"I know what I'm doing," was all he could get out. "I know what I'm doing, dammit, Jago."

"Is there pain, Bren-ji?"

Damned right there was pain. Every breath he drew. Every move he'd made for days. The tape was cutting in, the shoulder had a fixed angle he'd not been able to relieve in days, and the damned Department shoved him overseas with painkillers too strong to take and a briefing from some damn Department-worshiping fool who hadn't told him to read the damn instructions —

He wasn't winning in his struggle with Jago. He wasn't losing either, Jago risking her fingers, his effort getting nowhere, and Jago, unstoppable in her level-headed, insistent sanity, didn't let go.

"It's supposed to come off," he found the coherency to say.

"That's very good, Bren-ji, but perhaps a doctor should do it."

"I don't need a doctor. I'm supposed to have taken the damn thing off, Jago, I don't want a doctor."

"Are you quite sure, nadi?"

"I'm not stupid, Jago." Which all evidence around him seemed to deny.

"One knows that, Bren-ji, but why now —"

"I just read the damn instructions. In the case. It's all right. It's all right, Jago, let me alone to be a fool, all right?"

"You might cut yourself."

"I can handle a damn pair of scissors." He was aware of servants watching from the door and began to be mortally embarrassed. "Just leave me alone, all right, I won't cut myself."

Jago looked in that direction, too. "It's all right, nadiin. I'll manage. Please shut the door."

They might doubt the paidhi was going to be reasonable at all. But they shut the door, then, the first time he'd been that isolated since he'd arrived in Shejidan. It was just him and Jago and the scissors, which was not, at least, a crowd.

"Let me," Jago said, and when he resisted: "Bren-ji, let me. I'll cut it. Just sit still. — You're quite sure."

"I'm quite sure. Jago, dammit, it's all right. I can read!"

"One believes so, nand' paidhi. Please. Sit still. Let me have the scissors."

Small scissors, in Jago's hand. He'd gouged his wrist enough to sting. She set a knee on the bed and worked around where she could get a good, straight cut up the back of his hand, little snips that sliced the bindings of the foam cast as far as the forearm.

"Say if I go too deep," she advised him, and then, "Bren-ji, the shirt must go."

It had to. He unfastened it and Jago laid the scissors on the bedside table and helped him take it off.

"The tape around my ribs," he said. That was the truly maddening stricture.

"Let me do this in good order, Bren-ji. Let's be sure." She'd taken from somewhere about her person a small spring-bladed knife he suspected had more lethal purpose, and delicately sliced along the bindings above the foam cast.

"I'm very sorry," he found the sanity to say, very meekly and very quietly.

"It's no difficulty at all. But are you quite sure? If we take this off —"

"I'm quite sure. I was a fool. I didn't read the things they sent me."

"Then we can do that very easily. I believe I can split the cast right up the top. Let's be sure of the shoulder before we worry about the ribs, nadi."

"Quite all right." He held his breaths to small ones, and held still as Jago sliced delicately along the cast surface, starting with the hand, splitting the foam apart between the knife and the grip of her hand.

It gave. She had to resort to the scissors again, to make the final cut of tape and free his hand from the elastic bandage.

Which ached, freed from confinement; and he could see atevi-sized fingerprints gone purple on his wrist, likewise the marks of cord on his skin, still red, when the marks on the other wrist had begun to fade.

Jago reached the bend of the elbow, and slowly gained ground, up to the chafing spot at the shoulder.

Where she hesitated. "Are you quite certain, nadi?"

"I'm certain. I'm more than certain. I want it off."

Jago put a finger under the cast at the neck and carefully cracked the last. The arm began to ache, the more widely the cast split, and then truly to hurt, as Jago kept going all the way down to the elbow, and to the wrist, by which point he was struggling to breathe easily and not to let on it hurt the way it did — he wanted no delays, and took firm resolve as Jago cracked the cast as far as it would go without cutting the tape on his ribs.

"Nadi?" Jago said, having — while his vision was other than concentrated — turned up a curious object from inside the cast, a piece of paper wrinkled and curled and sweated and conforming to his arm. "What is this?"

What is this? indeed. He supported his elbow on his knee and snatched the paper, perhaps too rudely, too forbiddingly, from his own devoted security. It was a printed sheet, with the Foreign Office header, and a simple:

Do what you can do. I'll stand behind it, long as they leave me here. HD's on my back. I'm using all the credit I've got to get you back to the job. Maintain the Treaty at all costs. Codeword emergency call my line is Trojan 987 865/UY.

HD. Hampton Durant. With Shawn's signature. He had an access code.

Jago clearly understood where it was from and that it didn't belong there. His hand was shaking, but it was only confirmation at this point — only backing what he'd already done: he and Shawn had always been on the same wavelength.

"Silly — silly joke," he said. "Staff. My office. Told me. Do what I've already done. Doesn't do any good now." He let it fall. "Get the damn tape, Jago-ji. I'll regard you highly forever if you cut that damn tape off."

He turned, Jago maneuvered, and got the scissors-point under the edge of the tape on his back, snipping carefully. The split foam cast was still holding the arm braced outward, and Bren took larger and larger breaths, as centimeter by several centimeters he felt the tape give way, Jago peeling it and pulling its mild adhesion away from his ribs.

"Pull," he said, knowing it was going to hurt. "Just pull it, dammit."

Jago pulled. With her greater strength.

Which at once pulled the surface of his skin and jerked the support of the cast from under the arm he had propped on his- knee, all that kept the arm from falling — that and his own quick grab at his elbow as the whole god-awful arrangement parted. Muscles frozen for days in an uncomfortable attitude and a joint that hadn't flexed since the bone was fused — all moved. Ribs lately broken — expanded on the reflexive intake of breath.

He thought he said something — he wasn't sure what; he curled over sideways on the mattress while he cradled the elbow, with spots in front of his eyes. His mouth tasted of copper.

"Nadi?" Jago asked, clearly afraid something wasn't according to meticulous plan.

"No, no, it's — quite all right, Jago, just — it's not used to moving."

"One still thinks —"

"No!" he said, surly and short-fused — holding on to his arm as tightly as he could, as if he could curl the pain inward, spread it out, get it out of the sensitive spots. "No damn doctor."

He thought Jago went away. He hadn't meant to snarl. He really hadn't. But after a time still curled into a ball, he thought she was there again, and immediately after, felt the cold of some kind of salve on his arm — which might not be the best idea with a recent incision, especially given the poisonous character of local medications, but he was out of moral fiber to protest anything and, hell, it was, in a moment more, killing the ache — he was aware finally of the servants in the room, and of, quite improbably to his way of thinking, being lifted bodily up off his face. Jago let him go and steadied him sitting, and he sat up long enough for the arm to find a new sore angle and for the servants to take down the bedcovers.