That was a different way to look at his function. So he was the subversive influence. It was his assigned job in child management, in Tabini’s reckoning.
“His mother,” Tabini said, “was exceedingly put out with me for leaving him there. So were her relatives, you may understand. But what would he have done if I had brought him back to the Bujavid? He would be back at petty mischief, longing to make another escape right back to the middle of things. He would grow willful and bitter and less obedient. I think that leaving him where I did actually scared him, paidhi-ji, and very few things have done that.”
“He did learn, aiji-ma. And he gained the man’chi of the two guards you gave him.”
“Those two!” Tabini said.
“They acquitted themselves well, finally, aiji-ma.”
“That they did, after near disaster! But they have gotten his respect, more the wonder. He is listening to someone advising him to protect himself. That is an improvement.” Tabini gave a deep sigh and signaled for more tea, a period of quiet, while the servants poured.
Then Tabini said: “And our son has, given his powers of persuasion, made associations. The challenges my son will meet in his life will be fewer if his relationships are far-reaching and sound. Dur. The tribes. Lord Geigi of Maschi clan, director of atevi affairs on the space station all worth winning. His connections are enough to daunt his enemies.”
“One has observed that he has exerted himself to be well-regarded; and it is not childlike, his pursuit of such relationships. He is growing in adult intent, aiji-ma.”
“One credits you and his great-grandmother for this growth in good sense. And I especially count Cenedi and Banichi, whom he regards highly and whose advice he respects far more than mine. He quotes them daily.”
“Aiji-ma.”
“Oh, let us be frank, paidhi-ji. He believes Banichi knows everything, and Cenedi is close behind.” A sip, a little glance toward Banichi and Jago, who stood nonparticipant and statuelike against the wall. “One is less sure of the common sense of his newest bodyguards, but your bodyguard and my grandmother’s recommend them.”
“Their bravery in his service one never questioned. But their reading of a situation, aiji-ma, has markedly improved.”
“And their man’chi is, your bodyguard feels, to him. In the light of troubles within the Guild—of which you are far too aware, paidhi-ji—this is a matter of deep concern. You know about this. You know detail about this about which most of the lords of the aishidi’tat are ignorant.”
“I have been made aware of things,” he said. “Yes, aiji-ma.”
Tabini set his cup down, definitively. Small talk was done. “Certain lords, you are also aware, have never agreed with my selection of Taibeni clan for both domestic staff and my bodyguard. Some have protested most household assignments being given to one clan, my clan. But considering that even the bodyguard the Guild sent me on my return tried to kill me—I decided I prefer to know intimately the family connections of the men who stand at my back and serve my tea. Granted, the ones who betrayed this household were deep agents. But recent events have shown we still have problems.” Tabini frowned, hands steepled. “Paidi-ji, we—I—did not, believe me, have any warning of the situation you were going into on the Coast.”
“One would never have thought so, aiji-ma.”
“Hear me out, paidhi-ji, and understand me to the depth. I have read Machigi’s letter. And what I have to tell you may be worse than you think.”
“Aiji-ma.”
“We knew that there was Senji pressure on the Maschi lord at Targai. We also knew that young Baiji’s lordship in Kajiminda was irresponsible, and we suspected he might have mismanaged the estate and run up debt, which might ultimately necessitate our intervention. We frankly had chosen not to trouble Lord Geigi with that fact because we needed him where he has been—a fortunate situation, as happened. We now know, as you do, that the threads of misdeed ran to a far more serious situation than petty embezzlement; but at the time we were distracted by the malfeasance of the Maschi lord at Targai, whom we suspected of an agreement with the Marid—another situation we did not want to bring to light, because the last thing we wanted to do was to destabilize Maschi clan. We thought we would have to deal with him and that that might bring Lord Geigi’s nephew into line without us having to embarrass Lord Geigi and bring him down to the world. We certainly believed you were safe at Najida. In fact, in prospect of your visiting Baiji, and jar something useful out of the young man—that your close relationship with Lord Geigi might give him courage enough to start talking about Targai. We did know that he had lost the services of the Edi. We knew he was selling off items he had no right to sell. Our intelligence indicated that the Guild presence on his staff was new, and from Separti, since the bodyguard his mother had left him had died in the Troubles. We at no point in that sequence attributed those people to a Marid cell in Separti Township. This is all the information we had under this roof. We were being systematically fed bad information, in fact, and some things were not remotely suspected.”
“My domestic staff knew there was some degree of trouble at Kajiminda,” Bren said, “but did not pass those suspicions on to me, for fear of involving themselves in what they assumed I was there secretly to investigate. They indicated troubles, but I thought it involved overspending and Baiji’s failure to pay his debts, purely financial difficulties, which I could solve. It was a situation straight from the machimi.”
“And of course my wayward son turned up there amid it all,” Tabini said with a sigh. “But even so, there was no apprehension here of any danger from that quarter, and I was constantly assured the Guild had been keeping a close watch on the Marid for its own reasons, and that the Marid was bubbling with plots as usual, but all confined to the Northern Marid. My grandmother heard about my son’s little escapade and did not delay to argue with me or to be fully informed of the situation as we saw it—which was to the good, since we would have tried to assure her there was no reason for alarm. She simply turned her plane around and headed for Najida—and, a situation that I assure you, I do take for irony—I was most worried that she would agitate the Marid and disturb Guild investigations in the region. She, assuming that the briefing Cenedi had gotten from the Guild was complete, let you and my son go visiting in Kajiminda. The Guild, which had a great deal more critical information and which should have done something, said nothing to Cenedi.”
That sent a little chill through him, added to the rest of it. The Guild had kept an operation secret, not just from the paidi-aiji—but from its own strategically placed senior members and from the government…risking the heir to the aishidi’tat, as if he mattered nothing?
“Do you understand what I am saying, paidhi-ji?” Tabini asked quietly, grimly. “I think you do. The fact is, we were not informed. Nor were you. Nor was the aiji-dowager. Whether we lived or died did not matter to the persons who blundered their way through that decision, with this and that priority, and protecting this and that operation, and nobody with vision beyond their own chessboard, who would say—it will be inconvenient if we lose the paidhi-aiji. It will be inconvenient if we have the heir to the aishidi’tat kidnapped. Did these things occur to them? They were each worried about security in their own little part of the map, and Najida was not part of their individual responsibility—no one got clearance to phone Cenedi and tell him his information was incomplete, because Cenedi had asked one simple question: Is Kajiminda safe? And they lied to him.
It was shocking. It was more shocking to think the Guild had been that far in disarray.
“You would think,” Tabini said, “that it was simple incompetence. But that is not the Guild hallmark, is it, paidhi?”
That became ominous. “You think—there was ill intent in that decision, aiji-ma?”
“Having your bodyguard and the aiji-dowager’s in one place at one time, comparing notes freely with my bodyguard out in Najida district…turned up things we were none of us apt to le
arn otherwise. And having access to ranking Guild with contrary opinions that certain biases could not attribute to Taibeni politics within my staff, frankly, has been a revelation.”
He did not understand—except—
“Someone,” Tabini said quietly, “prevented both my aishid and yours and the dowager’s from getting critical information. Someone put the secrecy of a Guild operation and perhaps the exercise of a personal pique above the safety of my household—the excuse being that my guard is not senior in Guild rank, and that they are Taibeni, a clan that has never figured in internal Guild committee politics. My guard was not taken into confidence. Well, I knew that their clan was an issue when I appointed them past the recommendation of the Guild and jumped them two ranks doing it. I am still safer, and I sleep better at night. I was, let me assure you, paidhi-ji, right! —and recent events have proven it.”
“Aiji-ma,” Bren said in dismay.
“More than the aishidi’tat fractured when they attempted to assassinate me and my house, paidhi. And I tell you this in utmost confidence, and in the presence of Guild witnesses. There have been, paidhi-ji, four factions in the Guild, not a fortunate number of opinions. The first is what one may call the elder Guild, who have not involved themselves in political opinion and who have managed the Guild honorably for decades. The second is of course the renegades, who, far from following politics of the clans, rose up inside the Guild, overthrew the elder Guild, attempted to assassinate me, and, finding I do not die easily—were driven from power. They set up their rival Guild authority—the shadow Guild, as you have aptly called them—in the Marid. We found them. And now a new, younger leadership in the Guild has moved to strike down the Shadow Guild, but they do not take advice from the elder Guild. They are the ones who were running the investigation in the Marid; they are the ones who, meeting in Guild Council, could not come to a conclusion. They are divided by man’chi to various of the departed leadership—protégés of this and that elder Guild, advocates of this and that policy, when they have no business determining policy. They are, in some cases, regional in sympathy. Some of the elder Guild, for which we may be thankful, are now coming out of retirement to retake their old posts. Has Algini told you any of this?”
“No, aiji-ma. Not in such detail. Not with such connections.”
“Algini is himself, one believes, aligned with the elder Guild, which has its iron traditions, and that element of the Guild has a dilemma on its hands. First of all rules is that they do not involve themselves in politics. But in this case, the politics exist within the Guild itself—some honest younger Guild have gone against the elder Guild as too conservative and blind to what they conceive as a drift toward human influence.”
“One has perceived that undercurrent in the general politics, aiji-ma, and one bitterly regrets it.”
“These elements,” Tabini said, “are a problem. But they have their expression in legitimate politics, among them the Conservative Caucus. They do not worry me. There are those who have taken a position because of their man’chi to other Guild or to specific clans. These people, while decent enough persons morally, have seriously infracted Guild rules. Two of that sort are your old servants, who protest that their sole aim in attempting to rejoin your household was to protect you.”
“One is distressed at their situation.” Moni and Taigi attempted to return to his service, and his bodyguard had taken exception. “I refused them.” He corrected himself. “My bodyguard refused them.”
“Correctly so,” Tabini said. “Nor should you take them back.”
“May one ask—what their connections are?” At the time he had employed them, he had not had the cachet to ask. Now he did.
“Ajuri,” Tabini said bluntly.
Tabini’s wife’s clan. Damiri’s clan. Cajeiri’s grandfather’s clan.
That was a surprise.
“You do not ask,” Tabini observed. “Your aishid has asked. And well they might.”
Tabini had assigned Moni and Taigi to the paidhi’s house ages ago. Ajuri, trying to get a spy or two near their daughter, in Tabini’s house, had found its spies instead assigned to the…at the time…relatively innocuous paidhi-aiji.
That had to have annoyed the lord of the Ajuri.
Now he could see how it had become useful to Ajuri to have them back in the paidhi’s household, delivering information to Ajuri. Entirely understandable.
Equally understandable—his bodyguard had very quietly routed them straight to the aiji’s attention, which had not been favorable.
And the Guild did have clannish politics. The Guild had always had.
“No,” Tabini said, “they are not the depth of the problem. Or the height of it. The Guildmaster’s council. This is the sum of it: after the events on the west coast, we sent the strongest possible message to the Guild. My bodyguard was recently called to a meeting about which they correctly decline to report, except to say they were satisfied and that there has been a bitterly contested retirement.”
A retirement. At high levels within the Guild, one could surmise.
“Preceding the decision to table the Guild action on Machigi,” Tabini added.
That far back. He was, again, stunned. That afternoon, of his first bus trip into the Marid, when he had gotten the absolutely insane request from the dowager to turn from his original mission and go talk to Machigi, who had supposedly been trying to kill Tabini, and kill the dowager, and him, and Cajeiri.
A retirement. Then the vote had gone through.
Cenedi, head of the dowager’s bodyguard, had been in contact with the Guild in Shejidan, and someone had resigned. An office had changed hands inside the dark confines of the Assassins’ Guild, and the whole character of the Guild operation had shifted as if a switch had been thrown, from a determination to take Machigi out and use his territory as a base—to the dowager’s determination to preserve Machigi and create a new regional power in the Marid.
And some influence had been upset when Tabini chose not a bodyguard of the Guild’s choice but only Taibeni clan, his own clan, to run his household and defend him.
“And regarding Machigi,” Tabini said. “This letter.”
God. The letter. From the other side of this confused table. “Aiji-ma.”
“How do you read Lord Machigi, paidhi-ji?”
“In all that I have just heard—one is trying to reassess, aiji-ma.”
“Personally. How do you see him?”
“An intelligent man. Young. Too young, perhaps, to be wise, but possibly headed in that direction. He has good advisors, one thinks—smart men who have maneuvered themselves into a position and decided to deal with the Guild….but now—now one is not as certain what one has observed.”
“Do you have any suspicion that his advisors may have contacted Cenedi in advance of the dowager’s sending you to him?”
That was another thunderbolt.
“One had not remotely suspected such a thing, aiji-ma.”
“These four Guildsmen of his are clever people,” Tabini said. “Certainly capable…but that can go either way. And this young lord they support—is definitely a remarkable young man. One knows he is changing ships, one having begun to leak, so to speak. But what ship was he on in the first place?”
“One has reservations on that matter, aiji-ma. One acquired reservations while reading that letter. Do you think he may have been behind the coup against you? That all prior suspicions were correct that blamed the whole event on him?”
“That does leave out his northern neighbor, who turned out to host the shadow Guild. If Machigi was colluding with the lord of the Dojisigi—he has a talent for the stage. There truly seems deep animosity there.”
“But the Shadow Guild itself could easily have switched patrons.”
“Certainly it could,” Tabini said, with a tight, unpleasant smile. “Many things are possible once the Guild itself starts directing politics instead of responding to the interests of the lords and the people.”
Which brought it down to a very uncomfortable question. “Have I made a mistake, aiji-ma? I confess—I thought I was understanding his motives and his reactions until I read that letter. Since then—”
Tabini gave a short, silent laugh. “I most fear stupid people. Stupid people will do anything. Truly smart people will do only what is logical for them to do. That should more often put us on the same side as Machigi…if he composed the letter himself.”
“It is at least his turn of speech, aiji-ma. And one might add, it is his sense of humor.”
“How much of his opinion do you think represents his bodyguard, and how much is the man himself?”
“He has taken their advice, but if a human can read him at all, he is not at all their puppet. And he shifted from opposition to reasoning responses to my statements, which sounded genuine.”
“This bodyguard of his,” Tabini said, leaning back in his chair. “My bodyguard has had difficulty getting at Guild records until quite lately…in fact, until the resignation I mentioned. But between you and me and the ears of our bodyguards, it is possible the fathers of those four men, his bodyguards, were put there by my grandfather. Or by my grandmother.”
“The aiji-dowager, aiji-ma?”
“Ilisidi. You may have met her. —Gods less fortunate, paidhi, she is a persistent woman!”
“One is shocked, aiji-ma. Things in what you have told me have astonished me, but this one—I am quite absolutely shocked to think so, but—indeed, she might.”
“This business in the Marid is an agenda predating both of us, paidhi! The woman is following a persistent purpose my father refused and my grandfather before him died cursing. And here she is with me—proposing two new lordships, allying with the Marid, upsetting the entire aishidi’tat, and all this without the least advisement to us what she had in mind. What she has always had in mind, from the foundation of the world, for all we can tell!”