Peacemaker

Then he’d been handed a small ring with three keys, and had had only enough time to toss his bag into the room before his escort had led him on a confusing route to a barren office roughly three meters by three.

The office supplies, on otherwise vacant shelves, had consisted of a packet of copying paper, a packet of fine paper, three well-used pens—computers were not part of the technology surrendered to atevi at that point—and three somewhat worn message cylinders. On that small desk had stood a bottle of ink, a bundle of reeds, a pen-rest, a shaker of sand, and a waxjack for the seals he’d create with the re-sized seal ring he’d worn back to the mainland. It was Wilson’s ring, surrendered along with the office.

He still wore it. And used it.

He’d had no clue on that day even how to use the waxjack. Left to his own devices, he’d found the lighter beside the device, lit the wick, and discovered that its whole function was to melt white wax from a winding coil on its baroque stand and drip it—he’d hastily inserted a piece of paper to prevent a wax spatter on the brass plate below—into a small, nicely unstained white puddle on a document. One adjusted the flame to prevent the wax collecting soot.

That, indeed, was what it did. It was the finest instrument in the little office. In point of fact, it was the only instrument in the little office, except a penknife to sharpen reed pens—literally, to shape pens out of the little bundle of reeds, a species that grew to a natural size, of a certain toughness, and that actually made Ragi calligraphy rather easier, once one got the knack.

He’d made his first impression with his ring of office on a letter to Tabini-aiji officially reporting his presence, his satisfaction with the arrangements, and his hopes for a good relationship between atevi and humans. He’d put his rolled letter into one of the little message cylinders, the nicest. And there he’d sat—Bren Cameron, from the human enclave on the island of Mospheira, on the Earth of the atevi, the sole human allowed to set foot on the mainland—wondering how he was going to get his letter delivered.

He had become staff to Tabini-aiji, the young ruler of the Western Association, the aishidi’tat, which for complicated historical reasons amounted to the rest of the planet. The wax that would bear his seal imprint was white, like the ribbon that would tie his—at that time—very short queue.

White was the heraldic color of the paidhi-aiji—a neutral party, the translator who conveyed messages between the atevi world and the human population who’d dropped, unasked, onto their planet.

All of Mospheira lived on the tolerance of the atevi. And the last decade or so, after a period of progress, had been a particularly anxious time—first the unexpected death of Valasi-aiji, then the rule of the aiji-regent, Ilisidi, Valasi’s mother. Ilisidi had ceased meeting with Wilson-paidhi, who described negotiations with her as like talking to a stone statue.

Then Valasi’s son, Tabini, had come of age, demanding the legislature elect him aiji and set aside the aiji-regent. And among his first acts in that office, Tabini had indicated to Wilson that he should go back to Mospheira and not come back.

Wilson’s word for Tabini had been— dangerous.

Bren had had that warning. He’d read Wilson’s notes.

He’d come into his office as a babe in the woods, no older in years than Tabini-aiji, and dropped into a very different life, a foreign world to which he was obliged to conform, right down to the clothes he was wearing and the ribbon that had barely enough braid to pin to.

He’d learned a lot over the years. He’d changed . . . oh, a great deal.

He sat here now on a regular train, in company with his own bodyguard, the four closest people in the world to him—towering, black-ski

And he loved them—loved them, although that had been one of the words not only missing from that early dictionary—but forever missing from the entire atevi mindset. Atevi didn’t love. Everybody on Mospheira knew that. They didn’t love and they didn’t have friends.

But atevi had man’chi, which in the case of these four, and their Guild, meant everything. They were his. They’d walk through fire for him. And he loved them for it.

They, of course, still thought that love was for salads and man’chi was for people you’d die for.

That slightly mismatched feeling wasn’t supposed to go both ways, either, but it did.

They’d damned near died for him this morning, and Banichi had one hand supported in a half-zipped jacket because he was too damned stubborn to wear a sling. “I can still use it,” was Banichi’s answer, and Banichi’s partner Jago and teammates Tano and Algini simply shrugged off their unit-senior’s hard-headedness as drug-induced, and watched out for him.

More than physical, that wound. Banichi had taken down a former teammate this morning—an enemy, an old relationship with a bitter history. Banichi was on painkillers and around the clock without sleep. He was finally getting a little on the train. So were his three teammates.

Banichi’s team hadn’t asked Banichi any deep questions on the matter, not that Bren had heard. Not even Jago had asked, and she happened to be Banichi’s daughter—a fact it had taken Bren years to learn, and that no one within the unit ever acknowledged.

Most in this very ordinary train car were black-uniformed Guild, and most were taking the chance to catch a little sleep: Bren’s own four-person bodyguard, Ilisidi’s, and the elder bodyguard of Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini—all, all had nodded off.

Ilisidi was sleeping in her own way, fully and formally dressed in many-buttoned black lace, with her cane somewhat before her and her hands on it—she at least had her eyes shut, and one was not always sure whether she really was asleep. The dowager admitted nothing about her age, but it was considerable. Lord Tatiseigi, beside her, attempted to stay awake, but he, of Ilisidi’s generation, was giving way, too. The youngsters at the other end of the car—Cajeiri and his three young guests—human youngsters, all just under or over the age of ten—were all collapsed. Cajeiri’s young bodyguard was cat-napping by turns, that unit stubbornly staying on duty in the presence of so many exhausted senior units.

Jase Graham, in the seat across from Bren’s, was dead to the world. His two bodyguards, Kaplan and Polano, were up forward in the next car, with their five detainees, who would not be enjoying the trip in the least.

Jase was one of the four ship-captains—and another of Cajeiri’s birthday guests. At least Jase had come down to the world with the human youngsters. But he’d actually come down, Bren was increasingly sure, because Lord Geigi, atevi master of half the space station, had gotten a briefing that had very much alarmed him.

Bren tapped computer keys with a code that had to be input, or certain stored data would vanish, and certain hidden files would, at very great inconvenience, expand and install themselves instead.

The file Bren called up now was simply titled: For my successor: Read this.

There were several sections to the file that came up: codes, notes on various topics, dossiers on numerous people, who to contact first and second. He double-checked that list in consideration of recent events, and of who was advantageously located at the moment, with the legislature in session. He kept the index of the collection sparse, and frequently updated. If a successor took over in a moment of crisis, that paidhi would need certain information fast. He had duplicated these essential files in Ragi and in Mosphei’, since he had no idea in what language his successor might be more fluent. Both, he hoped. Both, would be good.