Pretender

“The aiji ordered you,” he said to Jago. “Did he? He didn’t rely on his own security.”

Jago’s hand closed on his wrist. “We may die in this effort, Bren-ji. And our Guild resists emotional decisions. But this time, yes, we are obliged to go.”

“The paidhi is likewise obliged,” he said, closing his hand atop hers, a contact atevi ordinarily did not invite or accept. “We humans have our own feelings. We understand.” He did. Tabini had called in a debt, drafted his staff, the dowager’s, his own. They could get killed. But if it was the time to do it, if his staff was going, then he damned sure was. “Are the Atageini going into this on the same grounds? Are they solidly with us?”

“They must,” Jago said, and it made sense. Tatiseigi’s historic premises now had suffered at least two rooms in utter wreckage, the upstairs premises and the room immediately below, not to mention the lily foyer, the stables, and the driveway hedge.

Ridiculous items on the surface—but a matter of Atageini sovereignty.

Add to the stack of circumstances, the self-claimed Guild-master was dead within an hour of his arrival under Tatiseigi’s roof—it could be argued it had been about an hour short of their own intention to assassinate Tabini—a first strike against Ragi power, but the Atageini had been the site of the response, and they had had to make a fast decision.

As Murini had been prepared to make. His own shaken wits informed him that if Guild had come in to assassinate Tabini, it was not going to be the final blow, and it was not going to stop any time soon. There was much, much more intended.

Tatiseigi had had no choice but become involved—the epicenter of the event, exposed to any outrage, begi

An entire lifetime of evading conflict until the dust was already settling, a lifetime of being moderately obstructionist to Tabini’s modernization policy, and suddenly Tatiseigi was taking his whole province to war behind Tabini-aiji to put him back in power.

He found his way back to his seat, Cajeiri meanwhile kneeling and talking volubly to his two young escorts, who held the seat behind. Cajeiri turned around as Bren eased past that obstruction and sat down in his own place next to the window.

“The other buses are supposed to keep this bus on the inside,”

Cajeiri informed him. “So snipers will have no targets. But we should keep our heads down if shooting starts, nand’ paidhi, Nawari said so, because it will be very heavy guns and they could blow this bus to bits.”

Cheerful lad. “Whose bus is this, does one have any notion?

“It belongs to Dur,” Cajeiri said, which was Rejiri’s clan. “The lord of Dur and his bodyguard and the fishers’ association, too, nandi! They came in from the train station while the young lord took the plane! —I know where Dur is,” he added, apropos of nothing about the bus itself. Ilisidi had kept him at his lessons during their flight, and he did know his provinces. “Dur helped mani-ma in previous times.”

“That they did, young sir,” Bren murmured. He had an i

If any of them lived long enough to remember this current madness. But it was what a proper nobleman said, regarding a favor. Favors lived long past the favor-doers. Favors bound the generations together. It was one of those givens, that a house never forgot an obligation. And his house must not—if he could have any progeny. The thought had dawned on him long before this, that this boy came as close as he himself could ask, the child of his teaching, the boy he was going to send into years beyond his reach.

Remember them. Remember the favors, boy. Keep the old alliances.

“And if bullets do start flying, young sir, I shall rely on you to hit the floor with me. You and your bodyguard. And no guns, if you please. This is a situation where experience counts. One is obliged to be an extremely accurate shot, firing out these windows. There are too many allies wandering around out there.”

“One hears, nandi.” Cajeiri slumped down a little in his seat, arms folded, perhaps remembering his own baptism in fire, not long removed, when he had, though justifiably, killed a man. Tabini’s son was not, of course, if one should ask him, afraid. Tabini’s son, the dowager’s great-grandson, was given no opportunity to be afraid.

Or at least he had never had permission to show it. Delight in gore was, perhaps, his one means of defying the things that scared him very badly.

“Good lad,” Bren said, resisting any human notion he might have of patting the boy on the shoulder. The days when he could do that were passing, hurtling away by the second, as fast as the boy’s childhood. “Brave lad.”

He ought in fact to tell Cajeiri to move away from him and not come near him again on this entire journey. The windows were no protection from snipers, and he was in all respects conspicuous, one pale target shining in any scope. It would be the ultimate tragedy if someone aiming at him accidentally killed the heir.

Some vehicle passed them in the dark, two gold headlamps and an entirely improbable sight coming up from behind—an open convertible, with driver, guard, and two conspicuous occupants, the passenger seats facing backward as well as forward. He leaned forward, not quite believing his eyes, and finding they had not deceived him. It was indeed Lord Tatiseigi and Ilisidi in that open car, passing them at a rate that had to tax that antique vehicle.

One had thought Lord Tatiseigi had only owned one automobile, and that surely gone with the stables. Clearly not.

Cajeiri had to see what he was looking at so concentratedly, and leaned hard against him, peering out the window.

“Great-grandmother and great-uncle!” Cajeiri exclaimed in distress. “With Cenedi, one thinks, nandi, in that old car!”

“Indeed it is,” he said, and had a very uncomfortable feeling about what he saw, so uncomfortable a feeling that he excused himself out of his seat and went up the aisle to point out the sight to Jago and Tano. “The aiji-dowager and Lord Tatiseigi just passed us in an open car!”

Tano bent for a look out the windows. So did Jago.

“This is very reckless,” Bren protested, compelled by atevi idiom to a towering understatement. “This is extremely reckless of them, nadiin-ji. What can they be thinking?”

Jago cast him a shadowy look which, in the near dark, he could not read; but she went farther forward to inform Banichi of the situation.

Ilisidi, deciding to make the grand gesture, Bren thought to himself. Tatiseigi, who had been late to every battlefield, whose house had been assaulted, was making his own grand, potentially fatal gesture, right along with the aiji-dowager, who had mixed herself in every conflict of the last half century and more. Now she had shamed the old reprobate into joining her, one romantic fling at destinyc God, no. They couldn’t.

He staggered his way, burdened with the armored jacket, down the aisle, intent on having his own word with Banichi.

“Banichi-ji, they are trying to kill themselves. They are trying to compel the rebels, are they not, by force of example and man’chi and the dowager’s allies? We ca