“They are the clanless who cry fire in the shop and make off with the till.”
“That does describe them, aiji-ma. They would find profit in the situation.”
“You say the time of the Mospheiran paidhi is ending.”
“So far as the dispensation of technology is concerned, yes. But as a mediator, that, I shall be, as long as you wish, aiji-ma.”
“We agree. And toward that end, perhaps, that time when all science will be held in common, paidhi-ji—perhaps it is time Mospheira met the paidhi-aiji.”
“Aiji-ma?”
“Mospheirans think the paidhi is simply the arbiter of technology—giving small gifts to appease the aishidi’tat and keep us happy. Let our human allies learn the true value of our paidhi-aiji, firsthand, and in a needful instance. These young Reunioners are under our protection. Go to Mospheira. Make that clear, by your presence, by your dealings. Set up adequate protection for them and assure their proper education by sensible people. If the Presidenta is your oldest ally, and we are likewise your allies, you should use those circumstances to declare how these children will be treated, and why they should be treated so, and assure that all these Reunioners who will be landing also become Mospheiran, with all their benefits of science and knowledge at the world’s disposal.”
“They are not all scientists, aiji-ma.”
“Yet they are humans like other humans, are they not?”
“Not all in the most fortunate way, aiji-ma.”
“Gin-nandi is in charge, is she not? Human authorities surely can screen them before sending them down. And the Presidenta can act with authority, as he did with Tillington.”
“That is so, aiji-ma. But—”
Ilisidi swung her cane down and set it on the carpeted stonework with a distinct thump. “We approve our grandson’s notions. Go to Mospheira. Let them see they are not dealing with a market squabble, but something far beyond their shores and likely beyond the lives of their grandchildren. We have finally gotten sense from the ship-aijiin. We have established order on the station, granted we move these people off with some dispatch. Let us not leave this decision to the Mospheiran legislature to send to committee and committee and committee. We know their ways. Let us cast this matter into treaty law, in which, if we recall, the Presidenta has an aiji’s power, so he need not refer to the legislature and its committees.”
“Approval from my grandmother,” Tabini murmured. “When we two agree, the sun runs backward.”
“Look to the sky, then,” Ilisidi said. “The world is in for a long afternoon.”
“I shall go where I am sent,” Bren said. Images flashed through his mind, Port Jackson. The University. The Department. Occasionally the halls of State. His mother’s apartment and the downtown traffic—but that wasn’t there anymore. She’d died while he was at Reunion. Everything had changed while he had been at Reunion, and he hadn’t been back to any of those places since.
Everything . . . had changed.
“You will go to the island as paidhi-aiji,” Tabini said, “and with your aishid. Wherever you stand, you stand in the aishidi’tat.”
“Aiji-ma.” That was an order, as direct and specific an order as Tabini had ever given him.
And as simple and as complicated as the last one, to go up to space and deal with a kyo ship.
In some ways—that one had been more straightforward.
• • •
Mother’s suite had the really nice windows . . . a row of them, with beautiful lace curtains that stirred in the northern breeze. And Seimei slept, in her crib, opposite them, serene in her little world. Cajeiri paused on his way to his mother’s sitting room, stood by Seimei’s crib, nudged a little dark fist. Seimiro was her name, but it was too big a name for so little a person. Seimei was how he thought of her. Her hair was more abundant, black as his. She had plumped out since her birth, and he supposed that was healthy in a baby. And she was a determined sleeper, fist clenched, her mouth so strangely like their mother’s. She could frown. She did so, in her sleep, probably because of his shadow falling on her face.
He had no desire to wake her and have their mother upset. He had left his aishid to relax with Eisi and Liedi, and see Boji, and to settle down to a quiet cup of tea with the first chance to tell Eisi and Liedi at least the surface of the adventures they had had. He would have to answer his mother’s questions, and be careful what he said.
Well, there was nothing for it. Mother’s maid was waiting at the door to Mother’s sitting room. He left Seimei and let himself be ushered in.
Mother was waiting for him, in her chair. He gave a little bow. “Honored Mother.”
“Son. Sit down.”
He took the chair that was sometimes his father’s. “Seimei has more hair than when I left.”
“Do you think so?”
Saying something nice about his sister was the fastest way to get his mother in a good mood. It proved he had looked. Which proved he had cared. And he did care, actually; it was just that it did work, and he knew it. The fact was that, no matter what he did, he would never be as much as Seimei, in his mother’s eyes.
Her concentration on Seimei gave him peace, at least.
“I think at least a third more,” he said, and added: “She sleeps a lot. Is she all right?”
“She wakes midway to morning,” his mother said, “and goes to sleep in the sun. You were a sun child, always awake by daylight. Which you could not quite do on the ship, I fear.”
“No,” he said. “There was only artificial light there. But one trusts she will change.”
“Babies do,” she said. “And did you have a good trip?”
As if he had only been to Tirnamardi and back, on an outing. “We did. We had no trouble on the shuttle.”
“But on the station. Your father says you had to pull your young guests to safety, and Lord Geigi has them.”
“Yes.”
“Have you eaten? Would you like teacakes?”
He had had an absolute excess of teacakes, dealing with the kyo. He did not think he would ever like them again. “I think I would like a sandwich, honored Mother.”
Mother gave a nod to her maid, and another servant, standing beside a buffet, began to prepare tea.
“Tell me,” his mother said, “how these strangers were.”
“Prakuyo an Tep, Hakuut an Ti, and Matuanu an Matu . . .”
“Such strange names.”
“We have pictures of them,” he said. One had to be careful, warming to any topic with Mother. Some stories alarmed her. “Prakuyo-nandi remembered me. Remembered us all. Matuanu was fairly solemn—we think he was a kind of bodyguard. Or maybe he was old.”
“Could you not tell?” His mother seemed interested, in astonishingly good spirits.
“With them—they have no hair at all, they scarcely have any wrinkles, their faces are bony, but fairly pleasant, and we never could tell. I felt a closer association with Hakuut—he was always the one to try things—but I had no idea until the last that he was young. Like me. Well, like Veijico. We spent a lot of time working on the tablets and pictures. And he turned out to be Prakuyo’s son. Prakuyo brought his son to see us. None of us expected that!”
“I would not have expected it,” his mother said. The maid served tea, and he was not sure he should go on. It was never proper to discuss business over tea, but he was never sure, with his mother, what constituted business. “So did we get all we wanted from them?”
“I think we did.” He had his own reservations, all in that conference downstairs, but he did not think he should mention that to his mother. He was supposed to be ignorant, and sometimes that was safest. “They are going away now. They are way out from the station and going fast.”
“But still here.”
“I do not understand quite how it works,” he said, “but they will
go, soon, quite suddenly, and we will not see them. They go faster than light. And light goes faster than thunder. By quite a lot.”
“Well, well, these are things we will be obliged to understand, one supposes. What did they want? To look around? And for what? What were they looking for?”
“They are fighting a war, far on the other side of where they live. And nand’ Bren says they are probably very glad to see we are not strong and warlike.”
“They are not seeking us as allies, then.”
“Maybe they would have wanted to have allies, but mostly they just wanted to have us stay out of their territory. They evidently think they can deal with things. They just did not want a powerful enemy on their flank.”
“On their flank. When did you learn such warlike things?”
“I think from Father. Or mani. Or maybe Banichi.”
“Well, my son is back. And we shall not have a war in the heavens. And one hears your young associates will be living on Mospheira soon. You are not to take a rowboat, son of mine.”
It was humor, and from his mother. But it happened to conjure an all-too-vivid image. “I have had my adventures with rowboats, honored Mother.”
His mother instantly went solemn. “We should hope so. But you will know they are safe.”
“I shall.”
“Your tutor has missed you.”
Lessons. And routine. His brain hurt, from all he had learned above, and he did take notes, and he was still taking them.
“I think I should like a little holiday, honored Mother. I studied and studied up there. It was a lot of study.”
“You are tired.”
He hesitated to answer. He wanted no quarrel. But he nodded.
“We were very worried,” she said. “Your father was on edge the whole time. I confess the same. The major d’ was under orders if anything came at any hour, we were to know, and word was very scarce, until the last few days.”
“I am sorry.”
“We understand that there was a time when the human in charge interfered with the orderly transitions. We hear that there is now a new person in charge of the Mospheirans.”
“There is, honored Mother. Gin-nandi. She is a very nice person.”
“With other qualities, one would imagine.”
“Very many, honored Mother. She is excellent. I know her from the ship.”
The servant arrived, with little sandwiches. And he wanted one, but only one. He drank his tea unsugared, now, and it was strong. His stomach was all in knots.
“Please take all you want. Maeta, take a tray to the suite, with little cakes. My son’s aishid will surely be hungry.”
“Nandi,” the servant said, departing. Cajeiri took down his little quarter-sandwich in two bites, and washed them down.
“Are you sure you want no other?”
“No, honored Mother. Only to settle my stomach. I feel as if I have run for days.”
“And left your associates up there. Are they well?”
“They are well. They and their parents.”
His mother nodded. “I have you back. I have great reason to be proud of my son.”
He stopped in mid-motion, setting the teacup down on the side table. He did set it down. The click was loud in the room. He had stopped breathing for a moment.
“I am glad to be back,” he said, and added, thinking fast, as desperately fast as he had ever thought, trying to communicate with the kyo. “I really am.”
In the next room, Seimei began to fret. It was, in a way, a rescue, because he had no idea how to proceed from where he was, and he was relieved when his mother got up, and gave him a chance to go and take off the coat and greet his little staff and fall straight into bed for days. He was tired. He was so very tired of a sudden.
But his mother put out her hand, expecting his, and he gave it.
“You have done very well,” she said. “I have the report from nand’ Bren and from your great-grandmother, and from Lord Geigi . . . well, they were your father’s reports, but I shared them. Go. Rest. Your father has a thing in mind, but I told him he should give you a night to rest.”
“What does he have in mind?”
“Nothing of concern at the moment,” she said, and let go his hand. “Go.”
He did go, out past his sister, in the arms of the nurse. Seimei was lying against the nurse’s shoulder, but she looked at him—opened her gold eyes a slit and actually looked at him for the first time, a small frozen moment.
He said nothing. He thought, outside the door, that possibly he should have said her name. First meetings had omens.
But he was exhausted, and wanted to be in his own quarters, and his mother had said she was proud of him, had given him a holiday from his tutor, and said he should go rest.
That was the best encounter he ever remembered.
• • •
It was a quiet ride up the lift to the third floor. The dowager was momentarily pensive, and offered no advice or opinion, and Bren carefully confined his own thoughts, steering his mind onto simple things, things that had to be managed before he could leave—things as simple as wardrobe, as simple as a diplomatic pass, the procedures of which were ordinarily a phone call. Customs was usually inspection of fruits and vegetables—not people.
Clearing his aishid to step onto Mospheiran soil—had no precedent. Not to mention their bringing over their equipment, which was classified. It was not the matter of a simple phone call.
And he needed to move fast, before Mospheirans started getting anxious about their copy of the kyo document, which he would, under ordinary circumstances, have sent over by air, by courier.
The lift door opened. The dowager, with Cenedi and Nawari, exited first. He followed with his own bodyguard about him, into the third floor residency, a corridor as ornate as the one they had left. The dowager, Lord Tatiseigi, the paidhi-aiji—and Tabini himself—occupied this restricted section of the third floor, only four apartments, in the whole wing—only four, since the renovations. The other residencies, on second and fourth and off in other wings, were generally occupied seasonally, a prestigious nearness to the legislature, the audiences, the offices and conference rooms. Living in the residencies and not needing the hotels at the foot of the Bujavid’s high hill, was a jealously maintained privilege of the oldest clans, the largest clans—and one human official who had started his career in the basement, sharing an across-the-hall bath with not-so-powerful functionaries and servants.
He’d made his trips back to Mospheira to consult, in those early days, in a little five-seat passenger compartment on one of the few planes that carried passengers at all, typically ahead of a load of seasonal fruit or fish on ice. He’d changed to Mospheiran dress, hired a taxi at the airport—stayed wherever he had to stay to do the business he had to do.
His passage to Mospheira was going to be a little different, this time.
“You will go tomorrow?” Ilisidi asked, as they were about to part company.
“As soon as possible,” Bren said. “Tomorrow morning, if staff can manage it.” Wardrobe was an issue. Transporting it fit to wear was another. He could not unpack a suitcase on Mospheira and turn out in anything like the state Tabini expected. Moving him in his official capacity needed wardrobe cases. Staff to deal with it. Security—his aishid was enough. But they had equipment. They had a whole other level of security concerns. He had used to stay with his mother—one suitcase. Her apartment. That was gone.
Toby wasn’t. Toby was here—at Najida, at least, maybe hoping to hang on just a little longer, that they might manage a meeting . . .
Thump. The dowager’s cane.
“You are staring at things absent, paidhi.”
He focused on the dowager, shaken, still, by the prospect. By the things she knew, and didn’t know, even yet.
“We do not release y
ou to the Presidenta’s service,” Ilisidi said. “Be firm on that point.”
“I shall be, aiji-ma.”
“Well, well, take care.” And with a sharp glance at his aishid: “Protect him.”
On Mospheira.
That was going to be a first.
He went his way from the lift, she went hers, but he was not alone. He was never alone. Banichi and Jago were right beside him, Tano and Algini at his back. Comfortable. Familiar. Here on the mainland—he had them with him, near him, constantly.
On Mospheira—he’d taken his chances.
Now—there were risks he could no longer afford, for the sake of people who relied on him.
“Has our baggage arrived upstairs?” he asked, already estimating what it was going to take to turn everything around and go again.
“Yes,” Jago said, and: “Everyone has arrived.”
A few staff had just come in from Najida, resuming duty in the Bujavid apartment, which had been running on minimal staff in his absence. Everybody would be justified in assuming he would stay at least a day—maybe make a flying run out to Najida to spend a day with his brother, and then settle down to normalcy. All plans would operate on that assumption. Country clothes. Maybe one court appearance, considering all that had gone on. Time to sort everything into order again.
That was not going to happen. The treaty he had—best that not go over by courier, though the more delay there was about it reaching Mospheira—the more speculation might attend it.
Which might not be a bad thing—since he had the fairly simple facts of it in his possession. And if he delivered it personally, the document would get full attention, but his presence could also loom over any debate on the specifics.
His presence—in full force—would certainly get cameras—cameras when he wanted them, and when he didn’t. Full attention of the Mospheiran news services.
He was an issue over there. He could tip the balance of public opinion in either direction. It was a chance to say to Mospheira—I haven’t forgotten you.