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nice food and pretty clothes and we went to parties and met your parents. How could there possibly be a problem?”
    They laughed. There had been scary moments, particularly at Tirnamardi, when nand’ Bren and nand’ Jase had gone to deal with Lord Tatiseigi’s neighbor; and that had been a scary time. They had ashes drifting down onto Lord Tatiseigi’s driveway, and there had been bullet holes in the bus when nand’ Bren and nand’ Jase had come back.
    It had been even worse, when Great-grandmother had had to send nand’ Bren right into the heart of the Assassins’ Guild to take down the Shadow Guild. They had had to pretend everything was perfectly normal that evening. But they had not known whether they might all be running for their lives before morning.
    That had been an extremely scary night, and nand’ Bren and Banichi and several of Great-grandmother’s guard had come back wounded. But Father had had Cajeiri and his guests inside the tightest protection, and they had had Jase-aiji and his bodyguards with them as well as Father’s and Great-grandmother’s bodyguards around them. Jase-aiji’s bodyguards had weapons that could take out half the apartment and maybe the floor under them, and he was very glad
those
had never come into question.
    So, no, they had never been in that much danger.
    And right after that, while everything was still in confusion, his father had turned his birthday into a public Festivity and he had had to make a public speech and be named, officially, his father’s heir.
    His associates had been there when he had become “young aiji,” not just “young gentleman,” so they knew what had happened, and how everything had changed. And so far the title had not been a great inconvenience, but that was, Cajeiri feared, only because he still had his foreign guests. When they left, tomorrow—when they left—
    He feared there were going to be duties, and more appearances in court dress, and that his life for the next whole year and forever after was going to be just gruesome.
    But he would do it.
    He would do it because behaving badly could mean his guests could not come back. Priorities, his great-grandmother called it.
    He would definitely have to go back to living in his suite, inside his father’s apartment, with his mother—and his very new sister, who was a baby, and who was going to cry a lot.
    He would have his bodyguard for company. And he would have his valets, who were grown men, but they understood him and they were patient. His little household was his, and no one would take that away.
    He was sure he was going to have to go back to regular lessons. His latest tutor was not a bad one—even interesting sometimes, so it was not too awful. And he was coming back with a lot of things to ask about.
    But he had still rather be out at Najida or Tirnamardi.
    He would not get to ride his mecheita until the next holiday, and that only
if
he could get an invitation from Great-uncle Tatiseigi and
if
he could get permission from his father to go out to Tirnamardi. And all that depended on whether there were troubles anywhere near. It might be next year before he could go, because there
were
currently troubles in the north. During the whole year, there was still going to be the question of the succession to the lordship of the Ajuri
and
the lordship of the Kadagidi, either one of which could break into gunfire or worse and just mess everything up in Tirnamardi, where his mecheita was.
    Worse, Ajuri was his mother’s clan, and the upset in Ajuri was going to keep her upset all year.
    But maybe being “young aiji” meant even his father would be more inclined to listen to what he wanted.
    And what he wanted was to go riding for days and days; and what he wanted even more than that was his guests back again—
before
next year if he could somehow manage it.
    But third, and what he wanted most of all,