He didn’t want to ask. Staying still seemed to be the best course.
Algini left him then. That sign had probably given him Algini’s best advice, but right now, one by one, his bodyguard had left him, and he was all alone in Taisigi territory—an unprecedented solitude. It was possible that things were, one by one, going massively wrong—in which case all he could do was burrow in, prepared to last days in concealment, and hope whatever was going on in Taisigi district ultimately favored Tabini.
It was possible, too, that he was not as alone as he thought. Guild could disappear with amazing effectiveness and still be on the job, in which case it was the paidhi’s simple job to stay very still and tucked into the rocks, glowing in the dark as he inevitably did to atevi vision, and let Algini handle whatever came along.
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 problemsc
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, might 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 theyknew 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 followedthe 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 waswhere 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 waslogical.
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.