“It’s the ship. Our ship—at least, someship—”

He was speaking his own language. His legs were numb. He couldn’t trust himself to walk—it was a good thing the guards caught his arms and steered him back to safety at the table.

But they didn’t let him sit. They faced him toward Ilisidi, and held him there.

“Some call it treachery, nand’ paidhi. What do youcall it?”

Eight days ago. The emergency return, bringing him and Tabini back from Taiben. The cut-off of his mail. Banichi and Jago with him constantly.

“Nand’ paidhi? Tellme what you see.”

“A ship,” he managed to say in their language—he was bone-cold, incapable of standing, except for the atevi hands holding him. He was almost incapable of speaking, the breath was so short in his chest. “It’s the ship that left us here, aiji-mai, that’s all I can think.”

“Many of us think many more things,” Ilisidi said, “nand’ paidhi. What do you suppose they’re saying… this supposed ship… and your people across the strait? Do you suppose we figure in these conversations at all?”

He shivered and looked at the sky again, thinking, It’s impossible—

And looked at Ilisidi, a darkness in the dawn, except only the silver in her hair and the liquid anger in her eyes.

“Aiji-mai, I don’tunderstand. I didn’t know this was happening. No one expected it. No one told me.”

“Oh, this is a little incredible, paidhi-ji, that no one knew, that this appearance in our skies is so totally, utterly a surprise to you.”

“Please.” His legs were going. The blood was cut off to his hands. For what he knew, the dowager would have the guards pitch him off the edge from here, a gesture of atevi defiance, in a war the world couldn’t win, a war the paidhiin were supposed to prevent. “Nand’ dowager, I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t expect this. But I know why they’re here. I know the things you want to know.”

“Do you, now. And the paidhiin are only interpreters.”

“And human, aiji-mai. I know what’s going on up there, the way I know what humans did in the past and what they want for the future—nothing in their plans is to your detriment.”

“As the station wasn’t. As your coming here wasn’t. As your interference in our affairs wasn’t, and your domination of our trade, our invention, our governance of ourselves wasn’t. You led us to the technology youwanted, you lent us the industry youneeded, you perverted our needs to your programs, you pushed us into a future of television and computers and satellites, all of which we grow to love, oh, to rely on—and forget every aspect of our own past, our own laws, our own course that wewould have followed to use our own resources. We are notso stupid, nand’ paidhi, notso stupid as to have destroyed ourselves as you kept counseling us we would do without your lordly help, we are notso stupid as to believe we weren’t supplying you with materials for which you had your own uses, in an agenda we hadn’t set. Tabini placed great confidence in you—too damned muchconfidence in you. When he knew what had happened he sent you to me, as someone with her wits still about her, someone who hasn’t spent her life in Shejidan watching television and growing complacent. So tell meyour truth, nand’ paidhi! Give meyour assurances! Tell me why all the other lies are justified and why the truth in our skies this morning is good for us!”

The blasts of wind came no colder than Ilisidi’s anger. It was the truth, all of it, all justified, he knew that the way he’d known the unspoken truth of his dealings with atevi—that the paidhiin were doing the best they could do in a bad bargain, keeping a peace that wasn’t viable between ordinary people of their two species, saving what they’d almost entirely destroyed, things like this reality around him, the ancient stones, the lake, the order of life in an atevi fortress, remote from the sky and the stars he couldn’t reach from here. He looked up at that truth and the lights blurred in his eyes. The wind gave him no direction, whether up or down, whether he was falling into the sky or standing on stones he couldn’t feel. He was afraid—terrified as atevi must be of that human presence up there—and didn’t comprehend why.

“Aiji-mai, I can’t say it’s good that it’s there, it’s just there, it’s just what’s happened, and if you kill me, it won’t make anything any better than it is. Mospheira didn’t plan this. Yes, we’ve guided your technology—we wanted to get back into space, aiji-mai, we didn’t have the resources ourselves, our equipment was half-destroyed, and we didn’t thinkthe ship still existed. We took a chance coming down here—it was a disaster for us and for you. Two hundred years we’ve worked to get back up there, and we never wanted to destroy the atevi—only to give you the same freedom we want for ourselves.”

“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 takeanything 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 gostill rang in his ears; and she’d given him crazy signals before this, challenging him to stay behind her—atevi-fashion: followme 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’chito 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?”