Destroyer (28 page)

Nawari, a shadow against the light, turned their unconscious prisoner’s face.

“Dataini,” was the immediate, frightened-sounding answer. “Dataini. His wife is Tasigin. He is the new constable.”

“The new constable?” Banichi asked.

“Here in Adaran. Since—” Ruso’s eyes moved uneasily toward the dowager and back. “Since the new authority, in Shejidan.”

“And where is the old Adaran constable, Rusonadi?” Ilisidi asked.

“Gone back to fishing, aiji-ma, since they took his authority away.”

“We give it back. Do you suppose, if you found him this evening, he might deal with this man?”

Ruso’s eyes were very large. “I think he would run that risk, if it was your order, aiji-ma. But the wife has relatives.”

“See to it,” Ilisidi said with a wave of her hand, and Banichi lowered the tarp, taking the light away. A low-pitched discussion followed, outside, how they would leave this Dataini in the truck, well-secured, and how Ruso must go to the former constable in this town, and take measures to take Dataini’s wife into custody too, before she could realize her husband was missing and make a phone call to whatever regional authority was overseeing this remote fishing district.

The counterrevolution had started. And the young driver, Ruso, had volunteered in harm’s way, with time and force of the essence. It was not the move Banichi would have advocated if they were going to take months dealing with this.

God, Bren thought, we may have to deal with Kadigidi appointees in districts where we’re going, not to mention the cities. It was an unfortunate possibility that these new authorities were still compiling their own list of everyone within the man’chi of Tabini’s household and Geigi’s, Geigi being aiji up on the station, and in an otherwise unassailable position . . . threaten those under his protection, since they could not reach Geigi.

This could be a problem, Bren said to himself. This could be a real problem.

“Is there water, mani-ma?” Cajeiri asked. “Might we just leave the corner of the tarp up a little?”

“Hush,” Ilisidi said sharply, and there was renewed quiet, in which they could still hear the discussion with Ruso, a discussion in which it seemed there was some sort of written instruction, some commitment to paper that they had found in the dash panel of the truck, and a pricked finger—blood could work, where wax was lacking, however imperfectly, impressing a mark from Banichi’s Guild ring. It was an Assassin’s signature they were producing for the girl, a request with legal force, when Banichi was acting in his protective capacity. His own authority at least matched any village constable’s.

“There,” he heard Banichi say. “Let the Adaran constable carry that for a warrant, and gather deputies, as many as he can.”

They moved away, then, and by the give of springs, sat on the front bumper, Banichi, Jago, and the girl from Desigien together, as it seemed, looking, as they would, like country folk holding a bored conversation. Things grew quiet for while.

“There was almost certainly a phone call that put that man out on the road,” Cenedi said. “Someone, at sea or on land, saw nand’ Toby’s boat. When the constable does not phone back with a report, there may be an inquiry sent on more than a local level.”

“Good we are not staying the night,” Ilisidi said.

Other footsteps approached the truck. Whoever was sitting on the bumper did not get up, but Ruso, clever girl, told whoever had come up that these were her cousins from down the coast, that they had sailed up to beg the loan of a net, their own village having suffered extremely in a recent storm. Converse went on and on, mostly Ruso speaking in that local lilt, and the conversation up there settled to the usual grumbling about the weather, the fish, daringly, to the market since the trouble. Others gathered, and for a time the truck rocked to bodies leaning against it, all complaining bitterly about market prices and the attitude of the owners of the ice plant, who thought their profits should stay the same, no matter what the depressed market did to the villages.

The talk dwindled, then, some conversants going off to a local watering hole, inviting Ruso and her supposed cousins to join them, but Ruso said she would stay with the truck.

“Now who would steal it, nadi,” one laughed, “or filch one of your fish?”

“The new constable, for all I know,” she said, a bit of boldness that made Bren’s heart skip a beat.

“You have a point, Ruso-ji,” the speaker said, and voices and presence retreated.

There was a collective sigh of relief, audible in the dark. Their prisoner stirred, and went out again, to everyone’s relief.

Bren pillowed his head on his arms and tried to catch a nap beside Tano and Algini. He shut his eyes, tried to ignore the heat, hoped that Toby had gotten well away from the coast by now.

Hoped that the constable’s wife expected him to be out at all hours.

He did sleep a little. He came to in utter dark and much cooler air, no light even from the edges of the tarp, with the noise of a train in the distance. Everybody was stirring about, and he sat up, sore in every joint from resting on bare boards—he could only imagine how Ilisidi fared.

“We are ready, nandi,” Tano said, close beside him.

The train chugged to a stop, passed them, so that they must be alongside the cars. There was a good deal of hallooing and fuss up and down, and Ruso—Bren had gotten to recognize her voice—talked to someone, some talk of ice, a bill, and papers, and then she came back again, saying her cousins would help her load, there was no need of any other. There was a great deal of rattling about, rolling of large doors, cursing and thumps, as something loaded on noisily in their vicinity. It sounded like steel drums.

This diminished, finally, and whoever it was trundled off with the rattle of an empty pull-truck. There followed a period of silence, in which the unconscious constable stirred, and went out yet again, this time gagged and tied to an upright of the truck slats.

“When?” Cajeiri whispered miserably, teeth chattering. “When shall we move, mani-ma? What if we miss the train?”

“Hush,” Ilisidi hissed.

Abruptly someone pulled loose the ropes and freed the back of the tarp. Jago was there, in the dark, outlined in the light of a lantern somewhere distant, to the side.

“Quickly, aiji-ma.” Jago held up the edge of the tarp as two of Cenedi’s men rolled out to assist the dowager. Bren snagged his computer and Tano and Algini worked past him to get at the baggage. Cenedi and Nawari and Cajeiri himself helped Ilisidi to the end of the truck bed, simply sliding her inventively if unceremoniously toward the rear on a piece of baggage. Cenedi then jumped out and lifted her down in his arms, ever so carefully, himself no youngster, but he accepted no help doing it.

“I do not believe I shall walk,” Ilisidi said.

“This way,” Banichi said, and marked a destination with his flashlight, shining the beam along the waiting row of cars, onto the one fairly near their truck, with its door open.

Nawari clambered into the dark boxcar and knelt on the edge. Cenedi handed Ilisidi up to him, and Tano flung baggage in and jumped aboard to the side, pulling Cajeiri up after him. Bren slid off the end of the truck and tried to help Algini with the baggage, but Jago took over that job. “Get aboard, Bren-ji, quickly.”

He was the most conspicuous item in their company. He’d just spent two years where he was ordinary, and he found his protective instincts were dulled, rusted, right along with his wits. He moved quickly, made a try at getting up onto the waist-high deck of the car, computer and all. He couldn’t make it, and tried again. Tano hauled him aboard by the back of his coat.

Scrambling out of the way on the wooden deck, leaning his back against the boxcar’s wall, he checked his pocket. He had not lost his gun. His eyes, accustomed to the dark, made out the surrounds, the source of a pervading chill. It was what they had expected, a wooden refrigerator car, stacked high with dim blocks of ice, with crates of, yes, another village’s fish, already loaded, on their way to morning market somewhere along the rail line.

Banichi was last in, and slid the door to after him. Ruso helped shove it, brave girl.

“Good luck, aijiin-ma,” she said fervently, and the door shut with a thump.

Dark came with it, and persisted, until Cenedi produced a penlight and helped arrange seating for the dowager against the wall, on a pile of baggage.

“It smells like fish in here,” Cajeiri complained.

“They
are
fish,” Ilisidi said. “Hush.”

“Mani-ma.” A pained whisper, next, which no one could fail to hear. “I have need of the convenience.”

“That can be attended, young sir,” Cenedi said, and took the young lad toward a dark, opposite corner of the car, which, fortunately, had plenty of gaps between the boards.

There was mortified silence after Cajeiri returned, silence except for a trembling sigh, as the youngster collapsed onto the wet and mildly fishy floor to sit against the wall, elbows on knees, hands wrapped about his head, a thoroughly miserable picture.

Bren paid his own visit to that small corner. So did others. Life seemed a great deal more bearable, afterward.

The train fired up and slowly, slowly, without the blast of a whistle to disturb the village in the dead of night, got itself into motion, gathering speed with a regular thump of wheels along the rails.

“Ruso says the train will stop briefly for mail at Sidonin,” Banichi said, settling down with a sigh, “which should be just before dawn.”

Sidonin. Next to the Ragi estate of Taiben. It wouldn’t have been a preferred strategy, in Bren’s reckoning of things, to go straight to the heart of the trouble.

But staying aboard into full daylight, when the train reached some town market center, didn’t seem a good idea.

 

There was a sort of breakfast by flashlight, if one counted Toby’s food bars, slightly crushed by sitting on them—they were glad to have them, even so, and washed them down with melted mouthfuls of fishy ice, to conserve the little left in their water-flasks. The train sounded like one of the old-fashioned sort, a steam-powered relic, which rocked along at a fairly sedate clip, whistling eerily at lonely points of hazard.

The chill of the ice had come welcome after the truckbed, at first, but Bren found the chill seeping into his bones after an hour. He sat in near complete dark, now that necessary moving about was done. His hands and feet and backside grew increasingly numb, the faint taste of fish persisted in his mouth, and he was increasingly convinced those cereal bars would remind him of that fishy taste as long as he lived.

Distaste wouldn’t survive the next pangs of hunger, he said to himself. An upset stomach was the least of his worries. A meal at all was better than none. And he had actually gotten a little sleep in the truck, and caught a little more, in the surreal spaces between blasts of the whistle. He found a way to pillow his head on his computer case, and hoped the fishy smell would not embed itself in his clothes.

Eventually, at one waking, there seemed a ghostly gray light coming in the seam of the door, and they were still thumping along. Banichi and Jago had gotten back into uniform. Ilisidi had bestirred herself, and gotten up onto her feet in the brisk cold. She walked about, relying on her stick for balance, waving off Cajeiri’s well-meaning assistance and Cenedi’s offered arm. Cenedi had arranged a sort of a chair for her, consisting of their waterproof luggage atop blocks of ice of suitable height, and she had rested in the best arrangement of all of them. He was heartened to see her up and moving steadily, if slowly. What it cost the dowager in pain he had no idea, but she was on her feet, and refusing to give up. And if she could, no one else could complain. He began to rub life back into knees and ribs and elbows, and thought about hot tea, which was as remote as the space station.

Squeal of iron wheels. The train began to slow gradually, braking, with attendant squeak and thump and rattle. Cenedi leapt up immediately to steady the dowager, who allowed him to see her to her seat.

“Are we supposed to stop, nadiin?” Cajeiri asked worriedly.

“Likely,” Nawari said, extremely curt, and shushed the question.

The dowager had settled and perched braced with her cane as the train slowed to a stop.

Sidonin, one hoped, the mail stop, edge of the Central Association.

In Sidonin, there was more than a chance of a hostile constable. In the territory of the Central Association, an hour or so by rail from Kadigidi territory, their opposition would have set up shop in far more elaborate fashion than in Adaran, on the coast. Not only a constable, but likely the town authorities as well.

Banichi and Tano heaved the door back while the train was still slowing to a stop. It was the faintest of dawn light, and a lantern showed, when Bren took a quick look outside.

No chance that they could jump out before the train reached the station and avoid the possibility of being spotted. It was a long way down, next to the hazard of the track. Ilisidi couldn’t do it. Cajeiri couldn’t. He didn’t know if he could. For the dowager’s sake—at least for hers, they had to wait for a full stop and get down in better order.

Guns were a real likelihood, in that case. Bren patted his pocket and drew a deep breath. Slower. Slower. Slower. Thump-thump-thump.

Wheeze and stop. Banichi and Jago jumped down onto the graveled slant. Nawari and his mate followed.

And any employees of the rail line who saw Assassins’ Guild black suddenly in evidence beside their train at this hour of the morning were likely to be looking for cover, fast. Bystanders were safe during a Guild operation—if they ducked fast and avoided involvement. Things had to be finessed, Banichi’s favorite word, and that meant delicacy, and avoiding the simply feckless and unfortunate.

Two more of Ilisidi’s men heaved baggage down. Bren passed his computer down to Jago, who shouldered it and held up her arms to steady him as he jumped.