They had increased their estimate of those going. More had found an excuse this morning— I wish very much to see this place, was one, and: My father would never forgive me if I left the paidhi-aijivied with I wish to leave my mother’s name in this far place.
Ship authorities had said they had room enough for a few extra. For the whole apartment, if they wished. So the list grew a little, and Narani recalculated the numbers and ordered more compartments opened, which one authorized, a simple message to the ship—no fuss, no extraordinary effort.
Could a human or an atevi wish better staff around him?
And walking down that corridor, realizing how close they were to boarding and how close he was to letting loose the reins of the unruly political beast he’d ridden breakneck for his whole adult career… he experienced a certain momentary euphoria.
“Baji-naji,” he said to Banichi and Jago in that giddy feeling. “Baji-naji, nadiin-ji, if it doesn’t work now, if Mercheson-paidhi can’t make it work, and if Geigi can’t, on what we’ve built—” He said it to convince himself, after his dark night of doubt. “—I don’t know what more I can do.”
“Bindanda has successfully boarded,” Banichi reported to him. “He reports the quarters are heated and lighted and he has set himself to stand guard at the entry, to establish a perimeter, pending arrival of the baggage carts.”
“Jase-aiji has communicated with Tano,” Jago added—electronically connected as ever, “and given clearance for the baggage and staff to board. We’re expected at our convenience, likewise the dowager, who will follow us.”
It all felt completely unreal of a sudden, as giddily impossible as it had seemed possible a second ago. He was a kid from Mospheira. He was a maker of dictionaries in a little office in the Bu-javid.
What in hell was he doing in the execution of an order like this one?
He had no business exiting the solar system. He felt the whole concept as a barrier, a magical line that, if he crossed it, would simply evaporate him, a creature that would burst like a bubble in the featureless deep of space.
Yet Jase had exited and entered several solar systems in his life. The ship did it as routine. Magic didn’t apply. He had no business being scared of the process, or supposing that disaster would swallow them up without a trace or a report. Hadn’t Jase had to have faith in boats, getting out on the sea for the first time, and figuring out that the sea was deep, and that he was balanced on a rocking surface high up—relative to the sea bottom. It didn’t matter that a body falling into the water floated and didn’t plummet straight to the bottom—it hadn’t convinced Jase’s gut. And knowing that this ship had done this again and again successfully—in atevi reckoning, were those not good numbers?
As the shuttles had good numbers?
Hell with that. He’d gotten more timid about airplanes, since flying the shuttle.
He’d begun to hold onto the armrests of airplanes, trying to pull the plane into the sky. Stupid behavior. Anxious, animal behavior. He told himself again and again what made airplanes stay in the sky… the way he’d used to tell Jase, who trulydidn’t like zipping along near a planet’s surface… and didn’t starships work on perfectly rational principles he just didn’t happen to understand as well as he understood airfoils?
In the station’s informational system, Banichi now reported, the ship had reached a mysterious 99% and holding.
“The dowager has decided to accompany us in boarding,” Banichi said further. “Her party will overtake us at the lift.”
So. So. A deep breath. Time to wait for protocols. He stalled his small party at the lift door.
In due time, at the dowager’s pace, with her staff and with Lord Geigi and his men for escort, Ilisidi and Cajeiri arrived and joined them at the personnel lift. The dowager was of course immaculate and fashionable in a red fur-cuffed coat, and the heir-apparent, neatly pig-tailed in the black and red ribbons of his house, wore a modest black leather coat, red leather gloves, and a quiet demeanor vastly different than his arrival.
Terrified, Bren thought with sympathy for the boy.
Sent from Tatiseigi’s ungentle care to Ilisidi’s and Cenedi’s, and now exiled to travel to the ends of creation in a human-run ship. Was ever a boy faced with more upheaval in his few years?
He was very glad Lord Geigi had come to see them off… considerable inconvenience, all the bundling-up for the cold core, a disturbance in the schedule of a man who got only a little more sleep than he had, Bren was very sure. Still, the man’chi was very tight, very sure, and it would have been sad had Geigi not stirred himself out to walk with them.
Hug Geigi? Not quite.
“Paidhi-ji,” Ilisidi said with a polite nod, the intimate address, acknowledging her traveling companion.
“Aiji-ma.” He bowed at the honor. “Nandi.” For Geigi, with human affection.
Banichi had called the lift, at the dowager’s approach. It arrived at precisely the grand moment.
“Young man.” Ilisidi offered her arm to her great-grandson, and the boy took it ceremoniously, escorting his great-grandmother with the grace of the lord he was born to be. They boarded. Cenedi and his men, and the dowager’s servants—small distinction between the two duties—held back. Geigi made a subtle wave of his hand, cuing himto move: thatwas the way it was, a difficult matter of protocols, and Bren moved, heart racing, thoughts suddenly a jumble of remembrance that, no, he was not demoted, and that Geigi, to whom he was accustomed to defer, gave place to him in the personnel lift—
As if he were higher rank.
Because he was leaving, perhaps, and numbered in the dowager’s party, not, silly thought, that the paidhi-aiji, if he even retained the title, in any way outranked the lord of the station. Empty honors, Tabini had paid him. The paidhi wasn’t any lord of the heavens, and hadn’t any claim to Geigi’s man’chi.
God, no. He didn’t want Geigi or the dowager to change the way they dealt with him. He didn’t want a paper title. He supposed it augmented his rank in dealing with Sabin… no matter it was meaningless, but he suspected Geigi was, if charitable, amused. He hoped Geigi wasn’t offended. He hoped the dowager wasn’t about to make some issue of it all.
He didn’t want any more. He wantedto retire to his estate on the coast for at least a month and look at the stars from the deck of a boat—Toby’s boat, at that.
Instead, the lift arrived, and they all fitted in, the same procedures they used when taking the shuttle down to the planet. He hoped that workers would communicate and the baggage wouldn’t stall in their path, and that it would all happen magically, so that the newly appointed lord of the heavens didn’t end up in interstellar space without shirts or Bindanda’s cooking supplies.
So much had to be a miracle. So much just sailed past his numb senses; and meanwhile he had to muster intelligent small-talk, in a station where the weather wasn’t a possible topic.
“So much done so quickly,” he said to the dowager as the lift rose.
“Did you hear from my grandson?”
“I did hear, aiji-ma.” He feared he blushed. And it wasn’t a topic he wanted to discuss, his elevation to mythical lordship. “One was very gratified by his letter.”
“Ha,” Ilisidi said, one of those ambiguous utterances. “Politics.”
And Geigi: “My staff is in communication with your quarters, nandi-ji.” Oh, he was glad to hear warmth in Geigi’s tones. “Does Mercheson-paidhi favor fish, do you think?”