“Happy birthday!” they all said at once.
He laughed, he was so surprised. And they insisted he open the boxes, one after another: there was a little handwritten notebook from Irene—“A lot of words you could use,” she said; and he saw words he had never seen before, with the rules for pronouncing them. And from Artur there was a little clear shiny marble that lit up. “Just set it in any light,” Artur said, “and it recharges.”
And from Gene there was what looked like a pocket-knife, but it unfolded in screwdrivers and picks and a magnifying glass.
They were wonderful gifts. And then Madam lit the candles and they cut the cake, and all had some—Madam said they had made another cake for staff, and his guests had told them how such a cake had to be—it was iced like one piece, but inside it was in layers and pieces, and Great-uncle’s cook had made the icing orangelle-flavored, his favorite, in clever patterns.
They had fruit drink, and cake, and told stories until it was past midnight and Great-uncle came home, asking whether he had seen his sister, and how his mother was.
“My sister is fine and my mother is, Great-uncle. My father is very happy.”
“Excellent,” Great-uncle said. “Excellent. Such a day this has been! Congratulations, young aiji.”
“Nandi.”
“A fortunate day, indeed. Your ninth year and your sister’s first—all on one day.”
He stood there a moment, realizing . . .
He had a sister. And she was born on his birthday.
His birthday was her birthday. Forever.
Nobody had asked him about that. Worse—his next fortunate birthday would be his eleventh. And from zero, which was today, the very same day would be her infelicitous second: they were always going to be out of rhythm, and nothing could ever fix it.
Except if they celebrated each other’s fortunate day with a festivity.
He had to make a deal with his sister about birthdays. There could be a sort of a festivity every year.
“Is there a problem, Jeri-ji?” Gene asked.
He saw Great-uncle venturing a taste of his extraordinary cake, and very definitely approving.
“No,” he said, and felt mischief coming on. There were so many things his sister needed to learn, not to turn out as stiff and proper as people could want her to be. “No. Not a one.”
Lord Geigi, Lord Regent in the Heavens: His History of the Aishidi’tat with commentary by Lord Bren of Najida, paidhi-aiji
i
Before the Foreign Star appeared in the Heavens, we, on our own, had reached the age of steam.
We had philosophically and politically begun to transcend the clan structure that had led to so many ruinous wars.
We had eleven regional associations which agreed to build a railroad from Shejidan to the west without going to war about it.
Within the associations, there had been artisan guilds for many years. But during the building of the first railroad, many guilds, starting with the Transportation Guild and the Builders, had not only transcended the limits of clan structure, Transport and the Builders ended by transcending the regional associations. They were the first political entities to do so.
Clans had long formed temporary associations of regional alliance and trade interest. These were associations of convenience that often broke up in bitter conflict.
That was the state of things when, three hundred years ago, the Foreign Star arrived in the heavens.
It appeared suddenly. It grew. Telescopes of the day could make out a white shape that seemed to reflect light instead of shining like a star. The Astronomers offered no one theory to account for it. Earliest observers said it was a congealing of the ether that conveyed the heat of the sun to the Earth. But as it grew and showed structure and shadow, the official thought came to be that it was a rip in the sky dome and a view of the clockwork mechanism beyond.
The number-counters agreed it was an omen of change in the heavens, and most said it was not a good one. Some tried to attach the omen to the railroad, for good or for ill, and for a whole year it occupied the attention of the lords and clans.
But it produced nothing.
And under all the furor, and with a certain sense of something ominous hanging above the world, the railroad from Shejidan to the coast continued. Aijiin, once warleaders elected for a purpose, were elected to manage the project, holding power not over armies, but over the necessary architecture of guilds, clans, and sub-clans, for the sole purpose of getting the project through certain districts and upholding the promises to which the individual clan lords had set their seals.
Empowering them was a small group which itself began to transcend clans and regions: this was the beginning of the Assassins’ Guild, and their job was to protect the aijin against attack by others of their profession serving individual lords.
The Foreign Star harmed nothing. The railroad succeeded. If the Star portended anything, many said, it seemed to be good fortune.
The success of the first railroad project led to others. Associations became larger, overlapped each other as clans and kinships do. And significantly, in the midst of a dispute that might have led to the dissolution of these new associations, the Assassins’ Guild backed the aiji against three powerful clan lords who wanted to change the agreement and break up the railroad into administrative districts.
We atevi have never understood boundaries. Everything is shades of here and there, this side and that. It had not been our separations and our regions that had brought us this age of relative peace. It was associations of common purpose, and their combination into larger and larger associations, until the whole world knew someone who knew someone who could make things right.
And now this one aiji, backed by the Assassins’ Guild, had made three powerful lords keep their agreements for what turned out to benefit everyone—even these three clans, who collected no tolls, but whose people benefited by trade.
That aiji was the first to rule the entire west. The first railroad and the power of the aiji in Shejidan joined associations together in a way simple trade never had. Now the lords and trades and guilds were obliged to meet in Shejidan and come to agreement with the aiji who served and ruled them all. This was the true beginning of the legislature and the aishidi’tat, although it did not yet bear that name.
And without lords in constant war, and with the Assassins enforcing an impartial law, townships sprang up without walls, not clustered around a great house, but developing in places of convenience, with improved health and new goods. Commerce grew. Where conflicts sprang up, the aiji in Shejidan, with the legislature and the guilds, found a way to settle them without resort to war.
Shejidan itself grew rapidly, a town with no lord but the aiji himself. It attracted the smaller and weaker clans, particularly those engaging in crafts and trades. And those little clans, prospering as never before because of the railway, backed the aiji with street cobbles and dyers’ poles when anyone threatened that order. The guilds also broke from the clan structure and settled in Shejidan, backing the aiji’s authority, so that the lords who wanted the services of the Scholars, the Merchants, the Treasurers, the Physicians, or the Assassins, had to accept individuals whose primary man’chi was to their guilds and the aiji in Shejidan.
The Foreign Star had become a curiosity. Some studied it as a hobby. Then as a village lord in Dur wrote, who lived in that simpler time . . .
One day a petal sail floated down to Dur from the heavens, and more and more of them followed—bringing to the world a people not speaking in any way people of the Earth could understand. Some were pale, some were brown, and some were as dark as we are. Most landed on the island of Mospheira, among the Edi and the Gan peoples. Some landed on the mainland, near Dur. And some sadly fell in the sea, and were lost.