Subcurrents. Implication and insinuation and hint. He was back on the continent, for sure. He clung to the upright bar against the chance of a hole in the road and asked himself how far he had gotten out of touch with the pulse of the mainland— of the whole planet—during his absence. So much hardship, so many lives impacted— A rock hit the windshield. His imagination made it a bullet for a split second, and he flung himself back, bumped into Banichi, who steadied him on his feet.
“We are not yet under attack,” Banichi assured him, releasing him. “But we shall be. Best rest while you can.”
“Next to the young gentleman?” Bren asked, resolved on remaining where he was, and drew a quiet laugh from his bodyguard.
“Indeed,” Jago agreed, and for several moments the cloud of dust sparked with taillights was all their reality, the bus going blindly behind the others.
“Someone has gone off in the ditch,” he realized, as they passed a bus pitched over beside the road, nose canted down in the drainage ditch. Their bus whipped past and kept going.
“The hindmost will help pull them out,” Jago surmised, which was the only reasonable help: They could not stop the whole column behind them to render aid, and it had not been the dowager’s car in the ditch, which alone would have gotten their attention. Their bus bucketed along, itself swerving violently as the road turned for no apparent reason—one such turn had betrayed the vehicle now well behind them.
The progress became a hypnotic blur of headlamp-lit dust and sways and bumps, the driver working the wheel furiously at times to keep them on track, the engine groaning intermittently to get them up over a hill. Then they would careen downward, keeping their spacing from other lights, the whole rushing along at all the speed they dared.
No telling what Tatiseigi’s driver had achieved, or how far in the lead they were. They passed a small truck that had pulled over. The passengers were gathered out in front of it with the hood thrown up, attempting to find some problem in the steaming engine. And it was gone in the night. Machines that had never driven farther than the local market were pressed to do the extraordinary, and they passed a large market truck, this one with a flat tire. The passengers held out hands, appealing for a ride, but their bus was already more crowded than afforded good standing room.
“We cannot take them on,” the lord of Dur said, in Bren’s hearing. “We are charged to overtake the dowager. We have the heir and the paidhi aboard. Someone will take them.”
The scene whipped past them, and was gone.
7
Another low range of hills, another diversion to the east, as the driver spun the wheel wildly. One of Dur’s men held a flashlight to a map and shouted instructions into the man’s ear the while.
Intersections with other country lanes went past, and Bren found a small place to sit on the interior steps by the door, down next to Banichi’s feet, seeking to relieve his knees.
“No, the paidhi is quite well, young sir,” he heard Jago say. “He is trying to sleep at the moment.”
Not precisely true. He heard his young companions had come looking for him, or Cajeiri had, personally, and he did not lift his head from his knees, while the rumble of bus tires over gravel made a steady, numbing din at this range. The door had three slit windows, and he could make out brush.
Perhaps he did sleep, in that position. He waked with a squeal of brakes and a rattle of gunfire, that sound he had heard all too often.
“Banichi-ji,” he exclaimed, and started to get up, but Banichi’s large hand on his head shoved him right back down. A little rattle became a barrage, and he sat, crushed by his bodyguard. Banichi and Jago were keeping low, everyone ducked down. Something cracked through the windshield, but the bus kept going, and then someone toward the righthand rear of their bus must have had a window slid back, because someone inside their bus let off a full clip. The bus never slowed. He heard Dur exhorting his bodyguard to shield their driver.
Damn, he said to himself, crouching there, thinking of that vulnerable, open car ahead of them.
“Cajeiri!” he heard Banichi say, then; and Jago’s weight left him.
With the worst of thoughts, Bren heaved himself up and scrambled through a press of atevi who tried to give him space.
Cajeiri was on his knees in the seat, he and his young guards, struggling to lift the window they themselves had dropped. Banichi leaned across and did it one-handed.
“What are you doing?” Banichi challenged them.
“There was a flash in the woods, nadi!” This from Antaro, defending her young lord. “We were shooting at that!”
“We?” They were all exposed to the night, but the spot which had roused their alarm was long past in the dark: The bus had sped off at the column’s speed. “Your task,” Banichi said in that dreadful voice he could use, “your task, young woman, is to protect your lord, which may require your flinging him to the floor, not abetting his youthful misjudgement.”
“Yes,” Jegari said.
There was a draft still coming in, a hole in that window, difficult to see in the dark. A bullet had gone through, and missed. Bren spotted it. He was sure Banichi already had.
And Ilisidi and Tatiseigi in that open car, Bren thought with a chill.
Whoever had shot at the column had fired blindly—which argued non-Guild forces, maybe Kadagidi coming crosscountry, having learned they were no longer at Tirnamardi. In the latter case, the attackers surely had no way of knowing they had had the heir in their sights— Or they were Guild, Bren said to himself, and had tried an impossible shot.
Which the fool youngsters had tried to return, and never mind Antaro had used the indefinite, child’s we, the child’s language which she had doubtless left behind entirely seven years ago, Banichi and Jago and everyone else in hearing had to be sure who had drawn a gun and not ducked his vulnerable head—damn, one could be sure of it.
“Keep your heads down, and rest,” Bren suggested, employing the fortunate three-mode. “We shall all have to sleep an hour or so, no matter they shoot at us. I shall sit with you.”
Which probably did not please his staff, but his backside was numb from the chill of the deck, and he slid past Cajeiri and took his former place, by the window. He took out his handkerchief—a gentleman had a handkerchief—and stuffed that white object in the bullet hole, high up. Well enough, he thought. A sniper might take that pallor for a targetc above their heads.
“Nandi,” Jago said, she and Banichi taking their leave, moving back to their former position, they and Tano and Algini, who had held the curious back. The aisle in their vicinity cleared, people getting back to their seats.
It was the moment in which an adult might have a word with a foolish young lad, and his desperately inexperienced staff. One prudently declined, letting them think about it, think about the dangers out there.
Young nerves had clearly had enough for the moment. Cajeiri had turned about in his seat, trying to find a comfortable place. He tried turning his head away, pretending to go back to sleep, but in lengthy silence, the bus bumping and thumping at its high speed, he ended up turning over, and finally sliding against Bren’s shoulder, exhausted.
Fair enough. Bren provided a shoulder, the weight was warm and provided a brace against which Bren himself could lean, the bus wall being cold and all too vulnerable. Bren found himself able to shut his eyes, even to drift a bit, in an interval of relatively smooth road and dark.
The bus jolted. Brakes wheezed. Refueling stop, Bren decided, at once aware that there was light outside the window. He began to think about getting up and finding out where they were.
Suddenly the bus roared off in a scattering of gravel, making no stop at all.