Foreigner

Light hurt. Moving hurt. There wasn’t any part of him that didn’t hurt once he tried to move, particularly his head, and the smell of food wasn’t at all attractive. But a second shake came at his shoulder, and Tano leaned over him, he was sure it was Tano, though his eyes wouldn’t focus, quite, and light hurt.

“You’d better eat, nand’ paidhi.”

“God.”

“Come on.” Pitilessly, Tano began plumping up the cushions about his head and shoulders—which made his head ache and made him uncertain about his stomach.

He rested there, figuring that for enough cooperation to satisfy his tormentors, and saw Algini in the doorway to the bath and the servants’ quarters, talking to Jago, the two of them speaking very quietly, in voices that echoed and distorted. Tano came back with a bowl of soup and some meal wafers. “Eat,” Tano told him, and he didn’t want it. He wanted to tell Tano go away, but his servants didn’t go away, Tabini hired them, and he had to do what they said.

Besides, white wafers was what you ate when your stomach was upset and you wanted not to be sick—he flashed on Mospheira, on his own bedroom, and his mother—but it was Tano holding his head, Tano insisting he have at least half of it, and he nibbled a crumb at a time, while the room and everything tilted on him, and kept trying to slide off into the echoing edges of the world.

He rested his eyes after that, and waked to the smell of soup. He didn’t want it, but he took a sip of it, when Tano put the cup to his lips, and burned his mouth. It tasted like the tea. He wanted to stop right there, but Tano kept trying to feed it to him, insisting he had to, that it was the only way to flush the tea out of his system. So he put an arm into the cold air, located the cup handle with his own hand, let Tano prop his head with pillows, and drank at the cup without dropping it, until his stomach decided it absolutely couldn’t tolerate any more.

He rested the cup in both hands, then, exhausted, unable to decide whether he wanted to put his arm back under the covers to get warm or whether the heat from the porcelain was better. Stay where he was, he thought. He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to do anything but breathe.

Then Banichi walked in, dismissed Tano and stood over his bed with arms folded.

“How are you feeling, nand’ paidhi?”

“Very foolish,” he muttered. He remembered, if he was not hallucinating, the aiji-dowager, a pot of tea, smashed in the fireplace. And a man, Banichi’s very image.

Who was standing in the doorway.

His heart jumped.

Cenedi walked in when he saw him looking his way, and stood on the other side of his bed.

“I wish to apologize,” Cenedi said. “Professionally, nand’ paidhi. I should have known about the tea.”

“I should have known. I will know, after this.” The taste of the tea was still in his mouth. His head ached if he blinked. He was upset that Banichi allowed this stranger into the room, and he asked himself whether Banichi was playing some angle he didn’t understand, pretending to believe Cenedi. It only made sense to keep his answers moderate, and to be polite, and not to offend anyone unnecessarily.

“They compound the aiji-dowager’s tea,” Banichi said, “from a very old local recipe. There’s a strong stimulant involved, which the dowager considers healthful, or at least bracing. With humans’ small body weight and adverse reaction to alkaloids—”

“God.”

“The compound is a tea called dajdi, which I counsel you to avoid in future.”

“The cook requests assurances of your good will,” Cenedi said from the other side of his bed. “He had no idea a human would be in the company.”

“Assure him, please.” His head was going in circles. He lay back against the pillow, and almost spilled the half cup of soup. “No ill will. My damn fault.”

“These are human manners,” Banichi said. “He wishes to emphasize his confidence it was an accident, nadi.”

There was silence. He knew he hadn’t said what he hoped to have said, and he shouldn’t swear doing it, but his head hurt too much. “No wish to offend,” he murmured, which was the universal way out of confusing offenses. “Only good will.” His head was beginning to hurt again. Banichi rescued the soup and set it aside with a clank on the table that sounded like thunder.

“The aiji-dowager wants her doctor to examine the paidhi,” Cenedi said, “if you would stand by as a witness for both sides in this affair, Banichi-ji.”

“Thank the aiji-dowager,” Banichi said. “Yes.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” Bren said. He didn’t want to have the dowager’s doctor near him. He only wanted a little while to rest, lie in the pillows, and let the soup settle.

But no one paid any attention to his wishes. Cenedi went out with Jago, came back with an elderly ateva with a bag full of equipment, who threw back the warm furs, exposed his skin to chill, listened to his heart, looked into his eyes, took his pulse, and discussed with Banichi what he’d been given, how many cups of tea he’d had… “One,” he insisted, but no one listened to the victim.