Deliverer

"Deliverer" by C. J. Cherryh

1

Morning—a very early morning, with the red-tiled roofs of Shejidan hazed in fog, presenting a mazy sprawl in the distance beyond the balcony rail. A definite nip of autumn edged the wind that swept across the table and flared the damask cloth.

Ilisidi, aiji-dowager, diminutive of her kind, and very frail, seemed little affected by the chill. Bren Cameron, opposite her at the small breakfast table, swallowed cup after cup of hot tea and tried to still his shivers.

The dowager, seemingly oblivious to the slight breeze, slid several more eggs onto her plate and cheerfully ladled on a sauce Bren would never dare touch.

They were without bodyguards for the moment, or, rather, their respective bodyguards were sensibly standing just inside, out of the wind. The balcony was high enough and faced away from likely sniper sites, so that here, at least, one had no reason to fear bullets, assassins, or remnants of the recent coup and counterrevolution.

“Lord Tatiseigi will go home soon,” Ilisidi said conversationally—one never discussed business over meals. This was a social remark, ostensibly, at least.

“Indeed, aiji-ma?” They had come here from Lord Tatiseigi’s estate, which had suffered extensive damage in the fighting, damage ranging from its mangled hedges to an upstairs bedroom missing its floor. It would not be a happy homecoming for the old manc though it was a triumphant one.

“He has so many things to arrange,” Ilisidi said. “Carpenters, plasterers—stonemasons.” An egg vanished, and Ilisidi rapped the dish with her spoon. “Do trust the white sauce, nand’ paidhi. Have the fish. You look peaked.”

Frozen was nearer the truth, and sauces were a minefield of alkaloids delectable to atevi, and potentially fatal to humans, but Bren obediently slid a little of the fish offering onto his plate, and spooned white sauce atop it, a sauce kept hot, despite the bitter gale, by a lid and a shielded candle.

The breakfast service was silver lined with hand-painted porcelain, hunting scenes, each piece exquisite and historic.

Everything was historic in Ilisidi’s apartment, which no rebel hand had dared touch, even when everyone had believed that Tabini-aiji was dead and Ilisidi was unlikely to return from space. Tabini had lived, and she had returned, and those who had thought differently were, at the moment, running for their lives.

Bren himself had a small guest quarters within Ilisidi’s domain, inside the Bu-javid, that massive city-girt fortress which housed no few of the lords of the Association. Herein, inside a building that loomed above the city of Shejidan, resided the aiji himself, the lords, the officials, besides their offices, the legislature and their offices—the complex sat atop its hill in the ancient heart of the city.

The fortress and the city, not to mention the continent that spanned half the world, were newly back in the aiji’s hands, and they, Bren Cameron and Ilisidi and their respective bodyguards, were newly returned from their two-year voyage, dropped down to the world in support of Tabini-aiji. The two of them had come down from the sterile security of a steel world, where the only breezes came from the vents, to this balcony, where nature determined the temperature and the breeze, and Bren found the change of realities—and the intervening few days of revolution—both exhilarating and a little unreal, even yet. The paidhi might freeze and shiver, but this morning he enjoyed the sensations, the sight, the tastes— the very randomness of things.

Not too much randomness, thank you. The random shooting had died down in the city. The Assassins’ Guild had sorted out its internal affairs and begun to function politically, which meant more stability, enforcement of laws and, indeed, elimination of certain individuals bent on civil unrest. As a result, they two, and the rest of the country, could draw an easier breath, and sleep at night in relative confidence of waking up the next morning: Bren personally welcomed that sort of scheduled regularity, even bloodily achieved.

“Tatiseigi will go home,” Ilisidi reiterated across the rim of her teacup, “and I shall go with him. He will need our advice.”

Significance penetrated the shivers. “One understands, then, aiji-ma,” Bren said. “One will make other arrangements immediately.”

“Arrangements are already made for the paidhi-aiji’s residence.”

Ilisidi’s cup touched the cloth and a servant appeared, to pour more tea. “Nand’paidhi?”

Tea, she meant. Bren set down his ice-cold cup and the servant whisked another, steaming hot, into its place, before pouring.

“Thank you, nand’ dowager. May one ask—?”

“Tatiseigi will inform you of the details himself, doubtless, or at least leave a message, but he intends to make his own apartment available for the paidhi’s usec under current circumstances.”

“One is honored.” Thunderstruck by the old man’s action was more to the point. Tatiseigi’s apartment was, indeed, where he had once resided, in Tatiseigi’s long absence from the capital, and he had once thought of it as home; but a good many things had intervened—a very great many advancements, and a great many violent things. He had dealt with Lord Tatiseigi, who did not approve of humans, or televisions, or any other human-brought plague on his traditions, and who had housed him in the meanest rooms in his great house on his return from space.

And Tatiseigi was willing to invite him back? One would be very glad to believe that the old man had suddenly suffered a complete change of perspective about humans, had determined that he was an admirable and acceptable being.

Or the sun might rise in the west. The old man had something up his sleeve, surely. “One is extremely honored, nandi, and I shall express it to him.”

“Understand, this residence would remain available in my absencec” Ilisidi ladled sauce onto fish. “c except, one regrets to say, my grandson, who finds his personal residence greatly disturbed, has set eyes on it.”

Disturbed was an understatement: Tabini-aiji’s personal apartment had been a battleground during the coup: certain of his servants had died there, blood stained the carpets, there had been a fire set, and certain priceless artworks had been damaged or stolen.

The premises was under thorough restoration and examination for security problems.

Meanwhile the paidhi’s own apartment, on loan from the Maladesi, had been a case of don’t-ask on his arrival: a clan of difficult man’chi, claiming to be distant relatives of the Maladesi, had occupied it, had been instrumental in getting access to that floor during the aiji’s entry into the Bu-javid—since they had taken out political rivals, supporters of the other regime, in the process—and in point of fact—the aiji had not found it politic to toss them out of the residence, never mind the fact they had jumped themselves to the head of a very long waiting list for Bu-javid residencyc it was a mess, it was an absolute mess, and the end result was—the paidhi had no apartment until the aiji finessed the Farai out of it. And the aiji was too busy finessing his own living quarters to worry about the paidhi-aiji.

“So Tabini will lodge here,” Ilisidi said, “while the aiji’s official residence is restored and renewed. Tatiseigi, for his part, is very anxious to get back to Tirnamardi and assess damages there. It seems a convenient arrangement, that the paidhi should lodge in the Atageini apartments.”

Which meant that the Farai were either persons that Tatiseigi of the Atageini would not invite—possible: they were southern, not high in Tatiseigi’s favor at the moment—or the Farai were still barricaded into his apartment in hopes of getting concessions out of Tabini.

He was still amazed at Tatiseigi’s hospitality toward him. “Dare one ask,” he began cautiously, “whether this gracious gesture was his lordship’s idea, aiji-ma?”

Ilisidi chuckled and lifted an eyebrow. “We did suggest itc considering my grandson’s impending residency here, and considering our assistance in the Atageini defense, which has indebted Tatiseigi, when he will acknowledge the fact. In very fact, our attendance out at Tirnamardi will prevent another sort of disaster. Tatiseigi will bully the artisans. The artist he most wants will certainly quit if not kept in good humor, we well know. So we will be there to prevent the old fool from threatening the man’s life.”

One could only imagine. Ilisidi was in for a lively stay under Tatiseigi’s roof.

But to have something like his own quarters again: that was glorious news. He was delighted. But on a second thought, he was not the dowager’s only guest, and that other individual’s security was a matter of deep concern to him. “And is Cajeiri going to Tirnamardi, too?”

“No.” A sip of tea, and a thoughtful frown. “No, my great-grandson will stay here, with his parents. That will be safest.

Far too many things in Tirnamardi invite his ingenuity. And best he have time with his parents in exclusivity, to allow bonds to formc”

He ventured no comment at all, nor deemed it proper. Hundreds of years humans had been on this world, and as long as there had been paidhiin—interpreters and intercessors between atevi and humans—and as close as he had gotten to the culture, atevi had still kept certain things unsaid—as was their custom, to be sure.

Certain things were either never commented upon, a matter of good manners, or remained entirely outside the realm of the paidhi’s dealings, and the bringing up of their children was a major zone of silence: neither Banichi nor Jago volunteered information in that regard, and when he had asked, Jago had professed ignorance and indifference on her own partc a clear enough signal it was not a topic she favored.

But he wanted to know—not only professionally: since he had taken up dealing with the boy, for two significant years of his life—since he had acquired an entirely unprofessional fondness for a boy he in no wise wanted to damage or misdirect, he wanted to know.

The dowager only added, “We have cared for him too long. His sense of association needs time to form naturally, and in appropriate directions. This is his chance, in a field of diminishing chances, and best take it.”

Sense of association: that emotion atevi felt that wasn’t friendship, or love, those two most dangerous human words. What Ilisidi referred to as diminishing was the opportunity for Cajeiri’s forming his own sense of attachments, which constituted an ateva’s internal compass in relationships, a feeling central to a healthy personality. A human could only ask himself how wide a window of opportunity a child had, to begin to form those necessary—and reciprocal—bonds, and if there was a point at which that window shut, after which they were left with one very confused young boy.

Certainly the ship where Cajeiri had just spent the last two years had held no youngsters of his own species: more, it had contained far too many opportunities to form ties to the human population, youngsters who used the terms friend and birthday partyc “Should I seek residence entirely elsewhere, then, aiji-ma?” he asked. He was through eating. The portions were far too much for his frame. The warmth the food and the tea provided was fast fading, especially in the contemplation of a separation from the household. “Should I take myself and my staff down the hill to the hotel—or perhaps all the way to my estate for a time? I could conduct certain business there quite handily, aiji-ma, if more distance would—”

“Our compliments to your sensitivity and grace, nand’ paidhi. No, that will not be necessary. We are confident that a removal down the hall will suffice. My great-grandson still needs your advisements, and your good sense. We should not all desert him at once, and doubtless—I have absolutely no doubt at all—he will attempt to contact you, whatever the difficulties. One also foresees he will attempt to politic with you and his father, playing one against the other: you know his tricks far, far better than my grandson. A surrogate for his father—oh, indeed, you have been that, paidhi-aiji, over the last two years. One rather assumes that you have formed some sort of bond to my great-grandchild as well.”

“One must confess it, aiji-ma, one does feel such a sentiment.”

“Well, well, one must necessarily let that association grow somewhat fainter, particularly for public view. I have spoken to my great-grandson regarding this. And to my grandson. One trusts the paidhi absolutely understands.”

Indeed. He was saddened to have it confirmed it had to be.

But Cajeiri had had far too much to do with humans, the last two formative years, between six and eight—and now he well understood that if the dowager needed to back away and let the boy form ties to his parents, then he had to back away and let Cajeiri become what he had to be, to be adult, sane, and healthy—not to mention heir to his father’s power, ruler of the atevi worldc aiji of the aishidi’tat, with all that meant. Aijiin didn’t form upward attachments, or they abandoned them increasingly as they grew up: the boy he saw as just a boy was, if he was ever going to rule, going to have to change—would have to drink in other people’s manchiin like water, and attach himself only to his inferiors.

Would have to become cold enough, calculating enough—to rule, to judge, to administer. To be impartial in decisions, reasoned in debate, and ruthless with his enemies, as enemies not only of himself, but of the people he representedc it was not a mindset a Mospheiran wanted to encourage in a child, but it was what Cajeiri was supposed to become.

So they had come back to earth in various senses. The change had to come, and for the boy’s own psychological health, the right signals needed to run down the boy’s nerves, and that set of instincts needed to find answers that a human just couldn’t give himc not and produce a sane ateva.

At least, he thought, this time someone had warned the boy ahead of time that his life was about to be jerked sideways. Cajeiri wasn’t going to like it. That was also part of his mental makeup: he defended himself, oh, quite well.

And for good or for ill, he told himself, waiting for the dowager to finish her last cup of tea, he wouldn’t be totally out of reach, when, not if, the boy needed him.

Great-grandmother, a Stability of One, was having breakfast with the Lord of the Heavens. That was marginally more fortunate to say than to remark that Great-grandmother and the Lord of the Heavens were having breakfast, an Infelicity of Two. There was, of course, a compensatory flower arrangement on that table on the drafty balcony, and the bodyguards, five in number—only Jago had come with nand’ Bren, which was odd—made a Felicity of Sevenc All of which was to say that Cajeiri was not invited to that table, but he was sure it was not just the numbers. He was sure it meant the grownups were discussing him, because it would have been a great deal less fuss over all to have provided him a chair at the same table and made felicitous three, would it not?

As it was, he had a quiet breakfast with his bodyguards, Antaro and Jegari, who were brother and sister, and only a little older than he was. They were Taibeni, from the deep forests of the slopes of the Padi Valley, and they were not at all accustomed to city manners, so it was a relief to them, he supposed, not to have to stand in the hall and try to talk to the likes of Cenedi, Great-grandmother’s chief bodyguard, or Banichi or Jago, who were Bren’s, and terribly imposing—Banichi was actually a very obliging fellow, but Jegari was quite scared of him: that was the truth.

His guard liked the informal ways of Taiben. He, on the other hand, was accustomed to servants at his elbow, oh, indeed he was.

He had grown up first with his mother and father, in the most servant-ridden place in the world, and then with great-uncle Tatiseigi, who was a stickler for propriety, and finally with Great-grandmother, traveling in space with nand’ Bren, in a vast ship far too small to hide him from proper manners. It was first from Uncle Tatiseigi and then from Great-grandmother he had learned his courtesies: they were very old-fashioned, and insisted on the forms even if they secretly didn’t believe in the superstitions.

He had been locked up in Great-grandmother’s apartment for two years on the ship, and she had made sure he would be fit to come back as his father’s son and her great-grandson—his left ear had gotten positively tender from all the thwacking.

He had left the world when he was six. He was now in that awkward year before nine, that year so infelicitous one could not name it, let alone celebrate its birthday in any happy way. That was very bad fortune, since it was the only birthday he had had a chance to have with his new associates on shipboard— Great-grandmother had finally agreed he might have a small celebration, and then he had not even gotten that much, because of the crisis—because they had plunged right down to earth on the shuttle, leaving all his shipboard associates behind and spending the next number of days getting shot atc Well, except he had gotten to ride in the engine of a train. That had been exciting.

He was very precocious in his behavior and in his schooling: nand’ Bren said so, so he was already as good as nine, was he not?

He could speak Bren’s native Mosphei’, as well as ship-speak. He could speak kyo, for that matter, which only a handful of atevi or humans could do. He had learned to ride and shoot before he went into space—well, he could ride, at least: he had learned to shoot on the ship; and Great-grandmother had taught him how to write a formal hand in all the good forms and made him memorize all the lords of the Association and their rights and dutiesc and proper addressesc So he was really not too uncivilized to be at their table, was he?

He was not yet fluent enough in adult Ragi to dance across the nuances, as Great-grandmother called it. Using it could still get him into embarrassing trouble. And it was ever so hard just to sit and listen when really interesting questions were bubbling up into his head.

But he could at least parse everything that was proper at that table. Bren, a Stability of One, he most-times referred to very properly as Bren-nandi. Bren’s guards were, together, Bren-aishini, not just aishi, the association of Bren-paidhi, and his guards were aishishi, meaning the protective surrounds.(1) So, there! He could handle the basic forms of the adult language and remember to put in the compensatory numbers—that was at least sure, and people did use the easy forms, well, at least they did informally, or when they were pretending to be informal, which was a layer of pretending which he understood, but he was not supposed to use it with adults or he was being insolentc How could one learn the whole nuance of adult Ragi if no one would ever talk with him?

How could he be i-ron-ic if people only took him for a baby who used the wrong form because he had not a clue?

1. A note from Bren’s dictionary: The number of a noun or verb is always considered In-Its-Environment, which means the kabiu of the item is subject to the surrounds and Number Compensations such as seating and arrangements. This is complex enough. Rendering human views in Mosphei’ contains words with sentiments strongly reflecting human emotions—for example: “motherhood” and “friendship.” To give equal expression to an ateva speaking Ragi, which contains constructs for his own biological urges, any accurate translation of his thoughts into Mosphei’ must, for the human hearer, create special forms to note the mental direction of those feelings. For example, Ragi has “respect” in general but also specifies “familial-respect” or “aiji-respect” or “newly-met-stranger-respect,” each of which evokes feelings which resonate through the ateva psyche. Ragi is meticulously specific in many sensitive terms in which a human, reading the translated words, must struggle to remember contain emotional impact at all. A mentally healthy ateva feels, in saying, for instance, “aiji-respect” as powerful a sense of emotional bonding as a human would experience in saying, “my dearest friend” and “my own front doorc” The central difficulty of Ragi translation rests in the fact that while specific words can be translated, the human brain hearing them, unless cued to do so, does not readily attach sufficient or correct emotional subtext.

Numerically auspicious and inauspicious aspects present yet another subtle resonance, sometimes a presentiment of luck or foreboding.

He wanted company other than Great-grandmother’s staff. He wanted people he could surprise and make laugh.

He missed Gene and Artur, his ship-aishi (one could not call them aishini, or at least one had certainly better not do it in Great-grandmother’s hearing.) He had gotten more used to young humans than he was to atevi over the last two years, and still found it strange to look across his own informal table and see two dark, golden-eyed atevi faces, so earnest, so— That was the heart of his domestic problem. Antaro and Jegari felt man’chi toward him, a sense of duty and devotion so passionate it had drawn them away from all their kin to live in a city they hardly understood. It had brought them to risk their lives for him on a dangerous journey, with people shooting at them, and he knew he should feel a pure, deep emotion toward them in turn—great-grandmother had said on the ship that he was in real danger of never developing proper feelings, which would be a very unhealthy thing; and that once he was back in the world, proper feelings would come to him, and that what he felt toward his aishini would be ever so much stronger than anything he had ever possibly felt toward Gene and Artur, because that feeling would be returnedc in ways Gene and Artur could never return what he needed.

But on that point everything broke down and hurt, it just outright hurt, because Gene and Artur did care about him, in their human way, and he knew they still cared—in their human way. He knew they had been hurt when he left—they must have hurt the same way as he hurt, and no one would acknowledge it.

Aishimuta. Breach of association. Losing someone you never thought of losing.

Losing someone you could never even explain to anyone, someone that no one else thought you could care aboutc there ought to be a word for that, too, even worse than aishimuta. He had never thought he would lose Gene and Artur. He had been so confident he could just bring them home with him when he had to go down to the world, and that sensible grown-ups would, with no problem at all, agree to the idea of their living with him.

That had been juvenile thinking, had it not?

And once their coming down to earth had fallen seamlessly into place, so his plans had run, of course he would bring Gene and Artur to his father and his mother and tell his parents what wonderful associates they were, and how clever, and unusual, and all those things, and the whole world would understand it was a wonderful arrangement. He would have Gene and Artur with him forever, the way his father had nand’ Bren to advise him about humans, and everything would be perfect and happy.

He had been a fool. Great-grandmother had not quite said that word, but he was sure she had disparaged his plans in private and spared him her opinion, only advancing that argument that there would be someone who would appeal to him when he reached home, and that he would know that person, or those people, in a situation that felt right. According to her, there would be no question what he feltc all the things everyone told him he would feelc And for one moment, he had almost had it. When Antaro and Jegari had declared for him that day in the forest, with so many dangers around him, he had accepted it—he had been surprised by their gesture, for one thing, and he had believed that something special would flash down from the heavens or something—he didn’t know exactly what. But he was open to it. He had tried.

But he still waited to feel it take hold of him.

Now he felt uneasy in his connection with Antaro and Jegari, who had done so much for him. It was true they were comfortable companions and he felt at ease with them. He knew what their expressions meant as if he had known them all his life, and he could guess what they were thinking with fair accuracyc that was something. They were faces like his own, black, golden-eyed, and naturally subtle around strangers. They were not at all like aboard the ship, where no one stood on ceremony—where he could all but hear Gene shout down the hall in that reckless, wonderful, irreverent way, “Hey! Jeri!”

He was Jeri. He had been delighted to know it was a proper human name, too, the way it was a proper atevi one.

And oh, he missed that voice, and that irreverence, and that sense of fun. And he felt so guilty and ashamed of himself for it.

Antaro and Jegari were a steady warmth, not a spark and a flash.

They never offered a really wicked glance, the way Gene would look at him to let him know some adventure was brewing and they were about to risk trouble. Jegari and Antaro would ask, cautiously and solemnly, “Do you think your great-grandmother would approve, nandi?”

And that was the way his life was supposed to be. Solemn.

Cautious.

Well, he supposed he had had adventures enough for one year at least, riding on mecheiti and buses and trains and being shot at—he had shot a man himself, because he had to, to save their lives, but he had no wish to remember that part, which was not glorious, or an adventure, or anything but terrible. He thought it ought to have changed him—but it was mostly just not there in his thinking.

Certainly a lot of people had died. That had been horrible, too.

And he knew that just the journey had changed things around him—more, that it had changed him in ways he was still figuring out.

But the thing that really hit hardest was how close he had come to losing everyone he really knew and relied onc the last remaining: Great-grandmother, and nand’ Bren, and their aishini.

All his associations in the whole universe were, if not broken, at least stretched painfully thin, and people wanted to shove others at him, fast, while he was alone and desperate. That was a nasty thing to do. A few meant well—Great-grandmother, and nand’ Bren. But lords were all but battering at the door to introduce him to their own children, and he just would not see them: Great-grandmother at least supported him in that.

He had learned that not everything was that sure in his life: that was the second lesson he had gotten on this voyage. Having lost the heavens, he had come within a breath of losing everything that was ever going to matter on earth, too, and right now he was stranded with no chance ever to get back to the heavens, because the shuttles were not flying, and might never, if certain people had had their way. It had been close, on that score, but great-grandmother and Lord Bren had taken precautions, and the shuttles were being protected—for which he was very grateful.

In recent days he had been alone, and scared of being alone, and of dying alone, although dying was something he still could not quite figure out—how it was, or how it worked. And he had met Jegari and Antaro, who had some promise, if they weren’t so rule-following.

And they were going to get the shuttles flying again, so there was still hopec But he was not supposed to think about Gene and Artur coming down here, and worse, he had to face the possibility they might not ever be able to. Now he understood how very politically difficult it was going to be, to bring humans anywhere near him, and how people would be watching him and suspecting him. He saw how people all over the world had blamed nand’ Bren for everything that had gone wrong, which was just unfair, but that was how people had wanted to think, because it was easier to blame humans for everything that was the matter, and now for people to blame any association he had ever had with humans for any peculiarity he would ever have or any bad thing he ever did—that was just wrong.

It was wrong, and he could not go for years being good. It just made him so mad he could just— But one could not. One had to be calm, and act like an adult to get one’s way. And most people were coming to a different opinion about nand’ Bren, now, so maybe the trouble would die down.

But it could take years.

Great-grandmother had told Uncle Tatiseigi that he had had enough association-separation in his young life so far; and great-uncle Tatiseigi had argued he had come out of it perfectly fine for a boy in an unfortunate year of his life. Uncle Tatiseigi had told Great-grandmother he was not unbalanced in his head: that much was nice of Great-uncle. But then uncle Tatiseigi had added that he certainly would have been unbalanced if he had stayed in space much longer, that there were clear signs of improper thoughts, and it was a damned good thing he had come down here among real people.

That had made him mad, too, but that was Great-uncle.

And at least he knew his elders worried about him, and great-uncle did sincerely worry that he had grown up under questionable influences. The problem was, Great-uncle had very firm opinions about what was right for him, and unluckily for him, Great-grandmother and Great-uncle were not that far apart in their arguments. Uncle Tatiseigi would like him never to mention humans again. Great-grandmother wanted him to give up even thinking about Gene and Artur, and she was hoping, too, that he would forget about them coming down to earth, ever.

And years and years could pass, and they might quiet down about bad influences, but that would be long after he had grown up sane and normal and Gene and Artur had turned into human adults he would never even recognize if he saw them.

That hurt. That thought already wore a deep sore where it lodged and was not going to heal, because he never intended to let it. It made him resolve one thing, that the moment he did get any power, he was going to bring anybody he wanted down to the earth and keep them there.

Ripping him away from every association he knewc was that not damage to his psyche, too?

And if it did hurt him, and everybody knew it, why did familial-adults he trusted keep doing this to him? Why did they think it was for his own good?

Because he had to rule the aishidi’tat when he grew up, that was what, and there had been a war, a stupid, long-ago war, and that was why he could never be too close to humans. That was why everything bad had happened.

And something in him wanted to explode whenever he thought about it, but he could never let his upset show, because that would absolutely assure he never got power.

He would not have chosen differently for his life than Great-grandmother had done for him this far: he never would have missed the voyage with Bren and Great-grandmother, he never would choose to miss knowing Gene and Artur— And he was absolutely sure that the adults who had combined to make his life miserable in his homecoming did not really have him particularly in mind when they did it—that was what Great-grandmother would say: she had said, word for word: No one is thinking too much about you, young gentleman. There are larger things at issue. If my distressing you were at all personal, you would have no confusion at all about the fact.

That was the truth. He was quite sure of it. And he was disabused—Great-grandmother’s word—of any notion that the world was going to change its ways to accommodate him. He had imagined being his father’s son would mean being rich, and happy and getting just about anything he wanted.

His father, it turned out, had to make compromises, and the world was complicated, and no, he could not even ask his father for what he most wanted.

All his rank thus far had done for him was to see everyone he attached to had to leave him alone for his own good, because they weren’t perfect enough, in the opinion of his great-grandmother or his great-uncle, or even, in Bren’s case and his uncle’s and his grandmother’s, because they were important and busy and had no time to bring up a boy. His father had welcomed him, hugged him close, looked him in the eyes, and straightway gone off to talk to people about an assassination in the south; his mother had hugged him, remarked how he had grown, patted his cheek, and gone off to talk to Uncle Tatiseigi and the lord of the Ajuri about where they were staying and how they were going to deal with Lord Bren’s apartment.

He knew, because Great-grandmother had told him, that being aiji was necessarily a lonely job. He already knew that ruling the aishidi’tat meant owing no aiji-respect, only collecting it from others—he had made a start with Antaro and Jegari—and if one was born to be aiji, one had different sorts of emotions from the rest of the world. One was just peculiar, compared to other people. He would be sitting someday at the top of a pyramid of man’chi, and getting it all, but needing to dispense, well, very little, in an obligatory way, though Great-grandmother told him that a wise aiji was as good as he knew how to be or people left him in short order, the way they had left Murini.

So he could have a few people close to him, but mostly he had to deal with everybody equally and impartiallyc because that was good, and it kept everyone happy. Favoring certain people was a bad thing. If one was aiji.

Was he that peculiar-minded? He had no idea. Loneliness sounded—well, boring as well as painful. He had no way to tell if it meant something else to other people.

On the ship he had been amazingly safe, and comfortable, and could do almost anything he liked when he was off with Gene and their other associates—and was that not having power, even when he had to worry about getting caught? It was never serious. Nobody died. Nobody even got hurt—well, muchc Here he had to slip about to do the least little thing, and invent somewhere to have been, if he was not where someone expected him. Overall, it had been so pleasant up there, being attached to people. There had been endless things to do. There had been surprises, and plans and plots.

Now he had won the place he was supposed to havec and everything had changed for the worse. He was bored and irritated most of the time he was just with Jegari and Antaro, bored and lonely when he was by himself. Great-grandmother no longer gave him his daily lessons. She forgot he existed.

He was a prisoner, was all, not even invited to breakfast on the balcony.

He pushed his plate back. “Nadiin-ji,” he said to his young bodyguards, “I have no appetite. But one has no wish to worry Cook. Will you make it disappear?”

“May we ask, nandi?” Taro asked, the sister of the pair.

A deep sigh. And two devout faces stared at him, concerned and with their own world out of sorts, because he frowned at them and said he was out of sorts.

He saw how the atmosphere was of his own making. He decided it was time for a supreme effort, and that he was going to break several rules at once.

“I shall talk about Gene and Artur,” he said solemnly. “About the ship. About how we lived aboard.”

“We will be glad to hear,” Jegari said earnestly, as if Jegari really were glad, even relieved. Antaro’s face brightened, too.

“I might have an egg or two,” Cajeiri said. Having made up his mind to talk, and having met actual enthusiasm for a change, he found something of an appetite to go with it.

He had shared tea with a kyo, a being neither Taro nor Jegari could imagine, even having seen pictures of that event. He could tell them about that association.

He had done so very much in his young life, and to have Great-grandmother telling him—but not directly ordering him—to drop all his former associationsc Well, but it was just stupid! Breaking with associations was not his value in the scheme of things, was it? Had not Lord Bren said that? Had not Great-grandmother and Great-uncle agreed? He mixed most of the continent in his bloodline, and it had turned out the lords were considerably wrought about that, each vying to claim a share of him for their province, their people. They all thought those connections he had were a good thing.

So, and had he not gained human associates, including Lord Bren, who advised his father. He was never going to give Lord Bren up, was he? Did not Lord Bren serve his father, and his father approve him?

So he could make these two who were so devoted to him understand how that was, and maybe get them to stop objecting about the rules.

He decided, he was not going to sit on his hands—Bren’s word for doing nothing. He was not an island. He was not born for that. He connected everything. Was that not why everyone who wanted the aishidi’tat to survive—had cheered him in the streets when he came here?

“Gene and Artur were my associates during the voyage home,” he began, attempting cheerfulness toward two maddeningly attentive faces. He decided to be patient. Great-grandmother had taught him to be, and thwacked his ear when he fidgeted. He decided to fight with words. Lord Bren had taught him that. “Gene and Artur and Bjorn. They made fortunate three.” That hurt to think of, because, up there, they still would be fortunate three, without him. Gene had somehow invited Bjorn into the group. Or Bjorn had added himself, and confused him, since he had known his great-grandmother would disapprove. “I said Irene should join us because it made us five— though humans hardly think in numbers.

They were born on a space station we never even knew existed, a few years agoc”

“A number of matters have to be attended to,” Ilisidi said to Bren, and spared a glance up. “Are you chilled, nand’ paidhi?”

“Only a little, aiji-ma. Please, finish your tea.”

“Well, well.” She poured her cup, and by gesture, offered the same to him, from her own hand, in this breakfast with few servants.

“Honored, aiji-ma.” He took it, and warmed his hands and scalded his mouth with the first sip.

“Bitter?”

“Hot. Heat is welcome.”

“Well, well, but I shall be leaving the Bu-javid. Things must be said while we have the chance, nandi-ji. The repairs of Tirnamardi are one thing. The repairs to the fabric of the Central Association—those are far more urgent.”

“Indeed. Whatever you wish said, or done, aiji-ma, I shall do.”

“There have been too many assassinations in our absence from the world, even into the East. Lord Mesi is dead.”

That was a neighbor of hers, in the Eastern Association, her distant home.

“One regrets to hear it.”

“Poisoned. And he was such a careful man.”

“One urges the dowager take very great care at Tirnamardi. We already know its risks.”

“Disaffection in the district. A house neighboring the Kadagidi.

Not to mention marriages across that border.” Of which Cajeiri’s mother’s relatives in Ajuri clan were several key ones, nominally interested in mending fences—and likely to make approaches, honest or otherwise. Ilisidi pursed her lips, the cup stayed on its way to her mouth. Her gold eyes darted a sharp glance aside to the doorway and back. “Tatiseigi asked remuneration from my grandson for the damages to the estate. He will get it. He will be quite astonished.”

So Tabini himself was going to foot the bill for the battle. Or the national treasury was. “It seems just,” Bren said. “But the province at large suffered, too.”

“A people as stubborn and prideful as their lord. They will wrangle over compensatory damages and ask funding for repairs.

That is not the compensation my grandson proposes for them.”

“Not industry.”

“Never.” Amusement crinkled her eyes. “No. The Atageini have no bent for factories. Nor would Tati-ji ever accept it. But developing the hot springs at Comeic public baths there will gain money and trade, and preserve the natural environment. It was our suggestion, to my grandson.”

“An excellent notion.” It truly was. He knew the area, a set of terraces and hot springs, natural and beautiful, but almost inaccessible. They only had to get a rail line through Tatiseigi’s estate—and he began to see that Tabini had another motive in mind besides gratitude: they had tried to get that line through for the last fifty years. Putting it through near Comei—that was brilliant. Tabini hadn’t dropped a stitch.

“Beyond this,” Ilisidi said, “the recovery of one bus from the Taiben woodsc that will mollify the transit authority. Recompense to various districts for wear, tear, and damage to the trucks and buses: my staff is making a list. The monetary damages will be dealt with.”

She was a force of nature.

And she would be leaving the capital soon, to find her own way back east, to her own holdings, after her sojourn with Tatiseigi. So he imagined. He would miss Ilisidi. He had lived so closely with her and her staff and Cajeiri during the voyage that he had, yes, dammit, regarded her as family—he had lost his own mother in parting with the world, and it had been too natural during those two years to fall into Ilisidi’s orbit. It was an emotional attachment that would shock and amaze the dowager.

Time, he thought, to cut those bonds. Might it be his own too-frequent presumptions on her society that had driven her to take refuge elsewhere?

But she knew what was right to do, and she was self-protective, and protective of the boy. She had the right instincts. She surely saw that those bonds needed to be cut, and national politics as well as the welfare of the boy himself was the urgent reason for doing it now, as painlessly as possible.

Wise Ilisidi, he said to himself. Wise. Even kind. Ilisidi had found so delicate a way to manage, had arranged all the details, and set up a plausible situation which would help the boy through it and wean them all apart, their little family that could only have existed in the human geometries of shipboard living. That this departure to Tirnamardi was just the natural, convenient progress of thingsc he by no means believed it.

The breakfast invitation was the last he would have of her company for a while, he became sure.

“Well, well,” she said, pushing back her dish, “best break this up before you freeze, nandi.”

“Then I must say good-bye to you, aiji-ma.”

“Oh, indeed, not quite good-bye, paidhi. Join me for dinner this evening.”

He might have stopped in rising, ever so slightly, but he covered his dismay with a bow—or thought he had.

The dowager smiled beneficently.

The party, he well knew, was a company of Easterners arrived yesterday, to meet the dowager, to felicitate her on her return, and probably to deplore her recent associationsc meaning humans, shipboard and current.

And she wanted him there tonight, when he had intended to have supper in his rooms, troubling the staff as little as possible and giving no intimation of his presence in her household.

“I shall, then,” he said, his heart beating just a little faster. He searched her face, the flick of a glance, for motive, or hint, or warning, and gained nothing at all. “Honored, aiji-ma. Indeed, I am honored.”

“There was no place on the ship we could not go,” Cajeiri said.

“Well, except onto the captains’ deck, or into a few such places, but we knew every passage, even between decks, even the dark, cold places, where you could almost float when you walked.”

His audience followed everything with rapt attention— gratifying. Jegari and Antaro were older and taller and stronger than he was. It was hard to feel in charge when one had to look up constantly. But at the moment, he felt embraced, and felt their loyalty about him, solid and good and steady.

He could hardly help it. Wicked ambition took over. His next sentence was: “We need to know this place that well.”

A spark leaped up in that placid, absolute devotion, the same little spark he had seen leap up under fire in Tirnamardi— in two young bodyguards who by no means knew this place, this huge single building. Was ignorance and fear of this great house the reason they had been so subdued, so absolutely, deadly earnest and spooked by every noise? They had known their deep forest. This stone place had different rules, and they must be more lost than he was.

“Yes,” they said, almost as one, seizing on what he said. And he immediately had second thoughts: he knew the hazards of what he proposed, and knew, too, what these two were not—Guild, for one: Assassins’ Guild, the way bodyguards were supposed to be, and their pretending to be would not sit well with those who were.

Pretense was no longer a game. Not in the Bu-javid’s nervous corridors—where there might well be people bent on killing. It might get them into dangerous trouble.

But neither was it a game, that he needed to have his freedom, and he needed to have knowledge of his surroundings, in case some intruder got into Great-grandmother’s apartments, or met them in the halls. They had to know the escapes and the secret ways, and these existed: he knew they did—they had used some of them to get into the Bu-javid alive.

“There are wires,” he said. These two had seen the effect of wires, that could be set ankle-high, nearly invisible, that could take a foot off. It was one of the deadliest traps the Guild used, and there were wires guarding the aiji his father, and guarding lords, and various other sensitive places throughout the building. He knew that just on a reasonable guess, because he knew the resources of the Guild that defended them.

“We know wires,” Jegari said cheerfully. “Taiben has them.”

They would know other things, then. That was good. His father’s hunting lodge had been a major security installation in Taiben province, and the Taibeni had maintained it until the coupc so they were not ignorant in that regard.

And after Murini took over, the Taibeni had served to protect his father, as woodland rangersc and they had shuffled here and there about the province, eluding Kadagidi attacks and returning attack only when they picked the ground and the odds. They might be wide-eyed and quiet, these two, and spooked by shadows, but that was because they did notice things. They were quick and they might be clever—once they knew facts to work on.

They had to find out how things were set up, that was what, and that included even the Guild’s security precautions, so they could move in safety. If they were his substitute for Gene and Artur, and this was where he had to live, well, freedom to come and go would fix a great many things. On the ship, he had had the computers on which to look things up, and they had had the intercoms at every turn, and the back passages and service accesses and crawlways to enable quick movement and secret meetings. The Bu-javid was absolutely riddled with passages on its lower levels, and had no few above. During the fighting, at the very time he had been running for his life and climbing stairs until his stomach hurt, he had seen the pipes and the conduits that ran right along overhead and all around them on the walls, and he knew that where those conduits and pipes disappeared and appeared again for water lines and vents, there would be access panels, valves, and interrupts of some kind. That was the way plumbing and electricity worked. There had always been access panels on the ship, and there had to be such here, unless one wanted to chisel through a wall to get at something stuck in the plumbing. And that was just too stupid. It was not the way clever builders would do things.

“We need maps, nadiin-ji,” he said. “And we can draw them, for all the servants’ halls.”

“We can indeed do that, nandi,” Antaro said.

“But no one should see you at it.”

Jegari touched a finger to his head. “We remember forest paths.

There is no difference, nandi. All we have to do is walk through and then draw the map when we get to the room.”

He was perplexed suddenly. He found he had no Ragi word for service access. He thought, sometimes, in a mishmash of Ragi and ship-speak. “Panels where you can reach wires and pipes.”

“Entry plates, nandi,” Jegari supplied.

“We have to know where all those are. Those should be on the maps. I know how to wire things.” He was very proud of that. “And I know about—the things you turn like faucets, to shut water offc what do you call the things that shut off pipes?”

“Valves,” Antaro said.

That was still a Mosphei’ word, by the sound of it. Ragi had borrowed a great many words from Mosphei’, so nand’ Bren had told him, even for things like plumbing, which atevi had had a long time before humans dropped down to the world. His head was stuffed with new information: he met strangeness on every hand, all the hours of the day, and he was determined not to forget his lessons from shipboard. He was determined, now that he thought of it, to draw every passage on the ship, from memory, with all the accesses they had used, he and Gene, and Artur, when grown-ups tried in vain to find them. And then he intended to do the same for the Bu-javid.

There were bullet-holes in the hallways here in the Bu-javid.

People had died out there, and his father’s staff had been murdered in his apartment without even a chance. Here the back ways could very clearly be important. If he knew them, he said to himself, he could get himself and Great-grandmother to safety. So anything was justified, so long as he was careful, and kept his notes secret.

“And we need to get into communications,” he said. “If it were the ship, we could just listen in. We need to learn how the phones work, so if we want to know something, we can learn it.”

“Security will surely catch us at that, nandi,” Antaro said with a frown. “They can tell if we tap a line.”

“How?”

“One by no means knows how, nandi, but they will know.”

“We need to know how they know. One could ask our security that. One could find a clever way. Or one might find a manual. Is there a library, do you think, nadiin-ji?” He had no idea if there was a computer library here in the Bu-javid, the way one could call up files on the ship, but it seemed reasonable that people would want some sort of reference near, and the Bu-javid certainly had every other amenity. Downstairs, when they came in, there had been records strewn across the floor. Those had to sit somewherec records of all sorts. Books. Maps. Charts. Diagrams.

“There is a library,” Jegari said. “There is a great library, nandi.”

“A very famous one,” Antaro said. “But one has no idea where in the building it may be.”

“I can find out,” Cajeiri said in every confidence, “and they will lend books to me. My father will approve my study. Study always looks innocent.”

“Can one be certain,” Jegari asked carefully, “that this inquiry will not bring trouble on you, nandi?”

“I have no such fear,” he said, and indeed, had none at all, and quickly changed the subject. A servant had just come in. It was that woman who always smiled at him and made smiling look like a chore. Pahien was her name. She belonged to the staff here. And he detested her. “Eat the eggs, nadiin-ji. Quickly, before I have to.”

The servant had brought a message cylinder, a silver filigree one, proffering it in a small silver bowl. It was, Cajeiri saw, Great-grandmother’s personal message cylinder. And he did not think it portended anything good. Great-grandmother rarely sent him messages, and they were usually social, but often a reprimand, sometimes a very scathing reprimand. He was prepared to control his face, and hoped to the depth of his heart they had not just been overheard in what was a very important scheme.

There was, the message read, a party tonight.

And he was invited. His heart leaped up.

But it was a dinner party for lords out of the Eastern Association.

Well, that was not good news. It was no one he knew. Probably nobody in all the world he knew would be there, except Great-grandmother and Cenedi and his men, and security would be on strictest duty, which meant Jegari and Antaro had to eat later and stand behind his chair. He would have to dress in starched lace and sit on display, like a porcelain on a pedestal, and be perfect and still while people stared at him.

It was just gruesome. It was not at all what he called a party.

Everyone would talk past him, or expect him to perform, or ask him cleverly worded questions about things Great-grandmother would not want him to talk about and then smirk if he proved too clever for them.

“I shall answer, nadi,” he said to the maidservant, who took the cylinder and the bowl away and would return with his own plain message cylinder and appropriately sized paper and pen. And then she would stand by and stare at him while he wrote.

On the ship he could have called Gene on com and asked whether they might have pizza.

But even on the ship, he would have answered Great-grandmother with a carefully written message, and that message would say, inescapably, in very proper script, “One will be extremely honored to attend the formal dinner this evening at sunset, esteemed Great-grandmother. One is gratified by the invitation.”

2

The paidhi’s quarters within the dowager’s apartments were, indeed, a little cramped for the burgeoning piles of documents and letters which had been pouring into the paidhi’s nonexistent office since their arrival in the Bu-javid. Citizens had complaints, felicitations, and earnest queries as to whether, for instance, the station was the agency which had sent down the mysterious capsules that had been rumored landed in the remote north.

Probably they had done so, was the short answer. But Bren had no personal idea what these mysterious landings portended, whether such packages were dangerous, or observational, or just what the station might have had in mind. One could note that they had been landed during Murini’s takeover, when the station had every reason to mistrust the situation. But the station had neglected to mention the existence of such things when they had passed through—admittedly in haste— and he had no information for the recipients of such landings. He could not say whether they were dangerous to approach, and now everyone was looking for such items in their bean patches and hunting areas. It was hard to tell a farmer just to be patient, with an unknown thing sitting in one’s orchard, with a parachute draped over the fruit treesc that was one photo he had received, and yes, if he were the orchard-keeper, he would be understandably perturbed.

He had those inquiries—and letters from a handful of persons seeking appointment. He had a dinner invitation for five days from now from the Lord of Dur, who wished, with the mayors of several coastal towns and villages, to host a celebratory banquet in the paidhi’s honor. Even five days from now was still early for too provocative celebrations of the defeat of certain powerful interests—the relatives of whom were still at court. Human influence at court was a touchy topic in many quarters, and it was a delicate matter to accept or refuse the honor, not least because he owed Dur considerably, and might be expected to reciprocate with some signal favor to that district that he could bestow in turn. And he had no way to swing that influence, nor ought he to tryc not being atevi. That was one thing riding the back of his mind.

For another matter, he was reluctant to bring Dur in as egregiously supporting the paidhi before he was entirely sure the paidhi had a future in his present post. Politics might yet have him replaced, at least as related to his current status as the aiji’s personal interpreter. Tabini-aiji still favored him, and Tabini’s word was ordinarily law, but there was contrary pressure from a number of disgruntled southerners (granted that, as the source of the recent coup, they had limited expectations of being heard, and some of them were lucky to be alive), but there was, in fact, an alternative.

Yolanda Mercheson, over on Mospheira, had held his post for the last two years. Yolanda had rather walk barefoot through fire than come back to the mainland, and only wanted to get back to orbit; but that had no place in the calculations of atevi who would cheerfully see Tabini divorced from the adviser many blamed for economic troubles. There were, for that matter, certain people who wished the paidhi dead, so Yolanda would have to come back.

So he hardly knew what to tell the good people of Dur about the dinner.

He passed through his little sitting room, designed for a guest, not a full-fledged office, on his way to the bedroom, and rang for the servants. Jago had gone on to her own quarters, adjacent and down the short inner corridor. This was a safe place. There was hardly any safer in the entire continent.

That fact did not, however, protect him from the towering stacks out there. At the very least he had to answer his hourly-growing backlog of letters and queries, some of them from very serious people with very difficult questions.

And in the meantime, he had to prepare for a series of legislative hearings on the restoration of the regime and the distribution of appointments. He would sit on several of those legislative committees, whose work was waiting, pending location of various people who had fled the capital to save their lives.

He had another set of inquiries of lesser import, including requests for interviews, and several requests for commemorative notecards from well-meaning individuals.

And meanwhile various people ambitious to gain space within the Bu-javid saw no reason to allot any precious room to a human official.

He had sent a desperate request in for proper offices downstairs in the Bu-javid, and if he could locate enough of his old staff to start sweeping up the debris of data and records, he might start his own work with skilled help—he hoped the specific office space he requested would be a reasonable balance between security and modesty.

Top priority on his agenda—he had, sometime in the next day or so, to get a call through to the island, to the President of Mospheira, who, thank God, happened to be his old bureau chief, Shawn Tyers. The atevi Messengers’ Guild, in charge of all mainland communications, had concentrated its repair efforts on land lines and claimed the big dish at Mogari-nai was near resuming service.

Once that was up, the continent would have communication with the station in orbit—and calls could be relayed with a great deal more reliability to the island. But there had been, all along the coast during the troubles, a perfectly adequate unofficial radio network. He had, yesterday, sent a report to the Messengers’ Guild and requested the transmission of the bare facts to Shawn by means less publicly known: we’re alive, we’re safe, Tabini’s back in power. It was the sort of wide-open communication that anyone could read—and he was sure that spies of every sort had; the Messengers’ Guild was a little looser in its membership than was the Assassins’ Guild—but if Shawn failed to know they were back in power, Mospheiran agencies were completely asleep at the switch.

For formality’s sake, he had said: We’re alive and safe. The aiji is back in authority over the mainland. And then the key part of the message: Tell Jase and Yolanda that the shuttles on the mainland are in fairly good condition, and the pilots and crews have survived —they’re going to have to catch up in training and service, but we are in far better shape than we dared hopec Maybe Shawn knew, being in communication with the station.

Maybe not. So they proceded a lot in the dark about what this side and that knew. It had been five days since the shooting stopped.

They had had time to do a bit of mopping-up, some of it bloody, and they had done a bit of repair—and now messages flowed. Air service resumed, though it was sporadic. The trains ran. True, the Assassins’ Guild had its own wireless network—and that functionedc but one did not ask to send even official messages through those channels. One just did not. The Guild did what the Guild did.

The dowager’s servants arrived to take his coat. He assumed a lighter one, and went back to his makeshift office. The servants offered tea, which he declined, having had tea up to his eyeballs. He sat down at his desk, shifted papers into stacks he mentally tagged “critical,” “dire,” and “maybe in a few days.”

Jago returned, and stood, immaculate in Assassins’ black and silver, looking particularly inscrutable at the moment.

“These visitors of the dowager’s tonight will certainly be spying on us,” he remarked, making a slight guess as to what occupied her mind.

“One assumes so, nandi.” She would have heard every word that passed between him and the dowager, so there was absolutely nothing he needed to tell her about the invitation, or about the impending move. She would be with him tonight, at that table, parsing every lifted eyebrow and watching every dish that came and went—even in this household.

But she had been alone this morning, extraordinary as that was.

Her partner had not been with her; nor had Tano or Algini.

“What is Banichi’s business this morning, Jago-ji?” he asked. He had not had time to ask before now, at a place and in a privacy from the dowager’s servants. He had kept assuming Banichi would turn up, but he had not, and when he had reached the dowager’s vicinity, the numbers of the dowager’s guards had turned up compensatory. That was mildly troubling. But asking what Jago had not volunteered seemed to require some little space for communication, a commodity which had not been available yet this morning, nor on the walk back. Now the servants left. In those diminishing footsteps, they had perhaps five minutes of sure privacy.

“He was called to the Guild, nandi. Tano and Algini are with him.”

He had somewhat concluded that. And more footsteps passed the open door, and diminished in the distance.

“They may not be back this evening,” Jago added, entirely gratis, once those footsteps were gone.

He returned a worried stare, wondering what she was trying to tell him in that further, unsolicited information. It was unusual that Banichi stay that long at a Guild meeting, but at this juncture his Guild was in turmoil, Guildsmen had died, and one suspected there was a thorough shake-up going on, even yet. His own staff, particularly Algini, as it turned out, was very high up in that secretive guild—so if Tano and Algini were with Banichi, he felt a little better about the situation, but he hoped Banichi was not in some difficulty for actions he had recently taken in the paidhi’s causec and he hoped that Algini himself had not seen his position weaken. Guild infighting was scary beyond all comfort. “If Banichi needs your support,” he began.

“I am not to leave you, nandi-ji,” she said.

“Neverthelessc one could promise to lock oneself into the bedroom and not come out until you get back. If Banichi needs you, Jago-ji, that is my priority.”

Solemn as she was, a ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “And what would you do about the dowager’s dinner party?”

“Hell,” he said in Mosphei’, which she also understood perfectly well. “But I personally value Banichi’s safety, nadi-ji, and yours, above any protocols.”

“I am assuring that safety, Bren-ji, by staying here. I by no means trust these dinner guests.”

The dinner and the dowager’s motives for asking him were not the main area of his concern. But it was certainly a valid concern.

The guests had come from the eastern half of the continent, Ilisidi’s home territory—and come in a time of unrest. He very vividly remembered a broken arm and a very rough few days, early in his tenure, both thanks to Easterner politics, not to mention having been deliberately poisoned by the great lady who was his host. “I shall stay as close as I can to plain tea and bread tonight, Jago-ji. I shall be extremely discreet and stay entirely out of trouble, I promise you. I do remain extremely worried about Banichi.”

“Spare your concern for him, Bren-ji. He would wish you to have your mind on business. And one is assured the dowager’s cook will take pains to provide you a safe dinner at the dowager’s table. Only mind anything passed to you. Do not take such favors from any hand but the dowager’s staff.”

Atevi thought alkaloid poisons quite flavorful, hence their prevalence in sauces, in particular. Atevi cooks in the dowager’s employ knew he had special considerations in that regard, and no, he had no desire to offend the hard-working cook, or the devoted serving staff.

“Well, then one will rely on the cook. And on you, Jago-ji. And Banichi.”

“Indeed, Bren-ji.”

He thought, and he delayed the question, and then he asked it, Guild secrecy or no: “Dares one ask—are they voting tonight, Jago-ji?”

Jago’s face went instantly impassive, remote. “The paidhi-aiji might not be incorrect to surmise so.”

Enough asked, enough said; she breached her Guild’s rules to advise him. Lives and fates were being decided tonight. The Guild, having had a crisis in leadership, was electing a new Guildmaster, he very much suspected, and whether the previous Guildmaster had actually lived through the coup, he was unable to determine—nor would he press Jago on the point.

So it was far more than window-dressing that kept Jago close by him tonight. It was a very dangerous time, an unhinged evening for everyone who sat in government, and the paidhi-aiji, the aiji’s human translator, was one of the most conspicuous targets of discontent in certain quarters—the human translator being a safer focus of discontent than the aiji himself. There was some word in servants’ gossip that the old Guildmaster had returned to the Assassins’ Guild, but in what condition or capacity, outsiders still did not know. Granted the first piece of gossip was true, there was also some hint he might step down soon.

And by what Jago hinted, he must have done so—if he was alive, and not merely represented by the action of a proxy.

“I have letters to write,” he began to say, and intended to invite Jago to sit and relax in his room while he worked, since she insisted on watching him; but at that moment someone rapped at the outer door.

Jago went immediately to investigate, and he followed at a more leisurely pace, into his makeshift office, in time to see one of the dowager’s men hand Jago a silver wire basket of cylinders.

She set it on the table and shut and latched the door.

Messages. Letters. Half a dozen of them. He uncapped the most tempting, a plain steel cylinder, a case such as the Messengers’ Guild provided for unjacketed phone messages, and drew out the little roll of paper. He was hoping for word from the island.

It proved to be a message not from the island, however, but from his estate. His major domo there reported the staff in high spirits at his return, and the whole seaside community—a small village attached to the lodge—putting things to rights. They hoped he would visit his estate soon. They promised his boat was now in good shape despite, their words, “an untoward incident during the troubles.” And, indeed, Moni and Taigi had quit the employ of the estate some lengthy time ago. Why did the paidhi inquire?

Because Moni and Taigi had shown up here and gotten through security, was what. Perhaps they had returned to him in some sense of man’chi, perhaps not. He had ordered them released, to go where they liked. Where they were now was a matter his staff knew. He didn’t ask—yet. So many things were uncertain. So much suspicion had fallen on old acquaintances, a great deal of it perhaps undeserved. The fate of those two—or their potential shift of man’chi—worried him. The two had served him well, years ago. He had thought so, at least.

He did long to see his coastal home, where he so seldom set foot that he knew it was inexcusable extravagance to maintain it, for his own sake; but closing that establishment would throw all those good people out of work and depress the village economy. The whole district relied on him, and took pride in his prominence at court. He was indeed their lord, more than he was Lord of the Heavens, that ostentatious title Tabini had bestowed on him. He had responsibilities there, not least among them to see Moni and Taigi settled, somehow, if he could get all his staff back, and find the resources to do a reasonable investigation. And he owed all those many people, those very good people, in his district.

Truth be told, his little estate was the home he had thought about when he was in space. It was as much of a home as he had nowadays, apart from the Bu-javid—since he had no home left on Mospheira. His mother had been the focus of his visits, and now his mother was gone, his brother Toby divorced, and he had lost track of all his old University contacts, the people who had worked with him, and worked for him. A man destined to be paidhi was all job, no social life, and it had only gotten worse. Now not even his brother’s house offered a refuge for him on the island any longer.

Well, there was that, and the fact that Toby had taken up with the one woman on earth he most wanted to avoidc even that tie was in jeopardy, and that troubled him.

And, more troubling, Toby was out at sea on a boat that hadn’t put into any port, not since he had used Toby’s help in his return to the mainland, in a maneuver that might have brought Toby into harm’s way. If that boat had gotten to any port, he had no message from his brother yet—but the lines had been down; and, well, failure to phone—that was an old pattern with Toby, too. Likely Toby, hearing that Tabini was back in power, as the rumor likely was over there, had just concluded he had no more part to play and had settled in with Barb, never even thinking of a phone call. Toby cherished his private-citizen status. He didn’t insert himself into international agendas.

Well, well, but Toby would surely report in once he could get a convenient and routine message to the mainland. He was all right.

And as far as losing contact with Toby over Barb, hell, if Toby and Barb did make a couplec If they did, hell, sure, he’d invite them to his estate.

No, he wouldn’t. He didn’t want Barb making a play for him, was what. And she would. She hadn’t omitted to do that on the boat crossing the strait—he’d had a damned uncomfortable feeling about what she was doing.

Damn and damn. One more connection with humanity starting to frayc and he’d let the connection go cold before he’d hurt Toby. The last family connection he had, and Barb was in the middle of it.

But what could he expect? Go off to space for two yearsc and the world just got along, was all. He’d become a ghost, a revenant, in the spaces he’d used to call home.

His home here in the Bu-javid—well, that was gone. He was upset about it: he was still trying to track various of his staff, scattered to the winds in the troubles.

But nand’ Tatiseigi’s court residence had suited him before, and would suit him again, and it was a handsome offer from the old man. He did hope that Tatiseigi would leave the staff intact rather than remove them with him to his provincial estate—he truly did like the staff of that establishment, supposing that Madam Saidin was still in charge, and more, that staff knew him, knew all his ways. In all the changes, he had learned, it was the staff that made a place home, and if the Atageini staff should have been broken up in the troubles or pulled home to Tirnamardi with Lord Tatiseigi now, leaving him the furniture, but not the soul of the placec A sigh. Well, if that happened, he would have to be writing to the coast to pull people in from his estate to serve in Shejidanc and that without even visiting it, without even taking a tour on his boat. That would be a terrible reward, would it not, for the people who had risked their lives to save that tranquil nest from armed rebels? He honestly didn’t see how he could do that without at least visiting and praising their efforts there. He had to go do that, as soon as it was safe to travel. As soon as he got Banichi and Tano and Algini back.

And had he not promised Cajeiri one day to go sailing?

They’d made plans for that trip while they were in the intervals of folded space, on the ship. Cajeiri, his young eyes shining, had said that if he could learn to handle the yacht it would show him something about big ships.

He’d laughed, then, imagining the boy’s next outrageous ambition—in those innocent days before they’d gotten home and found the world in chaos.

But they’d set it right. They’d begun to, at least. And that promise ought to be kept.

Now, with Tabini back in power, and a flood of letters from returning loyalists reporting the slow restoration of order, he did look to keep that modest promise—to the boy, and to Jase, too, for the long-postponed fishing trip. It would be good for his soul to do that. He could combine Cajeiri’s trip, maybe, with the needed courtesy call on the estate. The staff would be thrilled to host the aiji’s son—and it would be some promise he could hold out to the boy when he left the premises.

“Nadi,” he wrote to the old man who cared for his estate, “please express my gratitude to the staff, and accept my most earnest sentimentsc”

He plowed through more messages, mostly from department heads, felicitations on his survival, reports on where the scattered directors of agencies had fled, measures they had taken for the security of their staffs, occasional, probably very sincere apologies for having worked with the new administration— assurances they had only been waiting for reversion back to legitimate authority, and preventing damage to equipment or records by remaining at their posts.

“The paidhi-aiji is extremely gratified by your message,” he wrote to each, with suitable variations for circumstance, and filed the details away in memory.

He had gotten through a small stack of such messages when one of the dowager’s servants, Pahien, appeared in the doorway, reporting that he had a phone call—the staff, she said, with just too lively a curiosity, believed it came from the island.

He leaped up, went out and took the call, in the dowager’s well-appointed library, hoping— Hoping it was Toby.

“Hello?”

“Bren. Delighted to hear your voice.”

“Mutual.” A disappointment, but not a deep one. Not Toby. An official call, and welcome. Shawn Tyers, his old boss. The President of Mospheira.

“I got your message. My staff’s been trying everything but rocket launches to get through to you. How are you?”

“All in one piece. All of us are.” Damn, he hadn’t known he was that worried over Toby. But he was. He tried to re-sort things in his head, bring up the things he needed to tell Shawn. There were details he wished he dared give, specifics on who was where and in what degree of stability, but giving them over the phone was roughly equivalent to shouting them in the public street.

More, if Shawn had been using unorthodox methods to get to him, the Messengers had not gotten them to him. And he took that mental note, intending to refer a complaint through channels—the Messengers’ Guild had roadblocks somewhere in its structure, purposeful slowdowns, he strongly suspected. And he did not trust themc nor, he thought, did Tabini.

He retained, within his computer, the means to reach into the island secure network—if he had been able get a stable and noise-free connection, but his line to Shawn was far from noise-free at the moment, and he wasn’t ready to risk too much verbal frankness, not yet. No details.

And Shawn seemed to observe equal caution. “Tell me all you can. Are you safe?”

“We’re certainly in far better shape than we expected—the people have backed the aiji, the dissidents have fled without too much fuss: comfortable and secure here. The shuttles—the pilots and techs have saved the manuals and hid out. They’re coming back—some in transit at the moment. It’s going to take a while to get the shuttles flying again, but we’re in good shape there, comparatively. The University is back in operation; we didn’t lose the books.” The Astronomer Emeritus, Grigiji, had come into the fray with a handful of his faithful students. Grigiji and his entourage were currently resident in the hotel below the hill, with a fierce group of the coastal folk of Dur around them for protectionc the hardiest Assassin would hesitate at that much trouble; and students who had carried away the precious books were filtering back to the University, with classes due to resume within days.

“We’ve been promised full service on the dish in another few daysc I’ll leave that to the Messengers’ Guild. But I’ve been trying to get through from my side.” He tried to sort his scrambled thoughts into order, trying to think what Shawn most needed to know, besides the restoration of Tabini’s regime and the good news about the space shuttles. The connection cracked and hissed, and might go down at any instant. “How is it aloft?”

“The station reports all the refugees are now aboard the station and the new tank is functioning—they’re holding for another few months with no problems at all, but they’re sending down an order for fruit candy as soon as we can deliver it.”

It was code for hurry-it-up, he understood that—four-plus-thousand new residents, refugees from the remote depths of space, dumped onto a station already short of supplies.

That was a worry—but the wording was worth a laugh. He could actually laugh, now, if shakily, hearing Shawn’s voice. So much suddenly seemed possible again, including getting ahead of the mess. But the hissing on the line had increased.

“Shawn, I’m afraid I’m about to lose you. Tell my brother, will you?” It went against years of discipline to give way to personal matters, but he couldn’t stand it. “Personal favor, Shawn. I haven’t heard from him. Can you find out if he’s all right?”

The faltering line went completely dead, then, on one personal item he desperately wished he could learn—and before he was sure Shawn had heard him.

But the phone had worked, and he’d gotten through to Shawn, at least, and Shawn had been aware of where they were. He was vastly relieved to have that, just to touch the island and to know things were well there, that the shuttle and crew that had brought them to the planet were still safe, that everything he relied on that wasn’t in his power was securec and that the informal network of coastal radio and spies was still operating.

He flashed the receiver, got the operator, and decided to press his luck on that personal matter, while the Messengers’ Guild was having a moment of efficiency. “This is the paidhi-aiji. Please restore the connection to the Mospheiran operators.”

“Nandi,” the reply was, deferentially. “We shall try. Please wait.”

He waited. And waited. And waited.

“This is the Port Jackson service operator,” a human voice said, through static. “How may I help you?”

“This is Bren Cameron, calling from the mainland. I need to reach Toby Cameron, either by ship-to-shore or residential phone.”

“Which do you wish, sir?”

“Try one and try the other. The boat name is Brighter Days.”

“You have a bad connection. I’m not hearing you. Please re-dial.”

“I’m calling from the mainland, for God’s sake! This is the best connection available. I need to reach Toby Cameron, ship-to-shore or residential. On the Brighter Days.”

“You’ll have to contact the marine operator for ship-to-shore,” the reply came back.

“Then call his residence, please.” On the verge of swearing, he gave the old number, the personal number that ought to stay valid for life, clenched and unclenched his fist the while. “This is an emergency.”

“Yes, sir.” Blandly, as if sleepwalking. The woman still didn’t know who he was, or where. Not the brightest light in the phone service, Bren was sure.

Clicks. Silence. More clicks. He bit his lip and waited, but the phone did ring. And ring. Toby’s voice came on, making his heart skip for the moment, but it was only the answering service, saying Toby was on his boat and could be reached via the Port Jackson operator.

He tried to get the operator back. The connection cut out.

“We have lost connection to the island, nandi,” the atevi operator informed him regretfully. “Shall we continue to try?”

“Attempt to reach Toby Cameron on ship-to-shore, boat name Brighter Days.” He gave the name in Mosphei’. “Advise me when there is an answer—at any hour you receive it. This is an urgent personal matter.” He was trying to persuade himself his sudden attack of anxiety was only that. It hadn’t been so many days, and it was unreasonable suddenly to go feverish with desire for news, but the momentary thought it might be Toby calling had just taken the lid off his anxiety.

Which was stupid of him. Toby might have stayed out at sea awhile, attempting to pick up shortwave transmissions, looking for information. Or if he had come back to shore, he probably was camped out on his boat in some harbor, even at Port Jackson, ready for a call to go pick his errant brother up off some beach on the mainland. Toby would very likely do exactly that, and maybe not communicate with Mospheiran authorities for fear of having the navy step in and take the job away from him. He’d be ready for one phone call, the same phone call he was trying to get through to him.

Toby was all right. He had to be all right. It could even be a weather delay. It had rained, hadn’t it? So there’d been weather at sea.

He desperately hoped Shawn had heard his last statement in that call and would check up on Toby, which would bring down the whole Mospheiran navy into the search, for sure, but dammit, he wanted to know, and he wanted to know now. He wanted someone looking out for Toby, when he couldn’t go do it himself.

He’d ask Shawn in the next call he made. Maybe by tomorrow the communications would be a little better. The Messengers were working on it.

Frustrating. But that he had any phone contact with Mospheira at all was a great improvement over yesterdayc a relief not just in his personal level of anxiety. Peace between the mainland and Mospheira rode a little easier now that Mospheira had been made officially certain Tabini was back in power, and the station could start making preparations to make drops of supplies and personnel on this side of the straits—if that had to be done—to help them get the shuttles flyingc because the station, in turn, depended on the shuttles getting foodstuffs up to them.

“Shall we continue to try the contact with Toby, Bren-ji?” Jago asked from the door.

He hadn’t even realized she was standing there. The servant had departed.

“Insofar as you have time,” he said, “yes, nadi-ji, pursue it with the Messengers’ Guild. I have some concern for him. One cannot understand why the Guild cannot come up with one clear line.”

“Yes,” Jago said, receipt of an order.

“Is there news?” he asked. She had that manner about her.

Jago came all the way in and shut the door. “Tabini-aiji’s choice of bodyguards is under Guild dispute at this hour. The western and northern members want their own members near the aiji. The aiji has selected only Taibeni clan. This does not please the south or the Padi Valley. This may go on some hours. One believes the aiji will have his way, particularly as the last choice was not trustworthy.”

The chief of Tabini’s guards, Ismini, was dead, with two of his men. Another had gone south, which said something. The surviving heart of the usurping regime was in the south, on the verge of eradication—politically struggling for what scraps of power it could get back, and damned cheeky to be asking anything.

“There was some notion,” Jago said, “of myself and Banichi being called to that post. We have refused, Bren-ji. Banichi has refused a direct request from the aiji’s staff.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Tabini’s safety was paramount. But losing Banichi and Jago to Tabini—he didn’t know what he would do, and yet he couldn’t refuse the order to give them up, either.

“We would not consider it,” Jago said, “and the aiji has graciously backed us in that determination.”

He owed Tabini for that one. He ever so greatly owed him.

“If it were advancement for you,” he said, constrained to think of their side of the situation.

“No,” Jago said, flatly, and simply walked out on the discussion.

Offended? He earnestly hoped not. But when he found her a little later in her quarters, she seemed content and rather smug.

Preparations for the formal dinner still did not produce Banichi, nor Tano nor Algini. So it was an Infelicity of Two, himself and Jago, unless one counted them each a Stability of One—Bren personally chose to do so.

Given any choice at all, he would have declined the honor of dining with people he knew wished him dead. But his appearance surely had its purpose. It was difficult for the aiji-dowager to hide his presence in her household: that he resided here was a matter widely known in the Bu-javid, and it was not the dowager’s nature to hide any controversial fact, not in the least. Her neighbors from the East surely knew her ways, her inviting him was a statement on her part, and the wisest thing he could do, he was firmly convinced, was to keep his expression pleasant and his mouth generally shut.

So he gave himself up to the dowager’s domestic staff, bathed, dressed in his courtly best, braided and beribboned—he insisted on the white ribbon, the paidhi’s neutrality, rather than the black of the Lord of the Heavens, that title with which Tabini had attempted to put a human of no house into the ranks of the great houses. That distinction had been useful in dealings on the station.

It was not useful here, and certainly not among conservative Easterners.

“Nawari will accompany us tonight, nandi,” Jago informed him.

That was one of Ilisidi’s young men, a member of the dowager’s own bodyguard, a very reliable man, and it improved the security, besides improving the numbers. “The young gentleman will also attend,” Jago added. And then dropped the bombshell: “So will the lord of the Atageini.”

God. Lord Tatiseigi. Preeminent lord of the Padi Valley, in the central regions of the West, and an old flame of the dowager’s—in any sense, Tatiseigi was certainly an odd and volatile inclusion in tonight’s invitation. But Ilisidi and Tatiseigi had become thick as thieves since Ilisidi’s return from space, and perhaps the dowager meant her Eastern neighbors to see that she had strong allies in the West, that her power was increased, if anything, since Tabini’s return to powerc and to make one additional point that if they shared her dinner table and sought her favor, they had to share it with her intimates and behave themselves.

It was like a great deal else Ilisidi did: difficult to parse, and covered with thorns. Tatiseigi’s presence would not please the East, though in conservatism, they hardly had him outdone. More, he had to wonder if Tatiseigi knew that the paidhi-aiji would be there, or if Jago had gotten the full story of the dowager’s dinner party even from Nawari: Ilisidi’s guest lists could produce very uncomfortable surprises. Her sense of humor was not what other people called amusing, particularly when someone pushed, and he suspected it was in full force tonight.

Jago appeared, sleek, black-clad, and armed, at the very moment they needed to depart. Nawari had showed up at the door, likewise elegant, a handsome young fellow—all Ilisidi’s “young men” tended to that description, besides their other qualifications.

From there it was a short walk to the dining hall—and despite coming from within the apartment, he was not the first or even the second guest to arrive: Lord Tatiseigi was already there, his arm in an elegant brocade sling. Lord Tatiseigi had been wounded in recent action, and was quite proud of himself. Cajeiri was there, attended by two Atageini men in Assassins’ black, as well as the Taibeni youngsters, the latter in genteel court dressc rumor would tell the Easteners who and what the two anonymously-dressed young people were: not Guild, but certainly self-appointed bodyguards to the young gentleman—from a clan not highly approved by the Atageini, who asserted their close kinship to the heirc “Nand’ Bren!” Cajeiri said brightly, rising from his chair and bowing—due courtesy for a young person to an elder, but a little out of precedence. Bren managed a courteous, quick bow to Lord Tatiseigi, and had a nod from him, before addressing the youngster.

“One is honored, nandi.” One saw the white token at the place opposite Cajeiri, and next to Lord Tatiseigi—and above the places designated for their guests. It was not where the paidhi would have chosen to sitc certainly not above a trio of Eastern guests. And one had an immediate intimation that the dowager was up to something.

“One is bored,” Cajeiri complained, as he began to sit, but at that exact moment the Easterners showed up, a commotion at the doorway, with their own clutter of bodyguards and only the colored markers to tell them that they were sitting below the paidhi-aiji at the table.

And just then, thank God, the dowager and her guard entered by the other door. Bren reached his seat, but remained standing. So did Cajeiri. Lord Tatiseigi—senior, elderly, and injured—made only the most perfunctory gesture toward rising, but received a small motion of the dowager’s hand, making even the effort unnecessary.

There were grim bows from the Easterners, and a lingering, frowning glance at the two Taibeni, as the dowager introduced her great-grandson, then Lord Tatiseigi—an impassive politeness on both sides, while Ilisidi beamed; and then smugly introduced the paidhi-aiji—“Whom surely you know, nandiin.”

As if anyone could mistake him. The looks shifted his direction went a shade darker, and Bren chose to ignore the fact in a small, respectful bow—but not too deep a bow.

The Eastern glower turned to stony smiles and polite bows, however, as their regard swept back toward Lord Tatiseigi and their hostess.

Cheerful lot, Bren said to himself, and realized he had himself physically braced, as if shooting might break out at any moment.

There was a godawful array of weaponry on every hand, openly visible on the varied bodyguards, that was certain. Only the Taibeni youngsters stood in civilian dress, stiffly polite.

Ilisidi provided the names in their acknowledgment: Lord Caiti, Lady Agilisi, and Lord Rodi—Caiti was youngish, broad-faced, a surly customer. Agilisi, a thin, stylish woman, was expressionless, which never boded well among atevi. And Rodi, as plump as atevi came, eyed both the Atageini lord and the paidhi-aiji with a biding frown.

Neighbors of the dowager’s estate of Malguri. Not the best sort of neighbors, Bren decided. And his chair was not too happily between Lord Tatiseigi on the right and Lord Caiti on the left. Never would he have thought to find Lord Tatiseigi the more comforting presence—but at this moment the old man was a haven of courtesy and kindness. Cajeiri was across the table, between his great-grandmother and Lord Rodi, a perfect model of young gentlemanliness and current Ragi fashion. It was chilling, the grim look on that young face when no one was addressing him: it transited to perfect affability and a spark in the eyes as quickly as ever his father could manage, as his great-uncle Tatiseigi addressed him and asked whether he had seen his mother today.

Little politician, Bren thought. Never mind “little” was as tall as he was.

“No, Great-uncle,” Cajeiri said quite cheerfully. “One is certain she is busy.”

“The boy does not reside with his parents, ’Sidi-daja?” Rodi asked Ilisidi bluntly.

“My great-grandson resides with me, at present, nandi, and has over the last two years,” Ilisidi said.

“For security,” Rodi pursued.

“Indeed, nandi,” Ilisidi said. What that extended exchange meant Bren had no idea, since dinner service began, the servants moving in, and conversation contracted to requests for the sauces, compliments for the cook, and, thereafter, discussion of the weather and the plane flight the lords had had, coming west.

Ilisidi did regale the company with an account of the weather on the coast and in the midlands and inquired after their estimates of the coming winter—suitably tame topics for dinner, notably boring, as Tatiseigi, a font of past meteorological data, somewhat tediously compared notes on recent winters with Lord Rodi’s recollections, two gentlemen living on one side of the continent and the other, and gave his theories about the predictive qualities of early leaf-fall.

It was actually the bright spot in the dinner: the two seemed to warm to one another, seeing they shared similar views.

Cajeiri ducked his chin and smothered an occasional yawn over the vegetables. He perked up at dessert, however, and took a second helping.

Bren had one helping of the custard, and rather hoped to escape before the brandy. He looked for chances. But there was absolutely no breath of a gap in the proceedings. It was outright impossible to present his excuses and leave when the dowager seized him by the arm and asked, “And have you been able to reach nand’ Toby today, nand’ paidhi?”

She knew the answer to that question. He’d bet his coastal estate on it. Jago had been using her staff’s equipment, no doubt of it.

“Regrettably I have not, aiji-ma.” As he found himself steered for the sitting room. “Though I am indeed pursuing it.”

“So. Well, well, my staff will keep trying, too, nand’ paidhi, in all good will.” This, as they passed the door into the more intimate setting. She turned and made an expansive wave of her cane, all the while maintaining her grip on his arm. “Lords of the East, share a glass with us, and my great-grandson will of course have a lighter refreshment. The paidhi-aiji has very graciously agreed to stay with us for the social hour. Do not hesitate to inquire of him or us, gentle neighbors.” She at least released his arm. “And how are affairs in the inconvenient snowy heights, Lord Rodi?”

Brandy made the rounds. Bren knew the server, at least, would be careful of his sensitivities. He took the glass and intended to claim a seat unobtrusively in the corner near the door, but: “We are bored, nand’ Bren,” Cajeiri remarked, at his elbow before he could achieve his objective. “Where is Banichi this evening?”

“A necessary meeting,” he said, and had a sip of brandy standing.

“He will be back soon, young sir, so I am promised.”

“There was an assassination this evening,” Cajeiri informed him cheerfully. “A Talidi lord. We forgot who.”

Jago had not told him that news. Possibly, considering the boy’s sources, even Jago had not heard it yet. “Was there indeed, nandi?”

“Yes, nandi,” Nawari reported quietly from behind his shoulder.

“Lord Eigun is dead.”

Eigun was a disagreeable man, a man he personally wouldn’t miss, though he was sorry for the news, on principle. Rodi seemed pleased, however, and he passed it on to Agilisi, who outright asked the dowager the details as everyone settled to enjoy their brandies.

“Cenedi-ji,” Ilisidi said, and Cenedi, her head of security, stood forth in the gathering and gave the more particular details: Eigun had been returning from a trip to the southern islands, probably fled there for his safety during the upheaval of the aiji’s return to power, and had returned too soon. It was doubtless Assassins’ work, a neat shot out of the morning dark. There were no other fatalities in that household, and no one knew whose order had sent the Assassin who had done it—if it wasn’t the Guildmaster’s own order, or a Filing approved by the Guild—likely not a recent one, since the Guild had been obsessed with its own upheaval in recent days—but the Bu-javid records were in a thorough mess, under intensive review. It was a nightmare, that there might be Filings floating around as relics from the former regime, with Assassins engaged, and Tabini’s administration as yet unapprised of their existence.

Not even mentioning the occasional in-clan assassination, when man’chi had broken down.

“Well, one happy event for our visit,” Agilisi said, turning a dismissive shoulder: there was insouciance in her tone, outright rudeness to her host, and arrogant disregard of other possible opinions or allegiances presentc when it was very likely Agilisi had no intimate knowledge of western connnections.

“We never met him,” Cajeiri remarked, frowning. He had walked over next to Bren, with his fruit juice, and a small mustache of it on his lip. “Was he indeed a bad man, Great-grandmother, and should one indeed be glad?”

There was a very uncomfortable moment. The boy had learned his manners on the ship, where he knew the undercurrents to a nicety. Here—was another story. But he had just rebuked the lady and deferred to the host with an accuracy that made Bren’s heart skip a beat.

“We hardly knew him,” Ilisidi said smoothly, and redirected.

“Does the paidhi-aiji happen to know his character?”

A chance, a palpable chance to salve the Eastern lady’s provocation and the heir’s jibe with diplomacy—or to provoke the lady in a way that would be very unprofitable to the dowager’s relations with her neighbors.

And, professionally, he gave a shrug and avoided eye contact with the Eastern lady, answering the dowager’s question in a deferential way. “Having been absent so long,” he said softly, “we find ourselves inclined to reserve all judgments: recent events have reshaped allegiances. The paidhi-aiji would far rather consult those who might be better informed.”

“And who would those sources be?” the belligerent lady asked, ignored. “What authority does a human ever consult?”

Now he had to look in her direction, and bowed, politely and respectfully—before firing back, softly: “One consults the aiji-dowager, of course, nandi, in all matters.”

“Perhaps,” Lord Caiti said, out of the breath of shocked silence that followed, and gesturing with the empty brandy glass in his hand, “perhaps the paidhi will elucidate on matters he should indeed actually know something about: machines from the heavens.

What are they, and what business do they have settling on our land?”

Landed in the East as well? That was news. And it was not a polite question, not the way it was stated.

“One has had rumors likewise from the north,” Bren said smoothly. “Any such landing in the East is news to me, though certainly not out of all possibility.”

“As if it were nothing? We have destroyed them where found! We assure you of that! And in the north as well? What are we, raining infernal machinery from that pernicious station?”

“My office must confess ignorance in the matter, Lord of the Saibaitet Ami. Our passage through the station at our return was much too rapid to gather all details of what the station lords have done or caused to be done during the dowager’s absence, but one assures the gracious lord that if there was such a landing within his district—”

“Repeatedly!”

“Then I can only surmise the intention was both benign and possibly of service to you, if indeed, the package came from orbit and was intended to be set where it came down.”

“You impugn our common sense? What do you take us for?”

Bang! went that formidable cane. “Caiti, Caiti-ji, the paidhi-aiji is telling you what he knows, which is, we assure you, no more nor less than what we know: that fools in the south instigated all manner of trouble in our absence, that murder was done under this very roof! That Lord Tatiseigi’s neighbor, who has been repudiated by his own clan, has acted quite foolishly, and that the paidhi-aiji, Lord Tatiseigi, my grandson, my great-grandson and I have all spent so much time being shot at that we have not investigated strayed items dropped from the station—as the very least of concerns in Shejidan! These things were parachuted down possibly to reconnoiter, possibly to map, who knows? The installation at Mogari-nai is under repair and we are unable as yet to inquire of the station aloft their reasons for such landings. But we assure you the station acts consistently in support of Lord Geigi, among others, in any such mission undertaken to the mainland, and subject to his will. Lord Geigi, whom we left in authority on the station is still in power on the station, was never overthrown in the general disorder here in Shejidan, and he to this hour enjoys great authority over any such operations aimed at the planet, let me assure you, Lord Caiti. I certainly hope you have not destroyed some installation which would have monitored rebel aircraft encroaching on your province. That would be a misfortune.”

“I have every right to destroy whatever foreign object falls on my land! Whatever foolishness you pursue here in the westc”

“Pardon me, nandi.” A high and indignant voice intervened. “This is my great-grandmother’s house, and,” pointing at what Caiti held, “that is her brandy glass.”

There was stunned silence. Then Agilisi outright laughed, and Rodi smiled, silently, behind his hand.

Caiti looked at the offending glass as if he hardly knew whether to fling it at the floor or set it conspicuously on the side table.

Security all around the room was braced, hands not moving, but close to it.

“You trust my brandy,” Ilisidi said quietly. “As indeed by my good grace you may, Caiti, you scoundrel, and you know you may trust our brandy and our opinion. Rodi and Agilisi at least have no doubts of my intentions, nor have deserved to have. You share my hospitality with the paidhi-aiji and my hot-headed great-grandson, and of course you have questions in our return to the world, but grant we have moved with too much speed to pause for detailed briefings. Tati-ji, we ask your indulgence for our esteemed neighbors: they know us; we know them, oh, intimately. Patience, I say, Cai-ji, and do sit down.”

“Disagreeable woman!”

“Dare you?” Tatiseigi broke in, dignified and lately glorious in battle. “Dare you insult your host, nadi?”

Oh, it was about to get bitter. “Nandi,” Bren said, concentrating his gaze on his waterglass, “do allow the aiji-dowager to make peace, one most earnestly entreats it.”

There was an audible huff of breath, but the old man sat down.

Cajeiri went to stand by his great-grandmother, right by Cenedi, and entraining his own unofficial security as he did so.

“Now, now,” Ilisidi said, reaching for the boy’s hand. “Defense is unnecessary, Great-grandson. These are my neighbors, my esteemed neighbors around Malguri. They are inclined to speak bluntly, but they are not fools. Caiti has been a valued associate in prior years. And—” The latter in a low voice: “remember what is done here, in your own time.”

“Ha,” Tatiseigi muttered, with a look like a jealous lover. He positively youthened as he glowered at the three Easterners.

“Foolishness, foolishness,” Ilisidi said. “Let us have a civilized agreement, shall we? As for Lord Bren’s presence, it now seems very wise to have asked him to favor us with his attendance tonight. Would you not agree, Bren-nandi, that whatever was landed in the East was likely done with Lord Geigi’s consent? And Lord Geigi is out of the Coastal Association, long correspondents of the East—an old, old alliance, his with Malguri.”

“If the ship-aijiin acted otherwise and failed consultation with Lord Geigi, it would breach all manner of agreements,” Bren said, “and I would be obliged to carry strong words to the ship-aijiin in protest. I hardly believe they would have done so. But even if there had been some misunderstanding, take reassurance in this, nandiin. Two ship-aijiin have returned to the station aboard the ship that brought us, and they are extremely well-disposed to the aiji-dowager and her interests, having spent two years in her close association. The third, Ogun-aiji, whatever he may have done good or ill in his administration of the station, must now account to them for all he has done in their name, and I have no doubt he will do so.”

“So there is disagreement in the heavens, and they drop machines of war in my woods!” Caiti cried.

“Nandi, one is certain that there will be adequate explanation and accountability for any actions taken in the aiji-dowager’s absence, to your ultimate satisfaction. And one is equally certain that none of these actions were aimed at all at seizing advantage for the ship-humans, or aimed in any wise at securing a foothold on the earth. One is very confident that any machines dropped from the heavens have been in support of legitimate atevi authority, most probably to secure communications for the aiji’s forces when he might need them.”

“Communications to do what?” There was no polite address. It was entirely rude. “To make us a battlefield? No aiji of the west has ever set foot in the East.”

“No such thing, nandi, but the ship-folk will have wished to preserve your ability to contact the aiji’s forces, should hostilities break out. One is most regretful that such a gesture could have been misconstrued.”

“Misconstrued!”

“Nandi.” A tap of the dowager’s fingernail against the empty brandy glass, a clear, crystal note. “One may not lay the deeds of the station in the paidhi’s lap, certainly not if you wish his good offices to lodge inquiry on your behalf.”

“We expect an explanation.” There was a small silence, and the old lord muttered, “Nandiin.”

The plural was generic. It did not necessarily include the paidhi.

But it might. It did not, however, properly respect the dowager.

No sense pushing it, Bren said to himself.

“Doubtless,” he said, “we will learn the answer, once communication with the station resumes—which it has not, nandiin, so whatever the station-folk have dropped, they have not activated, or we might not have these problems in reaching them.

One rather thinks they have not activated them, in deference to the dowager’s efforts and the aiji’s return to the capital. They would not wish to offend sensibilities.”

It was not a damned bad speech, impromptu as it was. Its numbers were convolute enough to keep the restive Easterners calculating and digesting the information for a few heartbeats at least.

“Well,” Agilisi said with a ripple of thin, manicured fingers, “well, well, accountability in the heavens. That would do a great deal to settle our stomachs.” She finally sat down. So did Rodi, and Caiti settled, still frowning.

“Sit down, Great-grandson,” Ilisidi said with a little pat of her hand on Cajeiri’s, which rested on her chair arm, and Cajeiri finally went and took the chair by Lord Tatiseigi. A servant quickly offered him a refill of fruit juice. The servants moved in general to pour more brandy on the situation, and for a moment there was an easier feeling in the air. Caiti took a very healthy dose of brandy—whatever its effect on his common sense.

“Well,” Caiti said then, “well. Machinery falling out of the heavens. High time the dowager attended to her estate. When will you visit us, ’Sidi-daja?”

“Oh, soon. Soon.” Ilisidi took her own glass, refilled. “Those who thought our being sent to space was our grandson’s means of being rid of us were quite wrong. We are back, nandiin-ji. Believe that we are back.”

“Oh, there were far worse rumors than that, ’Sidi-daja,” Rodi said. “There were immediate rumors you were being held prisoner in Shejidan or on the station, there were rumors that the humans on the station had joined Murini, or that you had long ago died in space and no one would confess the fact, while humans corrupted the aiji’s heir.”

“A pretty fantasy,” Ilisidi said, and smiled. Her eyes did not.

“Surely Murini hoped so. But we thrived. We succeeded. The aiji’s heir is quite uncorrupt. He rides, he shoots, he ciphers, and he is conversant in the machimi. And here are three of my neighbors come to threaten our glassware and wish me a fortunate homecoming. What could we lack? But where are Ardija and Ceia tonight?”

These were two other districts of the East, major holdings not represented here: Ardija was actually closer to Malguri than, Bren recalled, Caiti’s holdings at Torinei, in the Saibai’tet Ami.

“We came in respect of the aiji-dowager,” Caiti said flatly. “We chose to come.”

“Well, well, and Lady Drien of Ardija and Lord Sigena of Ceia did not. Ah, but perhaps they had a previous engagement.”

“One doubts that,” Rodi said under his breath.

Ilisidi nodded sagely, contemplatively. “Your attendance at our table confirms my judgment of you. We shall not ask about Sigena.

We are not on the best of terms. But our neighbor Drien? I am somewhat disappointed in Drien. One would have expected word, at least. Can kabiu have failed her?”

There was a restless shift, not quite glances exchanged, but uncertainty.

“We do not judge, nandi,” Rodi said. “But we are here.”

“Guard yourselves, the while, nandiin,” Ilisidi said. “Households returning are just now settling, and the capital is still in turmoil.

One should take great care, coming and going to the hotel tonight.

As for that scoundrel Murini, Tati-ji, have you any recent information?”

Tatiseigi cleared his throat. “Reports state he has landed in Talidi. Who knows, now, with this assassination? Perhaps he is behind it. Perhaps he will move on, fearing retaliation. We have not heard word of Lady Cosadi, who has dropped entirely from sight.”

“Perhaps the aiji is already settling old scores, nandi,” Agilisi remarked.

“Not quite yet, nandi-ji, in her case,” Ilisidi said. “One believes she is hiding. And you will find no one in the north will mourn Talidi moving against each other. Murini himself may not survive this settling of old scores—if he is not behind it; and if he is, then one may lay odds others will deal with him without the aiji’s turning a hand. There will be a certain repaying of old debts all through the south. I should not be surprised. I should not be surprised if Lady Cosadi now finds Murini an embarrassment. But clearly she will not live long, and her own followers may be thinking of that. Twice spared, twice made a fool of in her choice of causes, and I believe my grandson is entirely out of patience.

Others certainly may be.”

Fruit juice was a treat after their long voyage, on which even tea had run short. Cajeiri sipped it the way the adults did the brandy, out of the special glasses, as he kept a careful watch on Lord Caiti, and nand’ Bren, who had answered the Easterners’ bad manners very sharply and very correctly. Great-grandmother was keen-edged tonight: it was something to watch.

Reminding Lord Caiti who provided the drinks had been a good touch on his own part, too. Cajeiri was very pleased with himself, and with the way great-grandmother had taken it right up. She had already told him about Caiti: more mouth than thought, Great-grandmother had said, and she was right. Rodi was smart, and said very little. Agilisi was probably the one to watch in this set, and just occasionally she looked curiously distressed, as if she was not entirely happy with the evening.

The people they talked about—Sigena was to the west of Great-grandmother’s estate, and a perpetual problem. Drien was closer, and more so, being upset about some old land dispute right on Malguri’s edge. Drien was great-grandmother’s youngest and only surviving cousin, and her not being here tonight had certainly raised great-grandmother’s very ominous left eyebrow. He wondered if these three had known how to read Great-grandmother’s expression—it had left him a little confused.

They were all Great-grandmother’s neighbors, and their numbers, combined with Great-grandmother alone, were not felicitous—they would have been felicitous, had Lady Drien come, but they added badly, without, and cast the balance-making to Great-grandmother’s good will, to make up the rest of the table. So she tossed in not one, but three of her own asking for dinner; that saved the felicity of numbers, but he thought the visitors might have hoped for his father and mother and him to be sitting here instead of Lord Bren and Lord Tatiseigi.

So they were surprised to find Lord Tatiseigi, who was too kabiu to quarrel with, more kabiu than they were, if it came to that, in their coming here all but demanding a dinner—the proper thing to have done would be to write from the East hinting they wanted an invitation: that would have respected Great-grandmother’s rank, but they had not done that. And they kept calling her not nand’ dowager, but ’Sidi-daja, which was about like yelling “Hey, Gene!”

in Great-grandmother’s hallway. Great-grandmother said they were both more kabiu and less respectful of western offices in the East, but that seemed pushy of them, especially considering they were pushy in coming here.

So if he read the clues, it was not a happy meeting, and Great-grandmother had shoved her closest associations and particularly nand’ Bren right in their faces. That was the way Gene would express it, and it fit. Right in their faces. He liked that expression.

And they were powerful, all three together, but they were not that important in the affairs of the aishidi’tat. Lord Sigena had been, but he was not here. Drien had kabiu, but not a great force.

It was a dispute in the East whether it was kabiu to have Guild, which was a western institution, but Great-grandmother had, and for that reason a lot of the East walked very quietly where Great-grandmother was involved. How dangerous those bodyguards over there were—he would pick Cenedi and Jago over all of them together, he was quite sure, but alarms were still ringing, in the barbs flying back and forth, and he sipped his fruit juice and kept trying to add things in his head, who was barbing whom, and most of all why Great-grandmother put up with it.

Because they were neighbors? Because they were all Easterners?

He had memorized all the provinces and their lords, all the provincial estates and the holdings in all the aishidi’tat, including the Eastern districts in which Great-grandmother’s heredity meant property, and rights, and obligations that stretched on into very long ago, until he yawned and Great-grandmother thwacked his skull and asked him to recite it all back. Great-grandmother had thumped the details into his head over two long years, along with the machimi, a grasp of poetry, and the laws of inheritance, property, and bloodfeud.

He knew he was actually very, very remote kin to Lady Agilisi.

He was not sure he liked being. And he was more kin to Drien, whose absence Great-grandmother found interesting.

And the news about machinery dropping out of the sky onto Lord Caiti’s lands, that had been an exciting point, and he wanted to know more about it. He had ached to inform Lord Caiti he was a fool for breaking what was probably very valuable and useful equipment, but Lord Bren had handled the man well enough.

Now it was just talk. And talk ran down to actually polite discussion over the third round of brandy, naming names, some of which he knew. They talked about Malguri, which was Great-grandmother’s estate, and she was glad to know it had not been bothered during Murini’s rule.

So was he. He had never been there. She had kept promising him—or threatening him with a year there, where she informed him there was no television at all. He thought it would be interesting to see, but he wanted not to be left there.

So, well, grown-ups were in charge of the evening, and there was more and more talk, and things grew boring.

Then deadly boring, as they got down to babies and births, which he tracked, because he was absolutely certain Great-grandmother was going to ask him. He had to memorize who was related to whom, particularly those that were related to him, and he tried.

But the back of his thoughts took comfort in the fact underlying all this conversation, that the guests were leaving Shejidan in four days, going back across the mountains, and he really, really hoped there would not be another dinner party before they left More boring things. He watched their security, wondering what they were. At the very last moment, arriving for the dinner, Great-uncle Tatiseigi had provided him two Guild Assassins that loomed over him and Antaro and Jegari. He had left them both in the outer hall, but they would be coming and going in his apartment, and he really had no choice about it if Great-uncle was going to insist. They were Atageini: they were substantial protection, Great-grandmother had said this evening, making it fairly clear he had to take them, and he had gone so far as to mutter that none of Great-uncle’s men had done very well about defending them this far, which his Great-grandmother called ingratitude and impudence, and said he should never, ever say that to Great-uncle.

So he had to thank Great-uncle for sending two people he had as soon not have spying on him.

Because he was sure that was exactly what Great-uncle was doing, and Great-uncle had picked this evening to slip them into Great-grandmother’s household. They were nowhere near as good as Banichi and Jago, and they were probably not happy to be assigned to him, either, they were glum fellows, in their middle years, and had no sense of humor, if looks said anything.

More, they were Atageini, and Atageini were not on good terms with Taibeni folk, not for centuries, and the recent alliance had done nothing to patch up personal feelings. They clearly looked down their long noses at Antaro and Jegari attempting to protect him, not only because they were not really Guild, and Guildsmen took a dim and jealous view of non-Guild trying to do their job, but also, he strongly suspected, just because they were Taibeni. Antaro and Jegari had gotten respect even from Lord Bren’s staff. Banichi and Jago had said, had they not, that they were very brave?

He feared he was losing certain elements of the conversation. He tried listening and remembering, but it was just more names that meant nothing to him. He had a notion he could ask Great-grandmother later and get a long, long explanation which he would have to remember.

And he intended to find every excuse to leave the Atageini guards standing in the hall at functions like this, until they got the notion they had to please him in order to get permission to do anything else.

If they got bored enough standing in the hall, they might go back to Great-uncle and beg off. Then he could talk about them with Great-grandmother and maybe get rid of them altogether. That was a plan.

He could get Antaro and Jegari into the Guild; they could start their schooling. Banichi said they could, and he would back them.

And that would mean they would be gone some of the time, and the Guild had a lot of things to decide before they got around to two youngsters from Taiben, but it was going to happen, was it not?

But that might mean he had Great-uncle’s guards on his hands all the while they were in training, which could be years. And years. And years.

That was just—Gene would call it—gruesome.

He would still have them stand in the hall, until they knew to take his orders.

But Antaro and Jegari had to go to the Guild. They were not cut out to be domestic staff. He knew that. They were rangersc well, they had been trying to be. They knew guns, and hunting, and trackingc “Well,” Great-grandmother said, in that particular way that made all her guests know that the social hour was about to end—and he paid attention. It was very effective, that well, and had to be a particular tone, with the look and the attitude. Cajeiri had practiced it himself in private.

Great-grandmother, however, wielded it with expertise and her guests never dared take offense. She simply said, “Well,” and in due time the guests got up and finessed their way to the door as if they felt apologies were due on their part for leaving: it was very curious how that worked.

And it came very welcome.

He got up, too—Lord Bren found his way out, and Cajeiri decided there was no particular reason to bother adults with a good night.

He was only wishing he could shed his lent Atageini clan bodyguard with a similar lack of offense. “Well,” would not be adequate.

But he ever so much wished he could have somebody else.

“Jeri-ji,” Great-grandmother said.

“Mani-ma.” He bowed, offering that intimate address. “Excuse me.” He had been caught inattentive. He had no wish to be found at fault, and bowed again to Lord Tatiseigi. “Great-uncle, thank you very much for lending staff this evening. I will return them with profound gratitude when things are settled.”

“They will remain here,” his uncle said dourly, with that lack of address only acceptable when one confronted a child. “Your mother will call on them at need, with her own staff.”

“Yes, Uncle,” he said, wondering what his mother’s need of staff had to do with anything, but uncle could be at least as indirect and as scheming as his great-grandmother.

“Patience, Tati-ji, patience. We have not yet told him,”

Great-grandmother said.

“Told me what, mani-ma?” They had drifted out into the hallway.

All the bodyguards were standing around them, now, those he wanted, and those he did not, not to mention Cenedi and Nawari, and Antaro and Jegari, and he really disliked that tone of voice everybody was using—had he daydreamed right through something important to him?

“You will keep your current rooms,” great-grandmother said.

“But I shall be leaving before daylight, to spend time at Tirnamardi, so we will say our good-byes now, young gentleman. When you wake, your father will be in residence, with staff you may not know—expect strange faces, but reliable persons. My caretaker staff has their orders to stay near and identify them to you during the transition.”

His heart had picked up its beats, faster and faster, and shock and anger first cooled, then heated his face, all in the space it took mani-ma to assault his whole life and his plans and dispose of them in a single, ridiculously easy stroke.

It was absolutely necessary, dealing with Great-grandmother, and in front of Uncle, to maintain iron composure, and he managed it, short of wind as he found himself: a grown man had to manage that rush of heat and anger, cool it to a faint, easy breeze, and keep his voice absolutely, absolutely steady and pleasant. That was what Cenedi had said.

“But, mani-ma,” he said, “When did you decide this?”

“Oh, over the last several days.” His great-grandmother touched his cheek. “We have enjoyed a most remarkable adventure together, have we not? Now it is extraordinarily important for the heir of the aishidi’tat to learn from his father, and understand the things his father and mother can teach him. I have business to care for, as you heard this very evening. So do you. Your business is to learn. Your father and your mother need a residence, as they have been most uncomfortably camped in inadequate quarters, and they have accepted our hospitality here. There is hardly room for your father’s affairs and mine under one roof, so we have accepted your great-uncle’s very kind invitation to visit in Tirnamardi, and you, Great-grandson, are to stay here and get acquainted with your father.”

Disaster. His father hardly paid attention to him, except naturally as his heir, and his mother had concern for him, but no great care, either. And both of them were more concerned with keeping him safe and contained and completely out of their way. He had no great resentment for their dealing with him: he entirely understood that they had abdicated his rearing to Great-grandmother, but she could not just walk off and leave him with Great-uncle’s guards. They wanted him to find man’chi for his father. Well, he did have. He was perfectly fine in that regard. His father was the authority. He was willing to say so. But nobody cared what he thought.

“Will nand’ Bren be here?” That was his last hope, his one appeal to his personal needs.

“Nand’ Bren will be moving to your great-uncle’s apartment. It is considered,” she said in that voice with which she made implacable pronouncements, “that you should have a period of dealing only with atevi, learning the things your sojourn on the ship could not teach you. You know you need that time. You know why, and you may immediately erase that frown, Great-grandson.”

“But—” he began.

“There is no ‘but,’ Great-grandson. People are watching you at every turn. Be seen to be your father’s son, as you ought to be. You will see us again, in good time. It will not be for that long. Surely one can trust your discretion.”

“One can trust. If I were on my own—” He leaped to the next foothold, the only possibility that offered relief. “I had my own place at Tirnamardi. Surely, mani-ma, I might have my own householdc”

He had mastered the anger, at least: and he would not let mani-ma embarrass him in front of Great-uncle and his own staff, who stood nearby, witnesses to the scene. She let a little well-guided astonishment lift a brow, now, that, in itself, enough to make him think, for one terrible moment, that she might still say something to make him out a fool. Great-grandmother’s wit was quick, and lethal.

“Your managed your own suite, yes, Great-grandson,” she replied to that doubtful argument. “For the few hours you were in it, and with Lord Bren’s staff coming and going. But that brings us back to the fact your father and mother have nowhere proper to live at the moment. Their apartment needs renovation, the Bu-javid’s undamaged suites are all occupied, and the primary purpose of our removing to Tirnamardi is to afford your parents suitable quarters.”

So he would pass under his father’s authority, and his mother’s, people who hardly knew him, who had last seen him when he was a baby. His composure wavered dangerously. He fought to recover it, knowing Great-grandmother was about to walk away and end all discussion. “But,” he said, the solitary word he could muster on the instant, and then sucked in a deep breath and made his best try.

“Mani-ma, may I just go to Tirnamardi with you and Great-uncle?”

“You have parents, Great-grandson, and all eyes are on your behavior. Persons will wish to know the source of influence on your behavior. I have had my time. Time now for your father and mother. And the demonstration needs to be public.”

“They hardly know me at all, mani-ma!”

“And you hardly know them, Great-grandson. Time to remedy that. Man’chi must settle where it should. Lord Bren must resume his duties. I must attend my own business. You, as your father’s son, have so many things to learn. See to it you do. Your father thinks quickly, and the aishidi’tat as it exists is his creation. You will do very well to learn what he thinks, and what your mother thinks.”

That was the problem. And Great-grandmother ran right past it.

“They by no means know what I think!”

“One is certain your thoughts will be of interest to your father once you prove yourself to have worthwhile actions.”

“Will you tell him so, mani-ma?”

“We have already told him so. Convincing him of that is your job, great-grandson. He has faults of his own: impatience and temper, infelicitous two. These should not become your faults, mind you. He has virtues: cleverness, a keen sense of opportunity, and courage, fortunate three. Profit by them. Avoid the one and imitate the other. They are both in your blood: deal with them.”

“One had far rather be in Tirnamardi! Or with Lord Bren.”

“Yes. Clearly. But that is not what you have. And one is hardly surprised at your reaction. You are afraid of your father. He makes you afraid.”

His chin lifted, betrayal of emotion. It was involuntary.

“Ah,” she said. “We offend you. You think nothing can frighten you.”

“No, mani-ma.” He scrambled to recover, and turned the argument completely end-first, as mani-ma had demonstrated, oh, very often. “You do not offend us.”

“Us. Us, is it?”

“We learn from you, mani-ma. But one must agree this is a very bad surprise.”

“Tell us that when you meet us next.” The cane rapped the floor.

“Infelicitous reversal. You have missed several points.”

His face went hot. “I have not!”

“Are you my great-grandson?”

“I certainly am, mani-ma.” Her subtleties hammered her opposition: few grown-ups wanted to trade words with mani-ma.

One had to add up the things she never said as well as those she had, and think fast, and still be respectful; and he knew what point he had failed to answer—the point he had not wanted to consider.

“And I will show my father.” He took a great risk, and left an infelicity, a proposition unresolved, just as mani-ma would do when she meant to provoke someone to ask, “What?”

The network of lines about Great-grandmother’s mouth, that map age had made, could be either hard or amused, and it was not, at the moment, amused. But he stood fast, and composed his face as well as he could, waiting for her to ask the mandated question. Or otherwise comment.

“Indeed,” Great-grandmother said, and the dreaded eyebrow lifted. “Pert, are we? Your father will certainly see our influence in that. We are not certain it will please him.”

“I am not certain I shall please him, mani-ma,” he said. “Perhaps then he will send me to Tirnamardi.”

“He certainly will not, since I will not permit it, and he certainly should not, with the whole Association watching and judging you. It would be no favor to you were he to do that, Great-grandson.”

“Perhaps I shall go live in space with Gene and Artur.”

Foolish provocation. He knew it the instant it slipped out.

“Do you imagine,” Great-grandmother asked him, “that that course would not require you to grow up? Do you imagine that the changes now proceeding in you would inexplicably cease, and you would be forever a little boy? I assure you, Gene and Artur are growing up. Are you?”

“One has already grown, great-Grandmother.”

“You have reached an infelicitous year,” Great-grandmother said sharply, “and yet show promise in it. Your arguments have improved, but do not yet convince us. Learn from your father, boy.

Then argue with us again.”

He was dismissed. He was left with no recourse but to bow, and watch mani walk away ahead of Cenedi, a straight, regal figure, walking with small taps of the dreaded cane, with great-uncle Tatiseigi at her side and both their bodyguards behind. His staff, his own and Great-uncle’s spies, had seen and heard everything: staff witnessed everything, and one was obliged to be dignified, even while losing badly and being embarrassed and treated like a child.

He remained upset. He was not fit at the moment to discuss matters. He walked down the short hall to his own suite and cast Great-uncle’s two guards a forbidding look as they attempted to go in.

“Wait here, nadiin,” he said, assigning them to stand at the door.

It was only Jegari and Antaro he admitted to his rooms; and pointedly he shut the door and glared at Pahien, who, across the hall, had started an advance on his door.

The Taibeni pair had gained a certain wisdom about his moods.

They went and turned down his bed, and quietly prepared his closet, choosing his wardrobe for the morning, doing all the things Pahien did, and said not a thing in the process.

He was not in a mood to sit down and talk with them and not in a mood to go to bed. He stalked to his desk and looked through his books, and looked at his unfinished sketch of the ship. That made him think about Gene and his associates up above, and made him think about being happy, which he was not, at the moment. Not at all.

He knew what he was. His parents were an Infelicity of Two and he was a Stability of One. He served the same function with his great-grandmother and his great-uncle, to keep them united in peace. He had served that function with Lord Bren and the kyo, and very many other people, and he had wished someone else would take that job—but he was clearly stuck with it. That was what Gene would say. Stuck with it. That expression meant very many different things in Gene’s language. One was stuck with something.

One stuck with a thing.

Mani would say everything fluxed and changed, and very few things stuck together, unless there was One to make them stand still. A Stability was a valuable thing to be. Everyone wanted a Stability. It was when it stuck to something else isolated and became an Infelicity of two that it began to be in trouble.

Baji-naji, mani would say: fortune and chance: flux. Everything shifted, or the numbers would hold the universe from moving, and the ship could never move through space and people who were wrong would never change their minds.

He detested numbers.

But he had to acknowledge he was probably stuck with Great-uncle’s two guards.

At least for a while.

And mani had come out of that meeting with her anger up, and that was why she had been so blunt and so unobliging.

He should have seen it. He had not. Fool, he had been, to talk to mani when she had just had to deal with rude people in the salon.

She had been on alert, and that had been an infelicitous moment to go on with that conversation. He should have asked to talk to her in the morning, but now she had closed the subject and taken a position.

He had to learn. He had to learn not to walk into such arguments, and to pick felicitous moments. That part he agreed with. He had seen enough fighting to give him bad dreams at night.

He had seen people die. He had probably killed someone, which he tried not to remember, but did. And he knew people here on the planet wanted to kill all of them, and that he was obliged to be smarter than most boys.

He was obliged to grow up faster than most boys.

And then people would see what he was.

A Stability could become an Aggressor, quite as well as a Support. He wished people really were afraid of disarranging him and disturbing his life. No one believed he was a threat— well, his father’s enemies might, but people in his household called him a Stabililty. He had rather be an Aggressor, at the moment.

But Bren-nandi said no. Bren-nandi had told him it was better for an aiji to prop things up than to knock them down. Murini was the sort who had knocked things down, and look what it had done, and how badly he had ruledc and everybody wanted him dead. Build.

That was Bren-nandi’s advice.

But he still wished he had his father’s power to break heads of those who had hurt his family. If he were aiji, if he was his father, he would be thinking about that. So was mani thinking about it, and he was well aware that was why everybody was too busy to talk to him as if he had any worthwhile ideas of his own. Mani was more Aggressor than Stability, and she was One, was she not?

But she had dinner with disagreeable people. She was polite. She found time for them, and smiled, even when it was a political smile.

And she had invited Lord Bren, when people there were not well-disposed to him. Why?

She was either a Stability or an Aggressor. Bren-nandi was always a Stability. One could feel the flux settle, when Lord Bren took hold of a situation.

That was a sort of power, too. That was a great and valuable power, was it not?

Nand’ Bren knew his timing to the finest degree. Nand’ Bren spoke, and even his father changed his mind.

So it was not just Aggressors who changed things, was it?

Something occurred to him as he fingered the sketch of the ship and thought about Lord Bren and great-grandmother.

On Bren’s advice, his father had agreed to have atevi go into space. It was his father who had had all the factories built which built modern machines. It was his father who had used television to reach the outlying villages and towns and kept the aishidi’tat informed. It was his father who had seen that if the humans failed to get their affairs in order and establish a stable authority up in the heavens, then disorder would spread in space—and that had led everybody to discovering the trouble at the far station, and rescuing Gene and everyone, and meeting the kyo, and learning about that danger in time to do something. And it was his father’s decision that they were building another starship, one that would belong to atevi, and maintaining an atevi authority on the space station, and using all manner of technologyc So his father might be an Aggressor—aijiin were that. But his father had wanted nand’ Bren’s influence and mani’s both to instruct him in his growing up. His father had gotten him and mani out of the reach of Assassins, seeing danger coming. His father was behind all sorts of change and technology which had brought on the trouble. So his father took chances.

And valued technology. And nand’ Bren.

So it was not like arguing with uncle Tatiseigi, who deplored everything new just because it was new.

So living with his father was not quite like being in Tirnamardi.

Mani had said there should be no televisions under her roof.

Where mani came from, in the East, things were very kabiu, and proper, and people were more interested in the traditions, like Uncle Tatiseigi.

But if Father were running the apartment, well, he could just possibly ask for a television, and maybe a computer, could he not—he could tell Father how he had learned to use the computers on the ship and he needed to keep his skills in practice, and he could tell Father how he needed books. There was the whole human Archive, over on the island, or at least up in space, on the ship, if he could get it. And that would bring movies. He ached to have movies again.

And there was a world of things on the ship that were just more convenient, that they could set up, like the kind of communications he knew Banichi and Jago and Cenedi and Bren himself had brought down in their luggage— Communications which had proved so much better than Uncle’s, and saved their lives, besides. His father would not disapprove of that. His father might be impressed if he knew his son could use computers as well as he could. His father would think it was a very good thing for his son to have learned.

Things could be different with his father in charge.

Not to mention Father might let him fly with Dur’s son in the yellow airplane.

Father was very close with Lord Bren, so he would be seeing Bren often, too. That was not so bad. If Bren was staying in Great-uncle’s apartment, that was just down the hall.

And if his father gave him computers and keys and permissions and the like, so might his mother, who might be easier to approach in some respects. Then getting places and getting information might be a great deal easier. His father would be the one to approve his going to the library, and “going to the library” could cover a lot of territory, besides that he would bet the library Jegari and Antaro had talked about had more than one door.

So it was not quite that he was about to be locked into an apartment with his father and kept like a prisoner. He was gaining access to someone who could get anything and do anything and get any book and any key in the world, if he could practice Bren’s kind of skill and just use his head.

That was one point in its favor.

Having those two Atageini bodyguards watching him and reporting to his mother and to great-uncle Tatiseigi—that was a problem.

But he could get past problems. He could depend on Jegari and Antaro for anything.

He drew a deep, deep breath, contemplating his sketch of the ship.

Now that he thought about what his father could do if he wanted to, this could work out. It could very well work out.

3

Breakfast, and Banichi was back—just after dawn, a towering and unexpected shadow in the dowager’s inner hall. He stopped, he gave a sketchy bow; Bren did, on his way to the dowager’s table.

And kept at bay the human desire to fling arms about his bodyguard, in sheer relief.

“One is extremely delighted to see you, Nichi-ji.” Ever so properly. “One is ever so greatly relieved.”

“One is extremely delighted to be back, nandi.” Banichi looked uncharacteristically tired, and was a little hoarse—one could imagine long talk, or loud talking, both unlikely in Banichi, but it had been an extraordinary week.

“Did Tano and Algini come back, too?”

“They are still at the Guild,” Banichi said, drawing that opaque curtain on all information within that organization, and telling him no more than that. It was worrisome. He wanted the rest of his staff back, with all his heart he wanted them, and considering Algini’s high rank in the Guild, he was by no means sure he would get them back. But he had Banichi safe and sound, and equally important, Jago had her partner back. Both facts made him feel ever so much happier in the start of a chaotic day.

“Do go rest,” he said. “The dowager’s staff is packing and moving for us, with help from down the hall. I don’t know if you may have heard.” It was almost impossible that Banichi had not picked up, from Jago, if no one else, that they were changing residences, but he delivered the information himself, for courtesy. “We are to remove to Lord Tatiseigi’s apartment this afternoon, but no one will disturb your sleep, on my explicit order, and one is certain the dowager will concur.”

“Indeed,” Banichi said, for once evincing the need. “I shall do that, Bren-ji. And I am thoroughly briefed. I will be awake by noon, when your security will gain advance access to the premises .”

“Go,” he said, and Banichi disappeared, with one more duty in front of him—getting them in there, and coordinating with Cenedi.

He knew Jago would refuse to leave him unattended for an instant, and with Tano and Algini still—engaged—at the Guild—it was all on Banichi.

He had seen nothing of Jago since they had waked, however, in these safe halls: she was closeted with the dowager’s security so far as he knew, doing everything alone, at least as the sole representative of his own staff in the transition. There were matters to be arranged with the place he was leaving as well as the place he was going: passwords to be changed, keys to be traded, God knew what else.

But Jago knew Banichi was back, and that it would not be all on her. Banichi would have advised her first of all, and he would be linked in by electronics at least the moment he passed the front door. So his personal world was knitting itself back together.

Banichi was coming down off that state of high alert that had occupied his staff ever since their return—or at least he was relaxing enough to admit he needed sleep. That was good to see.

And he very much preferred Banichi’s parting “Bren-ji” to “my lord.”

He felt easier in body and soul, despite the disarrangement of the impending move. He returned his attention to his unanswered correspondence, composing on the keyboard, where erasure did not mean throwing away a piece of tangible paper that could then fall into wrong hands—and where he had an automatic copy of his exact words. Even carbon paper was controversial modernity, in very conservative households, and worked exceedingly poorly with calligraphic pens, to boot— but at the moment he had no staff to turn it into proper handwritten text, and he could work very much faster on the computer. He answered the inquiries from Patinandi Aerospace, and also from the Ministry of Transport, assuring the latter that he had communication with the scattered flight crews—the truth: they were in the “answered” stack, and, being sensible people, would get their typescript quickly.

Most of all, he hoped Algini and Tano would show up soon, and his whole world would steady on its axis if he had some word from his errant but probably safe brother.

The dowager was in the process of leaving; he intended to go say a formal farewell, but wanted to stay out from underfoot otherwise.

Lord Tatiseigi had left his apartment at the crack of dawn, witness the fact that his own staff, namely Jago, was beginning to get contact down the hall in that other apartment. He had no idea how soon after the dowager’s departure Tabini would arrive here—or whether Cajeiri would come to wish him farewell as he left the premises. He dreaded that scenario. On the one hand it hardly seemed such an occasion, considering he would be only down the hall, but the change was far greater than that in the boy’s already unstable life, and he hovered between fear Cajeiri would pitch a fit and fear that he would only sink into quiet unhappiness.

Damn, he would miss the boy’s frequent company, probably more, he told himself, than the boy would end up missing him. He at least hoped that would be the case. In the welter of arriving stimuli, in the sudden plethora of atevi to deal with as the boy settled into court life, ideally young nerves would discover the stimuli that made them react properly—that was the theory behind the dowager’s decisions. The boy, educated in space among human children, would find more and more atevi associates, discover them much more to his own comfort, and become, in short, whatever a normal atevi boy ought to bec Which was not—the dowager was absolutely right—not— snuggled too close to the paidhi-aiji and passionately addicted to pizza and ancient movies from the human Archive.

He did interrupt his work to bid Ilisidi a brief farewell—she must have bidden farewell to Cajeiri already, since the boy did not appear. He asked Jago to order flowers sent to the dowager’s household staff, and more flowers to the staff of Tatiseigi’s establishment, and went in person to thank the cook in particular for his skill and courtesy in avoiding poisoning him; and he also thanked old Madiri, the major domo attached to the apartment itself, for his devotion. Madiri looked to be in the final stages of collapse; he had the aiji’s household about to move in, and had Cajeiri in his charge in the meanwhile. It was not an enviable position, and he accepted thanks in a distracted series of frenetic bows, then rushed off to investigate a crash in the hallway.

It seemed a good thing for the paidhi-aiji to disappear back into his office. He attended to his correspondence and did the requisite courtesies for the staff as people became available. And by noon, indeed, Jago turned up paired with Banichi, looking much less grim, and reported everything ready for his occupancy down the hall.

He signaled his departure to the staff. He rather expected Cajeiri to come out and bid him farewell when he stood at the door, at least, but there was no such appearance. He only repeated his courtesies to Madiri and thanked him for his assistance with baggage and the like, and walked out, a little worried for the boy, a little distressed, to tell the truth.

It was a short walk, the move down the hall; he personally carried nothing but his computer, Banichi and Jago nothing but two very large bags of what was not likely clothing.

And, except for the worry nagging him, it felt like the settling-on of a well-worn glove, walking through that familiar door and finding that, indeed, Madam Saidin and staff members he knew were lined up to welcome him.

“Nandi,” Saidin said—a willowy woman of some years, an Assassin whose working uniform was graceful brocade and whose principle defensive tools were her keen-eyed staff.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said, using the warmly intimate greeting on first arrival, for her, and for the staff. They bowed—mostly female, and impeccable in their attention to the floral arrangements in the foyer, the priceless vases on their fragile tables beautifully arranged, incorporating his flowers, his colors, as earlier they would have been all the Atageini lilies.

He felt immediately at home in this place—home in a sense that he had not been since his return from space, living on the dowager’s tolerance. He allowed himself to be conducted on a brief tour of the thoroughly familiar rooms, every detail evoking memory and very little changed from their state when he had last been in residence, unchanged, down to the precise placement of vases on pedestals, the display cases in the parlor, the little set of chairs—well, little on the atevi scale. There was a tea service beside flowers in the library, where he had loved to spend his idle time.

The immense master bedroom was ready for him, the bed with its historic hangings, its tall mattress piled high with comforters and pillows, and again, a vase of flowers. There was the luxurious bath, with its deep black-marble tub, fire-hose water pressure, and steam jets at one end—silver-fitted, of course.

He was toured about the well-stocked kitchens, introduced to the cook—a man who had worked with Bindanda, and who was doubtless very competent and knowledgeable about his requirements. Cuisine was one area in which Tatiseigi’s household excelled, and this man was very anxious to demonstrate the new containers of human-safe ingredients he had acquired precisely for him.

Never mind they were, to a man (or woman) Lord Tatiseigi’s staff and no few of them, likely down to the cook, were members of the Assassins’ Guild. That was more or less common among lordly establishments in the Bu-javid and round about, where assassinations were a threat. Never mind that he suspected Lord Tatiseigi had invited him to resume his residency in these historic and museum-like premises so that he could have better current information on him and on the aiji, who might presumably invite him and confide in him, than for any reason of personal regard. But that was very well. It was a place to be.

So here he stood. He had absolutely nothing to hide from Lord Tatiseigi, and knew that being spied upon by such a pillar of rectitude and tradition had a certain benefit: other eyes would see that he had nothing to hide, since he was willing to be minutely observed by the staff of this Padi Valley lord. So his residency had value to him and to Lord Tatiseigi alike, and indirectly, to Tabini and the aishidi’tat.

The tour concluded, praise and felicitations duly delivered. It was, finally, bliss to sit in an armchair he had once regarded as his, and sip a very delicate tea in a room little changed from simpler times—times when he had only had to worry about the political annoyance of certain regional forces, never seeing where that annoyance could lead. In these very rooms, he had contemplated the situations that had allowed Murini of the Kadigidi to survive, and finally to ally with the south—it would have been hard to see that unlikely alliance coming, still less to imagine its world-shaking effects, but he certainly wished he had done so.

Regrets, however, were only useful as instruction, not a dwelling place. He had to observe with a little greater suspicion, was all, and he had to go to Tabini with his suspicions: he had once held certain observations private, fearing the atevi answer would mean, literally, bloodshed. But at a certain point he had changed his view.

He saw Tabini’s opposition as likely to commit more bloodshed than Tabini, and moreover, against thoroughly undeserving people. That was the deciding point for him. But he remained doubtful that he ought to advise on such matters, where he lacked an internal sense of how the chemistry ran. He wished he had been a little less morally sure, back when there had been a chance—and knew how to be morally sure in the other direction that he was not losing touch with his own, admittedly alien, instincts.

He received a message cylinder which had chased him from one residence to the other. It brought good news, that his clerical staff had received approval for its old offices, which were to be refurbished on a high priority. His old staff was setting up preliminary meeting space in the hotel at the foot of the hill, vying with various other offices attempting the same. And—to his great relief—records were reappearing, being checked in and stored safely at a secret location, before their restoration to the refurbished office. Staff had stolen them away to safekeeping, and now brought them back.

He answered that letter immediately, and sent expressions of gratitude to his office manager. Thank God, he had some means of retracing his steps through correspondence: he might have records of what had been agreed and what was not. And with certain of the lords, this was a very good thing to know.

“I have one lingering concern, Saidin-nadi,” he said to Saidin, who dropped by to assure herself that her new charge was well-settled. “If there should be a message or a call from the Presidenta of Mospheira, I should be waked at any hour, and also if there should be any word from my brother Toby or his companion Barb. He assisted us to reach the mainland, he is somewhere at sea, we think, and my staff is still attempting to locate him. He speaks a few words of Ragi. Whoever might handle a call from him should ascertain his welfare and his location, if safe to do soc You understand.”

“We shall certainly do everything possible, nandi,” Madam Saidin said, with a little bow of the head and a level look afterward. Even Guild resources would not be off-limits to this lady: she was a very potent ally. “We remember nand’ Toby well, indeed, and we shall gather whatever information we can.”

He so hoped Toby was being sensible with that half-kilo letter he’d given him in file: it was in most points the same report he’d just given the atevi legislature—he’d given it to Toby when there was a real chance it would be the only copy to survive. Now that the report was public, the danger of having it in his possession had gone, but Toby might not know that. He hoped Toby would just go into port soon: he surely had to, to resupply—there was a limit to how long he could stay out.

And then Toby would check his messages and call him, please God, quickly.

He answered two more letters, with that element of worry gnawing away at his stomach. If Tabini-aiji were not busy and distracted, and if the atevi navy was not concentrated down south trying to assure the nation stayed intact, by rounding up Murini’s southern partisans, if all that were not true, he’d put in a plea for a full-blown coastal search from this side of the water.

He did put in a query to the atevi weather service, which he sent with staff, to inquire about maritime weather over the last week. It was, the report came back, calm and clear in the strait until midweek, then overcast and colder.

Some time later he heard an unbidden and familiar step enter the room: he knew whoever-it-was. It was absolutely certain in his mind even before he turned his head that the someone who had entered was part of his household, but it was neither Jago nor Banichi; and he was a little surprised and very relieved to discover it was Algini padding in—but solo.

An uncommonly resplendent Algini, leathers polished and winking with silver. “I am back, nandi.”

“One is extremely gratified, Gini-ji.” Algini and his partner Tano were the ones he most feared he would lose in the general shake-up of allegiances and revisions of duty as the Assassins’ Guild sorted out its internal business, and he still feared Algini had simply come to collect belongings and offer his regrets. “We are very glad to see you safe. Is everything all right?” He added: “Are you staying?”

Algini was very, very high in the Guild, as he had discovered.

But was that a pleasant expression he saw on Algini’s face? Algini was not a man who outright smiled often. And, yes, that was indeed a smile, a faint, even gentle one. “It seems that we are now without official employment, nandi. Tano suggests we would still be welcome here.”

He was utterly confused, and shoved his computer aside and got up to meet what was officially now a mystery. “Of course you are welcome here, Gini-ji, you are both very welcome— how can you doubt it? Are you in some difficulty with the Guild? One is not obliged to say, but if you are in any danger, this house is always yours, no matter the difficulty, and we will sort it out.”

“Nandi.” Algini’s face took on great earnestness, and he bowed.

“Nandi. By no means. We are yours. We now have no other man’chi, and we are very content with that situation.”

So, so much passed under the surface of the Guild, never admitted to outsiders; but one had had the strongest indication in recent days that the Guildmaster had died.

So perhaps that had freed Algini and Tano from the clandestine service to the Master their Guild forbade them ever to admit had existed. Or perhaps they weren’t free even yet. Maybe they were going under still deeper cover. Maybe there was a new Guildmaster by now, who gave them such orders; but that was no matter to him.

He trusted them, whether or not Algini was telling him the whole truth now. If, by some remotest reason they could not be trusted, he had every faith Banichi and Jago would have disputed their being here; and emotionally, he could never believe they would defect from him; logically—logically it was his business to remember he was on the mainland, and lives depended on his judgment. But not these two. Never these two. On some matters, a sane man just stepped over the cliff and trusted.

“Welcome,” he said wholeheartedly, ever so glad to put logic in second place. “Welcome. Do Banichi and Jago know you have come home?”

“They know, nandi,” Algini said.

“Bren,” he said. “One prefers Bren, in private. One is ever so glad to have you back.”

“Indeed,” Algini said, with another low bow. “Bren-ji. Tano will be here soon. Tell him immediately that you know. It will be clear to him, and it will save him worry. Meanwhile there is equipment to move.”

No hour off for rest or socializing. “Yes,” he answered, that atevi absolute, and Algini bowed and left to that duty.

So his little household had survived intact. He settled in his chair again and a sigh went out of him. He found himself increasingly happy in the situation.

And in a little time Tano came in, bowed, and said, “My partner has reported?”

“He has. You are very welcome. Exceedingly welcome, Tano-ji.

He said to tell you I know.”

A sober nod. The flash of a shy smile, a little amusement. “We are very content,” Tano said, and then: “There are boxes to bring up, nandi. Algini and Jago need my help.”

“Go,” he said, and Tano went to see to business, likely the installation of lethal protections all over the apartment, but that was all very well; his household drew its perimeters, and more than any electronic system—all his people were here. He felt safer, in an emotional sense, than he had been under the dowager’s roof, and he worked with a certain lightness of heart he had scarcely felt since they had entered the capital.

He finished his session with the correspondence, or at least, reduced the stack considerably, being now in a fine and communicative mood. He reassured ministers of various departments that he would hear any request fairly and with understanding for the actions taken under the previous regime. He scheduled his priorities: certain committees had to meet soon to resume close communications with Mospheira and the ship; certain others had to assess damagesc granted the phone system and more, the earth-to-orbit communications, were patched up.

In the several days since the fighting, in a situation changing literally by the hour, the hasdrawad and the tashrid had passed through a period of sticky-sweet interregional cooperation, but that was over. Now regional interests shouted at each other in separate committee meetings. The lords of the south protested they bore all good will to the returning regime, but that they could not locate Murini, who had unaccountably taken to sea in a boat which no one admitted giving him, and as for Lady Cosadi, who had aided him, she was nowhere to be found. There was no particular destination available to Murini from that coast, and one was a little suspicious that there really was no boat. Everyone hoped that, by now, there was no Murini, either, nor any Cosadi. Embarrassing leaders had no grave markers.

That was as much as to say, the provinces of the south no longer wished to carry on the fight with the northern provinces as the odds now stood. They were anxious to reconstitute their positions on committees in the national capital and to mend matters enough to get their voices heard in the process of reconstituting Tabini-aiji’s authority, since that was the authority they were going to have.

It was the paidhi’s one chance, in particular, to try to approach these southern representatives, when their fortunes were at the lowest ebb, and try earnestly to mend some of the problems that had started the rebellion—without, need one add, antagonizing those provinces that had stayed loyal at great risk and sacrifice.

Unfortunately, most of the southern representatives were as hostile as they had ever been to human influence, merely biding their time and hoping he would, oh, take a fall down the stairs, so they could support Tabini-aiji with much better conscience.

Jago came in to report a member of his coastal staff was inbound on the train, hoping to deliver a detailed report to him on affairs at the estate, and possibly bearing some message from Lord Geigi’s nearby domain: that message, if actually from Geigi’s estate, might be a little more urgent than an accounting of the silverware. Air service was still spotty, mostly due to a tangled-up refinery dispute, but coming back on schedule, and the gentleman, unable to get a flight, inconvenienced himself greatly.

“One will be extremely glad to see him,” he said, and since her hand was on the arm of his chair, he touched it, and gained a glance of those golden eyes, a little acknowledging flicker, and a curve of very familiar lips.

“Things are falling into order,” he said, which, in Ragi, amounted to a sense of “taking the course the numbers allow.”

“The paidhi is master of his own suite, now,” she said, “and can order privacy as he wishes tonight. His staff is very sure he will be safe.”

He looked up at Jago, saw the mischief in her look.

The night seemed suddenly much too far away.

4

There were two days of such bliss, after shipboard life and their stay in various residencies where there was no privacy. The move had restored a sense of calm and ordinary safety. The staffer from the coast turned up with a neatly written chronicle of affairs there and on Geigi’s lands, wished to confirm local staff appointments, and wished to relay to Lord Geigi, the first that anyone could reach the space station, that his niece wished to marry. There was no deeper crisis from that quarter, only an assurance of things restored to order—besides the delivery of a suitcase of valuable items which had been rescued from the paidhi’s apartments, including several very welcome pairs of boots—and the advisement that certain national treasures, including, of all things, the carpet from his study, were to be found at his estate, and could be returned to the Bu-javid in good condition. The gentleman also reported two assassinations at which no one was surprised, likely not even the victims, who had abused the coastal villages where they had asserted authority on Murini’s behalf. The gentleman returned on the following day, after a very pleasant dinner as the paidhi’s guest, and went back with the paidhi’s request to keep a sharp eye out for Toby’s boat.

The Bu-javid over all assumed a quiet sense of order, a quieter, more formal environment than he had experienced in years—no human neighbors, no crisis of supply, no disputes with human passengersc But, somewhat to the paidhi’s disappointment, no Cajeiri. Tabini had moved in, and the whole hallway was under tight security.

There had been no invitation into the household, which was in the process of setting up and settling in. There was no knock at the paidhi’s door from that quarter, not even to deliver a message cylinder.

At times, in the intervals between official letters arriving, the apartment seemed deathly, even ghostly still, a silence broken only by the quietest of steps and the hushed voices of servants going about their business as atevi servants did, most times by that series of back passages which only servants used. Doubtless, down the corridor, Cajeiri was recounting his own adventures to his parents, living with them, sharing staff, and, one hoped, developing those relationships needful in a young gentleman and particularly in the aiji’s heir. Cajeiri was not, Bren imagined, without the company of the Taibeni youngsters, who would entertain him and restrain him from ill-advised projects. Inquiries proved the lad was spending a certain amount of time in the Bu-javid libraryc so he was getting out and about, but there was still, and now worrisomely so, no visit.

There was, at last, however, a small contact. One of the solemn Taibeni youths showed up at the door and presented a message cylinder—very formal and proper—which Madam Saidin had a maid carry to the study.

Esteemed paidhi, the enclosed miniature scroll said, straight to the point. Please use your influence with my father and mother and explain to them that we have greatest need of a television. Please point out that it is educational. We are otherwise well and hope that you are also well. We wish you would come to dinner, but my father has to ask you.

Well, Bren thought. That was interesting.

There was a postscript, in passable ship-speak, with the letters mostly facing the right direction. If we had a televizion we could see news and pictures about the other provinces. This would be educationish. Also if you have any movies on your computer or can get some, We would be very pleased. I am drawing a map of the ship. Sincerely, Cajeiri.

The little rascal, Bren said to himself, at last smiling.

And he instantly understood about the map: the boy didn’t want to forget the place he knew best, now that he had come down to this world where he should have been at home, and wasn’t. It was sad, in a sense, and entirely comprehensible, and no, he didn’t think it would be politic to provide movies to the heir.

He wrote back, in courtly Ragi: One will find an occasion appropriate and suggest these things to your father the aiji. One is extremely gratified to know that you are well and interested in educational experiences. He daren’t write: I miss you. He wrote, instead: One has wondered how you fared and one is very glad to hear such favorable news. Please convey our respects to your father and mother and be assured of our lasting good will.

Flat and formal, as it had to be—with just a little warmth. He did miss the boy. He sealed his own message cylinder, and hoped that Tabini would not take umbrage at his sending a reply to a minor child—assuming Tabini had any notion that the boy was sending out messages of his own. Atevi were protective of their children. They didn’t deal with non-household adults on their own.

He didn’t know why he had expected anything different than a very proper, very kabiu situation for the boy under his parents’ care.

Drawing maps of the ship. Remembering the associations there.

He sighed, and spent a moment or two retrieving those mental files of his own, his own cabin, filled with those silly spider plants, plants that grew another foot and exploded into streamers of young every time the ship transited folded spacec His surroundings here were all gilt and golds, white and porcelains, the colors of the Atageini. Ancient hand-knotted carpets, the upholstered curves of furnishings were all larger than human scale; he tended to use footstools and other means of letting his feet rest somewhere solid, one of those habits so engrained he scarcely thought of it these days. It was like being a permanent child, with, however, adult respect. Which Cajeiri no longer got, poor lad.

His surroundings here were Banichi and Jago, Tano and Algini, and Madam Saidin and her Atageini staff. If he wanted something, it appeared, or if he wanted to know something, Jago ferreted it out. He controlled his surroundings as Cajeiri could not, any longer.

No computers, no network. No television.

Most of all, his time began to slow from the frantic career it had observed since they had landed. It had only been a few days. It felt like forever. And he planned on cultivating that leisure. He feared time passed much more tediously for the boy. There was absolutely nothing he could do, not while matters were delicate, not while human intervention could only make matters worse.

But the very next day a second message came, this one from Tabini himself, and not contained in a cylinder: Tabini’s new chief bodyguard, Jaidiri, came to Banichi, and informed his staff that the aiji wanted to meet the paidhi-aiji in private conference in the afternoon. It was not a brusque or alarming order: it came through polite channels; but it was scarcely time enough to get ready, and not quite time enough to marshal his thoughts on various topics.

Madam Saidin’s staff, by dint of hard work, had the wardrobe in excellent order, and recent days had let it multiply, with the welcome additon of dress boots that fit, that most difficult article, thanks to Tatiseigi’s staff, and shirts with the fashionable amount of lace, not to mention ribbon that wasn’t tattered and warped.

“One wonders, nadiin-ji, if this summons regards Cajeiri’s letter,”

he said to Banichi and Jago as they exited the apartment.

“Possible, nandi,” Banichi said, and added, “things have been very quiet.”

It had been quiet within the committees, within the court sessions, which he had not attended. Atevi were busy reconstituting their own channels of communication and influence. The lack of requests for the paidhi’s offices limited the number of reasons Tabini might ask to see him, unless his attendance was suddenly important.

He did long to see the boy. He wondered if Cajeiri might be there—ready to embarrass both of them. That could be unfortunate. For both of them.

Or it might be there was news from the mainland, or more, from Toby. Jago had been tracking communications and making daily inquiries regarding Toby’s whereabouts, as yet turning up nothing, and that worry constantly gnawed at his stomach. Surely it was not bad news. Tabini would not have called it an interview if that were the case. And Jago would have known before anyone, and told him.

They presented themselves at the door of the dowager’s apartment, entered, and Banichi and Jago, by protocols, let him go on alone into the little drawing room beyond, guarded only by the aiji’s people. It was a house to which they had man’chi, and in which there was every presumption of safety.

“Aiji-ma.” Bren bowed to the ruler of the atevi world, who sat quite easily and informally, in a chair next to his grandmother’s vacant favorite chair, and acknowledged the greeting with a casual wave of his hand.

“Sit, paidhi-ji.”

Paidhi-ji. The intimate address. So he was not in towering disfavor, at least. Bren chose his frequent place in this room, a brocade-seated, spindly side chair, and waited while Tabini ordered tea from the servants, that lubricant of all social dialogue.

“Be at ease,” Tabini said, which surely meant it was not bad news in the offing, so he felt free to draw an easier breath. “You cannot think, nand’ paidhi, that your actions are in any sense disapproved.

You should by no means seem so ill at ease.”

Did it show that badly? He tried to settle. “One hopes that this is the case, aiji-ma,” he said, “but it was a long voyage, and the aishidi’tat has seen a great deal of disturbance in the interim.”

“This report of yours,” Tabini began, and Bren’s pulse picked up.

He had been trying to get that report read since they had landed: a very lengthy report, it was, a very detailed report, in its whole, and he had made a summary of it for Tabini’s convenience, but even that had seemed too difficult, in the hours immediately after Tabini’s return. “I have read the long version,” Tabini said. “Our son did not exaggerate his part in matters.”

“He hardly needs do so, aiji-ma,” Bren said. “He was very much in the midst of things.”

“Oh, he is in the midst of most things,” Tabini said with a laugh, and Bren found a quiet smile.

“That he is, aiji-ma, but profitably so during the mission.”

“He sent you a message, so we hear.”

That was a question. “He did, aiji-ma.” He took a chance on Tabini’s mood. “He pleads for me to intercede with you for a television.”

“The scoundrel!”

“The paidhi-aiji is requested to present the very best case and to say that it would be educational.”

“We have no doubt,” Tabini said, and the ghost of a smile played about his stern mouth, even reaching his eyes. “Well, well, perhaps.” The servant arrived with tea, and served him and Bren.

For a moment courtesy required silent appreciation, which Bren paid with a nod.

“Indeed,” Tabini said. “And this report. This report, paidhi-aiji.”

Bren’s pulse renewed its pace. “One absolutely stands by its conclusions,” he said. “The kyo will surely visit the station, aiji-ma, and they must see order and stability when they arrive. They were much taken by your son and your honored grandmother, for his youth, forthrightness, and enthusiasm, and for her age, authority, and wit. They do not understand the arrangement that allies our two species, but they are intrigued by the fact we are diverse species in close association: this offers them hope for their own affairs, which have not gone at all well in this regard.”

“In the case of their aggressive neighbors.”

“The trouble may well lie with them, aiji-ma: that is one possibility. It may lie with their neighbors, or in the way the kyo proceed with problems. In our cooperation, we presented them a model of a different way of dealing, when they had no hope of other outcome with their own neighbors. They were impressed that we finessed the problem of the hostile station in a relatively quiet manner, which they did not foresee happening. They place as great a value on precedent as atevi place on numbers: what has been done once is what is done thereafter, and change in their expectations of a situation comes exceedingly slowly—not because they are stupid, aiji-ma, but because their concept of precedent frequently diverts them from constructive risk. We have shown them other modes of behavior than they expected, and they now, I suspect, have had their confidence shaken in regard to their own decisions regarding powerful neighbors. They wish to understand if their conclusions about us are correct and if the reality here is as we represented it to be—they correctly understand that it is one thing to theorize peace, and quite another to obtain it from rival masses of people. Precedent is so very important to them in securing peace within their own population, based on their traditions, and yet they see us as stable, inventing our way through problems; and they are curious and a little fearful that we will do unpredictable things. It is very much in the interests of this world, aiji-ma, that they respect us and view us as potential allies. To put them off now will not increase our chances of impressing them: on you, in fact, and on your holding office, depend the chances of peace in the heavens. The paidhi very strongly recommends we make peace with this group, aiji-ma.”

“And thereby alienate their enemies?”

“We cannot reach their enemies, as yet, aiji-ma, and hope never to see them, if the kyo deal reasonably with them as a result of their contact with us. They are our buffer. I know there is a risk, a very great risk, but we must decide on some posture toward the strangers: it was not by our invitation that they will come here, but by their own insistence and assumption. On the one hand one does not see any way to prevent their visit, and on the other, one may see advantage in acquiring their respect. We are involved in their affairs not by our own choice, but because humans who were related neither to Mospheira nor to the atevi built a station in their territory without permission. Their view is that atevi are the real authority, and have exerted it with Mospheira and with the ship-folk to retrieve this illicit settlement. This is, is in their view, impressive, and while they do not grasp that the ship-humans do not represent other humans, it is useful for them to conceive now that the station-humans have come peaceably under ship-folk authority, and that ship-folk are allied to atevi. It creates, at least, a perfectly valid interpretation of the situation, and produces at least an expectation on their part that we will deal rationally. The ship-aijiin will not dispute our dealing with the kyo, since their affairs concern their ship and its fueling, and they readily admit they lack expertise in negotiation. Certainly Mospheirans will not dispute it, since they have no grasp of affairs outside the earth’s atmosphere. So the kyo will seek contact with your representatives, and you, aiji-ma, will govern negotiations and influence their next moves. As they by no means wish us visiting their planet, I do not think it likely they will ask to descend to this one: symmetry plays a large part in their thinking, and this is a trait which can be reconciled with atevi philosophy—I strongly resist the word ‘reciprocity’ as inviting a parsing of numbers that will only confound the issue. ‘Symmetry’ is the word that will best translate. One has tried to create a small, carefully limited vocabulary with the kyo, and to agree firmly on the words we do share.”

Tabini’s eyes—their shade of pale gold was quite remarkable and unnerving among atevi—flickered in deep thought. He was not a traditional thinker, but he was no headlong fool, either. If he had been the enemy of humankind on the planet, humanity would have been in very dire circumstances, indeed. As it was, he saw humankind as a personal advantage to his power.

And right now, Bren suspected, the keen mind behind that pale gaze was laying one or two plans he would not mention to the paidhi-aiji at all, to deal with contingencies which the paidhi-aiji and his grandmother might have failed to foresee.

Fear had not been part of their relationship, however, not before he left, and he refused to have it become so, now. He trusted this man—would trust him even if Tabini found it necessary to go against him and send him back to the island as an encumbrance to his future plans. The greatest fear he had had until now was that Tabini for some reason might refuse to read the report he had spent two years composing, and now that Tabini said he had read it—that was enough to produce relief in a great many senses. The paidhi had done all he could do until Tabini gave him the authority to act, and Tabini was, at the moment, thinking about next steps. He had every confidence he knew exactly what was going on in Tabini’s mind, at least in this one narrow regard.

“Symmetry,” Tabini said, and nodded, still thinking. Then he frowned, as definite as a total change of topic. Tabini repeated: “And my son did not exaggerate.”

Total, but not quite.

“He did not, aiji-ma, if he said that he was very instrumental in gaining understanding of the kyo and their language. He has an unexpected gift in that regard, a facility with languages not uncommon in the young, but very uncommon in the intelligence he applies. He speaks the kyo language as well as I do, which is to say, imprecisely, but he communicates, aiji-ma. His youth engaged these foreigners’ interest, and moreover proved our peaceful intentions, since one gathers they do not bring their young or their elders near a conflict. They were, in a word, engaged with him, and regarded him highly as a symbol of hope. If their representatives do come, aiji-ma, as they will, one urges that their request to see him should be granted. They will wish to assure themselves he is well and that his father is a person in authority as we claimed, and his appearance will have a powerful effect.”

Again, a slow nod. “Indeed.”

“He spent the return voyage practicing and increasing his command of their language, aiji-ma, besides the lessons the dowager taught, in geography, law, and manners. He has prepared himself.”

“And does this fluency include Mosphei’?” Tabini asked pointedly.

“We have heard the name ‘Gene’ on several occasions.”

Bren’s face went hot. He hardly dared break with that stare.

“Indeed. One was aware of the difficulty developing—not as aware as perhaps one should have been. One has now been informed he was at the age of social attachment: one did not entirely grasp the potential of the situation, and therefore failed to prevent the contact.”

“His great-grandmother would have been the one to prevent it.

We have discussed the matter. She deemed the association with these children better than no association: that is a point worth considering. And we knew he might reach that age during the voyage. We deemed his situation in the heavens was better than the risk of assassination on the ground. That he should survive, unassailable by my enemies, was important to the existence of the aishidi’tat.”

So Tabini had indeed seen upheaval coming—upheaval possibly to be triggered by the departure of the ship from orbit, in the mistaken apprehension of Tabini’s opposition that his most fearsome allies had left him unprotected. That had been a point of curiosity, and the swiftness of the popular reaction once the ship did return suggested even that the heir’s return, unassailable, and his daring landing, and his advance across the country, had done a great deal to support his father’s return. A grand gesture, an unexpected stroke revising the numbers—the psychological impact of Murini-aiji being caught so entirely flat-footed had been no small part of their victory, and Tabini’s sense of timing in pressing right into the heartland had been absolutely dead on. He had sensed the movement of the wave sweeping the country without entirely absorbing where it was going, or how devastating it might be when, in two days flat, Tabini carried the capital.

The numbers had shifted. The trend had changed. And Tabini had not been able to do it until the key items of his own numbers, protected from the coup by distance, had reassembled and started moving.

At that point, Murini had started to topple.

Interesting, looking at it from the inside.

“About a television in his great-grandmother’s apartment,” Tabini said, “—we remain doubtful. We resist his notions of bringing this Gene down to earth. We further hope our son will not demonstrate his command of Mosphei’ for the news services. But, over all, well done, paidhi-ji.”

“One is grateful, aiji-ma, knowing one’s great shortcomings.”

“Nandi,” Tabini said sharply, “you will sit in the legislature in all the honors of your lordship, should you choose.”

Tabini would back him that far, and ram his presence as a lord of the aishidi’tat down the throats of senators jealous of their ancient prerogatives. He quietly shook his head. “I shall not vote, aiji-ma, nor attempt to hold a seat there. I cannot advise impartially, if I vote, nor can a human decide matters for atevi.”

“Better than some who hold that post,” Tabini said, though clearly he was not put out by the refusal. “But your ministerial rank and your lordship stand. I am adamant on that matter.”

“Not to any detriment of yourself or the people, aiji-ma. One would not wish that.”

“What great reward would you desire for yourself, nand’ Bren?

What could we give you? A television?”

He laughed a little, and then thought of one thing. “Word of my brother, Toby, aiji-ma. He has not reached the island since he brought us to the mainland. That is my greatest personal concern.”

“My grandmother told me so. So, indeed, has my son. Both have requested a search. It is already in progress.”

“Then I shall be patient as well as grateful,” he said, indeed grateful that those two had set it so high in importance. And that Tabini had. He was better-cared-for than he had knownc than perhaps even his staff had known, though he was not sure on that point. “Thank you, aiji-ma.”

Tabini looked at him a long, long moment. “That you have no permanent residence in the Bu-javid is more than an injustice. It is our personal inconvenience.”

It was well-known there was no space for new families.

Residency in the Bu-javid was the most jealously guarded of privilegesc and he had had such a place, which now was bound up in politics—a difficult matter, with several deserving houses wanting the honor and the space and a touchy one already fighting for it. “Even if it were possible, I would not violate the precedences of those waiting for room.” He attempted a modest joke. “There would be Filings, and there are already so many, aiji-ma.”

Tabini laughed outright, but briefly, not to be diverted. “We will consider the matter—should Lord Tatiseigi return to court. As, who knows, he may, soon. You would not be averse to resuming the Maladesi residence once that matter with the current residents is sorted outc”

“I would not, aiji-ma, or any other the aiji might deem just, but—” What in hell were they going to do with the family who had occupied it? Was Tabini proposing to add that household to his list of enemies?

“But there is the present solution,” Tabini said, “until Tatiseigi returns. We take it you are comfortable in your current situation.”

“Very much so, aiji-ma.”

“Then we shall let it rest for now.” Tabini’s conversation thereafter bent to administrative committees and details, current matters under investigation, inquiries on communications with various committee heads.

That Cajeiri had not interrupted the audience was both unexpected and somewhat disappointing—he hoped the boy was not forbidden to see him. He supposed Tabini was bearing down on protocols, and needfully so, and no, his son should not come bursting into audience as he pleased. It was a new and rule-rimmed existence Cajeiri had entered.

So they drank their tea, and settled several committee matters.

Bren asked no questions about the boy, nor had any answers volunteered. Tabini, he concluded, had taken his son back, as he ought, and Cajeiri was, by implication, no longer the paidhi’s business.

He took his leave, finally, taking with him a small folio of important papers which were part of committee agendas with Transportation and Commerce. So his wild days were settled, now, and it was back to committee meetings, tedious oratory, and something of his old function. It seemed forever since a committee meeting had occasioned a rush of adrenaline. He wasn’t sure he could still muster it in such an instance. And, damn, he’d rather hoped to see the boy before he left.

Nand’ Bren had left, before ever Cajeiri had heard he was on the premises, and Cajeiri knew, after dealing with his father and his mother, that complaints about the matter after the fact would find no sympathetic ear at all.

No matter he was angry enough to fling his stylus at the wall—he restrained himself from doing that, and discovered that the very deliberate act of returning his stylus to its box and straightening his paper on his desk likewise rearranged his temper into more potent order—a temper stored up, filed, labeled, and ready to access when it counted.

With that small angry treasure on an otherwise bare mental shelf, he called a servant—not Pahien—to call his great-grandmother’s chief caretaker, the older man, Madiri, who had the premises under his care, and a small staff at his disposal.