Pretender

Then it was soft lawn. The Taibeni must be on the move, camp struck, mecheiti all moved out. Their bus gathered speed, following a line of taillights that snaked ahead in the dark, a line of about two dozen or so buses and trucks.

“Where is your father at the moment, young sir?” Bren asked Cajeiri. It was one of those things which ordinarily they might not be supposed to know, but if the boy did know, the knowledge was on this bus already.

“He flew!” Cajeiri said, and did one imagine within that awe a profound indignation that he had been left behind? “Cenedi made up nine gasoline bombs out of wine bottles!— and papa went with nand’ Rejiri, and they are going to drop them on the Kadagidi if they come at us while we move.”

My God, he thought, bombs from airplanes were illegal as hell—and he could no longer restrain himself, no matter the bus was bouncing over the turf in a general advance back toward the hedge and the road. He got to his feet, holding to the seat in front of him, eased his way past Cajeiri, and holding to other seat backs as the bus bucked and jolted over the turf, he searched faces and forms in the dim, diffused light of headlamps behind and taillights ahead. They were passing the estate boundary, crossing past the open gate, and turning off south, he was sure it was south. Toward the train station.

“Jago-ji.” He identified her standing in the aisle with Banichi, and she obligingly moved a few steps back to him, bracing herself against the seat on the other side of the aisle.

“Is the aiji indeed flying with Rejiri, Jago-ji?” he asked. “Are they pla

“Only if they need to, nandi. Only if we come under attack. Such an action is hardly kabiu.”

To say the least. “Do they hope that they can actually land in the capital?”

“By no means, at this moment, nandi. But the young man seems quite skilled at finding landing places in open territory.”

The young man in question had a notorious history of seat-of-the-pants flying. One could only envision some pasturage, some meadow which would set Tabini and the boy alone, with nine—fortunate nine!—damned wine bottles full of petrol, somewhere far removed from help, after making enough noise to alert enemies from half a dozen townships.

“What are we doing, meanwhile?” he asked. “What do we hope to do?”

“We shall go to the capital ourselves,” Jago said. “The paidhi must go.They are calling the legislature, Bren-ji.”

The legislature, in whom there had been, within the day, an outbreak of acute sore throat. A body which had defied a summons from Murini. But Tabini believed it would answer him and come in.

“How has he called them, Jago-ji? Are we public, on the air?” To do anything involving general broadcast would set the whole country in an upheaval—and he had no idea how they would do that.

“We have our means,” Jago said, that we almost certainly encompassed immediate company, her partner, her hijacked Guild, and electronics to which outsiders had no access. They were matters into which prudent outsiders were not supposed to inquire, and into which he had by no means meant to trespass, God help them all. It meant they were not broadcasting for general hearing, and it meant there was far less chance Mospheira knew what was happening right now. It was, as far as a roaring great column of buses could be, a clandestine advance.

“But the Guild officers,” he began, still aching for information, any small bit she could give him. “Have they gotten out a message?”

“These persons were so imprudent as to lodge in an upstairs room in an ancient and hostile building. These historic houses are barrel vault upon barrel vault and massively built—precision in such matters is quite possible.”

“Were we in an upstairs room, nadi!”

A tone of amused shock. “But, Bren-ji, we never allowed enemies to occupy the room beneath us!”

Tatiseigi would have an apoplexy about his missing floor, was all he could think for the moment. The enormity of what his staff had done, in terms of assassinating Guild representatives—perhaps Guild leadership—he could hardly grasp. But no message to Shejidan had gone, it seemed; clandestine hardly described them, and certain forces were likely scrambling to meet their challenge.

And the Guild officers were dead. If the two had imagined that they had actually installed any proper precautions in the room below them, if they had had confidence in the man’chi of someone within the house, in the Atageini staff or otherwise to aid and abet their movements— Clearly someone had prevented those particular precautions from moving into position in the room below. His staff seemed extraordinarily well-briefed on what had happened, even smug, if he could read Jago’s tone.

And he knew their ways. He knew that Banichi had no inclination to be the second man into an action he could much better direct, or to take a purely defensive position when someone aimed at their lives. Neither was Cenedi so inclined, nor was the dowager he served—Tatiseigi might have hesitated, even Tabini might have paused to consider. But the only likely argument between Cenedi and Banichi after two years of ru

The Guild officers, the biggest threat to come at them directly from Murini’s side, hadn’t even made it to supper.

And what did Banichi do next? Now what did one possibly do, when one had blown up one’s own officers, and was ru

At the moment he felt inclined to sink down into the nearest seat and let his stomach settle, but his own seat was a few rows back, and the nearest was occupied, like most of the seats, by an ordinary provincial, a man in a rough canvas jacket, with a hunting rifle in callused hands. The type was everywhere. In all those buses. Tabini was in the airplane, and Banichi and Cenedi were calling the shots, never mind Tabini’s personal bodyguard.

He was suddenly overwhelmed by the scale of it. By the force of what they had launched.

“You should sit down, Bren-ji,” Jago said.

“This is a war we bring, Jago-ji.” Atevi society had known no open warfare since the War of the Landing—skirmishes, yes; civil unrest, yes; sniping between bodyguards of lords in conflict, constantly—but not a conflict that swept up every clan on the continent, flagrantly involving bystanders. Not involving middle-aged men with hunting rifles.

And assassinating Guild officers, the Guild being supposedly the keepers of the law and the peace, the impartial, every-sided court of appealc impartiality and fairness had clearly gone by the board; so had legally mandated support for the sitting aiji. But his staff had delivered an answer for it.

“Bren-ji?”

“Do we hope simply to drive all the way into Shejidan, Jago-ji?”

“Perhaps.” Far too lightly.

“Or are we going to the train station?”

“We refuel there, nandi, at the station pump.”

“And the Guild? Are they moving against us?”

“We have moved to convince certain forces within the Guild, persons of certain man’chi, nandi—that Gegini was no fit leader.”

Not from the grave, he wasn’t, that was quite clear.

Cenedi and Banichi. Extravagant action, high and wide action, of a sort subordinates didn’t undertake on their own.

It was not just to protect him, he thought. It was much beyond that. Banichi and Jago had been Tabini’s staffers before they were his. In the nature of things, there always was one higher man’chi that overrode what they owed to him.

So had Tabini appropriated them? Given them such an order? Or had the dowager herself?

And coordinated it, dammit all. The echoes of that explosion had hardly died before Tabini was airborne, headed into trouble ahead of them, precipitating this flood of buses and trucks.

Follow, Tabini was saying to all who had ever followed him—irresistible as the mecheiti leader, dashing hellbent for whatever destination, in the echoes of that explosion. Atevi of the Ragi man’chi were feeling more than an emotional tug at their hearts. Their whole being plunged toward that leader, pell mell, an attraction not in his wiring. He might be immune for the hour, capable of a second, critical thought—deciding things on love, that slower, more anguished emotion. But his staff wasn’t wired that way. It was the aiji who’d called, and they’d moved. Ruthlessly, comprehensively, without consulting himc dammit.