Invader

"Meaning a handful of lords want to restore theirrights at the expense of the commons."

"One could hold that, yes. And, yes, if that is Hanks reporting to Mospheira, and the persons who have her have let her do this, andshe's done it willingly, one does rather well believe that she's at least convinced them she believes them. I take it the report she's made supports their view."

"You take it correctly. She has the opportunity, I'll be frank, to use words that would negate everything she says even if they did have a translator standing over her shoulder. There's no linguistic evidence an atevi dictated it word by word, and I'm not pleased with the content."

"I should have shot this woman," Jago muttered, "on the subway platform. I would have saved the aiji and the Association a great deal of bother."

"I've a question," Bren said, and with their attention: "Ilisidi — has always — to me — supported preservation of the environment, preservation of the culture. Not preservation of privilege."

"But," Jago said, "one must bea lord to assure the preservation of the fortresses, the land holdings, the reserves. A lord on his own can knock down ancient fortifications, rip up forest — it belongs to him. No association of mere citizens can stop him. And, no decree of the hasdrawad can dispossess the lords. The tashrid can veto, with a sufficient majority."

The airport at Wigairiin, he thought. The fourteenth-century fortifications. Knocked down for a runway.

For a lord's private plane. The lord's ancestors built the fortress. The lord inheriting it knocked the wall down, the tourists and posterity be damned.

"Do brickmasons and clericals on holiday… ever tour Wigairiin?" he asked — clearly perplexing Banichi and Jago.

"One doesn't think so," Jago said. "But I could find out this information, if there's some urgency to it."

"Nothing so urgent. One just notes — that such ordinary people do tour Malguri. With the dowager in residence. Whose doing is that?"

"Ultimately," Banichi said, "Tabini's."

"But Ilisidi has made no move to prevent it."

"Hardly prudent," Jago said.

"Nevertheless," he said.

"If some human reason prompts you to justify the dowager," Banichi said, "I would urge you, paidhi-ji, to accept atevi reasons to reserve judgment."

Things were at a bad pass when his atevi security had to remind him where things atevi began and things human ended.

"One respects the advice," he said. "Thank you. Thank you both — for your protection. For your good sense, in the face of my… occasional lapses in judgment — and security."

"Please," Jago said, "stay within our guard at Taiben. Take no chances."

He looked straight at Jago, and imagined, the way he'd imagined Jago avoiding him for the number of hours, that she intended the meeting of the eyes, that she looked at him in a very direct, very intimate way. Which made him flinch and duck.

"Considering all this," he said, trying to recover his train of thought, "in atevi ways the paidhi may be too foreign to reckon — howdid Ilisidi know about Barb the morning after I'd gotten the news? How do you think she knew that fast, if not directly from Damiri's staff? And why should Damiri and Ilisidi associate?"

There was a sober look on both opposing faces.

"Tabini has asked himself that very serious question," Banichi said. "And one does recall where Ilisidi is guesting today."

"Has he asked Damiri about it?" a human couldn't refrain from asking.

"Far too direct," Jago said. "We do lie, nadi-ji. Some of us do it very well. Certain of us even take public offense."

"Do youbelieve Damiri to be honest?"

"One can believe that Damiri-daja is quite honest," Banichi said, "and still know that she might be closer to her uncle's wishes than Tabini would wish. That is honest, paidhi-ji."

The only thing showing under the wings at Taiben was the endless prospect of trees, and at the very last the rail that ran between the airport and the township at Taiben, and the estate of Taiben, at opposite ends of the small rail line, two spurs.

And one was aware, watching that perspective unfold, that other short lines ran up to various townships, villages, hunting lodges and ancestral estates — including those of the Atigeini, and the other three lords of the valley.

The paidhi did have the rash and foolish thought that if, after collecting their luggage, they asked for a train not to Taiben but up to the Atigeini holding, in the north of the valley, they might actually have a civilized reception, a fair luncheon with Ilisidi, an exchange of civilized greetings, and a train ride back again to meet Tabini for supper at Taiben.

That was the way things went when lords met.

When the Guild met — other things resulted, and he wouldn't throw Banichi and Jago up against Cenedi and others of Ilisidi's household, not for any urging and not for any cause that he could prevent. Not that he lacked confidence Banichi and Jago would deal with the situation. And Cenedi. Who would be equally determined, at Ilisidi's order, though they'd fought together, cooperated, shared all the struggle at Malguri. In some ways, he suspected, humans who thought they had a monopoly on sensitivity couldn't imagine the feelings atevi had when some damned fool or some lord's ambition threw them into a conflict they didn't want and weren't going to win — in any personal sense.

So he was quite glad notto find any delegation from Cenedi waiting for them once they were on the ground; he was exceedingly glad that a quick security mate-up with perso

More pleasant than security, who'd had to dislodge Ilisidi from the premises last night, damned sure; security who'd gotten no sleep whatsoever last night and, looking a little less crisp than the wont of Tabini's personal guard, undoubtedly hoped that they could get some rest very soon, now. So he asked no questions whatsoever of his own and boarded the rail for a rattling, slightly antiquated train ride to the south.

It took a winding long time getting there — no one who came to Taiben was supposed to be in a hurry —

Thinking about the lander, and the drop out of space; and the fact that the trip to push the lander into the atmosphere was actually underway by now, if he remotely understood the distance the station sat from the world, or the speed of the craft shoving the lander into final descent.

Thinking about Deana Hanks, and his having listened to her explanations, and halfway believing her — that was what made him angry: he'd askedfor her help, given her the looseness in contacting atevi sources which she'd probably used to get two good men killed —

He was mad, he was damned mad. And feeling betrayed, in a very personal sense, in his own judgment of another human being — he'd have thought instinct was worth something; and he'd argued with Banichi that she'd been upset at the attack, she'd tried to warn her guards —

One of them was a fool. Again. He'd fallen for her line about searching for him because it was noble, because it was what he'd have done — the search for him was herdamn excuse for contacting what Tabini called unacceptable persons, for going outside the lines; God, she'd had a field day in the atevi opposition, and not a theoretical opposition. She'd dropped FTL into the mix, all right, and maybe that had been a mistake, but she'd also damned near fractured a province and damned near taken out Geigi's influence — Geigi was one of the most scientifically literate lords in the tashrid andin the scientific committees. Geigi had fallen into her arguments, and so had he — refused to maintain his intellectual conviction that she could possibly be the ideologue he'd thought and still do a credible job — he'd held out in the contact they'd had, because at the back of his mind had been the fear of being alone, the need for somebody human to check with, to haveher contrary but human train of thought to consider. He'd needed her.