It was farther down than he expected. It involved walking quite far back in the fortress, first through a walled courtyard, then across an earthy-smelling second walled court, at which he truly began to doubt the direction they were going, and the wisdom of following this party of strangers.

Banichi is going to kill me, Bren thought. Jago is going to file Intent on me. If the dowager’s guard doesn’t have it in mind from the start, Banichi can’t have any idea where I’ve gone, if he isn’t watching already—

Which, thinking of it, he well might—

Something banged, hammerlike, at the gate in front of them, and as Cenedi opened it there came fierce squeals the like of which he’d never heard at close range, only in machimi plays…

Mecheiti, he thought with trepidation, seeing first Cenedi and then the dowager walk through that gale. Horsewas what the Remote Equivalencies said.

But horsedidn’t cover this utter darkness beyond the gates, defying the servants to hold it, shaking its head, threatening with its formidable rooting-tusks—it was horseonly because atevi rode it, it was horseon the atevi scale of things, the creature that had helped them cross the continents and pull their wagons and patrol their borders. It threw its head in defiance of its handlers, it gnashed its formidable teeth, its tusks capped with gold. Its head-harness glittered with beads, in the mop of flying mane—it was violent, frightening in its nearness and in the heedless strength with which it pulled the handlers about.

He stopped at the gate, counting it only prudence—but Ilisidi kept walking, after Cenedi. The other guards—there were three more of them than they had started with—passed him where he stood, telling him his fear was inappropriate, whatever the evidence of his senses, and he gathered his resolve and walked out behind the last, suffering, in that tall company, a sudden revision of perspectives: the world had suddenly become all atevi size, and the fragile old ateva leaning on her cane next to this terrible creature, and reaching out her hand to it, was of the same giant scale, the same fearsome darkness. It might have been centuries ago in Malguri. It might have been some aiji of the warlike age—

He watched in trepidation as the mecheita dipped his huge head and took something from Ilisidi’s hand. It gulped that down and began to make little snatches at her fingers with its overshot upper lip as if it expected more—playing games, he realized, delicate in its movements, reacting to her fingers with a duck of its head and a gentleness in its touch he would not have believed from its behavior with the handlers.

Bluff and bluster, he said to himself. The creature was a pet. It was all a show to impress the paidhi, the stupid human.

“Come, come,” Ilisidi said, looking back at him. She leaned the hand with the cane against the mecheita’s neck, using the animal for a prop instead, and wanted himto come up to it.

Well, atevi had tried to bluff him before—including Tabini. Atevi in the court had set up traps to destroy his dignity, and with it his credibility. So he knew the game. He summoned up the mild anger and the amusement it deserved, walked up with his heart in his throat and tentatively offered his hand, expecting the dowager would dissuade him if there was a real threat.

But not putting all his faith in it. He was ready to snatch his hand back as it stretched its neck toward him—and jerked away.

He did the same, heart thumping.

“Again,” said Ilisidi. “Again, paidhi. Don’t worry. He hasn’t taken fingers in a year or two.”

He gathered a breath and held out his hand a second time—this time he and the creature were more cautious of each other, the mecheita’s nostrils opening and shutting rapidly, smelling him, he supposed, recalling from his studies that such animals did rely heavily on smell. Its head was as long as his arm from shoulder to fingertip. Its body shadowed him from the sun. It grew bolder, feeling over his hand with its prehensile upper lip, not seeming to threaten, but dragging his fingers down against the gold-capped rooting tusks.

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, thatfor 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’tadmit 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!”