Protector: Foreigner #14 (34 page)

“We are not satisfied with the garage,” Algini said sharply. “It abuts the area where we had the first alarm. We are rechecking.”

“The three mechanics,” Tano said, “normally have quarters in the loft above the service area. We started processing that area this afternoon. The vehicles, the loft, the fueling station, the service pit . . . the searchers say most access doors are painted shut and undisturbed—they opened the plumbing access, and checked for signs of entry, but found none. The place is evidently a dense clutter of tools, pipe, chain, all sorts of things. Four of Cenedi’s men spent two hours going over the place—but we also have had the basements to go through, and the staff checks. The team in charge locked the garage and put a guard on it, then went to check plumbing accesses that branch off from that one.”

“We are not satisfied,” Algini repeated. “We have been through the basements—we are assured the basements have no access at all except through the door in the main hall, and Lord Tatiseigi confirms that is the case, but we have been surprised before by some detail that dates to the last century. The garage holds two dead vehicles besides the current, besides, we are told, every tool and spare part ever needed on this estate, besides plumbing and electrical parts, hose, chain, and parts for an earthmover not in the garage: there are accesses, plates welded shut, painted shut, accesses built over with shelves—the moment we had the second alarm, we unlocked that door and started another search. Banichi and Jago, with Rusani’s men and the original four, are rechecking the place right now. We have cleared the entire house to our reasonable satisfaction. Not the garage. And we are having to proceed with caution, nandi, in the event of some sort of trap.”

He had never seen the garage—there was a drive, a cobbled spur off the wide sweep of the drive at the front door, but it was offset somehow from the frontage, not apparent from the approach, and its east wall, also inset, was screened in shrubbery, vines, and an arbor—which he did think of when he thought about the nearness of the garage to their trouble spot of the afternoon. There was the shrubbery, the arbor—and a very long stone’s throw removed from that, the little woods started, with its little path for walks on summer days. That woods was what he had been looking at when they had the first alarm. The garage, behind its camouflage, he did not even recall as a stone wall. The two upper floors rose above what looked like just part of the landscaping. A place out of mind. Never visited. Lord Tatiseigi himself had probably never ventured into it—just stepped into his car at the front door. Get rid of the old tools? They had met Lord Tatiseigi’s notions that old was perfectly good, that getting rid of what one had paid good money for was just unthinkable . . . the mechanics had had help in that accumulation.

Maybe, he thought uneasily, they should just call the mechanics back from the township and have
them
go through the place. They probably knew what belonged there, and didn’t.

Damn, he didn’t like it.

“What’s the story?” Jase asked him. “I missed some of that.”

“The mechanics’ quarters. It’s apparently a cluttered mess and it’s right near where they had the first alarm. They’ve searched it once. They’re increasingly sure that’s where we need to look, and Banichi and Jago are in there now.”

Banichi and Jago were good, but Tano and Algini were the demolitions experts. He’d feel better if it were Algini in there doing the bomb search. If it was Kadagidi mischief, even an assassination attempt, it was one thing. But if it was Shadow Guild—

Scratch that thought. What he knew now said that the Kadagidi
were
the Shadow Guild, or as good as, and that group didn’t stick at civilian casualties, explosives, wires, damage to historic premises—anything to take their targets by surprise and anything to create fear and panic. They couldn’t claim they hadn’t hedged Guild regulations themselves: Tano and Algini had taken out two rooms right here in this house, eliminating one of Murini’s mainstays.

He hoped to God the Shadow Guild hadn’t returned the favor.

What did it take to get a load of explosives into Lord Tatiseigi’s estate, between packing off the resident mechanics to the township and the dowager’s men doing a massive security installation?

Before
their security revision—it could come in as a load of foodstuffs.

He sat and sweated, listening to what he could overhear from Tano and Algini—not wanting to say or do anything to distract anybody, and wishing they would hear from the Taibeni. He
hoped
they had gotten information out of the intruders. He hoped they were in shape to talk, and that, even if they weren’t forthcoming with information, they could find out what they were. That alone—

Then again—the routine homecoming for Lord Tatiseigi would have involved the touring car and the truck.

If they had not used the bus, Bren thought with a slight chill, if they had come in at the train station and called to be met by the estate truck and that huge open car, as Tatiseigi always traveled—and if drivers who were not the regular Atageini drivers showed up—

Tatiseigi would have taken alarm at once. But he might not have had time to do more than realize that fact.

God.

He did
not
interfere in a Guild operation. He had sworn it to himself in the Najida affair; and already violated it. His mind kept racing, actually
hoping
that that was the case, and that it did not involve explosives. But he kept his mouth shut. His team had to investigate what bore investigating, and find out, not guess.

Algini took a deep breath, reacting to something he’d heard. Then: “The Taibeni have them, nandiin-ji,” Algini said. “Two of them. Guild. The Taibeni are bringing them back.”

Have
them. Not
killed
them.

“The report is they climbed a tree, and surrendered, though there was a lengthy negotiation,” Algini said. A pause. Then: “They have asked to speak to
you,
Bren-ji.”

S
o what did one wear to an after-midnight meeting with men who had attempted one’s life?

A bulletproof vest was the first choice.

Banichi and Jago were on their way—they had broken off the search and sealed the garage. Ilisidi and Lord Tatiseigi also intended to have a look at these intruders: but as Jase put it, four humans downstairs was probably too many, and he had no desire to be a distraction. He and Kaplan and Polano were headed down to the house security station where he could get a report and translate the situation for his two guards without getting in the way.

Bren changed coats for a better one . . . with the weight of his small pistol in the pocket. Tano and Algini waited at the door for him—and now he narrowed his focus to just them. From now on they entered a kind of choreography in which, indeed, it was just him and his guard going down there, to meet up with Banichi and Jago. From here on, it was his aishid in charge: he had to be completely aware of their signals, position himself exactly where they wanted him to be, and believe that he could concentrate on his job only when he
was
where they wanted him.

If anything went wrong down there, or if they weren’t liking the situation, he’d pick it up in his peripheral vision—by mind reading, he sometimes thought, awareness of them so keen he could feel their reactions right up his backbone. Right reactions for an atevi world. He settled into that, uncommunicative, as they headed for the stairs—Cenedi had asked the paidhi-aiji’s bodyguard to see these prisoners, find out what they had intended, before they let them anywhere near Ilisidi and Tatiseigi, and find out
why
they had asked to see the paidhi-aiji.

But they were not meeting them alone. Cenedi had lent them twenty of his own.

Twenty. And two of them. Intimidation: just as his best coat was meant to put two fugitives, just pulled from a tree, at a disadvantage.

Banichi and Jago were waiting for them, down in the foyer, along with that number of the dowager’s guard—so many black uniforms the light in the foyer seemed dimmed and the echoes were dead, overwhelmed in the slight shift of very tall bodies. Bren stepped onto the floor, his aishid moving around him, making space for one pale, shoulder-high human in a towering, black-skinned company. No one spoke. After only a moment of their waiting silence they could hear the sounds of mecheiti in the distance, coming from the north end of the house.

Mecheiti arrived on the drive at a slow pace, walking, with the rhythmic sound of harness and the scrape of blunt claws on the cobbles.

That stopped. There were voices, footsteps ascending. Banichi exchanged a word with someone on com, gave a quiet signal to the men in charge of the doors. The whole foyer whispered with the shift of bodies, the movement of weapons.

One door opened; the other was pinned fast, and the night wind came in, a breath of chill. The porch light showed a number of Taibeni, in their green and brown, the only district where the Assassins’ Guild did not go in black. In their midst, came two windblown strangers in Guild black—not restrained, but surely disarmed. They came in, and their eyes made a fast search of the reception—a little surprised, perhaps, at so many weapons.

Then they saw Bren, and Bren saw instant focus—awareness, emotion of some sort. Nerves twitched, his aishid was already on high alert, and he heard one simultaneous rattle of weapons around the foyer.

One of the prisoners dropped to one knee. The other did, like some scene out of a machimi play—and Bren just stood there, jolted into an improbable frame of reference.

“Nand’ paidhi,” one said to him, showing both hands empty, “do
not
put it out to the Guild that we are still alive. Hear us out.”

“Nadiin-ji,” Bren said—not to them, but to his own aishid. He had no idea what had and had not gone out to the Guild system.

“We have reported nothing as yet,” Algini muttered, at Bren’s shoulder, and Bren stood there, aware of his aishid, of the protection around him. And the intent in front of him didn’t read as a threat—but as strange an approach as he had ever seen. Nobody
knelt.
Not even to Tabini.

“My name is Momichi,” the first man said in a hoarse and thready voice. “My partner is Homuri. The ones who gave us our orders take theirs from a man named Pajeini.”

“We know that name,” Banichi said, and there was nothing of warmth about it. “Is he still in the Dojisigin Marid?”

“Yes. Probably he is. Nand’ paidhi, they have our whole village hostage. If a report goes out, if they learn we failed—and talked—they will kill everyone, without exception. You spoke for the Taisigi. Speak for us. For our village. For Reijisan. The aiji dowager can move Guild on orders Shejidan cannot track. If anyone can help us—she can. If you could persuade her—”

“What
was
your mission?” Jago asked sharply, and with a nod to Bren, but likely no shift of her eyes off the two on their knees: “Forgive me, nandi, but there is a great deal of information missing in this business. They come here by stealth, lie in wait, inconvenience the aiji-dowager, all to ask your help? We believe the paidhi-aiji would like to hear your reasoning!”

“Our target was not the paidhi. Nor the aiji dowager. Lord Tatiseigi was our objective.”

“Why?” Bren asked.

“We do not know, nand’ paidhi. We can guess . . .”

“Who helped you?” Algini interrupted him, wanting specifics, facts and names. “What
was
your route?”

“From our village by boat,” Momichi said, “to Lusini on the Senji coast, to the railhead at Kopurna . . .” He looked at Algini, as if judging if that was the answer Algini wanted. And kept going. “To the station at Brosin Ana . . .”

Brosin Ana was the last stop in the Senjin district. It was the old rail line, a route up from the Marid, through the mountains, and the territory of several small associations, finally joining the new line north and east of the capital. Trains from Senji had carried commerce and contraband for two hundred years.

And that line ended in the Kadagidi township, where Marid commerce had always come in, an old, often problematic association that had not been happy, one suspected, to see Tabini back in power, certainly not happy to see the southern Marid talk about its own rail link.

His doing, that talk about a new line—a realization in two heartbeats of stretched time. That the northern Marid wasn’t happy with
him
—he perfectly well understood.

“To the Kadagidi township,” Momichi said. “We were met, given specific instructions for our mission, and we walked in.”

“Walked in,” Algini said. “From the Kadagidi township.”

A hesitation. But geography made it obvious. “From the Kadagidi estate, nadi.”

“When?”

That was the question, Bren thought.
How?
ran right beside it.

“Five days ago. We were directed simply to get into the garage, substitute ourselves for the garage staff—and wait until Lord Tatiseigi arrived at the train station and called for his car.”

“Give us the detail,” Algini said. “How were you to accomplish this?”

“It was all laid out. We were to come onto the grounds by the back gate, keep well to the north hedge until we had passed the stables. We were to find an iron plate under the vines, in the corner near the arbor, and that would get us to the water system—we should work behind the pump housing, and follow the pipe to an access.”

“Which access?” Banichi asked. “Where?”

“Beside the hot water tank.”

“Go on,” Banichi said.

“We were to deal with the staff,” Momichi said. “We did
not
want to kill any of the staff. We were prepared to keep the garage crew drugged and confined. But when we got in—there was no one there. So we thought—they are on leave; they will come back when their lord advises them he is coming. We just need to wait. Our information said the garage staff used its own kitchen, rarely mixed with the rest of the staff—that it was very likely no one would come to the garage at all, except the garage staff when they came back. That was the plan. But there was no one there. We never used the lights. We never used the stove. We just waited.” Momichi drew breath. “Then two days on, the house began to stir. And grew busy, as if there was something going on. We caught some voices, and we began to realize there was a great deal of construction going on in the house and on the roof. We went out through the trap, onto the garage roof, that night, and we saw a patrol, Taibeni, on mecheiti, on the front grounds; we saw a glow against the hedges, lights moving. We had no idea what to think—whether Taibeni had occupied the Atageini lord’s estate, or whether
they
were preparing an ambush— We stayed very quiet. We thought, if they kill Lord Tatiseigi, the garage staff may not come back. But everything had changed. We decided to stay to find out what was going on—but then we began to realize it was more than Taibeni, that there were other Guild about. And nothing made sense. We thought—we might take the car, claim we were on some errand, and drive out the gate—granted the Taibeni would not know the regular staff. But we decided we might still accomplish what we were sent to do; and even if we failed at that—if we could find out what was going on at Tirnamardi, we might be able to trade that information to the rebels.

“Then we realized Lord Tatiseigi had come home without calling for his car—that the aiji-dowager was in the house. That was the point at which we decided we were in something so far beyond our understanding—it could bring the whole north and East down on the Marid. We thought—we even thought of simply calling on the house phone and reporting ourselves. But we thought—the rebels would get the news. So we opened the same access and tried to leave. Going straight forward, we immediately set off an alarm on the premises. We had used up our only defense against the mecheiti—to keep them from finding the access. We decided to make a second try, but we knew we would never make it on foot if another alarm sounded and the mecheiti were let loose. We thought of taking the car—but doubted we could ram the gate. We thought then—if not afoot—then we might use the mecheiti native to the grounds. If we could bridle two of the leaders while they were settled for the night, we could loose the herd, ride for the east gate and hope the mecheiti would create enough confusion with the Taibeni riders for us to get through the gate. Well, it was a foolhardy idea.” Momichi sighed and shook his head. “We no more than opened the door when some night creature bolted across the rails setting up a racket, the mecheiti all rose up in a panic—and a shot went off. At that point—we ran. We just ran.”

Boji, Bren thought.
Boji.
Of all damnable things.

“We expected,” Momichi said, “the Atageini would immediately loose the herd on us. We headed for the trees. We made it a distance into the woods, and since we had not had the Atageini herd behind us—we were expecting the Taibeni riders. They cut us off. We climbed for it. We had our rifles. They had theirs. We shouted back and forth a while. We exchanged views—they were upset about the black powder. We granted their point. And we knew the danger should the report about us get out to the south—we told them about that. They said that we could present our case to the aiji-dowager and Lord Tatiseigi, and you, but that they had no sympathy. So we said—if we could talk to you, nandi, we would surrender. And we did.”

If there was bad luck to be had, Bren thought, these two had found it at every turn—bad luck their security had arranged, true. But bad luck that had come full about. These two had come back alive.

And, damn, the expressions looked sincere. They were exhausted, they had spent days in a situation progressively going to hell, and their story made sense, step by miserable next step, so that he was almost inclined to believe them. They’d had rifles. They’d had a chance to use them. They
said
they’d come for one target, only one—strictly regulation, give or take the lack of a Filing. They had not harmed anybody on staff. At the end, they hadn’t shot it out with the Taibeni or aimed at the mecheiti—which had probably persuaded the Taibeni to stand back and talk them down.

He
hoped
his aishid could figure them out: he looked at Algini, and at Jago, who gave no offender any grace.

“You posed us quite a difficulty,” Algini said to the pair in an easier tone. “You are
not
village-level.”

“No, nadi.” No hesitation in that answer. A little return of spirit.

“Where assigned?”

“We served in Amarja, nadi,” Momichi said. “In the citadel.”

“In whose man’chi?” Algini asked.

“In the aiji’s,” came the curt answer. “But not
this
aiji.”

This
lord of Dojisigi clan, and aiji of a quarter of the Marid at the moment, was a fifteen-year-old spoiled brat of a girl, who had once expected to marry Tatiseigi’s nephew. She was twice lucky—first that the nephew had been packed off to the East, and second, that she was alive, and thus far getting her own way, where it regarded personal comforts and the illusion that she was in charge of the district.

But was young Tiajo likely to remain in office another year? Bets inside and outside the Marid ran counter to that. She was lord only because she was next in line, though under house arrest. She might have been a convenient rallying-point for the remnant of the Shadow Guild, but evidently even
they
had found her more liability than asset.

“Does your partner have a voice?” Banichi asked.

“Nadi,” Homuri said. “Yes.”

“
Why
were you in your village?”

“We were dismissed from the citadel,” Homuri said, “when the Shejidani Guild took over. We were told, all of us, to go separately back to our home districts, our own villages, and maintain order. We went to Reijisan. We both came from there. Our partners went another direction. To Meitja.”

“And with your skills, you could not protect this village?”

“Nadi,” Homuri said, “we could not. They took our weapons.”

“Who took them?”

“The Shejidani Guild. They confiscated all our weapons, all our equipment. When they sent us out, we went afoot, with
nothing,
nadi, from the point the truck dropped us, a day’s walk from our village. We had no communications, no weapons, no equipment, not even a canteen or a folding knife.”