Invader (60 page)

And definitely Ilisidi, Ilisidi on the redoubtable Babsidi, leaning on Babsidi's withers and surveying their resources as another rider came up — leading —

God, it was —

"
Hanks
!" he said, and in the same instant recognized the slightly portly ateva leading that rider, an ateva also in plain riding clothes.

Lord Geigi looked straight at him. "Nand' paidhi! One is
very
glad to find you in good health."

"Indeed, I — received your messages, lord Geigi. With great appreciation. Hanks?"

"Get me away from these people," Hanks said, in Mosphei'. "Bren, get me loose!"

Hanks' hands were tied. To the pad-rings. "Hanks," he said, "shut up."

"We've the whole damn ridge going up," Tabini said. "We can't get the cars through the fire. We're going to have the whole south range going up if the fire units don't get ahead of it fast. Grandmother's graciously agreed to furnish transportation. Haven't you, 'Sidi-ji?"

"I don't know," she said over the constant quiet give of leather and the clash of harness rings. "Throwing me off the estate. Having your
staff
throw me off the estate___"

"Grandmother." Tabini had a rifle in his hands. He rested its butt on his hip and kept the barrel aimed skyward. "One apologizes. One
needed
the estate. For business. One knew
you'd
know exactly who of the neighbors to go to."

"And your security couldn't figure it out?"

"Not with your persuasive charms involved,
no
, light of my day. Can we get moving?"

"Lovely morning for a ride. The smell of gunpowder and morning dew."

"Please," Bren said, foreseeing more quarrels, and more delay. "Nandiin. Please. It's descending by now. The fire's spreading —"

An explosive snort from one of the mecheiti, a squalling exchange and a scattering of armed security as a mecheita nosed through an unwilling barrier of its fellows and riders grabbed reins.

He knew when the incomer singled him out — he was sure when a perilously sharp pair of tusks nudged into his protesting hands, but he
didn't
shove down On the nose; he let the sensitive lip taste, smell, wander over his gloved fingers —

Nokhada remembered him. Nokhada had reestablished herself,
his
mecheita. It wasn't love, it was ambition, it was
man'chi
, it was a fight looking to happen, and a warm gust of mecheita breath and a slightly prehensile lip trying for his ear while he tried to get the single rein off the saddle-rings where it stayed secured, when a mecheita had no rider.

He clipped the rein to the jaw-loop of the bridle,
not
the slowest rider to get sorted out. He whacked Nokhada hard and, despite the ache and a breathtaking pain when he hauled, got her to go down, and got himself aboard for the neck-snapping rise back to her feet.

Not the last. Far from the last. Far from the most fuss. He surveyed a burning landscape from a height at which a rider was lord of most everything around him and a threat to the rest, and looked out at a sea of grass below the ridge.

A line of fire was eating away at the edge of that sea. He heard Hanks talking to him, demanding he get her loose.

He said, quietly, to lord Geigi, "Nand" Geigi, would you possibly have an idea where Hanks-paidhi's computer is?"

Geigi patted the case slung from the pad-rings on the left side. "One thought this machine might have some importance."

"Thank you," he said fervently. He saw Algini from his vantage. He'd been searching for him since he'd gotten up, and that was the last of his little household at risk — they were all safe, they'd come through without no more than the smell of smoke.

Ilisidi was vastly pleased with herself. Babsidi was fidgeting about, anxious in the fire, and the last of their party, two of Tabini's security, were still trying to get aboard when Ilisidi set Babsidi at the downward slope, straight out for the threatened grassland.

He looked back, not sure the last two were going to get up at all, but they'd made it, scarcely — drivers were getting back in the cars to pull them out, so far as he could tell, safe from the fires.

But he had the slope in front of him and his hands full — cut off abruptly as Cenedi's mecheita insisted on maintaining second-rank position with Ilisidi's, that being the established order, and Nokhada fought with one thought in her mecheita brain: getting up there and taking a piece out of any mecheita in her way to Babsidi, which he wasn't going to allow, dammit. He thumped her on the shoulder with his foot, held on with a sore arm, and held her back to give precedence to Tabini's beast as they moved out.

It wasn't the way the mecheiti understood the precedence to be, and it necessitated fits of temper, nips, squalls, kicks and threats as they reached a place to spread out.

It wasn't the way Hanks would have had it, either — she yelled after him, until someone must have told her her life was in danger.

Himself, he kept Nokhada back from Ilisidi and Tabini as they rode, Nokhada having ideas of fighting her way up there.

But Cenedi dropped back and rode beside him a moment.

"These were members of an opposition," Cenedi found it incumbent on him to say. "Those that surrendered go home. Tabini's men will see to it. We were aware 'Sidi-ji was under suspicion."

"I knew it wasn't you," he said. "Cenedi-ji, you have far more finesse. You wouldn't have shot up the porcelains."

"The lily," Cenedi said, "the lily that Damiri-daja sent. That was a dire mistake on their part. Not to say we hadn't almost persuaded Tatiseigi." Cenedi's mecheita was starting to fret, wanting to move forward in the column, and Nokhada gave a dangerously close toss of her head, nose much too near the other mecheita's shoulder, but Cenedi was looking back at the moment. "Fire's spreading. Damn, where are those planes?"

"They're sending firefighting equipment?"

"Too much is diverted because of the trouble," Cenedi said. "Which does us no service now. Hope the wind holds to the west."

One devoutly did hope so. Cenedi moved back up with Ilisidi and Tabini, and Bren cast a look back — the stench of smoke was in his nostrils, but that was only what he carried on his clothes. The wind was still in their faces, retarding the fire so far.

But he became aware he could see the leaders — the light had grown that much. The grassland stretched out in front of them, a pale, colorless color, like mist or empty air, through which the foremost mecheiti struck their staying pace. When he looked back, the same no-color was there, too, with the shadows of riders following, but the east was a contrast of dark and a fiery seam across the night that would obscure any dawn behind the ridge.

Banichi overtook him. Jago also did, from the other side, company Nokhada tolerated.

"Algini's all right," was the first thing he thought to tell them. "I saw him."

"We were talking to him, nadi," Banichi said. "Tano was."

He couldn't always tell voices on the pocket-corns. He was relieved, all the same. Hanks had settled down, damned unhappy — his computer was a melted mess, he was sure of it.

Until Jago passed it across to him.

"It took one bullet," Jago said. "I don't know if it works."

It might, at least, be made to. He slung its strap over his head, under his good arm.

He said, "Geigi's got Hanks'. I need it. I'll try just asking."

"One believes the man wants your good will," Banichi said. "A partisan of Geigi's knew where she was. Geigi's security simply walked in last night and took her — having credence with the opposition. And a very good Guild member also on his side."

"Who?" he asked.

"Cenedi," Jago said. "Of course."

"But Ilisidi wasn't responsible." What they said upset his sense of who stood where. "She was on Tabini's side. She
is
, isn't she?"

"Lords have no
man'chi
," Jago reminded him — the great 'of course' in any atevi dealing. "The dowager is for her own interests. And fools threatened them. Fools went much too far."

"Fools attacked you," Banichi said, "elevated Hanks, broke Tatiseigi's porcelains and threatened what could be a very advantageous move for Tatiseigi, granted Tabini's desire actually to have an Atigeini in the line. Fools doubted Tatiseigi's commitment and thought, I believe, they might scare him."

"I don't think they did."

"One doesn't think so." Banichi set his knees against the riding-pad and rose up slightly, taking a look behind and skyward.

"Not quite yet," Bren said. "By the time the light is full. Then we can look. These things are very precise."

"I was looking for planes," Banichi said. Then: "The wind's changing. Do you feel it?"

It was. He saw the stillness in the grass around them, which had been bending toward the fire.

"It's not just when the lander comes down," he said, with a rising sense of anxiety. "It's where and when, in the firefront."

"Naidiri's carrying the chart," Banichi said, and put his mecheita to a faster pace, leaving the two of them.

"How fast can it burn?" he asked. He'd seen the grasslands fires on the news. They happened. A front of fire, making its own weather as it went, creating its own wind.

"Not as fast as mecheiti can run," Jago said. "But longer. They try to stop them."

Dumping chemicals from the air.

The planes that hadn't shown up. The cars that had left them had radio. The rangers had to be doing something.

God, they had hikers out. Tourists, out to see the lander parachute down.

The rangers already had their hands full. Picnic parties. Overland trekkers.

The light was growing more and more. The wind was decidedly out of the southeast, now, the grass starting to bend.

The smell of smoke came with it, distinct from that about his clothing. The mecheiti were growing anxious, and the ranks closed up. The seam of fire was very, very evident behind them.

But Disidi, astride Babs, held the lead and kept the pace. No mecheita would pass Babs — pull even, maybe, but not pass.

And the talk up there was…

"You could have said," Tabini was saying. "You could have left a message."

"Pish," Ilisidi said. "Anyone would leave a message. I made no secret where I was going."

"The place I least wanted you, nai-ji. Unfortunate
gods
, you have a knack for worst places!"

"I could have been aiji, grandson. All it wanted was a little encouragement. And you, damn your impudence, toss me from Taiben in my nightclothes —"

"You could have been
dead
, grandmother-ji! These are fools! Have you
no
taste?"

"Well, I certainly was not going to be your stand-in for a target, nadi. I assure you. You sent me Bren-paidhi. Was I not to assume this very handsome gift had meaning?"

"A foot in every damn province!"

"As I should! Who knows when you'll stumble?"

"They regard you no more than they do me. They want the office under their hand. And you'd never do that, grandmother-ji. They'd turn on you as fast as not."

"I'm not so forgiving as you, grandson of mine.
My
enemies don't get such chances."

"Oh? And how
is
Tatiseigi?"

"Oh, sitting in Taiben, having breakfast, I imagine — waiting for a civil phone call from a prospective relative."

"I proposed an honorable union in the first place!"

"This is not a man to rush to judgment."

As the wind gusted up their backs. As the light grew in the sky.

"I tell you," Ilisidi said, "this hacking up the land with roads is a pest, and they're never where you want them. I
told
you I was against it. No, follow the precious, nasty roads, won't they, Babs? Scare all the game in the countryside, rattle and clatter, clatter and rattle — game management, do you call it? Look, look there across the land.
There
are herds. I'll warrant you saw none in your clanking about last night."

"Unfortunate gods," Tabini muttered. "Demons and my grandmother.
Naidiri! Where are the damned planes? Call again
!"

"They say they're loading," Naidiri said.

The herds in question were in general movement, traveling away from the fire, like themselves. Once in recorded history fire had swept clear to the sea, jumped the South Iron River and kept going until all the south range was burned.

The paidhi didn't want to remember that detail.

"Look!" one of the hindmost said. "What's that?"

Pointing up.

Atevi eyes
were
sharp. He could scarcely see it. He had to bring Nokhada to a stop, and others stopped.

"That's it!" he said. It had a feeling of unreality to him. "That's it! It's coming in!"

Far, far up, and far in the distance and to the south. It
wasn't
where, on the charts, they'd said.

"It loses us time," Banichi said, "southward, in front of the fire."

It was true.

But it was in sight. They could do it. They could make it — please God it came down soft.

«
^

T
here was
one stream in kilometers all about, maybe within a day's ride, and the lander found it — landed up to its hatch in water.

Draped all over in blue and red parachute.

And not a sign of life.

"Damn quiet," Tabini said as they rode up on it. "Are they able to open the hatch, Bren-ji?"

"One would think," he said. There was, unremitting, the smell of smoke on the wind. A glance to the side revealed the fires: a long, long line of black darkening the dawn.

They rode up on it, as far as the stream edge. It was pitted and scarred. And quiet. He urged Nokhada with his foot, and Nokhada laid back her ears and didn't want to go until he started to get down — then she moved, waded down into the water.

Atevi weapons came out. All around him.

"Tabini-ma," he said. "Banichi —"

"In case," Tabini said, and Banichi urged his mecheita out, too, into chest-deep, silty water. They reached the side of the lander, mecheiti wading through an entangling billow of parachute.