It was a piece of bald-faced flattery at the end, but was true, too. Ogun didhave a knack for handling the truth with tongs and getting it safely delivered. Sabin could manage sticky operational situations and get out alive—related skills, but in completely different arenas.
Sabin was the hardest to reckon with. “You take orders, Mr. Cameron.”
“On ship? I’d be a fool not to.”
“Are you ever a fool, Mr. Cameron?”
“I’m alive. Most of my enemies aren’t.”
That struck Sabin’s fancy. Delighted her, in fact. She almost laughed. And didn’t.
“Chain of command, Mr. Cameron. Observe it. I’ll take your atevi. You keep them happy. You keep their equipment out of my way. You keep them out of my way. I’m first shift, Captain Graham’s third shift. Pilots will serve in the intervals. I want your primary hours on mine, Mr. Cameron. Say that I want the benefit of your opinions when they do occur. Or if I ask you.”
“I understand you.” No collusion with Jase. He very well understood that implication.
“Good,” Sabin said.
“Any further words, Captain Graham?” Ogun asked.
“No, sir,” Jase said.
Sabin’s hands had returned to their interlaced calm. “Then make your arrangements, Mr. Cameron. That’s all I need from you. That’s all I hope to need.”
“How much time?” he asked.
Sabin cast a glance at Ogun, glanced back again. “Three days to power up from rest. Three weeks to do this in decent shape. But three days will do.”
Three days.
God.
Chapter 12
“Three days,” Bren said to Banichi and Jago on the way back to their section.
“Three days,” he had them relay to lord Geigi and to the aiji-dowager even before they reached the security of their own hall. He wondered if Kroger knew, and if Tabini knew, and suspected the dowager already did.
He stopped personally at Geigi’s door, and learned from Geigi’s major domo that the dowager had already departed to her own quarters—small wonder, since she was straight from a long and difficult journey, and the place was warm.
He stopped there as well. Cenedi himself came to the door to take the message.
“One apologizes for the short notice,” he said. “Cenedi-ji. The ship-aijiin seem to believe that the ship will somehow make that schedule.” He fished shamelessly. “Perhaps their preparations were already advanced.”
“One understands, nandi.” Cenedi completely refused the hook.
“We hope it affords reasonable comfort for the dowager.”
“Understood, nand’ paidhi. We are not surprised.”
Not surprised. No. And therefore prepared? Was that his answer? Three days’ notice?
If that was the case, no one was surprised but those of them who lived here.
Meanwhile a small figure appeared to Cenedi’s left, wide-eyed and apprehensive in the visitation.
Cenedi, too, had followed that minute diversion of his eye, as if someone in Cenedi’s profession hadn’t been aware all along of the boy’s presence ghosting up on him, curious and likely wanting information.
“And the aiji-apparent?”
Cenedi gave a little lift of the brow. A motion of the eyes in the appropriate direction. “What of him?”
“Where will he be, Cenedi-ji?”
“The aiji’s heir, nand’ paidhi, accompanies the dowager.”
“With all respect, this is an extremely dangerous voyage.”
“Yes,” Cenedi said.
What had he left to say or to object?
“I understand,” he said, but he didn’t understand. He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He’d desperately hoped the boy would go to Geigi. And he’d hoped the dowager would have some sort of information for him, but nothing was shaping up as he wished. “Thank you, Cenedi-ji, if you’ll advise her that I came as soon as I had news.”
“I shall, nandi,” Cenedi said to him—not coldly, but firmly.
So that was that. Feeling shattered, he walked on toward his own apartment, in Banichi’s and Jago’s company, asking himself how he’d let things come to such a state of affairs—and how Tabini could have sent the boy on such a venture even with other family members, and how Tabini could so have distrusted him as to go to Mercheson, or how he could ask his own staff to risk what they couldn’t readily conceive as real—
Banichi hadn’t known the sun was a star when the whole space business became an issue.
He had believed Tabini almost grasped the universe at large, but now, with Tabini’s sending the dowager and the boy up here as if this was a short-term venture to another island, he was no longer sure Tabini did know.
He wasn’t sure, among other things, that the aiji-dowager herself particularly cared about stars, or knew this wasn’t the next planet over, despite her association with the Astronomer Emeritus, and he wasn’t wholly sure Cenedi had a grasp of the geography—or lack of it—either.
Granted it wouldn’tbe that long a trip, at least as perceptions made it. The ship folded space— folded space, as Jase put it; and outraged mortal perceptions just didn’t travel well in that territory.
“Nadiin-ji,” he said to his companions as they walked, “understand, if the sun were a finger-bowl in the aiji’s foyer, then where we’re going would be as far distant as…” He didn’t know. But it was far. “As far as another such bowl in my mother’s apartment. Almost as far as a bowl on the dining table at Malguri. Do you see?”
“Quite far,” Banichi said.
“And once we get there, there may not even be a station. This is not a mission to a station like this station. Nothing so comfortable. This is a ruin. This is an area of conflict and destruction, with unknown enemies that might simply blow up the ship before any of us know we’re in danger. And Tabini’s sending the dowager, and a boy who won’t see the sun, won’t see the sky, won’t have any freedom aboard—” He was about to say they had sufficient time to make other arrangements and to persuade the dowager against bringing Cajeiri. But Banichi was quick to answer.
“Then he will learn the discipline of the ship, nadi-ji. He will learn.”
“And risk his life, Banichi. Is it worth it? What can he learn? What can a child do?”
“If he were a potter’s son,” Banichi said, “he would learn clay. Would he not?”
Among atevi, yes. A child would, if he was among potters. If he were among potters he would not be fostered out to every powerful lord in the Association.
“Yes, one assumes so.”
“So being the aiji’s son, he will learn thisclay, will he not? He will learn these leaders. He will learn these allies.”
What was there for the paidhi to say to that? He foresaw he wouldn’t make headway on that score.
And where wasthe proper school for an energetic, somewhat gawky boy who had thus far damaged an ancient garden—where was the school for a boy who would someday succeed the architect of the aishidi’tat, and for whom, all his life, even now, any untested dish on the table, any careless moment at a party could turn lethal?