It was a long, long ride at a fair clip after that. Nokhada disliked eating dust and fought to get forward, which Bren fought to prevent, not wishing to leave Jase alone, even if the spacing necessary to the mechieti for their sheer body size made conversation difficult.
That meant that the strangers to Ilisidi's company all rode in a knot that strung out at times, but never broke entirely apart so long as Bren kept a tight rein on Nokhada, who eventually seemed to resign herself to the notion that due to some failure of ambition or temporary insanity on her rider's part they were not going to dash forward and attempt to occupy the same space as Cenedi's mechieta — for maybe this little while.
Ilisidi, meanwhile, ignored them to hold consultation with the armed young men who took her orders, and one or the other would fall back to the rear guard. Bren kept glancing at the horizons, asking himself what was going on. There was no recourse to the pocket corns, nothing to indicate any problem. But something had changed.
There was a wicked, angry streak in this woman, not just in a human opinion but in two species' ways of looking at it. Ilisidi had been genial at the dinner last night; that was the velvet over the steel. Ilisidi was the gracious lady, the lame old woman — and the aristocrat, lord of her scaffold-supported hall. She'd arranged that crystal-laden table simply because it was difficult, and because her staff, too, did the impossible at her whim.
This morning she'd ceased to make things difficult for her staff and, astride Babsidi, whose four strong legs carried her with more speed, agility and strength than any man alive, she began to make things difficult for them. It was her way of saying to the world, he began to think, Those who follow me have to follow at disadvantage and difficulty. It was the condition of her life. She was not aiji. But those who served her treated her wishes as if she were.
And to the powers around Tabini she said, When you who rejected me as aiji suddenly want my help, damn you all, you'll bleed for it.
So the aiji's security (along with the paidhiin, who were excused from the normal considerations of man'chi and courtesies due, but not from the suffering part of it) didn't get full information from her, either: they were simply supposed to follow in blind obedience whenever fortune and chance, those devils of Tabini's designs, put his agents temporarily under her instructions.
That was one way Bren summed it up, having seen it in operation at Malguri and again in the Padi Valley.
Or possibly it was nothing of retribution on Tabini at all.
Perhaps it was just the native style of the old-fashioned, unabashed atevi autocrat she was — as old-fashioned in some ways as the fortress of Malguri off in the east — to make them follow her only under her terms.
As if, ateva to the core, she proved the direction not only of the man'chi of the mechieti she lent them, but that of the men she led.
Bren reasoned his way to that precarious point, while slowly stretching muscles he only used when he skied and when he rode, and bruising points of contact he only contacted when he rode. He'd asked for it. He'd asked for it for good reasons, but he'd forgotten how badly one could ache after a ride with Ilisidi.
There was, however, the suffering of the boy from Dur, who now rode with inexpert desperation and, being taller, leaned more, with a more committed center of gravity.
The boy from Dur fell off, and fortunately held to the harness on his way down.
The dowager kept going, as Bren reined in, as the boy's mechieta tried to keep going, as Banichi and one of Ilisidi's men reined in and Jago went on with Jase, who had no success stopping Janari at all: if the herd was going, Jase was going.
"Bren!" Jase called back in alarm, as if he were being kidnapped.
The boy from Dur meanwhile proved that one of atevi weight and from a standing start (or from upside down with one foot still in the bend of the mechieta's neck and the other on the hither side of the beast, while hanging onto the saddle straps) could not leap or even crawl back into the saddle. To a likely devotee of television machimi, it was surely an embarrassment.
"I'd get off," Banichi said dryly, as he, Bren, and Ilisidi's man Haduni all watched from mechieta-back. "I'd make him kneel and get up from the ground."
One suspected if anyone could do the television trick, Banichi might, but the boy from Dur gave up his foothold on the mechieta's neck and hopped to the ground, whereupon the mechieta decided he was through for the day and decided to wander off.
The boy was clearly mortified, took a swat with the riding crop while holding to the rein and the mechieta bolted, jerking the rein from the boy's hand and flinging him flat.
Haduni rode after the mechieta, which was on its way to join the herd.
The boy nursed a sore palm and bowed and bowed again.
"I'm sorry, nandi. I'm very sorry."
"Shouldn't have hit him," Banichi said. "That's for running."
"Yes, nadi." The boy, a lord's son, bowed, clearly in pain.
Meanwhile Haduni had caught the mechieta and brought it toward them.
Banichi tapped a strap on his mechieta's saddle. "Hold and tuck up," Banichi said, and that was something Bren had seen in the machimi, too. For the short distance they had to go, the boy held to the saddle strap while Banichi swung to the other side and counterbalanced, and they met Ilisidi's man and the recovered mechieta.
Then the two men gave the boy a very quick lesson on how to get the mechieta's attention with a tug on the rein, where to touch the crop to get it to kneel, how fast to get his foot into the stirrup, and how to use the animal's momentum to settle on, with what tension of the rein. It was familiar stuff. And it was a good lesson, which the boy from Dur seemed to take very gratefully.
"Very much better, nandi," Ilisidi's man said.
"You have a chance," was Banichi's judgment, and they set off at a brisk clip toward the rest, who were now over the horizon of a land that didn't look all that rolling. But it was. And the dowager, Jago, Jase, and the rest were as invisible as if they'd sunk into the sparse, gravel-set vegetation.
It wasn't the only time they had to stop for the boy from Dur, whose mortification was complete when, at one such crisis, the mechieta led him a chase, body-length by body-length, as it grazed on the fine spring growth and the boy would almost lay hands on it only to have it move on.
There was laughter.
"Someone should help him, nadi," Jase said, as if suggesting he should do it; but Bren shook his head. "They laugh. If they meant ill, they wouldn't. If the boy laughed it would be graceless and impudent."
"Why?"
"Because, nadi, it would signal his mastery of the matter." The mechieta eluded the boy another body-length, and the boy this time made a sprint for it. The mechieta, almost caught by surprise, bolted, and the boy went sprawling, clutching his leg. There was laughter at that, too, but fainter, and one of the men got down to see to the boy and another chased down the errant mechieta.
"Good try, boy," the dowager said. "Bad timing."
The boy, clearly in pain, bowed. "Thank you, nand' dowager." And limped over to the mechieta the man brought back for him. He properly had it kneel, had it hold the posture, the lesson of his last fall, and got on with dignity.
"Good," Ilisidi said shortly, and Bren guessed there was — if not devotion forming in a young atevi heart, for atevi reasons: man'chi would determine that — at least a knowledge that respect could be won from her.
As good as a ribbon, that was. A badge of honor.
"Nandi," the boy said, and bowed with a modern conservatism, not going so far as the arm-waving extravagance of the riders of such beasts on the television. He managed not to look foolish.
From Jase there was silence. If they were lucky, Bren said to himself, there was deep thought going on.
Midafternoon. There was one break for, as the atevi put it, necessity, at which they all dismounted (it was Banichi's comment that in less civilized days they didn't dismount at all) and went aside with two spades from the packs, men to one side of a small rise, women to the other.
"Nadi," Jase said in a faint, unhappy voice, "I can't do this."
"You'll be terribly sorry in a few hours if you don't," Bren said with no remorse at all, and Jase reconsidered his options and went and did what he had to do.
He came back happier. Embarrassed, but happier. They rejoined the dowager and Jago, the mechieti having waited quite happily without a boy chasing them. Babsidi came to the dowager's whistle, and riders sorted the rest out.
The boy from Dur and Jase were the last up, but they managed on their own.
Definitely better, Bren said to himself, safe and lord of all he saw, from Nokhada's lofty back; and Babsidi started moving, which meant Nokhada had to try to catch him.
He let Nokhada win for a while. Jase was doing well enough back there, and was not slowing them down.
At no time yet had they hit an all-out run: they had mechieti carrying the packs, and that, he began to realize, was the primary reason. But the pace they did strike ate up the ground.
They were going west. And they reached a point that the sun burned into their eyes, and still the mechieti kept that steady gait.
He had shut his eyes to save them pain from the light when a hitch in Nokhada's rhythm warned him of change ahead, and his eyes flashed open as they topped a low roll of the land.
The horizon had shortened. The land fell away here into golden haze.
The sea stretched out in front of them hardly closer than they'd seen from the plane. Rocky hills across a wide bay were only haze. An island in blued grays rose from the golden sheet of water.
The mechieti stopped as Babsidi stopped, on the rim of the land.
"That's Dur!" the boy said, and added meekly, in courtesy, "nand' dowager."
"That it is," Ilisidi said, and signaled Babsidi to go down. She was quicker to dismount than Cenedi, snatching her cane from the loop in which she had kept it, and with a hand on Babsidi instead of the cane, waved the stick at the immediate area. "Make camp."
"What direction are we facing?" Jase asked quietly.
"West. That's the sun. Remember?"
Jase pointed more directly at the sun, which was slightly to their left, and near a knoll of rock and gravel that shadowed dark against the sun and broke the force of the wind. "That's west."
"North." Bren signaled the direction. "We're facing west northwest."
"West north," Jase said.
"West northwest."
It wasn't a concept Jase got easily. But Jase repeated it. "West northwest. Dur to the north and west. Mospheira west. Shejidan is tepid."
"South. Actually southeast."
"South," Jase amended his pronunciation. "East. Can the mechieti go down to the sea?"
"On a road or a trail they can. Trail. Small road." He didn't see one at the rim, which looked sheer to his eyes. "But we've done enough traveling for the day. Supper. I hope." In fact the order was going out now to make camp, and he heaved a sigh, feeling a definite soreness that was going to be hell tomorrow.
"She said sit down?" Jase had heard it too.
"Settle for the night, nadi. Camp is the word." Talking with atevi was a constant battle to have the numbers felicitous. Talking to Jase was a continual questioning of one's memory on what words Jase knew would carry a thought.
"We go down to the sea in the morning."
"Nadi, remember manners. Don't bring up the matter at supper. The dowager gives. She won't have things demanded of her or she'll say no. Face."
Jase was disturbed. But he mended his manners, made his face void of thoughts, and bowed slightly. "Nadi. I shall remember. North. Northwest. South. Southeast. Is there a northeast, nadi?"
"There." He pointed. "Taiben is in the northeast. Southwest is Onondisi Bay. This water is Nain Bay."
"I know. It was on the map."
Nain Bay was on the map. The sun wasn't. And Shejidan was tepid.
One hoped, Bren said to himself, that this whole adventure would express itself only in Jase's striking vocabulary. He hoped the night to come would be quiet, that the vans had been the caterers', that Tano and Algini had stayed to manage the details of a welcome-home banquet — all possible — and that none of the things added up the way they might.
"Also," he said, trying to think of everything with a man for the first time loose among the hazards of the outdoors, "nadi, be very careful of the cliff edge. Weather weakens the edge, do you understand? The earth could crumble and you could fall a long way if the edge is weak."
"Then how do we get down?" Jase asked.
"Carefully," Bren said. "And on a road if one exists. That's what one does with roads."
The packs began to come off the mechieti. Canvas bundles came down.
And sprang up rapidly as tents — spring-framed, modern tents, arising with blinding quickness.
For a woman who favored the ancient, Ilisidi certainly didn't disdain the latest in camping gear. He knew those atevi-scale tents. Northstar, the same brand of Mospheiran-made tenting that had served Mospheiran campers for generations, was a big export item to the mainland in atevi scale, a very, very popular export that helped Mospheira secure aluminum. The paidhi's mind was full of such helpful eclectic data.
But a tent like this modern thing of aluminum and nylon certainly wasn't what he expected the dowager to be using. And in hunting camouflage, not the house colors. They sprang up, arched, immediate, ground-sheeted, and pegged down with toothed lightweight pegs that went into soft ground like this like daggers into crusted bread.
"What are we going to do?" Jase asked, he thought somewhat obtusely, and he answered with a little impatience: "I suppose we're going to have supper, nadi-ji."
The packs gave up not only tents, but well-packed modern thermal storage, so there was no need of fire, and the mechieti, grazing, wandered off to join the mechiet'-aiji and to have Ilisidi's men take off their harnesses.
Jason sat himself down on a hummock of grass and was examining a stem of bristle-weed as if it were of significance — and of course it was a curiosity, to him. The boy from Dur, Rejiri, had appeared to settle on Jase as a person of great interest and minimal threat and, having nothing else to do, had settled down opposite Jase, the boy talking to him rapidfire in a way that looked to have Jase engaged but confused. There was no knowing what Jase said, but Jase looked embarrassed, and the boy laughed.
But, Bren said to himself, Jase could handle himself. The boy who'd nearly bashed a plane into him wasn't one to talk about taking offense at the paidhiin.
He could draw breath, at least, and allot concern about Jase to someone else as the sunset, beyond the picturesque spire of rock, drowned in a bank of leaden cloud.
He walked about at peace and off duty, stretching out muscle — doing nothing for bruises near the bone, but it did seem to prevent the worst stiffness. Banichi and Jago were talking with Cenedi; Ilisidi was talking to three of her young men who were about to set out the thermal containers. As a rough camp, it was a lot more grand than the night they'd spent dodging bombs in Maidingi's hills.
And there was still nothing ominous on the horizon behind them. One could hope, maybe.
They were up here, notably, with the establishment at Mogari-nai, which had not made Tabini happy. And if they were up here to rattle the foundations of Mogari-nai and the Messengers' Guild, that Guild was not a warlike crew. Their hostilities mostly expressed themselves in the paidhiin's fouled-up mail.
There was also the matter of the tower up by Wiigin, and the pilots and the communications regulations. That as well as the communications fallouts he was sure was on the agenda, if they were paying an official call on Mogari-nai, and he certainly didn't rule it out.
And if he got all that straightened out, he might possibly get another chance to make a phone call, this one with the weight of the aiji and the aiji-dowager behind him, to crack the phone system.
He wondered what had happened with his family now. No calls, he was reasonably sure, at least nothing that had gotten past Mogari-nai, through which the incoming calls from Mospheira were all routed. By the luck that dogged him in that department, there was a good chance any incoming call that Toby sent was hung up in politics. Ilisidi, if she was planning a housecleaning at Mogari-nai, couldn't head the agenda of the aiji of Shejidan with a query from the paidhi-aiji. It just wouldn't look right. But he might get that call through after other business was finished.
So he walked and he stretched his legs. He walked closer to the sea than he would have liked Jase to come, and he shouldn't have done it. Jase followed him, with the boy from Dur trotting along with him, pointing out the sights, telling them there was, approximately, Wiigin, in that haze across the bay, and there was Dur, one could just see the lights in the gathering gloom, and that was the fishing port, but his father's house at Dur-wajran, that was on the height of the island, which had been a fortress in the days of the first sailing ships, but the inhabitants of Saduri on the body of the mainland, with their deeply inland harbor, had attempted to take the trade, even if they'd had to dredge the bay, because of the deeper draft of modern ships.
It was all done with scarcely a breath. And Jase looked a little desperate.
"Supper," Jago came to say, "nadiin-ji."
They had set the tents in a semicircle, the back of each to the wind that escaped the knoll. The company settled down to a lightless supper as the dusk settled about them, and there was good hot food from the insulated containers.
There was also a wind getting up that, in Bren's estimation, was going to make two humans glad of their jackets and the insulated tents before morning. The synthetic canvas fluttered and rippled in the wind, and the clouds flew in rags above their heads, gray in an apricot sky.
The mechieti grazed in apparent contentment. Jago had stowed the computer, little good that it was besides mental comfort, and had put it in his tent. They passed out sandwiches and had tea from instant heat containers in insulated cups.
When the dowager wanted modernity, it attended her. Clearly so.
"So, Ja-son-paidhi," Ilisidi said. "How do you fare?"
"Well, nand' dowager, thank you." Jase was on his very best behavior, and bowed with courtly grace.
"And you, son of Dur-wajran?"
"I am well, nand' dowager. Very well."
"And you, nand' paidhi?"
"Curious, nand' dowager, about your purpose here."
"Ah." Dark was coming down on them. "Curious. I thought you might be. What do you think we're doing out here besides pasturing the mechieti and enjoying the sea air?"
"Annoying Mogari-nai."
He took a chance. He was relatively certain of that much.
And he amused the dowager, whose shoulders rose and fell as she leaned upon her silver-headed cane. "The earth station, they call it. This unsightly great bowl. An offense, I say."
"A shame they put it on such a lovely view. But how else could it also watch Mospheira?"
They sat crosslegged. On ground still cold and damp with spring. And ate fish sandwiches.
"Do you think so?" Ilisidi asked, and he had the feeling that it was no casual, habitual challenge, but a question very much to the point of the hour. "Let me tell you, nadiin, before the aijiin sat in Shejidan, before humans were a suspicion in the skies, before foolish atevi had made stupid smoking machines to run on rails across the country and frighten the creatures that lived there, and before that eyesore of an earth station existed or a petal sail had dropped down to annoy us, there was war in this place. Where we sit, there was death and bloodshed." Ilisidi held out her hand for a refill of her cup, and a young man ducked close and low to refill it. "Bones probably underlie this very hilltop. And do you know why, heir of Dur?"
"The island of Dur," the young voice said, "was held by the heresy of the Gan, and they used to send ships up and down the coast to collect gold and grain, and they killed anybody that opposed them. They held the whole coast and they raided on Mospheira. But aijiin from several townships began to follow the aiji of Wiigin, and they raided the island and set up — set up our line."
"Wiigin it was," the dowager mused. And pointed a dark forefinger. "Source of this traitorous tower, this hotbed of conspiracy."
"But now," the young man said, "nand' dowager, we follow the Barjidi."
"Since the War of the Landing. That now. Two hundred years of now."
"Since the War, nand' dowager." The boy had become very quiet, very wary, sensing that he was being stalked, Bren was sure, and asked himself to what end Ilisidi was proceeding.
"The petal sails came down on Mospheira," Ilisidi recalled, "the wandering machines tore up the land and the stones of the Gan, and for a time that was convenient for Barjida-aiji, that the last stronghold of the Gan should fall to such an unforeseen threat. The grandmother stones were downed not by fleshly hands, but by these reeking machines. Machines struck down the heresy."
"Yes," the boy said. "And all the atevi on Mospheira left and settled on this coast."
"Foolish politics," Ilisidi said. "The Gan lords attempted to deal with what they thought were men descended from the moon. And it killed them. Did it not, nand' paidhi?"
He did not want part of any quarrel, ancestral or otherwise. The atevi of the coast held just reasons for dislike of humans: many of them had moved off Mospheira to escape human contact, human ways; more had moved off when the War of the Landing had ravaged the island; the last had left when the Treaty of Mospheira had given the land to humans, the whole of a vast and once prosperous island.
"We did each other great harm, nand' dowager." A gust battered them.
"A good night to be under canvas," Ilisidi said. "And a strong wind rising. But what would you tell our guest from Dur, regarding humans? Should he fear them?"
Loaded question. Very.
"Yes, nand' dowager. At least one should remain prudent."
"Are all humans on the island reasonable people?"
"Some are, nand' dowager. Some are very well disposed to the peace. And I have discovered some are not."
It was an infelicity of two, unbalanced, positive and negative. It could not be allowed to stand. It was, in its way, a question. But by inviting the posing of two, the dowager had encouraged it. This was the difference between competency and fluency: this was the line he'd begun to cross in his off-the-cuff negotiations, the line across which humans who'd dared it had frequently blundered. He felt a kind of elation, aware of what he was doing as Wilson-paidhi never had figured it, aware the dowager was getting responses with which she could know she was understood.
And with a twist of her mouth, as at some sour taste, the dowager added,
"The Kadigidi are fools."
"I agree."
"It lastingly troubles me that I did not shoot that woman."
Direiso was a possibility. But he knew that woman had one meaning to Ilisidi. "Hanks-paidhi, aiji-ma?"
"Hanks." Definitely a sour taste. "Melon-headed, my ally, did I tell you?"
Jase had to wonder about his vocabulary.
"Lord Geigi?" Bren asked.
"One had an excellent chance to shoot Hanks-paidhi," Cenedi interposed. "And Geigi protected her."
"Melon-head," Ilisidi said.
"So what did happen, aiji-ma?" It was a point of his extreme curiosity. "One hears that there was breakage of small objects."
"Nothing of taste," Ilisidi said. "Oh, it was easy for Geigi to gain admittance to Direiso's estate. Direiso had offered Geigi money to pay off a certain"— a waggle of Ilisidi's fingers —"oil investment gone bad. Saigimi had the extreme impatience to call it due immediately. Saigimi's wife is, you may have heard, Geigi's cousin. And she held the financial note on the house at Dalaigi. She had no idea that Geigi dared come to me with the matter." By now a smile was tugging at Ilisidi's lips. "Silly mistake. And of course Direiso had involved herself with that detestable human woman who had embarrassed them all. Saigimi had taken her from the capital, so my sources say, and brought her to Direiso's estate somewhat against his will."
One had to be aware of the lord of Dur's son, who was sitting still as a stone. And themselves, Tabini's for certain, when Tabini himself had not been able to discover the things Ilisidi was saying.
Ilisidi held out her cup, and more tea arrived in it.
"Well, well, and having taken her from the capital before she spoke any more such foolishness and proposed death rays coming from the station," Ilisidi said, "he was of a notion to take her to his house in the Marid, from which she would only speak at his permission. Covering his embarrassment over the faster-than-light notion, as happened. When you were able to explain the paradox, it was clear that houses would topple, and not Geigi's. Meanwhile Direiso had gained Hanks as her guest. She called Geigi's cousin, Saigimi's wife, up to her house in the Padi Hills, and things were moving very rapidly. Murini, Direiso's heir, had gone to the Atageini — his nerve was weakening when it came to such an outrageous provocation of the aiji; but Tatiseigi locked him in a storeroom and refused to deal with him. Tatiseigi phoned me saying he had apprehended vermin in his cellar, meaning that he had some prisoner, of course, and was notifying me, and that was when that fool Saigimi shot up the lilies."
He felt his heart beating faster and faster.
"To be rid of me?" he asked in the silence the dowager left for a sip of tea.
"The action would at one stroke have embarrassed the Atageini, whom Saigimi saw as dangerous, and if it had eliminated you, who were seen as in my grandson's man'chi, it would have elevated the value of the human woman. They were planning an attack on nand' Jase at the landing site, and would thus have all the paidhiin, a situation which looked quite impressive.
"At this point I approached them to contest with Direiso — as Direiso privately thought — to try to take leadership of her movement, and sent Geigi as my emissary, having myself paid his debts not an hour before.
"But the transfer of funds had not reached Saigimi, who was, of course, out of his district, being involved with the lily matter. So he didn't know, need I say, that Geigi was free, and in my debt, and gave no warning when Geigi showed up to see whether the way was clear for me. Silly man, he thought Geigi had come to see his cousin, who was there for, well, safe-keeping in Direiso's care.
"It was quite a little conference. And, not wholly relying on Geigi's inexperienced judgment, why, I showed up at the door and asked admittance before Geigi had even made his report to me. The foolish woman was distracted from the back entry. I always said Direiso had no qualifications for high office. And she said she was electable as I am not. Well, well, she probably was electable, being of the Padi Valley and a westerner. If she didn't look a fool."
Now he knew why Ilisidi had spoken freely in front of the boy from Dur, who was probably terrified of hearing so much detail of conspiracy against the aiji.
Twice the national legislature had voted against Ilisidi becoming aiji in Shejidan, the story was, because she was believed apt to take bloody revenge on enemies in the legislature; twice that he knew of, now, Ilisidi had been involved in conspiracy that might have led to Tabini's overthrow, and this time had made a thorough fool of Direiso. If she had ever admitted what she had said in others' hearing, his security hadn't reported it and Tabini had professed to him not to know.
As Tabini might not know. Ilisidi would delight in putting Tabini in a place where he had to rely on her simply because maneuvering the aiji of Shejidan into such a position exercised muscles and gave the dowager pleasure, damned if not. The plague of my life, Tabini called her; and never, that he knew, never made a move against his grandmother.
"Dowager-ji," he said softly, "you are amazing."
"Ah, but I should have shot that woman."
"As seems now," Cenedi said, "but then — who knew what would come from the sky?"
Hedging her bets against the ship keeping its word. Cenedi hadn't revealed that, either, without the dowager's implied permission, but far fewer in this company would understand it in all its meaning.
"One needs ultimately," Ilisidi said, "to draw all these elements together. But this distasteful human woman, one takes it, with the help of the President of Mospheira, is continuing her meddling. She knew contacts. She knew where to send such messages to have them fall on willing ears. She evidently gathered such information quite freely while she was dealing with Saigimi — whose demise was timely. I dare say, timely."
What does that mean? he wondered in some distress, but consciously didn't frown.
The rags of cloud had flown over them. There was thunder, definitely, in the distance. The sky flickered over their heads, reminding one of metal tent frames and their situation at the crest of the promontory — save the knoll behind the tents.
"It was well done," Ilisidi said, and chuckled softly. "So was Badissuni's indigestion."
"Nand' dowager," Jago said as if she had received a compliment.
He at least had suspected. He was at least keeping up with situations. Badissuni might have joined Direiso in her adventurism in the north. Badissuni was in the hospital — but alive — and Ajresi still had Badissuni to worry about, so he was out of the game.
"Time for bed," Ilisidi said, and the woman who used a cane to get about and who had complained for years that she was dying used it now to lever herself up with smoother grace than a much younger human whose muscles had stiffened from sitting on the ground. "Early to rise," the dowager proclaimed, looked up, and smiled at the lightning. "Lovely weather. A new year. Spring on the coast." xl