Foreigner

Left arm hurt, dammit. Good and stiff. The legs weren’t much better. Couldn’t quite straighten the one and couldn’t, with the one shoulder stiff, conveniently turn over and get more room.

Gunshots. Several.

Someone of their company, still alive out there. He listened to the silence after, trying to tell himself it wasn’t his affair, and wondering who’d be the last caught, the last killed—he couldn’t but think it could well be Banichi or Jago, while he hid, shivering, and knowing there wasn’t a damned thing he could do.

He felt—he didn’t know what. Guilty for hiding. Angry for atevi having to die for him. For other atevi being willing to kill, for mistaken, stupid reasons, and humans doing things that had nothing to do with atevi—in human minds.

Someone shouted—he couldn’t hear what. He wriggled up on the elbow again, used the back of his hand to flatten the weeds on the view he had of the space between his building and the other frontages.

He saw Cenedi, and Ilisidi, the dowager leaning on Cenedi’s arm, limping badly, the two of them under guard of four rough-looking men in leather jackets, a braid with a blue and red ribbon on the one of them with his back to him—

Blue and red. Blue and red. Brominandi’sprovince.

Damn him, he thought, and saw them shove Cenedi against the wall of the building as they jerked Ilisidi by the arm and made her drop her cane. Cenedi came away from the wall bent on stopping them, and they stopped him with a rifle butt.

A second blow, when Cenedi tried to stand up. Cenedi wasn’t a young man.

“Where’s the paidhi?” they asked. “Where is he?”

“Shejidan, by now,” he heard Ilisidi say.

They didn’t swallow it. They hitIlisidi, and Cenedi swung at the bastards, kicked one in the head before he took a blow from a rifle butt full in the back and another one on the other side, which knocked him to one knee.

They had a gun to Ilisidi’s head, then, and told him stop,

Cenedi did stop, and they hit him again and once more.

“Where’s the paidhi?” they kept asking, and hauled Cenedi up by the collar. “We’ll shoot her,” they said.

But Cenedi didn’t know. Couldn’t betray him, even to save Ilisidi, because Cenedi didn’t know.

“Hear us?” they asked, and slapped Cenedi in the face, slamming his head back into the wall.

They’d do it. They were goingto do it. Bren moved, bashed his head on the tank over him, hard enough to bring tears to his eyes, and, finding a rock among the weeds, he flung it.

That upset the opposition. They shoved Cenedi and Ilisidi back and went casting about for who’d done it, talking on their radio to their associates.

He really had hoped Cenedi could have taken advantage of that break, but they’d had their guns on Ilisidi, and Cenedi wasn’t leaving her or taking any chances with her life—while the search went up and down the frontage and back into the alley.

Boots came near. Bren flattened himself, heart pounding, breaths not giving him air enough.

Boots went away, and a second pair came near.

“Here!” someone shouted.

Oh, damn, he thought.

“You!” the voice bellowed, and he looked up into the barrel of a rifle poking through the weeds, and a man lying flat, the other side of that curtain, staring at him down that rifle barrel, with a certain shock on his face.

Hadn’t seen a human close up, Bren thought—it always jarred his nerves, to see that moment of shock. More so to know there was a finger on the trigger.

“Come out of there,” the man ordered him.

He began to wiggle out of his hole, not noble, nothing gallant about the gesture or the situation. Damned stupid, he said to himself. Probably there was something a lot smarter to have done, but his gut couldn’t take watching a man beaten to death or a brave old woman shot through the head: he wasn’t built that way.

He reached the daylight, crawling on his belly. The rifle barrel pressed against his neck while they gathered around him and searched him all over for weapons.

Besides, he said to himself, the paidhi wasn’t a fighter. The paidhi was a translator, a mediator— wordswere his skill, and if he was with Ilisidi, he might even have a chance to negotiate. Ilisidi had some kind of previous tie to the rebels. There might be a way out of this…

They jerked the rain-cloak off him. The snap resisted, the collar ripped across his neck. He tried to get a knee under him, and two men caught him by the arms and jerked him to his feet.

“He’s no more than a kid,” one said in dismay.

“They come that way,” red-and-blue said. “I saw the last one. Bring him!”

He tried to walk. Wasn’t doing well at it. The left arm shot blinding pain, and he didn’t think they’d listen to argument, he only wanted to get wherever they were going—and hoped they’d bring Cenedi and Ilisidi with him. He needed Ilisidi, needed someone to negotiate for, himself and his loyalties being the bargaining chip…

Claim man’chito Ilisidi: they’d read his actions that way—they could, at least, if he lied convincingly.

They hauled him into the next building, and Cenedi and Ilisidi werebehind him, held at gunpoint, shoved up against the wall, while they said someone’s neck was broken—the man Cenedi had kicked, Bren thought dazedly, and tried to make eye contact with Ilisidi, staring at her in a way atevi thought rude.

She looked straight at him. Gave a tightening of her mouth he didn’t immediately read, but maybe she caught his offer—

Someone grabbed him by the shirt and spun him around and back against the furniture—red-and-blue, it was. A blow exploded across his face, his sight went out, he wasn’t standing under his own power, and he heard Cenedi calmly advising the man humans were fragile and if he hit him like that again he’d kill him.

Nice, he thought. Thanks, Cenedi. You talk to him. Son of a bitch. Tears gathered in his eyes. Dripped. His nose ran, he wasn’t sure with what. The room was a blur when they jerked him upright and somebody held his head up by a fist in his hair.

“Is this yours?” red-and-blue asked, and he made out a tan something on the table where red-and-blue was pointing.

His heart gave a double beat. The computer. The bag beside it on the table.

They had it on recharge, the wire strung across the table.

“Mine,” he said.

“We want the access.”

He tasted blood, felt something ru

“ Tellus the access code,” red-and-blue said, and gave a jerk on his shirt.

His brain started functioning, then. He knew he wasn’t going to get his hands on the computer. Had to make them axe the system themselves. Had to remember the axe codes. Make them wantthe answer, make them believe it was all-important to them.

“Access code!” red-and-blue yelled into his face.

Oh, God, he didn’t like this part of theplan.

“Fuck off,” he said.

Theydidn’t know him. Set himself right on their level with that answer, he did—he had barely time to think that before red-and-blue hit him across the face.

Blind and deaf for a moment. Not feeling much. Except they still had hold of him, and voices were shouting, and red-and-blue was giving orders about hanging him up. He didn’t entirely follow it, until somebody grabbed his coat by the collar and ripped it and the shirt off him. Somebody else grabbed his hands in front of him and tied them with a stiff leather belt.

He figured it wasn’t good, then. It might be time he should start talking, only they might not believe him. He stood there while they got a piece of electrical cable and flung it over the pipes that ran across the ceiling, using it for a rope. They ran the end through his joined arms and jerked them abruptly over his head.

The shoulder shot fire. He screamed. Couldn’t get his breath.