His allies had been upset.
His enemies had been alarmed.
The little old man in the Guild, seeing the world going aside from any future he had planned, had seen a need to strike now—and he’d done it, sure his people would be commanding the Assassins’ Guild and they’d gain immediate control, for a complete reversal of Tabini’s policy.
He’d been wrong. Not only had the middle-tier Assassins’ Guild officers turned obstructionist when Murini took power, the upper echelons had organized to fight back. Other indispensable guilds had taken heart and declined to cooperate: the Scholars, the Treasurers, even Transportation had balked.
Then Murini himself had proven hard to manage.
To take over the continent, to inflict the terror they’d instilled, and to do the deeds they’d done, the Shadow Guild had had to resort, ultimately, to the three-month recruit given a photo and an entirely illegal mission.
The day the coup had moved to assassinate Tabini—a fact they all had known from early last year—the Assassins’ Guild Council had been taken by surprise.
But Tabini himself hadn’t been caught so easily—whether by accident, or a feeling of unease or the action of his very skilled bodyguard. The Assassins who had attacked Tabini’s residence had gone in flawlessly, very high-level, as Algini put it, meaning people of extreme skill, with absolutely no leaks in their operation . . . and one could, Algini had said, almost guess which unit.
But with all that expertise, they’d missed Tabini.
Had Tabini’s bodyguard, on nothing more than a sudden bad feeling—taken him and his consort for a sudden vacation in his maternal clan territory of Taiben?
Certainly the rest of the legitimate Guild, hearing that a group in their guild’s uniform had invaded the aiji’s apartment and killed the aiji’s servants—among them, other senior Guild members—was not going to fold its hands and hope for better news in an hour.
The legitimate Guild, realizing the aiji was the target of an assassination, and that Tabini might have escaped, had immediately launched an emergency plan to protect key people and networks and secure the government against disorder. They’d been too late to prevent the second strike against Tabini, at Taiben, but records, people, and accesses had gone unexpectedly unavailable to the conspirators—the same way, Bren thought, that his own servant staff, carpets, and furniture had been loaded onto a train and reached Najida before Murini’s hangers-on could lay hands on them.
The conspirators had had far more important things than the paidhi’s household furnishings vanish in those initial hours—things like the shuttle manuals; the access codes for the state archives and records; the aiji’s official seal—any number of things that would have let them do more harm than they had done.
Once the legitimate Guild had begun to question the new administration’s orders, very senior Guild officers had begun to retire, an hour-by-hour cascade of retirements—which the conspirators had at first mistaken for the old guard’s acquiescence to a new administration. They had neglected to go after those officers and kill them. Or perhaps they’d tried—and lost a few teams.
These Guild officers, in those first few days, had needed to find out what had happened to Tabini—but they dared not risk their search leading the enemy straight to him, either. No, the legitimate Guild’s next move had been further afield, to establish contact with, of all people, the humans, the Mospheirans. That not-quite-high-tech linkup operation had required several men and a small boat loaded with explosives in case the navy, under the orders of the new aiji, should overhaul them.
Mospheiran authorities had been extremely glad to see them. Mospheira had stayed in close contact with the station, and the station included Geigi and the atevi community aboard the space station.
Individuals among the Missing and the Dead had linked up with Lord Geigi and set themselves at least nominally under his command.
Establishing contact with Tabini, even finding out whether he was alive—had posed a far more formidable problem. They had hesitated to invoke any network that might contact Tabini until they knew, first, that they could protect him and, secondly, that their own ranks were not infiltrated. But they had to take it on the thinnest of assurance that he was still alive.
When Tatiseigi opened his doors to Ilisidi on her return from space—Tabini knew about it almost within the hour. Tatiseigi’s security and their outdated communications equipment had leaked like a sieve in those days; but one of those leaks had gone in a very good direction . . . and kept Tabini minutely aware of what was going on in the world.
In just two years of rule, Murini had set himself and his supporters on the wrong side of public opinion. From one shore of the continent to the other, ordinary citizens had been organizing in small groups, considering what they could do on their own to get rid of Murini.
And when Tabini turned up alive, with the aiji-dowager and his son appearing at his side and reporting success in the heavens, he had met widespread public support. In that rising tide, the Shadow Guild had made one attempt on Tabini, the dowager, and Lord Tatiseigi—but they’d stopped that, with unfortunate damage to Lord Tatiseigi’s grounds—and a bedroom.
And when that attack failed, when it all began to fall apart, Murini and his closest staff had run for the Marid and Murini’s government had disintegrated.
In the one year since their return, Tabini and the aiji-dowager had been systematically turning over rocks left in that landscape, seeing what crept out from underneath—forgiving a few, putting some on notice, and doggedly going after the leaders. Murini had been among the first to go.
The rest had been harder. But the Shadow Guild had made truly interesting enemies in their two years in power. To firm up a deal with their allies in the northern Marid, they had made the mistake of targeting young Machigi, lord of the southern Marid, and run up against Machigi’s high-level but locally-trained bodyguard.
Now Machigi, seeing the way the wind was blowing, had signed a trade agreement with Ilisidi—the first step toward an agreement with the aishidi’tat, granted only that Machigi kept his fingers off the west coast.
The Marid clan from whose territory the Shadow Guild had targeted Machigi—the Dojisigi—had now fallen to the legitimate Guild, who had lately taken the Dojisigi capital and forced the Shadow Guild out.
But not entirely. In the last month, the Shadow Guild still hiding in that mountainous province had tried an entirely new maneuver. By an order ostensibly from the legitimate Guild—they were still asking who had issued that order—they had first disarmed the best of the native Guild units, then sent them out to defend the rural areas—without returning their equipment.
That matter had only turned up last night, when the dowager had taken up two of the Dojisigi Guild who’d been thus mistreated—and made a move to rescue several hundred innocent countryfolk. Her units in the south had just last night laid hands on two of the Shadow Guild’s surviving southern leadership—and what she learned had given the dowager the legal cause she needed to go against the Kadagidi in the north, this morning.
Now the Kadagidi lord, Aseida, was up ahead of them on this train, being grilled nonstop by the dowager’s bodyguard—men themselves extremely short of sleep, and who had just been shot at by Shadow Guild operatives that Lord Aseida had been harboring.
Lord Aseida, who himself was no great intellect, had claimed innocence of everything. Aseida’s chief bodyguard—Haikuti—had been the Shadow Guild’s chief tactician, the man who for two years had ruled the aishidi’tat from the curtains behind Murini. Haikuti might have conducted the attacks on Tabini’s residence.
The Tactician had not made many mistakes in his career. But the ones he had made had finally come home, on a red and black bus from Najida Province.