Foreigner

Straining his eyes, he could make out what he thought was Maidingi Airport, beside a hazy sprawl he decided must be Maidingi township. Nearer at hand, he could just make out the road, or what he took for it, wending down the mountain.

“Is that the town? he asked, knowing it was a stupid question, but only to break the silence; and Ilisidi said it was Maidingi.

After that, looking out over the broad plain, Ilisidi pointed out the direction of villages outlying Maidingi township, and told him the names of plants and regions and the mountains across the lake.

But in his mind was the history he had seen in the books in his room, the castle standing against attack from the Association across the lake, even before cannon had come into the question. Malguri had stood for centuries against intrusion from the east. Banners flying, smoke of cannon on the walls…

Don’t romanticize, his predecessor had told him. Don’t imagine. See and observe and report.

Accuracy. Not wishful thinking.

Lives relied on the paidhi’s accuracy. Billions of lives relied on the truth of his perception.

And relied equally on his representing both sides accurately to each other.

But, he thought, how much have we forgotten about them? How much have we encouraged them to lose? How much have we overridden, imposing our priorities and our technological sequence over theirs?

Or are those possibilities really forgotten here? Have they ever wholly been forgotten?

They rode to the very end of the ridge. Clouds were rolling in over the southern end of the lake, dark gray beneath, flashing with lightnings, brooding over slate-gray waters. But sunlight slanted over the blue peaks to the east, turning the water along the Malguri shore as bright as polished silver. A dragonette leapt from its nest among the rocks, crying protest to the winds, and thunder rumbled. Another dragonette was creeping back up the mountain the long, slow way they must, once they’d flown, wings folded, wing-claws finding purchase on the steep rocks.

Dragonettes existed in Shejidan. Buildings near the park had slanted walls, he’d heard, specifically to afford them purchase. Atevi still valued them, for their stubbornness, for their insistence on flying, when they knew the way back was uncertain and fraught with dangers.

Predator on the wing and potential prey on the return.

Ilisidi turned Babs about on the end of the trail, and took a downward, slanting course among the rocks. He followed.

In a time more of riding, they passed an old and ruined building Cenedi said was an artillery installation from a provincial dispute. But its foundations, Cenedi said, had been older than that, as a fortress called Tadiiri, the Sister, once bristling with cannon.

“How did it go to ruins?” he asked.

“A falling out with Malguri,” Cenedi said. “And a barrel of wine that didn’t agree with the aiji of Tadiiri or his court.”

Poison. “But the whole fortress?” he blurted out.

“It lacked finesse,” Cenedi said.

So he knew of a certainty then what Cenedi was, the same as Banichi and Jago. And he believed now absolutely that his near demise had embarrassed Cenedi, as Cenedi had said, professionally.

“After that,” Cenedi said, “Tadiiri was demolished, its cannon taken down. You saw them at the front entrance, as you drove in.”

He had not even been sure they were authentic. A memorial, he had thought. He didn’t know such things. But the age of wars and cannon had been so brief—and war on the earth of the atevi so seldom a matter of engagement, almost always of maneuver, and betrayal, with leaders guarded by their armies. It was assassination one most had to guard against, on whatever scale.

And here he rode with Ilisidi, and her guard, leaving the one Tabini had lent him. Or was it, in atevi terms, a maneuver, a posturing, a declaration of position and power, their forcing him to join them? He might have found something else unhealthful to drink, or eat. There were so many hazards a human could meet, if they meant him harm.

And Banichi and Cenedi did speak, and did intrude into each other’s territory—Banichi had been angry at him for accepting the invitation, Banichi had said there was no way to retrieve him from his promise—but all of it was for atevi reasons, atevi dealing with a situation between Tabini and his grandmother, at the least, and maybe a trial of Banichi’s authority in the house: he simply couldn’t read it.

Maybe Ilisidi and Tabini had made their point and maybe, hereafter, he could hope for peace between the two wings of the house—Tabini’s house, Tabini’s politics with generations before him, and paidhiin before himself.

Diplomacy, indeed, he thought, falling back to Babs’ tail again, in his place and deftly advised of it.

He understood who ruled in Malguri. He had certainly gotten that clear and strong. He supposed, through Banichi, that Tabini had.

But in the same way he supposed himself a little safer now, inside Ilisidi’s guardianship as well as Tabini’s.

VII

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