“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.