Defender

A leader took care of his own. A leader preserved those he led. A leader became passionately distressed at a threat to what was his.

But the high leaders, the aijiin, didn’t bring up their own children. They passed them around, fostered them out to high-level relatives and trusted associates to be tutored, taught ma

The boy would never, perhaps, forget this assembly in the tomb of his grandfather. That speech from his father would brand itself on a boy’s memory. Even given species differences, that was likely true.

But how did a human understand the situation that might logically relegate a child elsewhere? Or even dispose of him? It happened in the machimi, in the hard, brutal feudal age. One didn’thear of it happening in modern times.

And there were some things he had always been a little hesitant to ask even the atevi he trusted with his life. But the questions nagged him.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said, as the rails clicked beneath the wheels, as the car took a turn he well knew, “Mospheiran humans regard their children very highly, protect them at all costs, and Mospheirans generally don’t hand off their children to raise—” He supposed in that understanding his own father was not quite respectable, but he tried to simplify the case. And tried not to insult the people he lived with. “So I remain perplexed about Cajeiri’s situation, to put it very delicately. Is there satisfaction with him? Is he in any way the focus of this ceremony? Why did Tabini ask me here, and why is Cajeiri suddenly with Ilisidi, when I thought he was with Tatiseigi, and has thatanything to do with this event?”

They were mildly amused, and perhaps a little puzzled.

“Regarding the invitation,” Banichi said—Banichi had had thatquestion a dozen times in the last few days, “one still fails to understand the reason. We have kept a careful ear to the Guild, Bren-ji, and no one has given us a clue. Regarding the heir, Tatiseigi has appealedto the dowager to take the boy in charge: the dowager has received Tatiseigi, and the boy packed his bags last night.”

“The dowager’s plane has entered the hangar,” Jago said. “Her crew has taken quarters in the Bu-javid.”

Thatwas interesting: Ilisidi was not, then, returning to Malguri immediately. She was staying in the Bu-javid with the boy in tow, and staying at least long enough to warrant a hangar for her private jet.

“One fears for the porcelains,” Banichi said.

“His own parents would not—forgive me for a distasteful question—harm him?”

“No,” Jago said quickly. “No, nadi-ji.”

What do they feel?was the question he tried to ask, and wondered whether he ought just to blurt it out and trust his long relationship—but Banichi and Jago themselves were father and daughter: he had had a parent-child relationship right in front of him for years, and stillcouldn’t quite decipher what they thought, or felt, except a strong loyalty—no, they existed within the same man’chi, and that was different: they’d served the aiji before they attached to him, still within that man’chi, and that told him nothing about their own ties to each other.

“I remain bewildered,” he said to them.

“So are we all, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “So are the lords in the Bu-javid. So are the newsservices.”

“That’s at least informative,” he said. “They did broadcast it.”

“To the whole aishidi’tat,” Jago said.

“And the station, I’ll imagine.”

“One believes so,” Banichi said.

“Curious. Troubling, nadiin-ji.”

“Your staff is troubled, too,” Jago said. “But we detected nothing aimed at you, nandi.”

“Rather I’m aimed at someone else, perhaps.”

“Yet we don’t detect that, either,” Banichi said. “And we gather nothing from usual sources. It’s all very curious.”

“What is the relationship of a child to parent?”

He amused them. Jago laughed softly. “It depends on the parent.”

“It depends on the child,” Banichi said.

“ Thischild, nadiin-ji. I know I could never explain either of you.”

“Cajeiri is bright, precocious, and the porcelains are in danger. If one could advise the aiji, best foster him to ourGuild, to teach him where to put his elbows.”

“Everyone has something to teach, is that it?”

“To the aiji’s heir?” Banichi asked. “Very many have something to teach.”

“Yet he has no security to speak of. When no one else draws a breath without security.”

“He has a great deal of security,” Banichi said, “in the man’chi of those in charge of him. He learns to rely on them. And they learn what he will do.”

The train reached another curve. The protected windows obscured everything outside, but he had a vision of where they were, a brief stretch of wild land before the airport.

“Do you suppose this transfer of the boy to Ilisidi’s hands, coupled with my presence, coupled with this honor to Valasi, and her attendance, and mine—all sums up to a declaration of peace in the household? Ilisidi supporting the aiji’s push to space?”

“Her visit to the station did that quite well,” Jago said.

“Yet something might be afoot in the east,” Banichi said. “Or something might be brewing closer to Shejidan.”

Never mind that atevi had no word for friendor love. Enemytranslated closely enough. One who threatens my interestsapplied on both sides of the strait.

What they thought of a human’s prolonged association with the dowager as well as Tabini—Well, atevi had an untranslatable word for a person who bridged a gap and created an association they’d rather see in hell. Troublemakerwas close. And that described him, for sure.

And Tabini made a point of having him down to the planet and then sending him back, dragging him like a lure past certain noses?

Half his primary security wasn’t on the planet—couldn’t therefore watch his computer, and Tabini’s security hadn’t wanted people carrying packets into the mausoleum, a situation Banichi and Jago had not, in fact, been warned of, not until two of Tabini’s staff showed up not only to assist and guard the baggage while the two of them guarded him, but to take charge of the offending object. On the one hand it could be simple indication they were being strict with the lords and didn’t want to make an exception in his case. On the other—his stomach reacted—it could have robbed him of one bodyguard or set a stranger with him, which Banichi and Jago wouldn’t allow, not even for Tabini’s men—or it could all be a ploy to get their hands on the computer. Banichi and Jago were as nervous as he had ever seen them and, when that was presented to them, about as put out as he had ever seen them. One rarely saw them vexed with the authority that ruled them all—but vexed they had been. They’d been a week on the planet, and suddenly and without warning, no, the computer couldn’t go with them into the service, even when they were told the service would run close to shuttle launch?

So here they were, having gotten through it, headed back to orbit with no more explanation than before, but at least back into his own security, back into the safety of a closed world, where such surprises wouldn’t come up. Much as he missed the world, much as he pined for blue sky and the heave of the deep sea under him, much as he missed the people he couldn’t take with him—he knew the world up there was safe. He ranhis own section of the world up there, and he knew what was going on in it.

Down here he’d had to take the computer back, not knowing what might have been done in two hours. And he wasn’twholly sure Algini, the best computer wizard on his staff, had the expertise or resources to find out quickly—not compared to the resources Tabini-aiji could draw on.