There was that gap in that very white garden wall. There was that black gap, which was the potentially noisy metal gate.

That was a fair-sized target. He could risk it. And that would get a lot of attention, and maybe show them how many enemies were out there.

He had Jegari’s and Antaro’s curiosity. He stuffed the pieces in his pocket, kept one, handed them a stake apiece to break up, and took the slingshota out of the other.

Thenthey understood him.

“Nandi,” Jegari whispered, not against his ear, but very, very softly. “Please be careful.”

“Pardon,” he said, took his piece of a stick and the slingshota, and worked his way out, very low, behind the little stucco wall beside the downward steps, putting his head up very, very slowly. His dark face and hair were going to show against the white stucco, no question, if he got up above the level of the wall. But from the far angle the steps offered, he had a good view of the iron gate.

He put his missile in the slingshota, having the other two ready. He had just one perfect alley, right between two trees that would block the shot.

He let fly.

Damn. Hit the branches. Rustled them. He didn’t stop to see whether the man on the roof had noticed. He fished more pieces out of his pocket, laid them down in front of him and fired the first. Muted clang, where it hit the gate. Third. Clang.

He ducked down immediately. Then scrambled back on the miniature landing, behind the little wall.

“The man has gone from the roof,” Jegari hissed.

The best outcome. He had planned to peg whoever came to investigate the noise. But that was the best.

“Now, now, now,” Cajeiri hissed, giving a shove of his knee to Jegari. “Over! We are going!”

They had prearranged, that when they did go, Jegari would go first, to test the distance, then Antaro, then himself, with them to help break his fall. He saw Jegari go over the wall, saw that Antaro had picked up the rusty garden claw. She was supposed to be counting: thirty-two the sweep of the sensor to the left, thirty-two to the right. But she solved it. She jammed the garden claw into the track. Hard. And slithered out along the walkway and went over the wall.

The man had reappeared. He came out onto the tiles. He was looking their way just as Antaro went over the edge.

Cajeiri snatched up the last missile and shot it straight across the gap. Hit. The man fell back, hit the tiles, tiles came loose, and slid, and Cajeiri did not watch a heartbeat longer: he stuffed the slingshota into his shirt, then he flung himself astride the battlement and spotted Antaro and Jegari with upheld hands below.

He got half a handhold and slid around and off: the handhold failed on the rounded surface. He scraped his cheek on the rough stucco, raked coat buttons on the way down. His companions’ hands broke his fall, snatched him around, and all of a sudden they were running for the woods, exactly what they had agreed not to do. They were supposed to run along the wall, sheltered from the sensor-units.

But Antaro had jammed this one. There was a hole in the net. And they were going straight through it, into the trees, Jegari and Antaro half-carrying him in their breakneck haste to get to deeper cover.

They had made a lot of noise when he hit the man on the roof—tiles sliding, what sounded like a lot of tiles sliding and hitting the ground, and whether the man had gotten clear— whether he was in shape to report them—he had no guarantee they had not been spotted. He had not planned to shoot anyone; Antaro had been supposed to count the sweep. They were supposed to have followed the wall back away from the road to stay out of the sensors and then get into the woods, and now the plan had unraveled, and they were just running as fast and as far as they could, dodging among the trees, avoiding branches, no matter the noise they made.

There was no knowing where the Guild might have laid traps or put sensors.

But there was no time for looking. No more time for plans. They just had to get out of reach.

Fast.

The bus reached the intersection with Lord Geigi’s estate roadc and there the dowager’s man stopped and cut the motor off, and Cenedi got out and walked a little up the road. There was a woods some distance down the road, a finger of the peninsula’s woodlands that ran up beside the house.

They had packed the bus with the dowager’s men, and with equipment. When Banichi and Jago and the dowager’s two men had left and picked up the village truck, that had given them a little breathing room, but no more seating; and Bren had no view of the dowager, or anything else: Tano sat by him, next to the window—between him and the unarmored side of the bus: Bren knew exactly why Tano had insisted on that seat. Algini stood in the aisle, holding to the overhead rail, and it was shoulder to shoulder. They talked. Tano and Algini listened to what he had to say, but offered no suggestion of their own.

Their bus had stopped. And the door opened, in the middle of grassy nowhere, the bus in plain view, if not of the house, at least of somebody watching for trouble to come down the road.

Algini shifted into a now-vacant seat behind him as the dowager’s men piled off, taking gear with them, pulling gear down off the roof rack. Most dispersed into the tall grass and the brush, so far as Bren could see. Tano and Algini sat near him, now, both with rifles and sidearms. The dowager was across the aisle, and two of her young man were right behind her with a massive lot of firepower.

Cenedi climbed back aboard the bus and came back to her to report: “We have a perimeter set up.”

“We shall wait,” the dowager said. Cenedi left. And Bren drew a deep breath.

“Aiji-ma,” he said, and got up to speak quietly. “Thoughts occur—that these people will be moving assets in. If they have your great-grandson—they will not hold him here. There may be a base in Dalaigi.”

Ilisidi looked at him in the diminishing daylight, a sidelong and upward glance. “The paidhi-aiji now gives military counsel.”

“The paidhi-aiji is concerned, aiji-ma. Desperately concerned. This was not Baiji’s idea.”

“We have advised my grandson,” Ilisidi said with a dismissive move of her fingers. “What happens in Dalaigi is outside our reach. What happens hereis within our concern.”

“Aiji-ma,” he said quietly, took the hint and went back to his seat.

She had advised Tabini. Tabini was taking care of Dalaigi— one hoped—if there was anything he could lay hands on. They were on the same wavelength, at least.

From here on until disaster, Bren thought, here was their only job. They were going to prick what was here, and see what came out.

He wanted Banichi and Jago back unscathed. He wanted the boy back and both the Taibeni kids unharmed.

He just hoped to hell the boy, in his dive into the bushes by the front door, had found a hole and stayed there, waiting for exactly this development—they were canny kids.

But asking an eight-year-old with the power to give orders to a couple of sixteen-year-olds to stay put and not move at all for hours and hours and hours—that was asking more than most eight-year-olds or even sixteen-year-olds could bear. It was worse, even, that Antaro and Jegari had had a littleGuild training. They’d tried to protect Cajeiri and gotten in Banichi’s way, or they might not be out here now. They had training— and might think they were called on to use it, and that could be disastrous. Guild that the Tasaigin Marid had sent to keep Baiji under control was one thing. Guild that they might move into a higher-stakes and messed-up operation weren’t going to be house guards. They would bring in serious, serious opposition, and the time that would take might be measured in days—or, if they hadsomething down in Dalaigi Township—it might be here by now.