She gave the question serious consideration. “Martians place great stock in personal responsibility, which they call okhaya. If you were, for example, to tell them that you do not know who had abducted the egg but that you know where it is hidden, they might be pleased at its recovery, but they would still be bent on the apprehension and punishment of the malefactor. Whereas if you yourself admit responsibility and offer the egg’s location in a gesture of sincere atonement, they will leave off their search for the culprit and they might—I must emphasize might—offer leniency to you for your admission of guilt.”
Simon stared into the fireplace, as though seeking some other alternative there. But there was no alternative to be had. “Very well,” he said, and firmed up his chin. “I shall, like Daniel, offer up my confession for the sake of my people.” His eyes took on a calculating aspect. “But I must request that you, with your greater knowledge of Martian language and customs, accompany me to wherever the admission must be made.”
Arabella regarded him with frank suspicion. But she could not in good conscience deny his request. “Very well,” she said, considering. “I will accompany you to the tower.” Others would be present there, and they would be far from the Martians and their nimble swords.
Simon bowed deeply and proffered his elbow. But Arabella fixed him with a cold eye and gestured that he should instead precede her.
He raised one eyebrow, then inclined his head and opened the door.
They made their way down the hall toward the drawing-room in this way, with Arabella careful to keep Simon in sight at all times.
*
“Keep your head down, miss,” said one of the men on the parapet as Arabella followed Simon through the door. “They’ve lobbed a few arrows at us, and they usually go clean past, but you never can tell when they might get lucky.”
The view from the tower’s top was as spectacular as it had ever been. The house, still grand despite the substantial damage it had sustained, spread out its roofs and corbels below them, and all around rose the craggy red-ochre magnificence of the Skatasho Hills. But the view to the east, once an appealing prospect on Fort Augusta and the pleasant town beneath it, now offered nothing but ruin, scattered with wrecked and abandoned buildings and smeared with columns of smoke. And the plain below the house was a shambles of angry, clattering Martians. At least five catapults seemed complete now, and more were rising at the back of the encampment.
“We’ve shot a few of the buggers off the wall below the windows,” offered another man, pointing. “Not many so far.”
“We think they might be massing for an assault, though,” said the first. “You can see there, where they’re building ladders. But when and if they do attack, you can be certain we will defend the house to the last.”
“Thank you, sirs, for your service,” she said. But she observed to herself that these three men and their half dozen hunting rifles had no more chance against the thousands of Martians massed below than she herself, unaccompanied, would have had against the privateers who had nearly destroyed Diana.
Simon merely stared down at the vast insurrection that he, however unintentionally, had provoked. “How will they even hear me?” he asked Arabella.
“Their hearing is quite good. You should begin by calling ‘karaa, karaa’ to get their attention.”
“Must I speak in Martian? I do not know the language.”
“Most of them have at least a little English.”
With Arabella’s encouragement he stepped up onto a box of cartridges, raising himself into the Martians’ view, where he called out a creditable “karaa, karaa” and waved his arms. Several of the nearer Martians paused in their work and pointed at him; soon a respectable crowd had turned their eye-stalks up to him. None, she noted, loosed an arrow at him, despite his vulnerable position above the crenellated battlements. She took this as a good sign for the potential success of their negotiations.
“You have their attention,” she told Simon. “Begin by stating your name.”
“My name is Simon Ashby,” he called, and though his voice trembled slightly it carried loud and clear across the roofs and rocks. He swallowed and closed his eyes. “I am here to confess that it is I who stole the egg.”
A chuttering rattle of consternation greeted his words, though again Arabella was pleased to note that no Martian fired an arrow or even threw a rock.
Simon opened his eyes and looked to Arabella for reassurance. She smiled encouragingly and whispered, “Go on.”
“I am genuinely sorry for this … precipitate action,” he told the gathered Martians. “To demonstrate my sincerity, I reveal to you the location in which I have hidden the egg: It is buried in the sand beneath a rough outcropping of orange stone, one mile to the west of the Ashby plantation, not far from the path. The outcrop is conical in shape, and it is marked by a diagonal vein of black stone.” To Arabella he said, “Is that sufficient?”
She hoped that it was. “The egg is of utmost importance to them. They will search until they find it.”