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In point of fact—it was the elegant Red Train, the aiji's own, with the baggage car that usually attended it. Tabini routinely lent it to the paidhi-aiji on official business—and in this case it was here to convey honored guests to the spaceport and bring the aiji's son back home. It had run from Shejidan, crossed the Southern mountains and the chancy district of the Senjin Marid last night to be here this morning.

It would not be taking the same route home.

The bus rolled slowly to a halt alongside the platform and opened the doors.

Tano and Algini were first out onto the platform, and other armed, black-uniformed Guild appeared from both train cars. Those would be the aiji's men, who would have ridden out from the capital, and who now would ride back in the baggage car.

Clearly, from the easy manner on both sides, they were people Tano and Algini knew, and Bren himself recognized two who served in the aiji's own apartment.

Algini gave the all-clear. Banichi and Jago got to their feet; Bren and Jase did, and they exited first.

Then the young folk came out, joined them in crossing to the waiting train, a short walk with a living shield of Guild bodies, to a second, assisted climb into the waiting train car.

Inside that car was red velvet from a prior century, fake windows with fake shades that didn't work but looked elegant—two areas of small tables, ordinary seats, then a bench seat at the rear, near the galley. The youngsters took the reverse of their seating on the bus. Bren and Jase and their bodyguards went to the rear where there was a bench seat and galley, while the youngsters and Cajeiri's young bodyguard stayed at the two table and bench arrangements nearest the door.

“Tea?” Bren's senior valet asked as they settled in. The water in the tea service was already hot, no surprise there. The containers with their breakfast arrived aboard from the bus, handed up by the aiji's men, who were out on the platform seeing to the baggage.

There was the sound of another vehicle outside: their baggage truck had arrived, with the young gentleman's baggage, and his. Jase's bulkier baggage, and the youngsters' one large case, had gone to the port last night.

They would take tea while the crates loaded, he and Jase. The youngsters declined.

Boji's screech was audible even with the car door shut. No question he was part of the operation, first loaded, last off.

And toward the end of the first cup, came the thump of the baggage car door slamming shut.

In a moment more, the Red Train began to move, a barely perceptible motion.

Bren's valets, Koharu and Supani, began the breakfast service with a professional flair. Ramaso and Cook had provided absolutely everything they could ask, hot and chill, and spicy and sweet and savory, from the insulated cases. A liquid storage held an abundance of iced fruit juice.

Even the youngsters stayed in a cheerful mood so long as the fruit juice held out.

But as Koharu and Supani cleared the service away, a glum quiet descended on the young company at that end of the car. Heads came close together up there, secrets exchanged.

“They're exhausted,” Jase said quietly, over a last cup of tea. “They were up all night. They're running entirely on nerves this morning. Irene's scared of flying. Absolutely terrified.”

“Poor kid,” Bren said. And added: “They've been running hard for days. And it was a given they wouldn't sleep last night until they fell over.”

“If they did sleep at all, it was about an hour toward dawn.”

He and Jase shared a second pot of tea. Banichi and the others, in rare relaxation, sat at the other end of the bench, in their own conversation. Jase's bodyguards, Kaplan and Polano, in green fatigues, had the side bench seat, backs to the false windows, talking together as the valets cleaned up and put the dishes away.

Jase, like the youngsters, had opted for atevi dress all the way to the spaceport. Just when they'd change clothes, or whether they'd all change before the launch, Bren hadn't asked.

Maybe the clothing choice was a courtesy to their hosts. Maybe it was a way of not saying good-bye yet.

But Jase, Bren thought, was already mentally going home, already thinking about problems aloft, business that had to be done—and Jase was clearly less happy this morning.

Truthfully, he was going through exactly the same process. He'd have liked to have more days at Najida.

He'd have liked to have time to handle some local matters.

He'd have liked to make a personal visit to Kajiminda, Geigi's estate, just down the main road, to take a leisurely walk through Kajiminda's ancient orchard. He'd have liked to take the bus out to the new construction the Edi were building at the end of that peninsula.

He'd even more have liked to have a week to himself on his yacht, to feel the sea under him. He dreamed of four or five days to pretend to fish, but he absolutely couldn't afford any more time away from the capital.

And he found himself, in the quiet moments this morning, already thinking about the legislature: already thinking about the dowager's agreement with the Marid, and about the next things that had to be done.

He wasn't thinking, quite yet, about the problems on the station.

He was doggedly not thinking about that.

That resolve failed. He urgently had to do something about Tillington. A letter to Mospheira was a start. The President, Shawn Tyers, was indeed an old friend. And he had to make that letter say what needed saying. He
might
have to go to Mospheira, to say what needed saying. He just didn't know.

He'd been up well before dawn composing one document—in two languages.

Now he quietly picked up his briefcase, opened it, and handed them to Jase.

“What I promised,” he said. “Take the copies for your own files. I have a translation for the aiji.”

“Exactly what I need,” Jase said, as he read, and gave a deep sigh. “Excellent. Thank you.”

“There'll be a statement with the aiji's own seal, next shuttle.”

Jase drew his own traveling case from the floor near his seat. “There was a little lingering question up there, whether Tabini-aiji would stay in office or whether, if he did, his power would ever be what it was. I have no doubts now that it's probably greater than it ever was. And I'll convey that impression to the Council.”

“I'll report to the aiji, in turn, that Sabin remains his ally.”

“Ogun isn't the aiji's enemy, understand, if I've given any other impression. Ogun's just keeping all the connections polished. And right now, and since Yolande's resigned, he thinks he needs Tillington. So he gives him maneuvering room, and tries to encourage the right maneuver. Does he know the man is flawed? Probably. Ogun's no fool.”

“I'll be thinking about Tillington. I'll do something.”

“To the great relief of all of us.”

“Given what you said last night,” Bren said, and let that trail off in very dark thoughts. “God. God. Why can't people get along? We—meaning you and I—right now—we two could sort out the Reunioner business and get everybody half of what they want—if we could get one
hour
of honest compromise out of both sides.”

“I'd settle for five minutes. But we have done good things on this trip, the two of us.”

“We should arrange an annual Official Fact-finding,” Bren said. “Bring the kids.”

Jase laughed. “I'll use that argument.”

“Next year. The official birthday.”

“Another Festivity?”

“Ten is a less felicitous year for the young gentleman, so there'll be no public celebration entailed. A much quieter event. No public access. You've never seen the mountains. We could take that train trip to Malguri. With the window shades up. Snowy mountains. Glaciers.”

“The kids would like that,” Jase said.
“I
would.”

Came a burst of laughter from the front of the car, where the youngsters gathered, laughter far louder than usual, and not involving Cajeiri's bodyguard.

Nervous laughter. Desperate laughter. The kids were trying their best to compress everything good into a last few hours.

It was like that with him and Jase—tense. Keenly aware of imminent parting. They'd had weeks to say everything they could think of. They'd cleaned up the loose ends last night.

But they
would
be seeing each other in the immediate future, in a much more serious context—and he didn't know how he was going to exclude Cajeiri from that trip, on the one hand.

Or get permission from his parents, on the other.

It would be an excuse for Cajeiri to get access to the kids.

But did he want the boy to become a presence in station politics?

The Red Train gave a little jolt as they shunted onto the northern route, bound for the spaceport.

I
t would have been a lot smoother, at the spaceport train station, just to say their good-byes at the door of the Red Car, let their guests cross the rustic wooden platform to the waiting bus, and let the train continue on to Shejidan with no more delay.

But that just wasn't going to be satisfactory for the kids, and Bren didn't even suggest it. The Red Train could safely sit where it was for an hour: the spaceport spur, off the main north-south line, didn't have anything incoming or outgoing for at least two hours.

So they all—excepting Tano and Algini, who stayed with the train for security—walked out onto the platform, where uniformed spaceport personnel were offloading the few pieces of carry-on baggage from the baggage car—Boji's shrieks of protest about that process were loud and frequent.

The spaceport bus was waiting alongside the baggage truck—but this time the kids delayed crossing the platform, gazing at the horizons all about them, sweeping from the high metal fence of the spaceport, to the rolling hills and grasslands that surrounded the train station in the other directions.

Trees. Grass. Everything had been a miracle to them. Artur was taking home his little collection of pebbles, little brown and gray rocks from every place he'd visited. A spaceborn child from a metal and plastics world, he'd never handled bare rock before.

Never seen a sky cloud up and rain.

None of them had.

The kids needed to move on and board the bus now. And Cajeiri wasn't urging them and he wasn't watching the scenery, either. He was watching them, utterly ignoring Boji's muffled shrieks from the baggage car. Bren gave them all a minute more, in the relative security of the place.

“Got to move, kids,” Jase said then. “Sorry. Have to go.”

They did move, not without looks back. They dutifully boarded the bus and went all the way to the seats in the back—where they immediately took peeks under the drawn window shades.

Bren, standing in the aisle, said to Jago, “Tell them they may raise the shades, Jago-ji.”

It was more of a risk here, but it was still a very small risk, now, counting an area with security all about. And if raising the shades made the youngsters feel less confined and compelled in their leaving—he judged it worth it.

So they all settled, leaving their hand luggage to the spaceport crew, all of it set aboard the bus, down in baggage.

The bus door sealed. As the bus startled to roll, the youngsters scrambled to raise the window shades on both sides of the bus, seeking a panoramic view. The driver turned the bus about on the broad graveled parking area, then took the gravel road along the security fence at a brisk clip.

Bren tried to think of any last moment thing he needed to say to Jase, something he might have forgotten.

Likely Jase was thinking just as desperately, going down a mental checklist. They'd reached their agreements. They'd planned their course. Matters belonging to the world were rapidly leaving Jase's interest.

Matters on the space station, Bren thought, were invading Jase's agenda hand over fist.

Jase's security team, Kaplan and Polano, were talking idly behind them, saying they'd be glad to get back to friends in the crew, and wondering if there would ever be an atevi restaurant on the human side of the station.

The kids—there was noise back there. There was nervous laughter. There were periods of heavy silence.

Leave the boy behind, when he made his own promised trip up to the station?

That wasn't going to be easy.

But there was the matter of domestic peace, too—and the boy had new ties to Earth. A new baby had arrived in the aiji's household, and Cajeiri needed to bond with his new sister, and needed to firm up the bonds with his parents.

That bond mattered, to the atevi psyche. It mattered desperately. And they'd disrupted that, in the boy's life. Two years of separation at a young and vulnerable age. And Cajeiri was just getting over it,
finding
his parents again, with his emotions all fragile with being parted from his associations on the ship and being forced to find what he had lost on the planet.

No. Not a good idea, a trip up to the station right now, with hard politics potentially at issue up there.

But how on earth did one tell the boy no?

The final turn. They pulled up at the guarded gate, and port security let them right on through, the armored doors yawning open on another, more modern world.

In the front windows now, the shuttle—it happened to be
Shai-shan
—rested sleek and white, looking like a visitor from the world's future in a gathering of mundane trucks and tankers of this present age, the whole area blinking with red warning lights and blue perimeter flashers.

Closer sat the administrative and storage buildings. The freight warehouse and preparation area loomed on the right, and, low and inconspicuous in the heart of the complex, sat the passenger terminal—a modest two-story building, of which shuttle passengers generally saw no more than the sparsely furnished lounge.

But they didn't go to the terminal. The bus drove past the blue flashers, straight for the edge of the runway, and there the bus stopped.

They would board directly: Jase's prerogative. That was the word from the port. A starship captain could waive customs for himself and his companions, where it came to personal items. And Jase had done it.

 • • • 

There was no more time. Cajeiri got up, and his bodyguard did, and his guests did. He looked at them all—he looked hard, trying to remember every detail of their faces, their relative height—that was going to change. By their next visit, and forever after, he would very likely be the tallest of them, and the tallest by quite a lot, once they were all grown.

The bus doors opened, and it was time.

They had to behave now. They had to follow all the regulations. Most of all things in the world, they had to keep nand' Bren and Jase-aiji firmly on their side.

Cajeiri had only one immediately chancy intention, however: to go just as far as he could with his guests, and not to have to say good-bye at the bus door. He led the way up the aisle, up to the door, as Jase-aiji's bodyguards were going out, and as Jase-aiji was taking his own leave of nand' Bren. If he got onto the steps, he had to go down them to let his guests out, and his bodyguard had to go out, and he would
be
outside with them.

But Jase-aiji
and
nand' Bren went on out ahead of him. So he was able to go outside with his guests, just behind Kaplan and Polano, and stand with them under the open sky. They were so close to the runway they could hear the address system from trucks attending the shuttle, voices talking about numbers, and technical things.

Jase-aiji had lingered to talk with nand' Bren and their security. But nand' Bren was going no farther, so this, now, was where they had to say good-bye, having gotten at least this far together.

His guests understood, too. Irene's eyes started watering, and she kept trying to stop the flood, and trying to make her face calm.

“One regrets,” Irene said in good Ragi, wiping at her face. “One tried not to do this, Jeri-ji. It's
stupid
.”

“You have to go,” Cajeiri said, “but remember what we said last night. We are associates. Forever. And I
will
get you back, so long as you want to come back. If everything goes well—I shall get you back for my next birthday. Maybe sooner.”

“We stay connected,” Gene said.

“I have my notebook,” Irene said. She sniffed and her voice shook.

“Just be careful what you say to everybody,” Cajeiri said. That was his greatest worry. “Tell only the good things. Be careful. And remember you should not have to pay anything to send letters or to call me on the phone. Do not let anybody say you have to pay. Nand' Geigi will send the letters for you if you cannot reach nand' Jase. Just get the letters to him if you have any trouble. And go to him first if anything goes wrong.”

“We shall write,” Gene said. “A lot.”

“Come along, kids,” Jase-aiji said, waiting with his bodyguard. “Sorry. They want us aboard. They're going into an unscheduled hold for us.”

A moment of panic came down then. They looked at each other. Irene took a deep breath and managed to steady herself. Artur and Gene gave a little bow, very proper.

Then they walked away, all three.

 • • • 

The youngsters all three were very polite, very proper in their leaving, bowing as they passed on their way to Jase, and Bren returned the bows very gravely, in silence.

Irene was the last.

“Nandi,” she said properly.

“Reni-daja,” Bren said. That was Cajeiri's name for her. “Have a very good flight.”

“Get me back!” she whispered suddenly in ship-speak, looking up at him.
“
Please
get me back, sir!”

Then she spun around and ran the few steps to catch up with Jase and the two boys, wiping tears as she went.

God, Bren thought, a little shaken by that. He stood watching as Jase and the kids walked on their way to the shuttle, along the safety corridor painted on the pavement. Jase had his hand on Gene's shoulder, and the boys had Irene between them, holding her hands.

He turned then to see how Cajeiri was taking the departure, and saw a forlorn figure, as tall as he was, back already turned, boarding the bus with his own bodyguard waiting.

Damn, he thought as he headed back to the bus. He wasn't sure whether Cajeiri had seen or prompted that exchange with Irene, but he was relatively sure Cajeiri's young bodyguard had seen it.

When he boarded, Cajeiri had gone to the rear of the bus with his bodyguard, and they were all talking to him, heads close together.

The adult world that made good-bye necessary just wasn't going to have any welcome advice for the boy right now. And he and Jase had planned as much as they could plan to be sure the kids
would
come back next year.

It was bound to hurt.

It
had
to hurt. But it was part of the boy's growing up.

He settled behind the driver with Banichi and Jago for the trip back, sighed sadly, and leaned back. The driver started the bus, took a broad turn, and headed back the way they had come.

“How is the schedule, nadiin-ji?” he asked them.

“We are well within the window,” Banichi said. “One freight is inbound for the port, but we have plenty of time.”

They would have no trouble getting off the spaceport spur before then. The shuttle would launch before then.

And it was significant that Cajeiri hadn't asked to stay and see it go.

“One cannot read the young gentleman at the moment,” he said to his aishid. “One is concerned for him.”

“He is making every effort,” Jago said, “to bear this in a dignified way. He has done very well today.”

So Jago thought the boy was handling it well enough.

But making the boy happy to go back to the confines of his life in the capital, making him content, there—

That was not going to happen.

 • • • 

They reached the platform, they left the bus in silence and crossed to the train. Tano and Algini waited for them at the steps.

The boy, first inside, with his bodyguard, just settled where he and his guests had sat, in the empty seats, at the now lonely little table. His young aishid stood, uniformly long-faced, in the nook beside him.

“Young aiji,” Bren said, pausing by the table, “if you should wish to join me at the rear of the car, you would be welcome. One does not insist, however.”

A muscle jumped in Cajeiri's jaw, a little effort at self-control. The boy looked up. “I shall prefer to sit here, nandi. Thank you.”

Fragile. And so wishing not to give way right now. Bren gave a little bow and with a movement of his eyes, advised his valets, who were in charge of service on the train, and poised to offer tea or anything else desired, also to let the boy be. The boy's own bodyguard would do anything the boy wanted. Cajeiri just asked to be alone, and one had to respect that, in a boy who had, overall, done very, very well and behaved bravely in recent weeks.

So Bren went back to the bench seat at the rear of the car, with his bodyguard, and with his valets following closely.

“The household might have tea, nadi,” he told his valet quietly, including Supani and his partner Koharu in the suggestion—and he settled into his place on the corner of the bench seat, where he habitually sat. His bodyguard settled with him, and the train began to roll.

Quiet again. Devastatingly quiet. No Jase. No kids' laughter.

In another half hour he had the word from Tano that the shuttle had started its takeoff.

Within the hour he had the word that the shuttle had cleared the atmosphere and was in space, safely past the most dangerous part of its return.

“Advise the young gentleman's aishid,” Bren said and Tano did that, via Guild communications, just the length of the car.

The young gentleman settled after that, over against the wall, head down, arms folded, apparently asleep.

Despite the adrenaline from the launch and the climb to orbit, the youngsters on the shuttle would soon be ready to fall asleep, too, seatbelts fastened, for the next few hours.

They'd certainly earned it.

They'd all earned it. Jase and his bodyguard, too.

 • • • 

The paidhi-aiji, however, who had been up before dawn composing documents for Jase, had two reports to outline while the details were fresh in his mind, and another set of documents to translate.

The train was headed home, on an eastward route right back around to the Central Station. They would come into the capital, then take the ordinary route along the edge of the city, to the Bujavid train station.

Tatiseigi had returned to the capital some three days ago. Ilisidi was back from business in the East.