He hadn’t been able to turn the situation over to Deana Hanks for a week. Where did he think he was going to find it in him to turn the whole job over to her and walk out—irrevocably, walk out on what he’d prepared his whole life to do?

Like Wilson—a man seventy years old, who’d just seen Valasi assassinated, who’d just come home, because his career ended with Valasi—with nothing to show for forty-three years of work but the dictionary entries he’d made, a handful of scholarly articles, and a record number of vetoes on the Transmontane Highway Project. No wife, no family. Nothing but the university teaching post waiting for him, and he couldn’t communicate with the students.

Wilsoncouldn’t communicate with the human students.

He was going to write a paper when he got out of this, however damning it was, a paper about Wilson, and the atevi interface, and the talk he’d had with Jago, and whyWilson, with that face, with that demeanor, with that attitude, couldn’t communicate with his classes.

Thunder crashed, outside his wall. He jumped, and lay there with his heart doing double beats and his ears still ringing.

The cannon, Jago said. Common occurrence.

He lay there and shook, whether because of the noise, or the craziness of the night. Or because he couldn’t understand any longer why he was here, or why a Bu-javid guard like Tano drew a gun and fired, when they were out there looking at transformers.

Looking at lightning-struck transformers, while the lightning played over their heads and the rain fell on them.

Like hell, he thought, like hell, Jago. Shooting at shadows. What shadows, Jago, is Tano expecting out there in the rain?

Shadows that fly in on scheduled airliners… and the tightest security on the planet, except ours, doesn’t know who it is and where they are?

Like hell again, Jago.

VI

« ^ »

Alively night,” the aiji-dowager said, over tea she swore was safe. “Did you sleep, nand’ paidhi?”

“Intermittently.”

Ilisidi chuckled softly, and pointed out the flight of a dragonette above the misty, chill lake. The balcony railing dripped with recent rain. The sun came up gold above the mountains across the lake, and the mist began to glow with it. The dragonette dived down the face of the cliff, membranous wings spread against the sun, and swept upward again, with something in its claws.

Predator and prey.

“They’re pests,” Ilisidi said. “The mecheiti hate them, but I won’t have the nest destroyed. They were here first. What does the paidhi say?”

“The paidhi agrees with you.”

“What, that those that were here first—have natural ownership?”

Two sips of tea, one bite of roll, and Ilisidi was on the attack. Banichi had said be careful. Tabini had said he could handle it.

He thought a moment, first to agree, then to quibble. Then: “The paidhi agrees that the chain of life shouldn’t be broken. That the loss of that nest would impoverish Malguri.”

Ilisidi’s pale eyes rested on him, impassive as Banichi’s could ever be—she was annoyed, perhaps, at his changing the subject back again.

But he hadn’t changed her proposition, not entirely.

“They’re bandits,” Ilisidi said.

“Irreplaceable,” he said.

“Vermin.”

“The past needs the future. The future needs the past.”

“Vermin, I say, that I choose to preserve.”

“The paidhi agrees. What do you call them?”

“Wi’itkitiin. They make that sound.”

“Wi’itkitiin.” He watched another scaled and feathered diver, and asked himself if Earth had ever known the like. “Nothing else makes that sound.”

“No.”

“Reason enough to save it.”

Ilisidi’s mouth tightened. The grimace became a hint of a laugh, and she spooned up several bites of cereal, put away several thin slices of breakfast steak.

Bren kept pace, figuring one didn’t speak to the aiji-dowager when she was thinking, and an excellent breakfast was going to get cold. Cooked over wood fire, Cenedi had said, when he wondered how there was anything hot, or cooked. He supposed they managed that in the kitchen fireplace, if there was a fireplace in the kitchen. The thumping Jago had called the generator had stopped sometime during the night. The machine was out of fuel, perhaps, or malfunctioning itself. Maidingi Power swore on their lives and reputations that Malguri would have power, as soon, they said, as they had restored power to the quarter of Maidingi township that was dark and chill this morning.

Meanwhile the castle got along, with fireplaces to warm the rooms and cook the food, with candles to light the halls where light from windows didn’t reach—systems which had once been The System in Malguri. The aiji-dowager had ordered breakfast set outside, on the balcony, in a chill mountain summer morning—fortunate, Bren thought, that he’d worn his heavier coat this morning, because of the chill already in the rooms. The cold had steam going up from his tea-cup. It was nippishly pleasant—hard to remember the steamy nights that were the rule in the City in this month, the rainstorms rolling in from the sea.

And with the candles and the wood fires and the ancient stones, it was a blink of the eye to imagine, this misty morning, that he had come unfixed in time, that oared vessels with heraldic sails might appear out of the mist on the end of the lake.

Another dragonette had flown, with its eye on some prey. Its cry wailed away down the heights.

“What are you thinking, paidhi? Some wise and revelatory thought?”

“Thinking about ships. And wood fires. And how Malguri doesn’t need anything from anywhere to survive.”

The aiji-dowager pursed her lips, rested her chin on her fist. “Aei, a hundred or so staff to do the laundry and carry the wood and make the candles, and it survives. Another five hundred to plow and tend and hunt, to feed the launderers and the wood-cutters and the candlemakers and themselves, and, oh, yes, we’re self-sufficient. Except the iron-workers and the copy-makers to supply us and the riders and the cannoneers to defend it all from the Unassociated who won’t do their share and had rather prey on those who do. Malguri had electric lights before you came, nadi, I do assure you.” She took a sip of tea, set the cup down and waved her napkin at Cenedi, who hovered in the doorway and mediated the service. He thought the breakfast ended, then. He prepared to rise, but Ilisidi waved a hand toward the terrace stairs.

“Come.”

He was caught, snared. “I beg the dowager’s pardon. My security absolutely forbids me—”

“ Forbidsyou! Outrageous.—Or did my grandson set them against me?”

“No such thing, I assure you, with utmost courtesy. He spoke very positively—”

“Then let your guards use their famous ingenuity.” She shoved her chair back. Cenedi hastened to assist, and to put her cane under her hand. “Come, come, let me show you the rest of Malguri. Let me show you the Malguri of your imagination.”

He didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t an enemy—at least he hoped she wasn’t, and he didn’t want to make one. Tabini, damn him, had put him here, when he’d known his grandmother was here. Banichi was all reproach for the invitation he’d accepted without having Banichi’s doubtless wise advice—and there was nothing the paidhi saw now to do, being committed to the dowager’s hospitality, except to fall to the floor moaning and plead indisposition—hardly flattering to an already upset cook; or to get up from the table and follow the old woman and see what she wanted him to see.

The latter seemed less damaging to the peace. He doubted Banichi would counsel him differently. So he followed Ilisidi to the outer edge of the terrace and down, and down the stone steps, to yet another terrace, from which another stairs, and then a third terrace, and so below to a paved courtyard, all leisurely, Cenedi going before the dowager, four of the dowager’s security bringing up the rear.