So, it developed, had Ilisidi exited her rooms, between them and the stairs. Ilisidi was standing in the hall near the steps, appearing in no mood to trifle, and house staff was attempting explanations.
“Damned fools!” she shouted, or approximately that. “Nand’ paidhi?”
“Aiji-ma, one hears the window alarm was disconnected. One supposes the young gentleman has undertaken the mission himself. I shall find him. Atageini might be shot trying it.”
“So might he, the young idiot. We have emphasized that the western defenses must be let down for him no matter what happens here, which one trusts this household has the basic skills to accomplish. We have asked for an accounting of every person in this household, and we intend to have it! We only hope he has gone by his own will! Why are you standing there, nandi?”
“Aiji-ma.” He hurried for the stairs, Jago right with him, hastened down them, and met Cenedi on his way up. “Cenedi-ji, we are going after the boy ourselves, at all speed. Can the gatekeeper possibly be queried and advised to prevent them without betraying the nature of the problem?”
One rarely saw Cenedi so distressed—not since the boy had pulled his cursed tricks on the ship. A houseful of Guild on high alert—but occupied in general conference—and the boy, who had heard all the complaints about lax security, had gotten out of his quarters and followed Antaro. One hoped that was the whole story.
“The window was open, nadi-ji,” Jago said to Cenedi. “The window contact was pried loose inside and stuck against its receiver, this while the system was armed. We are headed for the stables. The young gentleman and his companion have taken mechieti.”
“Clever lad,” Cenedi said, tightlipped. “Nandi.” And with that parting courtesy and fire in his eye Cenedi went up to inform the dowager of whatever detail of the situation he had been going to report. Some of Ilisidi’s young men were with her in the upstairs—one could hear Cenedi deliver instructions, sending his own men to manage a discreet phone call to the gate, and to check windows up and down the hall. By the time they reached the downstairs Lord Tatiseigi himself was out of his study in a cluster of his own men, looking entirely discommoded.
“Our precautions are adequate,” Tatiseigi shouted at the commotion above, “unless sabotaged!”
Bren wanted no part of that dispute. He headed out through the lily foyer, out the front doors of the house, with Jago, and found Tano headed up the broad steps.
“The boys told the grooms that the dowager had sent them with a further message,” Tano said. “They took the last two of lord Tatiseigi’s mechieti and rode out to overtake the girl.”
“The scoundrels,” Bren muttered, heading down the steps.
“Come, Tano-ji,” Jago said, “all of us are going.” Tano, whom Banichi might have sent back to watch the gear, changed course and immediately headed down the steps again, overtaking them on the cobbled drive and taking part of the load of ammunition and one of the rifles as they walked.
The path to the stables lay at the side of the house, beyond a well-trimmed, doubtless security-rife hedge, devices that would not likely have been activated, not with household staff coming and going to the stables on emergency missions.
Clever, damnable young scoundrels. Lying was not Cajeiri’s usual recourse, but it was within his arsenal. It was in those novels he had been reading and those entertainments he had been viewing on the ship.
At least—at least, Bren said to himself, the boys were only loyal and stupid, not kidnapped.
Breathlessly, down the well-trimmed path to the stables. Mechieti were complaining. Loudly. Banichi, Algini and the grooms were in the process of saddling up.
“You should not go, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, heaving on a girth. “Our numbers are more fortunate without you.”
Seven without and eight and ten with, counting the expected recovery of three fugitives and two Atageini escorts.
“But less fortunate numbers toward finding them in the first place,” Bren shot back. Two could do that kind of math, and his staff was by no means superstitious. “The defenses are confirmed down in the west, Banichi-ji.”
Jago muttered: “One doubts the boy will join the escort. He will follow them. And we know what tale he will tell the gatekeeper.”
“Someone is calling the gate to forestall that.” But not someone with knowledge of how the boys had gotten the mechieti. “Go advise them the boy is using the dowager’s name, ‘Gini-ji. Run.”
“Yes,” Algini said, and sprinted.
“They took the two remaining of the local herd.” Banichi said, “prize stock, and were gone at high speed.”
“One assumes you will take our own herd leader.”
“I intend to,” Banichi said. Another saddle had gone on, the last. “Up, Bren-ji.”
Bren accepted the boost up, took up the quirt, kept quiet, under the overhang of the stable roof. Banichi accepted a rifle and an ammunition kit from Jago, slung it over his shoulder and mounted up. The rest of them did.
“We offer apologies,” the head groom said, “profound apologies for this sorry affair, nandi.”
“You were lied to, nadiin,” Bren said, as good a grace as he could muster, and the stable revolved in his vision as Banichi took the leader out and the mechieti under him followed as if on an invisible lead.
The rest of them had mounted up, and moved out, Algini’s moving with them. Behind them, wood splintered. A barrier shattered.
“Damn,” Bren said, looking over his shoulder.
“We have mistaken one of our matriarchs,” Tano said. And no question, in unfamiliarity with the herd, they had not recognized the mechieti in question, ranking matriarch. The gate was broken and the mechieti that had broken it surged past the grooms with a rip of her dangerous head. The grooms scrambled back. Three more mechieti, exiting behind the other, took out a porch-post on their way to daylight, and with a thunder and a squeal of nails and wood, the porch sagged. The whole unsaddled herd broke out, following them along the path to the cobbled drive.
Algini met them on the drive, at the bottom, hard-breathing. “They passed the gate, nandi. But not the boys. Two loose mechieti showed up with the party before they reached the gate, saddled, and joined the others. The boys have taken off afoot, likely to scale the fence.”
Oh, two years of conning ship’s personnel, building little electric cars and playing hob with ship’s security had created a boy far, far too clever for his own good. It was not the Taibeni teenagers that had accomplished this entire escape. He had no such notion. It was an eight-year-old Ragi prince with far too much confidence in his own cleverness, a deft touch with electrical gadgets he had gained from building toy cars with Mospheiran engineers and Guild Assassins, and a way of assuming such conviction, such lordly force, that he often got past adults’ wiser instincts. Not to mention other things he had gained from Guild company: speed to get near the gate, and never rely on the same trick twice.
Algini mounted up, the whole herd in motion. They rode clear of the despised cobbles, the mechieti stepping on eggshells all the way. On the first edge of the roadway Banichi took out at a loping run, not a comfortable pace, not something they had done in a long while, and Bren took a moment to find his balance, already finding the saddle a renewed misery.
Too late already, too damned late to prevent a commotion. The defenses were down, the boys had had better than an hour to be across the fence, and, damn it all, the escort would be riding along beyond the estate fence with two extra mechieti they could by no means drive off—instinct would not allow it; and with two boys hellbent on overtaking them.
“Nadiin,” the young scoundrel would say to them when they met, his golden eyes clear and as pure as glass, “the dowager my great-grandmother has added a message, which we are to carry ourselves.”