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The tea was a code word, which between them meant: read between the lines and act.

Geigi quietly detested that tea.

Please care for your health, and please enjoy your visit with Jase.

Could he say it any plainer?

Likewise assure him that I accept his very good advice.

I shall be coming up to the station on business soon, and look forward to the pleasure of your society.

As regards Jase-aiji, please tell him—

Now came a deliberate security test. The news could break now—or later—and
if
it leaked immediately, at any level—they would find that out through Jase, if no other way.

I shall be escorting elements of a regional Assassins' Guild office to be set up within the atevi section, to operate under your authority. Its central function will be liaison and information-gathering for the Guild.

It is my task to interpret this new presence to the humans on the station, who may have questions about the nature of the office, and who, while they will not deal with that office directly under any ordinary circumstances, will need to understand and accept its function. It will be useful to have another atevi presence in direct communication with Shejidan, and the Guild will benefit from their skilled observation of situations. One hopes they may resort to you for guidance and assistance.

This should be a benign and beneficial presence, reflecting beneficial changes in Guild organization in the aishidi'tat. Its man'chi is now strongly toward Tabini-aiji.

I shall escort them to the station and explain to the ship-aijiin. Jase-aiji will be a useful contact preceding this process. And as always, I rely on your good will and your wisdom.

One understands there is some stress regarding the human situation. Please be aware, but let me deal with Tillington-aiji on my arrival.

Which was to say, talk to Jase, fast. We've got the Guild asking questions, launching a fact-finding mission, and there are things you desperately need to know before they get there.

Leave Tillington to me.

 • • • 

Very good to talk to you,
the message came back from Shawn early that afternoon, not a response to his couriered letter, which had left on the plane that delivered Shawn's letter, but Shawn's own state of the state message, in a letter crossing his.

And then the part that mattered.

The visit of the Reunioner children to the mainland has stirred controversy here. It was generally assumed that they—and a significant number of Reunioners in general—would not be able to live on Earth even a few days without difficulties. The extension of their visit and reports of their inclusion in official events have raised questions.

Stationmaster Tillington reports that the children were given a drug to enable this, and unfortunately this report has become public this week, elaborated into unrealistic reports that this new drug enables the Reunioners to land en masse. This frightens some people.

Good God. How do they land, in the shuttles we have?

Five thousand ordinary citizens, including old people and kids, a threat to a planet?

The petal sails all over again?

I am assuming your letter crossing this one may involve the Reunioner issue, and whether or not this is the case, an exchange of information will be useful.

Sanity. He drew an easier breath.

Tillington has reported that the Reunioners themselves have followed this visit with some speculation that the children will be taken from their parents and that all children will be taken away before the Maudit expedition.

God.

Tillington reports he has made statements strongly denying this, and he urges the legislature make a decision in favor of the Maudit venture, as the integration of Reunioners into the station population poses significant security risks. We have received Tillington's very detailed proposal to send a small exploratory team to Maudit, to establish an orbiting station—for which Lord Geigi may be solicited for materials support. The proposal, in effect, establishes the Reunion colony at a remote distance.

I am not fully in support of this idea, and it is meeting opposition, again on grounds of security.

The pro argument is that the need for supplies to move to such a new orbiting station by Mospheiran supply ships will foster a necessary cooperation between the populations.

The counter-argument is that atevi will likely demand the treaty be extended to mandate equal atevi presence on that station and this is argued to lead to a separate arrangement between Reunioners and atevi if Mospheira does not send more personnel to balance them, and this would make an impractically large station at Maudit, far larger than the one now orbiting Earth. If atevi would count both stations together for the purpose of parity that might be workable. But even so, it poses difficulties.

We are now at the anniversary of the restoration of the atevi government and we understand that the aishidi'tat is now resuming programs once suspended. We hope that atevi attention to the Reunioner matter should become a priority, and we hope to work cooperatively to resolve these issues.

Tillington's put a strong push on his own program, while the children have been down here. Interesting.

I have been hearing nothing but the Maudit proposal for the last year, as I think you have likely heard the details. I have advised Tillington previously not to press Lord Geigi for materials until there is a decision. We have no wish to stir up argument on an issue not yet decided.

Bet on it. Geigi is not going to say a thing officially until Tabini gets involved.

I say in confidence I am not convinced that moving the Reunioners farther from our centuries of experience onworld is the right answer. It is a solution attractive to some who believe their existence threatens us. But in my view our security is far more threatened by keeping this population unified by frontier hardship while we live in comforts they do not enjoy.

Bravo, Shawn.

If this new drug can let these people adapt to Earth I would favor it. I had rather see the Reunioners distributed across Mospheira, but there is no means to provide security for these people as scattered immigrants, which I regret to say could lead to difficulties in some areas.

He knew the areas—pockets of regional discontent that still spawned problems, where remnants of the Heritage Party had taken stubborn root.

I have a specific solution in mind. But there is a set of tech-based industries on Crescent Island, in which they could be valuable.

Space industry.

The environment is a little trying.

Humidity and torrential rain.

But there is employment, and a space-oriented population, which may better understand the environment from which they come.

The tech unions were going to have a fit.

I solicit your advice in these matters. I understand that you have shaped your position in the aishidi'tat and that you now serve unique functions in the atevi world. I do not urge your return to Mospheira in this context or at this moment; once we have settled the problem the Reunioners pose, that may be a good time.

Translation: you're not that popular here, Bren, and if you should become tangled in the Reunioner issue, you could become less so.

I hope that your message, which necessarily crosses this one, does not present difficulties with what I have set out above.

Sorry to say, Shawn, it does.

I hope to renew our previous frequency of communication.

I remain hopeful that we can resolve whatever matters divide the people we guide.

I'm with you on that one, Shawn. God, I am
with
you.

But Tillington has to go. Next shuttle. Call him home. Find a reason. Any reason.

Next shuttle. Next
Mospheiran
shuttle. Two week rotation. And if it kept schedule, it had already gone up. The Mospheiran shuttle had never reconfigured its cargo bay in orbit. It could. Theoretically.

They either had to withdraw Tillington before he had a replacement, or get a replacement up on the next rotation. Neither was a good option.

Granted Shawn could get one.

 • • • 

A phone call came at dusk. Bren took it, barefoot and in his shirtsleeves, interrupting his dressing for dinner.

“I have it,”
Shawn said, first off.
“God, what a mess. I understand. I'll keep you posted.”

It was all they could say on the central matter, where the connection might be compromised.

“Good,” he said. And understood, by the careful tone of Shawn's statement, it wasn't something Shawn could do quickly or without political danger.

Heritage Party. The source of simple answers that always looped back to the same proposition. Humans first. And
us
first of all.

He and Shawn talked for a few minutes, then wished each other a pleasant evening and broke off.

God, Bren thought, laying the receiver in its cradle.

Three years of not dealing with human problems . . .

And there it all was again, same old theme, different verse.
Them.
And
us.

It was a quiet dinner. He invited his aishid to join him, and to take brandy after, contrary to their habit. What he had to explain was convoluted, and needed interpretation.

And there were questions. But mostly they listened.

 • • • 

“Tillington worries you considerably,” Jago observed later, in bed.

“Immensely,” he said. “I grew distracted, Jago-ji. I let myself fall out of close communication with the Presidenta. That was my first mistake.”

“You could not have visited Mospheira without comment—and not without speculation on this side of the strait, either.
Messages
that go back and forth occasion comment. There is no diplomatic bag that goes that the guilds fail to know it. Your staying here, throughout the restoration of the aiji, was important.”

Every breath he took, this close to the aiji, and involved as he was in politics with the Marid, politics with the dowager, politics with the northern clans, politics with the Tribal Peoples—everything was parsed by a dozen agencies for clues about his mood, and clues as to his consultations and his associations.

Message Shawn at every turn? There'd been no great emergency involving Mospheiran affairs.

But after a year putting out fires on the mainland, the fact that the heir had had a birthday and invited human children down from the station—Reunioner children—had hit the rumor mill over on Mospheira with a force
he
hadn't foreseen, in a context
he
hadn't been tracking as closely as he should. He'd had his mind on security, on the assassination of Cajeiri's grandfather, and several attempted assassinations aimed in what turned out to be the youngster's vicinity—not to mention questions about the integrity of the guilds. He'd been preoccupied. He'd been staying alive and keeping the kids safe and happy.

But he couldn't drop stitches like that. He couldn't rest confident that people outside the mainland were going to think to advise him of their crises.

Hell, he'd
deliberately
disconnected himself from Mospheiran politics, because he'd been working closely with Tabini, working closely with the dowager, and constant communication with Mospheira during that period of recovery would, as Jago said, have said something he didn't want said. It would have undermined trust, thrown his loyalty into question.

But Shawn had said it: it was not a good time for him to return to Mospheira. He couldn't help anybody if he became tangled in political issues on Mospheira, or, for that matter, aloft. He'd kept out of the Mospheiran upset over the Reunioners' arrival, trusting Shawn to calm things down. The fact was that Mospheira and the station had been maintaining calm and keeping their treaty agreements as they should—one reason they'd been able to do that, he'd thought, was because he'd not roiled the political waters around them, and because the ship's independent authority up there had kept the lid on things.

Well, he got Shawn's signal loud and clear now. The Heritage Party hadn't been a problem so long as the Reunioners were out of sight and removed from daily consideration. It was going to be a problem if they started landing. Tillington, likewise grounded, was going to find backers for his position, and he had to be careful with the situation. Use extreme finesse.

Finesse
in the Guild's terms—
was
one answer that leapt to mind, removing a man who wanted to play politics with kids' lives, who wanted to create a situation that stirred up the worst in Mospheiran society. But it wasn't a route he wanted to take. It wasn't a route he ever could take, not remotely, and maintain any semblance of a link to Mospheiran society.

No, let Shawn arrange some sort of soft landing for Tillington, get him out of the way without creating wreckage in the system—or damaging his administration. That needed thought. It needed calm. And it needed, most of all, a little time.

Well-fed and content to retire was the best disposition for a man who'd served tolerably well—until the arrival of the Reunioners had triggered something in him that wasn't at all pleasant.

Maybe a University sinecure—

No. The man should not teach. If he entertained Heritage ideology—he should not have students in his hands.

Ilisidi, with the Assassins' Guild entirely at her disposal, had managed to find a spot for the former lord of the Kadagidi, supervising a textile mill. Well-paid. Quiet. Not political.

And under another lord's thumb.

Solutions like that, unfortunately, weren't readily to be had on Mospheira.

Not as secure, not as quiet, and not with that kind of well-watched certainty.