Down a long hall to the side, dust everywhere — but the dust on the stone floor showed a clear track of feet having passed this way recently. Like bread crumbs in the wilderness, Bren thought to himself as he and Jase, behind Ilisidi's man, climbed a short flight of stairs where Banichi, following them, surely had to duck his head.
Jago had stayed behind in the downstairs, having something to do with Tano and Algini and the baggage in the second van, Bren thought.
The stone of the stair treads was bowed, worn by the use of atevi feet — old. Older than the use of cannon, perhaps. He wasn't sure how long it took to wear away stone. The floor above was stone, which he had learned from Malguri meant a barrel vault beneath, in this age predating structural steel.
The hall above had no windows, no light but what came from a lamp at the side of the stairs and what filtered up from the open door below. It was increasingly shadowy at the top of the stairs, pitch black down the hall, and the servant — if such he was: he looked very fit — opened the second door of a small row of doors, and showed them into a hole of a room, into which the thin stream of white daylight from a glassless window-slit showed the outlines of a bed and a table. The draft from that window was cool spring air. It moved languidly past them, doubtless to find the door downstairs.
The servant struck a match and light flared in a golden glow on an atevi face, atevi hands, a candle on a rough (but recently dusted) table. A small vase stood next the candle with three prickly-looking flowers that looked to be from the hillside. The wick took fire, and illumined a rubble stone wall, a deeply shadowed but smallish room, bare timbers helping the masonry hold up a doubtless weary roof.
"There are more candles," the servant said, and indicated a small wicker basket at the end of the same table. "And matches, nandiin. The dowager requests one have a caution of fire." The man presented him a small bundle of matches, neatly tied with ribbon. "One regrets that the inner halls are under restoration and not pleasant. Ordinarily, guests would be lodged there, but there are plenty of blankets. The accommodation is at the end of the hall and it does function. Please follow me."
The paidhi sensed intense unhappiness in Jase's silence and chose not to touch it off with a question. "Down the hall, then," he said, as cheerfully as he could. Banichi was waiting in the doorway, and one wondered whether he had had any warning.
Possibly Banichi was thinking, You fool, Bren-ji. But Banichi gave no hint at all in his mildly pleasant expression. It might be more comfortable than a rooftop in the much warmer peninsula. Might be. Marginally.
And this was the vacation spot he'd chosen.
The putative servant took several candles from the basket and lit the first from the lighted candle on the table, then carried it outside and lit another, which, as they all stood watching, doubtless with separate thoughts of the situation, the servant set in a wall-sconce.
"Nand' Banichi, your room, and nand' Jago's," the servant said, lit a candle and set it by that door to relieve the darkness of this tunnel; and so they went; the room for Tano and Algini was next.
On the other side of this hall, although there were doors, as best the paidhi could judge the geometry of the building he'd seen from outside there were no windows: the rooms they were not using must be little more than stone coffins with no source of light but the candle, rooms dependent on mortar imperfections or God knew what for ventilation. He supposed, since he had challenged Ilisidi to challenge Jase, they were lucky not to be lodged on that side of the hall.
And the euphemistically named accommodation? The servant opened the door on a room with cold spring daylight showing through a hole in the stone floor. With the stack of towels. And a dipper and bucket.
The servant explained, for Jase's benefit. The paidhi well understood. He wasn't sure Jase quite believed it was the toilet.
The one at Malguri had had indoor heat. This didn't. It had an updraft.
Malguri had had glass windows. Fireplaces in palatial suites, however old the plumbing. The distinction between Historical Site and Oldest Continuously Occupied Site began to come through to him with a great deal more clarity.
Jase hadn't said a word. He was probably in shock, and walked along tamely as they all retraced their steps, the supposed servant in the lead, back down the candlelit hall toward their room — their — singular room.
Their — singular — room, which to his memory had one — singular — and not very wide — bed.
It was not polite for a guest to complain of accommodations. It was just not done. One assumed one's host knew exactly what her guests were being put into, and one smiled and made no complaint.
He'd said trustingly to Ilisidi, in a private meeting in her luxurious study, in the Bu-javid apartment she maintained, "Aiji-ma, Jase doesn't understand atevi. You taught me. And I daren't go so far from the capital as Malguri. Might I impose on you, aiji-ma, to linger a little at Taiben this season? Perhaps to go over to the seashore and show Jase-paidhi the land as it was? I've promised him the sea. I've undertaken to provide him that — and your help would be best of all, aiji-ma."
There'd been one of those silences.
"What happened to 'Sidi-ji?' " Ilisidi had asked with a quirk of her age-seamed lips and a lift of a brow, meaning why didn't he use that familiar, intimate address he'd a number of times dared with her.
"I think," he'd said, knowing he was fencing with a very dangerous opponent, at a very unsettled time in the aiji's court, "I thought I should show some decency of address in such an outrageous request of your time, nand' dowager."
And Ilisidi had said, after an apparent moment of thought, one thin knuckle under a still-firm though wrinkled chin: "I think — I think that if you want the seashore, nadi, why, we should go to the seashore. Why not Saduri?"
He hadn't thought it was a site open to the public. He'd foolishly said so.
And: "We are not the public," Ilisidi had said, in that aristocratic mode that could move mountains.
So here they were. Tano, Jago, and Algini, with a number of putative servants, came up the steps at the end of the hall with a fairly light load of baggage.
"The rest of the baggage is going to be stored downstairs," Jago said cheerfully.
Bren didn't feel cheerful. Tano looked bewildered, and Bren didn't dare look at Jase, just depressed the iron latch on his door to let their personal luggage in.
"Is there a key for this door, nadi?" he asked Ilisidi's servant.
"No, nand' paidhi. That room has no lock. But one assures you, the entire perimeter of this site is very closely guarded, so one may be confident all the same."
Bren rather expected Banichi or Jago to say something caustic about that situation. But by that example, and their silence, he wondered whether their rooms had locks.
One servant took his and Jase's baggage in. Jago handed him his computer, which was not going to find a recharge socket in this building, but which he on no account allowed to remain outside his immediate guard, especially in a premises occupied by uncle Tati-seigi. That servant left. He walked in, Jase walked in, and he shut the door, leaving them in the white daylight from the window and the golden glow from the candle, which had by a whisper of a flame survived that gust from the closing door.
"Nadi," Jase began with, he thought, remarkable restraint, "what are they doing? Why are we here?"
"Well," he said, and tried to think of words Jase knew.
"I," Jase began again, this time in his own language. He was clearly now fighting for breath — and probably falling down that interlinguistic interface again.
Bren said sharply, "I'm sorry."
"Where is the ocean, nadi?"
"Clearly not here. Let me explain."
"In my language! Please!"
He'd said that in Ragi. Which said Jase was at least getting the reflexes under control.
"Five fast minutes, then, in Mosphei'. You remember how dangerous I said Tatiseigi was? — Well, the aiji-dowager is the focus of every anti-Tabini dissident in the country. She has the legitimacy Tatiseigi doesn't. Except for the legislature voting the other way after her husband died, she could have been aiji. Except for them voting for her grandson after her son died, she could have been aiji. She could step in tomorrow without the country falling apart, and she's the only one who'd avoid an unthinkable bloodbath, but she's also —" One was never sure a room lacked bugs. And was always playing for an audience. "She's also fair and honorable. She's been exceedingly moral in all her dealings with the welfare of the Association. It would have been a lot easier for her to have raised a civil war against her grandson. But she didn't, and I'm alive to say so. So keep objections to a minimum. And for God's sake don't make any objections to her. I asked her to show you atevi life as it was before humans came!"
"This is it, then, this falling-down ruin?"
"You listen to me, Jase."
Jase shoved him, hard, and he grabbed Jase's coat to prevent a swing at him.
"I've been listening to you," Jase said, trying to free himself, and shoved again.
"You're being stupid, stupid is what you're being! Stand still!"
Jase clawed at his hand and he let go. And they stood and stared at each other, Jase panting for breath, himself very much on the verge of hitting him, someone, anyone.
"All right," Jase said. "All right, I'll go along with this. I'll play your rules, your game, let's just keep smiling."
"Let me explain, before we switch languages again. If you insult this woman, you could have a war. If you insult this woman you could be killed. I am not exaggerating. We are dealing with cultural differences here. We are dealing with people who don't owe anything to whatever code of ethics lies in our mutual past. So whatever happens, you get a grip on that temper, Mr. Graham. You get a grip on it or I'll suggest to our staff they feed you some tea that'll have you throwing up your guts for three days and ship you back to the apartment before you say something to kill several million people! Do I make myself clear?"
"No guts yourself?"
"No brains, Mr. Graham? If I hit you, and I'm tempted, God! I'm tempted; they'll see the bruises — which I'd rather not, for your reputation and future —"
Jase swung. Bren didn't even think about doing it — he hit Jase hard. Jase grabbed his coat, Bren blocked a punch with one arm, hit Jase in the gut, and had to block another punch.
They hit the table together, holding on to each other. The candle fell, they both overbalanced and went down, and Bren writhed his way to his knees, blind, angry, and being hit by an idiot he wanted to kill. Before he got a grip on Jase, Jase got a grip on him, and they knelt there on the floor like two total fools, each with a deathgrip on the other's coat, sleeve, arm, shoulder, whatever.
"Get up," he said. "We've put the damn candle out. Are you trying to burn the building down?"
"Damn you."
He shook at Jase. Jase was braced. They were that way for several more breaths.
"Are they going to walk in and find us like this?" he asked Jase. "Get up!"
"Let go."
"No way in hell."
"Truce. Let go."
He didn't let go. He started to get up, Jase started to get up, and they got up leaning on each other, still holding on to each other, managing a slow, mistrustful disengagement.
Fool, he said to himself. He wasn't surprised. He wasn't happy, either, as he trusted Jase's common sense enough to pick up the candles, the extinguished one in the holder and the entire basket of them that had been overset.
He took a match, relit the candle. They'd delivered body blows, at least of those that had landed; and hadn't done each other visible damage, give or take dust on their clothes. The candle and the wan light from the window showed him Jase with hair flying loose, collar rumpled, a sullen look. He figured it had as well be a mirror of himself at the moment.
"We have to go to dinner tonight."
"In this wreckage?"
"This is a Historic Monument, Jasi-ji, and I suggest if she declares it's a palace on the moon you bow and agree that it's very fine and you're delighted to be here."
There was a long silence from the other side.
"Yes, sir," Jase said.
"I'm not sir."
"Oh, but I thought you'd taken that back. You are sir or you aren't in this business, so make up your mind!"
"Damn that talk. This is not your ship. You're supposed to be doing a job, you're not doing it, you damn near created a rift in the government and I brought you here to patch the holes, the gaping holes, in your knowledge of these people, their customs, their language, and your sensitivity to a vast, unmapped world of experience to which you're blind, Mr. Graham. I suggest you say thank you, put yourself back to rights, and don't expect atevi to do the job you volunteered for. They weren't born to understand you, they're on their planet, enjoying their lives quite nicely without your input, and I suggest if you approach atevi officials who owe their precious scant time to their own people, you do so politely, appreciate their efforts to understand you, they choose to make such efforts, or I'll see you out of here."
"Thank you," Jase said coldly.
"Thank you for waiting to blow up."
"Don't push me. Don't push me. You need my good will."
"Do I? You could have an accident. They'd send me another."
There was a small, shocked silence. Then: "You're an atevi official. Is that the way you think of yourself?"
"You don't question me, mister. When it comes to relations with the atevi, I am sir, to you, and you do as you're told. You and your rules-following. This is the time for it, this is the time in your whole life you'd better follow the damn rules, and now you want to do things your own way! What do I need to diagram for you? Where did you get the notion you know what in hell's going on? Or did I miss a revelation from God?"
A long, long silence, this time. Jase didn't look him in the eye. He stared at the floor, or at dust on his clothing, which he brushed off, at the light from the window, at anything in the world but him.
"I think we should go back to Shejidan," Jase said to the window. "This isn't going to help."
"Well, it's not quite convenient at the moment to go back. You asked for this, and you've got it. So be grateful."
"The hell! You've lied to me."
"In what particular?"
A silence. A silence that went on and on while Jase stared off into nowhere and fought for composure.
There was a small rap at the door.
"Nadi?" Bren asked, wishing the interruption had had better timing, to prevent the incident in the first place. He shouldn't have hit Jase. It hadn't helped. The man had lost his father. He was on a hair-trigger as it was. He'd chosen this particular time to bear down on the language, probably because of his father's death; and now he didn't know where he was: he was temporarily outside rational expression.
The door opened.
"Is there a difficulty, nadiin?" Banichi asked — Banichi, who was lodged next door, and, if there was anyone besides Ilisidi's chief of security, Cenedi, who was likely to have heard the entire episode, he'd about bet Banichi had the equipment in his baggage and would use it.
"No," he said. "Thank you, Banichi-ji. Is everyone settled? What's our schedule?"
"A light dinner at sunset. An early start, at sunrise."
"We'll be ready. Thank you, Banichi-ji."
"Nadi." The door closed.
"He heard us," Bren said quietly.
"I thought they took orders from you," Jase said in a surly tone.
"No. They don't. One of a great many things you don't know, isn't it?"
Another small silence.
"You need to know, Jase. You'd better learn. I'm trying to help you, dammit."
"I'm sorry," Jase said then. "I'm just —"
Jase didn't finish it. Neither did he. He waited.
"I am sorry," Jase repeated, in Ragi. "Nadi, I was overturned."
"Upset," he said automatically and bit his lip. "Overturned, too, with reason. Jasi-ji. I know that. Can we recover our common sense?"
"Nadi," Jase said, "I wish to see the ocean. Will it be possible?"
"Nadi, you're very forward to keep asking me. If I were atevi I should be offended. Learn that."
A small hesitation. A breath. "Nadi, I take your information, but you are not atevi and I wish very much to know and not be surprised."
"I'll try to find out," Bren said. "There are things I don't understand." He hesitated to say so, but there were very quiet alarm bells ringing in the subconscious. "Observe a little caution. This is in excess of the conditions I expected. We are possibly in danger, nadi. One wonders if we have quite left behind the events in the city."
"Is this part of the lesson?"
Layers, upon layers, upon layers. "No," he said. "It isn't."
"Are you lying to me right now?"
"No," Bren said. "And of course, if I were, I would say I wasn't. But I'm not. I've turned us over to Tabini's grandmother, and I don't know what the truth is. The aiji thought us safe to be here. But I am, however mildly, concerned at the conditions. I can't say why I'm concerned. I just would expect — somewhat more comfort than we have here, more evidence that someone had some idea of the conditions here before the aiji-dowager took guests here." He wasn't sure Jase followed that. But there was something ticking over at the back of his brain now that he was no longer focusing on Jase's potential for explosion. That feeling of unease said that the dowager had security concerns, very reasonable security concerns, as did they. As did Mogari-nai, some distance away across the plain, which one would expect would be a very sensitive area; and they weren't seeing the security level at this place he had expected.
"Can you ask Banichi?"
"Within his man'chi, yes."
"Qualified yes."
"Always. It always is." It was the truth he gave Jase, and the answer was one that struck deep at what was human and what was atevi. He understood Banichi's priorities and took no offense at them. He wasn't in the mood to explain. He wasn't in the mood now to doubt his own security.
Just the dowager's.
Not a cheerful thought.
"Can you ask them what the schedule is?" Jase persisted.
"We were just told what the schedule is."
"For tomorrow, I mean."
He turned and fixed Jase with a glum stare. "I'll tell you a basic truth of atevi, nadi. If there were no real need for you to know that, yes, you could go, or I could go, and ask anyone around us. But because there is some question of good will here, and since that's why you need to know, no, it wouldn't be prudent to ask. Never make your hosts lie to you, Jasi-ji. Once that starts, you don't know what to believe."
"They're not lying?" Clearly Jase was not convinced.
"Not yet, I think. Not likely. But I haven't seen Cenedi. I haven't seen the dowager. I haven't seen anything but one servant, and our own security."
"What does that tell you?"
"Nadi, in response to your far too blunt question, it tells me either that people are busy because we've come here on short notice and quite clearly they've had to move even food up this hill to have anything on hand — or — there's something going on and they're too polite to offer us the possibility of a question."
"Meaning what?"
"Again too blunt, nadi." He was determined to push, in coldly correct, even kindly atevi fashion, to see whether Jase was capable of holding his temper. "But in response to your question, and in hopes your next question will be more moderate, they may avoid our presence rather than put themselves in the position of lying or us in the position of needing to be polite." He changed languages. "A new word for you: naigoch'lmi. It means feigned good will."
"Naigoch'imi. Is that what we're dealing with?"
"We? Now it's we? A moment ago you wanted to kill me."
"I wanted the truth, dammit. And I still don't know if this includes you."
"Is that the way they get the truth on the ship? With fists?"
A silence. Several small breaths. "I won't apologize, Bren."
"Fine."
Back into the ship's language. "Friendship wouldn't have hurt, you know. From the beginning, friendship wouldn't have hurt."
Now Jase wanted to talk. He'd had enough from his brother. And he wasn't in the mood for sentiment, dammit, he'd turned it off between him and Jase at the beginning.
"Frankly," he said with coldness that amazed himself, "I don't know that you've ever offered any such thing. Not since we first spoke on the radio before you came down here. You were bright, interested, pleasant. But since you landed, since then —"
"I tried!"
"And I have a job to do, which means hammering words into your head, like it or not — no, I'm not always pleasant. I can't be! You were a teacher — I'm not. So I do the best I can, even in the intervals when you had the luxury to be annoyed at me."
"So I've learned. I have learned."
"So you've worked at it. Good for you. You've also gotten mad. But I didn't have the luxury to be mad, no matter what you said, no matter what you did. So I've taken it. I've taken anything you wanted to hand out, because I know my way around, I have the fluency, and I'm used to being the diplomat in touchy situations. — But friends, no. A friend would have met me halfway. A friend would have advanced some understanding that I'm crowding teaching you into the spaces where — never mind my leisure time — the spaces where I was getting sleep, nadi. Friendship wasn't in the requirements, I haven't asked it and I damn sure haven't gotten it!"
"You don't give me a chance."
"It was your choice, from the first day you landed. You weren't pleased with me or anyone else. You've made no secret of it. You never have trusted me. Why are we talking about it now? What do you want from me?"
"I expected…" Jase stopped, a need for words, or just a shaky breath. "Things were not what you promised from the moment we landed!"
(Hanks yelling, Don't trust them! The whole plain afire. Atevi armed to the teeth and clear evidence of an armed conflict.)
"You had some reason to think that, I'll grant."
"And they're not what you said here!" Jase flung a gesture about him, at the stones, the situation. "Every time I trust you! Every damned time I trust you, Bren, something blows up in my face! You're the one that keeps the peace between your people and the atevi — but your people aren't speaking to you, have you noticed that?"
"You've trusted me once to come down," he said restrainedly, "and once to come here. At no other time have I asked you —"
"Oh, it's believe me, trust me, I know what I'm doing, every time I draw a breath, Bren! I trusted you into that damn party. I trusted you into that interview. Well, where in hell is the ocean?"
"You'll have to trust me again."
"I believed you enough to come down here! Do you know how many parachutes, Bren? Did you notice how many parachutes? The first chute failed, Bren!"
Jase outright ran out of breath. And seemed to want something in reply. He saw Jase's eyes fixed on him as they'd not steadied on anything in the chaos of the trip up.
"I know," he said. "I saw that. I'm glad you made it. I'm personally glad you made it. If that needs to be said."
"Personally glad."
"I wouldn't have wanted you to die."
"That's kind of you."
"What do I need to do? Name it for me. What would satisfy you?"
"An expression. Have an expression on your face. Tell me the truth for once."
The remark about his lack of expression stung: it was probably true. But it clarified the source of objections, too. "I've tried," he said with labored patience,
"to teach you a language and a way of dealing with this world. And you ignore my lessons. Your repeated insistence on questions I've pointedly ignored is rude in atevi eyes, and on such points of misunderstanding with atevi we began a war that killed a great many people. Do you understand that?"
"Then cure my misunderstanding. Why in hell are we on this hilltop, in this place?"
"For a good time. Which we will have. Relax."
"What are we down to? Trust me? Trust me, one more time?"
"Yes!"
"God." Jase ran a hand through his hair and walked to the window. Stark daylight painted him in white as he stood there staring out. And as he stood straight, as if he'd seen the devil. "There are mechieti out there!"
Atevi riding animals. Jase had had that experience on his first hour on the planet.
"Doing what, nadi?" he asked Jase.
"Eating the grass. Inside the wall."
"That's fine," Bren said. "They're the dowager's."
"What does she need them for?"
"Getting down to the sea, maybe."
"I'm not riding!"
"I think you'll do what she says," Bren said calmly. "Whatever it is. She's a lord far higher than I am. And this is, in all important senses, her land."
"Bren —" Jase turned, became a shadow against the white light of outdoors. There was a moment of silence. Then: "All right. All right. Whatever you say."
"We're here to enjoy ourselves. Make an effort at it. And get your wits about you. Complain to me in private if you must. Don't offend her. This is not a lesson. This is not an understatement. This is by no means a game."
Prolonged silence from the shadow in front of the light.
Then, coldly: "Oh, I don't take it for that, nadi."
It was sunset outside. The hilltop felt the chill of evening. But the fireplace functioned, the long table had a white cloth and the benches had folded blankets to keep the splinters from ruining clothes. There was crystal, there were candles, there was the aiji's banner, red and black, and the banner of Malguri, red and green, within the candle and firelight, and there was a respectable, even a splendid dinner in front of them. Ilisidi sat in the endmost seat; Banichi and Jago and Cenedi were seated, privilege of rank; Tano and Algini were seated but on duty, even here, so Banichi said; and the paidhiin were seated, one on one side, one on the other.
No one sat endmost to match Ilisidi. But then, no one ranked that high in the Association but the aiji himself.
There was pastry, there was a vegetable course — immense quantities disappeared, which Bren helped, and Jase discovered a vegetable dish he favored, clearly, while it remained a wonder where Ilisidi put the quantities she tucked away; certainly it wasn't evident on her spare and (for an ateva) diminutive frame.
It must go into sheer energy, Bren decided. For a while there was no discussion, only food, and then the main course arrived, the seasonal fare, which was fish, and a delightful tart berry sauce.
"So," Ilisidi said, "did you settle your disagreement, you two?"
The woman missed nothing.
"Jas-on-paidhi?"
"Nand' dowager, I am told not to talk except the children's language. I apologize for my inability in advance."
"Oh, risk it. I'm not easily shocked."
God, Bren thought. "Nand' dowager," he said. "Jase-paidhi is at a great disadvantage of vocabulary."
"As the nation heard." Ilisidi tapped her glass and a servant poured. "Water. Pure spring water. Perfectly safe. — But, do you know, Jase-paidhi, I would have bet against your learning the language so quickly. Yolanda-paidhi, on the island, of course, had no such requirement."
"No, nand' dowager."
"And she's been turning over the precious secrets — at a greater rate of speed?"
Pitfall, Bren thought and opened his mouth and didn't dare say a word.
"Not so, I think, if you please, nand' dowager. Engineering diagrams are the same with both the island and Bren-paidhi."
"One hears also of sad news from that quarter. One regrets your loss, Jas-on-paidhi."
Jase ducked his head. "Thank you for your good will, nand' dowager."
"And how is nand' Yolanda? Is she faring well? I get no news from my reprehensible grandson."
"I believe she is well, nand' dowager."
"You believe she is well."
Jase looked toward him, disturbed, likely not sure he'd followed her around that corner or used the right word. He had.
"He doesn't understand, nand' dowager," Bren said. And didn't add, thinking of those illicit radio transmissions, Nor do I.
"Oh, well. How do you find the fish, Jas-on-paidhi?"
"The fish is very good, nand' dowager."
"Good. — Such an innocent. What's it like on the ship, Jase-paidhi? Tell me. Satisfy an old woman."
"It's — a lot like being indoors."
"Oh, well, boring, then. Give me the open air, I say. Do you like it there?"
"I hope to go back there. When the ship flies, nand' dowager."
"And when will that be?"
"I'd say sooner rather than later, aiji-ma," Bren said, anxious to divert Ilisidi from her stalking and probing for reaction, one damned jab after another. She was not on her best behavior and she was enjoying every second of it.
"Another damned machine roaring and polluting the fields," Ilisidi said, and had a bite of fish. "Now, one could make a ship to go beneath the sea and see the wonders there. Have you ever thought of that, nand' paidhi?"
"It could be done," Bren said, and broke every law on the books.
"You might persuade me to go on a ship like that. I'm less sure about this spaceship. What do you think, nand' Jase?"
"About what, nand' dowager? I'm not sure I follow."
"Do you think I'm too old to fly on your ship?"
"No, nand' dowager. You ride. I'm sure you could fly."
"Wise lad. Flattery is the essence of politics. One wondered whether ship-folk are as wise as Mospheirans. Possibly they are."
"They can learn," Bren said, before Jase could think of words. "Don't you say yourself, aiji-ma, that he's quick?"
"Oh, not so quick as you, nand' paidhi."
"One tries, aiji-ma." It was a fencing match from start to finish. "So what do you have in store for us?"
"A brisk ride, a little outing. — More fish, nand' paidhi? I'll assure you simpler fare tomorrow."
He recalled Ilisidi's brisk rides and hoped Jase didn't break his neck. And had the other helping, taking that for a warning.
Jase, fortunately, said nothing. But seemed not to have as great an appetite.
"Well, well," Ilisidi began.
And of a sudden Banichi, Cenedi, and Jago were simultaneously leaving the benches in a fast maneuver, and Tano and Algini, rising, had guns visible in their hands. So did two of the servants. Something was beeping.
"Perimeter alarm," Cenedi said, with a slight sketch of a bow toward Ilisidi. And started giving orders to persons unseen in the room.
"Piffle," Ilisidi said, and rose slowly from the only chair. "What a pest!"
As a gunshot popped somewhere in the distance.
And Cenedi said, after recourse to his pocket com, "One individual. They have him."
"Him, is it?"
Oh, God, Bren thought with a sinking feeling.
"They haven't killed him, have they?" Bren asked, and held his breath until Banichi had asked and received an answer.
"No. He flung himself to the ground and surrendered. Quite wisely so, nadi."
Bren sat down again and had another sip of his drink.
The island of Dur was, he recalled from the map, off the northern coast of the promontory — down a great steep bluff that one would take for a barrier to sensible people. But it was there.
And after witnessing an ungodly persistence in a culture where a young man knew he was risking his life, he had a sinking feeling of a persistence that, measured against a minor air traffic incident, no longer made sense.