Najida Estate, the bus said on the side, with a bright, rope-encircled picture of a peaceful blue bay and a small ship right below the name.
The truck was a little less decorated: its side panel said just, Najida, which was the village: a market truck, well-maintained, perfectly adequate for their baggage. Bren saw that matter going well, and climbed up and took his seat on the bus just behind the driver, with Banichi and Jago just behind him, and Ramaso and Saidaro just opposite, as other staff piled on in noisy commotion, all those who weren’t seeing to the baggage-loading.
The dedicated train would go back the way it had come, with no passengers—possibly with a car or two of freight for Shejidan, if the stationmaster so decided—back to Tabini, to wait the aiji’s pleasure. So they were here, peacefully settled, in rural solitude until that train made the return trip to pick them upc closer than the airport; and much more leisurely a passage.
The grassy road, greening in spring, showed recent mowing; and the dust of fairly frequent use—mostly the village and the estate going back and forth for supplies, very little in the way of passenger traffic. They passed thickets into which caiki dived for coverc nice to think that his land sheltered the little creatures: bobkins, Mospheirans called them, quick, gray little diggers that undermined planted gardens, common on the Island as well as the mainlandc food for larger hunters, which were scarce here, so the caiki thrived. A small herd of gigiin grazed on the hillside above the village, fat and prosperous and complaisant, not seeming alarmed by their presence. Nobody hunted them in this season. The hunt was permitted only for seven days a year.
Najida mostly fished the bay for its living, hunted very little. It sold a part of its take for farm goods and supplied its village as its village supplied it, mostly by green-gardens; and during the summer the village kids probably hunted bobkins out of the village gardens, making some items out of the hides.
It was typical seaside rural life, keeping a schedule that didn’t have committee meetings looming, and didn’t greatly worry about the capital, in the best times. The village gardens would still lie asleep for the winter, areas nearest the houses probably being turned now for the first time, but the vines still were protected under neat straw rows, down in the fenced fields, the orchard trunks wrapped with straw rope in the old way. Bren gazed out the bus window, taking it in, always fascinated by the attention to detail, using so many materials that never passed through a mercantile chain—just made off the land, out of waste straw from neighboring grain fields.
His mother’s house on Mospheira had never had a garden: they’d been city-dwellers, though Toby had once made a try at a garden when he’d lived on the North Shore, and probably harvested three tomatoes and a few carrots after his summer of trying. Next year, at least, the garden had gone back to flowers.
And Jill—Toby’s wife, then—and the kids—they’d laughed about it when he asked how it had gone.
Pity that Jill hadn’t stuck it out. He hadn’t had time to ask Toby the details of that breakup. He knew there was too much of his own fault in it, his fault that he hadn’t been home to take care of their mother, his fault that Toby’d done it allc done too much of it. Way too much, but that had been Toby’s choice, in his own opinion.
And Jill had taken the kids and left.
No more little house on the north coast. No more family. Toby had sold the house, bought a bigger boatc
And God help him, Toby had immediately taken up with Barbc with his brother’s old near-fianceec if you asked Barb about their relationship. He’d been trying his best to shed Barb. Barb had immediately flung herself into one bad marriage, then gotten out of that and straightway moved in on theirmother, taken care of her in her last illnessc
And who had shown up regularly at that same bedside, if not the ever-dutiful if not the favorite son? Toby. Toby, who’d worked all his life for the kind of recognition their mother lavished on her absent son the paidhi-aijic and never, to his knowledge, got a shred of thanks.
Barb had lost no time. Moved right in on Toby while Toby was visiting their mother in the hospital. Mum had died, Jill had left Toby, and—oh, yes—there was Barb, as fast as decency possibly allowed, moving right onto Toby’s boatc just helping out.
Well, Toby could use a hand on the boat, that was sure. It was safer sailing, with two of them: hand Barb that.
So he could worry less about Toby, knowing he had somebody with him, in bad weather and the lonely stretches of water where he persisted in sailingc sometimes on covert business for the Mospheiran government.
Just so Barb stayed with him. That was all he asked. He forgave her everything, if she’d stay with Toby, so Toby had somebody.
The bus passed the village, took the curve, and his own land spread out across the windows, the sinking sun just touching the bay in the distance, spreading gold across the water. The red tile roofs and limestone walls of Najida estate showed from the height, a mazy collection of courtyards traditional in the west coast provinces; and at the bottom of its landscaped terraces, two yachts rode with sails furled, one at anchor—his own Jeishan— Northwind—that he hadn’t seen in more than three years, riding at anchor; and, tied up to the estate’s little wooden pier, Toby’s slightly larger Brighter Days, that he’d last seen when Toby had let his party off ashore on the mainland, well north of here.
It was a cheerful sight. Banichi and Jago had noted it, he was sure, and he suddenly realized he hadn’t said a word to them since they’d left the train.
“Toby’s boat,” he said.
“Yes,” Banichi said, the obvious, and Jago: “It shows no activity.”
Meaning Toby and Barb must surely be up at the house by now, which was where their bus and the trailing truck were going—directly so, now that they made the turn from the main road to the estate drive, a modest little track lined by old weathered evergreens, the sort of seaside scrub that, aged as it was, never grew much larger than he stood tall, all twisted shapes and dark spikes in the waning light.
Lamps glowed at the portico, a warm, welcoming light for them at the edge of twilight, showing the flagstone porch—his own porch, a place he’d rarely been, but been often enough to love in every detail.
The bus pulled to a stop. Banichi and Jago got up in the last moment of braking, got to the door as it opened, and were first on the ground. He followed, down the atevi-scale steps, and onto the stone drive, up the walk, as Ramaso and the staff poured off the bus behind him and other staff came out of the open doors to welcome him. The house staff bowed. He bowed, and when he lifted his head there was Toby in the open doorway, with Barb behind him.
“Toby,” he said, and was halfway embarrassed by old habit, the impulse to open his arms, as Toby did—and there was Toby oncoming, and nothing to do: Toby embraced him; he, with no choice, embraced Toby, a little distressed. Toby slapped him on the back, and, hell, he did the same with Toby, stood him back and had a look at him, grinning. “Missed you,” Toby said.
“ Missedme! Hell! Worriedabout you, damn it, when you dropped out of contact after you dropped us off.”
“ Youworried! Youwere the one getting shot at!”
“I was safe enough,” he said, with a nod over his shoulder toward Banichi and Jago. “ Theymake me keep my head down.” The reserve he cultivated was deserting him. Staff had seen it before. Hell, he said to himself, there was no teaching Toby differently. He had stood back enough to look at Toby. Toby’s face was getting sun-lines that showed plainly in the lamplight: his wasn’t. Toby lived in the sun and the weather. He rarely saw the out of doors and took care of his skin with lotions. Time passed. Things changed. They both grew older. Further apart. But now was now. “Missed you,” he said.