Narani did understand him, he had every confidence. The letters went. Things were out of his hands. The best people he knew were on the job, and Toby was hereafter going to be in place to link the Presidenta to Tabini, where it was useful to pass messages.
Sorry, brother.
He hadn’t written that part in his letter to Toby.
I’m scared as hell.
He hadn’t written that part either.
And he didn’t envy Shawn his job, or the political consequences of removing a powerful appointee. But the nature of the matter, the fact that it was reasonable to need a total change of management to handle the unprecedented visit imminent, might provide salve enough for political sensitivities and let Shawn bring Tillington home for that favorite euphemism for executive displeasure—consultation.
He had local staff moves to make, too. He was going to rotate a small number of household staff home to Najida once he left. They could go on furlough by turns during his absence, partly to relieve the pressure on Koharu and Supani, in their first stint at managing the household from the executive post, partly because they deserved some time at home, and partly because people arriving from his Bujavid staff could answer Toby’s more detailed questions, just for Toby’s comfort—assuring Toby that he had left the world in good order and in confidence.
Bren found himself staring at that spot on the office wall that was always his recourse, catty-angled opposite his desk—that spot that his aishid and his staff occupied, when there was something they could do about a situation.
When that spot was vacant, because his staff was already doing everything they could do—the worry was all his.
Communicate with aliens who’d seemingly been surprised by the very notion that there could be peaceful cooperation between species?
It certainly didn’t paint a sunny picture of the history of the kyo homeworld. Species didn’t, to his knowledge, grow up in isolation. Humans had had antecedents, as a species. So had the atevi.
Yet the kyo were astonished by cooperation with another species.
What else he knew about the kyo—was that they had also made an enemy in a neighboring region of space, one potent enough to worry them.
He knew that Phoenix, before it had returned to the Earth of the atevi, had accidentally attracted kyo attention, and the ship’s actions had angered or scared the kyo. That had apparently led the kyo to hit Reunion . . . possibly because they thought their enemies were involved. Or possibly because it was kyo policy.
The kyo had fired, destroying part of the station, and then sent an investigatory team in— or they had fired once a team they had sent in reported trouble. That sequence of events had never been sufficiently clear. Station records said the former. But that was the word of Louis Baynes Braddock that the kyo had fired without provocation.
Did he believe it?
Braddock could tell him the sun was shining and he’d look to be sure.
Then came the natural question. Having blown a third of Reunion Station to hell—why had they then failed to finish the job?
Because the team they had sent in could still be alive in there? Did they care about their own people?
Maybe.
Or had they waited because they wanted to give whatever ships belonged to that station an incentive to show up? Phoenix had indeed come in to remove the colonists. But it had taken them ten or so years to do it.
The kyo had turned up immediately.
And either the kyo mode of communication and transport was quick beyond anything they could conceive, or that ship had indeed been sitting out there, watching, waiting, for all those years.
The kyo had had one of their own, Prakuyo an Tep, detained in human hands all that time, as well. They hadn’t gone in to get him out.
Why hadn’t they, in ten long years—if they were just sitting out there?
Why not, if they had weapons enough to blow the station apart?
Ethics?
Timidity?
Curiosity?
They’d waited for something to happen. For a ship to come in, as it had?
Why?
To find out its origin.
That was the likely answer.
Nor had Reunioners during all those years ever gotten Prakuyo an Tep to talk to them.
On that thought—uncomfortable as it was—he had to stop staring at the wall.
I’ve got Braddock to deal with.
I’ve got Tillington.
And the new Guild office going up there, along with everything else.
God. I do not intend to explain Tillington to them.
But maybe I should. Let them know that, in this environment, at close quarters, we cannot afford to react as we might in an atevi dispute.
He leaned back in the chair, eyes shut.
Of all guilds—the Assassins’ Guild understood politics. The Assassins’ Guild had had the vision to turn around and work with Mospheira when Tabini was overthrown. It had abhorred humans, before that.
But during that emergency, in very short order, they’d become far more respectful of ideas they’d once considered foreign.
He could not let himself be led too far by an analogy.
One species was not another.
But after two hundred years of opposition, the Guild had shifted its attitude toward humans in two years.
Why?
Because the Assassins’ Guild and humans had found a common interest in preserving Tabini-aiji. Not for who he was—but because Tabini’s flexible governance benefitted them both. And once humans and the Guild had seen that—things changed.
Of what possible benefit were humans and atevi to the kyo? What common interest?
He pulled down yet one more clean sheet of parchment, dipped his pen, and started a brief note to Lord Tatiseigi—certainly not the political ally he would have envisioned for himself a few years ago, but the old lord was the best ally he had now, where it came to dealing with the touchier, more traditional parts of the legislature.
He and Tatiseigi had worked out a system: he represented the aiji, who swayed the liberal side of the legislature. He himself had a certain cachet with the liberals and the outliers, frayed as it occasionally seemed to be. Tatiseigi had the old-line conservatives on his side.
And between them, if they two could agree, they could often work out some common-sense give-and-take to make both sides happy, and make both Ilisidi and Tabini happy—which once had been a mutually exclusive proposition.
The current effort added up to the dowager’s long-held plan, a smoothly developing strategy to stabilize mainland politics by linking the troublesome Marid with the highly independent East—and the key parts of it were happening at a time convenient for Tabini’s own aims.
In this case—Tatiseigi was his backup with the legislature, while he, along with Ilisidi, were so to speak, called out of town.
That meant Tatiseigi was going to have to work with Tabini during his absence—and vice versa. There had been a time when that would not have worked.
There was the specific legislative agenda to handle—coupled with public pressure, once the public knew what was going on.
But politics would not cease. The Liberals and the new tribal peoples’ representatives were going to have to do some trading and hammer out practical agreements while events were going on in the heavens.
Domestically, the worst disagreement was past and the tribal peoples were in the legislature.