Maybe it wasn’t quite that harsh an ultimatim in Tabini’s mind.

Maybe he was sweeping the paidhi along out of some sense of policy he meant to maintain. But nothing in Tabini’s past had ever suggested completely idealistic reasons, nothing except the aiji’s absolute conviction that without him, and ultimately without his heir—there was no way to hold the aishidi’tat together, and without the aishidi’tat, there was no way for atevi to compete with humans and rule their own planet.

The scariest matter was—adding it all up—Tabini happened to be right.

Lurch. Jolt. The train passed by the airport, swung onto a familiar track, hitting a bump Bren remembered in his very bones, from his very first days on the mainland. Men in Guild black stood by the side of the track, lifted solemn hands as the train passed their position—hands empty of weapons, some, and others lifting rifles aloft in salute.

Guild had left their official neutrality. Guild had moved. The airport was at their left.

Was Murini still there, or might these Guildsmen have taken action to dislodge him? Had signals passed to Guild among them?

“Is there any word,” he asked Jago, “nadi-ji, is there any word yet of conditions inside the hill itself?”

“There is dispute in the train station,” Banichi said, clear understatement, “so the report is, nandi.”

“And Murini? Has he been proven to have left the airport?”

“There is no word,” Jago said. “Certain persons are looking for him.”

Looking for him, was it? No one knew? Could the Guild itself have completely mislaid the self-proclaimed aiji of the aishidi’tati He didn’t think so. The Guild knew where he was. There was a firefight or a standoff going on somewhere, that was his guess, and the side of the Guild they were communicating with had not been able to verify who was on the other side, so they had gotten no information they were willing to bet on.

“Can you talk to my grandmother?” Cajeiri asked, pressing up beside him in the apparent hope that communications were active.

“One is in communication with Cenedi, young sir,” Jago said, “who is in communication with her.”

“Tell her I am with my father,” Cajeiri said plaintively. “Tell her and Uncle.”

“She knows and approves this move, young sir,” Jago said.

“Indeed she does.”

A deep breath from the boy, who leaned on the metal console and peered out the bright windows ahead of them. “Good,” he said. They passed scattered buildings, the outliers of the airport. Streets were deserted, windows ominously shuttered along the way.

So had the airport train ordinarily been, when they had traveled in Tabini’s personal car, that with the red velvet cushions, the thick, doubtless bulletproof blinds.

The door opened, a rush of wind and noise, and shut: Tano arrived, went straight to the aiji’s conference, delivered a few words and left, acknowledging Bren’s glance only with a slight bow of his head.

Another turn, and the train, at fair speed, rumbled through the commercial edge of the airport. Here, in this unlikely district, ordinary people had come alongside the track, near the road. People waved as they passed, and Cajeiri, leaning toward the side window of the cab, waved back.

“Dangerous, young sir,” Jago said, setting herself between him and that window, and Bren put out his hand and moved her back as well, not disposed to let her make herself a living shield. She gave him one of those down-the-nose looks she could so easily achieve, touched his hand gently, then removed it.

“Bren-ji,” she chided him. “You do not protect us. You do not protect us. Shall I say it, fortunate three?”

He was obliged to say, however reluctantly: “I shall rely on you, Jago-ji.”

“I wish Antaro and Jegari were here, now,” Cajeiri said. “I wish Antaro had not taken my coat.” And then an apparent thought: “Can you contact them, too, nadiin-ji?”

A deep frown, on Jago’s light-touched face. “We do not attempt it, young sir, for their safety, in order for the ruse to work. They may contact Cenedi, if they can.”

“But there is no word from them?” Cajeiri was distressed. “There is no word at all, nadiin-ji?”

“Being wise, they will not chatter back and forth, young sir,”

Banichi said. “They will move quickly, and they will move unpredictably, as if you were in their care. We cannot answer your questions.”

“They should not have gone at all,” Cajeiri muttered, head ducked, his mouth set in a grim line. “They should not have done it.”

Jago said sternly: “Jegari and Antaro are not your human associates, young sir. Never mistake it. They are not Gene and Artur.”

A scowl. And a young man left to sit on a jump seat, head bowed, not so much sulking, one hoped, as thinking about what she meant, in all its ramifications.

A human was totally out of place in that transaction: Man’chi pulled and pushed, and it was an emotion as extravagant and sharp and painful as anything humans felt—no reason he could offer could make it better for the boy, to be told, indeed, they were not Gene and Artur. What they did was exactly comprehensible to the boy’s instincts, if he would give way and listen to them. The paidhi had absolutely nothing to contribute in that understanding.

But in the next moment, while the engine gathered speed after the curve, Tabini crossed the claustrophobic aisle to lay a hand on his son’s shoulder and point out the ways one should exit the engine if they should crash inside the tunnelsc how ladders led to traps in the ceiling, and how he should, if worst came to worst in the tunnels or before that, find a small dark place inside the tunnels and wait until dark to get back down the hill.

“Yes,” Cajeiri said, paying close attention, and Tabini found occasion to touch his son’s cheek, approving— Push and pull of emotions, curious combination of harsh and soft treatment to Bren’s eyes, but the emotional tide in the boy at losing his companions had shifted back again, become a bright-eyed, active observation of his surroundings, his assets, the proper course to follow to gain his father’s approval—one could all but see the wheels turning.

And one knew this boy. He aspired to be a hero. If he got the chance he would do extravagantly brave things, if security or the paidhi didn’t quickly sit on him and keep him out of the line of firec God, how did a human reason with the new spark in those gold eyes, that combination of empowering sacrifice for his own welfare and the heady draft of fatherly approval?

The train slowed for another curve in that moment, as the sun came between buildings. It cast their shadow against a grassy hummock beside the tracks, and showed the shadow of their train, the fluttering transparency of the banner spread above it, the low shapes of persons on the roofs of the cars. People all along could have no doubt who they were, and where they were going.

And still they turned out as the train passed the edge of residential districts with the tunnel looming ahead, men, women, children waving at them, one group with a stick with red and black streamers attached.

A short transit through a parkland. Then a tunnel appeared in the windows, a tunnel, a dual fortification, a gateway that could be closed.

It was not.

Here we go, Bren said to himself, as if preparing for a dive down a snowy mountainside. Here we go. They were remote yet from the Bu-javid: It was the entry to the underground, the common train system that ran through the heart of the city. It would not be the greatest point of danger, unless their opposition cared nothing for casualties.

The tunnel widened to embrace them. They were swallowed up in darkness with only a row of lights in the ceiling to show their way, and those widely spaced. The lights of the engine itself illumined rock and masonry, and the double ribbon of steel that carried them.