Read Precursor for Free Online Page B

Neon lights and hotels.” It wasn’t his favorite change.
    “Petitioners to the aiji,” Kroger said.
    “That’s right.” Over changes atevi themselves chose, the paidhi had no veto, and Tabini hadn’t stopped it, though conservative atevi complained. Three years had seen a neon growth all through the city. The atevi thought it curious. It looked like downtown in the capital of Mospheira, and it afflicted his soul. “Anyone has the right to see the aiji, if he comes here, and the aiji will see he can come here, if he can’t afford it.”
    The plane’s next bank brought a view of other neighborhoods past the window now, tiled roofs in varying shades of red. “There’s your
ashii
pattern,” he said for Ben and Kate. “See the geometry laid out. The unified walkways. Associations. Apparent to the eye once you know you’re not looking at our kind of boundaries. That’s what the first settlers ran afoul of. Never saw it.”
    “Not a straight street in the place.”
    “People walk a great deal more.”
    “Well, thank God it won’t be for us to figure out.” Ginny’s face, a thin face with a multitude of faint freckles, caught the white light of the window as she looked out on the foreignness of an atevi city. “We’ve got enough problems.”
    She hadn’t said a thing in a quarter hour. At this precise moment—maybe it was his imagination—she looked scared as hell.
    The plane leveled out.
    Stewards wordlessly collected the glasses, and they stayed belted in while the familiar signs glided past the window. They were on final approach to the airport.
    “Can we see the shuttle from here?” Kate asked, craning forward.
    “Not on this approach,” Bren said, and drew a deep breath, hoping he might find a stable, peaceful city… hoping his security would meet him. Hoping nothing had blown up… besides Jase’s unexpected orders.
    He’d gotten far too used to company… psychological weak spot, he told himself Shouldn’t have done it… shouldn’t have associations he couldn’t keep up. Gotten himself attached to someone he damned well knew would leave.
    Unwise, in a man who’d made the professional choices he’d made.
    Wheels touched down, squealed on wet pavement. The airport buildings rushed past, went slower.
    Slower still.
    ----
Chapter 2
    « ^ »
    The plane braked to an easy turn on a rain-puddled taxiway and rolled toward the security zone while the stewards reunited passengers and coats.
    They reached a sedate stop, and there followed the immediate, familiar growl of the ladder-truck.
    All four of Bren’s seatmates, putting on their coats, simultaneously developed the same angle of furtive small stares toward the windows, dignified, not wishing to be seen staring as the ladder-truck moved up. But at the approach of the first atevi personnel, the first atevi they would ever have seen in the flesh, they stared. Ben and Kate had spent years studying and translating the language, but they had never seen the species who owned the planet they lived on; Ginny and Tom had no association whatever with atevi but trade and scientific exchange.
    Bren himself fully expected the ladder-shaking rush of giants up the aluminum steps to meet the opening hatch. He didn’t stare, rather composed himself to court standards, as the two atevi he hoped would have come to meet him arrived in the hatchway… Banichi and Jago, senior pair of the four who guarded him: black skinned, black-haired, golden-eyed, in the black leather and silver of the Assassins’ Guild, against whose size they all looked like children.
    His bodyguard, appointed by Tabini-aiji: his dearest friends, humanly speaking… and not friends: he was their duty, their association, as atevi felt things.
    Human friends, even family, might desert you for very valid emotional reasons, even leave you for hire; and when he was on Mospheira, the human ways crept into his bloodstream and gave nesting room for doubts. But this pair, not being insane,