Betrayer: Foreigner #12 (27 page)

So there was something to what mani had said. Things made sense suddenly. They were an infelicity that would not heal until they got Lucasi back. But they
chose
to be that, because they chose to take Veijico in; and she was suddenly different with them. Not alone, now. Antaro came back with toast and tea, and Jegari told her he was going out for a moment, and she should save him some.

So now Antaro had to figure it out. But he helped. He said, “Jegari has gone to find out if there is any news about Lucasi. He will be back. We should save his breakfast.”

“Yes,” Antaro said, and set up the teacups, four of them, and poured three, and served him one.

“Nadi,” Veijico said quietly, taking hers, with a look at Antaro. And the room went on feeling better.

 

Jago had been back with them for at least a minute before Bren knew it. She was just there, saying nothing, but moving ahead of them, in the eye-tricking last of the night.

“Is Banichi moving ahead of us, Jago-ji?” Bren whispered when he caught up. It was a brief rest, in the dark, on the edge of dawn. “Why have we not met up with him?”

“We are having trouble getting around our inconvenience,” Jago said, and indicated the rugged ground that rose on their left hand, across a ravine. They had traveled, they had climbed through difficult terrain, and they
still
were not out of the vicinity of their enemies?

“Is that the same place?” Bren surmised.

“Yes,” Jago answered. “We are below it, but not away from it. We are wary of surveillance, Bren-ji. We cannot dismantle it without betraying our presence. Banichi is mapping it. We are going to have to lie low for the day if this way does not work out. How are you faring?”

“I can do it,” he said, impatient of the delay. And then he had to be honest. “If it doesn’t involve a vertical climb. That—I can’t.”

“One hopes to avoid that.”

So that was the story. They were increasingly exposed. There might be enemies waiting in ambush. The sun was coming up, and it was still night to human eyes—but to atevi vision?

They were getting into a region where there had been trouble, and it might have posted sentries. And the day was coming.

“I can go faster, at least,” he said.

“Banichi is back,” Algini said in a low voice, close at hand.
Where?
he wondered, looking around like a fool. He saw nothing but rocks and brush.

But as they started moving, and just a little distance farther, a tall shadow appeared in their path, gave a handsign, and they all waited while Banichi and Jago exchanged a handful of words and signs.

Then Tano said, “Banichi has found the boy.”

Lucasi? Good God. “Where?” he asked. And then thought of the enemy base. “God. Is he up
there?”

“No,” Tano said. “But ahead of us. We are going to where he is.”

They’d made all possible racket in the district, including gunfire. The enemy had to be on high alert up there. Now they moved quietly, slipping down into a nook in the rock, behind vertical slabs, overgrown with brush, and down and up again, Banichi and Jago in the lead, and Banichi not stopping for a lengthy report.

They came to a split in the rock, a difficult passage over tumbled boulders, a nook deep in shadow.

He didn’t see any sign of Lucasi there, not at first, and then he saw the direction of attention of the others and made out the faint outline of a figure sitting next to the scrub with one leg extended. That figure started to get up, but Banichi signed abruptly and it stayed put.

Bren came closer, finding, indeed, their missing young Guildsman, with a splinted leg and an attitude of utter exhaustion and dejection.

Tano, their team medic, dropped down on his haunches and asked, “Your condition, nadi?”

“Foot and ankle, Tano-nadi,” came the faint answer.

“He was the one who started all this,” Banichi said in the lowest of voices. “He came very near to being shot, but he spoke to me in time.”

Jago
had missed spotting the kid, when she had gone over the area. He had recognized Banichi in the dark. And he had somehow not gotten away from the original firefight, the one that had touched off the trouble. That was something.

“Can he walk?” Bren asked.

“He will slow us down,” Banichi said. “He will have to keep up to our pace or hide and wait for help. We cannot risk
you,
Bren-ji. He knows that very clearly.”

He didn’t like the choice. He felt responsible for the boy.

But if the renegades succeeded in taking them, the aishidi’tat had a problem.

He went over to the boy and half-sat against a rock—if he knelt down to the boy’s level, he thought, it would take his whole aishid to get
him
on his feet again. “One is glad to see you, nadi.”

“Nandi,” Lucasi said with a lowering of his head. “One understands the depth of trouble I have caused.”

“Banichi has told you that your sister is safe, along with Barb-daja.”

A nod. “Yes, nandi. One is deeply grateful.”

“Banichi may have told you. You are in Taisigi district, and that post up there is not Taisigi. The Guild is moving on a nest of renegades of the Guild, from the years of the Troubles. And this will not be a safe place once they arrive. Can you possibly attempt to stay with us, or can you go to ground and stay there?”

“I wish to go with you, nandi.”

“Make the safest decision, for your own sake, whether to try this or to go to ground. I wish very much to present you to your partner safe. But we cannot have you endanger this mission.”

“I can do it,” Lucasi said. “I can, nandi.”

Bren walked back to Banichi. “I have told him the importance of our mission. He believes he can stay with us.”

“I have my own orders for him,” Banichi said, and he went over and said about two words, which Bren did not hear; but he saw the boy, who had risen to stand on one foot, nod emphatically. Twice.

They gathered up their gear then—or Banichi and Jago did. Tano and Algini were suddenly not in sight, and since Banichi and Jago started off, it didn’t seem a good thing to ask too many questions.

Guarding their backtrail, Bren thought. They had to make speed and still avoid running into allies
or
enemies in the dark, and with dawn coming on.

Then he realized the boy was not with them. Banichi had, he thought, outright ordered the boy to stay put and wait for them to come back for him once they had this mess sorted out.

Which was as it was. Banichi was thinking about the mission, he had no question of that. About the mission and getting through this. He was glad if Banichi was doing what was necessary in spite of help from him.

He just hoped to hell Tano and Algini would get back to them soon.

They were about half an hour on, on a delicate climb downward, in the earliest of dawn, when all of a sudden the ground heaved and rocks fell, bounding hollowly down from the height.

Bren leaned back against a man-sized boulder and stared up in startlement at the source of the explosion, a cloud billowing skyward above the ridge.

He didn’t say anything. But that hadn’t been any weapon he knew about.

It was
,
however, Tano and Algini’s specialty.

And now that explosion and that cloud was a beacon for the neighborhood. It was going to upset any enemies in the area, who would probably run to see what had happened.

The renegades had certainly been stirred up from the hour Jago had fired the first shot. He had no doubt of that. But that towering cloud above the ridge was a magnet for an ambush. The other side would know it—and maybe blame Machigi’s forces, which actually lay in the opposite direction. The combination of misdirections was not a bad thing—unless it brought action down on their heads.

Just hurry up and get back to us, he thought; and he hoped Tano and Algini didn’t stay to do any more damage.

And he hoped to God the kid back there just kept his head down and melted into a hole in the rocks before their enemies came swarming out and around the area.

He—he just had to get down this slope, carefully, quickly. Safety was ahead of them, not behind. Banichi and Jago might have left the kid out of practicality, but they were held to the progress
he
could make, and the only thing he could do to help them was to watch where he put his feet and just do better, longer, farther than he thought he possibly, humanly, could.

He got down to flat rock. Banichi moved on, and he kept going, with Jago’s help under his arm.

“Bren-ji,” Jago said at one point, “go more slowly if you must!”

“For my sake or yours, Jago-ji?” he panted as he went. “If for mine, trust I can do this. I shall live, I assure you.”

They went at the increased pace, Banichi in the lead, Jago close by him, being sure he didn’t step into a hole, so he had one less thing to worry about. Staying upright. Moving. That was his job.

The sun was definitively up, now, removing the cover of darkness even to human eyes. Breathing and walking occupied all available intellect. And he was no longer sure he was using his best sense, but he pushed a bit harder, able to see, now. He made it to the top of a rise, wavered, with the far view of hills swimming ahead of him, then realized he was wobbling on the edge of a drop-off, and he caught himself one nanosecond before Jago snatched him against her and steered him to safer route, keeping him from descending the hill in a catastrophic slide.

“One is,”
grateful,
he tried to say. But he hadn’t the wind left. The whole world went fuzzy at that point. He might have been out on his feet, except Jago still had hold of his arm, and then had her arm around him.

“Here is not a good place, Bren-ji. Just a little farther. Then we shall rest an hour.”

An hour. A whole hour sitting still. He wanted it so much.

But they couldn’t afford that.

He had to tell them that. But he had to get where it was safe. He energized his legs and managed to keep going, sure, with what shred of intelligence he had left, that where Banichi was going, where Jago wanted him to go, was at least better cover, and a place where he could take just a little rest and get his wind back and then argue.

Maybe he could even take off the damned vest for a moment or two. It would be such a relief. God, he wanted to do that.

It was still another downhill, in among rocks, and past an overhanging shrub. Banichi waited at the bottom of a steep little slope, took his other arm and steered him to a little concealed nook and a flat rock he could sit on.

Then, silently, by the time Bren looked up, Banichi had left them. Jago was alone.

“Sorry,” Bren said, trying to get his breath. “One is sorry, Jago-ji. Banichi is scouting?”

“As well we take a look ahead, Bren-ji. Use the time.”

She offered him a drink from a small flask, plain water, which they had in very short supply, he knew that. His mouth was dust-dry and he let a mouthful roll around and moisten his throat in little trickles. For not very much encouragement at all he would lie flat on the rock and stay there, but it would only hurt more, getting up, and the damned vest, once he was sitting down, at least helped hold him upright in some comfort.

“How are you, Bren-ji?” Jago asked him, sinking down on her haunches. She wanted an estimate, he said to himself, not stupid overstatement.

“I can walk,” he said, “but my judgment is question—” More breath. New try. “Questionable.”

She pressed her fingers against the side of his neck, where the pulse rate, he thought, was probably still rather high.

“Rest,” she said. “I could give you a drug. But one advises not.”

“If it keeps me going—”

“Better to rest. You may need it later.”

“I need more time,” he said, “in a gym, Jago-ji. I am going to do that . . . when we get back.”

He won a slight smile from her, and with a little bow of her head: “I shall go up to a better vantage, Bren-ji. I shall not be leaving you.”

“Tano and Algini,” he said.

“They may overtake us here. The boy will probably be somewhat behind them.”

So the boy was coming. Alone. God. He hadn’t wanted that.

“Rest,” Jago said, and stepped up onto the rock, and onto another, and left his field of vision.

At that point, it was his job just to sit there. And breathe. And let blood circulate back to parts of his brain he was sure were not functioning all that well. His feet hurt. Badly. He had burst a couple of stitches in the lightweight dress boots that were all he had with him, which was not a good situation. And he was lost. As lost as he had ever been in his life. He had absolutely no idea where they were, or even what direction they were going at the moment—west, he thought, and then wasn’t sure, given the season and the latitude. He could judge where the sun would be, behind the rocks, but he couldn’t see it from where he was sitting. It seemed they had not aimed due northwest, which would have taken them to Targai. But that could be an accident of where they had stopped, or the route they had to take, since they had wound around so many obstacles it had seemed they were going in circles.

They were still on the Southern Plateau, he was almost sure of that. They hadn’t been descending that long. They wouldn’t be descending northeast, toward the coast—that would only put them back in danger.

If they were ever out of it.

He was dizzy, still. Orientation in the world? He was doing damned well to orient himself upright.

He still thought that if he could just get rid of the vest, and its constriction, he could go faster. But Jago would shoot him herself if she came back and found him sitting there in his shirt sleeves.

So he sat. He sat with the spring chill of the rock working its way up his backside and the warmth of the sun and the heavy vest working its way down from his shoulders, for a reasonable meeting somewhere in the middle of him: his chest hurt and his backside was numb. He let his eyes shut, just drowsing upright. Best he could do.