The repair of the stableyard’s eastern gate seemed to be the focus of a great deal of activity. Never mind the stable behind it had burned down. They needed fences to give the Atageini mecheiti a sense of territory, to keep them from challenging the Taibeni mecheiti—if one of the big bulls took it into his thick skull to start a fight, it could be very nasty indeed. At the moment, presumably, the hedges kept them apart, but those barriers only lasted until a mecheita decided to walk on through.

Jago came back.

He looked at her, lifted a brow in mild question regarding her business.

“One delayed, consulting with Cenedi,” Jago said.

“How is the dowager?”

“Quite well, nandi, though Cenedi himself is suffering somewhat.”

“Wounded?” He had not heard that.

“Minor, but an impairment in hand-to-hand. We discussed alternatives. Places of refuge to which we might retreat, if things grow chancy. One has a rather better notion of alignments in the region—some business the dowager gathered from her grandson.”

A very useful conference between those two, then. A notion how the political map lay, and what doors might welcome them, and what ones would not, as a next step after Atageini territory. But this was not a staff that liked the word retreat.

“One rather hopes the Kadagidi would have reconsidered their reception here,” he said, ”and at least delay for consultations.”

Consultations with their lord Murini, who was still sitting in Shejidan, at their last report, while his clan went at it hammer and tongs with the previously neutral Atageinic and now had outsiders coming in. Provoking a region-wide war ought to require at least some consultation with the self-proclaimed aiji.

“Couriers may have gone to the capital,” Jago said.

“Unfortunately, though the Kadagidi had an agent here, Lord Tatiseigi does not seem to have had particular success at installing his own among the Kadagidi.”

Of course not, Bren thought. Tatiseigi had spent all his best men infiltrating the paidhi’s household—and very good men, too, not to mention a better cook than he could otherwise have found. He was the great threat Tatiseigi had been keeping an eye on, not the neighboring clan who had been plotting against the stability of the aishidi’tat for as long as that entity had existed.

“One wishes we knew what would be the wise thing, Jago-ji.

Staying here much longer seems rash. The servants, however— Damiri-daja has affirmed she sent them.”

“So Cenedi said.”

“Damiri says Ajuri clan is coming in—for a familial visit in crisis, one supposes. And all the farmers and townsfolk out there arriving and picnicking, as if it were a local harvest fair— one worries about this situation, Jago-ji. One is very concerned for their safety.”

“Well we should,” Jago said. “But, understand, it makes a statement—one does wish you would stay farther from the window, Bren-ji.”

He moved. Instantly.

“The servants intend to install privacy screens,” he offered.

“Perhaps we should add them to the windows.”

A rich, soft chuckle. “Privacy screens indeed. After what the gentleman saw in the bath, nandi?”

“I greatly regret the embarrassment, Jago-ji,” he said. “I profoundly apologize.”

“For what possible offense, Bren-ji? And privation will not last.

Likely we shall indeed be leaving soon.”

“Where?”

“One can only guess,” Jago said. “As for the harvest fair out on the lawn, clearly the lord has encouraged it. He has met with these locals. He has praised them. He has sent out word.”

“Is that from Cenedi?”

“It might be.” The Guild kept its secrets. “Clearly Lord Tatiseigi wishes to rally the clans and meet his neighbors in force if they come in. Tabini-aiji has choices to make.”

“God.” The last in Mosphei’, but Jago understood him. Tatiseigi, whose equipment had nearly gotten them all killed, proposed to raise local war against the clan whose lord claimed Tabini’s office, pushing the aiji to move now or move on. “I have to talk to Tabini while we still have some means to print a file. I just sent Banichi to reach him.”

“Banichi was going downstairs.”

“Downstairs?” To find Tabini’s senior staff, was it?

Then Tabini was in conference, or his staff was, with Tatiseigi or his household. Perhaps Tabini was trying to talk Tatiseigi out of provoking a second round with the Kadagidi while things were still within the realm of negotiation and finesse.

The faint thrum of an engine, meanwhile, had barely intruded into his awareness. He had thought at first it was another bus coming up the front drive.

Then it seemed more like something else. And Jago had heard it, clearly. She seized his arm.

“An airplane, nandi.”

Air attack. She wanted to pull him to cover. His heart doubled its beats. “My computer. Above all else, my computer.”

He broke away and rushed to get it, Jago right on his heels, and when he had it she seized up a heavy bag from the same stack: armament. Tano and Algini dived in, arming themselves likewise.

The plane buzzed over the roof to a rattle of small arms fire.

No bombs dropped. The plane flew away and sounded as if it reached a limit and perhaps turned to come back somewhere over the east meadow.

“That plane came from the west,” he said; the west was not from the Kadigidi side of things. And since the engine sound was still far away, he darted back out of the bath to risk a quick look from the window, Jago and Tano and Algini in anxious attendance.

It was a very small plane, a three-seater at most. It looked to be landing on the broad meadow of the eastern mecheita pasture. Its fuselage was yellow striped with blue.

“Dur!” he exclaimed, seeing those colors, remembering a young and determined pilot who had scared the hell out of a scheduled airliner. “Jago-ji, come with me! Tano! Algini! Call security! Stop them from shooting at that plane!”

He was still encumbered with his computer. He ran back and shoved it into the pile of baggage, not even knowing whether the landing had succeeded against the small arms fire that renewed itself. He headed straight for his foyer and the door of the suite, ahead of Jago, for once. She overtook him, seized his arm with one hand, and opened that door to the outer hall, by no means stopping him, but not letting him dash recklessly ahead of her.

“Tano is calling Banichi,” she said, as they walked double-time down the upstairs hall toward the stairs. They were alone in the upper hallway—servants might have ducked for cover or run to windows within unoccupied rooms, but there was no sign of anyone as they reached the stairs and hurried down.

There was a broad landing in front of the foyer, the juncture of the main floor and the stairs that led outside, a region now the domain of workmen setting up scaffolding and repairing the outer doors. As they arrived the door to the adjacent drawing room opened, and Tabini-aiji himself strode out through the collection of Guild security that ordinarily guarded the doors of any conference in progress—the aiji was in Assassins’ black, still, with an identifying red scarf around his arm, much as he had appeared when he had turned up last night, if less dusty.

Elderly Lord Tatiseigi, in muted pastel green with abundant lace, accompanied him out, looking entirely vexed with the proceedings.

Banichi exited the room with them, pocket com in hand.

“They must not shoot!” Bren said at once. “The colors of the plane are yellow and blue! They are Dur!”

“In my winter pasturage!” Tatiseigi cried.

“See to its protection,” Tabini said to staff. “Quickly!”

Bren himself veered for the foyer and ran down the steps under the scaffolding to the massive front doors, while workmen who had stopped their cleanup and repair stared at the sudden commotion.

With Jago and now Banichi in close company, and right behind Tabini’s own head of security, he exited the house onto the wide front steps, above a clutter of buses and farm trucks that now jammed the hedge-rimmed drive. Ordinary townsmen had taken cover from the overflight behind the flimsy cover of vehicles, armed and waiting with their pistols and hunting rifles.