Protector: Foreigner #14 (39 page)

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 right 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.”

“Nandiin,” the driver said. “They acknowledge. They say keep inside.”

“Assure them we are aboard,” he said, with an idea
who
had said keep inside.

There were medical kits aboard, a small one in the overhead storage, a larger one in the forward baggage compartment. He got up and got a small bandage to stop the cut from bleeding; but they were, he thought, unhappily apt to need the larger one before all was done, and he was not going out there.

Things grew quieter. He became aware he was no longer hearing gunfire through the insulation of the bus.

“They have located the lord and his servants, nandiin,” the driver said.

“Good,” he said. Then the driver said:

“Lord Aseida requests to speak with the paidhi-aiji. They will be bringing him down.”

He was not, at the moment, enthusiastic about dealing with Aseida. His cheek was throbbing and he was developing a headache—those were the sum of
his
stupidity-induced injuries; and he could certainly do his job past that discomfort, but all of a sudden he felt entirely rattled. It seemed a crushing responsibility, to get the necessary dealings right, to react, knowing the record would be gone over and gone over by political enemies. His people had risked their necks to get the renegades identified and removed—everything had worked. They’d gotten their chance, and they’d made the most of it.
He
couldn’t give the opposition a loophole in his own sphere of responsibility . . .

Most of all he couldn’t give Assignments’ allies in high places in the Guild any excuse to charge a misdeed to Tabini’s account, and the station’s. Aseida was not, counting the damage to his house, going to be an asset.

He
was
rattled, he thought, by that trifling hit. He drew deep breaths, steadying down, getting control back.

The exchange of gunfire was over. He wanted to know his people were all right, and that the dowager’s were, that first. Lord Aseida, already under ban, was not in charge of events now. No. Only the aiji could unseat Aseida, and
he
had the excuse Tabini needed.

“Whatever Aseida is,” he said to Jase, “he’s representative of a major clan, a lot of people, a lot of connections, historic and otherwise. He’s a patch-together sort of lord—the clan’s lost one after the other—but he’s what they’ve got, all they’ve got. Banned from court. They couldn’t let him into the Bujavid, for security reasons. Most of all, they couldn’t let his bodyguard in. He’s alive. And we’re going to keep him that way. His own allies probably won’t like that.”

“They are bringing out the casualties first, nandiin,” the driver said.

He got up to look out the bullet-starred windshield. Jase stood behind him. He saw, one after the other, three of the dowager’s men helped down the shattered steps by comrades, all ambulatory. Thank God.

He asked the driver the question he dreaded to ask, “Have we lost anyone, nadi?”

“No, nandi,” the driver said. “We have not. All are accounted for. Six injured, none critically.”

He drew a deep breath and let it go slowly. He saw Banichi, conspicuous by his stature, walking under his own power, but with his right hand tucked inside his open jacket. He saw Jago, walking beside Banichi. And, escorted by two of the dowager’s men, a young man in blue brocade came out the door, hesitating at the broken steps and the dreadful sight there, and trailed by two agitated servants.

Aseida.

Time to risk his head a second time, going out there in the courtesy due the Kadagidi lord? He didn’t think so. The mess was Aseida’s and he didn’t owe it courtesy.

He stood where he was. He waited until the driver opened the door, and he was there to meet Banichi and Jago as they came up the steps.

He didn’t embarrass Banichi with inquiries, and Banichi delivered his report in two sentences: “We have the house secure. The lord requests to speak with you.”

“Shall I go down?” Bren asked.

Banichi frowned at him, perhaps noticing the new bandage on his cheek. “Lord Aseida can come aboard,” Banichi said, “under the circumstances. He is requesting Atageini assistance to secure the premises.”

Things had shifted immensely in the last hour. The Kadagidi-Atageini feud had gone on, intermittent with periods of alliance, for centuries.

Now the Atageini were being invited in—preferable to the Taibeni, likely.

Bren shot a look toward Jago, who had smudges of pale ash on her chin and cheek, and a bleeding scrape on her hand. He was overwhelmingly glad to see her and Banichi both in one piece. “Tano and Algini, nadiin-ji?”

“They are supervising the document recovery,” Jago said. “The servants attempted to destroy records. We stopped that.”

Records were involved. That was
very
good news.

The servants being at the business of destroying them, while the front porch was exploding—was peculiar, and spoke volumes about the character of the Kadagidi servants.

And the Kadagidi lord was standing at the bus door, with his two valets, waiting for his permission. “Come up, nandi,” he said, “without your servants.” He saw the frown and gave back one of his own. “Your servants may stay with the premises, under the watch of the guard we set here. You, on the other hand, may come aboard and make whatever request for protection you wish, and I shall relay it to your neighbor Lord Tatiseigi, to the aiji-dowager, and ultimately to the aiji in Shejidan. Be aware, since one does not believe your bodyguard adequately reported to you, that a ship-aiji is with us. It is
his
bodyguard outside. Your bodyguard, sadly, fired on them. So did someone from your upper windows.”

Aseida turned and looked up. His mouth opened. He turned back with an angry expression.

“These are historic premises!”

“Fire came, in a ship-aiji’s presence, at a ship-aiji’s bodyguard, from
your
historic premises, nandi. And one strongly suggests that you give no more such orders!”

“I did not order it!” Aseida protested. “I gave no such order!”

Bren backed up a step, in invitation. “Then you would be wise to come aboard, nandi, and explain to Jase-aiji just who
did
order it.”

T
hey were all down in the basement of Uncle’s house, which might have been an interesting place to visit, except the circumstances reminded Cajeiri all too vividly of the basement at Najida, where they had had to go because of the attack on the house.

Only this time mani had chosen to stay upstairs with Cenedi and Casimi. Cajeiri was sure that was because Cenedi was in contact with Banichi and nand’ Bren and possibly Nawari. Very serious things were going on that his guests were not supposed to know about, and since he was the only one who could talk to them—
he
was obliged to act as if everything was perfectly ordinary.

Nothing in fact was ordinary. Great-uncle, who had never in his life approved of humans, had come down himself to guide not just children, but
human
children on a tour through his clan’s most precious things. And they had security with them, of course, two of Great-uncle’s, and all of his own aishid—which meant, of course, that he could
not
have them upstairs trying to find out things.

Great-uncle had begun by pointing out the beautiful porcelains, and talked at length about glazes in terms Cajeiri struggled to translate at all—though his guests were all very polite about it and nodded in proper places, seeming impressed by the porcelains, and the pictures, and the fact people had painted them a long time ago.

And once, when Irene’s eyes grew wide and damp and she whispered
How beautiful,
in very careful Ragi, Great-uncle did a very strange thing and actually opened a case and took out a cup and let her hold it for a moment before putting it back behind glass.

They came to another door, and Great-uncle, his face very blank, ordered lamps brought and the lights turned off, and for a moment Cajeiri forgot all about nand’ Bren and the Kadagidi, as the great double door opened, and huge eyes glimmered in the flickering light. Claws reached. Fangs glistened. Irene gave a great squeal, and pressed up against Gene, who laughed and put his arm her and swore, quite loudly, that he would protect her.

More than that, Great-uncle . . . smiled.

That
 . . . was scarier than the taxidermied creatures.

But Great-uncle did not insist the tour continue in the dark for which Cajeiri was glad. It had been a surprise, and his guests had enjoyed it, but somehow ambush in the dark seemed just a little too real this morning.

So he was glad when Great-uncle ordered the main lights turned back on and proceeded to show them the ferocious taxidermied beasts in his father’s father’s collection, creatures Cajeiri had only seen in drawings. His guests were excited and amazed and so was he. There was a legless reptile as big as a man, all coiled up and threatening, almost as good as a dinosaur. There was ornate old armor that was real, not made for machimi. There were swords and spears that probably had killed people, which was a sobering thought.

There were lots and lots of really interesting things to see, aisles and aisles as crowded as the warehouses under the Bujavid, and he found himself going for whole periods of time without thinking about the people they had caught in the garage, and how they had been afraid there might be Assassins in the basement.

Besides, they had their bodyguards. And from here on they had the lights on, bright as day, where they were, though it was scary to look off through doorways into sections where they had been, that were dark now, or sections where they had not yet been, which were a little more ominous.

They came to dull spots: there were, in one nook, rows of plain brown pottery that looked like nothing at all—until Great-uncle said was the first pottery ever made in the Padi Valley—which, Great-uncle said showed that the Atageini ancestors had come from the south coast a long, long time ago, thousands of years ago, in fact. Uncle said the Scholars could tell all sorts of relationships because of the way the pots were made and the patterns on them, because the ancient peoples had particular ways of doing things, even particular ways to make a pot.

Cajeiri had not known that, himself, and for a moment he forgot about the trouble outside, in a flight of imagination about his own Atageini ancestry being from the coast where Lord Geigi and nand’ Bren had their estates. It was almost like being related.

Artur got right up close, not enough to touch, but staring at the details, and he asked questions about the differences he saw, which Cajeiri translated, and Uncle was quite pleased to talk about those differences . . . though Uncle had an amazing good sense about getting them back to collections of fierce fish, with amazing teeth.

But in the intervals, the grim thoughts came back: there was real danger coming near the house, which was
never
supposed to happen in historic premises like Tirnamardi, with so many ancient, precious,
fragile
things. Cajeiri knew, he was sure, why they were being kept down here—he had been through shelling. And he very much hoped mani was in some sort of a safe place, too, and especially he hoped that they were going to hear something from nand’ Bren soon—

He hoped that there would not,
not,
he hoped, be gunfire, or grenades or people sneaking up on the house to do mischief.

And that there were not accesses down here in the basement that could have ambush waiting in one of the rooms.

They went on to a different part of the basement, where lights went on, and there were cabinets and cabinets of record books. It was records going back hundreds of years, Great-uncle said, showing them books bound in leather so old it was flaking, and Irene said she wished she knew enough Ragi to read them.

Had they been scanned into a computer, she asked, in case something should happen to them?

He didn’t translate that part. He didn’t think Great-uncle would like that idea, not this morning. “I shall ask him that later,” he told Irene.

Beyond that place, in another room, a dimly lit display case held a skeleton of a person that Great-uncle said was thousands and thousands of years old. They had dug him up on the grounds, when they had built the house, and the broken pots around him were what he had been buried with.

That was a scary place. That was a real dead person. Cajeiri did not want to linger there.

“Can you tell anything,” he whispered to Lucasi, while his guests crowded close to the case. “Is there anything going on the house network?”

“They have us cut off completely, nandi,” Lucasi said. “We cannot pick up anything at all, not even routine things.”

There were two Guild Assassins locked up somewhere in the house, maybe down here in the basement, right near them.

And he could not forget the sight of Kaplan and Polano suited up and looking like nothing the earth had ever seen. It was a sight from the ship—walking down the stairs of Great-uncle’s house. And it was all crazy.

Nand’ Bren was going to try to talk to the Kadagidi and get an accounting for those two Assassins, apparently, and maybe warn them they were in trouble.

Nand’ Bren had gone right in and talked to Lord Machigi, in the Taisigin Marid, and gotten an agreement with him, which nobody would ever think could happen. So if
anybody
could talk to the Kadagidi, nand’ Bren might.

But the way they were keeping everything secret, putting them down in the basement, and not letting his guard know anything, he was getting more and more anxious about what the Kadagidi were doing.

He
hoped
he had not invited his guests down for all of them to get in the middle of a war.

On his
last
birthday they had started a war.

They had had the whole Najida business just weeks ago.

And here it was his birthday and they were going to start another war.

It just was not
fair,
was the childish thought that surfaced; but there was so much more at issue than
fairness,
now. He wanted everyone safe. He wanted the world not to have selfishness, and stupidity. And it was bound to have. But he wanted not to have it in places where it could do so much damage.

He heard footsteps in the room behind them, which was no longer dark. The head of Great-uncle’s bodyguard had come downstairs. He overtook them and called Uncle aside to talk to him, while they were in the room with the skeleton in the case. They waited, all of them, while Great-uncle talked, and now none of his guests were looking at the display. They were all looking at Uncle and three of his bodyguards, now.

And given all that had gone on in the house last night and this morning, they would be really stupid if they did not figure out there was something wrong.

Gene moved over close to him. “What’s going on?” Gene whispered in ship-speak. “What’s happening?”

He could not lie directly. “Trouble,” he said quietly. “Nand’ Bren and Jase-aiji went next door. Bad people. The Kadagidi.”

“Something to do with last night?” Artur asked, at Gene’s shoulder. Irene just looked worried.

“Next door—” He did not have the right words in ship-speak. “Trouble with the Kadagidi. A long time.”

The bodyguard went back down the hall. Great-uncle turned to them and said, “My staff may continue the tour this afternoon, young gentleman, if you wish. There is some little more to see. Some business has come up, and I must go upstairs. Nephew, please have your bodyguard escort you back to the stairs at your leisure. You may bring your guests up to the breakfast room and enjoy refreshments.”

“Great-uncle.” The bow was automatic, while his brain was racing. What was it? Was everything all right now? They were being let out of the cellar and offered lunch alone, with no grown-ups.

But was the trouble over?

Great-uncle and his bodyguard went ahead of them through the basement, headed up the stairs and left them with just his bodyguard for guides.

“What did he say?” Gene whispered urgently. “Jeri, what just happened?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. Lunch, is all. If it were bad I think they’d want us to stay downstairs.” He
hoped
his bodyguard remembered the way out.

But they did. They went back through the rooms fairly quickly, the lights going on and off as they passed through, not too far behind Great-uncle. They went upstairs and out the door, to a little alcove in the main hall. Great-uncle and his guard were still ahead of them, on
their
way toward the sitting room, where one would easily bet Great-grandmother was.

The breakfast room was a little distance away from that.

“Is that an all-clear?” Jegari asked suddenly. He was looking at his bracelet, the same sort that most Guild wore.

“Yes,” Veijico said, looking at her bracelet. “Nandi, we are receiving again.”

•   •   •

Kadagidi fortunes had certainly sunk today. That was clear in the bedraggled, soot-stained person of the Kadagidi lord, who had to negotiate with intruders on his clan’s territory, in a bus sitting on his land.

“We do not surrender,” Aseida had said first, frayed and rattled as he was, once he stood aboard. “We appeal to the paidhiin to prevent damage to our estate. We are innocent of all offense!”

Ship-paidhi. Jase was that.

Innocent
, however, had been an interesting claim.

So was Aseida’s insistence on addressing Jase by his lesser, onworld title.

Let him, Bren had thought, showing him to the first of the seats, arranged as the first rows were, in facing pairs, with a let-down table.

Let him spill whatever he wants of his thinking, his views, his presumptions.

He hadn’t let down that table. He wanted full view of Aseida’s hands. He had Jase sitting beside him. Kaplan and Polano had come aboard, and, unable to sit in the armor, they had taken their places again beside the driver, in front of the damaged windshield.

“We were betrayed,” Lord Aseida had said for openers. “We were
forced
by Murini-aiji’s bodyguard. We
never
wanted the man’chi of that aishid. They
attached
to me when I was a child, and I had no choice in the matter.”

The account went on and on, somewhat incoherently, if interestingly.

It did follow one scenario they had surmised—that there had been an unusually strong Guild presence in the house before and
during
Murini’s sojourn in the Dojisigin Marid; that the bodyguard that had escorted the usurper into exile and died with him had
not
been Haikuti’s team, no, they had stayed constantly in the house, and, well, perhaps, Aseida thought, possibly had contact with others about the region, but they always had that.

Definitely Haikuti and that aishid had not gone down to the Marid with Murini, before the coup, nor had they conspicuously stood beside him in his ascent to power, though they had been physically with him during some of his administration.

But they had been Aseida’s aishid for years. How assigned? Clearly by Shishoji, who had held his office through more decades than that.

The records that had accumulated in the house during Murini’s tenure possibly still existed, among those they had confiscated within the Kadagidi estate.

But now they had, indeed, very interesting things pouring out: a Kadagidi lord, the very person involved, claiming that Haikuti had taken over the household, that Haikuti had effectively run the clan by threat and intimidation, possibly using Murini as a puppet—and that he, Aseida, was innocent as the spring rains.

The paidhi’s job, however, was a good deal easier than Aseida’s, who had to explain what the situation
had
been, a lot of it unlovely, and precisely
how
he was innocent.

“Do not accuse us,” Aseida said hotly, at one point. “We had no way to respond to you. It was you who elected to come onto Kadagidi land, with these men dressed as machines, it was you who called out my guard and blew a hole in an ancient house. Who is my neighbor to send
humans and machines
to attack us, on the charges that we
aided
an attack on Tirnamardi? You have fired without judgment and damaged historic premises! You have shattered treasures older than your presence on this earth! You had no right to come here and fire on us!”