Free Peacemaker by C. J. Cherryh Page B

long the story they’d given the Transportation Guild would hold—which might tell them whether or not the Bujavid was under an active alert. The ordinary process that brought in an upbound train from the provinces was far from speedy these days. Security had grown incredibly meticulous since the coup. There would be a query. The question was how far to maintain the cover, and whether to invoke Bujavid security to secure the platform.
    It was not his decision, however. The dowager’s Guild senior, Cenedi, in charge of their prisoners in the next car, would make the call to tell certain people in the Bujavid station office who they
really
were—and granted the Bujavid station office was operating without problems, they would make adjustments and get reliable people into position to assure they could disembark smoothly, without, say, meeting a random work crew or other waiting passengers. Cenedi
might
have made that call as they switched onto the Bujavid spur, but if not, it would come very soon.
    The operation came down, now, to
hoping
they were informing the right people, and
hoping
the Bujavid was serenely unaffected by the dust-up up in the Padi Valley. It was all riding on Cenedi’s judgment.
    Banichi was talking to Jago, nearby, discussing the situation. Banichi
ought
to have been lying down the entire trip. Banichi had refused, and insisted on staying armed and on active duty.
    â€œIs everything in order?” Bren asked Tano, who was nearest him.
    â€œEverything is in order, nandi,” Tano said. “We are still not using the locators, not even our short-range communications. We shall run dark until we are in the lifts. But we are on passive reception, and our story seems to be holding up. We seem not to have roused any questions yet.”
    Security-wise, they were story within story within story—within story, since they were all supposed to be at the dowager’s estate across the continent. It was still a little worrisome that they were arriving in the most secure building on Earth, blithely breaching their own security . . . but when they did lie, they could at least do it from inside knowledge.
    Someone eventually had to advise Tabini-aiji, too, that they and his eight-year-old son were back—and Tabini would have to make a decision to let them go on hosting a collection of bright-eyed young humans, or take the youngsters himself. Natural, that a father would take custody of his own son—but the aiji-consort, who had just lost her father, was about to give birth, didn’t approve of humans, and the marriage was in trouble, politically.
    It was one mundane problem, in the midst of others not so mundane. But it was a large problem. They had to put the youngsters
somewhere.
Somebody had to make a decision, and it had to be one that calmed, rather than exacerbated, Tabini-aiji’s domestic problems. God knew whether Tabini had told the aiji-consort the public story—or the truth about where her son had been staying.
    There was at least time, in that slow climb, for everybody to get organized. “I am perfectly well-arranged, nadiin-ji,” Bren said to his two valets, when they came to assist him. He needed a change of coats, at very least, but they had not packed with that in mind. “Kindly help any of the heir’s guests who need assistance. We are not going to delay for precedence once the doors open. Our intention is to get off the platform as quickly as possible until we know the situation here. Help keep them in good order.”
    They moved immediately to do that, quietly assisting Jase to lift his duffle down, for starters, from an atevi-scale storage rack. The dowager’s own servants had gone to the other end of the car, assisting with the fair lot of hand baggage the human party had with them—a significant amount of it belonging to Jase, equipment that they had not wanted to leave behind for later shipment.
    Their personal