Foreigner

“Nand’ paidhi,” the interrogator said. “You say Banichi fired the shots at the intruder in your quarters. Is that true?”

Past a certain point, to hell with the game. He shut his eyes and thought about the snow and the sky around winter slopes. About the wind, and nobody else in sight.

Told him something, that did, that it wasn’t Barb his mind went to. If it mattered. It was, however, a curious, painful discovery.

“Isn’t that true, nand’ paidhi?”

He declined to answer. The gun barrel went away. A powerful hand pulled his head up and banged it against the wall.

“Nand’paidhi. Tabini-aiji has renounced you. He’s given your disposition into our hands. You’ve read the letter. Have you not?”

“Yes.”

“What is our politics to you?—Let him go, nadi. Let go. All of you, wait outside.”

The man let him go. They changed the rules of a sudden. The rest of them filed out the door, letting light past, so that he could see at least the outlined edges of the interrogator’s face, but he didn’t think he knew the man. He only wondered what the last-ditch proposition was going to be, or what the man had to offer him he wasn’t going to say with the others there. He wasn’t expecting to like it.

The interrogator reached down and cut off the recorder. It was very quiet in the cell, then, for a long, long wait.

“Do you think,” the man said finally, “that we dare release you now, nand’ paidhi, to go back to Mospheira? On the other hand, if you provided the aiji-dowager the necessary evidence to remove the aiji, if you became a resource useful on our side—we’d be fools to turn you over to more radical factions of our association.”

“Cenedi said the same thing. And sent me here.”

“We support the aiji-dowager. We’d keep you alive and quite comfortable, nand’ paidhi. You could go back to Shejidan. Nothing essential would change in the relations of the association with Mospheira—except the party in power. If you’re telling the truth, and you don’t know the other information we’d like to have, we’re reasonable. We can accept that, so long as you’re willing to provide us statements that serve our point of view. It costs you nothing. It maintains you in office, nand’ paidhi. All for a simple answer. What do you say?” The interrogator bent, complete shadow again, and turned the tape recorder back on. “Who provided you the gun, nand’ paidhi?”

“I never had a gun,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The interrogator cut off the tape recorder, picked it up, got up, and left him.

He hung against the bar, shaking, telling himself he’d just been a complete fool, telling himself Tabini didn’t deserve a favor that size, if there was a real chance that he could get himself out of this alive, stay in office, and go back to dealing with Mospheira, business as usual—

The hell they’d let him. Trust was a word you couldn’t translate. But atevi had fourteen words for betrayal.

He expected the guards would come back, maybe shoot him, maybe take him somewhere else, to the less reasonable people the man had talked about. If you had a potential informer, you didn’t turn him over to rival factions. No. It was all Cenedi. It was all the dowager. All the same game, no matter the strategy. It just got rougher. Cenedi had warned him that people didn’t hold out.

He heard someone go out of the room down the hall, heard the doors shut, and in the long, long silence asked himself how bad it could get—and had ugly, ugly answers out of the machimi. He didn’t like to think about that. Breathing hurt, now, but he couldn’t feel his legs.

A long while later the outer room door opened. Again the footsteps, descending the stone steps—he listened to them, drawing quick, shallow breaths that didn’t give him enough oxygen, watched the shadows come down the darker corridor, and tried to keep his wits about him—find a point of negotiation, he said to himself. Engage the bastards, just to get them talking—stall for time in which Hanks or Tabini or somebody could dosomething.

The guards walked in.—Cenedi’s, he was damned sure, now.

“Tell Cenedi I’ve decided,” he said, as matter of factly as if it was his office and they’d shown up to collect the message. “Maybe we can find an agreement. I need to talk to him. I’d rather talk to him.”

“That’s not our business,” one said—and he recognized the attitude, the official hand-washing, the atevi official who’d taken a position, broken off negotiations, and told his subordinates to stonewall attempts, officially. Cenedi might have given orders not to hear about the methods.

He didn’t take Cenedi for that sort. He thought Cenedi would insist to know what his subordinates did.

“There’s an intermediate position,” he said. “Tell him there’s a way to solve this.” Anything to get Cenedi to send for him.

But the guards had other orders. They started untying his arms. Going to take him somewhere else, then. Inside Malguri, please God.