Foreigner

Which convinced him they had no idea of the fragility of human joints and the guard was imminently, truly going to break the arm. He tried to take the step and missed it, lost his balance completely, and the guard shoved him along regardless, using the arm for leverage until he got his feet marginally under him and made the next several steps down on his own. Vision blurred, a teary haze of lamplight from a single hanging source. Stone walls, no furniture but that solitary, hanging oil lamp and a table and chair. Thunder shook the stones, even this deep into the rock, seeming like a last message from the outside world. There was another doorway, open on a dark corridor. They shoved him at it.

There wasn’t any help. Unless Banichi was on some side of this he couldn’t figure, there wasn’t going to be any. He’d lost his best bid, thrown it away in a try at fighting two atevi hand to hand—but if he could get leverage to get free… before they could get a door shut on him—and he could get the door behind them shut—

It wasn’t a good chance. It wasn’t any chance. But he was desperate as they took him aside, through a door into a dark cell with no light except from the room down the hall. He figured they meant to turn him loose here, and he prepared to come back at them, duck low and see if he could get past them.

But when the guard let go, he kept the wrist cord, swung him about by that and backed him against the wall while his fellow grabbed the other arm. He kicked and got a casual knee in the gut for his trouble, the atevi having their hands full.

“Don’t,” that one said, while he was trying to get his wind back. “No more, do you hear me?”

After which they hooked his feet out from under him, stretched his one arm out along a metal bar, while the second guard pulled the other arm in the other direction, and tied it tight with cord from wrist to elbow.

For most of it, he was still trying to breathe—damned mess, was all he could think, over and over, classic atevi way of handling a troublesome case, only the bar wasn’t average human height and he couldn’t get his knees on the ground or his feet under him. Just not damned comfortable, he thought—couldn’t get out of it by any means he could think of—couldn’t even find a place to put his knees to protect vital parts of his body from the working-over he expected.

But they went away and left him instead, without a word, only brushing off their hands and dusting their clothes, as if he had ruffled their dignity. He dreaded their shutting the door and leaving him in the dark… but they left it as it was, so there was an open door within sight, and their shadows retreating on the hall floor outside. He heard their voices echoing, the two of them talking about having a drink, in the way of workmen with a job finished.

He heard them go away up the steps, and heard the door shut.

After that was—just—silence.

They had told him at the very outset of his training, that if the situation ever really blew up like this, suicide was a job requirement. They didn’t want a human in atevi hands spilling technological information ad lib and indefinitely—a very serious worry early on, when atevi hadn’t reached the political stability they had had for a century, and when rivalry between associations had been a constant threat to the Treaty… oh, no, it couldn’t happen, not in remotest imagination.

But they still taught the course—he knew a dozen painless methods—and they still said, if there was no other option, take it—because there was no rescue coming and no way anyone would risk the peace to bring him out.

Not that there was much he could tell anybody, except political information against Tabini. Technology nowadays was so esoteric the paidhi didn’t know it until he had his briefing on Mospheira, and he worked at it until he could translate it and make sense of it to atevi experts. There was no way they could beat atomic secrets out of him, no more than he could explain trans-light technology.

But he couldn’t let them use him politically, either—couldn’t make statements for them to edit and twist out of context, not without marks on him to show the world he was under duress.

And he’d made the television interview—sitting there quite at ease in front of the cameras.

He’d let Cenedi get his answers on tape, including his damning refusal to attribute the gun. They had all the visuals and sound bites they could want.

Damn, he thought. He’d screwed it. He’d screwed it beyond any repair. Hanks was in charge, as of now, and damn, he wished there was better, and more imaginative, and somebodyto realize Tabini was still the best bet they had.

Overthrow Tabini, replace him with the humanophobes, and him with Deana Hanks, and watch everything generations had built go to absolute hell. He believed it. And the hard-liners among humans who thought he’d gotten entirely too friendly with Tabini… they weren’t right, he refused to believe they were right; but they’d have their field day saying so.