So he did his best. Whether they were walking into something and where Banichi was at the moment—he left that to Jago, whose senses and skills were on the alert. Tano and Algini were lagging behind them with Lucasi and hadn’t shown up in the last brief rest.
Jago suddenly held up a cautioning hand. He froze right where he was—not an advantageous spot, but at least a tenable one, in the shadow of a tall upright rock and next to a growth of scrub.
She melted backward and indicated he should get deeper into cover.
He did that, set his back against springy brush and put his hand into the pocket with the gun, just in case.
She was leaving him for a while, she signed to him. He couldn’t go where she was going or do what she was going to do.
But if Jago couldn’t handle it, he was sure it couldn’t be handled. He just needed to stay absolutely still, remembering the acuteness of atevi hearing. She was apparently going hunting.
He settled to stay where he was. His best contribution was to rest and catch his breath, in the theory they were likely to have to move and maybe move for a long distance and fast.
In the best of situations, they’d nearly caught up to Banichi, and she was going to move up on him with the appropriate moves or signals, so Banichi wouldn’t, God help them, shoot them both by accident.
In the worst—they were running into trouble, and Jago was going to have to handle it.
He mopped his face with the back of his cuff, never mind the chill in the air. He wanted to sit down, but that involved moving, and not moving in the least was just safer. He had a rock and a springy bit of brush to lean on, he had his legs braced, and he was not in pain, which was all he asked, at the moment. He was sure she’d be back in a few minutes.
He didn’t know how far they were from that nebulous transition that humans would call the three-way border, the district between Taisigi land and Maschi territory, and likewise between the Marid and Sarini Province. “Border” might be a lovely distinction for a human brain that didn’t like shades of gray, but the people who’d like to kill them wouldn’t be at all fussy about where they were when they ran into each other, and they wouldn’t be safe until they’d gone far enough to have a substantial enough contingent of allied Guild forces between them and everybody who wanted them dead.
***
It wasn’t mani nor even Cenedi they found, going up the stairs; it was Lord Geigi, with household servants carrying baggage, and headed for the stairs.
“Is the enemy coming, nandi?” Cajeiri asked.
“Not imminently, young gentleman,” Lord Geigi said. “Staff will be moving furniture. A precaution.”
“Is mani calling my father?”
“One is certain your father is aware of our difficulty, young gentleman.”
It was an adult trying to keep him from worrying. Which always meant there was something to worry about.
“Is mani calling my father, nandi?”
Geigi had intended to go on down the stairs. They were impolitely in the way. Lord Geigi said, “It is being taken care of, young gentleman.”
Nand’ Toby said, in Mosphei’, “What’s the problem?”
Geigi understood ship-speak. And he looked at nand’ Toby, looking out of breath and bothered.
“Communications,” Lord Geigi said in ship-speak. “We have transmitted a general alert to the station. Phones are notc” It was a ship-speak word Cajeiri did not know. It was not fair.
“What?” he asked. “Reli-ble.”
“Reliable,” Lord Geigi said in Ragi. “Neither phone nor radio is secure at this point. The enemy is preparing something.” And Lord Geigi said it again, in fluent ship-speak, adding:
“I’ve alerted the station, nandi. They will be contacting Mospheira andShejidan, and at that point, what they will do is up to them. The Edi, on the other hand, have contacted the Gan, and that is—” Another big word.
“Nandi,” Cajeiri said, frustrated. “What will the Gan do?”
“They will come, young lord. They will arrive in the middle of things, armed and with no connection to Guild authority. One has asked the Grandmother of the Edi to fortify Kajiminda, and if the Gan then arrive in the midst of this, one can only hope not to have complete confusion.” He changed to ship-speak, addressing nand’ Toby and Barb-daja.
“Guild action does not tend to be long, nandiin. We must hold Najida for the next number of hours, perhaps three days, before help willc” More words, involving Shejidan. Cajeiri drew a quick breath and got a question in.
“My father has nobody to send, nandi?”
The question drew a strange frown, a calculation, maybe, and a hesitation in answering.
“Your father will have received our message, young gentleman. One has every confidence he will act—or that he hasacted would not surprise me in the least. If you would assist, young gentleman, persuade your great-grandmother to move downstairs. Thatwould be to the good.”
“But what is my father doing, nandi?”
“One has no idea at all, young lord,” Lord Geigi said, and said in ship-speak: “We expect attack. Cenedi hasn’t been able to get new information from the Guild. We can send messages out, but no one is talking to us, and we only dare say what we don’t mind the enemy hearing. At this point we simply get ready.” And back to Ragi: “Persuade your great-grandmother to move downstairs, young sir. Thatwould be a service.”
Nobody was going to listen. Mani was clearly in a bad mood. And the enemy had tapped the phone lines.
“Can we get guns?” nand’ Toby asked.
“Nawari, in the security office, nandi,” Lord Geigi said. “He’s arming any staff who knows how to use one.”
***
Time passed. More than half an hour. An hour. Bren watched the shadow creep across a small knob of rock, and pass it entirely, and eventually start to decline off the rock entirely.
He heard nothing. Saw nothing move but a small creature digging roots, out beyond the rocks. He had been still enough that that shy creature felt safe to come out. His feet had gone to sleep.
The shadow crept off the rock entirely and traversed the brown dust of the ground.
He’d stood and waited as long as he could. He moved very carefully so as not to rustle the branches he’d been leaning on and sank down to one knee, and finally down to sit as far back in the rocks as he could manage.
He still refused to worry at this point. If Jago had gotten into a situation, he only hoped she would rely on him absolutely to do what she had told him to do. The last thing he wanted was for her to risk herself and Banichi because they expected him to be a fool.
And, he told himself, Tano and Algini would be arriving here, sooner or later. He hadn’t heard any explosions besides the one back at the ridge. But that didn’t mean that pair was through dealing with the opposition, and it didn’t mean that anything had happened to them.
It was entirely possible they would show up and just move him along toward Jago, relying on the signals they occasionally passed to one another. The second last thing he wanted was to be rambling around out in the countryside, either to draw enemies to himself or to get himself shot by his own bodyguard.
He didn’t know whether there was any specific Guild code for “I’ve left the paidhi in a cul de sac and I hope he stays there,” but he wouldn’t be surprised to know that his bodyguard had a code for pretty much that idea.
The one thing he was sure of was that he truly had no business even taking a look outside his hiding place, no matter what. A human just couldn’t easily judge what an atevi could hear or what one could see in near darkness. Twilight and high noon were the two times when the differences most mattered— advantage went to the human in blinding glare but to the ateva in near darkness. And he very much hoped somebody showed up before dark.