Let Jase see the historic origins of the atevi, let him experience the same sort of things that had opened the atevi world to hisimagination. Thatwas the plan.
It was, though he hadn’t thought so then, the best thing that had ever happened to him in terms of his understanding of the world he lived in, a textured, full of smells and colors world that could fill up his senses and appeal to him on such a basic level that something in his human heart responded to this atevi place and taught him what the species had in common.
On the other hand, watching Jase flinch from sunlight and shadow, it might not happen to Jase. It at best might be a bit much to meet all in one day. Their spaceman was brave, but growing vastly disoriented just in the sounds and level of perceived threat constantly coming at him; fast-witted, but lost in the dataflow that had begun to wipe out the linkages in his brain and rearrange the priorities.
It wasn’t just the language now that had overwhelmed Jase with its choices. It wasn’tjust the same linguistic shift that overwhelmed every student that came close to fluency—it was the whole physical, natural world that came down on Jase, stripping away all his means not only of expressing himself—that was the language part—but also of interpreting the sensations that came at him. Jase was hanging on to that part of his perceptions with his fingernails.
And that disorientation, coupled with what he guessed Ilisidi might provoke him to, would make it a very good idea to limit the breakable objects in Jase’s reach.
He began to have misgivings. Jase wasn’tplanet-born. There might not be that common ground he hoped to have Jase find with atevi. For the first time he began to fear he’d made a mistake in bringing Jase out here and asking this of him.
It was a lot of input.
But it was fractal, soothing input if Jase’s brain could just figure out it did repeat, and loop, and that it didn’t threaten.
Ilisidi, however, didn’tgive you an inch.
And you had to go farther into atevi territory to meet Ilisidi than she was going to come onto human ground to meet you: that was a given.
“Pretty view,” he said desperately as they rounded a turn, and it was, a glorious view into the distance of the plain. “Taiben is that way—a fair distance, though.”
Jase faced that direction. He gave no indication his eyes even knew where to focus two seconds running or what was pretty or what he was supposed to look at.
Bren thought of asking the driver to stop and let Jase get out and have a steady, stable look and catch his breath; but he thought then that they weren’t within a security perimeter, and that they were going to such a perimeter, within which they could stand and have such a view, presumably. And Jase could calm down.
It was a risk. Their whole lives were a risk. But you limited them where you could. It was different from the catwalk at Dalaigi.
There was no crowd watching them.
The trip went a good distance up and up, among rolling hills of greening grass spangled with wild-flowers in yellow and purple and white, with no structures, no building in sight until, just around a steep turn in the rolling hills, they passed through a gate in a low stone wall and then, in the next turn, caught a brief view of a stone building.
That view steadied in the forward windows after the second turn, a pile of the local rocks with a number of high, solid walls, one slightly tumbled one, and a staff posed crazily on the battlement of a two, in places three and four floored fortification with a bright banner flying, on a staff slightly atilt, from the front arch.
Red and black, the aiji’s colors.
The van pulled up to the door, under a sweep-edged roof, as the door opened and poured out the aiji-dowager’s men, who opened the door of the van.
Jago was first out. Bren climbed down.
Jase stayed seated. Blocking Banichi’s path to the door was never a good idea. Jase, however, was not doing so in panic. Jase was frowning darkly.
“Where’s the beach?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s here,” Bren said. “Come on, Jase.”
Jase stayed put. And belted in. His arms were folded. From that position, he spared a fast, angry gesture around him. “Grass. Rock. High rock. You promised me the beach, nadi.”
Not trusting this, Bren thought. From overload to a final realization they were on a mountain. “Jasi-ji,” he said reasonably, “you’re preventing Banichi getting up.” Not true, if Banichi weren’t being polite. “There is a beach down the hill, where water tends to be and remain, as physics may tell you, and I promise you ample chance to see the ocean. One just doesn’t build these kind of big houses down there. Too many people. And it’s old. And it’s the aiji’s property. It’s all right, Jasi-ji. Get down, if you please, before Banichi moves you.”
Jase moved then, carefully, ducking his head, and stepped down into the shadow of a building, clinging to the van and evading the offered help of the servants. He stood there a moment, then sighted on the door and started walking.
Bren walked with him, looking at the open, iron-bound doors; at the dim interior ahead of them and around them as they walked in.
Malguri was the oldest fortress still functioning, he knew that. This place had a dusty, deserted look as if it hadn’t quite been maintained on the same level as Malguri. Like Mogari-nai, it was supposedly from the Age of Exploration, younger than Malguri: it had supported the fort at Mogari-nai, when atevi had started trading around the Southern Rim, when East and West had made contact, when they’d gotten out on the seas in wooden ships and rival associations had shot at each other with cannon.
But by what he was seeing he understood in a new light what Ilisidi had said to him when she proposed it, that Saduri wasn’t on the regular tour circuit, and was not legally permitted to hikers—a security advantage, she said, which Malguri hadn’t had.
This fortress might not be as old as Malguri, but he wouldn’t lay odds on the plumbing. That banner on the roof, too, said something about the way things were put together. No regular bracket for the staff. No regular provision for such a thing—he could imagine one of the dowager’s ‘young men’ climbing up there to do it, out of the reckless enthusiasm and the loyalty they showed for Ilisidi.
And for the sheer hell of it.
Malguri’s hall had been lively and full of interesting banners. This one—
—had one of the ceiling beams lying crashed onto the floor at the rear of the hall. Workmen’s scaffolding occupied that end, which, with no interior lighting and with only the light from the door, was brown with dust.
Even Banichi and Jago stopped in some dismay.
Where is the beach, indeed? Bren asked himself.
What have I let us in for?
“Nadi Bren.” One of the dowager’s servants came from a side hall, and said, with the usual calm of the dowager’s servants, “Nadiin. One will guide you to your rooms.”
16
Down a long hall to the side, dust everywhere—but the dust on the stone floor showed a clear track of feet having passed this way recently. Like bread crumbs in the wilderness, Bren thought to himself as he and Jase, behind Ilisidi’s man, climbed a short flight of stairs where Banichi, following them, surely had to duck his head.
Jago had stayed behind in the downstairs, having something to do with Tano and Algini and the baggage in the second van, Bren thought.