He slipped back to his chair and sat down, arranging his coat as he did so, putting the computer down beside his chair, the gun in his pocket and that pocket arranged for a quick reach. He sat and waited. And watched that dark window.
Tano signed to Jago, who came and took his place at the console while Tano went and delved into their baggage, and pulled out a particularly nasty automatic with several clips of ammunition in a shoulder loop.
Bren watched that, too, still not moving or offering comment, as Tano simply walked down their little entry hall and left them.
It was just him and Jago now. Just him and Jago, and Jago now had all her attention focused on that little console. Once she interrupted her attention to make a sign he knew: Banichi. Just that, for his benefit.
Was Banichi in trouble? Was that why Tano had armed himself and left? No. If it were Banichi in trouble, Jago was his partner.
Was it Algini who had run into a problem? Whatever was going on, he knew his security would be far more efficient if both teams were whole—and Jago couldn’t leave him, dammit to hell.
He couldn’t stand the waiting. He got up from his chair, taking his computer with him, and stood near Jago, who gave him another sign, one he raked his brain to remember. It was, perhaps, the sign for all our people lying still. Or the one for stealth.
Explosion rocked the floor underfoot, a shock into his very bones, that made him stagger and grab for the gun in his pocket.
“Quickly,” Jago said, and left the chair, grabbed the computer from him, grabbed a rifle and an ammunition belt from the baggage in the corner, and motioned him toward the outer door.
He went. He seized the computer from her as they hit the hall, headed for the stairs.
Down, then, down the public stairway as fast as he could manage it, which was far less fast than Jago could have done it, but he was only a little to the rear as they hit the main floor and met a gaggle of alarmed staff, all asking what it had been and whether a boiler had blown up.
Jago grabbed his arm and hauled him away from Tatiseigi’s people, ignoring their questions, pulling him toward the lower stairs. They went down again, down to a pale stucco hall, plainly lit, punctuated by a long series of doors, some open— servants’ territory, the underbelly of the stately home. He thought they would go to one of those rooms and find Banichi, but Jago jogged right past all such choices, down the whole length of the hall.
“Outside,” she said, not even out of breath, as they reached a short stairway. It led up again, to an exterior security door, the sort that was usually alarmed.
It was ajar at the moment, with a rock holding it open. A sliver of night showed at its edge before Jago elbowed that door open, and they exited into the dark, the two of them, emerging right by the end of the hedge and the newly restored stable fence.
Jago turned right, along the side of the house by the hedge-rimmed path, and onto the floodlit drive, where the buses had cleared back a little and rendered themselves a wall of defense.
Beyond that next hedge, across the drive, was the Taibeni camp and their mecheiti—that was where he thought they were going, but Jago drew him left, along the row of buses, passing one after the other.
Off to the distant left, an engine coughed to life, down toward the meadow. The plane, he thought. Rejiri.
His breath came hard now, and the light and shadow jolted and jagged in his blurring vision. They ran along the drive, weaving through the crowd that had gathered, and dodging more questions: “What happened at the house? Was it the Kadagidi?”
It had not been the Kadagidi attacking, he was sure of that. It was most likely the Guild they were fighting, and God and Jago only knew what they were running from or to. Blood had been spilled, possibly to get them out of the house—and to get Tabini out, he hoped above all else, all their lives depending on that one life. He was sure whatever was going on, staff was communicating, Jago doing exactly what she and Banichi had agreed had to be donec She dived among the trees, then drew him past the tail ends of two buses and a truck, and into full shadow and brush, then past a thorn thicket. He hoped to stop just there and catch his breath.
No such luck. Jago kept going at a steady jog, seizing him by the arm as the going got rough. She kept him moving and directed him deep among the trees of the little decorative copse.
“I can follow you,” he gasped, out of breath. “Go, Jago-ji.”
No question, no protest from her. She trusted him to run, and kept going.
Meanwhile the plane buzzed over their heads, headed south.
South. Toward the heart of the country.
That would be Tabini, he hoped, Tabini, and maybe it was the prevailing wind that indicated south rather than east. Maybe the plane would turn, veering off to the mountains, to safety. Rejiri would do anything in his power to keep the symbol of their resistance safe, but that plane only held three people at most, and that meant if Damiri was in that third seat, no bodyguard was going with them—safest, maybe.
Or a decoy? Was Tabini somewhere out in these woods, running the way they were running?
His legs ached. His side ached, breath a knife in his ribs, and still Jago kept jogging on in near silence, repositioning both of them to some refuge, it might be—someplace to wait for the rest of the team. He could hardly hear past his own breathing, and beyond them rose a tumult of shouted questions in the driveway, compounded with the bawling of mecheiti across the hedges. He was all but blind in the dark. Atevi hearing and atevi eyesight guided them, and he kept in Jago’s tracks, trusting her utterly.
After that one explosion there had not been one intimation of hostile action in return. What proceeded, proceeded stealthily beneath the confusion of the general assemblage, stealthy as his and Jago’s exit from the building, their dive aside into this grove of ancient trees.
She stopped near the edge of the copse, the farther meadow and part of the line of buses visible through the trees, and there she stood listening. Bren found himself a tree to lean against, fought to quiet his breathing, and not to cough or move at all, rustling about the leaf litter. The least sound might mask any untoward approach she was listening for. There might be any number of Guild Assassins loose out here. And here he stood in a pale, easily-seen court coat, trying to blend in with the trees. The shirt he wore underneath the coat was no better. He wished he’d at least stolen the bedspread. A curtain. Anything to wrap in, to mask the pallor of his skin and his dress.
A soft chirr sounded, off in the brush. Jago answered it. A moment later, a shadow slipped like a soft breeze through the woods and joined them. Tano, then another shadow: Algini, Bren was sure—he was vastly relieved to find them safe, but he was greatly concerned when another moment failed to produce Banichi.
He dared not say a thing or ask a question, least of all to Jago.
Suddenly he felt a heavy leather jacket whipped between him and the tree, enveloping his shoulders in its protective darkness. A push at his arm, a signal to move, and he hitched the strap of the computer high on his shoulder, hooked his free arm into the black coat, and struggled not to lose it in the brush as he ducked and followed Jago, Tano, and Algini behind him. The coat was warm, hot, even, in the general chill of night air. It weighed like lead, which it all but was—body armor against a stray shot, and his having it around his shoulders meant one of his team was working without protection at the moment.
Their course through the edge of the trees veered more and more toward the right, until they paralleled the end of the cobbled drive, where it became the unpaved road from the west gate.