Inheritor

Forces on various sides of atevi concerns were moving on the mainland. Everything that had been going forward was still in motion and now human troubles were linked into it.

“You and I had better level with the dowager, is what we’d better do,” Bren said. “There are operations going on all over the coast. It may be a hostile reaction Hanks meansto stir up, if your partner’s given away her intentions. If she and Hanks have had a falling-out, it could be whyHanks is doing what she’s doing in the first place, trying to start a war here so the ship won’t deal with us. Or it may be as simple and stupid as I think it is: she doesn’t know what in hell she’s messing with. Years in the program and a week being withatevi and she still doesn’t figure it.—Jago-ji, nadi.” He changed languages, and went for the door, concerned at the time slipping away from them. “How would Yolanda come, Jasi-ji? By boat? By plane?”

“She can’t fly. That’s certain. She couldsteal a boat. But the storm—”

“Handling a boat’s no given, either. Stay with me.” He walked into the communications center, walked past concerned technicians and the boy and the dowager’s security to speak to Ilisidi herself. “Nand’ dowager,” he said, “my partner says that the other ship-paidhi has quit her post.”

“Quit.”

“And is leaving the island and coming to the mainland for refuge. Likeliest by boat. We don’t know when. We don’t know where.”

“And thatis in these messages you read?”

“No, nand’ dowager,” Jase said for himself. “I knew by a phone call days ago. Nand’ Bren had noknowledge of it. I wished finally—” Jase’s voice was trembling, and steadied. “I wished to tell it before now. I apologize, nand’ dowager.”

“It was a code by conversation,” Bren interjected, “aiji-ma. Security couldn’t possibly detect it. I didn’t.”

“Well,” Ilisidi said, and while a foul temper was possible, when it was entirely justified, in fact, it didn’t happen, though nerves all around were drawn tight. “Well.” Ilisidi stood leaning on her cane. “And in this night of human secrets, in this night with serious consequences on every hand and fools attempting to overthrow all established order, what will happen on the island, nand’ paidhi? What hashappened? Disasters? Or better news.”

Bren found his hands trembling again. He didn’t want to go into the business with his family and he was sure someone on Ilisidi’s staff had read the message by now, since it had sent Jase rushing after him, and had stalled everyone until he could sort matters out in the restroom.

“I’m sure that they’ll try to stop her, nand’ dowager.” He had one resource left, one thing Shawn had given him, and as best he could figure it was time to try it.

It was a connection into the international phone system he’d done everything to avoid making: the National Security people had had their hands on his computer during his last visit, and somethinghad happened when he’d stopped on his way to the airport to update his files: a huge amount of information had flooded into his computer storage, data and programs he’d downloaded onto removable storage once he’d realized it. And the Foreign Secretary having gone so far as to slip the codes he had under his cast to get them onto the mainland with him, he figured that Shawn intended them for a dire emergency and not just a phone-home-soon, Bren.

He also figured that by the time he’d found the note, far later than Shawn had intended, things were vastly changed and the people in the State Department and in the Defense Department who were in charge of such things had probably put something lethal on that access, something that would render his computer worse than useless.

He’d no facilities or knowledge to figure out such destructive actions. He’d not dare connect it in again to any computer system for fear of what he might bring with it. He just hoped the contact he was trying wouldn’t destroy the computer’s unconnected usefulness to him, in his translations and the other things he used it for, right down to his personal notes.

But, foreseeing the day, he’d backed up what he could. And he couldn’t avoid the direct contact. It was a reciprocating set of operations that would flow back and forth—if he got in.

He used the keyboard. He entered what he had. He sat, with a human by him who wasa computer tech from a system vastly more advanced than his, who didn’t, Jase said, know as much about what Jase called these early machinesas he knew about atevi. Jago was there. Banichi was. Cenedi was. And at the critical keystroke, the computer telltales lit up, flickered, and kept flickering. He sat and listened for the vocal output, which he didn’t believe would come.

But relays were clicking. It sounded as if relays were clicking. On the State Department lines, if that was how he’d gotten in, there was a robot, not a human operator. If the numbers were good, the call went to another robot.

But if what he feared was true, the second robot would be deactivated, the one that once had been able to get him through to the Foreign Office.

Next relay. He expected a voice. He could hardly believe it.

Then another click dashed his hopes. Click. Pause. Click. Click. Click.

“They must be routing the call to the far side of the island,” he said to Jase, and even as he said it, he suspected the call was doing exactly that: those were repeated long-distance connections, his codes still burrowing through walls and routing itself, please God, to the State Department and the Foreign Office, where if he was very, very lucky, at this late, after-dark hour, he might find the system routed itself withoutan operator, as could happen if your codes were very, very clean, to Shawn, wherever he was.

It rang.

“ You have reached—” It was the damn recording. He punched a manual code. And it rang another number.

“ Foreign Office.”

It was a young voice. Female. Very young. His heart sank.

“Shawn Tyers,” he said. “Code check. This is an emergency.”

“ Sir?”

“The Foreign Secretary.” God, God, they were hiring fools. “Put me through to the Foreign Secretary. You punch code 78. You have to do it from your console.”

“ Is this Mr. Cameron?” There was alarm in the voice. Excitement. And he didn’t want to admit it, but he saw no choice.

“Yes. It is. On diplomatic business. Life and death. Put me through.”

“ He’s gone home. I mean— he’s gone home up to the coast, Mr. Cameron. They shut the office.”

“They shut the office.”

“ Well—” The voice lowered. Sounded shaky. “ Mr. Cameron, the State Department shut it down. They’ve fired everybody in the whole Foreign Office, except I worked for both offices. I’m the night operator.”

“Polly?” He remembered a dark-complexioned young woman with a part down the middle of her head.

“ Yes, sir, Mr. Cameron. And they’re going to fire me, too. They record all the calls. I can’t call out. Is there something you can tell me that I can tell somebody?”

“Good night, Polly.”

“ Yes, sir.” The voice was very faint. Hushed as it was, she sounded like a child. “ Have a good evening, sir.”

Damn, he wanted to say. And wanted to slam the receiver down. But he didn’t. He drew a deep breath and calmed his nerves.

“Nand’ dowager, the State Department has discharged everyone in the Foreign Office. Even the Secretary has gone home. That’s what I’m told, and I believe the young woman who told me. Yolanda-paidhi may well have gone somewhere. But I’m very fearful she hasn’t.”

Jase, leaning on the counter, hung his head and looked utterly downcast.

“So,” the dowager said.

“I know where she’d come,” a young voice said.

And with one accord everyone looked at the boy from Dur.

24

There were maps. Ilisidi’s security had very detailed maps, which they had brought into the small, glass-walled conference room just off the main communications center. Out there beyond the glass, technicians of the Messengers’ Guild kept routine broadcasts going and, being mostly Saduri locals stranded away from their homes by the crisis, gratefully had their suppers off the official buffet. In this room, standing around the conference table with the chairs pushed back to the glass, all of them that had to make the plans were the crowded but willing audience as Rejiri of Dur-wajran ran his hand over a profusion of numbers and topographical lines on the shoreline of Mospheira—including this area, which was not detailed on most atevi maps.

“Most illegal boats come from the Narrows, here,” Rejiri said with his fingers on the narrowest part of the strait, that nearest Aidin. “And there’s a very bad current in the Narrows, so it looks like a real good place to go across but it isn’t. Freighters know, but they come down from Jackson and catch the current and drive hard. They have the big engines, too. But the little boats, they can’t carry that much in their tanks, nand’ dowager, and if they go too hard they’ll run their tanks dry and especially if they don’t have a lot of extra tanks aboard they’ll be in a lot of trouble. If they leave out of Jackson and go with the current and the wind’s not in their faces off Aidin headland they can cut across and the current will just carry the little boats to Dur. But the sneaky thing is if you don’t know anything but boating in safe water and you don’t know you’re in the current and you think you’re going across, and you aren’t, you’re going way, way south. You want to have a lot of cans of fuel, a whole lot of cans. But if you run out or sometimes if you go out of Bretano—if you do that, and some do, they all come in right here.” The boy pointed to a spot on the outer shore, at the place where it turned in to Saduri Harbor—and drew a second breath. “That beach. If you drop a bottle in at Jackson or Bretano it’s got to come here. You can find all sorts of stuff after a storm. Just junk, most times. But if there’s a boat tried to smuggle stuff in, or if they don’t make Dur, they’ll break up on the rocks at the point or they’ll make landfall somewhere right along here. And weather’s been bad. Which could help them along but the seas are going to be awful, too.”

“What does he say?” Jase wanted to know. The boy had a rapid patter, an accent, and he was using words Jase didn’t know. Bren gave him the condensed version in Mosphei’.

“He’s saying the current through the strait is very strong. Boats starting from Mospheira if they don’t reach Dur, it carries them onto a beach near Saduri.”

“Water current.”

“Yes.” Hedidn’t know what caused a current. It wasn’t the time to find out. He had a council of war around him and Jase. The dowager was looking grimly at the map over which he was sure her knowledge of plans that might be affected was superimposing other considerations, and the boy went on.

“Nand’ dowager,” the boy said. “I could take the plane out there. I could get to Dur and tell my father you need help.”

Ilisidi scowled at the boy. “You don’t have a key.”

“One doesn’t need a key, nandi.”

“One forgot. Stealing airplanes is your trade. How doesone start it?”

“One pushes a button, nand’ dowager.”

“A security disaster. Stay here. I plan to charge your father your hourly keep.”

“But I could help!”

“Gods felicitous, boy, this is the communications headquarters for half the continent! Do you think we can’t phoneyour father?”

“But they might tap the phones. Mightn’t they, nand’ dowager?”

There was quiet for a moment, and Cenedi said, “It might be a useful diversion. And the boy’s presence on the radio could get four men in unannounced.”

“A damned fool of a boy whose welfare is in myhands.”

“Nand’ dowager, I could go right off the cliff and beon approach. I could fly men into Dur! And we’ll get my father to shut the ferry down, so nobody can go from Wiigin to here! If you send men, he’ll believe me!”

“Wari-ji.”

The man so named leaned a hand on the table. “One does see it as possible, aiji-ma. And the boy has a point.”

“Instruct him. If he can start the thing, ifit has fuel—let him go. And go now. We haven’t touched Dur, so as not to involve them, but Dur has touched us. So let them act, if they will.”

“Yes,” the man said. Nawari was his entire name. “Boy.”

The boy darted to the man and toward the door, remembered to bow, and went where the man beckoned him to go. There was a silence in the glassed-in room until the door was shut. On the end of a console counter outside in the communications center, the carefully prepared buffet laid in the path, and the boy pocketed a sandwich as he passed that table, against, Bren supposed, famine on the way to Dur.

It was safe food: their own people had brought it, as Bren understood, when they came in to secure Mogari-nai. Even if everyone but the paidhiin had had the foresight to tuck emergency rations into their pockets once they left the baggage behind.

“There’s fuel in the plane,” Ilisidi said. “As happens. Our staff flew it here.” There were men still on guard on the roof and about the area of the transmission towers, men who had certainly gotten up to Mogari-nai somehow, but there were too many for one small plane. “One would leave the young fool here, but one can lay odds he’d be in the midst of matters.” The dowager’s fingers rested on the map, on the aforenamed beach and the island of Dur. “Dur-wajran and its position has been a concern. I do rely on the boy’s assessment of his father’s man’chi, and I am relieved on that score. We havea number of men on Dur. They came in two days ago on the ferry from Saduri, but they’re there as tourists unless they receive orders or see trouble. Nawari will provide them orders for quiet and specific actions and, with the active cooperation of the lord of Dur, we can close off Wiigin from Saduri by water. The boy canbe useful in that regard. As is his advice useful. Trust every local youth to know that beach. And if that isthe case, so do the Kadigidi know it. They mayhave advised a boatload of otherwise inept human sailors to put out from Jackson Harbor with enough fuel just to keep the bow to the waves. Smugglers have used Dur, generally, since the stretch of beach in question is government reserve. So Cenedi informs me.”

“Trust every local youth to have been onthat beach,” Cenedi said. “Nandiin, we had not relied on holding Dur, because its beaches are too broad and it’s a wooded, populated island rife with smugglers’ caches the locals don’t want found. We believe a landfall on the Aidin headland would be far safer for the rebels. We do not have sufficient resources in Aidin to prevent a landing at village airstrips or movement at train stations or other routes that might bring Hanks-paidhi into friendly hands. If she comes by air she could possibly come in at the city airport at Wiigin and leave by train without our people being able to prevent her. But if she comes by boat—and we hope our heavy air activity up over Wiigin has discouraged an air route and forced her to that—we know now it will be a small boat, and thatcan’t reach Wiigin. There’s been a diplomatic snag in clearance for freighters, ours or theirs, to leave Mospheiran ports: the aiji has withdrawn permits as of yesterday. They’ve been warned, and they’re a cautious breed. The last freighter in transit turned back to Mospheira this morning. If another leaves port, we can spot it. A small boat, however, has a good chance of getting through the net unseen, and they know that.”

That freighter ban was very serious, Bren thought. Extremely serious, following the pattern of the attack on Mospheira the rebel radio had foretold. Atevi would be using surveillance planes out over the strait, probably overflying the harbors and provoking more alarm. The aiji did have customs boats, a number with guns of a range and power sufficient to sink another ship.

Mospheira also had such boats. There was a danger of confrontation if this state of crisis went on too long. “What does the presidentsay?”

“There is a protest from the Trade Office regarding the aiji’s action,” Banichi said. “If they’re officially aware of Hanks-paidhi’s provocations, they’re being very quiet about the matter. There’s no signal they’re willing to correct the problem.”

“One suspects they areaware,” Bren said, and was conscious he now contemplated treason; his stomach knotted up—but so did his nerves, from years of coping with the administration. “But they’re not very brave, dowager-ji. They’ll please their contributors until the first consequences show up where the voters can find out. Then their attention will be on keeping the voters from finding out and keeping their contributors from being exposed. They’ll pull back. The main thing is keeping the customs boats away from each other. That’s where people at lower levels could worsen the crisis.”

“If they link up with Direiso,” Ilisidi said, “she’ll lead them on much more precipitate courses.”

Or she’ll be driven mad with frustration trying to deal with the Mospheiran government, Bren thought. Unless Direiso planned to invade Mospheira if she became aiji.

Which was not a joke. Direiso might indeed have such a notion. The island was ill-prepared to resist, precisely as it had been ill-prepared and ineptly led in the War of the Landing. It was, potentially, the same situation: a mushrooming crisis and most of the human population in slumberous disregard of the danger of a rebel ateva seizing power and running with it.

The same way one decree from Tabini’s pen had swept away all debate, all studies, all partisan delays in relocating Patinandi Aerospace and reconfiguring the space program, so events around them now could replace Tabini, who tolerated humans, with Direiso, who would wipe them off the face of the earth.

Bad news multiplied and Mospheira blamed the Foreign Office which told it things that didn’t match its expectations; Mospheira then refused to listen to the paidhi in the field and, rather than face down human agitators who now thought they were winning political points, Mospheira had withdrawn police protection from his mother’s apartment, or worse, politics infiltrating the police departments had made it impossible for the Mospheiran government to do anything about political thugs and lunatics if they wanted to.

He’d seen it coming. He’d watched it barrel down on them like a train headed down the tracks.

Thistime there was a strongly centralized power in Shejidan. Thistime the Edi and Maschi atevi of the peninsula weren’t raiding the Padi Valley. Thistime they had a ship over their heads that was definitely a player, but which couldn’t reach them or get its people out. This time atevi were verywell advised on human habits and internal divisions, and thistime there were paidhiin.

All of which might—or might not—tip the scales.

Outside, he heard the sound of the plane starting up.

The boy was on his way. With the means to take the island of Dur for their forces. That was one stretch of beach, if the lord of Dur was on their side, they were relatively sure they could win.

And one of the men outside the glass walls came in and handed Cenedi a note. Cenedi’s expression changed as he read it.

“Nand’ dowager,” Cenedi said, “the warehouse down in the town is moving its trucks out. Down the harborside road to the west. Do we stop them, or allow them to clear the harborside?”

Ilisidi frowned and looked down at the maps.

“Maintain the peace,” Ilisidi said. “For the next hour or so.”

So now atevi forces were moving. Bren didn’t know where, or how many, but the consoles out there were manned by loyal Guild and watched over by loyal Guild, and he tried to sit in one of the soft chairs in the lounge, lean his head back on the back of the seat and rest, when he wanted to be up pacing the floor.

Jase came into the little nook with a cup of tea. He had a worn, grim look, and found even the padded chair uncomfortable—at least he’d winced when he sat down, and Bren would have done so when he’d sat down, if he’d had the strength left. He eyed the arrival, muttered to indicate he didn’t mind Jase being there, and shut his eyes, thinking that in Shejidan it would be about bedtime.

Their company was getting the little rest they could. Not all of them: Banichi and Jago were in close conference with Cenedi, and the dowager had taken possession of the director’s office to rest, having taken a map with her.

He’d rather, personally, have stayed in the briefing; but it was Guild business in there, not the Messengers, but the Assassins, and when Banichi said in that very polite tone, “nand’ paidhi, you need to rest,” he supposed even aijiin took that cue and went to nurse their headaches.

And watch over their other responsibilities.

Mospheira didn’t care so much, Bren told himself, if it let both its Ragi-speaking paidhiin, him andDeana, travel out of its grasp; there were other students in the University. Someone’s son or daughter could replace either of them. Of course.

Jase shifted. Bren heard the creak of the other chair. Jase was worried about Yolanda. Justifiably so.

As Mospheira’s allowing Deana Hanks to cross the water meant risking her life. If Mospheira lost her, that meant they had no translator who’d actually been in the field advising them, and their maze of security precautions was going to operate very slowly in giving anyone outside the State Department access to documents: the aiji’s blockade order, which hehadn’t translated, must either have come in Ragi and sent them scurrying for advanced translation, or in atevi-written Mosphei’, which wasn’t supposed to exist. He did wonder which.

But the readily obvious fact was, the government didn’t give a damn whether it talked to atevi so long as it thought the ship up there would deal with them.

It would, however, panic at the thought of Yolanda Mercheson leaving its shores or the ship aloft cutting them off cold from the flow of technology that was coming to the atevi. There was a level of self-preservation in the President’s office that hated adventurous doings, and that wouldn’t letDeana Hanks take Yolanda with her. He reasoned his way to that conclusion.

There werealso people in charge of Deana: Deana who did not have the intelligence or the authority she dreamed she had. She was not a random and stupid threat until she was in the field dealing with atevi. They, the theywho controlled her, didn’t know how bad her handling of the translation interface was, which was their major flaw. If there wereatevi experts able to know how bad she was, there wouldn’t bean intercultural problem. They liked her because what she told them would work was shaped exactly to fall into their plans, and that was their blind spot and her reason for getting the post.

But they had to be restraining her from her wilder notions, or God knew what would happen.

And somebodycould keep Hanks on the island. George Barrulin could, if he could get through to him.

But the paidhi-aiji was out of phone numbers that would mean anything, and he couldn’tget through to George. They fired everybody in the whole Foreign Office. God!

“Bren,” Jase said.

He opened his eyes a slit. And saw Jase sitting opposite him, elbows on knees, cup in both hands, with a downcast look.

“Bren,” Jase said in human language. “I want you to understand something.”

He had to listen. Jase’s voice had that tone. He sat up, tucked a foot across his knee, and tried to look as if his brain were working.

“The business about my father,” Jase said. “I don’t have one. Fact is—fact is, he isdead.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Politeness was automatic. Understanding what Jase was getting at wasn’t.

“No,” Jase said. “He diedhundreds of years ago.”

A glimmering of understanding didcome, then. “Taylor’s Children. Is thatwhat you mean?”

The ship had had its heroes—those everyoneowed their lives to: the original crew and the construction pilots, the ones who’d mined and fueled the ship in the radiation hell they’d first had to survive, had left their personal legacy in cold storage, all they knew they’d send into their ship’s uncertain future.

And such individuals, drawn from that cold-storage legacy, had notbeen the lowest members of the Pilots’ Guild, when the modern crew let them be born.

When—rarely—they’d let them be born.

He was sitting in an ordinary chair in an ordinary lounge in a tolerably exotic facility, but the man he’d been dealing with was notordinary, as he understood history.

The man he’d almost called a friend—brought a bit of the cold of space with him into this little nook.

What the ship had sent them in Jase wasn’t the lowest, most expendable crew member. It was one of the elite, one who wouldn’t be seduced by any planetary—or personal—loyalties.

The people of the Landing, Mospheirans, hadn’t been outstandingly fond of the breed. The privileges of that elite was one of the issues that had led to the Landing. And now the ship sent one down to the planet?

“I must say,” Bren said mildly, “I’m surprised. I take it you do have a mother.”

“One I’m very fond of. One I want to get back to.”

“One can understand how much you want to get back. One can understand very well.”

Jase looked at him a little curiously, and didn’t ask. But maybe, he said to himself, Jase didn’t know there’d been a rift between the ship’s crew and the colonists. Maybe that was one of the informational dropouts over time—things like weather, and currents, and sunrise.

“What I want to tell you,” Jase said, “is that I amtelling you the truth. I’m not keeping secrets from you. And I’ll tell you all of it. But I want your help.”

“For what?”

A slight move of Jase’s eyes, a gesture to the side, to the communications center, he supposed. “To talk to the ship. To warn them what’s going on and to tell them to send someone else down here, if something happens.”

“ Isthat what you’d tell them? I’d think it would be ‘Get the hell out of here. They’re crazy down here.’ ”

Jase shook his head. “That’s not my conclusion. I don’t know what’s on the other side of the water. Yolanda said at first she was all right. She was having a lot less problems than I was. But things starting going bad. I’ve heard other codewords, that just meant worry. When she gave me this one—I was scared. You weren’t there. And then things started blowing up. I don’t think it’s coincidence she called me about the time your government started making trouble over here.”

Your government. Mospheira. It was a hell of a thing, that statement, he’d had to parse that to know whichgovernment Jase meant.

“Telling you the family crisis story was supposed to get you to get Yolanda over for a sympathy visit. And it went wrong. It just went wrong. The ship knows there’s something wrong on her side of the water. But if I don’t call soon they’ll think there’s something wrong on this side, too.”

“What would they do about it?”

“They’d attempt to deal with it, most probably attempt to deal with atevi in the notion some of them do understand Mosphei’ and maybe I’d made a mistake.”

He was considering that possibility. “Let’s try some critical truth. Is the ship armed?”

“It has weapons. It doesn’t have atmospheric craft.”

“Coercion occupies absolutely no place in their planning? A little piracy, perhaps?”

“No. If they get involved in this situation, it’s possible they can withhold information from one side or the other and get cooperation. It’s my recommendation that they cooperate with the atevi and withhold all help from Mospheira.”

“You know,” Bren said, on a breath that made his voice sail higher and more casual than he wished. “You know,” he said more soberly, “I think that’s a reasonable position, but I haven’t had a lot of luck persuading human governments about it, and we’ve livedon this planet a couple of centuries.”

“You want the truth?”

“I think it would be a really good idea, Jase.”

“If Yolanda goes—” Emotion clouded Jase’s face and ruffled the calm in his voice. “If she doesn’t make it, it’s important to me. But not to the ultimate outcome of this business. Neither of us is that important to the outcome unless we can do our work. They give us a lot, that’s what they say. But they ask a lot of us.”

“You’re not a computer tech who’s studied languages and taught kids.”

“I know computers. We had two engineering texts in the library, one French, one German. They didn’t teach me a lot about planets. But I learned how languages work. That’s the truth, Bren.”

“You in love with Yolanda?”

“I suppose so. Yes. I am.”

“But disregarding all this, say we lost you, what would your ship do?”

“Right now, they’d go on pretending everything was fine, and see if you built the spacecraft.”

“And then?”

“If atevi got up there, my captains would negotiate. They’d have done what they want. They’d negotiate with atevi. They’d probably keep on giving them tech. As much as they wanted.”

He had a very, very bad feeling that he wasn’t understanding everything, and that Jase wanted his full attention for the next item.

“Why?” he asked.

“They want the atevi in space.”

“Why?”

“Because—” Jase’s voice was faint. “Because we’re not alone. We’re not the only ones in space. And they’re not friendly. And we’re not sure, but they could come here.”

He sat, having heard that. Having heard it, he didn’t want to believe it.

“You said,” he recalled, “there was another station out there, at the other end of—wherever you’ve been.”

“There was one. It’s gone. We don’t know who the aliens are. We don’t know what they want. We tried to contact them. We had a few passes, months apart. Just a streak on one tape. And some transmissions. We tried scanning the area where we thought they were coming from. We’d moved Phoenixout. And when we got back, the station was—was wrecked. Everyone was dead. It hadn’t infallen. But it was going to. We took a vote. We decided—we decided we’d better get out of there.”

“And come here.”

“It was the only place.”

“Oh, you could have lost yourself in space. You could have gone the hell awayfrom us!”

“It’s not that far, Bren. It’s about eighteen, twenty years light. You’re in their neighborhood. We did nothingto these people. People—whatever they are. We did nothingto provoke them.”

“We did nothing to provoke the atevi into attacking the colony, either, but we made it damned well inevitable!”

“You know that. You dealt with this situation. Maybe you have a skill—maybe you have a skill we don’t. We need you.”

“God, look around you! My government’s not doing outstandingly well at the moment!”

“If they’d listen to you, they’d be better off.”

“But failing that miracle, you want the atevi in space. You want us, or you want the atevi.”

“This is the atevi star. This is their world. There’s something out there that kills people it doesn’t know anything about, that never did anything to them. And the atevi need to know that. We could have gone off in space somewhere and hoped they never found us. We could have tried again—”

“No, you couldn’t. Youthought there’d be a thriving colony here. You thought you’d get fuel for the ship here. Youthought you’d rally the colony to the defense and you’d have everything the way you used to have it, with us doing the mining andthe dying for you to run the ship.”

There was a small silence. But Jase didn’t flinch. “We thought we’d have your help, yes. But we thought we owed each other a mutual debt—a warning, and a chance for us to get out of here if you want to take your chances.”

“That’s a lousy patch on exactly what I said.”

“That’s fine. That’s the situation. Nowwhat do you do?”

He let out a long sigh and fell back into the chair cushions to look at the room beyond, communications that could indeed talk to the ship.

Then at Jase.

“Damn lot of choice you’ve given us.”

“I’m giving you a choice, Bren. The people at the other station didn’t have any.”

“What in hell provoked it?”

“We don’t know. We just don’t know. Maybe they’re just that way. That’s always a possibility, isn’t it?”

“Not one I accept!”

“That’s what I count on.”

What Jase had already said began to sink in. Unwelcomely. “Don’t you lay thaton me! Good God, no.”

“Let me call the ship. We have armed atevi and probably armed humans and airplanes and boats and mechieti and no one knows what else. None of us may get out of this. Yolanda’s already told them don’t rely on Mospheira for anything. If you don’t want to leave the matter of the atevi to blind luck, baji-naji, Bren, let me talk to them. I’ll give them codewords to tell them I’m not compelled and I’ll tell them first to trust you, to trust the aiji and the aiji-dowager and whoever they recommend. And if it comes down to Direiso and the rest of them, maybe they’ll give the outsiders indigestion if they come here, I don’t know. But if we die here, everything is left to chance. They could end up trusting this Direiso person.”

“You’re not inept, yourself, Jase.”

“I’ve tried to learn from you. Will you let me do it?”

25

Banichi,” Bren said at the door of the little room in which the Assassins held private consultation and, having drawn Banichi a little out of earshot of the guard the Guild had placed on the meeting room, he tried to tell a man who last year hadn’t known his sun was a star that aliens were hunting in the neighborhood.

“There are other suns,” was the way he put it to Banichi, “and one of them is a very bad neighbor. Jase is an officer in the Pilots’ Guild and he’s made up his mind we’re preferable to Hanks.”

“A man of good taste,” Banichi said calmly. “What about these bad neighbors?”

“They fly in space,” he said, and Banichi said, “I think Cenedi should hear this.”

Banichi called Cenedi and Jago out of the room. After three more sentences, Cenedi said, “ ’Sidi-ji needs to hear this.”

Jago went to wake the dowager, and in a very short time indeed Ilisidi herself had come out of the office she had chosen as her retreat, immaculate, stiff-backed, and frowning.

“More foreigners,” Ilisidi said, then. “With bad manners, is it? And Jase-paidhi wants us to ally with his people, who provoked them?”

“I think we can avoid alliance,” Bren said, with a hollow feeling in his stomach. “Or manage it to our advantage. But I do think the call to his ship would open options otherwise at risk should he—or I—be unlucky tonight.”

“The risk seems on his side,” Cenedi said, “aiji-ma, since we could then remove him from consideration were we so inclined.”

“He is very well aware of the hazard,” Bren said, “and has expressed the wish that the aiji-dowager take Mercheson paidhi under herpersonal protection as he himself is under the aiji’s.”

Banichi gave him a look. So did Jago, at this yielding up of rights Tabini might have contested. But contest was the operative word. There was no option without extensive negotiation if Ilisidi was the leader in the field, as she was, and there was a certain advantage in having Ilisidi step in. Having her as protector of one paidhi created a new position of authority if somehow they should fail and if Ilisidi had to contest with Direiso.

And for all persons concerned in the transaction including Yolanda Mercheson it brought paghida sara, mutual leverage. It meant negotiable positions.

Meant a place, a man’chi, a salvation—if they could stop the slide toward unreason.

A message had come in. A white paper went from an operator to one of Ilisidi’s junior security to Cenedi, to Ilisidi.

And to Banichi.

Banichi picked up a sandwich from the table. And pocketed it. And another.

That, Bren thought, that was the action of a man who didn’t expect a regular breakfast.

“We’ve just had an indication from Dur,” Banichi said, “that the boy did get down safely. One thought you would wish to know. Whether he’ll be safe when his parents lay hands on him is another matter, but we do at least have a confirmation that they’re being met by his father’s staff. Tano and Algini report movement, however.”

That was worrisome.

“The fortress hears at some distance,” Jago said.

“Not far enough to give it another hour,” Cenedi said. “ ’Sidi-ji.”

Ilisidi gave a wave of her hand. “Whatever one does to make the earth link work,” she said, “do. How long does this talking to the ship take?”

It took very little time, the director said. And gave the orders.

Then it was a matter of settling Jase at the console in the communications center. Jase was visibly anxious.

It was disturbing for the workers, too, Bren was sure, a human not only occupying that post, but giving his own protocols and codewords to the ship in a language they had, for one reason and another, no translators here to interpret.

The ship answered. The foreign voice went out over the speakers so all the room could hear.

Then with full knowledge that the conversation was going to be monitored by a very similar center on Mospheira, Jase had to inform his captain that things were both better and worse than the ship might have feared.

“Sorry to call at this hour,” Jase said, and his voice steadied. “But I’ve thought it over and I really need Yolanda over here.”

“ Yes,” the answer came back. “ How are you?”

“Doing very much better, sir. I’ve received sympathy from the atevi and I’ve made recommendations to the atevi government which they’ve accepted. I need Yolanda, though. Everybody means well, but it’s hard. I want her here. I’ll try to negotiate that myself, but I wonder if you can’t explain to the island that I really need her for a while. Urgent persuasion. That kind of thing. Tell Sandra not to worry about me.”

The whole speech was laced with codewords. If he’d had any concern that Mospheiran cooperation was still a possibility, he’d have expected a following and angry phone call. But they knew. He knew. Jase wasn’t even taking pains to bury them too obscurely in ordinary conversation. He was just delivering the words and all of them could hope they were the right ones.

“ Do you want to talk to your mother?” the captain asked, after hearing all of that with no comment.

“Absolutely no need to, sir.”

“ I’m here anyway,” another, female voice cut in. “ I miss you.”

“Good to hear your voice, mom.” This time there was a little shakiness. “I’m fine. I really am. How are you?”

“ Worried about you. When am I not? How are you doing?”

“A lot better. I can’t talk too long. I’ll call when I get back to the city. I’m on what they call a vacation. You’d be amazed. I was rained on by a weather system and I’m sore from riding. And it’s beautiful down here. But I’ve got to sign off now. I love you. You take care, mom. And you can take a call from me orfrom Bren.”

“ You take care.— Jase? Jase?”

“Yes? I’m here.”

“ Jase, are you keeping your hours regular?”

Jase ducked his face and wiped a hand over his mouth as if that last was some unexpected and embarrassing item. “Fine, mom. I’m doing fine. You just take care. All right? I’ll call you maybe in three or four days. Tell the captain solid fix and green lights on the report and pleaselook out for Yolanda. Whatever you hear from this side, rely on the people I’ve been dealing with to tell you the truth. Good night.”

“ Good night, Jase,” was the signoff, and Bren stood there, the most fluent listener to the exchange, on whom all the others most relied.

And hecouldn’t tell. There wasn’t a way to crack a verbal code, no way but fluency and a specific knowledge of the situation.

“So?” Ilisidi asked.

“I take no alarm, aiji-ma. Codewords were certainly all through it, which I expected. There’d have to be to make assurances valid. He seemed to want his captain to pressure Mospheira to get his partner out. He also asked his captain to listen to his associates down here as reliable people.”

“A very good thing,” Ilisidi said, leaning on her cane. “A very wise thing.”

And they waited, while technicians revised settings and threw switches and consulted checklists.

Jase took out a folded sheet of paper that had already seen a great deal of crumpling, and spread it out on the console in front of him—Jase’s own writing, but two paidhiin had collaborated on it to eliminate infelicitous remarks; and Banichi and Cenedi had read it, with one good suggestion, but Ilisidi by her own choice had not.

The director cued Jase, and Jase, smoothing his piece of paper flat on the counter, perhaps because his momentary attempt to hold it in his hands did not produce a steady view of it, began:

“Nadiin of the aishi’ditat, this is Jase-paidhi with news of the current situation—” Risky word. Jase pronounced it with only a slight stammer. “I have spoken with the ship and have learned that Mercheson-paidhi on Mospheira has concluded that the unsteadiness of the Mospheiran government and haphazard management make it impossible to continue there. She has appealed to the ship to leave Mospheira and to come to the mainland. The Mospheiran government is attempting to prevent her from doing so and has attempted to stir up political rivalries among atevi of the aishi’ditat to cover their own failures. The ship however, on the advice of Mercheson-paidhi and of myself, has concurred: the ship is withdrawing Mercheson-paidhi from Mospheira and calls on the Mospheiran government to allow her to join me on the mainland. The ship is continuing its association with Tabini-aiji and will deal solely with Shejidan. It sends good will to the aishi’ditat, and to the aiji, and to the aiji-dowager, who has stated she will take Mercheson-paidhi under herprotection, to preserve the felicity and the wisdom of the arrangement that has established threepaidhiin, myself, Bren-paidhi, and Mercheson-paidhi, as representatives. Thank you for your kind attention. I shall now repeat this message in Mosphei’ for the information of Mospheiran listeners on the other side of the strait.”

Technicians scrambled in the silence of a broadcast area. Coughs were smothered. Switches were thrown off, others were thrown on, and a tower aimed at Mospheira punched out the next message at a power level reserved to announce impending war.

Jase got his next cue.

“Citizens of Mospheira, this is Jase-paidhi with news of the current situation—”

Atevi stood very still throughout the whole length of the message. Technicians jumped at one point, and made adjustments. Jase was speaking rapidly and it inevitably took Mospheiran technicians a moment to respond to an electronic provocation.

This version, however, was going up to the ship as well. And ifthey received the ship’s support and that message came back down from the sky, there would be receivers tuned to it, and if they jammed every broadcast on the island, someonein an island full of various-minded and argumentative humans was going to get that message recorded and passed out hand to hand on faxes and copy machines.

This time there was a consequence and a crisis George Barrulin couldn’t head off from the President’s door.

The President’s morning golf game might not take place tomorrow.

Jase finished. A technician cut off the microphone and shut down his console and spoke to him. Then everyone dared talk—and take a breath. Small coughs broke out, held until now.

“He did it exactly,” Bren said to Ilisidi. “And the University will knowhe damned Hanks’ numbers in what he said.”

“Hanks’ numbers andDireiso’s.” Ilisidi was very pleased.

Jase meanwhile had gotten up and left the console. He looked very solemn and pale as he came down the aisle between the long rows of consoles.

He looked very lonely.

Atevi might not understand two humans embracing in a crowded room. They did understand an offered hand.

Jase took it like a drowning man. Squeezed it hard.

“Just a little shaky,” Jase said. “Sorry. Did I do it?”

“You did it.”

Jase’s voice sank to near-nothing. “Codeword, for the ship: ask to speak to Constance.” And sadly, desperately, “Is there anyword, Bren?”

As if information might be forthcoming from them now that Jase had done what he could on their side—and made Mercheson-paidhi suddenly a very valuable piece in a very deadly game. Bren reluctantly shook his head. “I wish I could tell you yes.”

“We may not get her out,” Jase said quietly.

“If she comes ashore anywhere from Dur southward, the aiji’s people will bring her in, no question.”

Or, the unspoken possibility, Direiso’s people might try to lay hands on her if they had any inklingshe might be attempting a crossing. If Hanks’ people were holding her, a possibility he didn’t discount, he was sure they’d hear from them, maybe claimingto hold her, after they’d held their meetings and managed a decision about it.

“How long does it take to cross?” Jase asked.

“Varies. Depends on the weather. Freighters, about two days.”

“If she was out there during the storm—”

“You just point the bow at the waves and keep the engine running enough to let you steer. She didn’t come down here knowing, but she could find that out among the first things she’d learn. The wind would be constantly at the back of someone trying to cross. That would save fuel. A lot of it. The storm was out of the west—it would helpher, not run her out of fuel.”

“The captain’s gotten the word from me to apply pressure to get her over here. I didn’t get anything from him on what she might have told him about her situation and, most of all, the captain didn’t cue me at any time that he knew where she was or that she’s safe.—What’s going on? What’s happening?”

There was movement, suddenly, in the room: security headed for the stairs that led, they had all learned, to the roof.

Cenedi was looking not entirely displeased.

Jago came to him, and Banichi close behind. “Lord Tatiseigi,” Jago announced, “has moved forces to Saduri headland, nandiin. That was the movement Tano reported. Tano and Algini have agreed to let them pass. However, the dowager says we would be prudent to retire our force to Saduri Township down the road, and get the staff down to the town as well.”

Banichi said, “Either he’s approved the marriage or he’s tracked down the television set.”

The plain of Saduri was a smallish peninsula, shaped like a triangle, and the sea made a deep indentation in one of the legs with the old cannon fort and Mogari-nai on one side of the indentation and a flatter, more rolling land on the other, where rail ran. Onondisi Bay, with its resorts, was one face of the pyramid. Much larger Nain Bay, barriered by the isle of Dur, was to the north.

And the town of Saduri was below them, down at the bottom of a winding one lane road, out of sight from this position and in the dark, but Bren standing at the front entry to the station, with the mechieti moaning and spitting about the night-time summons to the herd, was very sure he had a good description of it.

“I’m glad it’s night,” Jase said. Jase had taken two of his motion sickness pills before he came out, and he fastened his jacket now with multiple tries at the buttons.

“They give you bonuses for this, I’m sure,” Bren said; and Jase, who didn’t get paid any more than he did nowadays, gave a nervous laugh, even a grin.

Jase wasn’t in any wise as anxious as the Messengers’ Guild, whose local assistant director, nand’ Brosimi, and two junior staffers, came to the dowager and wished to stay on to protect the equipment. But Brosimi, who did not at all relish the notion of resistance to an armed lord’s political intentions or simple misuse of the equipment, obeyed Ilisidi’s instruction to send the junior personnel down to safety and to obey all orders lord Tatiseigi gave.

“So long as they aren’t damaging to the equipment,” Ilisidi added, while her men were out calling in the mechieti and the staff that were going to walk down the road were shutting down their consoles.

All nonessential communications ceased when those switches flipped. Phone service was going to be limited in the region. The local province was going on the Emergency Network for such things as fire and ambulance, which one hoped didn’t prove necessary.

But other things were happening. Among the last messages to come in over the news service, there was a train stopped on the tracks near Aisinandi, effectively blocking the northern rail from reaching the area. By amazing coincidence, a switching error derailed another car in Aidin. Somethinghad started moving, and that event wasn’t on Cenedi’s list or Banichi’s.

There was beach on the northern face of the peninsula, running all the way around, broad and flat and such that motorized transport could operate, but it couldn’t get to the beach the boy named, on the Saduri headland, because the stretch where the point of the jut of headland met the waves of the strait was sheer jagged rock. If a ship grounded there, it was very bad news.

It was good news for them, however, because if the small force they now knew was safely on Dur could keep either of the two ferries from operating and also keep boats from landing on Dur’s sandy north shore, they’d assure that Deana went south right into the aiji’s hands.

Motorized transport had moved inSaduri, earlier, and Ilisidi hadn’t stopped it, fearing, Bren judged, that a fight would break out inside town limits with innocent citizens at risk.

That much made tactical sense. But he didn’t figure even yet that he knew all of what was proceeding. Humans in the War had had the advantage of their high tech neutralized by the assumptions they made about whatatevi might do and when they would do it.

Studying atevi campaigns, as he’d done, didn’t tell him why, for instance, they left some of this station active instead of shutting it all down, no matter Tatiseigi’s annoyance. It might be technical, the need to keep personnel at hand to keep certain functions going and to be sure a lord didn’t go ordering things turned on and off that one of the least technologically minded lords in the Association didn’t understand.

The reason might also lie in the insult it might accord that powerful and influential lord if one didn’t accept his gesture of help in the spirit in which, if they were lucky, it was truly offered.

One wondered where Direiso’s heir was at the moment, whether he was again under Tatiseigi’s roof, or whether Saigimi’s daughter, claimant to Saigimi’s lordship, was with the force almost certainly coming at them.

One wondered exactly where Ajresi, Saigimi’s brother and that daughter’s bitterest rival, happened to be at the moment, and whether Badissuni’s indigestion had swayed his opinions.

If Ajresi wanted to stay neutral, he probably could, with Tabini’s tolerance. If he saw Tabini fall, however, and Direiso rise, the first debts Direiso would have to pay off would be awarding the Tasigin Marid to Saigimi’s wife and daughter, and that meant dispossessing Ajresi, who was too young for peaceful retirement and whose quarrel with Saigimi’s Sarini-province wife was too bitter for him to survive her daughter’s lordship in the Marid.

Add to that tangle of relationships lord Geigi, who had a grudge against the wife for her attempt to dispossess him from his seaside estate at Dalaigi.

There was one thing a great deal different than the last time, at the start of the War of the Landing, when the northern provinces had gone against Mospheira. In that long-ago day the south, the Peninsular lords, had joined the north and the dispossessed Mospheirans in their assault against the island.

This time most of the former atevi inhabitants of Mospheira were running resorts at Onondisi, fishing on the Dur coast, or scattered up and down the Aidin headland, a Gan minority that had not fared as well under the lord of Wiigin as those had fared who had settled near the old fortress at Nain, on the Barjidi grant of that vacated lordship that had made the Treaty possible. Tabini’s ancestor had deserved well of the Gan.

And Tabini’s sudden removal of Saigimi, he began to understand, had made the south less, not more likely, to join Direiso.

The coastal ethnic minority around old Nain wasn’t fond of the northern provinces and theywouldn’t side with Direiso, who couldn’t shake her long-time association with Wiigin.

And Dur? Dur, famous mostly for a ferry connection and for smuggling? Dur through its teenaged heir swore itself consistently loyal to Tabini’s house.

Ilisidi, in the light from the foyer door, got up on Babs, and men searched out their various mounts. Haduni had lost one of his charges, who had flown down to Dur, but he was there to take charge of Jase; and Bren whistled for Nokhada who was notdelighted to see her rider at this hour when she was full of grass and roused from sleep. He hoped the handlers had gotten the girth tight.

He got up in Nokhada’s surly sketch of a bow. There were complaints of mechieti all around them, and Banichi and Jago glided close to him, shadows in the single-source light from the door, as the Messengers’ Guild staff that was going down the road with them afoot moved nervously into a knot by the door.

He had the gun in his coat pocket. The paidhiin were supposed to be unarmed and innocuous. Neither of them fit the latter description.

But defend the third of them? He didn’t know how they were going to find a woman from space who’d possibly launched out from Jackson with no skill and no chart and no knowledge of a sea that overmatched even the occasional smuggler.

He knew the dangers andthe numbers of people who drowned in that crossing. Whenever some enterprising fool of a human or atevi thought he’d circumvent the import restrictions, and failed in the crossing, the fact if not the grim details reached the paidhi’s desk as a complaint from one authority or the other. Fishermen and, very rarely, pleasure boaters got caught by a squall and if they were very, very lucky, the paidhi got to straighten out the international paperwork and get them escorted to the middle of the strait, aimed at the appropriate harbor.

There were the sad inquiries to which the paidhi had had to say, no, no one had been picked up, no boat had reached shore.

He didn’t want to think about Yolanda trying it alone in some harbor runabout she’d found the key left in.

Deana Hanks, on the other hand, could easily get expert help, either some 20 meter yacht with a crew hired from her rich father’s friends or, more useful and far more likely to reach the port she aimed at, some Mospheiran smuggler who supplied mainland antiques and jewelry, two items no one could identify as smuggled, to the parlors of that crowd who otherwise disdained atevi culture.

God, he wanted his hands on Hanks!

Preferably before Hanks ended up in Direiso’s camp.

Without warning Ilisidi started out, and they were moving. One of Ilisidi’s men told the communications staffers who were walking down to stay to the inside of the road so a mechieta didn’t shoulder them off a cliff.

Better to hit the rocks on the inside of the curve than the ones at the bottom of the cliff, was the way the man put it, to a collection of people, mostly young, already scared by their situation; but they fell in, keeping in a group as they walked and trying to stay clear of the mechieti.

“The staff will have to tag after us as best they can,” Banichi said. “I have a feeling we’ll out-pace them considerably; and that may be best for their sakes.”

“What’s waiting for us down there?” Bren asked as they moved into the dark and the starlight of the road.

“Tabini’s men, nadi, and some of Ilisidi’s who came in by train from Shejidan, if, baji-naji, we have fortune on our side for a few more hours and they’ve met up without shooting each other.”

They passed the split in the road, that which led around the rim to the cannon fort, the route the tourists used. Another mechieta shouldered in, with Jase aboard and Haduni leading it by the rein. “Nadiin,” Haduni said, “the dowager has lent Jase-paidhi Nawari’s mechieta for the trip down.”

Nawari had left in the plane. Nawari was one of those who ordinarily rode close to Ilisidi.

“Jasi-ji,” Jago said out of the dark by Bren’s left, “he means when we run, you take the rein from him, stay low and hang on. He’s holding the rein now because if he lets go you’ll be up there with the dowager very fast.”

“Yes.” Jase acknowledged an order with atevi brevity. And to Bren. “I’ll certainly hang on, nadi.”

The head of the party had reached the fork of the road that slanted sharply down in the starlight, down and down into dark. As yet they kept a moderate pace, but the first hairpin turn came a good deal sooner than Bren expected, the mechieti still moving briskly, but not so the staff walking down couldn’t stay with them.

The next hairpin and the next tier of the road brought the town lights into view, not as many lights as one saw looking down, say, from a plane on a Mospheirancity by night.

But those lights might be fewer than ordinary tonight, since one could well suppose the townsfolk were not unaware of the crisis, and were probably listening to radio and television in hopes of news or public safety announcements.

It was a steep road at the next turn. Very steep for the tourist buses that were the summer traffic up this road; but one paved lane was very broad for mechieti; and the front rank at the fourth hairpin turn struck a faster downhill pace that would leave the group afoot behind very quickly. Nokhada was in a far better mood, pricking her ears forward and hitting a stride that advanced her just marginally through the pack.

Her rider didn’t stop her. That made her happier still; and Jase’s mechieta stayed with her.

Next switchback. “Nadiin,” Jago said, riding near Bren, as Banichi came on Jase’s far side. “If we come under fire, stay on. Our security is holding the road into town, and it will not be Guild opposing us, but all the same, present as low a profile as possible. There is a chance of Kadigidi partisans.”

It was never hard to pick out the leaders in an old-fashioned atevi cavalry charge. It never had been. It was part of the ethic—and maybe, Bren thought, among other fearful thoughts, that risk kept wars to a minimum, in a species where the leaders went first, not hindmost. The gun knocked hard against his ribs as the dowager let Babsidi gather speed. Nokhada was right on the front rank with Babsidi. Cenedi’s mechieta was; and Jase’s; and Banichi’s and Jago’s. As they reached the lowest part of the road they were running nearly all-out, security maneuvering only to put their bodies between their charges and the likelihood of snipers as the road let out onto a town highway.

A human might not be wired to know what passions it could touch off in the hearts of atevi instinct-driven to follow such a leader as Ilisidi was. He’d seen the maneuver in the machimi plays, he recalled that, the mad dash of riders across a landscape, a move he’dunderstood for a dramatic convention, but which often preceded a sort-out, a realization of atevi loyalties.

But as they came into the streets of the township of Saduri, he felt real emotion gathering in him. Hadn’t the waving of a flag, the call of a trumpet meant something to humans once? They couldn’t but follow. No matter whether Ilisidi or the atevi she led rationally knewwhat she was invoking— thishuman felt it.

A shot from somewhere blasted white chips of plaster from a building onto what was now black, starlit pavement ahead of them; and fire racketed back at that source from riders all around him. From another answering source more fire broke out somewhere ahead on the road. He was aware every smallish rider in their group was a target. He knew he was supposed to keep his head down and he knew that using the gun he carried and putting his head up to do it was a stupid risk—but in his heart-pounding excitement Jago’s warning at the start was all that held him from such foolishness.

Do what Jago said. Listen to his security. Get through this alive and take down the ones who’d threatened him and his the way hecould deal with them, not with a gun, but by getting to what they wanted before they did, and interdicting them from everything they intended tonight.

A flare went off behind them, a brilliant burst of light that threw them all into silhouette. Then he hoped the Guild workers, caught on the road above this fire-fight, had the sense to take cover. They’d stirred no random fools but an ambush. Tabini’s men were notin possession of this area. They passed side streets that would lead to the harbor, each one of which could become a shooting gallery.

Then a single small light blinked ahead of them and a second red one, twice, to the right.

That might surely be signals of their own allies. Abruptly, Ilisidi took Babsidi around a corner, down a ghostly deserted street, and rode hellbent through the heart of a not-quite-sleeping town toward the harbor.

“Aiji-ma!” someone cried from a window above the street and others yelled it. But the street was dark.

“Go!” shadows yelled at them from an intersection, in utter darkness. “ ’Sidi-ji! Go! Go! Go!”

The darkness of the streets gave way to open night sky and hills and the sheen of water, and they went toward that gap. A light flashed in a window above the street, near the end of the block, and when they reached that open harborside, other atevi shadows appeared with that same flashing of lights, some white, some red, in a pattern that must silently tell Ilisidi and the Guild with them what was critical for them to know.

Ilisidi stopped on harborside against a weather-shelter. A sign by the water and another on the railing said Ferry, and gave a departure schedule, but there was no ferry there for them.

A boat was coming, however. Not a ferry, if one could judge who’d only seen them on television, but a fair-sized boat, just the same.

“Is that someone we want?” Jase asked faintly, having seen it too, as mechieti all around them breathed and blew and harness creaked. One could just make out the spreading disturbance of the boat’s wake, as, against a shadow of low hills well across the water, it made its way on a diagonal toward them.

“ Late,” Ilisidi breathed. “After all these years, every damned appointment, Geigi is still late, damn him!” She signaled Babsidi to extend a leg, and got down—a glistening dark trail was on her hand, and Cenedi wanted immediately to see to it, but: “It’s a damned plaster-chip,” she said. “The man’s revised his arrival time three times—half an hour more, he says, and he’s stilllate!”

Bren slid down and Haduni got down, but in the meanwhile Ilisidi was back among the mechieti, looking for more injuries.

One mechieta had taken a fairly extensive injury on the flank. Two riders had been hit, one a trivial matter, one man with a serious amount of bleeding and a broken arm, which by no means improved her mood.

“I want this woman,” Ilisidi said. “ Damnthis fool! Damn, damn, damn!—Can someone get this man to hospital?”

“Help is coming,” Jago said. They had risked the pocket coms, she and Banichi, so it seemed.

And indeed dark figures were moving on the street, figures that shouted to each other and brought timid ventures from the buildings along the way. More supporters joined them, townsfolk or maybe Guild. But by this time the victim was swearing that he could very well walk to the hospital, which was just down the street. They could see the lighted sign from here. People who called themselves local residents were offering respects to the aiji-dowager in an outpouring of support, loudly wishing to carry the wounded man and to take the injured mechieta to the doctors, too.

Haduni provided them answers and directions.

Cenedi and Banichi were giving orders to the ferry personnel, who had shown up uncertain whether their services could be of use, and very willing to support the woman they recklessly called ’Sidi-ji.

In the meanwhile Jase was safely down and on two feet, and Ilisidi was muttering about the modern age and modern leaders sitting safely in estates and offices looking at computer screens, as lord Geigi’s boat cruised up to the ferry landing with a powerful slow thump of engines and a boil and wash of water.

For a fishing boat, Bren thought, it was pretty damned impressive.

Security came ashore first. Lord Geigi followed with an amazingly agile leap, as the ramp manned by the ferry personnel attempted to adjust to the height of his moving gangway.

“Late!” Ilisidi cried.

“The wind isup, nandi-ji! A hard west wind beyond the breakwater, which does make a difference! Was I to forecast intent to join you? The aijiwas late, so I was late, the whole countrysideis late, so the Kadigidi will be late, too!”

“You were to take the train and borrow the boats here!”

“Well, and the village of Kinsara has a carload of spring vegetables derailed on the grade on this side, so we had to take the boats all the way, and I’ve come to order boats out from Saduri, if I can get some of the good fisherfolk to give us a hand.—And good evening, paidhi-ji. Good evening to your associate. Come aboard! We’ve a cold supper if you’ve been in a hurry. It’s a good half hour back to the breakwater against the wind, ’Siri’s going to call in debts up and down the harborside. We’ll get boats out there tonight, as many as you like.”

Bren recognized Gesirimu among the handful who had come ashore, as shouts went out to get boats away and get the coastal road blocked.

“We have three boats out there holding off shore, but it’s a dark, wide sea,” Geigi said, “and I’ll not say we can keep the Kadigidi from getting a boat past us. If we can intercept the rascals on the water we’ll take fewer casualties.”

“Some Kadigidi arehere,” Banichi said, “in the township. If we’re unlucky we’ll just have chased them to positions up the shore to warn their allies.”

“Nothing for it,” Cenedi said. “Sitting here gains us nothing. With a west wind blowing, lord Geigi, where would a Mospheiran craft come in, between here and Aidin?”

“Is it only Hanks-paidhi, all this mysterious goings-on?”

“ OnlyHanks indeed,” Ilisidi said in disgust and, with Geigi, led the way to the heaving plank. The wind blew cold off the harbor, and the buffers squealed and groaned as the boat heaved against the shore.

“We’re going looking for Hanks,” Jase said faintly, at Bren’s side. It was a question. It was despair. “What about any other boat? Can you ask him—”

“Take your pills,” Bren said. “I’d take a double dose.”

“You don’t think she’d have survived the storm,” Jase said. “Do you?”

“I don’t know.” He had resolved not to lie to Jase, but Jase had a way of going head-on to questions with bad answers. “She might not have gone out with the weather threatening. There’ve been planes out, and boats, all up and down the middle of the strait. Somebody could have picked her up if she did try. I don’t give her up.”

“Neither do I,” Jase said resolutely. And added, with a desperate grip on the gangway rail. “But, Bren, the pills are gone.”

“You can’t have taken all of them!”

“I didn’t. The bottle fell out of my pocket.”

26

Geigi had been communicating delays since the derailment of vegetables, which had happened, Geigi said, while he was at the train station at the Elijiri ferry dock waiting to take the train over the hills to Saduri to keep his appointment. At that point, realizing the train connection would not work, he’d made a call to his private boat, which was on its way back to Dalaigi, and advised them to come back to get him. The three neighbors who were stranded with him had called for theirboats to fill the tanks for a long haul, and to come across to pick them up at Elijiri. Having crossed the Bay, their small fleet (consisting of two retired gentlemen, the lord of Dalaigi, and a middle-aged lady who had made her fortune in the jewelry business) had fueled again at the resort marina at Onondisi, so they were going to be capable of staying out.

Now, seated on soft cushioned chairs and couches, the dusty and sweaty company watched the lights of Saduri Township retreat from the stern windows. A strange way to go into a fight, Bren thought, as Geigi himself poured Ilisidi a small glass of cordial: the arm was, Ilisidi confessed, uncomfortable.

“I also have,” Geigi said, “the name of the resort manager of Mist Island Tours, who says if there is a need that serves the man’chi of Sarini Province, he will publish a need for boats. The seas are rough and I would hesitate to encourage small craft tonight, but there are the harbor tour boats and their crews would willingly bring them out. They lack onboard radar, but they do have radio. I have only to give the orders.”

“Do so,” Ilisidi said. “I don’t think we are operating in overmuch secrecy now. What the wind brings us, the wind will bring.”

“May one—” Bren said quietly, “may one also request we call Dur at this point? There ismore than Hanks. There’s some chance that Mercheson-paidhi has fled the island, and if she’s done so, it would be a very light craft. With the storm, as I remember the map—she’d be blown straight west.”

“Southeast, nadi.”

“I’ve heard how strong the current is,” Bren said. “But the wind—”

“Out of the northwest. The storm andthe current, nand’ paidhi, one assures you.”

“The storm was out of the west. It was in our faces when we were camped. Was it not, nadiin-ji?”

“Northwest, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “The Mogari-nai headland doesn’t lie parallel to that of the south. It faces northwest.”

His whole land-sense had been wrong. He’d looked at the map and believedwest.

“The cliff is weathered, nand’ paidhi,” lord Geigi said, “by uncounted storms that wear away the headland. By waves that dash against those rocks. It’s a dangerous place in a heavy sea. But since centuries ago, when atevi made the breakwater to protect the harbor from silting, the sand has come in all along that stretch and stopped against the stones. What flotsam comes in there is washed out by the next storm, but with that blow night before this, I’d look at Saduri Beach above all else. And I’d say every other sailor on this coast would make the same conclusion.”

“It’s a government reserve,” Ilisidi said. “Does noone on this shore respect the signs?”

“Certainly the wrecks don’t,” lord Geigi said. “Baji-naji, they come there, ’Sidi-ji. And so will anyone who needs to find them.”

“Direiso’s lot had a freighter in here two days ago,” Cenedi said. “A shipment of four heavy trucks. They moved out tonight and headed up the road to the breakwater. So they are thinking in the same direction.”

Lights were showing in the windows. Boats were standing away from the shore. Gesirimu had rallied the fishermen. Lord Geigi had ties to Saduri as well as to his neighbors in Onondisi Bay.

The Peninsula’s north shore had joined Shejidan, this time, in opposingthe dissolution of the northern provinces.

“Well, well,” Geigi said, looking back over the cushion, “we shall have help.” He turned and picked up his glass. “In the meanwhile, if anyone would care to wash away the dust of travel, there is a lavatory just forward and to the left.”

Jase got up and went forward. Quickly.

“Excuse me,” Bren said, and Banichi came with him, across a deck he didn’t think too unsteady; but he feared Jase’s stomach did. The door was shut.

Bren gave a weary sigh. And leaned against the wall as they waited.

“At least,” Banichi said, “he’s not as sick as you were with the tea.”

He’d forgotten that.

Mercifully.

“Have we,” he asked Banichi, because it was the first chance he’d had since they’d made contact with Geigi, “any difficulty at Patinandi?”

“No, no, no,” Banichi said softly, “Geigi could hardly put on tight security, as if he had any reason to fear his good neighbors. But certainly if the dowager has requested lord Geigi’s assistance here, with smugglers, Tabini hasto provide support and security.” Banichi flashed a grin. “How didyou and Jago get along?”

Banichi caught him utterly by surprise, and speechless.

The door opened. Jase was there, water soaking his face and the front of his hair, which strung mostly loose.

“Can one go out on deck?” Jase asked. “I want to look at the water.”

“One can, but you might fall in. It’s quite deep. And it’s dark out there.”

“I want to go outside,” Jase said.

Bren looked at Banichi, who slid a glance toward the door not far removed from where they stood. It let out on the deck and a narrow walk to the fishing deck at the stern or the foredeck in front of the bridge.

They were in the middle of the harbor and it was cold out there in the wind, he fully anticipated that; but he nodded, and went back to the group in the salon to catch Jago’s eye.

“We’re going outside a moment,” he said. “Jase needs air.”

“One does understand,” Jago said, and joined him in his going back to the door and out onto the deck.

Banichi and Jase had gone to the foredeck. Jase stood at the very point of the bow, in the wind and the spray. He’d be soaked, Bren thought. Banichi was out of his mind, standing by him like that.

He and Jago walked up to the rail.

“How deep is it?” Jase asked, over the rush of water and the noise of the engines.

“Oh—” He had no real idea. He guessed, since security didn’t come up with the answer. “About thirty meters.”

“We’re high up, then.”

It was an odd way of looking at the ocean. “I suppose we are.”

“If you fall in, do you go to the bottom?”

Now he knew the direction of Jase’s thoughts. And didn’t like it.

“The waves bring you to the shore,” he said, and didn’t know how to explain that fact of oceans to a man from space. “Jase? Don’t give up on her.”

“I’m not giving up,” Jase said. “I won’t. I couldn’t be sick, Bren. I thought I was. But it’s better at night. You can see the stars.”

One could. The land was black on either side of them. The water shone. There was a black line reaching far out across the harbor mouth; a light stood at the end of it and a line of light shone across the waves. That was the breakwater, extending south from the cliffs. That was where the beach was,

“There are boats out there in the distance,” Jago said, she of the sharp eyesight. He couldn’t see them.

“Beyond the breakwater,” Banichi said, and lifted an arm. “We’ll go out and around, paidhiin-ji. The road is running beside us at the moment, at the foot of the cliffs over there. If we’d dared rely on Saduri orthe Atageini lord, we should have left you both in the township.”

“No,” Bren said. “I’m glad we’re here. Just—how are we going to get in to shore in this boat, nadiin? We can’t beach it.”

“A good question,” Banichi said, but didn’t answer. Bren tried again.

“Can we get ashore, nadiin-ji?”

“ Wewill go ashore, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “If we have to go in, which is by no means certain yet.”

“With us, you will!”

“Listen to your security, Bren-ji. Always listen to your security.”

“Damn it, I was with you at Malguri, I was with you at Taiben.”

“My partner,” Jase said. “Nadiin, mypartner and Hanks-paidhi. Out there.”

“Bad numbers,” Banichi said. “No.”

“You’re not a ’counter,” Bren said, “nadi. I know you’re not. Four is a perfectly fine number.”

Banichi laughed and looked at the open sea ahead of them.

“You need translators, if it’s humans involved.”

“Jago-ji,” Banichi said, “you stay with them. Felicitous three.”

“No,” Jago said.

“Your duty, Jago-ji. Someone has to keep them aboard.”

“I am going,” Bren said.

“No,” Banichi said, “you are not, nand’ paidhi. But you can watch.”

He fell silent then, dejected, telling himself it was not fair of them, but neither was he of any use if he took Jago away from her partner simply to watch them.

“Then trust, Jago-ji, that I can remain safe with the guard aboard, and I will not risk Banichi’s life by holding you here. You saved him at Malguri and again in the Marid—”

“An exaggeration,” Banichi said.

“I want both of you back,” Bren said. “Nadiin.” The wind was like ice this far out in the harbor. The breakwater was very close. The boats were running dark. There was only the one light showing, that at the end of the breakwater rocks.

“Best get inside,” Banichi said. “All of us. We’ll be passing close to a sniper vantage, if they’ve positioned anyone to hold the harbor.”

Banichi herded them back, back to the door. Against the glow from Saduri Township, even human eyes could see the fishing boats running behind them, six, seven, maybe more behind.

The light inside the salon was out. They were dark as all the other boats now. Bren felt his way the short distance to the salon, with Jase and Banichi and Jago behind him.

“Best everyone get down, nandiin,” Banichi said. “We’re coming up on the breakwater.”

“A very good idea,” Cenedi said. “ ’Sidi-ji?”

“Damned nuisance,” Ilisidi said. “ Youstay inside, ’Nedi-ji. There’s nothing to be gained out there. Down!”

The dowager sat down on the floor. That settled the matter. They all sat down, low, beneath the woodwork, while the engines thumped placidly away.

And all of a sudden surged, as the fishing yacht proved what it had in reserve. They had to be passing the breakwater light, the one vantage for ambush.

Jase was tucked down. Bren held his breath as the deck tilted sharply to port under the power of the engines; and all of a sudden the boat shook and rocked and something exploded against the hull and the superstructure at once.

“Damn!” Geigi cried, as the diesels roared and the deck pitched hard on the beam on the other tack. Starboard, this time, canted way over. The boat’s course was an arc. And they were surely beyond the breakwater. “We’ve not lost an engine,” Geigi said, which was the first thing to think in a veering motion. By the sound, that was correct, but the pilot up on the bridge must have jammed the wheel all the way over to starboard and if they were past the breakwater they had to be turning back to—

The boat’s keel hit something, the engines kept driving, one roaring dry as the starboard side hull hit and bounced along rock. Cushions and bodies and glassware and the remnants of the stern window all traveled toward the bulkhead as Jase and Bren slid down the hall toward the door that swung wildly on its hinges.

“Get out!” Banichi shouted as motion slowed. “We’re full of fuel!”

“Do it!” Bren cried, shoving at Jase. They were closest to the door, and the door had come open, the whole boat listing over hard as it swayed and bobbed and scraped along the shore, pushed by the sea and its last working engine. “Get out!”

Jase moved, half-fell through the open door and slid against the rail, Bren right with him and someone else close behind him. Gunfire hammered at the hull as they went over the rail and dropped into waist-deep water.

Someone and a second someone landed beside them with two distinct splashes. “Keep down,” Banichi’s voice said. “Keep below the tide line! Stay nearthe water unless the tank blows!”

He took the advice, his hand in the middle of Jase’s back as they moved aside to give others room to exit the still-moving boat, which was grinding and scraping its way along rocks, its engines both dead now, the waves pushing at it. They were on the breakwater. Others of their group splashed down and they made their way further toward the bow. Fire was still coming at them.

“Where’s Lasari?” Geigi’s voice cried. “Lasari! Casurni, he’s not answering.”

“Get clear, nandi!” someone said. “I’ll get him out!”

Gunfire boomed out, a large gun, from somewhere astern and in the dark.

It hit the cliffs.

“I’ve got him,” someone said. “Geigi-ji, I have him, I’m coming down!”

A hand found Bren’s arm. “Move, nadiin! That rock!”

He couldn’t see what she wanted. But he moved ahead, keeping low, and Jase was with them. Someone, two or three, splashed past the three of them, and flattened down on the rocks and got up and ran again, as gunfire aimed at the boat thumped and echoed off the cliffs.

‘They’re trying to blow the boat up,“ Jago said.

“Where is the dowager?” he asked. “Where’s Banichi?”

“Just go, paidhiin-ji!”

He could see cover ahead now, Jago’s rock, a huge boulder embedded in sand; and sand kicked up where bullets hit it.

He dived behind the rock and Jase went down with him, Jago atop them, for a second. Then Jago was seeking targets in the rocks at the foot of the cliffs, the height above them that of Mogari-nai. He remembered—for the first time remembered—he had a gun. It was jabbing him in the ribs; and he dragged it out and slipped the safety off.

“Can you see anything?” he asked.

“We are—”

Jago shoved herself around the rock, slammed them into the rock and the sand, and a shot went off to their right flank, and a second, answering shot banged out right beside him from Jago’s gun, so close to his face he was in danger of powder burns.

He couldn’t see. “Stay down!” Jago said, and used her pocket com, telling Banichi something in vocal code.

An answer came back. He couldn’t hear. His ears were still ringing from the gunshot. Jase was breathing hard, Jago’s elbow and a lump of rock were both in painful places, but he didn’t move, nor did Jase.

Another paired set of shots resounded near at hand as Jago’s body jumped, and a succession of shots went off, two of them hers. He saw a gun flash: he fired back; and heard a scatter of gunfire elsewhere.

Then in a thump of sound and glare that cast the rock breakwater and the sand in stark light and shadow—the boat’s fuel tanks blew. He saw a figure, the man he must have shot, lying flat on the beach near them.

Then other atevi figures started running across the rocks from the boat and toward the action.

“That’s Cenedi,” Jago said, with no breath. And he hoped to God she meant the running ones.

“Are you hit?” he asked Jago. “Jago-ji, are you all right?” He shook at her, and then for whatever reason she caught a breath. “Are you hit?”

“Bruised—bruised, nadi.” Gunfire was still thumping and popping from further away, as in the continuing, fainter light of the burning boat, he probed past her fingers where the leather of her coat was shredded. His hands met the bulletproof lining beneath that, and that fabric had a stiffened dent where kinetic reflex fibers had absorbed the force and taken that shape permanently.

One of the new plastics. For the space program.

“Stay in shadow,” she said, and held her side and braced herself to reload. “One is grateful, nadi,” she said between her teeth. “But if Banichi finds us sitting here, I will hear about it often. We need better cover.”

The water was lit like a carnival. Gunfire was coming at them from along the bottom of the cliffs, where the sandy beach offered dunes and cover. And there, at the limit of the light from Geigi’s boat, another sail-driven yacht lay in a wreckage the mirror-image of their own, heeled over on the sand. Inflatable runabouts were beached near it, three of them.

“God.” He nudged Jago. Jagohadn’t seen the wreck, either, until then. She made a call on the pocket com, and this time, crouched very close to Jago and in a lull in the gunfire, he heard Banichi’s voice:

“ I see it,” Banichi said. “ I see no sign of movement.”

A concentrated fire swept the beach and knocked chips off the boulder.

“ One would suggest you stay down,” Banichi said.

“One would suggest you do the same,” Jago retorted, and did not seem happy—evidently not believing Banichi would take his own advice. She turned on one knee, crouching low, and took a fast look.

Very fast. Fire blasted back and kicked up sand that Bren spat and wiped from his face.

“We are in a predicament,” Jago said. “I have position. I’m going to move quickly, Bren-ji, and I must ask you stay here. You have your gun. I want you to fire ten shots, above my head, please, while I run for the rocks a little closer. Then I will lay down fire to cover Banichi and Casurni, who will move. Ten will empty your clip.” She pressed a clip into his hand. “Reload as rapidly as you can and please aim above me.”

“Jago—”

“I must trust you to do this, nadi,” Jago said. “Can you see the gunflashes?”

Fire was going on. He did see, risking a look. “Yes.”

“Begin firing, Bren-ji. Now!”

She didn’t give him a chance to protest. She ran. He fired, putting shots as accurately as he could toward that mark, and someone else was firing, he thought maybe Banichi and maybe someone else.

But fire came back. Jago staggered and went down, and got up, and he fired, pacing his shots. Jago was hurt, trying to run; and then someone from their side broke from cover and reached her and swept her along just as heran out of bullets.

“Damn!” he gasped, and tried to reload calmly, rammed the clip in and fired as rock shattered and something stung his chin. He saw the two figures reach cover and then open fire—two discharges of weapons.

“She made it! They made it!” Jase said beside him. “Incandescent.”

He held his fire maybe two seconds, having maybe seven, eight shots left. Then fire started up again, Jago’s and, he guessed, Banichi’s, which was covering Geigi’s man, Casurni. It was too rapid for just one. He opened fire to support them.

Then—

“Bren!” Jase said, and distracted him to the side, where firelit movement out on the water caught his eye.

Something huge was coming in from the sea, past the wreck of the yacht, like some floating white monster with a mouth gaping dark and wide, an incredible sight, lit by the fire of the burning boat.

It rammed itself onto the sand between them and the wrecked yacht down the beach. A broad ramp came thumping down and a tide of atevi poured out onto the beach, guns in hand. The sign on the superstructure said Dur-Saduri.

“God,” he said, as fire spattered across the beach.

“What isit?” Jase asked.

He said, faintly, not quite believing his own conclusion, “I thinkit’s the Dur island ferry.”

27

There were black-uniformed Guild among the new arrivals. Bren could see them walking across the beach, saw the use of pocket coms, and held his breath and hoped. For a moment firing was very intense and he shouted aloud, “Finesse, nadiin! We have people out there!”

Someone came directly toward their shelter, not rapidly, a little bent and limping, and he ducked in fear of having mistaken the situation. He was about to advise Jase to run for one of the inflatables, when a shadow came to the rock, leaned there, black leather sparking firelight off metal studs, and—he was sure it was Nawari, of Ilisidi’s service—said, “Are you all right, nandiin?”

“Perfectly fine,” Bren said, and stood up as Jase rose to his feet beside him—if Nawari was standing up, he dared. “Jago and Banichi and I think Cenedi went that way!” Fire was still going on. He was shaky in the knees. “Can you spare a clip, nadi?”

Nawari gave him one, and took off running.

“Come on,” he said to Jase, and ran after the man, toward the bank of rocks that, he saw in the firelight, supported a paved road right at cliffside, until pavement lost itself on the beach.

Thatwas where the intense fighting had been going on. That was where he found others of their group, lord Geigi among them, and Ilisidi; and Jago, who had a bloody bandage just above the top of her boot and who was getting off shots down into the dark. As he and Jase slid in beside her, he could just make out the tops of a group of trucks in that direction, between them and Saduri Township. She spared only a dart of her eyes toward them.

“What target?” he asked her.

“Those trucks,” she said. “Aim high! My partner’s a fool!”

He was alarmed. “Where’s Banichi?” he asked. He saw gun flashes out in the dark where he thought was water, and realized then it was the fishing boats. Geigi’s other Guild protection, Gesirimu, had been with them, and theywere running close to shore, firing from the water toward the trucks on that road.

“He said he’d get the trucks!” Jago said, stopping to shove in another clip.

“Are we sure who’s out there in the trucks, Jago-ji? Jase’s partner is missing!”

“We’re sure. Hanks has a pocket com. She’s appealed to all of us to disintegrate and abase our weapons.”

It was surreal. The paidhiin were shooting at each other. His friendBanichi was out there in the dark with bullets flying from the water and from their position, and he opened fire high, with the thought of knocking rock down off the cliffs above those trucks. He was scared of hitting Banichi.

Jago’s fire joined his, lower and more dangerous to the enemy, he was sure. And another someone joined them.

“Nandiin!” a young voice said. “My father believedthe dowager’s men! I have a gun! Where do I shoot!”

“Above the trucks!” Bren said. “Aim at the cliff. Produce ricochets!”

“Yes!” Rejiri said, lifted his high-caliber rifle, and fired.

Fire blossomed in the trucks, and in a flash that imprinted trucks and figures on the retina, light stained the cliffs, the sand, the sea, lit the boats and the rocks they were using for cover. The shock went through the ground and into their bones and before the light died a piece of the cliff was peeling away and headed down toward the trucks. There was the sound of one truck engine, speeding away.

“Ten, ten,” Jago said anxiously into the com.

“ Got them,” Banichi’s voice came back. “All but one, damn it.”

That truck was headed back to Saduri, by the sound of the motor fading. Jago rattled off a string of verbal code that Bren guessed was their identities. It ended with, “The Dur island ferry,” and drew an astonished and rude remark from the com.

A hand closed on Bren’s shoulder, Jase’s, in the silence of the guns. He reached his own out and closed on Jase’s arm, shaky, feeling the chill of the wind now that the area was quiet. Jago went on, apparently trying to talk to someone else.

Then a voice came back and Jago said, “Ten, ten, four, sixteen. Headed your way.”

“ Mistake on their part,” a voice came back. And something exploded in the distance, another shock echoing and echoing off the cliffs.

There was silence after, except the ringing in the ears.

“ Lord Tatiseigi’s compliments,” the com said distinctly.

Deana Hanks was dead. Banichi said he could verify that and it was probably better not to go down to the trucks, but Bren did. The place stank of smoke, of oil, and ocean—of burning, mostly, and while he was there, a small rock gave way high up the cliffs and fell with a pelting of gravel.

Six humans. At least—he was relatively sure it was six. More atevi. Twisted metal, the paint burned off. Banichi had gotten them with a grenade he’d gotten from up at Mogari-nai.

And Tatiseigi’s forces, while the elderly lord had ridden down in the van, had occupied the township proper and thrown up a roadblock with the help of residents. So they heard on the radio.

Fishing boats had come in as close as they could to shore within Saduri Harbor. They were anchored there.

One could just see the lines that ran down to the water. Bren began to be aware of the dawn, as he and Banichi walked back toward the beach.

Jase and Jago waited for him where the paved road gave way to sand and a view of two wrecked boats, the beached island ferry, and a sea full of pleasure yachts and working boats, all in the shadow of the Saduri headland.

Jago had his computer. The case was mostly melted. It was a wonder the strap held.

“Bren-ji, I did my best,” Jago said.

“Jago, you did wonderfully well.” He took it, such as it was. What it could do, it had done. Data recovery might turn up something, but he doubted it. “How are youdoing?”

“Nothing serious, nadi. The dowager is well, lord Geigi is well. Cenedi has a cut from glass. Wehave taken no serious injuries. Lord Geigi’s pilot has cuts and both arms broken, but he did excellently well to steer us about into the shore when the bridge was hit.”

“One is veryglad, Jago.” Bren leaned against the rock and caught his breath. Or tried to. He pointed to the ferry. “Did you know about that?”

“One had noidea, nadi,” Jago said. “Our people there were under orders not to use radio, and they didn’t. The boy—and his father—called in certain of the island folk. And saw the fires and came in.”

“Definitely it was Hanks,” Bren said. “It’s a mess down there. We won’t know what happened—but she musthave hit the rocks at the point.” He was looking out to sea as he said it. And saw, among the atevi yachts in the haze of smoke and morning, a motor-sailer, a tall-masted boat that didn’t belong in this company, gliding along under sail.

It didn’t belong in this company.

It didn’t belong in these waters. It belonged up on the north shore of Mospheira.

“My God,” he said, and then in Ragi: “That’s my brother’s boat!”

“Bren!” a male voice yelled, and he knew the man who’d come running toward him from the grounded runabout—a man in a pale fishing jacket and a hat, a ridiculous hat stuck about with fishing floats. Yolanda Mercheson stepped over the side of the orange fabric boat, with him, and third was Shawn Tyers. Yolanda was trying to run, not quite steady on land-legs; and about then Toby was all his field of vision, Toby unshaven, looking as if he’d had no sleep for days, and grinning from ear to ear.

“God, it’s good to see you!”

“Good to see you,” Bren said, and Toby hugged him; he hugged Toby. Atevi had to wonder at them, and he didn’t care.

“What are you doinghere?” Bren managed to ask.

“What are youdoing?” Toby asked. “Are we at war or something? We were doing fine but a gunboat escorted us down here.”

“They’re ours. How’s mama?”

“She’s doing fine. We couldn’t bring her. But Jill’s with her. And the kids. We brought Shawn’s family, though.”

Shawn was there, in a puffy insulated jacket, bright blue, the most informal thing he’d ever seen Shawn wear. He let go of Toby and recovered wit enough to hold out his hand.

“Welcome ashore, sir. I take it you had something to do with this.”

“It was getting uncomfortable,” Shawn said, and nodded over his shoulder where Jase and the other ship-paidhi were giving atevi another exhibition, oblivious to all else. “I figured it was easier to talk to the aiji than to George, truth be told. We just assembled down at Bretano and Toby flew up to the coast and got the boat. Got my wife, my kids, a Ms. Johnson who said you sent her—”

“God, Sandra made it.”

“Showed up at my door with two plants in a grocery sack as I was leaving for Bretano. I said come along, we’d explain it. She said she didn’t want to go this far, but it sounded safer here.” Shawn cast a look around the beach. “She’s probably changed her mind.”

Bren looked behind him, where a row of atevi stood, Banichi, and Jago, and Cenedi, expressionless, uniformed, and armed.

He suddenly realized how they must look to Toby and Shawn. And blinked again and saw his dearest friends.

28

The wind came in from the sea, in a summer warm and pleasant. The leaves sighed in a lazy, sleepy sussuration on the face of the wall, where the djossi vine had spread itself wide.

Lord Geigi was bringing the boat. His new, two meters longerboat, gratefully donated by Murini, lord of the Kadigidi. It was a short walk down to the water.

“Quiet day,” Jago said, leaning elbows on the rail. She made hand-signals. The paidhi could just about bet that Banichi was below, watching over the boat dock.

Jago made a furious sign then, and a sign of dismissal, but not in anger, in laughter. Banichi’s unseen comment was, he was sure, salacious.

“The boat’s coming in,” Jago said.

“One thought so,” Bren said, and stood up and looked over the the rail himself.

Toby was joining them—that was the second boat, tied up just down the row. Geigi especially favored Toby: a fine sailor, Geigi called him, a true fisherman. Toby had an invitation in his own right; and he’d brought their mother for a three-day visit coinciding with the paidhiin’s two weeks at Geigi’s estate. Jill, who was pregnant, had flung herself valiantly into the breach, and was, with Shawn’s wife, not only entertaining their mother, but escorting a children’s birthday party (Shawn’s oldest) to the beach, which had Tano and Algini occupied.

“Nadi.” Jase joined him, with Yolanda, coming out of the house. “Are we promised fishing gear? One wants to be sure.”

“There is, nadiin,” Bren said. “I assure you it’s on the boat.”

“I’ll be sure before I board,” Jase said, and the two of them took the steps quite rapidly for spacefarers.

The ship—it was up there. The government of Mospheira was dealing quite politely nowadays, having apologized for the misunderstanding—one knew they would. The aiji had threatened an embargo of more than aluminum if they didn’t come up with a passport for anyone the paidhiin requested—an offer the validity of which Sandra Johnson had tested, returning once for a visit, and a night of live machimi theater in Shejidan, the experience of her office-bound life. Now the State Department wanted Yolanda to come back and lecture to the Foreign Studies program at the University. One was absolutely sure she would not accept the offer, although Shawn said with Eugene Weinberg in as Secretary of State it was a certainty they’d honor her passport.

The telling matter was that the government of Mospheira, no longer able to pretend it had a space program, was dealing for Patinandi to build an expansion plant on the mainland to build a second spacecraft, part of a fleet of five such craft, that being the only way humans were going to get up to the station; and the ship did want them.

Shawn, however, was not going back to Mospheira. Emissaries came to Shawn, who said he’d wait for the next elections to see whether the voters had really acquired some sense. The Progressive Unionists wanted Shawn to run for President of Mospheira in the fall, but he said he’d think about it. Meanwhile Sonja Podesty was a very good candidate for Foreign Secretary if they’d use their heads. He wrote letters to Weinberg suggesting Weinberg run for President for the Unionists and appoint Podesty to the cabinet post.

Mospheira had to revise its notions of the universe, quite as much as Geigi had—and with far more disturbance to their expectations.

A radio show on the far side of the island, on which George Barrulin was a frequent guest, still maintained that atevi were going to pour across the straits and murder them all; but tell that, this summer, to the traders who saw their markets opening up, tell that to the companies which were making across-the-straits deals. The Foreign Office and the State Department were beginning to issue trade permits and companies would cut throats to be in early on the market—even if the aiji would not issue patent protection beyond three years for any product. The aiji wasprotecting certain Mospheiran patents, where it served the interests of atevi or where the paidhiin recommended exceptions. Everything among atevi was both patronage andmerit. It always had been. And Gaylord Hanks wasn’t on the aiji’s list.

Tides ebbed and flowed in that blue water, and the one that had carried Deana Hanks to the heights of influence was ebbing. Her father still had money; and the old money still gathered at the Society meetings and talked about the unfairness of it all, but money meant less when the ideas it bought and backed were on the ebb of their fortunes, gotten down to the tide-pools and creatures that skipped away for deeper, safer water.

The aiji was in Shejidan, the heir of Dur was attending University, grandmother was riding mechieti at Malguri on the lake, and uncle Tatiseigi was in Shejidan politicking with the fragments of the association which had revolved around Direiso and now wanted very much to be seen with Uncle andwith lord Geigi, who was the guest of the season in social circles.

As for the bad neighbors out in space, those who needed to know were warned. They were working on it. Nobody mentioned it. Yet.

Bren picked up the lunch basket that had rested on the terrace and joined Jago on the way down the steps.

They had gotten fairly good at certain things. Practice, Jago called it.

The aiji-dowager had invited the paidhiin and their staff for a season at summer’s end—the aiji-dowager had promised themboating, too, and a bedchamber guaranteed to be as haunted as the lake.

The ghost bell has been heard this summer, Ilisidi had written them, in that careful, delicate hand Jago said was the old school of penmanship. I propose to spend the night in the old watchman’s tower on the island in the lake. If we find no ghosts the view of the stars will still be extraordinary, and if it rains, the fireplace is intact.

I assure you of the safety of the old tower and the caution of our cuisine as well as the security of our boundaries. The shell holes are patched. The banners fly. There’s a nest of wi’itikiin on the roof this summer.

The damned creatures have taken advantage of the repairs and are getting entirely too impertinent.

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