Deliverer

Malguri staff, at full strength, having drawn up additional servants from the township, bustled about breakfast, which looked to be an all-out affair, on short notice. Cajeiri and Jegari had gotten together, Jegari with his arm in a sling, which had gotten considerable respect from Cajeiric and an enthusiasm from the young gentleman which had thoroughly embarrassed Jegari and gotten a reproving Look from his great-grandmother.

Bren just held his cup in newly bandaged hands and was very glad of the ice bag on his right knee, the foot propped on a footstool, and both his worlds being very hale and well this morning.

Toby—the odd man in the scene—had brought along his fishing-trip best, a clean khaki coat and clean denims, but another plane had arrived in the last confused hours, finally bringing the luggage out from Shejidan, so there sat Toby, looking a little uncommonly short-haired in a gentleman’s proper lace shirt and morning coat, but very proper, all the same, and very much cosseted by the maids. Tano and Algini were huddled in a corner conversation with the rest of the Guild present— Banichi had gotten off with a sliced hand (hand to hand with another Guildsman) and Jago with a sore shoulder (falling debris from the explosion), while Cenedi and his men had gotten off entirely unscathedc but all of them had tales to tell. Jegari had been determined to stand and attend his young lord, wobbly as he was from concussion; but Cajeiri had ordered him to sit down and have a cup of sweetened tea; and now the two boys chattered away in lowered voices, with animated gestures from Cajeiri as he told his young attendant all the gruesome details he had missed.

Murini was confirmed dead, of small caliber arms fire, uncommonly small caliber. Bren took a deep swallow of wine and tried not to think about aiming at a man in that oncoming line of attackers, but he would do it again, he knew he would. He was sure Banichi and Jago knew exactly who had done it, and whether they told anyone, he left to their judgment: he needed no deeper personal feuds with either the Kadagidi or the Taisigin Marid.

Lord Caiti was also dead—had been dead when they entered the Haidamar. Lord Rodi was dead, the poison having had its ultimate effect about the time the company holding the Haidamar had reached Malguri by phone. Lady Agilisi had gone home to her lowland residence in Catien, in no high good favor, but alive, and now needed to restore herself to the dowager’s good graces by a thorough house cleaning.

While Lady Drien— Lady Drien had come to Malguri to capitalize on her new relationship with her cousin, to sit, looking a little travelworn, but refreshed. She sat, starched and ramrod straight, awaiting breakfast, and quite proud to be participating in the exchange of experiences and timetables. Staff from Cobesthen had arrived by boat, and would take the lady home after breakfast, by which time, Bren presumed, all of them would be very content to collapse into bed and let breakfast settle. He tried to count when he had last seen a mattress. It seemed a while.

The dowager herself had spoken on the phone to Tabini, shocking event. The dowager was not inclined to use telephones.

And then Cajeiri had gotten on the line and blurted out a wild adventure involving digging through a wall, trying to electrocute the guards (but changing his mind) and then watching a giant robot wreck a housec As usual, with Cajeiri, it was all, all true. Bren figured Tabini would come to appreciate this tendency, as the rest of them did.

Always take Cajeiri’s accounts seriously, that was the way to manage the young rascal. Never assume he wouldn’t, couldn’t, or hadn’t.

Bren found himself with a phone call of his own he had to make, once he got a secure line, one on which he could pose a few plain questions to Jase—questions like: what in hell have you been dropping all over the continent? And why?

He’d shed the gun, the locator, all of that, when he’d had a warm bath—which had nearly put him to sleep—and changed for breakfast. “We knew where you were,” Jago told him, “and we believe that Jase-nandi did.”

Now didn’t that say something of that thing’s capabilities, too?

He recalled how Jago’s voice had come through the com quite clearly all of a sudden, when they were in proximity to that robot, and so had everyone else’s voices, at the end.

Relay station, hell. Juggernaut. A lander that could get up and walk.

That sort of gift from the heavens had stirred hostilities in the East, and led Lord Caiti and Lord Rodi to try to deal with Murini instead of supporting Tabini’s party, almost certainly contributing to everything that had gone on.

And if Murini had been a leader of better qualities, and not as suspicious, and not expecting treachery out of Caiti and most anyone else he dealt with, he might not, in fact, have gotten treachery served to him in the end.

Murini had been preemptively fast on the trigger when he thought he was betrayed: Caiti had been acting suspiciously from the moment Murini, arriving from the airport at Cie, had wanted to see the kidnapped boy—who turned out to be gone, to Caiti’s great distress.

And in that confusion of Caiti’s fear at having lost the boy, and Murini’s suspicion of Caiti’s motives, someone had moved first and shots had broken out—the great disadvantage when Guild met non-Guild security. If any of the participants had been of any better character than they had been, affairs might have gone better for the conspirators than they had gone—but they were not, and things had gone very ill indeed the instant Murini had incorrectly concluded he was in a trap. Caiti had reacted, so Ilisidi had gotten from Rodi before he died, by actually attempting to assassinate Murini on the spot. But his guards had been in no wise up to the deed, since half of them had been out desperately chasing Cajeiri.

So Caiti had died, the staff had all fled or died as Murini’s people had gathered from Lord Rodi that the boy really had been there and escaped. They had clear tracks to follow—those of Caiti’s men tracking the boy—so Murini had taken out in pursuit, intending to find the boy and link up with their bus on the road—an airport bus from Cie, as they had guessed, a vehicle which was now in pieces, thanks to Banichi. Lord Rodi, realizing he was left behind in a considerable embarrassment, and faced with explaining either to Murini or to Ilisidi, had swallowed poison which had turned out to be a miscalculation: Ilisidi had been quite willing to let him live. So he died with that knowledge.

And on one other point Murini’s intelligence had badly failed him: he had not been informed the Cadienein-ori runway was still blocked and that Guild out of Shejidan had by then taken control of it—a force now modestly and quietly withdrawing now that the heir was safe, a force vanishing back into the woodwork and pretending it had never, oh, never operated in the East. So Murini would have been trapped there— and been trapped with Cajeiri for a hostage, right in the middle of a firefight.

This had not, of course, happened.

So Murini was confirmed dead, along with most of his Guild bodyguard, two staffers from the Haidamar had gotten back alive, of the five who had gone in pursuit, and it looked very much as if the northernmost district on the lake was now up for inheritance, regardless of whoever Caiti’s heir might be down in the plains. Bren had not tracked the heredity of the Eastern lords as precisely as he knew those of the west. He thought Caiti’s likely beneficiary was a third cousin, and there was a niece, in the case of Lord Rodi.

But the question was very much whether Malguri was going to allow the summer residence in the Haidamar, which it might consider strategic and of interest, to be inherited along with the Saibai’tet—Caiti’s main holding, down in the lowlands, neighboring Agilisi and Rodi. It might claim the Haidamar, if the dowager was in a mood, and she was, and the lowlanders might whistle for their rights to it.