Scary as hell, to a human trying to figure out a volatile situation that might undermine everything he’d struggled to preserve.

But today all he had to cope with was the debated slumber party, in which Cajeiri had not even remotely twigged to the impropriety of young people of various sexes spending the night in the same bed. Irene, Cajeiri said, wasn’t a girl, she was Artur’s sister. Translation: she was clan, she was family, she was part of his aishid. Which had to worry anyone in the context of oncoming changes in the boy.

Not to mention the understanding of human parents, who saw a boy as tall as a grown human proposing to sleep with their very underage daughter.

Three ticks of the keys windowed up an ebony face, a young face, though humans not used to atevi might not see how young… gold eyes that brimmed with questions, questions, questions. There was so much good in that young heart. So much enthusiasm and willingness.

And his parents’ good looks, and his father’s cunning and, when thwarted, his father’s volatile temper. Which, fortunately, there was the aiji-dowager, his great-grandmother, to sit on, when needed.

Tantrums there might be, a last-ditch insistence on the slumber party.

We decided to offer a movie for the entertainment, he calmly wrote to Toby. Since we haven’t encouraged the boy in his movie-viewing out of the Archive lately, and since the dowager has loaded him with homework to fill his time, this should be a special treat.

In several well-considered opinions, Cajeiri had gotten far too fond of those human-made movies. Prepubescent as the lad still was, most machimi plays, the classic and common literature of his own people, did sail right over his head, both intellectually and emotionally, and unfortunately that had combined with the boredom of a long voyage to make the human Archive all too attractive to a boy who should have been out riding the hills and conniving with other children—not that Cajeiri understood the nuances of the human dramas, either, but there was in the vast Archive a great store of the sort of movies he favored… notably those with abundant pyrotechnics, a great deal of sword-swinging, and most especially horses and dinosaurs.

Machimi were, in origin, stage-plays, largely filled with people talking, in limited, static sets. The classic ones didn’t have the flash and sweep of a movie epic. So what did their boy do when admonished to view the classics of his own culture? He fast-forwarded to the blood and thunder scenes, and disrespectfully skipped through the intellectual and sensitive parts, ignoring all the things that should have begun to mean something to his developing brain.

This fast-forwarding button had begun to make his elders just a little uneasy. He was bright. He was extremely bright. They were not sure about his other attributes, or how this fascination with blood and battle played in his developing brain.

Horses, pirates, and especially dinosaurs are his current passion, he wrote to Toby. Did I mention he’s keenly disappointed to be told we don’t really have horses or dinosaurs on Mospheira? He was all ready to take a rowboat over there and see them, and we had to tell him they were long ago and far away, and that dinosaurs were not alive when humans appeared on old Earth.

Cajeiri had put in his request for Captain Blood as the birthday movie, but the dowager’s staff had lately made the firm decision that pirates were not appropriate fare for a young one-day ruler. Cajeiri and his young associates had recently sent each other a series of fanciful between-decks letters about overthrowing the ship-aijiin and cruising the universe as space pirates, a plan which, whatever its lack of feasibility, entirely scandalized his grandmother.

The offering the staff has settled on for the festive occasion is the lost world, which has wall-to-wall dinosaurs. Presumably this will please him, since we’re sure this is a version he has not seen and the dinosaurs, staff informs me, are particularly well done.

Surely in the next few years the problem would fade: his great-grandmother seemed to think so. When the boy got old enough, the machimi plays, the ancestral art of his Ragi forebears, would touch his awakening sensibilities and adult instincts in ways peculiarly and exquisitely atevi. Then human-made movies would no longer satisfy the young rascal.

Then he would stop being the appealing young rascal he was and start becoming, well, what he ought to be, ateva to the core—which would leave the paidhi a little lonely, he had to admit it. He’d never thought to bring up a son. Even a surrogate one. And he’d had the boy on his hands for over two years. Did that qualify as fatherhood, for a man who, given his only deep romantic attachment wasn’t to his own species, would never father a child?

Change of topic. Some things he didn’t write to his brother, or commit even to volatile memory.

Gin and her crew invited me in for the poker game yesterday night. It’s only for sugar packets, but I won ten. It’s the math, you know. Before this voyage is over I should have a corner on…

The door to his cabin opened. “Nandi.” Narani came in, his chief of staff: atevi, a head taller than he was, skin which should be black as ink and eyes gold as sunset, but the absolute of both colors had faded a bit from age. His queued and ribboned hair was peppershot with gray, his face mapped with years. He was the gentlest of men… never mind he was, like the rest of his staff, a Guild Assassin. “Jase-aiji advises us he will call in person in a moment.”

“Will he?” He didn’t see near enough of Jase Graham, whose day was his night—they met, when they met, in the morning and twilight of their respective days, and it was evening at the moment. He folded up his computer. Jase’s announcement of his imminent presence was usually done from the central lift system.

Narani reached and adjusted his lace cuff, which had fallen back and snagged on his coat. In no wise would this good gentleman permit the Lord of the Heavens to meet the ship’s second captain at any disadvantage of dress. If there had been time, Narani would have called the rest of the staff and gotten him into a more formal coat.

Bren drank off the cold remainder of his cup, when he had satisfied his staff. Then he went out into the hall, the main corridor on this part of five-deck, the atevi section.

Jase had already passed the section doors. Jase was in his working uniform, blue sweater and blue coat, and in a fair hurry.

News? Bren wondered, his heart beating a little faster. It wasn’t an invitation to a dinner-breakfast upstairs. Jase would have simply called down for that.

“Jase,” he said, as Jase reached him, all prepared to stand aside and show him into the cabin—to offer him a precious cup of tea, if he could, all the courtesies of old, yes, friends in his otherwise atevi universe. Jase was the closest human tie he owned, except Toby.

“We’re about to drop out,” Jase said. “Emergence tomorrow on my watch, 0416. 14h.” Jase’s eyes fairly danced with what he had come to say. “We’re there, Bren. We’ll be there, tomorrow morning, right on the button. I have it from nav, and Sabin concurs.”

Sabin was senior, first-shift captain, Jase being second-shift, just preparing to go on duty about now. Drop out meant emerge from subspace, and there—

There meant home. The Earth of the atevi. The place they’d come from. Mospheira. The aishidi’tat. Toby. Tabini. Everything he’d left in limbo on a hasty departure a little over two years ago.

“I wanted to tell you myself,” Jase said, while Bren found himself still numb, perhaps less joyful than Jase expected to see. In his daze he woke a little-used half-smile, then a laugh, in this space too dull for smiles and laughter, and clapped Jase on the shoulder.

“Home, then. Home! You’re sure.”