The steward offered a refill of tea. He took it. Ordinarily tea did not include sugar, but Cajeiri’s request had brought a small dish of sugar rounds to the service, and he wanted the energy: He used the delicate little scoop to slip several little balls into the tea, and drank it down, wishing there were something more substantial in the way of food: The youngsters’ sugary snack was wearing thin even for him.
Cenedi came into the car from the forward door, arrived in a deal of hurry, and went straight to Banichi and Jago, who in turn roused up Tano and Algini, while Cenedi went after Nawari and two others of his teamc something was going on outside this tea party, Bren thought. It wasn’t proper for a lord to get up and go inquire when such things happened, but he did cast a look at Banichi, which missed its mark, or the emergency was acute. Banichi headed for that forward door, and so did a number of others.
Trouble forward, Bren thought. “Aiji-ma,” he said calmly, “one observes there may be trouble on the tracks. One might well brace for that eventuality.”
“We have observed it,” Ilisidi said calmly, passing her teacup to a steward. And sharply: “Andi-ji!” This, to one of her youngest men, who had moved quietly into her vicinity. “What is Cenedi about?”
“Someone is reported to have pulled a bus across the tracks, aiji-ma.” The young man came and dropped to one knee. “And to be defending its position with arms. But this is a distance away, and others in the district are working to clear it. One doubts there will be any great inconvenience to us.”
One of the points against using the rails, Bren said to himself, resolved not to disgrace his staff by showing alarm. Lord Tatiseigi, meanwhile, had called his own chief bodyguard over for a running discussion, and Antaro hovered anxiously, while Jegari went to the left-side windows and attempted to get a look forward—useless, Bren said to himself. There was nothing to do but sit and wait and hope they did get the bus off the tracks.
Something thumped across the roof, going forward—instinctively the stewards’ looks went aloft, to see nothing, to be sure, and none of the lords looked, but it was clear enough, all the same, that someone was moving along the roof of the cars, and moving fairly briskly.
Their own security, one hoped.
A sudden second noise, then, above the steady racket of the wheels on the track, that of a low-flying plane, passing overhead.
“Well,” Tatiseigi said, addressing himself to the lord of Dur.
“Well! Do we surmise the origin of that racket, Lord Adigan?”
“We would surmise,” the lord of Dur began, but just at that moment small arms fire popped from somewhere outside, and Antaro and Jegari flung themselves between Cajeiri and the nearest window, pulled him down as tea went flying. Security all around moved, and two young men seized Ilisidi to move her safely out of her chair. Bren slipped down to floor level with not a thought to dignity, except to avoid spilling his cup— one could grow quicker in that operation, over the years. The only one sitting upright at the moment was, God save them, Tatiseigi, who was waving instructions to security and demanding they take action.
“They are acting, great-uncle!” This from Cajeiri, from floor level above his crossed arms, as Jegari tried to get over to the side of the car. “You should get down!”
A window shattered. A red flower in the bouquet exploded in a sudden burst of petals. It was entirely astonishingc for the split second it took for fire to rattle out from along their roof. Hope to God, Bren said to himself, that it was their own security up there, that they still controlled the train, and that no one would manage a roadblock.
“A car!” Jegari, from his knees, risking a glance out the window.
“Get down!” Cajeiri shouted at him, a high, young, outraged voice, and Jegari immediately squatted down as fire laced across the windows.
Something exploded then. Jegari popped his head up and stared out the window.
“It blew up!” Jegari cried.
“Down!” Bren yelled at him, and Jegari ducked.
More fire from their roof, then. A dull, distant boom which there was no way to attribute.
Silence, for the space of a few moments after.
“We shall sit, now,” Ilisidi declared, her aged bones surely protesting this undignified business, and her young men assisted her to sit up on the tiles. Tatiseigi sat in his chair, meanwhile, with his security bodily shielding him; the more agile lord of Dur had taken to the floor with the rest of them.
A thump forward, at the juncture of the car with the one forward, and Banichi came in, a little windblown, and carrying his rifle in his hand. Attention swung to him, and he gave a little bow.
“The attempt has fallen by the wayside, nandiin,” he said. “There was a bus on the tracks, briefly, but the village of Cadidi has moved it, at some great risk to themselves and their property.”
“To be noted, indeed,” Ilisidi said, and, “Get me up, get me up!”
Cajeiri scrambled to join the effort—the aiji-dowager was a wisp of a weight to her young men, and Cajeiri was only able to turn the chair to receive her, and to assist her to smooth a wisp of hair.
“Will someone shut that cursed window?” Ilisidi requested peevishly. Wind whipped through the gap, disturbing their hair.
“One fears it is broken, nand’ dowager,” the head steward said, the stewards moving to sweep up glass and recover the flowers. The steward gallantly proffered one surviving blossom, and Ilisidi took it, smelled it, and remarked, with a small smile, “They tried to shoot us, nand’ paidhi.”
“Indeed,” Bren said, on his feet, and knowing he ought to stay out of the way, but Banichi was on his way back to the forward door, and curiosity burned in him. “Banichi-ji. Are we all right?”
“We have agents at the junctions and the way is clear,” Banichi said, delaying. “But it must stay clear, Bren-ji. This far, we are all well. The opposition is not.”
“Well done,” he said fervently. “Well done, Banichi-ji.”
“Our lord should not come up above to assist,” Banichi said, not without humor, and not without truth. Banichi knew his ways, and was reading him the law of the universe.
“Go,” he said in a low voice, “go, Banichi-ji. And be careful! Trust that I shall be.”
Banichi ducked out in a momentary gale of wind and racket, and was gone, leaving him to walk back to his seat and pretend the world was in order.
“What did Banichi say, nand’ Bren?”
“He reports they have cleared the tracks, young gentleman.”
“That would have been that boom we heard,” Cajeiri said.
“Do you think so, young sir?” Ilisidi said, grim and thin-lipped. “It may not be the last such we hear.”
“We are still a target,” Tatiseigi said, “a large target, and damnably predictable in our course.”
“Very much so, nandi,” Bren said, “as you made yourself on the way here, did you not?”
“And paid dearly!” Tatiseigi declared, his face drawn with pain as he moved the injured arm in its sling. “This was a Kadagidi assault!
They knew that I personally would travel by automobile. First they destroy my own vehicle, and now they have shot my neighbor’s full of holes!”
“Shocking,” Ilisidi said dryly. “But more than the Kadagidi are involved.”
“They knew, I say! They had every reason to know that their neighbor was in that vehicle, and ignoring all past neighborliness and good will, they opened fire!”
“Perhaps it was the Guild instead, nandi,” Bren interposed, seeing his only window of opportunity, perhaps, to avoid a very messy feud between the Atageini and the Kadagidi—the burned stable, even the fatalities out on the grounds and the damage to the house might be accepted as the result of high politics, in which bloodshed was not unknown, but to think the Kadagidi, his neighbors, with whom he had such a checkered history of dangerous cooperation, had made a particular target of a vehicle they had every reason to think carried the lord of the Atageini—that, that had clearly offended the old man on a deeply personal level. “We might not have cleared all of them in the—incident.”