Текст книги "Deceiver "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“Pairuti can stop this,” Bren said. “At least where it regards local Guild. Can he not? And he has things to say, in court. We need him alive.”

“Yes,” Tano said abruptly, order taken; he relayed that to Algini, whose attention was fixed on the hall, and Algini nodded abruptly in the affirmative. Communication drew a look from Banichi, and then from Jago, who nodded her own agreement. Geigi looked momentarily confused.

No time to think, then: Tano seized Bren by the arm and jerked him past Banichi, down the hall, with one of Geigi’s men racing to the fore of them. His gun swung down, his burst of fire shredded the woodwork around the door lock—his kick opened it, and that man whipped around the door to the inside.

Fire erupted from inside—Bren had started to follow, and Tano snatched him back before he had so much as twitched. Then Jago appeared from the hall behind them, her gun spitting a volley of bullets as she went inside.

There wasn’t time to say help her—Tano shoved him against the wall and dived to a knee, rifle around the edge of the doorframe. Then got up. Geigi’s man came into view, moving sideways, rifle still leveled, and Bren’s heart skipped a beat, seeing Jago standing in the clear.

“We have him, nandi,” Tano said, urging him forward, into the room; and Bren swore to himself he would never, ever, ever issue another order to his bodyguard.

The room was a shambles, three bodies on the floor, blood everywhere, openwork screens flattened and shattered by gunfire, and a lone survivor in a brocade coat standing amid the carnage, a white-haired, lanky aristocrat looking not at all related to Lord Geigi.

“Lord Pairuti,” Bren said, mustering a breath. “Surrender and I can keep you alive. Do not do this to your staff. They rely on you, nandi.”

The man turned away, looking ceilingward, seeming distracted.

And spun about with a pistol in hand. It went off.

The whole room went to ceiling in a burst of thunder. It was that fast, and it hurt, and Bren couldn’t get a breath, lying flat on the floor with the feeling someone had just hit him, and he had hit his head, which hurt nearly as much as the punch in his gut. His whole brain was shaken, and his ears rang, and Tano had him by the hand and the arm and was hauling up on him, so he was supposed to get up—

He tried. He could not get a breath, and then got a little air: was aware of Tano on his knees trying to keep him flat, and Tano kept coming and going in a tunnel of dark.

Bad move. Thoroughly bad move.

“He is dead,” he heard Algini say. And: “Good riddance,” Geigi said, and another huge shadow obscured the light. A strong hand took Bren’s shoulder. “Bren-ji.”

“One is—” Bren tried to say, but ran out of air. It came to him that he had been shot, and that that was why the room had gone upside down, and why he had hit his head, but he was still alive, which was due to the vest. The vest now, as his numb fingers explored it, had a large frayed spot. He tried to get an elbow under him.

A halo of faces surrounded him, from his vantage: Tano and Algini left that halo, and Banichi and Jago appeared in their places. “I am quite all right,” he assured them. And attempted to sit up, in which the stiff vest offered no help at all, and his ribs hurt abysmally. Banichi and Jago each took an arm and pulled him gently to his feet; but his head reaching vertical didn’t help, not in the least. He felt sick, and dizzy, and was very glad when they let him down into a chair. He slumped back in the corner made by an arm, and surveyed the carnage in the room.

He’d given an order. Now Pairuti and four Guildsmen were dead on the floor and he’d risked Tano and Algini and Jago and everybody else who relied on himc all because he’d called it urgent.

“One has been a fool,” he said in a low voice, and thought for a moment he was going to be sick and compound everyone’s distress. He kept it down, however, and got two and three breaths. “Do what you need to do for the mission, nadiin-ji. I am far from dead.”

“We are secure, Bren-ji,” Jago said.

“As secure as we shall be,” Banichi said, “until this situation is resolved. We hold Targai.”

“An unwelcome gift,” Geigi said glumly. “But mine to deal with.”

“Can you sort out the staff, nandi?” Banichi asked, and Geigi shrugged.

“Perhaps,” Geigi said, and then ordered his own guard: “Find me one of Pejithi clan.”

“Nandi,” that man said, and moved off. Bren shifted in the chair, sucking in his middle with a wince; but perhaps no ribs were broken—bruised, yes, but he had gotten off better than he had deserved, no question.

“Go do what you need to do,” he said. “I am sure I am bruised, no more than that. From now on I takeadvice, no more of giving it, nadiin-ji. What is necessary, at this point?”

Banichi’s hand closed on his arm, on the chair, commanding attention. “Lord Geigi must take control of the clan, Bren-ji. We must hold this place. The aiji’s forces will do as they have orders to do. Beyond that—we hold here and trust Cenedi to hold Najida.”

Some things came clear out of the fog: that the aiji’s forces were dictating next moves, and that the next move beyond Targai was likely to be the Marid, and all-out war. They were sitting on the front lines. They were, in fact, holding a major piece of the front lines.

But the Marid was not limited to land. They had a navy and so did the aiji. There could be conflict striking at Separti Township, or coming into Kajiminda Bay, or Najida Bay—where there were very valuable targetsc targets Tabini would want to protect; and he hoped to God that Tabini’s forces were not going to start a feud with the Edi locals by going in there in force.

He had to think. Never mind the headache and the lump on the back of his skull, he had to think.

And just then every Guildsman in the room twitched: the door had opened, admitting a broad-shouldered Guildsman, with a solid grip on a younger man.

A very bedraggled, haggard and limping young man in Guild uniform, in the custody of a tall Guildsman with a red band about his armc

“Lucasi,” Bren murmured, and a dozen thoughts flashed through his mind—Cajeiri’s bodyguards: they had been near Barb, they’d disappeared, and they were here, where Marid agents had been running the place and where the local lord had shot at him. Bren sat up with a wince and started to get up from the chair, but bruised ribs said otherwise.

“Nandi!” Lucasi cried, and tried to reach him. The Guildsman holding him had another idea, and then Jago stepped into Lucasi’s intended path, cutting him off. The young man protested: “Nandi, we tried to overtake them! We are nottraitors!”

“I want to hear him, nadiin-ji,” Bren said quietly, and did get to his feet, with Banichi’s hand under his elbow. He got a breath and fixed Cajeiri’s missing bodyguard with a steady stare and one question. “Where is Barb-daja, nadi?”

“Nandi, Veijico—Veijico—is still tracking the kidnappers. They were in a closed truck, four of them, with the ladyc”

“On what road?” Jago asked sharply.

“The main road. East. I had put my foot in a hole. I could no longer keep up. But the truck stopped here. So we did not trust the Maschi lordc we hid. We waited. And then the truck went on. And Veijico went after them. And I was waiting for her—until Ragi Guild came in.”

“And where was your communication back to operations?” Jago asked.

Lucasi cast a look at her and shook his head. “I—was not equipped, nadi. We have the short-range. We do have that.”

“You left the grounds. You did not advise the officer of the watch. You did not take proper equipment. You went off without instruction.”

“We justc we thought—we thought, Jago-nadi, we thought—” Lucasi took a deep breath and wiped his face with both hands, shaking his head. “We had orders.”

“From whom?” Banichi asked.

“From the young lord, nadi.”

“From a child, nadi!”

“To whom we were assigned, nadi!” He made a profound bow to Bren, a slighter one to Banichi. The ribbon of his queue had come half undone. He was dusty, dirty, and thoroughly wretched-looking. “I take all responsibility. Help my partner. Veijico will die before she leaves the trail now, and it is my fault, nadiin, entirely my fault.”

“You involved the paidhi’s brother and led him out of a secure house,” Jago said.

“He came, nadi. We told him go back! We knew there was an alert in progress. We thought the young gentleman might have gone down to the boat—”

“So you took the extravagant action, you involved non-Guild, and at no time did you communicate with operations, though you had short-range available!”

Lucasi’s face became pained. “The young gentleman despises us. He avoided us. We thought—we thought it was on our account, that he had gone out, to teach us a lesson.”

“And why did you go to nand’ Toby at all, nadi?”

“We were wrong,” Lucasi said. “We know now. We were embarrassed. We thought—we thought we could get the young gentleman back, we could save him from a reprimand—we might mend matters. Intruders fired at us. Nand’ Toby went down. We tried to get to position to return fire and protect him, but then the lady bolted uphill, across our line of fire. We sawthem take her. We dodged around and got up as far as the road. Then we heard the young gentleman shouting at us from the porch. We moved to get between the intruders and him, and then we had his orders to retrieve the lady. We tried. We ran out onto the road and saw a truck in the distance. We tried to catch up with it. Then we thought—we need to know which way it will go at the intersection, toward the town or toward the train station, so we can report that. So we tracked them toward the intersection, and then—then we found ourselves out of range of house communications. The truck, nandi, had kept going east, toward the train station or the airport, and then we thought if there was a train, if they tried to take her aboard we could do something—but they kept going past the depot. We thought it might be the airport—but—then we thought—if we can reach Targai, the lord there will help us.” The young man ran out of breath and shook his head. “We were wrong, nandi. And we just—all along, once we had left short-range, we thought if we could get her back—we could redeem some of our mistakes.”

“Fools,” Jago said. “Young fools. There was a phone at the train station and another at the airport.”

The young man looked dismayed. “We—failed to think of that, nadi.”

“Did you fail to think, nadi, or were you even thinking in terms of reporting? You were bent on following that truck. You knew what fools you had been and were bent on saving your reputations, to the lady’s detriment.”

“The truck was not going that fast, nadi, and we thought– we thought—it was trying to look ordinary. We could keep up if we cut across the land. We could find out where it was based. We were willing to die, if we could get good information on the lady! We at no time risked losing her!”

“So,” Banichi said harshly, “you created the situation. Now you have somehow misplaced your partner andthe lady.”

Lucasi hung his head and looked miserable. “I put my foot in a hole in the dark. My own fault. Veijico kept going, and I came back for help.”

“Finally!” Banichi said. “A thorough mess you have made of it, nadi.”

“Yes,” Lucasi said. “It is. We tried to do well for the young gentleman. But he despised us. And his order—”

“Enough of his order,” Banichi said. “An excuse. An excuse, casting blame on your lord.”

“It is not my intention!”

“Many things were not your intention, nadi!”

Lucasi turned his face toward Bren. “Nand’ paidhi, let us at least finish this. The truck I think was going toward Taisigi territory. There still may be time.”

He hadn’t the hardwiring to read it. The words were one thing. But reading the boy—it took atevi to do that, and he looked from Jago to Banichi. It was by no means reasonable that that truck was not racing toward safety by now.

“Clever fool,” Jago said, and nudged him with the rifle butt. “It would be bad form to shoot him.”

“ Areyou lying, nadi?” Banichi asked.

“ No, Banichi-nadi. I am not lying.”

“And you think that truck is still loitering about for us to find?”

“We never ceased to observe it, nadi! My partner is still tracking it, wherever it has gone. She will not have given up. We were ordered, nadiin. We were ordered.”

Banichi shifted the rifle that had been pointing straight at him, still frowning. “And do you not think you should have exercised more mature judgement on the young gentleman’s behalf? Do you think you were sent to him to concur in every idea he might have?”

“Nadi,—”

“ This is your one chance, nadi. Will you go on lying to the paidhi-aiji, and to the rest of us? Who hasyour man’chi, that you could leave your lord and leave him to two Guild-in-training, because a child told you to do it?” Banichi grabbed a fistful of Lucasi’s jacket and jerked him about, face to face. “Are you a child? Or is there something else we should know?”

“No,” Lucasi said faintly. “No, nadi.”

Banichi let him go, roughly. “Do as you wish to do with him, Bren-ji. They are not telling all the truth, they violated basic principles, and he is lying, maybe even to himself. You can take him in, in which case he will probably obey our orders, at this point—or you can dismiss him, in which case he will follow his partner as best he can. At least to her, he has man’chi.”

Bren cast a look at that shocked, miserable face—he knewBanichi, knew Banichi was both ruthless, and kind-hearted, and this was a very youngfool, in very deep trouble.

Not behaving rationally. That was what Banichi was telling him. Things didn’t add up, not with that lazily moving truck, and not with two young Guild who were close to causing a war with the Marid.

“Nadi?” he asked. “Explain yourself. Explain yourself to me, if you want my help for your sister.”

“Everything he is saying is right, nandi. We should have reported, we should have worked with the household, we—”

“Why did you not?” Bren asked. It seemed the central question. “Why did you, together, not do these things?”

The boy looked to be drowning in questions. He looked at Jago, looked at Banichi, looked at him.

“ Thereis your question,” Jago said harshly. “Banichi has asked it. The paidhi has asked it.”

“We are not your enemies!” Lucasi said.

“You wanted to impress your young lord—when it should have been the other way around. Are youaijiin?”

Are you crazy? Jago was asking.

It was a damned machimi play. And it was the last thing he wanted. It was the absolute last thing his aishid wanted, he was very sure, two psychologically messed-up young people who were Guild-trained and knew too much.

But one thread did make sense. They hadn’t meshed with Cajeiri. They hadn’tbeen able to attach. And there might be more than one reason for it. “Understand this,” Bren said, “nadi. Your young lord did not grow up on the earth. He learned many different ways up in the heavens. The aiji may have thought that with your excellent skills and your intelligence you might be able to adapt to him—since he may not always give you the signals you expect to have. Are you capable of seeing that? No one warned you. But you were credited for extraordinary qualities, so perhaps his father assumed too much.”

Lucasi stared at him, mouth slightly open. And the eyes tracked, locked.

“You cannot see it with myperspective,” Bren said, “but surely, nadi, you will have observed that the young lord, despite being the aiji’s son, is nottraditional in his thinking.”

Something clicked. One thought so, at least. Lucasi’s face looked a peculiar shade.

“Think on it,” Bren said.

“Nandi,” Lucasi said, “give me the chance. You can. I will notfail you.”

At doing what? one wondered. Something had just ticked over, perhaps; but he wasn’t wired to feel it—he never let himself expect to be, even if he’d just tried to reason down an atevi line of thought.

But in this mass movement of forces, in the fall of Targai, in Geigi’s succession to the clan lordship, in the Edi accession to a lordship, and the maneuvering of that truck, a deliberate challenge from the Marid, if the boy was not lying—in all of this, hestill had an objective. Barbwas nowhere in the aiji’s plans, and not that consequential in Mospheira’s, or Shejidan’s, or even the Marid’s. She was a silly woman. Nobody who’d taken her could communicate with her, and that meant her value was only as a provocation. She was disposable, unless somebody knew what Toby was; and higher and higher up the chain of command, somebody might realize what they had, which would make two governments realize both she andToby had become expendable—give or take the annoyance that would be to the paidhi-aiji.

And the paidhi’s not being a warlike office, neither was he on duty, once they had gotten Geigi into Targai, removed Pairuti, and taken thatstronghold out of Machigi’s control. He was dismissed from usefulness, at the moment, and hehad a promise he had made.

“You will obey my aishid,” he said, “on your life, Lucasi, from this point on. Where do you think they were going?”

“The main road. Southeast.”

Toward Taisigi territory.

“We had best move,” Banichi said, looking Bren’s way. “If you wish to pursue the lady’s kidnappers, nandi, best Jago and I go, best we move fast and get light transport from the aiji’s forces.”

That was sensible. That was the way it classically ought to work. Unlike the situation in which Lucasi had left his young lord, he was in a now-allied house, with two of his aishid left, and surrounded by the aiji’s forces, as safe as he would be in Najida.

But Banichi and Jago alone—to take on the Marid, and add themselves to the list of the young fool’s mistakes?

“Take some of the aiji’s forces with you,” he said.

“We cannot, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and the cannotwas the word meaning are not of sufficient rank.

“Then can I?” he asked, and Banichi’s face betrayed a little reluctance to answer.

“Can I?” he asked again, and Banichi said: “Officially, yes, Bren-ji.”

“Find out from their officer how many I can detach.”

“You must go with the party,” Banichi said, “to have that authority, and that is not advisable, Bren-ji.”

“ Not advisableis spread thickly over this entire situation, Banichi-ji,” he said. “We will take the bus, and a good number of the aiji’s men, if we can arrange that. Speed is of some use. We do notwant to enter Taisigi territory.”

“Nandi,” Banichi said, and turned and went out to the hall. Lucasi bowed deeply and, at Banichi’s nod, left with him.

Which left Jago standing there with, by now, Tano and Algini, Jago with a profoundly unhappy look.

“I have promised nand’ Toby,” Bren said. “Jago-ji, we bring Barb back for him. For no other reason.”

She seemed to find something ironically amusing in that, God knew what. “Understood, Bren-ji.”

In a moment Banichi came back from the hall with one handsign for his partners.

Even Bren could read that one. It said, “Ten. Affirmative.”

19

« ^ »

The house was looking different, bare, the way it looked when mani was packing to change residences.

Which was somewhat true. They had all moved to the basement, starting with transporting nand’ Toby downstairs. Staff got one of the tall, paneled screens from the sitting room and padded it all about with sheets and pillows, and then used it to carry nand’ Toby down the steps, himself gently tied to the screen—Cajeiri had watched the process, dutiful to his promise to nand’ Bren, and thought it scary, especially where the stairs turned, but they made it safely. Nand’ Toby was not supposed to walk and he was not supposed to be excited, and that process did not violate either, because mani’s physician, who supervised, had given nand’ Toby a good dose of sedative for the procedure. Cajeiri thought it a very good thing, and he was very glad they had not dropped him.

And next came the job of moving mani downstairs.

And since the physician had promised to stay with nand’ Toby for the next hour or so, Cajeiri took Jegari and Antaro and went to help move Great-grandmother.

Mani was not enthusiastic about going. In fact she vowed she was not going until trouble was proven to be on its way, or possibly until after trouble arrived. So all the servants were allowed to do was to get together Great-grandmother’s wardrobe and take that down. It was expensive, and bulky, and it all had to be safely hung.

So that went down, boxes handed from servant to servant, because it would have been indecent for mani’s garments to be displayed on their way. They would be taken into storage, and they would be unpacked, and readied for wearc

Granted mani ever consented to go down the stairs at all, which not even Cenedi could persuade her to do, yet.

“You truly should, mani,” Cajeiri said very cautiously.

“Hush!” mani said. And that was that. Cajeiri felt his ear smart even across the room.

So he took himself and Antaro and Jegari out into the hall again to see the stairs clogged with downbound packets of mani’s baggage.

Immediately after those, of course, all the historic pieces in all the rooms had to go down—and then all the spare storerooms were filled, so the servants had to move out all the food, boxes, and jars and sacks of it, from other storerooms and take that up into the kitchen upstairs and the kitchen downstairs, so one aisle of each was filled with supplies clear to the rafters, and canisters were set on the cabinets and the second and third stoves in the main kitchens. It was an impressive lot of food. There certainly seemed no danger of them starving.

Then the most fragile porcelains and the hangings had to go downstairs into all the storage they had just cleared. So did all the handmade draperies, which had to be taken down, and the hand-knotted carpets, which had to be rolled up, exposing the stone and wood flooring that one never saw except around the edges: it was a whole new Najida. There was one manufactured carpet, in the dining hall, which staff said just had to take its chances. But every one of the porcelains had to be individually padded up in pillows—there were a lot of those—and bedded down with the folded hangings. The ancient tea set had to go down, specially: it had a box of lacquered wood.

And then the historic furniture in the sitting room had to go down. Ramaso was really, really clever at telling how to stack it like a puzzle, and with padding between surfaces, so it took up far less space than seemed likely.

Everybody had a cold lunch: Great-grandmother readily agreed that that would do for her; but Cook said he was working on hot soup for supper, along with more cold bread and some pickle: it would be an odd kind of supper, but Cajeiri personally hoped they would all get to eat it in peace and that nand’ Bren and nand’ Geigi would be back in the morning, and most of all that his father’s Guild would sort things out and kick the Marid troublemakers clear back to their own towns. He had seen enough of people shooting up places in his life: he was out of all curiosity how that went. He hoped if people were going to be shot at that his father’s men did all the shooting, this time, and that nobody from Great-grandmother’s guard got involved, and most of all that if there was going to be more shooting on Najida grounds, they did all the shooting far out beyond the gardens, where nothing that belonged to nand’ Bren would get broken.

He wished at the same time that they would find nand’ Toby’s lady Barb, and that she would not be dead out there somewhere in the fields around the house.

That was the worst thought, and not fortunate at all, so he tried not to think it, even if Great-grandmother called it stupid superstition to believe that thinking about a bad thing could make it happen.

Think about bad things so you keepthem from happening, mani would say.

Well, he was thinking about quite a few bad things. He had been thinking about them all day, and he was very tired by the time he went back to watching over nand’ Toby. His bodyguard was tired, too, though all of them were trying not to show it.

Then the walls shook. There was a deep boom from somewhere outside.

He looked at Jegari and Antaro, who had jumped to their feet.

“What is that?” Toby asked, and tried to sit up. Cajeiri moved to stop him.

“I don’t know,” he said in ship-speak. “It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t. It was high time for mani to get downstairs, was what.

“Gari-ji, stay with him,” he said. And: “Taro, come with me.”

They had the bus for transport—thanks to their number. Bren would have preferred something a shade less conspicuous than that ruby red bus with shiny new paint. But they had more than ten of the aiji’s men, at the last: his aishid had talked to Hanari, who was the senior of Tabini-aiji’s forces on site, and Hanari, who could perhaps have vetoed the whole idea, or wanted to confirm it with Tabini, did no such thing. He assigned ten of his force to go with them onthat rolling target and they brought aboard communications and a classified lot of other gear.

Sixteen of the aiji’s men were staying with Geigi, to augment his small staff, and meanwhile the subclan had sent a representative up to Targai to offer its assistance, since allthe Guild serving the Maschi had either died in the firefight or vanished toward what border one could guess.

“We have uncovered a sorry mess here, Bren-ji,” Geigi said, at the steps of the bus as they were loading. “And one understands the need for haste, and one understands why you have involved yourself, but you are already injured. Take greatest care.”

“One hopes to.” Bren earnestly did hope to. And he hoped to stay out of any firefight. But one understood the technicalities of why he had to be with the team. With him on the bus, the responsibility was his, and it was not the aiji taking action. It was the paidhi-aiji moving on a personal grievance, which, with his presence in the field of action, did not requirethe formality of a Filing of Intent with the Guild. Filing that paper would have taken hours—and if granted, it would expose his household to a legitimate counter from the Marid. With Barb in the hands of kidnappers, it was still the rule of hot pursuit, and they could even cross a border region without breaking the law. So yes, he understood that part.

He didn’t understand what they were going to do once they ran down the kidnappers, which, the more they delayed getting underway, the more likely would not happen on Maschi land. That part was still a little hazy.

But he had a nape of the neck suspicion that the aiji, well aware what was going on, was going to politick hard with the Guild to act on the aiji’s personal Filing against Machigi– a campaign that would gather urgent moral force once some Marid agent actually took a shot at the paidhi-aiji. He might have to cross that border on personal privilege. He was taking with him Guild who had a very different reason for crossing that border, and a very different target.

It was so good to be of service.

“You take most extreme care, Geigi-ji. And should this not work out auspiciously—”

“Say no such thing, Bren-ji! But be sure that I am your ally in this and I shall bend every influence I have to secure your holdings coastward as well as my own. These rascals have annoyed us long enough!”

Geigi’s influence, on earth and in the heavens, was no mean commodity, and Geigi’s wit and persuasion and the extent of his connections were nothing at all to disparage. Bren bowed in deep courtesy as the bus engine started up. “My estimable ally. One will not forget this. And keep that waistcoat on, Geigi-ji, at all hours, one begs you! Stay safe!”

He wore his own bulletproof vest. He was so damnably sore and bruised he could hardly make the first atevi-scale step onto the bus, and had to have Geigi push him up from behind. At the next step, he had Jago’s help from above, and he got into his seat with the thought that, God, it hurt, and it was going to be a very long and bumpy bus ride. He had a folded silk scarf between his ribs and the vest at the sorest spot. The skin was not broken, and he was relatively sure the ribs were not broken. The general support the vest afforded was welcome enough, but its weight was scaled to atevi strength, it was hot, his head hurt from the fall—he’d hit a chair on his way down, he was relatively sure of it, he was dizzy, and it was a moment after he sat down before he could get his breath just from the climb into the bus.

Banichi and Jago were in the opposing seat. Tano and Algini and their gear were in the pair of seats across the aisle. And that considerable and formidable force, ten of Tabini’s finest, was with them.

Not to mention a very quiet young Guildsman sitting midway on the bus, allowed to be with them—but not included in the deliberations. Lucasi no longer had information to give– and he only entertained the hope that they might locate his sister, and Barb-daja, and maybe be in a good enough mood to give him another chance.

Had they had no more force than the paidhi’s own to carry on the search, they would have parked the bus still in Sarini province, on reaching that border region, and used their position to try to attract attention—and an approach from Barb’s kidnappers, a far, far more delicate operation.

With the aiji’s men supporting the operation—they were in a position to make a stronger demand in negotiation: give her back, or we open the doors of this bus and let ten Guild agents into Taisigi territory. The Taisigi at that point might see an advantage in restoring the status quo ante, meaning giving Barb back and getting a mobile Ragi base out of their territory.

It was going to be dicey, if it came to that. But added force, and the aiji’s already Filed Intent, offered a real chance of success, both in retrieving Barb, and Lucasi’s partner.

The bus rolled into motion, and jolted, and that was just the way the next number of hours were going to go, Bren said to himself. Jago and Banichi spread out a map, discussing it with Tano and Algini, who got up to have a look. Bren couldn’t personally see what they were talking about, which apparently involved points of hazard and potential ambush, and the point at which Sarini Province melded into the Marid lands.