Pretender

Adigian. Home territory, if he had a home anywhere besides that mountain over on Mospheira. The Ragi heart of the aishidi’tat.

For the first time since returning from space, even in his sojourn in Tirnamardi, he began to have a real sense of location, as if a missing true north had settled back into his bones and reached conscious level. He knew where he was with his eyes shut. Shejidan was there, just there, ahead of them, a little off dead-ahead, as the road wound. Remarkable, that he hadn’t had that awareness until now, that it had taken ancient Adigian and that old fortress to stir it.

Early evening on a rail trip, the train passing through the same town, himself on the way to Taiben, a guest of Tabini-aiji, all those years agoc Making notes for the University back on Mospheira, attempting a sketch of the fortress, since a camera would never be accepted in those long ago, nervous days of human-atevi relationsc back before the station had found new occupants, back before there was a space program, back before the paidhi had lived in the Bu-javid’s noble apartments.

In those days the aiji inviting a human guest to Taiben was itself unprecedented. Revolutionary.

Teaching him the use of a firearm, and giving him a small, concealable pistol, had been a thunderbolt. Defend yourself, had been Tabini’s implication, though at the time he had had no idea how imminent that necessity would be. It had not been a large gun: It was a small enough weapon to fit his hand, to fit very easily into his coat pocket—one of the concealed sorts that atevi maidservants might have tucked away when they only looked unarmed. Banichi had replaced it with another, slightly heavier, the night that he had arrived in Bren’s service, never to leave him.

Tabini had seen conflict coming, hadn’t he? The aiji had made his own decision to draw the paidhi into the thick of court activity, and gotten—oh, far more than Tabini had ever bargained for, that was probably the truth; but likewise Tabini had already known what he was going to ask for his people, hadn’t he? More technology, more change—he had never offered more than Tabini was willing to take, and use, and go with, clear to the stars, and to societal change, and technological revolution that did, in the end, exactly what paidhiin had been appointed to preventc Paidhiin had operated on the theory that technological revolution would be devastating to atevi culture, atevi society. That it would mean another war, with the destruction of Mospheira or of atevi, or both. Paidhiin had resided quietly, down among the secretaries of the Bu-javid, and made their dictionary, and consulted on every word, every concept, building notebooks ever so tightly restricted to certain aspects of the University and the State Department, which supervised them.

He had broken those ties years ago. He had become part of the court. He had all but renounced co

And that town had turned out to cheer them—to cheer Tabini-aiji, not the Kadagidi—hadn’t they? They were Ragi. It was natural they’d be on Tabini’s side. But not, necessarily, on his. He had to remember that, and not expose himself to danger, not until he’d delivered the final load of information— things the Ragi atevi might not like to hear, but had to.

Turn in the road. He lifted his head, quite sure in his bones where they were, and dropped it back against his hands, then against the bus wall, Cajeiri sleeping soundly against his shoulder.

He saw a map in his mind, a map that showed him the countryside between Adigian and Shejidan, a region crisscrossed with small roads between villages, population quite concentrated in this region, and with many towns of size.

It was a place where, above all else, they had no wish to engage their enemy. Nor would their enemy wish to engage them, here, in the heartland of Tabini’s staunchest allies.

Had they seen the dowager? Was she all right? The boy was asleep again, against his shoulder. He had no wish to badger his staff with the unanswerable, when they were using their spare moments to think of details that might keep them alive.

Eyes shut. There was a period of dark, vaguely punctuated by potholes, turns, and once, the awareness of another episode of crowd noise, while the bus tires hummed over another stretch of concrete pavement.

Like going to the mountains over on Mospheira, that pavement sound.

Like holidays with his family, with Toby and his mother, he and his brother headed up the mountain to ski, their mother to soak up the fireside and a few drinks at the lodgec Squeal of brakes. Loss of momentum.

He waked.

They had come to a fueling station: He saw the pump, and the dusty gray back side of a rural co-op building, with a red tractor with a harrow sitting idle, a wagon nearby piled high with sacks probably of grain, a railway car on a siding, typical of such places.

A truck was ahead of them at the pump. It moved on. They moved on, pulling briskly up to that point. He sca

That surely meant they had found fuel, and were taking it on—insurance, he said to himself muzzily, and the boy, exhausted, never woke, though there was a quiet exchange of surmises between Jegari and Antaro behind him.

He doggedly shut his eyes, thinking their calculations about fuel holding out had been wrong. They had diverted over to this other source. They were still considerably out from the city.

The bus started up again, its doors shut.

“The paidhi is asleep,” he heard Jago say, somewhere above him.

“Let him rest a little.”

He wanted to ask about the car, but they went away and he sank into spongy dark nowhere for an indeterminate time, before he realized the boy’s weight had paralyzed his shoulder and he was in pain.

He moved. He lifted his head. He saw countryside rushing by, above a cloud of dust. He saw a bus overcrowded, with weary passengers sitting on the outer arms of seats, or outright sitting in the aisle, asleep, it might be, while a handful stood near the driver.

It was the first time he had had a clear view out the opposite windows, and he saw a riverside, lined with small trees.

He shifted in his seat, chanced to wake the boy, who lifted his weight, blinked at the daylight, and asked where they were.

“Deep in Ragi countryside, young sir.” Bren rubbed his stubbled chin and got his razor from his kit, down between his feet, with his computer. The razor still had enough charge to shave with, and he did that, while Cajeiri visited the accommodation to the rear.

He was still shaving when the boy came back and sat down, and watched in curiosity.

“Can it grow as long as your hair, nandi?” the boy asked.

“It might, young sir. But one has no wish to scandalize the court.”

“Will you do it sometime?”

“What?”

“Grow it that long?”

“Much too uncomfortable, young sir. And not at all becoming.

And it grows just as slowly as hair on your head.”

“You would be as odd as the kyo.”

“That I might, young sir. But by no means as round.”

A laugh, a positive laugh on this chancy, desperate day. Cajeiri bounced onto his knees to see how his young bodyguard fared, the two of them having returned, one at a time, from their own visits to the accommodation. “Have we any breakfast?” he asked, and the two of them delved down into their gear and found grain and fruit bars.

“Would you like one, nandi?”

Now there was a good reason to have resourceful youngsters for company. He took the offering quite gratefully, tucked the razor back into his kit, and sat and ate slowly, finding it filled the empty spot in his belly.

All the while the land passed their windows, like a dream of places remembered. Not that far. Maybe half a day’s travel by these weaving roads, until Shejidanc Whatever that arrival brought them.