Defender

There was a change. The aiji’s heir took his place, not with uncle Tatiseigi, but one place down, still in the front row, with great-grandmother Ilisidi.

Cameras were discreet, but in evidence, and cameramen shifted slightly to get a good view of Ilisidi and the boy. This was going out across the continent: a ceremony of national unity and a memorial in respect for the past, it might be: but it was also a public function in which the alignment of public figures was highly significant.

So the aiji-dowager stood there now before Valasi’s sarcophagus, just visible in the tail of his eye. She was diminutive for an ateva, white-haired with age, leaning on that cane… sharp eyes taking in every nuance of expression and surely conscious of the camera. The boy stood stock still, just visible past Cenedi’s black uniform—Cenedi also being Guild security, oh yes. Guild security was all through the assembly, despite the limited seating.

A war of flowers out there in the corridor: of colors, of position in here—and a sense of progress and opposition in delicate balance, with the Assassins’ Guild to guarantee good behavior.

But far, far better than the alternative.

The aiji’s immediate household filed in. That was Tabini, Lady Damiri, and theirattendant security. Tabini-aiji was in black and red, his house colors. Damiri wore gold and green, the Atageini colors, and carried a lily in her hands, strong contrast to her black skin, amid the glitter of emeralds. They took their places, finishing the first row.

All seats were filled. There was a little murmur of expectation.

Then a bell sounded.

Utter silence descended. A camera changed focus. That was the only sound now, lamplight momentarily gilding an imprudent lens.

That stroke of the bell called for meditation.

Next would come a statement from the head of house—Tabini, in this case. Bren had read the program somewhat before he entered a shadow too deep for humans to read.

And whatever the aiji had to say, the gathered lords would parse it for every detail. It was important—an address that could, if it went wrong, break the union of lords apart. It always could. Any chance word, gone amiss, could break the Association at any time—and in this context, bets were doubled. Tabini had made deals with human authorities, sent atevi to work on the space station, admitting a flood of new technologies. He’d had to, for a whole host of economic and practical reasons that sliced right across the ordinary order of politics, throwing conservatives into alliance with the most liberal of western powers.

He’d had to reach across traditional lines, across ethnical lines—across associational lines.

And so the agreement with humans widened, policy deliberately blind to the causes of the last world war, dancing across the shards of old resentments, skipping over divides of opinion that had once swum with blood.

Most of all, the crisis in the heavens and the need to secure a voice in that resolution had shoved the whole economy into a hellishly scary rush, a fever pitch run that no one at first had thought would last more than a month.

No longer than three years.

Then no longer than six.

As yet there was no slowdown, no cooldown, no pause for breath—and no meeting of the associated lords—until this.

The silence after that bell was so absolute that breathing itself seemed a disturbance… and in that silence, of all things, someone dropped a program, a crack of parchment on stone that set a twitch—if not a killing reflex—into every hair-triggered, Guild-trained nerve in the chamber.

Every Guild member had to skip a heartbeat. Every lord present—had to make a conscious decision not to dive below the benches.

But it was only the next aiji, theirsomeday ruler, diving almost to the edge of the flower-decked sarcophagus to rescue that wayward, unseemly folio.

In his haste it escaped his fingers on his retreat. Twice.

Bren winced.

Three times.

The boy had it. Scrambled back to his place in the standing line.

Cajeiri, Tabini’s and Damiri’s, the hope of the Association, Tatiseigi’s grand-nephew—was the height and weight of the average human teenager—but not, by any means, average, human, or teenaged. Cajeiri tried—God knew he tried, but somehow his feet found obstacles, his hands lost their grip on perfectly ordinary objects, and when Cajeiri would swear to all gods most fortunate that he was standing still, everyone else called it fidgeting.

Now of all times… in front of the whole assembled Association, the lords of the aishidi’tat, this was notime for boys to be boys, or for a child to be—whatever he might be.

Cajeiri was invisible in the first row again. Silence hung all about him. The dignity of the highest houses settled on his young shoulders. Tabini, Tatiseigi—now Ilisidi, in whose care the young unfortunate attended the ceremony—were all in question in that behavior. Fosterage was the rule of the great houses, once a child of rank left the cradle. Tatiseigi, the maternal uncle, had had a go at applying courtly polish, in the rural, rigid politics of the Atageini stronghold in the central west. Now Ilisidi had him: in her district, modernistmeant someone who installed a flush toilet in a thousand-year-old stronghold.

God help the boy.

A second bell. Solemnity recovered. This was the second point, fragile second, unfortunate second: atevi lived by numbers, died by the numbers. Twoof anything presumed there would be a third. There mustbe a third. The very note, echoing in the stone recesses of the place, on this occasion, gathered up the tension in the air and prepared to braid it into a cord… if the third bell, please God, would only ring without unfortunate omen.

Cajeiri held himself absolutely still. Two would ring ominously even in an atevi six-year-old’s brain. Twoalways meant pay attention: another will follow.

Bren had been to Malguri himself. In a way, he wished he could go back there, have another try of his own at a life a human wasn’t regularly admitted even to see. In a certain measure he so envied the boy that chance.

Ilisidi had her hands full. He did know that. The boy, thus far, with the best intentions, had destroyed two historic porcelains, set off a major security alarm, and ridden a startled mechieta across newly-poured cement in Tatiseigi’s formal garden.

Finally, unbearably, with the least shifting of bodies in anticipation, Tabini, head of house, foremost of the Ragi atevi, aiji of the whole aishidi’tat, moved out of the row to the single lighted lamp that sat before the sarcophagus.

Tabini, tall shadow, took a slender straw, took light from one lamp and lit one of two others.

Two lamps lit.

Jago, armed and informed, nudged Bren’s hand with the back of hers. Pay attention. Be on your guard.

Banichi, on his other side, didn’t move.

Every bodyguard in the whole chamber must be thinking the same, prepared for anything. It was in all the machimi, the history-plays: in the feudal age, in Malguri’s age, the time of bright ba

Hearts beat, atevi, and in one case, human, with utter trepidation.

Tabini, damn him, knew it. The third bell had not yet rung. And Tabini turned, in that terrible, unprecedented interval.

“ I speak,” Tabini declared, in that resonant, still-young voice, “between the second and the third bell. We live… between the second and the third bell of our associated lives. We live… on the edge of decision and chance. We live… between expectation and fulfillment. Between the second and the third bell of our collective existence, I am Valasi’s son, I am Valasi’s heir… I amValasi’s successor.”