Defender

“I’ll attend to that.”

“Do.—Banichi-ji.”

“Nandi.”

“There’s hazard in moving about the corridors. Understand that, nadi-ji.”

“One understands, nandi.”

“There may be hard feelings. And suspicion, nadi. Very deep suspicion.”

“There’s something about being that sick, among strangers,” Bren said in Ragi, “that makes one re-evaluate the world.”

“I don’t count on it,” Jase said bluntly. And in ship-speak: “Mr. Hammond, take over while I make sure our guests reach five-deck.”

Not the deepest cover they could imagine, but Jase put a hand on Bren’s back and walked him to the lift, his bodyguard attending.

Jase punched five, inside. The doors shut between them and the bridge. The lift started into motion.

“Tell me this one,” Jase said. “Did you know?”

“I didn’t. I honestly didn’t. I don’t think it was sure until it went difficult at the table.”

“Dammit, Bren.”

“Dammit, indeed. But she and the dowager exchanged frank words. Very frank words. There may be communication.”

“We’re going out there in the deep dark with no agreement. With everything in flux.”

“Not wholly our doing. This limiting the dowager to fifth deck. This niggling away at the agreements started long before the dowager even came up to the station.” The lift reached bottom. The door opened. They couldn’t delay in conversation without provoking human suspicions. “You know Ramirez expanded agreements: you know he expanded them and you know he pushed, and you know the danger in that. He pushed Tabini into haste, and when he died, damned right we had an emergency. We had a council of captains without a useful clue attempting to change pace on the course we’d been following breakneck for years, all on human promises—”

“It doesn’t give you leave—”

“Not excluding Sabin all along being outvoted by the Ramirez-Ogun combination and Ramirez putting youin. That’s going to be with us. No, I don’t trust her, Jase-nadi. I don’t see a woman who’s open to strangeness, not now, not yet. I see a woman who shouldn’t be in charge of foreign contact, and yet that’s where she’s ended, and you and I know we’re in trouble.”

“This is our household,” Jase said in a shaken voice. “Do you get that, Bren? I’m willing to take an office I don’t want and try to make things work in non-technicals, in the things I cando. And hereafter—I may speak the language, but man’chi is to the ship.”

“You know how to sit in a two-species meeting and get out of it with a civilized agreement. That’s the point, Jase. That’s the very point.”

“We can’t have another incident like this.”

“I expect the dowager will invite Sabin back to di

“I expect Sabin will invite the dowager first.”

That, in fact, seemed very likely. “We’re going to have our hands full, Jase-paidhi.”

“I’ll get that tape,” Jase said, and reached for the lift control panel. “Out. Takehold’s going in effect in short order. I’ve got to drop by and talk to Sabin.”

“Luck,” he said, and got out, with his escort. Cenedi had a man on watch by the lift—a precaution. “Understand—no more restriction of our movements.”

“None,” Jase said. “Not on my watch.”

The door shut. The lift departed.

Bren cast a glance to the borrowed escort. “They stand ready to move the ship, nadiin. I send you to the dowager, with thanks.—Banichi.”

Banichi walked with him. The escort walked behind.

“Jago should come back down, to ride through this with us,” Bren said. Maybe it wasn’t wise, but things were about to change on a large scale. They were about to do something his gut insisted was dangerous—even if it was only getting up to speed, to clear the vicinity of the only world he’d known—and he wanted all the people he cherished safe and taken care of.

“I’ll pass that order,” Banichi said.

“Sabin should be safe. Her own people will see to her.”

“One hopes, Bren-ji.”

They walked down the curve of the corridor, past the dowager’s guarded door—two men there; and that place absorbed their escort.

They reached that area of hall that was the paidhi’s establishment—his own quarters. Doors were all shut.

Banichi spoke to Narani on his personal communications, and the door very quickly whisked open on a room vastly changed since the explosion of baggage.

There was order. There was his bed, freed of baggage, lid own, sparklingly modern.

It wasn’t Mospheira, it wasn’t Shejidan: it was modern, it was stark, spartan, and scary. He almost wished for the clutter, he very much wished for the halls of the Bu-javid, those halls where every carpet was hand-worked, antique, convolute in design; where draperies had one pattern and half a dozen vases of carefully selected flowers had another.

But there, right above his desk, in strong light, hung three globes—like Ilisidi’s banquet globes, transparent, and containing green leaves—growing leaves, he discovered, and then recognized them. Fortunate three. Living plants.

Bindanda had had a hand in this, he was quite sure. Had he not given Bindanda Sandra Johnson’s cuttings to establish?

And here they were, green, growing, an oasis, Bindanda’s little secret. He’d entirely forgotten. Some sort of medium, a hole to let the vines trail out—there being only a leaf-tip at the moment.

He’d never suspected Tatiseigi’s spy of such kind sentiment. “Bindanda offers these,” Narani said. “They’re just rooted. Would you care for tea before the ship moves, paidhi-ji?”

There were atevi established here. Of course, silly thought, be very sure there was tea, it was hot, and it could just be delivered before the warning siren.

He sat in the reclining chair, sipped his tea in a disposable cup while staff hurried about.

Jago appeared, right with the siren, on her way through to the quarters she shared with Banichi.

“Don’t take such chances, Jago-ji!” he begged her. “Kindly be earlier.”

“One hears, nadi.” Jago wasn’t inclined to argue.

And would do exactly as she had to do, he was quite sure.

“How does Sabin fare?” he asked.

“Asleep, one believes, nadi.”

A verbal warning, over the intercom: Jase’s voice. “ Acceleration in one minute. Count has begun. Take hold.”

“Go,” he said to Jago. “Quickly.”

He was belted in. Staff had gone to safe positions. He drank the last of the tea, wadded up the cup and held on to it… a physics experiment, he thought, once they were underway. Or he’d just hold it until there was an all-clear.

His heart beat faster and faster.

The first movement was a great deal like the lift’s acceleration, in the core. The illusion of gravity grew stronger and stronger, until the chair seemed horizontal.

He stared at the far wall that was, for the duration, the ceiling, scared, and with no useful place to spend a Mospheiran’s long-cultivated fear of flying.

For no reason and out of nowhere in particular, he thought of his mother’s apartment, and a lost cufflink, and the last visit before things changed in the family for good and all—

It was the last holiday they’d been together. He remembered that cufflink going down the heating register, in a room his mother constantly kept ready for him.

For the black sheep of the family.

He remembered breakfast in his mother’s apartment… and didn’t know whether she was still alive—a human attachment simply lost in the works of nations and captains. He’d had his one chance to go home, and hadn’t even made a phone call.

He couldn’t blame anyone else for thatchoice.

The ship went on accelerating

No way to call out Wait?

No way now…

In point of fact… fear reached a level and stayed there, and fell behind.

The ship traveled, and, different than a flight here, or there, separating him from a situation— Phoenixwas leaving the station, leaving the whole world behind.