The decisions were all made, now… an incredible three short years after the shuttle began to take shape and form. Whatever mistakes he had made or avoided, atevi were in space now. The shuttle had made its first flight six months ago, proving the vessel, a disappointment to the aiji’s enemies, vindication for the aiji’s program of technological advancement.

The world hadn’t blown up. There hadn’t been a war. It had been a close call, on that one… but the Heritage Party on Mospheira had been turned back in the elections, the new administration had passed the last election with knowledgeable people still in office, still with public approval. There were still stupid moves, one of the most egregious in recent memory being the message that had launched this half-thought delegation and destined them for space before there was any atevi mission… but he would get to the bottom of it, quickly so, once he landed. He trusted he could smooth over whatever was going on. If it wasTabini’s retaliation against Jase’s recall, he understood it.

If Tabini was mad as hell and if some misdirected request from the Mospheiran State Department had brought this about, Shawn Tyers would owe him for straightening this out. But he rather inclined to the former theory: they want humans… let’s give them humans.

Let them ask again, what they will, and let us see where they temper their demands.

It was, certainly, a way of probing the other side’s intention. It was damned, bullheaded atevi mindset.

And it certainly wasn’t out of line with the way Tabini had dealt with his own species.

To be first at something… wasn’t in and of itself either good or felicitous in the numbers.

He thought about that point, idly conversing with his fellow passengers while the plane crossed the coast, maneuvering through bumpy skies and a rainstorm.

As they descended through the cloud base, he pointed out places of interest in the countryside, a river, a small town, and had an appreciative audience.

They were taking a fairly direct approach, not being routed to the south, as sometimes happened.

And within a shorter time than usual they were over Shejidan.

They’d cut three quarters of an hour off the usual time. By the time the plane was maneuvering for a landing, runnels of rain were tracking back over the windows, roofs occasionally appearing out of the gray.

“We’re awfully low,” Ben announced, peering downward, and then a sharp bank gave them a view down into the hillside residence-circles that, with their connecting walks, served somewhat as neighborhoods and streets.

The leveling of the wings gave them a grand view of the Bu-javid, the hill palace rising above the tiled, rain-grayed roofs of the common neighborhoods… footed with a pink neon glow in the general fading of the light.

“Is that the Bu-javid?” Kate asked.

“Yes,” Bren replied. “That’s the aiji’s residence, centermost.” So was his, but his wasn’t a tourist attraction, not, at least, to Mospheirans.

“Hotels below?” Ben asked, peering down.

The palace was a vast sprawl of a building with interior gardens and pools, skirted, these days, by a proliferation of businesses at the foot of the hill.

“Hotels. Neon lights and hotels.” It wasn’t his favorite change.

“Petitioners to the aiji,” Kroger said.

“That’s right.” Over changes atevi themselves chose, the paidhi had no veto, and Tabini hadn’t stopped it, though conservative atevi complained. Three years had seen a neon growth all through the city. The atevi thought it curious. It looked like downtown in the capital of Mospheira, and it afflicted his soul. “Anyone has the right to see the aiji, if he comes here, and the aiji will see he can come here, if he can’t afford it.”

The plane’s next bank brought a view of other neighborhoods past the window now, tiled roofs in varying shades of red. “There’s your ashiipattern,” he said for Ben and Kate. “See the geometry laid out. The unified walkways. Associations. Apparent to the eye once you know you’re not looking at our kind of boundaries. That’s what the first settlers ran afoul of. Never saw it.”

“Not a straight street in the place.”

“People walk a great deal more.”

“Well, thank God it won’t be for us to figure out.” Ginny’s face, a thin face with a multitude of faint freckles, caught the white light of the window as she looked out on the foreignness of an atevi city. “We’ve got enough problems.”

She hadn’t said a thing in a quarter hour. At this precise moment—maybe it was his imagination—she looked scared as hell.

The plane leveled out.

Stewards wordlessly collected the glasses, and they stayed belted in while the familiar signs glided past the window. They were on final approach to the airport.

“Can we see the shuttle from here?” Kate asked, craning forward.

“Not on this approach,” Bren said, and drew a deep breath, hoping he might find a stable, peaceful city… hoping his security would meet him. Hoping nothing had blown up… besides Jase’s unexpected orders.

He’d gotten far too used to company… psychological weak spot, he told himself. Shouldn’t have done it… shouldn’t have associations he couldn’t keep up. Gotten himself attached to someone he damned well knew would leave.

Unwise, in a man who’d made the professional choices he’d made.

Wheels touched down, squealed on wet pavement. The airport buildings rushed past, went slower.

Slower still.

Chapter 2

The plane braked to an easy turn on a rain-puddled taxiway and rolled toward the security zone while the stewards reunited passengers and coats.

They reached a sedate stop, and there followed the immediate, familiar growl of the ladder-truck.

All four of Bren’s seatmates, putting on their coats, simultaneously developed the same angle of furtive small stares toward the windows, dignified, not wishing to be seen staring as the ladder-truck moved up. But at the approach of the first atevi personnel, the first atevi they would ever have seen in the flesh, they stared. Ben and Kate had spent years studying and translating the language, but they had never seen the species who owned the planet they lived on; Ginny and Tom had no association whatever with atevi but trade and scientific exchange.

Bren himself fully expected the ladder-shaking rush of giants up the aluminum steps to meet the opening hatch. He didn’t stare, rather composed himself to court standards, as the two atevi he hoped would have come to meet him arrived in the hatchway… Banichi and Jago, senior pair of the four who guarded him: black skinned, black-haired, golden-eyed, in the black leather and silver of the Assassins’ Guild, against whose size they all looked like children.

His bodyguard, appointed by Tabini-aiji: his dearest friends, humanly speaking… and not friends: he was their duty, their association, as atevi felt things.

Human friends, even family, might desert you for very valid emotional reasons, even leave you for hire; and when he was on Mospheira, the human ways crept into his bloodstream and gave nesting room for doubts. But this pair, not being insane, wouldn’t leave him except when duty took him overseas, where the law wouldn’t let them go… and the moment they could rejoin him, sure as sunset, here they were.

They found themselves facing strangers, probably no surprise to them, but their polite impassivity gave no clue even to him. In front of dignitaries from Mospheira they stood, armed, solemn—very, very tall.

“Banichi and Jago,” he introduced his bodyguard, then in Ragi, revised the island names to a form the language could accommodate. “Ben Feldman, Kate Shugart, Tom Lund, Ginny Kroger. One believes Tabini-aiji has granted their request to go up on the shuttle.”