At that point he didn't need Jago's suggestion he lie down. He rested on his face, trying not to move the joint, and trying to protect it, while Jago's smooth, strong hand worked salve across the sore spots. It stung on the new skin of recent incisions, but it diminished the pain, and he gave up his whole arm to Jago's ministrations, burrowed his face in the crook of the other arm, and relaxed completely, finally, eyes shut, just — comfortable, out of pain, out of discomfort for the first time in days, and sinking into a dark, dark pit.

After which the lights were down, some covering was on his shoulders, and something heavy was weighing down the mattress edge. Which was Jago, sitting on the floor asleep against the edge of the bed.

"Nadi," he said, and worked about to reach out a hand, but she waked at the mere movement, and lifted her face and made a grimace, rubbing a doubtless stiff neck. "You should have gone to bed," he said.

"One worried, nadi."

He reached out to pat her shoulder, and bumped her cheek with the back of his hand, instead, being not quite on his aim, which Jago didn't mind, which led to a more intimate gesture than he'd intended, and a more intimate return on her part, her hand on his.

"Jago-ji," he said, attempting humor, "you shouldn't. I'd hate to offend Banichi."

"In what?"

Translation interface. He tried to wake, wary of wrong words, and the situation. And while he was being apprehensive, and trying, muzzily, to compose a request to go to sleep that wouldn't sound like a rebuff, Jago's fingers laced with his, and in his inaction, wound around his wrist, and wandered up his arm to his back.

After which Jago got up, and sat down on the edge of the bed, took off the towel that was covering his skin, and began to work another dose of salve into his back and down the injured arm, which was enough to make a weary human's bones melt, and his recently wary brain all but disengage.

All but — disengage. After the nagging pain subsided, it waked up enough to remind that Jago's reactions of recent days hadn't been impersonal. And he remembered, while Jago's hands were sliding very comfortingly along his backbone, that Banichi had joked about Jago's curiosity from the very start.

The fact that the personal relationship between Banichi and Jago never had been clear to him, and that he was alone, and that the temptation more than intellectually dawning in the forebrain — was already settled and willing in the hind-brain, and beginning to interfere with his capacity to think at all.

"Jago-ji. Please stop." He feared offending her, and he rolled over and propped himself on his good elbow to give an impression, a lie, of a man well awake and sensible, but he was facing a looming shadow against the night-light, that gave human eyes nothing of her expression — such as she might show in a moment of rebuff. He tried to touch Jago's arm, but the arm he wasn't leaning on wouldn't lift all the way, and fell, quite painfully. "Jago, nadi, Banichi might come after me."

"No," Jago said, one of those enigmatic little yes-no's that maddened human instincts. But it was very clear Jago knew what she was doing.

"I just — Jago —" He was awake. He didn't know what reality he'd landed in, but he was aware and awake.

"One need say nothing, Bren-ji. No is sufficient."

"No. It's not. It's not, Jago."

"It seems simple. Yes. No."

"Jago — if it's curiosity, then go ahead, I've no objection. But —" Breath came with difficulty. Sore ribs. A fog coming over the brain, that said, Why not? "But," the negotiator got to the fore, "but if it's more than that, Jago, then — give me room. Let me understand what you're asking. And what's right."

Jago had sat back on her heels at the bedside, elbow on the mattress. A frown was on her face — not, it seemed, an angry frown, but a puzzled one, a thoughtful one.

"Unfair," Jago declared finally.

"Unfair?"

"Words, words, words!"

"I've offended you."

"No. You ask me damned questions." Jago gained her feet in one fluid motion, a shadow in the night-light as she turned, stiff and proper, and walked to the door, her braid the usual ruler-line down her back.

But she stopped there and looked back at him. "Nand' paidhi."

"Nadi?" He was struck with anxiety at the formality.

"One asks — is there danger from Mospheira?"

"Why do you ask that?"

No immediate answer. Jago was a darkness. A near-silhouette against the hall light as she opened the door to leave.

"Jago? Why? That paper? It advised me only of how to contact my office. Of persons not to trust."

He had only her profile now. Which became full face, a second glance back.

"Is Hanks-paidhi a danger?" Jago asked.

"Always a danger," he said, but added, in fear for Hanks' life: "but not the sort that would require your action, Jago-ji. The abstract sort of danger. Political rivalry."

"That, too," Jago said, "I can remedy, nand' paidhi."

"No." She frightened him. He'd thought Jago had lost her ability to do that. But coupled with Banichi's absence, the suddenly skewed relationship, and the atevi difficulty in interpreting human wishes —"No, Jago."

Silence. But Jago didn't move from the doorway.

Then: "You look very tired lately, Bren-ji. Very tired. When you read the letter from Barb-daja, your face showed extreme distress."

He thought of denying it. But it was, from Jago, a probing after honesty. A not-quite professional inquiry.

"We have a proverb," he said. "Burning your bridges behind you. I've done some of that — on Mospheira."

"Cutting one's own rope."

Count on it — mayhem and disaster translated amazingly well.

"Did this woman know you'd do what you've done?"

"Who? Hanks?" Rhetorical question.

"Barb-daja."

Blindsided. Jago'd been upset about Barb, he told himself, now, because Jago didn't understand human relationships, human reactions — didn't above all else understand how a loyalty could fracture. Hers couldn't. Hers came inbuilt. Hardwired. Or almost so.

"Barb's still —" There wasn't a word. "Still an associate of mine. The man she's marrying is an associate. They're good people."

Jago remained unconvinced. He saw it in the stiffness of her back. The lack of body language. And he decided it was good that Barb was on the island, and not here.

She looked back at him, a shadow next to the door. He thought — again — Why not? He was half moved to say so.

But common sense ruled the other half. "Jago. I regard you very highly. Don't be angry at me."

"One isn't angry, Bren-paidhi. Good night."

"Jago. Still — maybe."

A second hesitation, this one with a glance back that caught the night-light, and Jago's eyes reflected gold, one of those little differences that sometimes raised the hairs on a human neck. That and the momentary silence — so much more effective than Barb's. "One hears, Bren-ji."

She was out the door, then, and the door shut.

Damn, he thought. Damn, not knowing what he'd done, or whether he'd upset Jago, or, God, what Banichi might already know — or what a foolish human might have missed, or lost — the brain was sending contrary signals, yes and no, and caution, and the shoulder hurt, dammit, he'd be sorry if he had — as he was sorry he hadn't.

He rolled over on his face and tucked the freed arm up close, in possession of both arms at least.