The one she had stomped was shouting, "Get off! Lady to get off my hand!" but the others heard
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her. She lifted her foot and got out of his way as he came up fast, backing into his buddies with the
guns. "All right. Lady, we are sorry to have trouble," he said, tears in his eyes, cradling his hand. "We are Patriots. You send messish to this Pretender, like our messish. Nobody is to hurt. All right?" He kept backing up, and one of the gunmen swung the door to. Crash, rattle.
She drew a deep breath and turned. Teyeo was watching her. "That was dangerous," he said, smiling very slightly.
"I know it was," she said, breathing hard. "It was stupid. I can't get hold of myself. I feel like pieces of me. But they shove stuff in and run, damn ill We have to have some water!" She was in tears, the way she always was for a moment after violence or a quarrel. "Let's see, what have they brought this time." She lifted the tray up onto the mattress; like the other, in a ridiculous semblance of service in a hotel or a house with slaves, it was covered with a cloth. "All the comforts," she murmured. Under the cloth was a heap of sweet pastries, a little plastic hand mirror, a comb, a tiny pot of something that smelled like decayed flowers, and a box of what she identified after a while as Gatayan tampons.
"It's things for the lady," she said, "God damn them, the stupid Goddamn pricks! A mirror!" She flung the thing across the room. "Of course I can't last a day without looking in the mirror! God damn them!" She flung everything else but the pastries after the mirror, knowing as she did so that she would pick up the tampons and keep them under the mattress and, oh. God forbid, use them if she
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had to, if they had to stay here, how long would it be? ten days or more — "Oh, God," she said again. She got up and picked everything up, put the mirror and the little pot, the empty water jug and the fruit skins from the last meal, onto one of the trays and set it beside the door. "Garbage," she said in Voe Dean. Her outburst, she realised, had been in another language; Alterran, probably. "Have you any idea," she said, sitting down on the mattress again, "how hard you people make it to be a woman? You could turn a woman against being one!" "I think they meant well," Teyeo said. She realised that there was not the faintest shade of mockery, even of amusement in his voice. If he was enjoying her shame, he was ashamed to show her that he was. "I think they're amateurs," he said-After a while she said, "That could be bad."
"It might." He had sat up and was gingerly feeling the knot on his head. His coarse, heavy hair was blood-caked all around it. "Kidnapping," he said. "Ransom demands. Not assassins. They didn't have guns. Couldn't have got in with guns- I had to give up mine."
"You mean these aren't the ones you were warned about?"
"I don't know." His explorations caused him a shiver of pain, and he desisted. "Are we very short of water?"
She brought him another cupful. "Too short for washing. A stupid Goddamn mirror when what we need is water!"
He thanked her and drank and sat back, nursing
the last swallows in the cup. "They didn't plan to take me," he said.
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She thought about it and nodded. "Afraid you'd identify them?"
"If they had a place for me, they wouldn't put me in with a lady." He spoke without irony. "They had this ready for you. It must be somewhere in the city."
She nodded. "The car ride was half an hour or less. My head was in a bag. though."
"They've sent a message to the Palace. They got no reply, or an unsatisfactory one. They want a message from you."
"To convince the government they really have me? Why do they need convincing?"
They were both silent.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I can't think." He lay back. Feeling tired, tow, edgy after her adrenaline rush, she lay down alongside him. She had rolled up the Goddess's skirt to make a pillow; he had none. The blanket lay across their legs.
"Pillow," she said. "More blankets. Soap. What else?"
"Key," he murmured.
They lay side by side in the silence and the faint unvarying light.
Next morning about eight, according to Solly's watch, the Patriots came into the room, four of them. Two stood on guard at the door with their guns ready; the other two stood uncomfortably in what floor space was left, looking down at their captives, both of whom sat cross-legged on the mattress. The new spokesman spoke better Voe Dean than the others. He said they were very sorry to
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cause the lady discomfort and would do what they could to make it comfortable for her, and she must be patient and write a message by hand to the Pretender King, explaining that she would be set free unharmed as soon as the King commanded the Council to rescind their treaty with Voe Deo.
"He won't," she said. "They won't let him."
"Please do not discuss," the man said with frantic harshness. "This is writing materials. This is the message." He set the papers and a stylo down on the mattress, nervously, as if afraid to get close to her.
She was aware of how Teyeo effaced himself, sitting without a motion, his head lowered, his eyes lowered; the men ignored him.
"If I write this for you, I want water, a lot of water, and soap and blankets and toilet paper and pillows and a doctor, and I want somebody to come when I knock on that door, and I want some decent
clothes. Warm clothes. Men's clothes,"
"No doctor!" the man.said. "Write it! Please!
Now!" He was jumpy, twitchy, she dared push him no further. She read their statement, copied it out in her large, childish scrawl — she seldom handwrote anything — and handed both to the spokesman. He glanced over it and without a word hurried the other men out. Clash went the door.
"Should 1 have refused?"
"I don't think so," Teyeo said. He stood up and stretched, but sat down again looking dizzy. "You bargain well," he said.
"We'll see what we get. Oh, God. What is going on?"
"Maybe," he said slowly, "Gatay is unwilling to yield to these demands. But when Voe Deo — and
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your Ekumen — get word of it, they'll put pressure on Gatay."
"I wish they'd get moving- I suppose Gatay is horribly embarrassed, saving face by trying to conceal the whole thing — is that likely? How long can they keep it up? What about your people? Won't they be hunting for you?"
"No doubt," he said, in his polite way.
It was curious how his stiff manner, his manners, which had always shunted her aside, cut her out, here had quite another effect: his restraint and formality reassured her that she was still part of the world outside this room, from which they came and to which they would return, a world where people lived long lives.
What did long life matter? she asked herself. and didn't know. It was nothing she had ever thought about before. But these young Patriots lived in a world of short lives. Demands, violence, immediacy, and death, for what? for a bigotry, a hatred, a rush of power.
"Whenever they leave," she said in a low voice,
"I get really frightened."
Teyeo cleared his throat and said, "So do I."
Exercises.
"Take hold — no, take hold, I'm not made of glass! — Now —"
"Ha!" he said, with his flashing grin of excitement, as she showed him the break, and he in turn repeated it, breaking from her.
"All right, now you'd be waiting — here" — thump — "see?"
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"Ai!"
"I'm sorry — I'm sony, Teyeo — I didn't think about your head — Are you all right? I'm really