And the faces. And the voices. Bren-ji , they’d call him. And they’d all understand when he wanted to go barefoot at low tide.
But they were there. He was here. Lord Geigi was running the station they’d come from, trying to keep relations between atevi, Mospheira, and the ship’s technical mission functioning smoothly. A vacation at his own seaside estate was a pipe dream.
“I’ll take a sunset on the beach,” Ginny said cheerfully. “Mind, no tourist shops. I erase those.”
“Oh, we’re editing.”
“Privilege of being out here in hell’s armpit. There’ll be this nice little bar, white fence, blooming vine—chi’tapas petals on a sea breeze, while I’m at it, so sickening-sweet you could just choke. Sunset, just one of those orange ones.”
“Touch of pink,” he said.
“Clouds and sails. Lights of the boats on the water, right at twilight.”
“I’ll go with that.” He liked that image. It wasn’t really maudlin. Ginny wasn’t a maudlin sort. She edited that out, right along with the tourist shops and their shell boats and paper flowers. In favor of chi’tapas. “I’ll give you one. Big stone fortress on a stony hill. Huge wall and a gate. The ground’s so steep grass won’t grow in a solid mass, just sort of little shelves of grass and bare ground between. Thorny brush. And it’s one of those gold sunsets above the hill. There’s light in the windows, and there’s supper waiting, and you’re riding in on mecheita-back.”
“ You’re riding in,” Ginny said with a laugh. “I’m walking on two feet.”
“Most dangerous place to be.” Mechieti had fighting-tusks, short ones, and didn’t mind stepping on a pedestrian or knocking him flat, at very least. When the herd went, the individuals went, the dreadful fact of an atevi cavalry charge—unstoppable as an avalanche; forget steering. “But there’s roast something or another for supper—”
“Oh, stop. I’m going to die. Roast, with gravy.”
“Brown gravy.”
“Hot bread. Fruit preserves and real butter.”
“Egg pudding. With chi’tapas.”
Sigh.
“We’ll get back,” Ginny promised him doggedly. “We’ll get back. I can’t deliver you roast and gravy in a castle, but I’ll buy you dinner at Arpeggio.”
“Date.”
“Jago’s not possessive?” Slow wink from a woman as apt as Ilisidi to be his grandmother.
“Totally practical. Well, mostly.” It was good to exchange human-scale jibes and threats. He’d come very much to appreciate this woman’s steady, slow-fuse humor in recent years. “All this talk of food. God. Want to drop in for dinner?” He’d halfway thought Ilisidi might propose a supper on this eve of change. But she hadn’t. Staff hadn’t contacted staff, which was how lords avoided awkward situations. “Can’t promise roast and gravy either.”
“Deal. Absolutely. Your cook—your food stores—I don’t know what you do to it, but it sure beats reconstituted egg souffles and catsup.”
“Don’t say catsup near Bindanda’s egg dishes. He’ll file Intent.”
“Anything for an invitation. Can Banichi and Jago be there? I’ll practice my Ragi.”
“Delighted. You might have ’Sidi-ji as a fellow guest; and we might end up there, instead, but I swear you’ll get dinner. Trust me.”
“Either will be glorious. Believe me.”
A dinner.
It posed a pleasant end to a day that overlooked a sheer drop. He hated the ship moving. He hated that whole phase of their travel.
He hated worse the anticipation this time. He needed company, he found. He pitied Jase. He wished he could find the means to get him back—if only for an hour.
But hereafter Jase belonged to the ship. Had to. That was the way things had worked out… at least for the duration.
Chapter 4
In the end it was his cook in collaboration with the dowager’s, and a table set in mid-corridor—anathema to ship safety officers—and both staffs and the lords of heaven and earth at table. Pizza seemed the appropriate offering, a succession of pizzas, with salad from the ship’s own store, and atevi lowland pickles, and the dowager and her staff delighting in salty highland cheese on toast. The aiji’s heir adored pizza, and was on very best behavior. A new hanging adorned the hall, which had had all its numerology adjusted for the occasion. Cajeiri’s reputation was safe.
There was adult talk, translated, and a fair offering of liquors, and a warm glow to end a rare evening.
“An excellent company,” Ilisidi pronounced it.
“One applauds the cooks,” Cajeiri piped up—an applause usually rendered at the main course, but it was still polite and very good behavior, and entirely due.
Bren offered his parting toast. “One thanks the staffs that lighten this voyage—for their cleverness, their hard work, their unfailing invention and good will.”
“Indeed,” Ilisidi seconded his offering.
“I also thank all persons,” Ginny said—in Ragi, a brave venture, “and one offers sincere respects to the lords of the Association and to the aiji’s grandmother and to the aiji-apparent.”
That called for reciprocal appreciations, before they went to their separate sections and their several apartments.
Over all, Bren said to himself, it was like the voyage itself—an astonishing event, a mix of people on best behavior and divorced from those things of the world that usually meant diplomats working overtime to take care of the agitated small interests. An event that would take a month to set up—they managed impromptu. They had very little to divide them, at least on this deck.
Pizza, that food of sociality and good humor, had been the very thing.
A social triumph.
The dowager had genteely remarked on the change in the hangings, without remarking on the dent. Cajeiri had surely realized she knew, or he was not her great-grandchild.
Ginny had gotten her company of engineers through an evening mostly in Ragi, without a single social disaster and even with a triumph of linguistic achievement at the end. She’d likely polished that speech for hours.
And, as Cajeiri had very aptly pointed out, the joint efforts of the two staffs had turned out a success. In a long and difficult service aboard, there had to be some moments to cheer, and this was one.
We should have done this before, he thought, and wished Jase had been able to come down. That would have made the evening perfect.
But Jase had had—one hoped—a night’s sleep by now, if Jase dared sleep. It was near the end of Sabin’s watch.
One day, one very long day, at the end of which, guests all departed to their separate venues, Bren could sit in his dressing-gown and review his notes, by a wall on which two potted plants had run riot. Gifts from home, those were. They’d seemed to grow with more vigor during ship-moves. Humans didn’t like the state they entered, but the plants thrived, given water and food and light enough.
He read until he found his eyes fuzzing, then took to bed. Jago came to bed shortly after and they made love… well… at least that was what Mospheirans called it.
Atevi didn’t. Jago didn’t. He didn’t care and she didn’t. There was no safer companion, no one who’d defend him with more zeal, no bedfellow as comfortable in a long and difficult night. She came to distract him and herself, and it worked. He did sleep.