Then the lights left him and swung up to where his father was coming down the steps. He could hardly see in the sudden dark. He could not stumble. He took the steps very carefully, felt Antaro’s hand at his elbow, ready to help him, but he managed on his own, and climbed to the place where his father stopped, up in the light, where his father’s black brocade glistened like Guild leather; his own coat blazed with metallic red.
Drummers and string-players started up from somewhere in the dark edge of the buffet, and the kabiuteri banged their staffs.
At the foot of the dais, where the light barely reached, his mother stood watching; and he saw Great-grandmother, Lord Tatiseigi, and nand’ Bren. They were right at the steps, his mother and Lord Tatiseigi and nand’ Bren all a spot of brightness, and mani’s black lace drinking up the light.
There were far more people than had been in the museum. The whole hall was full, and just people moving created a noise.
A horn sounded. One was not supposed to gawk, but every head turned. He supposed he was permitted.
A kabiutera’s assistant on the steps had the horn, and blew it three times in all, until the voices and the echoes died away.
Then the senior kabiutera lifted his hands and intoned something in a language that hardly even seemed Ragi. He had heard it before, he very dimly recalled, when he was very small, maybe five. Maybe six. It was spooky-sounding, the whole thing. But when he looked past the kabiutera, in the television lights, he finally spotted nand’ Jase, and where nand’ Jase was, Gene and Irene and Artur would be—just there, right beside nand’ Bren.
He saw something else, too, far, far back near the doors—two hazy whitish shadows, like massive marble statues in the reflection of the floodlights: Kaplan and Polano were on guard, as tall as Banichi when they were in armor, and he was amazed. Ordinarily there were little flashing lights and sometimes light inside the masks so you could see their faces, but nothing showed right now. They could really be statues. People might think they were statues.
But they were safe, were they not? Everybody had to be safer since nand’ Bren and Banichi had straightened out the Guild.
He wondered whether his mother had refused to come up here with them. Or what his parents had been fighting about.
His mind was going in every direction, with the noise, and the people, and the sights. He needed to be thinking. He needed to remember . . . because he was sure his father was going to make his speech, and then he would have to.
He was out of time. The missing words might come back to him if he was less scared. He had not planned on being scared. But right now his mouth was dry and his heart was pounding faster than the drums.
· · ·
The boy looked, somehow, taller tonight—shining black and red brocade, which as the light hit it, blazed glints of fire, the smaller image to Tabini’s own solemn, shining black. Bren took in a breath, watching the boy become what he had always been intended to be—about to watch the boy he knew become . . . something he hadn’t expected him to become yet.
A heavy load was about to land on very young shoulders. It was going to be one more burden on a boy who already had had his childhood curtailed . . . whose dearest possessions had been, oddly enough, a world map and a little notebook of drawings of a spaceship, a boy who had wanted to be a musketeer, and hoped to see dinosaurs.
Cajeiri had grown tall, for nine. His shoulders were getting broader, a fact that coat made evident. He would look a lot like his father when he was grown, Bren thought, and that would be no bad thing at all.
Their Cajeiri.
His. His aishid’s. They had helped get him here. He felt more than a little possessive, though he was very far from saying so.
Ilisidi would not hesitate to state her claim, not in the least. But she had not said a word tonight. She had been uncharacteristically quiet, apparently content to watch, with a certain—was it a smile?—on her countenance at the moment. He had rarely seen her in such a sustained good mood.
The vacancy of the dais, instead of all the family together, the appearance of father and son together, alone, on the most fortunate of birthdays, with the television focused on them—
People throughout the hall took in the sight, and there was an undertone of comment—how the boy had grown; how much like his father he looked; and then the horn blew again, and kabiuteri moved out to various posts in the room, clashing their staffs on the floor, a racket echoing throughout the still assembly.
The steady drums and the music of the strings—stopped, leaving an embarrassed mutter of comment that quickly died away.
“Be you still!” the senior kabiutera shouted out from the dais, banging his staff on the floor. “Be you still! Be you still!”
They were going ahead with it.
With the whole city, the whole nation following it on television.
· · ·
* * *
· · ·
Cajeiri’s father laid a hand on his shoulder. “Son of mine.”
Cajeiri looked up. “Honored Father.”
His father maintained that grip. A staff hit the floor another three times, louder than mani’s cane, impossible as that seemed, and a silence descended on the hall, in which the stir of a single foot seemed apt to echo.
“The numbers have been counted,” the oldest kabiutera proclaimed, “and this gathering is felicitous. This time is the right time.”
“Nandiin, nadiin,” his father said, his voice ringing out over the shadowy hall. “This is my son. With you as witnesses, I pronounce him my heir, grandson of my father and mother, great-grandson of my grandfather and grandmother. I call on the tashrid and the hasdrawad, at the appropriate time, to proclaim Cajeiri son of Tabini as aiji of the aishidi’tat, heir of all my titles and rights. I call on my kin and my associates to support my heir’s claim and to give him their man’chi.”
There was a murmur, then the ripple of a shout, so loud it made Cajeiri’s heart jump. He did not flinch. His father’s hand kept him from that.
The staff struck the floor three more times, restoring silence so deep he could hear himself breathing.
His father’s heir. That was odd. He already knew he was that.
But the man’chi of all these people? His mind started scrambling after names, colors, relationships.
He really wanted to give his speech later. After he had remembered the missing line.
“Son of mine,” his father said aloud, and touched his elbow. “Speak loudly,” his father said under his breath, “and keep your head up.”
Keep his head up. He could do that much. But he was not certain he could get enough breath to his lungs to make anybody hear him.
He had the first part. If he just plunged ahead, the connecting word might pop into his head.
“Thank you, all my family, all my associates, all my allies, all my family’s allies . . .”
And there it stalled. The missing bit did not come to him.
The quiet persisted. Someone down in the gathering cleared his throat and it sounded like thunder.
“. . . I am fortunate nine, today, and I thank you for coming.”
The back part was just gone. Not just the back of the sentence. Everything after that. He was facing all these important people and they were going to think he was a fool. Worse, the kabiuteri would be upset with him and they could call the whole evening, his whole year, infelicitous.
He could not just stand there. Keen in memory, his right ear stung as if mani had thwacked him for forgetting. Keep going! she would say as he sat at her feet, aboard the starship. Think, boy! Think faster!