The train was in open country now, the city left behind.  Bren had been over this route so often he knew every turn of the track, every bump and swerve of the red-curtained car.

He was a little anxious in the outing - he was always a little anxious about well-publicized moves in this last year.  He and Geigi were both high-value targets, and the business Jago had handed him last night...

That was more than a little worrisome, but it was one not apt to become acute overnight.  Their enemies had taken a hammering down in the Marid, they were still being hunted out of holes down there, and it would take them time to reorganize and replot.  They might even reform, depending on how the local man'chi sorted out.

Dealing with atevi was not dealing with humans.  The sense of attachment, man'chi, that one could call loyalty, but which was so much more fundamental to the atevi instinct - was the emotion that held clans and associations together.  Man'chi was as intense as human love and just as subject to twists and turns, but man'chi was a network of attachments, not a simple one-on-one.  Sometimes, when the configuration of alliances changed, people changed.  One could always hope a reconfiguration of possibilities and objectives could allow some who had been enemies to reinvent themselves - and have it stick.

It did happen.  It was why atevi had feuds, but didn't often nurse grudges, and had no trouble shifting politics when situations changed.  The problems Geigi had handed him out on the peninsula... problems involving Geigi's estate... those he could certainly deal with.  He had a good major domo at Najida, Ramaso, who had connections to the tribal people of the area, and he trusted he had established a very good relationship in that district, with his handling of recent events.  Geigi, sitting across from him on the red velvet seat, sipping a little fruit-flavored tea, was heading back to space - from a world much better than the world he had landed on - and Geigi remained their ally in the sky, a powerful deterrent to complete idiocy on Earth.  That situation too, and the knowledge certain people had earned Geigi's wrath, might reconfigure a few alliances.

There was morning tea and there were breakfast sandwiches, courtesy of the staff - a few of whom might not have been to bed at all last night.  The staff party in the apartment had broken up to get Lord Geigi's last personal baggage and their breakfast down to the train in a secure condition - and not just Lord Geigi's own belongings, but baggage and breakfast for Lord Geigi's bodyguard, his several accompanying servants, and four more new staffers chosen from among the Edi people.  That little group had arrived from the peninsula last night.