“I am quite well, honored Father,” he said. “I shall follow instructions. I shall be very sensible, and I shall try to send a message back, if there is a way.”
“Salute Lord Geigi,” his father said.
“I shall, honored Father. And I shall be safe. I really shall be.”
“Behave,” his mother said, which was all she had said. He knew she was upset, and that it was not anger, this time: it was her worry about him.
“I shall, Mother. I truly shall.”
“See you do.” She gave him a little bow, and that was a dismissal. So he drew a deep breath and turned. The major d’ opened the door for them, and Eisi and Liedi were standing right by the side of it, sad to be left behind, and wishing him and his aishid a good trip and a good return.
It was real. He was really going. And he was scared, as he walked out the door with just his bodyguard.
He was more scared, hearing that door shut behind him, the lonely echo ringing up and down the hall.
It was just himself and his bodyguard, now. He was fortunate nine, he stood nearly as tall as nand’ Bren, he was nearly as strong as nand’ Bren, and he was going to go help nand’ Bren and mani do something no one else could do. He had his dictionary: Antaro was carrying it for him, in a shoulder bag. He had memorized it all. But he had it with him, in case; and he had it to write down new words.
He was sure Prakuyo an Tep would remember him. He certainly had never forgotten Prakuyo an Tep.
He had, he thought, been far braver when he was younger.
But two years or so ago, he had had far less understanding of what could go wrong.
· · ·
The foyer was already crowded when the young gentleman signaled his arrival, and there was no more room there, now. So Bren gave the order. Koharu and Supani, acting in their new capacity, simply opened the door, and the foyer emptied into the hall for their good-byes: Bren, and his bodyguard, Narani and Jeladi, Bindanda and Asicho, and now Cajeiri and his four young bodyguards. There were good-byes and well-wishes, courtesies from those staying.
At the very last moment, Narani remembered the vacation schedules in his desk drawer. “Use those if we are delayed, nadiin-ji,” Narani said to Koharu and Supani.
“You shall not be, nadi!” Koharu said fervently. Koharu and Supani were not ordinarily superstitious. But they were quick to reverse the omen. “It will not be that long!”
“Nandi,” Bren said to Cajeiri, then; and to the rest—“Nadiin-ji. We shall go now.”
So they started off, fourteen in all, down the ornate hallway to the lifts.
“Your great-grandmother is already downstairs,” Bren said to Cajeiri. “Did you have a good breakfast?”
“I had toast,” Cajeiri confessed. “I brought fruit drops.”
“Well, well, there will be something on the train, too, one is certain.”
They barely fit into one car. Tano keyed them through as express, they packed themselves in, and the car started down and down the levels, familiar trip—familiar destination, if one thought of it only in bits.
Cajeiri gave a palpable shiver against Bren’s arm. It was chill in the car. And the boy was in light dress, for traveling, and comfort—wise of his valets and his parents, but just a little thin for this hour of the morning.
“All of us are anxious,” Bren said quietly. “Except your great-grandmother, of course. She never is.”
Cajeiri flashed a grin. “Of course not,” he said, and laughed.
Reassuring to the soul, that grin. He didn’t have an ordinary child in tow. He had a boy who’d absorbed his great-grandmother’s training and his father’s, and who had an increasingly Tabini-like head on his shoulders. The boy was old enough to be nervous. He had reason to be nervous.
But he was not likely to panic, either.
“You know the Guild is sending a new office up,” Bren said, by way of distraction. “Four observers are going with us, to make the arrangements.”
“A new Guild office, nandi?” Cajeiri asked. No, apparently he had not heard. And Bren explained.
“It has been agreed. The Guild has chosen four observers to understand the station. Banichi says they are good. And they will have a great deal to learn.”
The car dropped rapidly through the levels, then slowed to a stop, and let them out into the echoing vastness of the train station.
Beyond the concrete block of lifts, the Red Train waited. The passenger car door was open, a bright rectangle of gold light. Two of the dowager’s men, armed, waited at the foot of those steps.
They crossed the intervening space, met the dowager’s guards, and climbed up the steps of the Red Car.
Strangers were in the aisle, indeed, Guild, four of them, conversing with one man they knew very well, graying, Guild-uniformed, lean and talclass="underline" the dowager’s chief bodyguard, Cenedi.
“Nandiin,” Cenedi said with a little bow, and proceeded to introduce the four newcomers, themselves a bit grayed; two men, two women, and one of the women, Bren noted, lacking her right arm, the jacket sleeve folded and tucked.
“Ruheso, Deno, Hanidi, and Sisui, nandiin,” Cenedi said. “The Guild Council’s representatives.”
Nods defined them, and the order of introduction gave seniority. The one-armed woman was Ruheso, Guild-senior. Deno was her partner. Guild-second was Hanidi, younger, maybe, but not by much. Sisui was missing half an ear. Field work. A lot of it, Banichi had indicated, in some very hard places.
Cajeiri, without prompting, gave a little bow. “Nadiin.”
“Young aiji,” the immediate response was, from all four. Bren gave a bow of his own.
“Nadiin. We had not planned to have you arrive in a state of crisis, but we shall keep you briefed at all points, and answer questions where we can, in whatever detail we can. You are very welcome with us.”
“Nand’ paidhi.”
Another exchange of bows, and the appropriate title for the aiji’s representative in the field. It was his first meeting with the team, and he was relieved to detect no reserve of expressions, nothing but intense attention to his position, not his humanity.
That spoke volumes. Smart. Sensible, able to absorb new things and take advice.
“Please assume inclusion to all conferences, nadiin,” he said to the four, and escorted the young gentleman toward the back of the car, to that long red velvet bench seat under golden lamplight where Ilisidi sat waiting for them.
“Aiji-ma.”
“Paidhi.” Ilisidi held out a hand sparkling with ruby and topaz rings. “Great-grandson. Sit.”
They sat. Everyone had risen in respect, staff having distributed themselves in seats along the way. Now everyone settled, bodyguards taking the seats reserved near their lords.
The door thumped shut. The train began to move out at its usual sedate rate.
And the dowager’s staff, alone rising to tend the small galley, provided tea in fine porcelain cups, steaming and welcome for jangled nerves. Tea went from there to the bodyguards, to the observers, to all the staff, followed by small sweet cakes.
And the Red Train chuffed down the long winding track that would exit the Bujavid hill and take them across the city.
They were on their way.
15
It was strange, Cajeiri thought. Up in the Bujavid hallway, and going down in the lift, he had been so scared his teeth were almost chattering. Now he felt strangely eager to go. The train, headed for the spaceport, was a place he’d been very recently, and when he thought of that, and the parting from his associates, all the fear left him. His three associates had gone where he was going now, and they had made the trip safely. So would he.