Defender

A hovering grandmother, a vitally important child with security attendant, a handworked and expensive cloth—none of these were the ship’s image of a coup, Bren hoped. It would hardly be the image of such an event in Shejidan, if one didn’t intimately know the chief participant.

They’d rescued the precious throw and substituted infirmary disposables. And Sabin was both semi-conscious and miserable.

“We shall stay personally and assure ourselves that the captain is well, nadiin-ji,” Ilisidi said. “We have antidotes, which I have ordered be at hand during any di

“Aiji-ma, in case there should be any fatal outcome, one would hardly wish to have supplied a drug—”

“Translate!” Ilisidi said. Bren translated, and subsequently accepted a vial from one of Ilisidi’s young men.

“This may be of use,” Bren added, passing it to a medical officer, hoping to very heaven it might not be a fatal dose. “To be taken by mouth.” He knew this one. “The dowager’s medic provides it, out of years of experience with such accidents. It should be minor, except the headache. These are complex substances. I advise taking this remedy.”

“It should be safe.” Jase said at his shoulder, and in Ragi. “Stay here, Bren-ji, and keep matters quiet. Don’t have it look worse than it is. I’m going to the bridge.”

“There will be time to discuss,” Ilisidi said, silk and steel, with a tender smile, “ship-aiji.”

Jase didn’t say a thing. Ship-aiji. She’d just made him that, in very fact.

Ogun hadn’t necessarily wanted Jase here. Now he was. Now he was in charge, with power to abort or delay the mission. Ogun hadn’t necessarily wanted Sabin in charge of the mission, either—hadn’t liked her, and possibly hadn’t trusted her associations, to put it in Ragi.

Possibly far too many of his thoughts came in Ragi these days; but he believed in what he saw. He believed that, all evidence accounted, Sabin was a potential asset, only a potential one, and that things trembled on the brink of very bad mistakes.

He saw Jase board the lift, taking Sabin’s men out with him, leaving Kaplan.

Very bad mistakes. Which couldn’t be allowed to happen. He intended to go inside the treatment room, but Ilisidi and her escort came, and they crowded into the room to the evident distress of the medics.

“There’s limited room here,” the chief medic said angrily. “Sir, if you’ll persuade them outside…”

“This is ‘Sidi-ji.” The crew knew the dowager, knew her ma

“We’ve no intention of giving the captain another unidentified alien substance…”

“You’re the aliens, sir, by way of precise accuracy, and I do urge the dowager has a far more exact knowledge of native chemistry. This is a medication I’ve had, and if I didn’t think it would ease the symptoms I’d never urge it.—Captain? You’re offered an antidote. I’ll vouch for it, on my personal honor. I’ve had such an incident myself.”

Sabin was just conscious enough, and she’d had it on far more alcohol and a far better cushion of previous dishes: the one might accelerate, the other cushion the effects of the substance, and for all his assurances to the doctors, Ilisidi hadn’thad that extended an experience at poisoning humans.

“At this point,” Sabin said, teeth chattering, eyes clenched rapidly after one second’s attempt to look him in the eye, “at this point, hell, it can’t be worse.”

It could.

“Captain,” the doctor said.

“I said it can’t be worse!” Shouting was not a good idea. Not at all a good idea.

“Just let her drink it,” Bren said. “Hang onto it as long as possible, captain.” Sabin’s heaving stomach knew exactly what he meant.

“Give it,” Sabin said.

Clearly the medics weren’t in favor of native medicines. But one uncapped the vial and offered it, stoppered with a gloved thumb.

Sabin sucked the black liquid down between shivers.

“I don’t know whether it would help or hurt to get gravity aboard,” Bren said. “At least dim the lights in here.”

“Listen to him!” Sabin said. “He’s the only one who knows anything!”

The headache had hit. It was probably a good thing. They were pumping fluids in via a tube.

The attendance of atevi had taken position not just in the corner, but stacked rather as if seated in a theater, a black and brocade wall of watchers, Banichi and Jago among the foremost, Cajeiri’s solemn young eyes staring amazedly at the goings-on.

Things settled. Sabin drifted with her eyes shut, medics monitoring, making notations, conferring in low voices among themselves. Bren watched, having learned in his mother’s crises and in a precarious lifetime somewhat to interpret what he heard, which at least indicated to him that vital signs were solid. Sabin’s pulse was racing—he remembered that effect—but not badly so. It went right along with the headache, which by Sabin’s determined, jaw-clenched quiet was indeed what Sabin was feeling.

“Poisoned,” Sabin said during one of her moments of lucidity. “Damn, I knew it.”

“Yet you came to di

“Brooks.” Sabin turned her head to appeal to the chief medic, a movement which brought nausea. She made a grab for a suction bag, and nausea replaced thought for a moment.

Bren felt pangs of his own—the memory of that illness didn’t go away.

“Damn you,” Sabin said behind the bag, face averted.

“Yes, captain,” Bren said. “Damn me as you like. But I’m very sure you’d walk through fire to an objective. I suggest this is the fire, and there is an overwhelmingly important objective to be won. I came to a like conclusion once. I suggest you very well know what that objective is: their respect and their cooperation… and that you’ve been tested. Favorably tested, I might add. Do you want the objective? Do you want their cooperation, unmediated by me or by anyone else?”

Sabin beat the nausea, dismissed the attending medic, put up a hand that trailed tubing and wiped sweat from her face. A medic started to dry it with a cloth, and she batted it away.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “ Don’t anybody touch me.” She added a string of profanities, and breathed heavily for a moment. Bren knew. Bren utterly knew, inside and out, the war going on in Sabin’s gut, and in Sabin’s very intelligent brain.

Sabin—slowly, this time—turned her head in Bren’s direction, not without a sideward glance toward the towering mass of atevi. Sabin’s eyes watered tears that stood in globules and blinked into small beads on her lashes. It was physiological reaction, not weakness, not—Bren was quite sure—abject fear, no fear of man, atevi, or the devil.

“Damn you,” Sabin said. “You’re in ourship, and you’re alive on our tolerance.”

“Captain,” Bren said, “you’re wanting supplies from ourstation and ourplanet.”

“Your planet,” Sabin scoffed. “You’re human. Or were. Or ought to be.”

“I am. And I still say my planet, my people, my government and my leaders. We’re not your colonists any more. And through your character, your skills, your actions over a lengthy acquaintance, you’ve won the planet’s agreement, not only in this, but in everything you could want. Everything you came to the dowager’s quarters to get, you’ve gotten—if you’re not such a fool as to let a cultural misunderstanding blow up the deal.” He knew Sabin’s temper—that it was extreme—but always under control. And he’d been on the station long enough to know two more things about Sabin, first that the crew’s dislike of her did get under her skin, and that she did make occasional efforts at humanity—and second, that there was a requisite level of honesty and bluntness in dealing with her. Do her credit, truth was one of her virtues. “My apologies, captain, my personal and profound apologies for what you’re going through at the moment. To this moment I don’t know if it was intentional. Atevi custom can be arcane. But the dowager’s attendance here—” He gestured with a glance toward the dark wall of atevi. “—Her attendance on you is an extreme statement. She’s saying she views you favorably. She respects you. She respects your strength.” Ego repair seemed in order, and there were qualities he knew Sabin respected. “Because you haven’t buckled, captain, thereforeshe’ll be able to cooperate with you, the same way she cooperates with the Mospheiran president and the aiji himself. There arevery few authorities that she remotely respects. There’s only one authority on earth she halfway abides, but she allows a very few equals. Thereforeyou were at her table; therefore she sat through—let me very bluntly refresh your memory, captain—your pushing her very, very hard to see what she’d do. And you know you did that. You meant to do it. You wanted to provoke her to push back. Well, now you’ve both proved something. So can we get beyond that, if you please, and walk through that fire, and get to what both sides really want out of this voyage?”