Foreigner

“Don’t jerk her head, nand’ paidhi!” someone shouted from close behind him, and Cenedi came riding past, bumping his leg, sending Nokhada on a perverse course along the very edge, the creature shaking her head and kicking at nothing in particular.

On the upward course ahead, Ilisidi stopped, and turned about and waited until they caught up, among the rest of her guard. Nokhada was sweating and snorting as he jogged them to a stop beside Cenedi, and he was perfectly content, trembling in every joint, that Nokhada should stop and stand as the other riders gathered about them.

He’d survived. He was on a solid part of the mountain. Nokhada couldn’t fling them both into the lake. That was a hard-won triumph.

“Caught your breath?” Ilisidi asked him. “How are you doing, nand’ paidhi?”

“All right,” he lied, out of breath.

“The lake trail’s a little steep for a novice,” Ilisidi said, and he thought she had to be joking. There wasno trail over that edge back there. Surely there wasn’t. “Are we ready?—Thumb and finger, nand’ paidhi. Gently, gently. She’ll follow. Just hold on.”

Babs moved, Nokhada moved, as if she was on an invisible string. Babs made a running rush at the slope, and Nokhada waited and did the same, right behind, with Cenedi behind him. But two of the men were ahead of Ilisidi, and over the ridge and out of sight—security, he supposed, though he supposed that any sniper would just wait for a more profitable target.

“Someone did try to kill me,” he said breathlessly to Cenedi, in case no one had ever quite made all the details clear, in case Cenedi had thought he was other than serious. “In Shejidan. Under the aiji’s own roof. Without filing. I supposed Banichi must have mentioned that. It’s not just a supposed threat.”

“We’re well aware,” Cenedi said. “The tea was our best chance.”

Cenedi was joking, he hoped. Deadpan retaliation for his remark when they mounted up.

But Cenedi claimed he’d known all along that there was a hazard, and Cenedi, or Ilisidi, had insisted all the same on bringing him outside the walls, and risking his neck with Nokhada. On one level, it was Tabini’s kind of gesture, absolute defiance of his restrictions and the better thoughts of his security—but he remained uneasy in spite of Cenedi’s assurances. The thought flitted through his head that if there were enemies or kidnappers in Malguri… he could be riding with them.

But Banichi hadn’t warned him anything of the sort. Banichi had brought Cenedi into his bedroom. Cenedi said he knew why they were at Malguri, and thought he could guarantee his safety.

Nokhada dipped her head of a sudden to investigate the ground—not the most opportune moment for Nokhada to do that, and he made a grab at the rings and jerked Nokhada’s head to bring it up—which brought Nokhada to an inglorious, sulking halt for two heartbeats before Nokhada moved on her own, still ducking her head, nose to the ground while she was climbing.

“She has a scent,” Cenedi said. Cenedi’s own mecheita was doing much the same, and so was Babs, up the hill. “I’d hang on, nand’ paidhi. Babs is lead.”

“Lead what?” he asked.

“Mecheit’-aiji,” Cenedi said, and he had a sudden recollection of televised hunts, of the legendary ability of mecheiti to track atevi fugitives or four-footed game. He remembered Babs going over his hand, and Nokhada smelling him over. He had the sudden apprehension that it wasn’t just television, wasn’t anything made-up, or exaggerated.

And he couldn’t control the damned mecheita he was on to prevent it taking him wherever Ilisidi took a whim to go.

Babs gave a sudden whip of his tail and with a scatter of gravel took out diagonally across the slope. Nokhada and Cenedi’s mount and the rest pivoted and launched themselves as if they’d been shot at—Nokhada recklessly, roughly surging uphill in Babs’ tracks, outpacing Cenedi and the rest. He didn’t wantthe lead—and all he could do was hang on to the rings and not drop the rein.

A gully loomed ahead, a wash of soft earth down the hill, and Ilisidi showed no disposition to slow Babs down.

Babs took it.

Oh, God, he thought, envisioning himself bleeding on the ground, run over by the mecheiti behind. He tucked down, he gripped the rings with all his might—he didn’t mass much, he didn’t mass much, he kept telling himself as Nokhada thundered across the slope—Nokhada was going to go and Nokhada didn’t intend to fall—Nokhada took a four-beat turn into the jump, hind legs shoved, shoulders rose—

Then came a floating feeling, a headlong plunge against which his body instinctively reacted backward—and a teeth-cracking jolt as somehow he went forward again and his mouth hit the back of Nokhada’s neck.

Nokhada’s legs were under them again, all four of them, in a pounding rhythm—Babs’ dark rump showed in front of them as Babs suddenly darted left and right on the close track of something brown and white running ahead of them. Nokhada ran a straighter course, other mecheiti running like earthquake behind her.