“A few years,” Toby said. “Not that long ago.”

“It’s different,” he said. “It’s just different now.”

“You’re Lord Bren, now. Is that more than being the paidhi?”

“A bit more.”

“When are you going to visit Mospheira?”

“It’s what I said. It’s not likely I will,” he said into a deeper and deeper silence. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy certain places. Certain people. But it’s just different.”

And the silence just lay there a moment. “You can’t say ‘enjoy old friends,’ can you?”

“Toby,” Barb said, a caution.

Which said, didn’t it, that he’d been the subject of at least one unhappy conversation?

“I’m kind of out of the habit,” he said. “And no, not the way I think of ‘friends.’ Nobody on the island’s in that category any longer. Shawn Tyers, maybe. But he’s busy being President. Sonja Podesta. Sandra Johnson. Who’s gone on to have a life.” He’d named two women and he saw Barb frown. “I have friends up on the station. Jase, for one. Jase is a goodfriend. But—” That was headed down its own dark alley. He stopped, before it got to its destination, which was that it wasn’t easy to keep friendships polished when he was more likely to get back to the station sooner than Jase would get a chance to visit the planet. And that wasn’t going to be any time soon. “On the continent I have my associates,” he said. “My aishi.”

Toby didn’t look happy with that statement, but damnedif Toby was going to sit there in front of Banichi and Jago, who did understand Mosphei’, and tell him that atevi sentiments were in some measure deficient for a human.

“Trust me,” Bren said, pointedly, “that I’m extremely content in my household. I’m not alone. I’m never alone, not for an hour out of the day. And I do ask you both to understand that, in all possible ways.”

Again the small silence.

“ Ibrought you a present,” Toby exclaimed suddenly, getting up, shattering the dark mood entirely. “I have it in our room.”

“Let Banichi go with you,” Bren said gently, and with a little restoration of humor. “ Youdon’t run about alone, either. You come here with no bodyguard, unless Barb wants to take that postc you can’t just run up and down the halls as if you were my staff. You’re a guest. You need an escort. You don’t open your own doors. It’s my social obligation.”

Toby looked at him as if he were sure he was being gigged, but he stayed quite sober.

“I’m serious. It’s just good manners. Mine, not yours, but be patient.”

“So who’s going to escortc Barb?” Toby asked, and slid a glance toward Jago, the only woman in his personal guard— Jago, who had as soon consign Barb to the bay.

“Exactly,” Bren said, and in Ragi: “Banichi-ji, please see Toby to his room. He forgot an item.”

“Nandi,” Banichi said gravely, and went to the hall door and opened it for Toby.

Which left him, and Barb, and Jago standing by the door.

“So,” Barb said in the ensuing silence, “you arehappy, Bren.”

“Very,” he said. “You?”

“Very,” she said, and slid in the chair and stood up, walking over to the fire, which played nicely on her fair curls. She bent down and put a stick of wood in. “I love fires. Not something you do on board.”

He sat where he was. “Not likely. You live aboard the boat, year round?”

She nodded, and looked back at him, and walked back toward her chair.

Or toward him. She rested a hip on the outsized arm of his chair. He didn’t make his arm convenient to her. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

“She wouldn’t object, would she?”

“She may, and I do. Move off, Barb.”

“Bren, I’m your sister-in-law. Well, sort of.”

“ Marryhim, then.” He wished he hadn’t said that. He couldn’t get up without shoving Barb off the arm and he could all but feel Jago’s eyes burning a hole in Barb. “It’s not funny, Barb.”

“I just don’t see why—”

He put his hand on her to shove her off the chair arm, just as the door opened and Toby walked in.

And stopped.

Barb got up sedately. Cool as ice. In that moment he hated her, and he hated very, very few people on either side of the straits.

Toby didn’t say a thing. And there wasn’t a graceful thing for him to say.

“I was just talking to Bren,” Barb said.

“Why don’t you turn in?” Toby asked. “Bren and I have things to discuss.”

Barb’s glance flicked toward Jago, and the ice crackled. Barb shook her head emphatically at that suggestion. “I’ll walk back when you do,” she said. “Toby, honestly, we were just talking. I wanted to ask Bren something. His guard understandsus.”

“It was talk,” Bren said. The Mospheiran thing to do was to explode. Among atevi, involving atevi, it cost too much. So did having it out now, on the very first night of their stay. “What is this surprise of yours?”

A wrapped present. Gilt paper. Ribbons. Toby resolutely held it out to him, a box about the size of a small book, and Bren got up and took it. Shook it, whimsically. Toby gave him a suspicious look.

“We’re too old for that, are we?” Bren said. “Well.” He looked at the paper. It said Happy Birthday. “God, how long have you saved this one?”

“Since the first year you went away,” Toby said. And shrugged. “It can’t live up to expectations. But I was dead set you were coming back. So I got it, for luck.”

“Superstitious idiot,” Bren said, and, it being Jago and Banichi alone, he took the chance to hug Toby, hug him close and mutter into his ear. “Barb’s mad at me. She made that damned clear. Don’t react. It’ll blow over.”

Toby shoved him back and looked at him at close range. Didn’t say a word.

“Truth,” he said, steady on with the gaze, and Toby scowled back.

“Truth?” Toby asked him, when that wasn’t exactly what Toby was asking, and he grabbed Toby and pulled him close for a second word.

“ Mylady’s standing over there armed to the teeth, and she doesn’t take jokes. Neither does Banichi. For God’s sake, Toby, nothing’s at issue. Barb’s acting out; she’s mad about dinner. I embarrassed her. Youknow Barb by now.”

He took a big chance with that, a really big chance. But this time when Toby shoved him back at arm’s length to look at him, Toby had a sober, unhappy look on his face.

“Damn it,” Toby said.

“Look, you two,” Barb said. She stood, arms folded, over to the side. “What’s going on between you two?”

“Turn about,” Bren said darkly, and held up the present. “Shall I open it?”

“Open it,” Toby said. “It’s not much.”

“Oh, we’ll see,” he said, and carefully edged the ribbon off, and unstuck the paper.

“He’s one of those,” Barb said. “He never will tear the paper.”

“Waste not, want not,” he said.

“He reuses it, too,” Toby said. “Come on, Bren. Just rip it.”

He reached the box, carefully, ever so carefully folded the paper and laid it on the mantel with the ribbon. Then he opened the box.

A pin, of all things, an atevi-style stickpin. Gold, with three what-might-be diamonds.

He was astonished.

“Where on earth?” he asked.

“Well,” Toby said, “I had it made. Is it proper? Kabiu? I asked the linguistics department at the University.”

“The paidhi’s color,” he said. “It counts as white. Kabiu, right down to the numbers. Now what am I going to do to get back at you on yourbirthday?”

“I got my present,” Toby said. “I got my brother back.”

“You did,” he said, and gave Toby another hug, and offered— not without the hindbrain in action—his other arm to Barb, and hugged them both. “Fortunate three. Two’s unlucky. Has to be three.”

He didn’t know how Barb liked that remark, but it was fair enough, and Toby duly hugged him back, and Barb did, and he hoped Jago didn’t throw him out of bed that night.

“All right,” he said, disengaging, “that’s a thorough quota of family hugs for the next couple of weeks. I’ll see you off to sea in good style, but we’ve got to be proper in the staff’s eyes in the meanwhile. Banichi and Jago understand us, but the staff, I assure you, would be aghast, and trying to parse it all in very strange ways. I’m going to wear this pin tomorrow. I’ll wear it in court. I could still get you a lace shirt, brother.”