“Because you’re her son, and you don’t accept anything but what you choose to accept. I know that.”

That was a hit below the belt.

“I’m grateful you were there to help her. If you want thanks for that—thank you.”

“It wasn’t hard.”

“I’ve never understood why you did it. You had nothing in common that I could figure.”

“She needed someone. So did I. She helped me see things. She helped me understand you.”

That was worth a laugh. “She didn’t understand me. She never figured me out.”

“She understood you much better than you think.”

“Well, good. I’m glad. But take your sights off me, Barb. I swear to you, if you ever hurt Toby, I’ll be your enemy.”

“I know that, too.”

“Do you, now?” He discovered he didn’t trust her, hadn’t trusted her all these years, and might have been right after all. “Don’t mistake me, Barb. Don’t play games with this situation. You like stirring the pot, right. That’s fine. Don’t stir this one.”

“I’ll tell you something. What I was looking for in you—I’ve found, in him.”

Maybe she meant that to sting. Maybe he was supposed to be jealous of Toby. It badly missed its target, if that was the case. He was only disgusted with her.

“No games, Barb.”

“None of yours, either, Bren. No more promises to me or him for what you can’t do.”

“That—that, I’ve gotten wiser about.” She’d set him suddenly on the wrong foot, taken away the impetus.

“I love him, Bren.”

“You’d better.”

“It’s not the glitter and champagne it was with you, showing up now and again for a fantasy night at a hotel. Toby’s a mug of hot tea in a cold morning, that’s what I think of when I think of him. He’s a week on the water, fishing. Just us. He’s happy. So am I.”

Curious, that what she saw of Toby was the life he wanted at his own core, or thought he did, and the life he had, by scattered days that he treasured through the days of office and court. What she said she loved about Toby was his own daydream reality.

But what she’d gotten from one Bren Cameron had been the hard security, the rush from this meeting to that, the contests of power, the secrecy, then a few stolen moments of the sequin-spangled glamor he’d thought she thrived on.

And here she was, older, wearing denims, with her hair in windblown curls, her immaculate complexion getting little frown-lines from the sun.

A mug of tea and a boat, was it? That was Toby, for sure. Ambitions had certainly changed.

But so had his.

“I wish you both three thousand years.” It was what atevi said. “I hope it’s all smooth sailing.”

“Oh, not smooth sailing.” For a second he saw Barb laugh, honestly laugh, and those sun-lines were in evidence at the edges of her eyes. “We have our storms. But we sail through them. Always. We like the lightning.”

“Then you take care of him,” he said, disarmed. “Enjoy things with him. Laugh like that.”

“You mean that?”

“Damned right I mean it.”

She stood on her toes, suddenly kissed him on the cheek. He didn’t flinch, but he wondered whether Toby was, in fact, out of viewing perspective, back at the wheel. He didn’t kiss her back, just patted her arm.

It was a decent test. Attraction toward Barb wasn’t anywhere in his reaction. Just worry for Toby.

Jago had seen it, however, Jago not letting him out of her sight for a moment. Barb passed by her on her way aft, but Jago looked straight at him the while, then walked up and leaned on the rail beside him.

“She was confirming a truce,” he said.

“Indeed,” Jago said blandly.

Damn Barb, he thought.

“This is the channel,” Toby said, drawing a black line along a treacherous series of shoals. It was Naigi district. “Get in, get out. You can reach Cobo village from this beach, which is mostly sea-grass. The little bay is particularly nice for redfish.”

Bren translated. Except about the redfish. They all—all but Cajeiri, who was fast asleep—huddled on deck in the dark, the chart secured behind a plastic cover with a faint glow underneath, and marked over with erasable pen.

That Toby owned such a precise chart, lettered over in Mosphei’, had passed without comment from Ilisidi, but being related to the possessor of said contraband, Bren suffered a twinge of minor guilt under Ilisidi’s sideward glance.

“My brother has fished illicitly, aiji-ma,” he admitted, while security looked over the situation and discussed the area.

“He has not,” Ilisidi said with a wave of her hand. “He has our permission.”

“One is grateful,” he said, bowing his head, and by then security had reached a favorable conclusion.

“We can manage, nandiin,” Cenedi said. “We have a name, one Lord Geigi personally recommends.”

“Then let us do it,” Ilisidi said sharply, slightly underlit by the table as she leaned close for a look. “Toby-nandi handles this boat very well. We have every confidence. Douse this light.”

It went out.

“They agree,” Bren said to Toby. “And you have the grant of a fishing license, and the right to this chart.”

Toby cast him a second, questioning look, with a little quirk of impish humor. Toby knew… damn him, he’d known what he was challenging, bringing that chart out into plain view, and had known, too, that he’d get away with it.

“Light off the starboard quarter,” Tano said.

Bren looked. He couldn’t see it. Out in the open sea, there was every chance that light was some fishing boat, like themselves, only more honest. Or their naval escort, which had never come into view. But they could afford no chances.

“If they’re atevi, they may well have seen us,” he said. “Toby, Barb, Tano’s seen a light out there, starboard quarter.”

“Wind’s fair,” Toby said, and fair it was, bearing on the Brighter Days‘ best sailing point. They could go in, or shy off.

Shying off would only make it likelier they’d be spotted.

“I still don’t see it,” Barb said, looking out into the dark.

“Trust Tano’s eyes,” Bren said. “We have this chance to get ashore. Any dithering around about it only gives the opposition time and warning. We’d better use it. But, God, Toby, be careful getting out.”

“I’m the model of caution,” Toby said. Damn him, he was enjoying this. It was like their days on the mountain. Beat you to the bottom, brother. Downhill on skis.

No Jill, now. With the boat’s wheel in his hands and the west wind blowing, Toby was free, these days, freer than in years. And it showed. It youthened him by the hour.

“Scoundrel,” Bren said under his breath, sure that Toby heard him, since Toby gave him a grin.

He found a grin of his own in reply, thinking, damn, if we die, we die moving, don’t we, not sitting still and letting our lives fade out?

Deep breath, as Toby steered them for the unseen coast, and the wind sang in the rigging.

That boat out there, if it had seen them, might be radioing someone in a better position to cut them off. They could only hope it was one of Shawn’s, though Shawn’s people were supposed to be doing something slightly noisy to the south, running a navy vessel into forbidden waters near Geigi’s estate, and running out again as if they’d dropped someone off.

It wasn’t a very sophisticated ruse, that feint by sea. But the other side would have to spend energy reacting to it. The opposition had to expect something, with the starship in dock and the shuttle down. He only hoped nobody got killed making it look real.

The coast was a dim line on the horizon by sundown, a sunset that reflected off a layer of cloud at their backs. That cloud went iron gray as the sun slipped away, and left them running an iron-gray sea on sail alone, that rocky coast bisected by their bow.

“Piece of cake,” Toby called it. Bren eyed the rollers that came in there and broke on rocks and wished they could have done this by daylight.

They had their runabout, a light shell of a thing with, Toby swore, enough motor to handle the surf inbound, if not out. But a buoyancy rating for humans was not the same as a rating for that number of atevi. The boat could handle at most three of them at a time, and that meant getting a number of them ashore first, with weapons, to be sure they could land the rest, and one person continually fighting that surf back and forth with the boat.