Bren had indeed slept. He waked against Jago’s shoulder, aware that the bus was climbing steeply, and that everyone around him was stirring.
Slept like a child. He felt Jago shift her weight, lay a hand on his shoulder.
He rubbed a face gone rough with stubble. Not exactly set for a formal visit, atevi finding this human characteristic, as they did, passing strange; but his personal kit was back at Drien’s abode and there was no help for it. They had to take him as he was, scratchy and chilled and in a parka and outdoor boots.
The bus tires slipped and skewed, and it clawed its way upward, steadily. It was far from a noiseless approach they made, but it was not intended to be. First they got in.
And that, even with Drien’s help, might be easier said than done.
Banichi got up, rifle in hand. It was the plan that he would go in, accompanying Lady Drien, asking admittance to the grounds. They would be seen. The rest would keep in the shadows.
“Bren-ji,” Jago said. “Things may move quickly. One requests, stay close.”
“One can manage. One requests you do not look back or divert your attention for my sake. One will not be a fool in this.”
“Yes,” she said.
She moved to speak to one of Ilisidi’s young men. Rifles were much in evidence, and one had to remember the metal shell of this bus was very little protection. One hoped there were no snipers, or at least that they would wait to see who arrived.
They reached mostly level road, and ground and slid to a stop.
Gates. Open gates appeared in the headlights, through the front windows—when they had had every apprehension it would take Lady Drien’s presence to get through those gates. And the house doors themselves wide open, scattering electric light out onto the snow.
That was no scene of tranquillity. People didn’t leave the doors of a great house open in the middle of the night. The yard held one bus. But there were a lot of tracks, recent, in the snow of the yard.
The bus stopped. Banichi and Lady Drien got down, and a trio pair of Ilisidi’s young men with them.
The dowager stayed, with Cenedi, and with Jago. Bren moved up closer, to have a vantage out the front window.
Banichi and the lady crossed ruts, deep tire tracks where either that one bus had been backing all over the yard, or where other buses had come in. There were all sorts of footprints out on the snow where they stood.
Banichi had put on a heavy coat, a coat lacking the spark of silver that distinguished the Guild. A heavy down coat, likely, of the sort Drien’s own guards wore.
Damn, Bren said to himself, eyes riveted to that sight, one of the two individuals he most cared about in the world walking with the diminutive lady, across that footprinted bare expanse of snow, and up the trampled, icy steps. He took faster and faster breaths, expecting—something. Any sort of thing. Gunshots.
They reached the top step. The young men went inside. Came back out.
And at that point, Banichi turned and signaled “come ahead.”
Come ahead wasn’t in the plan. But none of this was.
The dowager moved, with Cenedi’s help, to descend the steps.
Jago went next, and Bren came closely after, caught Jago’s arm to keep his balance as he landed and saw the dowager and Cenedi heading in. He went at the dowager’s deliberate pace, crossing that exposed expanse of rutted snow.
The house steps were icy and lightly snowed over, atop a lot of footprints. Banichi and Lady Drien had moved inside ahead of them, and when they reached the shelter of the front hall, there they found Lady Drien had stopped, waiting for them, and Banichi had gone on.
“Go,” Bren said. “Jago-ji, go.” More of the dowager’s men were at their backs. They had firepower all around them, and Jago let go his arm.
“Protect her, nandi,” Jago said, and was off in an instant. The dowager, snowy from the transit, stood with them in that hall, and Cenedi gave rapid orders to two men, then headed inside on Banichi and Jago’s track. Immediately two of the dowager’s guard took out down two side hallways that led off the small, mud-tracked foyer.
And not only mud. Bren’s eye picked out a ruddy stain in the mix—blood. Someone had quit this place in a hell of a hurry, leaving the doors open to the winter air, and he was very much afraid that there had been a falling-out among their enemies, maybe not to Cajeiri’s benefit. Someone had left the front doors open, and that would be someone who cared little for the fate of the house that belonged to Caiti.
Someone else whose name, he very much feared, was Murini.
And their own plans were changing by the minute, trying to adapt, but behind the events now, well behind them.
Hurt. Hurt awfully to keep running, but mani would expect— mani would expect him to keep going; Cajeiri could all but hear her saying itc You can do it, boy. A great-grandson of mine can do itc The forest gave out ahead. He was losing his cover. Tracks would show, and the snow out there beyond the trees was unblemished.
Open. Shining in the night. There were trees, but they became regular as if planted. They were planted. It was somebody’s orchard.
He leaned against a tree under cover of the woods and caught his breath, his heart pounding against his ribs. His mouth was dry. His whole body ached, and his feet were numb with cold in their light boots. And if he went out there, whoever might follow him would track him easily in that open space between those widely spaced trees.
Then an idea came to him. He had kept the damned boots. He had clutched them all the way he had run, thinking that it would be the only means to get his feet warm again—and now he thought—they were a man’s boots. And whoever was tracking him would be tracking a boy.
He looked for bare spots among the trees, carefully eased over a ways from where he had been standing, setting his feet carefully.
He worked over maybe the length of mani’s dining room, and then, leaning against a tree, put on the boots right over his own boots.
They were warmer from the start; he wanted to pull off boots and stockings, and enjoy dry boots as well, but he might have to run again. It was only a temporary thing, this trick, until he could get through the orchard, and best not have the others slipping around and wearing blisters.
So he walked out under the trees of the orchard, under thin branches edged with snow, and tried not to touch any of them.
Just—north, as best he could, and west to the lake shore, as close as he could get, as fast as he could get there.
The com in Bren’s pocket beeped. He fumbled after it, more nervous than he had thought, in his wait in the foyer.
“Nandi.” It was Jago’s voice, scratchy, on unit-to-unit function, and with a lot of interference. “You should come. The dowager should come, too.”
“Yes,” he said, and he flipped the com closed. “Aiji-ma, nandi, we are urged in at this point.”
“We shall go,” the dowager said.
Drien, thin-lipped, looked less determined to venture anywhere, but they went, all the same, up the three steps, through the arch, and into a broader hall, where there was a conspicuously open door and a brightly lighted room.
The bullet hole in the plaster near that door was a forewarning.
And there was a reason to fear boobytraps and wires, but that was why Guild had gone in ahead of them, being sure nothing of house defenses or hostile setups remained live. If Jago said come ahead, he came ahead, to the heart of the house, where Jago and Banichi and Cenedi were gathered about a man on the floor, a man in house dress. Another, to the side, lay like a heap of laundry, where blood had soaked into the antique carpet. A third and a fourth lay about, dressed like house security.
The man in the middle—Lord Rodi—was still alive, leaning on a footstool, his elbow on it; and seemingly missed in all this bloodletting.
Their security stood up, gave a little bow at the dowager’s arrival, her assumption of authority in the room.