And ten or so of Ilisidi’s guard, when he snatched a glance back on the uphill, were right behind him… along with a half a dozen saddled but riderless mecheiti.
They’d turned out the whole stable to follow, leaving nothing for anyone to use catching them—he knew that trick from the machimi. He found himself ina machimi, war-gear and armed riders and all of it. It only wanted the banners and the lances… no place for a human, he kept thinking. He didn’t know how to manage Nokhada if they had to break through a mob, he didn’t know whether he could even stay on if they took any harder obstacles.
And ride across a continent to reach Shejidan? Not damned likely.
Jago had said believe Ilisidi. Djinana had said believe Cenedi.
But they were headed to the north and west, cut off, by the sound of the explosions, from the airport—cut off from communications, from his own staff, from everything and everyone of any resource he knew, unless Tabini was sending forces into Maidingi province to get possession of the airport—which the rebels held.
Which meant the rebels could go by air—while they went at whatever pace mecheiti flesh and bone could sustain. The rebels could track them, harass them as they liked, on the ground and from the air.
Only hope they hadn’t planes rigged to let them shoot at targets. Damned right they could think of it—no damned biichi-giabout it: Mospheira had designed atevi planes to make that modification as difficult as possible—they’d stuck to fixed-wing and generally faster aircraft, but it couldn’t preclude some atevi with a reason putting his mind to it. Finesse, he’d heard it said in the machimi, didn’t apply in war—and war was what two rebel aijiin were trying to start here.
Push Tabini to the brink, break up the Western Association and reform it around some other leader—like Ilisidi?
And she, twice passed over by the hasdrawad, was double-crossing the rebels?
Dared he believethat?
An explosion echoed off Malguri’s walls.
He risked a second glance back and saw a plume of smoke going up until the wind whipped it completely away over the western wall. That was inside, he thought with a rising sense of panic, and as he swung his head about, he saw the crest of the ridge ahead of them, looming up with its promise of safety from weapons-fire that might come up at them from Malguri’s grounds.
And maybe their disappearance over that ridge would stopthe attack on Malguri, if the staff could convince a mob and armed professionals they weren’t there—God help Djinana and Maighi, who had never asked to be fighters, who had strangers like that man with the gun standing on the stairway, people Ilisidi and Cenedi must have brought in… people who might not put Malguri’s historic walls at such a high premium.
Cold blurred his eyes. The shooting pains in his shoulders took on a steady rhythm in Nokhada’s lurching climb. There was one craggy knoll between them and sharpshooters that might be trying to set up outside Malguri’s mountain ward walls—but Banichi and Jago were seeing to that, he told himself so. Brush and rock came up in front of them, then blue sky. Perspective went crazy for a moment as first Ilisidi and Cenedi went over the edge and then Nokhada nosed down and plunged down the other side, a giddy, intoxicating flurry of strides down a landscape of rough rock and scrub that his subconscious painted snow-white and sanity jerked into browns and earth again. Pain rode the jolts of Nokhada’s footfalls—torn joints, sore muscles, hands and legs losing feeling in the cold.
No damned place to take a fall. He suffered a moment of panic, then feltthe mountain, God save his neck—Nokhada ran with the same logic and the same necessities as he knew, and he clenched the holding strap in his good hand and wrapped the rein into the fingers of the weaker one, beginning to take the wind in his face with an adrenaline rush, hyper-awareness of the slope and whereNokhada’s feet had to touch, however briefly, to make the next stride.
He was plotting a course down the mountain, drunk on understanding, that was the crazed part, his eye saw the course and his heart was racing. His ears felt the shock an explosion made, but it was distant and he was hellbent for catching the riders ahead of him—not sane. Not responsible. Enjoyingit. He’d damned near caught up to Ilisidi when Babs gave a whip of the tail and took a course that Nokhada nearly killed them both trying to reach.
“ ’ Sidi!” he heard Cenedi yell at their backs behind them.
He suffered a second of sane, cold panic, realizing that he’d maneuvered past Cenedi and Ilisidi knewhe was at her tail.
A rock exploded near them, just blew up as it sat on the hillside. Babs took the slot beside a narrow waterfall and struck out uphill among stones the size of houses, higher and higher into the mountains.
Sniper, sanity said. They were still in range.
But he followed Ilisidi, slower now, more sheltered among the boulders, and he had time and breath to realize the foolishness he’d just committed, that he’d pushed himself next behind Ilisidi, that Cenedi was at his back, and that Nokhada was sensibly unwilling to slow down now and lose momentum on the uphill climb.
Fool, he thought. He’d lost his good sense on the mountain. Knowing the responsibility he carried, he’d risked his neck becausehe carried it, and because of the things he couldn’t do and didn’t have, and he didn’t care, didn’t damned well care, during those few selfish highspeed minutes that were nothing but now, risking his life, damn them all, damn Tabini, damn the atevi, damn his mother, Toby, Barb, and the whole human race.
He could have died. He could easily have died in that crazed course. And he discovered so much bitter, secret anger in him—so much rage he shook with it, while Nokhada’s saner, more reasoned strides carried him up and up among the protecting rocks. What sent him down a mountain wasn’t, then, the delirious freedom he told himself it was, it was what he’d just experienced: a spiteful, irrational death wish, aiming his own destruction at everyone and everything he served— thatwas what he was courting.
Not damned fair. The only thing in his life he enjoyed with complete abandon. And it was a damned death wish.
He hated the pressures at home on Mospheira, the job-generated pressures and most of all the emotional, human ones. At the moment he hated atevi, at least in the abstract, he hated their passionless violence and the lies and the endless, schizophrenic analysis he had to do, among them, of every conclusion, every emotion, every feeling he owned, just to decide whether it came of human hardwiring or logical processing.
And most of all he hated hurting for people who didn’t hurt back. He didn’t trust his feelings any longer. He was drained, he was exhausted, he hurt, and he wasn’t dealing with either reality sanely anymore.
It was the second personal truth he’d faced—since that dark moment with the gun at his head. It told him that the paidhi wasn’t handling the job stress. That the paidhi was scared as hell and not sure of the people around him, and no longer sure he’d done the right thing in anything he’d done.
You didn’t know, you didn’t damned well knowwith atevi, what went on at gut level, on any given point, not because you couldn’t translate it, but because you couldn’t feel it, couldn’t resonate to it, couldn’t remotely guess what it felt like inside.
They were on the verge of war, atevi were shooting each other over what to do about humans, and the paidhi was coming apart—they’d taken too much away from him last night. Maybe they hadn’t meant to do it, maybe they didn’t know they’d done it, and he could reason with himself, he knew all the psychological labels: that there was too much unresolved, that there were even physiological reasons behind the sudden fit of chill and fear and the morbid self-dissection this morning that had their only origins in the business last night.