“Damned nice of you. Did you ask?”
“We were naive. But we hadn’t a choice as we saw it, and we hadn’t a way to leave once we were down. It’s easier to fall onto a planet than to fly free of one. It was our calculated decision, aiji-mai, and we thought we could build our way back to space and bring atevi with us. We never intended to go to war—we didn’t want to take anything from you…”
“Baji-naji, nand’ paidhi. Fortune has a human face and bastard Chance whores drunken down your streets.—Let him go, nadiin. Let him go where he likes. If you want to go down to the township, nand’ paidhi,—there’s a car that can take you.”
He blinked into the wind, staggering in a freedom that all but dumped him down to his knees. The guards’ grip lingered, keeping him steady. It was all that did. It was like the other crazed things Ilisidi had done—sending him out of here, setting him free.
But he didn’t know he’d reach the airport. She didn’t promise more than freedom to leave Malguri. She didn’t say his leaving was what she wanted—If you want to go still rang in his ears; and she’d given him crazy signals before this, challenging him to stay behind her—atevi-fashion: follow me if you dare.
He shook off the guards and stumbled forward to grab the vacant chair at the table, as guns came out and safeties went off. He slid it back and fell into it, too cold to feel the lace-covered glass under his arms, his sense of balance tilting this way and that on this narrow strip of a balcony.
“Tabini sent me here,” he said. “Aiji-mai, your grandson couldn’t believe his own judgement, so he sent me here, relying on yours. So I do rely on it. What do you want me to do?”
A long, long moment Ilisidi stared at him, a shadow wrapped in robes, immune to the cold. He was too cold to shiver. He only flinched in the blasts and hunched his arms together. But he didn’t doubt what he was doing. He didn’t doubt the challenge Ilisidi had laid in front of him, offering him an escape—by everything he’d learned of her and of atevi, Ilisidi would write off him and every human alive if he took her up on that invitation to escape.
“In reasonable fear of harm,” Ilisidi said finally, “you would not give us a simple statement against my grandson. In pain, you refused to give it. What good is man’chi to a human?”
“Every good.” Of a sudden it was dazzlingly, personally clear to him. “A place to stand. An understanding of who I am, and where I am. If Tabini-aiji sent me here, he relied on your judgement—of me, of the situation, of the use I am to him.”
Another long silence. “I’m old-fashioned. Impractical. Without appreciation of the modern world. What can my grandson possibly want from me?”
“Evidently,” he said, and found, after all, the capacity to shiver, “evidently he’s come to value your opinion.”
Ilisidi’s mouth made a hard line. That curved. “In Maidingi there are people waiting for you—who expect me to turn you over to them, who demand it, in fact—people who rely on me as my grandson hasn’t. Your choice to stay here—is wise. But what excuse for holding you should I tell them, nadi?”
The shivers had become violent. He gave a shake of his head, tried to answer, wasn’t sure Ilisidi wanted an answer. The rim of the sun cast a sudden, fierce gleam over the mountains across the lake, flaming gold.
“This young man is freezing,” Ilisidi said. “Get him inside. Hot tea. Breakfast. I don’t know when he may get another.”
When he may get another? He wanted explanation, but Ilisidi’s bodyguard hauled him out of his chair—the ones he knew, who knew him, not the ones who had brought him from below. He couldn’t coordinate his getting up. He couldn’t walk without staggering, the cold had set so deeply into his joints. “My apartment,” he protested. “I want to talk to Banichi. Or Jago.”
Ilisidi said nothing to that request, and the guards took him from the balcony into the dead air of the inside, guided him by the arms through the antiques and the delicate tables—opened a door to a firelit room, Ilisidi’s study, he supposed, by the books and the papers about. They brought him to the chair before the fire, wrapped a robe about him and let him sit down and huddle in the warmthless wool. They piled more logs on the fire, sent embers flying up the chimney, and he was still numb, scarcely feeling the heat on the soles of his boots.