Текст книги "Deliverer"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

If my grandmother goes East, nand’ paidhi, you will join her.”

“Yes, aiji-ma.”

That the kidnappers were Eastern was certainly the most logical assumption in the current situation—and Tabini’s position was the only position he could take in the situation. Both Tabini and his grandmother had to maintain their grip, and after them, that boy, and, no, Ilisidi might actually have done in a husband and maybe a son and might conceivably be aiming at her grandson, Tabini, but the boy she alone had raised– God, had that been part of Tabini’s motive in sending his son and Ilisidi on that voyage? To forge that sense of connection, that unbreakable man’chi? To make his son and heir safe from his own great-grandmother?

The mind jolted absolutely sideways, when it needed desperately to be here and now, eye to eye with Tabini, as Tabini laid a hand on his shoulder, a grip that bruised. “You are valued, paidhi-aiji. You are valued.”

“Aiji-ma, my value in this situation is my persuasion. I beg to try.”

“Defend my grandmother,” Tabini said sharply. “Thankless though the task may be, keep her alive, paidhi-aiji, her and my son.

We want her back.”

“Aiji-ma.” Acceptance of his proposal—with all it meant.

Persuasion. He was profoundly touched, and simultaneously terrified.

Assure the aiji-dowager turned from Eastern to western man’chi?

Break the influence of her neighbors, if it was a factor—if, somehow, Ilisidi was in on this maneuver? Give her a politically safe turn-around if she was actually behind the kidnapping?

The boy being attached to his grandmother and not to his fatherc the boy might become a force in the East, a rival claimant, to shift the balance of power. All these things flashed across his horizon like summer lightning.

And he had no choice. “I shall do everything possible, aiji-ma. I shall do absolutely everything possible.”

“Cenedi-nadi,” Tabini said, and as Bren got up, Cenedi came close, not without Jaidiri’s frowning and jealous attention.

“Nandi,” Cenedi said. And if there was a man in the room at an unenviable focus of attention, it was Cenedic sent here, in advance of the dowager taking action. He was, literally, in danger of his life, if Tabini had any suspicion at all.

Or not. Tabini, like Ilisidi, was capable of playing a very, very subtle hand.

“Go to the airport. There is no need for my grandmother to come to the Bu-javid. We know where one of those planes has gone, most surely, nadi. Do you dispute this likelihood?”

“One does not dispute, nandi,” Cenedi said. And without aiji-ma.

No acknowledgment of man’chi. Only Cenedi was, being in the household of the aiji-dowager, entitled to that familiarity.

“The paidhi will accompany you and the aiji-dowager: she may take command of the search in the East. One trusts she will act for the aishidi’tat.”

Cenedi, his face deep-graven by duty and the dowager’s service, frowned. But this time he bowed deeply. “In her name, nand’ aiji, and subject to her orders.”

Tabini’s hand shot out and seized Cenedi’s forearm. “Return my son, Cenedi-nadi. And her, and the paidhi-aiji. Return them alive.”

“Yes,” Cenedi said: how did one refuse the force of that order?

Bren froze, and remembered to breathe as Tabini released Cenedi’s arm.

A second bow. Then Cenedi straightened and walked out. Bren hesitated a breath, a glance at the aiji. They were leaving Tabini—abandoning him to Jaidiri’s competency, and to the attitudes and conflicted man’chiin of the court, all of which evoked the greatest misgivings. He wished, not for the first time, that Tabini’s guard of many years had survived the coup, and that every resource Tabini had once had was around him nowc But they were not. He bowed. He glanced from Banichi to Jago, and bowed slightly to Lady Damiri, and walked out, hearing Banichi and Jago fall in behind him.

Cenedi was outside that room. They went together, with Cenedi’s two men, out into the outer hall, where Taibeni stood on guard.

“You will be welcome, nandi, one has every confidence,” Cenedi paused to say, plain to be heard. “Her plane will be landing—one assumes it will get clearance.”

“One is certain it will,” Bren murmured; and Jago: “I shall see to the packing.” Leaving Banichi with him, and not leaving him alone with Cenedi, she went down the hall at a fast clip, and Banichi nodded to Cenedi. “We are ready.”

“Nadi,” Cenedi said, and with a nod of his head to Bren, “nandi.”

And they headed for the lift, with no more than that.

No question that plane was going to stay on the ground any longer than it took to refuel, not unless the dowager was hellbent on an interview with her grandson, and one doubted that would happen until there was a definitive answer, one doubted it extremely.

“The hotel has been searched, nandi,” Cenedi said after they were in the lift, after one of Cenedi’s men pushed the button. “Caiti’s party has indeed remained. And left in the night. One plane has turned east. One north. One south.”

North was no problem. South, however, south was bad news.

Scary news. If anything had moved south, it would likely be the Assassins’ Guild, not the paidhi, who had to deal with that.

And a plane happened to go south when Caiti’s party moved east?

Their mission might, by that fact, be in the right direction; or it might be following a diversionc No. If, at very worst, the dowager was involved– God, dinner with the Kadagidi. Her great-grandson smuggled out of her apartment– No. No, and no. He refused, emotionally, stupidly, it might be, to believe it.

It could not be their concern: they had to deal quickly with the target they were given, and the best chance of stopping events short of a bloodbath was the dowager’s going back to her own region and knocking critical heads together, among her own neighborsc granted she was not behind this, God help them. If Caiti had made some deal with the south—the dowager knocking heads was not an inconsiderable force. The paidhi couldn’t be everywhere. He couldn’t do a damned thing if they had taken the boy south. He could do something in the East, with his connection to the dowager.

His own best use was as her support, and as a representative of the aiji’s confidence in herc and ultimately as a negotiator, once he had the whole truth of what was happeningc whatever happened.

He was, he realized as the elevator plummeted toward the train station, woefully short of staff, short of resources. These Eastern conservatives would respect appearances. Force. A full staff. He had no domestics: his personal staff was up on the station. Tano and Algini were at the coast trying to get his brother back and could not join them in time to back up Banichi and Jago. For servants—he would have the dowager’s staff, at Malguri, presuming that was where they were going. But he had by no means all the wardrobe; he couldn’t even pack his needful items. He had to trust Jago for that—and did. She would bring his computer: that, he wanted with him, where he could at very least wipe it, if things went wrong. He hoped there was nothing else waiting in the wings, no other assassins aiming at Tabini from within the dowager’s staff– God, God, when one stopped taking security for granted, within a household, there were so many things to think of.

And priorities had suddenly shifted. He had, as best he could, to rearrange the pieces on the board.

“It might be well if we recall Tano and Algini, ’Nichi-ji. One assumes their assistance would be useful to you and Jago.”

“If we can reach them at this point,” Banichi said. “One will try to contact them.”

“Surely it was not Guild, nadiin-ji,” Bren ventured to say, in the company of those who sincerely were. “Surely—if it were—”

“If it were Guild, the Taibeni boy would not have escaped,”

Banichi answered him—the one thing all of them could well conclude. “Unless escape was part of the plan.”

The car whisked past level after level, bound downward on a high-level security key. Bren’s stomach floated, in the precipitate drop.

And he clung to one hope. The kidnappers hadn’t killed anyone.

Their light-handedness argued for amateurs rather than Guild, argued for someone who feared bloodfeud that might well bring allies in against them.

But their being amateurs had its own particular dangers– not least, the possibility someone in their number would panic and all hell would break loose.

And, the other worrisome component of the problem, someone had let them into the dowager’s apartment. Someone who was at this very moment close to the aiji, being either part of his staff or the dowager’s, because, without that help, there was no way on earth they could have gotten in to reach the boy.

The lift hit bottom. So did Bren’s stomach. Banichi, meanwhile, was on his small com before the door opened, issuing orders while he kept an unceremonious and surely distracted handhold on Bren’s arm and pulled him along in Cenedi’s wake: it hurt, and that was all but unprecedented. Banichi was entirely on edge.

Cenedi’s two men meanwhile went ahead of them around the corner of the elevator bank, heading toward the trains that came and went in this heart of the Bu-javid complex. In better times, a small train had always waited in the event of the aiji’s need—and one sat there, now, on a concrete-rimmed siding, an engine with three cars, the way it always had been, and the middle one a luxury special belonging to the aiji. There it sat waiting, apparently unscathed in the interregnum, and Cenedi’s men, jogging ahead of them, split up short of the cars, one heading up to the engine, one moving to open the door of that middle car. That man went inside first, to be sure of it.

So they had clearance to use that train, that car. Bren now had no doubt where they were going. Banichi was moving fast, with Cenedi, and Bren kept up, dragged along, as it were. They reached the car and both of them, behind him, shoved him roughly up the atevi-scale steps.

They followed, and pulled the door to behind them. It shut with a thump.

Bren caught his balance against the transverse brass railing inside, near the bar counter. “Will we wait for Jago, Banichi-ji?”

“We shall wait, nandi,” Banichi said distractedly, clearly listening to something else, and, thus assured, Bren worked his way among the padded red-velvet seats and small tables, and on to the rear of the car, the position he had always favored as simply less in the way of traffic.

They were as safe here as armor plating could make them. The windows were bulletproof and shaded in red velvet, affording not even the hint of a target.

Cenedi meanwhile spoke to Banichi in that shorthand the Guild used, half with handsigns. Bren caught enough to know that they were sure of the dowager’s plane’s security, and would have it or another plane fueled and diverted to their use, on their subsequent flight—likely a second plane, since the transcontinental flight needed a longer range. Cenedi indicated that the dowager was bringing all her security with her, leaving only Cajeiri’s guards in the Bu-javid apartment, and that would reinforce them considerably.

Meanwhile, Bren thought he caught, via the conversation between those two, that air traffic control was reporting on the three planes that had already taken off. Directions had not changed: one eastward, one northward, and one bound to the hostile south. And he understood from that conversation, too, that Lord Keimi, lord of the Taibeni, had not been in the city, that he had gone back home two days ago, and that he now was coming in by train, to arrive by morning. That was a relief: Tabini could rely on Lord Keimi, absolutely, and to hell with critics trying to dictate the political composition of his bodyguard and staff. Lord Keimi’s arrival would take some of the pressure off Jaidiri, and that was to the good, within the staff.

But Lord Keimi had just had two of his own injured in this situation, and he would arrive with fire in his eye, bent on answers from someonec not to mention the youngsters’ parents were probably coming in with him.

And, again, who had taken Cajeiri?

If the Taibeni boy had gotten to a security office phone, what had he reported, and what did Banichi know, by now, that Banichi was too busy giving orders to explain?

He sat gnawing his lip, wanting to ask, but Banichi and Cenedi leaned close together, talking urgently, and that must not be interrupted.

Who could have gotten through Ilisidi’s security net—if not Ilisidi? Or had someone dared take service under her roof and betray her interests?

There’d be blood for that—if betrayal was the case. This wasn’t the ship, and whatever staffer had double-crossed Ilisidi of Malguri had better be on that plane with the kidnappers, unless suicide was part of the plan—or unless that wasn’t the picture at all. He just didn’t know. And the reason Banichi and Cenedi were talking like that, so intently, so quietly, without him—could be Banichi trying to feel out just what the hell was going on, and even to learn whether Cenedi himself knew more than he admitted of what was happening.

It was like the first stage of entry into a gravity well, a little courage, and a little bit of confidence, until one had reached a point of no returnc both in circumstance and in emotional context. They were sliding over the rim—the moment they boarded the dowager’s plane.

Dangerous. Ilisidi always was that. That never changed. But there had to be a way for a diplomat to bend the situation. Any situation.

The train started into motion, a slow, inexorable sense of force.

And it was not supposed to move. Not without Jago. That brought him to his feet.

“Banichi-ji.”

“Jago is in the baggage car,” Banichi said quietly, diverting his attention from his conversation with Cenedi. “The plane will be ready for us.” With the information came a direct look from Banichi, a look that, after all their travels, he could read as well as Jago could: don’t interrupt, don’t rock the boat. Sit down, Bren-ji.

“Indeed,” he said, and sat, immediately, as the train rolled slowly, inexorably on its course downward. He found himself half-paralyzed with thinking—the only action he could take at present, and with precious little data to do it on.

But if he believed one person present, he believed Banichi, and Banichi thought they were right to be here, surrounded by Cenedi’s men. He was at least as safe as Banichi could make them, and Jago had made it aboard. She was riding with the baggage, probably sorting equipment into order as they went, and probably eavesdropping on Banichi and Cenedi all the while.

Nor could he be a trusting fool, where he sat. Banichi might mistake the acuteness of human hearing. He could not hear what they said, not, especially, over the sound of the train. But clearly he was not welcome in the current conversation, which was, if he could make a guess, deeply Guild, and deeply dangerous, and possibly even that rare thing among atevi—completely frank.

Emotionally—he—that human word—liked Tabini; but that was not the be-all and end-all of his decisions. He wanted Tabini in power if Tabini could hold power, that had to be the bottom line. He wanted the dowager in possession of her habitual power if she could keep itc he wanted both those things not to become mutually exclusive.

His wits had to stay sharp, was what: if there was a word in isolation he had overheard, he still had not the pieces to put together any sane plan out of those words—east, north, south, and the dowager. He daren’t woolgather once he left the train. He daren’t think about anything but what was immediately at hand.

Meanwhile he sat in a rail coach rocking along as fast as a train could move within the curved tunnel, in company with Banichi, the two of them outnumbered by Cenedi and his men from the start.

If, God forbid, he himself had to choose loyalties between Tabini and the dowager—he had one, one overriding concern: what it would do when the kyo came calling, expecting to find a stable situation, the way they had described it to be—if Tabini couldn’t hold his own grandmother’s man’chi, something had to shake out.

It might, in fact, rest on him to straighten it out—keep her in the aishidi’tat. Keep the aishidi’tat together. Credit to Tabini, who more or less trusted him, the way he more or less trusted Tabini.

Not good, he said to himself, to the rhythm of the rails, not good, not good. Trust outside one’s own household was a sure way to get into a hell of a mess.

Every turn of the track, every pitch and sway he knew—and they were three quarters of the way to the airport when one of Cenedi’s men rose from a side bench, steadied himself with his hand on the bar rail, and announced, to Cenedi and Banichi both: “A fourth plane, nadiin, has left southbound from Bedijien. Lord Wyndyn is the owner.”

Damn. That was a smaller airpark, across town, where luxury aircraft underwent maintenance—at least that had been its role two years ago. And a fourth plane was in the air.

“Lord Wyndyn is himself in the south,” Banichi said, from the other side of the car, “having traveled by train. Why his plane is in this region at all is a matter for inquiry.”

Wyndyn was a southern lord, neighbor to the Taisigin Marid, and not even in the capital, from the borders of which his plane took off.

Murini was down there in the south, somewhere. At least they thought Murini was down there. Tabini’s loyalists were out hunting for the usurper, and if he or one of his aides had instead been here in the capital, all along, and left on that plane– No. If it was Murini’s people who’d snatched the boy, how in hell could they subvert Ilisidi’s staff, and why spare the Taibeni youngster? No. They had three planes aloft, four, five, now, with the dowager’s inbound flightc and they were tracking all of them.

What in hell was air traffic control doing, allowing that takeoff?

Or had they allowed it? Had a flight crew panicked, seeing the airlanes closed, and themselves cut off from their homeland? If no one had physically blocked the runway, a plane could have done it.

Once in the air, there was no way to stop them except flinging another plane into their pathc and that didn’t help the situation.

“The dowager’s plane is landing, nandi,” Cenedi said, for his benefit, as the train hit that long straightaway that led to the airport’s outer perimeter. “A bus will meet us and take us to the ramp while they refuel. All aircraft are still under hold.” Cenedi paused to listen to something. “The first southbound plane has been identified as a scheduled freight flight, departing ahead of the general ban. It says it will obey instructions to land in Omijen.

Local magistrates will bring force to meet it. The other two, the northbound and eastward are also scheduled freight. One is registered to the district of Cie, and has made its turn east, according to usual plan. The fifth, a ten-seater, property of Lord Wyndyn, should not have taken off. No one at Bedijien, however, was prepared to prevent it.”

Cie. Hell with Lord Wyndyn at the moment. It was Cie that rang like a bell.

Eastern. Upland.

And the largest airport abutting Lord Caiti’s sprawling domain.

Look to the dowager’s guests for damned sure. They had left their hotel in the middle of the night, and now they were headed out on a freight flight, unable to wait for daylight? People had used to travel that way, not so long ago, but not since there were dedicated airliners, and not since commerce had increased tenfold, so that they needed more freight runs, and freighters had given up installing the passenger section.

He cast Banichi a look. Banichi gave him one back, while Cenedi instructed his man and relayed a message.

Questions were unnecessary at this point. Caiti. Caiti became an exceedingly good bet.

8

The train pulled up at the security station at the airport in the morning darkness, and a van was waiting for them with dimmed interior lights as the coach doors opened. Bren, with nothing to carry, and Banichi going behind him, took the steps downward, with Cenedi himself waiting below to catch him as he made the last tall step to the concrete of the platform. Cenedi’s men were one car ahead of the coach they had used, catching the bags Jago and one of Cenedi’s team flung down at them, and two vans waited on the tarmac beyond the concrete, interiors dark, motors off.

They hurried to the van. Jago joined them there as Cenedi’s men, taking the baggage, headed for the second van. Jago, Bren was glad to see, had brought his computer with her, and gave it to him with a direct and affirming glance in the slight light from inside the van.

Affirming what? That everything was all right?

That they had made the right moves so far?

Bren slung the strap over his shoulder and clutched the handle up close as he boarded—struggled for balance on the steep rise, and Banichi shoved him from behind as he set a hand on the dusty floorboards. He made it up in haste, and flung himself into the seat behind the driver as Banichi and Jago landed heavily on the bench seat behind him. Cenedi and one of his men had boarded, the man pressing past, Cenedi lingering to instruct the driver.

“We have not been able to reach Tano or Algini, Bren-ji;” Jago said, leaning forward. “One left a strong request with Jaidiri to phone the estate, requesting they come after us as soon as possible.

This supposes that the estate can achieve contact—but one also instructed them by no means to compromise nand’ Toby’s position.”

Toby was as safe as he had been. At least that. And the safety of everything on the mainland was currently in doubt. He rested the hope of Tano and Algini joining them all in Jago’s capable hands: and if he had to go with what they had, Banichi and Jago were enough. She had trusted Jaidiri with that call. Not Saidin, whose man’chi was to the Atageini. Did that tell him anything?

The van door shut, the van started to roll, and just then a desperate apparition showed at the door glass, hammering on the door.

He knew that face, in the sidewash of the foglights.

“Jegari!” Bren exclaimed, half rising from his seat. “Banichi!”

Banichi, outermost, was immediately past him, laying a hand on the driver’s shoulder, checking the driver in his intention to pull away. The door opened, and Cajeiri’s young attendant, in no more than trousers and a torn and bloody white tee, scrambled up the steps into the dim light inside.

“Away!” Cenedi instructed the driver—Cenedi was on his feet, too; and Banichi lowered the winded boy into a vacant front seat—Cenedi’s, as happened. The injured youngster was clutching his left arm and bleeding on the upholstery, dripping blood from a cut on his forehead; and Bren dumped his computer to the seat and stood where he had a vantage.

“Nand’ Bren,” the boy gasped, looking up at him, blinking in the wash of blood. “They drugged us, I think. They took nand’ Jeri—and Taro—one does not know—”

“Your sister is safe in the Bu-javid, nadi,” Bren said, and the boy got a breath.

“But Jeri—one was not willing to escape, but one thought– one thought, nandi—someone had to report back—if Taro were dead—no one would know where—one thought—”

“You jumped from the truck,” Jago said shortly.

“Yes, nadi. I did.”

“You reported,” Banichi said, “that you saw them board a plane.

What sort of plane?”

Two fingers. “Jet. Two engines, nadi.” A gasp for air. The boy’s teeth chattered. “One failed to see the emblem. The lights—were all where they were boarding—”

“Did you identify anyone? Did you see faces, or colors?”

A wretched move of the head. “No, no, nadi, one regrets extremely—one did not. But it—it was big. The number—the number started with nine.”

“The plane to Cie,” Cenedi said. “Caiti, for certain.” The van hit a curve at that moment, and the boy slid in the seat. Banichi held him with a hand on his arm. The boy winced and all but fainted, and Banichi immediately eased his grip.

Banichi said, “This child needs a hospital.”

“No,” Jegari cried. “No. No, please, nadi. Does one know where they have taken my lord? One wishes—one wishes to—”

“The aiji-dowager is inbound at this moment,” Bren told the boy quietly, holding to the seat as the van swerved and gathered speed.

Jegari seemed justly due as much information as they had, given his help thus far. “We are joining her here at the airport. One expects to go after the young gentleman, as far as the Eastern Provinces, if that is where this trail leads. And what you say is good news—better, at least than a plane going southward. We shall find him.”

“May I go with you, nandi?” The boy’s face glistened with sweat in the reflected lights. “One asks—one asks—most earnestly—most respectfully—”

“I have no authority to say so,” Bren began, but Banichi caught his eye and gave an affirmative nod, as if, yes, the paidhi did, in absentia parentis, in this cause, have that authority.

“Ask the dowager, nandi,” Jago said. “This boy may well have seen useful things and his presence might be a resource.”

“I should be forever grateful to go, nandi,” Jegari said.

The dowager traveled, always, with her physician. On that plane, inbound with Ilisidi, there was medical attention.

And Jago was right. The boy was indeed a witness. Where the boy was now determined to go—answered to man’chi. And he was—dammit—not a human kid. There were obligations, questions of honor, of emotional ties in which he did well to take his staff’s advice, for the boy’s own sake.

He cast Jago a troubled look, all the same, then grabbed the seat back rail as the van made a turn, and dropped into his own seat rather than fight for balance. He wanted the kids in this wretched business all safe, not one more boy in risk of his life. He wanted a clear deck so people old enough to know what they risked could do what they had to do without more innocent parties getting hurt.

But he had clearly landed right in the middle of that territory to which atevi had never invited humans: the manner in which they dealt with their children. He’d had what he thought an intimate view with Cajeiri and the dowager on the ship—he’d winced whenever the dowager came down harshly on the boy, and he’d kept his mouth shut, and never intervened, though he had suspected it was just the dowager’s way and she was never inclined to take prisonersc not when she expected perfection.

But how did he go back to Jegari’s father and mother if they lost or crippled this boy? What would he say to them then?

Your son seemed useful to us?

Point of fact, it wasn’t his decision. Not ultimately. He kept his mouth shut.

A floodlit building veered across their path, succeeded by dark, as the van swung full about toward the view of a plane parked amid fuel trucks. The aircraft was in a secure area, with armed Guild security dotted here and there about it. A second plane, smaller, taxied slowly to a stop as they braked.

That, he thought with a habitual surge of relief, that had to be the dowager’s plane. She was down. Safe. They were one force again. Questions, doubts, seemed suddenly less reasonable. The unity between them was the way it had been, had been obliged to be, for the last two years.

Their van swung in toward the first, larger plane and began to slow to a stop. By the fact that no one shot out their tires, and that Cenedi was staring out the side door and actively using his com, the dowager’s other security clearly knew their leader was aboard, and that their van was not full of lunatics bent on ramming the now-departing fuel truck.

That hazardous vehicle trundled across their path. They rolled near to the boarding ladder, and stopped, as their other van, that with the baggage, rolled past them and toward the cargo hatch.

Their door opened, and Bren gathered up his computer, waiting as Banichi and Cenedi took the boy between them and helped him carefully down the steps. The boy descended as if it was the last strength he had in him, his knees almost failing as he stepped down to the ground, but he stayed upright and walked between them.

Bren followed, as Jago inserted herself between him and the adjacent hangar, then seized his arm discreetly and hurried him on toward the ladder. He was surely one of any enemy’s chief targets, a worry to his staff, and he applied all haste as Jago increased her pace and headed him up the steps to the boarding platform at a breathless rate.

Inside the aircraft, then, the dizzyingly ordinary sight of seats all prepared for passengers, as the ladder rang with footsteps behind them. He kept moving forward, with Jago. The compartment could be any airplane, with commercial seating, most of it vacant. He passed through that, meeting no objection from the two stern young men on guard at the bulkhead. He and Jago passed through a substantial door into the private sitting area forward of the wings, with its serving bar, and comfortable chairs. This was a transcontinental passenger plane. Lords traveled in such splendor, nowadays. The small adjacent accommodation, the bedroom nook that took nearly half the space, had private doors. Ahead of that, the pilots, behind their closed door. A lord’s spare security enjoyed the seats behind the bulkhead, the galley and accommodation hindmost. He had reached a sort of privileged safety. Jago shut the door.

The boy had not made it through to this compartment. Bren disapproved; but he was not the lord in question, on this plane. He had no power down here on the planet, arranged nothing. Cenedi did, in the dowager’s name, and Jago was probably listening to Banichi in her choices, in electronic communication– she had that abstracted look, one hand covering her ear to shut out noise.

Bren just stood, frowning, waiting while Jago ducked ahead to investigate the cockpit, and then, passing through, she ducked quickly back through the bulkhead door to check on matters back in the main cabin.

He had no desire to sit down while all this went on. The windows were shuttered. A glance at his watch informed him the sun was probably coming up now, just touching the horizon. A lord’s dignity—and everything rode on that, far more than usual—precluded his going back and interfering in whatever Banichi and Jago and Cenedi were doing about the boy.

Назад к карточке книги "Deliverer"