Boarding a plane. He was scarcely out of his teens. Scarcely out of university.
Coming in at Shejidan, ahead of a cargo of tinned fish and electronics, all the tiled roofs spread out below him. It rained, common enough in spring. The tiled roofs became more textured, more real, slicked and shining, while the surrounding hills veiled themselves in rain and cloud.
The Bu-javid sat on its hill, mysterious, indistinct in blowing rain. He’d live there one day. He hadn’t imagined it, then. But he’d have an apartment high on that northern wing, just that window…
Explosion of gunfire, amid golden fields. They were shooting at targets, and Tabini-aiji, tall, slender, skilled marksman, popping branches off a dead limb, while a novice human paidhi tried to figure why the unprecedented invitation, and trying to hold his own firearm steady and not shoot the servants. Illegal for him to have the gun, but the aiji invited him, and he asked himself what the motive might be.
Shot in the dark, in the spring night, with a shadow outside the blowing draperies and the smell of djossi flowers on the heavy air.
A very foolish, very young human interpreter diving out of bed and behind the unlikely cover of the mattress.
Banichi had found him there. Found him, and traded guns with him, and covered what might have been a deep secret among atevi lords.
Keep him safe, Tabini had ordered Banichi and Jago, and who could have known they’d one day be guarding his life this far from home?
Keep him safe. Was ever a man luckier in his associates?
Breakfast on a balcony, in a thin coat, freezing, drinking burning-hot tea before it chilled to ice. Breakfast with the dowager, who hadn’t needed a coat.
Breakfast and a broken arm.
And an end of all easy assumptions, all confidence in what humans believed about atevi intentions and the atevi’s choices for their future.
That breakfast had led him here, wherever here was beginning to be.
Down, now, increasingly down, an illusion of falling through space faster and faster, weightless for a moment.
Then here.
Here.
Suddenly at rest, when intellect knew they weren’t: that the ship was still going faster than a planet-bred imagination easily grasped.
But down felt down again, as if it had never been different—at least a planet-habituated stomach felt very reassured by the current state of affairs. The safe universe had fractured and someone had fixed it. Very nice, very reassuring.
That meant they had arrived. Space had straightened itself out. And he had to move. Quickly, by Jase’s advisement.
He got up, and Jago got up.
“We’ll go up to the bridge,” he said, as if he proposed a trip down the hall at home. Thoughts were suddenly easier. He remembered things. One didn’t have to nail every thought to the wall.
But now he wasn’t sure any of his prior reasoning about the log records made thorough sense.
Jago tugged her jacket smooth. He adjusted his coat. They went out to find Banichi. Staff had turned out into the corridor, too, understanding that events would flow rapidly in this arrival.
“ This is the senior captain speaking ,” the intercom speakers said suddenly. “ Early indications indicate arrival in Reunion System. General crew will stay in cabins until further notice .”
They had arrived. Banichi met them at the security center, where Asicho waited, ready to take up her watch at the boards. Narani had accompanied them down the corridor. So did Bin-danda and Jeladi. They all gathered outside the security station, all his household, all awaiting information and instructions on which their safety might depend.
All relying on him.
And in the same instant he grasped that distressing thought, the dowager’s apartment door opened and the dowager exited her rooms— with Cajeiri in tow. In court dress. It was not a casual expedition.
Ilisidi, Cajeiri, Cenedi. One of the senior staff carried a fair-sized packet wrapped in a tablecloth—lunch, one greatly feared.
They had notions where they were going.
Cajeiri, too, had a small wallet tucked under his arm, which Bren feared was not lunch.
And had he somehow implied, in his general muzziness, that the senior captain had cleared them to come up? There was nothing that stopped a tidal wave or the aiji-dowager once assumptions had gone this far. She was dressed. She was in motion.
And, granted Sabin was going to have the proverbial litter of kittens, the dowager was a resource the paidhiin could well use close at hand if things came unhinged.
“Go,” Ilisidi said with an impatient wave of her cane, as if she were not the one arriving late. “Go, go, nadiin. For what do we wait?”
“Nandi.” Bren stood aside to prefer her and Cajeiri, and both their bodyguards folded in behind.
Chapter 5
The senior captain would be too busy to lodge strong objections, Bren said to himself, watching the lift level indicator flick numbers past. And the captain did expect him, and expected help.
“The ship-aiji believes we have indeed arrived at our destination, aiji-ma,” he said as the lift rose. “One isn’t quite sure how they know, but one supposes they find familiar indications.”
Ilisidi gave an indelicate snort. “High time.”
The lift stopped at its appointed level. The doors opened and they walked out into that neck of the lift foyer that had no view of the bridge, only of the administrative offices beyond.
So far, so good.
Jase stood in view, beside the short screening wall. The lift noise had not gone unnoticed. Whatever his opinion, Jase kept perfectly deadpan, poker-stiff as they walked toward him, beyond that curtain wall and into full view of the bridge. Captain Sabin, in those narrow aisles of techs at consoles, stood there, watching over the situation, occupied, at the moment, at a console in the middle aisle.
“Four jump seats to your right,” Jase muttered in Ragi. “Emergency cabinet is next to them. Go there if alert sounds.”
Bren spotted the seats and the access—the takehold cabinet was, in effect, the curtain wall itself, and their party certainly exceeded the safety seating.
Then Sabin passed a cold glance over the atevi invasion, and strode toward them.
“Mr. Cameron.” The voice of doom.