“I shall,” he said, feeling the air he breathed had gone a little rare. He tucked the heavy object into his coat pocket. “As soon as I find the opportunity, Gini-ji. Your advice and Tano’s, both, and one does take it to heart. But one still hopes we shall get through this without my ever needing it.”
“Stay behind us,” Tano said, out of the dark above his head. “And stay down. You shine in the dark, Bren-ji, and we are not facing farmer-folk, not in this action.”
“Yes,” he said, the way one took an order. He had been glad of the darker coat: Guild opposition would not hesitate to target any lord on their side, with the human one a priority, no question. But Tano’s jacket crushed him with its weight. He found the occasion to shed the jacket, and hung it on the seat back, the night air welcome relief. “With gratitude, Tano-nadi. I shall stay out of view, one promises, most earnestly. Take it. Take it.”
“Do,” Algini said, just that, and quietly, efficiently, Tano shrugged it on, a more potent defense to him and his than the jacket itself posed.
With that thought, he took himself, his fair skin, his light coat, his newly-cleaned pistol, and his surmises back to his own seat, where Cajeiri was kneeling backward, talking with Jegari and Antaro.
“Is there news?” Cajeiri asked.
News.
There was plenty of guesswork, was what there was in the paidhi’s mind at the moment, a good many scary surmises, none of them fit for youngsters’ gossip.
“We shall stay close behind your great-grandmother’s car, is all.”
The bus gave a violent lurch, scraped through brush, and then seemed to have gone onto a road. Bren caught a look outside the window, and suddenly they were blazing along a dedicated roadway, throwing gravel from the tires. “One understands we are going to the rail station,” he said to the young people. “That being the nearest fuel stop on our way. If your great-grandmother fails to stop there, one hopes we will have enough fuel to follow them to the next such place.”
“We shall find them. We shall persuade mani-ma to get onto the bus,” Cajeiri said. “And Lord Tatiseigi and Cenedi, too, and Nawari and all of them. The car can go on and be a decoy.” The boy had learned that tactic on the ship, under circumstances in which no boy his age ought to have to learn his lessons. “But she will be very stubborn about it, nandi. You can persuade her.”
“She is likely to be that, young sir,” he said, as the bus swerved around a turn, top-heavy and slewing alarmingly. “And one greatly doubts she will listen to the paidhi, either. But I shall ask Banichi to talk to Cenedi.”
“And I shall!”
“You,” he said, “will stay on the bus, young sir!”
Arms folded. Cajeiri sulked, an eight-year-old again.
Up hills and down, and onto the flat again, as fast as they could go. They were not quite foremost in the column now, but they were close, only a handful of trucks and cars still kicking up a cloud of headlamp-lit dust in the sandy spots ahead of them. Tatiseigi’s car was in the lead of the whole column, one was quite sure, and it was beyond any doubt a far more modern car than the one in which Tatiseigi had first met them, a light and maneverable vehicle with good suspension.
One could hardly say the same for the bus they were riding. It slewed and rocked alarmingly, the driver taking wild turns to avoid major obstacles, and as they pitched wildly along the side of a drainage ditch, Bren braced a foot against the seat in front, of him against the chance they were going over at any moment.
Cajeiri imitated his stance, excited out of his mood, taking delight in the swerves. “The driver is going very fast, nandi!”
“Indeed,” Bren said, all the while hoping that if they did overset, it would not be on some steep hillside or into large rocks.
Up and over the hills, it was, and through woods that might mask Kadagidi ambush, branches raking the top of the bus. By now Bren had gathered half a dozen bruises on the side facing the window, and Cajeiri, laughing, caught him when his foot slipped and he all but dashed his face against the seat in front of him.
“One is grateful, young sir.” He righted himself and took a grip on the seat back with his hand. They had swerved onto a stretch of gravel, actually keeping on the road all the way through the woods, the tail of the bus tending to slew somewhat on the turns. Then, with a last such skid, they definitively left the trees, and turned what Bren calculated was due west, and not that far from the rail station.
People standing in the aisle had crowded forward, blocking his view. There seemed some discussion in progress between Dur and the driver—he had no idea what the subject was, but the bus was already going at a reckless pace, and now the driver added speed.
Then a set of red gleams lit the crowd in silhouette: tail-lights from the several vehicles in front. Braking.
Jago worked her way up against his seat. “We are coming to the station now,” she said. “There will be a delay here, and we will try to find the car. We will force our way in as far as possible, but there is no surety the car will stop. It has a fair-sized tank, and utmost priority at the pump, if it does. We do not wish to discuss matters with the others on the radio. Banichi is going out when we get to the pump.”
He didn’t like the notion of Banichi leaving them. He didn’t like the odds the car might have kept going, with some destination of its own in mind, and, as Jago said, no recourse to radio possible.
Damn.
But Jago had immediately gone forward again, and the bus, moving more sanely behind the other vehicles, hit a much smoother track, still rolling through an enveloping cloud of dust that lights coming up behind them rendered entirely opaque. There was sand under the wheels now—there had been a lot of that around the train station, a typically soft surface for a fairly major road. If the driver could see anything at the moment but the taillights of the vehicle immediately in front, he would be surprised.
“Great-grandmother has a better driver,” Cajeiri commented glumly, which was not precisely fair to the driver they had, but it added up to the truth.
Buildings appeared through the haze. More red lights ahead of them. Red light and the hazy headlamps of vehicles behind them lit the interior of the bus as they slowed to an absolute stop near those ghostly buildings, and then their forward door opened. Several people got out of their bus, some likely to go investigate the fuel supply or consult the drivers in front of them, or argue their precedence in getting to what would surely be one fuel pump.
And Banichi, trying to locate the car among these buses.
“Are we looking for mani-ma?” Cajeiri asked, as his young bodyguard leaned over the seat to hear.
“One hopes so, young gentleman. We have reached the train station and no one has shot at us. This is good.”
“Guild would have been ahead of us, nandi,” Cajeiri said with a wave of his hand, “and taken care of any problems. Cenedi would see to that, too.”
“He would certainly do that,” Bren agreed. “But we do not take for granted we are safe here, young sir.”
Damned sure he didn’t. Cenedi might be out there somewhere.
Banichi was. But his view of seats in that car indicated Cenedi was the only one of her staff with her. He hoped Nawari at least was somewhere close in the uncertainty of this blinding dust and dark, and that she was not totally reliant on the competency of Tatiseigi’s long-suffering staff.
And, in the matter of unreliable staff, God knew where Ismini was at the moment. Certainly there was no room in the plane for more than three, if that, with the fuel bombs: Tabini, Rejiri, and someone. If the aiji’s bodyguard was cut loose to operate, they would not be happy about it, they were ignobly set on a bus somewhere in this mess, and whether they were reliable in man’chi or whether they were in fact gone soft—that lot, with or without Ismini, would be up ahead of the column, no question, demanding precedence for themselves, maybe in a position to move near the dowager, who knew? The whole train of thought made him extremely uneasy.