Conspirator

It was the price of seeing Toby.

Which he wasn’t sure he wanted to do in this particular weekc

No. He did. He’d come too far unattached from his own kind. The paidhi might be the better, mentally, for reforging some of those human links, even if they hurt. It was part of what he had beenc which had been, once upon a time, efficient.

Maybe he just needed to recover his balance. Sharpen the edges, to mix metaphors. Regain a lost dimension of himself. The paidhi-aiji was useful when he washuman, not when he was embedded so deeply in atevi politics he could no longer be perceived as different from any other clan-centered interest.

Getting that sense of huma

Banichi said, “We just passed Nomi Dar, Bren-ji.”

Within an hour of the coast. “We might have sandwiches,” he decided. Staff at the estate knew when they were to arrive—they’d have consulted the train station. And he knew nothing would dissuade staff from having a meal ready, no matter the hour, but nothing would dissuade staff, either, from the formalities of meeting, and that might require a little fortification.

So he had one of the small sandwiches—small, by atevi standards—and gave half to Banichi. He had a cup of fresh-made tea, and with carbohydrates hitting his system, even mustered a sense of anticipation for Toby’s visit. The air seemed to smell differently—or weigh differently—as they came down toward the coast.

The sea—changed things. Healed things. He began to feel it.

And when the train finally slowed to a stop and they had reached the station, he was properly kitted out and ready. He carried his own computer: Banichi and Jago stood near the door awaiting the signal from Tano and Algini that they had found things proper outside.

Then and only then did Banichi throw back the lever and shove the door open, and a pleasant cool breeze met them—a breeze and a cheer from the station platform, where very many familiar faces waited.

His staff. His people. Familiar facesc chief among them, Ramaso, his major domo—silver-haired, entirely now, around the face: that was a shock. Ramaso was a cousin of Narani’s, that excellent man, his major domo from up on station, and looked very like him, now that the hair had changed.

There was Saidaro, who almost single-handedly had saved his boat from destruction; there was Husaro, and Anakarac there was a whole crowd.

“Nandi,” Ramaso said, with a deep bow and a beaming face. “One understands there is baggage: we brought the truck as well as the bus. The boys will take care of the baggage. You and your bodyguard should come in the bus.”

“One doubts being able to persuade my aishid, nadi-ji, but they will quite happily let the young lads do the loading.”

“Indeed,” Banichi said, at his shoulder, and Jago relayed that information to Tano and Algini—the baggage car had opened up, and some of the group was tending in that direction: a glance showed Tano outside on the platform, and doubtless talking to Jago.

It suddenly all felt better. Ramaso, and Saidaro, Husaro and others, some lifelong domestics, some clerical staff who had retired from office service during the Troubles, and who had come here to Najida to live out their retirement in service to the estate—mostly attending the needs of the adjacent village, teaching the children, handling forms and applications and helping out in general. The names came back to him, the faces moderately changed, in some cases the hair newly salted with whitec all of them wearing their finest, and positively beaming. They bowed. He bowed. They crowded about—as much as atevi ever would crowd and jostle.

“Have you heard from my brother yet, nadi-ji?” Bren asked Ramaso, and that worthy smiled and nodded.

“His boat was tying up at dock as we left to meet the train, nandi. Staff will see him and the lady up to the house. He will be settled in the south room. Will that suit?”

“One is extremely gratified,” he said, and meant it. He bowed again, and they all bowed, and Ramaso showed him and Banichi and Jago toward the platform steps, and the waiting bus. As he had thought, Tano and Algini, not leaving his baggage even to this devoted crew, marshaled junior staff to carry baggage down to the truck, which waited behind the bus.

Najida Estate, the bus said on the side, with a bright, rope-encircled picture of a peaceful blue bay and a small ship right below the name.

The truck was a little less decorated: its side panel said just, Najida, which was the village: a market truck, well-maintained, perfectly adequate for their baggage. Bren saw that matter going well, and climbed up and took his seat on the bus just behind the driver, with Banichi and Jago just behind him, and Ramaso and Saidaro just opposite, as other staff piled on in noisy commotion, all those who weren’t seeing to the baggage-loading.

The dedicated train would go back the way it had come, with no passengers—possibly with a car or two of freight for Shejidan, if the stationmaster so decided—back to Tabini, to wait the aiji’s pleasure. So they were here, peacefully settled, in rural solitude until that train made the return trip to pick them upc closer than the airport; and much more leisurely a passage.

The grassy road, greening in spring, showed recent mowing; and the dust of fairly frequent use—mostly the village and the estate going back and forth for supplies, very little in the way of passenger traffic. They passed thickets into which caiki dived for coverc nice to think that his land sheltered the little creatures: bobkins, Mospheirans called them, quick, gray little diggers that undermined planted gardens, common on the Island as well as the mainlandc food for larger hunters, which were scarce here, so the caiki thrived. A small herd of gigiin grazed on the hillside above the village, fat and prosperous and complaisant, not seeming alarmed by their presence. Nobody hunted them in this season. The hunt was permitted only for seven days a year.

Najida mostly fished the bay for its living, hunted very little. It sold a part of its take for farm goods and supplied its village as its village supplied it, mostly by green-gardens; and during the summer the village kids probably hunted bobkins out of the village gardens, making some items out of the hides.

It was typical seaside rural life, keeping a schedule that didn’t have committee meetings looming, and didn’t greatly worry about the capital, in the best times. The village gardens would still lie asleep for the winter, areas nearest the houses probably being turned now for the first time, but the vines still were protected under neat straw rows, down in the fenced fields, the orchard trunks wrapped with straw rope in the old way. Bren gazed out the bus window, taking it in, always fascinated by the attention to detail, using so many materials that never passed through a mercantile chain—just made off the land, out of waste straw from neighboring grain fields.

His mother’s house on Mospheira had never had a garden: they’d been city-dwellers, though Toby had once made a try at a garden when he’d lived on the North Shore, and probably harvested three tomatoes and a few carrots after his summer of trying. Next year, at least, the garden had gone back to flowers.

And Jill—Toby’s wife, then—and the kids—they’d laughed about it when he asked how it had gone.

Pity that Jill hadn’t stuck it out. He hadn’t had time to ask Toby the details of that breakup. He knew there was too much of his own fault in it, his fault that he hadn’t been home to take care of their mother, his fault that Toby’d done it allc done too much of it. Way too much, but that had been Toby’s choice, in his own opinion.

And Jill had taken the kids and left.

No more little house on the north coast. No more family. Toby had sold the house, bought a bigger boatc