This train was not only aimed at the center of the city, but about to force its way into the very heart of the hill on which the Bu-javid sat, that was increasingly clear: Tabini was determined to drive it as deeply as it could penetrate into the tunnels that led to the rail station inside the Bu-javid.
And, Bren thought, if he were in charge of Murini’s defenses, and only pretending to have fled, the very first thing he would do was park a locomotive in those tunnels—the only obstacle available that could possibly stop this iron juggernaut. Stop it, and jam the tunnel with the resulting wreckage.
It was not a comforting thought. Presumably Tabini had thought of it. Presumably Guild in Tabini’s man’chi were running ahead of them, making sure this did not happen. One had no way of knowing if Ismini and the team that had guarded Tabini during his exile were part of that effort, or were serving as decoy, or if there was some other reason for Tabini’s reliance on older, better-known Guild help.
And where were the buses and the trucks at this point? Where was the majority of their strength? Gathering more supporters, they might be, but the buses were traveling a circuitous webwork of roads leading toward the city—still out in the country, news of their coming stirring others to join—or resist—the passage into the suburbs of Sheijidan, doubtless, but not making the kind of time they made.
Tabini’s advance had met no great resistence, however—not yet.
And Sheijidan itself was a strongly Ragi city, not strongly affiliated with their varied Padi Valley cousins, who were Ragi only in part, and in part not, and married into this and that other ethnicity—the hills, the coast, the south. The city itself would surely have borne Kadagidi rule very uneasily.
The boy standing beside him, their young vessel of all key lineages, brought in the Padi Valley’s confused bloodties—and profited more from that heritage than Murini ever could or would, if the day went their way. It was demonstrable in that caravan of buses and trucks that the whole Padi Valley, Murini’s birthplace, had fallen in with Tabini’s advance on the capital. No question this boy’s return from space would ring the death knell of Murini’s hopesc unless this boy should die, or be proven to have fallen under unacceptable influences— The paidhi’s, notably, which state of affairs he himself had vehemently denied to all listeners, all the way from the coast.
So why in hell did Tabini insisting on bringing him with the boy, in the engine cab, in this most public of gestures?
Because Tabini, stubborn as they came, didn’t intend to fail in this attempt, that was what, and he intended to make Murini a dead issue, incapable of protest or politics. The paidhi-aiji, one could only think, was still part and parcel of all Tabini’s decisions, the adviser, the arbiter of his more outrageous opinions—and, though the paidhi himself had doubted it at times, it seemed demonstrable now that Tabini would not step back from that position. Some might see the paidhi as a liability. But others, diehard supporters of the aiji, might see the paidhi as the single binding-point of everything, every choice, every controversial step Tabini had made on the way to this upheavaclass="underline" Take me back, accept me intact, accept my decisions, and keep your objections behind your teeth, his challenge seemed to be. Admit I am right, and then have my son after me, this ultimate uniter of all clans, or bring me down, and lose my son, and lose his promise, and let a feeble union of the south coast and the small clans rule over nothing but chaos—choose that instead, and be damned to you all.
Maybe it wasn’t quite that harsh an ultimatim in Tabini’s mind.
Maybe he was sweeping the paidhi along out of some sense of policy he meant to maintain. But nothing in Tabini’s past had ever suggested completely idealistic reasons, nothing except the aiji’s absolute conviction that without him, and ultimately without his heir—there was no way to hold the aishidi’tat together, and without the aishidi’tat, there was no way for atevi to compete with humans and rule their own planet.
The scariest matter was—adding it all up—Tabini happened to be right.
Lurch. Jolt. The train passed by the airport, swung onto a familiar track, hitting a bump Bren remembered in his very bones, from his very first days on the mainland. Men in Guild black stood by the side of the track, lifted solemn hands as the train passed their position—hands empty of weapons, some, and others lifting rifles aloft in salute.
Guild had left their official neutrality. Guild had moved. The airport was at their left.
Was Murini still there, or might these Guildsmen have taken action to dislodge him? Had signals passed to Guild among them?
“Is there any word,” he asked Jago, “nadi-ji, is there any word yet of conditions inside the hill itself?”
“There is dispute in the train station,” Banichi said, clear understatement, “so the report is, nandi.”
“And Murini? Has he been proven to have left the airport?”
“There is no word,” Jago said. “Certain persons are looking for him.”
Looking for him, was it? No one knew? Could the Guild itself have completely mislaid the self-proclaimed aiji of the aishidi’tati He didn’t think so. The Guild knew where he was. There was a firefight or a standoff going on somewhere, that was his guess, and the side of the Guild they were communicating with had not been able to verify who was on the other side, so they had gotten no information they were willing to bet on.
“Can you talk to my grandmother?” Cajeiri asked, pressing up beside him in the apparent hope that communications were active.
“One is in communication with Cenedi, young sir,” Jago said, “who is in communication with her.”
“Tell her I am with my father,” Cajeiri said plaintively. “Tell her and Uncle.”
“She knows and approves this move, young sir,” Jago said.
“Indeed she does.”
A deep breath from the boy, who leaned on the metal console and peered out the bright windows ahead of them. “Good,” he said. They passed scattered buildings, the outliers of the airport. Streets were deserted, windows ominously shuttered along the way.
So had the airport train ordinarily been, when they had traveled in Tabini’s personal car, that with the red velvet cushions, the thick, doubtless bulletproof blinds.
The door opened, a rush of wind and noise, and shut: Tano arrived, went straight to the aiji’s conference, delivered a few words and left, acknowledging Bren’s glance only with a slight bow of his head.
Another turn, and the train, at fair speed, rumbled through the commercial edge of the airport. Here, in this unlikely district, ordinary people had come alongside the track, near the road. People waved as they passed, and Cajeiri, leaning toward the side window of the cab, waved back.
“Dangerous, young sir,” Jago said, setting herself between him and that window, and Bren put out his hand and moved her back as well, not disposed to let her make herself a living shield. She gave him one of those down-the-nose looks she could so easily achieve, touched his hand gently, then removed it.
“Bren-ji,” she chided him. “You do not protect us. You do not protect us. Shall I say it, fortunate three?”