Betrayer: Foreigner #12 (31 page)

Finally! “Yes, mani!” Any other answer was apt to get a thwack with her cane, and not a slight one. “Please come downstairs, too,” he said to nand’ Toby and Barb-daja. “Get some sleep.”

“How close is the enemy?” Toby wanted to know. “I can shoot, understand. I’m a better shot than my brother.”

“This is Guild business,” Cajeiri said. “It’s going to be bad up here. Mani says come down right now, and I’ll bet she knows something. So we have to go with her. Or she won’t go.” He looked at his bodyguard. “Taro-ji, Gari-ji, I don’t think you should be up here. Jico-ji—do whatever you decide to do.”

“I am Guild,” Veijico said quietly. “I shall be upstairs, nandi.”

 

It was also possible to be bored while worried sick, and there was nothing to do but sit and stew about the situation.

“Is there any reason they would switch off, Gini-ji?” Bren asked, desperately, finally, in their long sitting still. “Do you think they are still all right?”

Algini took a while answering. The Guild held certain information very close, and it was not likely at all that Algini would divulge method, only conclusion.

“When Guild goes against Guild,” Algini said, “yes. One might switch off.”

It was his dearest hope Jago and Banichi had done exactly that.

It had to pass for good news. Banichi and Jago were a force of two. The number of renegade Guild in the district was certainly far higher than that, even if they might have slightly reduced the odds tonight. They knew the direction Banichi and Jago had taken, at least generally, and prolonged silence and absence could tell them that there was something ahead of them they didn’t want to meet.

That would put that problem out into the far edge of Machigi’s territory, or right in the near edge of Geigi’s, neither being good news for their situation.

He began to wonder if that was the case. And once Tano caught up, they might decide that, instead of going north and trying to cross into Maschi territory as quickly as possible, they might veer off to the northwest and try to reach Najida directly. He wasn’t completely in favor of that. It would be farther. A hellish lot farther. He wasn’t sure how much he had left in him; and he most of all wanted to get back to Najida and in reach of a phone.

But if Tano and Algini said that was the best thing to do, he was going to have to find it in himself to do it.

If he could shed the damned vest . . .

But they weren’t going to let him do that.

Algini knocked his knee with the back of his hand, a signal to pay attention. Something was going on, but Algini hadn’t moved, otherwise, and just waited. And waited. “I have shut down my locator,” Algini said. “But Tano will find us.”

Tano was close. But there was a chance the enemy was close, too.

Moments passed.

“They are here,” Algini said, in a night no different to Bren’s eyes and ears than the last hour. “Come, Bren-ji.”

Tano and Lucasi. He got up. Algini took a grip under his arm on the way down the slight rise, for which he was grateful, and from out of a very little cover of brush, there were, indeed, Tano and Lucasi, the latter under his own power with, apparently, a stick he was using as a cane.

“We are all going dark now,” Algini said to him in a low whisper. “We have to make time toward Maschi territory.”

Still going north, then. Going for the major road. Or close to it. “Yes,” Bren said, and he just kept up as they started off, holding the thought in his mind that Banichi and Jago might have done the same, and they all might be heading toward some mutually agreed goal, to make a rendezvous.

He walked, at least doing no worse than Lucasi, who was walking with an improvised crutch and with his ankle now professionally splinted clear to the knee. They were a hell of a group, he thought, two of them doing well to be walking at all and not going as fast as Tano and Algini could wish. Bren had one sip more of water and kept going, trying not to breathe like a steam engine on a grade and trying to keep his feet out of holes, of which there were a great many, given the rocky, graveled ground. Tano and Algini were lugging heavy packs, and they made no fuss about it, just kept going doggedly at what was undoubtedly a slower pace than they would like to set.

They were now out of cover. One really, truly didn’t like this.

There was, however, a rock ridge running in the far distance. They seemed to be going toward that.

There would be cover there. He liked that better. He decided there were a finite number of steps between here and there and he
could
do it. Lucasi, who had not said a word, was likely telling himself the same thing. Once they got there, they could surely rest for a bit.

Try not to pant. That was noisy. He couldn’t help it. He just had to hurry. The kid was in the same shape. And toward the last, Tano and Algini each took one of them by an arm and just kept them moving.

They reached the shadow. And went into it, and down to a split in the rocks.

There was a downslope about three times a human’s height, down to a dirt road.

And there Tano stopped him and let him sink down and lean against a rock just slightly too high to sit on. It was enough. He tried to collect his breath and his wits.

Algini left his bag and slipped away, out of sight. Not one more of them, Bren said to himself, regretting that departure.

But Tano didn’t talk, the boy didn’t talk, and that set the rules he was sure Tano and Algini had laid down. He didn’t talk. He just sat and waited.

And waited.

And still waited.

Tano checked the time, doubtless himself wondering how long it had been.

And then there was a faint, distant sound. Even human ears heard it. A vehicle was coming from somewhere to the north. The road ran more or less north and south.

Somebody was coming.

The sound kept up. The boy’s head was up. There was no doubt Tano heard it, and he stood there attentive to the night and their surroundings.

Trouble, Bren thought. As if they didn’t have enough. But Algini would lie low out there. Algini might be able to see it.

He listened to the sound for several minutes. It was coming closer.

And then it changed pitch, then started up again. Shifted gears, maybe. Maybe a climb. Definitely coming this way.

“Come,” Tano said, and led the way behind the rocks.

Apparently they were moving to deeper cover, along the same line Algini had taken. Letting the vehicle pass them.

It was definitely getting closer.

Tano led the way around the end of the ridge, onto the exposed slope, and there was a van coming fast, running with no headlights, and here they were, out in the open on the slope.

Then it ticked into his thinking that they were going toward that van, and doing so recklessly. Tano seized him by one arm and took hold of Lucasi by the other, on his bad side, and took them down the slope, just about the time the van reached that point on the road.

It braked. Flung open a side door. Algini ducked out, beckoning them on, and Bren threw everything he had into it—damned near fell on his face, if not for Tano, coming down the last of the slope.

Two were driving. He caught the silver glint on the uniform, the profile against the faint, faint light from outside.

“Is it Jago? Banichi?”

“Bren-ji,” Jago said from the front seat as Tano seized Bren a second time by the arm and edged as far over as he could to give room to him and Lucasi—and two armored bodies between them and the walls of the van. “One regrets the long silence, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “We are reasonably well.”

Algini shut the door and dropped into the back seat. “Targai is too risky a run,” Banichi said, throwing the van into reverse, backing around. “We are heading straight west, for Najida.”

“One will by no means argue with that,” Bren said, feeling all the exertion of the last number of hours. He felt absolutely drained of strength, not least from sheer relief. “Is the van from Targai?”

“No,” Jago said. “It is probably from Senji district.”

“We have a little difficulty about fuel,” Banichi said. “But we are headed for a station.”

“Apai?” Algini asked.

“Yes,” Banichi said. It was a name which meant absolutely nothing to Bren. But his bodyguard knew. His bodyguard kept abreast of things that never occurred to the paidhi-aiji to wonder about and checked maps he had not, while he was deciding the fate of the east coast, thought to look at. But his aishid might have, while those atlases were on the sitting-room table. And there was fuel at a place called Apai, which was probably a crossroads in the back country. That would mean market roads, or a farm, or hunting station . . . more such details his bodyguard studied and that he hadn’t even thought of when they’d diverted themselves into Taisigi territory.

It was even possible his guard had studied these things before they had ever left Najida, in case of the unanticipated. He had never even thought to wonder.

Their enemies could have studied those things too, about Najida, about the territory they were in.

Their enemies were now missing a van. And probably several occupants. The windshield was badly cracked. There could be blood on the seat he was sitting on; but at this point he couldn’t care about it. He rested his head on the seat back and just breathed and took in the fact he had all his bodyguard back, their voices, matter-of-fact about their desperate business, reassuring him that, at least for the next hour, nothing was within his power to fix but it might be within theirs. He had no complaints.

Unless—

“Have we the ability to contact Najida, nadiin-ji?”

“Safest not to do so, Bren-ji,” Jago said, half turning in her seat. “We are dark at the moment and move best that way. Our opponents use the same systems, and they know each other, likely, only by what zone they occupy. Our best hope of getting out of here is to be misidentified.”

“Understood,” he said, and he shut up, content to let his bodyguard make their own decisions without his meddling. But, damn, he wanted to make that call.

He put a hand to his chest, site of the most forceful reminder not to meddle in Guild business. It could have killed him. It all could have ended right there, leaving more than his affairs in a hell of a mess. His bodyguard hadn’t called him a fool. But he had, every time he made an injudicious move. Every time he risked things larger than himself.

The bruise was better now than it had been, or he didn’t think he could have made it across country. He was sweaty, he was dirty, he was miserable, his hands and feet were still half frozen, he was sure he had deep blisters on his right foot, the sole had come loose on the left boot, and he had definitely picked up a bit of gravel in the failing boot to add to his misery, but the greatest immediate discomfort was the vest itself. It had to stay on, that was all, and the feet—he was sitting down now on a padded seat, out of the wind and no longer freezing, but his feet were cold.

Riding, however, was bliss. They weren’t safe by a long shot. There was a long way to go. A scary long way to go.

But going to Najida—that was where he needed to be.

That was the place he wanted most to protect, personally, emotionally. He was only upset about leaving Geigi at Targai in what could be a very dangerous situation.

Whatever was going on over at Targai, however—and an incursion from Senji was high on the list of possibilities, as well as action from the renegade Guild—there was a good chance Geigi’s bodyguard had already gotten Geigi out of it, the same as his was doing for him, the same that Machigi’s had done for their lord. Ordinary citizens were off limits as targets. If the lord wasn’t there, the Guild was supposed to cease operations. Which protected civilian lives, civilian property, and historic premises. That was the way it was
supposed
to work.

But they were up against people who mined public roads. Who kidnapped children. The whole district was getting to be no place for high-value targets, no guarantee for the ordinary citizen.

It was why the Guild had to win this one. The Guild had committed everything, broken with precedent, outlawed half the Marid and pulled in every asset they could lay hands on to stop this lot and restore the regulations that had always stood.

He had to trust it. Had to wish the Guild luck. Most of all, he had to rely on present company to keep him alive and be prepared to run for it, and run hard.

And he hoped to hell they didn’t, in this stolen van, draw fire from their own side.

There was occasional shooting outside, up above. It came and it went, and it was long after dark outside.

Mani and nand’ Geigi sat in a basement room having tea and discussing old times. Nand’ Toby and Barb-daja had gone to their basement room to get some rest. Cajeiri sat in the corner of mani’s room, teaching Jegari and Antaro chess.

And he had just made a bad move, because he had been thinking about what was going on upstairs instead of where his district lord was sitting relative to the magistrate.