There was a broad landing in front of the foyer, the juncture of the main floor and the stairs that led outside, a region now the domain of workmen setting up scaffolding and repairing the outer doors. As they arrived the door to the adjacent drawing room opened, and Tabini-aiji himself strode out through the collection of Guild security that ordinarily guarded the doors of any conference in progress—the aiji was in Assassins’ black, still, with an identifying red scarf around his arm, much as he had appeared when he had turned up last night, if less dusty.
Elderly Lord Tatiseigi, in muted pastel green with abundant lace, accompanied him out, looking entirely vexed with the proceedings.
Banichi exited the room with them, pocket com in hand.
“They must not shoot!” Bren said at once. “The colors of the plane are yellow and blue! They are Dur!”
“In my winter pasturage!” Tatiseigi cried.
“See to its protection,” Tabini said to staff. “Quickly!”
Bren himself veered for the foyer and ran down the steps under the scaffolding to the massive front doors, while workmen who had stopped their cleanup and repair stared at the sudden commotion.
With Jago and now Banichi in close company, and right behind Tabini’s own head of security, he exited the house onto the wide front steps, above a clutter of buses and farm trucks that now jammed the hedge-rimmed drive. Ordinary townsmen had taken cover from the overflight behind the flimsy cover of vehicles, armed and waiting with their pistols and hunting rifles.
“This may be an ally that has landed!” Bren shouted at the nearest. “Pass the word, nadiin! The colors are the island of Dur!”
And to Banichi and Jago: “Make sure no one fires, nadiin-ji.”
“Go,” Banichi said to Jago, and Jago dived among the cars and beyond, leaving them behind. By the way heads came up over fenders and truck beds in her wake, she was passing the word as she went, not relying on word of mouth.
Bren’s desire was to take off and run flat out toward the plane in the meadow before some accident intervened but a lord ought not to breach dignity; a lord, in view of strangers, was held to, at most, a brisk walk, and necessarily Banichi stayed close by him, armed and formidable, and making their way just behind Tabini’s man. Armed gawkers jumped back out of the path of black-uniformed Guild, and a handful of mounted Taibeni rangers that had ridden through the hedges to get over to this path fell in behind him, mecheiti snorting and fussing at being reined in, another reason to want to hurry the pace.
Down the side of the house, along what had been the stable path so long as the house had had a stable, past the ongoing fence repair, and around to the east meadow, where Bren caught a good view of a handful of rifle-bearing house security behind a low stone wall, holding a vantage on the sloping meadow beyond. Engine noise had sunk in volume. The small plane was taxiing in the middle of Tatiseigi’s pasture.
He still was constrained not to run. He walked, walked with that mandated dignity that lent calm to a volatile situation. That, as much as the radioed orders, made it less and less likely that some agitated townsman behind him would take a shot at the pilot as he climbed out. He walked, with Banichi, beyond the gateless stone wall and the spectators, walked over the cultivated pasture, a beloved patch of fine graze that had already suffered trampling, vehicular traffic, and fire last night. On the lowest flat, the plane came rolling to a stop.
Jago caught up with them as they came within hailing distance of the plane, and only at that point did cold second thoughts rush in. What if he were in fact mistaken about the color pattern? What if loyal Dur had turned against Tabini along with so many others?
A thousand doubts—a human could be mistaken in his assumptions, here in the heart of atevi feuds and upheaval.
But the door of the little plane banged open and the young pilot climbed up onto the wing, a silhouette against the bright fuselage, carrying his coat on his arm. He jumped down with that boundless enthusiasm that was the very signature of the young man Bren remembered.
He wanted to run up and hug the boy for very joy. But Jago had gone forward to meet the lad, and the young pilot came walking back toward them, putting on his formal coat in the process—a rich azure blue, it was.
And once he had his arms in the sleeves, the young gentleman, dignity to the winds, set out toward them at a moderate jog, letting Jago follow at a more deliberate pace.
“Bren-nandi!”
It was Rejiri of Dur, no doubt in the world, and when they met, Rejiri seized Bren by the arms just to look at him—a young man now, no boy, and he had grown half a foot; but his eyes were as bright, as blithe as ever. “Back from space, nandi! What an excellent, auspicious day!”
“Nandi-ji,” Bren saluted the young man, carried back to far happier times. Rejiri had stayed steadfast. The planet still turned on its axis.
“Dur is coming in,” Rejiri said breathlessly. “My father has sent a hundred thirty-two of the clan here, with our bodyguards, arriving by train this evening, to support the aiji!”
God, another clan to support the aiji, this one from the coast—as if Tabini had joined in with Tatiseigi’s crazed notion of going to war against the Kadagidi. The wiser course for the aiji was certainly to fade back into the hills and conduct a far more reasoned assault on the Kadagidi, with organization and pressure levied against the capital. Such wild enthusiam beamed out at him; and the boy from Dur, now a towering, broad-shouldered young man—Rejiri could not take the train with the ordinary folk of his clan, oh, no. He had had to make a dangerous, officially forbidden flight and execute a landing in the middle of Tatiseigi’s winter pasture, all to convey the news of Dur’s intentions—and have himself right into the thick of things long before clan authority arrived.
Not a hair of the youth was changed.
“You are our good luck, Rejiri-ji,” Bren declared. “You are ever so welcome.”
“Not just Dur, but our neighbors the Tagi and the Mairi are coming, too!” Rejiri said. And before Bren could muster any rational objection that the aiji himself might be taking off elsewhere, to a safer vantage—“And Banichi and Jago! Good to see you in good health, nadiin-ji! You look not a bit changed. Did you rescue the stranded humans? Did you see wonders out there?”
“We did both, nandi,” Banichi said. “But nand’ Bren will tell you that, in much greater detail.”
By now the row of onlookers back at the ruined fence had doubled in size, spectators gathered there, while on every floor of the house, multiple heads had appeared in every window facing the meadow.
“You will indeed tell us the whole adventure,” Rejiri said— words, with Rejiri, always flowed like quicksilver, affording no time for organization, no opportunity, sometimes, for basic common sense.
“We look forward to hearing it, every bit. And might there be tea, nand’ Bren? Intercede for me with Lord Tatiseigi. Might I prevail upon your good offices to do so? One does apologize profoundly for the tracks in his meadow. It has rained here, has it not? I felt the tires resist as I came in. And is there a chance one may see the aiji?
He is here, is he not? It is true, surely?”
All this in his first few steps toward the house.
“The aiji is indeed here, nandi-ji. In very fact, I was preparing to seek an audience with him and with Lord Tatiseigi when we heard your plane pass overc”
“Oh, excellent! It was good weather for flying, an entirely auspicious day, as I told my father when I set out. Clear skies made me just a little worried, in case, of course, these wretches should send up planes of their own, which one doubted they would dare, even so, over Atageini air space—but the heir to Dur has a perfect right to fly where he likes over the northern associations, does he not, nandi? Certainly he has!”