Steps sounded on the stairs at the turning. The door up there opened, and he froze. People were coming down, guards, by the look of them in the hall light. His heart started beating doubletime, and he edged back into the cover of the hanging coats. They were headed down for the room he had been in.
He had no choice. He pulled the magnet right off, keeping the tacks with it, and, never breaking contact, jammed it against the main part of the unit, where it would stay, preventing the alarm from sounding. He was about to open the door.
And about that time there was a yelp, an oath, and the whole hall went black.
He flung down the latch, yanked the door open, and— And the whole world out there was white, lit with floodlights from the left, where a bus was, and the ground was white—just white, with white puffs falling out of the sky, cold, and the most startling sightc Snow, he thought. He had never seen snow. But that was it. He took a step.
Hit ice and his feet went out from under him, faster than thinking. He landed at the bottom of the steps, half winded and backward, staring up at the door he ought not to have left open.
Suddenly an alarm was going off, wailing into the night.
He rolled, and scrambled up and ran in utter panic, half-blind from the jolt, stumbling in outsized boots. He made it to the stone wall—defensive wall, outer wall, just like in the movies. And of all things, there was a bus parked up by the big gates, and lights, and people stalking about in the floodlights, so the place was on the edge of swarming.
But the big wrought iron gates up there were shut.
Iron gates with big wide bars, and beyond them—beyond them, who knew? It was better than being trapped and put back in a worse room.
There were people running about everywhere in the light of what looked like the house’s front door, and the alarm was still going, but that gate was where he had to go, and there was that bus with its back end right up near it.
So he did what Banichi had always told him was the best way to avoid suspicion: walk, walk as if he knew exactly where he was going; and he walked right up near the middle of the bus, and then walked back to the iron gate, and the bars.
The bars might stop a man coming through. Not him. He squeezed through, saw a second gate, metal and solid, that might really stop something, but it stood wide open—just the barred gate was shut behind the bus.
He glanced back. People were clustered around the front steps of the house. People with guns. He saw no one he knew. He had the bars between him and them, now, and he turned and just kept walking. He hurt, where he had hit on the steps.
So he scooped up a handful of ice and clamped that down on the back of his head, and just kept on walking along the wall, where it climbed up and up the hill. There was the road the bus had used, but if he went that way, there might be more people coming along, and that was no good. He wanted to get back beyond the road.
There were trees, and brush covering a lot of rock, and if they got mecheiti out tracking him, he knew they tracked most by air-scent, and the wind helped, if he just didn’t touch things, and if he just got onto rough ground where mecheiti could not go.
Move faster, he said to himself, and tried to run. It was dark, and the snow was coming down, and that had another benefit: it might cover his tracks. He had pockets full of food. He was out. He was away. He was probably somewhere in the East, and if he could figure out where he was, he might get to a fuel station that had a phonec c if he knew what land he was on, and where their man’chi was.
All of a sudden the lessons mani had thwacked into his skull were life and death.
And if he had no precise knowledge where he was, except the East, up in the mountains.
And the mountains and down to the plains was where those guests of Great-grandmother’s had come from.
And they were her neighbors.
And if they were her neighbors, if he just kept going upland, if he just got up high enough, he might reach the lake, and if he got to the lake, he had to get to the shore and keep walking, keep ahead of any riders, because that was the worst thing, that was the thing he had to worry about.
He had no idea which one of the three that had come to dinner had done this, or in whose house he had just been. But it had to have been one of them, or somebody they knew. There was Lady Drien at the south end of the lake, there was Lord Caiti who lived in the east and had the estate at the north end of the lake, and Rodi farther north and Agilisi farther east in the lowlands of Ciec he had no clue, none, where he was, but he knew it was Caiti or Drien.
If Drien, south would take him around the lake to Malguri. If it was Caiti, north would be the direction.
And his stomach hurt from running, and he slipped and stumbled in the big boots. Finally, he stopped for breath and took the heavy boots off and just carried them, because he knew from the ship that if you stopped where it was cold, you were going to want heavy clothes. It was hard even to carry them; but the top of the ridge both encouraged and dismayed him.
There was a lake. It had to be the lake—it was just as mani had described itc except it was far down the slope, not near, and it wasc Huge.
He could not see how big. There was supposed to be an island out there. An island that had ghosts, and where a bell sometimes rang for no reason. But the gray water just went on and on into the haze of falling snow, until it was all one gray nothing.
He heard voices in the distance.
Then he heard far-off gunshots.
And sucked in a breath and took off running, north, for no particular reason, and without looking back.
Run and run and run. He clutched the wretched boots to him, and slipped over the edge of a snow-covered ridge, never even seeing it. He skidded to a landing at the bottom, closer to the lake but still, so, so far away, and now, down here, he thought, anybody chasing him had to have a good view of everything below.
But there had been the shots—he knew they were shots, and somebody was fighting up there.
And it could be mani, with Cenedi, come after him—it was the only person in all the world he would think would get here that fast and know where to look.
But even if it was, he dared not turn back to find out, and if they were shooting up on the ridge, he had a small window to get himself clear.
And that meant run.
The snow was coming down. That meant he left tracks. That only meant he had to be fast, and keep going, and maybe get somewhere he would not leave tracks.
He ran until he was out of breath, and fell on the damned boots, just sprawled. There were trees ahead, old gnarled trees, and a spooky looking place, but it was cover, at least from being seen.
Run and run. He stumbled on roots and rocks, but found a place beneath the evergreen branches where tracks were not evident, and that meant he just had to push himself and go by twisty ways and not get caught.
It was quiet behind him now.
He leaned against a tree to catch his breath. He could see all along the slope he had crossed, above the lake shore, and it was white out there, and he was in shadow.
He saw a flash of light, a starlike flash where no flash ought to be.
They were looking for him. Somebody was, with a flashlight. He had no guarantee that somebody behind him was of mani’s man’chi.
He would believe nothing and no one until he got clear to Malguri, and he had chosen his direction.
Shortest to go low, around the lake itself, and he drew as much cold breath as he could suck in and veered off lower as quickly as he could, toward the lake, toward the shortest route.
Best he could do. Only thing he knew to do.
They had never taught him this on the ship.
And here it was no game.
15