Tano got into the doorway, angled to the left, fired up at an angle, and fired again as a shot came back; then dived out across the hall. Bren stayed where he was, in the vantage Tano had had, safety off the gun and the gun at the ready, eyes scanning not only Tano’s position, but things up and down the hall. It wasn’t just Tano’s life at risk. He was Algini’s protection, and Algini was busy relaying their situation to other units of their team.
Maybe, he thought, he should shut the door—barricade himself and Algini inside. Don’t rely on the gun: his security had told him that more than once.
But Banichi had given him the damned thing. What was it for, but for backup?
Tano, meanwhile, moved out and down the hall toward the servants’ wing and the dining room corridor, moved, and moved again, not without looking at ground level for traps. He reached that nook, tucked in against the slight archway, and held position.
The dowager, with Cajeiri, with her immediate guard, was just beyond that intersection, in the office. Bren personally hoped that door stayed shut. They were all right. Nobody was in sight.
Scurrying movement from right over his head, beyond the ceiling.
“Tano!” Bren cried. “Above!”
Shots broke out, up above the ceiling, breaking through the paneling. Tano suddenly eeled around the corner he was holding. Fire came back from the direction of the dining room.
“Hold!” Tano shouted out to someone down the dining room corridor. “Hold place! Call off your partner! Truce! We offer truce!”
Bren held his breath, flexed his fingers on the gun grip.
Suddenly a shot sounded overhead, running footsteps headed down the hallway ceiling where there was no room.
“Tano!” Bren shouted, and about that time Algini knocked him aside and fired into the paneled ceiling.
Splinters exploded near Tano from overhead and chips ricocheted off the floor tiles.
A volley came out of the dining room hallway and hit the intersecting wall. Tano had dropped into a sideways crouch right into the open and fired back. More fire came from overhead, splintering a ceiling panel, Algini moved and fired back, and Bren darted across the hall, his back against the same wall Tano had used.
A volley of fire went overhead, above the panels, and one came back.
Algini stood mid-hall and fired nearly straight up. Something up there thumped, and then there was quiet, except that Tano got to his feet. A dark dot appeared on the stone floor near where Algini was standing. A second spatted down in exactly the same spot. It took a second before Bren realized what was dripping.
“Clear!” Tano called back to his partner, holstering his gun, and cast a look down the hall. Bren leaned against the decorative paneling and far from automatically, working a little, put the safety back on his gun.
Curious. His hands had used to shake considerably. Now he was thinking they’d kept the hall safe, he was thinking they’d kept the dowager safe, that it had been a better-than-average lot that had actually gotten through their perimeter—someone damned good, in fact; and thinking, with a small shudder, that, thank God, some on hisside were better. But he was worried about Ilisidi’s men on the roof. And just too cold-blooded about it. He didn’t recognize himself.
And then he did give a shiver, thinking how Banichi and Jago were out there somewhere trying to pull exactly what they’d just killed two people trying to do, here.
That didn’t make him feel better. Not at all.
Algini gave him a solemn look and nodded, then listened to something for a second, frozen quite still.
Down the hall, the library door opened slightly, and one of Ilisidi’s young men glanced out, and came all the way out to exchange a handsign with Tano up at that end of the hallway.
The stain on the stones was widening.
But they had no all-clear yet. They might not have one for some time. Standard procedure would send a search all through the area.
And in fact, while they stood there, shots sounded outside, maybe out on the road.
More came from their roof.
“Not safe yet,” he said under his breath. “I hope they’re alive up there.”
“That may have been an all-clear signal, Bren-ji,” Algini said. “But we should not rely on it. Best go back to the station and wait.”
Strong hint. There was mop-up yet to do. And Cenedi’s men would bear the brunt of it, if there was more to come. They had someone dead, likely, in their attic, bleeding a puddle onto the hallway floor. Someone down that hall was likely dead, right in front of the dining room, having shot a piece out of the paneling near the office. Bren found himself angry, a sense of outrage for the broken peace, for an attack his domestic staff hadn’t deserved, except for their service to him.
“Yes,” he said, to Algini’s strong suggestion, and began to walk in that direction, Algini walking with him.
Algini had to let them in: the door had shut and the lock had tripped. And Algini went right back to his console. In a very little time Tano came back and joined him, and took his former seat.
“Two of them,” Tano said.
Algini nodded. “Yes. That seems to have solved the immediate alarm.”
Bren took his former seat, trying to find in himself what he had used to feel, some sense of sympathy for a dead enemy, regret for the waste. It was there, but it was scant at the moment. Far stronger was his concern for Banichi and Jago, for the dowager’s pair with them; concern for the village, which had little protection but the general Guild policy of not involving such places—and the Marid had broken no few pieces of Guild policy. Hell, the Marid had tried to subvert the Guild itself, charging it was overly Ragi in leadership.
That hadn’t held. The Guild had solved its problem when Murini went down.
Murini was dead. His own clan had repudiated him. The Guild was the Guild again.
But that didn’t mean the Marid Association had reformed. And the quiet behavior of the Marid since the Troubles didn’t guarantee anything.
Worse, since the Troubles, with new weapons, new techniques—the old rules about keeping Guild business out of civilian venues were weakening. It was more than the traditional weapons and equipment at issue. Traditional limits of warfare were in serious jeopardy. Atevi hadn’t, historically, tended to have wars, just local skirmishes. Guild work. Professionals against professionals. Only a handful of times had it escalated to involve non-Guild. That was more than custom. It was a foundation of society. When somebody crossed that line, as Murini had—
“Tano-ji,” he asked. “How isthe village? Have you any word?”
“We have no reports of difficulty there,” Tano answered him. “We have observers able to report.”
Good for that, he thought, but decided not to accord the Marid any points for civilized behavior: not yet.
Things could get much, much worse than the attempt of just two Assassins to get inside.
Maybe, on the other hand, they were lucky: maybe that waswhat they had to deal with tonight, and the Marid didn’t have reinforcements ready to move in.
Failure of intelligence on the Marid’s part, perhaps. Failure of the local crew keeping tabs on Baiji to seek new instructions in time—either not having been told that the aiji-dowager had moved in with her guard; or being unprepared with higher-level Guild where they most needed them: inside Baiji’s household. They’d missed killing him. This was the second try—a better one than the first, for damned certain, but again—not with massive force.
Dared one think—they hadn’t been ready to deal with him yet?
Maybe Baiji had in fact made a try at warning him when he’d showed up at Baiji’s doorc give Baiji credit, he’d been sending signals. Or fear had been getting the better of him, once he was faced with the reality of the paidhi and the aiji’s son walking into a trap. Baiji had started sweating, and known he wasn’t lying with any skill, which had made him more and more nervous—which had blown everything.