Deliverer

And that was always dried fruit, and packets of dried fruit were good. He got into the box and shoved handfuls of those into his shirt and his coat pockets.

Then he cracked the door wider and slipped out into the hall outside, shutting the door after him to keep everything as ordinary-looking as he could. Down the hall to the left were what might be servant rooms, and a dead end. At the end of the hall to the right of his door was a dimly lit stairs going up, and there was a door up on the landing, on the opposite wall, that could go anywhere, outside, or to another hall. The landing was where the hall stopped.

But just before that set of steps was—what might be an archway.

Another hallway.

Servants’ quarters was indeed where he was. Kitchen storerooms, to boot, given the flour and the fruit, and it must be that hour or two in which kitchen staff might be asleep in rooms all up and down this hall. House serving and cleaning staff, and any night watch on duty, would be upstairs, two levels or so above the lordly rooms.

Kitchens, now—a thing he had learned from mani, and not from Gene and Artur and Irene—kitchens of a big house tended to have their own section, and tended to be in the basement, or just above it, the basement being mostly storage. The machimi he had had to read talked about kitchen stairs and kitchen doors.

And in those machimi mani had made him read, assassins notoriously got in by those low-level routes, so smart houses had alarms on them. You had to switch them off at some station somewhere in the house.

Well, but sometimes you just did what you had to, and took a chance.

He had seen how Banichi and Cenedi moved when they were on business. Quick and quiet, and stopping now and again to listen.

He always tucked away that kind of information. He remembered now, and had it in his head just how to go: whatever was going on up above meant the masters of the house were awake and about something, which meant at any moment someone could decide they wanted something that would send staff running down here to rouse up the kitchen folk.

His own room—he knew his trap could kill somebody; maybe one of the innocent servants; and he worried about that, now that he was out and slipping past that harmless-looking door.

Well, let it, he thought.

And then he hesitated.

And then he went back, and flipped the light switch on, so if somebody was a dolt and failed to notice the switch was down, he would get a fast shock from the door handle before he really closed down on the lever.

Which was maybe too obliging, but he felt better about it, not knowing who it might catch.

And the kitchen itself—would have a way out.

Mani had told him that the layout of noble houses tended to date from way back. Houses had used to get water from a well, and the strongest kitchen servants had had to carry it, until someone invented hand pumps and then electric pumps and brought the water inside, which was why kitchens were traditionally never upstairs.

And a well court might be where that stairs and that doorway led, the reputed outside door that was usually also near the storerooms. Mani had thwacked his ear and told him pay attention and not get bored when she was talking, and he had listened, even through the parts that had never made sense— why had people not thought of making pumps in the first place and piping water inside instead of carrying buckets? He had asked that question—and now the answer paid for all those thwacks.

Because there must be a well court. In old houses, there was always a well court.

It was not, however, a time to get careless. Banichi had taught him about wires, that could take your feet off, and about interrupt alarms, that could spot an intruder—if the house had systems up, and it might, with all that fuss in the upper halls, the systems could well be armed.

The hallway that intersected just short of those steps, however, looked more promising—looked like it might actually hold the kitchens themselves halfway down, a big area of arched openings where there were no doors, and down there was another closed door, on this level, and—near it, better than anything, oh, wonderful sight! a row of plain outdoor coats on pegs, with heavy boots arranged beneath them.

That must be the outside door. That must be the well court, right on the kitchen level.

He ran as lightly as he could, stopped, grabbed a coat off the peg, and saw something else hanging on the same peg: a flashlight, and a set of keys. He took that, just in case, and maybe to cause trouble, if they needed the keys. Then he bundled the too large coat about himself, stepped into men’s snow boots that fit right over his indoor boots, and headed for the door, using the flashlight to look that door over top to bottom.

No wires. But a simple magnetic interrupt alarm just stuck on as an afterthought, of all things, and without even any concealment: it had just been tacked onto the ancient woodwork. It was so simple, he looked it over and over again to try to find some hidden trap, but that seemed to be just what it was.

Steps sounded on the stairs at the turning. The door up there opened, and he froze. People were coming down, guards, by the look of them in the hall light. His heart started beating doubletime, and he edged back into the cover of the hanging coats. They were headed down for the room he had been in.

He had no choice. He pulled the magnet right off, keeping the tacks with it, and, never breaking contact, jammed it against the main part of the unit, where it would stay, preventing the alarm from sounding. He was about to open the door.

And about that time there was a yelp, an oath, and the whole hall went black.

He flung down the latch, yanked the door open, and— And the whole world out there was white, lit with floodlights from the left, where a bus was, and the ground was white—just white, with white puffs falling out of the sky, cold, and the most startling sightc Snow, he thought. He had never seen snow. But that was it. He took a step.

Hit ice and his feet went out from under him, faster than thinking. He landed at the bottom of the steps, half winded and backward, staring up at the door he ought not to have left open.

Suddenly an alarm was going off, wailing into the night.

He rolled, and scrambled up and ran in utter panic, half-blind from the jolt, stumbling in outsized boots. He made it to the stone wall—defensive wall, outer wall, just like in the movies. And of all things, there was a bus parked up by the big gates, and lights, and people stalking about in the floodlights, so the place was on the edge of swarming.

But the big wrought iron gates up there were shut.

Iron gates with big wide bars, and beyond them—beyond them, who knew? It was better than being trapped and put back in a worse room.

There were people running about everywhere in the light of what looked like the house’s front door, and the alarm was still going, but that gate was where he had to go, and there was that bus with its back end right up near it.

So he did what Banichi had always told him was the best way to avoid suspicion: walk, walk as if he knew exactly where he was going; and he walked right up near the middle of the bus, and then walked back to the iron gate, and the bars.

The bars might stop a man coming through. Not him. He squeezed through, saw a second gate, metal and solid, that might really stop something, but it stood wide open—just the barred gate was shut behind the bus.

He glanced back. People were clustered around the front steps of the house. People with guns. He saw no one he knew. He had the bars between him and them, now, and he turned and just kept walking. He hurt, where he had hit on the steps.

So he scooped up a handful of ice and clamped that down on the back of his head, and just kept on walking along the wall, where it climbed up and up the hill. There was the road the bus had used, but if he went that way, there might be more people coming along, and that was no good. He wanted to get back beyond the road.

There were trees, and brush covering a lot of rock, and if they got mecheiti out tracking him, he knew they tracked most by air-scent, and the wind helped, if he just didn’t touch things, and if he just got onto rough ground where mecheiti could not go.

Move faster, he said to himself, and tried to run. It was dark, and the snow was coming down, and that had another benefit: it might cover his tracks. He had pockets full of food. He was out. He was away. He was probably somewhere in the East, and if he could figure out where he was, he might get to a fuel station that had a phonec c if he knew what land he was on, and where their man’chi was.

All of a sudden the lessons mani had thwacked into his skull were life and death.

And if he had no precise knowledge where he was, except the East, up in the mountains.

And the mountains and down to the plains was where those guests of Great-grandmother’s had come from.

And they were her neighbors.

And if they were her neighbors, if he just kept going upland, if he just got up high enough, he might reach the lake, and if he got to the lake, he had to get to the shore and keep walking, keep ahead of any riders, because that was the worst thing, that was the thing he had to worry about.

He had no idea which one of the three that had come to dinner had done this, or in whose house he had just been. But it had to have been one of them, or somebody they knew. There was Lady Drien at the south end of the lake, there was Lord Caiti who lived in the east and had the estate at the north end of the lake, and Rodi farther north and Agilisi farther east in the lowlands of Ciec he had no clue, none, where he was, but he knew it was Caiti or Drien.

If Drien, south would take him around the lake to Malguri. If it was Caiti, north would be the direction.

And his stomach hurt from running, and he slipped and stumbled in the big boots. Finally, he stopped for breath and took the heavy boots off and just carried them, because he knew from the ship that if you stopped where it was cold, you were going to want heavy clothes. It was hard even to carry them; but the top of the ridge both encouraged and dismayed him.

There was a lake. It had to be the lake—it was just as mani had described itc except it was far down the slope, not near, and it wasc Huge.

He could not see how big. There was supposed to be an island out there. An island that had ghosts, and where a bell sometimes rang for no reason. But the gray water just went on and on into the haze of falling snow, until it was all one gray nothing.

He heard voices in the distance.

Then he heard far-off gunshots.

And sucked in a breath and took off running, north, for no particular reason, and without looking back.

Run and run and run. He clutched the wretched boots to him, and slipped over the edge of a snow-covered ridge, never even seeing it. He skidded to a landing at the bottom, closer to the lake but still, so, so far away, and now, down here, he thought, anybody chasing him had to have a good view of everything below.

But there had been the shots—he knew they were shots, and somebody was fighting up there.

And it could be mani, with Cenedi, come after him—it was the only person in all the world he would think would get here that fast and know where to look.

But even if it was, he dared not turn back to find out, and if they were shooting up on the ridge, he had a small window to get himself clear.

And that meant run.

The snow was coming down. That meant he left tracks. That only meant he had to be fast, and keep going, and maybe get somewhere he would not leave tracks.

He ran until he was out of breath, and fell on the damned boots, just sprawled. There were trees ahead, old gnarled trees, and a spooky looking place, but it was cover, at least from being seen.

Run and run. He stumbled on roots and rocks, but found a place beneath the evergreen branches where tracks were not evident, and that meant he just had to push himself and go by twisty ways and not get caught.

It was quiet behind him now.

He leaned against a tree to catch his breath. He could see all along the slope he had crossed, above the lake shore, and it was white out there, and he was in shadow.

He saw a flash of light, a starlike flash where no flash ought to be.

They were looking for him. Somebody was, with a flashlight. He had no guarantee that somebody behind him was of mani’s man’chi.

He would believe nothing and no one until he got clear to Malguri, and he had chosen his direction.

Shortest to go low, around the lake itself, and he drew as much cold breath as he could suck in and veered off lower as quickly as he could, toward the lake, toward the shortest route.

Best he could do. Only thing he knew to do.

They had never taught him this on the ship.

And here it was no game.

15

Bren had indeed slept. He waked against Jago’s shoulder, aware that the bus was climbing steeply, and that everyone around him was stirring.

Slept like a child. He felt Jago shift her weight, lay a hand on his shoulder.

He rubbed a face gone rough with stubble. Not exactly set for a formal visit, atevi finding this human characteristic, as they did, passing strange; but his personal kit was back at Drien’s abode and there was no help for it. They had to take him as he was, scratchy and chilled and in a parka and outdoor boots.

The bus tires slipped and skewed, and it clawed its way upward, steadily. It was far from a noiseless approach they made, but it was not intended to be. First they got in.

And that, even with Drien’s help, might be easier said than done.

Banichi got up, rifle in hand. It was the plan that he would go in, accompanying Lady Drien, asking admittance to the grounds. They would be seen. The rest would keep in the shadows.

“Bren-ji,” Jago said. “Things may move quickly. One requests, stay close.”

“One can manage. One requests you do not look back or divert your attention for my sake. One will not be a fool in this.”

“Yes,” she said.

She moved to speak to one of Ilisidi’s young men. Rifles were much in evidence, and one had to remember the metal shell of this bus was very little protection. One hoped there were no snipers, or at least that they would wait to see who arrived.

They reached mostly level road, and ground and slid to a stop.

Gates. Open gates appeared in the headlights, through the front windows—when they had had every apprehension it would take Lady Drien’s presence to get through those gates. And the house doors themselves wide open, scattering electric light out onto the snow.

That was no scene of tranquillity. People didn’t leave the doors of a great house open in the middle of the night. The yard held one bus. But there were a lot of tracks, recent, in the snow of the yard.

The bus stopped. Banichi and Lady Drien got down, and a trio pair of Ilisidi’s young men with them.

The dowager stayed, with Cenedi, and with Jago. Bren moved up closer, to have a vantage out the front window.

Banichi and the lady crossed ruts, deep tire tracks where either that one bus had been backing all over the yard, or where other buses had come in. There were all sorts of footprints out on the snow where they stood.

Banichi had put on a heavy coat, a coat lacking the spark of silver that distinguished the Guild. A heavy down coat, likely, of the sort Drien’s own guards wore.

Damn, Bren said to himself, eyes riveted to that sight, one of the two individuals he most cared about in the world walking with the diminutive lady, across that footprinted bare expanse of snow, and up the trampled, icy steps. He took faster and faster breaths, expecting—something. Any sort of thing. Gunshots.

They reached the top step. The young men went inside. Came back out.

And at that point, Banichi turned and signaled “come ahead.”

Come ahead wasn’t in the plan. But none of this was.

The dowager moved, with Cenedi’s help, to descend the steps.

Jago went next, and Bren came closely after, caught Jago’s arm to keep his balance as he landed and saw the dowager and Cenedi heading in. He went at the dowager’s deliberate pace, crossing that exposed expanse of rutted snow.

The house steps were icy and lightly snowed over, atop a lot of footprints. Banichi and Lady Drien had moved inside ahead of them, and when they reached the shelter of the front hall, there they found Lady Drien had stopped, waiting for them, and Banichi had gone on.

“Go,” Bren said. “Jago-ji, go.” More of the dowager’s men were at their backs. They had firepower all around them, and Jago let go his arm.

“Protect her, nandi,” Jago said, and was off in an instant. The dowager, snowy from the transit, stood with them in that hall, and Cenedi gave rapid orders to two men, then headed inside on Banichi and Jago’s track. Immediately two of the dowager’s guard took out down two side hallways that led off the small, mud-tracked foyer.

And not only mud. Bren’s eye picked out a ruddy stain in the mix—blood. Someone had quit this place in a hell of a hurry, leaving the doors open to the winter air, and he was very much afraid that there had been a falling-out among their enemies, maybe not to Cajeiri’s benefit. Someone had left the front doors open, and that would be someone who cared little for the fate of the house that belonged to Caiti.

Someone else whose name, he very much feared, was Murini.

And their own plans were changing by the minute, trying to adapt, but behind the events now, well behind them.

Hurt. Hurt awfully to keep running, but mani would expect— mani would expect him to keep going; Cajeiri could all but hear her saying itc You can do it, boy. A great-grandson of mine can do itc The forest gave out ahead. He was losing his cover. Tracks would show, and the snow out there beyond the trees was unblemished.

Open. Shining in the night. There were trees, but they became regular as if planted. They were planted. It was somebody’s orchard.

He leaned against a tree under cover of the woods and caught his breath, his heart pounding against his ribs. His mouth was dry. His whole body ached, and his feet were numb with cold in their light boots. And if he went out there, whoever might follow him would track him easily in that open space between those widely spaced trees.

Then an idea came to him. He had kept the damned boots. He had clutched them all the way he had run, thinking that it would be the only means to get his feet warm again—and now he thought—they were a man’s boots. And whoever was tracking him would be tracking a boy.

He looked for bare spots among the trees, carefully eased over a ways from where he had been standing, setting his feet carefully.

He worked over maybe the length of mani’s dining room, and then, leaning against a tree, put on the boots right over his own boots.

They were warmer from the start; he wanted to pull off boots and stockings, and enjoy dry boots as well, but he might have to run again. It was only a temporary thing, this trick, until he could get through the orchard, and best not have the others slipping around and wearing blisters.

So he walked out under the trees of the orchard, under thin branches edged with snow, and tried not to touch any of them.

Just—north, as best he could, and west to the lake shore, as close as he could get, as fast as he could get there.

The com in Bren’s pocket beeped. He fumbled after it, more nervous than he had thought, in his wait in the foyer.

“Nandi.” It was Jago’s voice, scratchy, on unit-to-unit function, and with a lot of interference. “You should come. The dowager should come, too.”

“Yes,” he said, and he flipped the com closed. “Aiji-ma, nandi, we are urged in at this point.”

“We shall go,” the dowager said.

Drien, thin-lipped, looked less determined to venture anywhere, but they went, all the same, up the three steps, through the arch, and into a broader hall, where there was a conspicuously open door and a brightly lighted room.

The bullet hole in the plaster near that door was a forewarning.

And there was a reason to fear boobytraps and wires, but that was why Guild had gone in ahead of them, being sure nothing of house defenses or hostile setups remained live. If Jago said come ahead, he came ahead, to the heart of the house, where Jago and Banichi and Cenedi were gathered about a man on the floor, a man in house dress. Another, to the side, lay like a heap of laundry, where blood had soaked into the antique carpet. A third and a fourth lay about, dressed like house security.

The man in the middle—Lord Rodi—was still alive, leaning on a footstool, his elbow on it; and seemingly missed in all this bloodletting.

Their security stood up, gave a little bow at the dowager’s arrival, her assumption of authority in the room.

The cane thumped the carpet. “Where, nandi, is my great-grandson?”

“A good question,” Rodi said in a thready voice. “A question he could not answer.” This with a nod to the dead man by the grouping of chairs. “The boy escaped.”

“Escaped.” Few things drew such startlement from the dowager.

“How, escaped?”

“That was never clear,” Rodi said, and gave a wave of his hand, gathering breath. “Murini-aiji arrived with his staff, and the boy had disappeared. One has no idea.”

“Where?” Drien asked. “Ro-ji, answer!”

“Dri-daja?” Rodi blinked up at the lady of Cobesthen. “Odd company you keep.”

“Answer,” Ilisidi said, “and you may survive this.”

“Oh, I think I shall not survive,” Rodi said. “I know I shall not survive.”

“Poison, aiji-ma,” Cenedi said. “He had taken it before we arrived.”

“Damned slow,” Rodi said. “Too damned slow.” He drew his knee up, and winced, as at a cramp. “Caiti believed he had the answer, believed he could take Murini. But that depended on having the boy for a pledge. On persuading Murini.” Rodi’s knuckles showed white, where they clutched the top of the footstool. “Hold the boy for Murini, assassinate you, and rule all the East, while Murini took on the aiji in Shejidan. But he could not produce the boy. So Murini shot him.”

“I say again, where is my great-grandson? What happened here?”

“Murini arrivedc to negotiate with Caitic he was supposed to.

But he came in force, to take the house.”

“Did Caiti expect otherwise? Where is he?”

Rodi was having difficulty holding his head up. One hand had begun to shake. “One did not expect—one did not expect— he would attempt thisc”

“Fool, then! Which airport?”

“Caidienein-ori.”

“And has taken him there?”

“If he has caught him.”

“Caught him.”

“Murini expected—expected Caiti had double-crossed him—tried to get from Caiti—from me—where Caiti had taken him. No knowledge. Murini ordered—all in pursuit. Bus—bus to go—”

“Where, damn you?”

“The north road—to meet him overland. One decided not to wait—to be shot. Your landing—in Malguri Township—is known. I took my dose—damn the man. Damn Murini and damn Caiti and that woman.”

“Agilisi,” Bren muttered, out of turn.

“She left us. She ran. That was the beginning of unraveling. We knew she had gone to Malguri.”

“She did not,” Ilisidi said shortly. “The bus, the bus, Rodi. Did they leave that way? Did they find my great-grandson?”

“One does not think— Caiti’s men—Caiti’s men went in pursuit—leaving the house. Murini arrived—believing Caiti had taken him away. Not believing—the escape. They shot Caiti. Went to track—went to track where Caiti had hidden the boy. But it was a lie from the start. All a lie. Murini meant to take him away.

Never any negotiation. He was smarter than Caiti.”

“There was a room on the next level,” Cenedi said. “A great deal of digging, and a wire rigged to the light socketc one assumes the young gentlemanc”

“Nand’ paidhi,” the dowager said sharply.

“Aiji-ma.”

“Send your guard. Find him.”

“Banichi,” he said. Aiji or not, it was impossible to order another lord’s guard. He had to do it. And he had his own conditions. “Jago.

Let us go.”

Banichi looked sharply at him, at the dowager, as if hoping Ilisidi would order otherwise.

But the dowager was on one agenda: finding the boy before Murini did. And anything less was not acceptable.

Bren, for his part, headed out of the room, for once ahead of his bodyguard. Ilisidi had Drien’s men and her own headed in, on mecheiti. If there was any attack from Murini’s lot, they had help coming, not to mention communication with Malguri, from this house.

He and his staff were the most experienced in tracking the heir, no question about that. Two years of practice, tracking the boy through the bowels of the ship.

“You should stay, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “You will slow us. Protect the dowager.”

“She has Guild to call on and Drien’s lot besides. Where does the trail start?”

Banichi and Jago were on the same area link as Cenedi. They knew. They headed down the hall at their traveling stride, and a human had to exert himself to keep up even before they reached the stairs.

Two of Ilisidi’s young men were in the lower hall, by an open door. “The young gentleman was held here,” one said, and pointed back down the hall, the way they had come. “Tracks in plaster dust, one smaller and many larger, go down the side hall.”

“The aiji-dowager is upstairs, nadiin,” Banichi said, already in motion down the hall in the indicated direction. “We shall find him.

Lock this door after us.”

Down the side hall, then, out into the dark, and into a view of the courtyard, and icy dark steps. The traces inside, in plaster dust, were faint. Out here it looked like a mass exodus, down the steps and out across the snow, obliterating any trace of the boy, but giving clear evidence of very many men exiting the building and heading out across the courtyard, straight for the gate.

Banichi headed out at a jog, Jago with him—trying to dissuade him from going along, Bren said to himself, and sucked in air and outright ran, as hard as he could, keeping pace all the way to the open gate.

There, a second set of tracks came clear, where a man had gone through the bars. The rest of the pursuers had opened the gates, and headed out on foot, trampling the trail beyond.

Bren stepped through the bars of the open gate. Banichi and Jago looked at him.

“The young gentleman,” Banichi said. “In thick boots.”

They had to go to the end of the gate.

“Five, ten men,” Jago said, as they rejoined him. “A bus left here.”

“Down to the north road,” Bren said, still hard-breathing. “To rendezvous with the others. Overland. To get back to Cadienein-ori Airport. With the young gentleman. Agilisi leaving—so scared Lord Rodi—Caiti. Murini shot Caiti to finish off—untidy business. Left Rodi to his suicide.” He ran out of air. “Can that be what happened?”

“It would seem reasonable that it did,” Banichi said. “Bren-ji, go back now. One asks you go back.”

“One asks,” he said, trying to ignore the pain in his side, “that we make all safe speed from here, nadiin-ji. I shall not slow you down.

Caiti’s men—are likely out tracking—Cajeiri. Murini’s, too. Your Guild does not negotiate. I can. I may help.”

“We cannot carry you where we may go, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “You must keep up.”

“Shall,” he said, and gestured the direction the tracks went. “Go!”

Banichi and Jago lit out at a ground-devouring run; and then he was glad he had the jacket on and not the coat, glad he had zipped pockets, too, and good boots, because the broad trampled trail lay uphill, along a ridge of evergreen and up among the rocks, rising, constantly rising, a long, long climb in which he began to think, no, they were right—he could not do this, he was a detriment to everyone’s safety. Including the boy’sc His feet slipped on snow. Jago grabbed his arm and bodily hauled him up, shoved him up, hand on his backside, to the next ragged level among the rocks, and said not a word doing it. He put his head down and just ran, making up time, whatever time—God knew.

They hadn’t asked Rodi how long since the boy’s escape, how long since Murini left. Possibly a dying man wasn’t that sure of schedules. Possibly Banichi and Jago knew that detail. There was no leisure to ask questions. No use in it either. Not his job, to catch them. Just to talk.

By the time they reached the high rim, his ribs ached and his vision blurred. He caught sight of the lake below, water half-glowing with the snow-light, and on his next step he nearly went down the slippery rock.

Jago got one arm, Banichi the other, and if that was not humiliation enough, they set him down on that rock, and dropped down themselves to reconnoiter— Their keener night-vision. One forgot that, one tended to forget that, in the safe hallways of the Bu-javid, in the corridors of the ship—but they saw what he could not, out here, and so did their enemy, and he was, comparatively speaking, blind.

More, he had just come over that ridge silhouetted against the sky, and risked all three of them.

He was utterly embarrassed, resolved to be smarter than that.

Come, Banichi signed, and he got up, not escaping Jago’s hand under his elbow, keeping him low, and they started the descent, down at an angle toward the lake.

Long climb down. The trail down was plain, even to his eyes, wending down a rocky, little-grown slope, where old fumaroles made spires and provided cover for ambush. It was not a comfortable place to be, but the trampled trail led them, and they kept to it.

On to lower ground, and a ridge which might have marked an earlier lakeshore—along that, then, and down again.

“Traveling fast,” Jago commented, “with a clear trail in front of them.”

Damn, Bren thought. He hoped the boy knew he was followed.

Cajeiri could have no idea by what, could not have an inkling of the worse danger tracking him; and the three of them, alone, were fewer than they needed against what they might run into, he was well sure of it. Cenedi was likely calling for reinforcements from Malguri, which might come straight across the lake—to reach a road meant going clear down to the township and around, and there was no way to come from Malguri Fortress except overland, by mecheiti, no way to reach the north road, that between the Haidamar and the northern airport, except to come over by water, or clear around the lake, as they had done, a journey of hours.

He hoped for boats. That was the likeliest. And the most help.

But none showed. The vast lake was snow-veiled, icy around its rim, and placid below them. And if they were very lucky, neither Caiti’s men nor Murini’s lot had a clue they were being tracked by a third force.

His side hurt. Calisthenics on the ship was no substitute. He gained a coppery taste in his mouth, as if he were bleeding inside.

And now the ancient beach played out in a rock slide, and the track descended again, on a tumble of rock.

The footholds Banichi and Jago took were increasingly too far apart for him as his side seized up. He put hands down and clambered and outright slipped in spots, determined to keep up.

Ripped a hole in his trousers and nearly broke his neck making one step, but he kept the pace, down and down, and at the last, he let himself slide and relied on Jago to catch him.

She set him rightwise about on the path and immediately headed after Banichi.

Way out of breath by now. It was a mad, a reckless speed, by his lights, but it was what they had to do. His legs felt like rubber, his left side was afire, and now lights began to dance in his eyes, step after step. He wasn’t seeing where he was going, now, he was just following, keeping up, sweating as if it were a summer’s day— His foot skidded into a brushy hole and his reach after balance snagged his sleeve on a branch.

He went down, hard, hit the rocks and thought that was all the damage. Then he began to skid, slipping helplessly over an edge, impact onto a slope, and a rock-studded slide all the way to the bottom, leg wrenched, head banged, stars exploding in his eyes, and a keen pain in ribs and elbows—thank God for good boots, which let him get his feet again, and for heavy tread, which let him stay there and negotiate his way to level ground.

Not, however, up again.

Banichi and Jago were up above, stopped for him, facing the need to leave the trail, all to go down and recover a fool.

Go on, he waved them furiously. Go on!

Banichi did that. Jago hesitated half a step. He waved her off, and then started moving himself, reprised his jog along the lower, flatter shelf he’d reached, and with a glance up, he saw Jago departing at a run, on Banichi’s track.

They had to. Right set of priorities. The boy was in danger. The fool paidhi had a sore ankle, nothing broken, and the fool paidhi could run, by what might amount to a shorter route. The old caldera reached a point of ancient blowout at the north end, a place where the rim was virtually level with the lake, and the ground grew flatter, and, dammit, he had a map, if he was lucky and the station’s web of satellites included this end of the continentc damned right there should be a map of the place, and the road.

He leaned for breath against a rock, hauled out the locator from his zipped pocket, turned it on, and waited while it went through a small search. Satellite, damned right. Several satellites up there.

And a map, a magical, detailed map. The lake.

His position, with the haunted island out there mid-lake and invisible in the snowfall. He clicked out on the zoom.

And saw the road from the remote hamlet of Cadienein-ori to the Haidamar, the same road that, skirting Cadienein-ori, crossed the hills to Cie. The road made a slow sweep close to the lake, right up ahead, and topography showed a low spot. If Murini and his lot were going to intersect the immediate pursuit, it was going to be there. If Murini, who might be on that bus, was going to get personally involved, it would be there.

He left the unit on, not knowing all its functions, but knowing Banichi and Jago had the same item in their possession, and that they had that map and were going to draw the same conclusion as he did. There was a small depot or some sort of building up there in that low spot. The map gave no indication what it was, just a square. Possibly it was a fueling station, maybe belonging to the Haidamar.

But it was a place, and people who were meeting a search party indicated a place to rendezvous, and worse, far worse, a boy who was running for his life might mistake a place for a refuge.

The land got steeper, directly after that small square: the topology showed a sheer rise, right where the ancient eruption had blasted through a wall of sheer rock and all sorts of geologic mayhem had gone on—sheer cliffs, and rough land, after that. He and the dowager had ridden the uplands, from Malguri, once years ago, and the dowager had said, had she not, that there was only one approach to the lake from Malguri, and that was her boat dock?

Did the boy know, did he possibly know, that there was no way out from where he had gone except the north road? That there was no beach to let him around to safety, only sheer cliffs? Could the boy even have any idea that it was Malguri land, just beyond that sheer wall?

He hurt. But he ran, all the same. He dared not trust the immediate-area function on the pocket com. What he had just reasoned out, he was well sure Banichi and Jago damned well knew, and everybody else in the world knew. They were coming to the bag-end of the course, the place where everything stopped.

16

The shore itself, a flat, treacherous strand, lumpy with rocks, offered no sure ground under the snow. Water lapped up against the icy edge, ice in the shallows along shore, in some places under a film of newly-fallen snow, that gave warning it was water only where the slight surge lapped up through the ice like lacework.

Bren stayed away from that, skirted it at the fastest pace he could make—had to stop now and again to double over and catch his breath, and then reprised the effort, run and run and run, with no idea how far ahead of him Banichi and Jago might be, or whether the dowager and Cenedi had made contact with Malguri, or asked for help, or what.

He passed signs of habitation—the regular geometries of an orchard situated in the blowout gap, and that might be the reason for the box on the map, the indication of structure. That might be all it was. And hope so. Hope that the boy had not gone to any definite Place that would give his pursuers any help finding him.

Hope that surprise would give them a marginal advantage over Murini’s lot, at least until help could get to them—and they had taken the mecheiti Malguri had in stable, mecheiti which might have carried help to the dowager by now, and help might be coming overland toward them, maybe down the north road itself, to try to catch Murini’s lot before they laid hands on a young hostage.

It was impossible to run fast, shod in oversized boots. Impossible to make any speed. Cajeiri kept walking, just trying to get far enough through the orchard that the branches might screen him off from anyone following him, and hoping they might mistake the boots for one of their own. He walked wide-striding, trying to keep a man’s gait through the snow.

Then something different hove up through the veil of snow and branches, something solid, like a building, a rustic kind of building.

No lights showed. Nothing gave any sign of life. He walked on, and as he walked, saw a snow-covered roof, a native stone foundation, stone wallsc It was a house, was what. A house out here. Maybe there was an orchard-keeper, but it was winter, and maybe nobody lived here in the winter.

At the edge of the orchard stood a second thing, a great big hulk of a thing that he thought might be a wrecked storage shed, but it was a very odd-looking shed, if that was what it had beenc it was all smooth-sided, and nested among folded-up girders, and it looked as if it had stood taller and then just collapsed down on one side.

Maybe it was a bin for the fruit or something, just toppled by age or weather, if nobody used this orchardc the orchard looked like a working orchard—there was no overgrowth sticking up through the snow—but who knew what it looked like without the snow? Maybe the trees were all dead. The house looked completely deserted. And in winter, the orchard-keeper could have gone to live in town.

Maybe—maybe there was stuff left in the house, stuff he could use.

Maybe there was even a door open—mani said country people rarely locked doors, in her district, and if people locked doors it was odd, because sometimes a neighbor just wanted to borrow something, and did, and would hike over and pay it back when the owner came back. That was a country tradition. Only the fortresses and the lordly houses kept their gates locked, mani had said, and whoever came there could not just walk in, and that was just the way things had always been, because there were historic things and firearms and, besides, always staff—but any country person who had business with the lord could still turn up at the gates and ask for help, and know he had a right to go in and talk to the lord. That was the way a proper lord’s house had to bec always ready to open, the same as any farmer’s or herder’s.

Mani had said—mani had said that, after her, he had to know these things, because he would be lord of Malguri.

And he would be neighbor to these people who had locked him in the basement.

He had a score to settle with them now. He knew mani would do it. But he had his own, once he came into his own. His staff, the same as mani-ma’s, his heritage, and if the neighbors had gotten together to treat him the way they had, they were the ones who had to be worried when he got to Malguri.

This orchard might even be a Malguri orchard. He had no idea how far toward Malguri land he had come—not because he had not paid attention, but because he had no idea of distances in this place.

That pale grayness between the trees to the left might even be the lake itself—but he was not sure. The whole scale was more than he had ever thought.

But if the lake was coming closer and on his left on this trek, that meant it was Caiti’s summer house where he had just been, and that meant he had turned the way he ought and was skirting the shore, at a distance.

And that meant, in turn, that he was sooner going to come up around to the other cliffs, those on which Malguri sat and still have to skirt around a long, long way before he could get to Malguri’s boat dock—because those cliffs were as good as a defensive wall.

The slot in which the boat dock set was the only way up to Malguri from the lake shore. Malguri had held out in the wars because there was no real way for a lot of people to come at it except from the south, or way up over the mountains, or fighting their way through that gap in the cliffs.

And he was going to be forever getting there, a very cold forever.

He had food in his pockets, and he had eaten a little of it, just to try to stay warm. But he was so tired, and his feet were still so cold, and he had nothing but the oversized coat and the stupid boots— And this place might have stuff in it. It might have coats, and blankets, and dry socks, for that matter, if whoever was the gardener had not packed everything, and set everything ready to come back in the spring.

But it was a scary-looking and neglected place, with that broken thing out in the yard, sitting in the middle of broken trees, and others all tilted. It looked as if something had blown it up, because there had been a stone wall, and part of that was down. It looked as if there had been a battle here— So maybe it was Malguri land. And Caiti had attacked it.

No light, no light at all, and one of the windows was broken. All of them were dead and dark.

The window beside the door was broken, too. And he got up on the porch, which was mostly clear of snow, and looked in, and there was furniture—he could make that out. There were things lying all over the floor, maybe because of the wind, or maybe because of people searching here.

He tried the door latch. It gave, and he pushed the door inward, very quietly. There might be a kitchen. There might be a knife or something. A weapon.

There was much better than that. There was a phone on the wall.

He went straight to it and lifted the receiver. It was dirty, old, it had no buttons inside the handle—he was scared it might be an intercom with somewhere he might not want to talk to, but in a moment more he heard a man’s voice ask: “What number, nadi?”

He hung up, he was so startled. He had no authorizations.

But it had not challenged him. He decided—maybe it was authority, some sort of security station. He picked it up again and listened.

“What number, if you please, nadi! Is there a problem?”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“This is the Malguri switchboard, nadi. Whom do you wish to call?”

He hardly knew what to say, he was so startled. But he knew where to start—where mani had gone. “One wishes to speak to Lord Tatiseigi in Atageini Province, nadi, if you please.”

“In Atageini Province.” That seemed to startle and perplex the person. Maybe it was impossible from here. Or he had given something away. “One moment, nadi.”

They could be tracing the call. He knew about that from nand’ Bren’s movies. He knew every second he spent on the line was dangerous. But he heard clicks and some discussion, perhaps among the operators, and then, just as he was about to hang up, came a ring at the other end.

And someone picked up. “This is Tirnamardi night staff.”

“Nadi!” he exclaimed. “Is my great-grandmother there?”

“No.” There was a pause. “Is this nand’ Cajeiri? Is this our lord’s grand-nephew?”

“Find my great-grandmother immediately, nadi. Or Great-uncle.

Either. One is in utmost need, nadi! It is extremely urgent.”

“They went together to Shejidan, at the report of your kidnapping.

Please stay on the line c”

“Impossible! There are people shooting here, nadi. I need my great-grandmother, I need someone to come to Malguri District!”

“Just stay on the line, young sir! Just one moment. Just one moment. I am calling Lord Tatiseigi, as fast as I can.”

Authorities did that when they were tracing a call. That was as old as the movies with no color. He hung up. Fast.

Maybe, he thought, he should try to get the operator to call Malguri itself, the fortress. Maybe the staff there could help— could just drive down the road and pick him up, easy as that.

But that was right in the district. If he started giving particulars about where he was, then the operator might know, and if the operator was not to be trusted, the operator might call somebody, and it could be the wrong side. It was just too dangerous to give out his location, supposing someone was tapping the lines.

Banichi and Cenedi would not sit here just waiting, either, after making a phone call on an unsecure land line. He had to go. He had to. He made one detour back to the kitchen, threw open drawers and took three knives, then looked in the pantry, but it was too dark to see anything useful and he was getting scared. He went out the back door.

And right from the back porch, he saw shadows in the trees, shadows moving across the white ground out in the orchard.

He dropped right off the small square of the back porch, right down into what might have been a flowerbed, and pasted himself to the side of the house, down low.

Men afoot, those were. At least there were no mecheiti on the hunt—mecheiti could have smelled him out, but they might not have made it down the climb he had done. There was no hue and cry at least, no indication they had seen him step out the back door.

He had a little time, while they were stalking the house, and maybe spending their own time wondering what had blown up the tower or shed or whatever it was.

He could not help leaving a few tracks: he knew there were some on the back porch above his head, but he could stay out of the open.

He edged along the foundation, turned the corner, and kept against the foundation about halfway back up the outside wall of the house.

Then he turned around and walked backward—another thing he had learned from the human Archive—to the low stone wall that divided the orchard-keeper’s yard off from the high rocks and the wilderness beyond. He vaulted it, and ducked down low.

Best he could do. He might climb the brushy rocks that rose beyond the wall, but that would bring him into the view of whoever was advancing on the house, and besides, he had no idea whether that massive rock went on for a long distance and became flat above, or whether it stopped there and went down sharply on the other side. If he climbed it for safety, there he might be, sitting on a stupid crag, while they climbed up after him and surrounded the place on all sides.

The same rocks ran right down to the lake, and more even jutted out into it—he could see spires that rose right out of the water.

There was no shore beyond, at least not here, just the rock and a narrow strip of land, and if you meant to get beyond it, you had to wade, or worse, swim to do it, in freezing water.

And if he ran down to the lake shore to get a better look, they would see him for sure.

There was one virtue to an oversized coat, and far too big boots.

They could keep him warm if he just stopped moving and tucked down. He found a nook in the rocks, deep in a drift, behind some brush, and burrowed into it, and put the coat entirely over his head as he sat tucked up into a ball, with just a slit to look through. He could stay there. He had food. He could stay there past breakfast, or until the people chasing him decided they had lost the trail.

The dicey part would be when they traced those footprints to the wall backward, and tried to make sense of it all. They would be all over the wall, up and down the little drainage channel, up and around the rocks.

But the snow was still coming down. And the more the better. He had become a rock, and the snow sifted down on him. All he had to be for the next number of hours, was a rock deep in the leafless brush. He would stay there, not moving for as long as he could, and they could take the house apart and not find him.

If only, if only, baji-naji, they believed those lying footprints.

Breathe. Breathe, as much wind as he could get, and try not to cough, try not to make noise. Bren had no idea where Banichi and Jago were, except he’d bet, ahead of him, considerably, though his was the shorter route, along the lake shore.

Run and run. If help was coming, there was no sign of it, and when, in a moment he had to stop to ease the pain in his side, he snatched a shielded look at the locator, he saw he was closer to that box on the map, the structure, the fueling depot, whatever it was.

And thus far no shot fired, no sign of parties stalking one another, and he hoped to heaven Banichi and Jago were in fact ahead of him, not veering off to try to make immediate contact. He left it to Banichi’s sense whether to try to use the unit-to-unit function on the pocket com: if Banichi or Jago called him, he’d use it, but not trust it otherwise. He only kept moving, watching the woods and the orchard edge carefully for any sign of life, and not, as yet, seeing anything. He would be unwelcomely silhouetted against the lake if he grew careless and took the fastest, smoothest course. As it was, he climbed over snowy driftwood and skirted around brushy outcrops, terrified as he did so that he could himself fall into ambush—whoever was tracking Cajeiri would be almost as happy to lay hands on the paidhi-aiji, for revenge, if nothing else, and he was determined to make a fight of it if he had to, but to avoid all chance of it if he possibly could.

Bare spot in the woods, something, for God’s sake, akin to a private yard, and a set of steps and a boat dock, such as it was, a mere plank on pilings, and a rowboat turned over and beached on the shore, up on blocks for the winter, as might be. He got down by it, said, quietly, foolishly, “Cajeiri?” in remotest hope that the boy might have taken cover in that shell, and the snow have covered his tracks.

No answer. Nothing. And there was no way Cajeiri could mistake his presence. He edged away, keeping low, and filed the location of that boat in memory.

Escape, for him and the boy, if he could lay hands on Cajeiri first.

A way out. He formed a plan, if Murini’s lot was still rummaging about the areac if that bus was not out on the road, if Banichi and Jago were up there somewhere reconnoitering the situation.

And if shots were not being fired, either they had not made contact with their enemy, or, most terrible thought, they were altogether too late to intercept that bus out on the north road, and Murini and company had already laid hands on the heir and spirited him off toward one of the two airports.

If that was the case, it was going to be damned messy at the other end, and they had to hope that the dowager had gotten Guild into position up— He stopped, froze, with a brush-screened view of an ordinary house in the middle of that yard, the answer to why there was a rowboat up on blocks on the lakeshore.

A country house with two figures standing on the small back steps. He very carefully subsided into a crouch behind a log edging, trying to stifle his breaths, keep them small and quiet.

That wasn’t Banichi and Jago. Not a hope of it. That was Guild, plain and simple, that segment of the Guild, southerners, who had supported Murini’s takeover once, and had declined to come in and bow to new leadership.

So the house was occupied. Plain and simple. An enemy was in it, and one could assume it was the same they had been following.

He didn’t think Banichi and Jago were going to go blithely up to that door. He hoped to God they didn’t have Cajeiri in there, but he couldn’t bank on that hope.

The log that he sheltered behind lay, snow-covered, on the edge of the yard, as if it and the ones beyond it, all in a row, had been put there to make a fence, or stop erosion—lake waves must have gnawed this edge in storm; or rain had washed the earth down. It gave him cover. He could see the men on the porch, standing out there, as if deliberately to advertise their presence, or to draw fire, and one could bet they were wearing body armor.

Beyond the house, through a veil of light snowfall— Beyond, toward the front yard of the house, was the damnedest thing, as if there had already been a battle there, ruined trees where the orchard abutted the yard, and a structure that might have been some round bin, maybe a water tower, all down in a welter of girders— The men on the porch went back inside, and others appeared at the edge of the front porch, just visible.

Damn. Swarming with people. And no clue about Cajeiri. No movement from Banichi and Jago, either. He could not have outpaced them, no way in hell, and there had been no shots fired.

They were out there, seeing what he was seeing, laying plans of their own, he had no doubt in the world.

What he had, while those men were in the house, was a modicum of cover, which might let him get a vantage here, from the edge of the lakeshore, that Banichi and Jago were not going to have, to set up a crossfire, and maybe convince the southerners that there were two forces, and that it was time to run for it.

He edged along, downright crawling on his belly, under the cover of the log and its neighbor, to the small gap that allowed shore access, and a worn path out to that flimsy dock and the rowboat.

God, if only—if only Cajeiri had gotten this farc There was, edging the yard on the other side, screening it off from brush, a drainage channel, that let out right onto the shore, with an eroded, snow-filled gully, at the base of a low stone wall that edged the yard—he could see it, a low, inconsiderable wall that mostly blocked the brush that grew there, and just beyond that, a huge rock face, that ran right out onto the beach, the start of the cliffs that rose to Malguri’s height.

The rowboat was only one place a person his size could hide. A brushy ditch was another.

He made a fast crossing of that eroded path, and crawled on along the line of logs toward that ditch.

Footprints there, men’s footprints. They’d been down this way, searching. They’d been all the way up and down the shallow, stony ditch. And with the overgrowth of brush, the last thing he needed was to disturb the brush overhead and have it seen from the house.

Just— Mechanical whine. A sound from the ship. An out of place sound that scared hell out of him and froze him in mid-move. It went on, from the far front corner of the house, and imagination replayed the wreckage up there, the destruction. What in hell? he asked himself, and then memory sorted out the lines of that collapsed tower, and replayed Lord Caiti at dinner, arguing about— —landings.

God only knew. Something was going on. The occupants of that house were likely distracted—it was a chance to move, was all, whatever else was going on, and he crawled up into the ditch and kept crawling, while the hydraulic whine went on and shots broke out, wholesale firing.

Crawl like mad, trying not to disturb the brush. He was out of breath. And the hydraulics reached a rhythmic, interrupted regularity, thump, thump-thump, as he hung up on a branch and tried to free it.

Hell with it, they had to be busy. He forced his way past, never mind the shaking of a branch, and moved faster, faster.

Crash, splintering of wood, firing like crazy, and he could hardly stand it, but he kept crawling, his elbows sore and his knees and feet frozen, face scratched from branches. He was hopeless if they came back this way—he was trapped between the rock and brush of the cliff and the rock of the stone wall. It was a stupid thing he had done, but it might lead him up to the road, where if they had Cajeiri, he might get a vantage to pin them back into that house until help could get here—there must be help coming. The dowager would see to it—she would turn out the whole of Malguri Township to help them. It was not just himself and Banichi and Jagoc Hydraulics kept up. Thump, thump-thump—interspersed with fire and voices. He reached a nook in the cliff on his left, a snowed-over spot where brush was thick, and there was not even storm-light to see farther down the ditch. He took advantage of the dark area and an overhang of brush to put his head up and try to get a look at the house and what was going on.

A whisper of movement behind him. He spun flat against the wall and made a foolish grab for the gun in his pocket.

“Nand’Bren!”

Boyish whisper. His heart thumped, heavy as the thing in the yard.

“Cajeiri? Damn, Cajeiri?”

“One is very glad to be rescued, nandi.”

Rescued. Rescued, in a ditch, pinned against a cliff, with a firefight going on and something on the loose out there.

He managed to breathe. “Get over here,” he said, rude outright command, and the brush moved, and a figure no bigger than he was came wriggling out from the roots and the rocks.

His immediate impulse was to grab the boy and hug him; he restrained it, contented himself with laying a firm grip on the boy’s parka-clad shoulder to be sure that young head stayed down.

“Banichi and Jago are out there on the other side of the house,”

he said, and thought of that boat, down at the other end of the ditch and along the shore. “Go ahead of me. Hurry. Down the ditch.”

Probably, he thought, no damned oars. People took that sort of thing into storage for the winter. That was a flaw.

But the boy moved, crawling along in front of him. And the shooting came their way, and that thing, going thump, thump-thump. The boy crawled for all he was worth, and he did, never minding disturbance of the brush.

Now the thing was closer, and the shooting was. It came right up against the wall, a towering dark shape flashing with lights, blotting out the sky.

Lander, hell! he said to himself, and Cajeiri reversed course as stones fell off the wall, a tumble of the first tier of mason-work, before the thing made its turn and simply limped away, thump, thump-thump. Bren levered himself up for a hair’s breadth glance over the wall as it lumbered on its way, and Cajeiri got up beside him. He put a hand on Cajeiri’s head and shoved him down, seeing, God, a monster, a mechanical monster, a cylindrical tower on three legs, a fourth one clanking and bent askew as it headed past the house. It misjudged, lurched, and took the corner of the front porch, which came crashing down in a crack of broken carpentry.

Stay put? Make a break for it down the ditch? He had no idea what to do.

His pocket com vibrated, like electric shock.

He grabbed it out of his pocket, flipped it open, and ducked low, back against the wall. “Who?” he asked.

“Btayi! Aeit eiga posii!”

It took him half a second to realize that sharp, clear tone was Jago’s voice and a heartbeat more to recognize and translate the out-of-context language. Kyo. Uncrackable by the southerners.

“Aeit makki.” Vocabulary eluded him. Wall. What the hell was wall? And how was she coming through that clear? “Topik! Aeit topik! Punjo’kui. Uwe aik haeit!”

“Kaie.”

She knew now where they were. We’re all right, he’d said. And: Don’t come here! because he and Cajeiri were safe where they were and man’chi would surely pull her and Banichi to risk their necks to get to him—Guild-instilled discipline might dictate something else, which was why they’d kept going when they had gotten separated, but come to him, they would, if he called, and he didn’t have any such— Something exploded, out beyond the front yard, an eruption of fire through the trees, illumining the orchard, highlighting the damned lander that was still thumping about in the wreckage of the porch as if it had gotten completely confused. That was their relay. That might even be driven by the station.

Then something major blew, and a fireball the size of a bus ballooned up, casting the far end of the yard in light, illumining the trees, and the wreckage. Pieces of metal began to come down, one heavy lump slamming down like the fist of God, right in front of their position.

Cajeiri popped his head up. He grabbed the boy and held him flat as a piece of sheet metal fell down right over them, providing cover, but near deafening them with the impact on the rocks.

“Ow!” Cajeiri breathed.

“Are you all right, young sir?”

“One is crushed. My leg—”

“Some vehicle blew up on the road,” he said, out of breath, and, hearing shouts and gunfire break out, he got up on one knee, struggling around past the piece of metal to get another look over the wall.

A dozen or so of someone not theirs was coming toward them, and in the light of fires touched off by the explosion, he saw Guild uniforms. He fumbled into his coat pocket, laid his hand on his gun.

“Get out,” he hissed at Cajeiri. “Get down the ditch to the lake, go left, and keep going.”

“Left, nandi! Right is—”

“Gods unfortunate, go!” No time. He opened fire at the one in civilian dress, the only one not going to be armored, as Cajeiri scrambled to do as he was told. That man dropped, the onrushing mass balked, several moving to retrieve the fallen man, and the lot veered off to the back yard, dammit, in the very direction he’d just sent Cajeiri. He fired three times more, at legs, which also weren’t armored, and hoped to God he was right which side was which.

He scrambled down the flagstone ditch, gun in hand, as fast as he could, while shots blew chips off the rocks and the stones of the wall over his head.

Second heavy explosion. He heard the lander thump, thump-thumping down the yard, and fire pinged off something.

“Halt!” a voice yelled, amplified and echoing off the rocks. “Halt!”

Fire redoubled. He reached the end of the ditch, and just slid off the eroded end of the drainage, trying to make speed and just get the hell wherever Cajeiri was.

Hands grabbed his coat, hauled at him. Cajeiri had found him, and he flung an arm around the boy and dragged him up and behind a jut of rock, while fire and light exploded—the whole damned house was afire, now, and the lander stood outlined against the surrounding woods, blinking with lights and threatening.

“Shall we run?” Cajeiri asked.

Good question. Dive out there and risk getting spotted, or continue to try to be part of the rock? He didn’t know what to do.

“Nand’ Bren!” Cajeiri exclaimed, and grabbed his sleeve and tugged him around to look at the lake.

There was a boat coming in. There were two boats. Three. None of them were showing lights, and they were coming hard.

“There is the greatest chance,” Bren said, as calmly as he could, “that they may be from Malguri, young sir, but it would be foolish to rely on it. Stand still. Let them come in. We may find that ditch a good retreat after all.”

“Yes,” a tense young voice answered, very properly, and Cajeiri stood like the rock itself as those boats came close, and veered off toward their end of the icy edge, and with a roar of the motor, ran around. Men in Guild black got out, and one, shorter, faces of all of them lit by the blaze of the burning house up the slope.

My God, he thought. My God. “Tano? Algini?” he called out. And most improbably: “Toby?”

They came running, all of them with rifles, Tano and Algini with a deal more gear than that, and Bren patted arms, that irrepressible human impulse, and outright hugged Toby, atevi witnesses or not, hugged him for dear life.

“God, Brother! What are you doing here?”

“Message said you were in the soup again,” Toby said, a return embrace nearly crushing the breath out of him. “They weren’t wrong. Who blew up?”

“I don’t know.” He changed languages, or meant to, but Tano and Algini had already headed off, likely on unit-to-unit with each other, and, he hoped, with Banichi and Jago somewhere up above.

He put the safety on his gun and tried for his pocket com, hoping to find out.

“Hi, there!” Cajeiri said to Toby. “I know you!”

“That you do,” Toby said. “Glad you’re safe, nandi.”

He got the pocket com, held it to his ear, heard, blessed sound, Banichi’s voice telling Algini and Tano they were a shade late, but they could come in on the yard.

Then Jago’s saying, “Murini is dead. His man’chi is broken. A bullet found him, and the Guild attending him wish to withdraw.”

“They will report to Headquarters,” Algini said then. “They will leave all weapons and turn up at Guild Headquarters, or be hunted .”

“They wish to take Murini to the Taisigin Marid,” Jago said.

Not even to Murini’s own clan, the Kadagidi, Bren thought. That said something.

The last throw made. The final try. The rebellion was done.

“We need to notify the dowager,” Bren said. His heart rate, which had hammered away for the last hour, began to slow, the strength to run out of him, and he was aware of knees battered and bruised, palms not much better, and a keen desire to sit down right where he was and not hear anything explode for the next while.

“We’ve got a radio in the boat,” Toby said.

“What in hell are you doing here?” he asked.

“Well, Tano and Algini had found us, and then the message got there, about the aiji’s son, and you going after them, so they just gave orders at the airport, refueled in Shejidan, and we came straight ahead from there. Too late to overtake you. But when the dowager’s man phoned Malguri for help, we went down to the boats. They’ve got help up there in the other fortress—”

“The Haidamar. The riders got there?”

“The whole lot, help from the other neighbor on the lake—”

“Lady Drien. So they’re all right?”

“Seems they are. But the boats were the quickest way across, and I figured I might be useful. If there’s one thing I know—”

“It’s boats,” Bren said, and became aware of a pair of young ears following all of it, but not necessarily understanding every word, in a world that was no longer the ship. “Nandi,” he said in Ragi, “your great-grandmother seems to be safe. Cenedi called Malguri and got help across the lake. We are safe. We can take the boats back to Malguri dock.”

“We would very much like supper,” Cajeiri said. “And we would be very glad if Great-grandmother came across the lake, too.”

17

A glass of wine for the grownups, and tea for the young gentleman.

Malguri staff, at full strength, having drawn up additional servants from the township, bustled about breakfast, which looked to be an all-out affair, on short notice. Cajeiri and Jegari had gotten together, Jegari with his arm in a sling, which had gotten considerable respect from Cajeiric and an enthusiasm from the young gentleman which had thoroughly embarrassed Jegari and gotten a reproving Look from his great-grandmother.

Bren just held his cup in newly bandaged hands and was very glad of the ice bag on his right knee, the foot propped on a footstool, and both his worlds being very hale and well this morning.

Toby—the odd man in the scene—had brought along his fishing-trip best, a clean khaki coat and clean denims, but another plane had arrived in the last confused hours, finally bringing the luggage out from Shejidan, so there sat Toby, looking a little uncommonly short-haired in a gentleman’s proper lace shirt and morning coat, but very proper, all the same, and very much cosseted by the maids. Tano and Algini were huddled in a corner conversation with the rest of the Guild present— Banichi had gotten off with a sliced hand (hand to hand with another Guildsman) and Jago with a sore shoulder (falling debris from the explosion), while Cenedi and his men had gotten off entirely unscathedc but all of them had tales to tell. Jegari had been determined to stand and attend his young lord, wobbly as he was from concussion; but Cajeiri had ordered him to sit down and have a cup of sweetened tea; and now the two boys chattered away in lowered voices, with animated gestures from Cajeiri as he told his young attendant all the gruesome details he had missed.

Murini was confirmed dead, of small caliber arms fire, uncommonly small caliber. Bren took a deep swallow of wine and tried not to think about aiming at a man in that oncoming line of attackers, but he would do it again, he knew he would. He was sure Banichi and Jago knew exactly who had done it, and whether they told anyone, he left to their judgment: he needed no deeper personal feuds with either the Kadagidi or the Taisigin Marid.

Lord Caiti was also dead—had been dead when they entered the Haidamar. Lord Rodi was dead, the poison having had its ultimate effect about the time the company holding the Haidamar had reached Malguri by phone. Lady Agilisi had gone home to her lowland residence in Catien, in no high good favor, but alive, and now needed to restore herself to the dowager’s good graces by a thorough house cleaning.

While Lady Drien— Lady Drien had come to Malguri to capitalize on her new relationship with her cousin, to sit, looking a little travelworn, but refreshed. She sat, starched and ramrod straight, awaiting breakfast, and quite proud to be participating in the exchange of experiences and timetables. Staff from Cobesthen had arrived by boat, and would take the lady home after breakfast, by which time, Bren presumed, all of them would be very content to collapse into bed and let breakfast settle. He tried to count when he had last seen a mattress. It seemed a while.

The dowager herself had spoken on the phone to Tabini, shocking event. The dowager was not inclined to use telephones.

And then Cajeiri had gotten on the line and blurted out a wild adventure involving digging through a wall, trying to electrocute the guards (but changing his mind) and then watching a giant robot wreck a housec As usual, with Cajeiri, it was all, all true. Bren figured Tabini would come to appreciate this tendency, as the rest of them did.

Always take Cajeiri’s accounts seriously, that was the way to manage the young rascal. Never assume he wouldn’t, couldn’t, or hadn’t.

Bren found himself with a phone call of his own he had to make, once he got a secure line, one on which he could pose a few plain questions to Jase—questions like: what in hell have you been dropping all over the continent? And why?

He’d shed the gun, the locator, all of that, when he’d had a warm bath—which had nearly put him to sleep—and changed for breakfast. “We knew where you were,” Jago told him, “and we believe that Jase-nandi did.”

Now didn’t that say something of that thing’s capabilities, too?

He recalled how Jago’s voice had come through the com quite clearly all of a sudden, when they were in proximity to that robot, and so had everyone else’s voices, at the end.

Relay station, hell. Juggernaut. A lander that could get up and walk.

That sort of gift from the heavens had stirred hostilities in the East, and led Lord Caiti and Lord Rodi to try to deal with Murini instead of supporting Tabini’s party, almost certainly contributing to everything that had gone on.

And if Murini had been a leader of better qualities, and not as suspicious, and not expecting treachery out of Caiti and most anyone else he dealt with, he might not, in fact, have gotten treachery served to him in the end.

Murini had been preemptively fast on the trigger when he thought he was betrayed: Caiti had been acting suspiciously from the moment Murini, arriving from the airport at Cie, had wanted to see the kidnapped boy—who turned out to be gone, to Caiti’s great distress.

And in that confusion of Caiti’s fear at having lost the boy, and Murini’s suspicion of Caiti’s motives, someone had moved first and shots had broken out—the great disadvantage when Guild met non-Guild security. If any of the participants had been of any better character than they had been, affairs might have gone better for the conspirators than they had gone—but they were not, and things had gone very ill indeed the instant Murini had incorrectly concluded he was in a trap. Caiti had reacted, so Ilisidi had gotten from Rodi before he died, by actually attempting to assassinate Murini on the spot. But his guards had been in no wise up to the deed, since half of them had been out desperately chasing Cajeiri.

So Caiti had died, the staff had all fled or died as Murini’s people had gathered from Lord Rodi that the boy really had been there and escaped. They had clear tracks to follow—those of Caiti’s men tracking the boy—so Murini had taken out in pursuit, intending to find the boy and link up with their bus on the road—an airport bus from Cie, as they had guessed, a vehicle which was now in pieces, thanks to Banichi. Lord Rodi, realizing he was left behind in a considerable embarrassment, and faced with explaining either to Murini or to Ilisidi, had swallowed poison which had turned out to be a miscalculation: Ilisidi had been quite willing to let him live. So he died with that knowledge.

And on one other point Murini’s intelligence had badly failed him: he had not been informed the Cadienein-ori runway was still blocked and that Guild out of Shejidan had by then taken control of it—a force now modestly and quietly withdrawing now that the heir was safe, a force vanishing back into the woodwork and pretending it had never, oh, never operated in the East. So Murini would have been trapped there— and been trapped with Cajeiri for a hostage, right in the middle of a firefight.

This had not, of course, happened.

So Murini was confirmed dead, along with most of his Guild bodyguard, two staffers from the Haidamar had gotten back alive, of the five who had gone in pursuit, and it looked very much as if the northernmost district on the lake was now up for inheritance, regardless of whoever Caiti’s heir might be down in the plains. Bren had not tracked the heredity of the Eastern lords as precisely as he knew those of the west. He thought Caiti’s likely beneficiary was a third cousin, and there was a niece, in the case of Lord Rodi.

But the question was very much whether Malguri was going to allow the summer residence in the Haidamar, which it might consider strategic and of interest, to be inherited along with the Saibai’tet—Caiti’s main holding, down in the lowlands, neighboring Agilisi and Rodi. It might claim the Haidamar, if the dowager was in a mood, and she was, and the lowlanders might whistle for their rights to it.

One could grow quite dizzy trying to map the associations and bloodfeuds involved, or that might become involved. But Cajeiri was safe and the two boys were, perhaps a little too noisily, sharing their respective adventures with the Malguri servantsc And thank God for one more thing, Bren said to himself. Toby had left Barb at his coastal estate—to keep up the boat. She would assuredly make demands of the servants. She would naturally botch up the few words of Ragi she might figure out and that would certainly amuse the staff there—at least, one hoped she would amuse them, and do nothing outrageous or insulting. He rather hoped she would stay on the boat, and not accept the natural and courteous invitation to move into the house. God, she would leap at the chance to be lady of the manor.

His eyes drifted shut. Just for a moment. His whole world being in tolerably good order for a change, he decided he could just rest for a moment. No one would notice if he rested scratchy eyes.

He realized then that someone was shaking his arm. He looked up, blinked, to find the whole company on their feet and generally trending toward the dining hall. On one side of him, Toby was leaning on his chair back. On the other, Jago loomed above him, a shadow against Malguri’s yellow lamplight.

A shadow with a sober smile, who at the moment had a hand on his arm.

“Nand’ paidhi,” she said. “Hold out just one more hour, Bren-ji.

Then we can all rest.”