“Whether they’ll open it will say something,” Bren said.
“We can take it down,” Jase said. “That’s no problem—if you need it.”
“We’ll see,” Bren said, and looked up as Banichi arrived beside his seat.
“When we get to the Kadagidi house, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, bypassing the question of modality, “we will bring the bus as far as the front porch, at an angle where sniping from the roof is not easy.
“Jase-nandi,—one understands the armor is good against armor-piercing rounds?”
Jase looked at Bren, wanting translation.
Bren gave it.
“Yes,” Jase said in Ragi, and nodded. “No problem, Banichi-nadi.” And in ship-speak: “Rules of engagement, Bren.”
Bren translated the question.
“Fire only if fired upon,” Banichi said. “Avoid servants and civilians.”
Bren translated that, too.
“This is the plan,” Banichi said to Jase, leaning on Bren’s seat-back. “We would ask Kaplan and Polano to go out the instant we stop, and take position to screen us from fire as we exit the bus.”
“Exit the bus,” Bren said, interrupting his translation. “Banichi-ji—”
“If the situation calls for it, Bren-ji, we all four will escort you out. Only if the situation calls for it. And, much as your aishid covets the honor of defending you, stay behind Jase’s bodyguards and do not go beyond one step from the bus. Your greatest danger is a sniper in the upper floors. Pay attention to that. We shall. The house will be on the right side of the bus and we will pull up close to the door to inconvenience targeting from those floors. A grenade remains a possibility. We can do nothing about that—except interest them in finding out what we have to say, and be aware whether those upstairs windows are open or shut.”
“Understood.”
“And, Bren-ji, you will not accept an invitation to tea in this house.”
“I promise that,” he said with a startled laugh. But it did nothing for his nerves.
“The gate is opening,” Jase said in Ragi.
Banichi straightened. “So. We shall see.”
The bus started to move. The road between the gate and the Kadagidi front door was not as long a drive as that from Tatiseigi’s gate to the house. It was a gravel road, by the sound under the tires, and the bus gathered more speed than it had used thus far, not all-out, but not losing any time, either.
“They’re going to let the bus all the way up to the house?” Jase asked. “What if we’re loaded with explosives?”
Bren shook his head. “We’re the good guys, remember. Guild regulations. A historic site, and civilians. We’re supposed to finesse the situation all the way. And of course they’re supposed to talk to us, on their side, lord to lord. If they refuse to talk to us, we have an automatic complaint—for what it’s worth.”
“This is that ‘little risk’ you were talking about. Going out there.”
“Banichi’s thinking this through. He has a reason. The dowager’s men, back there, may get off, too; and if they do, keep the aisle clear. And if things do go to hell, just get down below the windows and let the driver follow his orders, one of which is to get you out of here.”
“God, you’re insane on this planet.”
“It’s an eminently reasonable system—when you’re not dealing with scoundrels.”
“The hell.” Jase levered himself to his feet and went up to Kaplan and Polano, delivering low, quick instructions of his own. Bren couldn’t hear exactly what he said, above the noise of the bus, but Kaplan and Polano nodded solemnly more than once. Jase clapped each on the shoulder and returned to his seat, while Kaplan and Polano started putting their mirror-faced helmets on—their smallest movements accompanied by a whining sound that rose above the roar of the bus on the gravel.
“They understand,” Jase said. “Those helmets have sensors. They can see behind the wall. Three-sixty and overhead. They’ll know where we are and once they’ve mapped that, they’ll spot any other movement. I warned them about grenades. And snipers.”
“Is there going to be any complaint from the captains on this?” Bren asked. “Say I asked it. Urgently, I asked it.”
“Understood. And understand that they’re here to handle whatever my presence or those kids’ presence might provoke. I’d say this is partly due to my presence. For the record.”
The bus had begun the curve that would lead it right in front of the house. Bren caught a scant glimpse of the stone facade, past Jase’s men, a blockish, formal Padi Valley style manor, in situation and aspect not unlike Tirnamardi.
A fortress, in the day of cavalry attacks and short-range cannon, with windows only on the high upper floors.
“The paidhi-aiji and the ship-aiji have come to call on Lord Aseida,” Bren heard Banichi say, talking on Guild communications while the bus rolled. The calm tones had a surreal quality, as if it were old territory, a scene revisited again and again. “They are guests of your next-door neighbor the Atageini lord, and they have been personally inconvenienced by actions confessed to have originated from these grounds. These are matters far above the Guild, nadi, and regarding your lord’s status within the aishidi’tat. Advise your lord of it.”
Time to pay the rent on the estate at Najida. He’d said it. Lordships came with responsibilities.
And one didn’t give tactical orders to one’s bodyguard.
The bus gathered speed, took a gentle curve, and then ran into shadow, the Kadagidi house looming between them and the cloudless sunrise. A hedge passed the window, then a windowless expanse of pale stonework, ancient limestone, and vines, passing more and more slowly as the bus braked.
Full stop. Immediately the driver opened the door. “Go,” Jase said in ship-speak, and Kaplan and Polano immediately took the steps, jumped from the last one and landed on their feet as if the armor weighed nothing—gyros, Bren thought distractedly. Beyond the windshield, now that they could see, and about a bus length ahead, were low, rounded steps, a single open door, and black-uniformed Kadagidi Guild arriving outside to meet them with rifles in hand.
But the Kadagidi reaction stopped on those steps. What the Guildsmen saw facing them beside that bus door, the world had never seen. That was certain. Kaplan and Polano had taken up position, mirror-faced, tall, and bulky, atevi-scale and then some.
“Bren-ji, come,” Banichi said, from beside Bren’s seat.
He didn’t stop to analyze. He flung himself up and went behind Banichi and Jago as they passed, with Tano and Algini bringing up the rear. Jase himself might be visible to those on the steps, through the front window—but the rest of their company stayed out of sight, crouched among the rear seats . . . he had seen that as he got up.
Banichi and Jago alighted on the gravel drive. Bren grabbed the assisting rail and landed beside them, followed by Tano and Algini, all behind the white wall that was Kaplan and Polano.
Banichi, rifle in the crook of his arm, stepped out from cover alone.
“Are those alive?” the senior confronting them called out from the porch steps.
“These are the ship-aiji’s personal bodyguard,” Banichi answered. “And the ship-aiji is present on the bus. Be warned. These two ship-folk understand very little Ragi. Make no move that they might misinterpret. The paidhi-aiji and the ship-aiji have come to talk to your lord, and request he come outdoors for the meeting.”
“Our lord will protest this trespass!”
“Your lord will be free to do that at his pleasure,” Banichi retorted. “But advise him that the paidhi-aiji is here on behalf of Tabini-aiji, speaking for his minor son and for the aiji-dowager, the ship-aiji, and his son’s foreign guests, minor children, all of whom were disturbed last night by Guild Assassins who have named your estate as their route into Lord Tatiseigi’s house.”
Banichi had them.
Legally. There was a decided pause on the other side, a consultation.
“We will relay the matter to our lord,” the Kadagidi said. “Wait.”
A man left, through the door to the inside of the house. That left the unit on the steps facing them, but without direct threat, rifles down, and there seemed some remote chance of getting Lord Aseida out here on the steps—in which case there would be some use for the paidhi-aiji, and some chance, if Haikuti was not here, to argue the Kadagidi lord into an act of common sense—if there was a chance Lord Aseida wanted to get out of the predicament he was in.
Cast himself and his clan on the aiji’s mercy—if there was any way he dared walk away from the guards on the steps and board the bus. If they could detach Aseida from his bodyguards and get him under the dowager’s protection, they might have a source of information, a sure bet in any legislative hearing, and they could stabilize the Kadagidi for—at least a few years, so long as the fear lasted. That was what they could do if Aseida would walk out here and tell his guards to go back inside.
Beyond that remote chance—if Aseida refused the request to talk, the paidhi-aiji still had a job to do: take charge, and keep the company on the porch distracted and arguing, while Nawari probed the house defenses and found out whether the Kadagidi intended the Dojisigi to survive their return to the Kadagidi house—or not.
He was overshadowed on every hand, too short, behind Kaplan and Polano, in their white, faceless suits, to get a good look at the company on the porch. His bodyguard loomed head and shoulders above him.
They waited.
Another Guild unit came out that door and brusquely joined the first—a unit which could be Aseida’s personal bodyguard. The senior of that group exuded a force of presence and, God! an anger foreign to the Guild, a hard-faced man, absolute and furious as he had ever seen any man—except Tabini.
Aiji, was what the nerves said.
Haikuti. He had never seen so much as a photo of the man—but he had no doubt.
“Banichi!” that man shouted, swinging his rifle upward.
Banichi moved. In a time-stretched instant, Haikuti went backward, Banichi spun and went down, bullets hit the bus, and a buffeting shock went through the ground. Grenade, Bren thought, finding himself falling. It had all gone wrong. Banichi was on the ground right in front of him, moving, but dazedly.
Bren lurched forward, grabbed Banichi’s jacket, and pulled with everything he had, dragging Banichi back toward cover, aware that Jago and Tano and Algini had gone past him.
In the next moment the dowager’s men poured out of the bus past him, dodging him and Banichi as they charged past Kaplan and Polano. Gunfire went off inside the building. And Banichi moved, got a hand on the bus step and started to get up, while Bren was sitting on the ground.
Other pale hands arrived to help haul Banichi up. Jase had come to help, and was giving orders to Kaplan and Polano to stand fast. Banichi got a knee under him.
“Stay down, stay down,” Bren said, with a hand on Banichi’s arm.
Banichi took a breath, got one hand on the communications earpiece that had fallen from his ear and put it back, listened, on one knee, and said something in code, the three of them sheltered behind Jase’s steadfast bodyguard.
“Get aboard the bus,” Banichi said. There was a hole blown in Banichi’s jacket, exposing the bulletproof fabric, and blood.
“You get aboard,” Bren said. “You were hit, Banichi.”
“He,” Banichi said, looking toward the stone steps of the porch. Bren looked, past armor-cased legs. The stonework was shattered and black-uniformed bodies lay every which way.
“He went down,” Bren said, looking back at Banichi. “You hit him. They fired. Jase’s guard fired, and if anything else came from our direction it was ricochets.” If Banichi had to ask the sequence of events, he had been hit hard, and he did not want Banichi to get up and go staggering into the house.
“If it got him,” Banichi said, “good.” He did gain his feet, grabbed Bren’s hand and hauled him up as if he weighed nothing. Then he leaned back against the bus to check the bracelet and listen to communications. “Nawari’s group is arriving,” Banichi said. “Jase. Allies to the west. Tell Kaplan and Polano.”
Bren repeated that in ship-speak, to be sure—east and west were not concepts Kaplan and Polano knew operationally, and Jase relayed it in ship-speak and coordinates.
“They understand,” Jase said. “They’ve adjusted their autofire to that fact.”
Gunfire broke out somewhere beyond the house. He heard servos whine as Kaplan and Polano simultaneously reoriented.
“Ours,” Banichi said instantly.
Jase said, “Hold fire, hold fire. Rules of engagement still hold. Fire only if fired on.”
“Stay here,” Banichi said. “Get on the bus, Bren-ji, Jase-nandi. Now.”
They had become a distraction. Banichi was linking the operations together, Nawari’s group coming in overland, the ones that were behind the house, and in the house.
“Get aboard,” Bren said to Jase. “Keep Kaplan and Polano where they are—Guild can tell each other apart. We can’t. And they can’t.”
The bus was still running. The driver still had the door open. Jase grabbed the assisting rail and climbed the steps, and Bren followed close behind him, hoping Banichi would stay where he was, behind Kaplan and Polano, and direct matters from there, but by the time Bren had gotten to the first seats and turned around, Banichi had crossed open ground to the side of the house, and along the way, had gathered up his rifle.
Bren put his hand in his pocket, felt the gun in place. He planted a knee in the seat and looked outward. Banichi was on the steps, taking a closer look at one of the fallen.
“That was the one you were after?” Jase asked. “The one Banichi got?”
“If we’re lucky,” Bren said.
Banichi! that one had said and fired.
So had Banichi.
They’d known each other by sight, at least. But that anger . . . that instant reaction . . .
How, when they had known each other, he had no idea. But he had that impression.
He watched Banichi go into the house.
“Nandiin,” the driver said, “there is still resistance in the house. One believes they may be attempting to destroy information. We are moving to prevent it.”
“One hears, nadi,” he said. The driver was Guild—linked into communications and willing to tell them what was going on. That was unprecedented. Banichi’s arrangement, he thought . . . with the hope of keeping him in his seat.
The windshield was starred with a bullet scar. Simultaneous as it had been—the other side had fired first. He’d swear to it. Damned right he’d swear to it. Kaplan and Polano had fired when fired on.
The renegades had not followed Guild rules, had not called for a standstill and consultation with Guild authority.
They had done everything by the book—and the Shadow Guild hadn’t, damn them. The carnage on the porch, terrible as it had been, was thanks to that. There was no need for so many to be dead. It wasn’t the way the Guild had operated, before the Shadow Guild had tried to take the rules back to the dark ages, the clan wars, the days of cavalry, pikes, and wholesale bloodshed. Atevi had climbed out of that age the hard way, before humans had ever arrived in the heavens. It was their common sense, the Assassins’ Guild was their solution, and the Shadow Guild was doing their damnedest to unravel it.
Suddenly Kaplan and Polano reoriented, machinelike and simultaneous, toward the windows above. Bren ducked down to see what they were looking at, could not spot it.
“A man in an upstairs window,” Jase said, with a better view. “Waving and shouting.”
That would not be Guild. And they must not harm civilians. The bus door was shut, cutting off sounds from outside. Bren shoved himself out of his seat, Jase ri
ght with him, and ordered the door open, trusting to Kaplan and Polano for protection.
He got to the bottom step and looked up. The man was dressed as a servant, and seeing him, waved furiously, shouting down, “My lord requests respect for the premises! My lord requests assistance!”
“A house servant,” Bren said for Jase: the Padi Valley accent was thick. “Speaking for Lord Aseida.” He called up to the man: “Can you come down, nadi? Come to the front entry. You will be safe! We—”
A shot hit the folded bus door. Kaplan and Polano fired, robot-quick, before Bren could react and recoil. He had felt his hair move; he had felt a sting in his cheek; and then thunder blew past him. He blinked, and saw the window at the building corner—missing, along with the masonry around it.
The window from which the servant had called to them was undamaged. But empty.
Sensors. A sniper in a window up there in the corner room. He stared for a few heartbeats. Jase was hauling him back by the arm. He moved in compliance, backed up the steps, still looking up in disbelief.
“Nadi,” he said to the driver. “Advise those inside. Sniper strike, building corner, top floor. Jase’s guard just took them out.”
“Nandi,” the driver said calmly, and relayed that information.
Bren said: “Lord Aseida’s possible location is also the third floor, third window, next to the missing one.” His cheek stung. He touched it, bringing away bloody fingertips. Not a real wound. There might be a splinter of some sort. He was disgusted with himself. “My fault, standing there. Sorry, Jase.”
“Your local problems don’t miss an opportunity,” Jase said. “Sit down. Let me look at that.”
He sat. Jase looked, probed it, shook his head. “Not too bad.”
“Missed my head,” he said, and sucked in a deep breath, mad at himself, and now he second-guessed his sending information into the house. He hoped his information wouldn’t draw his people into some sort of trap. About Lord Aseida’s rescue, he didn’t at the moment give a damn. “My bodyguard’s going to say a few words about my going out there.”