And the city lights, the high rises—nothing at all like that on the mainland, where tiled roofs gathered, all dull red, showing very little light at night except the corner lanterns on streets as winding and idiosyncratic as they had been for a thousand years.

Towers, glittering with lights. Streets laid out on a grid, relentless, as strange to atevi eyes as the architecture of a kyo ship.

A long journey, there and here. And another, in the dead of night.

Toby reached the boat first, ran aboard and ran out a little gangway, with a safety rope, no less—on the old boat it had been a thick, springy plank. Bren moved up close behind, not sure whether he would dare lay a hand on the aiji-dowager if she should falter, but ready to help if she did.

No need to worry. The dowager waved all of them off and crossed onto the deck quite handily. It was Cajeiri that had to make a grab for the rope, and Cenedi grabbed him instantly and pulled him aboard.

“New boat,” Bren said to Toby in going aboard.

“My great indulgence,” Toby said. “The marriage was going. We split the investments.”

“Very nice.” The whole of Toby’s finance. Everything was in this boat. And Toby lent it to a hazardous effort that could get it shot up, could take him and all of them to the bottom. He walked the afterdeck, looking apprehensively around him—and, next to the boom, had a sudden thought of Cajeiri and that lethal item. “Young sir.” He snagged the heir unceremoniously—the boy seemed a little dazed. “This large horizontal timber is the boom. When the ship maneuvers, this may sweep across the deck very fast without warning. You may not hear it. It might sweep an unwary person right overboard or do him mortal injury. Kindly keep an eye to it at all times and stay out of its path.”

“Shall we spread the sails now, nandi?” Cajeiri asked, bright-eyed in the dark, with a whole boatload of unfamiliarity about him—but he had seen all those movies. “Do we have cannon?”

“We have no cannon. We have our bodyguards’ pistols. And whether we spread the sails—there are two—that depends on the winds, young sir. We have an engine as well.” Then he lost his train of thought completely, seeing Barb come up the dark companionway onto the dimly lit deck, a trim and casual Barb, with her formerly shoulder-length hair in bouncy short curls. She wore cut-off denims and a striped sweater—every inch the Saturday boater.

She saw him. And stopped cold.

“Good to see you,” he said as they confronted each other, a lie, but he was trying to be civil. “Toby told me you were here.”

“Bren.” As if she didn’t know what to say beyond that. Meanwhile Toby was trying to communicate in sign language and mangled Ragi where things had to be stowed, and Bren gratefully realized he had a job to do, directing duffles into bins and nooks, explaining where life-preservers were located, where the emergency supplies were, all the regulation things—and indicating to Ilisidi the stairs down to a comfortable bunk, a cabin of her own.

“A seat,” Ilisidi said, contrarily, “on the deck, nand’ paidhi. We enjoy the sea air.”

And the foreign goings-on, he thought. Those sharp eyes missed nothing, not even in the dark, where, one had to recall, atevi eyes were very able. They shimmered gold in the indirect light of the deck lantern, like the eyes of a mask, and the fire died and resumed again as she swung a glance to her great-grandson. “Boy! Stay away from the rail. Find a place and sit down!”

A sheltered bench beside the companionway, against the wall, a blanket for a wrap against the wind that would be fierce and cold once they started moving, although, Bren recalled, the dowager favored breakfasts on the balcony in Malguri’s ice-cold winds. She inhaled deeply as he settled her into that seat, her cane nestled between her knees, pleased, he thought, pleased and somber in the occasion. He had no wish to intrude into those thoughts, and went to help Toby.

No chance. Toby bounded ashore to unmoor them, tossed in the buffers as Barb started up the engine, a deep thunder and a rush of water. Toby hopped aboard, hauled in the gangway with an economy of motion and took the wheel as the boat began to drift away from the dock, bringing them away with a smooth, easy authority.

A team. Clearly. Bren stood against the rail, watched the water in front of them, the white curl of a little bow-wave, the space between the moored yachts reflecting a slight sheen of the few marina lights as they moved down the clear center of the aisle. Masts shifted past them, lines against the light.

Their own running lights flicked on. The bow light. There were rules, and they didn’t make themselves conspicuous by the breach of them, though their own lights blinded them and it would have been easier to steer by starlight. Barb had moved forward, past the deckhouse, to take up watch in the bows, and stayed there until they nosed into the open waterway.

Now Toby throttled up, and they ran the outward channel, just a fishing boat getting an early start, to any casually inquisitive eye.

They passed the breakwater, a tumbled mass of broken city pavings, and now Toby kicked the speed up full, getting them well away from the marina, well out into the dark. Wind swept over the deck, cold as winter ice.

Banichi and Jago had found a place to sit, on the lifejacket locker. Tano and Algini had gone forward, likewise some of Ilisidi’s men, and Cajeiri, leaving the bench seat near the companionway, immediately worked his way forward, too, into the teeth of the wind and the chill, staggering a little, this child who had grown accustomed to dice games in free fall and tumbling about like a wi'itikiin in flight—he had yet to find his land legs again, let alone take his first boat trip and find sea legs, and Ilisidi’s bodyguard was watching him closely everywhere he went. Cenedi got to his feet and quietly signaled one of his men to stay close to him.

Then Toby shut the engine down, walked over and began to hoist the sail. Bren twitched, almost moved to help his brother, old, old teamwork, that—he had taken a step in that direction, full of enthusiasm. But Barb turned up out of the dark, got in before him, working with Toby, all their moves coordinated—laughter passing between them, laughter which belonged to them, together.

A lot had happened. A great lot had happened, while he’d been gone.

The sail snapped taut—Cajeiri had run back to marvel at it, staggering hazardously against the rail in the process. The boat leaned, steadied to a different motion. The wind began to sing to them.

No right, he said to himself, no right to say a thing, or to insinuate himself into that partnership of Toby’s and Barb’s, not so early in his return, not while things were still fragile and both Toby and Barb were still defensive. He knew Barb, knew there was a streak of jealousy, sensed she’d moved particularly fast to get back and lend Toby a hand, nothing chance or unthought about it. He only sat and watched, letting Barb have her way, wishing his brother had twigged to that move, a little glad, on the other hand, if he hadn’t. He didn’t want to foul them up, didn’t want Barb’s worse qualities to get to the fore, things Toby might never yet have seen. Might never see. At the breakup, when it came, they’d both brought their worst attributes to the fray, he and Barb both. They’d seen behaviors in each other he hoped the world would never see again.

A feeling meanwhile crept up from the deck, that familiar thrumming sound of the wind in the rigging. The vibration carried into the bones, the gut, bringing him memories of past trips, past expeditions, fishing on the coast, a wealth of smells and sounds and sensations—it might have been a decade ago. The whole world might have been different, pristine, less complicated.

The wind moved, and the sea moved, and they moved over it, reestablishing a connection to the planet itself. Home, he told himself. Everything could be solved, in a breath of that cold air.