Pretender

Then he had to dive off this bus, try to get hold of the dowager and talk sense into her in precisely those terms—appealing to technology which she and her household could understand, alone of atevi within his reach.

If he could reason with her at all at this point. If she hadn’t taken some damned public stand from which she couldn’t back downc He would send Banichi to talk to Cenedi. That was the one agency that could persuade the dowager—get Cenedi to take his side. With reason. With logic. And a concrete plan.

First thing in the plan, they had to overtake that car.

The estate road joined the general provincial road at the southern estate gateway. The bus rolled through broad open gates, still not foremost among the buses that had set out— notably not the foremost, Bren thought, seeing how the lights went on up the curve their column made, and he would bet the dowager’s car was up in the lead by now. He heard the ti

My God, my God, he thought, feeling that chill run down his back. She’s challenging Murini head-on, no question. She’s using Tatiseigi’s communications system. If that doesn’t bring airplanes down on us with bombs, nothing will. Does she want that?

If Tabini starts dropping those illegal gas-bombs himself, all restraint goes on their side and oursc but he’s the liberal: he can conceivably do things like that, can’t he? Murini, with his conservative claims—he can’t. He daren’t. And it’s exactly the sort of thing the dowager wouldn’t stick at, not in this situation, even if all hell breaks loose.

No phones at the station that will let me get through to Mospheira, no radio that won’t be monitored. Shawn can’t order an intervention without going to the legislature and the legislature won’t move in time. No way I can stop this, not once that call to the tashrid has gone public, and Mospheiran military intervention wouldn’t help Tabini’s cause, anyway.

We’re in it. We’re in it for sure.

He had his pistol in his pocket. Tano had told him he should take better care of it. Clean it more often. Truth was, he hated carrying it, hated thinking he had it, hated ever needing it, treasure it as he did because of the source from which it came. Now he thought he should follow Tano’s advice and clean the thing before he had to fire it, if he didn’t set it off by accident in all this bouncing about.

He didn’t have a cleaning kit. Needed a brush. He didn’t want to be handling it with the boy next to him.

He didn’t want it to fail him, either. He got up again, made his way as far as Algini’s seat, which he and Tano shared by turns, the bus having many more people than seats. “Gini-ji.” He passed Algini the weapon, holding on with his elbow around a pole. “This needs cleaning, if you would do me the kindness, Gini-ji.”

Algini took it, ejected the clip and the shell in chamber, not even thinking of the motion, one was sure. Natural as breathing. An occupation for his hands. And Bren took a less painful grip on the seat back railing, held on as the bus lurched and bounced.

“Is there a chance we may overtake the dowager at the refueling stop, Gini-ji? Is there a chance Banichi can reach Cenedi?”

“We shall see what we do there. We may lose certain vehicles, as this assemblage drinks the fuel up, nandi. It will be a difficult matter to get so many vehicles to the capital, all with fuel. And some will not withstand the trip, mechanically.”

Clearly they could go stringing dead vehicles and stranded people from here to Shejidan, and it was no good fate awaiting those thus stranded, if their advance failed or stalled. “One has had an unpleasant thought. What if they figure out our path, and start blowing the fueling stations in front of us, Gini-ji?”

“This is our gravest concern, nandi,” Algini said, and blew through the open barrel before he added. “Certain fast-moving private cars are going ahead of the column. We hope to take fuel stations in advance. We hope, too, that certain local folk in favor of us will think of our needs and guard their own premises from destruction, such as they can.”

“Against Guild?” Ordinary folk contesting the Assassins’ Guild seemed the weakest link in their whole plan, even ahead of the vulnerability of the fuel supply, and the sheer mass of all these hungry vehicles. It seemed uncharacteristically fragile, this threat they mounted, even with the support of lords and professional Guild: Most of their supporters were farmers and shopkeepers, completely untrained except in hunting. “They can stall us out, Gini-ji, can they not? They can strand us in the middle of the countryside.”

Algini rarely met a direct question, or returned a direct gaze from anyone. In the dark, fitfully lit by bouncing headlamps from other vehicles, he not only gazed back, but did so with uncommon earnestness. “That they can do, Bren-ji.”

“What, then, shall we do? Are we to fight, wherever we run out and stop? Or have we a plan to get to cover?”

“The vehicles of high priority will refuel more often than absolute need, and if we are stopped—indeed we may have to fight, nandi, but one trusts a number of measures are being taken in advance of us.”

Algini lapsed into the passive voice precisely where the critical who would logically be other Guild, as clearly as if he had shouted it. Guild or operatives of the aiji, which would still be Guild—were implied to be taking those measures, out in front of the column.

That answered his query as to whether the aiji and his supporters had taken leave of their senses.

“We killed the Guild officers, Gini-ji.” Implying that the rest of the Guild might not be favorable to such action, and fishing for information.

“We did,” Algini said, clearly unwilling to disburse too much information to anyone. And then he added: “But do not by any means take Gegini-nadi as the Guild, Bren-ji. He elected himself.”

Not Gegini-nandi, then, no title so high accorded to the Guildmaster who had walked into Tatiseigi’s sitting room and started laying down the law. The late Gegini-nadi, then, and his associates were no longer an issue in this action, or not an active one. Algini hinted there was no majority behind him, and did not think that the Guild as a whole would be too disturbed.

And Algini, their demolitions man, Bren suddenly suspected, had been intimately involved in taking them out.

Never the most forward of his staff, Algini. Always quiet, always ready to slip into the background. In Algini’s Guild, the thought suddenly struck him, one never sought publicity, one never discussed Guild affairs, one never gave up one’s secrets, not even to one’s closest non-Guild associates.

Perhaps, dared one think, not even to other Guildsmen?

And that dark thought having struck him, he looked down at Algini’s light-limned features, so tranquil a face, and he wondered what Algini actually was within this most secretive of all Guilds.

Granted Banichi and Jago had come from Tabini’s staff— exactly what agency had lent him Tano and Algini? And why, after all these years, did he know so little of Algini’s opinions?

Curious thought to have occured to him, bouncing along in the dark, face to face with Algini over a piece of enigma Algini politely—and correctly—declined to discuss. It was an embarrassing position, having asked questions, having gotten another, deeper enigma back.