Destroyer

Antiquated equipment, but maybe the sort to lull an attacker into thinking it was all going to be easy. He didn’t utterly trust Tatiseigi to tell them everything.

But he didn’t look forward to tonight at all. He didn’t look forward to the rest of the day, which held a diminishing few hours of tedium and tension before twilight brought a rising likelihood of trouble. He had drunk tea enough to float, and his nerves were jangled—always were, after one of those breakneck logical downhills with Ilisidi, not to mention Tatiseigi in the mix.

Not to mention, either, a human urge to go down the hall and offer the poor kid some sort of reassurance or at least moral support, considering an order far too hard for children. Damn the situation. Damn the Kadigidi. He passionately hated gunfire. It always meant someone like him hadn’t done his job. And there was far too much evidence of that all around him.

His staff settled down near the fireplace for some quick close consultation of their own, and he found there was one thing constructive he could do in that regard. He unfolded his computer and produced a detailed map of the terrain. He had no way, in the upstairs of this traditional and kabiu household, to print it out for them, but they clustered around him, viewing the situation down to the hummocks and small streams. There was a discussion of the stables, where their riding gear was stowed, which Tano had checked and located—it was the pile of stable sweepings, curiously enough, which had told Tano the story of recent visitations: one lived and learned. They discussed the dowager’s rooms, which Jago had observed were similar in layout to their own, and they even considered the topiary hedges, where devices or automatic traps might be located, if such sensors had survived the mechieti’s foraging.

“There will be electronic sweeps,” Banichi said, and pointed to a stream that ran from the Kadigidi heights down toward Kadigidi territory. “That low spot, Bren-ji, is as good as a highway for intruders, except one can be reasonably certain the Atageini will have detection installed there and at other such places. And the Kadigidi will know it. So there should be devices set at other alternatives. We could not pry details out of this staff. Unfortunately, we are far less sure the Kadigidi have not done so.”

He had not considered such things in years. He studied the map, tried to recall how the pitch of the land had seemed as they had ridden in during the rain—a deceptive pitch. He remembered how cleverly the rolling hills concealed things one would never have expected—the whole length of the fence and the perimeter had vanished at certain times—which meant attackers might likewise be below electronic sweeps, moving as they pleased. His staff pointed out the probable course of a large, late incursion from the Kadigidi, and then the route the Kadigidi were likeliest to use because that first one was too probable.

A knock came at the door. The household staff came to beg his staff’s attendance at a general meeting. Jago opted to be the one to stay with him and stand watch.

They went on calling up maps, he and Jago, Jago taking mental notes, absorbing what might be useful to the team tonight. The meeting elsewhere went on a considerable time, more than an hour, until finally Banichi, Tano, and Algini came back, very sober of countenance.

“One has asked the staff quite bluntly, nandi, about the activity at the stables,” Tano said. “They maintain they shifted the lord’s herd in eight days ago for a seasonal hunt and out again, in favor of a small group used for ordinary purposes, and that this was all done by staff. One detected no lie, and this activity predated any action the Kadigidi may have taken against us. The lord generally keeps only seven mechieti here against personal need. That also agrees what what I saw.”

An autumn hunt. Plausible. Plausible, because one did not move part of an established mechieti herd out of its territory—or one had the remnant trying to join the others cross-country and tearing up fences and crops in the process. Even if it had been a small hunt, the lord would have brought an established herd in for the use of his guests, and then moved back a small herd, following the hunt. One did not believe Lord Tatiseigi himself still rode. But his staff would. Out of such events came the meat for table, the meat for market, meat for all the people of the province, the cull of game before the coming winter. Hunters from every Atageini village and town would have participated.

“They may or may not have been completely forthcoming about the deficiencies or the strength of the defenses,” Banichi said. “They had already activated the southeastern perimeter defenses last night, when we arrived.” That would be, precisely, the Kadigidi boundary. “They say there had been nuisance activity, spies, that sort of thing—likely because of the ship in the heavens. The Atageini raised defenses on the others today, repaired the one we blew, and have privately called on the various town-aijiin to take other precautions, asking them to avoid conflict with outsiders and to avoid the boundaries, the usual sort of thing. The Taibeni girl left some time ago, with two men in escort. She will likely have passed the gates by now.”

Things were moving.

Moving in the hall, too. Footsteps passed their door at a high rate of speed, drawing a look from his staff.

Jago got up and went to stand near the door, not opening it, but listening. She shot back an anxious look.

“There is some little disturbance,” she said, from that auditory vantage, and her hand was on her sidearm, unconsciously or not. She made the hand sign for man, and run.

The staff got up from their chairs. Bren shut his computer, rising, listening, his heart beating a little faster. The dowager’s rooms were in the direction toward which those steps had run. The boy’s were in the direction from which they had come. But the steps were heavy, a man’s.

Second set of hand-signals, Banichi to Jago, and she unlocked the door, opened it a crack, then looked out, and went outside.

Banichi followed, hand on his sidearm, not quite going so far as to draw a weapon in an allied house, but a heartbeat away from that move. The door stayed ajar. Bren stood still, not retreating as he ought to the neighboring room, but again, it was an allied house, in which they had basic confidence. Tano and Algini were on either side of him, Tano a little to the fore, protective position relative to the door. They signalled a move out of line with the window. Algini moved instantly to check that, and evidently saw nothing alarming.

More ru

Jago came back, ru

“Nandi,” she said. “Cajeiri is not in his apartment. The window is open, the alarm is disabled, and no one is in the apartment.”

“Damn.” The thought was instant and ominous.

Tano and Algini headed for the door, going out the way Banichi had gone, doubtless to have a firsthand look for how and why.

But it was foreseeable. They’d gone, they’d gotten out of the house. Banichi reported Antaro had left on her mission, and now the boy and Jegari had vanished? Enemy action?

No. They were all three of them going, fortunate three, sticking together, while the house staff had been in a meeting and nobody had been expecting it—a human could at least hope that was the case, and not that some Kadigidi assassin had gotten in.

“The outlying defenses are still down,” Bren recalled. Had not this boy grown up on human novels, human stories, human notions of heroes and desperate adventures? “I know exactly what they have done, Jago-ji. They have gone with Antaro. We should check the stables.”