Protector

A descent into the dark ages that had preceded the organization of the aishidi’tat would put a hellof a lot of inappropriate technology into inappropriate use. Hell if he was going to watch that happen.

And the instant he’d seen Jase, with a captain’s personal defenses, descending from the shuttle with the children—he’d had a little chill thought that Lord Geigi had sent him. Lord Geigi had gotten that briefing on his way to orbit. Geigi knew the situation inside the Guild. Knew exactly howit had to be stopped.

Geigi might have recommended the children come ahead. And he might have given the facts of the situation to the other captains, who were hell-bent on seeing the children’s mission work out, not in some ideal situation, but involved in the world as it was.

Jase had come down with just his bodyguard. The ship-paidhi.

With his bodyguard. From the starship.

Geigi, he suspected, had sat back at his desk, scarily satisfied.

17

The bus trundled onto the drive at the very edge of dawn, a slight blush to the sky above the hedges. It had a secret, sinister look, its red and black both muted by the dim light, except where the front door light cast its own artificial brilliance.

Black, too, the uniforms of the Guild who quietly boarded, stowing some pieces of heavier armament Bren hoped did not come into play. The rest, and the electronics, were hand-carried briskly toward the rear. It was war they were preparing.

Bren waited at the foot of the steps. His aishid was in conference with Cenedi and Nawari, beside the open door of the bus. Jase was on his way.

So was Jase’s bodyguard—in armor that trod heavily on the stone steps as they came out of the house, servomotors humming and whining constantly. Jase came down the steps of Tirnamardi, and Kaplan and Polano followed, weapons attached to their shoulders, not swinging free, but held there, part of the armor itself. They were taller, wider than human—taller and wider, even, than most atevi, and gleaming, unnatural white. They carried their helmets, and their human faces looked strangely small for the rest of them.

“That should make an impression,” Bren said, as Jase joined him—Jase in his own blue uniform, with, one surmised, that borrowed vest beneath it.

“Projectiles will ricochet off the armor,” Jase said. “Your people need to know that.”

Jase had a com device on his ear, and behind it.

“I’ll remind them,” Bren said. “Is that two-way communications?”

“With my own, not with yours,” Jase said, as they went toward the bus. Bren stopped to relay the information to Banichi, then climbed up the bus steps and went to his usual seat.

“Sit with me,” Bren said to Jase. Banichi and Jago were coming aboard, and took seats across the aisle. Tano and Algini went further back in the bus, where the dowager’s men had gathered in the aisle by the galley.

Last of all, Kaplan and Polano came aboard, rocking the bus somewhat and occupying the space between the driver and the door—an armored wall.

One of the dowager’s young men held the driver’s seat. He shut the door and put the bus gently into motion on the curving drive.

Dawn was coming fast. There was almost color in the stone of the house as it passed, in the straggle of woods that ran down the side of the house.

The situation, with Kaplan and Polano blocking out the view in front, and the hedge scrolling leisurely past the side windows, assumed a surreal feeling—a journey like others this bus had made in its brief service; but different. Far more desperate. Before, they had gone in with some hope of negotiation. Now, admittedly, they were not going in any hope of it.

It was a northern house they meant to visit—and all the accumulation of antiquities, associational ties, and politics that went with it—and this one, troublesome as it had been, was one of the core clans of the aishidi’tat. Political fallout was inevitable.

He had indirectly consulted with Ilisidi and Tatiseigi. But those two still had deniability. Tabini’s hands were nowhere near the situation. Ilisidi and Tatiseigi were having breakfast. Geigi was in the heavens. Had they met with the paidhiin to spark this retaliation? Absolutely not.

In the list of things one had planned to do to manage a boy’s birthday in some degree of peace and security—deliberately staging an incident between the two oldest houses in the Padi Valley had not remotely been on the horizon.

But here they were.

And if hehad been in this kind of situation before, on this bus, and knew its resources—Jase hadn’t, and didn’t.

“Snipers are at issue,” he said to Jase. “Keep your head down if—and when—shots start flying. We have armoring below the windows: the front windows are bulletproof. The tires will hold up against most things. The roof is reinforced. If you have to duck, get as low as you can below the windows and don’t put your head up.”

The kids were, one hoped, sleeping off their late night . . .

As the bus gathered speed toward the gates that would let them out to the road.

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