Betrayer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “I have my own orders for him,” Banichi said, and he went over and said about two words, which Bren did not hear; but he saw the boy, who had risen to stand on one foot, nod emphatically. Twice.

  They gathered up their gear then—or Banichi and Jago did. Tano and Algini were suddenly not in sight, and since Banichi and Jago started off, it didn’t seem a good thing to ask too many questions.

  Guarding their backtrail, Bren thought. They had to make speed and still avoid running into allies or enemies in the dark, and with dawn coming on.

  Then he realized the boy was not with them. Banichi had, he thought, outright ordered the boy to stay put and wait for them to come back for him once they had this mess sorted out.

  Which was as it was. Banichi was thinking about the mission, he had no question of that. About the mission and getting through this. He was glad if Banichi was doing what was necessary in spite of help from him.

  He just hoped to hell Tano and Algini would get back to them soon.

  They were about half an hour on, on a delicate climb downward, in the earliest of dawn, when all of a sudden the ground heaved and rocks fell, bounding hollowly down from the height.

  Bren leaned back against a man-sized boulder and stared up in startlement at the source of the explosion, a cloud billowing skyward above the ridge.

  He didn’t say anything. But that hadn’t been any weapon he knew about.

  It was, however, Tano and Algini’s specialty.

  And now that explosion and that cloud was a beacon for the neighborhood. It was going to upset any enemies in the area, who would probably run to see what had happened.

  The renegades had certainly been stirred up from the hour Jago had fired the first shot. He had no doubt of that. But that towering cloud above the ridge was a magnet for an ambush. The other side would know it—and maybe blame Machigi’s forces, which actually lay in the opposite direction. The combination of misdirections was not a bad thing—unless it brought action down on their heads.

  Just hurry up and get back to us, he thought; and he hoped Tano and Algini didn’t stay to do any more damage.

  And he hoped to God the kid back there just kept his head down and melted into a hole in the rocks before their enemies came swarming out and around the area.

  He—he just had to get down this slope, carefully, quickly. Safety was ahead of them, not behind. Banichi and Jago might have left the kid out of practicality, but they were held to the progress he could make, and the only thing he could do to help them was to watch where he put his feet and just do better, longer, farther than he thought he possibly, humanly, could.

  He got down to flat rock. Banichi moved on, and he kept going, with Jago’s help under his arm.

  “Bren-ji,” Jago said at one point, “go more slowly if you must!”

  “For my sake or yours, Jago-ji?” he panted as he went. “If for mine, trust I can do this. I shall live, I assure you.”

  They went at the increased pace, Banichi in the lead, Jago close by him, being sure he didn’t step into a hole, so he had one less thing to worry about. Staying upright. Moving. That was his job.

  The sun was definitively up, now, removing the cover of darkness even to human eyes. Breathing and walking occupied all available intellect. And he was no longer sure he was using his best sense, but he pushed a bit harder, able to see, now. He made it to the top of a rise, wavered, with the far view of hills swimming ahead of him, then realized he was wobbling on the edge of a drop-off, and he caught himself one nanosecond before Jago snatched him against her and steered him to safer route, keeping him from descending the hill in a catastrophic slide.

  “One is,” grateful, he tried to say. But he hadn’t the wind left. The whole world went fuzzy at that point. He might have been out on his feet, except Jago still had hold of his arm, and then had her arm around him.

  “Here is not a good place, Bren-ji. Just a little farther. Then we shall rest an hour.”

  An hour. A whole hour sitting still. He wanted it so much.

  But they couldn’t afford that.

  He had to tell them that. But he had to get where it was safe. He energized his legs and managed to keep going, sure, with what shred of intelligence he had left, that where Banichi was going, where Jago wanted him to go, was at least better cover, and a place where he could take just a little rest and get his wind back and then argue.

  Maybe he could even take off the damned vest for a moment or two. It would be such a relief. God, he wanted to do that.

  It was still another downhill, in among rocks, and past an overhanging shrub. Banichi waited at the bottom of a steep little slope, took his other arm and steered him to a little concealed nook and a flat rock he could sit on.

  Then, silently, by the time Bren looked up, Banichi had left them. Jago was alone.

  “Sorry,” Bren said, trying to get his breath. “One is sorry, Jago-ji. Banichi is scouting?”

  “As well we take a look ahead, Bren-ji. Use the time.”

  She offered him a drink from a small flask, plain water, which they had in very short supply, he knew that. His mouth was dust-dry and he let a mouthful roll around and moisten his throat in little trickles. For not very much encouragement at all he would lie flat on the rock and stay there, but it would only hurt more, getting up, and the damned vest, once he was sitting down, at least helped hold him upright in some comfort.

  “How are you, Bren-ji?” Jago asked him, sinking down on her haunches. She wanted an estimate, he said to himself, not stupid overstatement.

  “I can walk,” he said, “but my judgment is question—” More breath. New try. “Questionable.”

  She pressed her fingers against the side of his neck, where the pulse rate, he thought, was probably still rather high.

  “Rest,” she said. “I could give you a drug. But one advises not.”

  “If it keeps me going—”

  “Better to rest. You may need it later.”

  “I need more time,” he said, “in a gym, Jago-ji. I am going to do that . . . when we get back.”

  He won a slight smile from her, and with a little bow of her head: “I shall go up to a better vantage, Bren-ji. I shall not be leaving you.”

  “Tano and Algini,” he said.

  “They may overtake us here. The boy will probably be somewhat behind them.”

  So the boy was coming. Alone. God. He hadn’t wanted that.

  “Rest,” Jago said, and stepped up onto the rock, and onto another, and left his field of vision.

  At that point, it was his job just to sit there. And breathe. And let blood circulate back to parts of his brain he was sure were not functioning all that well. His feet hurt. Badly. He had burst a couple of stitches in the lightweight dress boots that were all he had with him, which was not a good situation. And he was lost. As lost as he had ever been in his life. He had absolutely no idea where they were, or even what direction they were going at the moment—west, he thought, and then wasn’t sure, given the season and the latitude. He could judge where the sun would be, behind the rocks, but he couldn’t see it from where he was sitting. It seemed they had not aimed due northwest, which would have taken them to Targai. But that could be an accident of where they had stopped, or the route they had to take, since they had wound around so many obstacles it had seemed they were going in circles.

  They were still on the Southern Plateau, he was almost sure of that. They hadn’t been descending that long. They wouldn’t be descending northeast, toward the coast—that would only put them back in danger.

  If they were ever out of it.

  He was dizzy, still. Orientation in the world? He was doing damned well to orient himself upright.

  He still thought that if he could just get rid of the vest, and its constriction, he could go faster. But Jago would shoot him herself if she came back and found him sitting there in his shirt sleeves.

  So he sat. He sat with the spring chill of the rock working its way up his backside an
d the warmth of the sun and the heavy vest working its way down from his shoulders, for a reasonable meeting somewhere in the middle of him: his chest hurt and his backside was numb. He let his eyes shut, just drowsing upright. Best he could do.

  He wiggled his feet to be sure they still worked. He thought about Najida, and the bath that he was going to have when he got home, and his own bed. Breakfast.

  Eggs and toast. Hot tea. He could do with that.

  When he got there.

  15

  All the house was supposed to be at formal breakfast, after the one they had already had and shouldn’t admit to. Cajeiri and Veijico and Antaro had been on the way, in the hall and headed for the dining room, all dressed and proper. A little toast and tea would not suffice for the whole morning, and Cajeiri had told his aishid to take turns going for a proper breakfast themselves. He was sure they had been awake long enough to be hungry all over again.

  But Jegari, who had gone to the security room, intercepted them halfway down the hall, with a low-voiced, breathless, “Nandi, there is open war broken out in Taisigi district. Your great-grandmother and Cenedi-nadi and Lord Geigi are in conference, and breakfast is delayed. They have shut the doors to the dining room and nobody can get in.”

  Cajeri took that in for a few seconds, stopped right in midhallway, with servants witnessing.

  War in Taisigi district.

  Where nand’ Bren was.

  Where Lucasi also might be.

  The shooting meant nand’ Bren was going to have to get out of there. It was a situation far beyond argument and finesse.

  “We shall go back to the suite,” he said to them. “Come.”

  So they all did. Cajeiri sat down. Everybody did, by the fire. Veijico looked more than generally worried.

  “Say,” he said to Jegari. “What do you know, Gari-ji?”

  “Nandi, a building was blown up in the outlying district of the Taisigi. No one knows by whom. It was a Taisigi hunting lodge. But nobody knows its current use.

  “Second part of the report: Guild from Shejidan is moving in to take out the renegades in Dojisigi, in Senji, in Taisigi, all at the same time. Lord Machigi has disappeared. One of his closest advisors has been assassinated. One of his cousins has fled to the north, presumably seeking refuge with the Dojisigi. But nobody seems to know where Machigi is at all.”

  People were moving all over the place. It was chess with Great-grandmother. You had to remember who was where and watch out for pieces that jumped squares.

  Only it was no chess game, and it was nothing as limited as a chessboard. It was scary, and nand’ Bren was right in the middle of it.

  “Here is what I know, besides,” Jegari said. “There is some sort of trouble at Targai—one suspects the Senji have attacked. Your great-grandmother is discussing this in the dining room, with Cenedi-nadi and the rest, and Lord Geigi’s bodyguard, and even Ramaso-nadi. Nawari told me it is likely that the same people were behind a lot of mischief in Kajiminda, and even Lord Geigi agrees. The Marid would stay at odds with your father, and that would keep the whole district of the Marid a safe refuge for the illicit operations. That was their plan. And it was not the Taisigi. It was almost certainly not the Taisigi. It was renegades. It was Guild who supported Murini.”

  Cajeiri drew a deep breath. He was getting a report. It was a real report, serious business that he actually knew something about. A lot of people had run south when his father had come back and taken the capital. And because they were in the Marid, which was not a lawful place anyway, nobody had much troubled about them being there.

  “But they either went too far,” Jegari said. “—Nawari said some could have been low-level tactical operatives given too broad an instruction, or they wanted to start a war. They wanted to take over Lord Machigi’s western operation—and then when nand’ Bren threw them out of Kajiminda, they decided to get Machigi assassinated, because they believed he was going to come down on them. That was when your great-grandmother sent nand’ Bren to warn Machigi and make him an offer.”

  “She had Lord Machigi in a corner she could control,” Veijico murmured, sounding impressed. “He was in trouble from both the renegades and the Guild.”

  A lot fell into place—scarily so, because everything these renegades had been doing could have worked, except mani was smart, once she was onto them. Just the fact that Machigi was talking to nand’ Bren was going to scare the northern Marid and the renegades.

  Cajeiri recalled all his study of maps. “Machigi’s allies are the two smallest clans in the Marid.”

  “Yes,” Veijico said. “And now the two largest may be in the hands of the renegades. The Guild thinks so. But the Guild is moving in.”

  And they were blowing up things over in Taisigi territory. The Taisigi were under attack.

  He saw things, now. Banichi had told him once, on the ship—to make the enemy use the door you really want, lay down fire on all the others. It was the same thing mani had said to him.

  “Mani is very smart,” he said.

  And then out of nowhere the worrisome thought came to him that if the legitimate Guild was all concentrating its fire on the Marid, then the only open door for their enemies was here. At Najida. Where an attack could threaten mani and try to get hostages, which was the only thing they could do.

  He hoped mani was going to ask his father for a lot of help, fast, none of this waiting around. Mani would not like to do that, because she hated to admit there was anything she could not settle herself, but it really seemed to him it might be a good idea, very soon, because if all the fighting came their direction, Najida was wide open.

  Was it the deliberately open door?

  It was pretty stupid of his father to have left mani and him sitting in it, if it was.

  Except his father and mother were having another baby.

  He really did not like that thought. The stupid rebels had robbed him of his birthday party on the ship. He really, really looked forward to his ninth, which was very close now.

  Dying and giving everything to the new baby was not at all what he intended to do. The renegades were very inconvenient.

  “So the Senji and the Dojisigi are going to try to make the Guild come here,” he said, “And they are not going to fight by Guild rules.”

  “One believes you are very right, nandi,” Veijico said.

  He was not as much scared as he was mad. The renegades were interfering with him, and they were hurting bystanders, and aiming at mani and nand’ Bren, and everybody. And if his father was not already sending help here, then he was going to be very mad at his father, because his father was not stupid, and it meant bad things if his father failed to do that.

  “My father will send help,” he said firmly.

  But then he had an even scarier thought, and he wished he were more confident his father could actually make the Assassins’ Guild move where he wanted them to move, right now.

  Jago stayed gone. Tano and Algini hadn’t shown up. Banichi was off looking for a way out of here. It was a very lonely wait.

  And it had gotten to that hour of the morning when the small life of the high plateau had just begun to stir into the sun’s warmth. Bren watched a living-leaf crawl up the branch of a shrub, among last year’s leaves that looked just like it. He heard a clicking that was a rockhopper greeting the day.

  Then a movement scraped the rocks above him, and a booted foot and a plummeting body landed right by him.

  Jago. Landing on her feet, as if it had not been that great a drop.

  Time to move, then, was his first thought. They’d overtake Banichi, who’d be waiting for them.

  “Tano and Algini are coming,” she said and added, frowning: “They have the boy with them. Stay down, Bren-ji.”

  That wasn’t as arranged. It wasn’t what Banichi had told the boy to do.

  He stayed where he was and waited, letting Jago guide the others in.

  And sure enough, Tano and Algini came in from around the stony
shoulder of the hill on the same track they had used. And just behind them was Lucasi. Lucasi was moving under his own power, limping, with a fairly substantial splint around the afflicted leg and leaving, one was certain, a clear trail behind him, even on the rocks.

  Maybe it was pity that had made them bring Lucasi with them—but he didn’t believe it. Tano might have a soft heart. Algini wasn’t so inclined.

  “Nandi.” Tano arrived a little out of breath. “One apologizes. The place was being overrun. The boy knows too much.”

  Cancel any thought that things were going smoothly back there. Whatever they had blown up, the explosion had drawn in more trouble, and they’d diverted themselves back to pick up a liability who would spill a dangerous truth: that there was a high-value target wandering around out here, in convenient reach.

  “One apologizes to you, nadiin-ji,” Bren said. “We should have taken him with us in the first place.”

  “By no means,” Algini said. “Nor will we slow you and Jago. The boy leaves a clear track. They will surely find us.”

  Lucasi looked mortified, head mostly down. “One asks,” the boy said, “let me hold this place. One will not be a liabil—”

  Algini gave him a single, hard shake, and didn’t have to say a thing. Lucasi bit his lip and ducked his head.

  “Jago-ji,” Tano said. “Go. We are not now in the path of incursion, but we are much too close to it, and our trail is so obvious they will be cautious following it.”

  “Yes,” Jago said, and, businesslike: “Bren-ji.”

  Move, that meant. Now. And Bren didn’t object. Their best chance, under the circumstances, was his doing exactly what Lucasi was finally learning to do: shut up when Algini expressed an opinion and stick very close to whichever of them had him in charge at the moment.

  What they hadn’t said, doubtless out of politeness, was that Jago already had her hands full and didn’t need two problems.

  Jago headed out, and Bren followed.

  And he was sure beyond any doubt that the area and the enemy had more to worry about in tracking Tano and Algini than Tano and Algini had in being tracked.