Foreigner

Meanwhile the castle got along, with fireplaces to warm the rooms and cook the food, with candles to light the halls where light from windows didn’t reach—systems which had once been The System in Malguri. The aiji-dowager had ordered breakfast set outside, on the balcony, in a chill mountain summer morning—fortunate, Bren thought, that he’d worn his heavier coat this morning, because of the chill already in the rooms. The cold had steam going up from his tea-cup. It was nippishly pleasant—hard to remember the steamy nights that were the rule in the City in this month, the rainstorms rolling in from the sea.

And with the candles and the wood fires and the ancient stones, it was a blink of the eye to imagine, this misty morning, that he had come unfixed in time, that oared vessels with heraldic sails might appear out of the mist on the end of the lake.

Another dragonette had flown, with its eye on some prey. Its cry wailed away down the heights.

“What are you thinking, paidhi? Some wise and revelatory thought?”

“Thinking about ships. And wood fires. And how Malguri doesn’t need anything from anywhere to survive.”

The aiji-dowager pursed her lips, rested her chin on her fist. “Aei, a hundred or so staff to do the laundry and carry the wood and make the candles, and it survives. Another five hundred to plow and tend and hunt, to feed the launderers and the wood-cutters and the candlemakers and themselves, and, oh, yes, we’re self-sufficient. Except the iron-workers and the copy-makers to supply us and the riders and the cannoneers to defend it all from the Unassociated who won’t do their share and had rather prey on those who do. Malguri had electric lights before you came, nadi, I do assure you.” She took a sip of tea, set the cup down and waved her napkin at Cenedi, who hovered in the doorway and mediated the service. He thought the breakfast ended, then. He prepared to rise, but Ilisidi waved a hand toward the terrace stairs.

“Come.”

He was caught, snared. “I beg the dowager’s pardon. My security absolutely forbids me—”

“ Forbidsyou! Outrageous.—Or did my grandson set them against me?”

“No such thing, I assure you, with utmost courtesy. He spoke very positively—”

“Then let your guards use their famous ingenuity.” She shoved her chair back. Cenedi hastened to assist, and to put her cane under her hand. “Come, come, let me show you the rest of Malguri. Let me show you the Malguri of your imagination.”

He didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t an enemy—at least he hoped she wasn’t, and he didn’t want to make one. Tabini, damn him, had put him here, when he’d known his grandmother was here. Banichi was all reproach for the invitation he’d accepted without having Banichi’s doubtless wise advice—and there was nothing the paidhi saw now to do, being committed to the dowager’s hospitality, except to fall to the floor moaning and plead indisposition—hardly flattering to an already upset cook; or to get up from the table and follow the old woman and see what she wanted him to see.

The latter seemed less damaging to the peace. He doubted Banichi would counsel him differently. So he followed Ilisidi to the outer edge of the terrace and down, and down the stone steps, to yet another terrace, from which another stairs, and then a third terrace, and so below to a paved courtyard, all leisurely, Cenedi going before the dowager, four of the dowager’s security bringing up the rear.

It was farther down than he expected. It involved walking quite far back in the fortress, first through a walled courtyard, then across an earthy-smelling second walled court, at which he truly began to doubt the direction they were going, and the wisdom of following this party of strangers.

Banichi is going to kill me, Bren thought. Jago is going to file Intent on me. If the dowager’s guard doesn’t have it in mind from the start, Banichi can’t have any idea where I’ve gone, if he isn’t watching already—

Which, thinking of it, he well might—

Something banged, hammerlike, at the gate in front of them, and as Cenedi opened it there came fierce squeals the like of which he’d never heard at close range, only in machimi plays…

Mecheiti, he thought with trepidation, seeing first Cenedi and then the dowager walk through that gale. Horsewas what the Remote Equivalencies said.

But horsedidn’t cover this utter darkness beyond the gates, defying the servants to hold it, shaking its head, threatening with its formidable rooting-tusks—it was horseonly because atevi rode it, it was horseon the atevi scale of things, the creature that had helped them cross the continents and pull their wagons and patrol their borders. It threw its head in defiance of its handlers, it gnashed its formidable teeth, its tusks capped with gold. Its head-harness glittered with beads, in the mop of flying mane—it was violent, frightening in its nearness and in the heedless strength with which it pulled the handlers about.