Pretender

More, granted he had gotten the Assassins’ Guild to stay out of action, he was beholden to someone for that favor. He dared not go violating publicized Guild resolutions, creating a scandal for Guild leadership, and worse, contravening the Guild’s established principles of politics in his new-minted claim to power.

So there were three powers, all teetering out of equilibrium: the people, the Guild, and the man who called himself (with his clan) the new authority. And if any one of the former two tipped away from him, Lord Murini, so-named Murini-aiji, stood to lose all his advantage. It would be calamitous for his authority if the Assassins’ Guild decided suddenly to take the side of Tabini-aiji, who was not dead, and who was, in fact, currently lodged four rooms down, his staff going through much the same precautionary cleanup of premises. It was very clear that Tabini would accept Guild neutrality, but hold a grudge for its inaction in preventing his overthrow, and might forgive that grudge if the Guild now budged toward his side.

So the last twenty-odd hours had brought a very delicate time for both claimants to the aijinate: Murini, the upstart would-be aiji, with ancient ambitions of an ethnically different clan, had relied on popular discontent under Tabini-aiji’s authority to seize power; Tabini, overthrown, but now with allies— themselves—newly returned from space, now had records and testimony that might change public opinion. In a few days, Murini’s unchallenged supremacy had slid a few degrees, and now the whole thing had headed downhill gathering calamity like a snowball provoking avalanche. Step one: the dowager’s party, including Tabini’s young son, had arrived from deep space and landed onworld, in spite of Murini’s plan to keep the shuttle fleet entirely out of action. They had immediately presented themselves on the doorstep of Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini, the young heir’s great-uncle, and by that action, had put Lord Tatiseigi to the choice of sheltering them or turning his young relative away.

Step two: Murini’s Kadagidi clan, neighbor to Tatiseigi— who had thought they were going to chastise the elderly and habitually neutral Tatiseigi for receiving Tabini’s grandmother and son under their roof—had not only failed in two nights of trying to breach the house and assassinate them all, but last night had found the Atageini’s neighbor to the west, Taiben, supporters of the old regime and relatives of Tabini-aiji’s clan, coming to the Atageini’s defense. It was an unthinkable combination of clans: Taiben and the Atageini had been at loggerheads for hundreds of years, and now they found common cause against the Kadagidi, for the boy’s sake.

Then, third step, Tabini-aiji himself, unheard from for the better part of a year, had shown up to defend his grandmother and his heir, risking life and reign on this one dice-throw: rescue Tatiseigi, drive off the Kadagidi, and support a new compact between Taibeni and Atageini lords.

Suddenly the Kadagidi control of their local Padi Valley neighborhood wasn’t looking as secure as it had three days ago, and centuries of Atageini neutrality in the region began sliding more and more toward commitment to a cause, namely restoration of Tabini-aiji to rule in Shejidanc because that would set a half-Atageini great-nephew up as heir.

So the sun was up. The ancient Atageini house at Tirnamardi still stood, if battered, in the middle of a province now a

Who overall had fared surprisingly well under such heavy assault, the old premises proving their ancient, blunt-force construction methods had produced very solid walls. The Atageini house stood, and stood well. By the sound of the flood in the bathroom, its plumbing evidently worked and its boilers must be up, producing hot water for the sore and weary household, to judge by comments that wafted out of the bath.

So the aiji-dowager and the aiji had won the first several rounds of the fight, if not the war that was surely preparing. Murini sat in the capital claiming to be the popularly-supported aiji while Tabini-aiji sat in a Padi Valley lord’s house maintaining that he still was. Meanwhile Lord Tatiseigi, their host, was still muttering about the Guild’s general ban on no-holds-barred attacks and its rules about historic properties and premises, as if this was sufficient to preserve the Atageini province and its towns from a repetition of last night. Most of Lord Tatiseigi’s security, who were members of that Guild, held far less optimistic opinions on that score, and senior members of Tabini’s security and the dowager’s were down on the lower floor, laying plans for coping with what they were sure would come with nightfall.

As for one Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, interpreter of foreign affairs, Lord of the Heavens and so on and so forth, he sat in the one safe chair in an unsafe world, wondering whether he should open up his computer and look up his notes on the finer print of Guild regulations, searching for loopholes for further attack and simultaneously wondering whether, if he took his boots off to go take advantage of that wonderful hot water in the bathroom, he could possibly get them back on.

He had blisters, he was sure, in places he would rather not describe to his staff. Numerous wood splinters were lodged in his palms. He was amazingly sore.

But he had recovered his computer. And because he had it, he had all his records from space and from the voyage. And because he had those, he possessed detailed evidence which could argue that Tabini-aiji’s unpopular actions had produced results well worth the sacrifices. It was a precious record, and there was a backup for what was stored here—but one copy was in orbit over their heads, and another in his brother’s hands—he hoped safely back on Mospheira by now. On the mainland, on atevi soil, where it was most needed, this was the only copy he could hope to lay hands on, and he wasn’t eager to let the precious computer leave his hands until he had gotten that report to Tabini.

All things considered finally, that was the highest priority, to get a printout or a disk where Tabini could read it and understand what he had. It was the highest priority, even when Tano came out of the bath and reported that the tub was well on its way to being filled, assuming the hot water held out that long.

It was true that in his present state, he was unfit for an audience: even while the world tottered, conventions and custom prevailed, and a man, even the Lord of the Heavens, had to be respectfully presentable to authorityc especially an authority shaken by events.

“You may have the water first, nandi,” Tano began, as Algini also came out of the bath—but at that moment a racket broke out in the hall outside their suite, a stream of angry shouting. He could not make out words. He looked in that direction, down the short entry hall, in some alarm, and Tano went as far as the outer door and listened, while Banichi and Jago waited with Algini, hands on sidearms.

“Cenedi is out in the hall, explaining certain things to the household staff,” Tano said wryly, which drew a little amusement out of them all. One was ever so glad to find Cenedi alive today, and clearly indignant: None of them doubted that Lord Tatiseigi’s household staff needed certain key points laid out before them and the head of the dowager’s bodyguard was the man to do it—not least bringing home the fact that most of Lord Tatiseigi’s security equipment belonged in a museum, not active service. Even the paidhi understood certain facts without explanation, notably that there was a very good chance that the intruders who had gotten into the house last night, not to mention spies predating them, might well have installed bugs, and wise servants would not discuss household business in any area until security with proper equipment had cleared itc Proper equipment. That was a sore spot. Security with proper equipment necessarily involved outsiders poking about in Lord Tatiseigi’s household security, even bringing in some outsiders, namely Taiben clan, with whom the Atageini maintained a centuries-old feud, while the bodyguard that Tabini had brought in had its own opinions, and certainly Banichi had voiced his.