Destroyer

That would have kept humans in space, giving no alternative but the ship, and no leadership or authority but the captains who had insisted on going out and exploring further, ostensibly hunting some vantage from which they could figure out where they were—but in fact poking and prodding among likely near stars for further and further expansion of human presence, greater and easier resources.

They’d have touched off the kyo sooner or later, and sooner or later gotten the kyo here with blood in their eye… to the planet’s detriment. And the planet would never have known what hit it or why—if those mountains had not existed, if those mountains had not divided eastern atevi from western and let humans get a safe foothold down here.

Curious thought, that humans might have endangered the world—but the humans down here were the ones who might prevent that danger from coming down on the world.

He had done his best, hadn’t he? No matter it had done damage, it had not done the ultimate damage—had not let war come on the world unawares.

And not all the changes were harmful.

Thanks to his predecessor in the paidhi’s office, and thanks to him, as well, planes had fairly recently rendered that divide much more crossable. Planes had united the two halves of the continent across that mountain divide that rail had found all but insurpassable, and brought the east into the politics of the west… which had brought benefits of peace, of cooperation, a flowering of art, a cross-pollination of atevi cultures. In her youth, Ilisidi had been an exotic foreigner herself, marrying the aiji of the west, arriving by train in what had been, half a century ago, an arduous and epic rail journey.

But darker politics had ridden those rails, too, before Ilisidi’s day. Politics, and a rising resentment of the formation of the aishidi’tat in the west, eastern politics that had once seen that railroad as a means of war against the west, forging an alliance with a few conservative western powers like the Atageini and the Kadigidi, jealous of the aiji’s authority, and most of all opposing a lingering human influence on the mainland, wanting even to take back Mospheira and obliterate human presence there. The east had missed the start of the War of the Landing—and the very knowledge the east might be coming in had led to the war-weary west and the human survivors entering negotiations before things flew out of control. The threat of eastern intervention had led to the ceding of Mospheira to humans and the relocation of the indigenous people of Mospheira to the coast, all before the east could get its chance to get in, and before it could find an excuse to ratchet up the war again.

So war and technology that sent trains across the mountains made peace among atevi, unachievable before there were humans to detest and decry. And from that time there had been paidhiin, trying to comply with the Treaty, leaking technology off Mospheira ever so slowly. Eventually the rail link had led to Ilisidi, an eastern consort for a western aiji. And the modern aishidi’tat was born.

Ilisidi’s Malguri lay beyond that deceptive haze, still a three hour flight away… but only a three hour flight away, which he had made, oh, under varied circumstances, never the train trip. The distance was still difficult—on today’s scale.

And the plainest fact of atevi politics was that the continental divide was still a political watershed as well as a geological one. There were still two very different atevi opinions, and because there was advantage to be had in turmoil, the Kadigidi and the Atageini, sitting in the heart of the west, still played politics with Ilisidi, the eastern consort, who chaperoned a half-Atageini heir of her own bloodline. And lately the Kadigidi had played even stranger politics by allying with south-coastal atevi, namely the Taisigin. And now there was another move, and a Kadigidi claimed to be aiji.

Only over his own dead body… granted numerous people would happily arrange that.

God, there was so much water under the bridge. Planets were so complicated, compared to the steel worlds he’d lived in the last few years.

And why did he think of such things? When his mind went into involuntary fugue, there was, damn it all, something bubbling down in the depths of his consciousness that was trying to surface, something that might be urgent, something that had been bothering him ever since breakfast, and he had sent that letter out, to what fate he now had no way of dictating.

For one thing, that landscape out there drew his mind down to planetary scale, down to the distances riders and trucks and trains could cover in a day, and reminded him how ordinary folk thought, and why they thought that way.

That view reminded him of the resources Tabini had had when, leaving here, one supposed he had headed for deeper cover, taking his Atageini wife with him.

But without an airplane or extraordinary determination with the cross-continental train, he could not have gotten much beyond those hills—nor would he have had much motive to exit the west, where he had some allies. In the east, yes, as the grandson of the lady of Malguri, he did have some cachet—but feuds predominated in that district and no outsider could exert any authority. No. Tabini would not lean to Ilisidi’s side of the family. Tabini—

Tabini was waiting. Tabini expected the ship to come back. Tabini, once he heard of their presence on the planet, would not sit idly by and wait…

Not Tabini. No. It wasn’t in his character.

A little stir near the door drew his attention. Algini had come to sit near it, just waiting, perhaps resting, in those odd moments that his staff caught rest.

Or watching him. Wondering why the paidhi stood staring out the window.

Everything became part of the fugue. Even the least talkative member of his bodyguard. Even a room in which they still dared not speak too much truth.

“Tell me,” he said, to Algini’s golden, impassive gaze. “If the aiji were to hear of our presence and come in unexpectedly, could he arrive safely in this house, ‘Gini-ji? And would there be prearranged signals between him and the staff that we also should learn—if they exist?”

Algini was as rare with his smiles as with his words, and this smile was rarer still, a gentle one. “Your staff has indeed asked this question of the household,” Algini said, managing not to make the paidhi feel too much the fool. “This staff will not confide to us any such signals, if they exist. They ask us to allow them to deal with any untoward event.”

So much for complete trust.

“Does Damiri-daja know them, and is there a possibility she knows them and has not told Tabini-aiji?”

“One can by no means say,” Algini said. “But we have considered that possibility, too.”

A small look at the ceiling, at the peripheries, thinking of bugs, and a sober look back at Algini. “And the message, ‘Gini-ji? Have you a clue how the dowager has heard it?”

“We have given the paidhi’s message to Cenedi, and it may by now have passed into Lord Tatiseigi’s hands, possibly further, into the hands of his staff. The rest depends on whether the messengers will go, and whether they will go by rail, which will bring them to Shejidan very quickly, or whether they will go in stealth, nandi. We cannot say.” It was Algini’s habit to answer only the immediate question. But he added: “Cenedi has confidence in this household’s skill, if not in their equipment being up to date.”

The dowager had more credit with Tatiseigi than he did. That was for very certain.

But it was worth remembering that Cenedi himself would have visited this house when Ilisidi had been, for extended periods, a guest, perhaps a lover, of the Atageini lord… possibly even while her husband was alive, if certain nefarious whispers were true, in the days after the birth of her son and during the dark days when the whole nation had tottered in uncertainty and suspicion, as to whether the eastern consort, namely Ilisidi, would steal away the heir and go to her own stronghold in Malguri to attempt to raise a rival power. In those days, the legislature in Shejidan had seen it as, yes, extremely possible that Ilisidi herself had come to the Atageini, gathering support among the more conservative central lords to seize power in Shejidan.

Instead, her son Valasi had grown up as a Ragi lord, had ruled with a hard hand. Valasi had died, not as an old man—some blamed Ilisidi herself, or Tabini—and the legislature had pointedly skipped over Ilisidi’s suggestion that her election as aiji of the aishidi’tat might ‘stabilize’ the association. The legislature had appointed Tabini as aiji at a very young age, to the frustration of certain conservative lords—notably Tatiseigi, notably the Kadigidi.

By all he had heard, it had been a battle royal in the legislature. Tabini had been young, full of ideas, combative with Wilson-paidhi, who had resigned in distress. So Tabini had gotten a new paidhi-aiji. Him. A paidhi considered too young for his job, too. They’d had that in common from the start.

They’d taken too much to each other, perhaps.

They’d gotten too much done too fast, debatably so, in the opinion of very many people these days. Lucky or not—they’d been able to respond when humans arrived in space and reopened the abandoned space station. If they hadn’t been ready, having pushed their technology past airplanes, to the brink of a space program—another loop of the fugue—they’d have watched the space station and possibly Mospheira itself run by a very problematic human authority. Those were the facts, but they weren’t facts with which the conservatives could be at peace. Ever.

They certainly weren’t facts the legislature loved, when the old men of the hasdrawad, the house of lords, got together to bemoan the younger generation.

Now, failing response from Tabini, with a Kadigidi upstart calling himself aiji, but not highly regarded in the central regions, in the very heart of his power, the Guild, which had sat paralyzed, might well move to install Ilisidi as regent for Cajeiri—and some few easterners might even hope to lose Cajeiri in some convenient accident. A move to install Ilisidi as a strong regent might gain support from Tabini’s followers as well as from old-line conservatives like Tatiseigi. Various factions, united in their dislike of a Kadigidi aiji, might logically reconsider their support of the usurper and line up temporarily behind Ilisidi.

But politics—politics—politics. It would be bloody.

“ ‘Gini-ji?” A sudden thought. “Does one suppose this house might already have sent some secret message to Tabini?”

“Again, we have inquired, and gotten no answer. But we all think it far more likely Taiben has, nandi.”

Of course. Taiben certainly would have contacted Tabini, if that district knew where to reach him. By mechieti, or even by phone—granted a phone line was still uncut or untapped in the district of Taiben, most notably the phone lines that followed the railroad… they might have just phoned him and said, The dowager is back.

While the Atageini staff kept refusing questions. Interesting. Disturbing.

And Algini sat watch, when he was in the apartment, and there was really no need. Reality came crashing in.

“Why are you standing guard, ‘Gini-ji? Is something afoot?”

Algini shrugged. “The Atageini staff has gone on alert, nandi. One believes, in dispute between the Atageini and the Kadigidi, the staff foresees action. Possibly tonight. Possibly earlier. They have resources of information we do not.”

“So will a message go to the Guild, ‘Gini-ji?”

“Uncertain. One has no idea.” Algini only cast a warning look at the ceiling. Not another word, that look said. God knew why.

Disturbing. A move underway, likely tentative, perhaps some forewarning. He envisioned the dowager, perhaps, being better able to politic without him. He could leave his files with her. He could withdraw to a more remote place, out of range. She had witnessed everything that needed swearing to, out in remote space. She and Cajeiri could tell everything that he could tell.

Certainly if he wanted to lessen the pressure on the situation here, there was Taiben for a retreat—and the foothills, on the other side, the forested skirts of those mist-hidden mountains. The mountain villages were, unlike the lowlands, not highly associated with the capital. The web of associations there looked more like a tangle, this village allied to one over the ridge, but not to the one nearest. In the old days, back when the Atageini house had had reason to be a fortress, those hills out the window had been a region of feuding chiefs and not a little outright banditry. As a refuge, it had its advantages. But it took a reference book to figure out the man’chiin involved between the villages, some of which territory neighbored Kadigidi land, for good or for ill.

Third loop of the fugue. What in hell was he thinking? Run from here? Retreat? Look for safety, where he could only endanger the Taibeni, or those villages, less prepared than the Atageini to hold trouble at bay?

A railroad linked the principal villages, and ran up to the highlands University, the apex of civilization in the district, itself lying outside man’chi and as neutral to all parties as it was possible to be, give or take minor allegiances to those lords and powers who endowed it—hoping an institution of learning would bring greater prosperity and less banditry to the region.

They had taken that route once, when they went up to visit the observatory. He remembered game running beside the antiquated train. Remembered a long climb up and down.

A lightning stroke. The hills.

The university.

The Astronomer Emeritus, Grigiji. The observatory, remote in the hills. A revered old man all but worshipped by his students, beloved by the court—but a man not likely in great favor with the new regime, his work having abetted Tabini’s efforts to reach into space. Another likely to be threatened by the upheaval.

Up in those hills, toward the mountains. Grigiji.

Where better to keep an eye to the sky, to know when the ship had returned, even when the shuttle launched?

He felt a chill. He decided he didn’t want to know Tabini’s whereabouts. He didn’t want to have that supposition in his head, remembering another time, early in his association with Ilisidi, when he’d been caught and questioned, very unpleasantly.

He wished he could talk freely with his staff, a free and open conference. But this wasn’t the place. Bad enough risk they’d run, discussing the letter and the Guild. But Tatiseigi had to find out they were up to something, or he’d only listen the harder.

Fugue done. Threads knit. Wide awake. He looked uneasily at the sky—momentary flash of steel and plastics, close corridors. Jase. What are you up to? he wondered, feeling a little forlorn. Can’t say I wish you were here at the moment. Not a good situation.

Flash of open sea and heaving deck underfoot. Hope you made it home, brother. And maybe got some fishing done. Stay out there, if you get the choice. Don’t be answering questions from the press. That game’s no good for a relationship. Good luck to you and Barb.

From brain-wearying fugue to a last few flashes of distance-spanning longing, pieces of him stretched thin. He’d never moved from the window. But he’d been on a long, scattered journey. Likely the tea was cold. He’d had only a single cup, and he’d learned it was precious, in the economy of the universe. He went and poured himself a tepid cup, drank it anyway, sitting in the well-padded chair. He was mentally tired, even physically tired after the mind-trip he’d taken. Curious how the brain wore the body out, and how it didn’t work the other way around.

He shut his eyes, wishing he didn’t know what he suspected he knew, but what—he reassured himself—Tatiseigi and his whole staff and the Kadigidi likely knew. He waited, cradling his lukewarm teacup. He thought about marauding Kadigidi creeping through the topiary hedges.

Over near the door Algini, clearly bored, stripped and oiled his gun, waiting. Bren smelled the oil. He didn’t need to look. He smelled the thousand scents that wafted through the open window. Curious, how many, many different scents a planet had, each freighted with significance.

Hadn’t taken him long at all to acclimate to negatively-curved horizons. He wondered if Jase would get queasy again, after being back in his element so long.

Deep sigh. A state near sleep, hindbrain running autopilot. The teacup was still safe in his hands. He probably should ask Algini to do the same maintenance for his gun, which, with Shawn’s computer attachment, was tucked into his gear.

Steps outside, ordinarily beneath his hearing, audible in the general hush. Algini got up.

Heavy steps. Several. Algini opened the door. Banichi and Jago were back.

“Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and came and sat down in the opposite chair, Jago standing behind him. Banichi set arms on his knees and leaned very close. “Tano has been out by the stables. He reports there have been numerous mechieti here before the rain, for what that may mean, and now there are only five, besides ours. Cenedi is aware. Possibly it is as mundane as the movement of an Atageini herd to the hills, after use in the hunt. On the other hand, there might have been visitors here in the last few days that the lord has simply not mentioned.”

Tatiseigi, the old fox, had made a career of holding everyone’s secrets, and moving very suddenly in the direction that gained him most. A patrol sent out, and never mentioned? Visitors, from one faction or the other, a diplomatic mission from the Kadigidi?

And not a word yet about his carefully crafted letter to the Guild. His brain threatened to enter fog-state again, having ten new things to process, none of them pleasant.

“Dare we speak, nadiin-ji?”

Banichi moved his eyes to the left, a slight warning. Bren bit his lip, increasingly uneasy in this luxurious, secretive house, and needing, dammit, more information.

“Lord Tatiseigi has read your letter, nandi, and is considering the matter.”

So Ilisidi had sent it on, implying she thought it should be sent. Tatiseigi was considering. And Algini indicated they were fast running out of time.

Things absolutely had to be said. “Come,” he said to them, and went to the writing desk.

He enlivened the computer screen. Wrote:

I have a wild guess, nadiin-ji, where Tabini is: with Grigiji.

Leaning over his shoulder, they read it, absorbed that with a little gratifying expression of surprise and a glance exchanged between them.

He wrote further: Algini says that the Kadigidi may make a move tonight. What Tano found at the stables may mean there has been diplomatic traffic from the Kadigidi—or from Tabini-aiji—or simply that there are more Atageini patrols out that his staff has never mentioned. One hopes for either of the last two.

Banichi signaled that he would answer. He dropped to one knee, took the computer, balancing it while he entered, hunt and peck with his much larger hand, and a telegraphic brevity:

The dowager says if Tatiseigi acts against her interests her staff will act against him, but that situation remains uncertain. She has considered Cenedi’s plan to move against the Kadigidi, which would seize the initiative and make it more sure that Tatiseigi cannot waver in his alliance with her. He has also proposed to her that the paidhi take the heir and withdraw to some unknown place, maybe Taiben. If the heir were not here, it would complicate the Kadigidi’s situation and divide their attention. Should something befall Cenedi and the dowager come to odds with our host, the boy would not be in Lord Tatiseigi’s hands.

My God, he thought, and reached for the computer.

Does she think she is in danger from Tatiseigi? I cannot believe Cenedi would give up Ilisidi as lost in that event. Whose interest is he protecting?

Banichi took the computer. We are not confident in Cenedi’s plan. Cenedi may not survive a mission against the Kadigidi, with or without our assistance, and he will rely only on us, not on the Atageini staff. He strongly believes there are spies in the house. He mentions the primitive nature of much of the monitoring equipment and communication here, which will be penetrated by the Kadigidi in any determined attack, and may give them access to our transmissions. Tano and Algini might go with him, and their help would at least raise the odds of his success, but Murini is much more likely resident in Shejidan, which means a very difficult operation, whether to draw him out to his province, or go after him in the capital. Your staff is not willing to throw all resources into this mission. If Cenedi should fail and we were all with him, no one but Tatiseigi’s staff would protect you, Cajeiri, the dowager, and the resistance to Murini. This is not acceptable, and we will not take that course. We do not support Cenedi’s proposal.

He seized the computer, then hardly knew what to say. It is absolutely not useful that the Guild see the heir as under my influence. I am the worst possible guardian for him. This is not feasible, nadiin-ji.

Jago reached for the machine. Typed: If you are correct that the aiji is at the observatory, putting Cajeiri into his father’s hands would be one answer to criticism.

He wrote, in his turn, rapid fire: I am by no means certain the aiji is there, nor do I have great hopes of reaching him with the boy in tow. And if I deliver him to his father—forgive me, nadiin-ji, but right now the dowager can attract the more conservative elements of the aishidi’tat, but Tabini-aiji is at disadvantage in that regard, and to have me and the boy join him does not answer the criticism of human influence in the situation. Does this house staff believe it can withstand an incursion tonight, granted Tatiseigi is being forthright with the dowager about his man’chi?

Banichi shrugged. “Baji-naji, Bren-ji.”

Dice-throw, that was to say. In Cenedi’s best plan, they were down to attempting to assassinate Murini, an aiji with a following, and all-out clan warfare, regional warfare, was likely as a consequence. This was where the Assassins’ Guild in Shejidan was supposed to step in, to declare which claimant to supreme power it supported. It should eliminate the loser and restore peace and balance.

But Cenedi would have the fat in the fire before the Guild could get into action, if Cenedi proceeded against Murini’s clan, Tatiseigi’s neighbors.

Unless his letter to the Guild could persuade Tatiseigi there was substance enough to throw his prestige behind it and affix his seal as a lord in support of his appeal, it would never reach the Guild at all.

Phoning that appeal in—was possible, if they could hijack a line; but a phone message was only informative. Legally, paper needed to be there, with house seals: the Guild operated by rules, with paper, with seals, with incontrovertible Filed evidence. A phone call had no legal standing.

But even if the physical letter did get there under seal, past all obstacles including Tatiseigi and Kadigidi interception, it was unlikely to produce immediate action. Unless the Guild had been waiting for some excuse to support Tabini, and fell upon his letter of appeal to the Guild as exactly the small legality they needed to have on record, they would not move fast enough.

Stalemate in the Guild. At best outcome, he was going to get a summons to a Guild hearing that would produce his safe conduct in a few days, but that did nothing to defend them tonight. Their immediate defense was in their own hands. The dowager’s young men, though decorative, were certainly not ornament. Neither, above all else, was Cenedi—who, yes, stood a marginal chance of doing exactly what he proposed: he was that good.

But the moment he left, then what did they get? Tatiseigi with the dowager under his roof and Cenedi off in Kadigidi territory? The heir here with her, in Tatiseigi’s hands?

It was a line of thought that he really, truly didn’t like.

He wrote: The moment Cenedi separates himself from the dowager, we would have far less means under this roof to resist whatever Tatiseigi might decide to do.

Banichi replied: Tatiseigi is ambitious. This has never changed. One doubts he would harm the dowager, but he would seize the upper hand if he could get it. Moving the heir out of his reach would mean the boy would not return to Tatiseigi unless the dowager sent for him.

His turn. Has she agreed with Cenedi? Has she asked this of us?

Banichi nodded.

He wrote: And it has to be done now, if it is to be done.

Another nod.

He wrote: If my letter is to go out, it must go within the hour, it seems, or risk falling afoul of her plans. Is there no way to persuade the lord and the dowager to work together?

Banichi and Jago exchanged a look, and then Jago took the computer.

We have argued strongly with Cenedi to defend this house and not to make this assault into Kadigidi territory. Cenedi believes this house is ultimately indefensible and that it is safer to carry the attack to the Kadigidi rather than to rely on the lord’s antiquated equipment. We believe that his making this attack will be a fatal error, but we expect the dowager will allow it. She generally yields to Cenedi in such affairs. The security deficits are demonstrable, a surprise even to Cenedi, and we have no standing to dispute him.

He wrote: Can I persuade her?

Banichi took the computer back this time, and thought a moment. Find her another course.

Twice damn. As easy to move a river in spate than divert the dowager from her intentions, especially when she failed to trust her former lover and Cenedi’s was the only advice.

And they all sat and acted under a roof where they could not talk freely, not only for fear of Tatiseigi overhearing, but for fear of Kadigidi spies.

He took the computer back. “I shall write another letter, nadiin-ji. This one to her. Thank you.”

They understood. They left him to it, for what little time they might have. And he sat in front of the computer and buried his face in his hands, shutting out the light, trying to think.

Then he wrote:

Bren-paidhi to the esteemed aiji-dowager. Aiji-ma, if my continued presence in this household is in any wise a hindrance to negotiations you may see fit to conduct, I am prepared to withdraw and seek safety elsewhere. You might view a changed situation if you did not also bear the burden of protecting and defending me. I believe strongly that I can guess where Tabini is, and will undertake to reach him, since it seems little likely that I can reach Shejidan. I would also undertake to bring your grandson safely to his father if it seems wise or politic to you to entrust him to me. You might go with me, too, aiji-ma, but these are matters in which I can only offer alternatives, by no means advice to one wise and clever. The paidhi urges in the strongest terms that you spend no force aggressively, but defend this house, allying yourself with Tatiseigi in that enterprise, with which he will much better agree. This close alliance between you and the Atageini, the paidhi believes, will not be what the opposition hopes to see, and the Kadigidi may be provoked into a succession of rash and expensive attacks which may wear down their forces and diminish their respect and their stature. One failure to penetrate your defenses will make them seem weaker than many have thought. Two failures will begin to make them look like fools. Three would cut deeply into their resources. And in the defense of Atageini land against the Kadigidi, one strongly suspects even Taiben would render assistance.

Most urgently I urge you to persuade Tatiseigi to send my letter to the Guild, as intervention by that body, if it could be moved, could save very many lives and preserve the peace.

Be assured I will abide by your wise decision.

I ask you to destroy this message utterly and send a message back with the bearer, with the confidence that I shall likewise destroy the message beyond recovery.

He wrote it out by hand, set his seal on it, and went and gave it to Banichi. “She will reply,” he said, and settled down to an intolerable wait, staring out the window, with nothing to think about but disasters, and routes, and defenses.

It took much longer than he hoped. Perhaps Ilisidi had taken offense at his advice. Perhaps she and Banichi and Cenedi were down the hall having a bitter argument, which might bar Banichi from further consultations.

Worst thought—Tatiseigi might have gotten curious, or tried to intercept his message or her reply. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Steps approached the door. Banichi came in and brought him a sealed message.

“Stay,” Bren said. “Nadiin-ji, all of you.”

Everyone took chairs near him as he pried loose the wax seal and unrolled the tight curl of the message.

The aiji-dowager to the paidhi-aiji. When has the paidhi joined the Assassins? Your arguments have already made several trips here wearing Banichi’s face.

Damn, he thought. He’d failed.

In advance of any move against the Kadigidi, we have decided to consult our host regarding your interesting notion, and if he is amenable, to send one of our great-grandson’s attendants back to Taiben to test their willingness to join in defense.

Taiben. For God’s sake, it was not the point of his letter. It was a side argument.

If the Atageini will consent and if Taiben will respond to defend the Atageini, this would be unprecedented. But yours is an excellent proposal. There has never been such heredity as my great-grandson’s. He has always been one of my best ideas.

Tatiseigi has sent your letter by courier.

Come to the library for tea within the hour.

He felt a little light-headed as he passed the note to Banichi, who read it impassively, and then with a little lift of the brows

Banichi passed it to Jago. It went from her to Algini, and to Tano, and Tano read it and proffered it back.

“Destroy it, nadi-ji,” he said, and Tano went to the desk and lit the wax-jack, then burned the message, and crumpled the incriminating ash to an irrecoverable smear across his hand.

Chapter 11

Afternoon tea meant well and away a higher-dress event than breakfast. There was no Narani to see to a proper coat and lace cuffs—there was no truly proper coat, for that matter, and no source for him to find one… Cajeiri’s might almost have done, if Cajeiri had had a spare, which he did not. So Banichi and Jago brushed his morning coat, steamed the wrinkles from it and his shirt in the bath, and had him at least presentable.

All the same he felt ill at ease, going downstairs, and with Banichi and Jago having to ask their way of dimly cooperative servants, who said, guardedly, yes, m’lord was expecting him in the library for tea.

No security stood outside. He might be early. He slipped through the ornate, lily-carved doors and, seeing Lord Tatiseigi sitting by the fire, made as unobtrusive a bow as possible, wondering if there was any graceful way to slip out again and await the dowager. But no, there was no way to retreat now. Banichi and Jago had stayed at the door. The lord was here unprotected—ostensibly. But there was, at the far end of the room, another door.

It might be a test. An incredibly important test. “Nandi.” A second small bow as he approached a chair. The old lord was resplendent in dark gold brocade, in a flood of pointed lace down the front of his shirt. He—was shabby, to say the least. “One regrets ever so much the inability to honor your hospitality with appropriate dress. This is so elegant a house, and my baggage was packed for rough living.”

“You did not foresee a welcome here?”

“One extravagantly hoped to be received for an interview, perhaps gain permission to cross your lands, nandi.” He still stood. Tatiseigi had not invited him to sit. “But one would not have presumed to take a welcome for granted.”

“Ha.” Tatiseigi looked not to believe it of him. He was a handsome old man, extremely jealous of his proprieties in a world that had changed far too fast for him. He was going some even to receive a human alone, in this inner sanctum, though they had talked before… in the Bu-javid, principally, where social interaction was compelled and carefully choreographed—well, where such was supposed to be the case. There had been a most unfortunate evening…

“And does this gracious solicitude,” Tatiseigi asked, “extend to gunfire under my roof?”

“One hopes not to endanger this household in any particular, nandi.” There was the unfortunate affair of the lilies, besides the first one. Tatiseigi would never let that go. “I am particularly sensible of the passions which confront my return from this mission, nandi, a quite reasonable demand for an accounting, which I am prepared to give. One would never wish to bring political difficulty on this house, or to provoke the Kadigidi. I understand there is an imminent threat.”

Tatiseigi simply gave him a fish-stare and kept staring, and had not yet invited him to sit down. The old lord had sent his letter, Ilisidi had said. He had dispatched a courier from his staff at considerable risk. But clearly it was not done for his sake.

The jaw moved. Briefly. “We will not countenance Kadigidi intrusion.”

“One is informed, nandi, that the Atageini are very formidable in that regard.”

“Ha. Spies, is it? Your Taibeni brats?”

At that point Ilisidi arrived, a rescue, a decided rescue. Tatiseigi rose to hand the dowager to a favored and comfortable chair.

“We see elegance, despite the circumstances of travel, Sidi-ji,” Tatiseigi said, quite pointedly regarding the paidhi’s less than splendid appearance, Bren was sure; and in fact the dowager with her black garments and blood-red lace made a very brave show, in a dark color in which packing wrinkles, if they were possibly allowed to exist, would not show. Much more practical, that, than his pale coat.

Ilisidi sat down with her hands on her walking-stick, ramrod straight. Bren took hers as a blanket permission to sit down, and he took the lefthand chair.

“Flatterer,” Ilisidi said primly. “But we accept it. One notes there has not been complete warfare between you and the paidhi in my absence.”

A small silence in which Tatiseigi, who might have protested that the paidhi had been perfectly gracious and polite in conversation, did not.

“Lord Tatiseigi has been very patient,” Bren said dutifully, and Ilisidi’s right eyebrow arched.

“Well?” she asked. “Patient, is it? A good thing, considering. And the letter has gone. Ah,” she said, deliberately diverting her attention and deflecting argument as Cajeiri came trailing in. “Great-grandson.”

“Mani-ma. Nandiin.” A stiff little bow, and Cajeiri walked to the one of the chairs—there were five—next Ilisidi’s right hand, and sat down, hands gripping the cushion edge. Late arrival, and very tight-lipped. One wondered what had occasioned the tardiness.

At that point, however, tea arrived through the main doors, a huge porcelain service in the hands of a very strong servant in green, followed by three young maidservants in soft gold and lily white coats.

No business was possibly appropriate while formal tea service went on in such a hall, nor, again, was it possible while the tea was being drunk. There were, at Ilisidi’s request, two rounds of service… and then a third. Tatiseigi had been impatient. Now he became edgy and frustrated, raising an eyebrow at Ilisidi. Cajeiri looked at his great-uncle, then at his great-grandmother, and back again in increasing frustration.

The paidhi kept focused on his tea cup and kept quiet, trying to avoid being spoken to or looked at for the interim.

“So,” Tatiseigi said, just that, after a mortal long time of waiting.

Ilisidi took a lingering sip of tea, and the lineaments of her face rearranged themselves subtly in what might be amusement. Or not. She made as if to set the tea cup down. And did not. She held it in her hands, carefully. “We have a proposition for our host.”

“And what would this be?”

A long inhalation, a slight stretch of frail shoulders, and she held out the tea cup for the servant to pour another. In the background, servant desperately signaled servant: the tea had run out. There needed to be more. “One has a notion,” Ilisidi said serenely, while servants scurried, “that the Kadigidi are bound to move against this house—I have even had the likelihood reported to me, as happens, through your own staff. One would be extremely distressed to see hostile forces move here to the detriment of the Atageini.”

A slight move of Tatiseigi’s shoulder. A shrug. “They would not be wise to do so.”

“Oh, doubtless, but then the Kadigidi know the lay of the land as well as the premises, since you hosted that ingrate Murini during the last upheaval.”

A muscle jumped in Tatiseigi’s jaw. “A mistake.”

“One we might ourselves have made, to be sure. But one is also very sure he was taking notes. Nor would such a slinking creature care for the odds as they might exist in a simple dispute between Atageini and Kadigidi, no, not this scoundrel. The Guild will not act. But Murini will gather reinforcement, and hire others, perhaps southerners.”

“He is in Shejidan.”

“Ah, but are all his servants, Tati-ji? Surely servants came with him, when he was a guest here.”

“One believes,” Tatiseigi muttered.

“They might easily advance onto Atageini land—in great numbers. And against such odds, and with their having observed the defenses at close hand, there might well be damage, even extensive damage to this house. We would ever so greatly deplore that. We had ever so much rather advance the quarrel to their territory and let it damage their crops and paintwork.”

Paintwork was a very touchy topic with the Atageini, and Ilisidi had neither shame nor remorse.

“Cease your campaign, woman,” Tatiseigi said with a wave of his hand. “We have sent this cursed letter, for all the good that may come of it, on your recommendation. The mission took away three of my staff, who might have defended this house.”

“Ah, but now, now, Tati-ji, I know where we can gain three back, and thirty more.”

“From what hidden source, pray?”

“My great-grandson, your grand-nephew, has acquired the man’chi of Taiben.”

Two heads moved, Cajeiri’s for a short sharp look at his great-grandmother, and Tatiseigi’s as if someone had just thrown something cold and wet right in his face.

It was, however, Ilisidi sitting there, and Tatiseigi did not explode outright.

“By no means,” he cried indignantly. “By no means, Sidi-ji, do we countenance these ragtag foresters who chase game into Atageini fields and refuse us any tithe of it! We have allowed two under this roof, but only on tolerance, and as a situation with our grand-nephew we earnestly counsel should never have happened, and should be dealt with at the first opportunity! Let them serve him at Taiben!”

“But look on it from a better vantage, Tati-ji. Your grand-nephew can mediate these ancient quarrels, which were quite justified… a hundred years ago, but a hundred years, nadi! Certainly you were wise, seeing how a grand-nephew’s connections in Shejidan would be advantageous to the Atageini. You have always known that. But only consider his connections across your closest border, Tati-ji, just consider it, and forbear to waste this advantage. When a lord sits as high as you now sit, at the highest level of the aishidi’tat, the perspective necessarily becomes quite different.”

“Abominable woman!”

The paidhi paid devout attention to his teacup. Few people argued with the aiji-dowager. Fewer engaged in a shouting match with her once, let alone twice in one day, and he could only add to the tension.

“Do not shout at my great-grandmother!” Cajeiri certainly had no such prudence.

“I shall shout as I please under my roof! And these ragamuffin adherents of yours—”

“Who are outside the door, nandi,” Ilisidi muttered, “at least one of them.”

“While the other steals the silver,” Tatiseigi snarled, regardless of warnings, but at least in a lower voice. “Or lays plans to.”

“They plan with us to save your precious silver from the Kadigidi, Tati-ji!”

“You bring Taibeni thieves under my roof, you ask me send three men to Shejidan in peril of their lives, and now you counsel me send more to Taiben, to rely on Taiben, of all possible allies, for our defense?”

“When you begin to prefer old quarrels to new opportunities, you have begun to die, Tati-ji! You have begun to sink, forgotten, into the slough of history. We, we, on the other hand, fully intend to live forever!”

“Great-grandmother. Grand-uncle.”

“Hush!”

A small moment of silence, even Cajeiri not daring move a muscle.

“Make peace with Taiben,” Tatiseigi muttered in disgust, shaking his head. “Ask them across our borders. How in all reason can we do this?”

“Courteously,” Ilisidi said, in a voice dripping with triumph.

“Abominable woman!” But this came quietly. Tatiseigi took up his refilled cup and gulped.

“Do we then sit and wait for an attack, Lord of the Atageini?”

“Well, well, you send for them! Send your own staff, none of mine, on this foolish venture! Plague take the necessity—which is altogether your fault, woman, and say nothing more to me about foolishness and sinking into sloughs! Who was it went traipsing off to the stars to settle quarrels among a pack of renegade humans while the association fell apart?”

“Ah, there is the brave Tatiseigi we knew in our youth. Young again. An inspiration. Confusion to the Kadigidi.”

“Ha!” Disgust. Defeat. “You make up your message to Taiben, woman. I shall add to it.”

“Courteously.”

“Courteously, always courteously. When are we anything but courteous?” The teacup, fragile as eggshell, clicked down on the table with considerable force. “So write this cursed message. And we shall see how to send it.”

“Our young kinsman can compose the request, in his own words, in his own hand, and attach our appropriate sentiments. Can you not, great-grandson?”

“Mani-ma?” Wide, alarmed eyes.

“The boy is not yet nine!” From Tatiseigi.

“If he wishes to see nine, he knows what must be done, and how to do it. A force from Taiben must arrive here, as soon as possible, to counter Kadigidi mischief. We shall add our bit to this missive, Tati-ji, and it may go out under our seal, but we have taught this boy to write, and to express himself with appropriate courtesy. Let us see this letter your grand-nephew will write. There is a desk, boy. There must be pen and paper in this elegant house.”

Cajeiri was uncharacteristically subdued as, at an insistent wave of Ilisidi’s hand, he rose, bowed correctly to his elders collectively, and went to the desk.

Not yet nine. Not yet nine going on a hundred, he was. Bren was humanly appalled, watching that stiff carriage, that proper straight back as the boy sat down, opened the desk, and located pen and suitable paper with the same dignity his father might have shown. The paidhi simply kept his mouth shut while the boy wrote. Ilisidi and Tatiseigi calmly discussed the harvest, and whether the invading Kadigidi would be so barbaric as to threaten the fields and towns to the east, or whether they properly ought to bring the populace into this. There was at least a need to advise the people in that quarter to melt aside from any incursion. Brave local folk, underinformed, might undertake to hold off a rapidly moving force which might otherwise ignore them, and there was no hope of their resisting the skilled, well-equipped agents of the Kadigidi, who were just as likely to employ southerners as homegrown agents. The Guild might not budge, officially, but the Guild’s inaction did not restrain Guild members in service to various houses from specific actions, directed by their lords. Among atevi, Guild actions, however desperate, were Guild actions, and farmers and tradesmen had no reasonable place taking up arms so long as their towns and fields stayed sacrosanct. Taiben, many of whose people were Guild, and who had long been attached to the aiji in their peculiar service, were somewhat another matter… and involving Taiben inside Atageini territory escalated the potential for general, bloody war far, far above the usual measured sniping of Guild of one house for advantage against Guild members employed by another.

Bren took another cup of tea. It was the only use for himself he could possibly conceive under present circumstances, to sit and absorb facts as they floated past, to listen to the surmises of these two ancient and knowledgeable atevi until the immediate issues resolved themselves or, if only, if only, some brilliant notion occurred to him. He by no means liked the disposition of his last such inspiration. He wished he had never said the word Taiben.

Pen scratched audibly on paper for several minutes intermittently. Perhaps five minutes. Seven. Flurry of scratches at the end. The desk shut. The chair scraped softly on the marble floor.

Cajeiri walked back to face his elders with a second proper bow, paper in hand.

“A letter,” he announced, like a schoolchild reciting, and squared it in both hands to read.

“Cajeiri son and heir of Tabini-aiji to nand’ Keimi of Taiben. We are guests of Lord Tatiseigi. The Kadigidi are planning to send assassins to kill us and our great-grandmother, also Bren-paidhi and Lord Tatiseigi, perhaps tonight. We need help very badly. Great-grandmother thinks it is a good idea if you will come. Lord Tatiseigi says he will be courteous. I shall always remember your help and hope for you to send help here as soon as possible. The aiji-dowager and Lord Tatiseigi both asked me to write to you.”

“Hmmph,” from Tatiseigi.

“Perfectly fine,” Ilisidi said, and asked Tatiseigi, “Does it suit?”

A scowl. “Well enough.”

She drew her ring from her finger. “Seal it without comment. Tati-ji, he will do the same for you.”

Tatiseigi drew off his own seal ring, and gave it into Cajeiri’s hand with a scowl.

The boy walked back to the table, lit the wax-jack, and in very short order produced a properly furled missive, liberally done up with heavy wax and two ancient personal seals.

He returned each ring, his great-grandmother’s first, then Tatiseigi’s, and both rings went back onto fingers.

“So. Which of your staff will you spare for this errand?” Tatiseigi asked. “I will not subject my staff to Taiben’s insolent behavior.”

“My great-grandson himself has the means, and the best messengers we could send.” Ilisidi waved a hand at Cajeiri.

“Dispatch your message, great-grandson. Your grand-uncle will clear the way for them. He will take the western defenses down for an hour and give them free passage.”

Cajeiri’s face had a rigid look as he looked at the old man. Go tell his young followers to undertake what might be an extremely dangerous ride, if Kadigidi had gotten into Atageini territory? Cajeiri surely realized what Ilisidi was asking, and Ilisidi herself had not volunteered a protective escort. Nawari, who had watched over the young folk, was nowhere mentioned in the equation.

“Go, go, boy.” Tatiseigi waved a dismissive hand. “All these things. Granted. Enough!”

Cajeiri bowed stiffly, took the message and left the room.

“A damnable situation you put us in, nand’ Sidi,” Tatiseigi said.

“Is it not?” Ilisidi said. “But in the meanwhile, our three staffs need to consult closely together, Tati-ji, with perfect accord and frankness. And who knows? The Taibeni may even respond favorably to the approach. They know I am here. They know we are your allies and that we may secure your benevolent cooperation… ”

“And thereby open our defenses to illicit incursions, people who will likely make holes in our fences. You let them scout us out, and lay us wide open to their own mischief, to exercise what they call their hunting rights, damn them, which will be more trouble to us in future than the Kadigidi ever have been! You will not, I say, not give them our access codes.”

“Your secrets are absolutely your secrets, quite firmly so, Tati-ji. We are certain the paidhi will agree, too, that what you tell us in confidence will remain as secret as within your own staff.”

Bren gave a deep nod to that proposition. “With utmost appreciation of the sensitivity of such information, nandi, we have no hesitation to issue reassurances. My staff would not breach such a confidence, and they are no minor members of their Guild. I assure you, nandi. I have been a target no few times, and I am still here.”

That chanced, unaccountably, to amuse the old lord. “So have we all, paidhi-aiji. And we are all still here.”

“And Murini’s predecessor is not,” Ilisidi observed dryly. “But Murini, alas, is no improvement. Some work must be done until we have gotten it right. So! We are entirely surfeited with tea, Tati-ji. We shall go to the solarium. We have always esteemed your solarium.”

“An honor.” The scowl persisted. “Do make free of it at your leisure, Sidi-ji. We, meanwhile, have detailed instructions to give, to permit this doubtless useless message to go through. We shall lower defenses in the west, altogether, to have no possible misunderstandings. We shall instruct the gatekeepers to let this message pass and let in any Taibeni that arrive, there or at the hunting-gate. Nand’ paidhi, if you will brief your own people and ask them to consult, to join a meeting of all our staffs—except these damned Taibeni teenagers, who will be told what they need when they need it, hear? I shall send three of my men with them, to see them pass the gate and get to the limit of our province. Immediately.”

“Immediately, nandi.” Bren rose, understanding a dismissal, and bowed. “With utmost attention.”

He left. He gathered Banichi and Jago to him outside. Of Cajeiri or his young followers there was no sign.

“The heir has written a letter to Taiben, nadiin-ji,” he said to them as they climbed the stairs.

“Antaro expressed her great desire to be the one to carry it, nandi,” Jago said in a low voice.

“There might be Kadigidi out, even in that direction,” he said. “Lord Tatiseigi says he will advise his security to let her pass, but we can by no means guarantee what else is out there that she might meet, the worse as hours pass.”

“We did soberly caution her, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “And we advised going overland, by mechieti.”

“The young gentleman is deeply concerned,” Jago said, “and expressed a wish to send Jegari with her, but Antaro said he should not go. Jegari will likely not leave the young gentleman.”

Will not, would not. Emotional decisions, man’chi, newly-attached young instincts at war with basic common sense, none of them Guild, none of them with adult comprehension of what they were up against, and Ilisidi encouraging this move, all because he had said one critical word: Taiben.

“They are attempting too much, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Tano and Algini took these youngsters in hand last evening for brief instruction, but that only concerned house security. Jago requested the house staff give the girl a firearm: there is considerable resistance to this request.”

“The lord has ordered thorough cooperation.” They were in the upper hall. “Go back, Jago-ji, and inform them of that. She should have a gun, if she knows how to use it.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and dived back down the stairs, pigtail flying.

He was far from happy with the arrangement—with consulting the Taibeni, yes, that was a possibility with some value, if Ilisidi had sent Nawari. But he did not agree with sending a teenaged kid through a potential ambush, however remote from the expected line of combat, even if Tatiseigi had relented and sent an escort. He least of all agreed with the pressure the dowager had put on the boy, newly possessed of—

Damn it, friends was not the appropriate concept. But whatever it was, the boy had just picked up longed-for companionship in a damned lonely world, a satisfaction of atevi instincts they had worried would never wake, and now Ilisidi used him and the two Taibeni youngsters without detectible compassion. Twice damn it. And damn the whole situation. He might have succeeded in diverting Cenedi from his notion of a hopeless foray into Kadigidi territory by making that suggestion of his, but it could be at terrible cost.

And now what did he do? He and his guard were committed to stay here—he couldn’t pull his staff out of the defense of Tirnamardi after he’d backed this alternative plan to stop Cenedi from what his staff called a mistake. He couldn’t urge the Taibeni to come in here, where they historically weren’t welcome, and not be here to meet them, to iron out any misunderstandings. And he couldn’t have sent an appeal to the Guild, asking permission to appear before them and then vanish into the hills, unfindable if things went wrong, or if that Guild safe-conduct turned up.

And he couldn’t now take Cajeiri out of here, and pursue the chance of finding his father, not when Cajeiri was the principle reason the Taibeni might consent to come in to defend their historic adversary.

Jago rejoined them before they reached his door. “The Atageini staff agrees,” she said, “and has gotten their lord’s word on it. They will instruct her such as they can, providing both communications and a sidearm, and escorting her as far as the edge of the Taiben woods.”

Much better. Damned much better, and Tatiseigi had come to his senses, not hampering any chance of success. Bren let go a deep breath. There was a chance they would survive this.

“Good,” he said as Banichi opened the door and let them in. Tano and Algini were waiting inside, on their feet.

“We are staying here, nadiin-ji,” Jago said. “One believes it may be an interesting night ahead of us. The Atageini have requested Cajeiri send Antaro-nadi to Taiben, to bring reinforcement.”

Eyebrows lifted. That was all. But Banichi said soberly, “Measures will be taken all about the grounds, once the girl has cleared the perimeter. Likely we will see eastern defenses activated in very short order, if they are not now. But the Kadigidi will expect that, and go around, if they are not already in the province. House defenses are generally adequate on the first floor, Bren-ji, far less so on the upper floors. There exist some few very modern surprises. And we do not know if the house staff has told Cenedi all its secrets, either of deficiencies or of capabilities. Soft target, hard target. One earnestly begs you recall your precautions at all points, particularly if there is an alarm, Bren-ji.”

Wires. Nasty devices that could slice a foot off. Electronic barriers. He hadn’t had to live with such hazards since the worst days in the Bu-javid, and coping with them now meant setting a series of checkpoints and alarms in his head, not to cross narrow places without extreme precaution, not to leave his bodyguard for an instant and never to precede them through a door, insert a key in a lock, or expose his head in a window.

And soft-target/hard-target. Which meant the upstairs was certainly not where they wanted to be tonight. The upstairs was where an attack was meant to enter—and descend at disadvantage, into much more modern devices, and defenders ready and waiting, likely in the dark. Soft-target, hard-target was a fairly transparent mode of defense, but one still hard to deal with, even if the enemy had reliable spies to inform them, because the line at which the defense would go from soft to hard was not going to be apparent and might change quickly.

Antiquated equipment, but maybe the sort to lull an attacker into thinking it was all going to be easy. He didn’t utterly trust Tatiseigi to tell them everything.

But he didn’t look forward to tonight at all. He didn’t look forward to the rest of the day, which held a diminishing few hours of tedium and tension before twilight brought a rising likelihood of trouble. He had drunk tea enough to float, and his nerves were jangled—always were, after one of those breakneck logical downhills with Ilisidi, not to mention Tatiseigi in the mix.

Not to mention, either, a human urge to go down the hall and offer the poor kid some sort of reassurance or at least moral support, considering an order far too hard for children. Damn the situation. Damn the Kadigidi. He passionately hated gunfire. It always meant someone like him hadn’t done his job. And there was far too much evidence of that all around him.

His staff settled down near the fireplace for some quick close consultation of their own, and he found there was one thing constructive he could do in that regard. He unfolded his computer and produced a detailed map of the terrain. He had no way, in the upstairs of this traditional and kabiu household, to print it out for them, but they clustered around him, viewing the situation down to the hummocks and small streams. There was a discussion of the stables, where their riding gear was stowed, which Tano had checked and located—it was the pile of stable sweepings, curiously enough, which had told Tano the story of recent visitations: one lived and learned. They discussed the dowager’s rooms, which Jago had observed were similar in layout to their own, and they even considered the topiary hedges, where devices or automatic traps might be located, if such sensors had survived the mechieti’s foraging.

“There will be electronic sweeps,” Banichi said, and pointed to a stream that ran from the Kadigidi heights down toward Kadigidi territory. “That low spot, Bren-ji, is as good as a highway for intruders, except one can be reasonably certain the Atageini will have detection installed there and at other such places. And the Kadigidi will know it. So there should be devices set at other alternatives. We could not pry details out of this staff. Unfortunately, we are far less sure the Kadigidi have not done so.”

He had not considered such things in years. He studied the map, tried to recall how the pitch of the land had seemed as they had ridden in during the rain—a deceptive pitch. He remembered how cleverly the rolling hills concealed things one would never have expected—the whole length of the fence and the perimeter had vanished at certain times—which meant attackers might likewise be below electronic sweeps, moving as they pleased. His staff pointed out the probable course of a large, late incursion from the Kadigidi, and then the route the Kadigidi were likeliest to use because that first one was too probable.

A knock came at the door. The household staff came to beg his staff’s attendance at a general meeting. Jago opted to be the one to stay with him and stand watch.

They went on calling up maps, he and Jago, Jago taking mental notes, absorbing what might be useful to the team tonight. The meeting elsewhere went on a considerable time, more than an hour, until finally Banichi, Tano, and Algini came back, very sober of countenance.

“One has asked the staff quite bluntly, nandi, about the activity at the stables,” Tano said. “They maintain they shifted the lord’s herd in eight days ago for a seasonal hunt and out again, in favor of a small group used for ordinary purposes, and that this was all done by staff. One detected no lie, and this activity predated any action the Kadigidi may have taken against us. The lord generally keeps only seven mechieti here against personal need. That also agrees what what I saw.”

An autumn hunt. Plausible. Plausible, because one did not move part of an established mechieti herd out of its territory—or one had the remnant trying to join the others cross-country and tearing up fences and crops in the process. Even if it had been a small hunt, the lord would have brought an established herd in for the use of his guests, and then moved back a small herd, following the hunt. One did not believe Lord Tatiseigi himself still rode. But his staff would. Out of such events came the meat for table, the meat for market, meat for all the people of the province, the cull of game before the coming winter. Hunters from every Atageini village and town would have participated.

“They may or may not have been completely forthcoming about the deficiencies or the strength of the defenses,” Banichi said. “They had already activated the southeastern perimeter defenses last night, when we arrived.” That would be, precisely, the Kadigidi boundary. “They say there had been nuisance activity, spies, that sort of thing—likely because of the ship in the heavens. The Atageini raised defenses on the others today, repaired the one we blew, and have privately called on the various town-aijiin to take other precautions, asking them to avoid conflict with outsiders and to avoid the boundaries, the usual sort of thing. The Taibeni girl left some time ago, with two men in escort. She will likely have passed the gates by now.”

Things were moving.

Moving in the hall, too. Footsteps passed their door at a high rate of speed, drawing a look from his staff.

Jago got up and went to stand near the door, not opening it, but listening. She shot back an anxious look.

“There is some little disturbance,” she said, from that auditory vantage, and her hand was on her sidearm, unconsciously or not. She made the hand sign for man, and run.

The staff got up from their chairs. Bren shut his computer, rising, listening, his heart beating a little faster. The dowager’s rooms were in the direction toward which those steps had run. The boy’s were in the direction from which they had come. But the steps were heavy, a man’s.

Second set of hand-signals, Banichi to Jago, and she unlocked the door, opened it a crack, then looked out, and went outside.

Banichi followed, hand on his sidearm, not quite going so far as to draw a weapon in an allied house, but a heartbeat away from that move. The door stayed ajar. Bren stood still, not retreating as he ought to the neighboring room, but again, it was an allied house, in which they had basic confidence. Tano and Algini were on either side of him, Tano a little to the fore, protective position relative to the door. They signalled a move out of line with the window. Algini moved instantly to check that, and evidently saw nothing alarming.

More running steps, these audible. Jago, Bren thought, headed for the stairs. He stood still, then remembered his gun and went and retrieved it, still within Tano’s protective screen. He slipped it into his pocket, along with an extra clip.

Jago came back, running, and came inside. Banichi headed down the hall in the direction from which the first runner had come.

“Nandi,” she said. “Cajeiri is not in his apartment. The window is open, the alarm is disabled, and no one is in the apartment.”

“Damn.” The thought was instant and ominous.

Tano and Algini headed for the door, going out the way Banichi had gone, doubtless to have a firsthand look for how and why.

But it was foreseeable. They’d gone, they’d gotten out of the house. Banichi reported Antaro had left on her mission, and now the boy and Jegari had vanished? Enemy action?

No. They were all three of them going, fortunate three, sticking together, while the house staff had been in a meeting and nobody had been expecting it—a human could at least hope that was the case, and not that some Kadigidi assassin had gotten in.

“The outlying defenses are still down,” Bren recalled. Had not this boy grown up on human novels, human stories, human notions of heroes and desperate adventures? “I know exactly what they have done, Jago-ji. They have gone with Antaro. We should check the stables.”

Jago’s brows lifted. She exited to the hall, and was gone for a moment.

An interminable moment. He shed his formal coat, hung it on a chair and picked the warmer, bulkier short jacket out of his baggage. He transferred the handgun and the clip, took his pocket com, a knife, and his pill bottle, then stuffed them into a zipped pocket, lace shirt warring with bulky, resistant jacket. He half fastened it, from the waist.

Jago came back.

“They have taken mechieti,” Jago reported, and by now Banichi and Tano and Algini had come in. “Nand’ Cajeiri and Jegari have taken mechieti, and the house has made a dangerous amount of inquiry on its antiquated com system. Bren-ji, what are you doing?”

“Going after them, nadiin-ji.”

“By no means!”

“To appeal to Taiben was my idea, nadiin. It was my suggestion in passing that provided the notion, and the dowager forced the boy to write the letter himself.” Personal distress overset coherent arguments, but in his mind, certain things had leapt up in crystal clarity, a boy’s sense of honor, a new-made obligation, a shiny new man’chi, and a detestable letter he had been forced to write. “This job I can possibly do, since negotiations with the Kadigidi are highly unlikely tonight. The boy knows me; the Taibeni know me, if we have to chase them that far.”

“They know us as well,” Banichi said, clearly about to propose the paidhi stay put and his staff take the trip in his stead.

“And if they take you for Atageini staff riding across that line after them, there is every likelihood of misunderstanding, and of utter disaster if they take you for Kadigidi. Me, there is no mistaking, and the boys will less likely run from me. Go say so to the house staff. Say it to Cenedi. Get us mechieti to overtake them.” A car might have a certain advantage getting to the gate if there was one available that could go above a walking pace, but not on the estate’s winding roads and certainly not overland, and least of all that ornate antique Lord Tatiseigi had used to meet them. The youngsters had had a long head start, and might well go overland. “Quickly, nadiin!”

He rarely ordered details of a security response. His staff habitually made all the operational decisions. But this was not a defensive situation, even Banichi knew it, and they took orders and left in haste, all but Jago, who stayed for his protection and made his staff’s preparations, lightweight for her Guild, but involving plenty of ammunition, long and short, two rifles, a handful of other ring-clipped small bags, not a light load for any two humans.

“The computer,” he recalled in alarm, and went and flung it open, dithered over the keys until he had it up, and input a personal code, then shut down and shoved it and Shawn’s unit into the back of the linen closet, breathless with haste. “I have put it under lock, Jago. I’ll tell you the code once we go outside. It will be safer left here, hidden. One fears it will be people that the Kadigidi will be looking for.”

“Yes,” she said brusquely, in working-mode, no nonsense and no courtesies. She held the door for him and they both exited into the hall.

So, it developed, had Ilisidi exited her rooms, between them and the stairs. Ilisidi was standing in the hall near the steps, appearing in no mood to trifle, and house staff was attempting explanations.

“Damned fools!” she shouted, or approximately that. “Nand’ paidhi?”

“Aiji-ma, one hears the window alarm was disconnected. One supposes the young gentleman has undertaken the mission himself. I shall find him. Atageini might be shot trying it.”

“So might he, the young idiot. We have emphasized that the western defenses must be let down for him no matter what happens here, which one trusts this household has the basic skills to accomplish. We have asked for an accounting of every person in this household, and we intend to have it! We only hope he has gone by his own will! Why are you standing there, nandi?”

“Aiji-ma.” He hurried for the stairs, Jago right with him, hastened down them, and met Cenedi on his way up. “Cenedi-ji, we are going after the boy ourselves, at all speed. Can the gatekeeper possibly be queried and advised to prevent them without betraying the nature of the problem?”

One rarely saw Cenedi so distressed—not since the boy had pulled his cursed tricks on the ship. A houseful of Guild on high alert—but occupied in general conference—and the boy, who had heard all the complaints about lax security, had gotten out of his quarters and followed Antaro. One hoped that was the whole story.

“The window was open, nadi-ji,” Jago said to Cenedi. “The window contact was pried loose inside and stuck against its receiver, this while the system was armed. We are headed for the stables. The young gentleman and his companion have taken mechieti.”

“Clever lad,” Cenedi said, tightlipped. “Nandi.” And with that parting courtesy and fire in his eye Cenedi went up to inform the dowager of whatever detail of the situation he had been going to report. Some of Ilisidi’s young men were with her in the upstairs—one could hear Cenedi deliver instructions, sending his own men to manage a discreet phone call to the gate, and to check windows up and down the hall. By the time they reached the downstairs Lord Tatiseigi himself was out of his study in a cluster of his own men, looking entirely discommoded.

“Our precautions are adequate,” Tatiseigi shouted at the commotion above, “unless sabotaged!”

Bren wanted no part of that dispute. He headed out through the lily foyer, out the front doors of the house, with Jago, and found Tano headed up the broad steps.

“The boys told the grooms that the dowager had sent them with a further message,” Tano said. “They took the last two of lord Tatiseigi’s mechieti and rode out to overtake the girl.”

“The scoundrels,” Bren muttered, heading down the steps.

“Come, Tano-ji,” Jago said, “all of us are going.” Tano, whom Banichi might have sent back to watch the gear, changed course and immediately headed down the steps again, overtaking them on the cobbled drive and taking part of the load of ammunition and one of the rifles as they walked.

The path to the stables lay at the side of the house, beyond a well-trimmed, doubtless security-rife hedge, devices that would not likely have been activated, not with household staff coming and going to the stables on emergency missions.

Clever, damnable young scoundrels. Lying was not Cajeiri’s usual recourse, but it was within his arsenal. It was in those novels he had been reading and those entertainments he had been viewing on the ship.

At least—at least, Bren said to himself, the boys were only loyal and stupid, not kidnapped.

Breathlessly, down the well-trimmed path to the stables. Mechieti were complaining. Loudly. Banichi, Algini and the grooms were in the process of saddling up.

“You should not go, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, heaving on a girth. “Our numbers are more fortunate without you.”

Seven without and eight and ten with, counting the expected recovery of three fugitives and two Atageini escorts.

“But less fortunate numbers toward finding them in the first place,” Bren shot back. Two could do that kind of math, and his staff was by no means superstitious. “The defenses are confirmed down in the west, Banichi-ji.”

Jago muttered: “One doubts the boy will join the escort. He will follow them. And we know what tale he will tell the gatekeeper.”

“Someone is calling the gate to forestall that.” But not someone with knowledge of how the boys had gotten the mechieti. “Go advise them the boy is using the dowager’s name, ‘Gini-ji. Run.”

“Yes,” Algini said, and sprinted.

“They took the two remaining of the local herd.” Banichi said, “prize stock, and were gone at high speed.”

“One assumes you will take our own herd leader.”

“I intend to,” Banichi said. Another saddle had gone on, the last. “Up, Bren-ji.”

Bren accepted the boost up, took up the quirt, kept quiet, under the overhang of the stable roof. Banichi accepted a rifle and an ammunition kit from Jago, slung it over his shoulder and mounted up. The rest of them did.

“We offer apologies,” the head groom said, “profound apologies for this sorry affair, nandi.”

“You were lied to, nadiin,” Bren said, as good a grace as he could muster, and the stable revolved in his vision as Banichi took the leader out and the mechieti under him followed as if on an invisible lead.

The rest of them had mounted up, and moved out, Algini’s moving with them. Behind them, wood splintered. A barrier shattered.

“Damn,” Bren said, looking over his shoulder.

“We have mistaken one of our matriarchs,” Tano said. And no question, in unfamiliarity with the herd, they had not recognized the mechieti in question, ranking matriarch. The gate was broken and the mechieti that had broken it surged past the grooms with a rip of her dangerous head. The grooms scrambled back. Three more mechieti, exiting behind the other, took out a porch-post on their way to daylight, and with a thunder and a squeal of nails and wood, the porch sagged. The whole unsaddled herd broke out, following them along the path to the cobbled drive.

Algini met them on the drive, at the bottom, hard-breathing. “They passed the gate, nandi. But not the boys. Two loose mechieti showed up with the party before they reached the gate, saddled, and joined the others. The boys have taken off afoot, likely to scale the fence.”

Oh, two years of conning ship’s personnel, building little electric cars and playing hob with ship’s security had created a boy far, far too clever for his own good. It was not the Taibeni teenagers that had accomplished this entire escape. He had no such notion. It was an eight-year-old Ragi prince with far too much confidence in his own cleverness, a deft touch with electrical gadgets he had gained from building toy cars with Mospheiran engineers and Guild Assassins, and a way of assuming such conviction, such lordly force, that he often got past adults’ wiser instincts. Not to mention other things he had gained from Guild company: speed to get near the gate, and never rely on the same trick twice.

Algini mounted up, the whole herd in motion. They rode clear of the despised cobbles, the mechieti stepping on eggshells all the way. On the first edge of the roadway Banichi took out at a loping run, not a comfortable pace, not something they had done in a long while, and Bren took a moment to find his balance, already finding the saddle a renewed misery.

Too late already, too damned late to prevent a commotion. The defenses were down, the boys had had better than an hour to be across the fence, and, damn it all, the escort would be riding along beyond the estate fence with two extra mechieti they could by no means drive off—instinct would not allow it; and with two boys hellbent on overtaking them.

“Nadiin,” the young scoundrel would say to them when they met, his golden eyes clear and as pure as glass, “the dowager my great-grandmother has added a message, which we are to carry ourselves.”

And what could two Atageini say to the contrary?

“Maybe,” Bren said to his companions, foreknowing if there was any good hope someone would have seen to it, “maybe the gate can call ahead to the escort and have them bring the boys back.”

“Not optimum, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “These cursed units of theirs make every transmission a risk. And that is not information to spread abroad.”

Tatiseigi was known to be as tight-fisted about technology as he was liberal with artists, conservative, reputedly not replacing the house gas lights with electricity until, oh, about ten years ago. But—good God, to short his security…

If the Kadigidi had monitored the house transmissions, everyone listening might get the idea that young gentlemen were roaming about the neighborhood virtually unprotected.

And would not the Kadigidi already be bending every effort to get there, while, thanks to the breakout, they had every last mechieti in the stable following after the young rascal, so that Cenedi and the dowager had no recourse but stay and defend the house, or escape in Lord Tatiseigi’s antiquated motorcar.

The girl’s escort would not necessarily suspect the boys of lying to them. Prudence dictated they not load the airwaves with inquiries to confirm the story. The boys would simply get their mounts back, with only moderately suspicious looks from Tatiseigi’s men—“We got down to fix a girth and they ran from us, nadiin… we knew they would go to you. We ran to catch up.”

Such a common mishap: mechieti with two of their number having disappeared over the horizon were inclined to present a problem in control, once they got the scent on the trail, and only two very foolish boys would both get down out of the saddle at the same time.

Those boys were now, at all good odds, themselves on their way to Taiben with Antaro… and if that were all the trouble they were facing at this point, Bren said to himself, he would cease his pursuit and let the youngsters reach the Taibeni, and, granted the Taibeni’s better sense, believe they would stay there.

But given all the fuss on the com system had made it likely Kadigidi had wind of confusion on the northwestern side of Atageini land, he could not leave it at that. The Taibeni, on their side, would not have a clue to what was happening, and two Atageini guards, while reasonably cautious, might not have any apprehension what a commotion had arisen around their mission.

Not good, Bren said to himself. It was not at all good.

Chapter 12

Bren held on, clamped the leading leg against the saddle and kept a grip on the leather. Any random glance back showed the whole damned mechieti herd crowding the narrow roadway, shoving against the low hedges, outright trampling them down as they went, where slight gaps in the shrubbery made spreading out attractive. Banichi stayed in the lead, and Banichi delayed for no second thoughts—in the hope—Bren nursed it, too—that Antaro and her escort would ride at a saner pace, perhaps stopping to talk at the gate, perhaps stopping to talk or argue where they met the boys—not long, but every moment gave them a chance.

The gate and the tall outer fence appeared as they crested a particular hill. The gatekeeper left his little weather-shelter amongst the vines and, clearly forewarned, opened the gates for them, to let them straight on through.

Banichi reined in, however, and all the other mechieti halted, blowing and snorting, jammed up close.

“Nadi,” Banichi said. “If the girl’s escort comes back and we do not, send them back out to us. We may need help out there. We fear the Kadigidi may be on to the messenger.”

“Nadi,” the man said—not, perhaps, the same watcher they had antagonized the night before—“nadi, one had no prior advisement there was any possible difficulty—”

“Indeed,” Bren said. “We know. They took the extra mechieti with them?”

“Yes, nandi. They said the strays had overtaken them, and they were puzzled. I had no means to keep them, and one feared they would stray along inside the fence, if… ”

“We shall find them. No fault to you. Be warned: we may come back very soon, or we may come back much later, at any hour, in company with Taibeni. Or maybe even Taibeni without us. That is the young woman’s mission, under your lord’s seal. They will be allies.”

“Most of all watch out for yourself, nadi,” Banichi said. “There has been far too much com traffic.”

“We have asked the house to send out reinforcement. They are sending it.”

“Good,” Banichi said, and with a pop of the quirt set the leader in motion, which put all of them to a traveling pace uphill beyond the gate.

Tracks of the girl and the escort were plain on the road, tracks that by now involved five mechieti—and now their own mechieti, catching the notion of what they were tracking, entered hunting-mode, the leader lowering his snaky neck to snuff above the ground as they went. It was an unsettling move at a run. Bren’s mechieti followed suit, an instant in which he feared the beast would take a tumble under him. He knew exactly what it was doing, and dared not jerk the rein.

Up came the head with a rude snort and a lurch forward of the beast’s own accord, and it loped ahead, coming nearly stride for stride with Banichi’s beast, which drew a surly head-toss… mechieti were not averse to hunting others of their kind, with malice aforethought, and this sudden taking of a scent was not a happy situation, not safe, and not good for the ones being tracked.

And, my God, Bren thought, recalling where they had borrowed these creatures… these were hunters of more than game. Mechieti were stubborn creatures, and these with uncapped tusks, that they had gotten from Taiben, from the rangers peculiarly charged with Tabini’s security—what would this band do, he wondered, when they overtook their Atageini-bred quarry?

“One fears they are hunting,” he said to Banichi.

“That they are, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, “and they will need a hard hand once we come in range.”

Last night’s rain had left a lingering moisture in the grass, particularly on the shaded side of hills, where the track showed clear even to human eyes. Mechieti snatched mouthfuls of grass on the run, rocked along at that rolling gait they could adopt on the hunt, trailing grassy bits. They clumped up together, the herd-leader foremost, along with the young female

Bren rode, and the unridden retired matriarch who had been their trouble back at the stables, all bunched in the lead. Low brush stood not a chance where the herd wanted to pass. When the leader moved, hell itself could not stop the rest… willingly headed, Bren began to add it up from the mechieti’s point of view, for their own territory, for Taiben itself, now on the trail of the others that their dim mechieti brains might reasonably think of as interlopers in that territory.

Trouble, he had no doubt. Trouble, and Lord Tatiseigi’s prize stock, those likely with tusks capped… and what can I do to hold this creature?

Banichi reined back as they reached a trampled spot, a space where a handful of mechieti had waited and milled about, grass flattened. Algini pointed to the side, and sure enough, even to a less skilled eye, a small track came in there, a line coming across the hill as one track, then diverging into two, and coming right up on their location.

“The boys joined them here,” Tano said, but even the paidhi had figured that out—knowing the boy in question, if not how to read a trail.

“And got their mechieti back,” Jago said.

Their own mechieti, milling about and getting the scent from the ground, had obliterated any finer tracks. Banichi started them moving again, and by now the whole herd had the scent clear, and moved with unanimity… willing to run, willing to spend energy they had not used on their way toward Atageini land.

A pop of Banichi’s quirt and the leader lurched into a flat-out run, a pace the Atageini would not reasonably have adopted on their way. They were using up their own mechieti’s strength, and even considering the beasts were willing now, that would fade quickly.

We have a slim chance of finding them before dark, Bren reasoned to himself, yielding to the rock and snap of the gait, less sore now: numbness had cut in, and nothing mattered at the moment but the hope of seeing five mechieti somewhere in the distant rolls of the pastureland.

The sun sank, and sank toward the horizon. The Atageini and the youngsters would almost certainly stop for the night. They entered dusk, and the trail grew dim, but the scent would not.

“Nadiin.”Algini rode to the fore and pointed toward the hill. Bren saw nothing. He hoped it was the youngsters and their escort, but their mechieti gave no sign of having spotted their quarry.

“Converging with their trail,” Algini said ominously.

“What?” Bren was constrained to ask.

“Another track, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Game, maybe, but one fears not.”

Something had moved along that hill and veered toward the party they were tracking. Either it was an older game track, that the youngsters’ party had crossed, or something was following them… and no four-legged predator in its right senses would stalk several mechieti.

Only other mechieti would come in like that. And none that they knew would be here just running loose around the landscape.

Not good, Bren thought, and said nothing. His bodyguard knew the score better than he did. Banichi used the quirt and took them up the hillside, veered over onto the intersecting trail and there reined to a slower pace and to a stop, letting the herd leader get that scent clear before it joined the other trail.

Tusked head came up, nostrils flared, head swinging to that new trail like a needle to the magnetic pole.

And they started to move again, fast, with several pops of the quirt.

We could just as well run into ambush at this pace, Bren thought, but he no longer led this expedition: Banichi did, and the paidhi dropped way, way back in the hierarchy of decision-making. Jago had moved up beside Banichi, in front of him, pressing her mount to defy the ordinary order of proceeding, and Tano and Algini moved up on either side to keep the paidhi in their close company, leaving Banichi and Jago free to make more aggressive decisions.

Up and over the ridge, Tano riding athwart Bren’s path to prevent his mechieti following Banichi’s too closely at this point… they pressed along the trail that now was merged with the youngsters, or overlay that track, moving as hard as they could go, across a brook and up the other bank. The incoming riders had taken no pains to disguise their track.

Dark was falling fast now. And Banichi reined in just short of the next rise of the land, slid down and handed the herd-leader’s rein across to Jago, but the creature pulled at the restraint, wanting to be let loose, eyes rolling, nostrils flared, and the rest of the herd trembled with eagerness, not that even the unridden matriarch would go past the leader. Banichi said something to Jago too low for Bren’s ears, passed her his mechieti’s rein and suddenly moved, slipping off along the top of the ridge with eye-tricking speed. He didn’t crest the hill—he melted over it, and was gone. And Jago had clambered down and up to the other saddle, taking the herd leader for herself, her own left riderless with the rein looped up for safety.

Bren sat still and kept the rein wrapped desperately around his fist, giving up no slack. He felt a skin-twitch shake the mechieti’s shoulder under his foot, as it gave a soft, explosive snort of sheer lust for combat.

He dared ask nothing. He guessed too much already. The herd leader was trying to break Jago’s control, and she hauled back with all her strength, pulling its head away from the direction it wanted to go, forcing it in a circle. It stopped, stood rock-steady.

Not a sound, except the small movements and breathing of the mechieti under them and around them, the whole herd held with Jago’s grip on the leader.

A gunshot, a single, horrendous pop and echo.

“Head down, Bren-ji!” Jago drove the leader forward and the whole herd lunged after her, up over the hill, down the other side in the dusk.

Bren ducked as low to the saddle as possible, tried to see where he was going. More shots echoed off the hills. Jago and two unsaddled mechieti ran in the lead, one on each side of her, and suddenly they veered, plunged into a ravine. Mechieti stood in the dusk ahead of them, whose mechieti or how situated he had no time to reckon. The mechieti he was on gave a squalling challenge and charged through prickly brush, raking his leg, catching his jacket, breaking off bits against his trousers on its way to murder. They hit, another mechieti ripped a head-butt at his, and he plied the quirt desperately, getting it away. Two surges of the body under him and they were in the clear again, charging uphill after mechieti in retreat.

He reined aside, to bring the beast slightly across the hill face without pulling it over. The heart of the fight was no place for him, whatever was going on. He had no idea whether they had just scattered the escort’s mechieti and driven off animals they needed. But his mechieti paid no attention, just ran blindly, crashed through other brush and kept going, defying his pull on the rein.

Someone rode near him, headed his mechieti off from pursuit. Tano. Again. Behind him, a volley of gunfire exploded in the dark.

“Hold here, Bren-ji,” Tano said. “Hold!”

He had no breath to object that he was trying to do just that. He hauled, the mechieti hauled back and he thought the rein might snap or the cantankerous creature, lunging ahead crosswise of the slope, would break both their necks before he could get it to stop at the bottom. He risked one hand to reach back and lay in hard with the quirt on the rump, which caused the rump end to shy off, and the whole beast finally to turn in the direction he wanted.

But now the rest of the herd was coming back toward them, Jago in the saddle, and the whole lot, riderless and ridden, shouldered past him and Tano. Their two mechieti swung about, fell into the herd, and they charged back down the draw, toward the origin of the gunfire.

A whistle, a very welcome whistle, came out of the brushy dark, and Bren drew a whole breath. Banichi was all right.

Their mechieti meanwhile settled to a determined walk, and broke brush as they went. “Keep down,” Tano said, reining back near him.

Then Banichi’s voice, out in the dark: “We are the paidhi-aiji’s guard. Identify yourselves.”

“Banichi?” asked a very shaky young voice. “Where are you?”

A gunshot. A whisper of brush. And from Banichi, distant, “Stay where you are.”

A long, long wait, then. Jago reined in and all the mechieti slowed to a stop, waiting, with occasionally a snort at the information wafted on the air.

“They are moving!” The same high young voice.

“Damn,” Jago hissed. “Tano!”

Tano and Algini both leapt off, instantly vanishing into the brush and the dark, in silence.

“Bren-ji,” Jago said. “If things go wrong, use the quirt and use it so hard it can’t think.”

Ride away, she meant. Get back to the gate. Get to Taiben. Go anywhere else. A young gentleman calling out instructions to his bodyguard had made himself a target and now his protectors had no choice but to go after his attackers.

Gunshot, flash in the dark. A brief scuffle somewhere, followed by a thump.

“Keep your head down.” Banichi’s voice came softly, ever so welcome, out in the distance. Meanwhile, Bren thought, he and Jago sat on mechieti, silhouettes against the dark, he because he was helpless afoot, endangered by the mechieti themselves, and Jago because if the herd leader slipped control they would all be afoot and trapped out here. That made them targets, no question, and all he could do was press as flat to his own knees as he could get, trying not to be shot by some ateva who could see far, far better than he could in this murk.

Gunfire. Gunfire responded, and something skidded on gravel.

“I shot him.” A quavering young voice piped up in the darkness the other side of the brush. “I think I shot him, Banichi.”

“You may well have, young aiji. Are you injured?”

Banichi had used the indefinite-number in that address, baji-naji, the whole future of the planet on a knife’s edge. Bren held his breath, lifted his head, trying to hear, and hearing nothing but his mechieti’s movements and the creak of the saddle.

“I am not. But they killed our escort.” That same young voice, a young gentleman who, at least was still alive. And so was Banichi. But they had heard nothing from Tano and Algini.

Then a different whistle from out of the dark.

“Come ahead,” Banichi said, and suddenly Jago shot ahead, and Bren’s mechieti went with her and all the rest, down a gravelly draw, across a little brook, up another bank. A breeze caught them there, a chill little breeze, bringing a shiver.

“There were three,” Tano said quietly out of the dark, “that we have accounted for. One may have escaped afoot. Keep low.”

Bad position. One Guildsman unseen represented a major problem.

“Bren-ji,” Jago said, “get down.”

“Yes,” he said, moved his leg from across the mechieti’s shoulder, secured the rein, gripped the saddle and slid down, wary of the creature’s tusks, expecting its head would swing toward him, and it did. He was ready for it. He popped it gently on the nose with the quirt and it swung that massive head back up, veered off indignantly and stood, as fixed by its leader’s staying as if it had been tethered there.

Shadows, meanwhile, moved on the slope, softly disturbing the gravel of a little eroded outcrop.

“Nadiin,” he heard a young female voice say: Antaro. “Nadiin, one regrets, the two Atageini are dead, down there.”

More movement. “Dead, indeed,” Algini said from their vicinity.

“The mechieti ran away,” Cajeiri’s voice said.

“As they would, young sir.”

“Did nand’ Bren send you?”

“Nand’ Bren is with us, young sir, and by no means pleased with your actions, no more than your great-grandmother.”

“We have to go on, Banichi!”

“How do you propose to ride, young sir, with no tack?”

“We have our tack, nadi.” That, from Jegari. “We had unsaddled for the night.”

“We told them we should not stop.” From Cajeiri.

The boy happened to be right. Even the paidhi knew that. They could well have kept going. They should have kept going to the border, given the urgency of the message, and without the escort’s adult advice, the youngsters, schooled in a more desperate experience, would have.

“The tack and the supplies are right here.” Antaro’s young voice. A slide on gravel. “We were down here, nadi.”

Atevi could see clearly in this darkness. It was all shadows to human eyes.

But suddenly: “Down!” Tano yelled.

Bren dropped to his haunches, behind the thin cover of the brush, and reached to his pocket, seeking his gun.

“Keep low!” Banichi’s voice.

Someone must be moving nearby, sounds too faint for human ears. Bren sat holding his pistol, virtually blind, knowing his vision posed a hazard to his own people, and declined even to have his finger on the trigger until he could confirm a target. Somewhere out there, Guild were stalking each other. Some Kadigidi Assassin had let his mechieti go after its fellows, staying to carry out his mission, and the best the paidhi could do was stay very, very quiet, as wary of keen atevi hearing as of atevi nightsight.

Small movements within his hearing. He could not tell the distance. His heart was in his throat. And for a long, long time, there was no sound at all.

Scrape of brush from down the ravine.

More furtive movements, barely discernible. Their mechieti shifted about. Jago had never gotten down, as he recalled. He feared she remained dangerously exposed. One of the most classic moves was to get the one rider holding the leader, encouraging the herd to bolt. But Jago was a good rider. She might be over on the mechieti’s shoulder, shielded between two beasts.

Brush broke. Splash in the little brook, crack of a quirt, and all of a sudden the whole herd moved, crashed past Bren on two sides, rushed past like a living wall, down the stream-course, up the slope, and all he could do was duck. Gunfire broke out. Two shots. Then silence.

Bren sat still, blind in the dark, sure that his was the only piece of brush on the slope that had not been crushed flat. They might have taken him for a rock, dodged around him. They had no compunction at all about running over a man.

A calf muscle began to twitch uncomfortably. A thigh muscle followed. It became a shiver. He settled his finger onto the trigger of his gun. It was all he had, if any enemy circled back trying to get to the young people. He thought that Jago had ridden that charge, deliberately sent the whole herd down the throat of the ravine and up the slope, likely in pursuit of someone, or to flush a man out.

Not a sound from the young people, not a question from Cajeiri, not a twitch.

Then a rustle of someone moving along the bank. “Nandi.”

Tano.

“Tano-ji?”

“We have gotten one of them, nandi, who may well be the last.”

“Are you all right?”

“No injury, nandi. Put the weapons down, nadiin.” This, to the children tucked down in the dark. “Come down, but keep low.”

A pale glimmer. The two Taibeni wore dark clothing. Cajeiri had come out on this venture in light trousers, his beige human-style jacket that was the warmest thing he had—and an absolute liability in the dark.

“Nadiin.” From Algini, whose approach Bren had not heard, a realization that set his heart pounding. “Gather the tack and supplies.”

Mechieti were coming back down, brush crackling under that shadow-flood of bodies. Bren judged it safe to stand up, and did, on legs strained from the unnatural position and just a little inclined to shiver, whether from the cold of the earth or the reckoning of their situation. He put the safety back on his pistol and slipped it back into his pocket as Cajeiri and Jegari came skidding down the gravelly slope together to join Antaro.

Then:

“Gunfire,” Jago said from somewhere above him.

Bren could hear nothing at all. It must be distant.

“Tirnamardi?” he asked, a leaden chill settling about his heart.

“Yes,” Jago said. “Whether at the gate or further east, I cannot tell.”

“Saddle our spares,” Banichi said. “We have no time to sit here.”

General movement. It took perhaps a quarter-hour more to pick out three mechieti from the herd and saddle them.

“Antaro-nadi,” Banichi said.

“Nadi.” Antaro’s young voice, in the dark.

“Have you that gun, young woman?”

“Yes, nadi, I have one, and nand’ Cajeiri has the other. And I have the com unit.”

“Put them all away. They betray your position. Rely on your guard. Ride at all times to the paidhi’s left, never otherwise. He knows where to ride relative to our weapons. Do not make a mistake in that regard, any of you. Someone could die for it.”

“I shall try, Banichi-nadi.” From Cajeiri, with a certain dignity.

“Never mind trying,” Banichi said sternly. “Do, young sir. Do. Get up. Do you need help getting up?”

“I shall do it myself,” Cajeiri said. “I have done it.”

Bren worked his own way close to the herd, located Jago’s shadow against the sky and located a mechieti with an empty saddle. He thought it was his, and by the scrollwork on the saddle, it seemed to be. He got it to extend a leg and bow down, and he heaved himself, stiff and sore, belly down across the saddle, then straightened around, got his left foot in position at the curve of the neck and unsecured the guiding rein. Everyone else was up, by then, and without another word, they started moving, climbing the other slope, passing through the greatest likelihood of further ambush. Bren’s heart beat like a hammer while they passed that zone.

“Are we going to Taiben?” Cajeiri asked.

“Hush!” Jago’s voice, sharply, to a boy, who, if he was not shot in the next hour, might be aiji.

And who, having spent so much time away from geographic referents, away from any subtle sense of the land, or the clues of the heavens, had trouble telling what direction they were riding. Cajeiri was lost. Terrible things had happened to so much bright enthusiasm. The maneuver the boys had believed would be a grand adventure and a great success had turned very dark indeed, and there was no mending it, only staying alive.

But after they had passed that region, after Banichi and Jago had exchanged a few quiet words, Bren found Cajeiri and the Taibeni riding next to him.

“Young gentleman?”

“Nand’ Bren?”

“We are riding toward Taiben. The Kadigidi have attacked your great-uncle’s house, and those of us who might help defend it are out here.”

“Finding help!”

“Finding help, yes. But you should know it is well possible, young gentleman, that your encounter was not chance. Your enemies found you by means of your great-uncle’s unsecured com system. Messages flew back and forth, unsecured, trying to prevent your going out here. It was not well done, young gentleman.”

“And they might have ambushed Antaro and the escort all the same, nandi!”

Oh, the heir was not as beaten down as one might expect. He was his father’s son. And his mother’s. And that burgeoning arrogance, if unchecked, could get others killed.

“Consult. Consult Banichi and Cenedi, young sir. Consult me. If your young staff had reason for misgivings about the mission, you should have told us, not gone off, stealing mechieti, lying to the stable staff—”

“Grandmother would never have let me go.”

“And do you think there was no reason for us to refuse such a request, nadi? And was there an excuse for lying to us?”

“When asking does no good!”

“Except that Antaro is Taibeni and might have accomplished this mission with a certain finesse which one does not see evident in our current circumstance, young sir.”

“Except if Antaro was ambushed. And she was. And the escort would never listen to her opinions, or take her as important. And Cenedi thinks there are spies in the house. If I tell Banichi, Banichi tells you, you tell grandmother, grandmother tells Lord Tatiseigi and he tells his staff, and then the Kadigidi know everything you do, nandi. Maybe they can overhear the com units, but maybe, too, someone just told them.”

It was a very sharp young wit, and a certain command of language. One saw his father.

“That may be, young sir, but there are always ways to consult in secret.”

“No one uses them with me! No one takes us seriously! The Atageini would not listen even to me when I said we should keep going. They said we would sleep til dawn and I said they were fools! Now the Kadigidi are at the house attacking my grandmother, and it will be another day before we can even get to Taiben, let alone back again!”

“You are certainly right in that,” he had to admit. “But mechieti are not machines. They have to rest, and sooner or later, we will have to.”

“One does regret very much that the guards are dead,” Cajeiri said after a moment—a boy who had just shot at a man, killed him, and seen two decent men go down protecting him… never mind they had not done wisely.

“As one should always regret such an event,” Bren said, and let it go. The boy had passed from deep shock to a reasonable, shaken outrage at the situation. Only eight. Only eight, with physical strength exceeding an adult human’s and with two followers who had served only as a slight anchor on his high and wide decisions—an especially slight restraint in an Atageini hall whose lord radiated detestation of his Taibeni escort, and Ilisidi herself had maneuvered for advantage with that very powerful lord’s opinions.

Had that been Cajeiri’s inner conclusion as to why Ilisidi had sent Antaro away from him?

Not an accurate assessment of his great-grandmother, if that was the case, and Tatiseigi himself knew his old feuds with the Taibeni counted for nothing with Ilisidi. But he kept his mouth shut on further argument with the boy on that score.

“Well put, with the boy, Bren-ji,” Jago found the opportunity to say when they did dismount and take a breather. They were shifting saddles about, his bodyguard trading their gear to others of the herd, except only the herd leader, who constantly carried, at least, Jago’s lighter weight. She slid down to stretch her legs, keeping the herd leader at very short rein.

“One never knows, Jago-ji, what to say to him.”

“Someone should listen to these young people,” Jago said, uncommon criticism of, Bren thought, the dowager’s dealings with her grandson. “Tano has tried.”

“How should I advise them?”

“Exactly as you have.”

“I gave them no advice at all, nadi.”

“You listened to him as if he were a man, Bren-ji. That, in itself, makes a point.”

It did, perhaps. Perhaps he had done that. His acquaintance with children in his whole adult life had been, precisely, Cajeiri, whose developing mind was rapidly turning in unpredictable directions, and he worried. The boy had killed—a child who had been very far from his own kind, in a situation rife with violence, a child far too exposed to human culture, a child who, given present circumstances, might soon be aiji over three quarters of the world, and who had not been on his own planet long enough to know instinctively which was east and which was west.

“I hardly know that a human has any business at all advising him. He may have read far too many of our books.”

“He learned from the kyo as well, Bren-ji.”

Odd to think that, in instincts if not experience, he might be as alien to the boy’s hardwiring as were the kyo. Scary, to think that. They at least had shared a planet.

“Bren-ji.” Tano walked up in the dark and pressed a paper-wrapped object into his hand, one of those concentrate bars they had gotten from the escort, as it proved. He realized he had not eaten since breakfast, and the slight definition he began to see in figures and shapes advised him that dawn was not far off, a new day coming.

They had gone straight through till morning. A morning in which, if the defense of Tirnamardi had failed, every power in the world he knew might have changed, and everything he relied on might have gone down in defeat.

In that cheerful thought, he wasn’t sure he could get the food down, but he soberly unwrapped it and tried, a mostly dry mouthful. For the mechieti’s sake, they had stopped by a stream—perhaps the same one they had crossed before. He walked over past the herd, to drink upstream of the mechieti’s wading and drinking.

He squatted down on the soft margin, cupped up water in his hands.

Mechieti moved, heads lifting. He froze, looked up, and saw a man standing on the slight rise across the brook.

He let fall the water, thrust his hand into his pocket and settled his hand around the pistol grip. But a man bent on mischief would have lain flat on that rise and fired at them. It hardly seemed an attack.

“Papa!” Antaro exclaimed, a clear high voice in the night. But commendably from cover.

“Taro-ji.” From the figure that was, indisputably, Deiso. “Is the dowager here?”

“No, nadi,” Banichi said, from their side of the brook, and stepping into the clear. “But the paidhi’s guard is.”

“Banichi-nadi. We saw the fire in the east. Is that my son?”

“Papa,” Jegari said from somewhere beyond the wall of alert mechieti. “It is. With nand’ Cajeiri and the paidhi-aiji.”

“Your daughter was sent to find nand’ Keimi,” Banichi said, “with a message from the dowager. The fire in the dark is likely a Kadigidi attack on Tirnamardi.”

“Kadigidi Assassins killed the men with us,” Antaro said. “And the paidhi and his guard came. And I have the message, papa, with Lord Tatiseigi’s seal and the dowager’s both. They need help.”

“My great-grandmother,” Cajeiri said in a clear, young voice that carried through the dark, “asked me to write the letter. And great-uncle signed it and put his seal on it with hers. He asks politely.”

A small space of silence.

“One knew there would be inconvenient entanglements,” Deiso said, “when the aiji took an Atageini consort.”

“My mother!” Cajeiri declared in his father’s tone. “And you are my cousin, once removed!”

“That I am,” Deiso said.

“I will go back and rescue my great-grandmother,” Cajeiri said. “And we will go back.” That familiar we, that we-myself-and-my-house—including, now, the man’s own son and daughter. “Come with us, nandi.”

God. It was his father, top to bottom.

“The heir should not go back,” Deiso said. “These young people should none of them go into a firefight.”

“And where will the mechieti go?” Cajeiri asked, standing his ground. “I am not a good rider, nandiin. I am sure he would break away and go with you.”

“He is a Taiben mechieti,” Jago said, “and going to his home range. Failing that, the young gentleman can safely walk to Taiben.”

“No,” Cajeiri said flatly. “We shall go with you, Jago-nadi. We will go back to my great-grandmother, and nand’ Deiso will bring his people to rescue her and my great-uncle, and we cannot stand here wasting time and arguing the way the Atageini did!”

“Time,” Banichi said, “is already running against us. Transmissions have fallen silent.”

Had there been any? Banichi had not said.

“An appeal from the aiji-dowager,” Deiso said, and gave a warbling whistle, which brought a number of others over the rise in the gray hint of a dawn. “We have mechieti.”

None were in evidence at the moment. The rangers had made a silent, careful approach. Very many things had turned up in their path that the paidhi’s human ears had never caught. He felt a little lost, and exhausted, and they seemed to be losing the argument with Cajeiri. He didn’t like that aspect of things, didn’t know whether he could gain anything at all by objecting, or whether the boy would at all regard a protest from him.

“There are nine of us,” Deiso said. “By no means all the force we can raise. Nand’ Cajeiri, here is one job well suited to young people. Get to a relay and advise Keimi we need help, and that we need it soon.”

“Nandi,” Cajeiri protested.

“Young sir,” Banichi said, “do it. This is necessary.”

“Yes,” Cajeiri said. “But when they come, we are coming with them!”

“As may be,” Deiso conceded, and walked among them, touching his son and his daughter, a brief contact, a bow from the young people, a goodbye. “You know the situation. Nand’ Keimi will ask your authority. Say the wind has shifted. Remember it. Go.”

“Go, indeed.” Banichi lost no time in escorting Cajeiri to his mount and boosting him up to the saddle. The Taibeni youngsters hurried to reach their own mechieti, and with their agile skill, were up before Cajeiri had gotten the quirt and the rein straightened away.

The youngsters departed at a run, headed back to this herd’s home territory, under strong persuasion and use of the quirts—the three would part with the others. It was the herd leader who had to be fought back and held—Jago had scrambled up beforehand and gotten him under restraint, and while two of the unsaddled mechieti decided to go with the departing youngsters, Tano and Algini showed up between them and the three outbound, turning them with mere broken branches, moving them back to the herd, remounts, Bren said to himself, that they were going to need to make any speed at all.

And in that moment of argument, his own mechieti relatively still, if weaving in confusion, Bren thought he should get its attention and get up while he had his chance. He grabbed the saddle leather, hauled himself up as the beast turned in place, the best and chanciest mount he had ever executed in his life. He snatched the rein unsecured, got the quirt properly back against the hindquarters, to steer it straight—damned proud of himself, that he was not lying in the dirt being rescued. Tano and Algini, who had come to rescue him, went to their own mechieti.

Other mechieti were arriving over the low rise, the two herd-leaders squalling at each other, and more rangers, some mounted, some afoot like Deiso, brought them. The youngsters’ mother was likely with them, Bren thought, not to mention cousins and uncles and aunts, all keeping a weather-eye toward Atageini territory and not hesitating to ride well into it, when they’d caught wind of trouble… without that message, they might have come in, a whole lineage set at risk for the sake of a son and daughter involved in this chancy business, and never, so far as he had observed, had a word to that effect passed between father and children, nor had their mother come in to wish them on their way. But they were headed in a safe direction, the best and safest direction Cajeiri could take. In Taiben there were unquestioned allies, people to support and protect the heir if the worst happened and the paidhi and his great-grandmother and all the rest perished in this foolishness. Worry was wasted in that direction, he decided.

But he had no choice. If Taibeni were going to the heart of Atageini territory at his urging, he had to go with them, he had no question of that at all—no way out of this, no real desire for one—only an urge to get back to Tirnamardi as fast as this weary beast could carry his aching bones. He was ever so sorry to have involved his bodyguard in this mess, and ever to have mentioned the word Taiben in that message, and wished he and they had better choices, or that he had made better ones years ago, when there had been a chance to dissuade Tatiseigi from his flirtation with Kadigidi rebels.

Power-seeking. Political games. The old, old reason.

Hell of a mess, was what it was.

He held his mechieti still beside Tano’s. The rangers sorted themselves onto their mechieti, with few words exchanged in the process. The two bands had stayed somewhat apart, the herd-leaders having come to a tusk-brandishing statement of dominance, so that there was a primary and a secondary leader—even possible that the mechieti had been one herd before this… such thoughts drifted through a dazed human brain. He only knew this batch wanted to clump together, and that put him with his own bodyguard, and meant they would react that way in a fracas, which he much preferred. And now that they moved, they headed cross-country, as directly toward Tirnamardi’s distant fence as they could dead-reckon it, by what he could tell. He settled himself to the even gait, trying not to wonder what might have happened back at the estate, but he could not help it. The Kadigidi might have gotten in. The dowager might have perished. He detected Banichi at least trying to get information by tuning in the pocket-com, but only briefly. “Can you tell anything?” he heard Jago ask him, and Banichi:

“No transmissions.”

It did nothing to comfort any of them. He would have gone all out. But mechieti who had been run all night had self-protection enough not to kill themselves, and as the day dawned, clouded and dim, the mechieti of their party slowed, and slowed further. The rangers, in the lead, dropped the pace, until finally they stopped for water at one of the loops of their meandering brook.

“Rest an hour,” Deiso decreed. “Keep under saddle, nadiin, nandi.”

An hour. An hour of delay. He wanted to be there. He wanted that hour to be past, but there was no choice. He slid down his mechieti’s rock-hard side, the creature so bone-weary it was already in the process of sitting down. It folded its legs and settled and his feet hit the ground. He sank down to sit leaning against its sweaty warmth, rested there, propped up, eyes shut, deliberately, concentratedly relaxing muscles that had been tense for hours, one at a time, starting with the toes and fingers.

Bodies gathered around him, one and the other, atevi, warm and as bent as he on rest, no talk, not a word out of any of them, a mortal comfort. Safety, in an unsafe world.

Silence for a space and inner dark. A mechieti snorted: that was the wake-up. His companions moved at once, and the mechieti Bren was leaning on suddenly decided to get up. Hands reached. Jago pulled him to his feet.

All the mechieti were getting up. Time to be under way, Bren thought, and wordlessly turned to grab the saddle, but Jago’s hand fell on his shoulder and caught his attention. Mechieti had gone on the alert.

Riders were coming in, riders in dark green and brown, more rangers—and bringing in a sizeable herd of mechieti with them. Bren gazed at them with rising hope that they could now make speed—and indeed, with hardly a dozen words of discussion with Deiso, the rangers started shifting saddles about, theirs and everyone’s, in an economy of motion and fuss that argued this must have been the order that had gone back to Taiben, and that the youngsters had gotten there safely, or somehow delivered their message and reached another band of Keimi’s men. He counted. They were no longer fourteen, they were thirty-three, a sizeable force, and armed, and Jago saddled him a mechieti that had not carried weight all night, a creature herd-bound to the rangers’ mounts.

He stood there with his legs shivering under him, exhausted, and knowing his own staff, including Jago, who handled that saddle as if it were a feather, must be feeling it in their bones. She secured the girth. He reached and touched Jago’s arm, that human-primate move, and she set a hand on his shoulder, that atevi instinct, bunching closer, group-made-solid.

“Can you do it, Bren-ji?”

“No question,” he said, and she took hold of him and lifted him up to the saddle, while Deiso and his people saw to the details, and exchanged rapidfire briefings the gist of which he caught in a half-sleeping haze. Yes, the youngsters had met up with them, yes, Cajeiri and his young bodyguard were safely on their way to Taiben—did he dream that? He fought mental drifting, brought his head up sharply and caught his balance as a strange mechieti moved under him. Stupid, he chided himself, to be falling off to sleep—he was apt to fall right out of the saddle; but he had been roused up out of a dark spot and handed information none of which was fitting together, not all of which made clear sense. The children were safe. This party was the aggregate of Deiso’s party, that had been out probing Atageini land for trouble since the gunfire. The other had been hunting trouble that might try to come around the Atageini flank—defending an old curmudgeon who didn’t want to be defended by Taibeni, but doing it all unasked, as their own best defense, only common sense, he heard Tano say.

Yes, they had seen the fire last night, and they had come across the children, heard the story, and sent them on to Keimi.

Thank God, Bren thought, in his private darkness, behind closed lids. Thank God. He could let go his worry for the youngsters.

“They will be safe, nandi,” he heard from Tano, and from Banichi himself:

“Keimi thinks the Atageini will be only a first step, that the Kadigidi will probe into Taiben as far as they can. They intend to stop that.”

“Wise of him.” More than wise. Necessary. He rubbed his eyes, making them stay open… his mind spiraled off into one of those fugues, those desperate quests after disconnected information, looking for hooks to tie things together. Woodland and meadow. The long stretch of Atageini hunting land, long in dispute, rolling away to Tirnamardi, the source of game for Atageini tables, a no-man’s-land between two associations long in contention—

Contention in which the Taibeni, closely bound to Tabini-aiji, had looked suspiciously on the Atageini’s dalliance with the Kadigidi, that old lowlander, central province association that had coveted Taiben’s woods, cut down trees, intruded into the highlands in countless raids, before the modern age.

Now Taiben came onto land they historically, before the clearing of these meadows, regarded as their own—bitter, bitter pill, the dowager’s insistence on Tatiseigi’s putting his seal to that letter. Tatiseigi would have an apoplexy if he knew the Taibeni had come in without it.

But Tatiseigi could pitch his fit. It was another thought he was chasing through the underbrush, beyond the Kadigidi-Atageini affair: another old, old association: the woodlands, the highlands, the long sweep of surviving woodland that swept right around the flank of the Kadigidi, woodland toward the west, outflanking the lowland association, serving as a barrier against lowland expansion. Come into that forest, and die.

Richness of game. Cover for movement… Atageini towns, historically, more afraid of those woods than they were of the plains-based Kadigidi. They would not go into the north. Would not intrude there. Would not poach that land, only appealed to their lord in Tirnamardi when game herds spilled over and damaged their crops…

Dusty papers, books, research in his cramped little office, the week he had succeeded Wilson-paidhi, all those years ago. Sunlight slanting through the window of the single room, its shelves piled high with books, facts obscuring truth in sheer abundance of paper…

Blink. Hindbrain made conclusions. Realized they had traveled northwest, away from the road. Were going due east from their meeting-spot, aimed at that long, long hedge and fence. They weren’t going in the gate.

Blink, again. Tabini had stopped on Atageini land, paid his visit, played his politics; and the Atageini had stayed firmly bound to the aishidi’tat, not falling in with the Kadigidi, not trusting, so long as Lady Damiri stayed bound to Tabini-aiji, any blandishments of the Kadigidi—because the Kadigidi would never rely on the Atageini lord, not with Damiri mothering Tabini’s heir, Tatiseigi’s kinsman…

Taiben had reason to think the Kadigidi would push the Atageini and that the old man ruling at Tirnamardi would have no choice but to play politics, having no force, no great establishment of security and weaponry such as Taiben had built during Tabini-aiji’s rule.

That mathematics went on in the dowager’s head, no question. No question his staff had understood it in all its permutations, with no word said among them. He began to have his own gut feeling that maybe his suggesting Taiben had never been a bad idea, that the dowager had been inclining in that direction and hadn’t seen quite how to do it… until she pounced on Cajeiri as the key part of the equation, necessary to tip the old man into compliance. Atevi, he had long suspected, didn’t always logic their way through such calculations at ethereal distance: they felt the pull of clan and house and influence, they moved, they acted in a peculiar symmetry, and, cold and logical as the dowager could be—she might have had a piece snapped into place for her, thanks to him. Or had she, damn her, forced a move?

Gut-sense said their little band was going in the right direction now, if not before. Safety was behind them. Chaos was swirling around Tirnamardi, trying to destroy the dowager, to suck the lord of the Atageini right down into it—damned right, the dowager had known the hazard, known that a very key player would be tottering, the more as their arrival onworld shoved hard at the situation—what was Tatiseigi going to think when they came back, if they didn’t come to him and expect his help?

And what, conversely, were the Kadigidi going to assume as fact, when he hosted the dowager? Every atevi involved in this mess had to feel the swing of that internal compass: man’chi. Man’chi applied even to him, as clearly as he had ever had that sense, and the dowager pushing every button she could reach… setting herself right at the crux of the matter and demanding extravagant action. Come and save us—move, if you have any disposition to move, and the hell with waiting for it.

Atevi weren’t given to fighting wars. Not often. But one was certainly shaping up here. Not just the usual skirmish, the usual Guild action, the fall of critical leaders: this was in one sense a small skirmish, but it happened on the dividing line between two forces, and the Guild, such as it was, had begun to engage—his staff, on this side. Kadigidi, on the other… and the only thing Ilisidi hadn’t foreseen was the boy, of all her resources, kiting off to Taiben, following his own developing instincts. Cajeiri had forced every power in play to readjust position… the boy had been under intolerable pressure, seen the situation, and, being his father’s son, he’d moved, damn his young hide, seized power of his own, without consulting his great-grandmother.

Atevi mathematics. Calculations he had to logic his way through. And now the fool human was riding the wave back again, having gathered force enough, he hoped to God—force that looked, by cold daylight, a little less precise, a little more weather-worn, Jago’s hair for once straying a few wisps out of her braid, their uniforms, even their faces smudged with pale trail-dust, frown-lines appearing that did not exist, otherwise. Exhausted. All of them, Deiso and the rangers as well, not to mention the beasts that carried them. It was a dangerous condition, and logic had nothing to do with what they were doing now, except evolutionary logic—mass movement of the forces across the continent, politics on its grandest scale.

They rode, leaving the mechieti that had carried them outward to graze, rest, and wander on their own logic back to Taibeni territory, or to trail after them if they were so inclined. The sun rose. The landscape passed in a haze of autumn grass, low scrub, the rolling hills. No one explained or talked or wondered. They all knew. Even the human did, now. Bren shut his eyes, locked his leg across the beast’s neck, trapped under his other knee, wrapping his arms as close to his center of gravity as he could, and for a few moments at a time he found he could rest, waking in a kind of daze, with no coherent thought beyond a realization that, yes, check of the internal compass, they were still headed east, to Tirnamardi, and, no, he hadn’t fallen off. No one spoke, which suited him, and the thunderous quiet began to seem the whole universe, closer and closer to an armageddon that wasn’t going to involve humans—except this one. There was some solace in that.

Eyes shut again.

Opened. The world had hushed. Stopped moving. He was still in the saddle.

“Nandi.” A ranger was standing beside his right leg, offering him up a canteen and a stick of concentrate. He discovered hunger he hadn’t known he had, wolfed the small bar down, barely a bite for an ateva, and drank deeply before he gave the canteen back.

Awake, this time, fugue-state never having produced specific information, only a general centering where he was, in what course he was taking. He had no interest at all in dismounting and having to climb up again. He was settled. He might die on mechieti-back, somewhere across that intervening distance. At least he wouldn’t have to walk there to do it. Banichi rode alongside for a moment, inquired how he fared.

“Well enough,” he said. “Well enough, Banichi-ji.” He asked no opinions. In the headlong rush of elements in this chaos, there was nothing orderly at all. Jago was near him. Tano and Algini were behind him. That was what he needed. That was what they all needed. It was an atevi sorting-out, as necessary to them as the mechieti moving with their leader. He was the one with the illusion of absolute choice. And where was he? Where his heart led him. Going to get the dowager out of a mess. End of all questions.

And having discovered that, shortly after they set to moving again, he let his head droop and honestly fell asleep—waked, suddenly, as balance changed, his heart skipping a beat. They had hit a long downward slope. A dark bar crossed the meadow ahead, and, bewildering him for the instant, the sun had somehow sunk well down the sky—

God, how had they gotten this far, this late? He both wanted to be closer, and was appalled that they were this close, choices, if there ever had been, steadily diminishing. Was there a better political answer? The paidhi was supposed to find them, if they existed, and he was bereft of other ideas. Was here better than going along that fence, or finding the hunting gate Lord Tatiseigi had said existed? His staff had that expertise, if there was a way.

A smell wafted on the wind, faint scent of disaster, urging they had no time for alternatives, that maybe they were already out of time.

“Smoke, nadiin,” he said. It was not a strong smell. It was wind-scattered, but he was very sure of it, and he was sure they had caught it, too, and drawn their own unhappy conclusions.

“There will have been plenty of it, one fears,” Banichi said. “But there has been no more sound such as last night. Scattered gunfire.”

“They are still shooting?” He took that for hope.

“Sporadically so, nadi,” Banichi informed him, and he cherished that thought as they rode the long slow roll to the crest of the next hill.

From there they had that view they had had on a prior evening, with Atageini farmland to the north, in the distance, and their bar, mostly arrow-straight, resolved as one part of the considerable hedges and fence of Tirnamardi’s grounds.

They rode closer. There was no visible smoke rising, but the smell persisted. Banichi listened, with the com unit, and shook his head, riding ahead to confer briefly with Deiso and his wife.

There was no view of the house at this distance. It lay behind a roll of the land. The hedge grew more distinct in their view, with no variance. He wished he had binoculars.

The conference between Banichi and the rangers continued. Their pace slowed, and came to a halt just off the crest of the hill, down in a low spot where they wouldn’t present a hilltop silhouette to observers near the hedge. The whole group bunched up, mechieti sorting into a lazy order, dipping their heads to catch a mouthful of volunteer grain that had strayed from farmer’s fields into the the meadow grass.

A glance westward showed color. The sun had begun to stain the sky at their backs.

And the conference continued.

Shots, Banichi had said. Sniping. They were coming in to overset whatever balance had been struck.

Towns existed north and south of here, and some further east. There was no sign yet, of a wider conflict, of farmers and craftsmen drawn into what still remained, thus far, a matter for lords and Guild. That might yet happen. If passions were too far stirred, it could well happen, common clansmen against common clansmen of the neighboring province—that was what they had to avert. It was the lords’ job to prevent it.

And that—the scattered bits from his musings began to try to gel—the lords had to get provocations away from the people. If they had not lost the dowager already, their own last and best chance—with Cajeiri safely committed to Taiben—was to snatch up Ilisidi and veer around Tirnamardi and the Kadigidi, northeastward, through those forestland corridors and toward the mountains, where his best guess said he might find Tabini, or at least find help. Those mountains, hazed in twilight, floated above the landscape where they waited, a vision distant as the moon in the sky, and seeming downright as difficult to attain, bone-weary as they were.

He could, if he were a coward, draw off his staff, even yet, pick up Cajeiri, get back to the coast and try to raise support in the north, maybe even back off to Mospheira and make another try from there. His mind was awake. Alternatives were spinning through the attic of his thoughts, none viable.

Folly, riding in there, blind and possibly much too late. He contained so much knowledge—but, ironically, it was knowledge an eight-year-old boy had, that Jase had, the star that was the station and the ship not yet apparent, but he knew it was there, and that thought held like an anchor. For once in his life he had backup, of sorts, and he could afford a risk. He could be a total fool, charging into the situation, as if he could rescue the two oldest, canniest connivers in all the aishidi’tat…

Ilisidi wouldn’t call him a fool. She’d bet on him showing up. Probably so would Cenedi, who wouldn’t have gone throwing his life away on an attack against the Kadigidi. She would be thinking about those mountains, too, and yet still stood by a pivotal old politicking fool, to be sure he didn’t collapse and cave in the belly of the aishidi’tat—

Forcing the issue, damn her. Forcing all of them. Forcing the Guild itself, from its perch in Shejidan, to have a look at the escalating chaos… and to face a new fact: that Murini-aiji didn’t control the middle lands or the north.

Banichi rode back to them, swinging his mechieti in close.

Jago moved near, companionably. And a movement in the tail of Bren’s eye advised him one of the rangers had gotten down, and now left afoot, running.

“Toward the hunting gate?” he asked his staff.

“Not that far, nandi,” Banichi said. “Get down. We shall, to rest here and wait. He should make the fence about twilight.”

Half an hour or so. Banichi himself dismounted, while his mechieti resumed interest in the scattered heads of grain. Bren experimentally slung both legs over the side, his mechieti likewise occupied, and slid down. Banichi caught him under the arms and set him down gently as if he were Cajeiri.

“There,” Banichi said gently. “Go sit down, Bren-ji. Your staff has business with the Taibeni.”

“If I have a regret, nadiin-ji, it is ever bringing you into this situation.”

“The paidhi-aiji’s company is usually interesting.” A wry smile from Banichi. He couldn’t help but laugh, however thin and soundless it came out, and however upset it left him.

“Go,” Jago said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Rest, Bren-ji. Your company may be interesting. But our talk will be dry detail.”

A stray civil servant, indeed, wasn’t highly useful to Guild at this point, particularly Guild trying to think of all possible eventualities. He took Banichi’s advice, walked over to a spot where it seemed little likely that mechieti would step on him. There he sat down, knees drawn up, head on hands for a moment. He seemed to have filled his quota of sleep, such as it had been. Rest seemed unlikely. Clear thought was not producing any comfort. Seeking some occupation for his hands, then, he unloaded his gun, checked its condition and blew out a little lint before he reloaded, all the while trying not to think more than five minutes ahead of him.

He never had mastered that knack.

Chapter 13

Wind blew the grass, clouds moved with incredible slowness, the mechieti grazed, one of them always head-up, watching the surrounds. And a close band of atevi sat laying plans while the sun went down.

Bren wished he could sleep. He couldn’t. He sat, rested his knees together in front of him, feet apart, and his arms against him, not a graceful position, but one that kept him mostly off the cold ground, and kept the wind at his back—since wind there had begun to be, now, a brisk wind that equaled the chill of the ground, against which his jacket was no defense at all.

The sun slipped past the edge of the world, and he rested his head down, aware that his bodyguard had come back to him and settled down to rest. He wouldn’t make them go through it all again for his information—he wouldn’t rob them of the sleep they’d won, and pursued, while strangers watched over them.

He did drift, waked in total disorientation, still sitting up, conscious of complete night, of movement around him, and for a single panicked moment not knowing what mechieti were doing in his cabin.

Atageini land, a hellish mess, the dowager somewhere beyond that ridge, and Banichi and Jago up talking to people who were, yes, Taiben rangers. Tano and Algini were with him, one on a side, and everything was, considering the presence of a couple of dozen mechieti, very quiet, very hushed. He didn’t want to chatter questions. But he tried to get his legs to move. It took a couple of efforts and finally Algini’s help to get up. He stood, a little embarrassed, rubbed numb spots, not an elegant process.

“Our spy is back,” Algini told him.

“What do we know?”

“The house remains protected, and inner defenses are still live, nandi,”

Supremely good news, and it represented a great risk on the part of the ranger that had gone in to find out.

“The estate perimeter fence is inactive,” Tano said. “One believes they have taken the house as the sole point of resistance, and the stable burned, which was likely the light we saw, but overall the house is still a point of resistance, and one believes now the neighboring towns may feel it necessary to intervene.”

Not good news. Townsmen who elected to get involved in a Guild action were as likely to create confusion for their own side, and the Guild on the other side would not spare them.

“We are moving in, nadiin?”

“One believes so,” Algini said.

Time he did talk to Banichi and Jago. He walked, still massaging a stiff leg, over to the conference.

“Likely we can get inside, nandi,” Deiso said as he joined them. “Getting out again—if they add forces—may be a very great difficulty. One advises your lordship retreat at this point.”

“No,” Bren said without even thinking on it. “No. If my staff goes in, I go. And we know the inside.”

Outrageous, in atevi terms. He only dimly reckoned that, after it came out of his mouth.

“Reason with him, nadi,” Deiso said.

“He is capable, no matter his size,” Banichi said, entirely unexpected, and the statement sent a little quiver of adrenaline through his nerves. Capable, he was. It was better than Lord of the Heavens.

And he had no wish, after Banichi saying that, to act the fool. He folded his arms and listened to Banichi lay out the plan, attempting dignity, and silently absorbing the simple outline, which was to go in the way the scout had: he had gotten through without problems at the fence. The rangers had wire-cutters in their collective kit, and meant to go in without need of going the long way round.

Crosscountry, from the fence to the house, trusting other defenses would be down, since their scout had met none.

After that…

After that, they approached the house—in the fervent hope they were not too late.

“A wonder they withstood the first attack,” Banichi said, “except the first incursion was a probe. Maodi is the chief of Guild that serves the Kadigidi. A ruthless sort, but not reckless, and if Murini is in Shejidan, as we have reported, that means Maodi will be there, not here—he will not want to stain his hands or his lord’s with this unneighborly move. That means secondary force is involved, and one perceives they were tentative, not committing great force.”

“Tonight,” Deiso said, “tonight they will bring force in. We have other bands coming, and they may be here before daylight. But we ought not to wait for an outcome, nandi.”

“Whatever Banichi says,” Bren stated, “I accept.”

More Taibeni forces coming in behind them was good news; but the chance of the Kadigidi getting in and slaughtering the household—not considering the Kadigidi might have agents on the inside… he was very ready to go without them. He would be dismayed if Banichi counseled waiting any longer.

“The paidhi is with us,” Banichi said.

“No question,” Bren said, and Deiso:

“Then we should move, should we not?”

Ten thousand questions, a whole world he wanted to know—but certainties were not available. He went back to his mechieti. The rangers mounted up, and he did, and fell in with his own staff. The band started to move eastward, in the deepening dark, up the low rise and down again. Clouds had moved across the stars, taking away even the starlight, and a breeze-borne chill swept down at their faces, numbed his hands and made him wish, not for the first time on this trek, that he had at least remembered his gloves, and put on a sweater under his coat. No Narani, that was what it was. He had gotten used to such items turning up in his pockets. Now all he had was his gun, his useless pocket com, his pill bottle, and a spare clip.

He ought to be terrified. He actually wasn’t sure about that, then decided what he felt wasn’t quite fear, rather a sense of fatalism, of foreboding—that he really, truly couldn’t envision their success in this operation, or more to the point, envision exactly what they were going to do once they had gotten onto the grounds and rescued the dowager, even granted their success. He doubted Ilisidi was up to a long, breakneck ride—she’d surprised him before, but she’d been out of the saddle for two years herself. And even if she could surprise him, he knew of a certainty that Lord Tatiseigi wasn’t up to it—and what were they to do to prevent consequences from overwhelming the one key lord in the middle provinces?

Over all, he feared they were going to have to stand and fight to keep Tatiseigi and the dowager alive, hoping for their own numbers to increase, as surely the Kadigidi were going to bring in reinforcements. Which would be very bad for the Atageini house, and its fragile lilies… worse for its surrounding towns, and their peaceful existence. The farmers—the locals—could have their whole structure blown to bits… vulnerable as the porcelain lilies.

His own affairs—he had wrapped up, leaving the next tries to Jase and Yolanda. He had delivered Cajeiri into the hands of his Taibeni relatives, to get to his father if they could. He trusted Toby was back on the island, likely hovering near the shortwave and hoping for news…

God, this was morbid, cataloging and disposing of all his ties to the world. But the ruler he served seemed less and less likely to get back to power, the more blood they poured on the matter, and if it didn’t happen, the world didn’t need a paidhi whose advice had led to civil war and bodies lying in windrows…

That was the underlying thought, wasn’t it? There was a certain justice in his being here, and he had run out of remedies. If he sent his staff off to take up service with Cajeiri, in the first place, they wouldn’t go, and if he went, himself, it would bring Cajeiri association with him. Everything seemed circular reasoning. Everything led where he was… which left him unable to see the outcome. He couldn’t even see how it mattered, except he might kill some Guildsman who adhered to the Kadigidi, and they might kill him, and nothing, in the long run, would get fixed, not by him, would it?

Maybe by Jase. Maybe by Lord Geigi, who could sit up in the heavens and say, you idiots, I told you so. Are you ready to stop killing each other?

Because the kyo would show up. And somebody had to be in charge. He was sure of that, as sure as he was that the whole current enterprise was unlikely to succeed.

Once he analyzed it that way, he began to have a roadmap of what they had to do, and what constituted a win—if only raising enough hell on the planet that Geigi and Jase got wind of his failure early, before the Kadigidi could capitalize on their win.

At best, getting Ilisidi back to Taiben and making the Kadigidi look a little less powerful than they claimed. That would put egg on their faces… start one hell of a war, but it wouldn’t leave the world to Murini’s non-existent common sense. Get Ilisidi to Taiben. That prospect might even budge Tatiseigi to go, be it in that antique roadster, not to mention the Kadigidi would never be able to claim the man’chi of the Atageini populace… who would rally to their oldest enemies, the Taibeni, and create a very hard kernel of resistance right next to the Kadigidi.

Damn, he was starting to think again, not on a cosmic scale, not of the politics of species, but in the dirt and sweat world of detailed politics and the knack of leaving an enemy looking less successful, while one’s own tattered cause emerged looking as if it had won something. Atevi, like humans, dearly loved a neatly carried action, an outrageous enterprise.

He became downright foolishly cheerful, as cheerful, at least, as contemplating the necessary obverse of that coin could let him be. The wind altogether seemed a little warmer, the dark a great deal friendlier to them.

Give the Kadigidi a surprise? Maybe. His backside had passed the tingling point, far past pain, where the jouncing and jolting of the mechieti’s gait was concerned; he could ignore discomfort, now. The darkened landscape passed in a shadow-play of his own staff riding near and then past him and back again, the rangers tending to the lead, in a territory they seemed to know much better than Lord Tatiseigi might like—down one long slope and another, and finally toward a dark line of shadow that his eyes began to resolve as artificial, the hedge that would conceal a fence, the estate boundary.

It came closer and closer until it barred off their forward progress, an ancient hedge more than head high to a mechieti, thick and tangled and stubborn—and how they could possibly pass it, he had no idea… but their scout had.

They drew up to a hard-breathing halt in front of that barrier, and a number of the rangers slid down and took equipment from their saddle-packs. Some of them bodily forced the hedge aside, one attaching a rope to his saddle and urging his mechieti to turn and pull, which bent two ancient parts of the hedge aside. Then men set to work with hand-axes, others spelling the effort in quick succession, so that the rhythm and strength of the blows never flagged for a moment. The center of each bush began to give way, and once they gave, another ranger pressed into the gap and set to work on the chain link fence, sharp, quick snaps of a wire-cutter: Lord Tatiseigi’s fences and the Taiben rangers seemed, by what he saw, an old, old matter. Bren sat his saddle, shivering alike from anticipation and from the chill breeze that ruffled the grass even in the hedge-shadow. Thunder rumbled out of the west. Lightning was not their friend, not in terms of being the tallest items in the landscape, and not in terms of secrecy in this invasion.

But the fence, thank God, was no longer carrying a charge… the house had ordered defenses lowered. But had they ever gone up again? He thought of the Atageini gatekeeper, alone out there. The man might not have survived the night.

Not to mention the destruction that might have fallen on the house itself. He saw Banichi check the pocket com for information, detected nothing unexpected in Banichi’s demeanor—it had told them nothing it had not told them before.

The wire-cutter meanwhile did its work. Rangers forced their way into the gap and pulled, and the fence, gleaming faintly metallic in the dark, peeled back on either side of the missing bush, and now Deiso quirted the herd-leader through the gap, breaking brush and probably losing a little hide off him and the mechieti in the process.

Bren grabbed for a hold on the saddle as the whole herd decided to go through that atevi-sized gap at once, his own fighting to get ahead of others. Brush broke. Bren had a chaotic view of chain-link bent aside and flattened, and then his mechieti scraped through, dragging his right knee painfully past an unyielding broken branch and ripping his trousers in the process.

They were onto the estate grounds, then, with a single mechieti’s wounded protest. The rangers still afoot had scrambled to the saddle and come through, joining the moving mass. Bren found Banichi on one side of him and Tano on the other, with, he was sure, Algini and Jago just off to their respective sides, in a breathless confusion of mechieti sorting out their traveling order and broadening their front. A peevish toss of a head, tusks gleaming in the dark, an answering snort and head-toss, riders maneuvering as they picked up the pace.

They were on Lord Tatiseigi’s land, now, concealed by a clouded dark, and coming in at a thirty-degree angle to the front door of the house, the opposite side from the stables Bren had at least the glimmering of an idea where they were, a kilometer or so yet to go; and a remarkably clear notion of what they were going to do once they got there, which was to get as close as they could, dismount, and conduct a Guild-against-Guild operation around the house hedges, a sort of conflict in which one human with a sidearm was not outstandingly much help.

Deep breath. The mechieti hit their traveling pace. Too late for second thoughts. His gun was safe in a fastened pocket, so it wouldn’t fall out. Extra clip in his inside pocket. He hoped against all instinct that the core of Tatiseigi’s questionable staff was loyal; he hoped the dowager was still safe, and that Cenedi was.

Over another low rise, and now the house itself showed on the opposing ridge, a dark lump amid dark hedges, not a glimmer of light.

Then a sullen glow, like an illusion. “A light,” he said to those nearest, and Banichi:

“Clearly, nandi.”

Not clear to his eyes. But the house was not deserted. Something was going on in an upper window.

The land pitched. They lost sight of the house on the downslope.

Then gunshots racketed through the dark, four, five, a volley so rapid there was no separating them.

Up again, into full view of the house, that looked no different than before.

“Bren-ji,” Banichi said, “this sort of action will be no good place for you. Pick deep cover and get into it. And get back to the hedge and out before daylight, if we fail.”

“One hears, Banichi-ji.” It was not advice to ignore, no matter how it stung his pride.

An explosion and a gout of orange fire shattered the night. Two explosions, three. More fires started.

“Near the stable,” Banichi said, which Bren desperately took for hope that that light in the house window had not been an invader, that there was still force holding out, deliberately provoking enemy action to get a bead on them. A spatter of gunfire racketed out, echoing.

And suddenly the leader hit an all-out pace and every mechieti followed. Bren grabbed for the saddle and recovered his balance, held rein and saddle with one hand, letting the quirt dangle as he unfastened his pocket and pulled out his pistol.

Safety off. He didn’t make that elementary mistake. The landscape, the blazing fire with its rising smoke, the figures around him were all a jolted blur in the dark. The gait was that breakneck, ground-devouring run that humped the mechieti’s back and knocked the rider against the rear of the saddle—flung him all the way off, if the rider didn’t keep his center of gravity forward and his leading leg locked around the mechieti’s heaving shoulders. The back had to give, thus, to the sway inherent in the motion. He wasn’t a novice, just a long time out of practice, and this beast had a scary habit of crashing around obstacles at the very last moment—nearsighted, he swore; but it was more than following its leader. The damned creature had suddenly taken ambition into its brain, and wanted further forward, carrying lighter weight and being suddenly full of charge-ahead enthusiasm.

Up the final rise onto a mown lawn, and the rattle of gunfire ahead seemed to have nothing to do with them. He hadn’t enough hands for the quirt, the gun, the rein, and a good grip on the saddle: he had to pick the gun and the rein and trust his balance.

The house hedge showed ahead, a black wall against a red-tinged haze of smoke, and the herd leaders were undaunted—vying with one another, jostling for position, they plowed through the low obstruction like so much scrub, flattening it as they poured onto the drive and the whole herd hit the cobbles, a footing they loathed, and scrambled to get away from.

The leaders dived into the stable-lane, beside the house, but a rider rode athwart his beast’s head—Tano, heading him off from that charge. Then Banichi himself rode across his path, jostling his mechieti, forcing it to a complete stop on the drive.

“Get down!” Banichi yelled at him, and he questioned not an instant. His mechieti was stamping and head-tossing at Tano’s beast, trying to get to the lane, and he simply flung a leg off, kept hold of his gun and slid down next to the house hedge, controlling his fall with a grip on the mounting-strap until his feet hit uneven cobbles and exhausted legs tried to buckle under him.

An atevi arm grabbed him around the ribs and one of his staff hurried him against the building, down into the hedge, an atevi hand pressed his head down—and then was gone, his staff—all of them, having left afoot, armed, and with definite intent.

Damn, he thought. They’d gotten down primarily to get him to cover. Now they were dismounted, the mechieti having followed all the others around the corner toward the stables, and he was stuck here beneath a hedge, behind a stone corner and a second, facing hedge that didn’t let him see what was going on.

He ought to stay put. He knew that. But he didn’t like being near the house, which could be a target of explosives and grenades. He was in possession of one gun, of their few. He was in concealment and the hedge was as good as a highway. He wriggled behind the thick central growth of the hedge, crawled, assassin-fashion, on his elbows and belly. Gunfire rang off the stonework, and the ruined arch above the stable hedge lit with fire and smoke. His staff was doubtless in the thick of it.

More gunfire. The hedge across the stable path offered better advantage, a short crawl in the open, and he scrambled for it, forcing his way in. He came up against a metal stake that must be some of the surveillance equipment—which, God knew, might be telling the house at this very moment that there was an intruder in the brush. He felt for wires, found a conduit, wondered exactly what it led to, but there was no cutoff point, no switch available.

Not a place to linger, in any case. From his new vantage, wriggling further, he saw the stable yard, its rails down, mechieti milling about against the skeletal ruin that had been the stable itself.

And he saw atevi moving down the drive, coming from that direction—not his staff, he feared.

Then he saw half a dozen atevi running in his direction, down the drive, toward his former hiding-spot at the corner of the house.

Not his staff, a dim judgement said, and he whipped up his gun and pasted a single shot at the house corner.

The movement halted, spun about, flattened, and now fire flew in earnest, shots chipping the stonework, ricocheting off the ruined arch over his head. He’d been right—he hoped he’d been right, that his shot had warned Banichi, that he hadn’t aimed at some of Deiso’s men by accident. Or—a sober second thought—Tatiseigi’s.

A shot whisked through the branches above him, clipping evergreen, giving off a strange vegetative pungency in a night air choked with fire and gunpowder. He flattened himself all the way against the dirt, and heard the men who’d taken cover at his one shot now attempt to move. He sent a second shot toward the brickwork, and then, remembering what Banichi and Jago had taught him, slithered as silently as possible back along the hedge to a changed perspective, down among the roots, a much smaller target than atevi would generally be aiming at, and he had possible hiding-places an ateva wouldn’t fit into.

Electric shock jolted his arm, right to the roots of his teeth. He jumped—he couldn’t help it. But he didn’t cry out.

He’d found the only damned live wire in the hedge.

He eased back, nursing a numb arm, and tried to figure out where that loose wire was, and what it was connected to, which seemed to be a junction box, a little down from his position, not particularly well-protected, and cut, at this end. Deliberately disabled, and not by someone inside the house, who controlled the master cutoff.

What had been cut could be rejoined. He wondered what would happen if he did. Wondered whether it was sensors or lights connected to this line. Lights could expose his own people, as well as the other.

But there was a buildup of hostile force in his area, which was exposed, and likely nervous, hesitating to move into chancier cover where Banichi and his crew waited. He reached through the brush another few meters and located what he’d crawled over. Pulled it gently, rolled on his shoulder while shots continued to go off and uselessly chip the pale stonework near the corner.

Hell, he thought. Whatever was going on around the house, if Cenedi and the dowager were still holding out inside, they couldn’t know what was going on. One thing would tell them, encourage them, give them the notion things weren’t all to the attackers’ liking. He dragged the wire back. Touched it to the live one.

Snap! The lights popped on and a siren blared for about a second before he jerked the wire away.

Gunfire spattered through the hedge. He hoped to God he’d not gotten anyone on his side killed. But Banichi wasn’t easy to surprise. Neither, he hoped, were the Taibeni.

Then he heard a whistle he knew. Once, twice. Fortunate three.

He reconnected the wires. And all hell broke loose above his head, shots going every which way. Mechieti squalled, and all of a sudden one broke through the hedge, catching the wire, jerking it right out of his hand.

He didn’t know where it had gone. He couldn’t find it. He didn’t know which way his own side was. The firing kept up, and a concussion went off against the corner of the house, sending a shockwave right over him, deafening him for the moment, in a small fall of leaves.

Not a good position, he decided, and decided, too, knowing the lay of the hedges, that he’d better go back past the live wire and back toward the drive, toward that hedge that ran along the driveway cobbles—it was low, too low to conceal an ateva, and as good a cover as he could get. It was certain he’d been too active in the last few minutes to remain safe where he was.

He moved in that direction, wriggling along, finding and following the live wire, and trying not to make noise, never mind the volleys of shots that were going off on every hand.

He heard whistles. That was Banichi or Jago. He thought so. Hoped it was. He didn’t want to distract them with his problems. He had the gun in hand, had counted the shots he’d made, being sure where he was in the clip. At the same time he asked himself what else there was for a weapon around the stableyard, and he tried to see what might be left of the stable wall, beyond the moving shapes of mechieti. The herd had occupied the yard and now defended it, so far as he could tell—there was a great deal of milling about, a great bluster of snorts and head-shaking, none of which he wanted to challenge—anyone, ateva or human, who attempted the herd in that mood was taking a real chance.

A moment to regroup, lying concealed along the driveway hedge. He remembered he had the pocket com. No one had tried that mode of communication… he’d gotten no signal from it. He didn’t know but what a signal just from turning it on might be picked up, if not understood, and he decided not to try it, Just staying still and undiscovered was a contribution to their side. He could do Banichi the most good just by not getting in—

A shadow moved near him, hunkered down and creeping along the hedge. He could see the face, at least in profile, and it wasn’t one of his. He was relatively sure it wasn’t one of Deiso’s men. Someone—one, no, two of them, attempting to maneuver along the hedge, going right past him.

Stay still? Let them pass? Let someone else handle it?

He fired, fired once and twice more, and the two men went down, one atop the other. He scrambled among the brushy growth, further down the hedge, weaving among the roots, as riflefire cracked and ricocheted off the cobbles of the drive.

Pause to catch his breath. He didn’t know but what there were more after him, but they wouldn’t expect anyone could get underneath the spreading branches, in this small, earthy dark.

A lengthy period of quiet. A sprinkle of rain came down. He laid his head against the ground. Cold had spread through his trousers, and now through his coat, but that was only discomfort. He wasn’t likely to be found if he just didn’t move, didn’t twitch. Except—

He caught a gleam of fire over by the stables.

Someone out there had lit a fire, spooking the mechieti to move out. They squalled and bolted, trampling brush, some crossing the hedge. The fire blazed up and his skin shone like the moon through branches. He did all he could to keep his hands tucked and his face away from the light. He hated not looking. He heard movement outside his hiding-place. He heard a step come right beside him, and the urge to look was overwhelming.

A shot. A body hit the ground right beside him, and now he did look, and saw a man down right beside him—wounded, not dead. It wasn’t one of his side; and sensible as it might be to do for him, for the safety of his own side—he scrupled to become an executioner. He scrambled to get out the other side of the hedge, eeled his way back, while, behind him, someone else tried to get to the man.

Full circle. He’d gotten back in view of the corner of the house, not well enough covered by the hedge, and by now not sure where his own side was. He wriggled underneath the branches and found himself back near the live wire.

Whistle. Banichi’s. Or Jago’s. He held his breath, tried to judge where it had come from, and he thought it was near him. He hunched down, face down, for a moment, to ease his position, arms under him, then looked up.

Straight at a pair of boots.

He didn’t move. Scarcely breathed.

Eventually the owner of the boots crouched down and moved off. His own, or the other side, he had no idea at all. He stayed still, breathing in controlled ins and outs, listened to occasional shots, and finally, strange in the dark, heard whispers, someone discussing the situation, but faint and far. They were talking about Lord Tatiseigi, about his security arrangements.

“The old cheapskate will never afford a wire,” one said, to his strained hearing. “And the power is down. Get in, take the dowager, take the heir and the paidhi, and what they do out here has no effect.”

There was indeed a wire. Or two. They misjudged, and it could be messy, if the lights had been deliberately turned out and if the house still had power.

But letting them try it—was too great a risk. He moved an elbow, eased his whole body over, and saw a knot of skulkers over beside the porch. He hated to let off a shot. He was running out of hiding places. They knew a human was in question. If they adjusted their concept of what to look for, they might suspect where he was. But he saw nothing else to do.

“Look out!” one yelled, looking his direction and moving, and he let off one shot and two and three and four at that knot of shadows, then ducked back among the roots, catching sight of a ground-floor window opening, but no one near it.

Then a couple of bodies dropped from the window down to the ground. Someone from inside the house.

He had the pocket com. He was in a position to see something. He drew a deep breath and risked turning it on for a second, adjusting it with his thumb in complete dark.

“Banichi,” he whispered. “Banichi. Someone has exited the house.”

Tatiseigi’s men had mixed themselves into the affair.

“Stay down,” the answer came to him. “Shut it off.”

He turned the unit off, stuck it back into his pocket, hoped not to hear from it again until there was reason for Banichi to want to find him. He stayed there, face buried, listening, listening. A twitch started in his shoulder muscles.

It was quiet for very, very long after that.

He changed position, half-numb, muscles shivering from strain. He moved very, very carefully. He wiped a little mud over his face and hands and ventured a look out.

A flurry of shots ensued, and a squall of mechieti.

He ducked back. Stayed absolutely still, relaxed, finally, except for shivers from the cold. Minutes turned into half hours, and half hours to an hour, at least. He had absolutely no sound from anything but the restless mechieti and the crackle of the ebbing fire over in the stable area.

He moved enough, finally, to rest his cheek against his left hand, which warmed both. The Guild could be very patient. They could stay like this for hours, waiting for something to change, and what would change was the planet turning on its axis, and sunlight coming over the horizon.

Daylight would come. At dawn things might begin to move again.

White light flared, ran across the cobbled drive. He lifted his head, peered up through the branches, seeing a spotlight glaring from an upstairs window. It played over the hedges, and off over the lawn.

Then it went out.

More waiting. He relieved the stress on his neck by dropping his head to his hand again, and wondered what was going on in the house. It had gotten ungodly complicated. If Cenedi was inside, Cenedi couldn’t just shoot at whatever moved out here.

But Cenedi could just toss pebbles into the pond, looking to raise a ripple, to force whoever hadn’t taken good cover to do so. That light might represent such thinking.

Or possibly Cenedi did as he had done, and signalled his rescuers that they were still alive, still in control of the house upstairs and down. He hoped that was the case.

Long, long wait. Then the spotlight flared out of another window, playing on the hedges, and running along the ground—Bren saw it through a black lattice of branches—toward the regrouped mechieti, who disliked it, and started milling about and creating noise of their own.

The com vibrated. Bren laid his pistol on the ground and dug the device out of his pocket, pressed it to his ear.

“We are on the grounds, on your trail,” a voice said, and one he thought was Banichi’s:

“One is advised, nadi.”

The transmission cut off. If the enemy had intercepted it, that news could only make them more anxious. Day was coming. Help was coming in, from Taiben. The odds were beginning to shift.

Then a voice from somewhere far to the right, Banichi’s, loud and clear.

“Kadigidi. Our allies are moving in. Atageini forces are coming in. Clear the grounds. Guild truce. Recover your wounded and go.”

Bren moved his hand to his gun, slipped his fingers around it, lay there, expecting a volley of shots to pursue that voice.

“Guild truce,” a clear voice came back.

And thereafter small movements began, one very, very close at hand. Bren lay hardly breathing as a shadow left the hedge, evergreen whispering, oh, so quietly. Small movements went on, increasing in the vicinity of the stables, and mechieti took exception.

Further and further away, those sounds moved. He had heard of such things, that the Guild, being a professional brotherhood, would limit damages, that there were mechanisms to prevent the waste of lives, among those who, in the Guild hall, might share a pot of tea.

Then silence, long silence. If Banichi wanted to move out and trust it was safe, Banichi would move, but Banichi did not, nor was there any sound at all but the mechieti milling about. Bren lay there, chilled through, his fingers no longer feeling the gun. He didn’t know if anyone ever agreed to, then violated Guild truce. A very great deal was at stake, and if no one ever had done such a thing in the history of the Guild, it still might not mean safety. There were non-Guild who sometimes mixed into these affairs—like him. It had all been stealthy—thus far.

The next round… who knew? Airplanes. Bombs. He didn’t like to think what the day might bring.

But if they went that far, if it got beyond Guild, then the farmers and the shopkeepers would take a hand. And it would be bloody war, with farmers on this side attacking farmers on the other. Utter disaster. Everything they had done last night was one thing. They never wanted it to get to the utmost.

Long, long wait. He took up the com unit in his left hand, rested his chin on that wrist, waited.

It vibrated, and he had it to his ear in a heartbeat.

“Bren-ji? ” Jago’s whisper, blessed sound.

“I’m fine,” he whispered back.

“Are you in a safe position?”

Amazing that Jago had to ask him. He’d learned a few things in his career. One of them was not to blurt out his position on a compromised communications system. “Are they gone?” He had heard no mechieti leaving.

“We think so. But we shall not trust them. Work your way toward the stable path. Algini will meet you. Our allies will be here in moments.”

He shut down, pocketed the com and wriggled forward, following the curve of the drive. He could only think of Taibeni allies inbound, and the fact that he didn’t know the sort of signals the rangers passed, or the Guild, either, for that matter. He slithered among the roots, beside another wire, another connection, and up where the stable path left. A shape crouched there, watching, the slight gleam of starlight on a rifle-barrel.

He stopped, frozen, the instant he realized that shape.

“Bren-ji?” it asked.

Algini. He moved again, as far as the path that divided them.

“Stay still, nandi,” Algini said. “Stay as you are.”

He was no longer alone, at least. And in a moment more, another figure turned up, crouching low along the hedges. Tano, he was relatively sure.

There was quiet, a lengthy quiet. He put the safety on the gun, at least, feeling that secure, and put it into his pocket, so as not to get dirt in it. But beyond that, he didn’t move.

The mechieti began to stir. One called out.

They’re coming, he said to himself. Their help was coming in.

He lowered his forehead against his hand and drew several even breaths, listening, listening as the mechieti decided, unrestrained, to go wandering out along the stableyard walk, one passing right by them, but, disliking the cobbles of the drive, not going further. His position was becoming untenable not because of enemy action, but because of mechieti.

He eeled forward and got up as far as his knees, when Tano seized his elbow and hauled him back, as all of a sudden mechieti poured past onto the hated cobbles, and other mechieti came crashing through the ruined hedge on the other side of the drive.

“Taiben!” someone called out, and from further down the path, another recognition.

“Cajeiri got there,” Bren ventured.

“One believes a message did,” Banichi said, appearing near them. “One hopes that he got there.”

He was numb. He watched the mechieti milling about, and then a tall rider drew up in front of them and slid down to the cobbled drive.

“Bren-ji,” that man said, in a resonant voice that, once heard, was never forgotten.

“Aiji-ma!” Bren said, with no doubt at all. One never hugged atevi, least of all one’s lord, but it was, it very much was Tabini-aiji.

“One somehow knew Bren-nandi was at the heart of all this fire and smoke,” Tabini said. “Where is my grandmother?”

“In the house, aiji-ma, at least one hopes she is.”

No hesitation, no explanations. A tall figure, wide-shouldered and clad in Assassin’s black, Tabini strode off toward the house steps. A woman in ranger’s green joined him, and two other Assassins in black—Damiri and Tabini’s guard, Bren had no doubt, though he was still stunned. He watched the bodyguard stride to the fore and heard them hail the house.

“Open to Tabini-aiji, nadiin!”

Bren felt Banichi’s hand on his shoulder, and flinched as lights went on in the house, porch lights and all, throwing the milling, squalling crowd of mechieti and riders on the driveway into relief.

And lighting the several figures on the steps.

Jago had come up beside. Bren found his legs a little uncertain. He was cold, he was filthy, but when his bodyguard moved toward the lighted porch, he walked with them, toward the handful of figures that had gone inside, into the battered hallway.

The lilies in that foyer had, unhappily, suffered in the assault. Bits of porcelain facade lay as white and green rubble on the floor where Tabini and his lady walked. Bren came in behind them, with his guard, and Nawari came into view at the top of the steps, while a few of the Atageini guard appeared behind him in the dimly-lit upper landing hall.

“Lord Tatiseigi?” Tabini’s voice rang out in that vacancy. “Grandmother?”

“Grandson.” The dowager’s voice from the hall above. The fierce stamp of her cane echoed up and down in the stone stairways and shocked nerves lately acclimated to gunshots. “About damned time you showed up, young man! Have you seen your rascal of a son lately?”

Tea, incredibly, hot tea, served to Lord Tatiseigi’s guests in the damaged sitting-room… while a great deal of confusion went on outside, noise of men, and, over all, the squalling complaints of irate mechieti.

A Taiben ranger, Keimi himself, sat taking tea in the Atageini hall with Lord Tatiseigi, not to mention Tabini-aiji, Lady Damiri, the aiji-dowager, and the just-arrived mayor of Hegian, who had rallied three other local lords and their very minor bodyguards in a brave and enterprising move to cut off the Kadigidi’s second advance without involving their towns, a little light, a little noise, well-placed rifles. The amount of racket alone, one might judge, had persuaded the intruders they had tripped a wider alarm than they had looked for.

The driveway, meanwhile, was full of the Atageini home guard, who had arrived in several noisy farm trucks, and, precariously situated near them, a sizeable contingent of Taibeni rangers, arrived in advance of that guard, and camped with their mechieti on what had been a manicured lawn.

“Outlaws,” Tatiseigi complained, not, in this instance, meaning the Taiben lord sipping tea at his elbow. “Outlaws! Renegades! And employed on my own staff! There were traitors!”

“We will see to that matter,” Tabini said. “We have names.” He had grown thinner, and grimly sober. He wore Assassins’ leather, black, with only a thin red scarf about the right arm to betoken his house colors. The sight and sound of him was still incredibly good to have. “But we have a long way to go, nandiin, to remove Murini from Shejidan.”

No hint of blame, Bren thought, no indication Tabini blamed the source of his advice. It by no means absolved him.

“We shall send letters,” Tatiseigi said, “strong letters, to the Guild and to the legislature.”

“Letters,” Ilisidi scoffed. “We shall do better than letters, this round, Tati-ji.”

“You,” Tabini said, “should take yourself to Taiben, mani-ma, and take care of your great-grandson.”

“Advice from my grandson, who spent his time skulking in the woods, with never a message to us when we were there!”

“Grandmother,” Tabini interjected, reasonably. “I was in the hills, somewhat further on. You came here, doubtless to raise a furor that I would hear, and I heard, and our hosts’ foyer is, unhappily, a ruin, by no fault of his.”

The paidhi sipped his tea, aware, at the bottom of everything, that some commotion had arrived outside, and that staff had moved, even security moving from their posts to have a look at the door.

“I swear I would sacrifice the lilies,” Tatiseigi said, to whom that was a very bitter sacrifice indeed, “for my hands on the scoundrels that dared sit on my staff and plot against their own comrades. You believe the downstairs is a shambles, aiji-ma. You should see the upper hall! You will see it, unhappily, in your lodgings.”

“We are by no means sure we should stay the night,” Tabini said. “We should take ourselves back to the hills.”

“And leave us to deal with the Kadigidi?” This from Ilisidi. “No! We have every right to advance over their border and settle accounts. This is no time for retreat!”

“We are by no means sure of success,” Tatiseigi objected.

“We have help from Taiben, we have my elusive grandson and doubtless resources from the Guild… ”

“The Guild remains a problem,” Tabini said gravely, “and one that we cannot force.”

“We have written to them,” Tatiseigi said. “We have posed one complaint. We have gathered reason enough for another letter.”

“Letters,” Ilisidi scoffed.

There was a stir at the door, and two travelworn, dusty young Taibeni came in past the guards, and a third, not Taibeni, and not as tall—a ragamuffin of a prince, an exhausted young gentleman who had no trouble at all getting past the guards.

“Father.” A hoarse, strained voice. “Mother.”

Tabini got to his feet. Damiri did. And did the young gentleman do what a human would do and fling himself into a parental embrace?

No. Bren watched as the boy walked up and gave a grave, deep bow, which father and mother returned with equal solemnity.

“You have grown,” Tabini observed, and reached and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“I have tried to. And I came against orders. I heard you were coming here to rescue mani-ma.”

“And how did you hear that?”

“That would betray a confidence,” Cajeiri said, “from someone who thought I would follow orders.”

“We taught him better manners,” Ilisidi said.

“You did, mani-ma. But we had to.”

“Had to,” Damiri said, and came and turned the boy about to face her, for a long, long look, a little touch at his cheek, which brushed away pale dust. “You had to.”

“Yes, mother.” A strange mix of regal contrition in that high, young voice. “Nand’ Bren was coming back. And we had sent reinforcements ahead of us.”

“Coming back,” Tabini said, “from where?”

“That takes some telling,” Ilisidi said, from her seat, her hands braced on her cane. “Some of which we are interested to hear, nandiin.”

“Might there be hot tea?” Cajeiri asked, and added: “For my bodyguard, too?”

“Oh, indeed, your bodyguard?” from his father.

A great deal to tell. A great deal yet to learn, on all sides. Bren held out his tea cup for a second service and drew a deep, long breath as he took the cup back into his hands, a warm and civilized act, no matter the dusty ruin outside.