A sound. A very, very faint sound seemed located off to his right. It wasn’t the direction Algini had gone.
Stand still, he told himself. Stand very still. Atevi had trouble realizing how blind humans were in the dark. And he was blind, in this nook where Algini had put him. At least he didn’t shine out across open spaces.
He hadn’t thought of the gun in his pocket. Now he did, and with what he hoped was a natural motion, he eased his hand into that pocket.
“Kindly hold fire, Bren-ji.”
He all but had a heart attack.
Tano was back. He hoped, instantly, for Banichi and Jago to follow.
But he didn’t move. He saw Tano pass a shadowy sign to empty air, and Algini reappeared, answered in kind, then indicated a direction. Right.
Bren very carefully went that direction, around the side of the rock that had sheltered him. Tano overtook him, took a gentle hold on his arm, as much to signal him when to stop as to offer help. He kept walking, trying not to make a sound, and Tano said, in a very quiet whisper, “Jago is coming back. Banichi is holding position.”
That was two things he knew, then, two very welcome pieces of news. They were heading in the direction of the gunshots. That was another thing he was sure of.
Tano suddenly had him stop and wait. He waited, absolutely still.
Then out of the dark beside the shoulder of the hill, Jago was back. “Opposition is momentarily cleared,” Jago whispered. “Banichi is watching for any further movement. We have met one of Lord Machigi’s problems.”
The report was for his benefit. The Guild could communicate in many fewer words.
“There is an operations post on the height beyond the ridge,” Jago whispered, breathing only slightly hard, and pointing up . “They may have picked up our signals. Sounds are dangerous.”
His bodyguard at some point had picked up the other side’s transmissions, Bren thought. And
Machigi’s problems . . .
The hostile base Machigi had talked about. It dominated routes in and out of Taisigi territory. It made terrible sense that their route, shaped by the land, had run them into it.
He didn’t push his luck with more questions, but Tano said, “We are not surprised.”
A veritable flood of information. Banichi was somewhere ahead mopping up. Solo, for God’s sake. One hoped Banichi was all right and that the alarm switch hadn’t been tripped up on the heights, to bring in reinforcements.
And where are the regular Guild forces? he wondered. If the Guild itself hadn’t moved in to check an advance out of Senji clan, they might be obligingly mopping up the Guild’s local problem for them as they went? His bodyguard had been a while in space, but they had not rusted.
Damn, they had not.
But, twice damn, this wasn’t their job. It wasn’t even Machigi’s bodyguards’ job. They were supposed to be getting out of the way.
They were supposed to be getting back to safe territory.
But now
they
knew where the target was.
Was there any means to let the Guild know?
No safe way. Not in his way of thinking. He had a responsibility for whatever negotiations
followed
the Guild actions. He couldn’t risk himself and his bodyguard taking on the Guild’s job. They needed to get out of here. Fast.
Silence persisted in the land around them.
Jago had indicated they should stay put for a time, not, one suspected, to go wandering between Banichi and some objective, or bringing one very slow-moving, glow-in-the-dark human near the opposition.
But at least there were no more gunshots.
It got cold. Very cold. Bren blew on his hands to keep warm, glad of the vest, which at least kept his core warm.
Eventually Algini got up from where he had been sitting. Jago looked at him, then got up and motioned for them to get moving. She quickly moved off ahead of all of them, in utter silence.
Atevi could see in this murk. A human couldn’t. To his eyes, there was no trail where Jago had gone. It was rocky, brushy country, and the night sky had grown overcast, so the dark in the dark places was deeper and played interesting tricks on human sight, especially when one was trying to hurry on rough ground.
Jago was, he thought, on a mission of some kind, and he didn’t want to slow her down. Banichi was out there somewhere ; Banichi might have signaled her, needing somebody to watch his back, and there was evidently some urgency about it.
The hills gave way to a flatter terrain, still at elevation. The Sarini uplands were part of the vast southern plateau, and now—Bren was sure it must be pushing dawn—they were well into that territory, the broad plains that constituted most of Sarini province. If that
was
where they were, it was a three-way border in the distance, where Taisigi land met Senji and both met Maschi clan and Sarini Province—a border that had lately been a permeable membrane, as agents of one Marid clan and the other had attempted to carve their way to the coast via Maschi holdings.
But there were wedges of land that had never known even the atevi concept of a road—breeding grounds, nature reserves left alone even during hunting season. It was a logical enough place for the renegade Guild to have established a base, a wedge of hills that would see only foot traffic, and that once in a hundred years. Setting up here might be illegal, immoral, and violating every concept of kabiu, but it
was
logical.
How other such bases might exist—if there was a plan behind what was going on.
That cell Tabini’s agents had found and eliminated over inside Separti Township? They’d attributed that operation to the Taisigi.
Now he wasn’t at all sure of that fact. Tabini’s agents thought they’d gotten it all. He didn’t entirely bet on that, either.
Their opposition had been clever. Nobody had suspected organization among the scattered elements who had run south. No one had—-except the Guild itself; and they hadn’t been talking to the government.
Not to Tabini, not to the dowager, and not to him. He’d more than walked into the renegade’s operation and exposed it—he began to think he’d walked into the Guild’s long-term counter operation, and triggered it.
Well, hell, if the Guild had politely told its own membership what it was slowly doing, he’d have avoided the coast this spring.
And maybe more people would be dead. So he wasn’t sorry for it.
He just wanted to get past this obstacle and into Maschi territory. Let the Guild handle it. That was all.
14
A
sharp yell erupted in the dark, from somewhere in the apartment. Cajeiri flung the covers off and flung his feet over the edge of the bed.
Antaro, was his first thought: the cry had been female. He thought of diving under the bed or into the closet, but if there were intruders, that was too obvious a hiding place.
He heard voices, then, and Jegari and Antaro were talking outside, which was not the sort of thing one expected if they were dealing with intruders. But he was not hearing Veijico. So he thought it might be a fight, then.
So he had better get out there before it got worse. He grabbed his night robe, belted it on, and went out into the sitting room, blinking in the bright lights.
It was no invasion from the roof, and no fight among his bodyguard, either. It was Veijico, looking embarrassed, standing there in the hall in her underwear, and Antaro and Jegari, too—all of his bodyguard in their underwear, all of them with their hair unbraided and looking entirely unkempt. Veijico gave a miserable little bow in Cajeiri’s direction.
“One apologizes, nandi, nadiin.”
“Was it a nightmare?” Cajeiri asked. He had them now and again, although he had never waked the whole apartment, well, not since he was a baby.
“A nightmare, nandi,” Veijico said shamefacedly. “One regrets. One regrets very much having inconvenienced the household.”
She started to turn back toward the room she shared with Antaro. Cajeiri did not think he was going to get back to sleep. It felt close to daylight, anyway. “What time is it?” he asked.
Veijico politely stopped, and when Jegari said it was as late as he thought it was, Cajeiri ran a hand through his hair and decided on waking up.
“Well, one will hardly sleep after that,” he said. He was sorry for Veijico. He supposed the bad dream was about her brother. And he knew he always wanted the lights on and people around him after he had had a bad dream. “I think we should have tea and toast,” he said, “should we not, nadiin-ji?—Will you like some tea, nadi?”
“One is deeply embarrassed,” Veijico said, “and would undertake not to disturb the house further.”
“Tea,” he said, insisting, and Antaro went off to her room to dress and probably to be the one to go after the tea. Cajeiri stifled a yawn. People were standing about in their underwear, a view which was interesting, from his standpoint, but he would see that from time to time all his life. When Guild moved in defense, they moved, whatever they were or were not wearing, and he was politely not supposed to notice it.
So he went back to his bedroom to dress, and before he was finished, Jegari, dressed but still barefoot, showed up to help him.
When he was done, he and Jegari came back out to the sitting room, where Veijico, in Guild uniform, was using a poker to stir up the sleeping fire. She put on three small sticks and poked the coals until it took fire.
She was deliberately not looking at anyone. Clearly she was still embarrassed.
“I have bad dreams sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes I think people are shooting in the house. And then I wake up.”
“It was like that, nandi,” Veijico said, and still she did not look at him or at Antaro.
“Was it about the kidnappers?”
“If I were given permission—” Veijico looked at him, then, her back to the fire. “No, nandi. I shall not ask for permission. I would have to have Cenedi’s support, and I know I would not get that.”
“To go look for your brother?”
“It is not practical, nandi.”
“Lord Machigi sent you and Barb-daja back. Everything will sort out, and Bren-nandi will get him to send Lucasi back, too.”
“The Taisigi caught me, with Barb-daja. But Lucasi will not be caught like that. They will not find him. And he will go on looking for Barb-daja and for me. He will live off the land, and he will not come back until he succeeds or gets an order.” A deep breath. “But if he shoots one of Machigi’s people, nandi, it will be a risk to nand’ Bren. And one very much hopes that does not happen.”
So that was the dream. They had had disturbing news from the Marid all evening, reports of Guild movement here and there in an action Cenedi was not in charge of, and, what was truly unsettling, neither was his father. All yesterday they had known nand’ Bren was talking to Machigi, trying to get him to deal with Great-grandmother, and Lord Machigi had directly promised to find Lucasi and get him home, but it was just what Veijico said: Lucasi would know none of what was going on. He would not want to be found, and if things blew up worse than they were, there was less and less chance of any good news about Lucasi. That was what Veijico was dreaming about.
“Do you want to go ask for news in the security room, nadi?”
“I am becoming a nuisance there, nandi, and I am not in good favor with Cenedi-nadi.”
That was the ongoing problem. Veijico was still in trouble. He realized he had never quite told Cenedi he had taken her back, and how else was Cenedi going to know that, except she was staying in his suite?
“I shall speak to Cenedi,” he said.
“One would be very grateful,” Veijico said.
“I shall go talk to Nawari, meanwhile, nadi,” Jegari said to her.
“
Nawari will tell me.”
“One would be grateful,” Veijico said again. But this time she looked at Jegari.
It was curious. Just in that, something shifted in the household. Cajeiri felt it. Adults had always said he would know things and he would feel things differently than his ties to humans. And he had thought they were just saying that to separate him from Gene and Artur and Irene, his
friends
on the ship.
But something shifted. Antaro came back into the room, and they were all together, and it felt different.
His father had unintentionally handed him a hard situation—trying to protect him by getting him a very young bodyguard that he would not try to shake off his track—not, maybe, reckoning how very hard it was going to be to work out man’chi with them and with Antaro and Jegari. Because mani was right. He had
not
felt his way through things. He was rowdy and disrespectful, and his ear had gotten very sore from mani’s thwacks on it. She would say things like, “You have no grace,” and “
Think,
boy. You were not born dim-witted.” And grow very out of patience with him being slow when it came to guessing what he should and should not do.
Then she would say things like,
“Nand’ Bren
can perceive these things. Why can you not use your head, young gentleman ?” So he knew she was comparing him to nand’ Bren. As if he were human. And things like, “You have to be among atevi. There are things you will
know
when you live among atevi.”
Nonsense, he had thought. There was nothing wrong with him.
But all of a sudden he did feel something. Something like a puzzle piece clicking into order. It was like Gene and Artur on the ship: if somebody did something stupid, they could figure it out, and forgive it, and stick together anyway. And this way they had—had scared him. He had not understood it. But now that his aishid did it, just that little exchange between Jegari and Veijico, it all felt—better. Safer. Maybe it was Veijico needing them and them forgiving her. Maybe it was the precarious way things were; they had become an infelicity of four without Lucasi, but they did not make a felicity of three by shutting her out, and she more than knew that, he suspected she
felt
that—because
he
did.