“What’s that?” Gene asked.
“One of my good things.”
“That’s weird,” Irene said, and reached out carefully and fingered the handle very carefully. Tapped it. “Is that plastic?”
He didn’t couldn’t remember their word for wood. “Tree,” he said. “Tree stuff.”
“You’re kidding,” Gene said. “Wood?” He touched it carefully. “I’ve never felt it.”
Artur picked up one of the stones, and said a new word. Irene said it again and added: “What planets and moons are made of.”
“Rock,” Cajeiri said in Ragi. “That’s a rock.”
“Rock,” Artur said. “Rock, yes. I guess it is. But I’ve never had my hands on one.”
“You’re kidding,” Cajeiri said, and then he remembered they had never been outside the ship or the station. And he could not think of anywhere on the station that was rock, or stone.
“It’s smooth,” Artur said, then, and he rolled it around between his fingers. “Is it made?”
“Water,” Cajeiri said. “Water made it smooth.”
“How,” Gene asked, “do you make it do that?”
That was an odd question. But then he realized he had no ship‑speak word for river. Or stream. There was ocean. But no word for waves or beach. What they had talked about on the ship was the ship, usually. Occasionally stories they remembered.
He had come prepared. He had a little notebook, and a pen. He started drawing the seacoast, and the peninsula. “Najida. This. Nand’ Bren’s.” He started describing things in Ragi, slowly, and Irene wanted paper, and borrowed the pen to write the words her way on her paper. So they started giving each other words, using the rocks and the slingshota and the juice sloshing in the cup. Waves. Beach. Rocks. Pebbles. Sand. Tides.
It was the old game, the way they had used to be, and he began to feel increasingly at ease. He showed them how the slingshota worked, and that got the attention of mani’s bodyguards–but he did not fire a stone, no. He just showed them.
“That’s really wicked!” Gene said, admiring it.
“Neat,” Artur said.
They were impressed. And everything was perfect.
· · ·
The young group back there, Jago reported, and Kaplan also observed, was entertaining themselves very happily, and being remarkably quiet about it. Bren and Jase sat and talked, and Ilisidi and Tatiseigi conversed at length, before Ilisidi invited them to sit together and do small talk regarding the ship, the persons Ilisidi dealt with–notably Captain Sabin.
“We are trying to persuade Lord Tatiseigi to pay a visit to the station,” Ilisidi said lightly. “Perhaps you can prevail.”
“One would realize the extreme honor of such an invitation,” Tatiseigi said with a forbidding gesture. “But I would decline. Flying does not agree with me.”
“There is no such sensation on the space station,” Ilisidi said.
“One has no desire to be sealed into a tube and flung into the heavens. With all courtesy, nandi,” Lord Tatiseigi added, with a little nod toward Jase, “toward the elegance I am told exists in the heavens. I am certain it exceeds imagination. But simply to move between Shejidan and Tirnamardi is such an untidy business. One can only imagine the difficulties of a household lifted to the station. Yet–yet I am aware both you and nand’ Bren do maintain such arrangements.”
“We have very capable staff, nandi. Extraordinary people.”
“Ah. There is the grade,” Tatiseigi said relative to the train’s motion. It was slowed a bit, then gathered speed again. “That will be a quarter of an hour to our destination, nandiin. Not so rapid as your shuttle. But one is accustomed to it.”
Guild around them were getting up from seats, putting away service items.
“Nandiin,” Ilisidi said purposefully, then, in a tone that had nothing of banter about it. “We shall enjoy the hospitality of our esteemed Tatiseigi. We shall see nothing untoward comes near these children.”
“Let me assure the ship‑aiji,” Tatiseigi said, “that he is welcome under my roof. We have ample room. Ample room.”
“Nand’ Tatiseigi.” Jase gave a very courteous bow, with no hint of bemusement–though he was amazed, Bren was sure. The old man had been pleasant the entire trip. Happy in the event? Bren wondered.
The old man was going to get off the train and run into Taibeni, who were coming in, arranged by Tatiseigi’s own staff. He thought a warning might be in order. He decided on it.
“There will be, one is advised, nandi, Taibeni at the station. An assistance. They are reliable.”
A brow quirked, just a little. The iron good will stayed in place. “Our allies,” he said, as if the words tasted entirely strange. “Yes. That is good to know, nand’ paidhi.”
12
The train pulled to a stop. The door opened. The dowager’s men went out first onto the platform. The word came back, clearly, and more went out, and the baggage cars next door opened up, distant thumps.
Bren got up. Jase did, then Lord Tatiseigi, and, last, Ilisidi, as the aisle had mostly cleared and unloading was proceeding outside. The youngsters stayed where they were–courtesy of the youngest Guild present. Kaplan and Polano, who had generally tried not to block the aisle, and who had found the far side of the galley the easiest for their bulky stance, put their helmets on, as Jase slipped a communications earpiece into his ear and from that moment on was in communication with them.
“Let Cajeiri’s aishid move the kids,” Bren said. Maneuvering was too tight for Kaplan and Polano, and Cajeiri’s aishid was getting instructions. “Bren‑ji,” Banichi said, his own signal, and he joined Banichi and Jago, going quickly down the aisle, in a fast sequence. Jase and his guard would be behind them. Tano and Algini were near the door. Guild moved their own baggage. Personal baggage stayed–it would get there, but not on the bus.
The open door brought a bracing waft of valley air, and daylight, a step down to the platform–baggage was piling up, and a cluster of Taibeni in brown and green were handing it out, one to another.
Bren followed Banichi’s gesture, left turn, moving with dispatch; the kids all together, with their young escorts, all headed toward the vehicles waiting beside the platform, in front of a small stand of trees: the red and black bus up from Najida, and two old and well‑used green and brown trucks. Taibeni colors, those, checked and secure.
The human kids stopped abruptly–frozen in place, staring . . . as three riders on mecheiti moved past the bus. Lean, towering beasts, mecheiti were built for speed, twice a human’s height, with curved necks and shining brass war‑caps on the short tusks that jutted from the lower jaw.
Stopping was prudent. The mecheiti had caught wind of something foreign, and the lead rider used his quirt to move his mecheita past, giving their group a wide berth. The other two followed, around the station office, out of sight.
Welcome to the Padi Valley, Bren thought, as he followed Banichi down the steps of the train station platform.
The kids were close behind, Cajeiri and Gene in the lead, then Artur. Irene was coming, holding to the wooden rail and looking anxiously in the direction the riders had come from. Veijico and Lucasi were right with her, wanting her to catch up, and she jogged a couple of steps, the kids bunching up again.
Off to the right was another group of riders. It was the trucks that were the rarity in Taiben. The lodge had them, for supply, for commerce; but the forest that was Taiben, the deep woods–mecheiti navigated those narrow trails and crossed the hunting ranges efficiently, with no need for costly and intrusive roads. It was a way of life far different than other clans–the Taibeni‑Atageini war had lasted over two hundred years for one thing because the Taibeni had never cared much what their neighbors did, or thought. The Taibeni used the same train station as the Atageini. They had visitors come in, and they would get them and their baggage to the lodge deep in the woods, by the sole road.