Precursor

“You did push the right buttons, didn’t you?” he asked Sato in all the jolting about of the car. “If you sent us somewhere you shouldn’t, my security would be very upset. They’re obliged to shoot anyone who threatens me. You understand that.”

“It’s the right place,” their guide said staunchly, if anxiously. “Sometimes it just does this. And you can’t be shooting people.”

“I quite agree,” he said, finding the acquaintance of his feet with the floor increasingly uncertain. “I notice you have a gun, amid that other—” He wagged fingers, indicating the heavy load of gear. “—equipment. Tell me, do you use it on other crew? Family members, perhaps? Or have you ever used it?”

“Don’t threaten us!” Sato exclaimed, her eyes wide with fear, and he laughed.

“Don’t worry. Just don’t, under any circumstances. You really shouldn’t carry that sort of thing about.”

“Yes, sir.” He’d deeply a

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re friends.”

“I have my orders.”

“Here.” He’d tucked a candy or two in his pocket in case Kaplan turned up. He offered it.

“I can’t take it, sir.”

“Oh, come on, no one’s looking. Or are they?”

“I don’t want it, sir!”

“That’s fine. No obligation.” He pocketed the candy. There was a silent interval.

What he took for a position indicator, a dotted line on a panel and a glowing light on the schematic that he took for their destination showed, at least a good guess, that arrival was imminent.

The car slowed. They began to float, and the car repositioned itself, simply turning them as they held on.

“Interesting device,” Jago remarked.

The car stopped.

The door opened on the bitter cold of the dock, on a place they had indeed seen before, with the crew members drifting about in orange suits, following a web of handlines.

The hatch that had lately mated with the hatch of Shai-shanwas right in front of them: the right destination, indeed. A light board said, in letters a Mospheiran could read, Engaged.

Shai-shanwas almost certainly in dock.

A second lift, just next to theirs, opened a door.

And this one gave up a dozen floating crewmen with rifles, on handlines.

His own security produced guns at the first sight and in a heartbeat, all three were very well anchored and facing the others with no disadvantage.

“No!” Bren said, holding up a hand.

Everything stopped, save a handful of crew drifting on inertia and probably wishing to be less conspicuous targets.

“You’d be fools,” Bren said, in Mosphei’, to the rifle-bearing crewmen. His breath frosted copiously in the icy air. The chill and the fright together produced a damnable tendency for his voice to shake, and he determined not to let it. “Ms. Sato, kindly inform your listeners that there’s absolutely no need to blow our negotiations to hell. This is a quiet visit to our own shuttle, official business, of which we’re bound to see a tiresome lot, and a very tiresome lot if you insist on customs raking over our cargoes or armed fools standing over us. You’ve already begun one war with strangers! For God’s sake, do you think you need a second?”

“Mr. Cameron,” Sato began, and all of a sudden, bad timing, the air lock flashed a light and opened.

Atevi came drifting out, fairly briskly, disembarked, took a split second to realize guns were deployed, and immediately deployed their own.

“Hold!” Bren shouted, in one language and the other. “Hold still!”

There were twenty, thirty of the atevi, in the black of the Assassins’ Guild, all armed, all at a standoff. More were coming out.

And amid all of it, a white-haired ateva floated out: Cenedi, he would swear.

And behind Cenedi, having hooked the line efficiently with her cane, Ilisidi sailed along, in all the fur-trimmed, long-coated winter finery of court tradition. Black furs, red brocade that glittered with gold thread.

“Don’t fire!” Bren shouted out, and turned about to face his guide and the ship security perso

Rifles wavered, lifted. It was hard to tell with the holders of them in free fall, but there was uncertainty in those ranks.

There was no hesitation at all in Ilisidi. And now Tom Lund had disembarked, with four, five, six other humans to the rear of the atevi.

“Well!” the dowager said, with a wave of her free hand. “Nand’ paidhi, and what nonsense is this? Weapons?Do we see weapons?”

“A mistake,” Bren said. “Sato, she’s very a

“Sir,” Sato protested.

“If you want your agreements to hold, this is the woman you have to convince. She’s the worst possible enemy; and a damned powerful friend. You stand to lose everything, or win!”

“I’m receiving instructions,” Sato said desperately. “This wasn’t cleared!”

“The aiji dowager doesn’t clear things with her grandson or the legislature, either. Put those damn guns away.” He couldn’t control the humans, but there was one instigation to violence he could command. “ Banichi!Stand down!”

“ Yes, nandi.” Banichi made a great show of putting weapons away, by no means affecting the thirty-odd other atevi of Ilisidi's guard, but at least minutely reassuring the ship-folk.

Bren went out along the handlines to offer the dowager an extended hand which felt frozen through. Ilisidi took it in hers, floating along with remarkable dignity, and her hand lent his a burning, firelike warmth.

Tom Lund came forward, bravely mingling human targets in among the rest, and called out, with a wave of his arm, “Put the guns away! Put them away now!”

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said anxiously. “Cenedi-ji. Be at greater ease. They are anxious house guard, not accustomed to armed guests.”

Cenedi gave a signal, the back of his hand, and instantly the dowager’s guard lifted weapons up and off target, so abrupt, so disciplined a move it seemed to shake the confidence of the handful of humans who kept their guns on target… a lingering threat of some alien-distrusting mind with a nervous trigger finger; but all the armed humans had gear like Sato’s, they all were waiting for orders, and those orders seemed to come. Guns likewise lifted, uncertainly, apt to come back on target in a heartbeat.

“One must see the dowager to warmer places,” Bren said to Cenedi. “Be cautious, nadi-ji! This is the midst of a dispute, one captain is wounded and in hiding, two scoundrels are in power, hearing every word of human language, and Jase is holding the residency we have made, where things are far more reasonable.” He realized objectively he was terrified. The dowager had committed herself to the station for at least the fifteen days it would take to fit the shuttle for the return voyage. It was not just the threat of guns where they were, and Ilisidi and himself and Lund all in reach of bullets; it was far more than that, where the station and the ship were concerned. Real terrestrial authority had arrived, and the bid of Tamun and his ally for power up here in the heavens could run up against a power in their midst that simply would not bend. Species extinction was suddenly completely possible, given the scenario they were offered.

But Sato kept chattering away, a ru