He found no comfort in the news. He could watch the play, which at least had color and movement. But the eyes were going and the mind had already gone or he wouldn't contemplate staying awake at all.

He was aware of dark, then, a suddenly dark room, and he must have slept — the television was showing a faint just-turned-off glow and a large man was standing in front of it.

"Banichi?" he asked faintly.

"One should never acknowledge being awake," Banichi said. "Delay gives one just that much more advantage."

"I have a house full of security," he objected. "And I haven't a gun any longer."

"Look in your dresser," Banichi said.

"You're joking." He wanted to go look, but he hadn't the strength to get up.

"No," Banichi said. "Good night, Bren-ji. Jago's back now, by the way. All's well."

"Can we talk, Banichi?"

"Talk of what, nadi?" Banichi had become a shadow in the doorway, in the dim light from some open door down the hall. But Banichi waited.

"About the election going on in your Guild, about what Cenedi found it his duty to warn me about — about what I suppose I'd better know since I've accepted another of Ilisidi's invitations."

"With suggestive grace, nadi. One issurprised."

"I like the old woman," he said shortly to a silhouette against the doorway, and well knew the word didn't mean likein the humanly emotional sense. "And there, of course, I have information I don't get here."

"Because you think the aiji-dowager is a salad and you value information from those most interested in disinforming you?"

He knew he should laugh. He didn't have it in him. It came out a weak moan, and his voice cracked. "Nadi, I think she's a breath of fresh air, you're a salad, yourself, and I'm collecting everything I can find that tells me how to make humans in the sky not fly down tomorrow morning in satellites and loot the Bu-javid treasures — I'm so damned tired, Banichi. Everybody wants my opinion and nobody wants to tell me a damned thing, how do I know she's disinforming me? Nothing else makes sense."

Banichi came and stood over him, throwing shadow like a blanket over him. "One has tried to protect you from too much distraction, nadi."

"Protect me less. Inform me more. I'm desperate, Banichi. I can't operate in an informational vacuum."

"Jago will take you to the country house at Taiben, at your request. It might be a safer place."

"Is there anything urgently the matter with where I am?"

That provoked a moment of troubling silence.

"Is there, Banichi?"

"Nand' paidhi, Deana Hanks has been sending other messages under your seal."

"Damn. Damn. — Damn." He shut his eyes. He was perilously close to unconsciousness. So tired. So very tired. "I don't mean to accuse, but I thought you had that stopped. What's she up to?"

"Nand' paidhi, she's in regular communication with certain of the tashrid. And we don't know how she got the seal, but she is using it."

He had to redirect his thinking. Three-quarters of the way to sleep, he had to come back, ask himself why Taiben, and where Hanks got a seal.

"Came with it," he said, "a damn forgery. Mospheira could have managed it."

"One hesitated to malign your office. That thought did occur to us. Equally possible, of course, that the forgery was created by our esteemed lords of the tashrid. And I don't say we haven't intercepted these messages before sending them on. They're some of them — quite egregiously misphrased."

"Dangerously?"

"She asked the lord of Korami province for a pregnant calendar."

Pregnant calendar and urgent meeting. He began to laugh, and sanity gave way; he laughed until the tape hurt.

"I take it that's not code?"

"Oh, God, oh, God."

"Are you all right, Bren-ji?"

He gradually caught his breath. "I'm very fine, thank you, Banichi. God, that's wonderful."

"Other mistakes are simply grammatical. And she speaks very bluntly."

"Never would believe you needed the polish." Humor fell away to memories of Deana after the exams, Deana in a sullen temper.

"We are keeping a log. We can do this — since it's our language under assault."

He laughed quietly, reassured in Banichi's good-humored confidences that things couldn't be so bad, that they could still joke across species lines, and he was fading fast, too fast to remember to question Banichi about the weather report, before, between flutters of tired eyelids, he found Banichi had ebbed out of the room, quiet as the rest of the shadows.

He hoped it would rain again and relieve the heat, which seemed excessive this evening, or it was the padding he was obliged to put around him.

Still, he was sleepy, and he didn't want to move — Banichi was all right, Banichi was watching, and if he waited patiently there was, he discovered, a very slight and promising breeze circulating through the apartment, from open windows, he supposed, perfumed with flowers he remembered —

But that was Malguri, was it not? Or his garden.

He shut his eyes again, having found a position that didn't hurt, and when he felt the breeze he saw the hillsides of Malguri, he saw the riders on tall mecheiti.

He felt Nokhada striding under him, saw the rocks passing under them —

The ominous shadow of a plane crossing the mountainside…

"Look out," he thought he said, jerking about to see, and feared falling bombs.

But after that he was riding again, feeling the rhythm of a living, thinking creature under him, feeling the damp cold wind.

He wanted to be there.

In a dream one could go back to that hillside.

In a dream one could find his room again, with the glass-eyed beast staring at him from the wall.

And his lake, of the ghost-passengers and the bells that tolled with no hand touching them.

That was what he wanted to save. That and the cliffs, and the wi'itkitiin — and Nokhada, that wicked creature. He wanted to go out riding again, wanted to be in the hills, just himself and that damn mecheita, who'd knocked him flat, jarred his teeth loose, and several times nearly killed him — wanted to see the obnoxious beast, for reasons of God-knew-what. He even wondered, in this dream, if he'd saved up enough in his bank account, and if he could get the funds converted into atevi draft, and if it was honorable of the aiji-dowager to sell Nokhada away from Malguri.

But then, still in this dream, which turned melancholy and productive of estrangements, he realized the mecheiti had their own order of things, and that he couldn't take Nokhada from the herd, the flock, the — whatever mecheiti had, that atevi also had, among themselves. Nokhada belonged there. A human didn't. Nokhada didn't understand love. Nokhada understood a tidal pull a human didn't, couldn't, wouldn't ever have.

In his dream he almost understood it, as a force pulling him toward association, weak word for the strongest thing atevi felt. In his dream he almost discovered what that was. He was walking in the hills, and he watched the mecheiti travel across the land, watched ancient banners flutter and flap with the color of the old machimi plays, and saw the association of lords as driven by what he could almost feel.

In this dream he saw the land and he felt human emotions toward it. He supposed he couldn't help it. His need to feel what atevi felt was a part of that human emotion, and more than suspect.

In this dream he sat down on a hillside, and his Beast walked up to him, still angry about its murder, but curious about the intrusion on the hill. It wanted part of his lunch, which he'd brought in a paper bag, and he shared it. The Beast, black and surly, heaved itself down with a sigh and ate half a sandwich, which it pinned down with a heavy forepaw and devoured with gusto. He supposed he was in danger from it. But it seemed content to sit by him and snarl at the land in general, as if it had some longstanding grudge, or some long-standing watch to keep over the fortress that sat on its hill below them. The sky was blue, but pale, making you think of heat, or new-blown glass. Anything might come from it. Maybe that was what the Beast watched for.