“And most imminently, I shall go ahead and send Cajeiri’s associates. I have slept on it, and I agree with you: the boy shouldhave this business resolved, however it turns out, poor lad. Now youfrown.”

“Worry that we are doing the right thing, Geigi-ji.”

And more worry—which he had learned last night, afterhis conversation with Geigi—that the Ajuri situation still had volatile potential. Not on the scale of the west coast mess which had brought Geigi down to the planet, and not likely immediate. There was that.

“Damiri-daja is opposed to the visit,” Geigi said. “I greatly admired your approaching her after the party. I was aghast. But well done, Bren-ji. Very well done. I must say that before I go.”

“You heard allthat.”

“I have excellent ears.”

God. Atevi hearing. It was sohard to judge. “One hopes no one elsedid.”

“Had Damiri-daja wished otherwise, she would have stopped it. Still . . . well done.”

“One is still worried about Ajuri’s reaction, Geigi-ji. They may have envisioned the aiji’s displeasure being short-lived. The rebuff from Damiri will sting.”

“Well, well, most clearly—the boy will have little to do with Ajuri, hereafter, in any form, so long as his grandfather is acting the fool. I have heard it from him: he wishes not to deal with the man. Protect him from Tatiseigi’s sillier notions, too, where possible. Man’chi to his father is his safest course, and I sense it isdeveloping in a perfectly natural way. A future aiji is bound to develop stubborn notions at a certain stage of life. That is the nature of aijiin, always the independence, the search for associations which just do not come to them in any normal way. And this boy—is his great-grandmother’s child. In a sense—so is Tabini-aiji. They are in that sense brothers, more than father and son. The boy is already making appearances at his great-grandmother’s side. AsTabini-aiji also did, in his youth, I well recall. Tabini-aiji sees the boy as growing up exactly as he did, and he finds both pride and reassurance in the occasional misbehaviors and risk-taking—another matter which Damiri-daja resents, if one may speak the absolute truth of the matter. Tabini-aiji will notside with his wife if she pushes the issue of the boy’s attachment to the dowager. Look to Ajuri not to leave this situation alone. The gesture Damiri-daja made, in her choice of gowns—that will indeed hit hard. I swallowed half my glass in sheer amazement.”

“One hopes she can make peace with her uncle Tatiseigi. As one is surprised to see youhave done.”

“Ah, that old scoundrel.” Geigi gave a gentle laugh, rocking back, hands on knees. “Tatiseigi and I have at last found common ground on this visit: idiot nephews, and porcelain-collecting. I have promised him the loan of certain rare books from my library, and made him a gift of a very special regional ceramic his collection lacks. We have, in fact, become steady correspondents. Fools, both of us, where it comes to glazes and clays.”

“We have become each other’s dinner guests,” Bren said, and they both laughed, because Tatiseigi at the paidhi’s table was the least likely thing in the world.

•   •   •

The salted fruit juice helped, actually. Cajeiri made it to his feet and into his bathrobe, intending to go have the bath he had missed last evening. He went out into the sitting room of his little suite and Boji immediately jumped to the door of his cage, clinging to the grill, glad to see him. Boji let out a head-splitting shriek, little feet and hands shaking the door in great hope of being taken out of his cage.

“Hush,” he said. Boji was not to make noise and bother the household, and it hardly helped his head. Silence was one condition of having Boji, and if he was going to leave the suite to have his bath down the hall, he could notgive Boji the impression he was going to get out of the cage for a while and then put him immediately back in. That would guarantee shrieks and bad behavior.

It was a large cage, as big as the couch and as tall as he was, an antique brass cage. Its bars were filigree work of vines and flowers. It was specially made for Boji’s kind, who, collared and leashed, retrieved eggs for their owners.

But Boji, in the city, had no way to hunt and there were no trees to climb. He was fed all the eggs he could want. His black fur was sleek and brushed and he was getting a little plump. What he lacked most was exercise. Cajeiri gave it to him when he could; but this morning Boji just got a second egg, delivered through the little feeding gate, and was quite happily appeased, at least momentarily.

His room was very different from the rest of his father’s apartment. It had white walls—everything did, and he could not change that. But he had covered the walls where he could. There was Boji’s cage, and the brass vase taller than even Lucasi. There were animal carvings on all the furniture, and tapestry pictures of outdoors, mountains and fields and fortresses and such; and most of all there were plants, plants hanging from hooks all over, in every place where they could get light from fixtures in this windowless, closed-in suite. They were special lights. They shone like the sun. Housekeeping had provided them to help his plants.

His mother called it a jungle. He was sure it was not a compliment, though if anyone else had said it, he was sure he would like it. He had never been able to show his rooms to his great-grandmother, but he thought she would approve his choices. It feltlike his great-grandmother’s sort of room.

And this morning he was not so sure he really wanted his bath until he absolutely had to. He wanted to let his headache go away. He wanted no one to say anything unpleasant to him, and most of all he wanted no one to ask him why he was walking around with his face was all squinched up as if he had a headache, which he certainly did. And the condition of his head and his stomach was not something he wanted gossiped about on staff. It was bad enough Eisi and Lieidi had to know he had misbehaved and drunk something from leftover glasses. He was really quite ashamed of himself. Or it was the effect of the headache and upset stomach.

Geigi and nand’ Bren must be on the train at this hour, well on their way to the spaceport. He so wished he could have gone with them, to say good-bye to Lord Geigi, and just to be outside the Bujavid and out of the city entirely for a few hours. The spaceport, too, would be something to see—he had been there once in his life, but he only just remembered it as big white buildings and a long strip of concrete. When he and Great-grandmother and nand’ Bren had landed back on the planet, they had landed at an airport over on the island of Mospheira, where only humans lived— thathad been something to see.

And from Mospheira, at Port Jackson, they had crossed the straits on Bren’s brother Toby’s boat, and then stowed away in a rail car, and ridden mecheiti—so many ways they had traveled to get back to Shejidan. He had done all these things most people never had and before that he had had the run of the starship, and known secret passages and places nobody in the Bujavid could imagine. He had floated in air. He had seen water hang in globes you could chase.

Now he was limited to a suite of rooms in a nest of potted plants, with poor Boji in a cage.

It was because of his grandfather that he had no idea when he was going to be allowed out. And if these were the conditions he had while his guests were here, it was going to be embarrassing.

Let us see the ocean, they would say. And he would have to say no.

Let us see mecheiti, they would say. And he would have to say they could not.

He would be embarrassed to have them know how strictly he was locked in, now. He could tell them about the adventures he had had, but he could not show them any. They might think he was lying, and he could not prove anything.