It's coming up on Cajeiri's birthday. The boy has been promised he can have the young human children he knew from his voyage sent down from the space station for a two week stay.But there's far a darker business going on in the background--a major split compromising the Assassins' Guild, which furnishes security and law enforcement to the whole continent. Tabini's consort's own father has been barred from court, and may be involved in a new conspiracy against him. For safety reasons, Tabini wants Bren and Ilisidi to take charge of Cajeiri, and protect him and his young guests. They themselves are very likely targets of whatever's going on, no question of it. So is Cajeiri. But having the targets separated and contained is an advantage. It's Bren's responsibility to entertain the guests, keep the security problem secret...and let a lonely eight-year-old prince reestablish his controversial relationship with the only other children he's ever met...inside the best security they can manage.
C.J. CHERRYH
THE FOREIGNER UNIVERSE
FOREIGNER
PRECURSOR
INVADER
DEFENDER
INHERITOR
EXPLORER
DESTROYER
CONSPIRATOR
PRETENDER
DECEIVER
DELIVERER
BETRAYER
INTRUDER
PROTECTOR
THE ALLIANCE-UNION UNIVERSE
REGENESIS
DOWNBELOW STATION
THE DEEP BEYOND Omnibus:
ALLIANCE SPACE Omnibus:
AT THE EDGE OF SPACE Omnibus:
THE FADED SUN Omnibus:
THE CHANUR NOVELS
THE CHANUR SAGA Omnibus:
CHANUR’S ENDGAME Omnibus:
THE MORGAINE CYCLE
THE MORGAINE SAGA Omnibus:
EXILE’S GATE
OTHER WORKS:
THE DREAMING TREE Omnibus:
ALTERNATE REALITIES Omnibus:
THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF C.J. CHERRYH
ANGEL WITH THE SWORD
A
Copyright © 2013 by C. J. Cherryh. All rights reserved.
Jacket art by Todd Lockwood.
DAW Books Collectors No. 1619.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Book designed by Stanley S. Drate/Folio Graphics Co., Inc.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
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DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.
To Jane and Lynn—above and beyond.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
1
Lace was back in fashion this spring—starched and delicate at once, layers of it flowing from cuffs and neck. It was a damned bother at a formal dinner, but there it was: the Lord of the Heavens had to be in fashion, and a state dinner in the court of Tabini-aiji meant a new coat, no question about that. So Bren Cameron arrived at Tabini-aiji’s door, accompanied by his four black-clad bodyguards, in a mode quietly equal to any of the lords present.
This new coat was a subdued beige-and-gold brocade, able, in this sparkling crowd, to fade into the background, and Bren Cameron—paidhi-aiji to that same Tabini-aiji, the ruler of the aishidi’tat, the Western Association of the atevi—liked it that way.
Paidhi-aiji. Official human-language translator—at least as he’d signed up for the job years ago. Back then he’d been the interface between the human enclave, restricted by treaty to the island of Mospheira, across the straits—and the atevi, native to the planet, who ruled the rest of the world.
Things had changed since then. Humans were in space, now. So were atevi.
And the paidhi’s office? The paidhi-aiji had become both diplomat and courier—become, in fact, paidhi in the sense in which atevi had always interpreted the office, long before the word
There had been a profound psychological shift in the attitudes on both sides of the strait. The earthly power that had threatened Mospheira in the past had ceased, at least in Mospheiran minds, to threaten them in any direct sense. The current worry of the human population on earth was the power of the human population in space versus their own insular ways and aims, most of which involved their comforts, their economy, and their sense of self-government.
