No damned specific information about the Guild, not even from Jago, not so the human mind could gather it.
“We are winning,” he paraphrased her.
“Baji-naji,” she answered him, that atevi shrug, and said then, “we have to move.”
Something else blew up, shaking the concrete walls of the trackside. Jago pushed him into motion, and Bren grabbed Cajeiri’s sleeve and shoved him ahead in the stinging smoke.
Where are we going? it occurred to him to ask. But they reached the short upward ladder, and Jago shoved them aside to go first, taking it in three moves, a rifle swinging from her shoulder.
Bren shoved Cajeiri up next, and followed right up against him, pushing the boy over the rim as Jago seized first Cajeiri and then him, dragging them into motion. Smoke was thicker above, stinging their eyes. Shapes—support columns, pieces of equipment, baggage trucks, moving figures—appeared like shadows and vanished again in haze. They crossed the broad platform, running toward the central lifts, from which the whole space of the station fanned out.
There were shouts, whistles, and they dodged around a column.
Are we going upstairs? Going up into the heart of the Bu-javid seemed to Bren a dangerous proposition, to put themselves into the fragile mechanism of the lift system, the towering shafts an easy target for sabotage. He was not anxious to do that, but he was not about to protest anything Jago thought necessary.
The wall and the bank of lifts came up at them, a darker gray in the smoke, and several shadows by it—these were surely allies: Jago had her rifle in hand, and did not raise it. Whistles sounded.
Jago answered in kind, short and sharp, and they reached the carpeted vicinity of the lifts themselves.
“Nandi.” Tano was there. So, for that matter, was Tabini-aiji, with his guard. Tabini snatched his son into his care, welcome event. Bren bent over, catching his breath, wiping his eyes. Lights were at half. Such lights as there were lit blazed in the high overhead like multiple suns in fog, contributing a milky glow aloft, but no distinction to the shadowy figures out across the terminal platform.
“We are going up,” he heard. It was Tabini’s voice, leaving no doubt that was exactly what they would be doing.
No one protested, not even the aiji’s security. A door opened in the wall, a clearer light shining within, where there was no smoke—and it was not the lifts Tabini proposed to take, but the emergency stairs, Bren sawc emergency stairs, atevi-scale, and the highest climb in all of Shejidan.
Guildsmen pressed their way into the stairwell slightly ahead of Tabini, and the rest of them were clearly going with Tabini, affording no time for questions, no time, either, to ask where Banichi was, or Tano or Algini, none of whom were immediately in sight. Jago pushed Bren and the boy up metal stairs that resounded with the thunder of climbers above them.
Up and up the steps, three landings that had no exit, a space occupied only by the height of the station roof, a fourth landing, where several Assassins stood waiting to wave them on up and up.
Bren found his legs burning, his heart pounding—Jago had the weight of the rifle, a sidearm, and ammunition, and he could only manage the computer and his pistol, himself, with the atevi-scale steps and a body that had spent the last couple of years sitting far, far too much. The rest of their force climbed behind them—he dared not slow them down, so he sweated and climbed, while his vision went hazy and his breath tore through his throat.
He bumped Jago hard when, at a landing, they reached an abrupt stop. He couldn’t see, couldn’t catch his breath, everything gone to tunnel vision. He heard Cajeiri ask him was he all right, and he couldn’t get breath enough to answer, only bent, leaning on a safety rail, the computer a leaden weight on his shoulder, but he had it, he had the heavy pistol in his pocket—that had not fallen out; and Cajeiri patted his back, exhorting him to breathe.
Then Jago’s free arm came around him, warm leather, great strength, absolute concern. He managed to straighten his back, then to get the edges of a real breath and center his haze of vision on an open door.
Tabini and his guard occupied that doorway. There were figured carpets in clear light. Paneled walls. He didn’t know precisely what floor it was, but maybe the first of the residential levels, above that of the courts and the legislature. He heard shots, somewhere down that hall, thought incongruously, hazily, of that fragile paneling.
“We are in, Bren-ji,” Jago said, heaving at him. “One is sure the aiji’s forces are ahead of us.”
Beat and beat and beat. The heart had survived it. Cajeiri was safe. Bren flung his other arm around Cajeiri’s shoulders, and Cajeiri’s came about his heaving ribcage, and there was nothing for it but to walk, Jago with her rifle at the ready.
They passed the door. And there, blessed sight, Banichi stood, rifle in hand, and Algini next to him, giving directions, waving them down what was, yes, the first level corridor, a place of priceless handwoven runners, carved plinths supporting ancient porcelains.
“We are clearing the upper floors, nandi,” Banichi said. “The adherents of the Kadagidi have not generally stayed to meet us.”
Bren wanted to sit down on the spot. His legs all but tried to do so on their own, but he locked his knees and kept his feet under him. “Very good,” he managed to say, the first thing he had gotten out of his throat. He had no sight of Tabini or his guard at the moment. Jago drew him on down the hall, with Cajeiri, until they reached a small conversational area, with an incongruous bouquet of flowers in a low vase on a table, everything kabiu, everything in meticulous order, as a rattle of shots went off somewhere down the hall.
He didn’t sit down. He thought if he should sit down, he wouldn’t get up. He stood leaning against the paneled wall, his eyes darting in the direction of the gunfire, which had ceased.
Jago watched that direction, too, and all others, until a Guild Assassin trotted down the corridor toward them, with no hostile intent evident.
“We have the lifts,” that woman said, and Jago made a move with her rifle, signaling they should go now.
They jogged back the way the woman had come, down past the door they had used, and on around the corner. The majority of their party was there, Tabini in the lead.
And shots exploded off the wall in a shower of plaster and stone fragments. Bren began to reach for his gun, but a body hit him and Cajeiri at once, a black leather jacket up against his face, his back against the wall, Cajeiri next to him: Jago had covered them both, and he felt her body jolt hard, heard an intake of breath.
“Jago-ji!”
She spun about against them and let off a burst of fire, her muscles jumping to the recoil of the gun she held one-handed. Then the pressure of her weight let up. She stood rock-solid, facing back down the corridor, and now, Bren was able to see, other Guildsmen had taken off back the way they had come, to secure it against any advance.
“Jago, you were hit.”
“Bruised, nandi.” She swung about and herded them both into a position sheltered from the corners. Tabini had moved to cover them. The armor inside the jackets, Bren thought. Thank God.
Then Tano showed up in the hall from which they had come, waving an all-clear, and stances relaxed all around. Tabini came back to see to his son, to offer Jago a nod of appreciation which she received tight-lipped, with a bow.
“The Kadagidi staff has asked to remain in their premises, aiji-ma,” one of the Guild reported. “They will admit our personnel as far as the foyer, and plead they have had no contact with their authority and cannot withdraw.”
An unenviable position. Bren feared for his own people.