The report was for his benefit. The Guild could communicate in many fewer words.
“There is an operations post on the height beyond the ridge,” Jago whispered, breathing only slightly hard, and pointing up . “They may have picked up our signals. Sounds are dangerous.”
His bodyguard at some point had picked up the other side’s transmissions, Bren thought. And Machigi’s problemsc
The hostile base Machigi had talked about. It dominated routes in and out of Taisigi territory.
It made terrible sense that their route, shaped by the land, had run them into it.
He didn’t push his luck with more questions, but Tano said, “We are not surprised.”
A veritable flood of information. Banichi was somewhere ahead mopping up. Solo, for God’s sake. One hoped Banichi was all right and that the alarm switch hadn’t been tripped up on the heights, to bring in reinforcements.
And where are the regular Guild forces? he wondered. If the Guild itself hadn’t moved in to check an advance out of Senji clan, might they might be obligingly mopping up the Guild’s local problem for them as they went? His bodyguard had been a while in space, but they had not rusted.
Damn, they had not.
But, twice damn, this wasn’t their job. It wasn’t even Machigi’s bodyguards’ job. They were supposed to be getting out of the way.
They were supposed to be getting back to safe territory.
But now theyknew where the target was.
Was there any means to let the Guild know?
No safe way. Not in his way of thinking. He had a responsibility for whatever negotiations followedthe Guild actions. He couldn’t risk himself and his bodyguard taking on the Guild’s job. They needed to get out of here. Fast.
Silence persisted in the land around them.
Jago had indicated they should stay put for a time, not, one suspected, to go wandering between Banichi and some objective, or bringing one very slow-moving, glow-in-the-dark human near the opposition.
But at least there were no more gunshots.
It got cold. Very cold. Bren blew on his hands to keep warm, glad of the vest, which at least kept his core warm.
Eventually Algini got up from where he had been sitting. Jago looked at him, then got up and motioned for them to get moving. She quickly moved off ahead of all of them, in utter silence.
Atevi could see in this murk. A human couldn’t. To his eyes, there was no trail where Jago had gone. It was rocky, brushy country, and the night sky had grown overcast, so the dark in the dark places was deeper and played interesting tricks on human sight, especially when one was trying to hurry on rough ground.
Jago was, he thought, on a mission of some kind, and he didn’t want to slow her down.
Banichi was out there somewhere; Banichi might have signaled her, needing somebody to watch his back, and there was evidently some urgency about it.
The hills gave way to a flatter terrain, still at elevation. The Sarini uplands were part of the vast southern plateau, and now— Bren was sure it must be pushing dawn—they were well into that territory, the broad plains that constituted most of Sarini province. If that waswhere they were, it was a three-way border in the distance, where Taisigi land met Senji and both met Maschi clan and Sarini Province—a border that had lately been a permeable membrane, as agents of one Marid clan and the other had attempted to carve their way to the coast via Maschi holdings.
But there were wedges of land that had never known even the atevi concept of a road—
breeding grounds, nature reserves left alone even during hunting season. It was a logical enough place for the renegade Guild to have established a base, a wedge of hills that would see only foot traffic, and that once in a hundred years. Setting up here might be illegal, immoral, and violating every concept of kabiu, but it waslogical.
How other such bases might exist—if there was a plan behind what was going on.
That cell Tabini’s agents had found and eliminated over inside Separti Township? They’d attributed that operation to the Taisigi.
Now he wasn’t at all sure of that fact. Tabini’s agents thought they’d gotten it all. He didn’t entirely bet on that, either.
Their opposition had been clever. Nobody had suspected organization among the scattered elements who had run south. No one had—except the Guild itself; and they hadn’t been talking to the government.
Not to Tabini, not to the dowager, and not to him. He’d more than walked into the renegade’s operation and exposed it—he began to think he’d walked into the Guild’s long-term counter operation, and triggered it.
Well, hell, if the Guild had politely told its own membership what it was slowly doing, he’d have avoided the coast this spring.
And maybe more people would be dead. So he wasn’t sorry for it.
He just wanted to get past this obstacle and into Maschi territory. Let the Guild handle it.
That was all.
14
« ^ »
A sharp yell erupted in the dark, from somewhere in the apartment. Cajeiri flung the covers off and flung his feet over the edge of the bed.
Antaro, was his first thought: the cry had been female. He thought of diving under the bed or into the closet, but if there were intruders, that was too obvious a hiding place.
He heard voices, then, and Jegari and Antaro were talking outside, which was not the sort of thing one expected if they were dealing with intruders. But he was not hearing Veijico. So he thought it might be a fight, then.
So he had better get out there before it got worse. He grabbed his night robe, belted it on, and went out into the sitting room, blinking in the bright lights.
It was no invasion from the roof, and no fight among his bodyguard, either. It was Veijico, looking embarrassed, standing there in the hall in her underwear, and Antaro and Jegari, too—all of his bodyguard in their underwear, all of them with their hair unbraided and looking entirely unkempt. Veijico gave a miserable little bow in Cajeiri’s direction.
“One apologizes, nandi, nadiin.”
“Was it a nightmare?” Cajeiri asked. He had them now and again, although he had never waked the whole apartment, well, not since he was a baby.
“A nightmare, nandi,” Veijico said shamefacedly. “One regrets. One regrets very much having inconvenienced the household.”
She started to turn back toward the room she shared with Antaro. Cajeiri did not think he was going to get back to sleep. It felt close to daylight, anyway. “What time is it?” he asked.
Veijico politely stopped, and when Jegari said it was as late as he thought it was, Cajeiri ran a hand through his hair and decided on waking up.
“Well, one will hardly sleep after that,” he said. He was sorry for Veijico. He supposed the bad dream was about her brother. And he knew he always wanted the lights on and people around him after he had had a bad dream. “I think we should have tea and toast,” he said,
“should we not, nadiin-ji?—Will you like some tea, nadi?”
“One is deeply embarrassed,” Veijico said, “and would undertake not to disturb the house further.”
“Tea,” he said, insisting, and Antaro went off to her room to dress and probably to be the one to go after the tea. Cajeiri stifled a yawn. People were standing about in their underwear, a view which was interesting, from his standpoint, but he would see that from time to time all his life. When Guild moved in defense, they moved, whatever they were or were not wearing, and he was politely not supposed to notice it.
So he went back to his bedroom to dress, and before he was finished, Jegari, dressed but still barefoot, showed up to help him.
When he was done, he and Jegari came back out to the sitting room, where Veijico, in Guild uniform, was using a poker to stir up the sleeping fire. She put on three small sticks and poked the coals until it took fire.
She was deliberately not looking at anyone. Clearly she was still embarrassed.