It had a little lump of bony plate on its nose, that was bare and gray and smooth. The inquisitive lip was barred with wrinkles, and came to a narrow point between the two gold-capped tusks. It explored his fingers, snuffling and blowing its great breaths on him in evident enthusiasm, flicking its ears as it had with the dowager, seeming not offended that he had no treat for it. It tickled the soft skin between his fingers, and tasted his fingertips with a file-like tongue.
It didn’t flinch away from him, that curious rough contact, it took to his whole fingers with skin-abrading enthusiasm, and he was delighted and afraid and enchanted, that something in the world met him with such complete, uncomplicated curiosity—accepting what it met. It wasn’t offended at his strange taste, that for the dowager’s hopes of his discomfiture.
Then it took the ultimate, unanticipated liberty of nosing him in the face. His hands flew up to fend it off, and his next view of it was from the pavings looking up at its looming shadow.
“Hei,” Ilisidi said, holding the creature’s harness, and standing over him, “don’t push on the nose, nand’ paidhi. Babs is sorry, aren’t you, Babs? Didn’t expect a hand on your nose, did you, poor Babs?”
He gathered himself up—he had saved his skull from the pavings, but not his backside. He brushed himself off and doggedly offered his hand again to the mecheita—one didn’t admit an embarrassment, among atevi, even while the dowager chuckled at his discomfort and said he should take Nokhada, as a relatively placid mount.
“Take… where, aiji-mai?”
“To see Malguri, of course,” Ilisidi declared, as if his agreement had encompassed everything. She gave her cane to Cenedi, hiked up the skirt of her coat and hit Babs on the shoulder, the signal—he knew it from television—for Babs to put out a foreleg. Another man helped Ilisidi with his joined hands, and Ilisidi swung up to a practiced landing on the riding-pad as Babs surged up again, smooth and quick as a courtly bow. They towered above him, Ilisidi and the mecheita, black against the sky, the beast that was wholly shadow, and Ilisidi, whose pale eyes were the only brightness, like a figure out of Malguri’s violent past, that swept past him, and turned about and fidgeted to be moving.
There was a great deal of activity out of the further building, a stable from which other mecheiti came with their handlers, a crowd of black shapes, as tall, as ominous from where he stood, one for every man in Ilisidi’s party.
And himself. “Forgive me,” he began, when Cenedi signaled the handlers to bring one of the creatures to him. “This isn’t cleared. I don’t know how to ride. I beg to recall that I was sent here for my safety, at considerable difficulty of my absence from critical matters in court—I’ve not consulted with my own security, whose reputations—”
Nokhada’s passage cut off his view, a living mountain between him and the stone wall of Malguri. “Let her have your scent,” Cenedi said, having the lead rope, and holding the creature still. “Just don’t press on the nose. The reaction is quite involuntary. The tusks are capped, but all the same—one could deal damage.”
The mecheita stretched out its neck for a lazy sniff of his hand, and a more curious examination of his clothing, and a lick at his face and a try for his neck. He stepped back, not quite in time, from the swing of its head—a blunt tusk bruised his jaw and brought stars to his eyes, while Cenedi restrained it and the servants, nothing heeding his protests, prepared to help htm up the way they had helped Ilisidi.
“Just put your foot here, nand’ paidhi, it’s quite all right.”
“I can’t ride, dammit, I don’t know how!”
“It’s quite all right,” Cenedi said. “Just hold to the pad-rings. Leave the reins alone. She’ll follow Babs.”
“Where?” he asked bluntly. “Where are we going?”
“Just out and back. Come. I’ll assure your safety, nand’ paidhi. It’s quite all right.”
Call Cenedi a liar, in Cenedi’s domain? He was surrounded by the people he’d left safety to follow, because he wouldn’t be bluffed into retreat. Cenedi vowed he was safe. It was Cenedi’s responsibility, and Banichi would hold him to it—with his life.