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They had left him—left him altogether, which they rarely did. She was off down the trackside.
His job was to stay low and stay out of trouble, and this he was resolved to do. “Come,” he said to Cajeiri, spotting a nook beside the massive drive wheels, a nook that led right down under the engine itself, a place grimy and black with grease, but a veritable fortress against most anything that might come.
“What if the train should move, nandi?” Cajeiri asked.
“Then lie flat,” he said. But the train had gotten itself into a position at the end of the line, only the roundtable could face it about, and that only after the cars were detached. Their train was not moving, and could not be moved, no matter a deafening explosion that filled the track area with stinging smoke.
Cajeiri moved to get out. Bren grabbed the coat and hauled him back.
“Great-grandmother,” the boy said.
“The aiji-dowager can take care of herself, young sir. Stay with me. Guild is positioning itself out there, and that thick smoke is part of it. This is not the time for us to be wandering loose.”
He could not read the boy’s face in a dark now compounded by thick smoke. Next, Bren thought, the lights might go. But he heard distant shouts, people calling out for someone to move south.
They were certainly not Guild, he said to himself. He maintained one arm about the boy, the other snugging his computer close. The only flaw in his plan that he could see was that his own staff might not realize he had gone to cover, but he had no means to tell them except to use a pocket com, and that might not be prudent—even if they had time to answer a phone call. He heard little short whistles, low and varied in tone—difficult to get a fix where they were, but those were Guild, likely their own Assassins moving and advising one another of their movements in a code that seemed to shift by agreementc much as he had heard it, he recognized only those signals his staff made with the intent he understand.
Boom. And rattle. The ground itself shook. The lights dimmed significantly, not that there was a thing to see from their vantage between the wheels, and meanwhile the smoke had sunk even to low places, stinging the eyes and making his nose run. He blotted at it, and found his calves cramping as he squatted there, not a good thing if they had to run for it.
Someone moved near them. He saw legs, out between the wheels, but the smoke and the shadow obscured identity.
“Bren-ji.”
Jago’s voice.
“Here,” he said, and let go of Cajeiri’s coat. The boy crawled out ahead of him, and he exited on eye level with Jago, who leaned on a rifle, kneeling on the end of a wooden tie beside the rail.
“We are making progress,” Jago said. “We have secured the platform. Forces are moving up inside the Bu-javid itself, level by level. The Guild has concentrated its efforts.”
“On which side?” he was constrained to ask.
“Tabini-aiji has taken possession of the Bu-javid,” was Jago’s answer, wrapped in the obscurity the Guild favored. “And Murini is confirmed to have left the airport, by air.”
No damned specific information about the Guild, not even from Jago, not so the human mind could gather it.
“We are wi
“Baji-naji,” she answered him, that atevi shrug, and said then, “we have to move.”
Something else blew up, shaking the concrete walls of the trackside. Jago pushed him into motion, and Bren grabbed Cajeiri’s sleeve and shoved him ahead in the stinging smoke.
Where are we going? it occurred to him to ask. But they reached the short upward ladder, and Jago shoved them aside to go first, taking it in three moves, a rifle swinging from her shoulder.
Bren shoved Cajeiri up next, and followed right up against him, pushing the boy over the rim as Jago seized first Cajeiri and then him, dragging them into motion. Smoke was thicker above, stinging their eyes. Shapes—support columns, pieces of equipment, baggage trucks, moving figures—appeared like shadows and vanished again in haze. They crossed the broad platform, ru
There were shouts, whistles, and they dodged around a column.
Are we going upstairs? Going up into the heart of the Bu-javid seemed to Bren a dangerous proposition, to put themselves into the fragile mechanism of the lift system, the towering shafts an easy target for sabotage. He was not anxious to do that, but he was not about to protest anything Jago thought necessary.
The wall and the bank of lifts came up at them, a darker gray in the smoke, and several shadows by it—these were surely allies: Jago had her rifle in hand, and did not raise it. Whistles sounded.
Jago answered in kind, short and sharp, and they reached the carpeted vicinity of the lifts themselves.
“Nandi.” Tano was there. So, for that matter, was Tabini-aiji, with his guard. Tabini snatched his son into his care, welcome event. Bren bent over, catching his breath, wiping his eyes. Lights were at half. Such lights as there were lit blazed in the high overhead like multiple suns in fog, contributing a milky glow aloft, but no distinction to the shadowy figures out across the terminal platform.
“We are going up,” he heard. It was Tabini’s voice, leaving no doubt that was exactly what they would be doing.
No one protested, not even the aiji’s security. A door opened in the wall, a clearer light shining within, where there was no smoke—and it was not the lifts Tabini proposed to take, but the emergency stairs, Bren sawc emergency stairs, atevi-scale, and the highest climb in all of Shejidan.
Guildsmen pressed their way into the stairwell slightly ahead of Tabini, and the rest of them were clearly going with Tabini, affording no time for questions, no time, either, to ask where Banichi was, or Tano or Algini, none of whom were immediately in sight. Jago pushed Bren and the boy up metal stairs that resounded with the thunder of climbers above them.
Up and up the steps, three landings that had no exit, a space occupied only by the height of the station roof, a fourth landing, where several Assassins stood waiting to wave them on up and up.
Bren found his legs burning, his heart pounding—Jago had the weight of the rifle, a sidearm, and ammunition, and he could only manage the computer and his pistol, himself, with the atevi-scale steps and a body that had spent the last couple of years sitting far, far too much. The rest of their force climbed behind them—he dared not slow them down, so he sweated and climbed, while his vision went hazy and his breath tore through his throat.
He bumped Jago hard when, at a landing, they reached an abrupt stop. He couldn’t see, couldn’t catch his breath, everything gone to tu
Then Jago’s free arm came around him, warm leather, great strength, absolute concern. He managed to straighten his back, then to get the edges of a real breath and center his haze of vision on an open door.
Tabini and his guard occupied that doorway. There were figured carpets in clear light. Paneled walls. He didn’t know precisely what floor it was, but maybe the first of the residential levels, above that of the courts and the legislature. He heard shots, somewhere down that hall, thought incongruously, hazily, of that fragile paneling.
“We are in, Bren-ji,” Jago said, heaving at him. “One is sure the aiji’s forces are ahead of us.”
Beat and beat and beat. The heart had survived it. Cajeiri was safe. Bren flung his other arm around Cajeiri’s shoulders, and Cajeiri’s came about his heaving ribcage, and there was nothing for it but to walk, Jago with her rifle at the ready.