But Mospheira might have contemplated bringing Lord Geigi and his people down in the one shuttle they had left in orbit, and letting Geigi go after Murini.
Now there was a thought.
Well, thank God it hadn’t gotten to that. Thank God Tabini had stayed alive, and the relative framework of the aishidi’tat had bent, but not broken.
A close call. None of the alternatives had been good ones. But if any had been put into play, one hoped Shawn would call them off quickly, so they could all pretend nothing had ever gone on.
And if Toby and Tano and Algini had locators, they stood a good chance of finding each other in all that water. Dared he think that?
He hoped so. He fervently hoped so.
Delivered to one’s own door by Banichi.
Escorted to one’s own chambers within those doors by his father’s bodyguard, and watched like a criminal. Cajeiri was disgusted.
He had been so close to reaching Gene. He had talked to Jase-aiji, and when he had, all the memories of the ship had come flooding back, the very textures and smells and the details, down to the ribbing on the lights and the pattern of the floor tiles—suddenly, in his mind, he had seen Gene’s face, with his pale skin, not unpleasingly brown-speckled across the nose, his eyes, a remarkable muddle of gray, green, and blue— his hair, which was brown and dark, and curled generally out of control— He had already begun to lose the details he tried to hold in his head, but they were back, now. Artur’s face, narrow-nosed and with a chipped front tooth—Irene’s, dark as an ateva, but brown, and eyes darker than her face, scarily dark, full of thoughts— Golden eyes around him, now, two sets of purest golden eyes, worried-looking. Antaro and Jegari seemed sure they were at fault, which was absolutely stupid. It was stupid the way everyone down here seemed anxious to sop up blame when he did anything at all.
For a moment overwhelming anger welled up in his throat, anger enough to strike out and break something, but mani had taught him better, so he choked it back.
Oh, he had anger enough for a sharp word to his father’s guards out there, but mani would do far more than whack him on the ear if he let fly. If mani-ma were here, which she was not. She had deserted him, given him up to his father. Everyone had deserted him, everyone that he actually wanted to be near him, everyone but these two, who sat staring at him as if at any moment he would have some incredibly brilliant answer for their collective embarrassment.
Banichi had not had two words for him, beyond the fact that he was delivering him to his father’s care, and that he was not to be out and about in the future without Guild in attendance. It was absolute disaster.
And Jaidiri-nadi had shown up in person to take custody of him, and he was sure Banichi had gone back down to the party, where he would inform nand’ Bren the boy was back in his room, under guard.
It had been fun down there until— Until the business with the phone call, and he had brushed past nand’ Bren, and pushed right in front of Bren’s staff—he knew better, but he had done it, and he knew he had gone far past even nand’ Bren’s patient limit. He knew what mani-ma would say about what he had done. He had known it before he did it. But the bitter truth was—he had assumed he could get away with it. He had pushed too far, and Bren, Bren, that he relied on for patience, had turned him in.
And that was that. He all but shook from anger, in the realization that from now on he would be watched—lucky if he could get out of his room, let alone the apartment. It was not fair.
Nothing was fair. Nothing in his life was the way he wanted any more, and now Banichi, of all people, who used to play games with him, had turned on him and told him not to be out without real Guild in attendance, and Bren-nandi was furious, and probably would talk to his father.
And Jaidiri was absolutely furious. He had gotten past Jaidiri when Jaidiri was in a meeting with staff, he had planned it that way, and now Jaidiri knew it. Probably Jaidiri was in a great deal of trouble with his father, new in his job as he was: Jaidiri was professionally embarrassed. His new servants, Uncle’s people, too, were embarrassed. Everybody was upset with him, because everybody was going to get into trouble for letting him get outside.
Well, so was he upset, but nobody cared that he was upset.
Nobody at all cared what he thought. Mani-ma went away with Uncle, and Bren moved out, and his father and mother had seized control of him, but just installed him as one more obligation on their busy schedules. They paid no attention to him except at dinner-times, when they spared an hour to talk to him.
Damn, damn, damn! He would say the word and nobody cared to stop him. Nobody cared at alclass="underline" they just shoved him in a room to be let out only for supper, and they embarrassed him in front of Jegari and Antaro.
He flung himself down at his desk and picked up his sketch of the ship and flung it. Papers scattered, and Jegari and Antaro were too wise to move to pick them up. He wanted to rip things in shreds.
And they just stood, part of the disaster, finding nothing at all they could do to help.
“One desires some of that cake from last night, nadiin,” he said finally, which gave them an excuse to leave, as they could do and he could not: they could pass the guards at his door without being tracked—even if nobody gave them keys, such as other guards had.
They could at least go out and do something useful. He remembered the cake from last night’s supper. He had liked it. He wanted some sort of comfort for an upset stomach. He wanted meanwhile to calm down and use his wits. He could hear mani-ma telling him that he was a fool when he was angry and nobody wanted to take orders from a fool.
Maybe they could filch keys. It was not like keys on the ship, which were cards if they were not personal codes or thumbprints: they never had figured how to get by the thumb locks; but the Bu-javid keys were metal, and people carried them, and might be careless if he kept his eyes open.
He could all but see the passages on the ship. Gene and Artur, and him, with their breath frosting in the light Gene had, and Gene saying, “We can go wherever we like. I know how.”
He picked up his own papers off the floor. He straightened them into order, and tried not to choke on his own breath.
How could he have forgotten any of the details that had just come back to him? How could he have forgotten details about Gene?
His own memory was fading in this place, after hardly more than a handful of days, and he might forget other things, important things. He might start speaking only Ragi, and lose a lot of his ship-speak, if he was not careful.
That was the plan, was it not? This was such a different place, and the things he forgot were the very things the grownups wanted to take away from him. That was what they were doing—taking things away piece by piece, so he would forget, and be what they wantedc Well, he would refuse to forget. He made a little note: he drew a pathetic little figure beside it, that was Gene, and gave it dark hair.
He wished he could draw better. He would draw his room on the ship, just the way it was, with the simple little bed, and the bath, and the things he had had in the cabinets, things he liked, which he had not been able to bring down with him—he’d just packed a few changes of clothes, was all, but everything he had up there was still up there, over his headc And it would be for years, as far out of reach as the moon.
Even the moon was a place, when they were up there. The earth was somewhere else. Everything he knew was different up there. It was wider. Warmer. It had nooks and levels and places he could explore or just sit for hours without guards breathing close behind him.
He missed it all. He missed it terribly.
He drew Artur and Irene, stupid, simple little figures, just to remind him of the details he had gotten back.