Foreigner

“You wait,” she finished for him, “for another aiji, another paidhi. But you expect to get your way.”

No one had ever put it so bluntly to him. He had wondered if the atevi did understand, though he had thought they had.

“Situations change, nand’ dowager.”

“Your tea’s getting cold.” He sipped it. It was indeed cold, quickly chilled, in the small cups. He wondered if she knew what had brought him to Malguri. He had had the image of an old woman out of touch with the world, and now he thought not. He emptied the cup.

Ilisidi emptied hers, and flung it at the fire. Porcelain shattered. He jumped—shaken by the violence, asking himself again if Ilisidi was mad.

“I never favored that tea service,” Ilisidi said.

He had the momentary impulse to send his cup after it. If Tabini had said the like, Tabini would have been testing him, and he would have thrown it. But he didn’t know Ilisidi. He had to take that into account for good and all. He rose and handed his cup to Cenedi, who waited with the tray.

Cenedi hurled the whole set at the fireplace. Tea hissed in the coals. Porcelain lay shattered.

Bren bowed, as if he had received a compliment, and saw an old woman who, dying, sitting in the midst of this prized antiquity, destroyed what offended her preferences, broke what was ancient and priceless, because shedidn’t like it. He looked for escape, murmured, “I thank the aiji-dowager for her attention,” and got two steps away before bang! went the cane on the stones, and he stopped and faced back again, constrained by atevi custom—and the suspicion what service Cenedi was to her.

He had amused the aiji-dowager. She was grinning, laughing with a humor that shook her thin body, as she leaned both hands on the cane. “Run,” she said. “Run, nand’ paidhi. But where’s safe? Do you know?”

“This place,” he shot back. One didn’tretreat from direct challenges—not if one wasn’t a child, and wasn’t anyone’s servant. “Your residence. The aiji thought so.”

She didn’t say a thing, just grinned and laughed and rocked back and forth on the pivot of the cane. After an anxious moment he decided he was dismissed, and bowed, and headed away, hoping she was through with jokes, and asking himself was Ilisidi sane, or had Tabini known, or whyhad she destroyed the tea service?

Because a human had profaned it?

Or because there was something in the tea, that now was vapor on the winds above the chimney? His stomach was upset. He told himself it was suggestion. He reminded himself there were some teas humans shouldn’t drink.

His pulse was hammering as he walked the hall and climbed the stairs, and he wondered if he should try to throw up, or where, or if he could get to his own bathroom to do it… not to upset the staff… or lose his dignity…

Which was stupid, if he was poisoned. Possibly it was fear that was making his heart race. Possibly it was one of those stimulants like midarga, which in overdoses could put a human in the emergency room, and he should find Banichi or Jago and tell them what he’d done, and what he’d drunk, that was already making its way into his bloodstream.

A clammy sweat was on his skin as he reached the upper hall. It might be nothing more than fear, and suggestion, but he couldn’t get air enough, and there was a darkening around the edges of his vision. The hall became a nightmare, echoing with his steps on the wooden floor. He put out a hand to the wall to steady himself and his hand vanished into a strange dark nowhere at the side of his vision.

I’m in serious trouble, he thought. I have to get to the door. I mustn’t fall in the hallway. I mustn’t make it obvious I’m reacting to the stuff… never show fear, never show discomfort…

The door wobbled closer and larger in the midst of the dark tunnel. He had a blurred view of the latch, pushed down on it. The door opened and let him into the blinding glare of the windows, white as molten metal.

Close the door, he thought. Lock it. I’m going to bed. I might fall asleep awhile. Can’t sleep with the door unlocked.

The latch caught. He was sure of that. He faced the glare of the windows, staggered a few steps and then found he was going the wrong way, into the light.

“Nadi Bren!”

He swung around, frightened by the echoing sound, frightened by the darkness that loomed up on every side of him, around the edges and now in the center of his vision, darkness that reached out arms and caught him and swept him off his feet in a whirling of all his concept of up and down.

Then it was white, white, until the vision went gray again and violent, and he was bent over a stone edge, with someone shouting orders that echoed in his ears, and peeling his sweater off over his head.