Tano came back just then, quietly entered the compartment. “There are messages besides the replies,” Tano said, and offered a small, cord-wrapped bundle of four cylinders and a bare paper roll.
One of those cylinders was the dowager’s. One had Bregani’s colors. The third had Machigi’s. The fourth had Topari’s. The bare paper roll was likely Nomari’s.
It was no question which missive to read first. He took a deep breath and drew out Ilisidi’s message.
Your presence is required at breakfast immediately.
Well—that settled the question of his own breakfast. And maybe one not of a flavor he would wish.
Narani had shed the casing of the other notes, and handed them to him in order.
From Nomari, who knew something of trains, to say the least: If I can be of service please call on me. Thank you for the message, nandi.
From Bregani: We are deeply concerned. We appeal to the paidhi’s office to inform us what is happening here and down in Senjin.
From Machigi: Whose was the train?
And a formal parchment message from outside, from Topari, in a nervous hand: Shall I still come to sign the document? Is everything well? Please advise me, nand’ paidhi.
One did not delay about the dowager’s summons. But he cleared the edge of the food-laden table and, standing, dashed off a quick note of his own:
Bren, Paidhi-aiji
To Topari lord of Hasjuran.
We hope to have information soon. Expect to come as planned, but be ready to come sooner if called. Take strong security precautions while crossing the square. This message without my seal, as I am in haste. I am about to meet with the aiji-dowager and I shall know more soon. Please be assured the welfare of Hasjuran is equal with all other matters in the dowager’s concern and you will be protected as a bastion of the aishidi’tat.
He passed the rolled note to Tano, who was waiting for answers. “Case that. Seal it. Do not leave the train yourself, Tano-ji. Call in a local messenger to carry it, and then come straight back here, sit down, and have breakfast.”
“Yes,” Tano said, and went off again.
Bren shook back his lace cuff, bent to the table again and wrote, in three rapid instances, I am about to meet with the dowager and will have some answers shortly. We believe the train in question is ours. Please be patient.
“The breakfast will await your arrival, nandi,” Narani reported. And, more precisely: “The dowager is at table.”
“Nadiin-ji,” he said. “Have breakfast. All of you. That is an order. I can travel the passage safely enough.”
“Bren-ji,” Banichi said.
“I shall be in Cenedi’s territory in fortunate seven easy strides, nadiin-ji. And I am armed.” He had felt the weight in his pocket when Narani had settled the coat about him. “Breakfast. Please.”
2
Cajeiri opened his eyes on a windowless dark bedroom, his room, in his father’s apartments, in the Bujavid, awake not for the first time in a long and uneasy night, and not wanting to get up—because if he did, his younger bodyguard, asleep in their two rooms opening onto his, might also wake, and once they woke, then Eisi and Liedi, his major d’ and his doorman would wake—and then his senior bodyguard, and then everybody, including the new servants. Which was not fair. And it did no good for them to be awake.
It did no good for him, either, and he could not say why he had waked twice before in the dark. Even Boji was asleep—which was a good thing. Boji would be curled on a branch in his filagree cage in the sitting room, a furry blacker knot in a very deep dark. At times he wished he could be Boji, and not wake thinking about things that had no shape and no reality.
Most of all, Boji spent no time in his day worrying about things.
And he once had been like that. But no longer.
He was fortunate nine. He was halfway to decisive ten, that number fraught with choices, two lucky threes, two extremely infelicitous twos, and a number perfectly divisible into an infelicitous two of equally chancy fives, in which lucky three won over the infelicity of two by a perfect unity of one.
Ten was that kind of number, delicately balanced, either to set one on a good course to indivisible eleven, or to become that sort of boy nobody trusted.
Father said, “Regard the truth of the numbers, expect others to believe in them, but do not expect that everybody will believe, and do not be afraid to take a chance. The forces that move the world are not all atevi. But you know that.”
He did. Humans had terrified the world when they arrived because the numbers had not foretold their coming. Nobody expected them to have dropped in, as people had once thought, from the moon.
They had actually come from much, much further away, in a great ship that sat now just off the space station. And they had built the Foreign Star in the heavens, when atevi had only just invented railroads. Humans had landed in petal sails, and brought amazing technology with them.
But for a time the Foreign Star had faded into legend and no one had seen it except in telescopes, until it had miraculously reappeared in the heavens. He understood why—he understood a thing that a great many adults did not remotely understand, how the station had moved back into geostationary orbit. That was a word most adults did not know. But he did. He was proud of that.
Only a handful of atevi had left the solar system and come back again. And he was one of them. So was Great-grandmother. He was extremely proud of that distinction.
And nand’ Bren, of course, had gone with them. He had never been afraid of humans, nand’ Bren having been part of the household since he could remember. And on the voyage he had gained human associates besides nand’ Bren, associates of his own age who had grown up in faraway space and survived a terrible attack on their space station. They had only just recently been able to come down to the island of Mospheira to live, and learn how other humans lived. Now they were only a plane flight away, living in a building that sat on the grounds of the Mospheiran University, and studying with tutors to learn things they needed to know to be Mospheiran, things they had never known, having been born far off in space. So close—only across the straits from the west coast—and one day . . . soon, he hoped . . . they would come to visit him again in Shejidan, or better yet, they would come by boat rather than plane, and he would meet them at nand’ Bren’s estate of Najida, where they could fish and go out in nand’ Bren’s boat, and do all sorts of things.
That was now. That was real. And it was a good thing. But sometimes, in bed at night, he dreamed about the ship, and the tunnels where they had used to meet as the great ship raced between stars. And sometimes, too, he dreamed about the station, and about Hakuut an Ti, who was another associate of his, a kyo, and as different from atevi or human as one could be. The kyo had almost been enemies. But now they were not.