“We are grateful,” Ilisidi said, from the deep recesses, where the angled light glimmered off atevi eyes. “We regret the inconvenience. Show her this man.”
Nawari, a shadow against the light, turned their unconscious prisoner’s face.
“Dataini,” was the immediate, frightened-sounding answer. “Dataini. His wife is Tasigin. He is the new constable.”
“The new constable?” Banichi asked.
“Here in Adaran. Since—” Ruso’s eyes moved uneasily toward the dowager and back. “Since the new authority, in Shejidan.”
“And where is the old Adaran constable, Ruso-nadi?” Ilisidi asked.
“Gone back to fishing, aiji-ma, since they took his authority away.”
“We give it back. Do you suppose, if you found him this evening, he might deal with this man?”
Ruso’s eyes were very large. “I think he would run that risk, if it was your order, aiji-ma. But the wife has relatives.”
“See to it,” Ilisidi said with a wave of her hand, and Banichi lowered the tarp, taking the light away. A low-pitched discussion followed, outside, how they would leave this Dataini in the truck, well-secured, and how Ruso must go to the former constable in this town, and take measures to take Dataini’s wife into custody too, before she could realize her husband was missing and make a phone call to whatever regional authority was overseeing this remote fishing district.
The counterrevolution had started. And the young driver, Ruso, had volunteered in harm’s way, with time and force of the essence. It was not the move Banichi would have advocated if they were going to take months dealing with this.
God, Bren thought, we may have to deal with Kadigidi appointees in districts where we’re going, not to mention the cities. It was an unfortunate possibility that these new authorities were still compiling their own list of everyone within the man’chi of Tabini’s household and Geigi’s, Geigi being aiji up on the station, and in an otherwise unassailable position… threaten those under his protection, since they could not reach Geigi.
This could be a problem, Bren said to himself. This could be a real problem.
“Is there water, mani-ma?” Cajeiri asked. “Might we just leave the corner of the tarp up a little?”
“Hush,” Ilisidi said sharply, and there was renewed quiet, in which they could still hear the discussion with Ruso, a discussion in which it seemed there was some sort of written instruction, some commitment to paper that they had found in the dash panel of the truck, and a pricked finger—blood could work, where wax was lacking, however imperfectly, impressing a mark from Banichi’s Guild ring. It was an Assassin’s signature they were producing for the girl, a request with legal force, when Banichi was acting in his protective capacity. His own authority at least matched any village constable’s.
“There,” he heard Banichi say. “Let the Adaran constable carry that for a warrant, and gather deputies, as many as he can.”
They moved away, then, and by the give of springs, sat on the front bumper, Banichi, Jago, and the girl from Desigien together, as it seemed, looking, as they would, like country folk holding a bored conversation. Things grew quiet for while.
“There was almost certainly a phone call that put that man out on the road,” Cenedi said. “Someone, at sea or on land, saw nand’ Toby’s boat. When the constable does not phone back with a report, there may be an inquiry sent on more than a local level.”
“Good we are not staying the night,” Ilisidi said.
Other footsteps approached the truck. Whoever was sitting on the bumper did not get up, but Ruso, clever girl, told whoever had come up that these were her cousins from down the coast, that they had sailed up to beg the loan of a net, their own village having suffered extremely in a recent storm. Converse went on and on, mostly Ruso speaking in that local lilt, and the conversation up there settled to the usual grumbling about the weather, the fish, daringly, to the market since the trouble. Others gathered, and for a time the truck rocked to bodies leaning against it, all complaining bitterly about market prices and the attitude of the owners of the ice plant, who thought their profits should stay the same, no matter what the depressed market did to the villages.
The talk dwindled, then, some conversants going off to a local watering hole, inviting Ruso and her supposed cousins to join them, but Ruso said she would stay with the truck.
“Now who would steal it, nadi,” one laughed, “or filch one of your fish?”
“The new constable, for all I know,” she said, a bit of boldness that made Bren’s heart skip a beat.
“You have a point, Ruso-ji,” the speaker said, and voices and presence retreated.
There was a collective sigh of relief, audible in the dark. Their prisoner stirred, and went out again, to everyone’s relief.
Bren pillowed his head on his arms and tried to catch a nap beside Tano and Algini. He shut his eyes, tried to ignore the heat, hoped that Toby had gotten well away from the coast by now.
Hoped that the constable’s wife expected him to be out at all hours.
He did sleep a little. He came to in utter dark and much cooler air, no light even from the edges of the tarp, with the noise of a train in the distance. Everybody was stirring about, and he sat up, sore in every joint from resting on bare boards—he could only imagine how Ilisidi fared.
“We are ready, nandi,” Tano said, close beside him.
The train chugged to a stop, passed them, so that they must be alongside the cars. There was a good deal of hallooing and fuss up and down, and Ruso—Bren had gotten to recognize her voice—talked to someone, some talk of ice, a bill, and papers, and then she came back again, saying her cousins would help her load, there was no need of any other. There was a great deal of rattling about, rolling of large doors, cursing and thumps, as something loaded on noisily in their vicinity. It sounded like steel drums.
This diminished, finally, and whoever it was trundled off with the rattle of an empty pull-truck. There followed a period of silence, in which the unconscious constable stirred, and went out yet again, this time gagged and tied to an upright of the truck slats.
“When?” Cajeiri whispered miserably, teeth chattering. “When shall we move, mani-ma? What if we miss the train?”
“Hush,” Ilisidi hissed.
Abruptly someone pulled loose the ropes and freed the back of the tarp. Jago was there, in the dark, outlined in the light of a lantern somewhere distant, to the side.
“Quickly, aiji-ma.” Jago held up the edge of the tarp as two of Cenedi’s men rolled out to assist the dowager. Bren snagged his computer and Tano and Algini worked past him to get at the baggage. Cenedi and Nawari and Cajeiri himself helped Ilisidi to the end of the truck bed, simply sliding her inventively if unceremoniously toward the rear on a piece of baggage. Cenedi then jumped out and lifted her down in his arms, ever so carefully, himself no youngster, but he accepted no help doing it.
“I do not believe I shall walk,” Ilisidi said.
“This way,” Banichi said, and marked a destination with his flashlight, shining the beam along the waiting row of cars, onto the one fairly near their truck, with its door open.
Nawari clambered into the dark boxcar and knelt on the edge. Cenedi handed Ilisidi up to him, and Tano flung baggage in and jumped aboard to the side, pulling Cajeiri up after him. Bren slid off the end of the truck and tried to help Algini with the baggage, but Jago took over that job. “Get aboard, Bren-ji, quickly.”
He was the most conspicuous item in their company. He’d just spent two years where he was ordinary, and he found his protective instincts were dulled, rusted, right along with his wits. He moved quickly, made a try at getting up onto the waist-high deck of the car, computer and all. He couldn’t make it, and tried again. Tano hauled him aboard by the back of his coat.
Scrambling out of the way on the wooden deck, leaning his back against the boxcar’s wall, he checked his pocket. He had not lost his gun. His eyes, accustomed to the dark, made out the surrounds, the source of a pervading chill. It was what they had expected, a wooden refrigerator car, stacked high with dim blocks of ice, with crates of, yes, another village’s fish, already loaded, on their way to morning market somewhere along the rail line.