FOREIGNER: a novel of first contact by Caroline J. Cherryh

“Banichi, I apologize. Profoundly.”

Banichi shrugged. “Ilisidi is an old and clever woman. What did you talk about? The weather? Tabini?”

“Breakfast. Not breaking my neck. A mecheita called Babs—”

“Babsidi.” It meant ‘lethal.’ “And nothing else?”

He desperately tried to remember. “How it was her land. What plants grow here. Dragonettes.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Nothing of consequence. Cenedi talked about the ruin up there, and the cannon on the front lawn. —She ran me up a hill, I cut my lip… after that they were polite to me. And the tourists were polite to me. I gave them ribbons and signed their cards and we talked about families and where they came from.—Was either one a disaster, Banichi-ji—before some fool tried to cross the lawn? Advise me. I am asking for advice.”

Another of Banichi’s long, sober stares. Banichi’s eyes were the clearest, incredible yellow. Like glass. Just as expressive. “We’re both professionals, paidhi-ji. You are quite good.”

“You think I’m lying?”

“I mean that you’re no more off duty than I am.” Banichi lifted the flask and poured moderately for them both. “I have confidence in your professional instincts. Have confidence in mine.”

It came down to the fruit, and a creme and liqueur sauce. A man could be seduced by that, if his stomach weren’t uncertain from dinner conversation.

“If you’re running courier,” Bren said, when the atmosphere felt easier, “you can handle a written dispatch from me to my office on Mospheira.”

“We might,” Banichi said. “If Tabini approves.”

“Any word about that solar unit I wanted?”

“I’m afraid they’re prioritied, if they can find one. We’ve donated the generator we have. We have homes in the valley without power, elderly and ill persons—”

“Of course.” He couldn’t fault that answer. It was entirely reasonable. Everything was.

Confidence, Bren said to the creatures on the wall. Patience. Glass eyes stared back at him, some angry, some placidly stupid, having awaited their hunters with equanimity, one supposed.

Banichi said he had business to attend—reports to write. In longhand, one supposed.

Or not. Djinana came and took the dishes away, and lit the oil lamps, having blown out the candelabra in the dining room.

“Will you need anything more?” Djinana asked; and, “No,” Bren said, thinking to himself that of individuals who didn’t get regular hours or a fair explanation around this place, Djinana was chief. One wondered where Tano was—Tano, who was supposed to be his personal staff. While Algini was off in Shejidan. “I’m sure I won’t. I’ll read until bedtime.”

“I’ll lay out your night things,” Djinana said.

“Thank you,” he murmured, and picked up his book and took the chair by the fire, where, if he sat at an angle, with the lamps on the table beside him, the two light sources made reading at least moderately possible. Live flame flickered. He had discovered that primary good reason for light bulbs.

Djinana whisked the cart away with the dishes—the man never so much as rattled a glass when he worked. The candles were out in the dining room, leaving it a dark cavern. Elsewhere the fire cast horned and large-eared shadows about the room, and danced in the glass eyes of the beasts.

He heard Djinana open the armoire in the bedroom, and heard him go away again.

After that was a curious quiet about the place. No rain, no thunder, nothing but the crackle of the fire. He read, he turned pages—which sounded amazingly loud, on a rare romance in the histories, no one bent on feud, no inter-clan struggles, no dramatic leaps from Malguri tower, and not a drowning to be had, just a romantic couple who met and courted at Malguri, who happened to be the aijiin of two neighboring provinces, and who had a plethora of talented children.

Pleasant thought, that someone who slept in these rooms hadn’t come to a bad end; interesting, to have a notion of romantic goings-on, the gifts of flowers, the long and tender relationship of two people who, being heads of state, never quite had a domicile except Malguri, in the fall. It was a side of themselves atevi didn’t show to the paidhi—unless one counted flirtations he never knew whether he should take seriously. But that was how it went, a number of small gifts, tied to each other’s gates, or sent by third parties. Atevi marriages didn’t always mean cohabitation. Often enough they didn’t, except when there were minor children in question—and sometimes then cohabitation lasted and sometimes it didn’t. What atevi thought or what atevi felt still eluded him through the atevi language.

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