Deliverer

Stay put? Make a break for it down the ditch? He had no idea what to do.

His pocket com vibrated, like electric shock.

He grabbed it out of his pocket, flipped it open, and ducked low, back against the wall. “Who?” he asked.

“Btayi! Aeit eiga posii!”

It took him half a second to realize that sharp, clear tone was Jago’s voice and a heartbeat more to recognize and translate the out-of-context language. Kyo. Uncrackable by the southerners.

“Aeit makki.” Vocabulary eluded him. Wall. What the hell was wall? And how was she coming through that clear? “Topik! Aeit topik! Punjo’kui. Uwe aik haeit!”

“Kaie.”

She knew now where they were. We’re all right, he’d said. And: Don’t come here! because he and Cajeiri were safe where they were and man’chi would surely pull her and Banichi to risk their necks to get to him—Guild-instilled discipline might dictate something else, which was why they’d kept going when they had gotten separated, but come to him, they would, if he called, and he didn’t have any such— Something exploded, out beyond the front yard, an eruption of fire through the trees, illumining the orchard, highlighting the damned lander that was still thumping about in the wreckage of the porch as if it had gotten completely confused. That was their relay. That might even be driven by the station.

Then something major blew, and a fireball the size of a bus ballooned up, casting the far end of the yard in light, illumining the trees, and the wreckage. Pieces of metal began to come down, one heavy lump slamming down like the fist of God, right in front of their position.

Cajeiri popped his head up. He grabbed the boy and held him flat as a piece of sheet metal fell down right over them, providing cover, but near deafening them with the impact on the rocks.

“Ow!” Cajeiri breathed.

“Are you all right, young sir?”

“One is crushed. My leg—”

“Some vehicle blew up on the road,” he said, out of breath, and, hearing shouts and gunfire break out, he got up on one knee, struggling around past the piece of metal to get another look over the wall.

A dozen or so of someone not theirs was coming toward them, and in the light of fires touched off by the explosion, he saw Guild uniforms. He fumbled into his coat pocket, laid his hand on his gun.

“Get out,” he hissed at Cajeiri. “Get down the ditch to the lake, go left, and keep going.”

“Left, nandi! Right is—”

“Gods unfortunate, go!” No time. He opened fire at the one in civilian dress, the only one not going to be armored, as Cajeiri scrambled to do as he was told. That man dropped, the onrushing mass balked, several moving to retrieve the fallen man, and the lot veered off to the back yard, dammit, in the very direction he’d just sent Cajeiri. He fired three times more, at legs, which also weren’t armored, and hoped to God he was right which side was which.

He scrambled down the flagstone ditch, gun in hand, as fast as he could, while shots blew chips off the rocks and the stones of the wall over his head.

Second heavy explosion. He heard the lander thump, thump-thumping down the yard, and fire pinged off something.

“Halt!” a voice yelled, amplified and echoing off the rocks. “Halt!”

Fire redoubled. He reached the end of the ditch, and just slid off the eroded end of the drainage, trying to make speed and just get the hell wherever Cajeiri was.

Hands grabbed his coat, hauled at him. Cajeiri had found him, and he flung an arm around the boy and dragged him up and behind a jut of rock, while fire and light exploded—the whole damned house was afire, now, and the lander stood outlined against the surrounding woods, blinking with lights and threatening.

“Shall we run?” Cajeiri asked.

Good question. Dive out there and risk getting spotted, or continue to try to be part of the rock? He didn’t know what to do.

“Nand’ Bren!” Cajeiri exclaimed, and grabbed his sleeve and tugged him around to look at the lake.

There was a boat coming in. There were two boats. Three. None of them were showing lights, and they were coming hard.

“There is the greatest chance,” Bren said, as calmly as he could, “that they may be from Malguri, young sir, but it would be foolish to rely on it. Stand still. Let them come in. We may find that ditch a good retreat after all.”

“Yes,” a tense young voice answered, very properly, and Cajeiri stood like the rock itself as those boats came close, and veered off toward their end of the icy edge, and with a roar of the motor, ran around. Men in Guild black got out, and one, shorter, faces of all of them lit by the blaze of the burning house up the slope.

My God, he thought. My God. “Tano? Algini?” he called out. And most improbably: “Toby?”

They came ru

“God, Brother! What are you doing here?”

“Message said you were in the soup again,” Toby said, a return embrace nearly crushing the breath out of him. “They weren’t wrong. Who blew up?”

“I don’t know.” He changed languages, or meant to, but Tano and Algini had already headed off, likely on unit-to-unit with each other, and, he hoped, with Banichi and Jago somewhere up above.

He put the safety on his gun and tried for his pocket com, hoping to find out.

“Hi, there!” Cajeiri said to Toby. “I know you!”

“That you do,” Toby said. “Glad you’re safe, nandi.”

He got the pocket com, held it to his ear, heard, blessed sound, Banichi’s voice telling Algini and Tano they were a shade late, but they could come in on the yard.

Then Jago’s saying, “Murini is dead. His man’chi is broken. A bullet found him, and the Guild attending him wish to withdraw.”

“They will report to Headquarters,” Algini said then. “They will leave all weapons and turn up at Guild Headquarters, or be hunted .”

“They wish to take Murini to the Taisigin Marid,” Jago said.

Not even to Murini’s own clan, the Kadagidi, Bren thought. That said something.

The last throw made. The final try. The rebellion was done.

“We need to notify the dowager,” Bren said. His heart rate, which had hammered away for the last hour, began to slow, the strength to run out of him, and he was aware of knees battered and bruised, palms not much better, and a keen desire to sit down right where he was and not hear anything explode for the next while.

“We’ve got a radio in the boat,” Toby said.

“What in hell are you doing here?” he asked.

“Well, Tano and Algini had found us, and then the message got there, about the aiji’s son, and you going after them, so they just gave orders at the airport, refueled in Shejidan, and we came straight ahead from there. Too late to overtake you. But when the dowager’s man phoned Malguri for help, we went down to the boats. They’ve got help up there in the other fortress—”

“The Haidamar. The riders got there?”

“The whole lot, help from the other neighbor on the lake—”

“Lady Drien. So they’re all right?”

“Seems they are. But the boats were the quickest way across, and I figured I might be useful. If there’s one thing I know—”

“It’s boats,” Bren said, and became aware of a pair of young ears following all of it, but not necessarily understanding every word, in a world that was no longer the ship. “Nandi,” he said in Ragi, “your great-grandmother seems to be safe. Cenedi called Malguri and got help across the lake. We are safe. We can take the boats back to Malguri dock.”

“We would very much like supper,” Cajeiri said. “And we would be very glad if Great-grandmother came across the lake, too.”

17

A glass of wine for the grownups, and tea for the young gentleman.