Protector

Tabini didn’t want Damiri to take over Ajuri. He didn’t want her to have any part of it.

Why? Because, Tabini had said, Ajuri swallowsvirtue.

And he had said that Damiri couldn’t settle on a clan. Even when she was wearing Tatiseigi’s colors, and bearing a Ragi child.

Problem, Bren thought.

Problem, of a sort a human was very ill-equipped to feel his way through. Damiri was not a follower, but a leader—of a strong disposition to wield power. That disposition had made her valuable to Tabini. She had a quick mind, an ally who understood him to the core; but in the way of atevi leaders—it made an unruly sort of relationship, a unison of purpose very, very difficult to keep.

Interpret Damiri’s actions as emotion-fueled and self-destructive?

He didn’t think so. Not even considering her condition. She might have shaky moments, but that brain was working on something. And she had a father she was not that close to, who was nowhere near Damiri’s level, not in intelligence and not in leadership qualities.

No. Damiri was no fool. She would do exactlywhat she considered in her own interest. Tabini would do exactlywhat he considered in his—which included, above all else, the survival of the one association that kept the atevi world peaceful and prosperous: the aishidi’tat.

The dowager’s ambitions were much the same. The dowager had helped createthe aishidi’tat. She had created the last aiji; she had created Tabini; andshe had taught Cajeiri.

What did Damiri fight for? What was herdriving interest?

It was disturbing that she opposed the dowager . . . and that he had no real answer for that question.

7

Cajeiri, at his homework, because he had nothing else to do, heard the front door open, out in the foyer beyond the hall. That was an ordinary thing. Servants came and went all the time.

Then he heard a familiar young voice out there, and another, and with that, he was out of his chair, out the door of his own suite and down the short hall as fast as he could run.

“Nadiin-ji!” he exclaimed. Indeed, in the foyer he saw not just two, but all fourof his bodyguards.

In uniform. All of them. Antaro and Jegari, had traded the greens and browns of their clan, and went black-uniformed, black-ribboned, and armed. They carried pistols in holster, just like the other half of the team, Veijico and Lucasi; and just like any Guild anywhere.

Now—they were realbodyguards.

“Nandi,” Jegari said with a proper little bow, while Seidi, the major domo, stood in the background.

“Are you to stay here now?” he asked, hoping that was the case. And: “You look tired.”

“They are not entirely through the first level,” Lucasi said—Lucasi and Veijico, also brother and sister, like Antaro and Jegari, were years older; but it was Antaro and Jegari who ranked seniors, having been his since he came back to the world, even if they were only apprentices. “There are tests yet to pass, nandi, but we are all back to stay. The rest we can do in stages. From here on—they are no longer apprentices, and we shall race each other up the levels.”

“We shall be sending in the written course work,” Veijico added. “We have a special dispensation, both to test outside the Guild headquarters, and for us to administer the tests. Your father ordered that. We shall be spending time in the Bujavid gym, in hours when you have your father’s aishid on premises, and on the firing range, the same. But otherwise we are intended to stay on premises, nandi. So we shall not leave you again.”

“Well, one is very glad!” Cajeiri said. “Come in, come in!”

He was used to Veijico and Lucasi having guns. There was a special locker in each of their two rooms, where those and other equipment stayed. But he was not used to Antaro and Jegari’s new appearance. He was used to them in ordinary clothing, like him, or lounging about in a variety of tee-shirts and casuals when they were entirely alone in the evening. Seeing them as somebody he had to obey instead of ordering—that was a little different thing, though he could not think of anyone better for him. They both seemed to have grown overnight, to have gotten bigger, and taller, and actually dangerous-looking. Like many Taibeni, they had a look, a little sharpness of face, that made a frown quite convincing.

Now everybody had to realize they had authority. That was the point of it all.

Now when they told somebody to move aside, they had better move and not argue.

It also meant Lucasi and Veijico had real partners to back them up in case of trouble, and the four of them all together meant he had a real aishid, who would be with him all his life, more permanent than any marriage. How important that was, he had come to understand in the way Great-grandmother’s aishid and nand’ Bren’s aishid operated—and how his father’s aishid was desperately trying to operate, except they were all young.