Conspirator

"Conspirator" by C. J. Cherryh

To Jane and to Shejidan— for keeping me honest.

Chapter 1

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Spring was coming. Frost still touched the window glass of the Bujavid and whitened the roof tiles of Shejidan at sunrise, but it left daily by mid-morning. This was a sign.

So was the letter, delivered by morning post, discreetly received by staff, and, understood to be important, delivered with Bren Cameron’s morning tea.

The little message cylinder hadn’t come by the automated systems. It had most certainly traveled the old-fashioned way, by rail, knowing the bent of the sender.

It bore the seal of Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini of the Padi Valley. It was silver and sea-ivory, with carved lilies.

When opened, its exquisite calligraphy, in green as well as black ink, written on modern vellum, nicely paid courtesies due the paidhi-aiji, the human interpreter for the ruler of three quarters of the planet; the paidhi-aiji, the Lord of the Heavens, etc., etcc

Tatiseigi was being extraordinarily polite, and that, in itself, was an ominous sign, since Bren was currently, and for the last several months, sitting in the old man’s city apartment.

Foreboding settled in before his glance skipped past the ornately flowing salutation to the text of the letter.

The paidhi will rejoice to know that repairs here at Tirnamardi have gone extremely well and we have greatly enjoyed this winter sojourn watching the restoration. However, with the legislative session imminent and with business in the capital pressing upon this house, one must regretfully quit these rural pleasures and return to the Bujavid as of the new moonc

Two days from now. God!

One most fervently hopes that this will not greatly inconvenience the paidhi-aiji. A separate letter exhorts our staff to assist the paidhi-aiji in whatever arrangements the paidhi-aiji may desire for his comfort and expeditionc

Expedition, hell! Two days was extreme gall, never mind that he hadn’t a leg to stand onc nor any place else to go. The man could have phoned. He could well have phoned instead of taking up a whole day of grace using the trains and the whole message process.

One naturally hopes that the difficulties attending the paidhi-aiji’s own residence have now been settledc

Tatiseigi’s current house guest in his country retreat was the aiji-dowager, who absolutely knew everything going on in the capital, including the paidhi’s situation. So the old man knew damned well the paidhi-aiji’s apartment difficulties were notin fact settled in the least, that Tabini-aiji’s apartments were not yet repaired, either—which meant Tabini was still residing in the dowager’s apartment while the dowager sojourned in Tirnamardi with Lord Tatiseigi.

God, one only imagined whether Tabini might not be in receipt of a similar letter from his grandmotherc requesting herapartment vacated.

He somehow doubted Ilisidi would be that abrupt—or share the roof with her grandson for long. She likely would be off for the distant east, on the other side of the continent, where she had her estate.

He himself might, however, be sitting in the hotel at the foot of the hill in two days. This historic apartment, which he had occupied since Tabini’s return to power—and his own return from space—had served him very well through the winter; and, thanks to politics, there had been no delicate way to get him back into his own apartment, not as yet. Scions of a Southern clan, the Farai, were camped out in it, and for various reasons Tabini-aiji could not or would not pitch them out and get it back.

He moved himself and his teacup from the sunny morning room to the less sunny, and chillier, office. There he sat down at the desk, laid out a sheet of vellum, and framed a reply which would notgo by train, or it never would reach Tatiseigi before the lord left for the capital.

To the Lord of the Lilies, Tatiseigi of the Atageini, Master of Tirnamardi, Jewel of the Padi Valley, and its great associations of the townships of...

He had the letter for a guide through that maze of relationships, all of which had, in properly formal phrases, to be stated. He refrained from colored ink, even given its availability in the desk supplies.

From the Lord of the Heavens, Bren Cameron of Mospheira, honored to serve the aiji as paidhi-aiji,

Words cannot convey the gratitude of my household to have been housed in such historic and kabiu premises this recent season.

One most earnestly rejoices in the anticipated return of the Lord of the Atageini to his ancestral residence, and further rejoices at the news that the beautiful and historic estate of Tirnamardi again shines as a light to the region.

They’d wait a few years before the hedge out front had grown back. Not to mention the scars on the lawn. The collapse of one historic bedroom into another.

Please convey felicitations also to your distinguished guest. The paidhi-aiji will of course seek his own resources and immediately remove to other premises, hoping to leave this excellent apartment ready for your return. One is sure your staff will rejoice and take great comfort in the presence of their own lord.

That was one letter. He placed it in Tatiseigi’s ivory-lily message cylinder, as the reply to the message it had contained, and dropped the cylinder into the outbound mail basket.

Then he wrote another letter, this one to Tabinic with less elegant calligraphy, and omitting the formal lines of courtesies: he and the aiji dispensed with those, when they wrote in their own hands—a very human-inspired haste and brevity.

Aiji-ma, Lord Tatiseigi has announced his intention to return in two days, in company with the dowager, necessitating my removal to other quarters. One is well aware of the difficulties which surround my former residence and expects no actions in that matter, which might be to disadvantage. One still has the hotel as a recourse, which poses considerable security concern, but if need be, one will ask more assistance with security, to augment staff, and will manage.

In the days before the legislative session, however, this situation does not arrive wholly unforeseen, and this would be an opportune time to visit my estate in Sarini province, barring some directive to the contrary, aiji-ma. One has some preparation yet to do in the month preceeding the legislative session, but the work can travel with me, and the sea air would be pleasant even in this early season. Also one has regional obligations which have long waited on opportunity, not only within the household there, but with the neighboring estate and of course the village.

Accordingly one requests a month’s leave to visit Najida, the living which the aiji’s generosity has provided me, where I intend to pay courtesies to its staff and its village, and also to pay long-delayed courtesies to the estate of Lord Geigi, which I have these several months promised him to do.

Lord Geigi was lord and administrator not only of the coastal estate of Kajiminda and all of Sarini province, but of all atevi in space, in his capacity as Tabini’s viceroy on the space station. And doing a damned fine job of it, up there. But Geigi had left his sister in charge of his estate at Kajiminda, the sister had died, leaving a young and inexperienced nephew in the post, and Geigi understandably wanted a report on affairs there aside from that which the nephew sent him.

In no way will this detract from my attention to legislative and committee matters, but it will at least provide more time to provide for a city residencec possibly even taking a house, or establishing in some secure fashion in the hotelc

Depressing thought, trekking through the city to reach what would be, were he in his own apartment, a simple trip down in the lift. And a damned great problem to be living and trying to do research in the hotel, where security was a nightmare and spying was rife—all the minor lords being in residence for the session. The Bujavid housed the legislative chambers of the Western Association, the aishidi’tat; it housed the aiji’s audience hall, and the national archives. But it also, and year round, housed the most highly-placed lords of the aishidi’tat. A centuries-old hierarchy dictated who resided on what floor, in what historic apartment: the teacup Bren used casually, for instance, was ciabeti artwork, from the Padi Valley’s kilns, probably two hundred years old—not to mention the antiquity of the desk, the carpet, and the priceless porcelain on the shelf. Who held what apartment, with what appointment, from what date—all these things meant respect, in proportion to the antiquity of the premises and their connection with or origin from potent clans and associations of clans.

And the aiji’s translator, the jumped-up human who had used to occupy the equivalent of a court secretary’s post in the garden wing next to the aiji’s cook—the human who had risen to share the same floor as the aiji’s own apartment, in the depletion of an ancient house which had left it vacant—had now lostthat lordly apartment to the same coup that had temporarily ousted Tabini from the aijinate.

In the coup, Tabini’s own apartment had been shot up, his staff murdered, and Tabini currently endured a sort of exile in status grandmother’s apartment, while his own place underwent refurbishment and his staff underwent its own problems of recruitment and security checks.

But the apartment next door to the aiji’s proper apartment, the apartment which had briefly been the paidhi’s, was now, yes, occupied by the Farai, Southerners, no less, out of the Marid—the very district that had staged the coup and murdered Tabini’s staff.

And whyshould Tabini thus favor a Southern clan, by letting them remain there? The Farai were natives of the northern part of the Marid, the Saijin district, specifically Morigi-dar— they were part of a foursome of power in the South, and they claimed high credit for turning coat one more time, opening the doors of the Bujavid and (so they claimed) enabling the aiji to retake the capital—while the rest of the Marid, namely the Tasaigin and the Dojisigin and Dausigin districts of the Marid, currently teetered somewhere between loyalty and renewed rebellion.

If the Farai were telling the truth about a change of loyalty, they were owed some reward for it—and to put a gloss of legitimacy on their seizure of that precious apartment, they claimed inheritance from the Maladesi, the west coast clan that had once owned the apartment in question. It seemed the last living member of that defunct clan had married into the Farai’s adjunct clan, the Morigi. Tabini maintained the Maladesi lands had reverted; they claimed inheritance. It was at least a serious claim.

So their seizure of that apartment actually had some justification. Tabini’s tossing them out of it might make his own future north apartment wall more secure—having a Southern clan there was a huge security problemc but tossing the Farai out of it in favor of the human paidhi, after their very public switch to the aiji’s side, would be counted an insultc a very strong insultc that might damage the Farai’s status in the still unstable South. And whether or not the Farai were sincere in their switching allegiances, they werechallenging the Taisigi clan and seeking to rise in status in the South. Swatting the Farai down might help the Taisigi, who were notTabini’s allies in any sense.

So the paidhi had no wish to upset that delicate balance. And certainly no other clan wanted to be relocated from theirhistoric premises, the rights to which went back hundreds of years, to give the paidhi theirspace. They had their rights, the Bujavid had allotted all its upstairs room, and outside of booting out legislative offices in the public floors and starting a new scramble for available apartments below, there was nothing to be done for the paidhi.

All of which boiled down to an uncomfortable situation. They had a clan out of the Marid taking up residence next to Tabini, where it wasn’t wantedc and for various reasons, it might stay a while. It was quite likely that one of the delays in Tabini getting into his apartment was his security reinforcing, and probably heavily bugging, that wall between him and the Farai.

All of that meant the paidhi was borrowing Lord Tatiseigi’s historic apartment—vacant so long as Tatiseigi of the Atageini had been out repairing his own manor, which had been likewise shot up in the coup. The work was nearly finished, the legislature was about to meet—

And the paidhi now had nowhere to go butthe hotel or the country.

There was, however, a bright spot of coincidence in the current situationc should he go to his coastal estate.

His brother Toby had just put out of Jackson, out of the human enclave of Mospheira—Toby fairly well lived on his boat, and plied the waters mostly in the strait between Mospheira and the mainland. He might have to hopscotch a call from here to Mogari-nai and Jackson, but however they got it through, unless Toby was on some specific business, Toby could easily divert over to the mainland, just about as fast as he himself could get to the coast, and they might manage to have that long-delayed visit.

Permission to leave the capital, however, was not certain until Tabini had answered his letter and agreed that he might take that temporary solution and go out to the coast. If Tabini was differently minded, there would be no visit, and he had no idea what he would do: he and his security would have to show up at the hotel tomorrow afternoon with baggage in hand, he supposedc but Tabini might think of something he hadn’t thought of. There was that possibility, too. So he would call Toby only after he had spoken to Tabini.

He drank the last of the tea, sealed and cylindered the letter to Tabini, then stood up and rang for Madam Saidin, major domo of this extravagant apartment. He gave instructions for both messages to be delivered, the one by courier, within the halls, the otherc

One of the staff would run the lily cylinder down to the mail centerc which would fax the content to the post office in the township neighboring Tatiseigi’s estate, and have it run up the hill, express, by local truck, to reach the old gentlemanc while the lily cylinder, itself ancient and precious, came back upstairs to Saidin’s keeping, to wait for Tatiseigi’s arrival. Proprieties, proprieties, and the motions they went through, to preserve the appearance of the old ways.

Tatiseigi have his own fax? Hell would freeze solid before that modern contraption found a place in Tatiseigi’s house. Or here.

“Lord Tatiseigi is coming back, nadi-ji,” he told Saidin, in giving her the message.

He looked up to do it. That esteemed lady stood a head taller than he did: skin the color of ink, eyes of molten amber, black hair well-salted with her years—he had no idea how many years. She was, like many of the great houses’ highest staff, a member of the Assassins’ Guildc but she bowed with such graceful sweetness, as she said, “He has sent also to us, nandi. We so regret the short notice.”

He would very much miss Saidin. He had stayed here before, never expected to do so again, and fate had surprised him. He laid no bets now, when he departed, whether he would ever be back under her care. “We by no means question it,” he said quietly. “My first message felicitates his arrival and the other advises the aiji of the situation. One has requested to take a short vacation in the country.”

“The coastal estate at Najida, nandi?” Those golden eyes sparked. “One had intended to suggest that.”

So she had thought about his welfare. It was a warm notion, considering their long though intermittent history.

“An excellent notion,” he said, “and in that case, I shall count it your good advice. Thank you for the thought, nadi-ji.”

“The staff’s very earnest wishes, nandi,” she said. “We shall miss you.”

“Nadi-ji.” It was worth a bow, as that worthy lady left on her mission.

Tatiseigi’s staff would miss him, that was to say. His own staff, many of them on more or less permanent loan from Tatiseigi or the dowager, or from Tabini himself, were scattered from the space station to the coast, surviving, in the disarrangement of his housec so in going to Najida, he simply exchanged one set of observing eyes for another. Spying was just a method of keeping informed about one’s allies—in the thinking of the great houses. One knew—and accepted such loans. And his own staff’s knowledge of him was consequently disruptedc and the persons they reported to—notably Tabini, or the dowager—might be less well informed on his business than, say, at the moment, the Atageini—

Except for one thing. His four bodyguards, his aishid—who knew most everything that went on, and who never left him— they kept information flowing properly, right up the lines of man’chi, of personal attachment, to the aiji himself; and they took care, too, that certain things stayed outsideAtageini knowledge, or anyone else’s, for that matter.

His bodyguard, his caretakers, his advisors—Banichi and Jago were the seniors, Tano and Algini his second-senior, and nobody on earth stood closer to him.

Nobody else had shared as many of his various disasters.

He located them, all of them, in the security station down the main hall—his four best friends, although “friend” was one of those words officially forbidden in the human-atevi interface. Sometimes he thought that way. Sometimes he was sane, and considerate of them, and didn’t.

This morning he just leaned into the doorway, sighed massively, and said, “A letter has come from Tatiseigi, nadiin-ji.”

“We are aware of it, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. Little reached the staff that his security didn’t learn fast.

“The coast, nadiin-ji,” he said. “Granted we get permission from Tabini.”

“The only solution,” Jago said with a shrug. His lover, Jago— lover: another of those forbidden words, and a word the deeper implications of which would just confuse everyone, including Jago. They’d tried now and again to parse it, and only ended up with Jago concluding “association” was quite sensibly adequate to describe them, and that the human sense of involved attachment was very odd.

Tano and Algini didn’t say anything, but didn’t look overly disturbed about the prospect of a fast move. The aishid was all together again, in a number of senses, and if “love” didn’t describe it, it was close enough to it to warm a human heart.

Not enough to make him foolish enough to hug anyone in appreciation, however.

His security team, all of them members of the Assassins’ Guild, wore the uniform, the black leather and silver, had the look, had the armament generally in evidence, and traveled with enough gear to outfit a small army: if he moved, they would. They had kept him safe—and his safety having required quite a lot of keeping in the last number of years, he owed them all extravagantly.

He owed them, among other things, a stable household, not a moving target.

He owed them a staff that could support not only his needs in comfort, but theirs. Saidin and her staff had certainly done very well for them—Saidin ran a tight ship; but because she wasn’t theirs, she was Tatiseigi’s, her attentions were always just a little worrisome. Tatiseigi, that conniving old gentleman had political ambitions that hadn’t stopped with getting a niece married to Tabini and a grand-nephew within a heartbeat of the aiji himself. There was that. Tatiseigi didn’ttrust human influence near his grand-nephew: Tatiseigi didn’t favor human gadgets, human ideas, or human newfangled inventions, and said grand-nephew had been much too infatuated with humans. And bet that Tatiseigi would want to know every detail of the paidhi-aiji’s residence here and all his dealings with Tabini’s household.

His going to the coast would cut off that source of information—and put Tatiseigi in immediate reach of Tabini’s household. Tatiseigi became Tabini’s problem, not his.

“Shall we assume, Bren-ji,” Jago said, “and pack?”

“One hardly sees what Tabini can do, else, but agree I should go. Take everything, nadiin-ji: we clearly must go somewhere. My belongings can easily go into storage, in favor of your gearc”

“No such thing,” Jago said. “All of it will move.”

Probably it was wise, after all, not to leave any remnant of his belongings exposed to tampering in storage—or subject to further controversy, should any clerk go nosing about into his bits of gear and his books.

“One assumes,” Tano said, “that the aiji will at least advantage himself of the time before the legislature meetsc to find a solution to the Farai.”

“If not, nadiin-ji,” Bren said, “one fears we may end up taking a house in the town.”

“The paidhi could File on this Southerner,” Banichi said, meaning the head of the Farai clan, and as long as Bren had heard Banichi’s humor and his serious suggestions, he wasn’t sure if that was dry humor at the moment.

“The paidhi has had cause,” Algini added, which made him think Banichi might have just offered a sensible and workable suggestion. Filing Intent: serving legal notice of application to the Assassins’ Guild, official Intent to assassinate the person in question—well, he supposed appropriating a lord’s apartment would be a legal grievance, if he were an atevi lord with historic standing.

Continuing the insult by continuing to occupy said apartment affected not just his pride, but his staff’s honor. There was that.

And for a heartbeat he asked himself if perhaps, just perhaps, that suggestion didn’t originate with Banichi—if perhaps it had come from Tabini himself, to whose staff Banichi and Jago still retained some minor ties.

A hint? Relieve me of this troublesome Southerner? The aiji himself had absolute right to remove an obstacle to the association, but politically speaking, had some obligation to prove the Farai were in fact an obstacle. The aiji could decree that they were—but since the aiji had to rule on a Filing, it was somewhat of a case of judge, jury, and executionerc an unpopular sort of situation.

The paidhi, however, actually had a legitimate grievance, an exacerbated grievance. The way it worked, in practicality—he could File Intent with the Assassins’ Guild, and once the Filing was accepted, it freed his staff to go after the head of that family. The Farai clan would simultaneously counterfile, freeing Assassins in their association to go after him. Both sides had legal right, both sides agreed to exempt noninvolved persons from personal harm, and it would all work itself out, probably in his favor, since he’d personally trust his bodyguard to take out the head of the Farai clan with considerable speed and efficiency. It would all be according to law.

Which would end the counterfiling; and a re-Filing would not be viewed with favor in the aiji’s court, meaning the Farai’s wider associations could not then all take after the paidhi’s life.

It didn’t mean they wouldn’t, however, in all practicality. They’d politic left and right with the aiji to allow a Filing, and of course he’d politic with the aiji not to allow it.

And at that point it would all devolve down to who was of more value, the entire southern coast of the aishidi’tat, or the human the aiji had listened to when he’d done some of the more controversial things he had to his credit.

Space travel.

Upsetting the balance of power in the aishidi’tat.

Contact with aliens that could still come down on themc

The aiji had been staunchly supportive of his human advisor in his return to power; but time—time and politics—could reorder all sorts of priorities.

“The paidhi could File,” Jago said with a sigh, “but then we would all be busy for years.”

“The paidhi’s generosity in withdrawing to the country,” Tano said, “if backed by adequate strength, can only trouble the troublemakers.”

“Backed by strength,” Banichi said. “ Andthe aiji. One month. Let the Farai hear that, and take another thought about inconveniencing the paidhi-aiji.”

Inconveniencing was one way to put it.

“Do you, nadiin-ji,” Bren asked very quietly, “do you think the aiji doeswish the paidhi to take a moderate course, or am I putting you in danger by my reluctance to File on this clan?”

A small silence. Opaque stares. Yes-no. Maybe. Then Jago, whose stare was generally the most direct, glanced down. No answer.

“See what the aijiwill do,” Algini said, then, “whether he will permit this trip—or not.”

Scary enough advice. Tabini coulddecide out of pure pique to throw the Farai out of his apartment, the hell with the South, collectively known as the Marid, which had caused the aiji so much trouble.

That would toss the oil-pot in the fire, for sure.

Or Tabini could use the month to maneuverc and temporize further with the Marid.

And the paidhi could come back and conspicuously set up in the hotel at the foot of the hill, posing a security nightmare for his staff, inconveniencing all the legislators who did nothave apartments in the Bujavid, and who relied on that hotel during the upcoming session—

And waiting for the Farai to feel the heat enough to do something overt, either against him, or against Tabini himself. Thatwould put Tabini in the right.

He’d personally bet the Farai would do neither, counting on all the paidhi’s other enemies to take him out of the way.

And there were certainly sufficient of those. As Jago said, they could become very, very busy, just keeping him alive, if they had to move into exposed circumstances. It was a risk to them, as much as him.

“It is a very uncomfortable position to be in, nadiin-ji,” he said. “Likeliest the aiji will give me at least my month, however—whatever we have to do for the session. And in any case, we know we have to pack. We can hardly share the premises with Uncle Tatiseigi.”

That produced a little laugh all around.

“Where will the dowagerlodge?” Tano wondered then, the second good question of the situation: the aiji was lodging in herapartment, part of the whole chain of inconvenience. And while it had been mildly titillating to have the aiji-dowager staying under Tatiseigi’s roof at Tirnamardi, in that very large estate, it escalated to salacious rumor to consider the dowager sharing the Atageini lord’s apartment in the Bujavid, at a very slight remove from her grandson the aiji.

Not that salacious rumor ever displeased the aiji-dowager.

“I suppose she will stay with the aiji and his household,” Bren said. That would set the nuclear fuse ticking: give that about a week before the dowager and the aiji were ready to File on each other. “But let us hope we shall be on the coast, safe from all events. For at least the next month.”

Nand’ Bren was leaving. Cajeiri heard it from Great-grandmother’s major domo, Madiri, who had heard it from Cajeiri’s father the aiji. Great-uncle Tatiseigi was coming back, Great-grandmother was also coming back, but Great-uncle was pushing nand’ Bren out of Great-uncle’s apartment, and nand’ Bren was going off to live on the coast, which was entirely unreasonable. And even worse, even worse, Great-uncle was going to be living down the hall.

That was what Cajeiri heard; and being a year short of fortunate nine, and already as bored with his existence in the Bujavid as a young lord could be—his father and mother let him do nothingexcept his studies, and his chosen aishi was up on the station probably forgetting all about him and growing up without him—he saw nothing brighter ahead. He had been back to ordinary, boring life in his father’s household for three whole monthssince the set-to with Great-grandmother’s neighbors in Malguri.

He had so looked forward to spring, and summer, and maybe, maybebeing able to go visit the wilderness of Taiben, or even go out to Great-uncle’s estate at Tirnamardi, where he would mostly have to behave (but Great-grandmother never watched him as closely as his parents, and out there, she would be running his life, so there had been some hope.)

But now—

Now Great-grandmother was going away, and Great-uncle was coming hereand throwing nand’ Bren out.

It was just unfair.

And he had nobody left to talk to. Antaro and Jegari, even, his two companions from Taiben, who were almost his bodyguard, were off enlisting in the Assassins’ Guild and training most every day. They did at least show him what they learned that day, or every so-many days, when they were held at the Guild house for overnight. That was where they were today, so he couldn’t even tell them the bad news.

If Jegari and Antaro had their Guild status, Cajeiri said to himself, he might set themon the nasty Farai and scare them right out of nand’ Bren’s apartment and solve everything.

But they had no such license, and the Farai had their own Assassins, and besides, his father would find out about it and thatwould stop that.

He should suggest it to Banichi and Jago. Theycould do it. They could scare the Farai all the way back to the Marid, and show them up for the scoundrels they were.

But you had to File Intent to be legal to go after someone. And that took time.

And probably Bren’s guard would never listen to him. Even Banichi. Banichi had used to build cars with him, but no longer. He’d had Casimi and Seimaji, that Great-grandmother had set to guard him; but he had not even had them now for days, because they’d both gone back to Great-grandmother. So besides that, he had those two old sticks, Kaidin and Temein, that Great-uncle Tatiseigi had sent to watch over him and spy on his father: and Kaidin and Temein had never been happy at all with him, since they had gotten in trouble for losing him once—

And for the rest of his resources, he just had his father and his mother’s guard standing around, and theywere never under his orders. If he asked them to do something, it was always, “Ask your own guard, young gentleman.”

Even worse, mother’s sister was visiting for the last three days; hertwo servants were flirting with his father’s guards, hanging about the kitchen and being obnoxious. The guards were distracted, being stupid, and nobody even cared what he thought.

There was an advantage, however, to nobody caring what he thought, and to his aunt’s maids acting like fools, which was that people grew busy and forgot to pay attention to him. He had not gotten in trouble in at least half a month, which meant that he was not under active restriction at the moment.

So he went down the hall and searched up boring old Kaidin and Temein. They were finishing the day’s reports when he found them; and he said:

“Nand’ Bren has a book I need for my studies.”

A sour look. “We can get it, young lord.”

He thought fast. “This is a very old book, and I have to convince nand’ Bren I can take care of it. No farther than just down the hall. I need to talk to him. I can go by myself or you can take me there.”

“We should ask the aiji’s staff,” Temein said. He was not the most enterprising of men; and Kaiden thought they should clear the order, too—to Cajeiri’s disgust.

“My father’s staff by no means cares if I am only in the hall,” he said. “Or if you go with me at all or not. But one needs to go now, nadiin. I have to meet my tutor before lunch. If you go to asking questions and going through procedures, I shall not get the book read in time, I shall not finish my lessons, my tutor will give a bad report, my father will be upset with me, and I shall be put out with you. Extremely. Come with me. We need to go now. It will hardly take a moment.”

They muttered to each other. They had only just ordered lunch, were not anxious to leave for a long consultation and getting permission, so the ploy actually worked. He got them out the door, and three doors down, and had them knock on nand’ Bren’s door—or Uncle Tatiseigi’s.

“We need to talk to nand’ Bren,” Cajeiri said to the maid who answered it, and when Madam Saidin showed up: “Nand’ Bren has a book I very much need, Saidin-nadi. May I speak to him?”

“Yes, young gentleman. Come this way,” Madam Saidin said, and, leaving Kaidin and Temein in the foyer, she escorted him to the study, where she knocked softly, and opened the door.

Nand’ Bren was writing. He looked up in a little surprise, and stood up to meet him, even if nand’ Bren was Lord of the Heavensc stood up to just his height, being a human, and just his size, which always made nand’ Bren seem more like his own age. Lord Bren was all the colors of a sunny day—pale skin and pale hair and eyes and all. When Cajeiri had been very little, he had wondered if Bren was the only one in all the world like that. When he was older, he had found out Bren’s kind came in all sorts of shades; but, even so, very few were Bren’s sortc and fewer still of any species were as smart as Lord Bren. Lord Bren was his father’s trusted advisor, and when Lord Bren talked, his father the aiji listened.

Well, mostly, his father did.

“Nandi,” he said to Lord Bren, ever so respectfully—and quietly, aware Temein and Kaidin were just outside, and probably talking and reporting to Saidin, because they wereactually all from Great-uncle’s estate of Tirnamardi. “Please lend me one of Uncle’s books. I told Saidin-nadi that I came for one. Are you really going away?”

“Yes,” nand’ Bren said. “Only for a month, until the legislature meets.”

“You mean to go to the coast. Where your boat is.”

“Yes,” nand’ Bren said, just a bit more warily. “Just for a while.”

Guilt was useful; and Cajeiri had no hesitation to use it. “You promised when you did ever go on your boat you would take us along.”

Nand’ Bren looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Not without your father’s permission, young lord, one could not possibly—”

“Then one hopes you will ask him, nandi. One ever so wants to go!”

“I shall ask him,” nand’ Bren said quietly, as if it were an obligation, a very wearying obligation.

That stung. And that made Cajeiri angry.

“Young lord,” nand’ Bren said, “he will surely say no. But one will make the request.”

Nand’ Bren still looked tired, and entirely out of sorts. Perhaps it was not himself that nand’ Bren was out of sorts with.

“You did promise,” Cajeiri said, pushing it, in that thought, “and one is so boredwith lessons.”

“One did promise,” Bren agreed with a sigh. “And one regrets to have so little hope of persuading your father, but one fears he will refuse any request. If you recall, young lord, you are intended to become reacquainted with your father and your lady mother, and to learn the court and the legislature—for your own protection and future benefit.”

“Great-uncle is entirely unreasonable to send you away!”

“Lord Tatiseigi has been very generous to have lent this apartment at all,” Bren said, “and when he comes to the capital, he naturally needs it. Should he take a room in the hotel?”

“But where are you to go when the legislature is in session? Shall you not be here?”

“ ‘Where are you to go,— nandi?’” Nand’ Bren corrected his mode of address, since his voice had risen far too sharply and he had just omitted a courtesy to moderate that sharpness.

“Nandi,” he amended his question, ducked his head and made his voice and his manner far more quiet and restrained. “But where are you expected to go?”

Nand’ Bren smiled sadly, patiently. “Clearly, for the immediate future, to the home I do have, which I am very grateful to have. After that, young lord, perhaps I shall take a town house.”

“If wecould, we would assuredly toss the Farai out of your apartment!”

“One is very sure your father daily entertains the same thought, young lord.”

“Then he should do it! He should File on them!”

“One is very sure he would do it, if not for the fragility of the peace, young lord, but in the meantime, my brother happens to be sailing near my estate—I spoke to him a few days ago when he was in port on Mospheira. So my trip to the coast is not all a loss. I shall very probably get to see my brother. I also owe extravagant thanks to my staff in that district, who held out against the rebels, at the risk of their lives. And I owe a debt to Lord Geigi—up on the station: you remember Lord Geigi. His estate is next down the coast.”

“One remembers Lord Geigi favorably, yes,” he said. Nand’ Bren was clearly explaining to him that there were all sorts of social obligations already lined up for him, with no time for taking a boy on his boat, that was what, and he hardly liked to hear the whole list. “One remembers nand’ Toby, too. And Barb-daja. Theywould certainly find pleasure in seeing us, and hearing all our adventures.”

“Surely they would,” Bren said, not unkindly. “And surely the estate staff would be greatly honored by your presence, and so would Lord Geigi’s people be glad to receive you, but your father—”

“The paidhi-aiji persuaded all the districts to make peace when they were at each other’s throats! Surely you can persuade my parents to let me go to the coast for a month!”

Nand’ Bren smiled and shook his head in the human way, and said: “I shall honestly try, young lord. I shall certainly do that.” He went and took a book from the shelves, taking a little trouble about it. It was, of course, Great-uncle Tatiseigi’s book that nand’ Bren lent him.

It was a very handsome little book, very old. Cajeiri appreciated the trouble taken, at least, and folded it to his chest. He bowed respectfully, and nand’ Bren bowed.

But when Cajeiri walked out of nand’ Bren’s office he found himself madder and more frustrated than he had been in a long, long time. He did not even look at Kaidin and Temein on the walk back, nor did he say a word.

When he got safely back to his own room, in his father’s borrowed apartment, and was rid of his guard, he flung himself into a chair and flung the book onto the table beside him. It nearly slid off the table. He stopped it.

Then he thought to look at the book. It was the sort of thing his great-uncle would have, the script of a machimi play. But it was one he had never seen or read. It was titled Blood of Traitors. The illustration chased into the leather cover, and painted, had swords and castles. And nand’ Bren had picked it out, which meant it might be very much better than the volume of court rules and etiquette his tutor was making him memorize.

It was no substitute for sailing on nand’ Bren’s boat, and none for seeing nand’ Toby and Barb-daja.

He had caught a fish on nand’ Toby’s boat once. It had been venomous, and it had flown all about on his line, making everybody scramble. It was one of his most favorite memories. They had all laughed about it later, himself, and Great-grandmother, mani; and nand’ Bren and his associates, even when things were desperate and people had been trying to kill them—even the fish in the sea had had a try at killing them. And that had been the best moment on the whole boat trip.

He so wished he had never told his parents about it.

Chapter 2

« ^ »

A very good idea,” was Tabini’s judgment to Bren regarding his removal to the coast, by no means surprising. A young man, still, a big wide-shouldered man, with the palest stare Bren had ever seen in an ateva—Tabini had ruled the mainland all the years he had served as paidhi. Tabini ruled the atevi world, in effect, though a recent challenge to his authority had racketed from east to west, provoking counter-revolution and skirmishes after.

But Tabini had resurrected himself from rumored death the moment Tabini had been sure he had his assets back in order— notably, when the paidhi and the aiji-dowager and his heir had come back from space alive. Tabini had come back, from what had been a cleverly planned assassination designed to take out first his staff (which had happened) and then isolate and kill Tabini himself (which plainly had not happened.)

In fact, within a few weeks of Tabini’s re-emergence from the hills, the capital showed few scars, most of the conspirators were dead, the always troublesome South, the Marid, was quiet, certain few had paid heavily for backing the Kadagidi Lord Murini in his coup, and Tabini had become again what he had always been: ruler of the world’s only major continent, owner of half the human-built space station in orbit above them, owner of every functional space shuttle in existence, linking the world to that station; and incidentally owner of a half-built starship, which had been the agreement the ship-humans had made with Tabini in order to get their vitally needed supplies off the planet.

Tabini’s space program had put a strain on the economy: that had been the origin of the Troubles, at least in some sense—but the panic and outrage that had attended the departure of the one viable ship and all that investment had abated with the return of said ship from its mission. On new evidence that the ship-humans were actually going to keep their word and honor their agreements, Tabini’s stock had risen indeed. Humans on the island enclave of Mospheira had not invaded the mainland: they had in fact cooperated with the ship-humans and with Tabini, and that old fear had proved empty.

It was, in some senses, a new world. Tabini had taken a renewed tight grip on the reins of power, and if there still were minor nuisances, like the Farai still occupying the paidhi’s apartment and pretending to be loyalists, it was also true that Tabini was a master of timing. If it was not yet time to pitch the Farai out and stir up the Southern troubles again, the paidhi could only conclude it was definitively not yet time, and the paidhi’s best interim course was probably to go visit his brother.

“We shall hope for some solution before the legislative session,” Tabini said.

“One thinks of taking a town house, aiji-ma,” Bren said, “but staff will deal with that process.”

Some legislators did that, at least for the session. Certain town families rented out their premises for the season at a profit. Housing was at that kind of premium in the town. But even if they went to that extreme—it was no permanent solution.

“Give it time, paidhi-ji,” Tabini said again, not favoring his proposed solution with a direct answerc neither saying the Farai would be out of his apartment in a few weeks, nor saying they wouldn’t be.

So a wise and experienced court official simply nodded, thanked the aiji for permission to depart the city and didn’t ask another question, even as easy and informal as Tabini had always been with the paidhi-aiji.

But he had promised—once, to take the boy; and a second time, to ask a foredoomed question. “Your son,” he began, and got no further before Tabini lifted the fingers of one hand. Stop right there, that meant.

“My son,” Tabini said, “just visited your premises.”

“He did, aiji-ma. He reminded me I did promise him a boat trip.”

“Not recently, surely.”

“No, aiji-ma. But your son has an excellent memory.”

Tabini sighed. “Indeed. He has lessons. He has duties. He was not to have left the premises. And he asked you to use your good offices with me. Am I right?”

“Entirely, aiji-ma.”

“Perhaps we can prevail on the workmen in ourapartment to make a little more haste,” Tabini said, “and solve one problem—but not before my grandmother arrives. No, my son may notgo to the coast, paidhi-ji. He will stay here to keep his great-grandmother in good humor. Now you have discharged your obligation to him. And Irelieve you of responsibility for the promise. My son will have to deal with me on that matter. Go, go. We have ordered the red car for your trip; it should be coupled on by now. The paidhi-aiji will have it at his disposal on the return as well, on a day’s call. Tell nand’ Toby we wish him well.”

“Thank you, aiji-ma,” he said, and rose, and bowed deeply. The red car, no less. The aiji’s own rail car, with all its amenities, and its security. It was no small honor, though one he had almost always enjoyed.

At no time had he mentioned Cajeiri coming to his office, and at no time had he mentioned Toby being near the estate, or intending a visit: but he was not totally astonished that Tabini knew both things.

He simply went to the door, collected Banichi and Jago, and Banichi said,

“The estate has contacted nand’ Toby, nandi, and he will be arriving.”

“Did he say whether Barb was with him?” he asked. He hatedto ask. One could always hope she wouldn’t be. But Banichi simply lifted a shoulder and said.

“We have never heard she has left.”

“Well,” he said, which was all there was to say.

Packing had proceeded, even when they had had no permission as yet to quit the city. Tatiseigi being a day short of their doorway, the baggage had been stacked in the hall, the dining room, and the foyer, involving security equipment, armament, ammunition, uniforms for his four bodyguards, and a few meager items of furniture, plus four packing crates with his clothes, his books, and his personal itemsc all this had been the state of things when he had left the apartment to call on Tabini.

Tano and Algini estimated seven rolling carts and some of Tatiseigi’s staff to get their baggage down to the train.

“Are we ready to load up, then?” he asked. “The aiji said we should use the red car. That it was being coupled on right now.”

That car waited, always ready, always under guard, in the train station below the Bujavid itself; and taking it on took very little time. The train that loaded at the Bujavid station backed up onto that reserved section of track, connected with it and its secure baggage car, and that was that.

“It should be on by the time we get down there,” Banichi said, evidently as well-informed from his end of things as the aiji was on the other. “The carts are on their way up. Tano and Algini will see to that.”

Things might have gone either way. If Tabini had said no, they would have been on their way to the hotel and most of his goods on their way to storage. As it was, they were on their way to the train station in the Bujavid’s basement.

“I should say good-bye to Saidin,” he said, and went the few doors to the apartment down the hall to do that personally— knocking at the door that had lately been his, but he no longer felt it was. Madam Saidin answered, perhaps forewarned, via the links the Guild had, and he bowed. She bowed, letting them in, and Banichi and Jago picked up the massive bags they had destined to go with them.

“One is lastingly grateful for the hospitality of this house,” he said, and picked up the computer he had left in the foyer; that, and a large briefcase. “One is ever so grateful for your personal kindness, Saidin-nadi, which exceeds all ordinary bounds.”

“One has been honored by the paidhi’s residence here,” she said, with a little second bow, and that was that. He truly felt a little sad once that door shut and he walked away with Banichi and Jago. He would miss the staff. He had staff of his own to look forward to, but he had been resident with these people more than once, and perhaps circumstances would never combine to lodge him in this particular apartment againc Tatiseigi’s political ambitions had lately become acute, and his age made them urgent. Possibly those same ambitions had made him lend the apartment last year, to solve a problem for Tabini, but with the legislative session coming up, and with Tatiseigi’s long-desired familial connection to the aijinate now a reality— in Cajeiri—Tatiseigi now had a motive to bestir himself and actually occupy the seat in the house of lords that he had always been entitled to occupy. The world likely would hear from Tatiseigi this legislative session, and hear from him oftenc not always pleasantly so, one feared. One could see it all coming— and one sohoped it observed some sense of restraint.

Jago added the briefcase to her own heavy load as they boarded the lift. The briefcase held several reams of paper notes, correspondence, a little formal stationery and a tightly-capped inkpot, wax, his seal, and his personal message cylinder. He still carried the computer.

And there was one other obligatory stop downstairs, an advisement of his departure and a temporary farewell to his secretarial office, another set of bows and compliments.

And another set of papers which his apologetic office manager said needed his urgent attention.

“I shall see to them,” he assured that worthy man. Daisibi was his name—actually one of Tano’s remote relatives. “And have no hesitation about phoning me. I shall be conducting business in my office on the estate at least once a day, and the staff there is entirely my own. Trust them with any message, and never hesitate if you have a question. I shall be back five days before the session. Rely on it.”

“Have an excellent and restful trip, nandi,” Daisibi said, “and fortune attend throughout.”

“Baji-naji,” he said cheerfully—that was to say, fate and fortune, the fixed and the random things of the universe. And so saying, and back in the hallway headed back to the lift, he felt suddenly a sense of freedom from the Bujavid, even before leaving its halls.

He had a hundred and more staff seeing to things in this officec he had them sifting the real crises from the odder elements of his correspondence.

And more to the point, he could notbe hailed into minor court crises quite as readily from this moment on.

The Farai were no longer, at the moment, his problem. Uncle Tatiseigi was not.

And as much as he adored the aiji-dowager, Ilisidi, crisis would inevitably follow when she was living with an Atageini lord a few doors down from her own apartment—which was now and until Tabini’s move to his own apartment—under the management of her grandson Tabini’s staff.

Things within the apartment would not be to Ilisidi’s liking. They were bound not to be. The management of her grandson would become a daily crisis.

Uncle Tatiseigi would voice his own opinions on the boy’s upbringing.

And hewould be on his boat with his brother, fishingc for at least a few hours a day.

He almostfelt guilty for the thought.

He almostfelt grateful to the Farai, considering the incoming storm he was about to miss.

Not quite guilty, or grateful, on either account.

The train moved out, slowly and powerfully, and the click of the wheels achieved that modest tempo the train observed while it rolled within the curving tunnels of the Bujavid.

Bren had a drink of more than fruit juice as he settled back against the red velvet seats, beside the velvet-draped window that provided nothing but armor plate to the observation of the outside world: Banichi and Jago still contented themselves with juice, but at least sat down and eased back. Tano and Algini had taken up a comfortable post in the baggage car that accompanied the aiji’s personal coach. Bren had offered them the chance to ride with them in greater comfort, but, no, the two insisted on taking that post, despite the recent peace.

“This is no time to let down one’s guard, nandi,” was Tano’s word on the subject, so that was that.

So they made small talk, he and Banichi and Jago, on the prospect for a quiet trip, on the prospect for Lord Tatiseigi’s participation in a full legislative session for the first time in twenty-one felicitous yearsc and on the offerings they found in the traveling cold-box, which were very fine, indeed. Those came from the aiji’s own cook, with the aiji’s seal on them, so they could know they were safe—as if the aiji’s own guards hadn’t been watching the car until they took possession of it. Even his bodyguard could relax for a few hours.

It was all much more tranquil than other departures in this car. The coast wasn’t that far, as train rides went, and the aiji had done them one other kindness—he had lent an engine as well, so the red car was not attached to, say, outbound freight. It was a Special, and their very small train would go directly through the intervening stations with very little pause. They might even make Najida by sundown, and they could contemplate their own staff preparing fine beds under a roof he actually owned for the first time since they had come back from space.

A little snack, a little napc Bren let himself go to the click-clack of the wheels and the luxury of safety, and dreamtc

Dreamt of a steel world and dropping through space-time.

Dreamt of tea and cakes with a massive alien. Cajeiri was in this particular dream, as he had been in actual fact. Prakuyo an Tep loomed quite vivid in Bren’s mind, so much so that, in this dream, the language flowed with much less hesitancy than it did in his weekly study of it. He dreamed so vividly that he found himself engaged in a philosophical conversation with that huge gentleman, with Cajeiri, with the aiji-dowager, and with peace and war hanging in the balance.

He promised Prakuyo an Tep that indeed this was the son and grandmother of the great ruler of the atevi planet (a mild exaggeration) and a partner with humans (true, mostly) in their dealings with the cosmos. He had done that, in fact.

Humans having greatly offended the kyo, he had collected the whole stationful of them that had so offended, and delivered them back to the star they shared with atevi.

Humans having so greatly offended the kyo, he had persuaded the kyo that atevi were a very great authority who would make firm policy and guarantee humans’ good behavior in future.

Most of all, he had shown the kyo, who had never seen another intelligent species prior to their exiting their own solar system, and who had somehow gotten into space with noconcept or history of negotiation—one shuddered to think how— that two powerful species could get along with each other andwith the kyo—a thunderbolt of a concept the paidhi had no illusions would meet universal acceptance among the kyo.

Prakuyo an Tep, over a massive plate of teacakes, miraculously and suddenly resupplied in this dream, vowed to come to the atevi world and document this miracle for his people, a visit which would persuade them to conclude agreements with this powerful atevi ruler and his grandmother and son—agreements which would of course bind all humans—and together they would find a way to deal with the troublesome neighbors on the kyo’s otherperimeter: God knew whether that species had a concept of negotiation, either.

But the paidhi, the official translator, whose job entailed maintenance of the human-atevi interface, and the regulation of mandated human gifts of technology tothe atevi—according to the treaty which had ended the War of the Landing—had apparently another use in the universe. He was supposed to teach the kyo themselves the techniques of negotiation.

And simultaneously, back on the planet, he had to make sure Tabini’s regime was secure and peaceful.

And make sure Tabini’s grandmother was in good humor.

And make sure Tabini’s son didn’t kill himself in some juvenile venture, anddidn’t take so enthusiastically to things human that he ended up creating disaster for his own people on the day he did take over leadership of the aishidi’tat.

He really had hated to say no to the boy, who had harder things to do than most boys. He hadpromised him a boat trip.

And he sat there having tea with the kyo and telling himself he was firmly in charge of all these things. He had lied a lot, lately. He really didn’t like being in that position, lying to the boy, lying to the kyo, lying to—

Just about everybody he dealt with, exceptBanichi and Jago, and Tano and Algini. They knew him. They forgave him. They helped him remember what he had told everybody.

And pretty soon now, he was going to have to lie to the atevi legislature and tell them everything was under controlc when they all knew that there were still plenty of people out there who thought the paidhi hadn’tdone a great job of keeping human technology from disrupting their culture.

This didn’t, however, stop atevi from being hell-bent on having wireless phones. Some clans thought his opposing their introduction was a human plot to keep the lordly houses at a disadvantage—because the paidhi’s guard had them, and probably Tabini’s had them, and nobody else currently could have them. Clearly it was a plot, and Tabini was in the pocket of the humans, who secretly told Tabini what to doc they became quite hot about it.

Tea with Prakuyo became the windblown outside of a racing locomotive, with a great Ragi banner atop, and the paidhi sat atop that engine, chilled to the bone by an autumn wind, hoping nobody found his pale skin a particular target.

They were coming into the capital. And the people of Shejidan might or might not be glad to see Tabini return to powerc

“Bren-ji.” Jago’s voice. “We have just passed Parodai.”

They were approaching the lowlands. In the red car. Carrying all his baggage.

He was appalled, and looked at Banichi and Jago, who had gotten less sleep last night than he had, and who were still wide awake.

Maybe they had napped, alternately. Maybe Tano and Algini were taking the opportunity, safely sealed in the baggage car. He certainly hoped they were.

Had he been wound that tight, that the moment he quitted the capital, he slept the whole day away? He still felt as if he could sleep straight through to the next morning.

But he had now, with Banichi’s and Jago’s help, to put on his best coat, do up his queue in its best style, and look like the returning lord of his little district.

He owed that, and more, to the people of the district, who had held out against the rebels.

He owed it to the enterprising staff, many of them from the Bujavid—who had fled during the coup and simultaneously spirited away his belongings—which had consequently notfallen into the hands of the Farai.

His people had held out on his estate, staying loyal to him when that loyalty could have ultimately cost them their lives.

That it had not come under actual attack had been largely thanks to the close presence of Geigi’s neighboring estate and the reluctance of anyoutsider to rouse the Edi people of that district from their long quietc the Edi, long involved in a sea-based guerilla war with almost everybody, were at peace, and not even the Marid had found it profitable to add the Edi to their list of problems. The west coast was remote from the center of the conflict, which had centered around the capital and the Padi Valley—and it just hadn’t been worth it to the rebels to go after that little center of resistencec yet.

He’d gotten home in time. Tabini had launched his counter-coup in time. The estate had held out long enough. The threat of war was gone and Najida stood untouched.

And the paidhi-aiji owed them and Geigi’s people so very much.

He had fresh, starched lace at collar and cuffs, had a never-used ribbon for his queue—the ribbon was the simple satin white of the paidhi-aiji, not the spangled black of the Lord of the Heavens, which he very rarely used. He sat down again carefully, so as not to rumple his beige-and-blue brocade coat, and let Banichi and Jago put on their own formal uniforms, Guild black, still, but with silver detail that flashed here and there. Their queues were immaculately done, their sleek black hair impeccable—Bren’s own tended to escape here and there, blond wisps that defied confinement.

He opened up his computer for the remainder of the journey. He’d hoped to work on the way, on matters for the next session. He’d slept, instead, and now there was time only for a few more notes on the skeleton of an argument he hoped to carry into various committees. Atevi, accustomed to the various Guilds exchanging short-range communications, had seen the advanced distance-spanning communications they had brought back from the ship, and gotten the notion what could be had.

Worse, humans on Mospheira had adopted the devices wholesale and set up cell towers, and the continent, thanks to improved communications, knew it.

He had to argue that it wasn’t a good idea. He had to persuade an already suspicious legislature, reeling from two successive and bloody purges—one very bloody one when Tabini went into exile, and one somewhat less so when he returned—that he was notarguing against their best interests, and that after all the unwelcome human technology he had let land on the continent, he was going to say no to one they wanted. And the paidhi’s veto, by treaty law, was supposed to be absolute in that arena. That, too, was under pressure: if he attempted to veto, and if Tabini didn’t back him and the legislature went ahead anyway, that override weakened the vital treaty—and did nothing good for the world, either.

He just didn’t know what he was going to meet when the legislature met. The last session had seen gunfire in the chambers, blood spilled in the aisle—that memory haunted his worst nights. In the upcoming session, the bloodshed might be figurative, but no less dangerous: undefined new associations trying to form, alliances being made, power-brokering from end to end of the continent, in whole new configurations that had never existed before, never tested themselves against the others.

Everything was undefined with these new representatives coming to the session in Shejidan, people who had come to their posts after the upheaval. The remnant of the old legislature, those canny enough, devious enough, or stupidenough not to have had an opinion during the Troubles, were going to meet that tide of “new men” in a month, in the aisles of the hasdrawad and the tashrid. God knew what the flotsam would be on the beaches of those debates, or whether the paidhi’s influence could moderate a rush to give Tabini exactlywhat Tabini had always campaigned to have: more and more of the human tech that conferred power, medical advances, comforts, conveniences—and the damned wireless phones.

Too much too fast ran the risk of shipwrecking thousands of years of atevi culturec worse, yet, of running up against that great unknown of social dynamic. Wireless phones in particular made changes in the way people made contact. Easy and informal contact imitated the way humans interacted—humans, who had the word loveand friend;and had alliances outside their kinships. And atevi, who had the word association, and who felt the pull of emotions that held clans together—atevi little comprehended the changes it would make if communications started going outside their ordinary channels and if information started flowing between individuals who had no proper power to resolve an issue.

Man’chi was an emotion that to this day the paidhi could neither feel nor grasp, not even in the two nearest and dearest associatesof his, who sat on the same bench with him. They couldn’t feel what he felt; he couldn’t feel what passion beat in their hearts, and that was just the way it wasc all unknown, all fragile, all foreign, all the timec but it was what kept the clans together. Banichi and Jago would lay down their lives for him, a concept which, were he to do it for them, would mortally offend their sense of the way the universe had to work, not just the emotional sense—but the basic logic and reason underlying every decision. Such an impulse on his part would be, in their estimation, completely insane.

So when it came to politics, wireless phones and pocket coms, according to Toby, it was notjust the social perniciousness of instant communication. The cell phone plague now preoccupied humans on the island of Mospheira, a plague making them walk into traffic while in conversation that preempted their awareness of their surroundings; a compulsion that suddenly rendered them incapable of ignoring a phone call in the presence of actual people they should be dealing with. It had gone overnight (from the view of someone two years out of the current) into, Toby said, its own kind of insanity.

Atevi who stood against the establishment of a wireless network argued about clan and Guild prerogatives, but even they little visualized what it would do to the social fabricc it was as basic as the decision whether to have a network of highways, or to have a network of rail. The one, with unregulated movement, would have utterly upset the associations that were the very fabric of civilization. Rail managed not to. And upset the mode of communication that preserved clan authority? Make it possible for anybody to call anybody at any time and withoutgoing through the household? Unthinkable.

The Assassins’ Guild had more grasp of the situation than anyone—the Assassins’ Guild andthe Messengers’ Guild were both on the paidhi’s side in the debate. The Trade Guild and Transport Guild both saw advantages in the proposed technology and wanted it on a limited basis, for themselves. The Academics’ Guild stood against, except that they wanted the now-limited computer network to include their research, and libraries.

Greed was not exclusively a human vicec and everybody was willing to accept damage for somebody else’s venue to benefit their own. Fortunately the Assassins’ Guild was a very, very potent Guild, and generally was listened to—out of dread, if nothing else. The paidhi held out hope that, if he could prevail, it would be thanks to the Assassins’ Guild this time; and if he didn’t—and if this one got past him—

God, the consequent damage could wipe out everything, absolutely every good thing he’d ever tried to accomplish. He could see the aishidi’tat dissolve, right when it was most necessary the world be stable.

At times, since their return from space, he asked himself if he had not already lost control of the flow of technology. He was shocked by the changes. It was as if the floodgates had already opened—as forces for and against the old regime bargained and connived for advantage. Tabini’s year-long overthrow, which he had helped end, was in one sense the last gasp of the forces that opposedthe wholesale import of human technology, but they had bartered, in a sense, with humans, and more significantly—with humans in space. The space station had sent down mobile base stations, landers. Had established communications. Had instructed Mospheira to set up the cell net. Had encouraged Mospheira to provide technology to the atevi resistance, the University doing damned little to prevent it, and the atevi saying no to nothing.

When he’d come back, he’d found himself on Tabini’s side, where he had always been, but Tabini had always stood for human contact, more and more human technology. All sorts of proposals were close to opening the floodgates for good and all, importing everything humans had, including the technology in that starship up there, which would change so, so muchc

It was still the paidhi’s job to say no when it was time to say no.

And if he couldn’t say no to this one and make it stick, maybe it was time the paidhi left the job.

Maybe a new paidhi could do better. But he didn’t know how anybody the University trained could step into the waters now—it had become a rip current, and his own understanding of where they were going had gotten less and less sure.

Maybe the very institution of the paidhi had become outmoded, and humans and atevi actually were far enough along toward unanimity they could find their own way hereafter.

But there were bitter lessons to say that was a dangerous, dangerous assumption ever to make. The paidhi’s office existed because humans and atevi had had another lengthy period of accommodation, right after humans had landed on the planet, and good things had flowed from humanity and everybody had just lovedtheir new friendsc

Or that was what humans had thought, right before atevi (as humans saw it) went berserk and launched the War of the Landing.

From the atevi point of view, humans had damned near wrecked civilization, and in fact, they nearly had.

So it wasn’t safe to start thinking everything could roll along on its own. That, at least once upon a time, had been the point of absolutely terrible danger.

He just didn’t have the vision of the future he’d used to have. It was all dark up ahead, and he couldn’t see. He’d lost touch with Mospheira: the island of Mospheira, where he’d been born, where he’d grown up, was a place where he was no longer comfortablec where the ties he had left were all official ones, political alliesc

Except Toby and his household.

Household, was it?

He hadn’t even been thinking in Mosphei’ just now. He’d been thinking in Ragi. That was how it was. He couldn’t remember his brother’s face when he was apart from him. Toby belonged to a different world, where people came with different features, spoke differently, felt differently, hadn’t a clue what went on in his head, and didn’t understand why touching another person was justc something he didn’t do anymore.

Hell.

He was losing his grip, was what. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing Toby at the moment. He was outright flinching from the thought.

He’d pitied his predecessor, Wilson, who had just gotten odder and odder. Wilson had quit the post once his aiji, Valasi, had died, and when Valasi’s son, Tabini, had been a few weeks in the aijinate. Wilson couldn’t deal with the change in regimes, and he’d retired to the university on Mospheira, saying Tabini was a future problemc

So one Bren Cameron had taken over the post, young, bright, academic ace, the onlyhuman, at the time, to master the mathematical intricacies of court Ragic Wilson himself had never been fluent; had never ventured far from his dictionary, and, God, researched every official utterancec

He’d rapidly been better than Wilson. More reckless than Wilson.

Now he had to ask himself which language he was thinking in.

Now he routinely limited his human impulses and curtailed his human instincts, shaping himself into something elsec

A good talent, up to a point. He didn’t know if he’d passed that point. Maybe he’d passed it somewhere in that voyage, when they’d all gone out to get a human station removed from where it had no right to bec

Maybe his usefulness to the world had become something else out there. Maybe he didn’t belong on the planet anymore, down in its web of intrigues, plots, and politics. Much as it would hurt—much as it would hurt people he cared about— maybe it might be better if he told Shawn his disconnnect had gotten the better of him, and he wasn’t just resigning from representing Mospheira—which he had done, even before he went off to space—he was resigning from functioning on the planet at all.

If he couldn’t stop this wireless phone business—God knew, maybe he should go back up to the station and live there, where the view was panoramic and the associations were all knowable and limited.

Represent the aiji to the station-humans. That wasn’t a small job.

It wasn’t what he emotionally wanted. He’d put down roots here on the mainland. Deep ones. But if he was becoming inconvenient to the very things he was trying to savec

Damn. He was losing himself. He was scared, was what.

And in that sense, Tatiseigi’s return was extremely inconvenient: he’d wanted uninterrupted time to prepare his arguments and gather data. He almost wished he didn’thave to deal with Toby. He needed his mind on business: it was a critical issue. He needed to stop this wireless business once for all.

But Toby wouldn’t overstay. Neither, for that matter, would Barb.

God.

Barb.

No. No. Not a good thing to go into their visit anticipating trouble. The last meeting had been uncomfortable, to say the least—finding an old and troublesome relationship had now ricocheted to one’s divorced brother was, yes, uncomfortable for everybody. But if the paidhi-aiji could negotiate affairs between people bent on killing each other, he surely could find a way to get through a week up close with Barb.

It was the price of seeing Toby.

Which he wasn’t sure he wanted to do in this particular weekc

No. He did. He’d come too far unattached from his own kind. The paidhi might be the better, mentally, for reforging some of those human links, even if they hurt. It was part of what he had beenc which had been, once upon a time, efficient.

Maybe he just needed to recover his balance. Sharpen the edges, to mix metaphors. Regain a lost dimension of himself. The paidhi-aiji was useful when he washuman, not when he was embedded so deeply in atevi politics he could no longer be perceived as different from any other clan-centered interest.

Getting that sense of humanness back, getting his thinking process in better order—that might be more useful than research.

Banichi said, “We just passed Nomi Dar, Bren-ji.”

Within an hour of the coast. “We might have sandwiches,” he decided. Staff at the estate knew when they were to arrive—they’d have consulted the train station. And he knew nothing would dissuade staff from having a meal ready, no matter the hour, but nothing would dissuade staff, either, from the formalities of meeting, and that might require a little fortification.

So he had one of the small sandwiches—small, by atevi standards—and gave half to Banichi. He had a cup of fresh-made tea, and with carbohydrates hitting his system, even mustered a sense of anticipation for Toby’s visit. The air seemed to smell differently—or weigh differently—as they came down toward the coast.

The sea—changed things. Healed things. He began to feel it.

And when the train finally slowed to a stop and they had reached the station, he was properly kitted out and ready. He carried his own computer: Banichi and Jago stood near the door awaiting the signal from Tano and Algini that they had found things proper outside.

Then and only then did Banichi throw back the lever and shove the door open, and a pleasant cool breeze met them—a breeze and a cheer from the station platform, where very many familiar faces waited.

His staff. His people. Familiar facesc chief among them, Ramaso, his major domo—silver-haired, entirely now, around the face: that was a shock. Ramaso was a cousin of Narani’s, that excellent man, his major domo from up on station, and looked very like him, now that the hair had changed.

There was Saidaro, who almost single-handedly had saved his boat from destruction; there was Husaro, and Anakarac there was a whole crowd.

“Nandi,” Ramaso said, with a deep bow and a beaming face. “One understands there is baggage: we brought the truck as well as the bus. The boys will take care of the baggage. You and your bodyguard should come in the bus.”

“One doubts being able to persuade my aishid, nadi-ji, but they will quite happily let the young lads do the loading.”

“Indeed,” Banichi said, at his shoulder, and Jago relayed that information to Tano and Algini—the baggage car had opened up, and some of the group was tending in that direction: a glance showed Tano outside on the platform, and doubtless talking to Jago.

It suddenly all felt better. Ramaso, and Saidaro, Husaro and others, some lifelong domestics, some clerical staff who had retired from office service during the Troubles, and who had come here to Najida to live out their retirement in service to the estate—mostly attending the needs of the adjacent village, teaching the children, handling forms and applications and helping out in general. The names came back to him, the faces moderately changed, in some cases the hair newly salted with whitec all of them wearing their finest, and positively beaming. They bowed. He bowed. They crowded about—as much as atevi ever would crowd and jostle.

“Have you heard from my brother yet, nadi-ji?” Bren asked Ramaso, and that worthy smiled and nodded.

“His boat was tying up at dock as we left to meet the train, nandi. Staff will see him and the lady up to the house. He will be settled in the south room. Will that suit?”

“One is extremely gratified,” he said, and meant it. He bowed again, and they all bowed, and Ramaso showed him and Banichi and Jago toward the platform steps, and the waiting bus. As he had thought, Tano and Algini, not leaving his baggage even to this devoted crew, marshaled junior staff to carry baggage down to the truck, which waited behind the bus.

Najida Estate, the bus said on the side, with a bright, rope-encircled picture of a peaceful blue bay and a small ship right below the name.

The truck was a little less decorated: its side panel said just, Najida, which was the village: a market truck, well-maintained, perfectly adequate for their baggage. Bren saw that matter going well, and climbed up and took his seat on the bus just behind the driver, with Banichi and Jago just behind him, and Ramaso and Saidaro just opposite, as other staff piled on in noisy commotion, all those who weren’t seeing to the baggage-loading.

The dedicated train would go back the way it had come, with no passengers—possibly with a car or two of freight for Shejidan, if the stationmaster so decided—back to Tabini, to wait the aiji’s pleasure. So they were here, peacefully settled, in rural solitude until that train made the return trip to pick them upc closer than the airport; and much more leisurely a passage.

The grassy road, greening in spring, showed recent mowing; and the dust of fairly frequent use—mostly the village and the estate going back and forth for supplies, very little in the way of passenger traffic. They passed thickets into which caiki dived for coverc nice to think that his land sheltered the little creatures: bobkins, Mospheirans called them, quick, gray little diggers that undermined planted gardens, common on the Island as well as the mainlandc food for larger hunters, which were scarce here, so the caiki thrived. A small herd of gigiin grazed on the hillside above the village, fat and prosperous and complaisant, not seeming alarmed by their presence. Nobody hunted them in this season. The hunt was permitted only for seven days a year.

Najida mostly fished the bay for its living, hunted very little. It sold a part of its take for farm goods and supplied its village as its village supplied it, mostly by green-gardens; and during the summer the village kids probably hunted bobkins out of the village gardens, making some items out of the hides.

It was typical seaside rural life, keeping a schedule that didn’t have committee meetings looming, and didn’t greatly worry about the capital, in the best times. The village gardens would still lie asleep for the winter, areas nearest the houses probably being turned now for the first time, but the vines still were protected under neat straw rows, down in the fenced fields, the orchard trunks wrapped with straw rope in the old way. Bren gazed out the bus window, taking it in, always fascinated by the attention to detail, using so many materials that never passed through a mercantile chain—just made off the land, out of waste straw from neighboring grain fields.

His mother’s house on Mospheira had never had a garden: they’d been city-dwellers, though Toby had once made a try at a garden when he’d lived on the North Shore, and probably harvested three tomatoes and a few carrots after his summer of trying. Next year, at least, the garden had gone back to flowers.

And Jill—Toby’s wife, then—and the kids—they’d laughed about it when he asked how it had gone.

Pity that Jill hadn’t stuck it out. He hadn’t had time to ask Toby the details of that breakup. He knew there was too much of his own fault in it, his fault that he hadn’t been home to take care of their mother, his fault that Toby’d done it allc done too much of it. Way too much, but that had been Toby’s choice, in his own opinion.

And Jill had taken the kids and left.

No more little house on the north coast. No more family. Toby had sold the house, bought a bigger boatc

And God help him, Toby had immediately taken up with Barbc with his brother’s old near-fianceec if you asked Barb about their relationship. He’d been trying his best to shed Barb. Barb had immediately flung herself into one bad marriage, then gotten out of that and straightway moved in on theirmother, taken care of her in her last illnessc

And who had shown up regularly at that same bedside, if not the ever-dutiful if not the favorite son? Toby. Toby, who’d worked all his life for the kind of recognition their mother lavished on her absent son the paidhi-aijic and never, to his knowledge, got a shred of thanks.

Barb had lost no time. Moved right in on Toby while Toby was visiting their mother in the hospital. Mum had died, Jill had left Toby, and—oh, yes—there was Barb, as fast as decency possibly allowed, moving right onto Toby’s boatc just helping out.

Well, Toby could use a hand on the boat, that was sure. It was safer sailing, with two of them: hand Barb that.

So he could worry less about Toby, knowing he had somebody with him, in bad weather and the lonely stretches of water where he persisted in sailingc sometimes on covert business for the Mospheiran government.

Just so Barb stayed with him. That was all he asked. He forgave her everything, if she’d stay with Toby, so Toby had somebody.

The bus passed the village, took the curve, and his own land spread out across the windows, the sinking sun just touching the bay in the distance, spreading gold across the water. The red tile roofs and limestone walls of Najida estate showed from the height, a mazy collection of courtyards traditional in the west coast provinces; and at the bottom of its landscaped terraces, two yachts rode with sails furled, one at anchor—his own Jeishan— Northwind—that he hadn’t seen in more than three years, riding at anchor; and, tied up to the estate’s little wooden pier, Toby’s slightly larger Brighter Days, that he’d last seen when Toby had let his party off ashore on the mainland, well north of here.

It was a cheerful sight. Banichi and Jago had noted it, he was sure, and he suddenly realized he hadn’t said a word to them since they’d left the train.

“Toby’s boat,” he said.

“Yes,” Banichi said, the obvious, and Jago: “It shows no activity.”

Meaning Toby and Barb must surely be up at the house by now, which was where their bus and the trailing truck were going—directly so, now that they made the turn from the main road to the estate drive, a modest little track lined by old weathered evergreens, the sort of seaside scrub that, aged as it was, never grew much larger than he stood tall, all twisted shapes and dark spikes in the waning light.

Lamps glowed at the portico, a warm, welcoming light for them at the edge of twilight, showing the flagstone porch—his own porch, a place he’d rarely been, but been often enough to love in every detail.

The bus pulled to a stop. Banichi and Jago got up in the last moment of braking, got to the door as it opened, and were first on the ground. He followed, down the atevi-scale steps, and onto the stone drive, up the walk, as Ramaso and the staff poured off the bus behind him and other staff came out of the open doors to welcome him. The house staff bowed. He bowed, and when he lifted his head there was Toby in the open doorway, with Barb behind him.

“Toby,” he said, and was halfway embarrassed by old habit, the impulse to open his arms, as Toby did—and there was Toby oncoming, and nothing to do: Toby embraced him; he, with no choice, embraced Toby, a little distressed. Toby slapped him on the back, and, hell, he did the same with Toby, stood him back and had a look at him, grinning. “Missed you,” Toby said.

“ Missedme! Hell! Worriedabout you, damn it, when you dropped out of contact after you dropped us off.”

“ Youworried! Youwere the one getting shot at!”

“I was safe enough,” he said, with a nod over his shoulder toward Banichi and Jago. “ Theymake me keep my head down.” The reserve he cultivated was deserting him. Staff had seen it before. Hell, he said to himself, there was no teaching Toby differently. He had stood back enough to look at Toby. Toby’s face was getting sun-lines that showed plainly in the lamplight: his wasn’t. Toby lived in the sun and the weather. He rarely saw the out of doors and took care of his skin with lotions. Time passed. Things changed. They both grew older. Further apart. But now was now. “Missed you,” he said.

“Mutual,” Toby said. And despite everything, all the water under that bridge—it was probably still true.

He truly hoped that Barb wouldn’t move in for her turn, but she did: a public hug that had more warmth in it than the one he returned.

A woman, his brother’s lover, and in public: it was far more of a scandal to the staff than the human habit of embracing brothers, but there it was, and he treated it as natural, if only for the benefit of his watching staff and bodyguard. More to the point, he feltJago’s gaze on his back in that moment, and set Barb firmly back at arms’ length, seeing the faint traces of weather on her face as well. “You’re looking good,” he said. “The sea agrees with you.”

“You never change,” she said.

That meant several things, and he knew which. His perfunctory smile had an edge—just like the statement.

“Nice to know.” He let Barb go and said, to Ramaso, “Thank you, nadi, and thank the staff, for your welcome to my Mospheiran household, and to me.”

“Indeed, nandi.” The worthy gentleman bowed. “The kitchen has a supper ready, at the lord’s pleasure, rooms are ready, and water is hot.”

Supper, or rest, or a hot bath. Every possibility.

But cooks could hardly be disrespected. And the truck had pulled around to the garden gate, where Tano and Algini were busy supervising the offloading of baggage and belongings. “One will visit the room, wash, and enjoy a leisurely supper, nadi-ji,” he said quietly to Ramaso, and to Toby and Barb: “Wash up and dinner, forthwith. I’ll see you at table.”

“Right,” Toby said.

The south room, Ramaso had said, which was actually a small suite, but with only one bedroom. The staff had lodged his family before. And someone had found a way to ask, apparently, about bedrooms—that, or staff had been unable to dislodge Barb from Toby’s arm.

The brother of the paidhi-aiji and the paidhi-aiji’s former lover, together under the paidhi’s roof. Atevi did readily comprehend political realignments. And knew how to accept them without comment.

“Tano and Algini have gone the back way, nandi,” Banichi said as they reached the door of his room— hisroom, indisputably his, and when he opened the doorc

He knew that carpet. He knew that vase on the peculiarly carved table. That bed. That coverlet.

They were from his apartment in the Bujavid. He had known that staff had rescued significant items of his furnishings and gotten them out by train. And there they were, his bedroom, reconstituted just as it had been. He was quite amazed.

They didn’t enter alone. Domestic staff arrived to take his traveling coat, and to supervise the arrival of his personal luggage, followed by more staff, who set things in the hall of his two-room suite. Banichi and Jago directed matters while Bren changed his shirt and coat—or changed it with the help of two of the staff who deftly assisted him with the lace cuffs and the collar: staff he knew, staff who’d been his for years: Koharu and Supani, who’d grown at least half a hand while he’d been gone and, gangly young men that they both were, grinned like fools and kept bowing, delighted as they could be. He felt—

Comfortable, finally. Truly home, truly safe. Even his bodyguard let these people come and go in confidence, and let this staff arrange his wardrobe in the rooms allotted to them. Banichi and Jago, Tano and Algini officially shared quarters just down the hall—though Jago would likely not sleep there.

And with the arrival of the various cases, it was a massive unpackingc an absolute fire brigade of clothing going from cases to closets, hand to hand, a steadily increasing staff all cheerful and quick about their jobs, and not a step out of order. They were excellent at their jobs, as fine a staff as any house could have, and Bren couldn’t but catch their mood. A man could workin this environment; a man could concentrate on his job in absolute confidence that everything was taken care of, impeccably managed, all in order. He’d be fed like a prince, he’d be dressed and taken care of, nobody would ever mess with his papers and his computer—he could rely on that. He could look out the windows and watch the sun set with no worries beyond the research he had to do.

And maybe he wouldhave ample time for the boat, and a little fishing, and a visit with his brother—he put the thought of Barb completely aside—before Toby headed back out to sea.

Oh, it was a goodset of circumstances that had brought him back. He’d held it off for months as both a promised reward and a necessary burden—and now that he was here—it was going to work. He could reward himself with a little time and it wasn’t going to put him off his duties at all. He could rest. His bodyguard could sleep decent hours and lean back and relax in real security, remote from the political angst that went with living in the Bujavid—and in the borrowed apartment and with the staff of a politically interested and very conservative lord.

And what was more, they could enjoy dinner with absolute confidence a borrowed chef on one of the Bujavid’s frequent dinner engagements wasn’t going to make a lethal mistake and poison the visiting human. This was Suba in charge of the kitchen. Suba absolutely understood what humans could and couldn’t eat: he was not the finest cook on the planet—but he cooked excellent regional dishes. And that was one more stage of relaxationc which Mospheira itself couldn’t afford him nowadays: too many crazy people there, too many agendas, too much controversy. Here, after a hellish year, he heaved a deep sigh as Supani made a final tweak at his collar and Koharu straightened the lace cuffs from the sleeves, and was just well content with himself and current company.

Even Barb’s presence under the same roof—if Toby wanted her, if she did good for Toby, that was all fine. He’d be pleasant. She could be. They could have some family time, do a little fishing—settle some personal business he didn’t exactly look forward to, but Toby probably wanted to say some things to him about the missed years, and clear the air, and he was obliged at least to listen and apologize. That needed doingc if Toby wanted to do it.

Banichi and Jago turned up ready for formal duty in their best black leather, gleaming with polished silver rings and fastenings—and they’d stand by while he ate and socialized, come hell or high water, since it was an official estate dinner, while Tano and Algini, on room duty and not obliged to formal dress, had their supper with staff, put their feet up, and watched the house servants unpack everything they were allowed to touch.

No arguing with the Guild’s sense of propriety, however. He headed out with Banichi and Jago, not, as it would be in the Bujavid, through the main hall of his quarters, out the foyer, and so on into the halls, but directly down the warm, wood-paneled hall of the main buildingc this wasn’t a building he shared with other lords, or even guests, ordinarily. Unlike the arrangement in other places he lived, this washis house, and when he went out his bedroom door he was immediately in the larger house, and when he walked down to the dining room, it was the dining room for himself and everybody who wasn’t staff.

He loved this hallway. It had something quite rare in atevi architecture, a technique perhaps borrowed, centuries ago, from Mospheirans. The wing ended in a stained-glass window, a huge affair: staff had lit the outside lanterns, which only hinted at its colors. He looked forward to morning, when its smoldering reds and blues and golds would bloom into pastels and light, a rare representation of an actual object—atevi art was given to patterns completely overwhelming any hint of a person or a tree or a landscape. This was indisputably a tree, with branches more natural than patterned, and he loved the piece. He’d almost, of all things, forgotten it; and the little he could see of it was precious to him, the final touch on his homecoming. He loved this whole place—small, as lordly houses went, cozy. He found himself completely at peace as he entered the dining room, smelled the savory aromas wafting in from the service hall, and met three familiar faces—serving staff he and Banichi and Jago had known and trusted for years.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said warmly. “So very good to see you.”

“Nandi.” Bows. Equally warm greetings. “Will a before-dinner drink be in order?”

He named it, an old favorite, perfectly safe.

And saw those three calm expressions change to shock, as Toby entered—with Barb clinging to his arm and with her blonde curly head pressed against his shoulder. Laughing.

His face must have registered almost the same shock as his servants. Toby stopped, taking the cue. Barb left Toby and came and hooked her arm into his, tugging at him as he stood fast.

“Bren. This place is so marvelous.”

“Thank you,” he said, and disengaged his arm enough to bow slightly, to Toby, then, in complete disengagement, to her. He said, then, soberly: “Customs are different here. People don’t touch. Forgive me.”

“Well, but we’re family,” Toby said, trying to cover it all.

“So are my staff,” Bren said shortly. It was an unhappy moment. He saw resentment in his brother, beyond just a natural embarrassmentc old, old issue, the matter of atevi culture, which, the more he had taken it on, had separated him further and further from Tobyc and their mother. And thatwas the sore point. “Sorry, Toby. Sit down. What will you drink? No beer, I’m afraid. We have vodka and some import wine. Vodka and shebai is good. I recommend it.” He was talking too much, too urgently. He was on the verge of embarrassing his staff as well as himself, doing their job instead of translating. And he resented the situation Barb had put him in. “Take the shebai.”

“Sure,” Toby said. “Barb?”

“White wine.”

He turned and translated for the staff. “Nand’ Toby will enjoy shebai. Barb-daja will have the pale wine, nadiin-ji. Forgive them.” He saw, in the tail of his eye, Barb reattaching herself to Toby, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

Neither did his staff, who would have seated them.

“Toby. Barb. Take those endmost seats, if you please. Toby. Please.”

“I think he means no touching,” Toby said to Barb, attempting humor. Barb actually blushed vivid pink, and shot him a look.

Jago shot a look back, Bren caught that from the tail of his eye as he turned to sit down, and as he took his seat at the head of the table, Banichi simply walked to Toby’s end of the dining room, in the ample space the reduced table size allowed, and stood there, looming over the couple while a very embarrassed servant moved to seat first Toby, who had started to seat Barb himself. It was a thoroughly bollixed set of social signalsc and dammit, Toby had guested here. Toby knew better.

“Toby always sits first,” Bren said in Mosphei’, to Barb. He didn’t add that Toby, as his brother, outranked Barb—and that the staff’s opinion of Barb’s social standing was surely sinking faster by the minute. He could imagine the talk in the kitchenc questions as to whether Toby had brought an entertainer—and a stupid one, at that—to a formal dinner under his brother’s very proper roof.

It was a social disaster and he was furious at Barb: Toby clearly knew better; and Barb was not that unread—but no, Barb decided she could push the whole atevi social system, here, under his roof, to assert herself—which Toby might or might not read the same way, and there was no way on earth he was going to convince Toby what her game really was. There was no way he could bring it up at the dinner table, for damned sure.

There was one way to defuse it gracefully: diplomacy, the art of saying what one didn’t believe, in order to swing the behavior toward what one wanted: guidance, more than lying. So he needed to have had a special talk with them. He clearly needed to have a talk with them, but not now, with personal embarrassment in the mix. It was likely Banichi and Jago would have that talk—by now, he was sure they intendedto have it in Mosphei’ the minute they had the chance, and logically they wouldhave had it immediately with Toby’s personal guard, if Toby had arrived with onec which, of course, he hadn’t—unless one counted Barb. It was the sort of social glitch-up and attitude that had led to the War of the Landing. Humans were sure atevi would adapt to their very friendly way with just enough encouragement. Atevi—who didn’t even have a word for friendship— assumed humans, who seemed so intelligent, would eventually learn civilized manners. Atevi assumed since they owned the planet, humans were in theirhouse, while humans considered that they could just naturally get atevi to relax the rules, since their motives were the bestc or for mutual profit.

“Drinks will arrive momentarily,” Bren said quietly. “I do owe you both a profound apology for not mentioning certain things beforehand. This is a formal occasion. It’s my fault.”

“You’ve been here too long,” Toby said, and it came out like a retort.

“I live here,” Bren said, just a trifle unwisely: he knew that once he’d said it, and added, the truth: “I won’t likely live on Mospheira again. So yes, I’ve changed.” That, for Barb, just a trifle pointedly, and for Toby, with gentler intent: “I’ve done things a certain way so long I’m afraid I’ve lost part of my function as a translator, because I truly should have translated the situation. An atevi house is never informal—but tonight is official. Barb, forgive me, you have to keep a respectful distance from each other except in the bedroom. If someone does something for you in your quarters, bow your head just slightly and say mayei-ta. About the seating: Toby takes precedence because he’s my relative and this is my house; gender has no part at all in the etiquette.”

“You mean we just shocked them,” Barb said.

“Profoundly,” Bren said mercilessly. “The same as if they’d surprised you in bed.” He actually succeeded in shocking her— not in what he said; but where he said it. And the drinks were arriving. He smiled at Barb with edged politesse, and wiped the hardness off his face in a nod to his staff. “Mayei-tami, nadiin-ji. Sa heigieta so witai so kantai.”

Which was to say, “Thank you, esteemed people. Your service is timely and very considerate.”

“Mayei-ta,” Barb said with a little nod, on getting her drink. “Mayei-ta,” Toby muttered, “nadiin-ji.”

“A amei, nandi.” This from the young server, who did notaccord Barb a notice, except to use the dual-plus-one, to make the number fortunate, and who paid a second, parting bow to Bren, a unity of one. He left via the serving door, and Jago turned smartly and tracked the young person straight out of the dining room, probably to deliver a certain explanation to the staffc

What, that the lord’s brother-of-the-same-house was attempting to civilize the human he had brought under the lord’s roof? That Toby was likely equally embarrassed, put on the spot by the lady, and was trying not to make an issue of it?

Probably not. Jago was nota diplomat. The talk probably ran something like: “Bren-nandi tolerates this woman because his brother and this woman recently risked their lives in the aiji’s service. The lord will deal with his brother, who will, one hopes, deal forcefully with this woman.”

Certainly Jago was back in just about that amount of time, and took up her position on the other side of the serving door, stiffly formal.

“Good,” Toby had said, meanwhile, regarding the drink, and Barb had agreed.

“How is the aiji’s household?” Toby asked. “Is that all right to ask?”

“Perfectly in order,” Bren said in some relief, and relaxed a little, with a sip of his drink. “Everyone is in good health. Nand’ Cajeiri is back with his father and mother, the relatives have mostly gone back to the country— Ihave nowhere to live, since I’ve been using Lord Tatiseigi’s apartment while he was patching up the damage to his estate, and he’s on his way back to the capital.”

“Well, I’dthink you’d be a priority,” Barb said. “I don’t know why you’re shunted out to the coast.”

“I’m a very high priority,” he said equably, “but it’s his apartment. The aiji himself is still living in his grandmother’s apartment, since his residence was shot up; and mine just happens to be full of Southerners at the moment. It’s tangled. A defunct clan, the Maladesi, owned both this estate and the Bujavid apartment, both of which came to me; but they have remote relatives, the Farai, who claim to have opened the upper doors to the aiji on his return—someone did, for certain—never mind that Tabini was actually coming up from the basement; but the doors did open to a small force that was coming up the hill. It’s the thought that counts, so to say, and therefore there’s a debt. The Farai had taken over my apartment, in my absence, and they’re still in there, politely failing to hear any polite suggestion they move out.”

“And the aijican’t move them?” Toby said. “I’d think he could at least offer them a trade. Or you some other apartment.”

“Well, that’s easier said than done. Apartments in the Bujavid can’t be had: it’s on a hill, there’s no convenient way to build on, though some have suggested doing away with legislative offices as a possibility— The point is, there’s not only no place to put me, there’s no room for half a dozen other clans that had rather have that honor—some of them really deserving it. There’s a certain natural resentment among the conservatives that Istand as high as I do, so that’s a touchy point that publicity just doesn’t help. Andthe Farai are Southern, which is its own problem.”

“Aren’t they the batch that just rebelled?”

“Related to them. Neighboring district. Their opening the doors to the aiji was a clear double cross of Southern interests, but since Murini’s Southern allies suffered a rash of assassinations, and since clans have changed leadership, the whole political geography down there has shifted—somewhat. Understand: Tabini-aiji is Ragi atevi. North central district. The South is Marid atevi, different dialect, different manners, four different ethnic groups, and historically independent. They were dragged kicking and screaming into the aishidi’tat by Tabini’s grandfather; they’ve rebelled three times, generally been on the other side of every issue the aiji supports, but they are economically important to the continent—major fishing industry, southern shipping routes: fishing is important.”

“Nonseasonal.” Toby knew that: certain foods could only be eaten in certain seasons, but most fishes had no season, and were an important mainstay in the diet—one of the few foods that could be legitimately preserved.

“Nonseasonal, and essential. If it weren’t for the fishing industry, the seasonal economy would be difficult, to say the least. So the aishidi’tat needs the South, the Marid. Needs all that association, as it needs the western coast. All very important. And by promoting the Farai in importance—however inconvenient to me—the aiji can make important inroads into the Southern political mindset. You always handle the South with tongs, because, however annoying the Marid leadership has been to the aishidi’tat, the people areloyal to their own aijiin. The Farai are Senjin Marid, as opposed to the Tasaigin Marid and the Dojisigin Marid. They’re northernmost of the four Southern Associations, and they appear to have switched sides.”

“Four Associations,” Toby said. “Isn’t that an infelicity?”

“Extremely,” Bren said. “In all senses. It’s unstable as hell. Double crosses abound in that relationship. One clan or the other is always playing for power—lately mostly the Tasaigi, which swallowed up the fifth Association, the islands, which has no living clan, and has the most territory. The Tasaigi argue that one strong aiji in theirAssociation, dominating the other clans, makes a felicitous arrangement. The Senji, the Dojisigi, the Dausigi—all have their own opinions, but the Tasaigi usually lead. Except lately. Since the Tasaigi’s puppet Murini fell from power, the Farai of the Senji district seem to be bidding to control the South.”

“The ones in your apartment.”

“Exactly. The Tasaigin Marid has produced three serious conspiracies to take powerc all failing. If Tabini-aiji should actually give Farai that apartment permanently—that nice little honor of residing inthe halls of power— Well, the theory is that the Farai, and thus the Senjin Marid, might become a Southern power that can actually be dealt with, which would calm down the South. I personally don’t think it’s going to work. But in one sense, my apartment could end up being a small sacrifice to a general peace—until the Farai revert to Southern politics as usual; or until someone in the South takes out a Contract on them. Which could happen next week, as the wind blows. What’s a current security nightmare is the fact that my old apartment shares a small section of wall with Tabini’s proper apartment. So that’s being fixed—in case the Farai presence there becomes permanent. Who knows? It could. At least they didn’t make a claim on this estate. I’d be veryupset if that happened.”

“It’s very beautiful,” Barb said.

“Palatial,” Toby said. “I can only imagine what your place in the Bujavid must have looked like.”

A little laugh. An easier feeling. “Well, Najida’s a little smaller, actually. And the rooms here all let out into a hall that I alsoown, which always feels odd to me. I think this whole house would fit inside the aiji’s apartment in the Bujavid.” He saw a little tilt of Banichi’s head, Banichi being in position to have a view down the serving hall, and read that as a signal. “Staff’s preparing to serve the first course. And with apologies, let me give you a fast primer on formal dinners: no business, no politics, nothing but the lightest, most pleasant conversation during the dinner itself, nothing heavy until we retire for after-dinner drinks. We keep it light, keep it happy, take modest bites, at a modest tempo, and don’t try to signal staff for drink: you’ll embarrass them. They’ll be on an empty glass in a heartbeat. A simple open hand at the edge of the plate will signal them you want a second helping of a dish: be careful, or you willget one; and if you see them give me a flat palm for a signal, that means they’re running out of a particular course and want to advance the service, so don’t ask for seconds then, or they’ll be scrambling back there to try to produce an extra, probably one of their own meals. There’ll be an opening course, a mid-course, a meat presentation, and a dessert, different wine with each, so expect that. And somewhere during the meat presentation the cook will look in, we’ll invite him in, praise the dish—it’s going to be spectacular, I’m sure—and thank him and the staff. There’s going to be much more food than you can possibly afford seconds of, if you want my advice. And then we’ll thank the staff again, and get up and go to the parlor for drinks and politics, if you like.”

They took that advisement in good humor, at least. It forecast at least a patch on things.

Barb, however, was on her own agenda since she’d arrived at the front door. He’d known her long enough to spot that.

And being Barb, she didn’t think her agenda through all the way to the real end, just the immediate result she fantasized having. She wanted to make him uncomfortable: she wanted him to acknowledge he’d been utterly wrong to drop her. The fact it could have international repercussions was so far off her horizon it was in another universe. The possibility of setting him and Toby permanently at odds, well, that just wouldn’t happen, in her thinking, because she controlled everything and that wasn’t the way she planned.

That was how she’d ended up marrying the dullest man on Mospheira, to get back at him, and had an emotional crisis when it turned out he wished her well and walked off; it was how she’d spent years of her life taking care of his and Toby’s mother, once she got her divorce—because she was just essential to their family, wasn’t she?

In point of fact, if he hadn’t had to run the gauntlet of Barb’s emotions to get to his mother’s bedside, maybe he’d have found a way over to the island more often—

No, that was a lie. Circumstances a lot more potent than Barb’s angst had made him unavailable and finally sent him off the planet and into a two-year absence. So that hadn’t been Barb’s fault, wasn’t his, wasn’t Toby’s fault, either, but it had done for Toby’s marriage, all the same.

And where did Barb go after Toby’s divorce—hell, beforethe divorce? Barb had been at their mother’s place. So had Toby. They’d both been at the hospital all day. Toby’s wife Jill had taken the kids and bailed.

He didn’t want to think about that, not the whole few days Toby and Barb might be here. He’d be damned sure there wasn’t another scene. He had to talk to Toby, was what. There was no use talking to Barb. That was precisely what she wanted.

Hewas precisely what she wanted, because he’d been too distracted to give a damn when she’d left him. There was the lasting trouble.

He put on his best diplomatic smile while staff served the first course, eggs floating in sauce; and didn’t let himself think too far down the course of events. They’d get out on the boat, they’d do some fishing. There was no real reason to have a deep heart-to-heart with Toby on the matters of atevi manners, Barb, or the particular reasons he hadn’t been there when their mother needed him. Fact was, Barb was going to do what Barb intended to do, and there was no way to warn a man off a personal relationship and stay on good terms with him. They could put a patch on it and smile at each other, fishing would keep them all busy, wear them out, and they could do some beachside fish-roasting and keep the issues between him and Toby and him and Barb off the agenda entirely until it was time for the formal farewell dinner.

They could get through that, too. With luck, they never would have to discuss the reasons for their problems at all.

Chapter 3

« ^ »

Great-uncle Tatiseigi was coming back to the Bujavid, and that was by no means good, in Cajeiri’s estimation.

But Great-grandmother was coming with him, and that waswelcome news. Great-grandmother understood him better than his parents did, and better still, Great-grandmother could make his father listen, being Father’sgrandmother, and powerful in her own right.

Things were definitely looking up, almost making up for his losing nand’ Bren—who hadn’t been able to talk to him before he left, not really. Great-grandmother’s major domo, Madiri, was hurrying about, berating tardy staff. Cajeiri’s own door guards, Temien and Kaidin—his wardens, in his own estimation—who were on loan from Uncle, were in their best uniforms; his mother and father were dressing for the aiji-dowager’s arrival— it being her apartment they all were living in.

And very possibly—Cajeiri thought—they might soon be in the same case as nand’ Bren, having to move out to let manihave her apartment back, the same as nand’ Bren had had to move out to let Uncle Tatiseigi have his. They might have to move out to the hunting lodge out at Taiben, which was where his own personal staff, Antaro and Jegari, had come from.

And that would be attractive: Taiben lodge was bigger, and he would have much more room; and there was the woods; and there was riding mecheiti and running about with Antaro and Jegari, who would be absolutely afire to show him thingsc that would be good.

Maybe his tutor would stay in the capital. That would be even better.

But he had ever so much rather be left here in Shejidan, in the Bujavid, and live in mani’s apartment, and be with her, the way he’d grown up—well, several years of his growing up, but the best years, the years that really, truly mattered: his time in the country, his little sojourn at mani’s estate of Malguri, his stays with Uncle Tatiseigi when mani was in charge of himc not to mention his two years in space, with just mani and nand’ Brenc and his human companions, Gene, Artur, and Irene and all—those had been the good times, the very best times. Everything had gone absolutely his way for two wonderful years—

And then they’d come home to a mess in the capital, and in the Bujavid, and his parents had demanded to have him back and would not let him have access to nand’ Bren or Banichi anymore. His father being the aiji, his father got what he wanted, and got him back, just as simply as that, and put him under one and the other tutor and told everybody in his whole association except Jegari and Antaro to get entirely away from him and leave him solely with his parents.

Which was why nand’ Bren had to avoid talking to him, even if he lived almost next door.

And why mani had gone away to Tirnamardi with Uncle, leaving her own apartment and her comforts and her staff behind.

It was why there was absolutely no chance at all his father was going to send up to the ship-aijiin and request Gene and Artur to come down to visit him. The space shuttles were flying again, and Gene and Artur didn’t mass much, compared to all the loads of food and electronics they were flying up there to the station. But no. He didn’t even get messages from Gene and Artur, just one, when he wrote to tell them he was safe, and about all his adventures. Gene and Artur and Irene had each written him a letter admiring his adventures and asking questions, and he had written back, but there had been no answers since then; and he knew his letters were either never sent, or their answers had never gotten to him; and Gene and Artur and Irene would take his silence as hopeless, and give up tryingc forever.

He was a prisoner, was what. A prisoner. He’d tunneled out when his father’s enemies had tried to keep him. But there was no lock on his door in his father’s residence—just guards, just his tutor, just ten thousand eyes that were going to report it if he stepped sideways.

And then where would he go if he did get out? He could hardly get aboard the shuttle in secret, and they would only send him back when they caught him. If he went anywhere in the whole wide world, they would send him back to his father.

He treasured those three letters, as his most precious things in the whole world.

Soc with mani-ma in residencec maybe he would have no better luck with letters, though he would certainly tell her he suspected connivance against him! But one of two fairly good things could happen with mani: mani-ma could settle in to stay with them and perhaps coddle him a littlec or his father and mother could take a vacation at Taiben, and even if they took him away with them, he would have that. Neither was too bad.

So, foreseeing the need for a good appearance, he became a model of good behavior. He dressed, with Jegari’s help, in his finest, with lace at cuffs and collar. Jegari braided his queue and tied on the red-and-black ribbons of the aiji’s house, and he waited, pacing, until Jegari and his sister Antaro had gotten each other into their best—very little lace, since they were Taibeni, foresters, but very fine leather coats and immaculate brown twill for the rest: mani could not possibly find fault with them.

“I want to talk to mani before she goes into the dining room, nadiin-ji,” Cajeiri said. “We need to put her in a good mood toward us.”

“Yes,” Antaro said, and, “Yes,” Jegari said. So they left the room, not escaping the attendance of his assigned grown-up bodyguard—and headed down the hall toward the drawing room.

He saw Cenedi, silver-haired Cenedi, mani’s bodyguard and chief of staff, resplendent in his formal uniform, and immediately next to him he saw mani herself, small, erect, and absolutely impeccable, walking with her cane, tap, tap, tap, toward the dining room.

He lengthened his stride to intercept mani and Cenedi, and met them with a little bow, exactly proper.

“Mani-ma! Welcome! One is very glad!”

“Well, well.” The aiji-dowager—Ilisidi was her name—rested both hands on the formidable cane and looked him up and down, making him wonder if somehow his collar was askew or he had gotten a spot on his coat. His heart beat high. No. He was sure he had no fault. Mani looked at everybody that way, dissecting them as she went. “We see some improvement.”

Another bow. “One is gratified, mani-ma. One has studied ever so hard.”

And a reciprocal scrutiny. “My great-grandson is availing himself of my library.”

“Indeed, mani-ma. I am reading, especially the machimi.”

“Well, well, an improvement there, as well.”

“You will teach me now! You know so much more than the tutors!”

“Flattery, flattery.”

“Truth, mani!”

“Well, but we will not be at hand to tutor you, Great-grandson. We are here only for the night, then back to Malguri.”

His heart sank. Malguri was mani’s own district, clear across the continent, a mountain fortress. He had been there.

And it was an alternative—if he could go there. There were mecheiti to ride. Rocks to climb. “I could come there, mani. Take me with you! I learn far less with the tutor than with you andCenedi!”

Did she soften, ever so little? She hesitated a few heartbeats: he saw it in her eyes. Then: “Impossible. You are here to become acquainted with your father. You are here to learn the arts of governance.”

“But I have!” He lapsed into the children’s language, realized it, and amended himself, in proper Ragi. “Mani, one has improved entirely.” He saw his grand chances slipping away from him and snatched after something more reasonable. “A few weeks, mani. One would wish to visit you in Malguri for only a few weeks, and then go back to lessons. Surely you could persuade my father.”

“No,” mani said regretfully. “No, boy. We have had our time, in two years on the ship. Now you have to learn from your father.”

“Then stay here, please! This is a big apartment!”

“Not big enough,” Ilisidi said. “Not large enough for your father’s staff and mine, not large enough to keep us from arguments, and your father has enough to do in the upcoming legislature.”

“And he will be busy, and have no time for me!”

“Language, boy.”

“He will be busy, mani, and I shall be obliged to stay to my tutor. Even nand’ Bren has gone away to his estate. I shall have no supervision and you know I should have!”

“Your great-uncle will be here.”

That was the grimmest prospect of all, but he kept that behind his teeth and simply bowed acknowledgment of the fact. “But one will miss your society, mani. One could learn so muchc of manners, and protocols, and historyc”

“Well, well, but not at Malguri, I regret to say, where I must be, and you must be here, boy, you simply must. Come, let us go to dinner; and then we will say our good-byes tonight. Weather is moving in from the west, and we shall be leaving before dawn tomorrow, at an hour much before a young boy will find it convenient, quite certainly.”

“One will get up to say good-bye, all the same.”

“Oh, by no means,” Great-grandmother said, and tapped the cane on the floor, rap-tap, a punctuation to the conversation, as she started walking again, and so did Cenedi, and he was obliged to keep pace. “You will get your proper sleep and apply yourself profitably to your lessons. We shall be taking off before first light. We know, we know your situation. You must bear it.”

“Mani.” He was utterly downcast, but he had mani’s sympathy, and that was an asset never to waste. If he could not get one thing he wanted, he could try for another, and he had his choice: permission for a television in his room, which his father would probably forbid, or mani’s backing in the business of the letters to the space station—which was as important to him. “Mani, to my letters—which I wrote to the station—there has been no answer; and one almost suspects these letters are being held, which would be a reasonable consequence, mani, if one had not applied oneself to one’s studies, which one has done, very zealously! So if you could possibly, possibly ask my father about communications to the space station, and find out if Gene has even received my letter or if possibly—possibly there is some security question from the ship-aijiin, or maybe Gene has said something improper, or I have— It is so important, is it not, mani-ma, for me to understand these proprieties and maintain contact with my associates up above, and not to lose this advantage of association, when I am aiji? One cannot be offending these individuals. It would hardly be politic to offend them due to some foolish misperception!”

Tap went the cane, sharply. “Rascal.” She saw right through him. Clear as glass.

“Yes, mani. But—”

“Your argument is rational.”

A little hope. A little lessening of Great-grandmother’s frown. “One earnestly hopes to be rational, mani.”

“We shall think on it.”

“Yes, mani.” It was not the agreement he hoped for. He got pleasantness: he got warmth: but he did not get yes.

Still, with Great-grandmother, one did not sulk. One definitely did not sulk, nor allow an expression of discontent. Never let an opponent see into your thoughts, mani would say. And: Whatis that expression, boy?

Mani was more than hard to argue with. “Think on it” was as much as he was going to get if he kept after her for reasons, and mani would not be persuaded to stay. He would have Great-uncle down the hall, arguing with his father and trying to instruct the guards Great-uncle had set over him, and, worse, asking them when he breathed in and when he breathed out. He was not happy with the evening thus far.

But mani had taught him how to release his face from his unhappiness. One could be as angry as it was possible to be, and completely relax the face, even smilec he knew how to add that little touch, without giving away anything. He could do it with his father and his mother. But he did not try it with Great-grandmother, foreseeing a thwack to the ear—she was only as tall as he was, but she could manage it, being able, he had once thought, to read his mind. Not the case, of course: that was for the human dramas nand’ Bren had lent him; but read his actions, oh, indeed she did that, better than anyone.

So they walked in to dinner together, and he kept his self-control. He was gracious to mani, to his mother, and to his father. He tested his self-control—and the situation—by saying, conversationally, “One had very much hoped that mani would take up residence again. There is surely room enough.” He darkly suspected that his father might have discouraged Great-grandmother from staying. He knew that propriety would be strained to the limits andhis father would have been held up to blame had Great-grandmother taken up residency down the hall, with Uncle Tatiseigic so he said it the polite way, and was unrewarded. His father said:

“She wished otherwise, did you not, esteemed grandmother?”

“We have affairs to tend in the East,” mani said.

“But I might go there!” he said, his control slipping just for a moment. He added, mildly, “If my father and honored mother could spare me from lessons only for a month or so.” Surelyhis parents’ apartment, promised to be ready before now, would be ready by thenc and mani could come back with him to She-jidan and everything would be better.

“One regrets to disappoint,” his father said without a shred of remorse, and said, directly to Great-grandmother: “He has frustrated three tutors and driven one into retirement.”

“Honored father,” Cajeiri protested. “You said yourself—”

“That the man was a fool? An excellent numbers man. A fool. But despise the numbers as you may, my enlightened and too modern son, you still need to know them.”

“Why?” mani shot at him, at him, not his father, and he answered, meekly,

“Because ’counters have political power and superstitious people are very excitable, mani, so one should knowthe numbers of a situation to know what superstitious people will believe.”

His father laughed. “There, grandmother, you have produced a cynic.”

“Next year,” Cajeiri said, doggedly being what Great-grandmother would call pert, “I shall be a more fortunate number in agec” He was infelicitous eight, divisible by unfortunate four, each bisected by unhappy two. “And then perhaps people will hear me seriously.”

“You have been fortunate,” his father said, “to be alive, young gentleman.”

“Fortunate to sit at this table,” his mother said. “Wheedling is not becoming anywhere.”

“Forgive me, honored mother. It was excessive.” Decidedly, it had been. He had gone much too far. He sighed, hating his own impulsiveness, and helped himself to more sauce for the meat course, fighting to cool the temper that had roused up. Great-grandmother assured him he had inherited that temper from Great-grandfather, and his grandfather, and his father. “Find myinheritance in you!” she had repeatedly instructed him. “Mountain air is chill. It stimulates the wit, young man. Choleronly ruins one’s digestion.”

It was good advice. He had been in Great-grandmother’s mountains. He had been in the snow. He understood. And like nand’ Bren’s rock, paper, scissors—he had seen how wit beat choler, every time.

So he reined in his anger, ate his dinner, and while mani and his mother and father chatted about the weather, the hunting, the repairs to the apartment—he thought.

He thought about nand’ Bren having to leave.

He thought about Uncle Tatiseigi being right down the hall and having his guards right outside his door, and Uncle Tatiseigi calling on his father every time he did a thing out of the routine.

He thought about all these things, and the whole situation was what mani called—intolerable.

Nand’ Bren had promised to take him on his boat when things settled down and people stopped shooting at each other, and it had been quiet for months, had it not?

His parents were convinced he was a fool, untrustworthy even if he should go to Taiben, where Antaro’s and Jegari’s parents and the lord of the Taibeni (who was a relation) would take extraordinary care of him. He saved that hope for absolute last.

He had asked to have his own staff and his own apartment, even if it let out into theirs, but he knew what modifications they were making to his parents’ old domicile, and there was noprovision for him in that place having anything but a foyer, a closet of a study, and a small bedroom of his own, not even his own bath—they said another bath was impossible without tapping into the lines next door, which were in Bren’s proper apartment, which was being occupied by the Farai, and noone lately offended the Farai, not even for Lord Bren’s sake. And it was a security risk. They were building a monitoring station against that wall, which he was not supposed to say.

But it was all just disgusting.

Still, he kept a pleasant face, and had his dinner, and said a proper good-bye to mani, and a good night to his father and his mother, leaving the adults to their brandy. He gathered up Antaro and Jegari and the two guards who were Uncle Tatiseigi’s and went back to his quarters.

He said, to the guards, “You should have your supper now. Go. I shall have an early night. You might have some brandy, too.”

“Nandi,” they said, and went off, unsuspecting and cheerful in the suggestion. They were not nearly as bright as his father’s guards.

Antaro and Jegari followed him inside and looked worried. They wereas bright as anybody could ask.

And he walked over to his closet and took out his rougher clothes, and laid them on the bed. He knew the handsigns the Guild used. He used several of them to say, “downstairs,” and “all of us,” and “going.”

“Where?” Antaro signed back, in some distress.

“Nand’ Bren,” was a sign they had, the same that Bren’s own guard used.

“Your parents,” came back at him.

He gave them that tranquil, pleasant look he had practiced so hard. And laid his fist over his heart, which was to say, “Carry out orders.”

They didn’t say a thing. They went to their nook and into their separate rooms and brought back changes of clothing. They weren’t Guild. They had no weapons, nor anything like the communications the Guild had. They just quietly packed things in a single duffle, and meanwhile Cajeiri opened his savings-box, emptied that, found a few mangled ribbons of the Ajuri colors, his mother’s clan, and the green of the Taibeni, and, yes, finally, a somewhat dog-eared train schedule book he had gotten from his father’s office.

He opened that and found that, yes, a train did leave the Bujavid station in the night: it went down to the freight depot, probably to pick up supplies, which was exactly the thing. Cook would be cleaning up in the kitchen, and the major domo would be engaged with mani—Cook was hers, more than his parents’, and that conversation would take a little time. The whole house would be focused on mani, because most everyone was hers, except his father’s and his mother’s staff, and those few would be paying attention to his father and mother, because everyone else would be waiting on mani and making sure she had all she wanted.

Mani probably would socialize late—for her—turn in, and catch several hours’ sound sleep before she got up to go to the airport.

Perfect.

Chapter 4

« ^ »

Brandy, in the sitting room, with the comfortable wood fire, the rustic stone hearthc beneath ancient beams. The furniture looked a little out of place, being ornate and carved and far from rustic in its needlepoint seats and backs. The carpet was straight from the Bujavid: it gave the place, to Bren’s eye, a sort of a piratical air, the furnishings all having been smuggled off to the coast during the city riots and none of the furniture quite matching.

But, formal or not, they were comforting, like old friends, every stick of the furnishings, the priceless porcelain vases on their pedestals. Bren was delighted with everything the staff had done, and expressed as much to the staff who served there. “One is astonished,” he said. “One knew you had extraordinary daring to make off with the dining room carpet, nadiin, but however did you get the furniture here?”

“In a truck, nandi,” was the answer. “In several trucks. We pretended to loot it, we hid it in Matruso’s cousin’s house, and we took it by back roads.”

“Extraordinary,” was all he could find to say. “One is extremely grateful, nadiin-ji. Say so to all the staff—and to Matruso’s cousin!”

“Shall we serve, nandi?”

“To be sure,” he said. Banichi and Jago were still with him, standing, and didn’t meet his eyes, which indicated they weren’t looking for a signal to sit down, and didn’t in the least want one.

Barb and Toby were also standing, on best behavior—finally. “Sit down, sit down, Barb, Toby. We’re all informal here, after dinner. Any chair you like.”

They were all outsized chairs for a human frame—Toby’s feet reached the floor, Barb’s didn’t, so she crossed her ankles and swung them a moment, feeling over the carved wood with pink-lacquered fingernails.

“Very fancy,” Barb said.

“ This,” Bren said, slowly taking his own favored chair, “is the spoils of my Bujavid apartment. My staff risked their necks getting it away—or God knows what would have happened to it. Carted off to the South, likeliest. They shot up the aiji’s apartments, killed poor old Eidi, broke things—you have to understand, it’s like breaking things in a museum. These things are national treasures. The finest of the finest.”

“They don’t have museums, do they?” Toby asked. Most every city on Mospheira did have.

“Not as such,” he said, “but people do tour historic places, and the great houses do rotate pieces downstairs, into the public areas, during their own tour season. Anybody can go to the Bujavid, on the lower levels; anybody can apply to visit the library and the collections. Anyone with scholarly interest can apply to have certain articles moved into a viewing room. You just don’t fire off guns in a place like that. It shocked everyone, it created great public resentment, once that fact got out. It was one thing that Murini’s lot shot people; it was another that his fools ripped up pieces of the past. You can’t imagine the furor.”

“Well, I’d think people were more valuable,” Barb said.

“People are valuable to their clan. The past is valuable to everybody. Losing that—is losing part of the collective. Part of the social fabric. It ripped. But restorers and copyists are at work. That’s one thing that’s taken so long. The aiji’s carpet that was ruined—the fools set a fire, for God’s sake—that’s going to take years to restore. In the meanwhile there will be a copy. The restored piece will probably go down to a formal room in the lower Bujavid.”

“The repairs will be part of its history, I suppose,” Toby said.

He was pleased. Sometimes Toby did get things. “Very much so. Exactly.”

The brandy came, sizable doses, delivered by staff on a silver tray.

“Quite the life,” Toby said, and shifted an uneasy glance toward Banichi and Jago, who hadn’t moved, not an inch. Toby didn’t say anything. But the thought was plainc Can’t they sit?

“A good life,” Bren said, ignoring the issue. He had no apology for the staff’s formality, no protest about anything staff wanted to do. They were on edge, in foreign presence, touchy about his dignity, which they saw as offended. But he was very content at the moment, with a smoky brandy, a warm fire, and his brother at hand. He did relax.

“You have to wear that all the time?”

“The vest?” He did. He’d shed the dinner coat, and sat quite informally in this family setting, though staff had offered to bring him an evening jacket. Putting one on would be a struggle with the lace, and he’d opted not to bother. “This, I assure you, is informal.”

“The shirt,” Toby said. “The whole outfit. I have a spare sweater, pair of pants that would fit you.”

He shook his head, gave a little laugh. “I really couldn’t. The staff is on their best behavior. Guests, you know. They would be a little hurt if I didn’t look the way they like.”

“Well, I suppose we look a little shabby,” Toby said.

“I could find youa shirt and coat,” he said. “Boots, now, boots are always at a premium.”

Toby laughed uneasily and laid a hand on his middle. “I wouldn’t look that good in a cutaway, I’m afraid.”

“I’d like to try what the women wear,” Barb said.

That was a poser. “None in my wardrobe, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, but there’s staff,” Barb said.

“I can’t quite,” Bren said. “And it wouldn’t fit you.” He couldn’t envision going to one of the servants and asking to borrow herwardrobe—not to mention the issues of rank and guest status and Barb’s already shaky standing with staff. “Best not ask. Next time, next time you visit, I’ll send you both a package, country court regalia, the whole thing.”

“Not me, in the lace,” Toby said. “I’d have that in the soup.” And then he added: “You used to wear casuals here.”

“A long time ago. Different occasion.” Silence hung in the air a moment.

“A few years,” Toby said. “Not that long ago.”

“It’s different,” he said. “It’s just different now.”

“You’re Lord Bren, now. Is that more than being the paidhi?”

“A bit more.”

“When are you going to visit Mospheira?”

“It’s what I said. It’s not likely I will,” he said into a deeper and deeper silence. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy certain places. Certain people. But it’s just different.”

And the silence just lay there a moment. “You can’t say ‘enjoy old friends,’ can you?”

“Toby,” Barb said, a caution.

Which said, didn’t it, that he’d been the subject of at least one unhappy conversation?

“I’m kind of out of the habit,” he said. “And no, not the way I think of ‘friends.’ Nobody on the island’s in that category any longer. Shawn Tyers, maybe. But he’s busy being President. Sonja Podesta. Sandra Johnson. Who’s gone on to have a life.” He’d named two women and he saw Barb frown. “I have friends up on the station. Jase, for one. Jase is a goodfriend. But—” That was headed down its own dark alley. He stopped, before it got to its destination, which was that it wasn’t easy to keep friendships polished when he was more likely to get back to the station sooner than Jase would get a chance to visit the planet. And that wasn’t going to be any time soon. “On the continent I have my associates,” he said. “My aishi.”

Toby didn’t look happy with that statement, but damnedif Toby was going to sit there in front of Banichi and Jago, who did understand Mosphei’, and tell him that atevi sentiments were in some measure deficient for a human.

“Trust me,” Bren said, pointedly, “that I’m extremely content in my household. I’m not alone. I’m never alone, not for an hour out of the day. And I do ask you both to understand that, in all possible ways.”

Again the small silence.

“ Ibrought you a present,” Toby exclaimed suddenly, getting up, shattering the dark mood entirely. “I have it in our room.”

“Let Banichi go with you,” Bren said gently, and with a little restoration of humor. “ Youdon’t run about alone, either. You come here with no bodyguard, unless Barb wants to take that postc you can’t just run up and down the halls as if you were my staff. You’re a guest. You need an escort. You don’t open your own doors. It’s my social obligation.”

Toby looked at him as if he were sure he was being gigged, but he stayed quite sober.

“I’m serious. It’s just good manners. Mine, not yours, but be patient.”

“So who’s going to escortc Barb?” Toby asked, and slid a glance toward Jago, the only woman in his personal guard— Jago, who had as soon consign Barb to the bay.

“Exactly,” Bren said, and in Ragi: “Banichi-ji, please see Toby to his room. He forgot an item.”

“Nandi,” Banichi said gravely, and went to the hall door and opened it for Toby.

Which left him, and Barb, and Jago standing by the door.

“So,” Barb said in the ensuing silence, “you arehappy, Bren.”

“Very,” he said. “You?”

“Very,” she said, and slid in the chair and stood up, walking over to the fire, which played nicely on her fair curls. She bent down and put a stick of wood in. “I love fires. Not something you do on board.”

He sat where he was. “Not likely. You live aboard the boat, year round?”

She nodded, and looked back at him, and walked back toward her chair.

Or toward him. She rested a hip on the outsized arm of his chair. He didn’t make his arm convenient to her. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

“She wouldn’t object, would she?”

“She may, and I do. Move off, Barb.”

“Bren, I’m your sister-in-law. Well, sort of.”

“ Marryhim, then.” He wished he hadn’t said that. He couldn’t get up without shoving Barb off the arm and he could all but feel Jago’s eyes burning a hole in Barb. “It’s not funny, Barb.”

“I just don’t see why—”

He put his hand on her to shove her off the chair arm, just as the door opened and Toby walked in.

And stopped.

Barb got up sedately. Cool as ice. In that moment he hated her, and he hated very, very few people on either side of the straits.

Toby didn’t say a thing. And there wasn’t a graceful thing for him to say.

“I was just talking to Bren,” Barb said.

“Why don’t you turn in?” Toby asked. “Bren and I have things to discuss.”

Barb’s glance flicked toward Jago, and the ice crackled. Barb shook her head emphatically at that suggestion. “I’ll walk back when you do,” she said. “Toby, honestly, we were just talking. I wanted to ask Bren something. His guard understandsus.”

“It was talk,” Bren said. The Mospheiran thing to do was to explode. Among atevi, involving atevi, it cost too much. So did having it out now, on the very first night of their stay. “What is this surprise of yours?”

A wrapped present. Gilt paper. Ribbons. Toby resolutely held it out to him, a box about the size of a small book, and Bren got up and took it. Shook it, whimsically. Toby gave him a suspicious look.

“We’re too old for that, are we?” Bren said. “Well.” He looked at the paper. It said Happy Birthday. “God, how long have you saved this one?”

“Since the first year you went away,” Toby said. And shrugged. “It can’t live up to expectations. But I was dead set you were coming back. So I got it, for luck.”

“Superstitious idiot,” Bren said, and, it being Jago and Banichi alone, he took the chance to hug Toby, hug him close and mutter into his ear. “Barb’s mad at me. She made that damned clear. Don’t react. It’ll blow over.”

Toby shoved him back and looked at him at close range. Didn’t say a word.

“Truth,” he said, steady on with the gaze, and Toby scowled back.

“Truth?” Toby asked him, when that wasn’t exactly what Toby was asking, and he grabbed Toby and pulled him close for a second word.

“ Mylady’s standing over there armed to the teeth, and she doesn’t take jokes. Neither does Banichi. For God’s sake, Toby, nothing’s at issue. Barb’s acting out; she’s mad about dinner. I embarrassed her. Youknow Barb by now.”

He took a big chance with that, a really big chance. But this time when Toby shoved him back at arm’s length to look at him, Toby had a sober, unhappy look on his face.

“Damn it,” Toby said.

“Look, you two,” Barb said. She stood, arms folded, over to the side. “What’s going on between you two?”

“Turn about,” Bren said darkly, and held up the present. “Shall I open it?”

“Open it,” Toby said. “It’s not much.”

“Oh, we’ll see,” he said, and carefully edged the ribbon off, and unstuck the paper.

“He’s one of those,” Barb said. “He never will tear the paper.”

“Waste not, want not,” he said.

“He reuses it, too,” Toby said. “Come on, Bren. Just rip it.”

He reached the box, carefully, ever so carefully folded the paper and laid it on the mantel with the ribbon. Then he opened the box.

A pin, of all things, an atevi-style stickpin. Gold, with three what-might-be diamonds.

He was astonished.

“Where on earth?” he asked.

“Well,” Toby said, “I had it made. Is it proper? Kabiu? I asked the linguistics department at the University.”

“The paidhi’s color,” he said. “It counts as white. Kabiu, right down to the numbers. Now what am I going to do to get back at you on yourbirthday?”

“I got my present,” Toby said. “I got my brother back.”

“You did,” he said, and gave Toby another hug, and offered— not without the hindbrain in action—his other arm to Barb, and hugged them both. “Fortunate three. Two’s unlucky. Has to be three.”

He didn’t know how Barb liked that remark, but it was fair enough, and Toby duly hugged him back, and Barb did, and he hoped Jago didn’t throw him out of bed that night.

“All right,” he said, disengaging, “that’s a thorough quota of family hugs for the next couple of weeks. I’ll see you off to sea in good style, but we’ve got to be proper in the staff’s eyes in the meanwhile. Banichi and Jago understand us, but the staff, I assure you, would be aghast, and trying to parse it all in very strange ways. I’m going to wear this pin tomorrow. I’ll wear it in court. I could still get you a lace shirt, brother.”

“No. If Barb can’t, I won’t,” Toby said, his arm around Barb at the moment.

“Probably best,” he said. He felt better as he went back to his chair, sat down, and took up his brandy. They did the same, chairs near each other. Peace was restored, despite Barb’s best efforts to the contrary.

And maybe—maybe he’d actually won a lasting truce and settled something.

“So where did you come in from?” he asked Toby conversationally, and listened comfortably and sipped his brandy— pleasant to hear someone else’s adventures instead of having them, the thought came to him. They’d been worried sick about Toby at one point, after Tabini’s return to the Bujavid, but he’d turned up, out at sea, doing clandestine things for the human government over on Mospheira, part of a communications network, for one thing, and probably that boat out there still had some of that gear aboard.

His own had a few nonregulation things aboard, too—or had had, before he’d left for space. That was the world they lived in, occasionally dangerous. He hoped for it to stay calm for a few years.

He was abed before Jago came in. Abed, but not asleep: he kept rehearsing the dinner, the business with Barb. He lay in his own comfortable bed, between his own fine sheets, and stared at the ceiling, until Jago was there to improve the view. She stripped out of the last of her uniform and stood there, dark against the faint night light. Rain spattered the windows, rain with a vengeance, hitting the glass in sharp gusts of wind.

“One greatly regrets,” he said to that silhouette, unable to read her, but reading the hesitation. “One ever so greatly regrets that unpleasantness this evening, Jago-ji. Barb is, unfortunately, Barb.”

“Her man’chi is to you,” Jago said, her voice carefully without inflection. “One understands. She places you in a difficult situation. Am I mistaken in this?”

Oddly enough, the atevi view of things said it fairly well. “You are not mistaken,” he said. “Very like man’chi. She gravitates to me every time she gets the least chance. But there is anger in it, deep anger. I offended her pride.”

“Would it mend matters to sleep with her?” Jago asked.

“Far from it. It would encourage her and make my brother angry. And I feel nothing but anger toward her. Come to bed, Jago-ji.”

Jago did settle in, to his relief. Her skin, ordinarily fever warm, was slightly cool, and he rubbed her arm and her shoulder to warm it.

“I might speak to her,” Jago said. “Reasonably.”

“I shall hold that in reserve,” he said. “I think I may have to speak to my brother if this goes on. If she causes him griefc”

“It seems likely she will,” Jago said.

“Very likely,” he said, and sighed. “Barb has good qualities— at best advantage when I appear nowhere on her horizon. Her man’chi, given, is very solidc”

“Except to your brother,” Jago said.

“Except when I appear,” he said.

“Conflicted man’chi,” Jago said. “The essence of every machimi.”

The dramatic heritage of atevi culture. Plays noted for the quantity of bloodshed.

“Let us try not to have any last act,” he said with a sigh. “Not on this vacation.”

Jago laughed, soft movement under his hand.

And slid her arm under his ribs, around him, a sinuous, fluid embrace that proved the chill had not gotten inside—a force and slight recklessness that advised him Jago was in a mood to chase Barb right out of the bedroom, in no uncertain terms.

Reckless to a fine edge of what was pleasure, but never over it—and deserving of a man with his mind on her, nowhere else in the universe.

He committed himself, with that sense of danger they hadn’t had in bed in, oh, the better part of a year. The storm outside rumbled and cracked with thunder, making the walls shake, and they came together with absolute knowledge of each other—not quietly, nor discreetly, nor even quite safelyc but very, very satisfyingly.

Chapter 5

« ^ »

He slept. Really slept. And in the morning he had a leisurely breakfast—Toby and Barb slept in, but he and Jago were up with the sun, and being joined in the dining room by Banichi, and Tano and Algini, they all five had a very ample country breakfast, absolutely devouring everything on the plates.

“You should consider this your vacation, too, nadiin-ji,” he said to his staff over tea. “Arrange to fish, to walk in the garden, to do whatever you like as long as we are here. No place could be safer. I have my office work to do. My brother and his lady will be engaged with me when they finally do wake. I promise not to let them free to harass the staff.”

There was quiet laughter, even from Jago, who frowned whenever Barb’s name came into question. But Banichi proposed they should go down to the shore and inspect the boat, and see how it was, and Bren said they should do it by turns, because he very well knew that his bodyguard wouldn’t consider all going at once.

“Manage to take a fishing pole or two,” he said to them. “Catch us our supper, why don’t you?”

“And shall you be in your office all day?”

“Oh, I foresee walking in the garden with our guests, or maybe down to the shore, or sharing tea in the sitting room. Nothing too strenuous.” In fact, he had some sore spots from last night, and regretted not a one of them. “Just amuse yourselves. I shall assign two servants to the hall, to forestall you having to escort either of them. Just relax. Trust even me to find my way, nadiin-ji. I shall just be going between bedroom, dining hall, and my study.”

He sent them off with a gentle laughc sure that, since Banichi and Jago were going to the shore, Tano and Algini were going to be close about, probably finding a place to sit and work on things that interested themc and still within call, supposing there should be some sort of emergency. They never quite relaxed. But he tried to encourage it.

He had, first on the agenda, a meeting with the major domo, Ramaso, who brought the household accounts, all balanced and impeccably writtenc the old man never had taken to the computer, but the accounts were simple. The village and the household both sold fish, they bought food and medicines and items for repair, clothing and rope and tackle, they had shipped a boy with a broken arm and a pregnant woman down the coast to medical care, which the estate had paid for, as it bore all such expenses for the village.

All the history of the past months was written in that arithmetic, and told him that the place had prospered, and made do, even during Murini’s regime. They sold to neighboring districts, they shipped an increasing amount to Shejidan, recovering the trade they had once enjoyed before the coup, and they maintained a good balance in the accounts.

“Very well done,” he said to Ramaso. “Come, nadi-ji, call for tea, sit with me, and tell me all the gossip of the district.”

The old man was pleased, and a man brought the tea in an antique and very familiar service with a mountain scene on the teapotc there was no end to the things his enterprising staff had smuggled out of Shejidan during the collapse.

“Extraordinary,” Bren said. “I greatly enjoy that tea set.”

“The staff is pleased, nandi.” A sip of tea. “Please visit the storeroom. The moment the irregularities are worked out in the capital, you will have the great majority of your furnishings returned. The Farai got very little of historic value.”

He had not been inside that apartment since his return. He had understood the staff had gotten a great deal of his property away, but now that he had reached Najida, there were surprises at every turn, items forgotten and rediscovered. “One is very pleased, very pleased, nadi-ji. Not least to see the faces of staff. One has not forgotten.”

“I shall relay that, nandi.”

“Thank them, too, for their understanding regarding my brother’s companion last night. Her customs are informally Mospheiran. She has no education in the manners of an atevi house. Such actions would rouse no great stir on the island— they are not entirely appropriate to formal occasions, to be quite frank, but they are not, there, scandalous, nor did she understand the nature of the dinner.”

Atevi didn’t blush, outstandingly, but it was possible that the old man did. At very least he found momentary contemplative interest in a sip of tea. “Indeed, nandi, one will so advise the staff.”

“One earnestly hopes to forestall another such event,” Bren said. “And one apologizes to the staff. My brother and the lady will guest here—perhaps two weeks, certainly no longer. Kindly station staff in the main hall to see to their comings and goings. During part of that time, I hardly dare wonder if I might leave them here unattended for a day. One is urgently obliged to pay a visit to the neighbors.”

That was to say, Lord Geigi’s estate, their nearest neighbor— whose regional influence had likely saved the paidhi-aiji’s residence during the Troubles, or he might not be sitting sipping tea in this sitting room now.

“You do know, nandi, that Lady Tejo has died.”

Geigi’s sister Tejo had been in charge, in Geigi’s long absence, a fairly young woman, too, though not the most robust in health. “Yes, one did hear that. A loss, especially to that clan. Illness, was it?”

“One is given to understand so.”

“Her son is in charge. Beiji? Baiji, is it?”

“Baiji, indeed, nandi. A young man. New in his post, new to responsibility,” Ramaso said. And added: “Samiusi clan, on his father’s side, nandi, and of a little flightiness that has become a concern to us. One is sure your influence will be as good as his uncle’s presence to remind him of responsibilities.”

The Samiusi were inland, containing most of the remaining identifiable elements of the Maschi clan, some distance east— no need to jog his memory on that score. All the nuances were important. Alliances outside the coast and somewhat southward were uneasy alliances, these days, and the Samiusi had provided Geigi’s last wife, who had politicked with the Marid. “Is there some question of Baiji’s man’chi?”

“None to speak of,” Ramaso said.

“None of his associations?”

“He is young,” Ramaso said. “Just a very young man, not in years, but Tejo-daja coddled him extremely. He spends a great deal of his time on his boat, he neglects his purchase debtsc he simply does not pay his suppliers until the second and third request.” Ramaso broke off in some uneasiness. But Najida was one of those suppliers, at least in fish. “One hesitates to speak ill, nandi, but this is a boy who definitely needs a more attentive accountant. He was not expected to succeed Tejo for years yet. He was unprepared for this.”

“Time I did pay a visit, perhaps.” It wouldn’t be easy to tell Geigi his nephew was a fool and a dilettante, but his own strongest memory of the boy in question was ten years ago, when his mother had had to go upstairs in person to bring a recalcitrant adolescent down to dinner. “Geigi will want to know, nadi-ji, if he delays any further payments. Perhaps one can bring a little fear of clan authority under that roof.”

“He seems not a villain, nandi, but one suspects his management is lax. He owes the village some three thousand five hundred fifty-three, in sum.”

He blinked. It was a large sum. And it was entirely unpleasant, to go bring the law down on a young fool, the relative of a trusted associate. But he was lord of this district, and the young fool had not well served Lord Geigi, and had brought financial hardship on hispeople, who had their own bills to pay. So there it was, one thing he had to do, and at the earliest.

“Send to Baiji,” he said. “I shall write the message myself, and visit him in five days. The letter alone may jar the late payments out of him. Then we can have a much happier visit, and he may be more careful of our accounts. The lord of thisestate has been absent. Perhaps that has encouraged him to believe our people can wait for payment. One expects we can change his priorities.”

They had their tea. He turned aside at the last to pen, with fair calligraphy, salutations from a neighbor and the intent to visit five days hencec with absolutely no mention of the debt. He delivered that to Ramaso for delivery by courier. “One has not mentioned the money, but if it does not arrive before the day, advise me, nadi-ji, and it will assuredly arrive, if Lord Geigi has to be the source of the instruction.”

“Nandi,” the old man said in some satisfaction, and took the message, to properly encase it in a cylinder and send it.

Five days was notice enough.

And five days from now he might be ready for a day’s vacation from Barbc but he tried not to borrow trouble. He found his briefcase, his reading, and his notepad, and called for a second, contemplative pot of tea—to cool mostly untouched, as he read up on cell phone and wireless technology, and tried to frame a persuasive arguement for the legislators.

All the while he had a Guild pocket com on his person. But that was a security matter—that connected him to his long-suffering bodyguard, who, with that connection, could let him out of their sight for at least half an hour at a time, and know he could still reach them instantly.

There was one legitimate use for the technology—if it saved the life of a lord on whom the aishidi’tat relied.

It would not be a legitimate use, however, to shortcut the process of informing, for instance, young Baiji. One could, in hot blood, call up, call the young man a fool, demand immediate payment, and, due to startling the young man and embarrassing him, have a nasty quarrel on one’s hands that might force even a reasonable Lord Geigi to take his own estate’s side.

A beautifully written note, in a courtly hand, in a message cylinder that bore the identification of the paidhi-aiji and the Lord of the Heavens—reminding said young fool who he was dealing with, and all the associations involved—gave the young fool time to panic as to the content of the message, to cool down, figure out that owing money was not the best frame of mind in which to meet one of his uncle’s closest allies. So with any sensitivity at all, he would pay up, and create the best possible mood in which to meet his visitorc

He could hardly use that example in his speech to the legislature. But it was the heart of the problem. There were ways of doing things. Old ways, graceful ways. And not every ateva born was gifted with verbal restraint—to say the least. Things went through channels for a reason.

On the other handc atevi had wisely concluded that phones, however convenient for summoning an airport bus, reaching the space station or the Island, or notifying a receptive associate of an imminent Situation, were notfor social calls, and ought notto replace the appropriate hand delivery of a written, courteous message in its identifying case.

Which was precisely the argument proponents were going to throw back at him. Atevi had coped with regular, nonportable phones.

Portable, into any inappropriate situation—there was the problem.

The speed of wireless messages could accelerate a security situation out of safe limits, or enable the involvement of non-Guild in Assassins’ Guild operations. That was one great fear.

That the young would take to the wireless as a way to save effort, as they had on Mospheira, thus undermining the traditional, conflict-reducing forms of messagingc that was a worry. That it would accelerate the exchange of information into an exchange of misinformation or half information—the evening news managed that. On a national scale, at times.

People could get killed over bad information. Information and the misconstruction of information was, history told him, exactly the sort of thing that had led humans and atevi to war— bad information coming too fast, too easy interaction, too many people who thoughtthey understood each other.

People communicating without going through channels, obviating the office of the clan lords, making independent contactc because humans had no reciprocal institution and didn’t want one.

Fracture, of the atevi way of life. Fracture of the associationsc fracture of the social structure.

Chaos. And reacting on micro-information, only partof the informationc and the other side reacting, and this side reactingc

Disaster. Therewas his argument. It wasc

A slight rap at the door, a servant signaling entry, possibly to see if he wanted more tea.

It was Ramaso himself.

“A phone call has arrived, nandi,” Ramaso said, his aged face much in earnest. “The aiji’s staff requests you to speak to the aiji.”

God. Thatcouldn’t be good news. He got up and went immediately to the phone on the study desk.

“This is the paidhi-aiji,” he said, and on the other end:

“ One moment, nandi.”

Then, deeply and distinctly: “ Bren-paidhi?”

“Aiji-ma,” he said. His pulse was up. He controlled his breathing with a mindful effort.

“ My son,” the aiji began, “ is on a train headed for the coast.”

Breath stopped. He wasn’t sure what to say, or what change of the aiji’s plans this represented. But he knew Cajeiri, and five would get you ten—

“Have you sent him, aiji-ma?”

“ We have not,” Tabini said, understandably hot. “ He left in the night, on a freight train, changed at the north Shejidan station for a westbound freight, he and his two associates, and they are quite clearly on their way to visityou, nandi. The aiji-dowager has ordered her plane to turn around in mid-flight. Our staffs are in an uproar— justifiably.”

He was aghast. The danger, the chance just of accident, let alone the boy’s exposure to the aiji’s enemies—

“One will meet the train, aiji-ma, and personally escort him back.”

A pause. A lengthy pause. “ You have guests under your roof. We shall send an escort.” A sigh. “ If you can intercept him, likely we can persuade his great-grandmother to resume her trip to Malguri. Can you bear with my son for five days?”

Tabini could get people there far faster than that—could fly them out to meet that train, if need be. Could stop that train with a phone call and have the local constabulary pick up his son. Tabini was giving the young rascal a little extra rein—and likely his plan to get Ilisidi safely settled back in Malguri before the legislative session drew her attention would be easier if he could tell the dowager that the boy was going to be absent. But that five daysc

Conflicted directly with his scheduled visit to Lord Baiji. That could be adjusted. But it was socially difficult.

“One would certainly do so, aiji-ma,” he said. “But shall I treat this as a proper visit?”

“ Yes,” came the exasperated answer. “ If the paidhi is pleased to have one more guest.”

“Then may one ask, with trepidation under the circumstances, aiji-ma, that he remain with us seven days. There are local commitments I have already made for the fifth day, a visit to a neighbor that I cannot gracefully break, but within a seven days’ stay, I can entertain your son in good style, take him on the fishing trip I promised him, as well as honor my other guests, and make my appointment with my neighbor.”

“ If the paidhi is so patient as to accommodate my son, yes, do so. Seven days. But speak to him, paidhi-ji, speak to him very strongly. Perhaps you can make him understand the hazards he runs in such reckless ventures.”

“One absolutely understands, aiji-ma.” He added, on an afterthought: “Aiji-ma, one hopes nothing I personally said to him can possibly be construed as—”

“ Encouragement? Paidhi-ji, the presence of Guild at the doors did not dissuade him! The presence of the aiji-dowager did not dissuade him! Gods less fortunate! My certain displeasure did not dissuade him! We have no doubt this thought sprang full-formed from his own mind, and he used his great-grandmother’s activities for a screen to his operations. What can anyone do? Seven days, restraining my son? You have my condolences, paidhi-ji!”

“Aiji-ma, I will at least keep him safe until the escort arrives to take him home.”

“ Do so, paidhi-ji! Perhaps a little country exercise will purge the energy from him. Faultless for a whole month and now this! He is far too clever for his own good.”

“I shall do my utmost, aiji-ma.”

“ Brave paidhi,” Tabini said. “ The train is the noon freight from Tolabi. Fortune attend you.” Which said, Tabini hung up.

Bren set the receiver carefully back in the cradle and looked at his anxious major domo.

“We shall be meeting the noon freight,” he said, “since the aiji’s son has decided to visit us, in company with his young escort. He will be here seven days. The two escorts are youths in their teens, brother and sister, both in Guild training.”

“Nandi.” A bow, a deep bow, with not a word of question. He had as well announced the young gentleman was landing by spacecraft.

A freight train. There was no possible claim, within the staff, that it was a visit originally sanctioned and arranged by the aiji.

“The young gentleman is resourceful and determined,” Bren said, “and we shall do our utmost to keep him entertained and out of trouble. One promised him a fishing trip, once. One believes he has come to ask us to fulfill that promise. See that the boat is ready.”

Keeping the young rascal out at sea could guarantee at least things on land were safe for a day or so. Toby and Barb were at their best, in their own element. He could deal with both problems.

Then he rememberedc

“Have you already dispatched the message to nand’ Baiji?”

Comprehension dawned in the old man’s eyes. “Regretfully, yes, nandi, one has done so.”

“By all means, and no fault at all. Well, we shall manage both things. We have time enough for me to keep my commitment to Lord Baiji, if you can keep the young gentleman and his companions safely contained. And—”

The door opened without ceremony. Toby and Barb walked in together.

“I guess we’re way too late for breakfast,” Toby said.

“Certainly in time for lunch,” he said, attempting brisk good cheer, “in a very little while.” Work was clearly impossible this morning. He addressed Ramaso, in Ragi, “I shall be meeting the noon freight personally, nadi-ji. Is there possibly time for Saba to manage lunch for us?”

Ramaso looked at the clock on the wall, and gave a little bow. “Easily. Easily, nandi. Shall I inform your bodyguard regarding the other matter?”

“Do so, nadi-ji,” he said, and mustered a bright smile for Toby and Barb. “Well, lunch fairly quickly, as seems. I have to make a run to the train station at noon. Would you care for a cup of tea? I’d intended to take you out to the grounds for a tour today, but it’s not that long ’til lunch, I’ll imagine, and things are not running on schedule today.”

“Tea’s welcome,” Toby said, and he and Barb found adjacent chairs. Bren gave a last instruction to Ramaso to send in hot tea and folded up his work before he sat down.

“What’s the project you’re on?” Toby asked.

“Upcoming legislature,” he said. “A little speechmaking. Did you sleep well?”

“Having the floor quiet is odd,” Barb said. “It rained last night. And thundered. We’ve spent so long on the boat. I keep thinking—it’s thundering: we have to wake up and check the weather.”

Bren gave a little laugh and sat down. “Well, please don’t develop bad habits! I can at least assure you this place won’t sink. And we may be taking a little fishing trip, likely an overnight, out into the strait. Cajeiri is arriving.”

“ He’scoming?” Toby asked. “I don’t recall you said that you had a state visitor. Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

“No, no,” he said, “it’s rather unexpected, and you’re perfectly welcome here. You’re a useful distraction, in fact: he’ll be delighted to practice his command of Mosphei’ on you, and he’ll be full of questions. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all. He’s a nice kid.”

“He’s a nice kid,” Bren agreed. As if that adequately summed up the heir to the aishidi’tat. “I’ll pick him up at the train station after lunch, get him settled in—he’ll be in the bedroom next to mine. I’ll manage the noise level.”

“Is the dowager coming, too?”

“No. She’ssupposed to be on her way to the East. Which is good, because we’re running out of bedrooms.” He didn’t intend to tell Toby or Barb all the details—though probably Cajeiri would manage to—the whole tale of his adventure. “I hope you don’t mind the extra guests. Cajeiri, his two attendants—teenagers, those two. You haven’t met them. They’re good kids, too.”

“I don’t mind,” Toby said with a curiously fervent tone. “Not at all.”

Toby had kids. Or he had had kids, before the divorce, Bren thought. Damn, he hadn’t at all meant to hit that nerve: he hadn’t sensed, in fact, that it was quite that live a nerve with Toby. But he had certainly hit it, Barb wasn’t looking happy, either, and it was just time to change the subject.

“Well, I’ll do my local business, we’ll let the youngsters explore the grounds and maybe go down to the village that day if you don’t mind being escort. I’m having the staff go over my boat today, be sure it’s in good order for a fishing run.”

“Our boat is certainly available,” Toby said.

“Thank you for that. It can certainly be our fallback if they find anything amiss with mine. So we’ll have an early lunch and you can do whatever you like and wait for us to get back from the train station—not a long trip at all, if the train’s running on time. We’ll probably be doing another small snack for the youngsters. They’ll most likely arrive hungry.” Since they were traveling by freight, illegally, it was a good bet they would be hungry. “We can just sit here and wait for lunch, meanwhile. My bodyguard is off and about on a little relaxation. They don’t get to do that very often—but I promised them I’d stay to my study and give them a little chance to go where they like. I can’t break that promise: they almost never get a holiday.”

“Oh, well,” Barb said, “just sitting still is good.”

“So what isthe news from the Island?” Bren asked, for a complete change of subject. “Gossip is welcome.”

“Oh, not so much,” Toby said, and then proceded to fill him in on two complex legislative scandals and the failure of a large corporation that had profited and ballooned mostly on the anticipation of the Crescent Island settlement actually working: it hadn’t. Buildings stood vacant down there.

And the Human Heritage Party wasn’t dead, it seemed, and had gotten all stirred up about the action of the station in dropping surveillance packets all over the map—what amounted to robotic surveillance, and communications outposts. They’d been sure that was an atevi plot, engineered by atevi on the station—that would have been Lord Geigi.

In point of fact, Lord Geigi had helped target the drops on the mainland, but the plan had been to provide surveillance and communication forforces loyal to Tabini duing the uprising—a plan that hadn’t turned out to be needed, but it had created controversy on both sides of the straits.

And meanwhile, indeed, as Toby had told him, cell phones had become the rage on Mospheira. Communications had improved. Privacyc well, in Toby’s view, he liked being out of range of phone calls.

“About forty miles off the coast is good,” Toby said.

“The wireless phone issue has become a problem here,” Bren said, “and certain concerns think it might be a good idea. I don’t. I’m preparing an opposition to it. Which is what I’m doing in my spare time on this vacation. Stopping cell phones.”

“I don’t mind them,” Barb ventured to say, “if we’re out shopping.”

“Finding one another is a convenience,” Toby said.

“And the ordinary ateva doesn’t have a bodyguard,” Bren said, “but he doesn’t go about alone, either—people are just not inclined to split up on an outing. It’s just the way of things.”

“So what areBanichi and Jago up to?” Toby asked.

“ Fishing, I hope. They so rarely get the chance to relax and enjoy themselves. Tano and Algini, too. They might even go shopping in the village—it’s one thing I don’tdo. And if they have done that—I may have to violate my own position on cell phones and use the com to track them down. They won’t forgive me if I go off cross-country without them.”

“Shopping?” Barb asked. But a light rap came at the door. Ramaso entered, announcing lunch.

So that was their morning. They actually had an enjoyable lunch. Barb did nothing outrageous, he and Toby and Barb talked about good fishing grounds just off the peninsula, and Toby and Barb proposed to go down to their boat and do some housekeeping in the case the young lord wanted to see their boat again, too—a good bet, that was.

Anything that took them out of the way of staff, Bren thought unworthily, but he was relieved to be relatively sure they’d be busy for a few hours.

But he had to phone down the hill to tell Banichi and Jago the news—and interrupt their small moment of leisure.

“By freight!” was Banichi’s only, somewhat exasperated remark when they all four arrived in the study. Jago said nothing. Nor did Tano and Algini. The four of them went outside the door, probably to consult staff, while Bren, with the servants’ help, dressed for an informal reception.

Not a reception at the station platform, on Banichi’s advice on the event, but just a little short of itc assuming the enterprising youngsters had made their connection and actually gotten off the train at the proper stop.

Chapter 6

« ^ »

They waited in the estate bus, the three of them, on the grassy side of the dirt road just out of sight of the station, which was on the other side of the hill. It was a pleasant place to wait: sea grass, dune-like little hills, a view of the bayc the bus afforded them a pleasant place to sit, given the afternoon air was a bit nippy. Last night’s storm had long since swept on eastward, and the sky was sparkling blue with a few straggling clouds. Looking out the back window of the bus, Bren watched those clouds float eastward, chasing their larger, angrier brothers. Another, larger front was due in. He hoped it wouldn’t scotch their plans. He was keeping an eye to the weather reports—kept an eye to the west, from this vantage, and still saw no cloud.

They’d dropped Tano and Algini atthe station. But Tano and Algini wouldn’t intercept the young scoundrels there, just tail them and be sure nobody else met the trainc and also ensure that the train didn’t get out of the station without dropping said young scoundrels.

Sure enough, Banichi reported a confirming signal from Tano, and in due time the youngsters crested the hilltop, marching right along as if they owned the countryside. Their jaunty step slowed a bit as they faced the unexpected bus.

Good. They were thinking self-defensively. But they were a little obvious, in mid-road, and stopping like that, as if they didn’tbelong here.

Bren got up, walked forward in the bus, slightly downhill; Jago got up ahead of him and went down the steps first, stepping down to the outside. Bren took hold of the rail and himself descended the tall steps, jumping down to Jago’s steadying hand. Banichi meanwhile took over the driver’s seat, just a precaution, always, in case of a quick getaway.

No need of that, however. Bren walked along the pebbled dirt as far as the tail of the bus, Jago staying with him. He waited there so their three visitors now could plainly see who was waiting for them—and add up for themselves the fact that their coming had been announcedc they could well guess by whom, and they could judge for themselves that now they might be in a spot of trouble. They might indeed have been in for a U-turn back to the train station or, more likely, a fast trip to the local airportc if Cajeiri’s father had been in a bad mood.

Two more walkers appeared on the hill behind the three youngsters—adult, in Assassins’ black. That was Tano and Algini, proceeding at a sedate pace, following the road from the train station.

Bren hadn’t wanted to make a scene of the meeting, or widely advertise their young visitors. They simply waited for the youngsters to show up—there was one road in the district that led to Najida from the train station, and this was, indeed, it, the single way any visitor to Najida or to Najidami Bay had to come.

So Bren waited for them, arms folded as they started walking again, deciding not to wait for Tano and Algini, and in due time the youngsters arrived at the bus. They all three bowed politely, and he bowed—Jago did not, in the icy chill of her professional manner—and then he looked Cajeiri straight in the eye.

“Young gentleman?” he said grimly.

An apprehensive look. “My father surely called you, nandi.”

“He did, young lord. Surely you don’t think the Guild in his service couldn’t trace a railroad train.”

Deep breath. The young miscreant had had a long train ride in which to put together a story. One was interested to hear what it would be.

“Great-grandmother is going away to Malguri. Great-uncle is in your apartment by now.”

“ Hisapartment, young lord. This seems a natural enough situation.”

“So it is, but it was rude of him all the same, and we support you, nandi!”

God, the boy was going to be a politician, no question about it. “And by coming to me in this fashion to say so, you risked your life, the lives and reputations of your associates, and bring me into disrepute as abetting this mischief, not to mention the instability to the aishidi’tat should some enemy find you and call your father seeking an exchange of favors.”

“My father cannot possibly blame you, nandi! One will strongly protest any such injustice! And we were very discreet. No enemy would expect us on a freight train. They would be watching the red car.”

“Your father called this morning,” he said dryly, in the face of this cheeky assurance. “He did notblame me, nor my influence, and gave you five days here, young gentleman—”

“ Ha!” Cajeiri cried, turning to his unwilling accomplices, beaming with delight. “Five days! Thank you, nandi!”

“The young gentleman should thank his father on his returnc”

“We shall, oh, we shall, nand’ paidhi!”

“ Notin words, but by renewed application to lessons! Is this agreed? Is this solemnly agreed, young lord? One cannot countenance supporting this notion otherwise!”

He caught Cajeiri with his mouth open. It shut, and Cajeiri looked at him and evidently saw, indeed, that there were two ways to go from here, only one of which would offer him the whole hospitality of the estate. Evidently he saw this choice before him, since his expression evolved into due caution, and he bowed in sober acceptance.

“One agrees, nand’ paidhi.”

“And will one remember, when one returns and the lessons are particularly boring?”

“One will remember, nand’ paidhi.”

“Then you are very welcome, young lord. We have asked, and been granted, two extra days of your companyc fortunate seven, in all.”

“Oh, excellent, most excellent, nandi! You are the best, the cleverest—”

“We seem to have promised you a day or two on the boat, among other things.”

“You see, nadiin-ji?” Cajeiri addressed Antaro and Jegari, who had looked throughout as if they wanted to sink into the damp earth of the roadway. And by now Tano and Algini had arrived, so that the young lord’s security-in-training had to have it stamped very clearly in their minds that they had been observed by Guild as they got off the train, and they had been observed all the while taking the road toward Najida, walking down the plain middle of it as they had been. They had had time to reflect that had Tano and Algini not been the paidhi’s own security, they might have been very, very sorry, and completely unable to defend their young lord. It was very, very likely that his bodyguard would impress that observation on the two in a private conversation yet to come.

The two certainly bowed, bowed deeply and respectfully when those two joined the party.

“Let us go,” Bren said, and led them back to the front of the bus.

Everyone piled onto the bus. Jago, resuming her seat, drove, and they made a bumpy descent toward the shore road, a brisk clip which delighted the youngsters. Cajeiri asked questions all the way: whether there might be wi’itikin in the sea cliffs— there were not: the flying creatures were more common in the East, and would not prosper where a gliding dive ended in the water. And were there fish in the bay? There were, abundantly so. And was that to the left Lord Geigi’s land, or his?

“It is mine, young lord, and you may even see the adjacent estate during your stay—one is, as a neighbor and associate of Lord Geigi, obliged to pay a visit there in a few days. You hardly had a chance to meet Lord Geigi on the station, but it may be useful, in coming years, for his nephew to have met you.”

“Is he my age?”

“One regrets, no, much older. But still a useful association, to you and to him.” The visit of the heir to the aishidi’tat would make a deep impression, even on a dim-witted newly-made lord, besides enhancing the nephew’s reputation locally. It would give Cajeiri a sense of the man—for good or for ill.

“But, nandi, you promised we could go fishing.”

“And that we shall, young lord. We shall spend this night at the estate, and tomorrow early we shall go on the boat, spend all day fishing and spend the night at sea, weather permitting. That is the plan. How will you like that?”

“Very much, nandi!” He turned to his young cohorts. “See? We shall have our fishing trip!”

He had the young rascal’s thorough cooperation now, he was surec a little carrot, when the boy had, perhaps, had too much stick over the last few months.

The boy’s presence would give his household a focus, too, other than Barb’s latest misdeeds.

And Cajeiri, having lived two years among the ship-humans, was far easier in the face of human habits, far harder to shock. One only hoped he didn’t learn anything new.

It was an excellent plan, over all, an excellent solution: they all wanted something to do—to keep him and Barb from unpleasant conversation. They could be doing something besides sipping tea and staring at each other. There would be bait to have ready, lines and poles and fishing-chairs to set up, all manner of things that would keep them busyc there would be the work to talk about. And Cajeiri’s questions to answer. Cajeiri’s endless questions.

So. That would all work out splendidlyc a happy visit, after all.

They wended their way past the first view of the harbor. Cajeiri, of course, had to bounce out of his seat to that set of windows and ask which was his boat and which was Toby’s.

“Toby’s is the one farthest out,” he answered the question.

That started a spate of reminiscences from Cajeiri—who had to tell his companions how he had caught a poisonous fish and scared everyone—understandably, since the lad had swung it all about the deck, including into the vicinity of the dowager. Guild training included many implements of assassination: live fish were, perhaps, a first.

Toby’s boat was where this adventure had happened, and there were bedrooms under the deck and the galley was just under the bridge, and you could sleep under the waterline, and they might do that, since they were going to spend the night on nand’ Bren’s boatc all this flowed out of Cajeiri in about one breath.