Transmissions between Mospheira and the station have been frequent,” Ilisidi said. “An explanation, nand’paidhi. What do you see?”
“It’s the ship. Our ship—at least, some ship—”
He was speaking his own language. His legs were numb. He couldn’t trust himself to walk—it was a good thing the guards caught his arms and steered him back to safety at the table.
But they didn’t let him sit. They faced him toward Ilisidi, and held him there.
“Some call it treachery, nand’ paidhi. What do you call it?”
Eight days ago. The emergency return, bringing him and Tabini back from Taiben. The cut-off of his mail. Banichi and Jago with him constantly.
“Nand’ paidhi? Tell me what you see.”
“A ship,” he managed to say in their language—he was bone-cold, incapable of standing, except for the atevi hands holding him. He was almost incapable of speaking, the breath was so short in his chest. “It’s the ship that left us here, aiji-mai, that’s all I can think.”
“Many of us think many more things,” Ilisidi said, “nand’ paidhi. What do you suppose they’re saying… this supposed ship… and your people across the strait? Do you suppose we figure in these conversations at all?”
He shivered and looked at the sky again, thinking, It’s impossible—
And looked at Ilisidi, a darkness in the dawn, except only the silver in her hair and the liquid anger in her eyes.
“Aiji-mai, I don’t understand. I didn’t know this was happening. No one expected it. No one told me.”
“Oh, this is a little incredible, paidhi-ji, that no one knew, that this appearance in our skies is so totally, utterly a surprise to you.”
“Please.” His legs were going. The blood was cut off to his hands. For what he knew, the dowager would have the guards pitch him off the edge from here, a gesture of atevi defiance, in a war the world couldn’t win, a war the paidhiin were supposed to prevent. “Nand’ dowager, I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t expect this. But I know why they’re here. I know the things you want to know.”
“Do you, now. And the paidhiin are only interpreters.”
“And human, aiji-mai. I know what’s going on up there, the way I know what humans did in the past and what they want for the future—nothing in their plans is to your detriment.”
“As the station wasn’t. As your coming here wasn’t. As your interference in our affairs wasn’t, and your domination of our trade, our invention, our governance of ourselves wasn’t. You led us to the technology you wanted, you lent us the industry you needed, you perverted our needs to your programs, you pushed us into a future of television and computers and satellites, all of which we grow to love, oh, to rely on—and forget every aspect of our own past, our own laws, our own course that we would have followed to use our own resources. We are not so stupid, nand’ paidhi, not so stupid as to have destroyed ourselves as you kept counseling us we would do without your lordly help, we are not so stupid as to believe we weren’t supplying you with materials for which you had your own uses, in an agenda we hadn’t set. Tabini placed great confidence in you—too damned much confidence in you. When he knew what had happened he sent you to me, as someone with her wits still about her, someone who hasn’t spent her life in Shejidan watching television and growing complacent. So tell me your truth, nand’ paidhi! Give me your assurances! Tell me why all the other lies are justified and why the truth in our skies this morning is good for us!”
The blasts of wind came no colder than Ilisidi’s anger. It was the truth, all of it, all justified, he knew that the way he’d known the unspoken truth of his dealings with atevi—that the paidhiin were doing the best they could do in a bad bargain, keeping a peace that wasn’t viable between ordinary people of their two species, saving what they’d almost entirely destroyed, things like this reality around him, the ancient stones, the lake, the order of life in an atevi fortress, remote from the sky and the stars he couldn’t reach from here. He looked up at that truth and the lights blurred in his eyes. The wind gave him no direction, whether up or down, whether he was falling into the sky or standing on stones he couldn’t feel. He was afraid—terrified as atevi must be of that human presence up there—and didn’t comprehend why.
“Aiji-mai, I can’t say it’s good that it’s there, it’s just there, it’s just what’s happened, and if you kill me, it won’t make anything any better than it is. Mospheira didn’t plan this. Yes, we’ve guided your technology—we wanted to get back into space, aiji-mai, we didn’t have the resources ourselves, our equipment was half-destroyed, and we didn’t think the ship still existed. We took a chance coming down here—it was a disaster for us and for you. Two hundred years we’ve worked to get back up there, and we never wanted to destroy the atevi—only to give you the same freedom we want for ourselves.”
“Damned nice of you. Did you ask?”
“We were naive. But we hadn’t a choice as we saw it, and we hadn’t a way to leave once we were down. It’s easier to fall onto a planet than to fly free of one. It was our calculated decision, aiji-mai, and we thought we could build our way back to space and bring atevi with us. We never intended to go to war—we didn’t want to take anything from you…”
“Baji-naji, nand’ paidhi. Fortune has a human face and bastard Chance whores drunken down your streets.—Let him go, nadiin. Let him go where he likes. If you want to go down to the township, nand’ paidhi,—there’s a car that can take you.”
He blinked into the wind, staggering in a freedom that all but dumped him down to his knees. The guards’ grip lingered, keeping him steady. It was all that did. It was like the other crazed things Ilisidi had done—sending him out of here, setting him free.
But he didn’t know he’d reach the airport. She didn’t promise more than freedom to leave Malguri. She didn’t say his leaving was what she wanted—If you want to go still rang in his ears; and she’d given him crazy signals before this, challenging him to stay behind her—atevi-fashion: follow me if you dare.
He shook off the guards and stumbled forward to grab the vacant chair at the table, as guns came out and safeties went off. He slid it back and fell into it, too cold to feel the lace-covered glass under his arms, his sense of balance tilting this way and that on this narrow strip of a balcony.
“Tabini sent me here,” he said. “Aiji-mai, your grandson couldn’t believe his own judgement, so he sent me here, relying on yours. So I do rely on it. What do you want me to do?”
A long, long moment Ilisidi stared at him, a shadow wrapped in robes, immune to the cold. He was too cold to shiver. He only flinched in the blasts and hunched his arms together. But he didn’t doubt what he was doing. He didn’t doubt the challenge Ilisidi had laid in front of him, offering him an escape—by everything he’d learned of her and of atevi, Ilisidi would write off him and every human alive if he took her up on that invitation to escape.
“In reasonable fear of harm,” Ilisidi said finally, “you would not give us a simple statement against my grandson. In pain, you refused to give it. What good is man’chi to a human?”
“Every good.” Of a sudden it was dazzlingly, personally clear to him. “A place to stand. An understanding of who I am, and where I am. If Tabini-aiji sent me here, he relied on your judgement—of me, of the situation, of the use I am to him.”
Another long silence. “I’m old-fashioned. Impractical. Without appreciation of the modern world. What can my grandson possibly want from me?”
“Evidently,” he said, and found, after all, the capacity to shiver, “evidently he’s come to value your opinion.”
Ilisidi’s mouth made a hard line. That curved. “In Maidingi there are people waiting for you—who expect me to turn you over to them, who demand it, in fact—people who rely on me as my grandson hasn’t. Your choice to stay here—is wise. But what excuse for holding you should I tell them, nadi?”
The shivers had become violent. He gave a shake of his head, tried to answer, wasn’t sure Ilisidi wanted an answer. The rim of the sun cast a sudden, fierce gleam over the mountains across the lake, flaming gold.
“This young man is freezing,” Ilisidi said. “Get him inside. Hot tea. Breakfast. I don’t know when he may get another.”
When he may get another? He wanted explanation, but Ilisidi’s bodyguard hauled him out of his chair—the ones he knew, who knew him, not the ones who had brought him from below. He couldn’t coordinate his getting up. He couldn’t walk without staggering, the cold had set so deeply into his joints. “My apartment,” he protested. “I want to talk to Banichi. Or Jago.”
Ilisidi said nothing to that request, and the guards took him from the balcony into the dead air of the inside, guided him by the arms through the antiques and the delicate tables—opened a door to a firelit room, Ilisidi’s study, he supposed, by the books and the papers about. They brought him to the chair before the fire, wrapped a robe about him and let him sit down and huddle in the warmthless wool. They piled more logs on the fire, sent embers flying up the chimney, and he was still numb, scarcely feeling the heat on the soles of his boots.
A movement in the doorway caught his eye. Cenedi was watching him silently. How long Cenedi had been there he had no idea. He stared back, dimly realizing that Cenedi along with Ilisidi had just gained his agreement—and Cenedi had arranged the whole damned shadow-show.
Cenedi only nodded as if he’d seen what he came to see, and left, without a word.
Anger sent a shiver through him, and he hugged the robe closer to hide the reaction. One of Ilisidi’s guards—he remembered the name as Giri—had lingered, working with the fire. Giri looked askance at him. “There’s another blanket, nadi,” Giri said, and in his sullen silence got up and brought it and put it over him. “Thin folk chill through faster,” Giri said. “Do you want the tea, nand’ paidhi? Breakfast?”
“No. Enough tea. Thank you.” Cenedi’s presence had upset his stomach. He told himself—intellectually—that Cenedi could have done him far greater hurt: Cenedi could have put enough pressure on to make him confess anything Cenedi wanted. He supposed Cenedi had done him a favor, getting what he needed and no more than that.
But he couldn’t be that charitable, with the livid marks of atevi fingers on his arms. He’d little dignity left. He made a desultory, one-handed twist of his hair at the nape of his neck—he wanted to make a plait or two to hold it, but the arm they’d twisted wouldn’t lift while he was shivering. He was angry, in pain, and in the dim, dazed way his brain was working, he didn’t know who to blame for it: not Cenedi, ultimately; not Ilisidi—not even Tabini, who had every good reason to suspect human motives, with the evidence of human space operations over his head and his own government tottering around him.
While he’d been doing television interviews with newscasters and talking to tourists who hadn’t said a damned thing about it.
His office had probably rung the phone off the desk trying to get hold of him, but atevi news was controlled. Nothing of that major import got out until Tabini wanted it released, not in this Association and not in others: atevi notions of priority and public rights and the duties of aijiin to manage the public welfare took precedence over democracy.
The tourists might not have known, if they hadn’t been near a television for some number of days. Even the television crew might not have known. The dissidents who must have gravitated to Ilisidi as a rival to Tabini… they would have had their sources, in the hasdrawad, in the way atevi associations had no borders. They would have wanted to get to the paidhi and the information he had, urgently. At any cost.
Maybe the rival factions had wanted to silence his advice, the character of which they might believe they knew without hearing him.
Or maybe they had wanted something else. Maybe there had never been an assassination attempt against him—maybe they’d wanted to snatch him away to question, to find out what a human would say and what it meant to their position, before Tabini took some action they didn’t know how to judge.
Tabini had ordered their rushed and early return from Taiben—after arming him against the logical actions of the people Tabini already intended to send him to?
Had the attempt on his bedroom been real in any sense—or something Tabini himself had done for an excuse?
And why did someone of Banichi’s rank just happen to be in his wing that night? The cooks and the clerks didn’t merit Banichi’s level of security. It was his room they’d been guarding—Tabini had already been advised of the goings-on in the heavens.
But somebody of Banichi’s experience let a man he was guarding sleep with the garden doors and the lattice open?
Things blurred. He felt a clamminess in his hands, was overwhelmed, of a sudden, with anger at the games-playing. He’d believed Cenedi. He’d believed the game in the cellar, when they’d put the gun to his head—they’d made him think he was going to die, and in such a moment, dammit, he’d have thought he’d think of Barb, he’d have thought he’d think of his mother or Toby or someone human, but he hadn’t. They’d made him stand face-to-face with that disturbing, personal moment of truth, and he hadn’t discovered any noble sentiments or even human reactions. The high snows and the sky was all he’d been able to see, being alone was all he could imagine—just the snow, just the sky and the cold, up where he went to have his solitude from work and his own family’s clamoring demands for his time, that was the truth they’d pushed him to, not a warm human thought in him, no love, no humanity—
His hand flew up to his face scarcely in time to bury the sudden rush of helpless, watery reaction that he told himself at once was nerves, the psychological crash after the crisis—that, at least, was human, if anything he did was human, or natural, if anything he did was anything but one damned calculated move after technologically, politically calculated move—
“Nadi.” Giri was hovering over him. He didn’t know Giri. Giri didn’t know him. Giri just saw the paidhi acting oddly, and the dowager didn’t want him to die because she had use for him.
It was good that someone did.
He wiped his eyes, leaned his head back against the chair and composed his face, mentally severing the nerves to it, drawing smaller and smaller breaths until he could be as statue-calm as Banichi or Tabini.
“Are you hurting, nand’ paidhi? Do you need a doctor?”
Giri’s confusion was funny, so wildly, hysterically funny, it all but shattered him. He laughed once, a strangled sound, and got control of it, and wiped his eyes a second time.
“No,” he said, before Giri could escape in alarm. “No, dammit, I don’t need a doctor. I’m all right. I’m just tired.” He shut his eyes against further ministrations, felt the leak of tears and didn’t open his eyelids, just kept his breathing calm, down a long, long, head-splitting spiral of fire-warmth and lack of oxygen, that bottomed out somewhere in a dizzy dark. He heard a confused set of voices talking in the background, probably discussing him. Hell, why not? he asked himself.
Usually it was the servants that betrayed you, the likes of Djinana and Maigi, Tano and Algini. But in the flutter of banners, the clashing of weapons, the smoke of shattered buildings, the rules of all existence changed. Hell broke loose. Or maybe it was television. Machimi and shadows.
Blood on the terrace, Jago had said, coming back out of the rain, and Banichi’s face had turned up in the mirror.
The beast walked Malguri’s halls after midnight, when everyone was asleep… looking for its head, and damned upset about it.
It’s my gun, Banichi had said, and it was. He’d been used, Banichi had been used, Jago had been used—everyone had been used, in every way. It was all machimi, and ordinary atevi didn’t know the game either—ordinary atevi had never understood the feud between the humans who’d had to stay on the station and those who’d taken the ship and gone, for two hundred cursed, earthbound years…
They’d fallen through a hole in space and found not a single star they knew, in the spectra of a thousand suns that fluttered on atevi banners, banners declaring war, declaring ownership of the world that seemed, for stranded strangers, the surest chance to live in freedom.
He lay still in the chair, listening to the snap of the fire, letting the tides of headache come and go—exhausted emotionally and physically—aching in a dozen places, now that he was warm, but hurting less than he did when he moved.
Build the station for a base and go and search for resources at the next likely star, that was what the Pilots’ Guild had decided they would do. The hell with the non-crew technicians and construction workers. Every kid on Mospheira knew the story. Every kid knew how Phoenix had betrayed them, and why Phoenix wasn’t a factor in their lives any longer. Time ran long between the stars and age didn’t pass the way it ought to—like in the stories, the man that slept a hundred years and never knew.
An atevi story or human, he wasn’t personally sure.
Goseniin and eggs. They daren’t kill the paidhi. Otherwise, how could they find out anything they needed to know?
“Bren-ji.”
He flashed on the cellar, and the shadows around him, and the cold metal against his head. No. A less definite touch than that, brushing his cheek.
“Bren-ji.”
A second touch. He blinked at a black, yellow-eyed face, a warm and worried face.
“Jago!”
“Bren-ji, Bren-ji, you have to leave this province. Some people have come into Maidingi, following rumors—the same who’ve acted against you. We need to get you out of here, now—for your protection, and theirs. Far too many innocents, Bren-ji. We’ve received advisement from the aiji-dowager, from her people inside the rebel movement… certain of them will take her orders. Certain of that group she knows will not. The aijiin of two provinces are in rebellion—they’ve sent forces to come up the road and take you from Malguri.” The back of her fingers brushed his cheek a third time, her yellow eyes held him paralyzed. “We’ll hold them by what tactics we can use. Rely on Ilisidi. We’ll join you if we can.”
“Jago?”
“I’ve got to go. Got to go, Bren-ji.”
He tried to delay her to ask where Banichi was or what they meant by hold them—but her fingers slipped through his, and Jago was away and out the door, her black braid swinging.
Alarm brought him to his feet—sore joints, headache, and lapful of blankets and all—with half that Jago had said ringing and rattling around a dazed and exhausted brain.
Hold them? Hold a mob off from Malguri? How in hell, Jago?
And for what? One damned more illusion, Jago? Is this one real?
Innocents, Jago said.
People who wanted to kill him? Innocents?
People who were just scared, because the word had begun to spread of what had arrived in their skies. Malguri was still candle-lit and fire-lit. The countryside around about had had no lights. People in cities didn’t spend their time on rooftops looking at a station you couldn’t see in city haze without a telescope, no, but a quarter of Maidingi township had been in blackout, and ordinary atevi could have had pointed out to them what astronomers and amateurs would have seen in their telescopes days ago,
Now the panic began, the fear of landings, the rumor of attack on their planet from an enemy above their reach.
What were they to think of this apparition, absent a communication from the paidhi’s office, but a resumption of the War, another invasion, another, harsher imposition of human ways on the world? They’d had their experience of humans seeking a foothold in their territory.
He stood lost in the middle of a nightmare—realized Ilisidi’s guards were watching him anxiously, and didn’t know what to do, except that the paidhi was the only voice, the only voice that could represent atevi interests to Mospheira’s authorities—and to that ship up there.
No contact, the Guild had argued; but that principle had fallen in the first stiff challenge. To get the deal they wanted out of the station… to go on getting the means to search for Earth, they’d given in and allowed the initial personnel and equipment drops.
And two hundred years now from the War of the Landing, what did any human on earth know… but this world, and a way of life they’d gotten used to, and neighbors they’d reached at least a hope of understanding at distance?
Damn, he thought, angry, outraged at the intrusion over their heads, and he didn’t imagine that there was overmuch joy in Mospheira’s conversations with the ship, either.
Charges and counter-charges. Charges his office could answer with some authority—but when Phoenix asked, Where is this interpreter, where is the paidhi-aiji, what opinion does he hold and why can’t we find him?… what could Mospheira say? Sorry—we don’t know?
Sorry, we’ve never lost track of him before?
And couldn’t the Commission office, knowing what they knew, realize that, with that ship appearing in the skies, they’d better call his office in Shejidan? Or realize, if their call didn’t go through, that he was in trouble, that atevi knew what was going on, and that he might be undergoing interrogation somewhere?
Damned right, Hanks knew. Deana Nuke-the-Opposition Hanks was making decisions in his name on Mospheira, because he was out of touch.
He needed a phone, a radio, anything. “I have to talk to my own security,” he said, “about that ship up there. Please, nadiin, can you send someone to bring Jago back, or Banichi… any one of my staff? I’ll talk to Cenedi. Or the dowager.”
“I fear not, nand’ paidhi. Things are moving very quickly now. Someone’s gone for your coat and for heavier clothes. If you’d care for breakfast…”
“My coat. Where are we going, nadiin? When are we going? I need to get to a phone or a radio. I need to reach my office. It’s extremely important they know that I’m all right. Someone could take very stupid, very dangerous actions, nadiin!”
“We can present your request to Cenedi,” Giri said. “In the meantime, the water’s already hot, nand’ paidhi. Tea can be ready in a very small moment. Breakfast is waiting. We would very much advise you to have breakfast now. Please, nand’ paidhi. I’ll personally take your request to Cenedi.”
He couldn’t get more than that. The chill was back, a sudden attack of cold and weakness that told him Giri was giving him good advice. He’d gone to see Cenedi last night before supper. His stomach was hollow to the backbone.
And if they’d kept breakfast waiting and water hot since his meeting with Ilisidi, it wasn’t that they meant to take the usual gracious forever about bringing it.
“All right,” he said. “Breakfast. But tell the dowager!”
Giri disappeared. The other guard stood where he’d been standing, and Bren strayed back to the fireside, with his hair inching loose again, falling about his shoulders. His clothes were smudged with dust from the cellars. His shirt was torn about the front, somewhere in the exchange—most likely in his escape attempt, he thought. It wasn’t humanity’s finest hour. Atevi around him, no matter the sleep they’d missed, too, looked impervious to dirt and exhaustion, impeccably braided, absolutely ramrod straight in their bearing. He lifted sore arms, both of them, this time, wincing with the effort, and separating his tangled hair, braided three or four turns to keep it out of his face—God knew what had happened to the clip. He’d probably lost it on the stairs outside. If they went out that way he might find it.
A servant carried in a heavy tray with a breakfast of fish, cheese, and stone-ground bread, along with a demi-pot of strong black tea, and set it on a small side table for him. He sat down to it with better appetite than he’d thought he could possibly find, in the savory smell and the recollection of Giri’s warning that meals might not be on schedule again… which, with the business about getting his coat, meant they were going to take action to get him out, maybe through the opposition down in Maidingi… on Ilisidi’s authority, it might be.
But breaking through a determined mob was a scary prospect. Trust an atevi lord to know how far he or she could push… atevi had that down to an art form.
Still, a mob under agitation might not respect the aiji-dowager. He gathered that Ilisidi had been with them and changed her mind last night; and if she tried to lie or threaten her way through a mob who might be perfectly content with assassinating the paidhi, there could well be shooting. A large enough mob could stop the van.
In which case the last night could turn out to be only a taste of what humanity’s radical opposition might do to him if it got its hands on him. If things got out of hand, and they couldn’t get to a plane—he could end up shot dead before today ended, himself, Ilisidi, God knew who else… and that could be a lot better than the alternative.
He ate his breakfast, drank his tea, and argued with himself that Cenedi knew what he was doing, at least. A man in Cenedi’s business didn’t get that many gray hairs or command the security of someone of Ilisidi’s rank without a certain finesse, and without a good sense of what he could get away with—legally and otherwise.
But he wanted Banichi and Jago, dammit, and if some political decision or Cenedi’s position with Ilisidi had meant Banichi and Jago had drawn the nasty end of the plan—
If he lost them…
“Nand’ paidhi.”
He turned about in the chair, surprised and heartened by a familiar voice, Djinana had come with his coat and what looked like a change of clothes, his personal kit and, thank God, his computer—whether Djinana had thought of it, whether Banichi or Jago had told him, or whoever had thought of it, it wasn’t going to lie there with everything it held for atevi to find and interpret out of context, and he wasn’t going to have to ask for it and plead for it back from Cenedi’s possession.
“Djinana-ji,” he said, with the appalled realization that if he was leaving and getting to safety this morning, Malguri’s staff wouldn’t have that option, not the servants whose man’chi belonged to Malguri itself. “They’re saying people down in Maidingi are coming up here looking for me. That two aijiin are supporting an attack on Malguri. You surely won’t try to deal with this yourselves, nadi. Capable as you may be—”
Djinana laid his load on the table. “The staff has no intention of surrendering Malguri to any ill-advised rabble.” Djinana whisked out a comb and brush from his kit, and came to his chair. “Forgive me, nand’ paidhi, please continue your breakfast—but they’re in some little hurry, and I can fix this.”
“You’re worth more than stones, Djinana!”
“Please.” Djinana pushed him about in the chair, pushed his head forward and brushed with a vengeance, then braided a neat, quick braid, while he ate a piece of bread gone too dry in his mouth and washed it down with bitter tea,
“Nadi-ji, did you know why they brought me here? Did you know about the ship? Do you understand, it’s not an attack, it’s not aimed at you.”
“I knew. I knew they suspected that you had the answer to it.—And I knew very soon that you would never be our enemy, paidhi-ji.” Djinana had a clip from somewhere—the man was never at a loss. Djinana finished the braid, brushed off his shoulders, and went and took up his coat. “There’s no time to change clothes, I fear, and best you wait until you’re on the plane. I’ve packed warm clothing for a change this evening.”
He got up from the chair, turned his back to Djinana, and toward the window. “Are they sending a van up?”
“No, paidhi-ji. A number of people are on their way up here now, I hear, on buses. I truly don’t think they’re the ones to fear. But you’re in very good hands. Do as they say.” Djinana shoved him about by the shoulder, helped him on with the coat, and straightened his braid over the collar. “There. You look the gentleman, nadi. Perhaps you’ll come back to Malguri. Tell the aiji the staff demands it.”
“Djinana,—” One couldn’t even say I like. “I’ll certainly tell him that. Please, thank everyone in my name.” He went so far as to touch Djinana’s arm. “Please see that you’re here when I come visiting, or I’ll be greatly distressed.”
That seemed to please Djinana, who nodded and quietly took his leave past a disturbance in the next room—Ilisidi’s voice, insisting, “They won’t lay a hand on me!”
And Cenedi’s, likewise determined:
“ ’Sidi-ji, we’re getting out, damned if they won’t come inside! Shut up and get your coat!”
“Cenedi, it’s quite enough to remove him out of range…”
“Giri, get ’Sidi’s coat! Now!”
The guards’ eyes had shifted in that direction. Nothing of their stance had altered. He gathered up his change of clothes and wrapped it about his computer, waiting with that in his arms and his kit in his hand, listening as Cenedi gave orders for the locking of doors and the extinguishing of fires.
But Djinana’s voice, distantly, said that the staff would see to those matters, that they should go, quickly, please, and take the paidhi to safety.
He stood there, the center of everyone’s difficulty, the reason for the danger to Malguri. He felt that the absolute least he could do was put himself conveniently where they wanted him. He supposed that they would go out through the hall and down; he ventured as far as the door to the reception room, but Cenedi burst through that door headed in the opposite direction, bringing Ilisidi with him, on a clear course toward the rearmost of Ilisidi’s rooms, with a number of guards following.
“Where’s Banichi?” he tried to ask as they went through the bedroom, with the guards trailing him, but Cenedi was arguing with Ilisidi, hastening her on through the hallways at the back of the apartments, to a back stairs. A man he thought he recognized from last night stood at the landing, holding a weapon he didn’t know, shoving shells into the butt from a box on the post of the stairs.
That gun wasn’t supposed to exist. He had never seen that man on staff in Malguri. Banichi and Jago, and presumably Tano and Algini, with them, had gone somewhere he didn’t know, a mob wanted to turn him over to rebels against Tabini—and they were bound down to the back side of Malguri, down, he realized as Cenedi and Ilisidi opened the doors onto shadowed stone—to a stairway beside the stable, where the hisses and grumbling of mecheiti out in the courtyard told him how they were leaving Malguri, unless they were taking this route only to divert pursuit—
This is mad, he thought as they came out onto the landing overlooking the courtyard, seeing that the mecheiti were rigged out in all their gear, with, moreover, saddle packs and other accoutrements they’d never used on their morning rides.
This isn’t two hundred years ago. They’ve planes, they’ve guns like that one back on the stairs…
Something exploded, shaking the stones, a vibration that went straight to his knees and his gut. Someone wasn’t waiting for the mob in the buses.
“Come on!” Cenedi yelled up at them from the courtyard, and he hurried down the steps, with some of Cenedi’s men behind him, and the handlers trying to get the mecheiti sorted out.
It was a crazed plan. Reason told him it was beyond lunacy to take out across the country like this. There was the lake. They might have arranged a boat across to another province.
If the provinces across the lake weren’t the ones in rebellion,
A second explosion hammered at the stones. Itisidi looked back and up, and swore; but Cenedi grabbed her arm and hurried her along where handlers held Babs waiting.
He spotted Nokhada, darted, arms encumbered, among the towering, shifting bodies; and wondered how he was to load the saddle packs with his bundled clothes and the computer, but the handlers took his belongings from him.
“Careful!” he said, wincing as the handler almost dropped the computer, the weight of which he hadn’t anticipated. His computer went into one bag, the clothes and the kit went into the other, on the other side of Nokhada’s lean and lofty rump, Nokhada fidgeting and fighting the rein. The mecheiti this morning all had a glimmer of brass about the jaw, not blunt caps on the rooting-tusks, but a sharp-pointed fitting he’d seen only in machimi—brass to protect the tusks.
In war.
It was surreal. The fighting-brass was, with Nokhada’s head-butting tendencies, not a weapon he wanted to argue with or even stay on the ground with. He took the rein one handler gave him, couldn’t manage it with the sore arm, shifted hands and hit Nokhada with his fist, trying to make the creature drop a shoulder. Riders all around him were already up. Nokhada objected, fidgeted up again, and resisted a second order, circling him, wild-eyed in all the surrounding haste and excitement. That was how things were going to go, he thought, unsure he could restrain the creature in an emergency—scared of its strength and that jaw as he hadn’t been since the first.
“Nadi,” a handler said, offering a hand, and atevi strength snared and held the rein.
He grabbed the mounting-strap, relied on the unceremonious shove of the handlers, shoved his foot in the stirrup on the way up and landed, sore-boned, and with a wrench of his sore shoulders, on the pad, with his heart pounding. He took a quick fistful of rein to bring Nokhada under control in the general confusion, as someone opened the outward gate.
Cold morning wind blasted through the court, stinging his face as all the mecheiti began to move. He looked distractedly for Babs and Ilisidi. He brought Nokhada another circle, and Nokhada found a fix on Babs before he even saw Ilisidi.
He couldn’t hold Nokhada, then, with Babs headed for the gate. Nokhada shouldered other mecheiti and struck a loping pace in Babs’ wake, into the teeth of an incoming gust that felt like a wall of ice.
The arch passed around him as a blur of shadow and stone. The vast gray of the lake was a momentary, giddy nothingness first in front of him and then at his right as Nokhada veered sharply along the edge and up the mountainside.
Follow Babs to hell, Nokhada would.