Peacemaker (16 page)

Secondary passages, secondary passages all over the place, in every office, in the Council chamber. It was the Assassins' Guild. Of
course
there were secondary passages. Every building in the aishidi'tat had back passages. . . .

A burst of fire came out the ruined Council-area door, and a concentrated volley came back, right past the door frame. No more fire came out.

A flood of bodies occupied the hall, shadows moving fast in the smoke. Bren put his hand down on the stone floor, thinking if that was their side inbound, it might be time to get up and have it clear who they were—and his hand slipped.

He wrenched halfway about to get a look at Banichi, saw his face in the flashing lights of the alarm system. Banichi was sitting upright, but not doing so well, and it was blood slicking the floor. A lot of it.

“Damn it.” Bren got to his knees, ignoring the rush of bodies past them as he tried to get Banichi's coat open. “Tano-ji! He's bleeding!”

“Likely a broken stitch,” Banichi said faintly, above the continuing din of the bell. “One is just a little light-headed. Stay
down,
Bren-ji. Tano, turn on the bracelet.”

Tano did that. Banichi's locator started flashing, communicating who they were,
where
they were.

Bren had a handkerchief—a gentleman carried such things. He put it, still folded, inside Banichi's jacket, under Banichi's arm, and felt heat and soaked cloth. “Press on that, Nichi-ji. Do not move the arm. Just keep pressure on it.”

“One hesitates to remark,” Banichi said, as another flashbang went off somewhere behind the wall and gunfire broke out, “one hesitates to remark that you are contributing no little blood, Bren-ji.”

His scalp stung when he thought about it. Adrenaline had been holding off an ill-timed headache, and he felt dizzy when he shifted about, which seemed likely from too much desk-sitting.

“That arm must not move,” Tano said to Banichi.
“Must
not, Nichi-ji, do you hear? Do not try to get up yet.” Tano was securing his own communications earpiece, which had fallen out, and voices were coming through it, fainter than the bell and the firing and shouting going on in the adjacent hall. There was more than the smell of gunpowder. There was smoke in the air—smoke the source of which they couldn't see, as yet, but this had the smell of woodsmoke. Something was afire.

Tano didn't move from where he was. Algini and Jago were on their feet, but not crossing that open doorway, just watching, with guns in hand, Jago still keeping the guard unit with the wounded partner quiet and out of the way. Bren knelt there with his body-armor between Banichi and whatever traffic passed them . . . not of much use, but at least he could keep an eye on Banichi, be sure he was conscious, and be ready to get up and invoke Tabini's name if any problems rebounded in their direction.

Gunfire, acute for a moment, had tapered off. And the bell stopped ringing and the lights that had survived the barrage stopped flashing. In that sudden, absolute silence, Bren felt the world quite distant and himself gone shaky, whether from contributing to the bloody puddle on the floor or from a sustained expectation of dying—he was not sure.

Tano got to his feet and spoke to someone on com. Bren stayed tucked low, one knee under him, the briefcase right by him, one hand on Banichi's arm. He wished he had a medical kit with him . . . but that briefcase could have no illicit weapons, offer no signs to anyone who would examine it that it was
anything
other than a paidhi's proper business. That briefcase was their justification and their protection—that briefcase, and himself, bearing the aiji's ring, the legal equivalent of Tabini's presence.

For some few minutes that eerie semi-silence in the halls went on. Across the perilous gap of the shattered doorway, Jago and Algini maintained their watch in two directions. Tano remained standing, watching that side hall, but things were much quieter. The trapped guard unit had stayed very still, concentrating on their own wounded, and now and again exchanging quiet words with Jago. Then quietly she got up, and under her armed watch, that unit laid their weapons on the floor, got up, lifted their wounded partner to his feet, and went on through that shattered doorway, apparently to seek medical help inside.

Dare we move? Bren wondered. But he noted flashes from Jago's bracelet, across the hall; and from Tano's and Banichi's, near at hand, and Algini and Tano were listening to something.

“We have secured the Council chamber,” Tano said.

“Up,” Banichi murmured then. “We are not done here. Bren-ji. The papers. The Council.”

That was the plan. The papers—ultimately—had to be proven for what they were. The justification for their action had to be laid down in official record.

“Can you?” he asked. “Banichi? You could stay here with Tano and Jago. Algini and I can go.”

“Half this blood is yours,” Banichi said, and drew a knee up and put his other hand down. “I can walk.”

“Stubborn,” Jago said. “Stubborn, unit-senior.”

“Let us have this done,” Banichi said. “Let us see this happen.
Up,
Bren-ji. Tano. Lend a hand.”

Bren stood up, watched uneasily as Tano gently assisted Banichi to his feet, providing most of the effort. For a moment Bren thought,
He can't do it,
and Banichi leaned against the wall, light-headed. But Banichi shook them off then, obstinate and setting his own two feet. Algini joined them. Lights sparked on bracelets.

“Briefcase, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, leaning against the wall, and Bren bent quickly and picked it up—feeling a little dizziness in that move; and the knee and shin of his trousers were dark and soaked. Banichi was right. Between himself and Banichi, they were a bloody mess.

They were in sole possession of the outer hall, except a guard the incoming forces had set at the ruined front door. Shouted orders reverberated from inner halls.

The splintered door beside them had long since stopped swinging, jammed in a way that had provided protection for Jago and Algini. Jago stood in that doorway now, pistol in both hands, got a look in one direction, nodded to somebody unseen, and a man walked into their hallway: Nawari, who frowned in concern at the sight of them.

“Nand' paidhi,” Nawari said with a little nod.

“The office,” Banichi asked immediately. “The problem.”

“Settled,” Nawari said. “There was some burning. An incendiary.
He
is dead, apparently a suicide, considerably burned, but recognizable. The records—suffered, but were not destroyed. And we intercepted one man with several notebooks from that office.”

So Shishogi was dead, unable to be questioned. But notebooks, removed under such circumstances . . . that might be a very fortunate find.

“One expected such a device,” Banichi said. “The bill?”

“Two of ours out of action,” Nawari said, “counting yourself. Two of the resistance dead, three, counting the target. Fourteen in the building wounded, one hundred forty-seven voluntarily standing down pending a resolution. Sixteen under arrest, undergoing sorting now, testimony to be taken: they are suspect. A new Council is about to meet to declare a quorum, record the change, and close the meeting. Yourself, nadi-ji, and especially the paidhi-aiji . . . are needed there as soon as possible.”

Banichi said, “Bren-ji.”

The aiji's documents. The justification. The legalities. “One is ready,” Bren said. “Banichi, if you can do this—then you are to have that seen to. Immediately.”

“Agreed,” Banichi said. Bren found his aishid around him—his head was beginning to throb with his heartbeat now, the buzz in his ears seeming louder than some voices, and he was beginning to feel a little sick at his stomach—the stress of the moment, he said to himself. He had to get through this, just a few more minutes, to get Banichi the help he needed, to get the whole business settled.

They walked with Nawari into the foyer on the other side of that splintered door, an area overhung with gray smoke, splinters from the door, dust-filmed puddles of water, and an amazing number of brass casings lying about—not to mention the leaking skein of gray fire hoses deployed through the open door of the left-hand hall. That one door, amid all the chaos, was relatively untouched.

The Office of Assignments—Cenedi's target—lay in that direction. But their own business was straight ahead, down the blood-spattered stub of a corridor to the open Council chamber. They just had to get to the heart of that chamber, just had to stand up that long.

Bar the paidhi-aiji, carrying no weapon but the aiji's ring and bringing a briefcase with
nothing
but the aiji's and the aiji-dowager's legitimate demands for an investigation? That was actionable.

Shoot at him? Wound his aishid? That was a shot fired at Tabini-aiji.

They
had
the bastards. They had them, legally. He just had to drive the last nail in. Had to stay on his feet. They all five had to hope there wasn't some holdout, somewhere—but self-protection wasn't their business any longer. Nawari opened the doors, gave orders to those guarding them. They entered the chamber, walked down the descending aisle, past tiers of desks, where a gathering of Guild, some with wounds, all heavily armed, filled the space around the long desk that dominated the speaker's well.

Their entry held universal attention from below—eyes tracking him and his aishid, and their progress down the steps and levels that split the chamber's seating.

The long desk at the bottom belonged, one understood, to the Guildmaster and his two aides. The less conspicuous desk to the side, obscured by the crowd, belonged to the recording secretary.

Thirty-three seats in the chamber, all counted—twenty-nine councillors if all the seats were filled. Three at the long desk. And the recorder.

He and his aishid reached the bottom of the aisle, and as they did, the armed gathering at the bottom of the well began to flow upward into the tiers of desks, spreading out to fill those places. A senior woman slipped her rifle from her shoulder and laid it on the long desk, at the right-hand seat of the three. A man, completely gray-haired, sat down in the central seat, and laid a pistol in front of him, and leaned another, a rifle, against the desk, sat in the leftmost seat, at which point the woman—likely Daimano—sat down.

Which
of these was taking the office of Guildmaster was uncertain. The leadership changed seating at whim, Jago had forewarned him, when outsiders were present; and under the circumstances, one was not sure that even all the Guildsmen taking the Council seats were themselves sure who was setting himself in charge.

But the retired and the Missing and the Dead, as Jago called them, were claiming their places in the chamber, some resuming old seats—more of them taking seats to which they had elected themselves, a complete change of the Council as it had been constituted this last year. The recorder's seat was still vacant as the man at center declared for silence in the room, and a last few took their places.

An old man, completely gray-haired, took the seat of the recording secretary, a last scrape of wood on stone as that chair moved into place, a thump and a riffle of pages as he opened the massive book that had apparently rested there safely shut during the tumult outside.

There was a distinct smell of smoke in the air here, too. There was still shouting back and forth outside the chamber, until the outer door definitively shut and muffled what was going on up on the main floor.

“Nand' paidhi,” the man centermost said.

“Nadi.” Bren bowed deeply to him, and to the two flanking him, no formality omitted. He shifted the briefcase to the other hand. “I speak as paidhi-aiji, for Tabini-aiji, with his ring.” His voice was undependable, hoarse from the smoke and the dryness. He held out the bloodied ring as steadily as he could, tried quietly to clear his throat, resisting the impulse to wipe the gold clean. Dignity, he said to himself. Calm. As if he
did
rule the aishidi'tat.

Happy with humans? They were not. His aishid had warned him they were bringing back a cadre of old leadership that opposed humans and all they brought with them—a leadership that might wish that he had been a casualty, leaving them to settle things without him.

“In the aiji's name, bearing his orders, with his seal—his request for an investigation of orders given in the Dojisigin Marid; bearing also, in the aiji's name, corroborating documents from the aiji-dowager.”

“Enter the documents, paidhi-aiji!”

“Nadi!” he said, the proper response, and with another bow, and leaving his aishid standing, he went aside to the recorder's table, set his briefcase on that desk—and found his fingers stuck together about the bloody handle, his cuff-lace on that wrist absolutely matted, both his hands too filthy to do more than open the two latches to show the ornately ribboned and sealed documents inside. “Recorder,” he said, “if you will kindly assist me.”

The recorder rose, carefully took the documents in clean hands, entirely emptying the case, and set them, unstained, on the desk. Using an old-fashioned glass pen and inkwell from a recess within the desk, the recorder wrote in his book, and carefully printed a number on the first corner of each document and signed beneath each.

Then he rose and bowed. “Paidhi-aiji,” he said, with an unexpected fervor. “The Guild is in receipt of the aiji's orders.”

“Nadi,” Bren said with gratitude. The shakes wanted to attack him now and he called up reserves, determined not to delay attention to Banichi by falling on his face. He walked back to his aishid and faced the Guildmaster's desk for a statement of a sort he had done often enough in the aiji's court.

“The nature of the aiji's business,” the Guildmaster said, “paidhi-aiji, a summation.”

“Tabini-aiji requests, with these documents, under his seal, an investigation into orders given in the Dojisigin Marid—regarding a situation in which local Guild were disarmed, their units separated, and put into the field without equipment.” Deep breath. “The second document, for the Guild's attention, from the aiji-dowager, under her seal: the deposition of two Dojisigin Guild whose village was threatened with destruction if they refused to carry out an unFiled assassination of a northern lord.”