Questions welled up, all but choking him, life and death questions about Tabini’s welfare, about Banichi, about Ilisidi and Cajeiri, and others’ whereabouts, after that groundshaking explosion—and he dared not distract his bodyguard with chatter. Were there other Assassins actively on their trail? Was Banichi coming? He hoped Tabini had been in that plane, that it had eventually banked toward the east, toward the long meadows near the mountains, where a plane could land.
Or maybe Rejiri would fly his passenger all the way west to Dur, which had hiding places aplenty, not to mention boats— or with that plane, he could even fly Tabini to Mospheira, where a shuttle crew was prepping for a return flight to the station: He had never proposed that course of action to Tabini— he had never had the chance to pose it as a choice. But Tabini surely knew that he would be safe to go to Mospheira, that he would have a welcome there from President Tyers, and he had surely gathered from the dowager that the shuttle was waiting there on an airstrip. If Tabini got up to the station, he had Lord Geigi and all the atevi aloft to rally around him, and the radio to make contact with his supporters on the ground, with Mospheiran help. If Tabini got up there and took power, there was no way in all the world for his enemies to reach him, ever, and he would be there to meet any trouble that camec But it seemed to him now that the noise of that plane had tailed off into the distance, still on a southward course.
South, toward Shejidan.
Chilling. Blood-chilling.
And he knew Tabini’s disposition, that running from a fight was the last thing Tabini would ordinarily choose. Tabini had run from Taiben coastward only when he’d been hit by surprise and had no choice. He’d had his chance then to cross the straits to Mospheira and gain help from the heavens.
Clear enough that he wouldn’t do it this time, either.
6
They waited in the woods, in a small parcel of dark—himself, Jago, Tano, and Algini, who breathed or moved gently, nothing more.
They stayed isolated from the larger, noisier dark out on the road, where voices disputed in high passion, vehicle doors slammed, and mecheiti groaned and protested. The noise of the plane had long vanished, and still the commotion out on the driveway persisted.
A shiver started up again. Bren pressed his hands against his legs, trying to still the tremors—he was cold by now, at least his legs were, while his upper body sweltered under the borrowed bulletproof jacket. He didn’t ask where Banichi was, or where Tabini was. He was resolved not to interfere with his bodyguard, no matter what.
But he saw Jago check her watch. That was the most hopeful thing. He saw the shadows that were Algini and Tano do the same, all of them privy to some forthcoming event that the paidhi didn’t know, and desperately wished he did.
A soft movement stirred the brush, not the gusting wind, he thought, and he eased his hand past the jacket, into his own coat pocket, where he had the gun and the clip. Clearly his bodyguard had heard that noise, their hearing being far more acute than his.
Bus engines had started up and another near them now coughed to life, momentarily deafening the night. More voices rose from that direction, some sort of excitement or confusion.
He couldn’t make out the shouted words above the engine noise.
He wondered if people were having second thoughts about their gesture of support, if they were going to desert Lord Tatiseigi, or if Tatiseigi himself had had second thoughts about holding out here at Tirnamardi.
No. Hell would freeze over before Tatiseigi abandoned the historic premises to Kadagidi looters.
More and more vehicle engines started, until the racket on the drive drowned their hearing and the lights blinded them to the deeper dark.
A whistle sounded near them then, low and perfectly audible above the noise. Bren’s heart leaped up. Jago whistled back, and a shadow joined them.
Banichi was back—Banichi and several other accompanying shadows whose identity Bren didn’t guess and didn’t venture to ask.
Shadow-signals passed, in too dim a light for human eyes, but enough, clearly, for his bodyguard to communicate, possibly even to recognize faces.
And Banichi was safe and had brought reinforcements with him.
Thank God.
Might one be Tabini, and the airplane a diversion? None were tall enough.
“Come,” Jago said, and a grip on his arm rescued him immediately as he foolishly caught his foot in a root and nearly fell flat on his face. Jago settled the jacket back onto his shoulder. He forged ahead, trying to keep an atevi pace, blind in the dark. Jago, who could see, cued him with pressure on his arm where to dodge an obstacle, steered him through a gap in the hedge where headlamps blazed and trucks and buses loomed up like strange lumpish beasts. Fumes from their engines stung the ordinarily pristine air, hazing the light like fog.
Banichi took the lead of their group, and slipped through the gap between two buses. Headlamps threw him into distinction for a moment. Those few newcomers with him—illumined for the instant in the lights—proved to be Taibeni, and one other who looked like one of Tatiseigi’s security staff. Bren sucked in his breath and kept with Jago, moving quickly in the lights and feeling like a pale-skinned prime target as she directed him on Banichi’s track, around into the second lane of vehicles.
Banichi had stopped by a bus door, holding the mounting rail and, the moment Jago brought him up, Banichi seized Bren’s arm and propelled him up the three towering, atevi-sized steps onto the deck.
Bren stumbled onto the last step, used a push of his hand on the flooring and a snatch at the passenger rail to haul himself aboard.
Another hand seized his shoulder and hauled him into the aisle as the rest of his team clambered up after him, their strength and weight rocking the bus, which, unlike others, sat dark and quiet, its aisle and its occupants all in shadow.
“Nand’ Bren!” a young voice exclaimed—a voice he knew as well as he knew the dowager’s. Cajeiri was aboard. And the bus seats—headlamps of other vehicles provided a glow through the windows, enough, at least, for outlines and shadows—filled with passengers, might contain the Taibeni youngsters, at least, if not the dowager herself—he expected her, and Cenedi, and the men he knew.
“Here,” that high young voice said, and a hand reached across the back of an empty seat, patting it—a whole vacant bench seat in an otherwise crowded bus. Doubtless the young folk had preserved it for him. He set a knee in the seat and strained his eyes forward, searching among those standing in the aisle, concerned to make sure all his own bodyguard had made it aboard—whatever this hurry meant, wherever they were about to go.
To the mountains, maybe. To safety—masked by all this to-do, this shifting of pieces on the board.
A shadow loomed above him. A heavy hand rested on his shoulder. He sensed rather than saw Banichi’s presence shutting out the light from that direction.
“Are you all right?” he asked Banichi as he heard the bus door shut.“Where are we going, Banichi-ji?”
“To Shejidan,” Banichi said.
“The Guild officers,” he began.
“They and theirs are no longer a concern,” Banichi reported.
Not a concern. Just that. There had surely been fatalities in that explosion—fatalities that encompassed the self-proclaimed highest leadership of Banichi’s own Guild—not men they supported, but not easy men to take down, all the same.
And the Assassins who might have come onto the grounds with that pair? Disposed of, just like that?
One noted that they still weren’t turning lights on inside this particular bus. A handful of other vehicles were lit up inside, interior lights recklessly blazing out into the night, while ordinary folk, townsmen and others, got to their seats in what one could only take as a general departure of the massed vehicles.