“Nandi,” Banichi said. “This region is temporarily under Guild regulation. Our Guild has moved to protect you, your council, your duly constituted institutions, and your citizens.
You
are officially and of this hour judged innocent. The lords of Dojisigi and Senji clans are outlawed.”
That
was stunning news. The Guild was suddenly cleaning house, and it was calling in every available member, on a priority above all other assignments.
Get its agents wholesale into the Marid?
Hell, yes. He figured it now. For over a year, the Guild had wanted this chance, wanted it badly, and lacked any way in to finesse the situation. And the renegades, in attempting to get Machigi out of their way, had tripped the legal switch—whether they wanted a confrontation or not.
“Our agreement is unaffected,” Bren said. “The dowager, whether knowledgeable of this event or not, has offered her condition. From here, it is nearly certain you will meet it. You will be the most powerful lord of the Marid.”
There was a space of silence. Machigi stared at him, jaw clenched.
“Who is it you represent
now,
paidhi?”
“You, still, aiji-ma. Until I am officially returned to the dowager or to Tabini-aiji. I had no more warning than you have had, I assure you. I doubt that Tabini-aiji was fully informed. My immediate concern, aiji-ma, is seeing you live to govern the Marid. And right now, I trust nothing outside this room.”
Machigi stalked off a pace and looked at his own bodyguard.
“Our man’chi,” the senior of that aishid said, “is what it has been. We have taken your orders, aiji-ma. We have stood outside our Guild. We have occupied a difficult position. We have seen these intruders trying to get in. We gave our warnings. We have tried to avoid this . . .”
“Warned me. You have, that.” Machigi was scantly in control of his expressions. He was that overwrought, and one didn’t move. One stood very still while a lord under seige argued with the bodyguard that was the reason he was alive. And there was a long, long silence, Machigi and the men he owed most for the situation.
“We have warned you,” the bodyguard said. “Aiji-ma, we are not securely in control of the premises. Nor are they. We face a number of hours in which, if you remain visible, you will come under concentrated attack, perhaps beyond our collective abilities to hold back. You are placing us in an untenable situation, aiji-ma.”
There was peculiar grammar in that
collective.
It used the felicitous unitary. It meant
as one.
It meant emotional sameness.
And Machigi stood there, a muscle working in his jaw and his eyes burning into the man he relied on for his life. Then: “What do you recommend, Tema-ji?”
Banichi gave a tap at his ear, an abrupt sign that disturbed Machigi’s aishid. It meant:
who is listening?
“Aiji-ma,” the guard-senior said. “Just come. Now. All of us.”
“Gods unfortunate,” Machigi said. “Paidhi. Come!”
Bren looked at Banichi. Banichi made a slight nod and the rest of his aishid moved, fast, to the back rooms, while Banichi nodded again to the man named Tema.
Positions shifted, to control the door; and it was the lords’ business to get in the center of that formation. Bren did. Machigi arrived beside him as Tano and Algini and Jago came back with, God, their luggage.
“One can part with the clothes, nadiin-ji,” Bren said.
“An inconsequential weight, nandi,” Tano said and set the bag on the floor by the table and swept the notes and notepad into it in an instant. Plus a packet of tea.
“At your direction,” Machigi said to his aishid, and reached into his coat pocket and kept it there—not, one thought, for any inconsequential item—as his aishid opened the door.
Servants stood there, faces grim and worried.
“Get to quarters, nadiin-ji,” Machigi said. “Stay there pending orders.”
The servants moved back, falling behind. Instruction would send them to the back passages, the lower rooms, where, if their doors remained shut, no action would touch them—no legitimate action. One hoped the Guild arrived here first and with minimal incident.
And it was in no good frame of mind that Machigi and his guard led the way to those same back stairs, and down and down, past startled servants who plastered themselves to the walls and heard the same grim order: “Quarters, nadiin-ji, quarters. Leave off all duties.”
It was a terrible situation. Servants devoted to the house would want to protect it—would do what the staff at Najida had done and protect the place, as best they could, moving fragile things. Their lord ordered otherwise.
And if their aishidi had contact with the Guild proper yet, there was no word of it.
Down and down the stairs. Bren struggled with the pace. Jago’s hand arrived at his elbow, trusting him, but there if he should slip.
He was breathing hard by the time they reached a basement passage—basement, by the number of turns they had made—and headed down a bare stone corridor. Old, this passage. Electric wires were a dusty afterthought. And an iron door gave them passage into yet another tunnel.
Lungs ached for air. Ribs
hurt
. Bren reached a hand to the wall, and Jago’s hand held him up from the other side.
In the dim light, Tema made a sign. Banichi returned another, something about transport, or leaving, Bren wasn’t sure. But they kept moving, now with some shred of a concept where they were going.
Two turns more, another door, and they moved by flashlight, as that door shut with the resistence of age. Locked.
It was only dust in their way, dust, and a few pipes; and finally a stair upward, to yet another, modern door, with a keypad. Tema input a code, and the lock moved, and the door opened onto a short lighted hall. They might not even be in the same building. God knew. Bren didn’t. He found himself dizzy, short of breath, not aware, when they stopped, that there was one more door to unlock, until he heard it click.
It opened on a concrete, utilitarian space with a smell of machines, and exhaust, and oil—garage. Transport. Their steps were quiet, but they disturbed a deeper silence as they went up a ramp. Four vans sat there, showing dim lights.
Outsiders, Bren thought, with a very atevi abhorrence of any help not from inside their operation. But they waited while one of Tema’s men left cover, approached one van, talked to whoever was inside, and signaled a come-ahead.
They moved. The three other vehicles suddenly showed lights. And one didn’t like the number of additional people involved. One didn’t trust the situation. One didn’t like it in the least . . .
Bren moved, however, with Jago, thinking with the scant supply of air he had,
God, we don’t know the streets. We don’t know where the hell we’re going. Do we?
They stopped at the first van. The side door opened, and they were supposed to get in with strangers . . .
“Rely on them,” Tema said. “They will get you to Targai by a safe road. As safe as exists.”
Three other vans, all leaving. Diversion. Confuse the enemy. Bren let Jago boost him up the step, to the seat inside. It was as far as he could get. The back door opened, and the rest of his bodyguard got in, Banichi moving forward to take the seat beside him.
And Machigi himself blocked the open side door.
“To Targai,” Machigi said, “to Najida if you insist, paidhi. And one hopes sending
you
to safety is not the act of a fool.”
“Aiji-ma, I
will
represent you to the aiji-dowager.”
“
Survive,
paidhi. I give you that order.”
“Do the same, aiji-ma.”
Machigi gave a heave on the door and slammed it between them. The back door shut. The van started moving—one Taisigi driving, one more occupying the front seat, whether Guild or the garage’s regular drivers one couldn’t tell in the dark, with just the headlights and the reflected light off concrete to make them into silhouettes.
He was sweating, not alone from the haste getting here. This wasn’t going to be a tame bus ride to Najida. In no sense. It wasn’t just the schism in the Guild. It was the Marid itself. The paidhi-aiji was persona non grata with a lot of the Marid: he couldn’t count the number of well-placed people in the region who’d like to see him dead . . . and the two handling the van were faceless, nameless, obedient to God knew what.
But they had no choice. Hunker down and hope the halls were never infiltrated—small chance. Machigi’s orders might be to retreat to neutral position—but that wouldn’t prevent the renegades from looking for hostages. He had to get clear before he blocked the solution—if there was to be a solution.
So did Machigi. Where he was going, whether any of three other vans loosed into the dark were Machigi’s or whether he was going to some deep bunker to wait it out, there was no telling. The regular Guild would take the place, sooner or later, one hoped, with a minimum of damage, a minimum of bloodshed—the way things were supposed to proceed, with the Guild being the only armed force in the aishidi’tat.
But with a splinter of the Guild taking up position—God knew. God only knew. Lords didn’t get in the middle of it. They had a responsibility to stay out of it, and let the Guild settle it, with the force of law. And to stand up and be assassinated, if it came to that, if one were taking the high ground. Lords had done that, to end an impasse. To protect a house. To protect a family. To save a dynasty.
That wasn’t what would fall out here. The Guild was trying to get their hands on Machigi to keep him alive, but in the early hours there weren’t enough of them, and innocents could get killed in the crossfire if Machigi tried to stay on, contrary to Guild planning. Get out, get out, get out was
all
they could do: he thought it with every thump of the tires on the drive—felt the sway as the van made the turn onto open street, and Jago moved to pull him aside on the seat, and get between him and the window. It hurt the ribs. Banichi helped from the other side, and the paidhi-aiji, Lord of the Heavens and half a dozen other titles, was obliged to kneel on the carpeted floor and hold onto the edges of the seats, keeping his valuable head lowest of anybody’s.
Damn, he wanted his 20-year-old body back. His body from before his head had hit the damned chair in Pairuti’s parlor would do at the moment. He never got dizzy like this. He hated it, hated the mess he was in, wished for once in a long career he’d told Ilisidi he wasn’t going where she’d taken the notion he should go.
She was tired of him, maybe. Wanted to inherit a place on the west coast.
Wanted to make her grandson deal with the world her way.
He shouldn’t have listened—
Thump. He swore the van had driven over a curb. And floored it. He lost his balance. But Banichi and Jago had him, and if either of the men in front proved traitor, there was firepower enough in his company to make it suicide.
And by the fact nobody opened fire, the pair up front were doing all right, never mind the bump and the scrape of shrubbery along the side.
They swerved onto pavement, headed uphill, fast.
“Situation,” he asked. He didn’t expect them to know more than he did.
But Banichi said quietly, “We are with Guild born to the district.”
Born here, not Guild who had fled here. Taisigi-born. He had never in his life thought that would be comforting to hear.
The van cornered again, righthand turn, and sped up a paved road.
To Targai, Machigi had said.
Good. Good. Righthand and upland was a good direction.
His mind was racing. He couldn’t see a damned thing but Jago’s knees and Banichi’s, and the back of the seat in front of him.
They turned, four more times, and the pitch was continually up. The whole of Tanaja sat in a stream-cut half bowl, fronting on the harbor, with the center of government midway up the hill. They were climbing, at every opportunity, headed for the heights where—God knew—he’d had a little chance to view the map—there was a road leading into the hills and off toward the main west road they’d used coming in.
They hit gravel,
not
the paved road they’d come in on, and that startled him. Bren propped his shoulder against Jago’s seat, wrapped his arms around his ribs and kept his head down, telling himself if his bodyguard wasn’t objecting they must be all right. He still had a concept where they were going, onto minor roads into the uplands, and that wasn’t a bad notion: if trouble was coming, it might well come in from the northwest, or from pretty well due north, out of Senji district and across Maschi land. The whole district might light up if Geigi knew about it and called in help to stop it. They could run straight into a firefight.
Nobody said anything. They drove and drove, on bumpy, chancily maintained road.
Then a shot echoed. And something blew. The van swerved.
“Tire,” the man in the front seat said, and the van was steering hard, swerving, with the shredded wreckage of a tire thumping in the front right wheelwell.
Damn, Bren thought, trying for calm.
A second shot broke the front side window. The van spun off violently to the side, bucking over rock and rough ground as the partner tried to steer. The van hit brush, broke through saplings, and the front end dropped with a brain-rattling jolt—that and the simultaneous impact with Banichi’s arm and Jago’s, before his chest and behind his head, so that he rebounded from one to the other. The back door opened, and Tano and Algini vacated the back seats, the hard way—the van was nose-down, and Banichi got his own door open and dived out.
Bren started to move. Jago prevented him. “Get down,” she said.
Down. There wasn’t much further to get down. But Jago was out of her seat, in the tilted floorboard, covering him with her own armored body.
“Nadiin,” she asked, but there was silence from the front seats. “Bren-ji, are you hurt?”