Destroyer (50 page)

Folly, riding in there, blind and possibly much too late. He contained so much knowledge—but, ironically, it was knowledge an eight-year-old boy had, that Jase had, the star that was the station and the ship not yet apparent, but he knew it was there, and that thought held like an anchor. For once in his life he had backup, of sorts, and he could afford a risk. He could be a total fool, charging into the situation, as if he could rescue the two oldest, canniest connivers in all the aishidi’tat . . .

Ilisidi wouldn’t call him a fool.
She’d
bet on him showing up. Probably so would Cenedi, who wouldn’t have gone throwing his life away on an attack against the Kadigidi.
She
would be thinking about those mountains, too, and yet still stood by a pivotal old politicking fool, to be sure he didn’t collapse and cave in the belly of the aishidi’tat—

Forcing the issue, damn her. Forcing all of them. Forcing the Guild itself, from its perch in Shejidan, to have a look at the escalating chaos . . . and to face a new fact: that Murini-aiji didn’t control the middle lands or the north.

Banichi rode back to them, swinging his mecheita in close. Jago moved near, companionably. And a movement in the tail of Bren’s eye advised him one of the rangers had gotten down, and now left afoot, running.

“Toward the hunting gate?” he asked his staff.

“Not that far, nandi,” Banichi said. “Get down. We shall, to rest here and wait. He should make the fence about twilight.”

Half an hour or so. Banichi himself dismounted, while his mecheita resumed interest in the scattered heads of grain. Bren experimentally slung both legs over the side, his mecheita likewise occupied, and slid down. Banichi caught him under the arms and set him down gently as if he were Cajeiri.

“There,” Banichi said gently. “Go sit down, Bren-ji. Your staff has business with the Taibeni.”

“If I have a regret, nadiin-ji, it is ever bringing you into this situation.”

“The paidhi-aiji’s company is usually interesting.” A wry smile from Banichi. He couldn’t help but laugh, however thin and soundless it came out, and however upset it left him.

“Go,” Jago said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Rest, Bren-ji. Your company may be interesting. But our talk will be dry detail.”

A stray civil servant, indeed, wasn’t highly useful to Guild at this point, particularly Guild trying to think of all possible eventualities. He took Banichi’s advice, walked over to a spot where it seemed little likely that mecheiti would step on him. There he sat down, knees drawn up, head on hands for a moment. He seemed to have filled his quota of sleep, such as it had been. Rest seemed unlikely. Clear thought was not producing any comfort. Seeking some occupation for his hands, then, he unloaded his gun, checked its condition and blew out a little lint before he reloaded, all the while trying not to think more than five minutes ahead of him.

He never had mastered that knack.

 

 

W
ind blew the grass, clouds moved with incredible slowness, the mecheiti grazed, one of them always head-up, watching the surrounds. And a close band of atevi sat laying plans while the sun went down.

Bren wished he could sleep. He couldn’t. He sat, rested his knees together in front of him, feet apart, and his arms against him, not a graceful position, but one that kept him mostly off the cold ground, and kept the wind at his back—since wind there had begun to be, now, a brisk wind that equaled the chill of the ground, against which his jacket was no defense at all.

The sun slipped past the edge of the world, and he rested his head down, aware that his bodyguard had come back to him and settled down to rest. He wouldn’t make them go through it all again for his information—he wouldn’t rob them of the sleep they’d won, and pursued, while strangers watched over them.

He did drift, waked in total disorientation, still sitting up, conscious of complete night, of movement around him, and for a single panicked moment not knowing what mecheiti were doing in his cabin.

Atageini land, a hellish mess, the dowager somewhere beyond that ridge, and Banichi and Jago up talking to people who were, yes, Taiben rangers. Tano and Algini were with him, one on a side, and everything was, considering the presence of a couple of dozen mecheiti, very quiet, very hushed. He didn’t want to chatter questions. But he tried to get his legs to move. It took a couple of efforts and finally Algini’s help to get up. He stood, a little embarrassed, rubbed numb spots, not an elegant process.

“Our spy is back,” Algini told him.

“What do we know?”

“The house remains protected, and inner defenses are still live, nandi,”

Supremely good news, and it represented a great risk on the part of the ranger that had gone in to find out.

“The estate perimeter fence is inactive,” Tano said. “One believes they have taken the house as the sole point of resistence, and the stable burned, which was likely the light we saw, but overall the house is still a point of resistence, and one believes now the neighboring towns may feel it necessary to intervene.”

Not good news. Townsmen who elected to get involved in a Guild action were as likely to create confusion for their own side, and the Guild on the other side would not spare them.

“We are moving in, nadiin?”

“One believes so,” Algini said.

Time he did talk to Banichi and Jago. He walked, still massaging a stiff leg, over to the conference.

“Likely we can get inside, nandi,” Deiso said as he joined them. “Getting out again—if they add forces—may be a very great difficulty. One advises your lordship retreat at this point.”

“No,” Bren said without even thinking on it. “No. If my staff goes in, I go. And we know the inside.”

Outrageous, in atevi terms. He only dimly reckoned that, after it came out of his mouth.

“Reason with him, nadi,” Deiso said.

“He is capable, no matter his size,” Banichi said, entirely unexpected, and the statement sent a little quiver of adrenaline through his nerves.
Capable
, he was. It was better than Lord of the Heavens.

And he had no wish, after Banichi saying that, to act the fool. He folded his arms and listened to Banichi lay out the plan, attempting dignity, and silently absorbing the simple outline, which was to go in the way the scout had: he had gotten through without problems at the fence. The rangers had wire-cutters in their collective kit, and meant to go in without need of going the long way round.

Crosscountry, from the fence to the house, trusting other defenses would be down, since their scout had met none.

After that . . .

After that, they approached the house—in the fervent hope they were not too late.

“A wonder they withstood the first attack,” Banichi said, “except the first incursion was a probe. Maodi is the chief of Guild that serves the Kadigidi. A ruthless sort, but not reckless, and if Murini is in Shejidan, as we have reported, that means Maodi will be there, not here—he will not want to stain his hands or his lord’s with this unneighborly move. That means secondary force is involved, and one perceives they were tentative, not committing great force.”

“ Tonight,” Deiso said, “tonight they will bring force in. We have other bands coming, and they may be here before daylight. But we ought not to wait for an outcome, nandi.”

“Whatever Banichi says,” Bren stated, “I accept.”

More Taibeni forces coming in behind them was good news; but the chance of the Kadigidi getting in and slaughtering the household—not considering the Kadigidi might have agents on the inside . . . he was very ready to go without them. He would be dismayed if Banichi counseled waiting any longer.

“The paidhi is with us,” Banichi said.

“No question,” Bren said, and Deiso:

“Then we should move, should we not?”

Ten thousand questions, a whole world he wanted to know—but certainties were not available. He went back to his mecheita. The rangers mounted up, and he did, and fell in with his own staff. The band started to move eastward, in the deepening dark, up the low rise and down again. Clouds had moved across the stars, taking away even the starlight, and a breeze-borne chill swept down at their faces, numbed his hands and made him wish, not for the first time on this trek, that he had at least remembered his gloves, and put on a sweater under his coat. No Narani, that was what it was. He had gotten used to such items turning up in his pockets. Now all he had was his gun, his useless pocket com, his pill bottle, and a spare clip.

He ought to be terrified. He actually wasn’t sure about that, then decided what he felt wasn’t quite fear, rather a sense of fatalism, of foreboding—that he really, truly couldn’t envision their success in this operation, or more to the point, envision exactly what they were going to do once they had gotten onto the grounds and rescued the dowager, even granted their success. He doubted Ilisidi was up to a long, breakneck ride—she’d surprised him before, but she’d been out of the saddle for two years herself. And even if she could surprise him, he knew of a certainty that Lord Tatiseigi wasn’t up to it—and what were they to do to prevent consequences from overwhelming the one key lord in the middle provinces?

Over all, he feared they were going to have to stand and fight to keep Tatiseigi and the dowager alive, hoping for their own numbers to increase, as surely the Kadigidi were going to bring in reinforcements. Which would be very bad for the Atageini house, and its fragile lilies . . . worse for its surrounding towns, and their peaceful existence. The farmers—the locals—could have their whole structure blown to bits . . . vulnerable as the porcelain lilies.

His own affairs—he had wrapped up, leaving the next tries to Jase and Yolanda. He had delivered Cajeiri into the hands of his Taibeni relatives, to get to his father if they could. He trusted Toby was back on the island, likely hovering near the shortwave and hoping for news . . .

God, this was morbid, cataloging and disposing of all his ties to the world. But the ruler he served seemed less and less likely to get back to power, the more blood they poured on the matter, and if it didn’t happen, the world didn’t need a paidhi whose advice had led to civil war and bodies lying in windrows. . . .

That was the underlying thought, wasn’t it? There was a certain justice in his being here, and he had run out of remedies. If he sent his staff off to take up service with Cajeiri, in the first place, they wouldn’t go, and if he went, himself, it would bring Cajeiri association with him. Everything seemed circular reasoning. Everything led where he was . . . which left him unable to see the outcome. He couldn’t even see how it mattered, except he might kill some Guildsman who adhered to the Kadigidi, and they might kill him, and nothing, in the long run, would get fixed, not by him, would it?

Maybe by Jase. Maybe by Lord Geigi, who could sit up in the heavens and say, you idiots, I told you so. Are you ready to stop killing each other?

Because the kyo would show up. And somebody had to be in charge. He was sure of that, as sure as he was that the whole current enterprise was unlikely to succeed.

Once he analyzed it that way, he began to have a roadmap of what they had to do, and what constituted a win—if only raising enough hell on the planet that Geigi and Jase got wind of his failure early, before the Kadigidi could capitalize on their win.

At best, getting Ilisidi back to Taiben and making the Kadigidi look a little less powerful than they claimed. That would put egg on their faces . . . start one hell of a war, but it wouldn’t leave the world to Murini’s non-existent common sense. Get Ilisidi to Taiben. That prospect might even budge Tatiseigi to go, be it in that antique roadster, not to mention the Kadigidi would never be able to claim the man’chi of the Atageini populace . . . who would rally to their oldest enemies, the Taibeni, and create a very hard kernel of resistence right next to the Kadigidi.

Damn, he was starting to think again, not on a cosmic scale, not of the politics of species, but in the dirt and sweat world of detailed politics and the knack of leaving an enemy looking less successful, while one’s own tattered cause emerged looking as if it had won something. Atevi, like humans, dearly loved a neatly carried action, an outrageous enterprise.

He became downright foolishly cheerful, as cheerful, at least, as contemplating the necessary obverse of that coin could let him be. The wind altogether seemed a little warmer, the dark a great deal friendlier to them.

Give the Kadigidi a surprise? Maybe. His backside had passed the tingling point, far past pain, where the jouncing and jolting of the mecheita’s gait was concerned; he could ignore discomfort, now. The darkened landscape passed in a shadow-play of his own staff riding near and then past him and back again, the rangers tending to the lead, in a territory they seemed to know much better than Lord Tatiseigi might like—down one long slope and another, and finally toward a dark line of shadow that his eyes began to resolve as artificial, the hedge that would conceal a fence, the estate boundary.

It came closer and closer until it barred off their forward progress, an ancient hedge more than head high to a mecheita, thick and tangled and stubborn—and how they could possibly pass it, he had no idea . . . but their scout had.

They drew up to a hard-breathing halt in front of that barrier, and a number of the rangers slid down and took equipment from their saddle-packs. Some of them bodily forced the hedge aside, one attaching a rope to his saddle and urging his mecheita to turn and pull, which bent two ancient parts of the hedge aside. Then men set to work with hand-axes, others spelling the effort in quick succession, so that the rhythm and strength of the blows never flagged for a moment. The center of each bush began to give way, and once they gave, another ranger pressed into the gap and set to work on the chain link fence, sharp, quick snaps of a wire-cutter: Lord Tatiseigi’s fences and the Taiben rangers seemed, by what he saw, an old, old matter. Bren sat his saddle, shivering alike from anticipation and from the chill breeze that ruffled the grass even in the hedge-shadow. Thunder rumbled out of the west. Lightning was not their friend, not in terms of being the tallest items in the landscape, and not in terms of secrecy in this invasion.