“We shall do what seems wisest, Tano-ji, with all hopes for the dowager’s success.”

“Baji-naji,” Tano said. “I shall tell Banichi to prepare.”

He was on the verge of losing Tano and Algini both to a danger where his staff, against all his wishes, couldn’t stand together, couldn’t work together. He felt desolate—didn’t want to withdraw his small force, didn’t want to leave the train.

But he didn’t want an innocent boy in the direct line of fire, either; and he understood the thinking that had brought Cajeiri this far—the inexorable demands of the office he might hold, the appearance of having come as far into the fray, for his future, as a boy could; and having done so, to lay back just a little and stay alive, while others took the risks.

He understood that. He understood what his own job was, and what the dowager was asking of him—survive. Report. Support Tabini and Tabini’s heir.

He sat there, the computer’s carrying strap hitched high on his shoulder, and Banichi came to him, leaned over him, a shadow between him and any view of the countryside.

“Tano has spoken to you, has he?” Banichi asked.

“If my staff thinks this move wise,” he said, “I understand the reasons.”

“Excellent,” Banichi said, and gave a little bow of his head.

“We are approaching the meeting point. The train will stop briefly. Come with us.”

“The boy—” he began, but Banichi was already walking away, leaving him to wonder whether to make a formal withdrawal, and say good-bye to the dowager, or just to get up and leave.

It was a Guild operation. He decided on the latter course, and got up and quietly followed Banichi to the front of the car.

Jago had drawn Cajeiri and his young staff with her, Nawari had joined them—no question now that the dowager was aware of the operation, and that her whole staff was.

“We do not wish to leave mani-ma,” Cajeiri said, as firmly as any adult. “We refuse.”

“The dowager’s orders, young sir,” Nawari said. By now the train was perceptibly slowing, the wheels squealing on the iron tracks.

“Move quickly, nandiin,” Jago said, and hurried them out the door and into the wind, the ties moving below their feet, under the iron grid that was the platform between the cars. A ladder led off this open-air platform. The coupling that tied them to the car ahead flexed and banged under their feet as the train squealed to a halt.

“Now,” Banichi said, seizing young Antaro by the arm, “change your coat, nadi, and your ribbon. Change with the young gentleman and be down those steps—stay low, be wise, and keep your gun out of sight. Trust to the staff with you. They are all Guild, and one is the dowager’s.”

“But,” Cajeiri said, as Jago whisked the ribbon first off his pigtail and then off Antaro’s, exchanging red for green.

“Stand still, young sir.” As the wheels were still squealing, she tied the red ribbon onto Antaro’s pigtail, straightened the too-tight coat, which would not button, and spun the girl about for a few quick words. “Straighten your shoulders, keep your head up. Be the young lord.”

“Yes,” came the teenager’s staunch answer.

“By this you both protect him,” Jago said, “as any Guildsman would do, and better than any of us. Go, nadiin!”

The train had scarcely stopped, but the two youngsters took off down the steps as quickly as possible, hit the gravel with Nawari behind them, rushing them along.

“I should be with them!” Cajeiri protested.

“Hush and take the ribbon,” Banichi said. “You will need it. And put on Antaro’s coat, young sir. This is the dowager’s order. Move!”

“But,” Cajeiri said, to no avail, struggling with the slightly oversized jacket.

“Come,” Jago said, “and you will ride in the engine.”

The engine, was it? Bren hitched up his computer strap, negotiated the passage between cars, and opened the door from the platform into the next car.

They entered with a gust of wind into a car the windows of which were defended by Guild of various houses, Atageini, mostly, Taibeni and Dur, not to mention Cenedi and the dowager’s young men, plus a few more whose faces Bren did not see. Their passage through the car drew only cursory looks, a nod or two toward Cajeiri, but these people had their attention fixed on the passing landscape, the open fields and occasional hedgerows.

They were drawing close enough to the capital to pass through more towns such as Leposti at any moment, where they might meet help—or opposition. Jago kept a fast pace through the car, Banichi bringing up the rear, but pausing a moment for a word with Cenedi, who nodded to something. Banichi cast a look back, as if in thought of the dowager.

So much Bren saw in his passing the door. In the next moment the wind hit him, the racket and rush of the unprotected platform, next to the thunder of the engine, an area where watching one’s step was life-and-death. A ladder confronted them, a straight-up ladder, atevi-scale, and the whole platform vibrated with the joints in the tracks, with the deafening noise of the locomotive over all and under all.

“Nandi,” Jago shouted into his ear. She took the computer strap from his shoulder, indicated he should climb first, and he did, hauling himself up the widely-spaced rungs as fast as he could, aware by the vibration in the rungs that someone was on the ladder behind him, likeliest Cajeiric he heard the boy shout something to someone, but he didn’t stop or look down. He came up at nose-level with a catwalk, exposed to the raw wind, and hauled himself up onto that gridwork, kneeling on the metal surface and holding to the railing—thank God there was a railing. The train was passing through empty countryside at the moment, with a town in the distance.

And a swing of his head forward, into the wind, brought him the unexpected sight of a banner aloft, streaming flat out in the wind, atevi figures atop the train, sitting or lying, weapons braced. That banner was the red and black of the Ragi, of Tabini’s house.

That was how the towns and villages turned out to mark their progress. That was the declaration they flew, unmistakable defiance of the authority claiming Shejidan.

Wind battered him as the train began a long curve. He felt Cajeiri’s presence behind him. He summoned strength to wind-chilled muscles, hauled himself up off his knees, holding to the catwalk rail, and moved as briskly as he could along the outside of the generator and engine. The engine gave off the breath of hell itself, heat and fumes stinging and making his eyes run. Above all was the racket, and the rumble and the power of the machine, shaking his fingers to numbness on the railing.

The Ragi banner—outrageous and uncompromising: Know us, know this is the moment, if Ragi will stand up and be counted. This is the moment, if man’chi will draw you.

Why send off Antaro in the heir’s coat? Why send Cajeiri up to the engine? Diversion, to be surec but should anyone think the young lord would leave this train, this banner?

Except if security feared a traitor in their midst, in contact, somehow, with Murini’s forces.

One of Tatiseigi’s men such a traitor might be, or one they had no way to know among their other allies.

But would the heir desert his father’s cause, under such circumstances? Would he leave his great-grandmother?

Murini would, in a heartbeat. It was the recipient of the information that counted: Murini might believe the boy would go.

Murini always had, changing sides with every breezec a long, long history of fast footwork.

Quivering iron railing slid constantly under his hands. Wind battered him as the train’s turn smoothed out, gathered speed, and carried the exhaust away in favor of cold, rushing air. His catwalk ended in another ladder. This one brought him down to a small, sheltered platform with a door into the cab, while another ladder offered steps downward. The driving wheels thundered under the small gridwork platform where he stood, making it impossible to hear.