But they had plenty on their hands where they were.

“We shall not negotiate,” Ilisidi said quietly. “Nand’ Bren.”

“Nandi? We shall go wherever we need go.”

“One has no doubt,” Ilisidi said.

“Can either of these ladies open those gates?” he ventured to ask.

Agilisi glanced at him, clearly taken aback. Drien looked disapprovingly down her nose at his impertinence. Ilisidi, however, had raised that dangerous brow.

“Answer the Lord of the Heavens,” Ilisidi said, leaning chin on fist. “You can find your way back into Caiti’s good graces, can you not, lady of Catien? One is certain you can at least get the gates open—if only for their desire to know what sudden turn of events brings you back.”

“One might venture it,” the lady said. Gone, all her prim assurance. It was a straw, and with whatever motivation, she grasped at it. “One might, with your favor, nand’ dowager.”

“We shall hold my favor in abeyance, woman. You have walked into it and you know your life is sinking low, low indeed, in my present plans. Redeem it. And rest assured this is your one chance.”

“Agilisi is my associate, cousin,” Drien said, “and courted by lords Caiti and Rodi, as was I, as all the lords of the lakeshore and eastward. Her house was, indeed, infiltrated.”

“Is yours?” Ilisidi asked bluntly.

“My people have been with me all my life, Cousin. As yours.”

That, Bren thought, might be a frank and honest answer. A small silence persisted in the room, and Agilisi’s life quite literally hung on that silence.

“Our man’chi,” Agilisi said. “Rescue my house, nandi. We need your help. We appeal for your help. We quit this madness when we knew its intentionsc”

“Do you know the premises of the Haidamar?”

“Somewhat.” A tremor possessed the lady, who was not, herself, young. It might be a chill. Her boots showed water-stain, the snow having melted. But again, one doubted that tremor was in any sense chilled feet. “I have been there. I was a guest there, before this venture. Nandi, I had no knowledgec I appeal for protection of my house, my associates, nandi. I am putting them all at risk in turning to you. These are innocent people, my staff, my guardc”

Ilisidi lifted her hand, stopping the torrent short. “Their safety now depends on our success and my great-grandson’s life. Provide my staff a diagram.”

Getting through that gate. Getting the gate open, Bren thought.

That was all they needed—the bus that had brought Agilisi to Cobesthen might be able to break through, but finesse— finesse was going to get the boy out alive.

Agilisi looked about to wilt altogether, trembling visibly as she lifted a hand in protest. “One hardly knows,” Agilisi began, and then Drien: “We know those premises,” Drien said, the infelicitous dual augmented with the mitigating article. “And they will admit me, cousin, with my neighbor. Let me intercede for my neighbor. She may stay here. We shall ride to the north shore.”

It was gallant of the lady. It was downright grand, considering the peril of her association and the dowager’s outraged anger. There was still the remote chance Lady Drien was in with the kidnappers from the beginning—she had certainly been named; there was the remote chance Lady Drien had sought the promise of title to Ardija from Caiti, which could mean she was trying to lead them all into Caiti’s trap— But if a dozen years of reading atevi faces and manners was any guide, she had every appearance of telling the truth, and every reason for peace. Ilisidi as a neighbor was assuredly more stable than Caiti’s hare-brained effort to rip the East out of the aishidi’tat.

If they survived it.

“I would go,” Agilisi protested in a faint voice.

“Yes,” Ilisidi said, “but you shall not. Rely on my cousin for your survival. Become indebted to her. And expect your brother to lose a wife!” To Drien she said: “Cousin. You will find we remember debts.”

So they sat, with the same fire crackling away and all the players the same but one, and the whole East changed. We’ve landed in a damned machimi, Bren thought, not letting a wisp of expression to his face. He could even put a name to it: Kosaigien Ashai, as ancient and tangled a nest of pieces as existed in the dramatic repertoire. He had studied it, and never made thorough sense of the moves and the motives.

But there it was, the grand gesture, the acceptance, the realignment which had challenged human students for decades—a revised set of man’chiinc the principal’s own, and everybody else’s.

And blood to follow. A lot of it.

Neither Agilisi nor Drien had Guild help, as such—and the thought came through clear as a lightning strike: Cenedi and his men, Eastern themselves, would be recognized in a heart-beat.

Banichi and Jago might not bec but Jago had been at the dinner party.

Banichi, however, had not been: Banichi had not yet returned from the Guild that night. He meant to mention that fact to the dowager, at the next opportune moment. And he wasn’t sending Banichi and Jago off into a desperate situation without him, no way in hell.

“Where,” Ilisidi inquired further, “Agi-daja, where is the bus that brought you?”

“At the base of the hill, nand’ dowager. The very last of the road.

There is no driver. Your man took us at gunpoint—”

“We shall need that bus. Nand’ Drien, you may go with us.”

“In that infernal machine! Overland is the sensible way, overland or at very least by boatc”

“Come, come, Dri-daja, straight into ambush? You need new experiences. You are not too old. We need you.”

“Then overland!”

“We cannot dither about riding there, not with my great-grandson—your cousin thrice removed!—at issue! The bus may need to go further, but it goes faster, and does not wear us down.”

“I am far too old for that rattletap!”

“If I fare well in a bus,” Ilisidi said, “you may survive it. And your staff, Dri-daja, can bring the mecheiti overland. You shall ride with us and arrive ahead of them, I wager you on it.”

“One has never agreed to this machine!” Drien cried.

“One has not written down the disposition of Ardija, either,”

Ilisidi said primly, and called for pen and paper.

Three quarters of an hour later Ilisidi had signed and sealed a note ceding Ardija, the lady Agilisi and her sole retainer were confined to a comfortable though chilly room in Cobesthen Fortress, and the rest of them were on mecheita-back, with the entire local herd and the Malguri herd together, all riding down toward the intersection and the waiting Cadienein-ori airport bus.

It was a whole damned cavalry, Bren thought, and the two herd bulls were not in the least compatible, Drien’s and Ilisidi’s. They raised a bawling complaint all the way down the road, prime reason to take the bus and not have that all the way around the lake shore, announcing their presence.

And having hastily having thrown on his warmer coat and trousers and having left all but his most essential baggage under Drien’s roof, Bren tried to keep that shorter coat spread out over Nokhada’s warm, winter-coated body, holding as much of her heat near his body as he could. The bus itself was not going to be comfortable, he was damned sure.

It sat, dark and dead, right amid the one-lane road, with snow piling on its hood and top—a stubby half-bus transport. A delivery van might have been more commodious. It said, on the side, in large letters: Cadienein-ori Regional Transport Authority.

It offered no sign of life as Cenedi’s men investigated it end to end and underneath. Two bundles went out, unceremoniously, likely Lady Agilisi’s luggage, right into a snowbank. One of Cenedi’s men started the engine, and reported a half a tank of fuel.

“Enough to get down to the depot,” Cenedi said, getting down.

Nawari slid down and held Babsidi’s rein, urging him to kneel.