Protector

Full stop. Immediately the driver opened the door. “Go,” Jase said in ship-speak, and Kaplan and Polano immediately took the steps, jumped from the last one and landed on their feet as if the armor weighed nothing—gyros, Bren thought distractedly. Beyond the windshield, now that they could see, and about a bus length ahead, were low, rounded steps, a single open door, and black-uniformed Kadagidi Guild arriving outside to meet them with rifles in hand.

But the Kadagidi reaction stopped on those steps. Whatthe Guildsmen saw facing them beside that bus door, the world had never seen. That was certain. Kaplan and Polano had taken up position, mirror-faced, tall, and bulky, atevi-scale and then some.

“Bren-ji, come,” Banichi said, from beside Bren’s seat.

He didn’t stop to analyze. He flung himself up and went behind Banichi and Jago as they passed, with Tano and Algini bringing up the rear. Jase himself might be visible to those on the steps, through the front window—but the rest of their company stayed out of sight, crouched among the rear seats . . . he had seen that as he got up.

Banichi and Jago alighted on the gravel drive. Bren grabbed the assisting rail and landed beside them, followed by Tano and Algini, all behind the white wall that was Kaplan and Polano.

Banichi, rifle in the crook of his arm, stepped out from cover alone.

“Are those alive?” the senior confronting them called out from the porch steps.

“These are the ship-aiji’s personal bodyguard,” Banichi answered. “And the ship-aiji is present on the bus. Be warned. These two ship-folk understand very little Ragi. Make no move that they might misinterpret. The paidhi-aiji and the ship-aiji have come to talk to your lord, and request he come outdoors for the meeting.”

“Our lord will protest this trespass!”

“Your lord will be free to do that at his pleasure,” Banichi retorted. “But advise him that the paidhi-aiji is here on behalf of Tabini-aiji, speaking for his minor son and for the aiji-dowager, the ship-aiji, and his son’s foreign guests, minor children, all of whom were disturbed last night by Guild Assassins who have named your estate as their route into Lord Tatiseigi’s house.”

Banichi had them. Legally. There was a decided pause on the other side, a consultation.

“We will relay the matter to our lord,” the Kadagidi said. “Wait.”

A man left, through the door to the inside of the house. That left the unit on the steps facing them, but without direct threat, rifles down, and there seemed some remote chance of getting Lord Aseida out here on the steps—in which case there would be some use for the paidhi-aiji, and some chance, if Haikuti was not here, to argue the Kadagidi lord into an act of common sense— ifthere was a chance Lord Aseida wanted to get out of the predicament he was in.

Cast himself and his clan on the aiji’s mercy—if there was any way he dared walk away from the guards on the steps and board the bus. If they could detach Aseida from his bodyguards and get him under the dowager’s protection, they mighthave a source of information, a sure bet in any legislative hearing, andthey could stabilize the Kadagidi for—at least a few years, so long as the fear lasted. That was what they could do if Aseida would walk out here and tell his guards to go back inside.

Beyond that remote chance—if Aseida refused the request to talk, the paidhi-aiji still had a job to do: take charge, and keep the company on the porch distracted and arguing, while Nawari probed the house defenses and found out whether the Kadagidi intended the Dojisigi to survive their return to the Kadagidi house—or not.

He was overshadowed on every hand, too short, behind Kaplan and Polano, in their white, faceless suits, to get a good look at the company on the porch. His bodyguard loomed head and shoulders above him.

They waited.

Another Guild unit came out that door and brusquely joined the first—a unit which could beAseida’s personal bodyguard. The senior of that group exuded a force of presence and, God! an angerforeign to the Guild, a hard-faced man, absolute and furious as he had ever seen any man—except Tabini.

Aiji, was what the nerves said.

Haikuti. He had never seen so much as a photo of the man—but he had no doubt.

“Banichi!” that man shouted, swinging his rifle upward.

Banichi moved. In a time-stretched instant, Haikuti went backward, Banichi spun and went down, bullets hit the bus, and a buffeting shock went through the ground. Grenade, Bren thought, finding himself falling. It had all gone wrong. Banichi was on the ground right in front of him, moving, but dazedly.

Bren lurched forward, grabbed Banichi’s jacket, and pulled with everything he had, dragging Banichi back toward cover, aware that Jago and Tano and Algini had gone past him.