Foreigner

Not to mention the plumbing.

But it had its charm. It hadits moments, it had the incredible texture of life that didn’t measure by straight lines and standardized measures, that didn’t go by streets and straight edges, with people living stacked up on top of each other, and lights blotting out the stars at night. Here, one could hear the wind and the waves, one could find endless variety in weathered stones and pebbles and there was no schedule but the inescapable fact that riding out and riding back were the same distance…

Ilisidi talked about the trading ships and the fishermen, while the high, thin trail of a jet passed above Malguri on its way east, across the continental divide, across the barrier that had held two atevi civilizations from meeting for thousands of years—a matter of four, five hours, now, that easy. But Ilisidi talked about crossings of Maidingi that took days, and involved separate aijiin’s territory.

“In those days,” Ilisidi said, “one proceeded very carefully into the territory of foreign aijiin.”

Not without a point. Again.

“But we’ve learned so much more, nand’ dowager.”

“More than what?”

“That walling others out equally walls us in, nand’ dowager.”

“Hah,” Ilisidi declared, and with a move he never saw, spun Babs about and lit out along the hill, scattering stones.

Nokhada followed. All of them had to. And it hurt, God, it hurt when they struck the downhill to the lake. Ahead of them, Ilisidi, with her white-shot braid flying—no ribbon of rank, no adornment, just a red and black coat, and Babsidi’s sleek black rump, tail switching for nothing more than excess energy—nothing more in Ilisidi’s mind, perhaps, than the free space in front of her.

Catching up was Nokhada’s idea; but with the rest of the guard behind, and Cenedi beside, there was nothing to do but follow.

At another time they stopped, on the narrow half-moon of a sandy beach, where the lake curved in, and a man thinking of assassins could only say to himself that there were places on the shore where a boat could land and reach Malguri.

But standing while the mecheiti caught their breaths, Ilisidi talked about the lake, its depth, its denizens—its ghosts. “When I was a child,” she said, “a wreck washed up on the south shore, just the bow of it, but they thought it might be from a treasure ship that sank four hundred years ago. And divers went out for it, all up and down this shore. They say they never found it. But a number of antiquities turned up in Malguri, and the servants were cleaning them in barrels in the stable court, about that time. My father sent the best pieces to the museum in Shejidan. And it probably cost him an estate. But most people in Maidingi province would have melted them for the gold.”

“It’s good he saved them.”

“Why?”

“For the past,” he said, wondering if he had misunder stood something else in atevi mindset. “To save it. Isn’t that important?”

“Is it?” Ilisidi answered him with a question and left him none the wiser. She was off again up the hill, and he forgot all his philosophy, in favor of protecting what he feared might have progressed to blisters. Damn the woman, he thought, and thought that if he pulled up and lagged behind as long as he could hold Nokhada’s instincts in check, the dowager might take that for a surrender and slow down, but damnedif he would, damnedif he would cry help or halt. Ilisidi would dismiss him from her company then, probably lose all interest in him, and he could lie about in a warm bath, reading ghost stories until his would-be assassins flung themselves against the barriers Banichi had doubtless set up, and killed themselves, and he could go home to air-conditioning, the morning news, and tea he could trust. From moment to moment it seemed like the only escape.

But he kept Ilisidi’s pace. Atevi called it na’itada. Barb called it being a damned fool. He had never spent so long an hour as it took to get home again, an hour in which he told himself repeatedly he had rather fall off the mountain and be done.

Finally the gates of the stable court were in front of them, then behind them, with the mecheiti anxious for stables and grain. He managed to get Nokhada to drop a shoulder, and climbed down off Nokhada’s towering height onto legs he wasn’t sure would bear his weight.

“A hot bath,” Ilisidi called out to him. “I’ll send you some herbs, nand’ paidhi. I’ll see you in the morning!”

He managed to bow, and, among Ilisidi’s entourage, to walk up the stairs without conspicuously limping.

“The soreness goes,” Cenedi said to him quietly, “in four or five days.”

A hot bath was all he was thinking of, all the long way up to the front hall. A hot bath, for about an hour. A soft and motionless chair. Soaking and reading seemed an excellent way to spend the remainder of the day, sitting in the sun, minding his own business, evading aijiin and their athletic endeavors. He limped down the long hall and started the stairs up to his floor, at his own pace.