Conspirator

Baiji had looked a little askance at Banichi’s departure, his eyes flicking to that doorway.

“So we must,” Bren said, “with greatest thanks, be on our way back to Najida, to attend to my other guests. Shall we see you in Najida?” Not while the dowager was there, for certain. But he could deliver her message. “Or perhaps in court, when the session opens?”

“One hopes,” Baiji said fervently, “one hopes so. Please convey my earnest good will to the aiji-dowager, and, young gentleman, to your esteemed father.”

Profoundly sweating.

Not right, Bren thought. It was time to go. And Banichi had not come back in, but Jago had begun to move toward the door. So, with her, and looking just a little on edge, the Taibeni youngsters moved. Cajeiri might or might not have noticed that action. He was sitting at Bren’s right, and his expression was not readable—one hoped he was not fidgeting anxious glances toward the doorway, where Banichi was, perhaps using his old contacts in the house, Geigi’s Edi contacts, to ask some pointed questions.

But it was his job to read the signals and get them out of here. He stood up.

“One will be most anxious,” Baiji said, rising as Cajeiri rose. “Please convey our most fervent wishes for the aiji-dowager’s good will. We had sickness in the house this winter. Please assure the dowager missing the session had nothing to do with political opinion. We feared to bring a contagion to that august assemblyc”

“Certainly one will convey that information,” Bren said, laying a hand on Cajeiri’s shoulder, steering him toward the door. He put a little pressure on it, just a brief warning signal, trusting the lad not to flinch. “We shall, shall we not, young lord?”

“Yes, nandi, indeed.” Cajeiri properly bowed toward their host, and Bren bowed, and turned the boy toward the door, where he hoped to God that Banichi was waiting. He didn’t like what he was getting from Baiji. Not in the least. Jago opened the door, and they exited into the tiled hall with the potted plants.

“Nandi,” Baiji said, at their backs, hurrying to overtake them as they headed for the front doors. The servants were at the front doors. Banichi and Lord Baiji’s guard were engaged in conversation there, and Banichi had to have realized they were leaving.

But overtake them Baiji did, just short of Banichi and the guards—but Jago turned suddenly and interposed her arm, blocking his path.

“Please!” Baiji protested. “Nandiin, let me escort you to your bus. We are so very pleased that you have come, and we hope to visit while the young gentleman and the aiji-dowager are in residence, if you would be so good, nandi, as to relay my sentiments to herc”

“Excuse me, nandi,” Jago said, maintaining her arm as a barrier. Her other hand was near her holster—not on it, but near, and she kept it there. Cajeiri’s young staff were in danger of getting cut off by Baiji’s three remaining guards, who were behind Baiji. “Come,” Jago said sharply. “The paidhi has a schedule to keep, nadiin-ji. Come.”

The youngsters hurried to catch up—inserted themselves right with Jago.

“Please,” Baiji said, actively pursuing as they walked toward the doors. “Please, nand’ paidhi. Something has alarmed your staff. In the name of an old alliance, in the name of my uncle, your neighbor, allow me a word. Nandi! Nandi, I havemet with the Tasaigi. I confess it!”

Tasaigi. The front doors had opened. But at that name out of the hostile South, Bren stopped, cast an astonished look back.

“But one refused them, nandi! Your presence has lent this house strength! Please! Do not desert us!”

He had stopped. Jago had stopped. Banichi held the doors open. And he needed urgently to get the boy out of here.

“Please, nand’ paidhi! Nandi, be patient, please be patient and hear me out! They are gone now, they are gone! I sent them off. It is all safe!”

“We cannot wait for this.” The door remained open: Jago held Baiji back; and now Jago did have her hand on her pistol, and quietly, deliberately drew it. The two Taibeni youngsters were as helpless as Cajeiri, caught in the middle, trying to figure out where they should be, which turned out to be against the wall. And he hesitated two breaths for a look back. “We can discuss it when you visit Najida.”

“Nandi, it may be too late! My uncle—my esteemed uncle— the position he occupies. He protects us. But he draws attention. Oh, favorable gods!” The fellow was sweating, and looked altogether overwhelmed, perhaps about to collapse on the spot: but his bodyguard had frozen in place behind him. “Oh, good and auspicious godsc”

“Out with it!” Bren said, with a worse and worse feeling that they were dealing with a fool, and one that might not survive, left alone in this house, having named that name. “I shall hear you, nand’ Bajji, for your uncle’s sake, and for your service to the aiji’s house. I shall hear you at length and reasonably, for your uncle’s sake, when you visit us in Najida.” Take him with them? Be surethat they heard whatever truth he had to tell, before Tasaigi agents caught up to him? “The truth, nandi, only the truth will serve you at this point—only the truth, and do not delay me further! In two words, tell me what I should hear. Tell me what you know Lord Geigi himself would wish to hear, because I assure you he willhear it.”

“Nandi, your great patience, your great forbearance—”

“Have limits. What have you doneregarding the Tasaigi, nandi?”

“Nandi, please hear me! I—dealt with the South during the usurper’s rule, that is to say, I dealt with them in trade, I received them under this roof, I encouraged them—I did shameful things, nand’ paidhi, because we were, all of us on this peninsula, under threat! It was rumored, nandi, it was greatly rumored at one time that Tabini-aiji might have come to your estate!”

“He did not.”

“But it was rumored! And we were all in danger, your estate, most of all.”

News. He had not heard anything about a Tasaigi intrusion here. “And?”

“And we—we feared every day that the Tasaigi might be encouraged to make a move against the township, and this whole coast. We expected it. Instead—instead—they wrote to me requesting I visit.”

“And you went to them?”

“If I refused them, it would be a matter of time before they sent assassins, nandi, and without mec not that I in any way claim the dignity or honors of my uncle—but without me— nandi, I was the only lord in the west, save Adigan up at Dur, to hold his land safe from invasion. The northern peninsula, that went under: the new regime set up new magistratesc”

“You are wasting my time, nandi. All this I know. Get to it! What have you done?”

“So I met with them, nand’ paidhi, being as good as a dead man otherwise, and hoping—hoping to negotiate some more favorable situation for this district. I reasoned—I reasoned as long as I was still in power here, it would be better than one of their appointed men, would it not?”

“Undoubtedly.” Taking him with them to Najida might indeed be the best thing. If there was a problem on staff, it might find Baiji before nightfall.

Or find them, if they didn’t get the hell out the door Banichi was holding open.

“So I met with them.”

“We have been to this point three times, nandi. Get beyond it!”

“They offered me—being without an heir—they offered me an alliance. They—offered me the daughter of a lord of the South, and I—I said I wished to meet this young woman. I did anything I could think of and objected to this and that detail in the contract—”

“You stalled.”

“Nandi, I—ultimately agreed to the marriage. Which I did not carry out. But I know that I have put this young woman—a very young woman—and her family—in a difficult position. Which they urge is the case. So—”

It could go another half hour, round and round and round with Baiji’s ifs and buts. “ Theyhave put this young woman in a difficult position, nandi. You are not morally responsible. And one will discuss this at length in Najida. Order your car, nandi, and join us there, should you wish to discuss it further. I will not stand in the hall to discuss this.”

“One shall, one shall, with great gratitude, nandi, but let me go withyou!”

“This is enough,” Jago said in the kyo language, which no Guild could crack—but which all of them who had been in space knew. “Nandi! Go!”

“Good day to you,” Bren said, and with his hand firmly on Cajeiri’s shoulder, steered him out the door, where to his great relief Banichi closed in behind them all and let the door shut.

It immediately reopened. “Nandi!” Baiji called at their backs, and Jago half-turned, on the move. “I shall go with you. Please.” Baiji ran to catch up.

“Stay back!” Jago said, and Bren glanced back in alarm as Jago’s gun came up, and Baiji slid to a wide-eyed, stumbling halt just this side of the doors, none of his guard in attendance.

Bren turned, drew Cajeiri with him, and Cajeiri looked back. The Taibeni youngsters were trying to stay close.

Meanwhile their bus, parked out in the sunlight of the circular drive, rolled gently into motion toward the portico.

A sunlit cobblestone exploded like the crack of doom. Bren froze, uncertain which direction to go.

A whole line of cobbles exploded, ending with the moving bus—which suddenly accelerated toward the portico with a squeal of tires. Fire hit it, stitched up the driver’s side door, and it braked, skidding sidelong into the right-hand stonework pillar with a horrendous crash.

The whole portico roof tilted and collapsed in a welter of stones and squeal of nails, the collapsing corner knocking the bus forward. In that same split-second Banichi turned and got off three shots up and to the left.

An impact hit Bren from behind—hit him, grabbed him sideways as if he weighed nothing and carried him the half-dozen steps to the bullet-riddled side of the bus—then shoved him right against it. It was Jago who had grabbed him, Jago who yanked the bus door open while the portico resounded with gunfire.

“Get in,” Jago yelled at him, and shoved him inside, and he didn’t argue, just scrambled to get in past the driver’s seat, and down across the floor. Their driver was lying half over the seat in front. Jago had forced her way in, and threw the man onto the floor, as Banichi got in. Bren got a look past his own knee and saw Banichi lying on the steps holding someone in his arms.

Jago jammed on the accelerator and snapped his head back, tumbling him against the seats. The bus lurched forward, ripping part of the bus roof and pieces of the portico ceiling, tires thumping on cobbles as they drove for sunlight and headed down the drive.

Glass broke. Bullets stitched through the back of the bus, blew up bits of the seats and exploded through the right-hand window.

Jago yelled: “Stay down!”

They hit something on the left and scraped along the side of it—the bus rocked, and Bren grabbed the nearest seat stanchion, sure they were going over, but they rocked back to level, on gravel, now, three tires spinning at all the speed the bus could manage and one lumping along with a regular impact of loose rubber.

But they kept going. Kept going, and made it to the gate.

Bren looked back, then forward, trying to figure if it was safe to move yet, trying to find out was everybody all right.

Banichi had edged forward, on his knees, and the person he had wasc Baiji.

Baiji. Not Cajeiri.

“ Where is Cajeiri?” Bren cried, over the noise of the tires on gravel, one flat, and past the roar of an overtaxed engine. “ Where is Cajeiri, nadiin-ji?”

Banichi was on his knees now, trying to staunch the blood flow from their wounded driver, whose body only just cleared the foot well. Jago drove, and as a disheveled Lord Baiji tried to crawl up the steps and get up, Banichi whirled on one knee, grabbed the lord’s coat and hauled him down, thump! onto the floor, with no care for his head—which hit the seat rim.

Baiji yelled in pain, grabbed his ear. His pigtail having come loose, its ribbon trailed over one shoulder, strands of hair streaming down beside his ears.

But no view, before or behind, showed the youngsters aboard the bus.

“Banichi!” Bren breathed, struggling to both keep down and get around to face Banichi, while the bus bucked and lurched over potholes on three good tires.

“He ran, Bren-ji.” Banichi didn’t look at him. Banichi concentrated on the job at hand and pressed a wad of cloth against the driver’s ribs, placing the man’s hand against the cloth. “Hold that, nadi-ji, can you hold it?”

A moan issued from their driver, but he held it, while Banichi tore more bandage off a roll.

They owed this man, owed him their not being barricaded in Kajiminda with God-knew-what strength of enemy.

But the youngsters were in that situation. All three of them. And Banichi and Jago had left them there.

“Were they hit?” he asked Banichi. It was the worst he could think of.

“The boy will have taken cover. He is not a fool.”

And was Baiji their hostage, intended to get Cajeiri back? What the hell were Banichi and Jago thinking?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t figure. He’d been about to look around for them when Jago had hit him and carried him forward, straight into the bus. He was stunned, as if something had slammed him in the gut. His heart was pounding. And he kept thinking, This can’t be real. They can’t have left the kids. They can’t have left them there.

He sat on the cold, muddy floorboards, with their driver’s blood congealing in the grooves in the mat, trying to think, trying to get his breath as the bus slung itself onto the potholed estate road and kept going. Banichi got up for a moment and pulled the first aid kit from the overhead, with the bus lurching violently and what was probably a piece of the tire flapping against the wheel well at the rear. Banichi got down and started to work again, got the man a shot of something, probably painkiller.

They reached the intersection and took a tolerably cautious turn onto that overgrown road, and then gathered speed again.

They’d lost Cajeiri. They’d grabbed Baiji.

And the hell of it—he, who was supposed to understand such things, didn’t know why in either case.

Chapter 10

« ^ »

Firing had been deafeningc and now it was silence, with people moving about. Cajeiri had no view of the proceedings, nor any inclination to make any noise, not even to rustle a dry winter twig. He was flat under the front shrubbery with his chin in the dirt, and Antaro and Jegari were lying on top of him. The roof had come down on the bus—he had thought it was wrecked. But it had gotten away. He had struggled briefly just to turn his head to see what was going on, but thick evergreen was in the way.

Then he had heard the bus take off again. Either the driver alone had gone for help from Great-grandmother, or Banichi and Jago had gotten nand’ Bren into the van and taken off. He should not have dived for the bushes. He had thought the bus was finished.

And now that it had gone, that left him and his companions, as Gene would say, in a bit of a pickle.

A fairly hot pickle, at that. A whole dish of hot pickles.

He rested there, struggling to breathe with the combined weight on his back, trying to think.

Going back into the house, even if things were quiet, and just asking the Edi staff: “Did you get all the assassins?” did not seem the brightest thing to do.

Damn. It was very embarrassing to die of stupidity—or to end up kidnapped by scoundrels. Again.

What would Banichi do? That was his standard for clever answers. Banichi and Jago and Cenedi.

They’dprobably moved fast for that bus, that was what they’d likely done. He remembered its motor still running. He hadn’t marked that. He’d thought it had been crushed by the roof when it came down. It must have been able to move. They’d have gotten nand’ Bren there, fast, and one of them would have been shooting back, which would be why the fire had been going on as long as it had—he was mad at himself. He could think of these things. But he should not take this long to think of them. If he had been thinking fast enough they would be on that bus, and headed for nand’ Bren’s estate.

So could he not think aheadof the next set of events?

It would be really, truly useful if he could. All Jegari and Antaro were thinking of right now was keeping him alive and trying to get him somewhere safe, but they were in a kind of country they had never seen before—neither had he—and he did not think he ought to take advice from them, not if it sounded reckless. There were times to be reckless. There were times to be patient. And this seemed maybe one of those times to be very, very patient.

He was afraid to whisper and ask them anything. The Assassins’ Guild used things like electronic ears, and might pick him up. Once that bus got to the estate, there would be a rescue coming back, that was sure; and maybe Banichi and Jago and nand’ Bren were still here, hiding somewhere nearby, themselves, just waiting for reinforcements, if the bus had gone and left them.

That meant he and his aishid had to avoid being found and used as hostages, and if they moved at all, they had to do it extremely quietly.

Voices were still intermittently audible: someone was talking unseemly loudly in the hallway, and the doors of the house were still open. It might be staff. But if the lord of the house was giving orders, did it not make sense he would now order the doors shut, for protection of the staff who were in the house?

“Is it safe?” one asked, which indicated to him that they had to be worried about being shot, and thatmight mean staff had not been in on the plot.

It did not mean that nand’ Baiji had not been in on it—nand’ Bren had told him there might be faults of character in nand’ Baiji, and it was very instructive, lying here on the cold dirt, under the weight of two people trying to protect him, and with the smell of gunpowder wafting about. Great-grandmother had held up faults of character— ukochisami—as a thing he should never be thought to have. And now that he had a shockingly concrete example of a grown man with faults of character, he began to see how it was a great inconvenience to everyone for a man to have such faults, and to be a little stupid, too, another thing of which Great-grandmother greatly disapproved. To have faults of character andto be a little stupid, while trying to be clever—that seemed to describe Lord Baiji.

And he thought that Lord Geigi, his uncle, up on the station, must have been at a great loss for someone better to leave in charge on his estatec that, or Lord Baiji, being a young man, had been a little softc Great-grandmother was fond of saying that soft people easily fell into faults of character and that lazy ones stayed ignorant, which was very close to stupid.

Great-grandmother would have thwacked Baiji’s ear when he was young, no question, and told him what she had told him: If you intend to deal sharply with people, young man, deal smartly, and think ahead! Do not try to deal sharply with us, nor with anyone else smart enough to see to the end of matters! You are outclassed, young man, greatly outclassed, and you will have to work hard ever to get ahead of us!

It was absolutely amazing how Great-grandmother could foresee the messes and the bad examples her great-grandson could meet along the way. Ukochisamadid describe Baiji, who had described a fairly good plan, a policy of stalling the Southerners and keeping them from attacking, but it would not have gone on forever. He would eventually have had to marry that Southern girl, who would be either extremely clever herself, or extremely stupid—and her relatives would just move right in.

Perhaps they had. One had a fairly good idea that the Southerners were somewhere in this situation. And one began to think—there had been very few servants in sight. They had not said very much. Baiji had let the roads go and he had told nand’ Bren it was because people had gone to relatives down in the Township during the Troubles and things had gotten out of hand.

That meant—maybe there were not many Edi folk in the house.

Or maybe there were none. Maybe those had been Southern servants. Southern folk had an accent. But you could learn not to have an accent.

The only thing was—Baiji had saved his life, when they had been about to sink out there in the sea.

Baiji had told nand’ Bren where to look for them.

But maybe Baiji had hoped to get to them first, for completely nefarious reasons—nefarious was one of his newest words. Maybe Baiji had had them spotted and was trying to get there ahead of Bren and sweep him up, or maybe just run over the little sailboatc while pretending to be rescuing him.

That had not happened, at least. And Baiji couldhave kept the information to himself.

That was confusing.

Baiji had trailed them out the door, pleading with nand’ Bren, before the shooting started. It had gotten confused then, and his memory of those few moments was a little fuzzy, but had not Baiji been talking about his engagement to that Southern girl and asking to go with them?

“Should we call the paidhi’s estate?” one of the servants asked, standing near their hiding place in the bushes. He had heard the Southern accent. The Farai had it. And that was not it. Maybe it was Edi. And another voice said: “Ask the bodyguard.” And a third voice, more distant, from what seemed inside the foyer: “No one can find them.”

That could mean anything. It could mean Baiji’s bodyguard had taken him and runc somewhere safe, like clear away and down to the Township, or to some safe room: great houses did tend to have such.

It could also mean Baiji’s bodyguard had been in on the attack and were somewhere around the estate hunting for nand’ Bren. Or for him.

That was a scary thought. He was cold through, in contact with the dirt. He started to shiver, and that was embarrassing.

“Are you all right, nandi?” the whisper came beside his ear.

He reached back blindly, caught Antaro’s collar and pulled her head lower, where he could whisper at his faintest. “We must not move until they shut those doors,” he said.

“Dark will not be safe,” Antaro whispered back. “The Guild has night scopes. We will glow in the dark.”

“We need full cover,” he whispered. “Did nand’ Bren get away, nadi?”

“His guard took him,” Antaro said. “They left.”

That was good and bad news.

“They will come back,” he said. “My father will send Guild. We have to stay out of sight.”

“Wait until they all go in. Then I can go along between the bushes and the wall and see how far we are from the edge of this place.”

“There might be booby traps,” he said. “Banichi taught me. Watch for electrics, watch for wires.” He heard the doors shut with great authority and that was a relief. For a few heartbeats after that it was just their own breathing, no sound of anyone any longer outside, just the creak of the wreckage settling: that was what he thought it was.

“I shall go, nandi,” Antaro said. She had had someGuild training. Far from enough.

“One begs you be careful, nadi.”

It took some careful manuvering: she slithered right over him, and it was very, very dangerous. They were behind evergreens, on a mat of fallen needles and neglect. That could mask a trap, and Antaro necessarily made a little noise, and left clear traces for somebody as keen-eyed as Banichi. That was a scary thought, but it was scarier staying here once night fell and nand’ Bren came back and bullets started flyingc not to mention people using night scopes on the bushes.

Antaro reached the end of the building, and Jegari, still on top, pushed at him, insisting it was his turn. So he moved. He saw no threatening wires. There was a wire that went to some landscape lights. But nothing of the bare sort that could take a finger. Or your head. He slithered as Antaro had done, as Banichi had taught him, intermittent with listening, and he was fairly certain Jegari moved behind him. He crawled past the roots of bushes, and along beside the ancient stonework of the stately house, trying to disturb as little as possible with the passage of his body, trying to smooth down the traces Antaro had left, and hoping Jegari would do the same, on the retreat.

Antaro, having reached the corner, had stopped. A little flagstone path led off the cobbled drive, and passed through an ironwork gate, a gate with no complicated latch.

That gate was in a whitewashed wall as high as the house roof, and it led maybe a stone’s easy toss to another whitewashed wall that contained the driveway. Where they intersected, there was a little fake watchtower, with empty windows and a tile roof with upturned corners.

Beyond that wall were the tops of evergreens and other, barren, trees. A woods.

Safety, one might think.

But he had read a lot. And he had talked with Banichi and Jago on the long voyage.

And Banichi had told him once, “The best place to put a trap is where it seems like the way out.”

Too attractive, a woods running right up to the house walls.

“The woods is going to be guarded,” he whispered. “Look for an alarm on the gate.”

“Yes,” Antaro said, and rolled half over so she could look up at the gate. She did that for some little time, and then pointed to the base of the gate and made the sign for “alarm.”

He looked for one. He could not see it, but when he looked closely, he saw a little square thing.

“Over,” she signed to him. And “Come.”

He moved closer. Antaro signaled for Jegari to come close, and he crawled close. Antaro stepped onto her brother’s back, and he braced himself, and she took hold of the top of the gate and just— it was amazing—lifted herself into something like a handstand. She went over, and lit ever so lightly.

She waited there, and Jegari offered his hands and whispered, “Go, nandi.”

He did, as best he could. He climbed up onto Jegari’s hands, and Jegari lifted him up to the top of the gate. Antaro stood close, so he could get onto her shoulders, and then she knelt down and let him gently to the ground, turning then to offer her hands to Jegari, who had pulled himself up and climbed atop the gate. Jegari was a heavy weight—but she braced herself and made a sling of her hands and he got down.

They were over. They were clear.

But they were also insidean alarmed area. It was a very bare, very exposed corner of a small winter-bare orchard—walled about with the same house-high barrier, with those intermittent little watchtowers. The old trees were just leafing out, not a lot of cover. And the orchard ran clear back out of sight, beyond the house, and evidently the wall went on, too, just a few towers sticking up above the slight hill. Probably it enclosed the whole estate grounds.

But something interesting showed, nearest, at the base of that corner tower: steps. One could go up there. Cajeiri pointed at it, pointed at a second tower, somewhat less conspicuous, beyond the gray-brown haze of winter branches. Pointed at the shuttered great windows in this face of the house.

Jegari nodded grim agreement. That little tower—that might be somewhere they would not look.

Antaro nodded, and moved out. Cajeiri followed, trying to move without scuffing up the leaves; and Jegari came after him. They reached a sort of flagstone patio that probably afforded very pleasant evenings in summer, with the trees in leaf. Tools stood there against the wall, rusting in the winter rains. Mani would never approve.

They trod carefully on that little patio, with its dead potted plants, its pale flagstones, and its upward stairs. And Cajeiri started to take that stairs upward to that whitewashed wall and tower, but Antaro pressed him back and insisted on going up first.

There was a chain up there, blocking off the top. She slipped under it, and slithered up onto the walk and into the tower, then slithered back again, signaling “Come quickly.”

Cajeiri climbed the steps as fast as he could, with Jegari behind him, up, likewise slithered under the prohibiting chain, crawled onto a little concrete walkway along the fake, whitewashed battlement. A very undersized door went into the tower from there, slithering was the only way in. Glassless windows lit the inside—and a very modern installation, a kind of box with a turning gear.

Cajeiri’s heart went thump. They had come on the very sort of surveillance they were afraid of. But the sensor was aimed out the windows: it shifted from one window to the other, whirr-click, left to right, right to left, watching out in the woods. Towers like this one were all along the wall— there were several in view just from the orchard, and probably every single tower had something similar inside. But the machinery was all dusty and rusty, even if it was working. There were big cracks in the wall, starting from two of the windows, the outermost and the innermost cracks which nobody had fixed. It was not the best maintenance that kept this system.

On their knees, peering through the crack beneath the garden-side window, they had a good view of the house from here, and a lot more of the orchard. They could see where the portico had collapsed in front.

Worse—much worse, there was somebody in Guild black just coming over the house roof.

They all dropped down, and Cajeiri kept his eye to the crack.

“Guild!” he whispered, with a chill going through him. There was an enemy, they were still hunting for them, and in a little while, as he watched through that crack, two more Guildsmen came around the corner of the house. They opened the alarmed gate, and shut it, and started methodically looking through the orchard.

Cajeiri knelt there, watching the search go on, watching that solitary black presence on the roof, out of sight of those below, and he shivered a twitch or two, which embarrassed him greatly.

Not good. Not good at all. Nand’ Bren was going to come back, and there was a trap, and they were already in it. These people, however, were standing around and pointing, more than searching. Pointing at the roof, and pointing at the front gate.

One could almost imagine them laying plans for exactly such a thing as an attack from Bren’s estate. They were devising traps.

They might come up here to check the security installation.

That would not be good. They might need to be out of here. They might urgently need to do that.

Chapter 11

« ^ »

The bus was running on the wheel rim on the left rear. Their driver, Iscarti, was not doing well, but they had gotten the blood staunched, and there was local help—the aiji-dowager never traveled without her personal physician: the man was a surgeon, and the best there was likely to be in the district. Banichi continually held pressure against the wound, and Bren had gotten up off the floor at least to look out the window and learn where they were.

Jago drove for all the bus was worth. They all kept as low as possible. Lord Baiji stayed in the well of the steps—under Banichi’s advisement that if he said anything whatsoever or moved from where he lay, he would be sorry he had.

Lord Baiji hadn’t budged.

But they were onto Najida Peninsula now. It was speed or it was caution, and right now, speed counted. Jago’s attention was all for the road—a good thing, at the speed she was driving, considering the condition of the bus—and a sharp jolt and bounce both drew no cry from the driver—in itself, ominous. Bren sat ready to spell Banichi at maintaining that pressure on the wound, but thus far Banichi managed without him.

Objections at this point were futile. They were where they were, headed for help, and that was all they could do. Questions he had aplenty, and knew most of them came down to him. He was the one who had left half his bodyguard in Najida. He was the one who had relied on a neighbor. And the one who’d valued stopping Barb from another embarrassment at a higher priority than Tano and Algini going with them.

Bad choice. Bad decision. And his call, totally. He was the one who was supposed to know the temper of the human side of his household and make the best decision—how in hell could Banichi and Jago figure how serious it was and wasn’t, with Barb and Toby’s situation? Jago had made her own heated recommendations regarding Barb not being under his roof, and he had dismissed her objections as personal jealousy. What more could she then say?

Wrong, he thought now. Wrong. Wrong. Impossible situation, for his guard. Absolutely impossible.

Second bad move, when he’d delayed them after he’d gotten an indication from Banichi that things weren’t right.

And at the doors, almost out of it, he’d turned his head to pay attention to Baiji and slowed them down—at which point everything had gone to hell. Somebody had had to get out of there alive—and his bodyguard had done exactlywhat his bodyguard was supposed to do, and grabbed him. He understood that now, intellectually, even if his gut hadn’t caught up to the situation. Man’chi drove Banichi and Jago: they’d go through fire to get to him. They had to. He understood that part. Intellectually.

What he didn’t understand yet was why Banichi had grabbed Baiji instead of Cajeiri.

Baiji was—he still thought—weak, a lord likely to collapse under anybody’s threat. He wasn’tlikely behind anything, unless Banichi read something entirely differentc

And that was always possible. There were times when the paidhi read atevi just very well; and there were occasional times he didn’t, and right now his confidence in his reading the situation was entirely shaken. Right now he didn’t know whatBaiji was, except related to a very major ally of theirs, and possibly involved in something very, very dangerous.

Banichi had made the gut-level choice to take Baiji with them. And Banichi didn’t make mistakes under fire, never had.

So what in the situation wasn’t he seeing?

He didn’t know, and he sat still and listened to Jago tell Banichi they were close to the house, and heard Banichi suggest they avoid any communications. That told him Banichi worried about a compromise in the house system, but that was a reasonable precaution, if they’d been caught by surprise. It was just a precaution, wasn’t it?

And what in hell was he going to tell the dowager?

Sorry? Sorry I misplaced the boy—again?

They made a turn, scraping brush on the side. “We are on the ridge,” Jago said. “We are going down the short way.”

“Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and indicated he should take over pressure. He did, and Banichi used his com at the last moment for a short, coded exchange, likely a heads-up for Tano and Algini, while Jago took them downhill, hard, and finally onto gravel.

Then he thought: a heads-up, maybe, or maybe checking to be sure everything’s all right at the housec God!

Final stretch. He turned the driver back over to Banichi and got up on his knee, elbows on the seat, to see where they were.

They made the final turn, came down the drive, onto the cobbles, and swerved under the front portico, so similar an arrangement to Kajiminda—but intact. Safe. Bren started to get up. Banichi seized his arm, said, “Hold it, Bren-ji,” meaning the compress, and got up, towering there, bloody-handed—he snatched Baiji unceremoniously to his feet as the bus came to a stop.

Jago pulled the brake, and opened the door.

Tano and Algini were there, and received Baiji when Banichi shoved him off the bus. So was the physician, who climbed aboard. Bren gladly surrendered the driver to the doctor, and stood up—his own pale clothes were as bloody as Banichi’s.

“Bren-ji,” Jago said, taking his arm and urging him up and to the steps.

Cenedi was outside. Bren didn’t know what to say to him, about the youngsters; and the ancient rule—one didn’t, in a crisis, ever discuss anything delicate with Guild not one’s own—seemed to cover the situation. He ducked his head and got down the steps, letting Jago guide him.

As her feet hit the cobbled ground, however, she stopped them both, and said, to Cenedi and Nawari, “One had no choice, nadiin-ji. The young lord is at lord Geigi’s estate—in what situation, by now, we are unable to determine.”

“Details,” Cenedi said shortly, and they stood stock still, facing the gray-haired senior of Ilisidi’s bodyguard.

What followed was what Bren called, to himself, Guild-speak, a lot of information freighted in a few words and a set of handsigns.

“Positioned at the door, bus coming. Shots from the right, wing of the estate roof, bus exposed. I took my Principal, Banichi took the lord, the young lord’s party moved apart, taking cover.”

Was thatit? Man’chi, in crisis, moved emotionally-associated elements together. What moved apart might be allied on a different mission; might be hostile. Man’chi was situated somewhere in the hindbrain, in the gut—Mospheirans would call it the heart. It moved people in certain directions, and Cajeiri’s man’chi hadn’t been to a human, never mind Cajeiri was a minor child. If he’d followed his aishid, that would have been a topsy-turvy response, a fault in his character; and if he’d led his aishid—he was emotionally in charge; but he’d instinctively leftthe paidhi and his guardc going in his own direction, getting under cover. It was crystal clear—if you were wired that way from birth.

He, personally, wasn’t wired that way. But his bodyguard was. Right now Tano and Algini were taking a man of his house to somewhere the doctor could work on him, and Jago was making sure Baiji stayed put, and Banichi—Banichi was facing down his old ally Cenedi’s justified anger, protecting the paidhi. Cenedi, their old ally in a hundred crises, was absolutely expressionless—not happy—and probably assessing what he and hiscould do about the situation that had developed.

He wished he had an answer. He wished he understood half the undercurrents in the situation he’d let develop.

“We stand ready to go back ourselves, Cenedi-nadi,” Bren said. “We shall get the boy back. We do not intend anything less.”

“In the meeting with nand’ Baiji,” Banichi said to Cenedi. “We were dealt half-truths and equivocations. This lord knows something more, and will tell it to us and the dowager’s guard.”

Cenedi glanced toward Baiji with the first gleam of inner heat in his impassive facade, but said nothing.

“One needs urgently to speak to the dowager,” Bren said, “if she will see me.”

Cenedi gave a jerk of his head, said: “Nandi,” and turned and led the way.

Toby had showed up at the door. Barb, thank God, had not. Toby made a sudden move to grasp his arm that sent hands to pistol butts—a motion restrained as Bren lifted a hand and then laid it on Toby’s shoulder, sweeping him along with him. “Toby, this is very serious. Get back to your suite and stay there. WithBarb. Assassins made a try at us. Cajeiri’s missing. Go. Nobody’s in the least patient here. Ask house staff if you need anything.”

“Any way we can help,” Toby began.

“There isn’t. Not at the moment. Just go. Stay low.”

Toby had that basic sense; and he trusted Toby, at least, to stay put—even to sit on Barb, for her own protection.

One of Cenedi’s men, Kasari, had now moved in to take charge of Baiji. Bren headed down the hall as far as the door of the dowager’s suite of rooms, and Cenedi and Nawari, in the lead, opened the door.

The dowager was on her feet, waiting, leaning on her cane.

Her eyes flashed sullen gold as they took in the bloody spectacle that confronted her.

Bren bowed his head, met her eye to eye with: “Our driver was shot, aiji-ma.”

“Cajeiri separated himself from the paidhi, aiji-ma.” Cenedi said in a flat tone, “seeking cover. He was left behind.”

“How?” Ilisidi snapped, and the cane hit the floor. “What occasioned this?”

“We were about to board the bus,” Bren said, having gathered the atevi-wise salient facts from Jago’s initial explanation. “Shots from the roof, the driver fell, Jago grabbed me and took the wheel. Banichi took Lord Baiji into keeping, aiji-ma. He is here. Cajeiri is there.”

Ilisidi actually, astonishingly, relaxed a little, hearing that set of facts. “In their hands?”

“Uncertain, nand’ dowager,” Banichi said. “One saw no such thing. Nand’ Baiji was addressing nand’ Bren, pleading to go with us to Najida. Shots met us outside. And the young people separated from us in the confusion of motion.”

The cane hit the floor much more gently, twice. The dowager was thinking, and her jaw was set.

“You have Baiji,” she said.

“The young gentleman moved toward cover,” Banichi said. “The young companions were between me and him.”

The Taibeni youngsters—an untrained guard—had moved between Banichi and their young lord: Banichi would have had to flatten them to reach Cajeiri. That might have taken one precious second, and two more to bring Cajeiri back to the bus—a time in which Jago might have been shot and the whole situation unraveled. Their bus in jeopardy, unknown man’chi around them, and Cajeiri andhim to protectc Banichi had saved what he could, and picked him.

The dowager nodded slowly, grimly. “The paidhi is the more valuable,” she muttered.

He understood it all right down to the point Ilisidi said that, regarding her precious great-grandson. He was appalled. Didn’t know what to say.

And Ilisidi turned and walked away into the inner hallway of her suite.

“Cenedi-ji,” he said. He thought maybe, under the circumstances, Cenedi might not favor the familiar address, but he knew the man, and did it anyway. “I will personally move the heavens and the earth to get Cajeiri back safely. One begs you let me and my staff assist you in what we do next.”

Cenedi nodded shortly in the affirmative. “We shall begin,” Cenedi said, “by asking nand’ Baiji what he knows about this. Will the paidhi wish to question him? The paidhi heard his prior responses.”

“Yes,” he said, and looked at Banichi and Jago, who gave him no sign to the contrary. “Nadiin-ji, I shall have to call the aiji.”

“One believes ’Sidi-ji is doing so at this moment,” Cenedi said. “There will be reinforcements within a few hours, asked or unasked.”

“Baiji’s household is suspect,” Banichi said grimly. “We did not recognize the men with him. Not a one. And we did not see all of them. Nor do we know about the servants.”

“Number?” Cenedi asked.

“Four uniformed, downstairs. The shots came from the roof.”

Crack. Tap. Ilisidi came back outof her room down the hall and said, with perfect and terrible calm, “We shall have a personal word with Baiji. I will spare half an hour. Come dark, we shall go get my great-grandson.”

Diplomacy might be his job. But security was wholly Guild business, and Guild was going to be in charge when they moved tonight. Dangerous enough, that they’d apparently just called Tabini to respond to the situation. Communications were a leaky business ever since the new technology had taken hold; and the Messengers’ Guild, in charge of the phones, had never been wholly reliable. The matter had gotten noisier and noisier, and if the lines were compromised, there might be more moving than a handful of Assassins over in Kajiminda.

Jago left quickly and quietly, and a very short time later came back in with two of the dowager’s security and Lord Baiji between them.

Baiji immediately bowed, a deep, deep bow, an apology, with: “I am innocent, aiji-ma.”

Thump! went the cane on the carpet. “I care nothing for your innocence or guilt or competency, man! I care for the whereabouts of my great-grandson! Where is he?”

“I—do not know, aiji-ma.”

Ilisidi flung up a dismissive hand. “Then you are useless! Why are you breathing?”

“I know who is behind this, aiji-ma! I am sure—I am certain— I am relatively sure I know—”

“Gods less fortunate! Make up your mind, man!”

“His guard,” Banichi said ominously, “left him under fire. They were new men attending him, not born to the house. And one is not certain we met a single Edi on the premises.”

“There were,” Baiji protested. “There were. My staff served you! And those Assassins on the roof—my guard—my guard was as stunned as all of us.”

“Splendid!” Ilisidi’s voice was like the damning crack of the cane. “Splendid. His guard was stunned into retreat, and there may or may not have been Edi! Give us your wisdom, lord of Kajiminda, while we have any patience left!”

“They might have known Lord Bren would visitc”

“They might have known,” Ilisidi said, and now her voice had sunk, silken soft. “Are you a total fool, boy?”

“I—”

“—you have no idea how they would know this? And you are not sure? Do you know to whom you are currently speaking? Do you imagine we will be taken in by lies and maybes, considering the offense against our house and the breach of man’chi with your own uncle?”

“My guard—”

“Your guard is dead, incompetent, or in collusion! Where are the Edi?”

“My staff is there, aiji-ma, they have always been there.”

“But some have gone to Dalaigi Township,” Bren muttered. “Tell her.”

“They are there! Some left—long ago. But the faithful ones, the ones that know I am a good lordc”

“And your bodyguard?” Banichi asked. “Why did they desert you?”

“They—they were confusedc”

“They have no man’chi!” Ilisidi’s dreadful cane extended, upward, and rested on Baiji’s shoulder. “They are not yours, or they would not have retreated.”

“They—they—are mine. They just—”

“ The truth, man! Out with it!”

Baiji bowed, hands on knees, and came upright again, waving his hands desperately. “Aiji-ma, the Tasaigi of the Marid came to me, Lord Bren knows, during the Troubles. I temporized with them regarding a marriage—a marriage, a marriage which kept this peninsula safe, nand’ dowager! I—”

“So. The Marid. The Marid.”

“You assisted the search for nand’ Cajieri yesterday,” Bren said. “With what motive? To find him yourself? To kill him?”

“No! No. One had no idea—no idea of who the boy was. No idea. One only wished to be neighborly.”

“Kill this man,” Ilisidi said.

“No!” Baiji wailed, lifting his hands, then bowing. “No, aiji-ma. I can tell you—I can tell you everything!”

“Why did you search for my great-grandson?”

“It was the paidhi, it was the paidhi-aiji, aiji-ma, one knew— one knew he was here, one wished to warn himc”

“We were in radio contact, nandi,” Bren said. “Why did you not?”

“You left,” Baiji stammered. “You left. One—one thought of sailing into Najidama Bay, but—they might have come here. They might have come here and we all would die.”

“Tell us,” the dowager said quietly, “tell us the details of this, tell us once, and be accurate, as you hope for my patience. My great-grandson is in danger. Is he not?”

“He is in great danger, aiji-ma. The Tasaigi came a few days ago. They came with new proposals—regarding—regarding the wedding. One has—one has not wanted to trouble those waters. One had hoped—they would simply go away and not renew their offer.”

“A few days ago,” Bren said, “notice came that made them move. Some in the Bujavid knew I was coming here. Some at Tirnamardi knew. My staff here in Najida knew. But one would wager on someone within the Bujavid.”

“The Tasaigi flew in, we take it?” Ilisidi snapped, looking at Baiji. “They arrived in the district, you met with them. Where did you acquire your personal guard?”

“They are—they are a—”

“Gift from the proposed in-laws?”

Again the deep bow. The appeal with the hands. “No. No, nand’ dowager. My guard vanished—in the Troubles—greatly mourned. The Guild itself sent these two. One has never, never, nand’ dowager—one would never be so foolish—they are not Southern! I would know if they were Southern.”

“Central district,” Ilisidi said sharply. “Let me guess. The traitor Murini himself sent them.”

“No, aiji-ma. The Guild in Shejidan.”

Ilisidi looked ceilingward and turned away.

Then looked straight at Bren.

“One bears blame for this, aiji-ma,” Bren said with a bow. “I divided my staff. I trusted our old relations with Kajiminda.”

“ Wetrusted Kajiminda,” Ilisidi said bitterly, “trusting an old ally, trusting in those two childrenwho attend my great-grandson, besidesc” She spun on her heel and looked straight at Baiji. “Elaborate, man! The nature and extent of this contact. Nowyou may go into detail and meander as much as you like.”

“I—”

“And use nouns! They, they, they! No more they! Give me names!”

“Aiji-ma—”

“Sit down,” Ilisidi said sweetly. “Nand’ Bren, send for tea. And no, nephew of our esteemed Lord Geigi, ambitiousnephew of our Lord Geigi, we do not intend to poison you. Let us sit down and talk reasonably. We lack some time until dark, when we shall take action.”

Bren himself went to the door, opened it, and signaled the major domo. “Kindly provide tea, a service for three.” He added: “ Notthe historic set, if you please, Rama-ji. I think that would be best.”

“Nandi.” A bow, and Ramaso was off like a shot, giving orders to two staffers on the way. Four of Ilisidi’s young men were out there. Tano and Algini were.

“Come in,” Bren said to them, increasing the coverage of black in the room, black uniforms wall to wall. He had assumed a tea service for three. He assumed he would sit with the dowager, and indeed, the dowager had taken a seat, and Baiji had, and, indeed, the dowager gestured to him that he should also take a chair, fortunate three.

“So,” the dowager said with sweet-voiced patience, while her great-grandson was at hazard of his life, while, very probably, hostile Southern interests had taken possession of Lord Baiji’s estate, while Assassins from the Marid were, very probably, moving against her as well. “How isthe spring planting shaping up?”

As if they were preparing to take tea with the traditional discussion of small topics, peaceful topics, pending service of the refreshment. Baiji stammered answers, sweat standing on his brow.

“And the dawi festival? How was it this year?”

“One did not attend, aiji-ma.”

“Did not attend?” the dowager asked with sudden sharpness. “Or do you fearto travel, Lord Baiji? Can it be fearthat kept you from, for instance, otherfestivities—such as, say, my grandson’s resumption of the aijinate? Or were you not celebratingthat event?”

“Aiji-ma,” Baiji began to answer. But Ilisidi had a flawless sense of timing. The tea service arrived, when conversation ceased for a moment and Baiji could not answer.

The service went around, one, two, and three. When Baiji picked up his cup, he had to steady it in both hands.

“Now,” the dowager said. “We were speaking of your attendance at court. Collect your thoughts, nand’ Baiji, and make your accounting as thorough as possible.”

Baiji shut his eyes—thinking, it was likely, possibly thinking harder than Baiji had ever thought in his life.

“Do not,” the dowager said sharply, “waste any moment of this contemplative time on a lie, an equivocation, or appeasement. We desire information on a political scale, and a full accounting of your dealings with the Kadagidi, with the Tasaigin Marid, with others that may be pertinent. Do not omit any detail and any person from this accounting. Name names. Cenedi-ji.”

“Aiji-ma.”

“Record this session.”

“Yes,” Cenedi said.

“So. Baiji.”

“Aiji-ma.”

“If we later discover an omission or a gap in your account, you will most profoundly regret it.”

Tea went down all in one gulp. The servant, standing by, moved to fill that cup, and yet again as Baiji swallowed—a certain dryness of the mouth, perhaps.

Bren himself swallowed small sips, as did the dowager. They both emptied their cups, and had another. It was late afternoon, now. His mind raced, trying to find logic in the situation, and one thing occurred to him—that if the Edi in Kajiminda were unconstrained and knew they had the boy in their keeping, they would have sent a courier, or at very least made a phone call.

So either they dared not or could not make such a call. They were constrained. He did not believe they had turned.

And no one had called to ask for ransom.

My God. The airport. The train station. He was asleep.

“Nand’ dowager,” he asked, ever so quietly, “has anyone been stationed at the airport?”

“Flights are grounded as of your return here, nand’ paidhi. Trains are stopped.”

The whole district was cut off, then. That left movement by car. The dowager had made that one phone call to Tabini. Of course. He was a fool. He’d been rattled. It was a Guild matter.

“Nand’ Baiji,” the dowager said, and set down her cup on the little side table. “Speak to us now. Never mind an apology. State the facts.”

“The facts, aiji-mac”

“Aiji-ma! Am I youraiji? Have you man’chi to us? Or where, precisely, does it reside?”

“With my uncle, nand’ dowager, one knows thatc one is so confusedc”

“ Focus, man! Where is your man’chi at this moment?”

“To my uncle, aiji-ma, and his is to the Ragi aiji, which has always beenc”

“You do not have to defend your uncle, boy. Yourman’chi is the one in question, gravely in question. Has it lately wavered?”

“Nand’ dowager, it—I—one has—one has been beseiged. One has been alonec one has hardly known where to turnc”

“Go on. Now you have your pieces in order. Where did you first question it?”

“When—when the aiji your grandson was rumored dead, when Murini had taken Shejidan and all the midlands.”

“Go on.”

“Districts were going down one after the other, so fast, so fast, aiji-ma, and the South had made an association with the Kadagidi: the Atageini were threatened; Taiben—Murini had struck there first, and one had no notion any resistance remained there or whether the aiji was alive. All the coast, aiji-ma, all the Marid was Murini’s ally, and all the southern islands, and we on the southwestern coast—we knew the Northern Isles had gone to the humans—but the Northern Isles are difficult to take. The southwestern coast, with its deep bays—we were vulnerable. The Marid would roll over us on their way to attack the Isles—it was—it was a matter of time, aiji-ma.”

“Keep going.”

“Except—except the South knows how serious it is if the Edi should get stirred up. The Edi hate the Marid; and my uncle being up on the station where, if the Edi were attacked, my uncle might have human weapons to usec the Southerners had to think of that. They fearedme.”

“Let us proceed at least with that assumption,” Ilisidi said dryly. “It was a great inconvenience that they could not reach your uncle; and a great relief that your uncle could not reach them. Nor had your uncle Geigi ordered the Edi to war against them.”

“Nor me. He gave me no such order, aiji-ma.”

“The dish at Mogari-nai being down, and other communications going only through the north—one wonders what he would have told you if he could have gotten in contact.”

“I had no word, aiji-ma, none!”

“Not even a message relayed from Mospheira, where he did have contact?”

“None, aiji-ma! None, ever!”

“I wonder. But no matter, now. Go on, nand’ Baiji. We are enthralled.”

“Please, aiji-ma! Nand’ Bren’s estate, here, and mine—we made common cause. We—that is—I sent a messenger to Ramaso-nadi here asking advice, and they said they would not surrender to the Usurper; and I agreed I would not.”

“Easily confirmed, aye or nay. Let us assume aye. And we omit who sent first to whom. Go on.”

“But—one knew it was a matter of time. At first—at first there was a rumor your grandson might have fled to Najida, and we feared the worst would come. And then it was rumored Najida had smuggled out state records and treasures. And we feared that would bring trouble down on us. But it was our strategy to keep quiet. The whole peninsula kept quiet. We knew how they installed certain people in power in Dalaigi Township the way they did elsewhere, but the Edi assassinated them; and we—we stayed quiet.”

“And then?”

“Then—one told Lord Bren—then they sent to me proposing a marriage, myself with a daughter of the Marid. One had no better advice, nor any communication with my uncle. One could stall it off—one could make requests: they wanted this badly. They might agree. It would all be meaningless once my uncle came back from the heavens, but in the meanwhile if I agreed to marry this girl, and then I kept asking for things and got the best bargain I could—it seemed the best thing to do.”

“A very dangerous bed.”

“It would be. One knew it. And then you came back, aiji-ma, and the paidhi-aiji, and Tabini-aiji, may he live long, drove Murini out, and Murini’s own clan repudiated himc and then—and then the Marid began to make new approaches to your grandson, and they were going to make peace with him. So I thought—see, even the aiji is hearing themc so when they also came to me, and said they were still interested in this marriage—I thought—this might not be a bad thing for the peacec”

“And you never presented yourself at court. You never consulted with my grandson about this daring maneuver. Do go on.” The dowager had notsupported Tabini’s hearing the South. If not for the aiji’s playing Southern politics, Bren thought, he might be in his own apartment in the Bujavid, the Farai would be out, and none of this would have happened at all.

“One had missed court. I was sick, aiji-ma. I was truly sick.”

“But you had visitors.”

“I had word from them. A message. A letter. And then—then I thought—now I shall be ashamed, aiji-ma, I thought to myself how things are not settled yet, and I should see how stable the aijinate is and how stable the South is before I commit to them or say no. One is profoundly ashamed.”

“The brightest thought you had had yet,” Ilisidi muttered. “The most honest you have yet expressed. Say on. Be precise, now. When did you acquire these guards?”

“The Guild of my house had gone to the fight in Shejidan, and never came back, so I had had members of my staff pretend to be Guildc” Baiji cast a nervous glance about at the Guild in black, grim attendance. “I had no choice but that, nadiin!”

“You were not the only one to do so, nandi,” Algini said quietly.

“Then—” Baiji said, looking back at Ilisidi, “then when the Usurper was going down, and it was clear my own guard would not come back, these Guildsmen came saying they had served in the Guild itself, but that there was a new regime coming in, there was a great deal of bloodshed, they had lost relatives, and they wished the peace of serving in a country house, remote from troubles. They had credentials!”

“Did you write to the Guild to confirm them, nandi?” Cenedi asked.

“I askedthem to write.”

“You did not confirm what they said,” Banichi said grimly, “by writing to the Guild yourself, and by a Guild representative officially confirming their man’chi.”

“I had no idea of the procedure, nadi! Kajiminda has never been without Guild until now. One had no idea what to do— one knows—one knows now this was not the thing to do!”

That, in itself, was possible. There had always been such a closely-woven network—and it was true that Baiji had been isolated from advice, out of society, getting his advisements in protocol mainly from the Tasaigin Marid, to be honest, while the neighbor at Najida, whose security might properly have advised a young neighbor what he should do, was light-years off in space, leaving noGuild at all behind on his estate. His apartment in Shejidan—the place was rife with Guild in and out of uniform, active and retired; but in the fall of the regime, indeed, Guild had gathered to the Guild headquarters, and dispersed on this side and that of the action.

And, as Algini had said, certain desperate houses had put up a facade of Guild protection where it did not exist.

“Do you believe him, paidhi-aiji?” the dowager asked.

“Logically, I follow what he says,” Bren said. “But myself being human, and this being a question of man’chi, I would not venture to have an opinion about his loyalty.”

“Cenedi?”

“Hadjaijid, aiji-ma.”

A mental condition. Isolation from the networks of society. Aiji-like, in having no upward or lateral man’chi—no connection to which he emotionally responded; but pathologically isolated, in that he had no real leadership—and no man’chi downward, either. Isolated. Delusional. Disconnected.

Sociopath.

“I am not,” Baiji cried, and flung himself out of the chair—a dozen guns flashed out—and onto his knees and onto his face on the carpet.

And there went the teacup, Bren noted, in surreal detachment. It shattered in an unfortunate four pieces.

Bad omen.

Baiji lay on his face on the floor, crying, “Aiji-ma, I am not disconnected. I have man’chi to my uncle, to my people, to this place, to the aiji in Shejidan and to you, aiji-ma! I have never broken it!”

“And man’chi to my great-grandson?”

There was a moment of heavy silence.

“And association with your neighbor nand’ Bren?” Ilisidi pursued him.

“I have only met nand’ Bren once before,” Baiji said into the carpet, and lifted his head and sat up and bowed again. “I beg pardon. I beg pardon. I had no idea my security was disconnected!”

And had been a spoiled brat at that one meeting, when his mother had had to beg him to come down to dinner. There was a problem, in establishing man’chi with that person. A serious problem.

“Then why,” Bren said, divorcing himself from all mercy, “did you not visit me? Why did you not, knowing I am connected to the regime, come hereto consult Ramaso, knowing that your estate has had problems in security? Why did you not propose coming here instead, when you knew I proposed to visit you with the young lord?”

“Because—because they would never agree!”

“They,” the dowager snapped. “ Theywould not agree and you knew it!”

“Aiji-ma!”

“Your aishid would not come here,” Bren said sharply. “And you are quite sure they would not have approved the visit. Do you or do you not lead the house?”

“Where are the Edi?” Ilisidi asked from the other side. “Is your staff still alive, or did they leave you?”

“Some—some are there, aiji-ma. Some stayed!”

“While you assure one side and the other of your good intentions,” Bren shot at him, “all the while courting the Marid? Explainthis to a simple human. One fails to understand this complexity. But one very well understands your motives in rushing to find our lost boat!”

“No!” Baiji cried. “Nand’ dowager, one had no idea you were here! One had no idea the heir was here at all, or that you were! A village child, he said. He said it was a simple accident—”

“Really?” she asked. “You have no source of gossip, considering we arrived at the public airport in quite a large plane? You have no news from Dalaigi Township? None from the market? We are quite astounded, nandi!”

“No, no, no, we had no idea.”

“Then your aishid failed to inform you of a critical event, one touching on your welfare. What a remarkable thing!”

“We saved your great-grandson, aiji-ma! We had no advisement of the dowager’s presence! We had no warning of any such incident! The Tasaigi had contacted me days ago—one had no idea they were advised—”

“By your own staff. You arenot the aiji on this peninsula,” Ilisidi said. “You are not even aiji over your estate. You are the major domo for your uncle, who does not make mistakes like this. You will notremain lord of Kajiminda, let alone of Sarini province!”

“Aiji-ma!”

“We will choose one of the Edi, with adequate guard of our choosing, to manage the estate in your uncle’s name, granted we can correct these matters short of regional war. And thank me that you are not awaiting your funeral, boy, nandi no longer! Nand’ Bren.”

“Aiji-ma.”

“This person will lodge here until we have exhausted the information we may draw from him. Keep him comfortably situated, for the sake of his uncle. But do notgive him freedom of the grounds.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.” Bren caught the eye of the servant, who had cautiously rescued the fragments of the teacup. “Advise Ramaso-nadi.”

A silent bow, a quiet departure. Baiji, having gathered himself onto his knees, continued to rock to and fro in distress.

“We are appalled,” Ilisidi said, and, leaning on her cane, and with Cenedi’s hand, rose. “Cenedi. Get my great-grandson back.”

“Banichi,” Bren said. “With the dowager’s permission, my bodyguard will assist. And I shall. Personally.”

“Nandi,” Banichi said, with a small nod.

Ilisidi’s men gathered up Baiji, who made no protest to being taken away from Ilisidi’s vicinity, and escorted him out.

“We shall bothbe involved, nand’ paidhi,” Ilisidi said. “Is the bus damaged?”

“Not significantly,” he said, “granted a hole in the back roof and the resources we have to replace a rear tire—if not a wheel.”

“Be ready,” Ilisidi said.

That was a dismissal. Bren bowed, gathered his aishid, and went out into the hall, where Ramaso waited.

“We have disposed nand’ Baiji in staff quarters downstairs,” Ramaso said, and with a distressed look. “It is the only place we can secure.”

It had no windows. His brother and Barb, Cajeiri, the aiji-dowager, Cenedi, her physician and her young men—guests had collectively taken the last suites left in the house. He could draw his own aishid into his suite and gain that room, but better Baiji have just a little less lordly accommodation. No windows was a good idea, not only considering Baiji trying to go out a window—he could not imagine it—but considering someone trying to come in.

“Are the storm shutters in order?” he asked. “I want them ready, if you get the word.”

“They are, nandi.”

“And Iscarti,” he said. “Is there news regarding Iscarti?”

“Awake, nandi. Very weak, but the dowager’s physician is encouraging.”

“I will see him as soon as I possibly can,” he said. “He saved us, Rama-ji. If he had not gotten the bus to us despite being shot, we might all be dead. He deserves the best we can do. The very best. One will never forget it.”

“One will convey that to him,” Ramaso said, “nandi.”

His bodyguard had gathered around him. “Nadiin-ji,” he said to them as Ramaso left, “the paidhi-aiji owes you the greatest of apologies. My foolishness divided the aishid, sending you to Barb and Toby. It was even numerically infelicitous.” None of them believed in the superstitions, not in the least, but there were reasons, with the Guild, that they worked in odd numbers—counting the one they protected. He had slipped that far from ordinary, and basic, considerations. “One cannot say enough—this was very much my fault.”

“We were taken by surprise,” Banichi said ruefully. “Not by the Guildsmen. We would not letthem position themselves. We would have shot them had they had made a move—we would have taken them down when shots were fired.”

“But?”

“But the young lord moved to disadvantage relative to his guards. Return fire would have come at him.”

“He moved apart,” Jago said, as if that summed up everything. To a certain extent, it did.

“Everyone has worked hard to waken the proper sensibilities in the young gentleman,” Banichi said. “And he moved in his own direction.” A rueful shrug. “Aiji.”

“ Wheredid he go, ’Nichi-ji?”

“Into the bushes, the nearest cover. They may not have found him. If his companions have learned anything in their training, he will not stir until dark. Then he may attempt to come here. Thatis our greatest concern. The Southerners may not have the equipment in place to find him—yet; and they may not have clearly seen that we did not get the youngsters aboard the bus. But there will be action, tonight. They will be expecting us. They may come herein the thought we may throw all our resources into attacking Kajiminda.”

“One fears we may have to. To what extent do you think they have taken over nand’ Geigi’s estate?”

“If the nephew is truthful,” Tano said, “and some Edi staff have stayed on—possibly out of man’chi to Lord Geigi—we must use caution. Certainly all armed staff are likely to be infiltrators.”

Any of the Edi that had tried to leave—would be lucky to survive the attempt. It was a terrible thought. These were decent people, all of them, staff of a good lord, who had appointed a reasonably decent woman to stand in his stead.

“One wonders how Baiji’s mother died,” Bren said. “She was sickly, but not that old.”

“She was not,” Jago agreed. “And one is suspicious.”

“One would not accuse the man of matricide,” Tano said. “Of weakness, of stupidity, both these things. The Tasaigi may have well known who they wanted in such a key position, and taken action to put him there.”

“They well may have,” Algini said. “And hoped, perhaps, eventually to get Lord Geigi himself in their sights. They may not have been that anxious to attack us. They may have been most worried that Baiji might talk to us. They had to put pressure on him.”

“Baiji rushed out to rescue a village child gone adrift,” Banichi said, “and says he considered running here for refuge.”

“If that was so,” Jago said, “he lost his best chance when he went back to Kajiminda.”

“ Guildmay have known very well who was lost out there,” Banichi said. “Guild back at Kajiminda would surely have found out the aiji-dowager had landed at the airport. At least late in the operation, they had to have an idea.”

“And have time to call in reinforcements of their own,” Tano said.

“We cannot leave Najida undefended,” Banichi said. “If they have the young gentleman or know he failed to leave with us, they will come here. If they have assets arriving in Dalaigi Township, they may bring those in. It can only get worse.”

“Granted they are ready for a confrontation with Tabini-aiji,” Bren said. “Which may give them some hesitation. Are they here yet?”

His guards’ faces were uncharacteristically blank of expression for a second. Forbidden topic. Highest security. Some were here, and had been ever since Cajeiri had taken the train in: he took that on faith.

“One does not need to ask,” he said. “But, nadiin-ji, the dowager herself has it in mind to go out there tonight. Can we intercede with Cenedi to argue against this?”

“We are fortunate she does not call in mecheiti for the venture,” Banichi said. The dowager, not that many years ago, had ridden under fire with noprotection. Hell—she’d done a stretch of it this winter, for all practical purposes. The dowager’s great-grandson was in danger, and the dowager was going after him— no argument about it.

“Then I shall be with her,” Bren said. “At the rear, one assumes. Have we a plan?”

“Jago and I will go in,” Banichi said, “having had a chance to see the current layout of house and grounds. Cenedi and Nawari will be with the dowager and with you. Tano and Algini will be assigned to you. Five of the dowager’s men will stay at Najida, and the village will be on alert.”

He didn’t like it. Banichi and Jago proposed to go inside, and he didn’t like it at all. He couldn’t pick and choose among his bodyguard, who took the risks, and who didn’t: it wasn’t, for one thing, his choice: it was Banichi’s.

But God, he didn’t like it. Noneof their choices were palatable.

“I have to go talk to my brother,” Bren said, “very briefly. All of you have things to do: I shall be safe to do this much alone. Call me immediately when we need to leave.”

“Yes,” Banichi said. “But do not go outside without us, Bren-ji. Do not stir from this hall without us.”

“I shall not,” he said. And headed off down the hall to talk to Toby.

Chapter 12

« ^ »

Dusk was coming, and Cajeiri was bored. He sat, jammed in the little tower as he’d learned to sit in a worse situation— very, very still, the way the Taibeni sibs had also learned to sit from very early, being hunterfolk, and used to waiting—all in silence. They knew voices carried and small movements caught attention, and they were sitting right at the feet of the security system that swept the forest beyond.

Occasionally they made handsigns. People had eventually come out and searched the orchard, which was a situation worse than being bored, and to Cajeiri’s great relief, they had finally gone back in.

The figures on the roof had gone away for a while, too, giving them some hope everybody would just go inside, but after a while the man reappeared near the chimney, and sat there on the red tiles, holding a large rifle with a sight.

That probably meant, in Cajeiri’s best guess, one of two things: the people who had tried to kill them were watching the road for nand’ Bren coming back with help.

But maybe some of these people were actually Edi, and maybe they would be on their side. There was the remote chance, if the way to Najida was watched, that they could go over the wall, keep close to it, below the angle at which the surveillance worked, and hike to Dalaigi Township to get help.

But that was a long way, as best Cajeiri recalled his maps.

They could steal a car from the estate. But there was none in sight.

They could sneak down to the harbor and steal a boat—but that had not worked so well last night. The wind was blowing fairly steadily to the east, and the tide might be moving and the wind would just carry them right back to the Kajiminda dock, while the tide could get them into the same trouble they had been in yesterday.

He bet that the Edi staff was probably not happy with Lord Baiji, who, by his embarrassing performance with Lord Bren, had not managed well at all and who had been incredibly suspicious-acting on a lot of accounts, even beforethe Guild with Lord Baiji had started trying to assassinate nand’ Bren and kidnap him. He personally had had his fill of being kidnapped, and he was not going to let that happen again. He supposed the Edi might be considerably put out with Lord Baiji.

And if hewere an Edi major domo and he had a phone that was working, he would call the local magistrates down in Dalaigi Township, or he would call nand’ Bren at Najida and ask for help or at least apologize, and if he had time he would call Shejidan and tell them the situation herec if the Guild was not running things.

But probably the major domo, if he was Edi, had not had a chance to do that. He was very much afraid the Edi who had served Lord Geigi were not in charge at all, if it was Southerners who had moved in. Probably the Southerners had killed people. They had certainly done that in the Bujavid. So the Edi might all be dead. And that would make Lord Geigi very unhappy, and it would probably make Lord Bren very, very mad, all things considered, not to mention Great-grandmother, who, with nand’ Bren, was very certainly going to be laying plans to get him back before morning—one did not have to think hard at all to know that.

He did not, however, want mani to be where people were going to be shooting each other. Mani did not move as fast as she used to, and just getting up and down stairs was sometimes hard for her, and if these people hurt mani—

That worried him. That worried him most of all. Because mani had a temper. Nand’ Bren did not, not the way mani did, and he really, really hoped nand’ Bren would call his father and get some people here he did not care about as much, who would not get mad and take chances the way mani would.

Not to mention Cenedi was getting a little old to be climbing walls, too. He wished he had not gotten into this. People important to him and important to everyone were getting too old to be coming after him in places like this.

And it had all gone wrong when the shooting started.

He had tried to figure out how. He had tried to figure out what he had done wrong, and he had built in his head how the portico had been and how the driver had been shot and still got under the portico where they could reach the bus.

But when the bus had hit the pillar and the roof had come down he had started—he thought—to the side, just a step.

But that was not all of it. He had moved. And Jegari and Antaro were studying to be Guild; and among the very first lessons they had come home with was how to take cover, and how to position themselves to be sure to know where their Principal was—that being him.

And the disturbing fact was, they were still bumping into each other in practices—which happened. They were still learning how to watch out for him, and watch everything else, too, and he’d moved that one step sideways when the crash happened. It had not been the gunfire that had scared him: it had been the pillar. And he moved sideways.

That was just scary. He’d left nand’ Bren. He had just lost all common sense and shied off awayfrom the bus, and thatwas when everything had gone crazy.

What had he thought he was doing?

He had confused Jegari and Antaro, who had probably bumped into each other, what he had done was so crazy. And a half a second later Banichi had been going without them and after that he had no idea. He was worried that either Jegari or Antaro had consequently gotten in Banichi’s way, all because of him, which was so embarrassing he could not even think about it right now. It was just humiliating; and he hoped with all he had that Banichi and Jago had gotten nand’ Bren out all right.

Everythingdepended on that bus getting back to the house, one hoped with nand’ Bren and Banichi and Jago both—or everything was going to be running very late, and people at the house might not knowwhat had happened here.

Mani herself was hard to fool. He was very sure of that.

So somebody wouldcome. Eventually.

And they sat. Silent. It was very uncomfortable where they were, in a little space that looked like a grand fortress tower, but which inside was dusty and crowded with canisters of fertilizer and rusty old tools and hose, besides. Some of the garden claws could be nasty weapons. But trying to use something like that to threaten real Guild—that was outright suicide. He had no illusions. Hand-to-hand with those would get Jegari and Antaro killed in short order. So those were no good.

He had his slingshota. He had taken that along as a very precious thing: he had no wish to have some overzealous maid, cleaning, decide it was a dirty old stick and toss it out.

It was their only good weapon. But it needed rocks.

The plan had been to wait until dark and then climb down from the wall. If they hung by their hands, or maybe by a loop of that brittle hose, it was not too far a drop to the outside, to run through the small woods and then open land, trusting to speed and luck to get away.

But the closer dusk came, the more he began to think that that was going to be a very chancy thing to do, because that man on the roof might spot them. That outward window of the tower made it a scary bit further drop than it was from the landing outside the tower, from this one window where there was cover.

And the closer they got to dusk, the darker and scarier the woods got, and they knewthese towers held this perimeter equipment that would spot somebody moving in the woods.

Not, however, if they kept right up close to the wall—unless there was a system they had not spotted.

Still—if they left, and mani came in looking for them—

It was getting scary as it got closer to dark, was what.

It was going to be real scary, either way, trying to go crosscountry in the open, or waiting.

They could head for the train station instead of Najida. That might surprise the hunters. But the train station was farther, and might be watched, too, if there were Guild hunters out.

And, again, if nand’ Bren came hunting them here, being therewould be a problem.

The enemy had not searched the patio and tower. He had no idea why, except Antaro had been very clever, spotting that trap and getting them over the garden gate.

Or maybe these big Guildsmen were thinking of only hiding places on an adult scale. It was a very, very small tower, so small they sat all tucked up together inside it, with knees and elbows so cramped up together, they had occasionally to apologize to each other and shift around to relieve really painful cramps.

Small places had worked on the starship. Sometimes searchers would go right by them and never think to look where they had hidden, because it was too small to be useful.

He tried to think of other things they could do, being here, which was sneak down to the house after dark and see if they could talk to the Edi servants, and see if the servants, given direction and a plan, could lock the Guildsmen into a room. Or poison them. That would be a plan, too. Mani would do that. But trying and missing could get the Edi killed. And he was not sure how he would tell who was Edi and who was not.

He was thinking about that.

And then they saw one of the Assassins come out the back door, and down into the orchard, and start looking around. He came close to the patio. And instead of looking up at the tower— Cajeiri watched him through the crack below the window—he kept looking back at the house and up at the roof.

They were starting to do another search, though: he doubted this would be the last. It was getting dark, and they would probably get out the night scopes, which could actually spot them better by dark.

Cajeiri wriggled a little to see better. The slingshota poked him in the ribs.

It was what they had.

If they had rocks. Which had made it useless.

Antaro and Jegari had no idea what was going on. But he could hear that man moving around on the patio pavings.

That was that. The men inside the house were getting curious. They had to get out of here.

“Toby,” Bren said, entering the suite. He was still in bloody clothes. There was going to be no time to change, he feared. Toby stood there by the table; Barb came in, both of them quite sober. “Toby, I’m sorry. This would probably be a good time for you to go back to the boat and just get out of the bay while you can, way clear of the coast.”

“What are you going to do?” Toby asked, worried-looking, slipping an arm around Barb.

“I’m going after the boy,” Bren said, “in about ten minutes, if that long. We want to get into position, get in there around dark—and take the place.”

Barb put her arms around Toby. They looked like two figures in a cold wind. She looked at Toby, looked at him, and Toby patted her shoulder.

“Bren,” Toby said, “can we help? Is there any way we can help?”

“Not in this,” he said. “This is going to get wider. It’s a Guild operation. This wasn’t the neighbor’s idea. This was the South behind what happened. An attack on this house isn’t impossible, and it may already be underway. They’d like to lay hands on my relatives. They wouldn’t as likely take after the staff as hostages—at least I hope not. But it’s definitely going to be a lot safer for you two to get out of the bay.”

“Look,” Toby said, “Bren, we can’t just cut and run. You’re in trouble. The boy’s in trouble.”

“You can get yourself out of harm’s way and relieve me of one worry.”

“We can manage,” Toby said. “If you’re worried about the house—”

“Don’t argue with me, brother. This is no time or place. You don’t know the rules. Tabini-aiji’s involved, no question in my mind. His men will be here. The dowager’s men are going in. So is she. This isn’t going to be small-scale, much as we’re trying to finesse getting Cajeiri out in one piece. We’re hoping he hid. But we don’t know that. I’m frankly real upset right now.”

“We can help,” Barb said. “Bren, don’t be stubborn. We can take care of ourselves. We can help here.”

“Not a thing you can do,” he said. He didn’t even say, to Toby, Go back to Jackson and take care of that kid of yours. He didn’t want another Barb incident. “Just get out of here.”

“We’ve got a radio,” Toby said. “We’ve got communications with the mainland, hell, we can radio Shejidan if you have phone troubles. We can radio Jackson and get you air support if it’s that bad.”

The Brighter Days, with its radio, was, in fact, an asset. “You’d be a target. There are those that would want to shut you down.”

“We dodged them for months on end while you were gone,” Toby said. “Trust me. This is an old game for us.”

“Get out of the bay. Get out at sea. The bay is a trap made to order. I’ll accept your running communications if you just get out into open water.”

“Got that picture,” Toby said.

“Then you go ahead, get down to the boat,” Bren said, “as fast as you can while you still have some safety doing it. We have no guarantee Guild Assassins aren’t moving on this estate, or moving to close off the harbor. Don’t take safety for granted. Just pack up the essentials and get out of here, well out, as fast as you can. Contact Mogari-nai.” There were Mosphei’-speakers manning that post, in the Messengers’ Guild. “Figure we’ll contact you if we need any help from the Island. And I hope we don’t.”

“Done,” Toby said, and disengaged from Barb to come and embrace him. Hard. “Bren, I know you take care of yourself. I know they take care of you. But for God’s sake, don’t take chances. My regards to the kid. Deepest. I’m so sorry this happened.”

“You be careful.” Barb put her arms around him and for once he didn’t flinch. Even hugged her back, even took a kiss on the cheek and hugged her tight. “Take care of yourself, Bren. Toby and I will be all right.”

“See to it,” he said, and slipped free and left, out into the hall, where one of Ilisidi’s young men was carrying a heavy bag toward the outer doors. The doors stood open, with Ramaso and several of the staff waiting there.

He made a brief trip to his room, delved into his top dresser drawer and drew out the gun staff always packed. He had not had it with him this morning. Now he did.

He went out into the hall and picked up Tano and Algini as he passed the dining room hallway. Banichi and Jago were already outside, loading gear on, and the tire had been replaced— the bus, battered as it was, was sitting more or less level. He was about to get on board when Ilisidi, Cenedi, and Nawari came out of the house.

He stopped, bowed, gave Ilisidi precedence in boarding, and delayed for an anxious look at Banichi.

“Jago and I shall ride with you to the village, first, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, “and from there, we shall take the village truck overland, along with Nawari and Kasari. The estate here is secure: two of the dowager’s men are on the roof, one inside, two standing guard over Baiji-nadi in the basement.”

He didn’t like it. He never liked knowing Banichi and Jago were going into action, but they were the hand-to-hand experts. Send Tano and Algini into a situation and things exploded—no asking what was in theirgear at the moment, and God knew he didn’t want things blowing up with the youngsters unaccounted for. So Banichi and Jago were the ones for getting into the estate on a surgical strike, taking out just the enemy, and getting the kids to safetyc

But—

“You take care, ’Nichi-ji,” he said. One didn’t touch, ever, especially not here. His human instincts were raw-edged at the moment, but Banichi’s and Jago’s minds had to be utterly on business. No distractions. Suggest they take Tano and Algini for backup? Twice divide their forces?

Neither half of that set would leave him without assurance the other would be protecting him. Wouldn’t. Banichi and Jago were free to do what they proposed to do becauseTano and Algini were with him, and Bren just shut up and climbed onto the bus, taking his seat near Tano and Algini. He caught a glance from Tano that said “all business” and ready for anything.

The sun was touching the horizon—they’d have well and enough time to get to Kajiminda around dark, even with the detour to drop Banichi and Jago down at the village, but he had a notion, as the bus started to move, that they would hardly slow down at the village, that Banichi and Jago and Cenedi’s two were going to go out that door before the bus had quite stopped rolling, start up that waiting market truck, and they wouldn’t see anything from that team until this business was done.

Baiji, taking on marriages with the Marid, for God’s sake. If Ramaso had ever heard that tidbit of information and once, just once hinted of that dealing, he’d neverhave taken the boy over there, nor would the dowager have let her great-grandson come near a man even on the outskirts of such a bargain.

But nobody at Najida had been in regular contact with Baiji. Not even indirect contactc since the Troubles. He knew about the unpaid bills. He’d seen the unmown grass. He’d had a bad feeling about Baiji and let his relationship with Geigi rule his thinking.

The disappearance of the regular staffc God, that was thirty, forty people. At least. All missing, and no word of warning reached outside Kajiminda to alert his staff at Najida?

He had confidence in Ramaso. If information had been floating outside, village gossip, rumors from the train station, the airport, even clear to Dalaigi Township, they’d have picked it up. Ramaso would have warned him. But no, they had walked into a situation at the neighbor’s, a completely unwarned situation—but all ordinary methods of information-gathering had failed. The Southerners had been secretive—nothing new— and Baiji had been cooperating in that secrecy, keeping it even from his neighbors, with far more skill and thoroughness than Baiji radiated at other enterprises.

How long had the Tasaigi been setting up for a move against Najida? And what hadthey been aiming at?

And how the hell had Baiji kept the Edi he claimed were still on his staff from telling their relatives, who would have told relatives in Najida district? Would they not? Had threats kept them silent? The Edi tended to keep their own counsel, but not to have gotten anyword out—

Oh, there were a dozen questions he had yet to ask Baiji when he got back.

And God, when Geigi did find out—good-natured, easygoing Geigi was not all sweetness and affability. No knowing what Geigi would do when he learned what had happened in his house, but coming down like a hammer on his nephew was head of the list.

And Geigi’s sister: another bad bit of business, and murder was a high likelihood: it was too convenient for the Marid. Geigi’s sister taken out, and her son, a fool, set in her place, last of a waning line and without relatives at hand to advise him. The Maschi remaining in Kajiminda—the last of the clan besides Baiji and Geigi’s niece—were two young men who’d gone to space to work with Geigi. Beyond that—

Beyond that—there were a few Maschi relatives in the Samiusi district, who, be it admitted, had been a problem in their dealings: Geigi’s former wife had gone to the Marid and married there: that was an old bit of business; and Geigi—

They relied on Geigi. They weren’t in the habit of questioning Geigi’s connections, because, up in space, Geigi had absolute control of his associates, and he was never exposed to problems. A security lapse up there just didn’t happen.

If he were down here, howeverc

There would be problems. Clearly there wereproblems, and the staunch loyalty Geigi felt to the aiji in Shejidan, that they treated as dependable as the sunshine—the lines of man’chi that ought to have made the nephew cling tightly to his uncle’s commitments—were not reliable at all.

The Marid, Tabini’s old enemies, didn’t do things without a purpose. The Farai had gotten into the Bujavid. Others had gotten into Baiji’s house, in the heart of Sarini province. His coming here—the Farai were clearly in a position to find that out, and he had a strong suspicion there had been a phone call or a courier. Dalaigi Township was a sprawling hub of transport, boats going in and out, rail, air—all kinds of things could go in Dalaigi. All sorts of people could be in Dalaigi—the missing Edi. Their relatives. Or a small cabal of Marid folk trying to look like locals. It was not a comforting prospect, not for the peace of this district—not for the Edi—not for his own estate, or Geigi’s.

Or for the Western Association, for that matter. Tabini was newly restored to power: the usurper Murini was dead. But the issues that had driven the attack on Tabini’s power were still there, old as the aishidi’tat itself. The matter of local rule. The ambitions of the Marid for power. The old issues of the displacement of whole populations from Mospheira, when it became a human island. All those things were still rattling loose, and nothing that had ever happened had settled them.

An impromptu move against the paidhi?

Oh, far from a single move. It was a movement he had stumbled into. The Farai might be bitterly regretting now that they had taken the paidhi’s apartment—that a chain of events had moved the paidhi to the otherold Maladesi estate, the one the Farai hadn’t dared claim.

He had come out here, the Marid had made a fast move to be sure Baiji didn’t pay a visit to Najida, Toby’s daughter broke her leg—three bored kids had decided to take to the water in a sailboat. And when he’d come over to do the socially correct thing, a handful of local trouble trying to contain Baiji had decided they had a chance at taking out the paidhi-aiji.

Maybe they’d been misinformed as to the identity of the youngsters, or just—as the dowager seemed to think—counted the aiji’s son inconsequential, if they could take out the aiji’s advisor.

He thought about that. And his heart rate got up. He was, he decided, mad. Damned mad about that.

Count on it—if low-level agents had blown their secrecy, the Marid was probably moving assets from wherever it had situated them, maybe inDalaigi, maybe in Separti—because an operation intending to spread Marid influence onto the coast wasn’t going to rely on a handful of agents holding Baiji silent. There was more out there. There could be a lot more out there.

God, he hoped Tabini had read between the lines. Ilisidi had made the call; protocol had dissuaded him from following up with a call of his own, and now, on a bus headed into the thick of it, he had second thoughts. Not about getting the kids out— that was increasingly imperative. But about what they were dealing with.

They needed help out here. They might need a lot of help, very soon, and if they didn’t move quietly, they could see events blow up in a major way—a little action spiraling out of control, into major armament, movement of forces—

It could get very, very nasty. He needed to talk plainly to Ilisidi—who wasn’t talking, at the moment. Nobody was, among her group. All he could do was put Tano and Algini into the current of his thinking, and trust if there was information flowing down Guild channels, they could be sure at least that Cenedi was thinking about it.

Dark was coming fast. It was just light enough for the whitewashed wall to glow a little in the twilight. For the windows of the house to show light.

And Cajeiri’s legs were asleep, a fierce kink getting worse in his back. Jegari and Antaro did not complain, but one was sure they were in more discomfort, being larger.

There was still no sign of nand’ Bren or Banichi or a rescue. That was getting scary.

Pain.

Excuse me, he signed, and had to wriggle about to his knees on the concrete floor, just for relief.

“Are we going to go, nandi?” Antaro signed back. And that was getting to be another trouble. They signed, to stay quiet. But it would reach a point soon when that would hardly work.

“If we go over the wall,” Jegari whispered, right against his ear, “we are bound to make some noise. Those are Guild, nandi, they are real Guild! We cannot take a chance.”

Noise.

Noise.

He had had an idea which had been simmering a long while, considering present resources, and with the lights in the house more or less indicating where people actually were—except the man on the roof, who must be getting very tired up there, and probably boredc

There was printing on the side of the fertilizer canister.

It said: fertilizer stakes.

It was just worth curiosity. He wriggled around where he could get into the canister, pried up the lid, and found curious hard sticks of smelly stuff. He tried breaking it.

It broke. It broke into nice pieces. It belonged in a garden, did it not?

So if they missed a few shots and somebody looked down, that somebody would only see fertilizer bits. Right? He thought he might just lob a few pellets into the trees. Hitting the windowsc that would bring another search of the garden, and maybe their patio, which he did not at all wantc but if he could get enough range, if he could get a clear shotc And nobody would see anything but fertilizer for the plants.

There was that gap in that very white garden wall. There was that black gap, which was the potentially noisy metal gate.

That was a fair-sized target. He could risk it. And that would get a lot of attention, and maybe show them how many enemies were out there.

He had Jegari’s and Antaro’s curiosity. He stuffed the pieces in his pocket, kept one, handed them a stake apiece to break up, and took the slingshota out of the other.

Thenthey understood him.

“Nandi,” Jegari whispered, not against his ear, but very, very softly. “Please be careful.”

“Pardon,” he said, took his piece of a stick and the slingshota, and worked his way out, very low, behind the little stucco wall beside the downward steps, putting his head up very, very slowly. His dark face and hair were going to show against the white stucco, no question, if he got up above the level of the wall. But from the far angle the steps offered, he had a good view of the iron gate.

He put his missile in the slingshota, having the other two ready. He had just one perfect alley, right between two trees that would block the shot.

He let fly.

Damn. Hit the branches. Rustled them. He didn’t stop to see whether the man on the roof had noticed. He fished more pieces out of his pocket, laid them down in front of him and fired the first. Muted clang, where it hit the gate. Third. Clang.

He ducked down immediately. Then scrambled back on the miniature landing, behind the little wall.

“The man has gone from the roof,” Jegari hissed.

The best outcome. He had planned to peg whoever came to investigate the noise. But that was the best.

“Now, now, now,” Cajeiri hissed, giving a shove of his knee to Jegari. “Over! We are going!”

They had prearranged, that when they did go, Jegari would go first, to test the distance, then Antaro, then himself, with them to help break his fall. He saw Jegari go over the wall, saw that Antaro had picked up the rusty garden claw. She was supposed to be counting: thirty-two the sweep of the sensor to the left, thirty-two to the right. But she solved it. She jammed the garden claw into the track. Hard. And slithered out along the walkway and went over the wall.

The man had reappeared. He came out onto the tiles. He was looking their way just as Antaro went over the edge.

Cajeiri snatched up the last missile and shot it straight across the gap. Hit. The man fell back, hit the tiles, tiles came loose, and slid, and Cajeiri did not watch a heartbeat longer: he stuffed the slingshota into his shirt, then he flung himself astride the battlement and spotted Antaro and Jegari with upheld hands below.

He got half a handhold and slid around and off: the handhold failed on the rounded surface. He scraped his cheek on the rough stucco, raked coat buttons on the way down. His companions’ hands broke his fall, snatched him around, and all of a sudden they were running for the woods, exactly what they had agreed not to do. They were supposed to run along the wall, sheltered from the sensor-units.

But Antaro had jammed this one. There was a hole in the net. And they were going straight through it, into the trees, Jegari and Antaro half-carrying him in their breakneck haste to get to deeper cover.

They had made a lot of noise when he hit the man on the roof—tiles sliding, what sounded like a lot of tiles sliding and hitting the ground, and whether the man had gotten clear— whether he was in shape to report them—he had no guarantee they had not been spotted. He had not planned to shoot anyone; Antaro had been supposed to count the sweep. They were supposed to have followed the wall back away from the road to stay out of the sensors and then get into the woods, and now the plan had unraveled, and they were just running as fast and as far as they could, dodging among the trees, avoiding branches, no matter the noise they made.

There was no knowing where the Guild might have laid traps or put sensors.

But there was no time for looking. No more time for plans. They just had to get out of reach.

Fast.

The bus reached the intersection with Lord Geigi’s estate roadc and there the dowager’s man stopped and cut the motor off, and Cenedi got out and walked a little up the road. There was a woods some distance down the road, a finger of the peninsula’s woodlands that ran up beside the house.

They had packed the bus with the dowager’s men, and with equipment. When Banichi and Jago and the dowager’s two men had left and picked up the village truck, that had given them a little breathing room, but no more seating; and Bren had no view of the dowager, or anything else: Tano sat by him, next to the window—between him and the unarmored side of the bus: Bren knew exactly why Tano had insisted on that seat. Algini stood in the aisle, holding to the overhead rail, and it was shoulder to shoulder. They talked. Tano and Algini listened to what he had to say, but offered no suggestion of their own.

Their bus had stopped. And the door opened, in the middle of grassy nowhere, the bus in plain view, if not of the house, at least of somebody watching for trouble to come down the road.

Algini shifted into a now-vacant seat behind him as the dowager’s men piled off, taking gear with them, pulling gear down off the roof rack. Most dispersed into the tall grass and the brush, so far as Bren could see. Tano and Algini sat near him, now, both with rifles and sidearms. The dowager was across the aisle, and two of her young man were right behind her with a massive lot of firepower.

Cenedi climbed back aboard the bus and came back to her to report: “We have a perimeter set up.”

“We shall wait,” the dowager said. Cenedi left. And Bren drew a deep breath.

“Aiji-ma,” he said, and got up to speak quietly. “Thoughts occur—that these people will be moving assets in. If they have your great-grandson—they will not hold him here. There may be a base in Dalaigi.”

Ilisidi looked at him in the diminishing daylight, a sidelong and upward glance. “The paidhi-aiji now gives military counsel.”

“The paidhi-aiji is concerned, aiji-ma. Desperately concerned. This was not Baiji’s idea.”

“We have advised my grandson,” Ilisidi said with a dismissive move of her fingers. “What happens in Dalaigi is outside our reach. What happens hereis within our concern.”

“Aiji-ma,” he said quietly, took the hint and went back to his seat.

She had advised Tabini. Tabini was taking care of Dalaigi— one hoped—if there was anything he could lay hands on. They were on the same wavelength, at least.

From here on until disaster, Bren thought, here was their only job. They were going to prick what was here, and see what came out.

He wanted Banichi and Jago back unscathed. He wanted the boy back and both the Taibeni kids unharmed.

He just hoped to hell the boy, in his dive into the bushes by the front door, had found a hole and stayed there, waiting for exactly this development—they were canny kids.

But asking an eight-year-old with the power to give orders to a couple of sixteen-year-olds to stay put and not move at all for hours and hours and hours—that was asking more than most eight-year-olds or even sixteen-year-olds could bear. It was worse, even, that Antaro and Jegari had had a littleGuild training. They’d tried to protect Cajeiri and gotten in Banichi’s way, or they might not be out here now. They had training— and might think they were called on to use it, and that could be disastrous. Guild that the Tasaigin Marid had sent to keep Baiji under control was one thing. Guild that they might move into a higher-stakes and messed-up operation weren’t going to be house guards. They would bring in serious, serious opposition, and the time that would take might be measured in days—or, if they hadsomething down in Dalaigi Township—it might be here by now.

It was totally dark now, at least to human vision. It was deep twilight for everyone else. A kid, even one who’d eluded capture, might now think it approaching time to do something. And one hoped the Taibeni youngsters’ Guild training had included night scopes, listening devices, and wires.

Banichi had tried to hammer basic principles of self-defense into Cajeiri himself. Cenedi had had a go at it. They all had tried—Remember you are not adult, young gentleman. You cannot take on Guild. Nor should your companions ever try it.

Young aiji. Born leader. Literally. Whether it was genetic or subtly trained or God knew what, he’d gone his own way.

And he, if he were ateva, might have felt an atevi urge and followed the kid into the bushes, which at least would have kept them together. If not for their man’chi to him, Banichi and Jago would have followed the boy, and everything would have been all right.

Machimi plays had an expression for it. Katiena ba’aijiin notai’i. A situation with two leaders. A real screwed-up mess. And this one was that.

It also meant, right now, that if the enemy had expected the boy to do what the average atevi boy would do, they’d been taken by surprise, too, when Cajeiri headed sideways. If only, if only they’d assumed he’d gotten on the bus. The portico might have shielded them from view. The attackers had been on the roof. The rest of the staff had been in the hall. They hadn’t been in a position to see, either.

Maybe they weren’t even looking for the youngsters. Most unlikely of all—maybe the people running the operation—not the ones in the immediate area, who had heard everything— were already planning their next move.

Maybe Tabini-aiji, who was very certainly involved, could take out their communications.

But they were moving closer and closer to widespread action, and civil war.

And he wished he could have persuaded Ilisidi to stay put and let the Guild sort it out—before they had worse trouble.

If the youngsters were now hostages, they would stay alive: the enemy would be outright idiots to waste that advantage. But damned sure the enemy would want to get them to some more secure place than a flat and open villa. Considering who the enemy likely was, that would mean getting any hostages southward as fast as they could—

For their part, he supposed they would leave any possible escape routes to the aiji’s men.

But getting in therec

That boiled down to four people. Banichi and Jago, backed by Nawari and Kasari.

Sorrowfully, Lord Geigi’s yacht might go to the bottom of the harbor. Banichi and Jago would not leave the sea as an escape route, and that boat had to be taken care of, among first targets.

God, he should have told Toby to get down the coast, block any boat coming out if he had to call in the whole Mospheiran navy to help him.

Thinking too much.

Banichi and Jago knew what they were doing. They knew their list of priorities, and they were very much the same as hisc exceptc

Except they themselves were his priority, and they wouldn’t see things that way. Not when it came to a mission of this importance.

God, he wanted them back in one piece.

Chapter 13

« ^ »

It wasn’t, unfortunately, a large or deep woodsc except in the seaward direction.

And that, Cajeiri thought, might still have been the best way to go, staying under cover the whole way to reach Edi fishermen or farmers.

But associations among the neighbors, given the goings-on here at nand’ Geigi’s estate were not clear to him; and Antaro had done what she had done, and Jegari had led off in this directionc which could be smarter. Nand’ Bren himself had gotten surprised, so that was a big indication that ordinarily reliable people in this place were lying.

Especially nand’ Baiji had been somewhere involved and guilty of something, whatever it was. And that meant there was no knowing which of the neighbors down toward the coast or anywhere, for that matter, was reliable. He knew that; but his side hurt from running, and it was a long, long way to Najida, and they were going to run out of trees before long.

“Maybe we should stop running,” he gasped, the faintest of whispers, far softer than their running through the woods. “Very likely nand’ Bren will have gotten to his estate, and mani and all her people are going to be out, and so will nand’ Bren and before long my father will have people here, so all we need to do is get out of the way, find a hole and get in it until they settle this.”

“You should, nandi,” Jegari whispered back, likewise bending, hands on knees. “And Antaro and I can go find help.”

“We all should!”

“Then Antaro can stay with you, nandi, and I shall go.”

He shut his eyes. Opened them again, trying to imagine the maps he had studied, among the many things he had studied. “No,” he said. “No. We shall just walk a while. We shall walk. If we find a good place, we can hide. But if we can get to nand’ Bren’s estate first—that would be safest.”

“They may attack there, nandi. This whole coast may be in rebellion.”

“Lord Geigi is Maschi. Baiji is Maschi. The coast is Edi. The Tasaigi are in this.” He was out of breath. He bent over again and gasped for air. “Southerners. They do not belong here. There cannot be that many of them. We shall go—we shall go until we reach nand’ Bren’s estate, and then—then we shall just sit there and watch. And, by morning, people will be out and about and if it looks all right—we can go in. It is far better than sitting here hiding on Kajiminda land.”

“We have to be careful, nandi,” Jegari said. “We have to be very careful if we go out in the open.”

“When shall we do it? By sunlight?” He held his side, where it ached. “Now is the time, nadiin-ji. Let us just walk a while. Let us walk quietly.”

They began, then, to do that. And he thought they were going in the right direction: he hoped they were. The sea, he thought, all the peninsulas and the woods that did not grow up and down, but tilted, made him unsure of direction. This whole coastline tilted, in his estimation. It wandered: at ground level it was nothing like it was on the big map in the library, and the coast was very irregular.

And that was stupid. It was an entirely infelicitous and careless approximation. The librarian should be thoroughly ashamed of such records.

Jegari stopped, frozen. Antaro seized Cajeiri’s arm, and pulled him to the side, signaling he should be quiet.

She backed him into a shelter of thorny undergrowth, crouching there as Jegari likewise edged into that cover. He heard nothing. Nothing, as they made themselves as inconspicuous as possible.

He shivered, and tried not to. It seemed a long time.

Then his ears told him someone was out there, somebody not as shining bright as he knew he was in his pale coat. Somebody maybe in Assassins’ black.

But in stalking and being stalked he told himself he was in very good company. In a forest, if not a sailboat, his Taibeni companions were very much at home.

He held his breath while something like the wind moved through the woods. For a scary moment he saw their shadowy shapes, and there were two or more of them.

The enemy was going toward nand’ Bren’s estate. Where mani was.

The night grew chill. Bren rubbed knees gone half-numb and watched out the bus window in the only directions he could watch, westward and south. Cenedi had gone outside a little time ago, and delayed about matters, whatever he was doing, likely talking to men posted outside. The dowager simply waited, with the rest of her guard. Those who did speak, spoke together quietly—a whisper too low for Bren’s ears to pick up.

Then Cenedi came back, and Tano and Algini, who had been busy with some sort of electronic equipment to the rear of the bus, got up and conferred with Cenedi, also very quietly, in the front of the bus.

Bren folded his arms for comfort and waited, Ilisidi not saying a thing, but then the formidable cane reached across the aisle and thumped his seat. He looked. Her face was utterly lost in the darkness, just a glimmer of silver about her hair.

“Aiji-ma,” he said in the lowest of voices.

“You are very quiet and contemplative tonight, Bren-paidhi.”

“One apologizes, aiji-ma. One is extremely concerned for the situation.”

Silence. Lengthy silence in the dark.Then the cane went softly thump! on the bus deck.

“If they harm him,” Ilisidi said, “they are dead. And there will be retaliation.”

“Aiji-ma,” he said. That was all. He was the peacemaker, the bridge, and in all his career, he had never been able to make headway with the South.

He had damned sure not read the boy accurately. God, where had an eight-year-old suddenly got the notion to grow up on them and take his own way?

Even atevi hadn’t seen this coming—maybe because they’d attributed the unorthodox behavior to a human influence they were trying to diminish in the boy. Aiji-born: Cajeiri was apt to do any damned thing, was what, and neither species was going to predict him. A brilliant, if erratic prospect.

If he lived to grow up.

The conference forward broke up. Cenedi came back solo, a looming shadow in the dark, and said, to Ilisidi, “We consider that Banichi and Jago have likely moved all the way to the house by now, nandi. There has been no sound of fire. We have gotten the regular signal from them.”

They would use a simple blip on a given frequency, nothing that could be easily read by the opposition, who probably were using their own signalsc which their security would be simultaneously trying to pick up. Tano and Algini had broken out gear of their own, and he would about lay a bet it was involved in trying to do exactly that.

Himself, he took Cenedi’s information for comfort, and kept his own observations quiet: it was Ilisidi’s call, if orders were to follow. Guild operations were not the paidhi’s domain.

“If we were to move closer to the house,” Ilisidi said, “we might more likely draw out persons of interest.”

“No, ’Sidi-ji,” Cenedi said with no doubt at all, and added: “Besides, we cannot leave this road open. This is our task: we have simply to sit here.”

Thump! went the dowager’s cane, a quiet and very dissatisfied thump. But she did not countermand her bodyguard. So they sat some more.

Two, and now four shadows moved silently through the woods. Cajeiri hunkered down with his companions and held his breath. They had been lucky so far, having made as much noise as they had, and having rushed through the woods headlong getting away. When the Guild had investigated why that sensor-thing had jammed in the orchard tower, the rusty claw was as good as a written note to say, “Someone was here.”

But then, the people occupying the house had just had a man slide down the roof, whether or not the man had actually gone off the edge, and if that man was able to say he had been hit by something before he lost his balance, that was a reasonable and very noisy indication in itself that someone had been spying on the house, someone who did not much mind a man falling off the roof. It was possible that man would not talk, and would never talk, and one had the luxury to somewhat hope he had not killed the man; but he had shot someone before this, so it would not be the first, and if this was the man who had tried to assassinate them he was not going to have bad dreams about this one. He was determined on that. He would not be sorry in the least, if this was the man who had tried to kill nand’ Bren. He had been desperate. And he had had to do something fastc had he not? He had hadto.

They moved now, the three of them, without saying a thing to each other. They did their best to sound only like the wind moving, and to avoid breaking branches—a very un-windlike sound.

Here was where the Taibeni were expert, and he tried to learn from them, never letting a branch snap back, bending every opposing twig gently and passing it to the next behind, to release very, very softly. He copied their way of setting the feet down very surely, and with as little disturbance as possible; and sometimes stopping—just suddenly stopping cold, frozen, so they could hear, Jegari informed him, touching his own ear—clearly meaning he should listen, too. They had seen four men pass them. They had no way of knowing if there were more coming behind them.

And the shadows were moving in the direction theyneeded to go, which said to him that they were going toward nand’ Bren’s estate. Nand’ Bren was meanwhile almost certainly coming here, to find him; and these people were going there, or maybe to the train station, which was also in that direction, up to no good at all. If all these men wanted to do was just to get away after they had been exposed for what they were, they could go the other way, south to the Township and the big airport, completely away from nand’ Bren’s estate. Or right where they could lay hands on it, there was Lord Geigi’s yacht, which, supposing theyknew how to run it, could carry them out of the bay and down the coast or most anywhere. So it was clear these skulkers were on their way to work mischief, and he could warn nand’ Bren’s people and they could send somebody and call nand’ Bren home, fast, and protect Great-grandmother.

They could phone his father, too. His father had probably sent people here as fast as planes could land them. And theywould be moving inc maybe from the little airport near Najida, maybe from the much larger one near Dalaigi, to come in and cut off these scoundrels from one escape.

That was what hewould do, if he were aiji in Shejidan. He would cut them off in one direction and have nand’ Bren and mani cut them off from this side—with a little help from the local airport.

And he and his companions meanwhile had to stay out of the hands of these people. So they had gathered ammunition more serious than fertilizer stakes. At one place where they had crouched down, which had happened to be at a rocky little streamside, there had been a nice supply of little water-smoothed stones, just the right size. He took a nice lot of them, never minding the gravel they brought into the pocket of an already hard-used coat. And Jegari had gotten himself a sturdy stick, while Antaro had just pocketed a fair number of rocks.

And meanwhile they just kept moving and moving toward nand’ Bren’s estate.

The scary thing now was that the woods were playing out on them: they reached the edge, and the woods gave way to brush, and the brush to tall grass, where the trail the men had made going through the grass was perfectly plain to see. Jegari bent some grass down himself and stood watching it a moment. It recovered a bit, but not much; and Jegari looked at Antaro, who looked as if she were absorbing things, too.

So were they reading it, somehow? Could they tell things? How fast they were going? How long?

Jegari started walking exactly in one of the tracks the men had leftc so, Cajeiri thought, following, there would be only one track, if anybody was behind them. That was clever. He began to think they were doing everything right.

It was getting harder, however. He had been tired and sore all day from their adventure on the boat, and now hiding all day and creeping through the woods, and he had no idea where to go or what to do. Nand’ Bren and mani were in terrible danger, and he did not know how to reach them.

They were out there somewhere, moving on the estate, now that it was dark.

Maybe they had been fools to have left.

But it still seemed safer to be out here. Out here they had some choices, and they had not gotten caught in the crossfire. Still—

Jegari slowed to a stop, leaning on his hands, catching his breath, and then folded down into the tall grass. They all did, squatting low. “They seem to be avoiding the road, nandi. If we get onto the road and go beside it, we can move faster: we can run.”

Run. He was hardly sure he could walk at the speed they were using.

But they had to do better, not to get caught out here.

“Yes,” he said. “Let us try it.”

They got up. His stomach hurt. But it was going to get worse.

They were going into the open. It was dangerous. But there was a reason these men were going the way they were—because it was safer for the enemy.

“Nandi,” Jegari whispered. “Nandi, if they spot us, one begs you, duck, and stay with Antaro. I run fastest. I always beat her. I shall keep going.”

And get shot, he thought, appalled. But it was what a bodyguard was supposed to do. He nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“We are going to be leaving a trail,” Jegari said. “We should at least make speed, nandi.”

With which, Jegari struck off at a run.

He ran behind Jegari, and it hurt. His boots were not sturdy for out of doors. Rocks hurt his feet. His ankles faltered, and his knees hurt. His ribs began to ache. He stumbled, and Antaro caught his arm and kept him going.

But they both were lagging back now, both were running to accommodate him, and he tried as hard as he could, harder than he thought he could, grass whipping at his shins and his breath coming like a locomotive.

“Halt!” a man said out of the dark behind them, just right behind them.

He ran harder, expecting to be shot at. But Antaro had stopped, and Jegari did, ahead of him, facing back toward him.

He stopped where Jegari stood, and looked back past Antaro.

A man rose out of the grass. He had what could be a rifle. He could have shot them, so things were not as bad as they could be—just stay alive, just keep himself and his companions alive. Mani was going to have to get them out of this one.

It was over. At least this round.

He stood still, panting hard. He could hear Jegari breathing.

He saw Antaro tamely fall in beside that man as he walked toward them, and he figured that man had threatened to shoot him and Jegari.

The man came right up to them. “Young lord,” he said, in an Eastern accent, and gave a sketchy, wary nod, and Cajeiri’s breath gusted out and didn’t come back for a moment.

The young man’s name was Heien. He was one of mani’s youngest, from Malguri.

“Come,” the young man said, “quickly.”

“There are men, nadi,” Cajeiri said, pointing, “further that way, moving northwest, toward nand’ Bren’s estate. Four men.”

“Hurry, then, young lord,” Heien said, and gathered him by the arm and dragged him into motion. “Quickly!”

Cajeiri ran, gasping as he did so, and Jegari and Antaro kept pace, but it was not far, just over a slight elevation, and there was the double track of the road through the grass, and of all things, the battered estate bus sitting in the middle of the road, where another road branched off and this one just kept going.

Had they even gotten beyond the estate road, with all their effort and their running?

Even before they got to the bus, more men were getting out—Cenedi was in charge of them. His pale hair showed, when little else did but shadows.

Cajeiri really ran, then, with all he had left.

The dowager had gotten up into the aisle and Bren deferred to her intention. “Ha!” was all she had said, when Cenedi told her that Heien had just swept up the youngsters. She had gotten up, painful as that process might be, and showed every inclination to go to the door and descend the steps. Bren, behind her, with Tano and Algini, waited in the aisle.

Some signal had passed, one of those prearranged sets of blips that the dowager’s guard used among themselves. And Bren ducked his head and asked, “Can you tell Banichi and Jago that we have them?”

“We have done so, nandi,” Tano said.

So Banichi and Jago did know the field was clear—the youngsters turning up was one of the eventualities for which they had arranged a code. Howthe youngsters had done it was something he was sure they were about to hear, in exquisite detail, once Ilisidi had given the princely ear a smart swatc

Or maybe she wouldn’t, for this one. Precocious lad. And the Taibeni kids—were Taibeni: out of their element in a state dinner, but not in moving across the country, thank God.

“Will Banichi and Jago come back now, nadiin-ji?” he asked Tano and Algini.

“They likely will not, nandi,” Tano said, and Algini:

“They are likely committed, now.”

“To what?” he asked.

“To removing these people from Lord Geigi’s estate, nandi,” Tano said. “The aiji’s men have likely moved up from the Township. The field is clear now. One doubts they will give up that advantage.”

Two of Cenedi’s men had gone with them— nottheir accustomed team—so both sets were working at personal disadvantage, and four of them were going to probe into the estate and attempt—

God. Bren bit his lip, knew he should not interfere in Guild operations, but, dammit—

“I did not approve this, nadiin-ji, this—extension of the mission.”

Algini said: “When the aiji requests it, nandic we are not his, but he can request it.”

Damn, he thought. He wantedthem back. He couldn’t bear it if he lost them. Couldn’t—couldn’t even think of it.

Cajeiri had come onto the bus to be shaken and thwacked by his great-grandmother on the bottom step—she was astonishingly mild in both. And then:

“Mani-ma, nand’ Bren, Guild is going toward the estate— nand’ Bren’s estate. They passed us.”

“On foot?” Ilisidi asked sharply, while Bren immediately thought of staff, of Ilisidi’s men—of the fact he had only half his bodyguard in a position to do anything about itc

“Yes, mani-ma,” Cajeiri said on a gasp for breath. “One is sorry. We were running. We were going therec and they were goingc ahead of us. East of the road.”

“Cenedi, did you hear?”

“Shall we move, aiji-ma?”

“Yes,” Ilisidi said sharply. “We shall.” She gave a shove to Cajeiri. “Get back there and keep quiet, boy. You and your companions are to stay low and stay quiet.”

Bren started to move. The knob of the dreaded cane came gently against his chest. “Paidhi-ji, we have resources, but this may entail damage to your estate.”

“The staff and villagers are my concern, aiji-ma. I told my brother to leave. One trusts he has done so.”

“Good,” Ilisidi said, and the cane dropped. Bren headed back to his seat, Tano and Algini preceding him, and he knelt with one knee in that seat as he reached it, facing them.

“How much can you advise them?”

“Nandi,” Algini said, “we can signal ‘base compromised’ and ‘base open.’ That is the best we can do.”

“They need to know that much,” he said. The bus engine started, the bus started to back and turn around, and he dropped to the seat and sat down. Tano moved up with him,another of Ilisidi’s men, in the scarcity of seats, sat down with Algini.

“Bren-ji,” Tano said, “one begs you will get down to the floor. We may take fire.”

It was an eggshell of a bus. There were already bullet holes perforating the door and sniper fire was a distinct possibility. That was true; and doubtless Cenedi, who still on his feet in the aisle, leaning over the seat behind the dowager and Cajeiri, was intensively debriefing the youngsters regarding what they had seen—how far back, how long ago.

Meaning what were their chances of the bus outracing a group of attackers moving in on foot?

Quite good, if the attackers hadn’t beenmoving for several hours. He thought about his assessment of more and higher-level Guild coming into the situation.

Bren dutifully got down on his knees, elbows on the seat, not a comfortable way to ride, but safer, considerably. Algini and the man behind, meanwhile, passed a heavy blanketlike affair forward, which Tano stood up to hook into the window frame. Small wonderthe baggage they had brought had weighed considerable. Another blanket was going into place on the far side. Not bulletproof, but certainly bullet-resistant, and protecting several rows of seats, notably the dowager and the youngsters, and him.

That secured, Tano sat down again.

“It is not entirely effective, nandi. One asks you stay as you are.”

It was uncomfortable. It was oppressive. It deprived him of all information about where they were. “Perhaps if we cut cross-country toward the village and came up to the estate from there,” Bren said, and then told himself just to be quiet and let people who knew what they were doing do their jobs.

“We may well do so, Bren-ji.” Tano was the gentlest of souls, given his profession; his voice relayed calm, even while the bus was bouncing along over unkept road and apt to come under automatic arms fire at any moment. “When we do exit the bus at the estate, kindly stay between us.”

“I have my gun, Tano-ji.”

“Rely on us, nandi.”

They had enough to worry about. He laid a hand on Ta-no’s knee. “Tano-ji. One relies on you both with absolute confidence.”

“One hopes so, nandi,” Tano said, and then there was an added energy to his voice. “We shall defend the house. Or take it back, if we come late.”

“One has every confidence,” he repeated. He didn’t want, either, to think of that historic residence occupied by persons bent on mayhem, its staff threatened and put in the line of fire. These were not fighters, the staff he had dispersed to this estate. They were brave; they had stayed by him during the worst of things, and taken personal chances rescuing his belongings, they were every commendable thing—but they were not fighters. They had nothing to do with the Guild.

Bounce and crash, potholes be damned. The speed their driver got from the overloaded bus was the very most it could do. It roared along with no care for the racket it made, bouncing over rocks and splashing through the remnant of rain puddles in the low spots, scraping over brush at the next rise, and rumbling over an ill-maintained bridge at the next low spot.

But at a certain point, after Bren’s knees had gone beyond pain from being bounced on the hard decking, and after the chill of that decking had migrated upward into his bones, they began to encounter brush that raked the side of the bus. One did not remember the brush being that close, and Bren twisted about, trying to see out the windshield, wondering whether they were still on the road at all.

Horrid jolt, and crash, and then the bus ran over something, multiple somethings that hit the undercarriage.

They were noton the road, and Cajeiri had flung himself over to assist the dowager.

“What did we hit, nandiin?” Cajeiri asked in distress.

“A stone wall, by the racket,” the dowager said. God knew— there was a hill out in the fallow land. There was the old road, where now only hunters ranged—but the wall had been timber railing.

“We have dropped out of contact with the house, nandi,” Cenedi said. “We are not going to the por—”

The nose of the bus suddenly tilted downward. No one of this company cried out, but Bren swallowed a gasp and grabbed the seat as they took the hard way down, through more brush.

He lost his grip: his head and back hit the seat in front, and Tano grabbed his coat and hauled him close to the seat.

“What are we doing?” he had time to ask.

“The estate road is a risk,” Cenedi said, holding himself braced in the aisle. “Get to your seat, young lord. And get down!”

“Yes,” Cajeiri said, and went there, handing himself across the aisle, and obediently ducking, with his companions.

They took another neck-snapping bounce, crashing through brush in the dark, scraping the underside of the bus, and when Bren looked around at the windshield, they had lost the headlights, or the driver had shut them down, never checking their speed.

My God, Bren thought, holding on, telling himself that atevi vision in the dark was better than his.

Another plunge, a hole, a fierce bounce and then a skid. He cast another look to the windshield.

The road. Even his eyes could pick up the smooth slash through the dark. They had swerved onto it—were ripping along it at fair speed. But where the hell were they?

Suddenly they turned. The bus slung everything that was unsecured toward the other side—Cenedi intervened, standing in the aisle, and supporting the dowager.

They hit a wooden wall, scraped through brush or vines or structure, and came to a sliding halt. There were lights— outdoor lights, from somewhere. They had stopped. The engine died into shocking silence, leaving only the fall of a board somewhere.

And then he realized they had just crashed through the garden gate of his estate, the service access at the back.

The bus door opened. Two shadows—Ilisidi’s men— immediately left the front seat and bailed out to take position.

Then people came running out of the housec notarmed, people in house dress, people he recognizedc

“They are ours, nadiin!” he shouted out, getting to his feet, as staff all innocent and alarmed, came to a halt facing leveled rifles.

“Quickly,” Cenedi said. “Disembark!”

“Go, paidhi,” Ilisidi said—practicality, perhaps, it being his estate, his staff: he steadied himself on Tano’s shoulder, and Algini’s arm as they sorted themselves out and headed for the bus steps.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said, descending.

“Nandi!” Ramaso’s voice. “Are you all right?”

“Everything is all right,” he saidc as boards went on creaking and settling. The stout pillars and vines of the arbor had withstood the impact. The garden wall and shed were not so sturdy. He found himself a little shaky getting down the steps and into the midst of dismayed staff.

“Rama-ji” he said. “We are a little ahead of possible attack on the house. Has anything happened here?”

“No, nandi. Nothing!”

“Get men down to the harbor, phone the village, and if you have not yet thrown the shutters, nadi-ji, do it now, as quickly as you can. We have the young gentleman safe, with his companions. Did nand’ Toby and Barb-daja get away?”

“Yes, nandi,” Ramaso said. “They have sailed.”

“Excellent,” he said. Thatproblem was solved. “Go. Quickly!”

“Nandi,” Ramaso said, and as Cenedi helped the dowager down from the bus, gave the requisite orders on the spot, distributing jobs, ordering guns out of locked storage, and telling three young men to get down to the dock, take the remaining yacht out to deep anchor and stay with it.

“Nadi.” Algini intercepted Ramaso as they walked, to give him specific orders for the securing of the house, the emergency bar on the kitchen door, Ilisidi’s men to have absolute access; and Tano said, urgently, seizing Bren’s arm.

“Stay under the arbor, Bren-ji.”

“We left men in charge here,” he protested.

“They are still there,” Tano said. “But take nothing for granted, Bren-ji.”

“Cenedi-ji,” Algini said. “If you will take the northern perimeter of the house, we shall take the main southern and center.”

“Yes,” Cenedi said, and hastened the dowager and Cajeiri along toward the house. Jegari and Antaro had caught up, and hurried. Bren lost no time, himself, with Ramaso keeping pace with him, along the main part of the arbor, into the house, the doors of which stood open.

They had not thrown the storm shutters. Those were going into place, one slam after another.

“Is there any dinner?” Cajeiri’s voice, plaintively. “One is very sorry, but we missed dinner.”

“We allmissed dinner, boy,” Ilisidi said peevishly.

“One can provide it,” Ramaso suggested, at Bren’s elbow, “in very little time.”

“For the guards stationed on the roof as well,” Bren said to him.

“So,” Ilisidi said with a weary sigh, as they reached the indoors, the safe confines of the inmost hall. “So. We shall meet at dinner, nand’ paidhi.”

“Aiji-ma.” He gave a little bow, half distracted, home, but not home: Banichi and Jago were still out there, at risk, and he wanted to know more than non-Guild was going to be allowed to know about what was going on out there.

Footsteps overhead.

“They are ours,” Cenedi said. “We are in contact.”

“Good,” he said. He worked a hand made sore by gripping the seat. “Good, Cenedi-ji. Aiji-ma, if you need anything—”

“We have all we need,” Ilisidi said, with her hand on Cajeiri’s shoulder. “We shall be in communication with my grandson once we dare pass that message, nandi.”

That was dismissal. Bren left them, headed for his own suite, as Ramaso turned up at his elbow. Tano turned up on the other side, staying with him.

“See to the dinner, nadi-ji,” Bren said to Ramaso. “If the enemy is moving out there, they will probably try us before morning. Four were spotted. There may be others. Let us take advantage of what leisure we have.”

“Yes, nandi,” Ramaso said. They reached the door of his suite, and even before the door had closed, Supani and Koharu turned up, solemn and worried-looking

He still had the blood from the early event sweated onto his hands and under his nails, the mud from the bus floor on his trousers—he was, Bren thought, a mess, the clothes were irrecoverable, and he was, despite the rapid movement getting in, cold to the core. A bath would be the thing, he thought; but he was not about to be caught in the bath by an enemy attack.

“Tano,” he said, “I shall be all right here. Go see to yourself. Help Algini. Be ready if Banichi and Jago need you. And have staff bring you something to eat. I shall be all right: I shall stay faithfully to this area of the house, excepting supper.”

“Yes,” Tano said. “But, Bren-ji, in event of trouble, take cover. Do not attempt to fire. Rely on us.”

“Always,” he said with a grateful look, a little instinctively friendly touch at Tano’s arm: he was that tired. “One has no idea how long this night may be. One promises to be entirely circumspect.”

“Bren-ji,” Tano said, and made a little bow before leaving.

Bren peeled off the coat. The lace cuffs of his shirt were brown and bloodstained.

“Hot, wet towels, here, to wash with in the bath,” he instructed the two domestics. “For Tano and Algini, too, if they can find time. Moderate coat and trousers.” He walked on to his bedroom and took the gun from his pocket, laying it on the dresser. “This I shall need.”

“Yes,” they said, and Supani went on toward the bath while Koharu helped him shed his boots and peel out of his hard-used clothes.

Appearances mattered. The staff was possibly going to be at risk of their lives, and theirlord was obliged to look calm and serene, no matter what was going on.

He bathed not in the tub, which would have taken time to fill, but within it, with running water and a succession of sopping towels, had a fast shave—he did that himself, with the electric—and flung on a dressing gown, trusting the pace Koharu and Supani had set to get him to the dining room in good order.

Somewhere out in the rocks and bushes, somewhere near the intersection of roads they had dodged, coming overland, or maybe up toward the train station, and on Lord Geigi’s estate, action was probably already going on—action was too little a word. The first moves of something far, far larger, if he read it right.

Banichi and Jago—

He hoped they weren’t taking chances out there. Lord Geigi’s Edi staff was on their side: they well knew that; but that was another question. They had seen no one they recognized from Lord Geigi’s tenure. If there were Edi about, where were they? What had become of them?

Banichi and Jago were still obliged to be careful about collateral damage. So were Tabini’s forces. If there was one solitary thing he could think to comfort himself, it was that there would not be random fire incoming in that situationc but it made it doubly dangerous, necessitating getting inside. Finesse, Banichi called it.

God, he didn’t want even to think about it.

He left a soaked pile of dirt-smeared towels in the tub and headed out to his rooms to dress, with staff help. It was surreal. Attack was likely coming, and so far, everything stayed quiet, quiet as any night in the house.

But he tucked the gun into his coat pocket when he had finished dressing, dismissed Supani and Koharu to go get their own supper, and, going out into the hall, suggested to the few younger members of staff who stood about looking confused and alarmed, that they might usefully occupy themselves by removing porcelains and breakables to the inner rooms. “Just put them in the cellar, nadiin-ji. One cannot say there will be disturbance inside the house at all, nadiin, but one hardly knows. And at the first alarm, go immediately to the cellar and stay there with the door shut, one entreats you. I would sacrifice any goods in this house to preserve your lives.”

“Nandi,” they said, and bowed. He headed for the dining room.

In fact, he and the dowager arrived at the same moment, himself alone, the dowager accompanied only by two of her youngest bodyguards; and Cajeiri and the two Taibeni youngsters, who had almost matched the paidhi in dirt, immaculately scrubbed and dressed, likely having used the servants’ bath.

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, bowing to the dowager. Staff had laid the table for three, the two Taibeni to stand guard with the two senior guards. Only the paidhi was solo—absolute trust for the security that was on duty; and a lonely feeling. Tano and Algini were in quarters, likely trying to monitor what was going on while the dowager’s men, under Cenedi’s direction, took defensive precautions.

And still no word from Banichi and Jago. He wished he could haul them out of wherever they were, whatever they were into, and let the aiji’s guard handle the mess at Lord Geigi’s estate. He was too worried for appetite. Given his preferences, he would have paced the floor. Sitting down to dinner was hard—but at this point necessary—besides being a demonstration of confidence for the staff.

The before-dinner drink, a vodka with fruit juice—that came welcome.

Supper consisted of a good fish chowder and a wafer or two, warm, filling, and quick. He took his time, somewhat, in general silence, in pace with the dowager, while Cajeiri wolfed his down with a speed that drew disapproving glances.

“Such concentration on one’s dinner,” Ilisidi remarked.

Cajeiri looked at her, large-eyed. “One was very hungry, mani-ma. One sat in that tower forever.”

“Tower,” Bren said.

“In the garden, nandi. We went over the wall and through the woods. We hid in a tower on the wall.”

“You have gotten quite pert,” Ilisidi said. “Have we heard an apology, boy?”

Cajeiri swallowed a hasty mouthful and made a little bow in place. “One is very sorry for being a problem, mani-ma, nand’ Bren.”

“How did you separate yourself?” Ilisidi asked. “ Whydid you separate yourself.”

“One—hardly knows, mani-ma. May I answer?”

At the table, there was properly no discussion of business. And the dowager’s table was rigidly proper.

“Curiosity overwhelms us,” Ilisidi said dryly. “You may inform us. We shall not discuss.”

“There was the bus, and Jago, and nand’ Bren, and Banichi; and the shooting started, and the bus was hit, and one just—we just—we just—the bushes were closer. We thought they would fight.”

It was a fair account. And contained the missing piece. We thought they would fight. He’d assumed Banichi would go for Cajeiri; and the kid had equally assumed Banichi wouldn’t. And the kid had assumed they were going to stand and fight, so he’d taken care of himself.

Ilisidi simply nodded, thoughts flickering quickly through those gold eyes.

“Indeed,” she said. “Indeed. One expected a sensible boy would then find his way down the road.”

It was more than the paidhi had expected of a boy. A lot more.

“One did, mani-ma. As soon as it was dark.” Cajeiri’s brows knit. There was something more to say, something unpleasant, but he didn’t say it.

“May one ask, young gentleman,” Bren said, “what you have just decided not to say?”

A flash of the dowager’s eyes, which quickly settled on Cajeiri.

“One fears one may have caused a serious accident to a man on the roof. One hopes they were the enemy.”

“What time was this?”

“Right at dusk, nandi. He was on the roof. He probably fell off.”

“Good,” the dowager said, taking a drink. And added: “Hereafter, you will have your own security.”

“Antaro and Jegari, mani-ma—”

“You are beginning to think independently. These young people will benefit from senior Guild constantly attached to you, young man. This should have been done before now.”

“Not Great-uncle’s! One asks, not Great-uncle’s!”

“No,” Ilisidi said, “ notAtageini. Nor Ragi. Malguri.”

Oh, that was going to be an explosion, once Tatiseigi heard hisgreat-nephew was dismissing his Atageini guards; and once Tabini andthe Taibeni heard that the senior pair in his son’s bodyguard was not going to be Ragi atevi, from the center of the aishidi’tat, but Easterners—that explosion would be heard end to end of the Bujavid, and Ilisidi’s opinion might not, for once, prevail.

The paidhi was going to stay well and truly outof that argu—

Quick footsteps sounded in the halls. One of the serving staff came in, breathless, bowed once to the dowager and once to him. “Nandiin. Movement is reported across the road.”

He cast a worried look at Ilisidi, whose face remained impassive. He swallowed the bite he had and with a little bow, got up from table.

The dowager likewise rose, Cajeiri offering his hand beneath her elbow as she gathered up her cane.

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, “one would suggest the office, which has no windows: there is a comfortable chair, and the staff might provide an after-dinner brandy.”

“An excellent notion, paidhi-ji.” One earnestly hoped the dowager would provide sufficient psychological anchor for her great-grandson to keep his burgeoning personality from flaring off down the halls to help them out. Clearly, the paidhi had not been adequate to keep him from picking his own course. Cajeiri had been looking for cover when the shooting started, not looking for direction from the paidhi-aiji. So write the paidhi off as a governance. Write off the boy’s most earnest promises: one suspected he was hitting an instinct-driven phase.

“Go,” Ilisidi said as he lingered, ready to assist her. “Go, nand’ paidhi. We are just moving a little slower this evening.”

“Aiji-ma.” He bowed, then left with the anxious servant, asking,

“Where are Tano and Algini at the moment, Husa-ji?”

“In the security office, nandi, one believes.”

In most houses, that was near the front door. In this one, by revision, it was a comfortable nook in the suite his bodyguard used, a left turn at the intersection of halls.

“Carry on, nadi,” he said to the servant, “with thanks. Check the garden hall locks. Put the bar down.”

“Nandi,” the servant murmured, and diverged from his path.

That beautiful glass window offered a serious compromise to house security. That was why there was a very stout mid-hallway set of doors to close the garden hall, with deep pin-bolts above and below and a sturdy cross bar that resided upright in the back of the right-hand door. The two doors that led off that hall, one to the kitchens and the other to the staff rooms, had equally stout single doors, as solid as if they were opposing the outside worldc which, being next to more fragile sections, they were counted as doing.

The last of staff was on their way to defensive stations or to cover. Those last doors were about to shut. Kitchen would not be gathering up the dishes. They would be sealing themselves in from both sides.

He turned his own way, his bodyguards’ door being wide open. He entered without knocking, into the little security office where Tano and Algini had set up their electronics, black boxes of all sorts, and a low-light monitor screen.

No need to tell them what was going on. And if they had wanted that door shut yet, they would have shut it.

They acknowledged his presence with nods of the head, that was all, eyes fixed on their equipment, and he slipped into the nearer vacant chair and watched the monitor. He didn’t see anything but shrubbery and a small tree. The view changed to the front door. The garden, and the damaged arbor.

“Have you contact, nadiin-ji, with the aiji’s forces?” he asked.

“Cenedi has,” Tano said, and added, after a moment, “Banichi has now missed a report, Bren-ji. We are not greatly alarmed, but we are obliged to say so.

He didn’t want to hear that. He bit his lip in silence for a moment, and forbore questions. Their eyes never left the equipment, with its readouts and its telltales.

“The roof still reports all quiet, but movement on the perimeter,” Algini said. “We remain wary of diversionary action. Two of Cenedi’s men are interrogating Lord Baiji. And names are named.”

“Report as you find leisure,” Bren murmured, meaning he would not ask for a coherent report, busy as they were. He was in the nerve center of their defenses. Some of those lights represented certain points of their defense. The monitor showed a view of the stone walkway that led down to the harbor and the boat dock.

Movement somewhere, though it didn’t show at the moment.

“Where is the dowager, Bren-ji?” Tano asked.

“The office,” he said, “with Cajeiri. Staff hall doors, garden doors, front doors, all shut and secured.”

“Tano-ji,” Algini said sharply, calling for attention. Both brows furrowed, and the pair exchanged looks, a shake of the head. Bren sat very still. Didn’t ask. They were busy, both of them, at their specialty, and Cenedi’s men were out and about, including on the roof, including down toward the dock, and some likely in the village. Right now, having been left in charge of his safety as well as their regular duties, they needed no divided attention: needed to know where he was, and that he wasn’t in need of their help. That door to the hall was open, but it, like the other secure doors, was steel-cored, capable of being shut and security-bolted.

What they had in that console, whether it was officially cleared, he had no personal knowledge, didn’t technically understand, and frankly hadn’t asked—deliberately hadn’t asked. Tano and Algini had spent the last couple of years on the space station. While the planet below them had broken out in chaos, they’d spent their time becoming familiar with equipment the paidhi, who was responsible for clearing new tech to be generally deployed on the planet, had never clearedc and under the circumstances of their return from space, he hadn’t asked.

Hypocritical? He had no question it was. But maybe he should have—considering that Captain Jules Ogun, in charge of the space station, had decided to drop relay stations on the planet. Maybe he should have asked what part Tano and Algini had played in that decision, whether they hadadvised Lord Geigi, governing the atevi side of the station, that this communications system was a potential problem.

Mogari-nai, the big dish, had been their sole contact when they’d left for deep space: now, with the proliferation of satellites—God knew what was going to be loose in the world.

Things that threatened the operation of the Asassins’ Guild, which hadn’t had to worry about locators. Or cell phones. There was a time they hadn’t had night-vision, or a hundred other items he suspected his own security staff and Geigi’s now had—and he hoped no one else did.

But hehad been out in space for two years, leaving the job of determining what technology ought to go to the planet largely to Yolanda Mercheson, essentially an emissary of Captain Jules Ogun. More, once the coup had happened, she’d interfaced—not even between Mospheira and the atevi—but mostly between the humans of her own ship and Lord Geigi, whose eagerness to snatch whatever tech he could lay hands on was only surpassed by that of Tabini-aiji himself.

The paidhi had notbeen doing his job for two critical years. The paidhi had come back to find the world girded by satellites, a grid laid out, and relay stations—armed and mobile relay stations—dropped into strategic areas, satellite phones, cell towers on the Island, and all the preparation to loose, even worse, either cell phones or far less restricted wireless on the continent. The Assassins’ Guild was the worst, the very worst affected. Keeping the aishidi’tat, the Western Association, together—meant keeping each member of the Association sure that his advantage was exactly the same as everybody else’s; or at least sure that if somebody else cheated and got an advantage, the aiji in Shejidan was going to come down on them fast and hard. Guild members didn’t talk about Guild business, but the Assassins’ Guild itself had had one internal power struggle, only last year.

The aiji’s side had won, but what was going on tonight out in the bushes around the estate contested that conclusion.

He’d been coasting along since his return trying to catch up on what had happened, what technology had come in, what atevi had invented themselves, or modified. He’d been writing letters, answering queries, trying to find out what was a fait accompli and what he could still get a grip on, and possibly stop—

He’d beencoastingc in the technology questions since his returnc and now he had a growing, sinking feeling that he might utterly have lost the war.

They had aliens out there that were promising to come calling, atevi wanted their share of the situationc and that meant technological advance.

They had one hell of a problem in the world, was what they had. Hehad a problem. The Guild certainly had—and wouldn’t be happy about it. The aishidi’tat had a problem—manifested in a coup, a counter-coup, and God help them if things went wrong tonight—possibly a civil warc in which the technology he’d delayed banning was likely to turn up, full-blown, possibly inciting certain factions, possibly giving advantage where it hadn’t been and meaning all bets were off on the outcome.

It was the paidhi’s fault—at least in the sense he hadn’t been able to prevent it.

And Cajeiri was going to have it all in his lap, if he survived his childhood.

The dowager was right. Time they did get the boy full-time, technologically sophisticated security to keep him alive, considering the world he’d been born into, and not Great-uncle’s socially impeccable but less than adaptable old men. They needed two very young Guild, somebody who’d keep aheadof the boy, and train the two Taibeni practically in situ. Thank God, he thought, the Taibeni youngsters had come in with some natural advantages of their upbringing. But it wasn’t enough.

Something had to change. Soon. It wasn’t a safe world. And the boy’s tendency to go off on his own wasn’t going to get handled if Tabini, Uncle Tatiseigi, and the dowager started quarreling about the ethnicity of the guard.

God. His brain was wandering. The upcoming cell phone speech seemed suddenly so little, so small an issue. He was trying to stop a flood with a teacup. It couldn’t be another regulation. It had to be an attitudinal accommodation in the society. They’d accommodated tech on ship. Why couldn’t they adjust—?

They’d handled phones. They’d handled trains crossing provincial and associational boundaries. They’d adjusted. They’d taken computers, and done things theirway, that the paidhi couldn’t even have conceived of. That had been a dicey step. And they’d survived it.

If he could just explain to them—

Somethinghappened. Tano gave that sign that meant trouble, and then said the code word for intruder, getting up from his chair and reaching for his pistol as he did so.

Bren got up out of the way immediately and reached for his own gun, while Algini kept his attention fixed on the equipment.

Tano got into the doorway, angled to the left, fired up at an angle, and fired again as a shot came back; then dived out across the hall. Bren stayed where he was, in the vantage Tano had had, safety off the gun and the gun at the ready, eyes scanning not only Tano’s position, but things up and down the hall. It wasn’t just Tano’s life at risk. He was Algini’s protection, and Algini was busy relaying their situation to other units of their team.

Maybe, he thought, he should shut the door—barricade himself and Algini inside. Don’t rely on the gun: his security had told him that more than once.

But Banichi had given him the damned thing. What was it for, but for backup?

Tano, meanwhile, moved out and down the hall toward the servants’ wing and the dining room corridor, moved, and moved again, not without looking at ground level for traps. He reached that nook, tucked in against the slight archway, and held position.

The dowager, with Cajeiri, with her immediate guard, was just beyond that intersection, in the office. Bren personally hoped that door stayed shut. They were all right. Nobody was in sight.

Scurrying movement from right over his head, beyond the ceiling.

“Tano!” Bren cried. “Above!”

Shots broke out, up above the ceiling, breaking through the paneling. Tano suddenly eeled around the corner he was holding. Fire came back from the direction of the dining room.

“Hold!” Tano shouted out to someone down the dining room corridor. “Hold place! Call off your partner! Truce! We offer truce!”

Bren held his breath, flexed his fingers on the gun grip.

Suddenly a shot sounded overhead, running footsteps headed down the hallway ceiling where there was no room.

“Tano!” Bren shouted, and about that time Algini knocked him aside and fired into the paneled ceiling.

Splinters exploded near Tano from overhead and chips ricocheted off the floor tiles.

A volley came out of the dining room hallway and hit the intersecting wall. Tano had dropped into a sideways crouch right into the open and fired back. More fire came from overhead, splintering a ceiling panel, Algini moved and fired back, and Bren darted across the hall, his back against the same wall Tano had used.

A volley of fire went overhead, above the panels, and one came back.

Algini stood mid-hall and fired nearly straight up. Something up there thumped, and then there was quiet, except that Tano got to his feet. A dark dot appeared on the stone floor near where Algini was standing. A second spatted down in exactly the same spot. It took a second before Bren realized what was dripping.

“Clear!” Tano called back to his partner, holstering his gun, and cast a look down the hall. Bren leaned against the decorative paneling and far from automatically, working a little, put the safety back on his gun.

Curious. His hands had used to shake considerably. Now he was thinking they’d kept the hall safe, he was thinking they’d kept the dowager safe, that it had been a better-than-average lot that had actually gotten through their perimeter—someone damned good, in fact; and thinking, with a small shudder, that, thank God, some on hisside were better. But he was worried about Ilisidi’s men on the roof. And just too cold-blooded about it. He didn’t recognize himself.

And then he did give a shiver, thinking how Banichi and Jago were out there somewhere trying to pull exactly what they’d just killed two people trying to do, here.

That didn’t make him feel better. Not at all.

Algini gave him a solemn look and nodded, then listened to something for a second, frozen quite still.

Down the hall, the library door opened slightly, and one of Ilisidi’s young men glanced out, and came all the way out to exchange a handsign with Tano up at that end of the hallway.

The stain on the stones was widening.

But they had no all-clear yet. They might not have one for some time. Standard procedure would send a search all through the area.

And in fact, while they stood there, shots sounded outside, maybe out on the road.

More came from their roof.

“Not safe yet,” he said under his breath. “I hope they’re alive up there.”

“That may have been an all-clear signal, Bren-ji,” Algini said. “But we should not rely on it. Best go back to the station and wait.”

Strong hint. There was mop-up yet to do. And Cenedi’s men would bear the brunt of it, if there was more to come. They had someone dead, likely, in their attic, bleeding a puddle onto the hallway floor. Someone down that hall was likely dead, right in front of the dining room, having shot a piece out of the paneling near the office. Bren found himself angry, a sense of outrage for the broken peace, for an attack his domestic staff hadn’t deserved, except for their service to him.

“Yes,” he said, to Algini’s strong suggestion, and began to walk in that direction, Algini walking with him.

Algini had to let them in: the door had shut and the lock had tripped. And Algini went right back to his console. In a very little time Tano came back and joined him, and took his former seat.

“Two of them,” Tano said.

Algini nodded. “Yes. That seems to have solved the immediate alarm.”

Bren took his former seat, trying to find in himself what he had used to feel, some sense of sympathy for a dead enemy, regret for the waste. It was there, but it was scant at the moment. Far stronger was his concern for Banichi and Jago, for the dowager’s pair with them; concern for the village, which had little protection but the general Guild policy of not involving such places—and the Marid had broken no few pieces of Guild policy. Hell, the Marid had tried to subvert the Guild itself, charging it was overly Ragi in leadership.

That hadn’t held. The Guild had solved its problem when Murini went down.

Murini was dead. His own clan had repudiated him. The Guild was the Guild again.

But that didn’t mean the Marid Association had reformed. And the quiet behavior of the Marid since the Troubles didn’t guarantee anything.

Worse, since the Troubles, with new weapons, new techniques—the old rules about keeping Guild business out of civilian venues were weakening. It was more than the traditional weapons and equipment at issue. Traditional limits of warfare were in serious jeopardy. Atevi hadn’t, historically, tended to have wars, just local skirmishes. Guild work. Professionals against professionals. Only a handful of times had it escalated to involve non-Guild. That was more than custom. It was a foundation of society. When somebody crossed that line, as Murini had—

“Tano-ji,” he asked. “How isthe village? Have you any word?”

“We have no reports of difficulty there,” Tano answered him. “We have observers able to report.”

Good for that, he thought, but decided not to accord the Marid any points for civilized behavior: not yet.

Things could get much, much worse than the attempt of just two Assassins to get inside.

Maybe, on the other hand, they were lucky: maybe that waswhat they had to deal with tonight, and the Marid didn’t have reinforcements ready to move in.

Failure of intelligence on the Marid’s part, perhaps. Failure of the local crew keeping tabs on Baiji to seek new instructions in time—either not having been told that the aiji-dowager had moved in with her guard; or being unprepared with higher-level Guild where they most needed them: inside Baiji’s household. They’d missed killing him. This was the second try—a better one than the first, for damned certain, but again—not with massive force.

Dared one think—they hadn’t been ready to deal with him yet?

Maybe Baiji had in fact made a try at warning him when he’d showed up at Baiji’s doorc give Baiji credit, he’d been sending signals. Or fear had been getting the better of him, once he was faced with the reality of the paidhi and the aiji’s son walking into a trap. Baiji had started sweating, and known he wasn’t lying with any skill, which had made him more and more nervous—which had blown everything.

If he’d never come calling on Baiji, if Geigi ever did pay his long-threatened visit home, Geigi might not have survived the first day on the ground. And everything would have been tolerably quiet, if the Assassins had managed it with some finesse.

Baiji would have inherited—married that Marid girl. The whole thing could have played out over five or ten years in which things on the coast just went from bad to worse. Like sitting in the stewpot with the water heating slowly—at what point would the aiji have made a countermove?

Sooner than they’d hoped, maybe. But all that was moot, since the kids and the sailboat. Baiji had taken his boat out—

Maybe Baiji really had wanted to make a break for it.

Maybec Baiji or his handlers had had other plans.

He’d never seen Baiji’s yacht—seen its lights in the distance, or thought he had; but he hadn’t stayed for conversation. He’d picked up the kids, turned around, rather rudely, but necessarily, and gotten them back to safety—to call on Baiji this morning. Contact made. Bait set. They’d have taken him out last night if they’d gotten a chance. But maybe they’d kept the operation to low-level Guild, who might not be traced to the Marid.

Mistake, if that was the case. Hisbodyguard had gotten him out, and the whole thing had blown up when Banichi had grabbed Baijic with all Baiji knew. All the key pieces. All the agreements.

Damned sure somebody had to be sweating now, and not just Baiji. Maybe the Marid had just called in higher-level operatives, and thatmakeshift fix had just failed.

He sat there listening to operations he couldn’t wholly hear and watching what he had only the most general means to understand, watched until a little of the recent affair had drained out of his veins. The report came in—Tano told him, that two of Cenedi’s men, on the roof, had been killed—by darts. Ancient Guild weapon, silent and lethal without the necessity of foreign technology. The perpetrators had gotten through the roof, into the attic of the house itself. They had likely been assigned to penetrate the inner defenses, but the attic, a defensive measure, was partitioned into strongly fortified rooms. The intruders had broken out of the area they had gotten into, and then used what amounted to a central walkway agreeing with the main hall of the house itself. It was a centuries-old, traditional building pattern—not that different from other houses of the period. So they hadn’t had much trouble figuring where they were, once they had hit that central hall. They had been trying to get to their target, in his suite of roomsc him, specifically, only he hadn’t been there. He’d been with Tano and Algini, listening to that hurrying step in the overhead. One of them had gotten into the servant’s wing and broken through down therec Tano had attempted to gain that man’s surrender. But that movement had been a diversion.

The other one had gone for the main hall, and hadn’tfound an access panel. It was, Tano said, tricky up there. There was such a panel, to get down into the building on the east side of the house. But one had to be inhis suite to get to it. Comforting thought. He’d never even thoughtto take a personal tour of the attic.

“It was used once,” Tano said, idly, “to enable the Maladesi lord to get Guild to the dining room to poison his wife. It is in Guild records. They used a string, let down from the ceiling, in the preparation area, and dripped poison into the dish. A servant spotted what she thought was a flaw in the preparation, tasted it with a finger—quite imprudent. She scarcely recovered.”

“One takes it that that marriage ended in divorce.”

“Actually in the assassination of the Maladesi by the wife’s relatives,” Tano said. “This left a younger daughter. She married into the Farai. Another imprudent move.”

Business outside had slacked off considerably, or Tano would not have indulged in conversation. He still spoke without taking his eyes off his console.

“The current owner should know such things,” Bren muttered.

“The current lord of Najida has been somewhat busy,” Tano said, “while Algini and I spent a great deal of our time on the station in the company of Lord Geigi and his staff.”

“It was useful information,” Algini said quietly. Rare that Algini turned conversational, when there was business afoot. Like Tano, he never looked away for a heartbeat. “Lord Geigi knows all the houses in the district. We have communicated certain things to the staff. Banichihas made his scheduled signal.”

Bren let go a long, slow breath, and now a shiver ran through him, totally out of control. “Is he all right? Are they both, can you tell?”

“The signal is not that specific, Bren-ji,” Algini said. What it was, how interpreted, fell under the heading of Guild business, and Algini was not one to break the rules, but he went that far. And further. “Banichi would have signaled trouble, one surmises, if there were trouble.”

They had two dead among their staff, two more from among the enemy. They had the aiji-dowager and the heir sealed in the office. They had the junior lord of the province locked in the servants’ quarters. He was incredibly glad to have gotten word from Banichi. He kept shivering, and finally got it stopped.

It was still bound to be a long night.

Chapter 14

« ^ »

Morning arrived with gray light slitting through the storm shutters, and various outlying watchers reporting clear.

It also arrived in a communication from the aiji’s forces that they had secured the factory and the town hall of the adjacent township.

And in the relatively matter-of-fact squeal of brakes under the portico.

Bren heard it from his office—the dowager and the heir both having gone back to their respective suites. He came into the hallway, and a young maid looked out the spyhole and came flying back to him at all speed.

“Banichi and Jago, nandi, Banichi and Jago are here, and the dowager’s men!”

For once he was ahead of Tano and Algini—who came briskly down the hall and said that they had gotten word and Banichi and Jago were arriving.

“Get Ramaso, Matru-ji,” Bren bade the maid, and added: “You may run, nadi.”

She did that, at all speed. He fell in with Tano and Algini, and pulled the floor bolts as Tano and Algini first lifted the heavy bar and slid it into the slot, then pulled down the four top bolts, which were entirely out of his reach.

Then they pulled back the heavy doors and indeed, Banichi and Jago stood there under the portico, along with Nawari and Kasari—all dirty, dusty, a bit scuffed, hair flying a little loose—rare in itself: they hadn’t taken time for neatness. Kasari had his left arm in a sling.

“Nadiin-ji,” Bren said, the most undemanding, unchallenging salutation he could come up with. “One hopes to hear the details at your leisure. We came through it. Are you well?”

“Well enough,” Banichi said, hauling out a heavy bag of gear from the truck bed. “One can report, Bren-ji, that the aiji’s forces are now in charge of the estate, and are taking an accounting of such staff as they can find.”

“Good,” he said. “One is extremely relieved, nadiin-ji.” There were unresolved issues. There were many of them. But the middle of the hall with the four of them only just returned was no place for them. “You should go off duty a few hours at least.”

“A mutual sentiment, Bren-ji,” Jago said. She was holding her side somewhat, or favoring a shoulder: he could not determine. And Nawari and Kasari, lugging their own gear, paid the courtesy of a small bow, which Bren returned, which Jago and Banichi returned with a nod, and then Nawari and Kasari went off toward the servants’ wing, where Ilisidi’s more numerous guard had set up a makeshift barracks.

“Are you all right?” Bren asked. Clearly they were not. But they were here.

“The Marid has made its attempt on Lord Geigi’s estate.” That was the definitive past she used. Over and done. Put “paid” to. “There are other things to concern us, but not, at least, apt to show up here within the next few hours.”

And about that moment Cajeiri put his head out of his own doors, exclaimed, “Banichi-ji! Jago-ji!” and came hurrying up, belatedly attended by his coatless and embarrassed companions. “One is very glad you are safe, nadiin-ji.” A second, deeper bow, as he walked, a feat of agility. “One apologizes, one very profoundly apologizes for the difficulty.”

“The sentiment is greatly appreciated, young gentleman,” Banichi said quietly.

“There will be breakfast very soon,” Cajeiri reported.

“That, actually,” Jago said, “will come verywelcome.” She hitched the bag higher on her shoulder as she moved. “We shall, however, wash.”

“Use both baths, nadiin-ji,” Bren said. “You have complete priority, there and in the dining hall. Please use it.”

“We shall manage,” Banichi said. “I shall go down with Cenedi’s men.” He evaded Cajeiri’s attempt to help with his heavy bag, and winced a bit. “One is grateful, but this is heavy, and the Guild handles its own baggage. One is very glad to know you are safe, young gentleman.”

“One is ever so sorry, Banichi-ji! One is ever so sorry to have mixed things up!”

“You survived. Your companions survived.”

“We are all safe, Banichi-ji.”

“Good.”

“Shall one alert nand’ Siegi, nadiin-ji?” Bren asked. Siegi was the dowager’s personal physician.

“Not if he prevents us from breakfast,” Banichi said, never stopping. “Or our bath.”

“We shall call him!” Cajeiri exclaimed, and was off at a run, Antaro and Jegari lingering for an embarrassed bow.

“Nand’ Siegi is not to come upstairs until he has tended Kasari,” Jago said.

“Nadi,” they said, bowing, then ran after Cajeiri.

Bren walked with Banichi and Jago down the remainder of the hall; so did Tano and Algini, as far as their suite and inside.

“The dowager’s company,” Algini said grimly at that point, “lost Pejan and Rasano.”

Jago stopped, and let the baggage she carried thump to the floor, unhappy punctuation.

“They were experienced,” she said. “How?”

“It was Nochidi and Keigan that got past them,” Algini said. “Those two got inside, through the roof, likely in the distraction of our arrival.”

“Are they still a matter of concern?” Jago asked.

“Dead, both,” Tano said.

“Settled, then,” Banichi said. “So is Lord Baiji’s guard.” He shed his coat with a sigh, then helped Jago pull hers off. Jago’s left shoulder was bleeding, or had bled, into thick bandages.

“Jago-ji,” Bren said.

“Minor, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “Quite minor. Bath, stitches, breakfast, in that order. The driver is taking the truck back to the village to refuel. But it will be available at need.”

“One fears the estate bus is not capable of being driven, nadiin-ji,” Bren said.

“One noticed the condition of the south gate,” Banichi said, “from the road.”

“The driver opted not to ask the front door be unbolted,” Bren said. “Please. See to yourselves, at greatest priority. Shall I send breakfast here—if you would be more comfortable?”

Jago said, with a little wince, “That would be welcome, Bren-ji.”

“Very welcome,” Banichi said, and pulled off his shirt. “We would be most obliged.”

“I shall then,” he said, and left the room—left it to Guild debriefing to Guild, as they urgently needed to do. The first encounter with a maid in the hall sent that message to the kitchens: service for his guard and the dowager’s, in quarters.

They had the aiji’s men next door, at Kajiminda. That was an improvement. That he wouldn’t have to send his bodyguard back in to settle that business, that was an improvement.

But they had two dead, a loss that the dowager would not forget. Nor could he.

Settled, Banichi had said. But he was very, very dubious that it was at all settled. Geigi’s estate had taken damage—in several senses. The Korisul Coastal Association might have had an attack come into its midst: but the Marid Association, the four-clan aggregation that lay at the heart of the Southern Coastal Association, had both flexed its muscle and committed a critical error of timing.

That was good, in the sense that the situation had gone no further.

But where were Geigi’s people? All quiet, the Edi, while outsiders had prepared to assassinate the paidhi-aiji and while Baiji had made extraordinary gestures—extraordinary effort from such an unenterprising man; but on which side he had exerted such effort, and with what intent was not in the least clear.

Likely nobody they could trust for information yet knew all the things he wanted to knowc but pieces of that information might be had, here and there, and he meant to have them.

He had a unique responsibility now as a regional lord, in Geigi’s absence, in the situation with Kajiminda. He’d never had to exercise it. Still, he knew what that responsibility was, and that was to defend his people and assert their rights, and to extend a stabilizing influence throughout the Korisul Association. He had to represent his people with the aiji, had to secure what was good for the district, and the occupation by Tabini, a Ragi lord, was not, ultimately, going to be acceptable with the Edic who, for one thing, had to be approached, and asked what the hell had happened here. They were not likely to talk to Tabini, on general principles.

They might talk to him. He couldn’t swear to that. They might not, given the situation, even talk to Lord Geigi himself.

That had to be dealt with.

They had the Farai in his apartment; they had the Marid trying to disrupt the aishidi’tat; they had the Edi coast in disarray, for starters, and they had the aiji having had to move Guild into action in the Korisul, where Ragi-directed Guild historically had never been welcome.

He was, when he added it all up, mad. He had been mad last night. He was damned mad this morning.

And no little worried about the future.

Not least of which was a matter that had been nagging the back of his mind since last night on the bus.

The Edi. Edi—who constituted part of the population of Najida village. Who were partially the reasonKajiminda estate and Najida estate had enjoyed such a steady, reliable flow of information.

Ramaso hadn’t warned him. Ramaso hadn’t said a damned thing about the mowing, just about the debt. Had said there was a lapse in contact. But absent the critical information about Edi leaving Kajiminda—it hadn’t conveyed the real situation there.

And Ramaso hadn’t known that fact?

He wasn’t mad at Ramaso—yet. But that question was forming in his mind.

Edi. And total silence. Not unlike them. They pursued their own business. They were not a government, officially, within the aishidi’tatc but they settled their own affairs, handled their own disputes, and generally didn’t make outsiders aware of their business. A silent, self-directing lot—they frowned on their secrets being discovered. They’d run illicit trade. There was a tacit sort of agreement with the aishidi’tat: the aiji’s law didn’t investigate things in the Edi community and the Edi didn’t do things to annoy outsiders.

So there was at least a situation behind the silence about the neighboring estate—and he understood Ramaso had one foot in the village community and one foot in the estate, so to speak.

But not warning him? Worse, letting him take the aiji’s son over there with him?

There were questions.

There were a lot of questions—some of which he was prepared to ask, and some of which he was prepared to investigate.

But theirs was an old relationship. And Edi reticence and the Edi reputation for piracy and assassination had managed to keep the coup from touching Najida in his absence.

So it was worth a little second thought—his frustration with Ramaso’s silence.

It was worth a careful approach, and a due respect for what services the man had given him. Maybe, he thought, he ought to talk to Banichi about the matter—doubtless Banichi had also added up certain missing pieces of information, but Banichi was not from the district; Banichi and Jago came from further inland, part of the aiji’s household, once upon a time, and that—

That could be an issue that might complicate any investigation his bodyguard tried to make.

Diplomacy, besides, was hisexpertise.

He found Ramaso in the servants’ hall, supervising a temporary repair on the ceiling paneling—one of the young men was on a ladder taking measurements—and approached him quietly. “Rama-ji,” he said, and before all other business, inquired about their driver. “How is Iscarti this morning? One is distressed not yet to have gotten down to see him—my guard does not want to be parted from me—or from their monitoring equipment.”

“He certainly will understand. He is much improved, nandi. Awake and talking, with diminishing doses of painkiller. His mother has come up from the village.”

A piece of good news. “Brave woman. One is very glad. Tell him not to worry in the least about his family. Tell him we will see his salary paid, and his family protected, not even a question about the medical bills. And we will get down there, among first things when my guard lets me leave this hall.”

“One will do so, nandi. Though he asks us what did happen. He says he cannot remember.”

“Then I shall personally tell him what he did. With all gratitude.”

“That will so greatly please him, nandi.”

“One thing more you can do for me, Rama-ji.”

“What would this be, nandi?”

The question.

And the wider question.