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.