Conspirator

by C. J. Cherryh

  “He ran, Bren-ji.” Banichi didn’t look at him. Banichi concentrated on the job at hand and pressed a wad of cloth against the driver’s ribs, placing the man’s hand against the cloth. “Hold that, nadi-ji, can you hold it?”

  A moan issued from their driver, but he held it, while Banichi tore more bandage off a roll.

  They owed this man, owed him their not being barricaded in Kajiminda with God-knew-what strength of enemy.

  But the youngsters were in that situation. All three of them. And Banichi and Jago had left them there.

  “Were they hit?” he asked Banichi. It was the worst he could think of.

  “The boy will have taken cover. He is not a fool.” And was Baiji their hostage, intended to get Cajeiri back? What the hell were Banichi and Jago thinking?

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t figure. He’d been about to look around for them when Jago had hit him and carried him forward, straight into the bus. He was stunned, as if something had slammed him in the gut. His heart was pounding. And he kept thinking, This can’t be real. They can’t have left the kids. They can’t have left them there.

  He sat on the cold, muddy floorboards, with their driver’s blood congealing in the grooves in the mat, trying to think, trying to get his breath as the bus slung itself onto the potholed estate road and kept going. Banichi got up for a moment and pulled the first aid kit from the overhead, with the bus lurching violently and what was probably a piece of the tire flapping against the wheel well at the rear. Banichi got down and started to work again, got the man a shot of something, probably painkiller.

  They reached the intersection and took a tolerably cautious turn onto that overgrown road, and then gathered speed again.

  They’d lost Cajeiri. They’d grabbed Baiji.

  And the hell of it—he, who was supposed to understand such things, didn’t know why in either case.

  10

  Firing had been deafening . . . and now it was silence, with people moving about. Cajeiri had no view of the proceedings, nor any inclination to make any noise, not even to rustle a dry winter twig. He was flat under the front shrubbery with his chin in the dirt, and Antaro and Jegari were lying on top of him. The roof had come down on the bus—he had thought it was wrecked. But it had gotten away. He had struggled briefly just to turn his head to see what was going on, but thick evergreen was in the way.

  Then he had heard the bus take off again. Either the driver alone had gone for help from Great-grandmother, or Banichi and Jago had gotten nand’ Bren into the van and taken off. He should not have dived for the bushes. He had thought the bus was finished.

  And now that it had gone, that left him and his companions, as Gene would say, in a bit of a pickle.

  A fairly hot pickle, at that. A whole dish of hot pickles.

  He rested there, struggling to breathe with the combined weight on his back, trying to think.

  Going back into the house, even if things were quiet, and just asking the Edi staff: “Did you get all the assassins?” did not seem the brightest thing to do.

  Damn. It was very embarrassing to die of stupidity—or to end up kidnapped by scoundrels. Again.

  What would Banichi do? That was his standard for clever answers. Banichi and Jago and Cenedi.

  They’d probably moved fast for that bus, that was what they’d likely done. He remembered its motor still running. He hadn’t marked that. He’d thought it had been crushed by the roof when it came down. It must have been able to move. They’d have gotten nand’ Bren there, fast, and one of them would have been shooting back, which would be why the fire had been going on as long as it had—he was mad at himself. He could think of these things. But he should not take this long to think of them. If he had been thinking fast enough they would be on that bus, and headed for nand’ Bren’s estate.

  So could he not think ahead of the next set of events?

  It would be really, truly useful if he could. All Jegari and Antaro were thinking of right now was keeping him alive and trying to get him somewhere safe, but they were in a kind of country they had never seen before—neither had he—and he did not think he ought to take advice from them, not if it sounded reckless. There were times to be reckless. There were times to be patient. And this seemed maybe one of those times to be very, very patient.

  He was afraid to whisper and ask them anything. The Assassins’ Guild used things like electronic ears, and might pick him up. Once that bus got to the estate, there would be a rescue coming back, that was sure; and maybe Banichi and Jago and nand’ Bren were still here, hiding somewhere nearby, themselves, just waiting for reinforcements, if the bus had gone and left them.

  That meant he and his aishid had to avoid being found and used as hostages, and if they moved at all, they had to do it extremely quietly.

  Voices were still intermittently audible: someone was talking unseemly loudly in the hallway, and the doors of the house were still open. It might be staff. But if the lord of the house was giving orders, did it not make sense he would now order the doors shut, for protection of the staff who were in the house?

  “Is it safe?” one asked, which indicated to him that they had to be worried about being shot, and that might mean staff had not been in on the plot.

  It did not mean that nand’ Baiji had not been in on it—nand’ Bren had told him there might be faults of character in nand’ Baiji, and it was very instructive, lying here on the cold dirt, under the weight of two people trying to protect him, and with the smell of gunpowder wafting about. Great-grandmother had held up faults of character—ukochisami—as a thing he should never be thought to have. And now that he had a shockingly concrete example of a grown man with faults of character, he began to see how it was a great inconvenience to everyone for a man to have such faults, and to be a little stupid, too, another thing of which Great-grandmother greatly disapproved. To have faults of character and to be a little stupid, while trying to be clever—that seemed to describe Lord Baiji.

  And he thought that Lord Geigi, his uncle, up on the station, must have been at a great loss for someone better to leave in charge on his estate . . . that, or Lord Baiji, being a young man, had been a little soft . . . Great-grandmother was fond of saying that soft people easily fell into faults of character and that lazy ones stayed ignorant, which was very close to stupid.

  Great-grandmother would have thwacked Baiji’s ear when he was young, no question, and told him what she had told him: If you intend to deal sharply with people, young man, deal smartly, and think ahead! Do not try to deal sharply with us, nor with anyone else smart enough to see to the end of matters! You are outclassed, young man, greatly outclassed, and you will have to work hard ever to get ahead of us!

  It was absolutely amazing how Great-grandmother could foresee the messes and the bad examples her great-grandson could meet along the way. Ukochisama did describe Baiji, who had described a fairly good plan, a policy of stalling the Southerners and keeping them from attacking, but it would not have gone on forever. He would eventually have had to marry that Southern girl, who would be either extremely clever herself, or extremely stupid—and her relatives would just move right in.

  Perhaps they had. One had a fairly good idea that the Southerners were somewhere in this situation. And one began to think—there had been very few servants in sight. They had not said very much. Baiji had let the roads go and he had told nand’ Bren it was because people had gone to relatives down in the Township during the Troubles and things had gotten out of hand.

  That meant—maybe there were not many Edi folk in the house.

  Or maybe there were none. Maybe those had been Southern servants. Southern folk had an accent. But you could learn not to have an accent.

  The only thing was—Baiji had saved his life, when they had been about to sink out there in the sea.

  Baiji had told nand’ Bren where to look for them.

  But maybe Baiji had hoped to get to them first, for completely nefarious reasons—nefarious was on
e of his newest words. Maybe Baiji had had them spotted and was trying to get there ahead of Bren and sweep him up, or maybe just run over the little sailboat . . . while pretending to be rescuing him.

  That had not happened, at least. And Baiji could have kept the information to himself.

  That was confusing.

  Baiji had trailed them out the door, pleading with nand’ Bren, before the shooting started. It had gotten confused then, and his memory of those few moments was a little fuzzy, but had not Baiji been talking about his engagement to that Southern girl and asking to go with them?

  “Should we call the paidhi’s estate?” one of the servants asked, standing near their hiding place in the bushes. He had heard the Southern accent. The Farai had it. And that was not it. Maybe it was Edi. And another voice said: “Ask the bodyguard.” And a third voice, more distant, from what seemed inside the foyer: “No one can find them.”

  That could mean anything. It could mean Baiji’s bodyguard had taken him and run . . . somewhere safe, like clear away and down to the Township, or to some safe room: great houses did tend to have such.

  It could also mean Baiji’s bodyguard had been in on the attack and were somewhere around the estate hunting for nand’ Bren. Or for him.

  That was a scary thought. He was cold through, in contact with the dirt. He started to shiver, and that was embarrassing.

  “Are you all right, nandi?” the whisper came beside his ear.

  He reached back blindly, caught Antaro’s collar and pulled her head lower, where he could whisper at his faintest. “We must not move until they shut those doors,” he said.

  “Dark will not be safe,” Antaro whispered back. “The Guild has night scopes. We will glow in the dark.”

  “We need full cover,” he whispered. “Did nand’ Bren get away, nadi?”

  “His guard took him,” Antaro said. “They left.”

  That was good and bad news.

  “They will come back,” he said. “My father will send Guild. We have to stay out of sight.”

  “Wait until they all go in. Then I can go along between the bushes and the wall and see how far we are from the edge of this place.”

  “There might be booby traps,” he said. “Banichi taught me. Watch for electrics, watch for wires.” He heard the doors shut with great authority and that was a relief. For a few heartbeats after that it was just their own breathing, no sound of anyone any longer outside, just the creak of the wreckage settling: that was what he thought it was.

  “I shall go, nandi,” Antaro said. She had had some Guild training. Far from enough.

  “One begs you be careful, nadi.”

  It took some careful manuvering: she slithered right over him; and it was very, very dangerous. They were behind evergreens, on a mat of fallen needles and neglect. That could mask a trap, and Antaro necessarily made a little noise, and left clear traces for somebody as keeneyed as Banichi. That was a scary thought, but it was scarier staying here once night fell and nand’ Bren came back and bullets started flying . . . not to mention people using night scopes on the bushes.

  Antaro reached the end of the building, and Jegari, still on top, pushed at him, insisting it was his turn. So he moved. He saw no threatening wires. There was a wire that went to some landscape lights. But nothing of the bare sort that could take a finger. Or your head. He slithered as Antaro had done, as Banichi had taught him, intermittent with listening, and he was fairly certain Jegari moved behind him. He crawled past the roots of bushes, and along beside the ancient stonework of the stately house, trying to disturb as little as possible with the passage of his body, trying to smooth down the traces Antaro had left, and hoping Jegari would do the same, on the retreat.

  Antaro, having reached the corner, had stopped. A little flagstone path led off the cobbled drive, and passed through an ironwork gate, a gate with no complicated latch.

  That gate was in a whitewashed wall as high as the house roof, and it led maybe a stone’s easy toss to another whitewashed wall that contained the driveway. Where they intersected, there was a little fake watchtower, with empty windows and a tile roof with upturned corners.

  Beyond that wall were the tops of evergreens and other, barren, trees. A woods.

  Safety, one might think.

  But he had read a lot. And he had talked with Banichi and Jago on the long voyage.

  And Banichi had told him once, “The best place to put a trap is where it seems like the way out.”

  Too attractive, a woods running right up to the house walls.

  “The woods is going to be guarded,” he whispered. “Look for an alarm on the gate.”

  “Yes,” Antaro said, and rolled half over so she could look up at the gate. She did that for some little time, and then pointed to the base of the gate and made the sign for “alarm.”

  He looked for one. He could not see it, but when he looked closely, he saw a little square thing.

  “Over,” she signed to him. And “Come.”

  He moved closer. Antaro signaled for Jegari to come close, and he crawled close. Antaro stepped onto her brother’s back, and he braced himself, and she took hold of the top of the gate and just—it was amazing—lifted herself into something like a handstand. She went over, and lit ever so lightly.

  She waited there, and Jegari offered his hands and whispered, “Go, nandi.”

  He did, as best he could. He climbed up onto Jegari’s hands, and Jegari lifted him up to the top of the gate. Antaro stood close, so he could get onto her shoulders, and then she knelt down and let him gently to the ground, turning then to offer her hands to Jegari, who had pulled himself up and climbed atop the gate. Jegari was a heavy weight—but she braced herself and made a sling of her hands and he got down.

  They were over. They were clear.

  But they were also inside an alarmed area. It was a very bare, very exposed corner of a small winter-bare orchard—walled about with the same house-high barrier, with those intermittent little watchtowers. The old trees were just leafing out, not a lot of cover. And the orchard ran clear back out of sight, beyond the house, and evidently the wall went on, too, just a few towers sticking up above the slight hill. Probably it enclosed the whole estate grounds.

  But something interesting showed, nearest, at the base of that corner tower: steps. One could go up there. Cajeiri pointed at it, pointed at a second tower, somewhat less conspicuous, beyond the gray-brown haze of winter branches. Pointed at the shuttered great windows in this face of the house.

  Jegari nodded grim agreement. That little tower—that might be somewhere they would not look.

  Antaro nodded, and moved out. Cajeiri followed, trying to move without scuffing up the leaves; and Jegari came after him. They reached a sort of flagstone patio that probably afforded very pleasant evenings in summer, with the trees in leaf. Tools stood there against the wall, rusting in the winter rains. Mani would never approve.

  They trod carefully on that little patio, with its dead potted plants, its pale flagstones, and its upward stairs. And Cajeiri started to take that stairs upward to that whitewashed wall and tower, but Antaro pressed him back and insisted on going up first.

  There was a chain up there, blocking off the top. She slipped under it, and slithered up onto the walk and into the tower, then slithered back again, signaling “Come quickly.”

  Cajeiri climbed the steps as fast as he could, with Jegari behind him, up, likewise slithered under the prohibiting chain, crawled onto a little concrete walkway along the fake, whitewashed battlement. A very undersized door went into the tower from there, slithering was the only way in. Glassless windows lit the inside— and a very modern installation, a kind of box with a turning gear.

  Cajeiri’s heart went thump. They had come on the very sort of surveillance they were afraid of. But the sensor was aimed out the windows: it shifted from one window to the other, whirr-click, left to right, right to left, watching out in the woods. Towers like this one were all along the wall—
there were several in view just from the orchard, and probably every single tower had something similar inside. But the machinery was all dusty and rusty, even if it was working. There were big cracks in the wall, starting from two of the windows, the outermost and the innermost cracks which nobody had fixed. It was not the best maintenance that kept this system.

  On their knees, peering through the crack beneath the garden-side window, they had a good view of the house from here, and a lot more of the orchard. They could see where the portico had collapsed in front.

  Worse—much worse, there was somebody in Guild black just coming over the house roof.

  They all dropped down, and Cajeiri kept his eye to the crack.

  “Guild! ”he whispered, with a chill going through him. There was an enemy, they were still hunting for them, and in a little while, as he watched through that crack, two more Guildsmen came around the corner of the house. They opened the alarmed gate, and shut it, and started methodically looking through the orchard.

  Cajeiri knelt there, watching the search go on, watching that solitary black presence on the roof, out of sight of those below, and he shivered a twitch or two, which embarrassed him greatly.

  Not good. Not good at all. Nand’ Bren was going to come back, and there was a trap, and they were already in it. These people, however, were standing around and pointing, more than searching. Pointing at the roof, and pointing at the front gate.

  One could almost imagine them laying plans for exactly such a thing as an attack from Bren’s estate. They were devising traps.

  They might come up here to check the security installation.

  That would not be good. They might need to be out of here. They might urgently need to do that.

  11

  The bus was running on the wheel rim on the left rear. Their driver, Iscarti, was not doing well, but they had gotten the blood staunched, and there was local help—the aiji-dowager never traveled without her personal physician: the man was a surgeon, and the best there was likely to be in the district. Banichi continually held pressure against the wound, and Bren had gotten up off the floor at least to look out the window and learn where they were.