately, and found himself let go and excused. He wanted only to get back to the dowager’s apartment where he could sit and reassemble the pieces of the last hour. He was losing the coherent memory of what he had said to the assembly. He hadn’t yet examined his sense of atevi logic to figure how the blowup within Tabini’s guard could be construed by the aiji’s enemies. He only knew it was going to create controversy, particularly as the paidhi’s guard had taken over, along with the dowager’s.

Who were eastern.

Wait until that hit the news.

He bowed his way to the edge of the group, found Jago and Tano with him, and said, “We should go back to the apartment, nadiin-ji.

Quickly.”

“Nandi,” Jago said, never questioning the decision, not explaining where Banichi and Algini were at the moment. Bren had the notion of business in progress, business likely regarding the would-be assassin, and deep inquiries among security that had led far outside the chamber and possibly all the way to the Assassins’ Guild—where Algini had a word or two to say.

But best, he thought, that he should clear the scene and render matters less complicated for his staff. There was a problem, a serious problem working somewhere in the vicinity, no question of that, and Jago and Tano needed to get him to safety and get back here to support Banichi and Algini in whatever was going on.

He headed for the side door, kept quiet the entire way out of the assembly and into the small service hall, where a few bodyguards waited, notably Ilisidi’s young men.

Safe, then, he said to himself, drawing an easier breath. Trust Ilisidi’s men, yes, absolutely. Just let them live through the next dozen hours. Let Algini’s allies win inside the Guild.

And let him get a phone link to the Island, and a relay to Jase up on the station, to explain the good and the bad of the current situation. Rumors had to be flying from the capital to the coast by now. He wasn’t sure how long he might stay in office—or stay alive, he wasn’t sure what might develop if he never got to explain to Mospheira or to Lord Geigi exactly what had gone on, before it grew more tangled than it was, and before they had to send another paidhi over here to try to deal with a general discontent with humans.

They exited quickly into the main hall, headed for the lift. The carpeted, beautiful hall outside had a gathering crowd of legislators and their staffers, particularly those of the tashrid, seeking their own apartments upstairs as the legislature left the chambers. Such a traffic was nothing unusual after a session. It was not what he wanted to encounter. He’d hoped to have beaten it in his retreat.

“The paidhi,” someone exclaimed, and heads turned. “Nand’ paidhi,” someone addressed him, and that address he was obliged to acknowledge: The speaker, the man coming toward him, was the lord of Dur, to whom he owed ever so much.

“Nandi.” He bowed, and by then others were pressing on him with enthusiastic protestations, Jago and Tano establishing a line of retreat to the lift car by the reach of arms toward that wall.

“It was extraordinary, extraordinary,” Dur said to him, as he heard the lift door open. Other legislators pressed close about him, even touched him, all positive, thus far. The lift made its departure, most of the crowd blocked from reaching it.

“Baji-naji,” he murmured to Dur’s enthusiasm, that eternal expression of events in imbalance. “One expects security to be quick in investigation of the matter—one fears now it was aimed at my person, and one was entirely wrong to have moved near the aiji—”

Not to mention flattening him to the floor.

“But well done,” the graying lord of Maidin said—a woman who had supported the aiji in critical votes, and the expression found several voices in approbation, and more hands actually touched him, a strange and uneasy sensation among atevi, who did not touch, except among intimates. It was eerily like an atevi family occasion, as if, among these diverse lords some sort of current was running that he could not tap or quite understand—an intoxication that led ordinarily dignified atevi he did not even know to brush hands against his back, his shoulders, and, stranger still, led his bodyguard to allow it. Anyone could approach him, anyone could touch him, and the lord of Hajidin actually gripped his arm with bruising force, and let it go again.

“Nandiin,” he said, shaken by the pain. It dawned on him that, the aim of the threat aside, he alone had been in position to do what many in the hall would have instinctively done. He had carried out their instinct to protect their aiji, no matter his own, human-driven reasons for doing it, and the motion was what counted with them. That was both the trap and the fact of the case.

He had acted for them. It was that tricky word muidi, that almost meant gratitude, and somewhat meant surrogate, God help him—Jago and Tano didn’t extract him not only because this crowd posed no threat, it had a political dimension. It wasn’t forgiveness they offered the paidhi; atevi were never keen on forgiveness, in their own pragmatic way, having no trust in its future, given their own passions. It was acknowledgment of a feeling they felt that did have a future, a sentiment of belonging and identity, and he was utterly awash in it, carried along by it—literally, as the crowd’s pressure moved him away from the lift and into a corner.

Lord Tatiseigi appeared in the mix, arm in a sling, the lord of the Atageini capturing his person from his other possessive protector.

There was a fierce strength in the old man’s good hand, at least enough for a human, and it closed on his arm.

“Lord Bren,” the old man announced, “the guest of the Atageini, the protector of the heir—” Lord Tatiseigi let no one forget that heredity. “And clearly of the household of the aiji-dowager, our ally and associate, and of the Ragi of the center. The Padi Valley Association stands firm in its solidity. The upstart who has troubled his own house and usurped rightful authority within the Padi region has been refused admittance. Let fools receive him, and let the Associations of the center—”

“And west!” someone shouted, while the blood left Bren’s hand and his bodyguard found no way to rescue him. Now the younger lord of the Ajuri had shown up and pushed in.

“—and the west!” the old man said, not missing a beat, nor surrendering him to Damiri’s father, “and the east and the north and the south, besides! Let us gather up the power and deal with traitors as they deserve! Approbation, we say, approbation for the safe return of the aiji-dowager and the heir, our great-grandnephew, and our support of the Ragi aiji and his allies forever!”

The old bastard, Bren thought, wondering if his arm was going to break; but the Atageini lord had cannily swept up the broken bits of the alliance and gotten them all concentrated on the dowager, the heir, and Tatiseigi’s relationship to the aiji— never mind one inconvenient human, who found no breath to speak and wished he could only get his arm free.

“And the paidhi-aiji!” Dur shouted out, reinserting the human into the argument.

“The paidhi-aiji!” several cheered, and at that point, thank God, the old man finally let go his arm. Bren resisted the urge to grab the injury and massage it. He bowed, instead, bowed several times while backing up, in the manner of a mere court official, not the vastly overtitled Lord of the Heavens.

“And never forgetting the bravery of the lord of the Atageini and his people,” Bren threw in, in a breath within the racket. “And the Taibeni, and the lord of Dur, who have come so many times to our rescue—” A fast breath, and a chance of rapid escape. “Nandiin, your leave. The paidhi will leave matters in very capable hands.”

There were cheers, a few pats on the back and on the aching arm. But he escaped the corner by retreating along the wall to the lifts, and Jago, again thank God, had likely used a security key to get control of the nearest one and hold it open for him.

He made it inside. He leaned against the wall, looking at Tano and Jago.

“Well done,” Jago said.

“Was it?”

“Well done in all things, Bren-ji.”

The Bren-ji was the part that warmed his soul. Not nand’ paidhi, not Lord of the Heavens. Just Bren-ji, whose staff no one could equal.