DEFENDER

Caroline J. Cherryh

the fifth in the Foreigner sequence

Chapter 1

Firelight went up to the red figures of an ancient frescoed vault, smoke-hazed from the braziers on either side of the black stone tomb. In the dark congregation, watchful eyes now and again caught the firelight and reflected it, gold fire brighter than the sheen of light off opulent brocade.

It was an atevi place—and solemn tribute to a decades-dead aiji. Decades in the past, Valasi might be, but the association he had created had only grown wider at his death. It spanned the continent now. It reached around the world. It shared the heavens with strangers.

An atevi place, an atevi ceremony, an atevi congregation… but one human, one pale, blond, very small and conspicuous human stood in a crowd of towering atevi lords, some of whom had often and fairly recently entertained the idea of killing him. Under the court attire, the frock coat and the lace and the brocades, Bren Cameron wore ten pounds of composite that would stop most bullets, if any of these very adept gentlemen and ladies ventured an assassination without proper Filing of Intent.

The Assassins’ Guild, on the living aiji’s order, would not allow that to happen. The tall atevi on either side of him, Banichi and Jago, in the black and silver of that Guild—they knew the odds, they knew all the agreements and contracts currently in force—knew the likelihood of illegal risks as well. And while assuring him there was no contract Filed, and that no Guild actions but surveillance could be taken for days on any side of this gathering—they still insisted on the armor.

So Bren complied, uncomplaining, with not too many questions, and kept his head generally down, evading any too-direct stare that might draw attention.

Deference, respect, solemnity… in a place where humans least of all belonged.

Tabini-aiji had decreed this honor to his father’s tomb, so the invitation declared, for a memorial and a reminder of the origins of the Western Association—well and good. Humans and atevi alike honored their dead, and they held memorials, particularly at points of change or challenge.

But what was changing? Or where was the challenge?

But predictably enough—they could hardly ignore the call to venerate the aiji’s father—the loyal lords of the western aishidi’tathad come in with no trouble. Those from the south shore and from the farthest eastern reaches of the Association arrived in far more uneasy duty, surely with questions of their own. They had been Valasi’s allies, most of them—and saying so had been unfashionable in the west for decades.

The aiji-dowager, too, had flown in from the east for this solemn event. If she hadn’t, rumors would have flown.

Ilisidi, aiji-dowager, Valasi’s mother.

Tabini’s grandmother.

And the whole world knew that one of the two, Tabini or Ilisidi, had almost certainly assassinated Valasi.

Well, grant she came: no mere opinion of men perturbed her. If one was an atevi lord—and she was among the highest of atevi lords—one rigidly observed the proprieties and courtesies that supported all lords, whatever the circumstances. One consistently did the right thing.

And if one were the human paidhi-aiji, the official translator, the point of contact between two species, one also did the right thing, and came when called, and kept clearly in mind the fact that this was nothuman society. A paltry assassination by no means broke the bonds of an atevi association, no more than it necessarily fractured man’chi—that emotional cement that held all atevi society together. A judicious, well-planned in-house assassination only made the association more comfortable for all the rest—eased, rather than broke, the web of association and common consent—in this case, the family bond on which the stability of the world depended.

A well-chosen assassination might make unity easier, once the dust settled, and a species that did not, biologically speaking, feelfriendship… still felt something warm, and good when its surrounding association settled into harmony.

Were they here to meditate on that fact?

To renew the bond?

A human couldn’t possibly feel it. Wasn’t hard-wired to feel it. Tabini had called him down from the orbiting station for this service, which he’dtaken as a simple excuse covering a desire to have some essential conference, some secret personal meeting which would make thorough sense.

But thus far—there was no meeting. There was going to be a special session of the legislature—and that had made sense, until it was clear he was dismissed, and would not attend. There’d been one intimate audience with Tabini on that first day, in which Tabini had entertained him in his study, a great honor, talked about hunting—one of Tabini’s favorite occupations, which he never actually had time to do—and asked in some detail about the welfare of associates on the space station. They’d had several drinks, become quite cheerful, shared an hour with Lady Damiri, the aiji-consort, and discussed the weather, their son’s education, and the economy, none of which he would have called critical—nor ever discussed with that much brandy in him if he’d thought it would become critical.

Good night, Tabini had said then, good fortune, not forgetting there wasa memorial service involving, oh, the entire continent, and would he kindly sit among the foremost in attendance?

Not quite news to him. He’d known it would take place—hadn’t quite known, before landing, that it was quite so extravagant, televised, or followed with a special session.

So he was on temporary display at the edge of the aiji’s household, wearing that white ribbon in his braid that reminded all parties he was the paidhi, the translator, the neutral, not an appropriate target.

He represented to those present, among other controversial things, the full-tilt acquisition of technology over which Tabini and Valasi had had their fatal falling-out.

So Valasi died under questionable circumstances, and instead of declaring any decent period of mourning and reconsideration, Tabini had immediately opened the floodgates of change: television, trade with Mospheira… railroads. Valasi’s paidhi, a human whose modest advocacy of airplanes, an expanded rail system and limited television broadcasting had scandalized the traditional-minded among the atevi—had quit, retired, and left the job to him.

Tabini had immediately taken—well, with atevi, a likingto him didn’t translate, but certainly Tabini had sensed that he could work with him. Occasionally he had wondered if Tabini had spotted the world’s greatest fool and thought he could get the sun, the moon and the stars from him…

The stars—considering that not so long afterward Phoenixhad shown up in the heavens, the colony ship returned to its lost human colony on someone else’s world.

Things out there, Phoenixreported, hadn’t worked out. Thingshad involved an alien encounter gone very wrong at a space station that never should have been built. And while the paidhi asked himself how he had ever gotten into this, Tabini’s close cooperation with humans spiraled wider and wider.

It took atevi into space, into a near-unified economy with the human enclave on Mospheira. It took two species and three governments to the very edge of union.

And atevi had never forgotten the hazards of swallowing foreign answers to local problems.

Ilisidi entered the tomb, among the last, just behind Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini, uncle of the aiji-consort. She walked with a cane, went in the company of Cenedi, her chief of security.

And Cajeiriwas with her. Bren noted that—the boy, almost lost in the company of adults, took his place with Ilisidi’s party.