Babs moved, Nokhada moved, as if she was on an invisible string. Babs made a running rush at the slope, and Nokhada waited and did the same, right behind, with Cenedi behind him. But two of the men were ahead of Ilisidi, and over the ridge and out of sight—security, he supposed, though he supposed that any sniper would just wait for a more profitable target.
“Someone did try to kill me,” he said breathlessly to Cenedi, in case no one had ever quite made all the details clear, in case Cenedi had thought he was other than serious. “In Shejidan. Under the aiji’s own roof. Without filing. I supposed Banichi must have mentioned that. It’s not just a supposed threat.”
“We’re well aware,” Cenedi said. “The tea was our best chance.”
Cenedi was joking, he hoped. Deadpan retaliation for his remark when they mounted up.
But Cenedi claimed he’d known all along that there was a hazard, and Cenedi, or Ilisidi, had insisted all the same on bringing him outside the walls, and risking his neck with Nokhada. On one level, it was Tabini’s kind of gesture, absolute defiance of his restrictions and the better thoughts of his security—but he remained uneasy in spite of Cenedi’s assurances. The thought flitted through his head that if there were enemies or kidnappers in Malguri… he could be riding with them.
But Banichi hadn’t warned him anything of the sort. Banichi had brought Cenedi into his bedroom. Cenedi said he knew why they were at Malguri, and thought he could guarantee his safety.
Nokhada dipped her head of a sudden to investigate the ground—not the most opportune moment for Nokhada to do that, and he made a grab at the rings and jerked Nokhada’s head to bring it up—which brought Nokhada to an inglorious, sulking halt for two heartbeats before Nokhada moved on her own, still ducking her head, nose to the ground while she was climbing.
“She has a scent,” Cenedi said. Cenedi’s own mecheita was doing much the same, and so was Babs, up the hill. “I’d hang on, nand’ paidhi. Babs is lead.”
“Lead what?” he asked.
“Mecheit’-aiji,” Cenedi said, and he had a sudden recollection of televised hunts, of the legendary ability of mecheiti to track atevi fugitives or four-footed game. He remembered Babs going over his hand, and Nokhada smelling him over. He had the sudden apprehension that it wasn’t just television, wasn’t anything made-up, or exaggerated.
And he couldn’t control the damned mecheita he was on to prevent it taking him wherever Ilisidi took a whim to go.
Babs gave a sudden whip of his tail and with a scatter of gravel took out diagonally across the slope. Nokhada and Cenedi’s mount and the rest pivoted and launched themselves as if they’d been shot at—Nokhada recklessly, roughly surging uphill in Babs’ tracks, outpacing Cenedi and the rest. He didn’t want the lead—and all he could do was hang on to the rings and not drop the rein.
A gully loomed ahead, a wash of soft earth down the hill, and Ilisidi showed no disposition to slow Babs down.
Babs took it.
Oh, God, he thought, envisioning himself bleeding on the ground, run over by the mecheiti behind. He tucked down, he gripped the rings with all his might—he didn’t mass much, he didn’t mass much, he kept telling himself as Nokhada thundered across the slope—Nokhada was going to go and Nokhada didn’t intend to fall—Nokhada took a four-beat turn into the jump, hind legs shoved, shoulders rose—
Then came a floating feeling, a headlong plunge against which his body instinctively reacted backward—and a teeth-cracking jolt as somehow he went forward again and his mouth hit the back of Nokhada’s neck.
Nokhada’s legs were under them again, all four of them, in a pounding rhythm—Babs’ dark rump showed in front of them as Babs suddenly darted left and right on the close track of something brown and white running ahead of them. Nokhada ran a straighter course, other mecheiti running like earthquake behind her.
A shot rang out ahead, from Ilisidi. Whatever it was—went down in a cloud of dust and flattening grass as it skidded downslope.
The guards all cheered the shot, as Babs stopped and the mecheiti came to a blowing, stamping halt around Babs, laying back ears and snorting and sidling about.