It was a scary business waiting for two men to find or not find a bomb. Especially when the two were Tano and Algini, who, one came to understand, were good at what they did and had state-of-the-art equipment, at least as good as the potential bomb-placers might have, if someone, however unlikely, had been fast enough to penetrate deep into Taiben Reserve and booby-trap the shelters.
Which no one had, apparently, since Tano and Algini signaled with a double flash of their hand-torch that the way was clear.
So they left the cars, hiked through the brush of the little copse that hid the excavation.
Storm shelters.
Classified storm shelters, with, as they could see when they opened the door, a well-kept interior, electric lights, at least enough to see by, which didn't depend on generators; and some which did.
For legitimate storms, Bren said to himself, not the political ones for which he suspected the aijiin of Shejidan had built such strong concrete bunkers. There were in fact fairly considerable storms, occasionally tornadic, not infrequently with hail, occasionally deep snow, and there were reasons the rangers who served the estate might want to pull in and take shelter, reach medical kits, even take a shower — the place could shelter twenty atevi, had no trouble at all tucking a stray human in. Bren found a quiet corner, pillowed his aching shoulder against a wad of folded blankets, and discovered a degree of comfort that let him shut his eyes and actually sleep a minute or two, to his own mild surprise, perhaps because things were finally moving in a direction he couldn't do a damned thing about, and people around him were alert, and knew there was harm aimed at them, and were doing everything in their considerable professional skill to stop it.
He?d felt like the only warning and the only fix in the system for so — damned — long. Now everybody knew what he knew, did what they knew how to do, nobody he cared about was going to get caught by surprise, and nothing was going to be his fault if a bomb dropped on them and blew them to hell — he could sleep on that understanding.
But in not long enough there was an alarm, at least enough stir to rouse him out of sleep. He waked with a thump of his heart and an awareness everyone was coming on guard, but Jago patted his arm, saying it was the aiji coming in, go back to sleep.
The eyelids were willing. But nobody slept through Tabini's arrival anywhere. There was a general stirring about, discussion among the Guild, who should go where, and then a decision they should go on, but they should leave the paidhi.
"The paidhi doesn't want to be left," he protested. "Jago?"
"We stay with you," Jago said quietly. "We don't split up"
He felt reassured in that — as the door opened and Tabini and Naidin and his group came in, and all of their group but his own security and the man working communications with Algini went out.
He sat still, wished Tabini a good evening, or morning, or whatever it was in this dim place, and held his shoulder against the ache, wishing he had had the foresight to bring his own first-aid kit.
"Bren-ji," Tabini said, patted him on the ankle in passing his perch on a raised bench.
And then he grew a little uneasy, since Tabini was not as cheerful nor as outgoing as one might look to have him. Tabini was preoccupied and spoke quietly with Naidiri and Banichi, after which Banichi and Naidiri talked with him for some little time, and then went and talked to each other.
"What's wrong?" he asked Jago quietly. "Can you tell?"
Jago got up, apparently wanting that answer herself, squatted down with Banichi and Naidiri, listening, arms on knees, talking with them for no little while.
Then she came back and said, in a low voice, "There's a breakthrough we're relatively sure isn't tourists. We think we have them identified there, but we're betting it's a feint, and that they might have created all this incursion area including the tourists to mask a move more to the south. We're trying to get information from several sources, but we have some feeling that either they weren't totally surprised by a landing at Taiben — or a move against the government has been in preparation for far longer than the Hanks matter."
"How serious?"
"Very. They didn't move after the ship sighting. They had a chance then. Tabini was at Taiben. But they likely expected tight security."
"They can't think it's lighter now!"
"The tourist move was very good. When we first sighted the ship, there was nothing at Taiben to draw citizen interest. But a landing — that's attracted the innocent public. That's drawn ordinary folk to lose their good sense about the proprieties. One doesn't drop in on the aiji for tea, Bren-ji, one can't think of it."
"Unless there's a spaceship on the aiji's front porch. With death rays and disintegrator beams. Jago-ji, they're out of their minds!"
"This is the public, nai-ji. You've made them confident of human good will. Here they are."
"My God."
"One could wish we had more time to scour the hills to the south. Banichi asks, as an option, if there's a way to delay the landing a few hours."
He looked at his watch, needed the display light in the faint light. "It's too close. I don't know. I could try right now. Not later. — But if we advise them what's going on — Jago-ji, they'll land on Mospheira. They won't proceed against hazard, I very much fear they won't, and that has its own problems."
Jago's lips pressed to a thin line. "We're not prepared to urge a delay yet. It may not be a good idea to delay. The search just has to move faster."
"We're talking about very little time, Jago. Once they go point-of-no-return, they're falling, and they have no choice."
Jago went back and talked to Banichi and Naidiri, who went and talked to Tabini.
Tabini came back to him, again put a hand on his ankle and said quietly, "Bren-ji. A group is coming in, within a very few moments. They're stopping. We're going on to the site immediately. We're going to make a certain amount of radio noise, in hopes they'll think us one of the patrols. I've a squad or two in the hills that's going to clear an area that has nothing to do with the drop, which we hope will attract attention to that area, and we're going on. We've a bulletproof vest. It's a little large. Please wear it."
"No argument, Tabini-ma. None from me. You're aware, I hope, that that capsule drops quite slowly as it nears the ground. It's not armored. It's tough — but I don't think it can take being shot at."
"We are aware. We're going to have air cover, at a respectful distance, of course. We'll be tracking it." A second pat at his leg. "We believe we know where Hanks is. They've been indiscreet with the phone lines. And the aiji has one advantage. I run the phone company."
He got up, he put on the vest Tano held for him and, worse, the helmet Tabini presented him, which had its advantages, he supposed, if someone were shooting at his head, but disadvantages if he didn't pad it with a folded small towel until he could see where he was going.
But other helmets were going on, and vests under jackets that probably had their own protection. It gave him the advantage, he thought, of looking a little less like a human and more like an atevi kid playing army.
He put his gloves on. There was nothing to do with his face, except, as Jago advised him, keep his head down, which sounded like a good idea to him.
'They're coming," Algini said, listening to his headset, over in the comer, and went on listening.
Banichi passed a woman a cassette. "The aiji's voice. Mine. Naidiri's. Dole that out and it's several hours' worth of our presence here."
"Yes," the woman said cheerfully. "Thank you, 'Nichi-ji."
'Nichi-ji? Bren thought with a second glance, but it didn't seem politic to ask. He gathered up his computer from where Banichi had set it when they came in and he held himself ready as the signals passed at the door.
They were going. Himself, Tabini, their respective security forces — the old gambling game, move the cups that held the stone, fast as they could; or pretend to move — meanwhile both sides were doing the same. For the second time in two weeks he was headed for a situation with atevi shooting at each other, he had his pockets weighted with ammunition clips, the bulletproof vest made his shoulder and ribs sore already, and the helmet kept obscuring half his vision — he wasn't a particularly martial specimen, he thought with a lump in his throat; he'd been shot at enough lately he'd decided he really didn't like it, and right now he wanted to strangle Deana Hanks barehanded for a situation she'd precipitated, if not directly caused.
FTL and stockpiles, hell.
It was dodge and turn in the dark through a confusing maze of small service roads, over hills, through meadows and down and across bridgeless streams in wooded areas — trees grew quite successfully wherever there was water and, increasingly so as they entered the wide south range, only where there was water.
They weren't in the lead: two other cars were in front, and Tabini rode with Naidiri in a car two back from them in the six-vehicle column, security clearly taking care to have them protected in the middle, but not together in the middle. The road ripped along a wooded streamside and out across open grassland for a space and back again into trees. They parked twice, each time in such wooded areas, at places where other roads diverged, and waited for what event wasn't clear, for maybe five minutes. Everyone sat in total silence, listening into the dark, the motors cut off, nothing but the night sounds of the range and the mild whisper of a breeze moving through the branches overhead. Tano relayed Banichi's messages to someone on his pocket-corn — Banichi didn't talk, neither did Jago: voices that might be too well-known, Bren thought, especially to the neighbors. Tano said something about section eleven and some incursion and taking the number twenty-one. "Easy," the driver said, and motors were starting ahead and behind them. The lead driver backed a little and nosed off onto the divergence, leading the way onto a rougher, less-traveled road. Brush scraped the undercarriage and escaped out the rear, branches already broken by the first and second vehicle scraped along their sides.
Change of plans, Bren thought and, sandwiched between Jago and Tano in the backseat, cradled his elbow to protect his arm from the weight and irritation of the vest.
But taking it off didn't tempt him in the least.
"Are we still going toward the site?" he asked once, as quietly as he could, after Banichi and the driver had exchanged a couple of casual words.
Then a branch hit their windshield and scraped over their heads, so atevi had to duck and the human in the middle suffered a rain of pungent and bruised leaves.
Three violent bounces over roots, a sharp turn, and they made an uphill climb over a ridge in which the view from the backseat was black sky and then the lumpish, weathered granite that told him for the first time they were on the cross-range ridge. He checked his watch, risking knocking into Jago and Tano.
"Hour before dawn," he said with a nervous flutter of his stomach. "They'll be underway, the lander will —" A fierce bounce, then a break out of the woods: the faintly lit detail of branches gave way to total black interspersed with trees, as the driver made furious efforts with the wheel to keep them up to the speed they'd carried.
Going as fast as they possibly could, he thought.
"We're not far from the junction east, then access to the —"
He heard a thump. Jago and Tano folded over him, shoving him down as a shock of air blossomed all around them in a sound, a pressure, a force that heaved up the road, shoved them and the whole car over, spilled them in a heavy tangle of limbs and stickery brush and lastly pelting earth and stone and wood.
He couldn't get his breath for a moment. He braced himself as somebody leaned on him trying to move, then — then the car exploded in a ball of flame, somebody grabbed his vest by the bottom edge and dragged him downhill, shots were going off. He'd lost the helmet, he'd every awareness his most essential job right now was to keep his head down and keep out of the way — he knew Jago and Tano were alive, they'd fallen tangled with him, they'd hauled him back. In a flurry of small-arms fire, he heard car engines whining — in what sounded like fast reverse, cars from behind them getting out the only direction they could; but his ears were ringing from the explosion, and in the glare of fire he couldn't make out anything but the burning vehicle they'd been in, black in the center of the fireball, uphill in front of them. Trees were catching, going up like matches. The whole area was lit in fire.
Then he heard someone shouting, and Banichi — thank God, Banichi — shouting back they couldn't maneuver where they were, don't try to come after them, they'd hold here.
"Stay down!" Banichi yelled, then, and a strong atevi hand shoved him flat as fire spattered chips off the rocks and thumped into the other side of the burning car.
"My computer!" he protested.
"Your head, nadi." Jago kept up the pressure on his back. These was another thump from up the hill, then an explosion that hit beyond them and rained rock and dirt.
Tano said, while his ears were recovering from the shock, "Firetube. I can go up after it."
"No!" Banichi said. "Too damn much light out —"
Another shell hit beyond them, starting a minor landslide. Jago hauled him into a hollow of rocks and Tano joined them, as Banichi fired a rapid series of shots toward the height.
He had his own gun. He pulled it out of his pocket, aware when he rested his weight on the other elbow that he'd strained the shoulder enough to make his eyes water. He wasn't sure what the target was, he wasn't even sure where the attack was coming from, but the blowing smoke was headed down the road and the fire had skipped to brush in that area.
Tano and Jago stretched out in the scant cover they had and began laying down fire at the uphill as well. He tried to find a way to do the same, but he had a rock in his way and tried to get a vantage above it, but Tano jerked him down, none too gently.
"I've extra clips," he said, trying to be useful at something.
Another shell hit. Banichi and another man he thought was the ranger took shelter with them as a tree came down in a welter of branches, right on the front of the car, and caught fire, making a screen of light between them and anything they could possibly aim at.
"Steady firing," Banichi said. "All we can do. We're a roadblock. They're trying to go behind. Keep their heads down. Bren, watch our backs. Hear?"
"Yes," he said, and edged around to do that. Go behind what, he wasn't sure, but he suspected Banichi meant Tabini's group was going behind the hill: they'd backed the cars out of the area, headed in reverse back around the curve of the ridge, the way the car in front of them seemed to have gotten away down the road. He didn't know if there was a plan, if some of them were going to go up and others were going to get Tabini out of there, or if Tabini and his security were going to try the hill; but Banichi and Jago and Tano and the ranger-driver were all firing as if they could see what they were shooting at — and as if they had more ammunition than he thought they had. He had a branch gouging his arm as he'd faced about to the downhill: he took a hitch on one hand to shift to a more long-term position — and saw a movement in the firelit dark downhill.
"Man!" was all that came out of his mouth — he fired, and a blow knocked him back into the rock, his head hit stone, and guns fired on either side of him.
"Bren-ji!" Jago's voice.
"Vest," he managed to say, bruised in the ribs, winded, realizing there'd just been justification for the body armor. He had his gun still in hand; he braced it on his knee, his arm and leg both shaking. "I'm watching! It's all right!"
Guns were going off next to his ears, Banichi and the ranger were still shooting. Tano and Jago turned their attention back toward the hill and he sat there and shook — which tightened the muscles in his ribs, which didn't help him get his breath. Heat was rolling down the slope on gusts of wind, bringing stinging smoke.
At least they weren't landing more of the heavy shells. Their attackers might not have any more. The fire they were sending upslope might be keeping the enemy's heads down.
But they couldn't have that much ammunition left to keep up their own fire, and the attackers on the ridge had sent at least one man below them — surely not just one. His eyes weren't as good as atevi eyes in the dark: he didn't know how they were against the fire-glare, but the pitch of the slope made deep shadows interspersed with firelit branches of trees and rocks, and out beyond, grass, just — grass forever, past this stony hump of a ridge that ran a diagonal across the south range, the one exception in a flat that went on clear to the ocean bluffs —
And that antiquated space capsule was already on its way, committed beyond return: a fast push of a button on his watch and a steadying of his wrist said it wasn't the eternity he'd thought, but it wasn't that much time left, either, and they weren't where they were supposed to be, even if Tabini's people got them clear; they weren't going to make it out of here in any good order; and the question was whether they were going to make it out, or whether, if Tabini was being his stubborn self up there, they were going to have a government left in another hour to care at all whether there was a paidhi to translate for humans. He felt sick at his stomach, partly the heat, partly the shock of the hit he'd taken, and partly the knowledge this wasn't going to work — —
"Clip, nadi," Jago said with complete calm, and he dug in his pockets with the other hand, gun still braced generally downslope, and reached around to hand her two of the three. "I've got one more, no, two, counting what's in my gun." His voice wasn't entirely reliable. He tried to keep watching where he was supposed to watch.
"Go easy, go easy," Banichi said, and the shots kept coming — Banichi's, Jago's — keeping his ears ringing. "We can't have that damn firetube back in action."
'The grass is catching fire," the ranger said, and Bren threw a glance to the ranger's side: fire had spread down-slope, not directly below them, but where the burning line of brush had caught down the hill to their left.
It was end of season. The grass was drying. Green-gold in the view from the porch —
All that grass. All that grass, clear to the sea. The capsule coming down in a sea of flame. The heat shield was mostly on the bottom, mostly there — how hot did a grass fire get, when the flames rolled ten meters high and scoured the land black?
Gunfire broke out on the slope above them, a sudden lot of it. He felt a rush of hope and terror, resisting the temptation to turn and look toward what he couldn't hope to see anyway. Gunfire rattled above them, and suddenly a nasal, angry squeal.
That didn't belong at Taiben — he heard a scream cut short, and that godawful squalling snort that, God, anyone hearing a mecheita attack a man would never, ever forget —
Mecheiti were on the ridge. Riders.
He did turn on his hip, striving to try to see through the spreading fire. Leaves on trees just over their heads were catching, a thin flicker of fire, a rain of burning ash, carried on a gust of firestorm wind. Heat was building. The trees near them could go up the way the first had.
"Trees are catching fire!" he said. "We've got to get to the clear — we're going to get caught —"
But the rattle of gunfire that came to them through the roar of the fire had stopped; atevi voices upslope were shouting at each other.
He didn't know what to think. He crouched on his knees with the gun in his good hand and everyone around him equally confused, for the instant. A sapling burst into flame, all the leaves involved at once. He felt a heart-pounding panic, no better excuse. And faintest of all was a thread of a voice from an active pocket-corn,
"Hold fire, hold fire, blue, below."
"They've got it," Banichi said. "Stay down!"
"Stay down yourself!" Jago said, the only time Bren had ever seen Jago defy an order. Her arm shot past him to grab Banichi's sleeve. "Your leg, dammit, stay here!"
"The hell," Banichi said, and broke his arm free, but he stayed down.
There was just the roar of the fire, now, no rattle of weapons fire. Nothing seemed to move. There was a reek of gunpowder, of burnt plastic, through the stinging woodsmoke, and Tano edged over, finding cover further away from the fire. They crept over sidelong across the slope, below the edge of the road, while a thin conversation over the pocket-corns continued, directing movement, directing roundup of surrendering rebels.
Then he heard Jago say, "The dowager. Yes, aiji-ma — we're fine. All of us. We're holding fire."
He hoped there hadn't been a carnage up there, that people he cared about were still alive, that there was some means of reaching a peace. He heard names like Dereiso, whom Banichi had named to him as a problem in the region. He heard orders to say they should stay still, and he heard the sound of a small plane overhead, which he didn't like, but Tano said it was theirs.
A motor started up, from around the bend of the ridge, and a second one — in a moment more, cars came down the road, Tabini's end of the convoy coming up behind and around their burning vehicle: ahead, nothing but fire — the downed tree that had buried the front end of their own car in its branches was a burning log, and the wind had carried sparks all over the ridge in that direction.
The third car didn't show, but down from the firelit hill came a ghostly soundless darkness: mecheita and rider. Others followed. Not under guard. Rangers, Bren thought. He hadn't known there were mecheiti at Taiben. He'd never heard of any. But there they were, fifteen or so riders, coming off the sparsely wooded ridge beyond where the cars were stopped. Riders in metal-studded black, the brief glimpse of one who wasn't — no intimation of threat to the cars or hostility to them: people were out of the cars, Tabini among that body-armored, helmeted group, he hoped.
Banichi stood up, and Tano and Jago did. Bren reached out for a careful grip on a branch, hauled himself up to his feet as he recognized the smallish, plainclothes rider among the others.
Ilisidi.
Cenedi — Ilisidi's bodyguard — and at least fifteen of what she called "her young men," on towering, long-legged shapes with the flash of war-brass about their jaws, short rooting-tusks capped with deadly metal, armed for trouble, the ridden and the unridden — fully ten, eleven more mecheiti shadowing through the brush and rock of the area, catching up with their herd, high-tempered with the fighting and the fire crackling away from already burnt ground.
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.