Defender

  “I don’t need to be more scared than I am.”

  “You can be more scared than this. When you are—again talk to staff. That’s why I want you surrounded by them. You’re paidhi-aiji. You’re most useful to Ogun when you take Tabini’s orders and put yourself at his disposal. You’ll be the honest broker—the only one there’ll be for lightyears around.”

  A novice… but not a stupid novice, as it turned out and not without canny advice, either. Once he saw she was truly disposed to take that advice, he had no trouble pouring his resources into her hands and wishing her every piece of luck possible.

  Yolanda said fervently, “I’m glad you’re going on the mission. You want what I know about what’s out there—if Ogun doesn’t know, and he hasn’t told Sabin, then there’s two names to watch. There was a three-man exploration team that went in. I know that Jenrette was one of them; and two more got killed. Tamun was trying to catch Ramirez during the mutiny, and they ran, and Tamun’s mutineers shot them but Jenrette’s still alive, but they aren’t. I didn’t used to think so, but now I ask myself whether Tamun suspected something, and if that was why he was trying to overthrow the council—but Tamun couldn’t get at it, when he was one of the captains. He couldn’t get the proof, or didn’t release it. So we didn’t know—and now Tamun’s dead. And that scares me. All of that scares me.”

  God. Had they been on the right side, putting down the Tamun mutiny?

  “Log record?”

  “Common crew can’t get into the log file. I guess not even all the captains can. There could be a tape—they always make one, through helmet-cam. But if there is, it’s deep in log archives.”

  Jenrette. Two dead men who’d used to guard Ramirez killed when dissidents tried to capture them.

  And possibly a tape.

  “Tape of what?”

  “Their going onto the station. Through the corridors. That’s all I know,” Yolanda said. “Which is what everybody in the crew knows if they’d think about it, which they probably haven’t in years. That’s the hell of it. We always thought the report was just what you’d think it would be… which it wasn’t. But I’ve thought about it, since Ramirez admitted he’d deceived the crew. And now if there was a tape, or if Jenrette knows something—he’s the only eyewitness alive. And he’s attached to Jase.”

  Jase hadn’t said a thing if he’d asked questions of Jenrette.

  But possibly Jenrette hadn’t answered those questions. Or Jase hadn’t time to ask.

  “I very much appreciate the briefing.”

  “Protect Jase.”

  “I will. I promise you I will.” Jase, who couldn’t handle the ship—Sabin, who could. They were in one hell of a situation if that relationship blew up.

  And Jenrette—and tapes that might prove Ramirez’s dealings with the station.

  God.

  “I want you here,” he said. “Within our protection. Right now. Go pack.”

  “I don’t think there’s any hurry that extreme.”

  He left the last of his drink, pushing it back. Banichi was nearby. The room was bugged. He knew his security had followed part of it, as much fluency as they had. “I want you with our security, starting now, and I want to know you’re safe and alive. I’m very appreciative, Landa-ji. But I’m not taking chances with someone who knows that many of the requisite pieces. You’re paidhi-aiji. Accept it. Think like it. If human enemies, then atevi enemies, at all times, and sometimes before you think they know what’s critical. Here, you’re safe. Come with me.”

  Was he surprised that when he saw her out to the foyer, the requisite persons were at hand: Narani, and Banichi, and Jago back from her conference?

  “Mercheson-paidhi will handle affairs on the mainland, appointed by the aiji to take my post, with my approval. To that end, I set her within the household, in the care of the staff. She very much needs reliable people around her, and she promises to appreciate good advice.”

  “Mercheson-paidhi,” Narani said, with a bow, and Yolanda made the requisite bow in return.

  “One is grateful,” she said properly. “Thank you all.” She made the bow of someone departing, but Narani hesitated in opening the door for her—alone, no security, no escort. That was the way Yolanda had been moving about the station, and that wouldn’t do, not at all.

  “Banichi-ji, can you draw someone from atevi general security to attach to her? She needs her belongings. Landa-ji, I’d rather you just stayed here and let us collect your belongings. Is there anything you urgently have to have from your quarters?”

  “Not that’s a security rush, but yes, keepsakes. And my mother—” She was starting to think of consequences.

  He was grateful for that. And had no good news. “We can provide reasonable security for your mother outside our perimeter. Within atevi protection, with a human staff—you can arrange that set-up, paidhi-aiji. You have the authority. You can authorize, you can build, you can order. It’s up to you how deeply you need to pull her into this.“

  “I’ll write a message for her. I don’t know whether she’s going with the ship, or not. We don’t talk that often—but—”

  “Frankly, I’d suggest she go. There’ll be fewer potential enemies, and there she doesn’t know anything, and can’t pressure you with personal demands. Here, there’s a danger, however remote, of hostage-taking, for someone else to pressure you.”

  Yolanda looked as if she needed to sit down.

  “There are two reliable persons in general security, nandiin-ji,” Banichi said, having been in communion with his personal electronics. “I have the names. By your order, we can assign them to bring the paidhi’s belongings.”

  “Do so,” Bren said, and to Yolanda: “We now have two agents to attach to you, to this household, as Tano and Algini won’t be at your orders, nor should you ask. No matter the temptation, never stray out of this door without the two agents we assign to you. Same level of security as in the Bujavid. No less hazard.”

  “Nandi,” she said, the respectful form, and seemed utterly lost.

  “The guest quarters,” he said. It happened to be the library, at other times; but there were beds at need.

  “I have a meeting with Ogun,” she remembered, and added, gathering her scattered manners, “nandi.”

  “Advise your staff of your needs when they arrive,” he said. “Go to your meeting on schedule, as you and they deem needful. But go with atevi security. Feldman and Shugart will assist her, too,” he said to Narani. “They’re Tyers’ people. One believes one can trust their word, too. We’ll want to provide them with residency here in the section. Not under this roof, however. They remain Mospheiran. Landa-paidhi’s become paidhi-aiji, and she will stay here. Her staff will stay where she disposes them, in this household, starting now, if you can find a moment to advise her.”

  “Perfectly understood, nandi,” Narani said. “We will make the arrangements.”

  In the midst of packing and everything else Narani had to do. Thank God for his staff.

  Late evening. Long evening. They had a guest tucked in toward the kitchen end of the apartment. They had a new pair of guards, formerly attached to general security, undergoing a rapid briefing in what was for them a vast career advancement, and two servants with Tano and Algini quietly retrieving a teddy bear and the contents of Yolanda’s closet from her on-station apartment. She had atevi-style clothing in her size, legacy of her days at court—a few years out of the mode, but adequate until the staff could manufacture something more current.

  Yolanda had gone to her quarters with the look of a woman in shock by now, just too much change, too many decisions— the aftershock of too many secrets. She’d arranged certain matters and wandered off to her room, and the servants Narani had assigned her reported her asleep in her clothing, to their deep chagrin.

  Bren knew… knew, he fancied, everything she was going through, alone: ultimately, alone, no matter how many people came and went; alone, the way each of the paidhiin was alone,
in that sense, and maybe relieved to hear from another paidhi that the isolation had a name and a reason and a set of rules.

  There’d come a time for him when he hadn’t found the island safe, or comfortable, either. And he’d—not bullied her into the choice, but maybe narrowed the path on either hand, accelerated the choice, given it a shape for her. He felt guilty about that, or sorry for her, or relieved for her sake, or relieved because she was safer than she would have been—the forgotten paidhi, the paidhi who hadn’t wanted the planet at all. He’d done the best thing.

  Jase, now—Jase might or might not know where she was. Ogun did by now. She’d ended up postponing her meeting with the senior captain—informed Ogun she’d taken Tabini’s request to heart, officially, and needed a few hours to rest, and by the way, was no longer functioning under Ogun’s orders.

  She’d already informed the aiji, the aiji-dowager, and Lord Geigi, officially and in order of protocol—he’d helped her with the wording:

  I have most gratefully accepted the aiji’s summons to duty and accept Bren-paidhi’s hospitality until such time as felicitous long-term adjustments can be made. I await the aiji’s instruction, etc., etc…

  He was as tired as she was. It was a decent letter. He knew he had to add his own. He wasn’t, tonight, up to it.

  The apartment was quietly, constantly, depressingly astir with servants packing and rearranging. He didn’t ask special favors, not even tea near bedtime.

  But Jago came while he was undressing for bed, to his great surprise. “News?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Welcome,” he said, and she lay down beside him. She was as tired as he was, he was well sure, but there was brief love-making, a release of nerves, a little rest for both of them.

  The thoughts, the problems, however, wouldn’t leave him alone. He slept briefly, then waked, fearing that that was all the sleep he could get. His mind traveled upstream doggedly, vexingly, back to complete awareness and a new assault on yesterday’s problems.

  Jago stirred beside him. Sighed. Drew a knee up, to judge by the motion of the bedclothes.

  “Are you awake?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she.

  “Is there trouble with Cenedi? I never did ask, nadi.”

  “No, Bren-ji. It was routine.” She kept things from him—she and Banichi did, being charitably aware that the paidhi’s mind approached overload. The interview with Cenedi might encompass a good many things that would worry him, if he asked too closely.

  Today there’d been a good many changes. Worrisome changes. And information shifted value. And he hadn’t thought through the new configurations as far as he wished he had time to do.

  “Have I done well with Mercheson-paidhi?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Once she contacted us—she did contact us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Once she did that, it seemed a good thing. Far safer for her to be here. I don’t think her own people would move to restrict her. Or understand how to protect her. I am worried about Mospheiran influences. More—I’m worried about her own captains. I know I’m right to break her out of the crew.”

  “One does agree.”

  “You heard about the tape.”

  “Yes.”

  The conversation with Mercheson kept nagging at him. Her worries about Jase—worries approaching serious doubts— nagged at him.

  And more…

  “When I went down to the planet,” he said, “that trip drew our concentrated attention there. Did it not, nadi-ji?”

  She was a greater than usual warmth beside him—or he was colder than usual. There was only the least hint of light, to his eyes—but to hers, quite enough.

  She rolled suddenly onto one elbow. He knew the pose, when his eyes failed to find her.

  “It did,” she admitted, increasingly keen and aware.

  “We suspected nothing, then.” There was no illusion of sleep, now. No possibility. “Persons might have moved up here, Jago-ji. Even Guild could have come aboard without us knowing. Is it possible?”

  “We have a list of everyone on that shuttle that came up with you,” she said. “And every shuttle flight previous. Thus far we’ve found no suspect.”

  His security had not been idle. Never, ever think it.

  “So you have suspicions.”

  “It’s our tendency, is it not?”

  “Who will replace us here?” he asked. “Who is Cenedi leaving? I take it he’s leaving some staff.”

  She named two men, Kalasi and Mandi.

  “I don’t know them that well,” he said.

  “They’re very good,” she said. “Of the dowager’s man’chi, unquestioned.”

  “Not precisely Tabini’s, that is to say.”

  “Hers, Bren-ji. Unquestioned.”

  Wake up, paidhi. Listen to your staff.

  “Will Tano and Algini be safe, staying behind, Jago-ji?”

  He felt Jago draw a long and thoughtful breath. “Cenedi’s men will assist lord Geigi. In that decision, we are outranked, Bren-ji. Our own staff—”

  “We are Tabini’s. Is that a difficulty?”

  “One hopes otherwise.”

  Oh, he’d hoped for a denial on that score. “But the politics of it—”

  “While the Association stays stable, our staff can ally with Cenedi’s men. As Geigi’s can. Under Ogun, things will likely change. Predictions fail us.”

  A low-level and chilling thought, often dismissed, kept nagging him. “Lord Geigi wouldn’t have killed Ramirez, Jago-ji. Surely not.”

  “It’s not his disposition. Although—”

  “Although?”

  “Lord Geigi has his own dealings with the aiji, Bren-ji. That isn’t to discount.”

  “Through Tabini? Acting as the aiji’s agent?” It wasn’t a comfortable notion at all, that Tabini would have finally decided to take Ramirez out—but that theory satisfied so many other conditions, and filled so many holes, and agreed so well with things he’d found out from Yolanda. The timing. The horrid question of timing.

  That trip.

  Getting the paidhi-aiji off the station. Out of play.

  Getting Banichi and Jago, what was more, off the station and out of play—because those two were the most likely of anyone to detect critical movements of atevi staff.

  “Or acting for the aiji-dowager. There is the close association, Bren-ji. Lord Geigi has long been in her association.”

  Ilisidi?

  “Do you, even marginally, think it?” He almost asked— where is her motive to attack Ramirez? But he’d been thinking far too many hours in human terms.

  “They did enter closed conference, the moment she arrived, Bren-ji. You have not been invited to her table tonight—yet Geigi was. I have been invited to conference with Cenedi, but at no time was I in position to overhear her and Geigi. One suspects something stirs there. But one still doubts her motive against Ramirez on her own behalf. There simply is no evidence.”

  “It might have been natural causes. There are coincidences. But one, unfortunately, has to suspect every direction except natural causes.“

  “Coincidence is the rarest beast, Bren-ji. Its tracks look like so much else.”

  “But with Tabini behaving oddly—oddly, Jago-ji. Oddly toward me. Oddly toward the whole association.”

  “Yes,” she said, one of those enigmatic of courses, agreeing with him: she was puzzled.

  So must Tabini have been—puzzled, or something like it.

  By what Yolanda had indicated this evening, Ramirez, against all warnings from everyone who knew better, had opened direct communication with the atevi lord of the known world.

  And while Tabini was the most enlightened, the most modern, the most interculturally aware of rulers, he was also atevi, and Ragi atevi, to boot—which meant he counted the expenditure of one man a very enlightened economy versus the need for troops, or wars, or invasions, all of which were as rar
e as coincidences in atevi dealings.

  Tabini wanted a space station: he damned near had it. He wanted a starship: they were building it, and Mospheira had very few illusions as to who was going to get his hands on it once it flew. It was an atevi world, and rulers in Shejidan long before Tabini had been conducting a steady campaign, usually quiet and bloodless, to maintain atevi authority over it. If Ramirez had said the wrong thing, and if Tabini had become convinced that it would advance his interests to remove Ramirez—it was possible. And if Ramirez had been tottering near death, in Tabini’s perception—if there was a real and increasing possibility of Ramirez’s making mistakes and dropping stitches—far from eliciting the sympathy a Mospheiran might expect, that would have alarmed Tabini. It might have convinced an atevi mind accustomed to weigh one life against many that someone had to take charge smoothly and quickly… that it was the ethical, reasonable choice, even for Ramirez’s own good.

  There it bloody was. The whole reason for man’chi. Such things didn’t happen in polite atevi circles because polite atevi circles were circles, inclusive, overlapped, interconnected.

  It was so damned dangerous to deal with an atevi power from outside the circles.

  He’d warned Ramirez. Shawn Tyers above all others knew the hazards, and hadn’t been going past him, but Ramirez had engaged Yolanda as his own, wrenched her tightly into his orbit and played his own game.

  Which meant—

  “If Ramirez initiated contact with Tabini, he ignored numerous, very basic warnings,” he said to Jago in the dark. “Tabini won’t blame her for things Ramirez could have said, but she should be cognizant of them. And Ramirez may or may not have logged those conversations privately. As senior captain—he had the accesses to be off the ship’s official record… I’m relatively sure that’s the case. We don’t know what they did. Only Tabini does.”