Foreigner

Just to some damned place where Ilisidi had friends.

Another alarm bell, he thought. Friends. Atevi didn’t have friends. Atevi had man’chi, and hadn’t someone said—he thought it was Cenedi himself—that Ilisidi hadn’t man’chito anyone?

They crossed no roads—with not a phone line, not a tilled field, not the remote sound of a motor, only the regular thump of the mecheiti’s gait on wet ground, the creak of harness, even, harsh breathing—it hypnotized, mile after rain-drenched and indistinguishable mile. The dwindling day had a lucent, gray sameness. Sunlight spread through the clouds no matter what the sun’s angle with the hills.

Ilisidi reined back finally in a flat space and with a grimace and a resettling on Babs’ back, ordered the four heavier men to trade off to the unridden mecheiti.

That included Cenedi; and Banichi, who complained and elected to do it by leaning from one mecheita to the other, as only one of the other men did—as if Banichi and mecheiti weren’t at all unacquainted.

Didn’t hurt himself. Expecting that event, Bren watched with his lip between his teeth until Banichi had straightened himself around.

He caught Jago’s eye then and saw a biding coldness, total lack of expression—directed at him.

Because human and atevi hormones were ru

Shut it down, he told himself. Do the job. Think it through.

Jago didn’t come closer. The whole column sorted itself out in the prior order, and Nokhada’s first jerking steps carried him out of view.

When he looked back, Banichi was riding as he had been, hands braced against the mecheita’s shoulders, head bowed—Banichi was suffering, acutely, and he didn’t know whether the one of their company who seemed to be a medic, and who’d had a first aid kit, had also had a pain-killer, or whether Banichi had taken one or not, but a broken ankle, splinted or not. had to be swelling, dangling as it was, out of the stirrup on that side.

Banichi’s condition persuaded him that his own aches and pains were ignorable. And it frightened him, what they might run into and what, with Banichi crippled, and with Ilisidi willing to leave him once, they coulddo if they met trouble at the end of the ride-—if Wigairiin wasn’t in allied hands.

Or if Ilisidi hadn’t told the truth about her intentions—because it occurred to him she’d said no to the rebels in Maidingi, but she’d equally well been conspiring with Wigairiin, evidently, as he picked it up, as an old associate only apt to come in with the rebels if Ilisidi did.

That meant queasy relationships and queasy alliances, fragile ties that could do anything under stress.

In the cellar, they’d recorded his answers to their questions—they saidit was all machimi, all play-acting, no validity.

But that tape still existed, if Ilisidi hadn’t destroyed it. She’d not have left it behind in Malguri, for the people that were supposedly her jilted allies.

If Ilisidi hadn’t destroyed it—they had that tape, and they had it with them.

He reined back, disturbing the column. He feigned a difficulty with the stirrup, and stayed bent over as rider after rider passed him at that rapid, single-minded pace.

He let up on the rein when Banichi passed him, and the hindmost guards had pulled back, too, moving in on him. “Banichi, there’s a tape recording,” he said. “Of me. Interrogation about the gun.”

At which point he gave Nokhada a thump of his heel and slipped past the guards, as Nokhada quickened pace.

Nokhada butted the fourth raecheita in the rump as she arrived, not gently, with the war-brass, and the other man had to pull in hard to prevent a fight.

“Forgive me, nadi,” Bren said breathlessly, heart thumping. “I had my stirrup twisted.”

It was still a near fight. It helped Nokhada’s flagging spirits immensely, even if she didn’t get the spot in line.

It didn’t at all help his headache, or the hurt in his arm, half of it now. he thought, from Nokhada’s war for the rein.

The gray daylight slid subtly into night, a gradual dimming to a twilight of wind-driven rain, a ghostly half-light that slipped by eye-tricking degrees into blackest, starless night. He had thought they would have to slow down when night fell—but atevi eyes could deal with the dark, and maybe mecheiti could: Babs kept that steady, ground-devouring pace, laboring only when they had to climb, never breaking into exuberance or lagging on the lower places; and Nokhada made occasional sallies forward, complaining with tosses of her head and jolts in her gait when the third-rank mecheita cut her off, one constant, nightmare battle just to keep control of the creature, to keep his ears attuned for the whisper of leaves ahead that forewarned him to duck some branch the first riders had ducked beneath in the dark.

The rain must have stopped for some while before he even noticed, there was so much water dripping and blowing from the leaves generally above them.

But when they broke out into the clear, the clouds had gone from overhead, affording a panorama of stars and shadowy hills that should have relieved his sense of claustrophobic dark—but all he could think of was the ship presence that threatened the world and the fact that, if they didn’t reach this airstrip by dawn, they’d be naked to attack from Maidingi Airport.

By midnight, Ilisidi had said, they’d reach Wigairiin, and that hour was long since past, if he could still read the pole stars.

Only let me die, he began to think, exhausted and in pain, when they began to climb again, and climb, and climb the stony hill. Ilisidi called a halt, and he supposed that they were going to trade off again, and that it meant they’d as long to go as they’d already ridden.

But he saw the ragged edge of ironheart against the night sky above them on the hill, and Ilisidi said they should all get down, they’d gone as far as the mecheiti would take them.

Then he wished they had a deal more of riding to go, because it suddenly dawned on him that all bets were called. They were committing themselves, now, to a course in which neither Banichi nor Jago was going to object, not after Banichi had argued vainly against it at the outset. God, he was scared of this next part.

Banichi didn’t have any help but him—not even Jago, so far as he could tell. He had the computer to manage… his last chance to send it away with Nokhada and hope, hopethe handlers, loyal to Ilisidi, would keep it from rebel attention.

But if rebels did hold Malguri now, they’d be very interested when the mecheiti came in—granted anything had gone wrong and they didn’t get a fast flight out of here, the computer was guaranteed close attention. And things could go wrong, very wrong.

Baji-naji. Leaving it for anyone else was asking too much of Fortune and relying far too much on Chance. He jerked the ties that held the bags on behind the riding-pad, gathered them up as the most ordinary, the most casual thing in the world, his hands trembling the while, and slid off, gripping the mounting-straps to steady his shaking knees.

Breath came short. He leaned on Nokhada’s hard, warm shoulder and blacked out a moment, felt the chill of the cellar about him, the cords holding him. Heard the footsteps—

He tried to lift the bags to his shoulder.

A hand met his and took them away from him. “It’s no weight for me,” the man said, and he stood there stupidly, locked between believing in a compassion atevi didn’t have and fearing the ca