The seventh novel in Cherryh’s Foreigner space opera series, a groundbreaking tale of first contact and its consequences…
It has been two years since the starship Phoenix left Alpha Station on a rescue mission where over four thousand human spacers were under attack by a hostile alien race. Now, exhausted from their journey, the crew of the Phoenix yearns for home. But when the ship makes the jump...

Bren Cameron, diplomat in residence, usually represents the ruler of the atevi state. But Ilisidi, the dowager, has been known to borrow his services from time to time--and she has her own notions how to solve the simmering hostilities in the south of the atevi continent, playing one problem against another. This time, she is betting the hard-won northern peace--and the lives of the people--on being right. She has commandeered the Red Train, taken...

Cajeiri, the young son of the powerful leader of the Western Association, has become a target for forces bent on destroying his father's rule. For Cajeiri is the first "ateva" youth to have lived in a human environment and the first of his people to ever truly understand the so similar--yet so dangerously different--aliens who share his home planet and threaten the hidebound customs of his race.

With the Assassins' Guild functioning again after a year of upheaval and rebellion, Bren Cameron takes a position on the court to champion a trade agreement, but tranquility in the atevi world is transient.

The civil war among the alien atevi is over-- but peace and tranquility are not in the cards for Bren. Cajeiri, the young son of Tabini-aiai, the ruler, slips away from his bodyguards for an adventure. When rebel clans attack, Bren's pastoral retreat becomes a locked-down fortress.

After the civil war among the alien atevi has ended, Tabini-aiji, ruler of the Western Association, and his son, Cajeiri, return to Bujavid and face threats from rebels who remain loyal to the opposition

Bren and Illisidi must protect young prince Cajeiri and the human children who have come to visit for his birthday from the dangerous split compromising the Assassin's Guild

Little does Tully know when he throws himself on the mercy of the crew of The Pride that he is putting the entire hani species in jeopardy and imperiling the peace of the Compact.

The nineteenth book in the beloved Foreigner space opera series begins a new era for human diplomat Bren Cameron, as he navigates the tenuous peace between human refugees and the alien atevi . Alpha Station, orbiting the world of the alien atevi , has taken aboard five thousand human refugees from a destroyed station in a distant sector of space. With supplies and housing stretched to the breaking point, it is clear that the refugees must be relocated...