“The President asked me to come here. So did Captain Ogun.”

“You’ve been in routine communication with the station.”

“Frequent communication. I’m spending my time mediating with President Tyers, these days. Trying to do something about the earth to orbit situation. Trying to persuade your people to spend their money on shuttle facilities, not missiles. With only partial success.”

Not wholly surprising. She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know. He hadn’t intended to do interviews, most of all wasn’t in a mood to coddle Yolanda’s upset mood. He wanted to lie flat on his bed for an hour. Wanted to make a phone call. Wanted to think about their immediate situation. But he was obliged to salve ruffled feelings, assure Yolanda he was on her side, offer appropriate sympathies, because the woman wasn’t happy and never had been, not by his experience.

“I regret to say,” he said quietly, “the shuttle is grounded. We have to get the mainland not to shoot at it. We have to get it prepped, and crew alone can’t do it. We consider ourselves lucky to have gotten down in one piece.”

A little compression of her lower lip. A crease between the eyebrows. “I understand that.” When it was the dearest wish she had, to be on that shuttle homebound as fast as they could possibly turn it around. I’m not a fool, that tone said. “But by your leave—and the President’s, and Captain Ogun’s—I’d like to take up residency on this floor, next to the shuttle crew. To translate for them. To be here, with a military guard, to make sure the shuttle stays safe. I have my luggage.” To be on that shuttle when first it lifts, he read her intention. He didn’t disagree with that. And it was fait accompli. She nodded back to the lift, where, indeed, a single bag stood.

Living on a world for two years, and that was the sum of what she’d accumulated. The sum of what she valued on the planet, he surmised uncharitably.

He’d brought down an entire entourage, with enough baggage for a small war; but then, Yolanda had always been a solitary sort. She had formed a liaison with Jase and broken it off, bitterly, when Jase got an appointment she wanted. And that was it, socially, for Yolanda. Pity the atevi shuttle crew.

“We won’t be here,” he said. “But if you could get a communications system set up in this place, something between us and Ogun, if you talk to the crew and make sure the local authorities keep the shuttle under guard, that would be extraordinarily helpful.”

“No problem. I’m gathering the President gave orders. I can be eyes-on for the immediate area.”

Good, he said to himself. Yolanda cooperative could be useful. He dared the harder question. “What happened, with Tabini? What do you think triggered it?”

Her lips went to a thin line. “There was no one trigger, that I was able to figure. No reason, but Murini’s ambition, and a public brouhaha over funding and districts. I think it was a long-running plot. It organized, got people into position over a period of months… maybe starting with your leaving, when they could talk a bit more freely about human influence. When the blowup came, like I said, we were already in the country. I was all packed to get to Mogari-nai. I was to leave in the morning, just to go out there, as if somehow I was supposed to get some special message from Ogun, or be in position to pass him something. But I woke up in the middle of the night with shooting going on in the hallways. The staff—your staff—threw me into atevi-style clothes, got me into a stairwell, and got me out into the garden, then to another stairs, and down to the outside. After that it was a lot of dodging and clambering around in the woods. The two men I was with got me as far as the garage, passed me to a woman who drove me off through the woods—I wasn’t trusting her much, but she got me to a farm, and a service truck, which drove all night into the country. And after that, after that, it was just a succession of farm trucks and small waystops.” A deep breath. Roads were far from extensive in the open country. There would have been detours, roundabout approaches. “At a certain point,” she said, “at a certain point the driver left the truck and didn’t show up for hours, and I just pulled my hood up and walked down the road. I walked three more days before I got to the coast, mostly walking at night. Trying to be mistaken for a kid, if anyone spotted me. Finally I stole a truck that was unattended at a rail depot. Learned to drive the thing in a few klicks. I got to Mogari-nai, and they told me Tabini and Damiri had disappeared, that Murini was claiming they were dead, and he was setting up as aiji in Shejidan.”

Yolanda hadn’t had an easy time of it. No question. He couldn’t blame her in the least.

“Any evidence what did happen?”

Shake of the head. “The contact got me down to the harbor, and put me in a boat with a woman to run it, and that was all. Later I gathered from independent radio and shortwave, that Ragi atevi were in confusion, certain lords assassinated, or claimed to be assassinated… ”

“Who’s gone?”

“Parigi. Celaso.”

Two stalwarts of Tabini’s court.

“Others had scattered from Shejidan to their estates,” Yolanda said, “which was probably how I got away—that they were tracking everybody at once, and I wasn’t the most dangerous to them. Instead of following me, they were probably chasing Tabini, and he was probably leading them in circles in the woods. Me, I just opted for Mospheira and made it. Once we lost sight of land I was seasick.”

He made a dutifully sympathetic face.

“But just after I got aboard—the boat had a radio, and we got radio messages that went out of there to Geigi’s people and up north, and back to Shejidan, trying to rally help for Tabini. I wanted the boat to turn around. But the woman running it pretended she didn’t understand me—she spoke some kind of dialect I had trouble with—and we didn’t communicate, and I didn’t think I could take over the boat in the middle of all that water. I just had myself, and my com unit, but I couldn’t reach the ship, because Mogari-nai just shut down, and all I was getting was Jackson and Bretano.”

“They’d have been onto his heels fast, if he did appear at Mogari-nai. He wouldn’t have lingered there, only long enough to send out advisements to Ogun and Geigi and to his own supporters on the ground.”

“That’s what I told myself. That’s the reason I didn’t make a try to take over the boat. But there’s been nothing else like that since. And they’re claiming it wasn’t the aiji talking from Mogari-nai, that it was one of his staff, and they’re claiming the station has launched capsules down by parachute, to infiltrate the countryside, would you believe? That’s a complete lie. But they’ve hyped that to the skies and put a bounty on supposed foreigners. Which I think is their way of covering their people searching every barn and warehouse and arresting the individuals they’re looking for, all Tabini’s supporters. It’s not going to make it easy if you’re going over there.”

“Lovely,” he said. The countryside overrun with searchers after every vestige of Tabini’s administration, all transport become suspect, Assassins of the Kadigidi man’chi out on the hunt in the central regions and those of the Marid Tasigin in the south. He looked unintendedly at Banichi, and particularly at Jago, who understood far more of shipspeak and Mosphei’ than she commonly let on. She might have followed the gist of it much more closely than Banichi, and neither of them looked happy with what they heard.

“I wrote all the detail I know in that file,” Yolanda said. “I’ve had my evenings to sit and rehearse the whole mess, for months now. I think it’s complete. I was waiting for you. I’ve been waiting.”

He never could warm to Yolanda. He came as close as he had ever come, counting what she had done. That bit about turning the boat around to go back to the mainland he wasn’t sure he wholly believed, but then again, Yolanda was tough at unexpected moments, tough as nails, if she wanted something; and she might have gone back to rescue Tabini and Damiri—if her linguistic skills had been up to it. But with some of the north coast dialects, and maybe with the boat’s owner being deliberately obtuse, she had ample excuse for failing. Seasickness. Vertigo. Terror. Jase had gone green when he’d realized what a distance of water was under their feet, aboard a small boat.