The Reunioner youngsters, who had never seen wood and stone in their lives before their visit, had been fascinated by the process. So had Jase been. They had gone out more than once to watch the work . . . even climbed up to see how the structure was made.
But the crew had gone home to their suppers, down in the village. Hammering had ceased for the night, and would not resume before they left, early, early in the morning.
“You’ll remember to send me pictures when it’s all done,” Jase said as they headed toward the door.
“Deal,” Bren said.
The house door opened for them unasked. Najida’s major domo, Ramaso, welcomed them in, staff waited to take their outdoor coats, and to provide their indoor ones. Other servants deftly took away the day’s catch from those following, and whisked it off to the kitchen—it would likely reappear as the staff breakfast in the morning, once the lord and his offworld guests were safely out the door and away.
“A pleasant trip, nandiin?” Ramaso asked.
“Entirely, Rama-ji,” Bren said. “The young gentleman and his guests have retired?”
“They are still awake in their suite, nandi,” Ramaso said, “well-fed and happy, by all report. Do you still wish only the cakes?”
“Jase-ji?”
“Certainly that will be enough for me,” Jase said. The sandwiches they had had for supper had been more than they could eat. “A glass of wine, the cakes, and I shall be very content.”
“The sitting room, then,” Bren said, and led the way, Banichi and Jago attending. Tano and Algini went on toward their own quarters, there being a little packing yet to do.
· · ·
He and Jase had their dessert, wine chilled so that moisture frosted the glasses, and a plate of spice cakes still so warm from the oven that the icing melted.
Banichi and Jago took cakes, too, but not the wine, and after sending an order to the kitchen, uncharacteristically informal in this very safe house, they took a second plate of little cakes with them and retired to quarters to help Tano and Algini pack up. Jase’s bodyguard, Kaplan and Polano, were likewise off in Jase’s suite, packing for a much longer trip.
So he and Jase had this one last evening to themselves, no duties to think of . . . locally speaking.
“My hindbrain’s already starting to add up what’s waiting for me,” Jase said ruefully, feet propped on a footstool, and a second glass of wine in hand. “And top of the stack is my report to the captains. And to Lord Geigi.” A lengthy pause. Then: “And Tillington. Bren, we two need to talk about Tillington.”
“In what regard?”
Tillington was the Mospheiran-side stationmaster, human counterpart to Lord Geigi.
Tillington had been all right, in Bren’s estimation: Tillington had kept his half of the station running fairly well—cooperating, generally, with Lord Geigi, getting along well with Ogun, who ran the ship’s affairs on station.
Tillington had had a hard situation. Phoenix, under Captain Sabin and Jase, with Ilisidi, Cajeiri, and Bren aboard, had gone off on its voyage to deal with a remote station in deep space, a lone human outpost that had been supposed to be dead—but which had been left with records they didn’t want lying there for any other entity to find: those, the human Archive, needed to be destroyed. That was the mission. Ogun, senior captain, had stayed behind, with half the crew, to maintain the ship’s authority on the station.
Then, no fault of anyone aloft, so far as he knew, the disasters had multiplied.
A conspiracy on the mainland had unseated Tabini-aiji, seized the spaceport, grounded all but the one shuttle which had happened to be at the space station. The paidhi-aiji and the ship-paidhi being absent on the mission had meant translation between humans and atevi was down to Yolanda Mercheson, who suffered a breakdown. The shuttles no longer flew and pilots and crews went missing. Supply to the space station stopped.
Geigi had refused to move the one shuttle he had left from its station berth. Geigi had kept it ready against the return of the ship—with the paidhiin, the aiji-dowager, and Tabini’s heir.
Tillington had argued long and hard about that shuttle. He had wanted to use it to build up Mospheiran technology and launch a human force to unseat the conspirators on the mainland—not a happy prospect on the atevi side of the station, and Geigi, who had the shuttle and the only crew able to fly it, said a firm no.
Geigi, meanwhile, had launched his own program to deal with the mainland’s new rulers. He had shut down construction on the atevi starship, diverted all its labor and resources to the construction of a satellite communications network, hitherto lacking, and to the production of sufficient food in orbit, which would render the station independent of Earth.
Tillington had cooperated with that—not happy, no, but cooperating, while the Mospheiran government had pushed its own shuttle program into production. They pushed training pilots of their own—and struggled with supply delays. The mainland, in hostile hands, no longer supplied certain materials, and the Mospheiran space program made progress only slowly.
In the midst of it all, Phoenix made it back—bringing in five thousand Reunioner refugees—when the station had thought at most there might be a hundred or so.
The aiji-dowager lost not an hour. Geigi, discovering Phoenix was coming in, had the shuttle and crew up and ready, and Bren, and the aiji-dowager, and Tabini’s son—had headed straight for the shuttle dock. They’d landed on Mospheira, and crossed the strait to deal with the conspirators in a way a human invasion never could.
The ship, in the exigencies of prolonged dock, and with supplies at rock bottom, refused to house the refugees any longer. It began disembarking the refugees—five thousand souls, all turned out onto the station, skilled workers, without jobs, without housing, and with no prospects, in a station with no jobs, not enough housing, and no plan for their numbers to double. The ultimate issue was—what voice should these new people have in anything? What were they going to demand, if they were given any vote at all?
And if they had to increase atevi presence to balance the numbers of humans—the newcomers would still be a majority of humans aloft, and they included people with children. They were going to increase in numbers, and they didn’t have to pass screening to get into orbit—they were born there.
On Earth, things were much better. Murini’s regime, the conspiracy, had held power on the continent only by force and assassination. Now Tabini was back in power, Murini was dead, and there was peace on the continent.
Mospheira likewise prospered. Trade resumed, and their shuttle program now regularly sent a vehicle into orbit. Atevi shuttles were in regular service. Vital supplies reached the station, so one had assumed there was progress on the situation aloft. Geigi had said nothing negative about Tillington, except the complaint that the man always sided with the senior captain, and that humans had dithered along with a decision about the refugees. But then—well-bred atevi were not inclined to complain until they were ready to call on the Assassins’ Guild. So to speak.
Evidently—it was not all under control up there.
“So what’s going on up there?” he asked Jase. “What’s Tillington doing—or not doing? I understand his workers aren’t happy. I know somebody’s got to make his mind up and find a solution for the refugees, and they’ve been divided as to what. But is it worse than we know?”