Defender Read online

  DEFENDER

  Caroline J. Cherryh

  the fifth in the Foreigner sequence

  * * *

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  Firelight went up to the red figures of an ancient frescoed vault, smoke-hazed from the braziers on either side of the black stone tomb. In the dark congregation, watchful eyes now and again caught the firelight and reflected it, gold fire brighter than the sheen of light off opulent brocade.

  It was an atevi place—and solemn tribute to a decades-dead aiji. Decades in the past, Valasi might be, but the association he had created had only grown wider at his death. It spanned the continent now. It reached around the world. It shared the heavens with strangers.

  An atevi place, an atevi ceremony, an atevi congregation… but one human, one pale, blond, very small and conspicuous human stood in a crowd of towering atevi lords, some of whom had often and fairly recently entertained the idea of killing him. Under the court attire, the frock coat and the lace and the brocades, Bren Cameron wore ten pounds of composite that would stop most bullets, if any of these very adept gentlemen and ladies ventured an assassination without proper Filing of Intent.

  The Assassins’ Guild, on the living aiji’s order, would not allow that to happen. The tall atevi on either side of him, Bani-chi and Jago, in the black and silver of that Guild—they knew the odds, they knew all the agreements and contracts currently in force—knew the likelihood of illegal risks as well. And while assuring him there was no contract Filed, and that no Guild actions but surveillance could be taken for days on any side of this gathering—they still insisted on the armor.

  So Bren complied, uncomplaining, with not too many questions, and kept his head generally down, evading any too-direct stare that might draw attention.

  Deference, respect, solemnity… in a place where humans least of all belonged.

  Tabini-aiji had decreed this honor to his father’s tomb, so the invitation declared, for a memorial and a reminder of the origins of the Western Association—well and good. Humans and atevi alike honored their dead, and they held memorials, particularly at points of change or challenge.

  But what was changing? Or where was the challenge?

  But predictably enough—they could hardly ignore the call to venerate the aiji’s father—the loyal lords of the western aishidi’tat had come in with no trouble. Those from the south shore and from the farthest eastern reaches of the Association arrived in far more uneasy duty, surely with questions of their own. They had been Valasi’s allies, most of them—and saying so had been unfashionable in the west for decades.

  The aiji-dowager, too, had flown in from the east for this solemn event. If she hadn’t, rumors would have flown.

  Ilisidi, aiji-dowager, Valasi’s mother.

  Tabini’s grandmother.

  And the whole world knew that one of the two, Tabini or Ilisidi, had almost certainly assassinated Valasi.

  Well, grant she came: no mere opinion of men perturbed her. If one was an atevi lord—and she was among the highest of atevi lords—one rigidly observed the proprieties and courtesies that supported all lords, whatever the circumstances. One consistently did the right thing.

  And if one were the human paidhi-aiji, the official translator, the point of contact between two species, one also did the right thing, and came when called, and kept clearly in mind the fact that this was not human society. A paltry assassination by no means broke the bonds of an atevi association, no more than it necessarily fractured man’chi—that emotional cement that held all atevi society together. A judicious, well-planned in-house assassination only made the association more comfortable for all the rest—eased, rather than broke, the web of association and common consent—in this case, the family bond on which the stability of the world depended.

  A well-chosen assassination might make unity easier, once the dust settled, and a species that did not, biologically speaking, feel friendship… still felt something warm, and good when its surrounding association settled into harmony.

  Were they here to meditate on that fact?

  To renew the bond?

  A human couldn’t possibly feel it. Wasn’t hard-wired to feel it. Tabini had called him down from the orbiting station for this service, which he’d taken as a simple excuse covering a desire to have some essential conference, some secret personal meeting which would make thorough sense.

  But thus far—there was no meeting. There was going to be a special session of the legislature—and that had made sense, until it was clear he was dismissed, and would not attend. There’d been one intimate audience with Tabini on that first day, in which Tabini had entertained him in his study, a great honor, talked about hunting—one of Tabini’s favorite occupations, which he never actually had time to do—and asked in some detail about the welfare of associates on the space station. They’d had several drinks, become quite cheerful, shared an hour with Lady Damiri, the aiji-consort, and discussed the weather, their son’s education, and the economy, none of which he would have called critical—nor ever discussed with that much brandy in him if he’d thought it would become critical.

  Good night, Tabini had said then, good fortune, not forgetting there was a memorial service involving, oh, the entire continent, and would he kindly sit among the foremost in attendance?

  Not quite news to him. He’d known it would take place— hadn’t quite known, before landing, that it was quite so extravagant, televised, or followed with a special session.

  So he was on temporary display at the edge of the aiji’s household, wearing that white ribbon in his braid that reminded all parties he was the paidhi, the translator, the neutral, not an appropriate target.

  He represented to those present, among other controversial things, the full-tilt acquisition of technology over which Tabini and Valasi had had their fatal falling-out.

  So Valasi died under questionable circumstances, and instead of declaring any decent period of mourning and reconsideration, Tabini had immediately opened the floodgates of change: television, trade with Mospheira… railroads. Valasi’s paidhi, a human whose modest advocacy of airplanes, an expanded rail system and limited television broadcasting had scandalized the traditional-minded among the atevi—had quit, retired, and left the job to him.

  Tabini had immediately taken—well, with atevi, a liking to him didn’t translate, but certainly Tabini had sensed that he could work with him. Occasionally he had wondered if Tabini had spotted the world’s greatest fool and thought he could get the sun, the moon and the stars from him…

  The stars—considering that not so long afterward Phoenix had shown up in the heavens, the colony ship returned to its lost human colony on someone else’s world.

  Things out there, Phoenix reported, hadn’t worked out. Things had involved an alien encounter gone very wrong at a space station that never should have been built. And while the paidhi asked himself how he had ever gotten into this, Tabini’s close cooperation with humans spiraled wider and wider.

  It took atevi into space, into a near-unified economy with the human enclave on Mospheira. It took two species and three governments to the very edge of union.

  And atevi had never forgotten the hazards of swallowing foreign answers to local problems.

&nbsp
; Ilisidi entered the tomb, among the last, just behind Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini, uncle of the aiji-consort. She walked with a cane, went in the company of Cenedi, her chief of security.

  And Cajeiri was with her. Bren noted that—the boy, almost lost in the company of adults, took his place with Ilisidi’s party.

  There was a change. The aiji’s heir took his place, not with uncle Tatiseigi, but one place down, still in the front row, with great-grandmother Ilisidi.

  Cameras were discreet, but in evidence, and cameramen shifted slightly to get a good view of Ilisidi and the boy. This was going out across the continent: a ceremony of national unity and a memorial in respect for the past, it might be: but it was also a public function in which the alignment of public figures was highly significant.

  So the aiji-dowager stood there now before Valasi’s sarcophagus, just visible in the tail of his eye. She was diminutive for an ateva, white-haired with age, leaning on that cane… sharp eyes taking in every nuance of expression and surely conscious of the camera. The boy stood stock still, just visible past Cenedi’s black uniform—Cenedi also being Guild security, oh yes. Guild security was all through the assembly, despite the limited seating.

  A war of flowers out there in the corridor: of colors, of position in here—and a sense of progress and opposition in delicate balance, with the Assassins’ Guild to guarantee good behavior.

  But far, far better than the alternative.

  The aiji’s immediate household filed in. That was Tabini, Lady Damiri, and their attendant security. Tabini-aiji was in black and red, his house colors. Damiri wore gold and green, the Atageini colors, and carried a lily in her hands, strong contrast to her black skin, amid the glitter of emeralds. They took their places, finishing the first row.

  All seats were filled. There was a little murmur of expectation.

  Then a bell sounded.

  Utter silence descended. A camera changed focus. That was the only sound now, lamplight momentarily gilding an imprudent lens.

  That stroke of the bell called for meditation.

  Next would come a statement from the head of house— Tabini, in this case. Bren had read the program somewhat before he entered a shadow too deep for humans to read.

  And whatever the aiji had to say, the gathered lords would parse it for every detail. It was important—an address that could, if it went wrong, break the union of lords apart. It always could. Any chance word, gone amiss, could break the Association at any time—and in this context, bets were doubled. Tabini had made deals with human authorities, sent atevi to work on the space station, admitting a flood of new technologies. He’d had to, for a whole host of economic and practical reasons that sliced right across the ordinary order of politics, throwing conservatives into alliance with the most liberal of western powers.

  He’d had to reach across traditional lines, across ethnical lines—across associational lines.

  And so the agreement with humans widened, policy deliberately blind to the causes of the last world war, dancing across the shards of old resentments, skipping over divides of opinion that had once swum with blood.

  Most of all, the crisis in the heavens and the need to secure a voice in that resolution had shoved the whole economy into a hellishly scary rush, a fever pitch run that no one at first had thought would last more than a month.

  No longer than three years.

  Then no longer than six.

  As yet there was no slowdown, no cooldown, no pause for breath—and no meeting of the associated lords—until this.

  The silence after that bell was so absolute that breathing itself seemed a disturbance… and in that silence, of all things, someone dropped a program, a crack of parchment on stone that set a twitch—if not a killing reflex—into every hair-triggered, Guild-trained nerve in the chamber.

  Every Guild member had to skip a heartbeat. Every lord present—had to make a conscious decision not to dive below the benches.

  But it was only the next aiji, their someday ruler, diving almost to the edge of the flower-decked sarcophagus to rescue that wayward, unseemly folio.

  In his haste it escaped his fingers on his retreat. Twice.

  Bren winced.

  Three times.

  The boy had it. Scrambled back to his place in the standing line.

  Cajeiri, Tabini’s and Damiri’s, the hope of the Association, Tatiseigi’s grand-nephew—was the height and weight of the average human teenager—but not, by any means, average, human, or teenaged. Cajeiri tried—God knew he tried, but somehow his feet found obstacles, his hands lost their grip on perfectly ordinary objects, and when Cajeiri would swear to all gods most fortunate that he was standing still, everyone else called it fidgeting.

  Now of all times… in front of the whole assembled Association, the lords of the aishidi’tat, this was no time for boys to be boys, or for a child to be—whatever he might be.

  Cajeiri was invisible in the first row again. Silence hung all about him. The dignity of the highest houses settled on his young shoulders. Tabini, Tatiseigi—now Ilisidi, in whose care the young unfortunate attended the ceremony—were all in question in that behavior. Fosterage was the rule of the great houses, once a child of rank left the cradle. Tatiseigi, the maternal uncle, had had a go at applying courtly polish, in the rural, rigid politics of the Atageini stronghold in the central west. Now Ilisidi had him: in her district, modernist meant someone who installed a flush toilet in a thousand-year-old stronghold.

  God help the boy.

  A second bell. Solemnity recovered. This was the second point, fragile second, unfortunate second: atevi lived by numbers, died by the numbers. Two of anything presumed there would be a third. There must be a third. The very note, echoing in the stone recesses of the place, on this occasion, gathered up the tension in the air and prepared to braid it into a cord… if the third bell, please God, would only ring without unfortunate omen.

  Cajeiri held himself absolutely still. Two would ring ominously even in an atevi six-year-old’s brain. Two always meant pay attention: another will follow.

  Bren had been to Malguri himself. In a way, he wished he could go back there, have another try of his own at a life a human wasn’t regularly admitted even to see. In a certain measure he so envied the boy that chance.

  Ilisidi had her hands full. He did know that. The boy, thus far, with the best intentions, had destroyed two historic porcelains, set off a major security alarm, and ridden a startled mecheita across newly-poured cement in Tatiseigi’s formal garden.

  Finally, unbearably, with the least shifting of bodies in anticipation, Tabini, head of house, foremost of the Ragi atevi, aiji of the whole aishidi’tat, moved out of the row to the single lighted lamp that sat before the sarcophagus.

  Tabini, tall shadow, took a slender straw, took light from one lamp and lit one of two others.

  Two lamps lit.

  Jago, armed and informed, nudged Bren’s hand with the back of hers. Pay attention. Be on your guard.

  Banichi, on his other side, didn’t move.

  Every bodyguard in the whole chamber must be thinking the same, prepared for anything. It was in all the machimi, the history-plays: in the feudal age, in Malguri’s age, the time of bright banners and heraldry, assemblies thus invited had been murdered wholesale, slaughtered by hidden archers. Whole tables of diners had fallen ill at once. Ladies had perished in poisoned baths—name the death: someone had delivered it.

  Hearts beat, atevi, and in one case, human, with utter trepidation.

  Tabini, damn him, knew it. The third bell had not yet rung. And Tabini turned, in that terrible, unprecedented interval.

  “I speak,” Tabini declared, in that resonant, still-young voice, “between the second and the third bell. We live … between the second and the third bell of our associated lives. We live … on the edge of decision and chance. We live… between expectation and fulfillment. Between the second and the third bell of our collective existence, I am Valasi’s son, I
am Valasi’s heir… I am Valasi’s successor.”

  After the hasdrawad and the tashrid, the bicameral legislature, had determined for the second time that Ilisidi would not be aiji, they had appointed Tabini to head the aishidi’tat.

  And the whole assembly, caught between the bells and the lights, heard felicitous, redeeming threes. Every atevi nerve rang as a human could only intellectually comprehend—not feel, gut-deep: felicitous one, then the two strokes of we live. Then I speak, disastrous two—felicitous three of we live. And now no resolution of the first cahi, the first proposal, at all, but the infelicitous two of I am. A human brain could short-circuit keeping up with the bracketing structures, but Bren swore he felt it in his own nerves: and he felt his knees go weak when Tabini gave the assembly that third, redemptive I am. The whole audience held its breath, angry as they must be at this tactic. That, in this audience, didn’t matter. They were caught up, snared, and couldn’t move. Daren’t move. Felt the aishidi’tat threatened—and were drawn, unwillingly, to hope that it, and their lives, continued.

  “I speak as your appointed guide into time to come,” Tabini said. And delivered the next third stroke, that painfully woundup, merciful third: “I speak for the unity of the assembly of us all.

  “We do not forget,” Tabini continued, as nerve and flesh all but liquified in relief and bodyguards stood down from red alert. Tabini swept on in possession of all attention. Thank God no program dropped. Breathing itself was at a minimum. Tabini’s oratory was all fortunate threes now, rapid, hammering into nerves still resounding to two strokes of the bell, still waiting for the resolution of their universe. “We do not break our strong connections with all that Valasi-aiji built. We do not abrogate our traditions. The more knowledge we acquire, the more we rationally comprehend the universe, the more we control our own destiny—”

  Sensitive spot: the number-counters who so powerfully ruled the traditional world had long discounted the numbers of the heavens, meaning they had deliberately, scornfully dismissed the work of astronomers, who had failed to foresee the Landing.