Catching up was Nokhada’s idea; but with the rest of the guard behind, and Cenedi beside, there was nothing to do but follow.
At another time they stopped, on the narrow half-moon of a sandy beach, where the lake curved in, and a man thinking of assassins could only say to himself that there were places on the shore where a boat could land and reach Malguri.
But standing while the mecheiti caught their breaths, Ilisidi talked about the lake, its depth, its denizens—its ghosts. “When I was a child,” she said, “a wreck washed up on the south shore, just the bow of it, but they thought it might be from a treasure ship that sank four hundred years ago. And divers went out for it, all up and down this shore. They say they never found it. But a number of antiquities turned up in Malguri, and the servants were cleaning them in barrels in the stable court, about that time. My father sent the best pieces to the museum in Shejidan. And it probably cost him an estate. But most people in Maidingi province would have melted them for the gold.”
“It’s good he saved them.”
“Why?”
“For the past,” he said, wondering if he had misunder stood something else in atevi mindset. “To save it. Isn’t that important?”
“Is it?” Ilisidi answered him with a question and left him none the wiser. She was off again up the hill, and he forgot all his philosophy, in favor of protecting what he feared might have progressed to blisters. Damn the woman, he thought, and thought that if he pulled up and lagged behind as long as he could hold Nokhada’s instincts in check, the dowager might take that for a surrender and slow down, but damnedif he would, damnedif he would cry help or halt. Ilisidi would dismiss him from her company then, probably lose all interest in him, and he could lie about in a warm bath, reading ghost stories until his would-be assassins flung themselves against the barriers Banichi had doubtless set up, and killed themselves, and he could go home to air-conditioning, the morning news, and tea he could trust. From moment to moment it seemed like the only escape.
But he kept Ilisidi’s pace. Atevi called it na’itada. Barb called it being a damned fool. He had never spent so long an hour as it took to get home again, an hour in which he told himself repeatedly he had rather fall off the mountain and be done.
Finally the gates of the stable court were in front of them, then behind them, with the mecheiti anxious for stables and grain. He managed to get Nokhada to drop a shoulder, and climbed down off Nokhada’s towering height onto legs he wasn’t sure would bear his weight.
“A hot bath,” Ilisidi called out to him. “I’ll send you some herbs, nand’ paidhi. I’ll see you in the morning!”
He managed to bow, and, among Ilisidi’s entourage, to walk up the stairs without conspicuously limping.
“The soreness goes,” Cenedi said to him quietly, “in four or five days.”
A hot bath was all he was thinking of, all the long way up to the front hall. A hot bath, for about an hour. A soft and motionless chair. Soaking and reading seemed an excellent way to spend the remainder of the day, sitting in the sun, minding his own business, evading aijiin and their athletic endeavors. He limped down the long hall and started the stairs up to his floor, at his own pace.
Quick footsteps crossed the stone floor below the stairs. He looked back in some concern for his safety in the halls and saw Jago coming toward the stairs, all energy and anxiousness. “Bren-ji,” she called out to him. “Are you all right?”
The limp showed. His hair was flying loose from its braid and there was dust and fur and spit on his coat. “Fine, nadi-ji. Was it a good flight?”
“Long,” she said, overtaking him in a handful of double steps a human would struggle to make. “Did you fall, Bren-ji? You didn’tfall off…”
“No, just sore. Perfectly ordinary.” He made a determined effort not to limp the rest of the way up the stairs, and went beside her down the hall… which was supposing she wanted the company of sweat and mecheita fur. Jago smelled of flowers, quite nicely so. He’d never noticed it before; and he was marginally embarrassed—not polite to sweat, the word had passed discreetly from paidhi to paidhi. Overheated humans smelled different, and different was not good with atevi, in matters of personal hygiene; the administration had pounded that concept into junior administrative heads. So he tried to keep as discreetly as possible apart from Jago, glad she was back, wishing he might have a chance for a bath before debriefing, and wishing most of all that she’d been here last night. “Where’s Banichi? Do you know? I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“He was down at the airport half an hour ago,” Jago said. “He was talking to some television people. I think they’re coming up here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, nadi. They came in on the flight. It could have to do with the assassination attempt. They didn’t say.”
Not his business, he concluded. Banichi would handle it with his usual discretion, probably put them on the next flight out.
“Not any other trouble here?”
“Only with Banichi.”
“How?”
“Just not happy with me. I seem to have done something or said something, nadi-ji—I’m not even sure.”
“It isn’t a comfortable business,” Jago said, “to report an associate to his disgrace. Give him room, nand’ paidhi. Some things aren’t within your office.”
“I understand that,” he said, telling himself he hadn’t understood: he’d been unreasonably focussed on his own discomforts last night, to the exclusion of Banichi’s own reasonable distress. It began to dawn on him that Banichi might have wanted things of him he just hadn’t given, before they’d parted in discomfort with each other. “I think I was very rude last night, nadi. I shouldn’t have been. I wasn’t doing my job. I think he’s right to be upset with me. I hope you can explain to him.”
“You haveno ‘job’ toward him, Bren-ji. Ours is toward you. And I much doubt he took offense. If he allowed you to see his distress, count it for a compliment to you.”
Unusual notion. One part of his brain went ransacking memory, turning over old references. Another part went on vacation, wondering if it meant Banichi did after all likehim.
And the sensible, workaday part of his brain told the other two parts to pay attention to business and quit expecting human responses out of atevi minds. Jago meant what Jago said, point, endit; Banichi let down his guard with him, Banichi was pissed about a dirty business, and neither Banichi nor Jago was suddenly, by being cooped up with a bored human, about to break out in human sentiment. It wasn’t contagious, it wasn’t transferable, and probably he frustrated hell out of Banichi, too, who’d just as busily sent him clues he hadn’t picked up on. As a dinner date, he’d been a dismal substitute for Jago, who’d been off explaining to the Guild why somebody wanted to kill the paidhi; and probably by the end of the evening, Banichi had ideas of his own why that could be.
They reached the door. He had his key from his pocket, but Jago was first with hers, and let them into the receiving room.
“So glum,” she said, looking back at him. “Why, nand’ paidhi?”
“Last night. We were saying things—I wished I hadn’t. I wish I’d said I was sorry. If you could convey to him that I am…”
“Said and did aren’t even brothers,” Jago said. She pulled the door to, pocketed her key and took the portfolio from under her arm. “This should cheer you. I brought your mail.”
He’d given up. He’d accepted that it wasn’t going to get through security; and Jago threw over all his suppositions about his situation in Malguri.
He took the bundle she handed him and sorted through it, not even troubling to sit down in his search for personal mail.
It was mostly catalogs, not nearly so many as he ordinarily got; three letters, but none from Mospheira—two from committee heads in Agriculture and Finance, and one with Tabini’s official seal.