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“Nandi. One understands.”

“This
one,” he said, regarding the second sealed cylinder, a distinctive one with sea-creatures, “goes to the Presidenta. A charter jet is probably leaving within the half hour, bringing the Presidenta's courier to us, and two of my aishid should meet that plane to hand on this cylinder, so that there are no delays whatsoever.”

Narani did understand him, he had every confidence. The letters went. Things were out of his hands. The best people he knew were on the job, and Toby was hereafter going to be in place to link the Presidenta to Tabini, where it was useful to pass messages.

Sorry, brother.

He hadn't written that part in his letter to Toby.

I'm scared as hell.

He hadn't written that part either.

And he didn't envy Shawn
his
job, or the political consequences of removing a powerful appointee. But the nature of the matter, the fact that it was reasonable to
need
a total change of management to handle the unprecedented visit imminent, might provide salve enough for political sensitivities and let Shawn bring Tillington home for that favorite euphemism for executive displeasure—
consultation.

He had local staff moves to make, too. He was going to rotate a small number of household staff home to Najida once he left. They could go on furlough by turns during his absence, partly to relieve the pressure on Koharu and Supani, in their first stint at managing the household from the executive post, partly because they deserved some time at home, and partly because people arriving from his Bujavid staff could answer Toby's more detailed questions, just for Toby's comfort—assuring Toby that he had left the world in good order and in confidence.

Bren found himself staring at that spot on the office wall that was always his recourse, catty-angled opposite his desk—that spot that his aishid and his staff occupied, when there was something they could do about a situation.

When that spot was vacant, because his staff was already doing everything they could do—the worry was all his.

Communicate with aliens who'd seemingly been surprised by the very notion that there
could be
peaceful cooperation between species?

It certainly didn't paint a sunny picture of the history of the kyo homeworld. Species didn't, to his knowledge, grow up in isolation. Humans had had antecedents, as a species. So had the atevi.

Yet the kyo were astonished by cooperation with another species.

What else he knew about the kyo—was that they had also made an enemy in a neighboring region of space, one potent enough to worry them.

He knew that
Phoenix
, before it had returned to the Earth of the atevi, had accidentally attracted kyo attention, and the ship's actions had angered or scared the kyo.
That
had apparently led the kyo to hit Reunion . . . possibly because they thought their enemies were involved. Or possibly because it was kyo policy.

The kyo had fired, destroying part of the station, and
then
sent an investigatory team in— or they had fired once a team they had sent in reported trouble. That sequence of events had never been sufficiently clear. Station records said the former. But that was the word of Louis Baynes Braddock that the kyo had fired without provocation.

Did he believe it?

Braddock could tell him the sun was shining and he'd look to be sure.

Then came the natural question. Having blown a third of Reunion Station to hell—why had they then failed to finish the job?

Because the team they had sent in could still be alive in there? Did they care about their own people?

Maybe.

Or had they waited because they wanted to give whatever ships belonged to that station an incentive to show up?
Phoenix
had indeed come in to remove the colonists. But it had taken them ten or so years to do it.

The kyo had turned up immediately.

And either the kyo mode of communication and transport was quick beyond anything they could conceive, or that ship had indeed been sitting out there, watching, waiting, for all those years.

The kyo had had one of their own, Prakuyo an Tep, detained in human hands all that time, as well. They hadn't gone in to get him out.

Why hadn't they, in ten long years—if they were just sitting out there?

Why not, if they had weapons enough to blow the station apart?

Ethics?

Timidity?

Curiosity?

They'd waited for something to happen. For a ship to come in, as it had?

Why?

To find out its origin.

That
was the likely answer.

Nor had Reunioners during all those years ever gotten Prakuyo an Tep to talk to them.

On that thought—uncomfortable as it was—he had to stop staring at the wall.

I've got Braddock to deal with.

I've got Tillington.

And the new Guild office going up there, along with everything else.

God. I do
not
intend to explain Tillington to them.

But maybe I should. Let them know that, in this environment, at close quarters, we cannot afford to react as we might in an atevi dispute.

He leaned back in the chair, eyes shut.

Of all guilds—the Assassins' Guild understood politics. The Assassins' Guild had had the vision to turn around and work with Mospheira when Tabini was overthrown. It had abhorred humans, before that.

But during that emergency, in very short order, they'd become far more respectful of ideas they'd once considered foreign.

He could not let himself be led too far by an analogy.

One species was not another.

But after two hundred years of opposition, the Guild had shifted its attitude toward humans in two years.

Why?

Because the Assassins' Guild
and
humans had found a common interest in preserving Tabini-aiji. Not for who he was—but because Tabini's flexible governance benefitted them both. And once humans and the Guild had seen that—things changed.

Of what possible benefit were humans and atevi to the kyo? What common interest?

He pulled down yet one more clean sheet of parchment, dipped his pen, and started a brief note to Lord Tatiseigi—certainly not the political ally he would have envisioned for himself a few years ago, but the old lord was the best ally he had now, where it came to dealing with the touchier, more traditional parts of the legislature.

He and Tatiseigi had worked out a system: he represented the aiji, who swayed the liberal side of the legislature. He himself had a certain cachet with the liberals and the outliers, frayed as it occasionally seemed to be. Tatiseigi had the old-line conservatives on his side.

And between them, if they two could agree, they could often work out some common-sense give-and-take to make both sides happy, and make both Ilisidi and Tabini happy—which once had been a mutually exclusive proposition.

The current effort added up to the dowager's long-held plan, a smoothly developing strategy to stabilize mainland politics by linking the troublesome Marid with the highly independent East—and the key parts of it were happening at a time convenient for Tabini's own aims.

In this case—Tatiseigi
was
his backup with the legislature, while he, along with Ilisidi, were so to speak,
called out of town.

That meant Tatiseigi was going to have to work with Tabini during his absence—and vice versa. There had been a time when
that
would not have worked.

There was the specific legislative agenda to handle—coupled with public pressure, once the public knew what was going on.

But politics would not cease. The Liberals and the new tribal peoples' representatives were going to have to do some trading and hammer out practical agreements while events were going on in the heavens.

Domestically, the worst disagreement was past and the tribal peoples were in the legislature.

Now they had to find associations compatible with their interests.

And, a complication in those dealings—there remained the issues raised by the railroad to the south, God help them, which paid off Machigi of the Taisigin Marid, which was
how
they had connected the Marid to the East and gotten the young southern warlord Machigi and the staunchly conservative Lord Tatiseigi
and
the very liberal Lord of Dur all to back passage of the tribal peoples bill.

Tatiseigi could shamelessly raise regional and conservative interests as a negotiating position, but the man was better than that, cleverer than that—more of a statesman than that.

He wrote, to Tatiseigi:
I have very lately reached certain understandings with Lord Topari in the railroad issue, understandings about which he seems very enthusiastic, and I believe we can get the building of this line underway, except for one serious difficulty. I am unexpectedly called out of the capital. If you would take the matter under your management—

No, that wouldn't do. There was
no
way to explain the kyo situation adequately on paper—and he dared not scant formalities with the old man, who was a stickler for proper form. He had to steer Tatiseigi, among other things, toward a social contact with the younger lord of Dur.

Young Reijiri, the rebel pilot whose yellow plane had once thrown the skies above Shejidan into chaos—had never been a close associate of the Conservatives, even in his more mature years. That partnership needed careful introduction, on a matter of common interest.

He wadded up that paper and took another.

It joined the first.

He pulled down another sheet and simply wrote:
Nandi, I must speak to you at the earliest on a matter of great importance. May one call on you this afternoon?

It was going to take time. Everything with Lord Tatiseigi took an extraordinary amount of time, and usually a face to face meeting.

There might be arrivals in the heavens at any moment the kyo decided to apply some speed.

But on Earth, proper form was absolutely mandatory.

 • • • 

Antaro and Jegari slipped quietly into Cajeiri's sitting room, and Cajeiri looked up from his lessons. He was waiting for an answer from nand' Bren. But it was nothing of the kind.

“Your father wishes to see you, Jeri-ji,” Antaro said—they were formal in private only when something was absolutely dire, so it was likely nothing much, probably something about some important old person coming to dinner. He could not recall anything he had really done wrong in the last several days. So it was probably that.

He knew his father and mother had been in conference for a long time. And it
could
be about him. He gave a sigh and got up. “Where are Veijico and Lucasi?”

“Waiting at your father's office,” Jegari said.

Well, that was not unusual either. He went out and down the hall, where Veijico and Lucasi waited; and he did
not
get the warning signal that meant
your mother is present.

So he let his unified aishid take up their largely decorative positions at his father's door—they did not habitually go into the office with him—and walked in, far from sure what the problem was.

His father was alone, sitting at his writing desk. His father finished a sentence, laid the pen in its holder, capped the inkwell, and turned his chair toward him, a degree of attention he did not always get.

“Honored Father,” Cajeiri said, with a little bow.

“Son of mine. Sit down.”

Sitting was unusual, too. It was apparently
not
about a dinner or anything ordinary. That was not necessarily good. He pulled one of the chairs closer, and sat down.

“Bren-paidhi,” Father said, “has had a message from Jase-aiji today. There is a strange ship in the heavens. They think it is a kyo ship.”

He forgot to breathe for a second. Things unrolled fast and far. He very vividly remembered Prakuyo an Tep, massive, wrinkled, gray, in a white room, sitting across a bare white table enjoying teacakes.

He remembered the inside of the kyo ship, dim, dark, with draperies and screens, so one could not tell how the room or even the corridors were shaped.

He remembered great-grandmother, and nand' Bren, and their bodyguards and the kyo in that place, and the voices, that rumbled like distant thunder.

The smell of the place had been different than anywhere else: it was age, and damp, and smoke and spices and something else.

“You are requested to go up to the space station with nand' Bren and your great-grandmother,” his father said, “to deal with this visit.”

He
was requested. He was just barely fortunate nine years old.

But he understood instantly why he was one of the ones to go. Nand' Bren and mani herself had warned him someday the kyo might come and he might have to deal with them, and he had taken it seriously, as something to be proud of.

He had talked with Prakuyo an Tep. He had helped nand' Bren learn to talk to him in the first place.

And he had taken it as a very serious responsibility to keep all his own notes on the kyo and to remember what he had learned. He had even taught his aishid. They used kyo words when they wanted to say something truly secret.

Prakuyo an Tep had promised them they would come visit.

So now he had.

It was definitely scary. The kyo themselves were scary. But they—he and mani and nand' Bren—had shared water and fruit with more than one of them.

Nand' Bren and Prakuyo an Tep had worked hard to make a dictionary in the few days they had stayed after that. Nand' Bren had not only let him see the dictionary, he had given him a copy of his own, and he had added words he knew, and copied into his own study notebook all the words that were new to him.

Words—a few of which he knew were bigger ideas than just one word in Ragi. The kyo language was like that.