Damn, he said to himself, crouching there, thinking of that vulnerable, open car ahead of them.

“Cajeiri!” he heard Banichi say, then; and Jago’s weight left him.

With the worst of thoughts, Bren heaved himself up and scrambled through a press of atevi who tried to give him space.

Cajeiri was on his knees in the seat, he and his young guards, struggling to lift the window they themselves had dropped. Banichi leaned across and did it one-handed.

“What are you doing?” Banichi challenged them.

“There was a flash in the woods, nadi!” This from Antaro, defending her young lord. “We were shooting at that!”

“We?” They were all exposed to the night, but the spot which had roused their alarm was long past in the dark: The bus had sped off at the column’s speed. “Your task,” Banichi said in that dreadful voice he could use, “your task, young woman, is to protect your lord, which may require your flinging him to the floor, not abetting his youthful misjudgement.”

“Yes,” Jegari said.

There was a draft still coming in, a hole in that window, difficult to see in the dark. A bullet had gone through, and missed. Bren spotted it. He was sure Banichi already had.

And Ilisidi and Tatiseigi in that open car, Bren thought with a chill.

Whoever had shot at the column had fired blindly—which argued non-Guild forces, maybe Kadagidi coming crosscountry, having learned they were no longer at Tirnamardi. In the latter case, the attackers surely had no way of knowing they had had the heir in their sights— Or they were Guild, Bren said to himself, and had tried an impossible shot.

Which the fool youngsters had tried to return, and never mind Antaro had used the indefinite, child’s we, the child’s language which she had doubtless left behind entirely seven years ago, Banichi and Jago and everyone else in hearing had to be sure who had drawn a gun and not ducked his vulnerable head—damn, one could be sure of it.

“Keep your heads down, and rest,” Bren suggested, employing the fortunate three-mode. “We shall all have to sleep an hour or so, no matter they shoot at us. I shall sit with you.”

Which probably did not please his staff, but his backside was numb from the chill of the deck, and he slid past Cajeiri and took his former place, by the window. He took out his handkerchief—a gentleman had a handkerchief—and stuffed that white object in the bullet hole, high up. Well enough, he thought. A sniper might take that pallor for a targetc above their heads.

“Nandi,” Jago said, she and Banichi taking their leave, moving back to their former position, they and Tano and Algini, who had held the curious back. The aisle in their vicinity cleared, people getting back to their seats.

It was the moment in which an adult might have a word with a foolish young lad, and his desperately inexperienced staff. One prudently declined, letting them think about it, think about the dangers out there.

Young nerves had clearly had enough for the moment. Cajeiri had turned about in his seat, trying to find a comfortable place. He tried turning his head away, pretending to go back to sleep, but in lengthy silence, the bus bumping and thumping at its high speed, he ended up turning over, and finally sliding against Bren’s shoulder, exhausted.

Fair enough. Bren provided a shoulder, the weight was warm and provided a brace against which Bren himself could lean, the bus wall being cold and all too vulnerable. Bren found himself able to shut his eyes, even to drift a bit, in an interval of relatively smooth road and dark.

The bus jolted. Brakes wheezed. Refueling stop, Bren decided, at once aware that there was light outside the window. He began to think about getting up and finding out where they were.

Suddenly the bus roared off in a scattering of gravel, making no stop at all.

Cajeiri lifted his weight from Bren’s shoulder, braced himself with a hand on the seat in front. “What was that, nandi?” he asked.

“What are we doing?”

“One has no idea,” Bren said, and hauled himself to his feet and past the boy, in search of information, in what was near dawn.

Details hung in a dim gray light, where before had been dark and silhouettes, and faces were weary and watchful, facing the windows.

Tano was the one of his staff closest by, he and Algini having traded off their seats to Banichi and Jago. He took a grip on Tano’s seat rail.

“What happened, nadiin-ji?” Bren asked.

“An isolated station, nandi. The pumps are booby-trapped. A team is working to clear it, for the hindmost. Our driver believes we can make it—if not, still to another pump, with a small detour.”

Communications must still be working. They had hardly slowed down to find this out. “Is there word of the dowager?” he asked them, “Or the aiji?”

“There is not, Bren-ji. But we have not passed the car, either, baji-naji.”

“What shall we do, then? Drive straight into the city?”

“Perhaps,” Tano said. “Perhaps, Bren-ji.”

Perhaps, if the fuel held out in sufficiency to keep the column together. If, baji-naji, the buses held together mechanically and they didn’t run head-on into ambush. Worse, they were going into a narrowing cone on the map, making it clearer and clearer to anyone that the city was their destination, and offering ample time for their enemy to put up a meaningful roadblock and a determined resistence.

He worked forward in the crowded aisle to have a look ahead for himself, and had an uncommonly clear view of the column in front, no longer a dust-obscured scatter of taillights, but a gray string of five small trucks and one bus stretching ahead of them down a hill, on a well-traveled market road. No car. No hint of a car aheadc whatever that meant. One hoped it meant that the dowager had gone off the route and tried some clever maneuver. It was no good asking. Whatever they got by radio—and it was even possible that his staff could reach Cenedi at short range—there was no news for him, or his staff would have waked him to inform him. Banichi and Jago were in a seat forward, themselves catching a few moments of sleep. He decided against interrupting that rest.

He went back to his seat, answered Cajeiri’s sleepy questions—the boy had finally, absolutely run out of energy—and when Cajeiri dropped off again, he watched out the window, watched grain fields pass, finally making a pillow of his hand against the outer wall and catching a few hazy moments of sleep.

Then the tires hit pavement. He jerked his head up, saw buildings, realized they were passing right through a town—a town he knew, by that remarkable red building on the hill, the old fortress. It was Adigian, firmly in Ragi territory.

And it was sunrise, and people were out on the roadside waving at them, cheering them on, some of them with weapons evident.

Cajeiri’s head popped up. “There are people, nandi!”

“Adigian. A Ragi town. Wave at them, young gentleman.”

Cajeiri did that, but soon they ran out of people, and only saw three trucks waiting in a side street, trucks crammed with passengers, a sight that whisked by them.

More would join them, had his bodyguard not said so?

His nerves were rattled. As the last of the little town whisked past the windows he found another priority. The bus had what genteel folk called an accommodation in the rear, which he visited, and returned to his seat. The bus meanwhile kept up its steady pace, never slowing once, not as they left the brief patch of pavement and struck out on the usual dirt surface.

If there was fuel in Adigian, they had declined it, because the driver judged they had enough. Most everyone had waked, but now heads went down again. And amazing himself, he dropped his head over against the seat edge on folded hands and caught a little more half-sleep, his mind painting pictures of the space station over their heads, the white corridors of the remote station where they had fought to rescue the colonistsc so, so much detail the world didn’t know. He remembered a boy playing at race cars in the ship corridors, Banichi on his knees helping repair a wreckc all these things. A curious dinner, with floating globes of drink, and fear of poisonc Odd-smelling, dark halls, then, the interior of a kyo ship. The wide, strange countenance of their own kyo guest, his broad hand descending on a pile of teacakesc His head spun. There were so many changes, so much water under the bridge.