“Thank you, nadiin,” Cajeiri said, and two heads bobbed in respect, the three of them crouching there, three youngsters on the mossy edge. Good, Bren thought, seeing Cajeiri relax and trust those who ought to be trusted.
And when they were underway again, the two Taibeni, who had been walking to the rear of their column, now walked alongside Cajeiri’s mechieti, keeping the pace with strong, determined strides, looking up with just now and again a little youthful chatter, a protective attitude—they were older—and occasionally the necessity to dodge a stray sapling. Cajeiri began to ask questions: where do you live, how long have you been here, how did you find us? In Cajeiri, this flow of questions was a heartening sign.
Considering how the saddle hurt now, it was remarkably good spirits. Bren bore his own discomfort, looking at the dowager, wondered how she was bearing up, and whether she was going to manage another long stretch of this traveling.
He was very much wondering that, several hours on, in late afternoon, when another few whistles came from somewhere ahead. Keimi answered that whistle, and before long, in a little cleft in the wooded hill, they met other rangers camped. There was a herd of mechieti, all under saddle, a greater number than the five rangers who waited there… for them, it seemed.
Now they had mechieti enough for all of them to ride.
“How did they know to meet us?” Cajeiri asked his young guides, and there were answers, a conversation that strayed into the trail system—interesting to know, but by now Bren was thinking obsessively only of his backside, and wondering if it was going to be less painful just to keep going at greater speed, wherever they were going, all of them on mechieti, or whether they might, please God, stop now, spend the night, and stop moving, never mind the hour of mortal pain when they got into the saddle tomorrow morning. He had reached the limit, legs two years unaccustomed even to long walks, let alone this abuse, and the conference of rangers afoot and mounted passed in a haze of absolute misery.
No one had yet uttered a word about their destination, which might be here, or days off, but likely all this hurry was to meant put distance between them and the bus, and any likelihood of the opposition tracking Ilisidi and the boy. They might have been riding in circles for all appearances—at least it had been uphill and downhill and around bends and through low spots, getting only to more forest, which, in Taiben, covered half the province.
Cajeiri, however, asked, “Are we staying, nadiin? Are we getting down now?”
Try, “Where are we? What are we doing here?” Bren thought, but he wanted detail that wouldn’t bear shouting up and down a moving column. He thought his staff might have an idea. He hoped they did. It was beyond the paidhi’s need to know.
They stayed stopped for a long conversation, out of earshot. Then Cenedi got off, and began to help the dowager to dismount.
So they were getting down, for a while, at least. With a profound sigh and a hope of at least an hour to sit on unmoving ground, Bren expertly secured the rein, slipped his quirt into its loop, slipped his leg over and slid down the mechieti’s side.
Mistake. Bad mistake. His legs buckled, his ankle gave on soft ground, and for a precarious moment he was in that worst of positions with mechieti, flat on his back on the ground, dazedly looking up at his mechieti’s underside. Banichi and Jago appeared out of nowhere, Banichi to seize the mechieti’s halter, Jago to haul him to his feet and brush off his clothes.
“The paidhi is exhausted,” Ilisidi said from a distance, having witnessed his tumble, and perhaps finding in his mishap her own excuse. “We shall rest here.”
Their guides tried to suggest Ilisidi sit and rest, but Ilisidi had her cane in hand and walked—walked in wide, aimless patterns, as far as the clear space allowed.
Not unwise, Bren thought. He walked a bit himself, trying to keep his legs under him, trying to get circulation back to his nether regions, and not to let the ankle give. Careless of dignity at this point, he swung his arms and bent and stretched, feeling the pain already, and knowing it would be worse before it was better. He owned, he very much recalled, a saddle more to his proportions. Unfortunately that saddle was, like the mechieti he owned, off in Malguri, at the other end of the continent, and for now, and in public, the only cure he could apply was three tablets of mild painkiller, which he carried in his baggage.
He swallowed the dose, washed it down with spring water, then sank down gingerly on a decaying log near the baggage, in the general area where the rest of them were gathering, to wait for it to take effect. The rangers had set up a small stove, and were heating water, for tea, one ever so earnestly hoped. He watched as other utensils appeared from various baggage. Food appeared.
His appetite began to override the pain. Food, hot food, and not concentrate bars. The fire seemed reckless, if they were being followed. The smell of smoke carried. But a hot meal was oh, so welcome. He resisted second-guessing the rangers’ judgement.
There were other whistles in the woods, some near, some far. Their guides fell utterly silent and listened for a bit.
“There has been no investigation of the bus, nandiin,” Keimi said, standing by the edge of the clearing. “The Sidonin authority evidently is not particularly zealous. We shall likely receive a message by hand, from another direction. We shall let them retrieve the bus, eventually.”
A whistle sounded startlingly close to them. One of Keimi’s people answered it, and meanwhile business around the stove went on as if nothing alarming had happened. Tea was served, soup was on to boil, water supplied from the spring, in a pot that otherwise served as a packing container. And someone out in the woods was watching, guarding them.
“Mind, we have a human guest,” Ilisidi had said, when they were putting together the meal, and she had her staff watch, personally, every item and spice that went into the stew, for which Bren was entirely grateful. It smelled better and better. Anything would have appealed to him, laden with alkaloids or not, and he would, he thought, have died mostly happy if he could only get a bowlful of what was preparing.
Some little noise attracted their own bodyguards’ attention. “We have others arriving, nandiin,” Keimi said, and Assassins relaxed. Hands left weapons.
In a while more, indeed, while they were ladling out the contents of the pot, which turned out to be a thick stew presented as a sauce on hardtack, other riders turned up, three of them, a woman, two men, these all in mottled dark green not unlike the leaves, on dark, well-kept mechieti.
There were introductions, and the dowager stayed seated, but she inclined her head courteously to each—whose names, it turned out, she already knew.
“Nand’ dowager,” they addressed Ilisidi, with great respect. It appeared, by what conversation flowed, and by the exchange of bows with the two youngsters that had settled by Cajeiri, that these were the parents of the two teenagers, and now they were on much more formal behavior. The elders recalled that they had known Cajeiri as a babe in arms, not the sort of thing a young lad of any species liked to hear recalled in front of his new friends.
But there they were, in the heart of Taiben, where Cajeiri had spent much of his babyhood. And the two teenagers recalled they had met Cajeiri then, if one could meet a toddler in any social sense.
So it was old acquaintance. The chatter went on, in a tumble of particulars for a second or two, entirely displacing adult business, until Ilisidi meaningfully cleared her throat. “There is a better sitting place over near the spring, great-grandson.”