By Tatiseigi’s tone, one had the feeling the supper offering might not be much beyond bread and cold sausages—a gesture of hospitality only, since even the paidhi could guess that the Guild on a mission would be very little likely to trust the house cuisine. One decidedly didn’t want them near the kitchens, the other alternative, letting them observe down there.
No. Not at all a good idea, Bren thought. One wanted those three shut in their quarters, not stirring out, and one very much doubted they remotely had that intentionc except to the degree they had agents slipping about in the bushes, while their officers diverted attention to themselves.
It seemed, in that light, a good moment for the paidhi, excluded from the dinner invitation, to retreat and consult. Bren got up quietly and slipped to the doorward side of the room, Banichi and Jago with him. They opened the door. He turned, bowed—no one showed interest—and left, entrusting Cajeiri to his great-grandmother and Tabini to his own devices.
“Come,” Jago said quietly once that door was shut and they stood outside, amid a very small scattering of other Guild. “We should go back upstairs, nandi, where we have some control over the perimeter.”
The operationally dual we, with the -ta, the numerical compensator, as if she were going with him, but as if Banichi were not.
Staff meeting, Tabini had said, but Bren had a terrible suspicion, given the businesslike frown on Jago’s face, that what happened next could be far more active than a debate. People could die, right in the meeting, by way of a vote. And he had no doubt at all there were Guild out on the grounds, if not already inside the house. They might have begun to lose this battle without most of the house knowing they were in it.
But what could he say, out here in front of witnesses? “Yes,” he said, and to Banichi, with a lingering look, “Take utmost care, Banichi-ji.”
“Always,” Banichi said smoothly, and Jago brushed a gesture against Bren’s shoulder—move now, that meant. Go.
No arguments. No choice at all.
5
It was quick passage up the stairs, back to Bren’s own rooms, where Jago’s patterned knock drew a sound of soft footsteps from inside. Tano answered the door and let them in. Algini waited, gun drawn, at the end of the foyer. That gun slipped quickly back into its holster.
But a rapid set of hand-signals passed between Jago, Tano, and Algini, while Bren stood in the foyer thinking quite desperately what he could possibly do to help them.
He found no practical use for himself in what was going on apace—he did catch the signal that meant going downstairs, which might be Jago reporting Banichi’s going down into the workings of Lord Tatiseigi’s house, down to the guard stations and other establishments. But there was another sign that meant hostile movement, and they signed understanding, agreement.
Then Jago did a curious thing. She went into the room, retrieved his computer from its hiding place, and set it on the table.
Maybe there was a use for him. Bren went to oversee this handling of an instrument so precious to their affairs. She meaningfully drew back a chair in front of the machine and signalled Tano and Algini to come over.
Bren sat down and silently brought up the typing function, keying over to Ragi as Jago drew up a second chair beside him.
She drew the machine over into range and typed, for the two looking over her shoulder, perhaps most of all for his benefit: Gegini has arrived with two of his lieutenants, claiming to speak for the Guild regarding a letter from this household. There will be others outside who have not made themselves evident.
Algini and Tano, reading over her shoulder, assumed a grim look—Bren flung a glance in their direction, then looked again at the screen, where Jago had typed quickly: The old Guildmaster should have sent. Clearly he has not. Either he is dead or this is an unauthorized mission, attempting to claim authority over us. Gegini is a Padi Valley man, Madi clan. He is here acting as if he were Guildmaster.
That was a small clan, attached—Bren raked his years-ago memory—to the Ragi on one hand, to the Taibeni and to the Kadagidi by blood and marriage. This Gegini, a name he had never heard, was a man with ties in all directions; a dangerous man, if disposed to be—and acting as if he were Guildmaster? To his experience, that entity never admitted his identity, never advertised his office—he permitted no likeness, gave no interviews, wore no identifying badge, and carried no special credentials. So rumor said of an individual only other Guild could identify, by signs outsiders didn’t know.
Atageini Guild reports numerous things. The vote for the Guild to act to overthrow an aiji requires a two-thirds majority, and it was reported to the Guild that the coup against Tabini-aiji was an accomplished fact, and that he was dead. When it was reported within a few hours that he was alive, the Guild should have moved in his support. It did not act. When it was proposed the Guild should throw Murini out of Shejidan, there was a vote on the question, which legally should not have happened, since it falsely supposed that the two-thirds majority rule was needed to overthrow Murini under those circumstances. It was a clever move, calling the vote that way, and calling on short notice. We and the dowager’s staff and Lord Geigi’s were absent in space. Others who would have voted for intervention were at Malguri and on the coast. Atageini Guild were not notified at all, except to send proxies, who were not properly instructed as to the question. The aiji’s staff, half of whom were dead and should not have been counted, were counted, along with the living members of that staff, as wilfully absent. Several other large contingents were called back by attacks aimed at their interests.
“God,” Bren said finally—-sure that his staff had known this much from Lord Geigi’s staff before they ever left the station— everything but the bits that involved Tabini: Those had likely dropped into the pot here, only filling out the scandal. The Guild never talked about its private business, he wasn’t entirely sure any lord downstairs had heard the half of it, and he was sure he was reading this now only because his staff was dangerously willing to breach Guild silence. Maybe it was because he was human, maybe it was because he didn’t twitch to the same instincts or have a wide and entangled man’chi.
Maybe it was because there was nowhere he could even accidentally pass such deadly secretsc secrets deadly to public confidence in the Guild itself, if this shameful business leaked.
God, did they possibly want his advice what to do, the head of their own Guild having proved unable to stop this?
It went on.
The meeting hour was moved up and proxies did not arrive until the vote was over. Two of Lord Geigi’s house were killed on the way, and no one has heard from the Guildmaster since the hour of the vote. The rumor in this house is that he is dead. This has been the state of affairs since the day after the attack on the aiji’s household.
No wonder his staff had gone about with very grim faces.
Jago typed: Now Gegini has made his first public move, coming here as if he were Guildmaster. We believe he is no more than Murini’s agent, and that any vote in the Guild that he has had a hand in is no legitimate vote. His presence here is ostensibly in response to the gathering and to the letters. By coming here and taking a hand as judge, he is effectively calling himself Guildmaster, and since no one knows the face or the age of the Guildmaster, no one but Guild can contradict him. We, along with the Atageini, suspect the old Guildmaster has died or is under duress.
A thought leaped to mind. Bren reached for the computer and slid it back. He typed: Have the Atageini Guild told their lord these things? And are not the Ajuri in effect a part of the Kadagidi Association? Are they possibly here as Gegini’s allies?