“Nobody told me!”
“This was done for your benefit, son of mine. It is now done for the first time since your great-grandfather’s Investiture, from before the East joined the aishidi’tat. The kabiuteri are extremely pleased to have the custom renewed—ecstatic, to put it plainly—and they will find felicity in every syllable of your speech. Between us, the longer the speech, the more adorned with fortunate words and well-wishes, the more easily kabiuteri can find good omens in it. We have just resurrected a tradition one hopes you will maintain in your own day. And you may be quite proud of the distinction. Your great-grandmother is delighted.”
He supposed it was a great honor. He was glad if he had done welclass="underline" he had tried to name nine people and give something good to everybody, the way his father had advised him, but he could hardly remember anything he had said except in generalities. Ever since Assassins had turned up at Great-uncle’s house, he had felt as if he was being shoved from every side in turn, scattering every thought he had—
Mani would not have forgotten everything she had just said. Mani never grew scattered. Mani always knew what mani wanted. She never forgot a thing.
So what had he said? He mostly wanted everybody to live for a long time, he wanted no more wars, and he wanted the world to be beautiful and peaceful . . . it was stupid that some people wanted the world neither beautiful nor peaceful.
He thought it was likely the same people his father and his great-grandmother wanted to be rid of.
So he supposed his mother was right, that he really was his great-grandmother’s, more than anybody’s.
“There will be cards to sign,” his father said, steering him off the last step and, yes, toward a long table set with flowers, where there were candles, one of which belonged to a waxjack: it was now lit; and there were rolls of ribbon and stacks of cards, and they were not going to get to eat.
“Shall I be signing, honored Father?”
“That you shall, a card for every person here. The ones given out in the city, some twenty-seven thousand of them, will lack a signature, but they will have a stamp and ribbon . . . you may sit beside me and sign your name first.”
He wished he had practiced his signature. He was still not satisfied with his signature and he was not used to doing it. He wanted a chance to change it someday. And maybe now he never could. And he had no seal ring, nothing like his father’s, which could make a seal officiaclass="underline" he always used just a little wi’itikin stamp he had gotten, but it was a trinket, not a real seal, and he did not even have it with him. His pockets were empty. Just empty. It was a condition he was not at all used to.
He reached the table, where secretaries and officials bowed to him and his father, and their bodyguards took up position without being asked.
The oldest secretary, a man whose hair was all gray, arranged a little stack of cards to start with . . . in front of the black-draped chair at the end of the table.
“You need only sign here, young aiji, and pass the card to your father. He will sign it. Then we shall apply the seal and ribbons.”
His father said: “Take your time. Speak to the people.”
“Yes, honored Father.” He sat down on the edge of the seat. He tested the inkwell and the pen on a piece of blotting paper, and was glad the table was covered in black, so if he spilled ink, nobody would know.
And the first person in line was mani herself.
“We do not, as a rule, collect cards,” she said solemnly. “But we shall be very glad to display this one. Well done, Great-grandson.”
“Mani,” he said, and ducked his head: he hardly knew what to say. He signed his name and passed the card carefully to his father, who said, “Honored Grandmother,” and likewise signed it, passing it on to the secretaries, who would sand it and finish it with an official seal and red and black ribbons.
The next in line was Lord Tatiseigi. And the third was nand’ Bren. It was all very strange.
It was even stranger, when he signed a card for Jase-aiji, and a card apiece for Gene and Artur and Irene. “These are to keep,” he explained to Gene. “To remember.”
“We shall remember,” Gene said, and very shyly said, when his father signed the card next. “Thank you very much, nand’ aiji.”
It was the same with Artur and Irene. And then young Dur, Reijiri, came to the table.
“One is very glad you could come,” Cajeiri said, and meant it.
And to the elder Lord Dur: “It is a great honor you could come, nandi.”
“You are a credit, young aiji, you are a great credit.”
They were calling him not young gentleman, but young aiji. Were they supposed to call him that? His father had always said he was his heir. But was that somehow truer than it had ever been? Was that what his ninth birthday festivity meant, just because it was the fortunate ninth? Or was it because of that paper a messenger was carrying through the city?
Nobody had told him his ninth birthday would change everything.
Was he going to have to be like his father, now, and be serious all day, and sign papers and talk business to people? He wanted to go back to Great-uncle’s house and ride with his guests. That was what he wanted, more than anything . . .
But he was supposed to be thinking about people right now, being polite to lords his father needed him to impress, all these people in the hall, as many as he had ever seen in this hall at once.
And he smiled at those he knew and those he knew only by their colors. He was careful not to miss anybody. He thanked them for their good wishes, and meanwhile he could smell the food and knew everybody who left with a card was now free to go over to the buffet and have something to eat. He had not really eaten since breakfast, and a very little at the formal lunch.
But neither had his father. That was the way things were, if you were aiji.
It meant looking good, even if your stomach was empty.
· · ·
Was one justified in being personally just a little proud of the boy? Bren thought so.
Lord Tatiseigi was walking about with a glass of wine in hand and a smile on his face, and Ilisidi—Ilisidi was talking to the head of the Merchants’ Guild, very likely getting in a word or two about the Marid situation, doing politics as always, but looking extraordinarily relaxed and pleased.
Jase and the youngsters had been through the buffet, with small, safe cups of tea and a few safe sweets—the buffet would hold out for hours, and the alcohol had started to flow. Bren took sugared tea and a very manageable little half sandwich roll, stationing himself where he could watch the individuals he needed to watch.
Damiri had a cup of tea, and a congratulatory line of people—that could go on, and presumably it was going well. She had no part in her husband’s or her son’s card-signing, no formal part in the ceremony, but that was the way of things—the aiji-consort was not necessary in the inheritance. She was, legally speaking, not involved in the question.
One noted Tabini had mentioned his own mother in his address, and that was a first—a Taibeni woman, never acknowledged, never mentioned, not in Ilisidi’s favor, and for what he knew, no longer living. But if Ilisidi had taken any offense at that one mention, it was not in her expression at the moment.
Politics. Tabini had mentioned his Taibeni kinship tonight. The Guild, which had so obdurately found every excuse to ignore his Taibeni bodyguards . . . had just undergone a profound revision. Lord Keimi of Taiben was in attendance tonight: Cajeiri’s other great-grand-uncle had just, after two hundred years of war, signed a peace with Lord Tatiseigi.