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"I might have failed. I might well have failed."

"Even Tabini, who knows her very well, does not think he penetrates the dowager's reserve."

A clear enough warning — fora human astute enough to take it. "Emotionally speaking, Banichi, I confess I'd rather it not be Ilisidi behind this."

"Certainly a formidable individual."

"More than that, I think her a pleasant conversationalist. An antidote to my isolation. This is perhaps foolish on my part."

"Perhaps a human who flings himself down mountains for recreation could think her a challenge. But one cautions you, most earnestly, nadi, this is not without risk, this flirtation with the aiji-dowager."

"Oh — damn."

"Bren-ji?"

"I need to send her word about the attack and the landing. I promised her, Banichi, to keep her briefed. No matter what. This isn't a time to break promises to her. And I have."

"The dowager has left, nand' paidhi."

"Left?"

"An hour before the attack."

He felt mildly sick at his stomach. Mildly, numbly — chilled to the core. "Damn," he said again.

"It could be prudence," Banichi said. "But one can't rely on such gracious supposition."

"The ones who took Hanks — what do they likely want with her? Stupid question, Banichi, I know. But do you see something I might not?"

"Certainly no suitors for marriage," Banichi said dryly. "I'd say — the obvious things. Her skills. — Her computer."

"She's not a bad woman," he found himself saying — never would have credited he'd be pleading Hanks' case. But it wasn't Deana as a hostage: atevi didn't quite understand hostages in the human sense of personal value; the conservatives she most appealed to for reasons of opposition to Tabini were the very atevi not long on patience with human manners — some of them not long on patience with human existence.

If it was those, as best he could think, it wasn't a live human they wanted. It was information on human activities and on secrets Tabini might hold.

Or they wanted words from Deana that might inflame popular feeling against Tabini. God, he knew the position Hanks had gotten herself into. He felt it, personally, in the pain that nagged at his shoulder and his ribs.

Behind his eyes, another pain, a stinging, angry pain, that a man in his job shouldn't feel, shouldn't entertain — not — not regret for Ilisidi's behavior. Attaching affections to atevi was a foolish, personally and professionally dangerous mistake.

One could be like Wilson. One could forget how to love anyone. One could stop doing it.

Or one could take the pain, and try to stand it, and steadfastly, professionally, refuse to be surprised or self-accusatory when atevi answered to their own urges and ran roughshod over human sentiment.

"Thank you," he said to Banichi. "Did I say thank you? I meant to."

"My —"

"— job. Yes, dammit. I know that. But prefer me just adequately, Banichi-ji, to Hanks-paidhi."

"Fervently so, Bren-ji."

"Still too little," he said. "Still too little, Banichi. I'd have let you shoot me before I took a chance it wasn't you tonight. Does that reassure you?"

"Far from it."

"Then you worry about it, Banichi-ji. I'm far too tired to."

"It's my job," Banichi said, infallibly, reliably numb to human feelings, missing the point. "You're quite right. We should keep you better informed."

The knot in his throat didn't go down. But there wasn't a solution. There wasn't a translation. Not in the paidhi's vocabulary. Not in the dictionary.

Banichi turned out the lights with, "If there are alarms tonight, trust I'll answer them, Bren-ji. And stay in bed."

Atevi asked what hecouldn't feel, either. He supposed it might bother them just as much. Atevi hadn't a word for lonely.

There was something like orphan.

There was something like renegade.

Otherwise they couldn't bealone — and knew, better than humans, he supposed, why they did things. Psychiatry was a science they hadn't practiced, and still didn't, possibly because no atevi would confide outside his man'chi, possibly because, among them, there was just pathology.

And, ever popular, solving all possible mental health problems — bloodfeud.

Or whatever atevi actually felt that answered to that ancient human word.

Possibly he'd troubled Banichi's sleep tonight. Possibly he'd made Banichi ask himself questions for which Banichi had fewer words than he did. If there was indeed some secret atevi dictionary of human language, Banichi might be consulting it tonight and asking himself what the paidhi had meant.

He'd kept after Banichi until he knew not only that everyone he cared for was safe — but as far as he could, until he knew to his satisfaction, wherethey were; which possibly wasn't love, just a neurotic desire to have them all in a predictable place for the night so he could shut his eyes.

But he couldn't shake the punched-in-the-gut feeling he'd felt when he and Banichi started talking about loyalties, and he'd seen how far he'd gone from safety in his dealings, how much, God help him, he needed, and kept telling himself wasn't — ever — going to be there for him. He'd known it when he'd gone into the job, and he'd known in the unscarred, unmuddied wisdom of youth that he'd one day meet the emotional wall, of whatever nature, in whatever remote time of his career, and remember where he'd been heading and why.

Needwas such a seductive, dangerous word. Needwas the vacancies. Needwasn't, dammit, love, not in any sense. If love was giving, it was the opposite of love, it drank love dry, it sucked logic after it, and it didn't ever output. Barb was need. She'd tried to become hisneed, and he'd seen that shipwreck coming.

Then he'd gotten himself the possibility of a backup in Graham, if Graham made it down safely. And the shaky character of his dealings with Banichi, who knew how to forgive him, at least, told him he hadto pull himself together or hand Jase Graham the keys to his soul, which Jase might not be good enough or benign enough not to use. Jago touched him, not in an unknowing way, and he hadn't, in small idle seconds, forgotten the feeling of her hands, the sensation that shivered through his nerves and said… he needed. He wanted not to have been responsible. He wanted Jago to have ignored warnings and gone ahead with… whatever atevi did with their lovers, which had become in his thoughts a burning curiosity.

Jago… and Ilisidi. He'd made a place in his human affections for the woman with all her edges and all her secrets — he'd ignored all the rules, even given her a piece of human loyalty that must have, in some intrusive way, taken Ilisidi herself by surprise and sent her judgment of him skittering off at angles no ateva could figure, as if he'd touched on man'chiand given a chivalrously honorable — aristocratically possessive? — old ateva a real quandary of the spirit. Like Tabini, he suspected, she'd tried to figure him, adjusted her behavior to fit her conceptions of hisaction, and gone off into that same unmapped territory of mutually altered behavior that he and Tabini wandered.

His fault and not hers. Ilisidi was angry with him. Jago, thanks only to Jago, could take care of herself. Jago hadtaken care of herself and walked out when he warned her. And Banichi knew. Banichi found everything out.

Or Jago had outright told him. Whatever that meant, in a relationship Bren had never puzzled out.