“It’s mad. How do we know what authority you have to do this?”
She lifted a hand toward the azi. “You see it. I could have handled this otherwise. I could have pulled licenses. But that wouldn’t have told you why. I am telling you now. I mean what I say, ser: that your continued trade is supplying a force that will try to break out of the Reach. That a few years of deprivation will destroy that hope and make a point to them. We’re not without our vulnerabilities. Yours is the need for what we alone supply. But you’ve been oversupplied in these last few years. You can survive a time of shut-down. I assure you, you can’t come in and take these things: trying to take them would destroy the source of them . . . or worse things . . .” She looked directly into his eyes. “You would stand where we do, and be what we are.”
“How can I carry a report to my authorities based on one person’s word? There’s another of your people in Istra. We’ve heard. This could be an attempt to prevent our contacting—”
“Ah, he’d tell you differently, perhaps. Or perhaps he’d shrug and say do as pleased you. His reasons you’d not understand at all.”
“You play games with us. Or maybe you have other motives.”
“Invade us. Come in with your ships. Fire on betas and innocent azi, break through to Cerdin and take all that we have. Then where will you be? The hives won’t deal with minds-that-die; no, they’ll lead you in directions you don’t anticipate. I give you a hive-master’s advice, ser, that I’ve withheld from others. Is it not so, that your desperation is because you need us? Your technology relies on what we produce? And do we not serve well? You’re safe, because we know well what we do. Now a hive-master says: stop, wait, danger, and you take it for deception.”
“Get my agents out.”
She shook her head. “It’s too late. I’ve given you warning. A decade or two, ser. An azi generation. A time of silence. Believe me now. We’ll get you to your ships. A chance to run, to get out of here with what lives I can give you.”
He stared at her. The ship was already coming into release from Istra’s gravity, and there was a feeling of instability. She beckoned him toward the lift.
“Believe me,” she said. “It’s the only gift I can give. And whatever you do, you’d best get down to your people, ser Tallen. They’ll wonder. They’ll need your advice. See it’s the right advice. My men will let you free, and you’ll do what you please on that dock.”
Tallen gave her a hard and long look, and sought the lift; the guard went with him.
Raen hand-over-handed her way back to the cushion, scanned instruments, looked at the crew. “Put us next the Outsider ships. If we need to clear a berth, we’ll do that”
The captain nodded, and she settled, arms folded, with station communications beginning to hurl frantic questions at them.
vii
“It’s settled,” the Ren-barant said.
The Hald looked about him in the swirl of brightly clad heads of septs and Houses, and at the Thel, the Delt, the Hit and others of the inner circle. Here were the key votes, the heads of various factions. They went armed into Council, remembering Moth, remembering another day. Ros Hald felt more than a touch of fear.
“I don’t trust the old woman,” the Ilit said. “I won’t feel easy until this is past.” His eyes darted left and right, his voice lowered. “This could as easily be a way to identify us, eliminate the opposition. We could go the way the others did, even yet.”
“No,” Ros Hald said fiercely. “No. Easiest of all if she gives over the keys we need. She’ll do that. She’s buying living time and she knows it.”
“When she knows other things too,” said the Delt.
Hald thought of that, as he had thought of it a hundred times, and saw no other course. The others were filing into the Council chamber. He nodded to his companions and went.