“We do what we can,” Banichi said. “We have taken precautions.”
“When we leave the plane, Bren-ji,” Jago added, “stay with us.
Nawari and Tasi will see to the boy. Cenedi will be with the dowager.”
Meaning he was to move quickly and not encumber his staff; and that they did not take for granted a safe move between airplane and bus. He entirely understood, and went forward again, where the dowager was busy putting on her coat.
He did the same, no time to be wasted.
He had hardly finished that operation before the nose of the plane began that gentle declination that warned they were going down. He settled in a chair, as the dowager did, and falling into her mood, he said nothing at all as the plane descended, asked no questions and expected no answers. The plain fact was, staff believed they were going in to a landing in which the dowager theoretically controlled the ground, and from which presumably Cenedi had had satisfactory responses, but they took nothing absolutely for granted.
Nor, he told himself, should the paidhi delay a moment once his feet hit the ladder.
The plane arrived in a gentle landing and with a slight oddness on the runway: snow, Bren thought; but with the sound of the tires as they came to a full stop, he thought, in some dismay— ice here, too.
They stopped, eventually, and taxied back and around. When the plane came to rest and the dowager got up; Bren got up, taking his computer with him. Meanwhile the thump of doors and hatches advised them that the crew was scrambling to get the plane opened up and the passengers needed to move out at all deliberate speed.
He led the way back into the central aisle, and picked up Banichi and Jago.
“We shall go down first, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and he made no objections: the dowager was too precious to risk drawing fire, in the case something was wrong here—one hoped some of Ilisidi’s people were in place outside. He felt the cold waft from the door as it opened, and they went back to the rear, where Ilisidi’s young men stood. The ladder had pulled up to the plane in an amazingly short time, considering it was not located near the terminal; and he drew in a breath and exited, sandwiched between Banichi and Jago, moving fast to get down into the shadows below the blinking running light from the nearer wing and the tail.
A half-sized bus arrived out of the darkness and stopped with a squeal of tires. Two uniformed Assassins bailed out and held the door open, and Bren climbed the steps. A clatter on the ladder above announced another party debarking, which, by the time they had gotten into the back of the very small bus, proved to be Jegari and his two protectors.
Last came the dowager, to be settled into the front seat, with Cenedi and the rest of the crew, which filled the little bus. There were no headlights. There were still no headlights as the bus pulled away and headed away from the plane, gathering speed, across the unmarked snow.
They crossed what might be the bus’s own tracks, passed a wire gate at high speed, skidded on ice on a shallow turn, banged a curb, and then the headlights flared on.
Bren exhaled a breath, realized he had the computer clutched in both arms like a panicked schoolboy, and studiedly settled back into the bench seat, with the fever heat of his bodyguard one on each side of him. The side of the terminal loomed as a gray stone wall in the headlights, then vanished sideways as they swerved again.
Malguri’s regional airfield was nothing like the metropolitan surrounds of Shejidan. The whole assembly was a huddle of stone buildings, a garage, a freight warehouse, snow-veiled and capped with white. Snow was piled on either side of the roadway, and the snowfall was gaining on the most recent scraping. Malguri sat at altitude, and winter was in full spate here.
They reached the outer road, and took the fork that led to the highlands. Breath frosted the windows. Wipers beat a frantic time against falling snow, and the engine hiccuped and growled alternately as it struck deeper snow—God, he knew this vehicle.
They had never replaced it. They had gone to space. Traveled to the stars. And this damned bus lived.
“Have we heard from staff at Malguri, nadiin-ji?” he asked his bodyguard.
“They are waiting for us, Bren-ji,” Jago assured him. “There will be food, and a bed tonight.”
Food and a bed was not the sum of his worries. “The young gentleman—have we learned anything, nadiin-ji?”
“Guild is pursuing the situation in the north, nandi,” Banichi said.
Upward bound, then. They whined their way through a drift, made it onto the road, bumping and jouncing.
The drive from the lowland airport to the heights of Malguri had figured in shipboard nightmares—it was still that potent. And that had been in good weather. He had repeatedly seen the view of a particular chasm and felt the vehicle tip under him, one of those edge-of-sleep falls that associated itself most firmly with folded space, the terror of losing oneself in nowhere.
It couldn’t possibly, he told himself, be as bad as he remembered it. And the driver would be more cautious with snow on the ground.
By no means would Cenedi tolerate any real risk to the dowager. It was simply the memory of an islander grown too spoiled, too used to paved roads. And they had the injured boy with them tonight—his injuries now well-wrapped, but by no means should he be jostled.
The bus bucketed fairly sedately along the first snowy climb, headed up small canyons, along reasonable curves. He ought, he thought, to be ashamed of himself—hell, he knew mountain roads: he’d grown up with them, well, at least on holiday. In that long-ago day he’d been anxious about his situation, was all. He’d transferred that anxiety to the busc The vehicle suddenly swerved, bringing empty air and distant scrub into his view beyond the headlights, as the bus tipped. He’d swear the wheel had found a road-edge gully under the snow. And ice didn’t improve the situation. He heard the wheels spin as they made the corner.
“God!” he muttered, and heard Cenedi sharply caution the driver and threaten his job—unprecedented.
Things settled markedly, after that, a number of sharp curves, but nothing so alarming—until they veered off on the Malguri road and nosed up toward the hills.
Bren’s foot crept to the stanchion of the seat in front, braced hard. Banichi, beside him, had a grip on the rail of the row in front.
They hit ice. The driver spun the wheel valiantly this way and that and recovered, then accelerated, for God’s sake. They rubbed the snowbank, and in a bump and a shower of snow they plowed through a small drift, with empty, snowy air on the left hand.
Cenedi leaped to his feet and, very rare for him, actually swore at the driver.
He could not hear the driver’s response; but one began to think that perhaps the driver had a reason for anxiety, in the dowager’s unannounced return.
Not to mention his own presence. The paidhi-aiji was as popular here as the plague.
The bus slacked its speed, however. Cenedi stood behind the driver, and one of Ilisidi’s young men had gotten to the fore of her seat, braced between her and the windshield.
There was something wrong, something decidedly wrong.
Banichi, too, got up, eased out and went forward, leaving Jago behind, as the bus reached a slower and slower speed, proceeding almost sedately now.
The driver, whose eyes Bren could see in the rearview mirror, looked wildly left to right.
“Down,” Jago said, beside him, and suddenly flattened him to the bench seat. “Bren-ji, get down.”
Ilisidi’s guard was, at that moment, shielding her with their armored bodies.