“That she will be, I am sure,” Bren said, moving his foot out of danger, the boy was so intent on leaning as much of him as possible against the passenger railing. The bus gave a final lurch, then an abrupt, brake-hissing halt cast Antaro against him. The girl murmured, “One regrets it deeply, nand’ paidhi.”
“One hears,” he answered absently, seeing the bus door opening, and himself caught in that press at the doorway with his computer and his baggage stranded back at his seat. There was no way to reach it. “Jago-nadi! My baggage!”
“We have it, nandi,” Tano said from the aisle, and that was that.
The door was open, the way led out, and Bren managed to negotiate travel-numbed legs down the high steps. The last had to be a jump, down onto the graveled slope beside Jago, Banichi just ahead of them and Cajeiri and the Taibeni pair hard behind.
“Hurry out of the open,” Banichi urged them and the youngsters alike, and Bren asked no questions. They had stopped by Tatiseigi’s car, which was bullet-punctured all along its side, and they made all haste toward the nearest open door, that of the third car behind the engine.
Up the steps, then, and face to face with an old and ridiculous problem, that human legs just did not find train steps easy. He hauled himself up to the first step at Cajeiri’s back, and, Cajeiri having struggled up on his own comparatively short legs, the boy turned and irreverently seized his arm, to haul him after.
And then straightway forgot about him, as they reached the aisle. The car, furnished in small chair-and-table groupings, was crowded with atevi in formal dress and Guild black, along with a scattering of Taibeni in woodland brown, most of them armed.
“Mani-ma!” Cajeiri cried out, and zigzagged his way through his elders to reach his great-grandmother, who sat— God knew how—sipping a cup of tea beside Lord Tatiseigi, who had his right arm in a bloodstained sling and a teacup in the other hand.
The crowd cut off the view for a moment, until Bren had maneuvered his own way through. Just as he did come near, the train began to chug into motion.
“Sit!” Ilisidi said, teacup in one hand, cane in the other. She tapped the nearest vacant bench, and Bren cautiously came forward, bowed, and took the seat. Cajeiri sat down. So did the lord of Dur, and one of Ilisidi’s young men brought the tea service.
Bren took a cup. It was hot, strong, and warmed all the way down to a meeting with his rattled nerves, no matter that his heavily armed staff was still standing watchfully by, like most others in the car, and that he still hadn’t seen his computer. Tano turned up through the press, carrying it, made sure he saw it, and he nodded gratefully, yes, he had noted that. He could let go that concern.
Another sip. He felt moderately guilty, drinking tea when his staff had none, but there were moments when being a lord meant setting an example of calm and dignity, and he did his staff as proud as he could, reasonably well-put-together, shaven, thank God, and clean despite his sitting on the bus steps. Of the several of those of rank, Tatiseigi looked the worst.
“We are very well, mani-ma,” Cajeiri piped up, in response to his great-grandmother’s question. And: “Where is my mother, great-uncle?”
“With your father, nephew.”
“In the plane?”
The plane seated three people, and she could be with Tabini—if Tabini was in the plane. Bren’s ears pricked up, and Ilisidi stamped the ferule of her cane on the deck. “Silliness,” she said. “She will be perfectly well, great-grandson. Trust in that. One is,” she added, looking directly at Bren, “grateful to the paidhi for taking care of this difficult boy.”
“A pleasure and an honor, aiji-ma.” It had been both, relatively speaking; but meanwhile he had an impression of many moving pieces in this operation, actions screening actions, and the casually revealed chance that Tabini, if Damiri was with him, was not in that airplane. “One is extremely glad to see you in good health, aiji-ma, and one is most concerned for nand’ Tatiseigi’s injury—”
“Gallantly gained,” Ilisidi said, the shameless woman, reaching out to pat the old curmudgeon’s good arm. “Protecting us, very bravely, too.”
Tatiseigi cleared his throat. “A piece of folly,” he pronounced, “an outrage, a thorough inconvenience, this upstart and all his relatives. And the car was not sprung as well as it might have been.”
Likely he had been in great discomfort. Bren gave a little nod, a bow.
“One is ever so glad to find you safe, nandi.”
“Glad!” A snort.
“For the sake of the stability of the center, nandi. You are the rock, the foundation on which all reason rests. One has always said so, in every plan.”
Tatiseigi fixed him with a very suspicious glare under tufted brows, and had a sip of his tea. Another snort.
“The paidhi has said so, indeed,” Ilisidi said, “and has understood your trepidation at receiving him under present circumstances. He expressed this sentiment to us, did you not, paidhi-aiji?”
“Very much so,” he said. He was entirely unable to remember exactly when this was, but Ilisidi was on the attack, headed for a point, and one never argued.
“It was by no means trepidation,” Tatiseigi said. “We are not trepidatious in the least. Cautious. Cautious, we say! Caution has kept this particular rock dry and steady all these years. Caution will carry us to the capital!”
“A wise and prudent lord,” Bren said, steadying the cup in his hand, and noting that the lord of the Atageini had happily adopted his metaphor. Lord Adigan of Dur presented compliments, received the dowager’s appreciation of his attendance. The wheels of the car had by now assumed a thump as regular as a heartbeat, a rocking sway that made the liquid tea shimmer under the light from the windows. The staff had filled a vase with hothouse flowers, red ones, to honor a Ragi lady, dared one say, and quietly set it on the table, inserting it into a little securing depression in the center.
It was all quite, quite mad.
But infinitely better than the bus. One hoped the walls of the car were better armored.
And that the effort to secure the switchpoints and stations ahead had succeeded.
“Another, nadi,” Cajeiri suggested, hopefully offering his empty cup to the steward’s view. “With sugar!”
And where is Tabini at the moment? Bren wondered, wondering, too, what the plane was up to. Nothing more than distracting the Kadagidi? Or just what had young Rejiri agreed to do with those bottles of petrol?
Where was Tabini, where were the Ajuri, the rest of the Atageini, whose lord, injured, would likely have wanted his personal physician? Had they gotten into the other cars? And what of the rest of the convoy, speeding across Ragi territory, presumably continuing on toward the city of Shejidan?
Faster and faster, surely to the train’s limits of safety. The stewards found small paper cups from another car and managed to serve everyone a deluge of hot tea, gratefully received. Under a barrage of youthful questions, Ilisidi sat primly upright, her cane against her knee, her hooded eyes scanning the passing scenery as she answered what she chose to answer, frequently flattering Tatiseigi, who drank it down like medicinec the old man who had been late to every battle of a long life now rolled along, decorously wounded, in the vanguard of a desperately dangerous attack on the capital.
The train was going to get there ahead of the buses, one had no question: The rails were the primary mode of transport in the land, vulnerable to stoppage and switching, but if security had put them on the train, that must have been solved. The question was what bloody business was going on out across the district. If part of the Guild, all the security staffs of all the houses backing the aiji’s return, had drawn other sections of the Guild into it—bloody indeed. The Guild did not take half measures.