“Restroom,” one said, and they brought him further down the hall to a backstairs room he judged must be under his own accommodation, and no more modern.
The one shut the outside door. The other stayed close to him, and stood by while he did what he’d complained he needed to, and washed his hands and desperately measured his chances against them. It had been a long time since he’d studied martial arts, a long time since he’d last worked out, and not so long for them, he was certain of that. He walked back toward the door in the hope the one would make the mistake of opening it in advance of him—the man didn’t, and that moment of transition was the only and last chance. He jabbed an elbow into the man at his left, tried to come about for a kick to clear the man from the door, and knew he was in trouble the split second before he found his wrist and his shoulder twisted around in a move that could break his arm.
“All right, all right,” he gasped, then had the unforgiving stone wall against the side of his face and found the breath he desperately needed to draw brought that trapped arm closer to breaking.
A lot of breathing then, theirs, his. The venue didn’t lend itself to complex reasoning, or argument about anything but the pain. He felt a cord come around his wrist, worse and worse, and he made another try at freeing himself as the one man opened the bathroom door. But the cord and the twist and lock on his arm gave the other guard a compelling argument.
He went where they wanted: it was all he could do—a short walk down the hall and to a doorway with lamplit stone steps leading downward to a basement he hadn’t known existed in Malguri. “I want to talk to Banichi,” he said at the top step, and balked.
Which convinced him they had no idea of the fragility of human joints and the guard was imminently, truly going to break the arm. He tried to take the step and missed it, lost his balance completely, and the guard shoved him along regardless, using the arm for leverage until he got his feet marginally under him and made the next several steps down on his own. Vision blurred, a teary haze of lamplight from a single hanging source. Stone walls, no furniture but that solitary, hanging oil lamp and a table and chair. Thunder shook the stones, even this deep into the rock, seeming like a last message from the outside world. There was another doorway, open on a dark corridor. They shoved him at it.
There wasn’t any help. Unless Banichi was on some side of this he couldn’t figure, there wasn’t going to be any. He’d lost his best bid, thrown it away in a try at fighting two atevi hand to hand—but if he could get leverage to get free… before they could get a door shut on him—and he could get the door behind them shut—
It wasn’t a good chance. It wasn’t any chance. But he was desperate as they took him aside, through a door into a dark cell with no light except from the room down the hall. He figured they meant to turn him loose here, and he prepared to come back at them, duck low and see if he could get past them.
But when the guard let go, he kept the wrist cord, swung him about by that and backed him against the wall while his fellow grabbed the other arm. He kicked and got a casual knee in the gut for his trouble, the atevi having their hands full.
“Don’t,” that one said, while he was trying to get his wind back. “No more, do you hear me?”
After which they hooked his feet out from under him, stretched his one arm out along a metal bar, while the second guard pulled the other arm in the other direction, and tied it tight with cord from wrist to elbow.
For most of it, he was still trying to breathe—damned mess, was all he could think, over and over, classic atevi way of handling a troublesome case, only the bar wasn’t average human height and he couldn’t get his knees on the ground or his feet under him. Just not damned comfortable, he thought—couldn’t get out of it by any means he could think of—couldn’t even find a place to put his knees to protect vital parts of his body from the working-over he expected.
But they went away and left him instead, without a word, only brushing off their hands and dusting their clothes, as if he had ruffled their dignity. He dreaded their shutting the door and leaving him in the dark… but they left it as it was, so there was an open door within sight, and their shadows retreating on the hall floor outside. He heard their voices echoing, the two of them talking about having a drink, in the way of workmen with a job finished.
He heard them go away up the steps, and heard the door shut.
After that was—just—silence.
They had told him at the very outset of his training, that if the situation ever really blew up like this, suicide was a job requirement. They didn’t want a human in atevi hands spilling technological information ad lib and indefinitely—a very serious worry early on, when atevi hadn’t reached the political stability they had had for a century, and when rivalry between associations had been a constant threat to the Treaty… oh, no, it couldn’t happen, not in remotest imagination.
But they still taught the course—he knew a dozen painless methods—and they still said, if there was no other option, take it—because there was no rescue coming and no way anyone would risk the peace to bring him out.
Not that there was much he could tell anybody, except political information against Tabini. Technology nowadays was so esoteric the paidhi didn’t know it until he had his briefing on Mospheira, and he worked at it until he could translate it and make sense of it to atevi experts. There was no way they could beat atomic secrets out of him, no more than he could explain trans-light technology.
But he couldn’t let them use him politically, either—couldn’t make statements for them to edit and twist out of context, not without marks on him to show the world he was under duress.
And he’d made the television interview—sitting there quite at ease in front of the cameras.
He’d let Cenedi get his answers on tape, including his damning refusal to attribute the gun. They had all the visuals and sound bites they could want.
Damn, he thought. He’d screwed it. He’d screwed it beyond any repair. Hanks was in charge, as of now, and damn, he wished there was better, and more imaginative, and somebodyto realize Tabini was still the best bet they had.
Overthrow Tabini, replace him with the humanophobes, and him with Deana Hanks, and watch everything generations had built go to absolute hell. He believed it. And the hard-liners among humans who thought he’d gotten entirely too friendly with Tabini… they weren’t right, he refused to believe they were right; but they’d have their field day saying so.
The irony was, the hard-liners, the nuke-the-opposition factions, were alike on both sides of the strait. And he couldn’t turn the situation over to them.
Mistake to have taken himself out of Cenedi’s hands. He believed that now. He had to tough it out somehow, find out if Banichi was involved, or a prisoner, or what—get them to bring Cenedi back in, get the ear of somebody who’d listen to reason.
Plenty of time for the mind to race over plans and plans and plans.
But when the cold got into his bones and the muscles started to stiffen and then to hurt—the mind found other things to occupy it besides plans for how to fix what he’d screwed up, the mind found the body was damned uncomfortable, and it hurt, and he might never get out of this cellar if he didn’t give these people everything they wanted.
But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, hadn’t done his job half right or he wouldn’t be here, but he wasn’t going to finish it by bringing Tabini down.
Only hope he had, he kept telling himself. Tabini was a canny son of a bitch when he had to be. Damn him, he’d given up a card he’d known he had to cede— knewhumans wouldn’t fight over him; and having not a human bone in his body, didn’t feelwhat a human would. He’d gotten his television interview. He’d show the world and the humans that Bren Cameron was well-disposed to him—he’d slipped that television crew in neatly as could be and gotten his essential interview just before the other side moved in their agents with their demands on Ilisidi, who was probably fence-sitting and playing neutral.