Peacemaker (15 page)

But those outer doors should not routinely be locked. Banichi had said that, too. They were not
supposed
to be locked. They
could
be. The inner door definitely would be.

They reached the lamp post. He thought Banichi might pause there, if they were somehow off their time—but Banichi and Jago kept going. It was his job to stay with them, and Tano's and Algini's to stay with him. It was a pace he could match if he pushed himself. Banichi said speed mattered. But it couldn't look forced to any observer, just deliberate.

Sixty-one paces. They crossed the cobblestone plaza on a sharp diagonal, crossed the scarcely-defined street, and the modern paved sidewalk that skirted the Guild's frontage.

Seven steps up to the iron-bound doors, which might or might not open.

At the last moment Banichi touched something on his locator bracelet and Jago pounded once with her fist on the dark double doors.

There was a hesitation. Then a latch clicked and the left-hand door, where they were not, swung outward—a defensive sort of door, not the common inward-swinging sort. Guards in Guild uniform confronted them.

“The paidhi-aiji,” Banichi said, “speaking
for
Tabini-aiji.”

Bren did not bow. He held up his hand, palm inward, with the seal-ring outward.

The unit maintained official form—the two centermost stepped to the side, clearing their path without a word of discussion.

They were in.

Bren went with Banichi and Jago in front of him and Tano and Algini behind. It was the tail end of a warm day at their backs. The foyer swallowed them up in shadow and cool air, and three steps up led to a hallway of black stone, where converted gas lamps, now electric, gave off a gold and inadequate light beside individual office doors. Antiquity was the motif here. Deliberate antiquity, shadow, and tradition.

Hammered-glass windows in the dark-varnished doors. Black stone outside . . . and that glass in those doors was, Bren thought, all but whimsical—a show of openness, even of casual vulnerability . . . in the fifteen offices that dealt with outsiders to the Guild.

These outer offices had nothing to do with Tabini-aiji's order. A business wanting a guard for a shipment, yes. Someone with legal paperwork to file. A small complaint between neighbors. A request for a certificate or seal. It
was
the national judicial system, where it regarded inter-clan disputes.

The aiji's business had no place in this hall, which led past the nine offices of the main hall toward an ornate carved door, and at the left, a corner, with six more offices in a hall to the left, just as described.

Two guards at their backs, down those three steps to the double-doored entry.
Four
guards at a single massive wooden door, this time.

“The aiji's representative,” Banichi said, and a second time Bren held up his hand with the ring.

This time it was no automatic opening of the door. “Seeking whom, paidhi-aiji?”

“The aiji sends to the Guildmaster, nadi, understanding the Guild Council is in session this evening.”

There was no immediate argument about it. Guild queried Guild, communicating somewhere beyond those doors.

Bren waited, his bodyguard standing still about him. It was thus far going like clockwork. Neither of these outer units should have the authority to stop them.

“The paidhi-aiji,” the senior said, in that communication, not in code, “bearing the aiji's seal ring, a briefcase, and with his own bodyguard.”

There was a delay. The senior stayed disengaged from them, staring across the hall at his counterpart in the second unit. There might have been a lengthy answer, or a delay for consultation. And there might yet be a demand to open the briefcase.

The senior shot a sudden glance toward Bren. “Nand' paidhi, the Council is in session on another matter. You are requested to wait here.”

“Here?” Indignantly. They needed to be
through
that second set of doors. Bren held up his fist, with Tabini's ring in evidence, and put shock in his voice.
“This
, nadi, does not wait in the public hall!” With the other hand, he held forward the briefcase. “
Nor
does the aiji's address to the Guild Council! If the Council is in session, so be it!
This
goes through!”

“Nand' paidhi.” The senior gave a little nod to that argument and renewed his address to the other side of the door. “The paidhi has the aiji's seal ring, nadi. He strongly objects.”

There was another small delay. Nobody moved. There was an eerie quiet—both in their vicinity, and from all those little offices up and down the two halls that met here. What was going on back at the outer doors, at any door along that hallway, Bren could not tell. One could hear the slightest sound, somewhere. Atevi ears—likely heard far more than that, possibly even the sound of the transmission.

Or movements within the offices.

Were they expected? Was the place in lockdown? What was behind all those office doors?

Banichi and the others stood absolutely still, and Bren refused to twitch—as still as his own bodyguard. He could do it. He'd prepared himself to do it, and lean on their reflexes, not his own. The click of the door lock in front of them echoed like a rifle shot.

And that door, that single, massive wooden door, opened on brighter light, with four more guards the other side of it, at an identical intersection of hallways—again, a blank wall on the right, an ornate carved door, however, closing off the hall of offices on the left. A short jog over, and a short hallway, beyond these guards, led to barely visible closed doors, also guarded by a unit of four.

That
was the Council Chamber, down that stub of a hall. The left-hand hall—that was Guild Administration. And at the other end of it sat the Office of Assignments.

Exactly as arranged, Bren stopped . . . not quite inside, as Banichi and Jago encountered the guards. He was
in
the doorway. So were Tano and Algini, just behind him, beside that thick outward-opening single door. The guards in front of them posed an obstacle, wanting to look them over. There were still the six guards in the outer hall, at their backs—and four automatic rifles, not just sidearms, to judge by the two men visible, guarded the Council doors ahead.

He
was causing a small problem. The outer four guards could not shut the door, and were mildly unhappy about it, the inside guards were trying to move them on without a fuss—

Fuss—was a lord's job.

He shot up his fist, with the ring in clear evidence.
“This,
nadiin, is the aiji's presence, and my case contains his explicit orders. Tabini-aiji sends to the Guildmaster, demanding urgent attention, and he will not be pleased to be stalled or given excuses about agendas. Advise the Guildmaster! There is no delay about this!”

“The Guildmaster is in Council, paidhi-aiji,” the senior nearest said in a quiet, urgent voice, “and the Council is in session. We will send word into the chamber and we will take you to his office to wait. He will see you and receive the orders there.”

Double or nothing. Bren pitched his voice low, where only the immediate four might hear him—for what good it did, if electronics was sending voices elsewhere. “I, speaking for the aiji, ask you now, nadiin,
where is your man'chi?
Is it to the Guildmaster, or to the aishidi'tat? They are
not
one and the same. Is it to the Guildmaster, or to the Guild? They are
not
one and the same.”

“Paidhi, this is neither here nor there. We are not refusing the aiji's request. Even the aiji—”

He kept his voice down. “You are
betrayed
by the Guild leadership, nadiin. Stand down
now!
This is the aiji's order! Obey it!”

Faces were no longer disciplined or impassive. Eyes darted in alarm, one to the other, and, to the side, Banichi had just deftly bumped the door frame, and inserted a little wad of expanding plastic in the latch-hole.

“Close the doors!” the inside senior said, and suddenly they were facing four rifles, from the Council doorway.

“Retired Guild is returning,” Banichi said. “The Missing and the Dead are returning, at the aiji's order and in his service. Will you shoot, and then face them? Assist us. Or stand down.”

“Banichi,”
one said to the senior in a low voice. “That is Banichi.” And the unit senior inside said, “Nadi, we are under orders. Retreat. Retreat now. Quickly.”

Bren didn't turn his head to see. The four behind them were Tano's and Algini's problem. The four immediately in front of them were trying to persuade them to retreat.

“He will
not
retreat,” Bren said. “Nor will this!” He held the ring in view.

“The
aiji's
orders,” Banichi said quietly. “If your man'chi is
not
to the Shadow Guild,
separate
yourself from the Guildmaster, or stand in opposition. The Council leadership has committed treason.”

A bell began to ring. Hall overhead lights began to flash. The offices, Bren was thinking. If those offices back there were occupied . . . but the back accesses down that hall were in
Cenedi's
territory.

“Shut down your equipment,” Banichi said to the units confronting them. “All of you. Now. Take the aiji's orders, Daimano's, Cenedi's . . . and mine.” It wasn't working. Not in the four in the background.
“Paidhi!”
Banichi said.

His
job. He was ready for it, on Banichi's wounded side—he spun around Banichi as Jago did the same with Algini. A flashbang sailed past him into the inner hall and blew as Tano hurled the massive door shut. It rebounded under rifle fire from the Council door guards—and opened again, splinters flying, everything in terrible slow motion.

Turn and duck when I call you, Banichi had told him, forewarning him about splinters, and something still caught him in the back of the head, so brain-jarring he was unaware of completing his turn to the door: he went down beside Banichi, leaning on him for an instant. Tano bumped into him and Banichi, getting into cover, as the door edge passed them on its next rebound—Tano had drawn his sidearm, covering the left-hand hall. The outer four door guards were down—lying over against the wall beside Jago and Algini as automatic fire over their heads continued to hammer the splintering door. The outbound volley and Jago and Algini's move had likely thrown the outside guards to their present position a little down the corridor wall, pressed tight to avoid the fire that had the door swinging insanely open and shut under the shots and the rebound. Fire inside lagged—and Jago flung another flashbang skittering in on the polished floor. God, Bren thought—hope the guards inside weren't equipped with worse to throw back.

The guards down by the front door were Banichi's to watch, those two men, and all those office doors. But those guards were gone, vanished, likely
into
the offices. Bren moved over against the wall in the side hall and stayed quiet—while from the Council hallway bursts of automatic fire shredded the door and made retreat back down the outside hall impossible. One of the door guards had been hit. His comrades worked to stop the blood and treat the wound, under Jago's implacable aim.

They were in possession of the doorway and the outer halls—and trapped there, with Tano aiming a pistol down the length of the short hall, Banichi watching the long hall, Jago with three problems and a wounded man at extremely close range, and Algini covering the door from an angle, to be sure nobody came at them from inside. The guards inside the Council hallway weren't coming out—the four they had talked to close at hand had disappeared, somewhere out of the line of fire—and the four Council Chamber guards had progressively shredded the door, which, thanks to Banichi's small plastic plug, hadn't closed
or
locked, and made it a very bad idea for anybody to exit into the hallway. Right now there was a lull in fire. There was just the bell making an insane racket, and glass from ricochets into office doors and overhead lights lying all down the hall.

“Young fools,” Banichi remarked in a low voice. “They have finally come to their senses, waiting for orders, waiting for us to move. They are over-excited. Seniors will use gas, if they can reach the stores. That will be a problem.”

The service corridor communicating with all those offices was the weakness in their position. Defenders were
bound
to come at them via the offices, and when that happened, they were in trouble, be it gas or grenades. It was a cold stone floor, a cold wait—good company, Bren said to himself. He just had to do what his aishid needed him to do, keep quiet, keep out of the way, and not distract them.

Suddenly the wall at Bren's back thumped, strongly—it made his heart jump; made his ears react. But then he thought: Cenedi. That intersecting administrative hallway, the other side of the wall. Something had just blown up. Cenedi
might
be giving the opposition worries from the other direction.

He snatched a glance at Banichi's locator bracelet. Dead black. No signals at the moment. And nobody had moved, only shifted position a little, tense, waiting. The alarm bell kept up its deafening monotone ringing and the lights kept flashing.

Then the floor thumped under them, and a shock rolled in from the doors down the hall. The massive outside doors flew back, counter to their mountings, one upright, one of them askew and hanging, then falling in an echoing crash.

That wasn't defense. It was
inbound.
Bren flattened himself to the wall with Banichi and Tano, as far from the inner door frame as they could get. Smoke obscured the street end of the hall, smoke and sunset-colored daylight, and two, three,
five
moving shadows in that smoky light. Three solid figures appeared out of it, flinging open office doors, and more shadows arrived up those three steps from the foyer, pouring into the hall from outside, opening office doors one after another, treading broken glass underfoot.