Destroyer

“They are humans, boy.”

“You rely on the paidhi-aiji, mani-ma, so I could rely on them!”

Time for the paidhi-aiji, a bystander, to duck his head, cling to his seat, and above all not to think unhappy thoughts about what grief the dowager’s reliance on him had brought to the world.

“Impertinent youth, to dare compare two untried boys with the paidhi-aiji.”

“They may be reliable, mani-ma, when they grow up,” Cajeiri protested.

“When they have grown up,” Ilisidi said, “and when you have acquired an adult mind, great-grandson—then give us your mature opinion. Until then, profoundly apologize to the paidhi-aiji.”

Bren looked off toward the staff consultations, quite sure he would surprise an unseemly sulk if he glanced toward Cajeiri. He waited for the dutiful, soulless, “One apologizes, nandi.”

And didn’t hear it.

“Bren-nandi was eight, once, and he grew to a more fortunate year, mani-ma. So even did my great-grandmother.”

“Impertinent boy!”

“But it is true you were eight once, and you grew up wise and clever. So they might, and I might.”

“Too impertinent by far,” Ilisidi said. “Wait until we stand again on solid ground, young gentleman. Then we will see if substance accompanies that sauce.”

“Yes, mani-ma,” Cajeiri said, and added, under his breath and with a forward glance: “One does respect the paidhi-aiji at all times.”

“One is grateful, nandi,” Bren ventured to murmur, as Ilisidi waved the imitation of a blow toward Cajeiri’s ear.

“Intolerable,” Ilisidi said. “And growing more impertinent by the day. We shall be glad to deliver him to his father.”

Fortunately phrased, auspicious wish. He personally took heart from the notion that the dowager, knowing her own people, and with her own ambition, had not given up on finding Tabini alive.

Nor, apparently, had she given up supporting him.

But he had gathered all he was going to for the moment. The mood was broken.

And somewhere in the exchange of names, the gathering of reference points and names he had not thought of in years, he found himself sunk back into those referents as he went back to his seat. The dowager’s analogy of standing in a rift was apt. He had been brought in to bridge a rift of his own—and was it entirely his fault if even Tabini, who had a thoroughly atevi set of instincts, had misjudged a situation in relying on him so much? They’d known what they were doing was dangerous, hastening the trickle of technology into a spring flood in response to trouble on the island, incursions onto the mainland, and—and the arrival of the ship from its centuries-long absence. In the press of events, a good number of atevi had come to agree with their actions. Even the dowager, prominent among the environmentalist and traditionalist element, still approved what they had done, to the extent of going into space herself and attempting to assert atevi authority over their own world and its surrounding space.

He found himself traveling down old, old mental cha

It all grew familiar to him again, like putting on an old, comfortable coat. They weren’t advancing into unreadable chaos. They were coming home—home, whatever its current condition, and there were resources he would be so busy laying his hands on, he wouldn’t have time to panic. They had resources with them, for that matter, and if saving the mainland government meant setting Ilisidi at the head of the aishidi’tat until they could find Tabini, there were northern and central and eastern lords that would approve that stopgap measure in a heartbeat. There were lords he was sure that would approve any aiji at all who wasn’t a usurping duplicitous Kadigidi backed by detested southerners. There was a solid center to the aishidi’tat that would accept compromises of every sort to gain the reestablishment of a solid, known power in place of Murini, who had no majority, only a coalition of powers that sooner or later would cut his throat and fight for power of their own, taking everything down to chaos with him.

Oh, yes, count on it: each and every one of the lords of the west would have a grand plan how to avoid chaos in the south. Each and every plan would favor their own interests—altruism did not run strong outside man’chi—but atevi also had their ways of coming to a workable arrangement, pragmatic in the extreme, and faster-moving than the Mospheiran legislature on its best behavior.

The lords already knew what had to be done to establish a lasting order: put power back in the hands of a non-regional authority, a clan with no particular regional axe to grind, which was exactly the position the Ragi atevi had satisfied, in the person of Tabini-aiji, wherever he was—or in the person of his heir or a regent for that heir. It was Tabini’s line that had been able to build the aishidi’tat. It was only Tabini’s line that could hold its neutrality in regional disputes—or at least, convince the participants of that neutrality.

He felt better, thinking of that. Tabini, for one thing, would not have had every hand against him, only a critical few. He would have had support. He likely still had.

He called Banichi and Jago, with Tano and Algini, into proximity, to trade what they had gotten from Cenedi for what he had gotten from the dowager, and thereby to point up certain lords as likely and certain others as dubious in their usefulness.

“Most of all,” he said, “and key to the situation in the central provinces, we need to ascertain what position the Atageini have taken.”

“Not forgetting we must also arrange something to protect Atageini interests, and Lord Geigi’s province in the west, nandi,” Banichi said. “They will have been under attack already.”

“And to ascertain the position of the aiji-dowager’s neighbors to the east,” Jago added.

Ilisidi’s neighbors, to the far east, were a band of hidebound conservatives who had been dubious enough they had any reasonable place in the aishidi’tat in the first place, and who had acquiesced to it because Ilisidi had dragged them into it and linked their interests to her influence in the government.

“They may have grown doubtful and restive in her absence, nadiin-ji,” he said. “But she is back, now. They may need to be informed of that fact. Perhaps convinced of it.”

“One thinks,” Tano began to say. But the steward had just appeared from the cockpit.

“Nandiin,” that person said, “we are entering the rough part of our trip. Kindly secure all items and take safety measures.”

Belt in, that meant, and get the computer safely into the under-seat locker. They were going in.

Their conference broke up. Jago came to sit by him, a comfort in a landing process he truly, truly dreaded.

And one he only wished had become routine.

They were about to come in over the western sea, which meant driving through the coastal weather systems, over a very worrisome central mountain range, itself a breeder of weather, to a landing at a short municipal airport on the opposite coast of Mospheira, an airport the crew had never seen before except in maps. Which was twenty feet shorter than it was supposed to be.

“Jago-ji, a message for the pilots. Remind them courteously that the runway is shorter than at Shejidan.” He gave her the precise measurement in atevi reckoning, and watched as she sailed forward and delivered the warning.

“They have the chart, Bren-ji,” Jago said, settling back in beside him. “The numbers agree.”

“Very good, very good, nadi-ji.” He briefly touched her hand, swore he was not going to grip it, white-knuckling the whole way down. He was going to relax.