Maybe it was the television cameras his mother disapproved. His mother had sworn when the lights had gone on in their faces. She had said a word he had never heard her say. And she had had words with his father in the museum, too—he had not heard what they had said, but his mother had been upset about something.
Nobody had told him there would be television cameras, either, or if someone had—he had not been paying enough attention. But he was more worried than angry.
He had gotten through meeting people in the museum. He had leaned heavily on the system of clan colors—which were also the relationships and the history, the way new clans built off old ones.
But sometime before midnight he was supposed to make that speech.
He had to remember that missing line, that was what. And there were television cameras, and he had to get it right. It was one word. One word, and if he could remember that, he could remember the whole rest of it.
He thought he could, at least.
They were using the old-fashioned oil lamps, besides the electrics, the way they did for evening parties, and probably once everybody was in place they might dim the lights again and leave only spots of light. The place smelled of food: there was a buffet set up, and his stomach noticed that, too. He had only pretended to eat lunch. If they did dim the lights, he thought wildly, if nobody was paying attention, he might get away for a few moments to find Gene and Artur and Irene at the buffet. Usually buffets were not that formal. But—
With television cameras on them—how could they? If he so much as moved, television cameras were likely to go right to him.
He could not think about those things. He just had to concentrate on remembering the speech. If he embarrassed his father by being a fool with the speech, it was not just his mother who was going to be in a bad mood.
The first line was—
The first line started, all speeches did, with Nandiin, nadiin . . .
No. It did not start that way. That was what confused him. It started with I thank my family . . .
He could just not get beyond that.
Why did it have to start differently? Why did he have to forget one word right in the middle of the beginning? He could remember everything after that, if he could just remember the first part.
He would not say anything infelicitous. That was the main thing. He would say something polite, and he would avoid infelicity. There were seven kabiuteri on the landing of the dais, just a little below where his father was sitting. You could never mistake them, with their square, brimless white hats and their white robes. And they were there to keep the felicitous gods happy and the infelicitous ones out of the hall. Even if his father called it nonsense.
The lights dimmed down, and one of his father’s bodyguards came down the steps, a moving shadow, coming for him, he began to realize. The camera swung toward that man, and that man came down to the third step and bowed to him.
The television lights were on him, white, like giant eyes.
“Young gentleman,” his father’s bodyguard said, and wanted him to come up. He started that way. His bodyguard did, on either side of him.
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.