It was a nightmare. He didn’t know what aspect of it to try to deal with. Finding out where Cenedi stood seemed foremost.
“Are you working for the aiji-dowager, nadi?”
“Always. Without exception.”
“And what side is shetaking? For or against Tabini?”
“She has no man’chi. She acts for herself.”
“To replace him?”
“That would be a possibility, nadi. She would do nothing that reduces her independence.”
Nothing that reduces her independence. Ilisidi had lost the election in the hasdrawad. Twice. Once five years ago, to Tabini.
And Tabini had to write that letter and send himto Ilisidi?
“Will you give me the statements I need, nand’ paidhi?”
It wasn’t an easy answer. Possibly—possibly Tabini hadn’t really betrayed him. Possibly Tabini’s administration was on its way down in defeat, and he’d never felt the earthquake. He couldn’t believe that. But atevi politics had confounded paidhiin before him.
“Nand’ paidhi,” Cenedi said. “These people have sent to Maiguri to bring you back to their authorities. If I give you over to them, I don’t say we can’t get you back—but in what condition I can hardly promise. They might carry their questioning much further, into technology, weapons, and space-based systems, things in which we have no interest, and in which we have no reason to believe you haven’t told the truth. Please don’t delude yourself: this is not machimi, and no one keeps secrets from professionals. If you give me the statement I want, that will bring Tabini down, we can be cordial. If I can’t show them that—”
His mind was racing. He was losing bits of what Cenedi was saying, and that could be disastrous.
“—I’ve no choice but to let them obtain it their way. And I had much rather keep you from that, nand’ paidhi. Again: who fired the gun?”
“Banichi fired the gun.”
“Who gaveyou the gun?”
“No one gave me a gun, nadi.”
Cenedi sighed and pressed a button. Not a historical relic, a distracted corner of his mind objected. But probably a great deal else around Cenedi’s office wasn’t historical, or outmoded.
They waited. He could, he thought, change his mind. He could give Cenedi what he wanted, change sides—but he had Cenedi’s word… and that letter… to tell him what was really going on, and he didn’t believe it, not wholly. Tabini had been too canny, too much the politician, to go down without a maneuver tried, and he might, for all he knew, be a piece Tabini still counted his. Still relied on.
Which was stupid to think. If Tabini wanted him to take any active role in this, if that letter wasn’t to take seriously, Tabini could have told him, Banichi or Jago could have told him— someonecould have told him what in hell they wanted him to do.
And he could have called his office, the way he was supposed to, and filed a report.
X
« ^ »
The door behind him opened. He had no illusions about making an escape from Malguri—half the continent away from human territory, with no phone and no one to rely on except Jago and Banichi—and that was, perhaps, a chance; but out-muscling two strong atevi who stood head and shoulders taller than he did, who loomed over him and laid hands on his arms as he got up from the chair… that hardly felt like a sane chance, either.
Cenedi looked at him, and said nothing as they took him out into the dim hall. They were taking him further back into Malguri’s farther wing, outside the territory he knew, farther and farther from the outside door, and he had at least a notion Banichi might be on the grounds, if Cenedi had told the truth, working wherever the power lines came into the building. He might reach Banichi, at least raise an alarm—if he could overpower two atevi, three, counting Cenedi, and one had bettercount Cenedi.
And get out of Cenedi’s hearing.
“I need the restroom,” he said, planting his feet, his heart beating like a hammer. It was stupid, but after two cups of tea, it was also the truth. “Just wait a damned minute, I need the restroom…”
“Restroom,” one said, and they brought him further down the hall to a backstairs room he judged must be under his own accommodation, and no more modern.
The one shut the outside door. The other stayed close to him, and stood by while he did what he’d complained he needed to, and washed his hands and desperately measured his chances against them. It had been a long time since he’d studied martial arts, a long time since he’d last worked out, and not so long for them, he was certain of that. He walked back toward the door in the hope the one would make the mistake of opening it in advance of him—the man didn’t, and that moment of transition was the only and last chance. He jabbed an elbow into the man at his left, tried to come about for a kick to clear the man from the door, and knew he was in trouble the split second before he found his wrist and his shoulder twisted around in a move that could break his arm.
“All right, all right,” he gasped, then had the unforgiving stone wall against the side of his face and found the breath he desperately needed to draw brought that trapped arm closer to breaking.
A lot of breathing then, theirs, his. The venue didn’t lend itself to complex reasoning, or argument about anything but the pain. He felt a cord come around his wrist, worse and worse, and he made another try at freeing himself as the one man opened the bathroom door. But the cord and the twist and lock on his arm gave the other guard a compelling argument.
He went where they wanted: it was all he could do—a short walk down the hall and to a doorway with lamplit stone steps leading downward to a basement he hadn’t known existed in Malguri. “I want to talk to Banichi,” he said at the top step, and balked.
Which convinced him they had no idea of the fragility of human joints and the guard was imminently, truly going to break the arm. He tried to take the step and missed it, lost his balance completely, and the guard shoved him along regardless, using the arm for leverage until he got his feet marginally under him and made the next several steps down on his own. Vision blurred, a teary haze of lamplight from a single hanging source. Stone walls, no furniture but that solitary, hanging oil lamp and a table and chair. Thunder shook the stones, even this deep into the rock, seeming like a last message from the outside world. There was another doorway, open on a dark corridor. They shoved him at it.
There wasn’t any help. Unless Banichi was on some side of this he couldn’t figure, there wasn’t going to be any. He’d lost his best bid, thrown it away in a try at fighting two atevi hand to hand—but if he could get leverage to get free… before they could get a door shut on him—and he could get the door behind them shut—
It wasn’t a good chance. It wasn’t any chance. But he was desperate as they took him aside, through a door into a dark cell with no light except from the room down the hall. He figured they meant to turn him loose here, and he prepared to come back at them, duck low and see if he could get past them.
But when the guard let go, he kept the wrist cord, swung him about by that and backed him against the wall while his fellow grabbed the other arm. He kicked and got a casual knee in the gut for his trouble, the atevi having their hands full.
“Don’t,” that one said, while he was trying to get his wind back. “No more, do you hear me?”