Resurgence

by C. J. Cherryh

He was, yes, wearing the damned bulletproof vest, despite that he was to walk a guarded hall and ride the Bujavid’s internal lift down and stand among enough Guild to stand off anyone of ill intent. He had argued, but not strenuously. He intended to shed it once aboard.

  “So what is the schedule?” Bren asked, letting Koharu adjust his collar. “Will there be a brandy hour, or are the meetings for the morning?”

  “We assume the morning,” Banichi said. “Cenedi says the dowager has settled for the night, that there will be a cold supper waiting in each car, and that we are advised to be quiet in boarding. She does not wish to be disturbed.”

  There were worse scenarios, one of which was a tension-fraught elaborate dinner in cramped spaces followed by late-evening verbal fencing over too much brandy. Cold supper, meat, eggs, and pickle, atevi-style, was perfectly acceptable. “How are we set up?” Bren asked. “One assumes we are between the dowager and Machigi.”

  “The Red Car does not come hindmost in this train,” Banichi said. “It has no passageway aft, but they have changed out one of the trucks, the wheel assembly . . . to enable a coupling. A common boxcar follows it. The dowager’s car, second up from the Red Car, is a special sleeper, the one she used on transcontinental rail before she took to flying. There were always two such in years past, one waiting wherever she happened to be. She has afforded you her own alternate car on this occasion, armored and secure. There are three others of like construction, destined for Machigi and Nomari and one additional. One regrets, Bren-ji, there are no windows. None, on the entire train.”

  Of course. Security. Windows that looked ordinary from the outside, but from inside, no. Not a glimpse of the outside. He had never seen the land eastward of Shejidan, never seen the northern face of the mountains. “Safety,” he said. “One can appreciate it. What is our schedule?”

  “None,” Banichi said. “Her passage door will be locked until breakfast, which will be in the Red Car,” Banichi said. “We recommend your door be locked, too, until that hour.”

  “I can conceive no reason to be wandering about.”

  “You will sleep between two special cars,” Algini said, “Cenedi’s units are in the one nearest the dowager, then your car, and the operations car allotted to us and other Guild, a buffer between you and Lord Machigi. Machigi will share a car with his security, and Nomari will share the next car with his. There is the baggage car, and a third sleeper between them, and then an additional Guild car. Twelve cars in all, the engine making felicitous thirteen—including a galley—Bindanda will travel there, with the dowager’s staff, and Narani and Jeladi will have the staff compartment in yours. General operations has the sixth car, Cenedi’s operations the eighth. The dowager’s car occupies auspicious ninth position, and yours, felicitous seventh. Machigi occupies relatively lucky fifth and Nomari, least in consideration, has risky fourth, with a baggage car between him in third place; then come the two cars we will send down to contact Lord Bregani, a sleeper car for him and his security and a Guild car to protect the train as a whole. It places Bregani at risky second position, but so he is, in all regards, and knows it. There is attention to such details, should any ’counter take note, and ’counters do abound in the mountain clans, professional and amateur. Lord Bregani can talk. Or he can refuse. The dowager is making the situation clear.”

  “We are also,” Jago said, “equipped with mortars, should we need them.”

  Bren glanced at her, rather hoping she was joking—but her expression said she was not; and probably he should be glad they had the capability.

  “We are informed,” Tano said, having listened to something in his ear plug, “that Lord Machigi is currently boarding, with his aishid. He has come up from the regular train station.”

  “We had best go down, then,” Bren said. Machigi might require some attention, some slight bit more courtesy than the dowager was likely prepared to give tonight. He perfectly well understood that Ilisidi needed to conserve her own energy. It was up to the paidhi-aiji to keep civility in the occasion—to offer Machigi a little brandy if needed to soothe travel-jangled nerves, and to be sure there were no unexpected events or delays. Narani, Jeladi, and Bindanda should not be the only recourse to handle problems down there.

  Machigi had to have taken the ordinary train, though possibly a sleeper car and isolation, boarding, likely, at Najida for a lengthy trip. Then there would be a van ride up the hill from the public train station, surely a new experience for the lord of the Taisigin Marid. Machigi might easily have taken a plane at the airport halfway between Cobo and Najida and been here very shortly. But then—he might never have flown before, either. Likely he had not.

  For that matter, he probably had never taken a train, either. It all might be new to Machigi, power and terror though he was in his own seaside world. Machigi indeed might be glad of a familiar face, even his, though one was sure Cenedi had someone assigned to ease difficulties and be sure Machigi and his Taisigi bodyguard were safe from public curiosity.

  As for Nomari, there was certainly nothing about train transport they needed explain to him. And he would have come down from upstairs.

  It was clearly time. The Red Train rolled when it wanted to, and everything else on the tracks had to give it priority—but the powers that commanded it did try to be considerate in the privilege. There was a good window of movement coming up, after certain regular trains had passed the junction, and the usual way of the Red Train was to slip into an opportune slot and not stall traffic any worse than need be. It was disruption enough that they would have delayed the habitual delivery runs up from the city to the Bujavid, to assure a secure boarding. There would be van-loads of vegetables stalled down in the markets.

  * * *

  • • •

  “The paidhi is going out to the lifts,” Antaro said.

  So it was time, and Cajeiri let Eisi help him into his coat—court dress, to be absolutely proper in the very strong likelihood of meeting great-grandmother, and because he wanted not to be at fault in any particular.

  His seniormost bodyguard was trying to monitor communications, but there was, they said, nothing from the train station, nothing flowing even on Guild channels. Onami was down there already, using his keys and passes to go where he needed to go—the only one of them, Rieni had said, that had never met Banichi or Algini. Onami was not using Guild communications, because Cenedi would likely track that.

  The Transportation Guild office downstairs had ceased operations—or at least was not answering inquiries from upstairs.

  “An uncommon shutdown,” Rieni called it. “Uncommon precautions. They are clearing track eastward.”

  “Anticipation of trouble,” Janachi remarked. “There is a rail check in progress.”

  “What is a rail check?” Cajeiri asked.

  “Exactly that. There will be a train preceding the dowager’s, checking all track, all bridges. And communication is silenced. Once we are inside the restriction we shall not be able to communicate outside the area while the information hold lasts.”

  “Is it ordinary?” He was used to his aishid being shut out of information. He had not expected the seniors to be shut out. “It cannot be.”

  “Given your great-aunt was murdered, nandi, given the controversial Ajuri heir is traveling with the dowager, presumably so that she can examine his claim and question him—and given that the Guild still has not laid hands on your great-aunt’s killer—there is reason enough for these precautions for a train leaving the city. The Red Train will be in a security bubble as far as it goes, which we are given to understand is Malguri.”

  “If it goes east,” Cajeiri said. There had been some speculation among them that it all might be a cover, and great-grandmother might be taking Nomari back to Najida.

  “We shall not know until it reaches the city junction.”

  It was worrisome. Until he had heard they were taking a
long extra Guild units, it had seemed a trip mani chose to take, the way mani suddenly chose to do things for her own comfort, or for effect, or, he thought, to have days with Nomari where there was no escaping her questions.

  But his seniormost aishid was thinking other things, now, like Aunt Geidaro’s killer, and Shadow Guild, and attacks on the train.

  “Let us go down,” he said. He was all the more determined, having heard from years back what great-grandmother had done when she had first met nand’ Bren—and he could not doubt it had happened, even though it was not mani as he had known her. Father had crossed her considerably in appointing nand’ Bren. Mani had been in a temper, and nand’ Bren had suffered for it. It was the same now, with Mother supporting Nomari and Father siding with Mother.

  In that light, he intended to visit the train even if mani had shut herself away. He intended to be clearly understood as concerned, and he intended all involved to relay to mani that he was aware and cared about the outcome, for himself, and likewise for Uncle and for his own sister, who might be Nomari’s neighbor someday.

  It was his concern and it was his business, and if he had not made that point clear enough to mani when he had gone to her apartment, he would do it now, so she had that to think about.

  * * *

  • • •

  The lift door opened on the echoing gray vastness that was the Bujavid station—quieter than ordinary, to Bren’s ears: no competing sound of engines this evening, no voices reflecting off the concrete ceilings, no rumble of iron-wheeled baggage trolleys, just the single steam-engine presence on track number one—that, his ears did detect—and their own footsteps as they exited the lift. Narani and Jeladi were there to meet them, proper and collected.

  “The baggage is all aboard, nandi,” Narani said. “We are ready. Bindanda is checking in with the galley staff—the dowager’s people.”

  It was not the usual consist of the Red Train—which ordinarily ran with the Red Car and a single baggage car, perhaps two. This was a row of gray cars, sparsely windowed, and those all blank behind the glass, by what he knew, at least for the dowager’s cars and the Guild cars. That was all one could see. There was not even a view of the Red Car from the vantage of the personnel lifts.

  The Red Train’s usual engine, ornate and steam-powered, was facing the downhill direction, ready to move. Twelve cars was an uncommon length even to be up here in the Bujavid station: and, typical of the Red Train boarding, there was no train on the other tracks. Black-uniformed Guild moved about the platform. That was ordinary, where the dowager was concerned. They would be the dowager’s young men, likely, all of them Easterners, from Malguri.

  Bren walked out with his own people as far as the end of the elevator block, and he could see the whole train laid out then, the Red Car next to hindmost, unprecedented, the whole train sleek and gray, and the beautiful old Red Car, ahead of a common well-used freight car.

  “The sleeping berths,” Jago said quietly, “all convert to seating, we are told. You will have a proper working area. And, excepting the dowager, we advise you invite guests in, Bren-ji, rather than go to other cars. You will have ample supplies for courtesies. We are assured of that.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “All traffic is being held until we clear the junction,” Algini said. “A train will precede us, to assure our safety. It has already left.”

  “Have we heard a particular threat?”

  “No,” Jago said. “But Topari will be getting a message within the hour that he will be visited, and by whom; and considering how very seriously Tiajo must take this move, if she finds out. And considering who is aboard, who also may not have been utterly discreet—security does worry us.”

  “Once we get there,” Banichi said, “we are moving agents into the region. Lord Topari’s bodyguard and that of every lord in Halrun is untrained and armed with less than Guild standard, besides lacking our communications. They are more apt to shoot us by mistake.”

  “One fervently hopes—” he began to say.

  Just then, however, there was an arrival in the lift system some distance behind them, and Bren checked step and turned to see another Guild escort emerge with a young man in traveling dress, an average-looking young fellow, looking uncertain and worried, and certainly noticing them.

  The place was under extreme lockdown, so it was equally certainly no random passenger.

  “Would that be Nomari-nadi, nadiin-ji?”

  Jago touched her earplug and asked a question. “Yes,” she said with certainty.

  “I should like to meet him,” Bren said.

  The message passed. The young man listened to something said by his bodyguard, smoothed his coat, and started toward them.

  An anxious gesture. Not pretentious in the least. Bren was favorably impressed with that. He waited, a little breach of security—his bodyguard liked him to keep moving—but there was overpowering Guild presence all around him, and he had agreed to the damnable bulletproof vest.

  The young man approached with a very quiet and worried demeanor, and the bow he gave was in deepest degree, no pretension of a rank he did not yet hold.

  “Lord paidhi.”

  He was not hard to recognize.

  “Nomari-nadi.” Bren gave a slight bow and allowed a pleasant expression. “One has looked forward to meeting you.”

  “One is honored to meet you, nandi. One is extremely honored.”

  “One understands you have knowledge that may assist the dowager’s decisions on this trip.”

  “I should never claim it, nand’ paidhi. I shall be very—”

  Nomari’s gaze was suddenly fixed past his shoulder, in the direction of the engine, and since Banichi and the rest had not reacted, Bren’s instant estimation was that, whatever Nomari had seen that gave him pause, it was not something that greatly alarmed his bodyguard. Exactly what—was almost worth a guess.

  Bren gave it a casual glance, turning a little stiffly because of the vest.

  And indeed, among the myriad sounds of a waiting train and arriving baggage—

  Machigi stepped out the side exit of his assigned car, ahead of his non-regulation bodyguard.

  Either Machigi had had an observer posted or the dowager had deliberately had the Guild make him aware. Certainly, Bren thought, given that he and Machigi had recently met, it was not likely that he was the object of Machigi’s excursion.

  Nomari had seen, too, and stood frozen in place.

  “Ah,” Bren said, instantly sorting whether he wanted to say to Nomari: This is someone you know, is it not?

  Or, blithely innocent: May I introduce you, nadi?

  He was quite sure at least that the dowager would want a meticulous account of both reactions.

  “Lord Machigi,” Nomari said in an undertone. “I worked for him, nandi, during the Troubles. One never expected him here.”

  Honesty raced forth before the possibility of exposure. But one could put a favorable light on the matter. He had reacted with the truth.

  “Was it a good parting?” Bren asked.

  Nomari said nothing. Machigi and his bodyguard were aggressively on the move, too close for any lengthy answer. Bren simply put on a warm but dignified smile, and walked forward while, likely, every Guild agent in the entire station went on alert.

  “Lord Machigi.” A proper bow.

  “Nand’ paidhi,” Machigi said. An equally proper one, and a nod. “Good evening. And to your companion, who one understands has met with extraordinary good fortune. Nomari-nadi, good evening. One might ask why you might be part of this venture—but perhaps you have shared certain facts with the aiji-dowager.”

  “I have not met the aiji-dowager, nandi,” Nomari said with a bow, “and I am not entirely sure why I am here.”

  “Well,” Machigi said, “but you do have a certain perspective on the rail system
. Have you mentioned it? Surely you have.”

  Nomari made a second, slighter bow. “To the extent the Guild asked, I answered, nandi, it is on record, and the Guild knows.—I have told them, nand’ paidhi, that I am in Lord Machigi’s debt. I did not conceal it. I hid when my family was killed. Through my mother’s associates’ influence I enrolled in the Transportation Guild. And when the Troubles started, I began to be a danger to my associates. I fled to the south, to Tanaja, finally. And I was arrested and questioned. Lord Machigi—to whom I am deeply indebted—heard my situation and asked me to work for him, which I was glad to do. I was in and out of Senjin and throughout the system, and I did provide Lord Machigi intelligence on Senjin, Dojisigi, and Maschi districts, and Najida, clear to the coast, all through the time of the Troubles. All that is true.”

  “And currently?” Bren asked.

  “When Tabini-aiji came back to power, I went back to my guild—as many did. But, yes. I have given Lord Machigi information on shipments into Senjin and onward.”

  “To this day, we have an interest in shipments to and from Dojisigi, how not?” Machigi said. “You were useful. But now our one-time spy has found a far better situation, and we have no desire to let rumors of past associations hamper his rise. Be assured, nandi, he has never betrayed the aishidi’tat. It was never my impression that he would. All his information has been on the aiji’s enemies as well as mine.”

  Machigi was unqualifiedly the most glib rascal on the continent, a lord with ambitions only limited by the ethnic divide, a substantial mountain range, and the storms of the Southern Ocean.

  But likewise, Machigi’s interests and the dowager’s and those of the aishidi’tat did occasionally overlap. A stable midlands was one of those instances. The north forming a stable relationship with the Marid was another desirable outcome, so long as Machigi stayed his current course.

  Bren nodded, projecting satisfaction. “I appreciate your candor, nandi, nadi, and, knowing the dowager, I would expect her to know rather more about all this than I do. May I offer you a brandy in my car? I am assured I have the means.”