“Aiji-ma,” he said quietly, took the hint and went back to his seat.
She had advised Tabini. Tabini was taking care of Dalaigi— one hoped—if there was anything he could lay hands on. They were on the same wavelength, at least.
From here on until disaster, Bren thought, here was their only job. They were going to prick what was here, and see what came out.
He wanted Banichi and Jago back unscathed. He wanted the boy back and both the Taibeni kids unharmed.
He just hoped to hell the boy, in his dive into the bushes by the front door, had found a hole and stayed there, waiting for exactly this development—they were canny kids.
But asking an eight-year-old with the power to give orders to a couple of sixteen-year-olds to stay put and not move at all for hours and hours and hours—that was asking more than most eight-year-olds or even sixteen-year-olds could bear. It was worse, even, that Antaro and Jegari had had a littleGuild training. They’d tried to protect Cajeiri and gotten in Banichi’s way, or they might not be out here now. They had training— and might think they were called on to use it, and that could be disastrous. Guild that the Tasaigin Marid had sent to keep Baiji under control was one thing. Guild that they might move into a higher-stakes and messed-up operation weren’t going to be house guards. They would bring in serious, serious opposition, and the time that would take might be measured in days—or, if they hadsomething down in Dalaigi Township—it might be here by now.
It was totally dark now, at least to human vision. It was deep twilight for everyone else. A kid, even one who’d eluded capture, might now think it approaching time to do something. And one hoped the Taibeni youngsters’ Guild training had included night scopes, listening devices, and wires.
Banichi had tried to hammer basic principles of self-defense into Cajeiri himself. Cenedi had had a go at it. They all had tried—Remember you are not adult, young gentleman. You cannot take on Guild. Nor should your companions ever try it.
Young aiji. Born leader. Literally. Whether it was genetic or subtly trained or God knew what, he’d gone his own way.
And he, if he were ateva, might have felt an atevi urge and followed the kid into the bushes, which at least would have kept them together. If not for their man’chi to him, Banichi and Jago would have followed the boy, and everything would have been all right.
Machimi plays had an expression for it. Katiena ba’aijiin notai’i. A situation with two leaders. A real screwed-up mess. And this one was that.
It also meant, right now, that if the enemy had expected the boy to do what the average atevi boy would do, they’d been taken by surprise, too, when Cajeiri headed sideways. If only, if only they’d assumed he’d gotten on the bus. The portico might have shielded them from view. The attackers had been on the roof. The rest of the staff had been in the hall. They hadn’t been in a position to see, either.
Maybe they weren’t even looking for the youngsters. Most unlikely of all—maybe the people running the operation—not the ones in the immediate area, who had heard everything— were already planning their next move.
Maybe Tabini-aiji, who was very certainly involved, could take out their communications.
But they were moving closer and closer to widespread action, and civil war.
And he wished he could have persuaded Ilisidi to stay put and let the Guild sort it out—before they had worse trouble.
If the youngsters were now hostages, they would stay alive: the enemy would be outright idiots to waste that advantage. But damned sure the enemy would want to get them to some more secure place than a flat and open villa. Considering who the enemy likely was, that would mean getting any hostages southward as fast as they could—
For their part, he supposed they would leave any possible escape routes to the aiji’s men.
But getting in therec
That boiled down to four people. Banichi and Jago, backed by Nawari and Kasari.
Sorrowfully, Lord Geigi’s yacht might go to the bottom of the harbor. Banichi and Jago would not leave the sea as an escape route, and that boat had to be taken care of, among first targets.
God, he should have told Toby to get down the coast, block any boat coming out if he had to call in the whole Mospheiran navy to help him.
Thinking too much.
Banichi and Jago knew what they were doing. They knew their list of priorities, and they were very much the same as hisc exceptc
Except they themselves were his priority, and they wouldn’t see things that way. Not when it came to a mission of this importance.
God, he wanted them back in one piece.
Chapter 13
« ^ »
It wasn’t, unfortunately, a large or deep woodsc except in the seaward direction.
And that, Cajeiri thought, might still have been the best way to go, staying under cover the whole way to reach Edi fishermen or farmers.
But associations among the neighbors, given the goings-on here at nand’ Geigi’s estate were not clear to him; and Antaro had done what she had done, and Jegari had led off in this directionc which could be smarter. Nand’ Bren himself had gotten surprised, so that was a big indication that ordinarily reliable people in this place were lying.
Especially nand’ Baiji had been somewhere involved and guilty of something, whatever it was. And that meant there was no knowing which of the neighbors down toward the coast or anywhere, for that matter, was reliable. He knew that; but his side hurt from running, and it was a long, long way to Najida, and they were going to run out of trees before long.
“Maybe we should stop running,” he gasped, the faintest of whispers, far softer than their running through the woods. “Very likely nand’ Bren will have gotten to his estate, and mani and all her people are going to be out, and so will nand’ Bren and before long my father will have people here, so all we need to do is get out of the way, find a hole and get in it until they settle this.”
“You should, nandi,” Jegari whispered back, likewise bending, hands on knees. “And Antaro and I can go find help.”
“We all should!”
“Then Antaro can stay with you, nandi, and I shall go.”
He shut his eyes. Opened them again, trying to imagine the maps he had studied, among the many things he had studied. “No,” he said. “No. We shall just walk a while. We shall walk. If we find a good place, we can hide. But if we can get to nand’ Bren’s estate first—that would be safest.”
“They may attack there, nandi. This whole coast may be in rebellion.”
“Lord Geigi is Maschi. Baiji is Maschi. The coast is Edi. The Tasaigi are in this.” He was out of breath. He bent over again and gasped for air. “Southerners. They do not belong here. There cannot be that many of them. We shall go—we shall go until we reach nand’ Bren’s estate, and then—then we shall just sit there and watch. And, by morning, people will be out and about and if it looks all right—we can go in. It is far better than sitting here hiding on Kajiminda land.”
“We have to be careful, nandi,” Jegari said. “We have to be very careful if we go out in the open.”
“When shall we do it? By sunlight?” He held his side, where it ached. “Now is the time, nadiin-ji. Let us just walk a while. Let us walk quietly.”
They began, then, to do that. And he thought they were going in the right direction: he hoped they were. The sea, he thought, all the peninsulas and the woods that did not grow up and down, but tilted, made him unsure of direction. This whole coastline tilted, in his estimation. It wandered: at ground level it was nothing like it was on the big map in the library, and the coast was very irregular.