Protector

“I don’t know if you caught all of what Algini just advised me. He hints that shemay be pulling the strings on this whole business. If that’s true—she’s using this the same way you are. She’s positioning assets. She won’t wantto upset the boy’s birthday. But she’s preparing something. If it can stay quiet, we get through this and get all the kids back where they belong with no problem. If it doesn’t—you understand this matter is reaching inside the Guild itself.”

“I’m right with you.”

The hindbrain was working, assembling pieces. Nowhe began to get a grasp of whyTatiseigi had so amazingly volunteered to take in a flock of human children. Tatiseigi probably didn’t know exactly why he’d been asked to fling himself into the breach—Ilisidi’s lastrecourse to him had entailed the whole last year repairing Tirnamardi—but he’d bet anything that the old man had gotten a flattering, urgent, and desperate appeal from Ilisidi to do it for Cajeiri, on whom Tatiseigi doted above all things.

“All right,” he said. “These kids. Geigi said there were problems.”

“I have a dossier on each of them.”

He wasn’t entirely surprised. “So.”

“Basically good kids,” Jase said, shot a look to the rear of the car, then said. “Irene’s our problem. Not the kid. Her mother. She was very upset about Irene’s association with Cajeiri. I won’t say what she said, but it got to the net. Then the Reunioners figured out who Cajeiri was. That changed things. Fast. Some of the people we trust least have become good friends of this woman. When the invitation came, Irene’s mother said yes with not one question about the conditions, the safety, anything. The kid was scared of the trip. Scared of the landing. Scared of her mother is my guess. Artur’sparents asked every question they could think of. Sabin talked to them, and they were still reluctant, but the boy wanted it. This is the boy that wrote a letter every week. Of course the letters weren’t getting through. But he said he was always sure Cajeiri would answer when he could.”

“And Gene?”

Jase let go a slow breath. “Gene—Gene’s mother’s another story. Gene got swept up by security. Guess where? The atevi section. Turned out he’d been missing three days prior and his mother hadn’t reported it. When the invitation came, he reported himself to admin, real scared that that detention record was going to stop him. A kid, solo, going up into admin. His mother had to sign. That’s allshe did. The other parents turned up to see their kids board. If you want my guess, Gene had four, five people for one year of his life who actually cared where he was. We reached port. The group broke up. That was it. He’s waited for this. Probably more than any of them.”

“Confirms my instinct,” Bren said. If there was one kid of the three that—just from what he’d heard from Cajeiri—might well be the human associate Cajeiri needed, he thought it wouldn’t be the compliant, pleasant Artur. Irene? She might or might not adapt. But Gene, the troublemaker, Gene, the kid who had showed them the tunnels, was the one Cajeiri always mentioned first.

And Gene was the one Bren resonated with personally. This solo leave-taking from the station felt very familiar. The scene when he’d told his own mother he was headed to the mainland for a year at a time, that his assignment had come through? Her response hadn’t exactly been congratulatory.

Long while since he’d thought of that. But he certainly hadn’t had the blessing of his family.

“They didn’t do anythingon the ship without Cajeiri,” he said. “Now they’re in a strange place. They’re likeliest to take his cues. Put Cajeiri in charge of them whenever you’re not there. He has his own bodyguard. And his great-grandmother is here. He minds her more than anyone.”

Jase said: “We’ve got one more asset. Locators on the kids.”

“Can they take them off?”

“Not without going barefoot.”

“Good,” he said. “Good!”

He felt better about the situation, hearing that. He wasn’t mad at Ilisidi, or at Cenedi. She had her objectives. They were essentially atevi objectives, and for the good of the side he was on. A chance to fortify Tatiseigi, and do it by sleight of hand, so that it lookedlike the security that would attend the unprecedented grouping of herself and her grandson and a batch of foreign guests out at Tirnamardi? Of course she took it.

But her movement to that place was as clandestine as they could make it, and that security wasn’t going away when they went back to the capital. It was going to stay right there, and any notions the Kadagidi had of reaching out to intimidate their neighbor or remove the dowager’s most valuable ally would meet that security head on.