“Doing what, nadi? I don’t think the aiji-ji has a thing to do with hardwares in Maidingi.”
He wasn’t amused. He leaned his back against the stones, folded his arms and fixed Banichi with an angry stare, determined to have it put, one way or the other. “You know,‘doing what.’ I could feel better if I thought it was policy. I don’t feel better thinking it might be something I’ve done, or trouble I’ve made for Tabini—I likehim, Banichi. I don’t want to be the cause of harm to him, or to you, or to Jago. It’s my man’chi. Humans are like that. We haveunreasonable loyalties to people we like, and you’re going far past the surface of my politeness, Banichi.”
“Clearly.”
“And I still likeyou, damn you. You don’t shake one of us, you don’t fling our likingaway because your man’chisays otherwise, you can’t get rid of us when we likeyou, Banichi, you’re stuck with me, so make the best of it.”
There wasn’t a clear word for like. It meant a preference for salad greens or iced drinks. But lovewas worse. Banichi would never forgive him that.
Banichi’s nostrils flared, once, twice. He said, in accented Mosphei’, “What meaning? What meaning you say, nand’ paidhi?”
“It means the feeling I have for my mother and my brother and my job, I have for Tabini and for you and for Jago.” Breath failed him. Self-control did. He flung it all out. “Banichi, I’d walk a thousand miles to have a kind word from you. I’d give you the shirt from my back if you needed it; if you were in trouble, I’d carry you that thousand miles. What do you call that? Foolish?”
Another flaring of Banichi’s nostrils. “That would be very difficult for you.”
“So is liking atevi.” That got out before he censored it. “Baji-naji. It’s the luck I have.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking. God, I’m not joking. We have to likesomebody, we’re bound to like somebody, or we die, Banichi, we outright die. We make appointments with grandmothers, we drink the cups strangers offer us, and we don’t ask for help anymore, Banichi, what’s the damned point, when you don’t see what we need?”
“If I don’t guess what you like, you threaten to ruin my reputation. Is this accurate?”
The headache was suddenly excruciating. Things blurred. “Like, like, like—get off the damned word, Banichi. I cross that trench every day. Can’t you cross it once? Can’t you cross to where I am, Banichi, just once, to know what I think? You’re clever. I know you’re hard to mislead. Follow, Banichi, the solitary trail of my thoughts.”
“I’m not a cursed dinner-course!”
“Banichi-ji.” The pain reached a level and stayed there, tolerable, once he’d discovered the limits of it. He had his hand on the stonework. He felt the texture of it, the silken dust of age, the fire-heated rock, broken from the earth to make this building before humans ever left the home-world. Before they were ever lost, and desperate. He composed himself—he remembered he was the paidhi, the man in the middle. He remembered he’d chosen this, knowing there wouldn’t be a reward, believing, at the time, that of course atevi had feelings, and of course, once he could find the right words, hit the right button, findthe clue to atevi thought—he’d win of atevi everything he was giving up among humankind.
He’d been twenty-two, and what he’d not known had so vastly outweighed what he’d known.
“Your behavior worries me,” Banichi said.
“Forgive me.” There was a large knot interfering with his speech. But he was vastly calmer. He chose not to look at Banichi. He only imagined the suspicion and the anger on Banichi’s face. “I reacted unprofessionally and intrusively.”
“Reacted to what, nand’ paidhi?”
A betraying word choice. He wasslipping, badly. The headache had upset his stomach, which was still uncertain. “I misinterpreted your behavior. The mistake was mine, not yours. Will you attend my appointment with me in the morning, and guard me from my own stupidity?”
“What behavior did you misinterpret?”
Straight back to the attack. Banichi refused the bait he cast. And he had no ability to argue, now, or to deal at all in cold rationality.
“I explained that. It didn’t make sense to you. It won’t.” He stared into the hazy corners beyond the firelight, and remembered the interpretation Banichi had put on his explanation. “It wasn’t a threat, Banichi. I would never do that. I value your presence and your good qualities. Will you go with me tomorrow?”
Back to the simplest, the earliest and most agreed-upon words. Cold. Unfreighted.
“No, nadi. No one invites himself to the dowager’s table. You accepted.”
“You’re assigned—”
“My man’chiis to Tabini. My actions are his actions. The paidhi can’t have forgotten this simple thing.”
He was angry. He looked at Banichi, and went on looking, long enough, he hoped, for Banichi to think in what other regard his actions were Tabini’s actions. “I haven’t forgotten. How could I forget?”
Banichi returned a sullen stare. “Ask regarding the food you’re offered. Be sure the cook understands you’re in the party.”
The door in the outermost room opened. Banichi’s attention was instant and wary. But it was Jago coming through, rain-spattered as Banichi, in evident good humor until the moment she saw the two of them. Her face went immediately impassive. She walked through to his bedroom without comment.
“Excuse me,” Banichi said darkly, and went after her.
Bren glared at his black-uniformed back, at a briskly swinging braid—the two of Tabini’s guards on their way through his bedroom, to the servant quarters; he hit his fist against the stonework and didn’t feel the pain until he walked away from the fireside.
Stupid, he said to himself. Stupid and dangerous to have tried to explain anything to Banichi: Yes, nadi, no, nadi, clear and simple words, nadi.
Banichi and Jago had gone on to the servants’ quarters, where they lodged, separately. He went through to his own bedroom and undressed, with an eye to the dead and angry creature on the wall, the expression of its last, cornered fight.
It stared back at him, when he was in the bed. He picked up his book and read, because he was too angry to sleep, about ancient atevi battles, about treacheries and murders.
About ghost ships on the lake, and a manifestation that haunted the audience hall on this level, a ghostly beast that sometimes went snuffling up and down the corridors, looking for something or someone.
He was a modern man. They were atevi superstitions. But he took one look and then evaded the glass, glaring eyes of the beast on the wall.
Thunder banged. The lights all went out, except the fire in the next room, casting its uncertain glow, that didn’t reach all the corners of this one, and didn’t at all touch the servants’ hall.
He told himself lightning must have hit a transformer.
But the place was eerily quiet after that, except for a strange, distant thumping that sounded like a heartbeat coming through the walls.
Then far back in the servants’ hall, beyond the bath, steps moved down the corridor toward his bedroom.
He slid off the bed, onto his knees.
“Nand’ paidhi,” Jago’s voice called out. “It’s Jago.”
He withdrew his hand from beneath the mattress, and slithered up onto the bed, sitting and watching as an entire brigade of staff moved like shadows through his room and outward. He couldn’t see faces. He saw the spark of metal on what he thought was Banichi’s uniform.
One lingered.
“Who is it?” he asked, anxiously.
“Jago, nadi. I’m staying with you. Go to sleep.”
“You’re joking!”