There was silence still. Then Banichi said, “This is news to us as well, Bren-ji. You mean Haikuti is giving the orders.”
Algini said, “I mean exactly that, nadi-ji. I think there are so many layers to this that one could peel it to the core before one ever got to a single truth—and then it might prove poisonous.”
“Haikuti should be taken out,” Tano said. “But if we remove him, we scatter the problem. We do not know all his subordinates…and we are not utterly sure he has no superior.”
A very cold feeling crept over the little gathering in the car. From far, far away in the tunnel system came sounds of machinery, and from closer, metal clicking as it cooled. They sat, an island of red velvet in the dank dark of the tunnels, and said things unsayable in other places.
Questions occurred to him. Of Tano and Algini—when did you learn this? And of Banichi and Jago: What should I do?
But the one he asked was: “Gini-ji. How informed are others? Does Tabini-aiji know this? Do his bodyguard? What of the aiji-dowager and Lord Geigi? Or Lord Tatiseigi?”
“As of this moment,” Algini said, “no one of those persons knows. Not even Cenedi. Only you, Bren-ji.”
Next question, in terrible, terrible silence. “Will you tell any of them?”
Algini took his time about the answer. Finally: “This is my suspicion. My search. My conclusion, which Tano shares. If I am wrong, I have made a correct deduction but misassigned the fault.”
“You are sure, however, about the situation.”
“I am very sure, nandi. And—” A little nod of respect toward Banichi. “By Banichi’s good grace—and with his cooperation—we should inform Cenedi and consult with him about informing the aiji’s bodyguard. As for Lord Geigi’s bodyguard, they are good men, but in my opinion, too little informed on too much on this earth to bring in this at this stage. We should inform them the night before the shuttle leaves. They may know, in the heavens, and there they will keep their secrets. As for Lord Tatiseigi, being the neighbor to this situation, and Lord Keimi of Taiben, likewise—Tatiseigi’s bodyguard is not up to this; Lord Keimi’s bodyguard is, and should be brought current before Tabini-aiji or his bodyguard or young Cajeiri’s Taibeni bodyguards next visit that territory. This is a danger difficult to make any map. But controlling absolutely the flow of information is one of the few means we have to judge suspicious behavior. The web of triplines we have set, in that sense, is very scant, but it encompasses all of us here present. If we move against Haikuti—one hardly knows what it will set off. Right now, with information absolutely restricted, there is absolutely no reason Haikuti would move against you, Bren-ji; in fact, though Aseida would wish to, he will not, because Haikuti will wish not to call attention to himself. From the Kadagidi, you are as safe as you could possibly be. But once the information about my suspicions spreads into one mistaken channel—it becomes very likely he would move against you very quickly if he thought it would discommode me and give me and Tano divided concerns. One regrets to put it in those terms. But I believe I am right. Because of me, because of Tano, you will become a target of operatives far, far more adept than ordinary. Any one of your associates becomes someone whose demise might draw you, and therefore your bodyguard, into range. Everyone you know is under dire threat. Well that nand’ Toby is back on Mospheira at this juncture. There he is safely inconvenient.”
“What do you advise us to do, Gini-ji?”
“If Tano and I disappear, it might worry them, but they will not necessarily know it for a time. Tano and I often run internal operations and do not appear. Doing so puts an extraordinary burden on Banichi and Jago, especially in this season, when the public has access to the Bujavid, when the legislature is meeting, when you are on your way to meetings the schedule for which may be read on any bulletin board in the servants’ hallways and every committee. If we disappear, we have a staff of very young, occasionally silly persons, country folk who do not remotely construe the danger, who might tell their mothers, their associates back home…they are not trained in security, they do not always think, and they are an extreme danger in this situation. One hardly knows whether to tell them, or what to tell them, that will not then become news to tell their families in Najida.”
He well understood that. “We can tell them, for starters, the average truth, that there is a crazy person who is trying to get information on my schedule, who wishes to assassinate me because he blames me for television or the train schedule. One hardly knows if it is exactly true at this precise moment, but you know it is likely to be true once the news reports my change of mind on the cell phone bill.”
Algini laughed silently…laughed, which was rare enough for him. “Bren-ji, yes—amid such a tangle, a simple small falsehood. One will advise Narani and Bindanda of the truth. Not the others.”
Those two were senior Guild. And if Algini trusted them, they were reliable. The rest—even Jeladi and Asicho—did not necessarily need the information, and the fewer that did know, the easier to keep it contained.
“We should get moving,” Tano said, checking the time.
“Yes,” Algini said, and made a quiet call. In a moment the engine started moving again, climbing toward the station.
Five minutes. Five minutes, and the world revised itself one more time. He had not had a chance to ask: If you disappear, what will you be doing? But he might not want to know that. If anyone would know, it might be Banichi and Jago.
And he didn’t think Algini had known all this when they’d been under Machigi’s roof.
He did mark that Algini had not often come into the front rooms of the apartment since they had been back. Tano had. But not Algini.
He, the interloper, the human, the outsider, had just gained a window into the Guild that he was willing to bet no other lord of the aishidi’tat had—excepting maybe Tabini-aiji, excepting maybe the aiji-dowager.
Those two, likely. And it was damned scary to be in that small circle—the one lord with no troublesome clan connections to run under compromised doors. Even Tabini’s wife couldn’t say that. Definitely Damiri-daja could not say that.
God, what a mess!
That something serious was going on in the Guild was evident. Those who thought they knew what it was thought it was mostly going on in the Marid, where the Guild was mopping up its own problems.
But by what Algini said, the war in the Guild wasn’t over. The worse danger to the aishidi’tat was far closer at hand, and deeply embedded, and Algini rated himself and Tano damned near alone in intent to take it out.
Given Murini had never been never the brightest light to rule in Shejidan. And given that Murini’s personal bodyguard hadn’t been that good—good, but not that good—maybe everybody should have asked questions earlier as to how he had landed in power. But fools and bullies had assassinated their way into power by surprise before this.
Just—in this case—there were the Kadagidi, that they’d always assumed to be the power behind Murini. Unhappily, they were Lord Tatiseigi’s next-door neighbors, the subject of one of the world’s oldest off-again, on-again feuds. One generally expected the lord of the Kadagidi to be a pain in the rear. The Kadagidi had been that to most everyone from the foundation of the aishidi’tat.
But one also expected the Guild to be honest, and serving the aishidi’tat, not the interests of personal power. And if one suspected the Kadagidi, one expected the lord of a clan to be in charge of the clan and the decisions he made to be carried out by Guild under his orders.
Evidently, when Murini had taken over the Kadagidi, supplanting his own lord on his way to the aijinate, something else had happened.
The Guild had apparently suffered an internal coup. Given. They now knew that.
When Murini’s regime had collapsed in a popular uprising, the perpetrators had all run for the south. They thought they’d known that. Flight southward had made logical sense. It had made little immediate difference in relations with the Marid, which had been on the outs wit
h the north and which had been supporting Murini on general principles.
But the fight and the flight had distracted their thinking, had it not, from another possibility, when they already suspected Murini was a figurehead. They had believed the wellspring of the poison had relocated down in the Marid, where it usually was and where the Guild had taken wide action to deal with it. That action was over, and everybody had breathed a sigh of relief as if it were all, all over…maybe with pockets yet to mop up.
But if the basic problem had not moved, if the problem was much, much closer to Shejidan…it was, by what Algini said, nested in the heart of one of the oldest clans in the aishidi’tat, in the Padi Valley, which was the heart of the Ragi atevi, the very heart of the aishidi’tat. He had been worrying about a young girl succeeding to the lordship of the Dojisigi, as if that were the worst thing that could happen to the situation.
Well. Damn. Damn the Kadagidi for the bastards they were.
Not that he was shocked. The Kadagidi had been flirting with the Marid for decades. But they had been so quiet since the Restoration. They had been so well behaved.
It seemed the Guild was in the midst of a silent war that was due to get still more dangerous…and that Murini’s coup hadn’t come from disgruntled lords. Murini himself had been of the Kadagidi family. But it now seemed his major and initial backing had not come initially from the executive or from the legislature, but out of the least expected and most secretive aspect of the government, from what humans would call the judicial—from inside the Guild.
Built-up opposition to Tabini had crept up within the shadows, starting many years before the paidhi-aiji had stirred up the conservatives. To this very hour, the Guild had not talked much about the movement that had sprung an attack on Tabini—except what he had just heard from Algini. It was generally accepted that the attackers had misfired—and killed Tabini’s innocent staff instead. In other circles it was suspected that the Guild around Tabini, before they died, had made moves to save Tabini’s life…knowing they were outnumbered, hopelessly outmaneuvered, and had no choice but get Tabini and his consort out of the region, fast.
Who had suggested Tabini take a holiday in Taiben, the one clan the conspirators could not crack?
Tabini’s staff had been wiped out. Tabini and Damiri had survived.
But who had driven the conspiracy? How could a mere lord order Assassins who could get the better of Assassins in the employ of the highest office in the land?
There were, in the majority in the Guild, Assassins with personal man’chi to the great houses, serving in all the clans that composed the aishidi’tat. Banichi and Jago were that sort of Guild members. So, one was relatively certain, was Cenedi.
But he had recently learned there was a second culture inside the Guild, one with man’chi only to the Guild itself…and that—
That culture had produced Algini. And maybe Tano.
One could see it, applying a little critical thought that the paidhi ought, perhaps, to have used long before now. One well knew that when Tabini’s administration had brought massive change to the world, and that change had upset people. Not only some lords, but no few of the guilds had found themselves arguing with Tabini-aiji—not recently, not all at the same time, but often enough to keep politics in ferment.
Yet amid all the furor of objections from the Messengers, and Transportation, and Commerce, and Industry, there had been utter silence from one guild.
The Assassins’ Guild, typically, had never said a word in opposition to the aiji. The whole world was accustomed to believe that that one guild, serving all houses, serving all interests, had no political bent and no opinion. It simply supported the aiji so long as he had a majority of lords on his side.
Wrong, apparently.
Apparently something had been building within the Guild. Maneuvering, as leadership aged and newer people moved into office.
Since the coup, since very recent events in the Marid, one began to understand that certain things had run exactly the way they would run in human society—or close enough that the paidhi should have paid closer attention to that circumscribed area of no-information. Whoever ran the Guild currently was a shadow, but he or she had an opinion. Whoever backed that Guild leader had opinions.
Algini himself had an opinion—and had finally declared man’chi for the paidhi-aiji only recently. Watching and waiting for years, Algini had finally declared a point of view and a loyalty.
Did it indicate that the paidhi had moved much closer to the Guild’s position?
Had the Guild’s new or renewed leadership now moved closer to him?
Or—third possibility—had the Guild now determined to act on him directly, to be sure he moved in the Guild’s direction?
He had seen the folly in the cell phone bill, for one major instance. He had already firmly put the brakes on the advent of war machines landed from orbit. Geigi, working with the space station during the coup, had started dropping what amounted to robotic communications centers and war machines about the continent and had unilaterally supplied Mospheira with cell phones and communications that had already changed the Island profoundly. Technology that had seemed in balance between humans on earth and the atevi now seemed sorely out of balance. At least atevi had come out of the event feeling that such might be the case, and they were worried about their future. What until recently had seemed like a stable and predictable future had started looking otherwise.
There was so, so much of the set of circumstances that had perched on his doorstep, in the Guild’s view of things. Could one doubt why the Guild had moved heaven and earth to get an agent into his household?
And now Algini was talking to him, warning him, advising him directly, and making suggestions. Did one take that only for Algini’s personal opinion? He wasn’t sure he did.
And there was one question he had to ask, that he dreaded asking, and he asked it when they got back to the apartment. He gave Jago a look that said, I want to talk to you, and the two of them went to the hall outside the guest quarters.
He knew a very few Guild signals, the ones that didn’t change with every mission. And he used just one, quietly, where only she could see.
Trust? The rest of the gesture went toward the rear of the apartment, where Tano and Algini happened to be at the moment.
She took in a breath, and simply nodded, adding the sign that meant, Aishid.
So she and Banichi had no misgivings about their partners. And therefore he should have none.
That was worth its weight in gold. To him, it was.
It didn’t answer the question what a human was doing, blind and deaf to man’chi, wandering in the mix of atevi motivations and loyalties…
Well, yes, it did. It did answer it, from the time a batch of humans had planted themselves in atevi territory, messed up the contact, and somebody had to be assigned to make the situation work.
It was gratifying that atevi at very high levels thought he had common sense enough to be warned about the ground he was treading. Maybe the Assassins’ Guild was the guild most apt to understand existence in that peculiar outland, between two loyalties.
And how damned scary it was to make decisions in that territory, trying to save both sides.
11
“He must be here,” Antaro said, out of breath. “The door has not been open.”
Cajeiri had looked absolutely everywhere and had Eisi and Liedi bring lunch in; and anyone going in or out was careful with the door, and was watched, carefully, and guarded at every step.
Boji had been missing from before lunch, and they had looked and looked and looked.
Antaro and Jegari knew Boji’s habits and where a little creature might take refuge, which was in small places. “He will come out for food and water,” they said, which made sense, so one of them sat guard over the cage, where food and water was, but far enough away not to frighten Boji.
Veijico and Lucasi had looked, and they were real Guild, who were good at f
inding hidden little things.
But bugs, they said, did not move when about to be discovered, and so one of them looked at one angle of the underside of a table, and the other watched the other side. They searched absolutely every piece of furniture and even behind the mattress, where it was up against the headboard, which was not easy to do, and behind every drawer of the bureau, which was not easy either.
The first thought was that Boji would not be far from food or water. The offer of water had not turned him up. The second thought was that a fresh egg or two might bring him, since he had not had an egg today.
It did not.
And one began to think over every trip they had made outside the doors last night and began to wonder uneasily if Boji had gotten out earlier, or if—worst of all—he had gotten to the front door or the servants’ doors and just slipped out far, far beyond their search, maybe down into the lower halls, in which case he could be anywhere. Anywhere. Even down to the train station, for all they knew.
Cajeiri feared so. He very greatly feared so, and told Eisi, one of the servants who had collaborated with them, bringing food and taking out soiled sand. “Be on the alert to any sign, anywhere in the premises. One believes he could even have gotten out into the servants’ halls, nadi-ji. Please look for him! Search little places! But ask no one! Do not tell anyone!”
It was a disaster. If Boji got out into the Bujavid halls, he would embarrass his father and his father’s security and the whole thing would be notorious, worse even than the mechieta and Uncle’s new driveway, which already was told about him far more often than he would like. His parents would wish they would have a new baby who caused less trouble. They would send him off to learn responsibility.
Maybe they would send him to mani.
Mani would not be very patient with him losing Boji in her household, but at least she would just thwack his ear and forget it in an hour or so. His father and mother never forgot anything, and every time he did something in the least wrong the whole history came up again.