But he couldn’t put it together without understanding what Ilisidi’s motive was, what she valued most, what she was logical about and what she wouldn’t be.
On such exaggerated threads his mind was running, chasing down invalid chains of logic, stretching connections between points that weren’t connected, trying to remember what specific and mutable points had persuaded him to believe what he believed was true—the hints of motivation and policy in people who’d been lying to him when they told him the most basic facts he’d believed.
Go on instinct? Worst, worst thing the paidhi could ever do for a situation. Instinct was human. Feelings were human. Reasonable expectations were definitely human…
Ilisidi said they should get underway, then. It was a good fifty miles, atevi reckoning, and she thought they could get there by midnight.
“Speed’s what we can do,” she said, “that these city-folk won’t expect. They don’t think in terms of mecheiti crossing hills like this that fast. Damn lot they’ve forgotten. Damn lot about this land they never learned.”
She leaned on her cane, getting up. He wanted to believe in Ilisidi. He wanted to trust the things she said. Emotionally… based in human psyche… he wanted to think she loved the land and wanted to save it.
Intellectually, he wanted answers about sending the mecheiti back to Malguri—where there were, supposedly, rebels having breakfast off the historic china.
He didn’t get up with the rest. He waited until the medic packed up and moved off.
“Banichi-ji,” he said on his knees and as quietly as he could. “She’s sending the mecheiti away. We might still need them. Is this reasonable, nadi-ji?”
Banichi’s yellow eyes remained frustratingly expressionless. He blinked once. The mouth—offered not a thing.
“Banichi. Why?”
“Why—what?”
“Why did Tabini do what he did? Why didn’t he just damn ask me where I stood?”
“Go get on, nadi.”
“Why did you get mad when I came to help you? Cenedi would have left you, with no help, no—”
“I said, Get on. We’re leaving.”
“Am I that totally wrong, Banichi? Just answer me. Why is she sending the mecheiti back, before we know we’re safe?”
“Get me up,” Banichi said, and reached for Jago’s hand. Bren caught the other arm, and Banichi made it up, wobbly, testing the splinted ankle. It didn’t work. Banichi gasped, and used their combined help to hobble over to his mecheita and grab the mounting-straps.
“Banichi-ji.” It was the last privacy he and Banichi and Jago might have for hours, and he was desperate. “Banichi, these people are lying to us. Why?”
Banichi looked at him, and for one dreadful moment, he had the feeling what it must be to face Banichi… professionally.
But Banichi turned then, grasped the highest of the straps on the riding-pad, and with a jump that belied his size and weight, managed to get most of the way up without even needing the mecheita to drop the shoulder. Jago gave him the extra shove that put him across the pad and Banichi caught up the rein, letting the splinted leg dangle.
Banichi didn’t need his help. Atevi didn’t have friends, atevi left each other to die. The paidhi was supposed to reason through that fact of life and death and find a rationale other humans could accept to explain it all.
But at the moment, with bruises wherever atevi had laid hands on him, the paidhi didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, refused to understand why Banichi should have died back there, for no damned reason, or why Banichi was lying to him, too.
Men were getting up, ready to move out. If he wasn’t on Nokhada, Nokhada would leave him, he had no doubt of it, they’d have to come back to get the reason—he still supposed—of this whole exercise, and nobody was going to be damned happy with him. He quickened his pace, limped across the slant of the hill and caught Nokhada.
Then he heard the tread of someone leading a mecheita in his tracks across the sodden leaves. He faced around.
It was Jago. A very angry Jago. “Nadi,” she said. “You don’t have the only valid ideas in the world. Tabini-ji told you where to be, what to do. You do those things.”