Protector

In the next moment the dowager’s men poured out of the bus past him, dodging him and Banichi as they charged past Kaplan and Polano. Gunfire went off inside the building. And Banichi moved, got a hand on the bus step and started to get up, while Bren was sitting on the ground.

Other pale hands arrived to help haul Banichi up. Jase had come to help, and was giving orders to Kaplan and Polano to stand fast. Banichi got a knee under him.

“Stay down, stay down,” Bren said, with a hand on Banichi’s arm.

Banichi took a breath, got one hand on the communications earpiece that had fallen from his ear and put it back, listened, on one knee, and said something in code, the three of them sheltered behind Jase’s steadfast bodyguard.

“Get aboard the bus,” Banichi said. There was a hole blown in Banichi’s jacket, exposing the bulletproof fabric, and blood.

“ Youget aboard,” Bren said. “You were hit,Banichi.”

“He,” Banichi said, looking toward the stone steps of the porch. Bren looked, past armor-cased legs. The stonework was shattered and black-uniformed bodies lay every which way.

“ Hewent down,” Bren said, looking back at Banichi. “You hit him. They fired. Jase’s guard fired, and if anything else came from our direction it was ricochets.” If Banichi had to ask the sequence of events, he had been hit hard, and he did notwant Banichi to get up and go staggering into the house.

“If it got him,” Banichi said, “good.” He did gain his feet, grabbed Bren’s hand and hauled him up as if he weighed nothing. Then he leaned back against the bus to check the bracelet and listen to communications. “Nawari’s group is arriving,” Banichi said. “Jase. Allies to the west. Tell Kaplan and Polano.”

Bren repeated that in ship-speak, to be sure—east and west were not concepts Kaplan and Polano knew operationally, and Jase relayed it in ship-speak and coordinates.

“They understand,” Jase said. “They’ve adjusted their autofire to that fact.”

Gunfire broke out somewhere beyond the house. He heard servos whine as Kaplan and Polano simultaneously reoriented.

“Ours,” Banichi said instantly.

Jase said, “Hold fire, hold fire. Rules of engagement still hold. Fire only if fired on.”

“Stay here,” Banichi said. “Get on the bus, Bren-ji, Jase-nandi. Now.”

They had become a distraction. Banichi was linking the operations together, Nawari’s group coming in overland, the ones that were behind the house, and inthe house.

“Get aboard,” Bren said to Jase. “Keep Kaplan and Polano where they are—Guild can tell each other apart. We can’t. And they can’t.”

The bus was still running. The driver still had the door open. Jase grabbed the assisting rail and climbed the steps, and Bren followed close behind him, hoping Banichi would stay where he was, behind Kaplan and Polano, and direct matters from there, but by the time Bren had gotten to the first seats and turned around, Banichi had crossed open ground to the side of the house, and along the way, had gathered up his rifle.

Bren put his hand in his pocket, felt the gun in place. He planted a knee in the seat and looked outward. Banichi was on the steps, taking a closer look at one of the fallen.

“That was the one you were after?” Jase asked. “The one Banichi got?”

“If we’re lucky,” Bren said.

Banichi!that one had said and fired.

So had Banichi.

They’d known each other by sight, at least. But that anger . . . that instant reaction . . .

How, when they had known each other, he had no idea. But he had that impression.

He watched Banichi go into the house.

“Nandiin,” the driver said, “there is still resistance in the house. One believes they may be attempting to destroy information. We are moving to prevent it.”

“One hears, nadi,” he said. The driver was Guild—linked into communications and willing to tell them what was going on. That was unprecedented. Banichi’s arrangement, he thought . . . with the hope of keeping him in his seat.

The windshield was starred with a bullet scar. Simultaneous as it had been—the other side had fired first. He’d swear to it. Damned right he’d swear to it. Kaplan and Polano had fired when fired on.

The renegades had notfollowed Guild rules, had notcalled for a standstill and consultation with Guild authority.

They had done everything by the book—and the Shadow Guild hadn’t, damn them. The carnage on the porch, terrible as it had been, was thanks to that. There was no needfor so many to be dead. It wasn’t the way the Guild had operated, before the Shadow Guild had tried to take the rules back to the dark ages, the clan wars, the days of cavalry, pikes, and wholesale bloodshed. Atevi had climbed out of thatage the hard way, before humans had ever arrived in the heavens. It was theircommon sense, the Assassins’ Guild was their solution, and the Shadow Guild was doing their damnedest to unravel it.

Suddenly Kaplan and Polano reoriented, machinelike and simultaneous, toward the windows above. Bren ducked down to see what they were looking at, could not spot it.