Foreigner

Banichi looked at him, and for one dreadful moment, he had the feeling what it must be to face Banichi… professionally.

But Banichi turned then, grasped the highest of the straps on the riding-pad, and with a jump that belied his size and weight, managed to get most of the way up without even needing the mecheita to drop the shoulder. Jago gave him the extra shove that put him across the pad and Banichi caught up the rein, letting the splinted leg dangle.

Banichi didn’t need his help. Atevi didn’t have friends, atevi left each other to die. The paidhi was supposed to reason through that fact of life and death and find a rationale other humans could accept to explain it all.

But at the moment, with bruises wherever atevi had laid hands on him, the paidhi didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, refusedto understand why Banichi should have died back there, for no damned reason, or why Banichi was lying to him, too.

Men were getting up, ready to move out. If he wasn’t on Nokhada, Nokhada would leave him, he had no doubt of it, they’d have to come back to get the reason—he still supposed—of this whole exercise, and nobody was going to be damned happy with him. He quickened his pace, limped across the slant of the hill and caught Nokhada.

Then he heard the tread of someone leading a mecheita in his tracks across the sodden leaves. He faced around.

It was Jago. A very angry Jago. “Nadi,” she said. “You don’t have the only valid ideas in the world. Tabini-ji told you where to be, what to do. You do those things.”

He shoved up the rain-cloak plastic and the sleeve of his coat, showing the livid marks still on his wrist. “That, for their hospitality last night, that, for the dowager’s questions—which I’ve answered, Jago-ji, answered well enough that theybelieve me. It’s not my damn fault, whatever’s going on. I don’t know what I’ve done since the dowager’s apartment, that you look at me like that.”

Jago slapped him across the face, so hard he rocked back against Nokhada’s ribs.

“Do as you’re told!” Jago said. “Do I hear more questions, nadi?”

“No,” he said, tasting blood. His eyes were watering. Jago walked off from him in his blurred vision and got on her mecheita, her back to him the while.

He hit Nokhada harder than his wont. Nokhada dropped her shoulder and stayed down until he had his foot in the stirrup and landed astride. He kicked blindly, angrily, after the stirrup, fought the rain-cloak out of his way as he felt Nokhada jolt into motion. A low vine raked his head and defensive arm.

Jago hadn’t hit with all her force—left the burn of her hand on his face, but that was nothing. It was the anger— hers and his, that found a vital, painful spot and dug in deep.

He didn’t know what he’d said—or done. He didn’t know how he’d come to deserve her temper or her calculated spite, except Jago didn’t like the questions he’d asked Banichi. He’d trod on something, a saner voice tried to say to him. He might have vital keys if he shut down any personal feeling, remembered exactly what he’d asked, or exactly what anyone had said. It was his job to do that. Even if atevi didn’t want him doing it. Even if he wasn’t going to get where they promised him he was going.

He lost the hillside a moment. He was on Ilisidi’s balcony, in the biting wind, in the dark, where Ilisidi challenged him with facts, and the truth that he couldn’t trust now to be the truth, the way he couldn’t pull the pieces of recent argument out of his memory.

He was on the mountain, alone, seeing only the snow—

On the rain-drenched hillside, with Jago deserting Banichi, cursing him for going after her own partner—and in the smoke, with the ricocheting bullets left and right of him.

The cellar swallowed him, a moment of dark, of helpless terror—he didn’t know why the images tumbled one over the other, flashed up, replacing the rainy thicket and the sight of Ilisidi and Cenedi ahead of him.

The shock of last night had set in—a natural reaction, he told himself, like the details of an accident coming back, replaying themselves over what was going on around him—only he wasn’t doing it in safety. There wasn’t any safety anywhere around him. There might never be again, only the bombs had stopped falling, and he had to focus and deal with what was ringing alarm bells through the here and now.

Banichi had challenged Ilisidi on the preparation of those bombs for a reason.

Banichi wasn’t a reckless man. He’d been probing for something, and he’d gotten it: Ilisidi had come back on him with a What do you know? and Banichi had claimed to know nothing of Tabini’s plans, implicitly challenging Ilisidi again to take himto that cellar and see what they could get.

Where was Banichi’s motive in the confrontation? Where was Ilisidi’s in the question, with so much tottering uncertain?

Putting Tabini’s intentions in question…