• • •
The train picked up a little speed as it emerged from the tunnel. Tano used the train’s internal communication, at the other end of the car, to talk to the engineer.
“The switches are set,” Jago said, cited the time to the half-minute, and Banichi quietly nodded.
Two critical switchpoints, one that shunted them from the Bujavid track to the eastern track, which the Red Train used occasionally; and another, down by the canal, that would shunt them onto the ancient line that ran down to the freight yards and warehouses, and up to the ancient heart of the city.
The Red Train, in Bren’s own memory, had never taken the eastern route, let alone switched onto the central city track, and it was far from inconspicuous. People who saw that train might think that Tabini himself, one of his family, or a very high official, was on the move. They would ask themselves whether they had heard that the aiji would be traveling—and they would think, no, there had been no such advisement on the news; and with the heir’s suddenly-public birthday Festivity imminent, it was hardly likely Tabini himself would be traveling.
A high official, likely.
And what, they might wonder, was the Red Train doing on this track, headed east on a track usually carrying freight? Might it be headed for the old southern route, for the Marid?
Not likely.
Would it take the northern end of the old route, up to the Padi Valley, to the Kadagidi township? There had been trouble up there.
Both those routes were feasible—until they reached the next switchpoint.
If the operation had leaked in advance, the first indication of trouble might come with that switch not sending them onto the old freight depot spur. Bren sat waiting, as aware as the rest of them where they were on the track—and aware of the story they’d handed the Transportation Guild, who, unlike the public, knew where trains were going—or had to be convinced they did.
Tatiseigi’s men and the dowager’s had moved into the Bujavid office of the Transportation Guild with an order from the aiji-dowager. The Red Train was to shunt over to the old mid-city spur for a pickup at the freight yard—artworks for Lord Tatiseigi’s special exhibit in the Bujavid Museum for the Festivity. The fact that there actually were large crates from Lord Tatiseigi’s estate in the system waiting for the regular freight pickup after midnight . . . was useful. The fact that the large crates contained all their spare wardrobe from Tirnamardi, the things they had not had time to pack, was nothing the dowager’s men needed to explain to the operators in the Transportation Guild offices.
Perfectly reasonable that the Red Train should move to bring in crates of priceless artwork. Unusual. But reasonable. That part of the operation was the dowager’s own plan, and one they had readily adopted into their own.
The train had reached a straight stretch of track, and the car rocked and wheels thumped at a fair speed. Bren had studied the map. His own mental math and the straightaway run told him they were beside the old industrial canal, and right along the last-built perimeter of the Old City. They were coming up on their second switchpoint, if the men that were supposed to have gotten there had in fact done their job.
If they didn’t make the switch—if they didn’t, then there was a major deviation in the plan. Then, in fact—the mission changed.
Slow, slow . . . slow again. Tano and Algini quietly got up, went to the intercom at the other end of the car and waited there.
What would they do—if the switch didn’t happen?
Stop the train and deal with the situation?
Nobody had told him that part.
A little jolt and jostle then, and the train gently bumped onto the other track, slowly making a fairly sharp old-fashioned turn due south.
Bren let go a breath.
Likely so did the engineer, the fireman, and the brakeman, the personnel that ran the Red Train—all three on the aiji’s staff, elderly gentlemen, veteran railroaders in what amounted to a mostly retired lifestyle, brave gentlemen, occasional witnesses to history; and once or twice under fire. They had survived the coup—they had simply boarded another train and ridden off to the north coast, unable to rescue their beloved old engine, so it had served that scoundrel Murini for a time. But it, and they, were back where they belonged. The crew might not know the extent of the mission this time, but they had orders that had nothing to do with the freight yard: to take an unaccustomed route, stall the venerable engine at a certain prearranged point in front of the Assassins’ Guild Headquarters, and hold fast no matter what happened . . .
A mechanical breakdown was what they would radio to Transportation Headquarters, which was, ironically, just two streets over from the Assassins’ Guild.
It was a slow progress now. There were no windows in the red car, but they would be passing the very edge of the Old City, the mazy heart of Shejidan, defined by its walled neighborhoods and narrow, cobbled streets. This was the oldest track in the system—and that was another reason the Red Train, while a novelty here, was a logical choice—being of the same vintage as the handful of city engines. The sleek modern transcontinental cars that ran out of the main Shejidan rail station could not navigate the Bujavid tunnels, and while the gauge was the same, the longer cars could not manage the curves of the trans-city route. Older, shorter cars and smaller engines served the Bujavid and plied the city’s warehouse to market runs with the same equipment as they had used a century ago, cycling round and round the loop that encircled the city’s ancient center, like blood pumping from a heart to the body and back again. Older trains served the less populous districts of the continent at the sort of speed that let a provincial lord stop a train for a mail or freight pickup—which was why their incoming crates from Tirnamardi had arrived at the city freight depot. And the vintage city trains picked up mail, they picked up fruit and vegetables, flour and oil and wine, and transported them to warehouses for local pickup, or to the express line for transcontinental shipment. They occasionally stopped and quickly offloaded a stack of crates onto the public sidewalk, for one of the larger shops. They picked up passengers, usually from designated stops, but would now and again let themselves be flagged to allow a random boarding. The system halted, oh, for long enough to get a stalled van off the tracks. It halted to allow a spate of pedestrian traffic to cross up in the hotel district. Or for a large unscheduled mail pickup.
But the whole city rail was about to come to a cold, prolonged halt. The situation would be reported, after a few moments, for safety’s sake, and it would be up to the dowager’s men to guarantee the Transportation office up in the Bujavid did not rush crews to reach the train at fault . . . but that it did stop traffic.
“We are still on time,” Jago said quietly. Banichi sat staring into space, counting, in that process that knew to the second where they were, where Cenedi was, and where their support was. Banichi signaled. Locators went on.
Bren sat still, avoiding any distraction whatsoever: silence was the rule, while his bodyguard thought, watched, counted. He had the all-important briefcase between his feet. He had his vest. He didn’t want to take another hit. The last one he’d taken was enough.
But shooting was not the order of the day. Finesse had to prevent that, as long as possible, and finesse needed that briefcase, and the very heavy seal ring he wore. Needed those things, and steady nerves.
Slower still. Straight. Now he was very sure where they were, on the track that ran right through the middle of the broadest cobbled plaza in Shejidan . . . the old muster ground, which the Guilds had claimed as the last available land in the heart of old Shejidan, back when the aishidi’tat was organizing and the Guilds were becoming the institution they were now.
Slow, slow, slow . . . until the train stopped, exhaled, and sat there.
Banichi and Jago got up. Bren picked up his briefcase and stood up, letting Banichi and Jago get to the fore. He walked behind them to the end
of the car where the door was, where Tano and Algini were waiting. There they waited just a handful of seconds.
From now on, Banichi led, Banichi set the pace, and it was going to be precise, once they reached a certain street lamp on the plaza. From that point, it was sixty-one paces to the steps, seven steps up to the doors, and beyond that—
Banichi gave a hand signal. Algini opened the door and stepped out into the twilight, not at the usual platform height. Algini landed on his feet below, Tano did, and the two of them immediately pulled spring pins that released three more filigree brass steps.
Banichi descended. Jago did. Bren took the tall steps down and used Jago’s offered hand to steady him as he dropped to the cobbles.
The car was sitting close by the lamp post in question, in front of the featureless black of the Assassins’ Guild Headquarters . . . a building as modern-looking as anything one might expect over on Mospheira. Its design made it a block, slits for windows, black stone with inset doors, with none of the baroque whimsy that put a lively frieze of an ancient open-air market around the Merchants’ Guild, or a staid and respectable set of statues to the Scholars’ Guild that sat next to it. The Assassins’ Guild just looked . . . unapproachable, its doors, as black as the rest of it, set deep in a relatively narrow approach. Wooden doors, Banichi had told him. Ironwood. It took something to breach that material.
But those outer doors should not routinely be locked. Banichi had said that, too. They were not supposed to be locked. They could be. The inner door definitely would be.
They reached the lamp post. He thought Banichi might pause there, if they were somehow off their time—but Banichi and Jago kept going. It was his job to stay with them, and Tano’s and Algini’s to stay with him. It was a pace he could match if he pushed himself. Banichi said speed mattered. But it couldn’t look forced to any observer, just deliberate.
Sixty-one paces. They crossed the cobblestone plaza on a sharp diagonal, crossed the scarcely-defined street, and the modern paved sidewalk that skirted the Guild’s frontage.
Seven steps up to the iron-bound doors, which might or might not open.
At the last moment Banichi touched something on his locator bracelet and Jago pounded once with her fist on the dark double doors.
There was a hesitation. Then a latch clicked and the left-hand door, where they were not, swung outward—a defensive sort of door, not the common inward-swinging sort. Guards in Guild uniform confronted them.
“The paidhi-aiji,” Banichi said, “speaking for Tabini-aiji.”
Bren did not bow. He held up his hand, palm inward, with the seal-ring outward.
The unit maintained official form—the two centermost stepped to the side, clearing their path without a word of discussion.
They were in.
Bren went with Banichi and Jago in front of him and Tano and Algini behind. It was the tail end of a warm day at their backs. The foyer swallowed them up in shadow and cool air, and three steps up led to a hallway of black stone, where converted gas lamps, now electric, gave off a gold and inadequate light beside individual office doors. Antiquity was the motif here. Deliberate antiquity, shadow, and tradition.
Hammered-glass windows in the dark-varnished doors. Black stone outside . . . and that glass in those doors was, Bren thought, all but whimsical—a show of openness, even of casual vulnerability . . . in the fifteen offices that dealt with outsiders to the Guild.
These outer offices had nothing to do with Tabini-aiji’s order. A business wanting a guard for a shipment, yes. Someone with legal paperwork to file. A small complaint between neighbors. A request for a certificate or seal. It was the national judicial system, where it regarded inter-clan disputes.
The aiji’s business had no place in this hall, which led past the nine offices of the main hall toward an ornate carved door, and at the left, a corner, with six more offices in a hall to the left, just as described.
Two guards at their backs, down those three steps to the double-doored entry. Four guards at a single massive wooden door, this time.
“The aiji’s representative,” Banichi said, and a second time Bren held up his hand with the ring.
This time it was no automatic opening of the door. “Seeking whom, paidhi-aiji?”
“The aiji sends to the Guildmaster, nadi, understanding the Guild Council is in session this evening.”
There was no immediate argument about it. Guild queried Guild, communicating somewhere beyond those doors.
Bren waited, his bodyguard standing still about him. It was thus far going like clockwork. Neither of these outer units should have the authority to stop them.
“The paidhi-aiji,” the senior said, in that communication, not in code, “bearing the aiji’s seal ring, a briefcase, and with his own bodyguard.”
There was a delay. The senior stayed disengaged from them, staring across the hall at his counterpart in the second unit. There might have been a lengthy answer, or a delay for consultation. And there might yet be a demand to open the briefcase.
The senior shot a sudden glance toward Bren. “Nand’ paidhi, the Council is in session on another matter. You are requested to wait here.”
“Here?” Indignantly. They needed to be through that second set of doors. Bren held up his fist, with Tabini’s ring in evidence, and put shock in his voice. “This, nadi, does not wait in the public hall!” With the other hand, he held forward the briefcase. “Nor does the aiji’s address to the Guild Council! If the Council is in session, so be it! This goes through!”
“Nand’ paidhi.” The senior gave a little nod to that argument and renewed his address to the other side of the door. “The paidhi has the aiji’s seal ring, nadi. He strongly objects.”
There was another small delay. Nobody moved. There was an eerie quiet—both in their vicinity, and from all those little offices up and down the two halls that met here. What was going on back at the outer doors, at any door along that hallway, Bren could not tell. One could hear the slightest sound, somewhere. Atevi ears—likely heard far more than that, possibly even the sound of the transmission.
Or movements within the offices.
Were they expected? Was the place in lockdown? What was behind all those office doors?
Banichi and the others stood absolutely still, and Bren refused to twitch—as still as his own bodyguard. He could do it. He’d prepared himself to do it, and lean on their reflexes, not his own. The click of the door lock in front of them echoed like a rifle shot.
And that door, that single, massive wooden door, opened on brighter light, with four more guards the other side of it, at an identical intersection of hallways—again, a blank wall on the right, an ornate carved door, however, closing off the hall of offices on the left. A short jog over, and a short hallway, beyond these guards, led to barely visible closed doors, also guarded by a unit of four.
That was the Council Chamber, down that stub of a hall. The left-hand hall—that was Guild Administration. And at the other end of it sat the Office of Assignments.
Exactly as arranged, Bren stopped . . . not quite inside, as Banichi and Jago encountered the guards. He was in the doorway. So were Tano and Algini, just behind him, beside that thick outward-opening single door. The guards in front of them posed an obstacle, wanting to look them over. There were still the six guards in the outer hall, at their backs—and four automatic rifles, not just sidearms, to judge by the two men visible, guarded the Council doors ahead.
He was causing a small problem. The outer four guards could not shut the door, and were mildly unhappy about it, the inside guards were trying to move them on without a fuss—
Fuss—was a lord’s job.
He shot up his fist, with the ring in clear evidence. “This, nadiin, is the aiji’s presence, and my case contains his explicit orders. Tabini-aiji sends to the Guildmaster, demanding urgent attention, and he wil
l not be pleased to be stalled or given excuses about agendas. Advise the Guildmaster! There is no delay about this!”
“The Guildmaster is in Council, paidhi-aiji,” the senior nearest said in a quiet, urgent voice, “and the Council is in session. We will send word into the chamber and we will take you to his office to wait. He will see you and receive the orders there.”
Double or nothing. Bren pitched his voice low, where only the immediate four might hear him—for what good it did, if electronics was sending voices elsewhere. “I, speaking for the aiji, ask you now, nadiin, where is your man’chi? Is it to the Guildmaster, or to the aishidi’tat? They are not one and the same. Is it to the Guildmaster, or to the Guild? They are not one and the same.”
“Paidhi, this is neither here nor there. We are not refusing the aiji’s request. Even the aiji—”
He kept his voice down. “You are betrayed by the Guild leadership, nadiin. Stand down now! This is the aiji’s order! Obey it!”
Faces were no longer disciplined or impassive. Eyes darted in alarm, one to the other, and, to the side, Banichi had just deftly bumped the door frame, and inserted a little wad of expanding plastic in the latch-hole.
“Close the doors!” the inside senior said, and suddenly they were facing four rifles, from the Council doorway.
“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.
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