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shuttle which had happened to be at the space station. The paidhi-aiji
and
the ship-paidhi being absent on the mission had meant translation between humans and atevi was down to Yolanda Mercheson, who suffered a breakdown. The shuttles no longer flew and pilots and crews went missing. Supply to the space station stopped.
    Geigi had refused to move the one shuttle he had left from its station berth. Geigi had kept it ready against the return of the ship—with the paidhiin, the aiji-dowager, and Tabini’s heir.
    Tillington had argued long and hard about that shuttle. He had wanted to use it to build up Mospheiran technology and launch a human force to unseat the conspirators on the mainland—not a happy prospect on the atevi side of the station, and Geigi, who had the shuttle
and
the only crew able to fly it, said a firm no.
    Geigi, meanwhile, had launched his own program to deal with the mainland’s new rulers. He had shut down construction on the atevi starship, diverted all its labor and resources to the construction of a satellite communications network, hitherto lacking, and to the production of sufficient food in orbit, which would render the station independent of Earth.
    Tillington had cooperated with that—not happy, no, but cooperating, while the Mospheiran government had pushed its own shuttle program into production. They pushed training pilots of their own—and struggled with supply delays. The mainland, in hostile hands, no longer supplied certain materials, and the Mospheiran space program made progress only slowly.
    In the midst of it all,
Phoenix
made it back—bringing in five thousand Reunioner refugees—when the station had thought at most there might be a hundred or so.
    The aiji-dowager lost not an hour. Geigi, discovering
Phoenix
was coming in, had the shuttle and crew up and ready, and Bren, and the aiji-dowager, and Tabini’s son—had headed straight for the shuttle dock. They’d landed on Mospheira, and crossed the strait to deal with the conspirators in a way a human invasion never could.
    The ship, in the exigencies of prolonged dock, and with supplies at rock bottom, refused to house the refugees any longer. It began disembarking the refugees—five thousand souls, all turned out onto the station, skilled workers, without jobs, without housing, and with no prospects, in a station with no jobs, not enough housing, and no plan for their numbers to double. The ultimate issue was—what voice should these new people have in anything? What were they going to demand, if they were given any vote at all?
    And if they had to increase atevi presence to balance the numbers of humans—the newcomers would still be a majority of humans aloft, and
they
included people with children.
They
were going to increase in numbers, and
they
didn’t have to pass screening to get into orbit—they were born there.
    On Earth, things were much better. Murini’s regime, the conspiracy, had held power on the continent only by force and assassination. Now Tabini was back in power, Murini was dead, and there was peace on the continent.
    Mospheira likewise prospered. Trade resumed, and their shuttle program now regularly sent a vehicle into orbit. Atevi shuttles were in regular service. Vital supplies reached the station, so one had assumed there was progress on the situation aloft.
Geigi
had said nothing negative about Tillington, except the complaint that the man always sided with the senior captain, and that humans had dithered along with a decision about the refugees. But then—well-bred atevi were not inclined to complain until they were ready to call on the Assassins’ Guild. So to speak.
    Evidently—it was
not
all under control up there.
    â€œSo what’s going on up there?” he asked Jase. “What’s Tillington doing—or not doing? I understand his workers aren’t happy. I know
somebody’s
got to make his mind up and find a