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.
If he’d never come calling on Baiji, if Geigi ever did pay his long-threatened visit home, Geigi might not have survived the first day on the ground. And everything would have been tolerably quiet, if the Assassins had managed it with some finesse.
Baiji would have inherited—married that Marid girl. The whole thing could have played out over five or ten years in which things on the coast just went from bad to worse. Like sitting in the stewpot with the water heating slowly—at what point would the aiji have made a countermove?
Sooner than they’d hoped, maybe. But all that was moot, since the kids and the sailboat. Baiji had taken his boat out—
Maybe Baiji really had wanted to make a break for it.
Maybec Baiji or his handlers had had other plans.
He’d never seen Baiji’s yacht—seen its lights in the distance, or thought he had; but he hadn’t stayed for conversation. He’d picked up the kids, turned around, rather rudely, but necessarily, and gotten them back to safety—to call on Baiji this morning. Contact made. Bait set. They’d have taken him out last night if they’d gotten a chance. But maybe they’d kept the operation to low-level Guild, who might not be traced to the Marid.
Mistake, if that was the case. Hisbodyguard had gotten him out, and the whole thing had blown up when Banichi had grabbed Baijic with all Baiji knew. All the key pieces. All the agreements.
Damned sure somebody had to be sweating now, and not just Baiji. Maybe the Marid had just called in higher-level operatives, and thatmakeshift fix had just failed.
He sat there listening to operations he couldn’t wholly hear and watching what he had only the most general means to understand, watched until a little of the recent affair had drained out of his veins. The report came in—Tano told him, that two of Cenedi’s men, on the roof, had been killed—by darts. Ancient Guild weapon, silent and lethal without the necessity of foreign technology. The perpetrators had gotten through the roof, into the attic of the house itself. They had likely been assigned to penetrate the inner defenses, but the attic, a defensive measure, was partitioned into strongly fortified rooms. The intruders had broken out of the area they had gotten into, and then used what amounted to a central walkway agreeing with the main hall of the house itself. It was a centuries-old, traditional building pattern—not that different from other houses of the period. So they hadn’t had much trouble figuring where they were, once they had hit that central hall. They had been trying to get to their target, in his suite of roomsc him, specifically, only he hadn’t been there. He’d been with Tano and Algini, listening to that hurrying step in the overhead. One of them had gotten into the servant’s wing and broken through down therec Tano had attempted to gain that man’s surrender. But that movement had been a diversion.
The other one had gone for the main hall, and hadn’tfound an access panel. It was, Tano said, tricky up there. There was such a panel, to get down into the building on the east side of the house. But one had to be inhis suite to get to it. Comforting thought. He’d never even thoughtto take a personal tour of the attic.
“It was used once,” Tano said, idly, “to enable the Maladesi lord to get Guild to the dining room to poison his wife. It is in Guild records. They used a string, let down from the ceiling, in the preparation area, and dripped poison into the dish. A servant spotted what she thought was a flaw in the preparation, tasted it with a finger—quite imprudent. She scarcely recovered.”
“One takes it that that marriage ended in divorce.”
“Actually in the assassination of the Maladesi by the wife’s relatives,” Tano said. “This left a younger daughter. She married into the Farai. Another imprudent move.”
Business outside had slacked off considerably, or Tano would not have indulged in conversation. He still spoke without taking his eyes off his console.
“The current owner should know such things,” Bren muttered.
“The current lord of Najida has been somewhat busy,” Tano said, “while Algini and I spent a great deal of our time on the station in the company of Lord Geigi and his staff.”
“It was useful information,” Algini said quietly. Rare that Algini turned conversational, when there was business afoot. Like Tano, he never looked away for a heartbeat. “Lord Geigi knows all the houses in the district. We have communicated certain things to the staff. Banichihas made his scheduled signal.”
Bren let go a long, slow breath, and now a shiver ran through him, totally out of control. “Is he all right? Are they both, can you tell?”
“The signal is not that specific, Bren-ji,” Algini said. What it was, how interpreted, fell under the heading of Guild business, and Algini was not one to break the rules, but he went that far. And further. “Banichi would have signaled trouble, one surmises, if there were trouble.”
They had two dead among their staff, two more from among the enemy. They had the aiji-dowager and the heir sealed in the office. They had the junior lord of the province locked in the servants’ quarters. He was incredibly glad to have gotten word from Banichi. He kept shivering, and finally got it stopped.
It was still bound to be a long night.
Chapter 14
« ^ »
Morning arrived with gray light slitting through the storm shutters, and various outlying watchers reporting clear.
It also arrived in a communication from the aiji’s forces that they had secured the factory and the town hall of the adjacent township.
And in the relatively matter-of-fact squeal of brakes under the portico.
Bren heard it from his office—the dowager and the heir both having gone back to their respective suites. He came into the hallway, and a young maid looked out the spyhole and came flying back to him at all speed.
“Banichi and Jago, nandi, Banichi and Jago are here, and the dowager’s men!”
For once he was ahead of Tano and Algini—who came briskly down the hall and said that they had gotten word and Banichi and Jago were arriving.
“Get Ramaso, Matru-ji,” Bren bade the maid, and added: “You may run, nadi.”
She did that, at all speed. He fell in with Tano and Algini, and pulled the floor bolts as Tano and Algini first lifted the heavy bar and slid it into the slot, then pulled down the four top bolts, which were entirely out of his reach.
Then they pulled back the heavy doors and indeed, Banichi and Jago stood there under the portico, along with Nawari and Kasari—all dirty, dusty, a bit scuffed, hair flying a little loose—rare in itself: they hadn’t taken time for neatness. Kasari had his left arm in a sling.
“Nadiin-ji,” Bren said, the most undemanding, unchallenging salutation he could come up with. “One hopes to hear the details at your leisure. We came through it. Are you well?”
“Well enough,” Banichi said, hauling out a heavy bag of gear from the truck bed. “One can report, Bren-ji, that the aiji’s forces are now in charge of the estate, and are taking an accounting of such staff as they can find.”