“And the young gentleman and yourself, aiji-ma, who engaged them and calmed them.”
“Pish,” Ilisidi said. “We need more words, paidhi. We need precise words and more of them, aptly used, so we may be better able to deal with them.”
It was, indeed, what they had for resources.
Given that Phoenix was all but unarmed, words were all they had.
· · ·
Time was running. Next day was the fourth, their last whole day in Shejidan, the last day before they would take the train to the port, and the port crew understandably wanted their baggage early. Crates stood in the hall now, about to go downstairs to the train station. Staff hurried back and forth. A grocery order arrived, with a large supply of orangelle concentrate that didn’t so much as visit the kitchen before it went straight into a crate with other non-wardrobe items, including real flour, fine cooking oil, and granulated sugar.
Even during the meeting with the dowager, two crates had arrived in Bren’s apartment from next door: Cajeiri’s wardrobe crate and a smaller one belonging to his bodyguard. Staff had simply stacked them on baggage trucks and they stood there overshadowing the foyer.
“We are ready,” Narani said by late afternoon. “The baggage is ready to go, at your word, nandi. One believes the dowager’s staff is likewise ready.”
“We shall send ours the moment hers has cleared,” Bren said, “at your discretion, Rani-ji.”
So the crates began to disappear then, as many as they could fit in the lift at once, until the foyer stood empty. Exhausted staff ate sandwiches, and slept—finally, slept.
Bren’s own supper was a very informal affair—the junior cook, a lad from Najida, had presided over the kitchen amid Bindanda’s raids on the spice supplies. And brandy afterward was an uncharacteristically solitary affair. His aishid joined him for a conference, but, being on duty, would not take a drop.
“Go to bed, Bren-ji,” was Banichi’s advice. “You, above all, cannot become over-tired.”
It was good advice. His bodyguard would continue to work, in shifts. He took his bath and put himself to bed early.
He had talked to staff, and made final assignments. Supani and Koharu were distressed to know they were not going aloft. They protested their willingness to go on a later flight, if they turned out to be needed, and he had assured them both that would be a consideration.
But to be set in charge of a large household staff—next to the aiji’s own, that was no minor thing, either.
Their distress concerned him, however, at a time when he could not distract himself with worries or second-guess his decisions. The baggage had left for the train station. Staff was still moving about, excited and distressed at once.
To shut off distractions, he took the kyo dictionary to bed and thought and thought, recalling the circumstances and the locale and the expression behind the words he had written down himself, trying to get a clear focus on the syntax, difficult as it was. The language held nothing like the numerical content of the atevi language, and, like Mosphei’, was more than a little confusing regarding what was a noun versus what was a verb.
Verbs combined, and seemed hell to figure, in forms and nuance. They were dicey things, like nouns or states of being embedding outcomes, and a few infixes giving clues to desirable and undesirable values.
If they were even verbs. Or if that ancient concept was not misleading him.
Could one negotiate a treaty with only nouns?
Easier said than done.
Did the kyo even have a concept like treaty?
It was a state of being. So there was a possibility.
His eyes were tired. He was asking himself about abstract nouns while attempting to decide whether there was any internal clue to tell chair from sit—that was how basic it was. The phonics in which he had written words down were his own system, and he had had to invent symbols along the way. Consonants and vowels were similarly difficult to define. The language boomed and resonated. He had tried to note distinctions. A human throat could hardly manage some sounds. And what he might have missed—or said by accident—
He found his eyes closing repeatedly while he was trying to read, and he finally got up, went to the wall and turned the lights out, then crawled back into bed and burrowed into the covers.
There was an uncommon chill in the air, tonight. Or he was that tired, and Banichi was right: he was trying to do too much himself, wearing himself down before he was really needed.
Time was running. That was the scary thing. He dreamed about girders, and vast cold spaces, where one needed a coat. That was the station docking facility.
He dreamed about a white room, and knew he needed to meet someone there, and could not remember—
Thump.
No. Hollow thump. Rap on the door. He opened his eyes, alarmed, saw a seam of light, a figure entering the room.
“Nandi.” Jeladi’s voice. “One apologizes. There is a phone call from nand’ Jase.”
He came awake fast, slid off the bed, hardly stopped to snatch up his nightrobe from the end of the bed. Shejidan’s night was Jase’s watch, the period in which he was in charge of the ship’s functions, aboard or on the station. And staff was under orders not to delay any message from the station at any hour.
The office offered the closest plug for the phone. “Tea, please, Ladi-ji,” he told Jeladi, on his way out his bedroom door, and indeed, the office door was open, the light was on, and the phone already sat on his desk. He was shivering as he picked up the receiver.
“Jase?” he said, heart thumping. The floor was like ice. “Bren, here.”
“Bren. They’re talking. Signal is exactly the same as two years ago, simple beep and pulse of light, repeating every fifteen point three five eight minutes. Station picked it up right at the last of the Mospheiran shift and Tillington kept them on duty. Discretion in the Mospheiran section is now completely blown and it won’t be long before everybody knows. News leaked onto B deck inside five minutes, at least that there was a signal out there.”
He’d had about two heartbeats to think, first, that Jase was breaching security, calling him and discussing the kyo directly, and another heartbeat to think, Thank God, regarding the nature of the signal, and a third heartbeat to realize what time it was.
Damn the unlucky chance that it had come in Tillington’s watch.
They were now in an entirely different game.
The robe was not enough. And his feet were approaching frozen. He sat down at his desk, shivering. “Immense relief, here, really, at least that it’s the visitors we expect. But we’ve got to tell Lord Geigi officially and we’ve got to tell the Reunioners and reassure them. What’s the reaction up there right now?”
“Communications are buzzing all over, but Ogun called up second- and third-shift ship techs to duty—that’s the ones that were at Reunion with us. He’s shut down the station com system except for official announcements. Tillington’s also shut the section doors in all human sections to prevent section-to-section movement, but he can’t hold that condition forever.”
“Is Geigi aware?”
“Yes. Expect a call from him, when he can get it out.”
“When he can get it out?”
“Ogun’s locked down com. We’re not transmitting at all, except this one call, pending your clarification.”
Good. “Echo. Precisely what we did in the past. Observe their timing. Otherwise normal traffic. Just keep me posted.”