They would do the same for messages to him.
He was too young to use the Messengers’ Guild on his own, and there was a scarcity of paper for printing things on the station, so the messages he sent would be real letters on paper, which would go up in packets on the shuttle missions. That meant his packets would go first to Lord Geigi, on the atevi side of the station—that was how it would work. And their answers would all come in the same packets as Lord Geigi’s reports home, on stationery that was part of the souvenirs going with them.
Along with his own little packets he could send any little light thing, if his father allowed and if it fit within regulations. So he decided he would always pack in some fruit sweets for Lord Geigi. He was sure Lord Geigi would appreciate the gift, and send the letters on to the human side of the station. Lord Geigi knew very well how his mail had gotten held forever, this last year. And Lord Geigi was on their side, and he would do it, and make sure things happened.
“Tell Bjorn, too,” he said. “Tell him to write to me. Often. One wishes to hear about his program.”
“We tell him,” Irene said. “I see him sometimes. Not often. But I shall tell him everything we did. He will be—” She changed to ship-speak. “He wanted so much to come. But the rules say no. He cannot be absent.”
“Next year,” Gene said. “Next year for sure. And you keep in touch with me, Reni, do you hear?”
Irene lived in a different section than Gene and Artur. Reunioners were divided up in residencies by sections, and Gene was not allowed to go where Irene and Bjorn lived, which was some sort of special place.
But they had set up their ways to deal with that, the same that they had had on the starship—tunnels, just like on the starship, that ran beside the public corridors, or over or under them. They had mapped them on the ship. They had mapped them on the station, and Gene had explored all the way to the place atevi authority started. They had made maps together, and added a whole new section to the little notebook that Cajeiri always kept close—the little notebook that had always helped him remember, and now helped him imagine places he’d never seen.
He could imagine now where they lived, and how their place related to the atevi side. And before, all last year, politics had gotten in the way of their even getting letters to each other. But now they had an ally, and if someone tried to keep them from writing, the tunnels meant ways they could get to the atevi side, where atevi made the rules.
“Lord Geigi will definitely always help us,” Cajeiri said. “And if people try to stop us from writing to each other, just get to the atevi side. Just walk right up to the doors and say my father said so and they should let you in.”
“Did he say so?”
“Well, he will,” he said, and they all laughed a little, which was disrespectful, but he was also determined it would be true. “And do not tell your parents any sort of things that may scare them!” Humans and atevi might be different, so very different they could have very dangerous misunderstandings. And if one added parents into the numbers, one could only imagine what sort of misunderstanding could happen. “Whatever your parents ask about the trouble, always say, That was very far from us, or . . .” He put on his most innocent face. “Was there something going on?”
Artur laughed, and they all did.
“We never saw the gunfire,” Gene said with his most innocent expression.
“Never!” Irene said. “We just had nice food and pretty clothes and we went to parties and met your parents. How could there possibly be a problem?”
They laughed. There had been scary moments, particularly at Tirnamardi, when nand’ Bren and nand’ Jase had gone to deal with Lord Tatiseigi’s neighbor; and that had been a scary time. They had ashes drifting down onto Lord Tatiseigi’s driveway, and there had been bullet holes in the bus when nand’ Bren and nand’ Jase had come back.
It had been even worse, when Great-grandmother had had to send nand’ Bren right into the heart of the Assassins’ Guild to take down the Shadow Guild. They had had to pretend everything was perfectly normal that evening. But they had not known whether they might all be running for their lives before morning.
That had been an extremely scary night, and nand’ Bren and Banichi and several of Great-grandmother’s guard had come back wounded. But Father had had Cajeiri and his guests inside the tightest protection, and they had had Jase-aiji and his bodyguards with them as well as Father’s and Great-grandmother’s bodyguards around them. Jase-aiji’s bodyguards had weapons that could take out half the apartment and maybe the floor under them, and he was very glad those had never come into question.
So, no, they had never been in that much danger.
And right after that, while everything was still in confusion, his father had turned his birthday into a public Festivity and he had had to make a public speech and be named, officially, his father’s heir.
His associates had been there when he had become “young aiji,” not just “young gentleman,” so they knew what had happened, and how everything had changed. And so far the title had not been a great inconvenience, but that was, Cajeiri feared, only because he still had his foreign guests. When they left, tomorrow—when they left—
He feared there were going to be duties, and more appearances in court dress, and that his life for the next whole year and forever after was going to be just gruesome.
But he would do it.
He would do it because behaving badly could mean his guests could not come back. Priorities, his great-grandmother called it.
He would definitely have to go back to living in his suite, inside his father’s apartment, with his mother—and his very new sister, who was a baby, and who was going to cry a lot.
He would have his bodyguard for company. And he would have his valets, who were grown men, but they understood him and they were patient. His little household was his, and no one would take that away.
He was sure he was going to have to go back to regular lessons. His latest tutor was not a bad one—even interesting sometimes, so it was not too awful. And he was coming back with a lot of things to ask about.
But he had still rather be out at Najida or Tirnamardi.
He would not get to ride his mecheita until the next holiday, and that only if he could get an invitation from Great-uncle Tatiseigi and if he could get permission from his father to go out to Tirnamardi. And all that depended on whether there were troubles anywhere near. It might be next year before he could go, because there were currently troubles in the north. During the whole year, there was still going to be the question of the succession to the lordship of the Ajuri and the lordship of the Kadagidi, either one of which could break into gunfire or worse and just mess everything up in Tirnamardi, where his mecheita was.
Worse, Ajuri was his mother’s clan, and the upset in Ajuri was going to keep her upset all year.
But maybe being “young aiji” meant even his father would be more inclined to listen to what he wanted.
And what he wanted was to go riding for days and days; and what he wanted even more than that was his guests back again—before next year if he could somehow manage it.
But third, and what he wanted most of all, and had no power at all to arrange—he wanted his guests to live safe from politics up on the station. The situation up there, the Mospheirans feuding with the Reunioners—that quarrel really, really worried him.