And God help him, even while he was trying to figure how to explain things to Toby, his hindbrain was working on a plot to use that restricted information to scare hell out of certain factions on the island and among the atevi on the mainland. There was no decency at all in the automatic functions of his hindbrain. He just went on calculating and finagling, while trying to tell his brother as much truth as he thought he could, about something that had already cost their family dearly.
“Sounds like you’ve been busy the last two years,” Toby said, understatement.
“Busy. Busy with a ship full of refugees who still don’t know how serious their situation was.” That led into the kind of trouble said refugees might pose the current local station population, and that was a topic he didn’t want to get into. “How are you?” he asked, the thing he truly wanted to know. And the next painful question: “Did you get back with Jill?”
“No,” Toby said. Just, no, when there were two kids involved, and Toby’s whole life. “I gave her the house, the kids, I kept the boat… ”
“I’m glad you kept the boat.”
“She sold the house. Couldn’t stand to live in North Shore any longer.”
Bitterness in that. Jill had been the one who wanted to live on North Shore, far from their mother, which had led to their mother’s deep unhappiness and isolation, and a lot else that had gone wrong, with him living on the mainland. But apparently that effort, like everything else, hadn’t worked out for Jill.
“Are you happy?” Bren ventured to ask.
“Actually—yes. I am happy,” Toby said. “What about you?”
He didn’t live the kind of life where he expected to find that question coming back at him, as if he could sum everything up in the fact he owned a boat, or a house with a white picket fence. Or a wife. Or kids. He’d just never gone that direction—had skittered all over the map with his life, from obscure, ignored atevi court official to Lord of the Heavens, and was lovers with Jago, for what physical needs he had. No children there. Nor ever going to be.
He supposed he was happy. He was alive. Banichi and Jago were. Toby was. He’d be happier at the moment if he thought Tabini was, which he wasn’t at all sure about. He’d be happier if he didn’t have the business on the mainland looming ahead of him, and the prospect of everything their return might bring down on a peaceful countryside. But—
“Happy,” he said. “I think I’m happy. Happy being back. Happy seeing you again. Happy to have all my people safe. Except the mainland’s in a mess. And there are people I care about over there who have their neck in a noose—increasingly so, as the news of our landing spreads.”
“I take it you’re going across.”
“Fast as I can.” He couldn’t even apologize for the desertion. “I have to.”
“I brought the boat.”
He blinked. Twice. “No. I couldn’t possibly—”
“She’s small, she’s quiet, she has full instruments, and I know the atevi coast.”
“Damn, Toby.”
“Look, it’s a family outing. I’ve been waiting for this fishing trip for two years.”
Toby’s humor broke out unexpectedly, and it got right through his guard. He missed a beat in their argument, and Toby said, with a slap on his shoulder,
“Deal, then.”
“For God’s sake, no, it’s not. We’re arranging for the military to run us over there. People with guns and engines to stand off an atevi patrol boat. Or an air attack.”
“Noisy. Let the navy just keep a radar watch and be noisy somewhere between them and us. We’ll make it in when no one’s looking. I’m even provisioned, if you don’t mind hot dogs and chili. I can set you ashore with food in hand. I’ve got a whole box of survival rations. Where precisely do you want to go?”
He had no intention of listening to Toby. But he envisioned Toby’s fishing boat, the sort that was ordinary traffic on the waters of the strait, then envisioned, as Toby said, a noisy military move.
And, unhappily, he knew which he’d rather be on, given the certainty their enemies would have intercepted the news broadcasts which had detailed their landing. There was more than enough time for Murini’s crew to position Assassins on the coast, people who moved quietly and secretly, more than enough time for the Kadigidi to toughen the surveillance around Lord Geigi’s estate. That around his own, he was sure was constant and thorough. A military escort bringing them in on a fair landing on the coast could do nothing to protect them. Only secrecy and surprise could do that.
“You’re wavering,” Toby said, reading his face. “You’re wavering, brother. I have you.”
“Damn it, lend me the boat!”
“Lend you my boat, so you can run her in and abandon her on the mainland?”
“And leave you safe on shore this side of the strait.”
“While you wreck my boat? No, thank you, brother! I’ll get you there. I’ll get you there and get out again with my boat, with room to spare. I’ve made a fine study of the tides and the shallows over the last dozen years, with that nice set of charts I picked up over at your place. I know what I’m doing. I’ve got charts our military doesn’t have.”
He gazed at Toby, at a face he’d so longed to see. “No.”
“I know the risk,” Toby said. “You’ve done what you want with your life. You’ve made the grand gestures. For God’s sake, give me the chance for mine.”
Got him dead on. He sat there a moment not saying anything.
“So,” Toby said. “We’re going.”
“Toby. If anything should happen to you—”
“Sure, sure, mutual. When do you want to leave?”
He made his career persuading the powers of earth and heavens. And his own brother nailed him.
“It’s not a done deal. I have to talk to Banichi.” Meaning Banichi, Jago, and the whole atevi contingent. “Not to mention the dowager.”
“You think she’ll want to come ashore on a Mospheiran navy ship? How would that look?”
Got him again. He heaved a slow sigh. “I’ll see if Shawn will give me a few boats for a screen and a diversion.”
“I’ve no doubt he will. But it’s not our problem. We can leave after dark, just get everybody into a couple of vans and pull up at the dock. My crew had her at the fueling dock when I left. We’re at dock C, number 2, easy to pull up and get right aboard.”
“Your crew. Who else have you snagged into this crazy venture? Not one of the kids, for God’s sake.”
“Barb.”
His heart thumped. “God.”
“You aren’t involved with her any longer.”
“No,” he managed to say. “No.” Barb, who’d been his lover for years, who’d broken with him, married and divorced Paul Saarinson, taken care of his mum with a daughter’s devotion, and pursued him with a forlorn hope of renewing their relationship, right up until he left the planet… and now she’d gotten her hooks into Toby? He started to say: It’s certainly over on my side… and then had sinking second thoughts, that it wasn’t a very good thing to say to a brother who might, God help them, have gotten himself emotionally involved with Barb.