The boy being attached to his grandmother and not to his fatherc the boy might become a force in the East, a rival claimant, to shift the balance of power. All these things flashed across his horizon like summer lightning.
And he had no choice. “I shall do everything possible, aiji-ma. I shall do absolutely everything possible.”
“Cenedi-nadi,” Tabini said, and as Bren got up, Cenedi came close, not without Jaidiri’s frowning and jealous attention.
“Nandi,” Cenedi said. And if there was a man in the room at an unenviable focus of attention, it was Cenedic sent here, in advance of the dowager taking action. He was, literally, in danger of his life, if Tabini had any suspicion at all.
Or not. Tabini, like Ilisidi, was capable of playing a very, very subtle hand.
“Go to the airport. There is no need for my grandmother to come to the Bu-javid. We know where one of those planes has gone, most surely, nadi. Do you dispute this likelihood?”
“One does not dispute, nandi,” Cenedi said. And without aiji-ma.
No acknowledgment of man’chi. Only Cenedi was, being in the household of the aiji-dowager, entitled to that familiarity.
“The paidhi will accompany you and the aiji-dowager: she may take command of the search in the East. One trusts she will act for the aishidi’tat.”
Cenedi, his face deep-graven by duty and the dowager’s service, frowned. But this time he bowed deeply. “In her name, nand’ aiji, and subject to her orders.”
Tabini’s hand shot out and seized Cenedi’s forearm. “Return my son, Cenedi-nadi. And her, and the paidhi-aiji. Return them alive.”
“Yes,” Cenedi said: how did one refuse the force of that order?
Bren froze, and remembered to breathe as Tabini released Cenedi’s arm.
A second bow. Then Cenedi straightened and walked out. Bren hesitated a breath, a glance at the aiji. They were leaving Tabini—abandoning him to Jaidiri’s competency, and to the attitudes and conflicted man’chiin of the court, all of which evoked the greatest misgivings. He wished, not for the first time, that Tabini’s guard of many years had survived the coup, and that every resource Tabini had once had was around him nowc But they were not. He bowed. He glanced from Banichi to Jago, and bowed slightly to Lady Damiri, and walked out, hearing Banichi and Jago fall in behind him.
Cenedi was outside that room. They went together, with Cenedi’s two men, out into the outer hall, where Taibeni stood on guard.
“You will be welcome, nandi, one has every confidence,” Cenedi paused to say, plain to be heard. “Her plane will be landing—one assumes it will get clearance.”
“One is certain it will,” Bren murmured; and Jago: “I shall see to the packing.” Leaving Banichi with him, and not leaving him alone with Cenedi, she went down the hall at a fast clip, and Banichi nodded to Cenedi. “We are ready.”
“Nadi,” Cenedi said, and with a nod of his head to Bren, “nandi.”
And they headed for the lift, with no more than that.
No question that plane was going to stay on the ground any longer than it took to refuel, not unless the dowager was hellbent on an interview with her grandson, and one doubted that would happen until there was a definitive answer, one doubted it extremely.
“The hotel has been searched, nandi,” Cenedi said after they were in the lift, after one of Cenedi’s men pushed the button. “Caiti’s party has indeed remained. And left in the night. One plane has turned east. One north. One south.”
North was no problem. South, however, south was bad news.
Scary news. If anything had moved south, it would likely be the Assassins’ Guild, not the paidhi, who had to deal with that.
And a plane happened to go south when Caiti’s party moved east?
Their mission might, by that fact, be in the right direction; or it might be following a diversionc No. If, at very worst, the dowager was involved— God, dinner with the Kadagidi. Her great-grandson smuggled out of her apartment— No. No, and no. He refused, emotionally, stupidly, it might be, to believe it.
It could not be their concern: they had to deal quickly with the target they were given, and the best chance of stopping events short of a bloodbath was the dowager’s going back to her own region and knocking critical heads together, among her own neighborsc granted she was not behind this, God help them. If Caiti had made some deal with the south—the dowager knocking heads was not an inconsiderable force. The paidhi couldn’t be everywhere. He couldn’t do a damned thing if they had taken the boy south. He could do something in the East, with his connection to the dowager.
His own best use was as her support, and as a representative of the aiji’s confidence in herc and ultimately as a negotiator, once he had the whole truth of what was happeningc whatever happened.
He was, he realized as the elevator plummeted toward the train station, woefully short of staff, short of resources. These Eastern conservatives would respect appearances. Force. A full staff. He had no domestics: his personal staff was up on the station. Tano and Algini were at the coast trying to get his brother back and could not join them in time to back up Banichi and Jago. For servants—he would have the dowager’s staff, at Malguri, presuming that was where they were going. But he had by no means all the wardrobe; he couldn’t even pack his needful items. He had to trust Jago for that—and did. She would bring his computer: that, he wanted with him, where he could at very least wipe it, if things went wrong. He hoped there was nothing else waiting in the wings, no other assassins aiming at Tabini from within the dowager’s staff— God, God, when one stopped taking security for granted, within a household, there were so many things to think of.
And priorities had suddenly shifted. He had, as best he could, to rearrange the pieces on the board.
“It might be well if we recall Tano and Algini, ’Nichi-ji. One assumes their assistance would be useful to you and Jago.”
“If we can reach them at this point,” Banichi said. “One will try to contact them.”
“Surely it was not Guild, nadiin-ji,” Bren ventured to say, in the company of those who sincerely were. “Surely—if it were—”
“If it were Guild, the Taibeni boy would not have escaped,”
Banichi answered him—the one thing all of them could well conclude. “Unless escape was part of the plan.”
The car whisked past level after level, bound downward on a high-level security key. Bren’s stomach floated, in the precipitate drop.
And he clung to one hope. The kidnappers hadn’t killed anyone.
Their light-handedness argued for amateurs rather than Guild, argued for someone who feared bloodfeud that might well bring allies in against them.
But their being amateurs had its own particular dangers— not least, the possibility someone in their number would panic and all hell would break loose.
And, the other worrisome component of the problem, someone had let them into the dowager’s apartment. Someone who was at this very moment close to the aiji, being either part of his staff or the dowager’s, because, without that help, there was no way on earth they could have gotten in to reach the boy.
The lift hit bottom. So did Bren’s stomach. Banichi, meanwhile, was on his small com before the door opened, issuing orders while he kept an unceremonious and surely distracted handhold on Bren’s arm and pulled him along in Cenedi’s wake: it hurt, and that was all but unprecedented. Banichi was entirely on edge.
Cenedi’s two men meanwhile went ahead of them around the corner of the elevator bank, heading toward the trains that came and went in this heart of the Bu-javid complex. In better times, a small train had always waited in the event of the aiji’s need—and one sat there, now, on a concrete-rimmed siding, an engine with three cars, the way it always had been, and the middle one a luxury special belonging to the aiji. There it sat waiting, apparently unscathed in the interregnum, and Cenedi’s men, jogging ahead of them, split up short of the cars, one heading up to the engine, one moving to open the door of that middle car. That man went inside first, to be sure of it.