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the field and, rather than face down human agitators who now thought they were winning political points, Mospheira had withdrawn police protection from his mother’s apartment, or worse, politics infiltrating the police departments had made it impossible for the Mospheiran government to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?