Peacemaker

“Retired Guild is returning,” Banichi said. “The Missing and the Dead are returning, at the aiji’s order and in his service. Will you shoot, and then face them? Assist us. Or stand down.”

“Banichi,” one said to the senior in a low voice. “That is Banichi.” And the unit senior inside said, “Nadi, we are under orders. Retreat. Retreat now. Quickly.”

Bren didn’t turn his head to see. The four behind them were Tano’s and Algini’s problem. The four immediately in front of them were trying to persuade them to retreat.

“He will not retreat,” Bren said. “Nor will this!” He held the ring in view.

“The aiji’s orders,” Banichi said quietly. “If your man’chi is not to the Shadow Guild, separate yourself from the Guildmaster, or stand in opposition. The Council leadership has committed treason.”

A bell began to ring. Hall overhead lights began to flash. The offices, Bren was thinking. If those offices back there were occupied . . . but the back accesses down that hall were in Cenedi’s territory.

“Shut down your equipment,” Banichi said to the units confronting them. “All of you. Now. Take the aiji’s orders, Daimano’s, Cenedi’s . . . and mine.” It wasn’t working. Not in the four in the background. “Paidhi!” Banichi said.

His job. He was ready for it, on Banichi’s wounded side—he spun around Banichi as Jago did the same with Algini. A flashbang sailed past him into the i

Turn and duck when I call you, Banichi had told him, forewarning him about splinters, and something still caught him in the back of the head, so brain-jarring he was unaware of completing his turn to the door: he went down beside Banichi, leaning on him for an instant. Tano bumped into him and Banichi, getting into cover, as the door edge passed them on its next rebound—Tano had drawn his sidearm, covering the left-hand hall. The outer four door guards were down—lying over against the wall beside Jago and Algini as automatic fire over their heads continued to hammer the splintering door. The outbound volley and Jago and Algini’s move had likely thrown the outside guards to their present position a little down the corridor wall, pressed tight to avoid the fire that had the door swinging insanely open and shut under the shots and the rebound. Fire inside lagged—and Jago flung another flashbang skittering in on the polished floor. God, Bren thought—hope the guards inside weren’t equipped with worse to throw back.

The guards down by the front door were Banichi’s to watch, those two men, and all those office doors. But those guards were gone, vanished, likely into the offices. Bren moved over against the wall in the side hall and stayed quiet—while from the Council hallway bursts of automatic fire shredded the door and made retreat back down the outside hall impossible. One of the door guards had been hit. His comrades worked to stop the blood and treat the wound, under Jago’s implacable aim.

They were in possession of the doorway and the outer halls—and trapped there, with Tano aiming a pistol down the length of the short hall, Banichi watching the long hall, Jago with three problems and a wounded man at extremely close range, and Algini covering the door from an angle, to be sure nobody came at them from inside. The guards inside the Council hallway weren’t coming out—the four they had talked to close at hand had disappeared, somewhere out of the line of fire—and the four Council Chamber guards had progressively shredded the door, which, thanks to Banichi’s small plastic plug, hadn’t closed or locked, and made it a very bad idea for anybody to exit into the hallway. Right now there was a lull in fire. There was just the bell making an insane racket, and glass from ricochets into office doors and overhead lights lying all down the hall.

“Young fools,” Banichi remarked in a low voice. “They have finally come to their senses, waiting for orders, waiting for us to move. They are over-excited. Seniors will use gas, if they can reach the stores. That will be a problem.”

The service corridor communicating with all those offices was the weakness in their position. Defenders were bound to come at them via the offices, and when that happened, they were in trouble, be it gas or grenades. It was a cold stone floor, a cold wait—good company, Bren said to himself. He just had to do what his aishid needed him to do, keep quiet, keep out of the way, and not distract them.

Suddenly the wall at Bren’s back thumped, strongly—it made his heart jump; made his ears react. But then he thought: Cenedi. That intersecting administrative hallway, the other side of the wall. Something had just blown up. Cenedi might be giving the opposition worries from the other direction.

He snatched a glance at Banichi’s locator bracelet. Dead black. No signals at the moment. And nobody had moved, only shifted position a little, tense, waiting. The alarm bell kept up its deafening monotone ringing and the lights kept flashing.

Then the floor thumped under them, and a shock rolled in from the doors down the hall. The massive outside doors flew back, counter to their mountings, one upright, one of them askew and hanging, then falling in an echoing crash.

That wasn’t defense. It was inbound. Bren flattened himself to the wall with Banichi and Tano, as far from the i

Secondary passages, secondary passages all over the place, in every office, in the Council chamber. It was the Assassins’ Guild. Of course there were secondary passages. Every building in the aishidi’tat had back passages. . . .

A burst of fire came out the ruined Council-area door, and a concentrated volley came back, right past the door frame. No more fire came out.

A flood of bodies occupied the hall, shadows moving fast in the smoke. Bren put his hand down on the stone floor, thinking if that was their side inbound, it might be time to get up and have it clear who they were—and his hand slipped.

He wrenched halfway about to get a look at Banichi, saw his face in the flashing lights of the alarm system. Banichi was sitting upright, but not doing so well, and it was blood slicking the floor. A lot of it.

“Damn it.” Bren got to his knees, ignoring the rush of bodies past them as he tried to get Banichi’s coat open. “Tano-ji! He’s bleeding!”

“Likely a broken stitch,” Banichi said faintly, above the continuing din of the bell. “One is just a little light-headed. Stay down, Bren-ji. Tano, turn on the bracelet.”

Tano did that. Banichi’s locator started flashing, communicating who they were, where they were.

Bren had a handkerchief—a gentleman carried such things. He put it, still folded, inside Banichi’s jacket, under Banichi’s arm, and felt heat and soaked cloth. “Press on that, Nichi-ji. Do not move the arm. Just keep pressure on it.”

“One hesitates to remark,” Banichi said, as another flashbang went off somewhere behind the wall and gunfire broke out, “one hesitates to remark that you are contributing no little blood, Bren-ji.”

His scalp stung when he thought about it. Adrenaline had been holding off an ill-timed headache, and he felt dizzy when he shifted about, which seemed likely from too much desk-sitting.