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Firing had been deafeningc and now it was silence, with people moving about. Cajeiri had no view of the proceedings, nor any inclination to make any noise, not even to rustle a dry winter twig. He was flat under the front shrubbery with his chin in the dirt, and Antaro and Jegari were lying on top of him. The roof had come down on the bus—he had thought it was wrecked. But it had gotten away. He had struggled briefly just to turn his head to see what was going on, but thick evergreen was in the way.
Then he had heard the bus take off again. Either the driver alone had gone for help from Great-grandmother, or Banichi and Jago had gotten nand’ Bren into the van and taken off. He should not have dived for the bushes. He had thought the bus was finished.
And now that it had gone, that left him and his companions, as Gene would say, in a bit of a pickle.
A fairly hot pickle, at that. A whole dish of hot pickles.
He rested there, struggling to breathe with the combined weight on his back, trying to think.
Going back into the house, even if things were quiet, and just asking the Edi staff: “Did you get all the assassins?” did not seem the brightest thing to do.
Damn. It was very embarrassing to die of stupidity—or to end up kidnapped by scoundrels. Again.
What would Banichi do? That was his standard for clever answers. Banichi and Jago and Cenedi.
They’dprobably moved fast for that bus, that was what they’d likely done. He remembered its motor still running. He hadn’t marked that. He’d thought it had been crushed by the roof when it came down. It must have been able to move. They’d have gotten nand’ Bren there, fast, and one of them would have been shooting back, which would be why the fire had been going on as long as it had—he was mad at himself. He could think of these things. But he should not take this long to think of them. If he had been thinking fast enough they would be on that bus, and headed for nand’ Bren’s estate.
So could he not think aheadof the next set of events?
It would be really, truly useful if he could. All Jegari and Antaro were thinking of right now was keeping him alive and trying to get him somewhere safe, but they were in a kind of country they had never seen before—neither had he—and he did not think he ought to take advice from them, not if it sounded reckless. There were times to be reckless. There were times to be patient. And this seemed maybe one of those times to be very, very patient.
He was afraid to whisper and ask them anything. The Assassins’ Guild used things like electronic ears, and might pick him up. Once that bus got to the estate, there would be a rescue coming back, that was sure; and maybe Banichi and Jago and nand’ Bren were still here, hiding somewhere nearby, themselves, just waiting for reinforcements, if the bus had gone and left them.
That meant he and his aishid had to avoid being found and used as hostages, and if they moved at all, they had to do it extremely quietly.
Voices were still intermittently audible: someone was talking unseemly loudly in the hallway, and the doors of the house were still open. It might be staff. But if the lord of the house was giving orders, did it not make sense he would now order the doors shut, for protection of the staff who were in the house?
“Is it safe?” one asked, which indicated to him that they had to be worried about being shot, and thatmight mean staff had not been in on the plot.
It did not mean that nand’ Baiji had not been in on it—nand’ Bren had told him there might be faults of character in nand’ Baiji, and it was very instructive, lying here on the cold dirt, under the weight of two people trying to protect him, and with the smell of gunpowder wafting about. Great-grandmother had held up faults of character— ukochisami—as a thing he should never be thought to have. And now that he had a shockingly concrete example of a grown man with faults of character, he began to see how it was a great inconvenience to everyone for a man to have such faults, and to be a little stupid, too, another thing of which Great-grandmother greatly disapproved. To have faults of character andto be a little stupid, while trying to be clever—that seemed to describe Lord Baiji.
And he thought that Lord Geigi, his uncle, up on the station, must have been at a great loss for someone better to leave in charge on his estatec that, or Lord Baiji, being a young man, had been a little softc Great-grandmother was fond of saying that soft people easily fell into faults of character and that lazy ones stayed ignorant, which was very close to stupid.
Great-grandmother would have thwacked Baiji’s ear when he was young, no question, and told him what she had told him: If you intend to deal sharply with people, young man, deal smartly, and think ahead! Do not try to deal sharply with us, nor with anyone else smart enough to see to the end of matters! You are outclassed, young man, greatly outclassed, and you will have to work hard ever to get ahead of us!
It was absolutely amazing how Great-grandmother could foresee the messes and the bad examples her great-grandson could meet along the way. Ukochisamadid describe Baiji, who had described a fairly good plan, a policy of stalling the Southerners and keeping them from attacking, but it would not have gone on forever. He would eventually have had to marry that Southern girl, who would be either extremely clever herself, or extremely stupid—and her relatives would just move right in.
Perhaps they had. One had a fairly good idea that the Southerners were somewhere in this situation. And one began to think—there had been very few servants in sight. They had not said very much. Baiji had let the roads go and he had told nand’ Bren it was because people had gone to relatives down in the Township during the Troubles and things had gotten out of hand.
That meant—maybe there were not many Edi folk in the house.
Or maybe there were none. Maybe those had been Southern servants. Southern folk had an accent. But you could learn not to have an accent.
The only thing was—Baiji had saved his life, when they had been about to sink out there in the sea.
Baiji had told nand’ Bren where to look for them.
But maybe Baiji had hoped to get to them first, for completely nefarious reasons—nefarious was one of his newest words. Maybe Baiji had had them spotted and was trying to get there ahead of Bren and sweep him up, or maybe just run over the little sailboatc while pretending to be rescuing him.
That had not happened, at least. And Baiji couldhave kept the information to himself.
That was confusing.
Baiji had trailed them out the door, pleading with nand’ Bren, before the shooting started. It had gotten confused then, and his memory of those few moments was a little fuzzy, but had not Baiji been talking about his engagement to that Southern girl and asking to go with them?
“Should we call the paidhi’s estate?” one of the servants asked, standing near their hiding place in the bushes. He had heard the Southern accent. The Farai had it. And that was not it. Maybe it was Edi. And another voice said: “Ask the bodyguard.” And a third voice, more distant, from what seemed inside the foyer: “No one can find them.”
That could mean anything. It could mean Baiji’s bodyguard had taken him and runc somewhere safe, like clear away and down to the Township, or to some safe room: great houses did tend to have such.
It could also mean Baiji’s bodyguard had been in on the attack and were somewhere around the estate hunting for nand’ Bren. Or for him.
That was a scary thought. He was cold through, in contact with the dirt. He started to shiver, and that was embarrassing.
“Are you all right, nandi?” the whisper came beside his ear.
He reached back blindly, caught Antaro’s collar and pulled her head lower, where he could whisper at his faintest. “We must not move until they shut those doors,” he said.
“Dark will not be safe,” Antaro whispered back. “The Guild has night scopes. We will glow in the dark.”