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You can't, brother, and it's not a language problem. Ramaso knows what I'd say about your paying anything. I'll get the fisherman a new pump.

I'd love to see you in the meanwhile. Any chance you could take the train over to Najida for a couple of days?

Oh, damn, he so wanted to do that. Did he have time? He might—if he flew, and worked on the flight to and from.

“The storm damaged nand' Toby's boat,” he said to Narani, who was standing by for a reply. “Toby has put in to Najida for repairs and he asks whether I can come out there. One is very strongly tempted, Rani-ji. The trip up to the station—I have to arrange. But two days—if nothing else blows up—I could possibly spare that.”

“Indeed, nandi. There are a few meetings on your schedule, but those might be rearranged. You could fly, or even take the train, and the bus could have you at Najida tonight.”

“Meeting with the young gentleman. Answering his query. The committee meetings in three days. Lord Tatiseigi is coming back tomorrow.
He
could deal with the Transportation committee. He intends to be there, regardless. We absolutely agree on the issues.”

“Indeed he might chair them quite ably, nandi.”

God, he rarely did things on the spur of the moment, these days—or he did, but those generally regarded politics or the need for firearms. Doing something this self-interested was an entirely different prospect. He should, he thought, feel guilty for even considering going out there.

But, hell, Tatiseigi
could
deal with the meetings. And whatever Jase answered about the kids' maybe-missing letters probably should wait for him to get up to the station. He wanted to talk to Tillington, get the measure of the man, personally, maybe impart a quiet understanding as to
why
Tillington needed to go home on the next shuttle and seek a nice job in the space industry, with no damaging fuss about it. That was by far the most constructive solution.

That left the Transportation Committee and that series of meetings—which he could come in on toward the last, if Tatiseigi was there to handle the initial phase.

Narani had his orders. He personally had just a few things to mop up, now. He needed to message the Port Director, confirm that he
was
indeed taking next rotation up. He had to meet with the Guild observers, everything as previously arranged.

And if anything critical came up in the committee meetings, he could be back in Shejidan by plane in a couple of hours.

He could do it. Fly out, fly back. No need of formality or any great furor, or any fuss with the wardrobe, not for informal Najida and working on his brother's boat.

“Let me compose an official permission for his landing, Rani-ji. I shall send that before all else, just to have the legalities in order.”

“Will you indeed go there, nandi?”

“I think I shall. Tomorrow. I have a letter from the young gentleman, asking for a breakfast tomorrow morning.” God. “And
he
will be entirely put out if I go to Najida without him. I shall ask his father. It might salve the matter of the
other
trip, which he cannot take. And there are phones, after all. I can call Lord Geigi and inquire about his problem from there.”

“Indeed, nandi.” Narani let the bowl stand on the little table by the door and quietly left.

Bren spread out a new sheet and dipped his pen in the inkwell, in rising good cheer.

I hope the damage is by no means extensive. You are of course welcome at Najida as long as you need and I shall make every effort to free my schedule. I am sending off the necessary permissions for your landing, with notice to Tabini-aiji, and the Assassins' Guild. If your schedule is flexible, too, we may be able to gain a day or so together.

If you need greater assistance of any sort, absolutely rely on me. I can locate supplies and repair items with no great difficulty at all and have them in your hands within a day or so.

Please take advantage of every resource Najida can offer for your safety and comfort meanwhile.

He hesitated at the last line. Always, always, there was politics, even within the family.

I hope that Barb is well. Give her my regards.

The letter would be physically delivered. He
could
pick up a phone and ask for direct contact, but if Toby and Barb were busy trying to bail out the yacht, he had no wish to call them up the steep hill to the phone. He simply spindled it, shoved it into one of his own official white cylinders, and rang for Narani to come back and take it. He could phone Toby tonight, perhaps, after everybody had finished for the day and had a good supper. Ramaso would see to that.

But express mail, couriered to the train, should make it by suppertime. And with luck—he could follow it after breakfast tomorrow and surprise Toby.

“To my brother,” he said simply, “on the regular train.”

“Nandi.” Narani took it, to be carried by one of the staff, who would pack an overnight bag and make it to the main train station from the Bujavid transport stop.

Thunder boomed and crashed, the storm had done with Najida, perhaps, but it had not yet quite done with Shejidan.

And if Cajeiri was to go out to Najida with him he needed clearance from Tabini. If they flew, on a charter, it would be quick, it would be secure, and if the plane waited, he could easily get himself and the boy back to the capital within an hour of any phone call.

He pulled down another sheet of paper, deciding that, hell, yes, he
would
clear his schedule, and he would go next door and see if he could liberate the young gentleman into the bargain, perhaps for dinner this evening, and have their breakfast on the plane at the crack of dawn.

Bren, paidhi-aiji

To Tabini, aiji of the aishidi'tat

A request has arrived, aiji-ma, from Toby my brother, who has had an emergency at sea. His boat took damage from the storm, and by my prior permission, he has put in at Najida for repairs. One begs you grant him an extended stay, of whatever length repairs require.

He also requests me to come visit him there, if this is possible. I am delighted to do this and believe I can do so without adversely affecting my schedule.

It also occurs to me that the young aiji would greatly enjoy a very brief—

A knock came at the door. Narani came in, bowed, and, without the bowl, handed him a
second
steel message cylinder.

This one did not have the Mospheiran color. It was plain.

Toby being in worse trouble was his first fear—but a message from his estate manager, Ramaso, should have the blue Najida band. He opened the cylinder, extracted the message, again one of those coded prints.

And not in Ragi.

Jason Graham, Captain, starship Phoenix.

Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, the Bujavid.

Unicorn sighted. ETA fifteen days. Operation here as discussed.

Reply requested.

His thought—if it was so coherent as a thought—was, Oh—my—
God.

He read it twice. Looked up at Narani and didn't trouble to keep the distress off his face.

“Rani-ji, the
kyo
are here—fifteen days out from the space station. All plans—my entire schedule—everything has to be suspended.”

It was more than a question of operations
suspended.

All manner of operations had to be gotten
underway
—many of them not confined to the Earth.

And a very dangerous set of strangers they had met at Reunion was arriving to be entangled with the problems he and Jase had been negotiating.

Tillington. And the Reunioners.

The Reunioners were going to panic when they heard. The Mospheirans might well.

He couldn't
wait
for another shuttle rotation. If he and his aishid had to ride up in the cockpit with the crew, he had to get up there.

He glanced at the calendar, in its nook on his desk. The current shuttle was launching day after tomorrow.

Narani was still waiting.

“I need to phone the Port Director, immediately, Rani-ji. I have to delay the shuttle launch, if at all possible. Call her, and let me tell her as much as she must know personally. I also need my aishid to report in, whoever is on the premises.”

“Nandi.” Narani left, and almost immediately after he had closed the door, footsteps went both directions down the hall. Narani was bound for his office to look up the spaceport code, likely—it was not one they routinely used; and Jeladi was likely headed deeper into the apartment, to advise his bodyguard they had a serious problem.

Fifteen days.

No trip to Najida. That was out.

Silly thought. The whole world was in danger. And he spared a thought for his brother, in dock at Najida, waiting for him, with no idea what had just shown up in the heavens.

The dowager needed to get back to Shejidan.
She
was involved in this.

He and Ilisidi likewise had a codeword for the kyo—but passing
through
Assassins' Guild communications what was clearly a codeword that the Guild was not permitted to understand, at a time when they were trying to establish trust—

He had to play
those
politics carefully. Everything involving the guilds was new and no little touchy.

He had intended the Guild observers to go up to the station with him. He had to take them now, or have them arrive later, uninformed, in the middle of a situation, to try to figure out what they had done. That, or put them off indefinitely.

Tabini needed to know what was going on, immediately.

It was a nightmare. A damned nightmare, unplanned, unstoppable.

Jase and Sabin would have to handle everything on the station until he got there. Ogun, the senior captain, had no experience with the kyo. He might be in charge of the station, he might be senior captain and giving orders—but he was an unknown quantity to the kyo, and he fairly well was an unknown where it came to working with the atevi.

Sabin and the kyo had parted amicably at the last, if one dared use the word
amicable
. At least the kyo had agreed to let them evacuate the station before they removed the human construction from space they claimed.

In that meeting, the kyo had warned them they'd come calling, eventually, since, as best one could understand abstract thought across the language barrier—the kyo held that all things once joined
were
joined, or however that philosophy worked out in the minds of a species who didn't share a planet or a history with them, had never dealt peaceably with another intelligent species—and didn't want any strangers in their space.

Forever-joined could mean alliance.

It could mean some other type of relationship—not all of them happy thoughts.

But
arguing
abstract philosophy in a language where they lacked definite vocabulary posed dangers. Big ones.

So they'd promised a further contact. He'd known the time
could
be short—and everything he'd started to do since he'd come home was to try to fix what had broken while he was gone and set things in order. He'd worked, hoping the contact would come later. Even a lot later. That perhaps the kyo would have to digest what
they'd
learned, and maybe postpone it for decades, after a lot of scientific wrangling and debate.

Not—this soon.

He flexed his fingers, his hands gone cold with uncommon chill.

They had to be damned careful how they responded to these visitors, when they had so very little language to help them.

They had to hope, first of all, that it really was the kyo, and the same kyo that they expected, and that these kyo were in a peaceful frame of mind—because
Phoenix
had very little in the way of armament, while the kyo ship they had dealt with had at least enough firepower to blow Reunion into scrap metal.

They really hadn't wanted to let the kyo know that their entire presence in space was one unarmed ship, posing no threat and having no defense. They hadn't been able to protest the notion of the kyo coming to visit them—they'd had no finesse of communication to make discussion possible, or safe.

The kyo knew that humans knew where
they
lived. It was fairly reasonable, in human terms, that they wanted humans to know they knew where
humans
lived, and that they
could
get here.

Tit for tat.

But then it got complicated. Kyo had seemed to be amazed by the concept that humans and atevi, though different, got along. They'd seemed both interested and strangely upset by the notion. That was what he picked up—or what he thought he understood.

But understanding
anything
in an interspecies contact was like wandering around a strange building with one's eyes shut, trying to imagine what was
in
the building and what its purpose could possibly be.

Interspecies contact was what the paidhiin were trained to do, however. It was the way he had been trained to think, the judgments he had been trained to make. He personally had the accumulated notes and observations of every paidhi since Romano. Studying that body of information, learning to decipher concepts that might run totally counter to all human expectation—that was how he'd begun. His original job had been a matter of a word at a time, making the dictionary larger, step by tiny step—assisting two very different peoples to understand each other and to keep their hands away from weapons, until—on his watch—the knowledge base had reached critical mass and events from the heavens had poured down on them.

Phoenix
had come home, and he'd concentrated all his efforts on putting out the fires that had broken out in their absence. He'd gotten humans to understand atevi and vice versa. Moderately.

The kyo were completely off the chart. And dealing with them out at Reunion, on two ships strange to each other, and far removed from both their homes—that had been one thing.