Protector

Once his sister was born—well, his mother would probably be more comfortable, and she would have a lot to do. He had to set his mind in advance that his mother was going to be treating his sister as her favorite, and she was probably going to start pushing to get his sister special honors, and make his sister important, and powerful. He saw that coming. His mother never would be on his side, because he was Great-grandmother’s, and his mother would try to make his sister take herside about everything, so long as she lived, by giving her absolutely everything she wanted.

He looked up at his map, wondering what he could do about Grandfather.

Fortunately, just to the west of the Northern Association, there was Dur, head of the North CoastalAssociation, and young Dur was hisally, and there was no way Dur was ever going to swing over to his crazy grandfather.

And the Gan people would be with Dur, because Dur was backing them for membership in the aishidi’tat; and that meant they would be on hisside, because the Edi were on his side, too, backed by nand’ Bren, and the Gan sided with the Edi. And if Najida and Kajiminda and the Edi were his allies, and the new proxy lord of Sarini went along as Lord Geigi would want him to, that meant the whole South Coastal Association was his. Not even to mention Lord Geigi himself, who ran half the space station, and Jase-aiji, who was one of the ship-captains.

So if Grandfather thought the Northern Association would be all behind Ajuri, the way he was acting, he was going to get a nasty surprise. Durhad some influence, too.

And hehad. He took a look at his map, took up two red pins, and stuck them over at the other end of the continent, across the Divide and just beyond Great-grandmother’s estate at Malguri,

Calrunaidi. The Calrunaidi girl, his cousin, had been nice. Her father was well disposed. They both were allied to Great-grandmother, and now Calrunaidi was allied to Lord Geigi because of his nephew.

So he had just had a few pins go yellow.

He put new red ones in, at the other end of the world.

One lost a few. And gained others. He knew how this game worked.

Even if he wasstill just infelicitous eight.

6

The oldest engine in regular service pulled up to the platform and small office, puffing steam—luck of the draw, last night, when it had been sequestered and prepared for its run, but it was fast, and it often pulled this particular set of cars.

There was not much to see at the train station, beyond the simplest of sidings, a line of blue-green trees, and, if one knew what one was looking at, a long runway that stretched out of sight behind the little transport office. The main buildings, a little outpost of the space program, were far in the distance.

A large, sleek bus was waiting, and a conveyor truck stood at the platform, ready to whisk people and baggage through a hidden gate to the spaceport itself, which operated in high security, behind fences and sensor-systems. It happened to be the oldest shuttle in the fleet that was waiting for Geigi, too, over that gentle roll of the land, but it was oldest only by months: that was how hard they had pushed, in the earliest days of the space program. It had been two weeks on the ground undergoing the sort of servicing the ground facility did best. And within hours, it would be winging its way across the ocean on a long ascent, up to where the blue of atmosphere gave way to the black of space.

The station’s modern world started here, with that bus, the conveyor truck. From this point on, Geigi would be too busy with procedures to be socially engaged. So it was prearranged that the paidhi-aiji was to go no farther than the doorway of the train car and that Geigi would immediately board the bus, no lingering about outside, and little to see, in this vast flat grassland.

“Well, well,” Geigi said, heaving himself to his feet, “one can only thank you, Bren-ji, for all you have done, from a very difficult beginning.”

“For you, Geigi-ji, my neighbor, an honor. Come back soon.”

“Nandi.” They bowed properly to each other, and moved toward the door, and their parting. Geigi’s staff was already shifting personal luggage out very efficiently, gently tossing things down, and Tano and Algini went outside to supervise the baggage car’s more extensive offloading. Baggage from that car entered the hands of Transportation Guild and Assassins’ Guild waiting outside, agents who worked the port.

From here, everything Geigi brought had a series of procedures and inspections to go through, not so much for mischief—although it was always a concern—as to discover those small thoughtless items like pressurized bottles which might need special containment or outright exclusion.

“I shall visit,” Geigi promised him in leaving. “I shall assuredly visit next year. And I shall give your regards to your on-station staff.”