Intruder

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 silentlyclaughed, 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 co

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 werethe 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 elsehad 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 thoughtthey’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 with 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 overcmaybe with pockets yet to mop up.

But if the basic problem had notmoved, if the problem was much, much closer to Shejidancit 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. Hehad been worrying about a young girl succeeding to the lordship of the Dojisigi, as if thatwere 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 dangerouscand 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 i

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 itselfcand 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 hadbeen building within the Guild. Maneuvering, as leadership aged and newer people moved into office.