She might well have decided to stay and become a thorn in the side to Tabini, or so Tabini would claim.

Yet it was remarkable how close that apparently divided house could stand, in crisis… no few of the aiji’s enemies had discovered it.

Ilisidi had brought herself and her security, for what was bound to be a period full of speculation among the lords: what would the paidhi learn? What would Tabini agree to? What would be the relation with Mospheira?… that was bound to follow his ascent into space.

God, he didn’t want to think about the flight. He’d survived watching the flights, had nervous fits watching the landing. The switchover in engines was a miracle the technicians swore was flawless, but it always seemed a chancy thing to do, cut off perfectly good engines several miles above the ocean.

A part of him wanted to go to the one atevi physician who monitored his health and ask for total sedation. He wasn’t sure he could do this; he’d been shot at, shot, and chased down mountains; but engine switchover scared hell out of him.

So did facing Jason at the end of this train ride with, Oh, well, you know how Tabini can be. He decided to send me with you. I swear I didn’t know. And by the way, we’re taking the station.

Sorry for the inconvenience, old friend.

He was still in that psychological dislocation that a trip to Mospheira tended to bring him, that sudden trip among people his height, furniture his size, steps his convenient dimensions, language and food he’d grown up with; and now, leaving Jase in the space center, he’d just definitively cleared the air of the island enclave from his lungs, human language from his head, and human expectations from his emotions.

Now, in the obliging silence of his security, he tried to jerk all that back into focus. Banichi and Jago, sitting across from him on the red velvet seats, became two stone-faced giants in the black leather and silver of their profession, black of skin, black of hair, gold of eye…

He knew, the patterns and the battles he understood… he was valuable here, dammit, the world’s leading expert on the atevi-human interface. Someone else could do this part… maybe a year from now.

Jasewas the logical one. Jaseshould be in Tabini’s employ and reckon whether Tabini hadn’t tried to get Jase’s loyalty into his hands?

He knew that answer, suddenly, knew it hadn’t played right from Tabini’s point of view, and Tabini had played the hand he had left.

And what wasthe meeting Jase had had with the dowager? Fond farewell? The dowager had been her grandson’s greatest opposition—on certain causes; but at times she was solidly her grandson’s conduit of policy. Had that been a sounding-out?

And had Jase failed it… or had he never been in the running?

“Well” Bren said with a sigh, “well.” The deep-welling panic about the shuttle flight took its place in a long queue, somewhere behind having to deal with Jase, and that itself was somewhere behind his knowledge that he himself was Tabini’s… and that civilization rested very heavily on his being faithfully Tabini’s… whatever Jase was or became.

It wasn’t the situation he wanted to contemplate. Jase was likely to be mad; if he mismanaged the matter, things could get worse.

“How far in Tabini’s confidence is the dowager in this matter?” he asked his security.

“One has no sure knowledge, nadi” Banichi said. ”We were aware of movements; we did not investigate the aiji’s doings.“

“I understand that,” Bren said. More exotic and more mundane affairs came flooding into his head. “Mospheira very carefully selected four persons, no staff: and I have—what, eight, with baggage? This will disturb Mospheira, I fear, not to mention the delegation; not to mention the station. We should be alert to that.”

“The paidhi-aiji will notmake his own supper,” Banichi said. “These things were agreed.”

Know to an exactitude the limitations of mass and cargo? Banichi’s native gift for mathematics exceeded the norm for his species, considerably. In human terms, he would have been a prodigy.

“How much cargo did we displace?” he asked his staff.

“Sufficient,” Jago answered, “to assure your safety and comfort.”

They had their weapons on them; they always did; and he apprehended that the kitchen likely wasn’t the only thing they were bringing along in cargo.

“They have never advised us our facility is complete,” Bren said.

“Did not this station once shelter three hundred thousand humans? And do we not reckon the crew of the ship to be two thousand five hundred at largest?”

“They have the ship,” Banichi said. “They can live there.”

“We will claim a very fineaccommodation,” Jago said firmly, “for a lord of the Association.”

And the weapons, he wondered?

“Will they be wise,” asked Banichi, “to attack the paidhi-aiji on his first mission?”

“They’re as fond of surprises as Uncle Tatiseigi.”

“The paidhi is a very skilled negotiator,” Banichi said with supreme confidence.

Get control of the station, for God’s sake. He had to argue fast for that one. Mospheirans might not want a thing, but they didn’t want their rivals to have it.

Looking at the microfocus, he’d thought of Cope as the principal problem, and assumed Yolanda’s recall was all the Guild was going to ask for a while. He and Jase had assumed that the Pilot’s Guild would take a long while to digest all that Yolanda could tell them. Consequently, he’d been utterly blindsided by this second request, this notion of having Jase back up there.

So had Tabini. Tabini didn’t like it—but took, not the path of resistance, but the path of equal action in their system of half-formed agreements.

One wanted to know what atevi were culturally set up to expect? The machimi plays held a repertoire of treachery and double-cross. It was the common trick, in the machimi, to try to move some agents about distractingly and achieve a move not suspected, not even by the all-seeing audience.

Mercheson hadn’t resisted going. Shall we send Mercheson-paidhi? Tabini had asked. And he and Jase hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t drawn the line. Nor had Mercheson.

So now the ship captains asked more, and at the last moment. And Tabini reacted.

He couldn’t claim he himself understood the Pilot’s Guild. They were human, but they damned well didn’t feel like Mospheirans… not the old familiar, frustrating debating and delaying of the Mospheiran policy-making apparatus. The ship’s captains were autocrats. In that, they and Tabini understood one another better than the captains were going to understand what the Mospheirans were doing.

Across the barrier of gravity and distance, the maneuvering of subordinates was not easy: one couldn’t, say, as in the machimi plays, ask a major player to tea and serve up daggers.

Now the ship suddenly had Jase, whom they’d asked for, plus a lapful of Mospheirans with their agenda, and worse, an atevi presence at the same time, instead of the test cargo it expected. He could almost see it in historical dress, the blithe guests at the doorway, banners flying: refuse us or accept us. Draw swords or deal.

If it wanted to turn them around and send them back down unreceived, it still had a two-week delay at minimum to service the shuttle. It still faced the fact it couldn’t leave them all on board the shuttle for two weeks unless it meant to murder them all, because life-support wouldn’t last that long… and it couldn’t just shoot them, either, if it ever wanted to deal reasonably and cheaply for earthbound supplies.

Itsaid it desperately needed those supplies, and thus far urged the world into a breakneck development of technology and materials.

The Guild also couldn’t take over the shuttle… couldn’t fly a complex surface-to-orbit craft themselves.