Deceiver

Get back to the bus? It was a sitting target, even if it hadn’t gotten so much as a ding in its painted panels on this venture.

Better to be where they were. Unless things went very, very bad in there.

And God, there were so many ways it—

Blast from inside. Grenade, or boobytrap. There were wires that could take a head or foot off. There were a hundred ways the Guild could kill intruders in a territory they had prepared for invasion; and Bren stood there against the bushes trying not to think of that.

Then massive fire erupted inside the building.

Followed by a deafening silence.

Stinging smoke wafted out of the doorway.

And out of that smoke, Jago appeared on a leisurely retreat, spoke code into her com, and looked as if she had understood something in the instant before her eyes shifted for one split-second toward Bren and Geigi.

“The aiji’s men have come into the house from the garden entry,” Jago said, watching down that hall again, “meeting ours.”

“Are they all right?” Bren asked in a low voice—not wishing to distract Jago from business; and in fact Jago’s look of concentration never broke from the hall.

“They have asked the same of us,” Jago said under her breath. “There are targets on the grounds. Probably it will be best to move inside the house, Bren-ji. Now.”

Bren moved, jammed his hand into his pocket to find the butt of the pistol, and, with Jago, Geigi, and Tano and Algini, rounded the corner into the hallway.

Banichi, two of Geigi’s men and a handful of other Guild were the only persons standing under a high pall of smoke in that hall. Two people in civilian dress were sitting on the floor, knees tucked up, against the wall—denoting their noncombatant status, and inconveniently far from any side door. Those were servants.

Two other Guild lay face down in a pool of blood. He and Geigi were still near the door, with their bodyguards; and Tano, stepping to the side, drew Bren against the wall there— a safer place than mid-hall, in case anybody should burst out of one of the side rooms firing, Bren thought belatedly. Geigi was in the same defensive position, their bodyguards arrayed as a living shield between them and anybody appearing from down the hall, and Algini, at their rear, guarding against anybody trying to retreat into the house and coming at them from behind.

Not an optimum approach, if they wanted to save Pairuti and what he knew. Bren looked at Geigi and saw distress: not an optimum homecoming, either, with dead in the hallway and house servants trying desperately to keep out of the line of hair-triggered Guild. Banichi signaled the two servants they could move to safety, and they quietly did so, getting into a side room, shutting that door.

So they were the only possessors of the hall, now. And the whole house grew very quiet for a moment.

Then shooting erupted outside, somewhat to the rear of the house, and again from the roof right over their heads. Footsteps sounded on the ceiling.

Attics. Attics in this district were a hazard, and this house, like Najida, like Kajiminda, was in the peak-roofed, sprawling style that had a full reach up there. Bren cast a worried look up, tracking that sound.

“They are ours up there, nandi,” Tano said then.

That was a relief. What was going on out on the grounds was another matter. Fire kept up.

And their chances of finding Barb alive grew less and less—if she had ever been here in the first place.

One had, lifelong, become philosophical about Tabini’s little surprises. Bren had told himself repeatedly it was how Tabini stayed in power. It was the way atevi managed things, and it was not the paidhi’s place to critique it. The paidhi, however, hadaccepted appointments—had risen as high in politics as it was possible to rise, infuriating Tabini’s opposition, astonishing his supporters.

And here he was, having involved himself in a district where peace had never existed, not since the War of the Landing, when the Ragi atevi agreement to pull two aboriginal peoples off Mospheira and settle them on this coast had thwarted their own major rivals, the Marid, in their grab for the same coast.

A quiet district, yes, under the threat the central region posed to any breach of order; but not peace, nothing like peace.

And the paidhi-aiji had been oblivious to the undercurrents sweeping toward an attack on the Marid, despite Tabini’s personally reco

And it was Tabini, of course, who had givenhis resident human an estate in the plain middle of an old, volatile situation.

Tabini might well have known the district was a tinderbox when he’d cleared Bren to leave the capital and go vacationing on the coast. Tabini claimed not to have known. But that was not guaranteed to be the truth. Tabini was completely capable of sending somebody in to stir the pot.

God, at the moment he so wished he’d just gotten a hotel in town.

Another burst of gunfire, right out front. He hopedTabini’s men were enough. This was not a good position, standing here in the front hall with the doors open.

Better than standing out there in the bushes, however.

And Geigi—he threw a look Geigi’s direction and caught a grim expression. Hell of a homecoming, all around, first at Kajiminda and now at Targai. Geigi and Geigi’s bodyguard surely had their own sentiments about Tabini’s actions—a human was not, possibly, wired to understand precisely that mix of emotions, the profound draw of man’chi toward Tabini and those aggressive urges of a born leader—literally, a born leader—and the draw of their own duty to Pairuti, who’d made a hash of his leadership of their clan. Grasp what a clash of emotions was going on in Geigi? Probably. Intellectually, he could.

Feel it the way Geigi felt it, in his gut? Not likely.

Have a clearer head than Geigi did at the moment? He might well. He didn’t trust that gentle Geigi wouldn’t order somebody shot.

It had gotten quieter outside all of a sudden. That was either good or bad. If bad, they were in the next place trouble would arrive.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said very quietly. Tano and Algini were on high alert, watching any movement down the long hall, where Banichi and Jago, nearly back to back, were directing men probing other hallways. “How are we doing out there?”

“The aiji’s men have the roof and the tower,” Tano said, “and are reporting no movement on the grounds.”

That was a relief. “Barb-daja. Any sign?”

“No, Bren-ji,” Tano said. “Regretfully, not yet.”

“The resistence is partly local,” Algini said from behind him, without losing his concentration. “Partly outsider. Marid, likeliest, the first shot, that hit the man out front.”

Thus starting a firefight—since all the local Guild, aware of the Filing, were going to assume they were under active attack. Their incursion had had everything under control, they’d been about to draw Pairuti out under a safe conduct and the local Guild had been taking it slowly, trying to get the best possible situation for their lord.

And then somebody had fired and hit probably the Guild senior of Pairuti’s bodyguard, maybe not even aiming at Banichi. The Marid would be completely willing to see the place shot up, Pairuti silenced, his honest Guildsmen dead, and things in as big a mess as they could possibly be.

That added up to Marid infiltration. Pairuti had let these people in, the same way Baiji had done, and they’d taken over, the way they’d taken over Kajiminda.

After a long period of maneuvering to get himself in the right in public opinion, Tabini now had a provocation that would be evident to the whole world.