Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) (50 page)

Which wasn’t what Cenedi had said.

There began to be a sea-echo in his skull, the ache where Cenedi had hit him and the one where Jago had, both gone to one pain, that kept him aware where he was.

In his own apartment, before Cenedi’s message had come, before she’d left, Jago had said … I’ll never betray you, nadi Bren.

I’ll never betray you …

N
ot doing well, he wasn’t—with one pain shooting through his eyes and another running through his elbow to the pit of his stomach, while two or three other point-sources contested for his attention. The rain had whipped up to momentary thunder and a fit of deluge, then subsided to wind-borne drizzles, a cold mist so thick one breathed it. The sky was a boiling gray, while the mecheiti struck a steady, long-striding pace one behind the other, Babs leading the way up and down the rain-shadowed narrows, along brushy stretches of streamside, where frondy ironheart trailed into their path and dripped water on their heads and down their necks.

But there wasn’t the same jostling for the lead, now, among the foremost mecheiti. It seemed it wasn’t just
Nokhada, after all. None of them were fighting, whether Ilisidi had somehow communicated that through Babs, or whether somehow, after the bombs, and in the misery of the cold rain, even the mecheiti understood a common urgency. The established order of going had Nokhada fourth in line behind another of Ilisidi’s guards.

One, two, three, four, regular as a heartbeat, pace, pace, pace, pace.

Never betray you. Hell.

More tea? Cenedi asked him.

And sent him to the cellar.

His eyes watered with the throbbing in his skull and with the wind blasting into his face, and the desire to beat Cenedi’s head against a rock grew totally absorbing for a while. But it didn’t answer the questions, and it didn’t get him back to Mospheira.

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’chi
to 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 running the machinery, now, he told himself, and the lump he had in his throat and the thump of emotion he had when he reacted to Jago’s cold disdain composed the surest prescription for disaster he could think of.

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
could
do 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
said
it 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 mecheita 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,
hope
the 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 canniness that might well have Cenedi behind it—he didn’t know, he couldn’t think, he didn’t want to make an issue about it, when it was even remotely possible they didn’t even realize he had the machine with him. Djinana had brought it. The handlers had loaded it.

The man walked off. Nokhada brushed him aside and wandered off across the hill in a general movement of the mecheiti: a man among Ilisidi’s guard had gotten onto Babs and started away as the whole company began to move out, afoot now, presumably toward the wall Ilisidi had foretold, where, please God, the gate would be open, the way Ilisidi had said, nothing would be complicated and they could all board the plane that would carry them straight to Shejidan.

The man who’d taken the bags outpaced him with long, sure strides up the hill in the dark, up where Cenedi and Ilisidi were walking, which only confirmed his worst suspicions, and he needed to keep that man in sight—he needed to advise Banichi what was going on, but Banichi
was leaning on Jago and on another man, further down the slope, falling behind.

He didn’t know which to go to, then—he couldn’t get a private word with Banichi, he couldn’t keep up with both. He settled for limping along halfway between the two groups, damning himself for not being quicker with an answer that would have stopped the man from taking the saddlebags and not coming up with anything now that would advise Banichi what was in that bag without advising the guard with him—as good as shout it aloud, as say anything to Banichi now.

Claim he needed something from his personal kit?

It might work. He worked forward, out of breath, the hill going indistinct on him by turns.

“Nadi,” he began to say.

But as he came up on the man, he saw the promised wall in front of them, at the very crest of the hill. The ancient gate was open on a starlit, weed-grown road.

They were already
at
Wigairiin.

T
he wall was a darkness, the gate looked as if it could never again move on its hinges.

The shadows of Ilisidi and Cenedi went among the first into an area of weeds and ancient cobblestones, of old buildings, a road like the ceremonial road of the Bu-javid, maybe of the same pre-Ragi origin—the mind came up with the most irrational, fantastical wanderings, Bren thought, desperately tagging the one of Ilisidi’s guards who had his baggage, and his computer.

Banichi and Jago were behind him somewhere. The ones in front were going in as much haste as Ilisidi could manage, using her cane and Cenedi’s assistance, which
could be quite brisk when Ilisidi decided to move, and she had.

“I can take it now, nadi,” Bren said, trying to liberate the strap of his baggage from the man’s shoulder much as the man had gotten it away from him. “It’s no great difficulty. I need something from the kit.”

“No time now to look for anything, nand’ paidhi,” the man said. “Just stay up with us. Please.”

It was damned ridiculous. He lost a step, totally off his balance, and then grew angry and desperate, which didn’t at all inform him what was reasonable to do. Stick close to the man, raise no more issue about the bags until they stopped, try to claim there was medication he had to have as soon as they got to the plane and then stow the thing under his seat, out of view … that was the only plan he could come up with, trudging along with aches in every bone he owned and a headache that wasn’t improving with exertion.

They met stairs, open-air, overgrown with weeds, where the walk began to pass between evidently abandoned buildings. That went more slowly—Ilisidi didn’t deal well with steps; and one of the younger guards simply picked her up after a few steps and carried her in his arms.

Which with Banichi wasn’t an option. Bren looked back, lagged behind, and one of the guards near him took his arm and pulled him along, saying,

“Keep with us, nand’ paidhi, do you need help?”

“No,” he said, and started to say, Banichi does.

Something banged. A shot hit the man he was talking to, who staggered against the wall. Shots kept coming, racketing and ricocheting off the walls beside the walk, as the man, holding his side, jerked him into cover in a doorway and shoved his head down as gunfire broke out from every quarter.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Bren gasped, but the guard with him slumped down and the fire kept up. He tried in the dark and by touch to find where the man was
hit—he felt a bloody spot, and tried for a pulse, and couldn’t find it. The man had a limpness he’d never felt in a body—dead, he told himself, shaking, while the fire bounced off walls and he couldn’t tell where it was coming from, or even which side of it was his.