So was Tatiseigi now to give way to a committee of upset political allies?
Not likely. He could sit there until the legislative session began, robbing the Conservatives of yet one more essentially Conservative voice, at which point they would beg him to come back.
It was what made this sudden breach with tradition and Tatiseigi’s own strategy so puzzling.
And the boy traveling by himself? The heir’s appearance in full view of news cameras, in that consideration, made perfect sense—if the aiji wanted to signal his support of Tatiseigi despite the impending veto, and make it very clear to the Conservatives that politics was off the menu while the boy was visiting.
But how did Lord Tatiseigi, having received that guest, now reverse course and nominate another candidate?
They could indeed fly back to the capital, as Banichi suggested. He had come over to Mospheira by boat, a slow way, trying to decompress and get his mind sorted back into Mospheiran politics. But they could fly out tomorrow morning, spend a few hours in Shejidan getting acquainted with the changing situation on the mainland, and be back on Mospheira again for supper. It would rouse questions, but he could contrive a dozen sensible explanations that didn’t involve the Padi Valley nomination.
“Bren-ji?” Jago quietly joined the two of them at the edge of the balcony. “We have a call from Gin-nandi. She asks to speak to you.”
Gin Kroger. Newly-assigned stationmaster on the human side of Alpha Station. Gin, calling him, and not the President, to whom she was supposed to report.
That wasn’t alarming, but it certainly wasn’t ordinary.
The heavens themselves were not behaving as expected.
2
Dinner was set for sunset, and the tall hedges that rimmed every horizon of Tirnamardi had some time ago hidden the sun. Cajeiri was dressed for dinner, lace cuffs and neckpiece, clothing not designed for wear out of doors.
But he had tested his permissions, and his personal security, including the senior part of it, had agreed it was all right for him to go out to the stables, at least for a little while, under close guard, considering Uncle’s own guard on the house roof, and considering the electronic perimeter. . . .
And that meant he could at least visit Jeichido.
He had to be extra careful of his clothes—he poked his cuff lace inside his sleeves, to keep it white—this shirt being only one of two choices for a formal dinner with Great-uncle. He had brought mostly his country clothes, expecting to go riding every day of his stay at Tirnamardi.
And he had gotten one glorious day of riding, and learned so much from Uncle—before the Ajuri relatives had shown up and everything had closed down again.
He had thought he might have to ask the grooms to give Jeichido the treats he had brought. But his own young aishid and the senior team Father had set to guard him said nothing to stop him when he climbed on the saddling-pen fence—carefully choosing the smoothest and cleanest of the age-polished railings. His bodyguards offered not even so much as a caution when he climbed all the way up, threw a leg over, and sat on the top rail of the saddling pen. His younger aishid did move close below and behind his lofty perch—because a hasty dismount was a possibility. But the seniors, seeming unconcerned, stayed back by the house door, talking casually to the stablemaster.
“Open the gate,” Cajeiri called out to the grooms. “Let Jeichido into the pen, nadiin.”
Mecheiti were scary up close, taller than a grown man at the shoulder, their heads way above that—one never realized how tall until one was up close. And they made a frequent low rumbling that was scary in itself. It was dangerous to walk into the herd—and there were nine of them in the pen, including the herd-leader, who was Uncle’s favorite. The grooms, however, who worked with them every day, could walk out with just a quirt and a lead rope to bring a certain mecheita out. The rest of the herd was in the south pen with the gate still open, but if that middle gate should start to shut, the herd would move to unite, with all sorts of commotion, and the mecheiti would get where they wanted to be, quirts and objections and all. So one had to be aware of that gate, and the possibilities.
That was the way mecheiti were—torn between man’chi, that made them all keep the herd-leader in sight no matter what, and the driving ambition, among the strongest, to be the herd-leader, which could unbalance everything and have rails down and all sorts of mayhem on the instant if the wind swung the gate—or if one of the usual contenders decided to make trouble on a certain day.
Once the herd-leader went under saddle and had a groom up directing the herd-leader’s movements, the rest would behave better, so it was all right to go out in the herd then, if one moved briskly and mounted right up.
He was not actually afraid to do that. And a quick mount the way the grooms could do it, even without a saddle, just getting a mecheita to put out a leg and drop a shoulder—that was his current ambition, but he was sure being taller and stronger would help.
Even once one was perched up atop, one had to take care very quickly, because another mecheita might take advantage and nudge the one being handled. Though peace-caps were on the upright tusks, which were as long as a man’s hand, that great long neck could flex in almost any direction, and if you went down, those slender forefeet had claws that never quite drew in.
Time was, mecheiti had been trained to war . . . but there was very little encouragement needed for that. If a strange rider came onto Uncle’s grounds, it would go very badly for the intruder. Only the most expert riders could manage the peaceful meeting of two herds by managing the herd leaders.
He hoped to be that expert someday. Great-grandmother was. Uncle was. And of course the grooms were. He really envied them.
But right now all he could do was establish himself with Jeichido as her rider, and that meant she had to learn his voice and his commands. The way to begin that was to call her into the saddling pen, and the way to do that was to have a pocket full of treats such as jerky and sweet grains—which he did. He perched on the top rail—he was big enough now to hook his toes firmly behind the second rail down, while sitting on the top rail. Antaro and Jegari, of his younger bodyguard, who were Taibeni and well used to mecheiti, waited right behind and underneath him, just in case, and Jegari obligingly handed him up a quirt, which was a point of safety.
Jeichido had to learn to come to him. She had to want to come, which meant he would be a fool to use the quirt at her approach at all unless he had to, but he would also be a fool ever to let her swing her head at him, and his bodyguard was right, it was a good idea to let her see he had the quirt as well as the treat.
“Jeichido!” he called out, and made that call the grooms used, while a groom held the gate open. Jeichido heard him, ears lifted, head up. She was, Uncle said it, ambitious, someday apt to challenge the herd-leader—a day on which he did not want to be on Jeichido. Uncle planned a new stable around her—over near Diegi—and Uncle wanted to give it to him. It was a handsome, handsome gift. He so wanted to live up to it, and to learn everything he needed to know, and not to be a fool.
“Come, Jeichido!” he called, patting his pocket.
Jeichido did come, and as she passed the gate, the groom waved off the handful trying to follow. She came up to him, her lofty head on a level with his. She turned that head to regard him with one golden, pretty eye, and the peace-capped tusk on that side was right by his face. She could do wicked damage, and he could be scarred for life, but anyone who intended to work with mecheiti could not be bluffed or threatened by them. He already had planned what he would do if she swung her head at him, which was to fall backward off the high fence, trusting Antaro and Jegari to catch him. But he also did exactly what he needed to do, keeping the hand at his pocket moving, to extract a treat and to offer it, so Jeichido knew there was a treat, and that he was not wasting time in giving it to her.
A delicate upper lip took it from his
flattened palm. He took the chance to touch that velvety skin and let her smell him over. She shifted just a little, crowding him, and he pushed her head back with the hand that held the quirt, immediately reaching for the second treat, which she took.
He went further, gave her a rough chin-scratch—lighter might tickle; but he did it right. One never laid a hand on the top of the nose. That would get an instinctive head lift, which would not be good. He scratched just the right spot, that spot under the jaw a mecheita could not reach, and heard the rumbling that was a happy mecheita.
“Good Jeichido,” he said. “Pretty Jeichido.” He was not yet to the point of doing the bridling and saddling himself, even if he had the time and were dressed for it. The visit was just to let Jeichido know he was a giver of treats, her giver of treats, and to fix his smell and his sound in her memory. Since he was allowed outside this far, he resolved to keep renewing that acquaintance every day from now on. He could do that much.
He was surprised by the senior Guild his father had set to watch him, that they had gone along and just stood by his venture. They seemed not at all worried. Veijico and Lucasi, the other half of his junior team, held back a little . . . not quite so confident; they had only ever ridden with him, which was not that often. But they were trying to learn. Antaro and Jegari were Taibeni clan, which was to say, riders from before they were born.
He gave Jeichido the last treat, then, and gave the “Su-su-su,” command that said she should go, now, unhooked his toes from the rail and swung over it to drop down to the ground.
Jeichido simply turned and went out the gate and back to the herd, to shoulder another mecheita sharply.
He felt rather pleased with himself. Ground training, Uncle called it, explaining why it was important, because either one worked with the mecheiti, or one forever depended on the grooms to do the bridling and saddling and grooming. And that would never do.
“Well done, Jeri-ji,” Jegari said.
“The grooms surely have worked with her.”
“She remembers you,” Antaro said. “And if some stranger sat up on that rail, she would not be so compliant, not that one.”
They walked toward the house, and joined up with the rest of his aishid—Rieni’s gray-haired team, waiting patiently: Haniri, Janachi, and Onami. The senior unit had brought their rifles out with them, just as a matter of course—added protection, if it had been needed. It had not been.
“One appreciates the outing,” Cajeiri said quietly.
“Yes,” Rieni said. They could have advised Uncle. They could have called Father if he had been far out of line; but they had let him have his little visit, and quietly taken precautions they saw as necessary.
They had been sensibly obliging to him, not knowing whether he would be obedient or not; and his reliance on them went up another notch with that. He and his younger bodyguard would have been five fairly rowdy young people suddenly out on their own, traveling alone by train, staying together in a beautiful, historic guest suite together with a spoiled parid’ja in a cage, and suddenly they had four gray-haired senior Guild instructors, of all things, who had to watch over their behavior. He had expected—
Well, he had expected the trip to be grim. Just grim. He had feared his life might be grim, forever, if the new aishid became permanent. He had feared a sudden, enforced growing-up, since Father had named him officially as his heir this summer. He had already had to attend functions and meet old people and be on his best manners.
But the new team was working out far better than his fears. Rieni and his unit turned out to have a good sense of humor—a fairly wicked sense of humor, at that—and did not seem inclined to phone Father every time he stepped out of routine, though he had no idea what they communicated to the Guild by their own systems. His younger aishid was definitely staying on their best manners in their company, but Onami (who everybody said had been left on the Assassins’ Guild’s doorstep in a cardboard box—he still was not sure of that story) had gotten them all laughing last night. It was—
Well, what had started as an unwelcome and uncomfortable shift in their lives was decidedly looking more pleasant. It felt more like acquiring four more uncles, fairly forgiving ones, at that.
Now they had to get the rifles back upstairs, and he had to get to the lower hall servants’ bath very quickly, and wash his hands before he dared touch his cuff lace, and become presentable for dinner.
• • •
“Bren.” Gin Kroger, stationmaster of the human half of the station, was all business in the phone call, and she sounded tired. “I’ve put together a documentary of the recent events—that I’d like you to view, before I take it public.”
Mospheirans had had absolutely no concept of the desperate state of affairs up there. A handful of photos, the official reports, simply failed to convey the horror that had almost happened. Releasing security takes on that was a political move and it definitely had to be a political decision. “I trust the President is seeing this.”
“Definitely. But you were there. And part of this vid is atevi.”
“Then I do need to see it.”
“People on the ground need to see what happened, Bren. God, they need to see it. They need to know what these people have been through. They need to know how atevi damned well saved their collective skins up there. And they also need to see the Heritage Party’s new darling in full flower.”
The Heritage Party’s new darling would be Mikas Tillington, Gin’s predecessor, who’d heated up a centuries-old resentment between the Reunioners and Mospheirans to justify restrictive measures against the Reunioners and, in the process, catapulted a difficult situation for the Reunioners into a hellish mess because he hadn’t dealt with repairs in the mothballed ‘old section’ and then needed the area functional, among other misjudgments involving planning, cargo requests, and food distribution. Conditions up there were changing rapidly, thanks to Gin, but supply was still short and there was no quick and easy fix for the emotional damage.
Three kids were coming down to Mospheira, a known quantity, children, least likely to rouse resentments. But ultimately five thousand Reunioner refugees who had their own culture had to integrate with a ground-dwelling population that had very different ways. Different traditions. Mospheirans had never met human strangers. They lived with atevi, but were restricted from meeting them.
No, Mospheirans couldn’t envision what the Reunioners had already been through—not the destruction of Reunion Station, not the long voyage under guard, not the miserable conditions they’d lived in since. Mospheirans had believed everything up on the station was going smoothly. They’d understood that the two halves of the station, the atevi half, under Lord Geigi, and the Mospheiran half, under Mikas Tillington, had done heroic things, keeping Alpha station going, feeding their own populations despite terrible problems during the Troubles that had overthrown the atevi government. They believed they’d been cooperating with each other up there, as Mospheirans on the ground had done everything to help atevi solve their political problems and get Tabini back in power, which alone would get the shuttles flying again.
Heroic, well, yes, maybe they were. Certainly the efforts had been heroic on Geigi’s part: he’d launched communication satellites and landed base stations, while Mikas Tillington had gone on a building binge, constructing expanded living facilities for the human population, when he should have been concentrating wholly on food production. Tillington had bet everything on somebody settling the problems on Earth and getting the shuttles back in operation.
And then Phoenix had come back bringing them five thousand refugees, who had been promised paradise.
Paradise definitely hadn’t been the situation on the station when the refugees arrived.
Tabini had taken the government back, and the shuttles were flying again. But resumption of shuttle flights and slow correction of the situation on the ground during t
he last year hadn’t fixed the situation that had been simmering up in orbit ever since the Reunioners’ arrival. Tillington hadn’t wanted the Reunioners. The ship couldn’t go on holding them: it had reached the end of its resources. Tillington had treated the Reunioners as potential hostiles, denied them employment, settled them in an antique, barebones area of the station that had been scheduled for complete reconstruction.
And tensions on the human side of the station had reached critical when the alien kyo had shown up.
“I’ve included,” Gin said, “footage of his meltdown on the bridge.”
One felt compelled to say . . . “The man was stressed, to be honest. Short of sleep.”
“He wasn’t short of sleep when he ordered those section doors shut. And he wouldn’t have been short of sleep if he’d followed protocol and made the shift with Lord Geigi.”
“Undeniable.”
“We’ve found things, Bren. He’s tried hard to operate from house arrest to get rid of evidence, but we have the records and we have evidence. I know who he’s been corresponding with. He definitely has close friends on Earth.”
Friends on Earth.
In that context, Heritage Party. In the initial setup of the station, Mospheira had screened its half of the station population carefully to keep violent politics and prejudices out of play up there, above all being sure there would be no conflict with the atevi.
Station workers and science personnel had been screened. But corporations had sent their officials unscreened. And the stationmaster and his supporting staff had all been political appointments, outside the screening process.
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