Foreigner

The last steps were a desperate, calculated rush for the toilet, scarcely in time to lose everything in his stomach, humiliating himself, but there was nothing he could do—it was three painful spasms before he could get a breath and flush the toilet.

He was ashamed, disgusted with himself. He ran water in the sink and washed and scrubbed and washed, until he no longer smelled the gunpowder on his hands, only the pungency of the soap and astringents. He thought Banichi must have left, or maybe called the night-servants to clean the bath.

But as he straightened and reached for the towel, he found Banichi’s reflection in the mirror.

“Nadi Bren,” Banichi said solemnly. “We failed you tonight.”

That stung, it truly stung, coming from Banichi, who would never humiliate himself as he had just done. He dried his face and rubbed his dripping hair, then had to look at Banichi face on, Banichi’s black, yellow-eyed visage as impassive and powerful as a graven god’s.

“You were brave,” Banichi said, again, and Bren Cameron, the descendant of spacefarers, the representative of six generations forcibly earthbound on the world of the atevi, felt it like a slap of Banichi’s massive hand.

“I didn’t get him. Somebody’s loose out there, with a gun or—”

“ Wedidn’t get him, nadi. It’s not your business, to ‘get him.’ Have you been approached by anyone unusual? Have you seen anything out of order before tonight?”

“No.”

“Where did you getthe gun, nadi-ji?”

Did Banichi think he was lying? “Tabini gave it…”

“From what placedid you get the gun? Was this person moving very slowly?”

He saw what Banichi was asking. He wrapped the towel about his shoulders, cold, with the storm wind blowing into the room. He heard the boom of thunder above the city. “From under the mattress. Tabini said keep it close. And I don’t know how fast he was moving, the assassin, I mean. I just saw the shadow and slid off the bed and grabbed the gun.”

Banichi’s brow lifted ever so slightly. “Too much television,” Banichi said with a straight face, and took him by the shoulder. “Go back to bed, nadi.”

“Banichi, what’s happening? Whydid Tabini give me a gun? Why did he tell me—?”

The grip tightened. “Go to bed, nadi. No one will disturb you after this. You saw a shadow. You called me. I fired two shots.”

“I could have hit the kitchen!”

“Most probably one shot did. Kindly remember bullets travel, nadi-ji. Was it not you who taught us? Here.”

To his stunned surprise, Banichi drew his own gun from the holster and handed it to him.

“Put that under your mattress,” Banichi said, and left him—walked on out of the bedroom and into the hall, pulling the door to behind him.

He heard the lock click as he stood there stark naked, with Banichi’s gun in his hand and wet hair trailing about his shoulders and dripping on the floor.

He went and shoved the gun under the mattress where he had hidden the other one, and, hoping Jago would choose another way in, shut the lattice doors and the glass, stopping the cold wind and the spatter of rain onto the curtains and the carpet.

Thunder rumbled. He was chilled through. He made a desultory attempt to straighten the bedclothes, then dragged a heavy robe out of the armoire to wrap about himself before he turned off the room lights and struggled, wrapped in the bulky robe, under the tangled sheets. He drew himself into a ball, spasmed with shivers.

Why me? he asked himself over and over, and asked himself whether he could conceivably have posed so extreme a problem to anyone that that individual would risk his life to be rid of him. He couldn’t believe he had put himself in a position like that and never once caught a clue of such a complete professional failure.

Perhaps the assassin had thought him the most defenseless dweller in the garden apartments, and his open door had seemed the most convenient way to some other person, perhaps to the inner hallways and Tabini-aiji himself.

But there were so many guards. That was an insane plan, and assassins were, if hired, not mad and not prone to take such risks.

An assassin might simply have mistaken the room. Someone of importance might be lodged in the guest quarters in the upper terrace of the garden. He hadn’t heard that that was the case, but otherwise the garden court held just the guards, and the secretaries and the chief cook and the master of accounts—and himself—none of whom were controversial in the least.

But Banichi had left him his gun in place of the aiji’s, which he had fired. He understood, clearer-witted now, why Banichi had taken it with him, and why Banichi had had him wash his hands, in case the chief of general security might not believe the account Banichi would give, and in case the chief of security wanted to question the paidhi and have him through police lab procedures.