It was just handling weapons in public places, Lucasi and Veijico said, that took special training . . . and they could pass. He was sure they could. And they would be back soon. Verysoon.

But not soon enough. He sighed and wondered how long it had been since he’d had Eisi’s medicine, and how long before his head stopped hurting.

Veijico and Lucasi were older, but not thatold. They were real Guild, though, and his father had assigned them to him, when he had been in the middle of the trouble over in Najida. They were good. They had had a reputation in the Guild for being too independent, too stubborn, and too reckless. He had overheard that from his great-grandmother and Cenedi. They had had problems. They had gotten in a lot of trouble, over on the coast.

But Banichi and Cenedi had gotten hold of them and they had reformed. They had been downright arrogant, and thought themselves too good to be assigned to guard a boy. But they had changed their minds, after everything, and they had sworn man’chi to him and meant it. He so wished he had had them to stop him last night. They might have done reckless things, themselves, but he was very sure they would have stopped him from drinking the brandy.

And he was so glad they were not here to see him this morning, even if he did wish they were all here now.

Last night—when he had had that very bad notion to try the brandy—because it was supposed to make one calm and happy—

Last night had been gruesome. Most of it, anyway. Mother and Great-grandmother had made peace. Officially. But not really. They had put on a show for politics and they were having tea this morning, and he was glad they could at least agree to do that. But it did not mean they were going to get along, and that his mother was going to forget she was upset.

He wished they really could get together, but Mother and Great-grandmother, his mani, were just too different. And worst of all, their quarrel mostly was about him, and things he just could not change. Mother was jealous of Great-grandmother. His parents had sent him off to Great-grandmother right before the troubles started in Shejidan, and there was no fixing it now. He had been with his Great-grandmother, up in the space station, and then on the starship, and he had been with her all the way, when they had met the kyo and gotten the Reunioners off their station and all—it had taken them two whole years, most of it just traveling, but he’d been learning all the time from Great-grandmother, and he couldn’t help it if, sometimes, he turned to her first.

But his parents had had a terrible time, while he and mani had been in space. Murini of the Kadagidi had gotten together a conspiracy and shot up his parents’ apartment and killed innocent people there, and in Taiben, where his parents really were; and his parents had had to get away into the woods and the mountains and move from place to place with people hunting them. That was what his father and mother had been through.

And when he and Great-grandmother had gotten back, the whole world was in a mess, and Great-grandmother and nand’ Bren had gone down anyway—they had gotten to Uncle Tatiseigi and started an uprising against Murini. And his father and mother had come in, and they had gone to Shejidan, with the people cheering them all the way. It had felt very good, then.

Except his mother was very jealous of Great-grandmother, because he had come back older and smarter, and knowing how to do things, and she had not taught him. Great-grandmother had. Great-grandmother was powerful. Great-grandmother did whatever she wanted. And people cheered for Great-grandmother, and for Father—but maybe not so much for his mother, and he did not know what to do to patch things. He knew what he knew. He knew that what Great-grandmother had taught him was the proper way.

It probably had not helped that he and his father and his mother had had to live all together in Great-grandmother’s apartment with Great-grandmother’s guard and Great-grandmother’s staff until they could take all Murini’s things out of their proper apartment and rebuild and repaint it, top to bottom, for security reasons.

It had not helped, too, that Grandfather showed up, and Aunt Geidaro, who had once been married to, of all people, Murini’s cousin—who had had nothing to do with the coup, since he was dead; but still, Father had sent herhome. Maybe Mother had not favored that. And then there was Grandfather—

Grandfather had pitched a fit, when they finally got into their own apartment. He had shown up at the door when it was just himat home—with the servants and his aishid—and Grandfather had wanted in, reallywanted in, and Cajeiri had locked himself into his room— thathad been scary. Grandfather had acted crazy. And he had notwanted Grandfather in the house.

Father had had his own fit when he got home, and banished Grandfather from the capital and banished all Mother’s staff, every one of them, from her bodyguard to the maid who had been her nurse when she was a baby—that last had been the one he would have stuck at, himself, but he understood. It was the people closest to you the longest who could be really efficient spies, and could turn and kill you and everybody if you were wrong about their man’chi. She had become a security risk, and so she had to go, and that was probably the person his mother missed the most. That was the person who had been with his mother when hewas born, but who would not be there for this new baby. His mother was upset about that.

His father said his mother would be less excitable once the baby came. He hoped so. His mother wanted him when he was absent and wanted rid of him when he was there; and that was the way things were, three and four times a day.

It had been the worst when all of them together were trying to live in mani’s apartment, and when mani’s rules were what the staff followed.

He had so hoped his mother would calm down when they got their own apartment back.

But mani was right. Mani always said: that there was no way to change somebody else’s mind, that that personhad to change, and that they had to wantto change, and the older they were, the less chance they were ever goingto change, so there was no good expecting it to happen some morning for no particular reason.

That sort of summed the numbers up. No matter which order you added numbers, they always added the same. Mani said that, too: if you ever thought you would get a different answer from the same numbers—you were wrong, that was all.

So he doubted mani and Mother were really making peace, not in the party last night and not in the sitting room over tea.

He heard the sitting room door open and close again as he was lying there. He heard footsteps go from the hall to the foyer. And he heard the outer door open and shut.

Then, farther away, he heard his mother’s door shut. Hard.

He heaved a deep, deep sigh, with his stomach still upset.

Lord Geigi was going away to space again. He was sad about that. He was going to miss Geigi. Geigi was fun. And Geigi had brought his letters from the station. Allhis letters from his associates on the ship. And Geigi had spoken up for him and his father had agreed to have his associates come down for his birthday. He would be grateful for that for all his life.

He just had to be really, really good for the next number of days, and not make his mother mad, and he would get his birthday—if nobody started a war and if nobody found out about the brandy he was so stupid as to have drunk last night.

He would have his guests, all his associates from the ship, that he had not seen in a whole year, his eighth, which was not a lucky number, and not a lucky year. One did not celebrate it, mani had said.

But this year, his ninth, was supposed to be veryfortunate, because it was three threes of years.