Inheritor

They were up here, notably, with the establishment at Mogari-nai, which had not made Tabini happy. And if they were up here to rattle the foundations of Mogari-nai and the Messengers’ Guild, that Guild was not a warlike crew. Their hostilities mostly expressed themselves in the paidhiin’s fouled-up mail.

There was also the matter of the tower up by Wiigin, and the pilots and the communications regulations. That as well as the communications fallouts he was sure was on the agenda, if they were paying an official call on Mogari-nai, and he certainly didn’t rule it out.

And if he got all that straightened out, he might possibly get another chance to make a phone call, this one with the weight of the aiji and the aiji-dowager behind him, to crack the phone system.

He wondered what had happened with his family now. No calls, he was reasonably sure, at least nothing that had gotten past Mogari-nai, through which the incoming calls from Mospheira were all routed. By the luck that dogged him in that department, there was a good chance any incoming call that Toby sent was hung up in politics. Ilisidi, if she was pla

So he walked and he stretched his legs. He walked closer to the sea than he would have liked Jase to come, and he shouldn’t have done it. Jase followed him, with the boy from Dur trotting along with him, pointing out the sights, telling them there was, approximately, Wiigin, in that haze across the bay, and there was Dur, one could just see the lights in the gathering gloom, and that was the fishing port, but his father’s house at Dur-wajran, thatwas on the height of the island, which had been a fortress in the days of the first sailing ships, but the inhabitants of Saduri on the body of the mainland, with their deeply inland harbor, had attempted to take the trade, even if they’d had to dredge the bay, because of the deeper draft of modern ships.

It was all done with scarcely a breath. And Jase looked a little desperate.

“Supper,” Jago came to say, “nadiin-ji.”

They had set the tents in a semicircle, the back of each to the wind that escaped the knoll. The company settled down to a lightless supper as the dusk settled about them, and there was good hot food from the insulated containers.

There was also a wind getting up that, in Bren’s estimation, was going to make two humans glad of their jackets and the insulated tents before morning. The synthetic canvas fluttered and rippled in the wind, and the clouds flew in rags above their heads, gray in an apricot sky.

The mechieti grazed in apparent contentment. Jago had stowed the computer, little good that it was besides mental comfort, and had put it in his tent. They passed out sandwiches and had tea from instant heat containers in insulated cups.

When the dowager wantedmodernity, it attended her. Clearly so.

“So, Ja-son-paidhi,” Ilisidi said. “How do you fare?”

“Well, nand’ dowager, thank you.” Jase was on his very best behavior, and bowed with courtly grace.

“And you, son of Dur-wajran?”

“I am well, nand’ dowager. Very well.”

“And you, nand’ paidhi?”

“Curious, nand’ dowager, about your purpose here.”

“Ah.” Dark was coming down on them. “Curious. I thought you might be. What do you thinkwe’re doing out here besides pasturing the mechieti and enjoying the sea air?”

“A

He took a chance. He was relatively certain of that much.

And he amused the dowager, whose shoulders rose and fell as she leaned upon her silver-headed cane. “The earth station, they call it. This unsightly great bowl. An offense, I say.”

“A shame they put it on such a lovely view. But how else could it also watch Mospheira?”

They sat crosslegged. On ground still cold and damp with spring. And ate fish sandwiches.

“Do you think so?” Ilisidi asked, and he had the feeling that it was no casual, habitual challenge, but a question very much to the point of the hour. “Let me tell you, nadiin, before the aijiin sat in Shejidan, before humans were a suspicion in the skies, before foolish atevi had made stupid smoking machines to run on rails across the country and frighten the creatures that lived there, and before that eyesore of an earth station existed or a petal sail had dropped down to a

“The island of Dur,” the young voice said, “was held by the heresy of the Gan, and they used to send ships up and down the coast to collect gold and grain, and they killed anybody that opposed them. They held the whole coast and they raided on Mospheira. But aijiin from several townships began to follow the aiji of Wiigin, and they raided the island and set up—set up our line.”

“Wiigin it was,” the dowager mused. And pointed a dark forefinger. “Source of this traitorous tower, this hotbed of conspiracy.”

“But now,” the young man said, “nand’ dowager, we follow the Barjidi.”

“Since the War of the Landing. That now. Two hundred years of now.”

“Since the War, nand’ dowager.” The boy had become very quiet, very wary, sensing that he was being stalked, Bren was sure, and asked himself to what end Ilisidi was proceeding.

“The petal sails came down on Mospheira,” Ilisidi recalled, “the wandering machines tore up the land and the stones of the Gan, and for a time that was convenient for Barjida-aiji, that the last stronghold of the Gan should fall to such an unforeseen threat. The grandmother stones were downed not by fleshly hands, but by these reeking machines. Machines struck down the heresy.”

“Yes,” the boy said. “And all the atevi on Mospheira left and settled on this coast.”

“Foolish politics,” Ilisidi said. “The Gan lords attempted to deal with what they thought were men descended from the moon. And it killed them. Did it not, nand’ paidhi?”

He did not want part of any quarrel, ancestral or otherwise. The atevi of the coast held just reasons for dislike of humans: many of them had moved off Mospheira to escape human contact, human ways; more had moved off when the War of the Landing had ravaged the island; the last had left when the Treaty of Mospheira had given the land to humans, the whole of a vast and once prosperous island.

“We did each other great harm, nand’ dowager.” A gust battered them.

“A good night to be under canvas,” Ilisidi said. “And a strong wind rising. But what would you tell our guest from Dur, regarding humans? Should he fear them?”

Loaded question. Very.

“Yes, nand’ dowager. At least one should remain prudent.”

“Are all humans on the island reasonable people?”

“Some are, nand’ dowager. Some are very well disposed to the peace. And I have discovered some are not.”

It was an infelicity of two, unbalanced, positive and negative. It could not be allowed to stand. It was, in its way, a question. But by inviting the posing of two, the dowager had encouraged it. Thiswas the difference between competency and fluency: thiswas the line he’d begun to cross in his off-the-cuff negotiations, the line across which humans who’d dared it had frequently blundered. Hefelt a kind of elation, aware of what he was doing as Wilson-paidhi never had figured it, aware the dowager was getting responses with which shecould know she was understood.

And with a twist of her mouth, as at some sour taste, the dowager added,

“The Kadigidi are fools.”