Peacemaker

They hadn’t really had to right that situation at the outset: with a little encouragement, the people had set Tabini back in power.

Their investigation in the year since Tabini had resumed his place as aiji was only now uncovering what had really happened, and it hadn’t been what they had first thought—what he and most people had believed as fact as late as a few weeks ago: that the coup which had driven Tabini from power for two years had involved a discontented Kadagidi lord with Marid backing, who had somehow gotten together a band of malcontent lords and their bodyguards, penetrated the aiji’s security, seized the shuttles on the ground, and been able to throw the government into chaos, all because Tabini’s sliding public approval had hit rock bottom.

Wrong. Completely wrong. It hadn’t been in any sense public discontent with the economy—or with Tabini’s governance—that had overthrown his government and set Murini in charge.

It hadn’t even been Murini who’d actually plotted Tabini’s overthrow.

They’d assumed it had been Murini. There had indeed been a public approval crisis, in the economic upheaval of the push to get to space.

But none of these problems had really launched the attack on Tabini.

He’d been surprised, really shocked, how bravely and in what numbers ordinary people had turned out in droves to support Tabini’s return to power. Evidently, he’d thought at the time, the populace had had their fill of Murini. They’d changed their minds. They’d seen the dowager and the heir come back from space and they’d understood that humans had been telling the truth and dealing fairly with atevi, against all doomsaying opinions to the contrary.

That had brought the people out to support Tabini’s return. Mostly, he’d thought then—it had been a return to normalcy the crowds had cheered for, after things under Murini had gone so massively wrong.

There’d been discontent before Tabini’s fall, but no, it had not been lords riding a popular movement that had organized the coup.

It had not even been a small group of malcontent lords acting on their own, though one of them had been glad to take over, not understanding, himself, that he was only a figurehead.

No, it hadn’t been Murini who’d done it.

He and his bodyguard had gradually understood that, and begun to look for what was behind the coup.

His own bodyguard and the dowager’s, working together, had been pulling in intelligence very quietly, intelligence that required careful sifting—old associates making contact from retirement, giving them, as he now knew, a story completely at variance with the account they were still getting from other sources. Some individuals that they might have wanted to consult—Tabini’s bodyguard—were dead, replaced twice since. And every inquiry they made had, he knew now, run up against rules of procedure—within the closely held secrecy of the Assassins, the most secretive of Guilds.

His bodyguard, and the dowager’s, had protected him, protected the aiji, and protected the heir through some very dicey situations, including misinformation that had nearly gotten him killed out on the peninsula.

They’d survived that. They’d tested their cha

Geigi coming down to the world had been a major break. Geigi, resident on the space station during the whole interval, observing from orbit, had filled in some informational gaps; and he was sure Geigi had gotten an earful of information from his own bodyguard when he’d gone back up there.

So now Geigi had sent them the three children, a ship-captain, and two ship’s security with a bagful of gear they weren’t supposed to have, and in which his own bodyguard had to take rapid instruction.

It was a good thing. Their opposition, finding pieces of their organization being stripped away, was making moves of their own.

The Kadagidi setup—was major.

Done was done, now. The lid was off, or was coming off, even while this train rolled across the landscape. Those of them that opposed the Shadow Guild dared not rely on orders going only where they were intended. They could not rely on discretion. They could not trust Guild communications, or rely on any perso

The Shadow Guild, wounded, might think it was blind luck and an old feud that had guided the strike. It wasn’t. And whatever the Shadow Guild believed, it could figure their enemies had just gotten their hands on records. Whether or not the Shadow Guild believed they’d delivered an intentional blow straight at them—it was time for the rest of the Shadow Guild operation to move. Fast.

From their own view—the Assassins’ Guild might have seemed on the verge of fatal fracture, infiltrated at its highest levels, still shaken by fighting in the field against Southern Guild forces. People who guarded the aiji already felt themselves unable to rely on Guild lines of communication . . .

One assessing the aiji’s chances of survival might think that the infiltration might be pervasive, and fatal.

But now they knew it was not that the infiltration was pervasive through the Guild, no. It was that it was that high up. It was not the rank and file who could no longer be trusted, and it was not a widespread disaffection within Guild ranks. It was a problem in the upper levels that had been able to set a handful of people in convenient places, that had sown a little disinformation in more than one operation—and done an immense lot of damage over a very long period of time.

Now they knew names. The dowager’s bodyguard, and his own, were increasingly sure they knew names, both good and bad. And the dowager intended a fix for the problem—granted they got to Shejidan in one piece, granted they could muster the right people in the next critical hours, and granted they did not muster up one wrong name among the others, or bet their lives and the aiji’s safety on a piece of misdirection.

They finally knew the Name behind the other names. They knew how he had worked. He was not an extraordinarily adept agent in the field, but a little old man at a desk.

His bodyguard months ago had reported the problem of tarnished names that deserved clearing—some living, some dead. A large number of senior Guild had retired two years ago, some of whom had dereliction of duty, medically unfit, and, in some cases, he was informed, even the word treason attached to their records. Some notations had landed there as a result of their resignations during Murini’s investigation, some had been added as a result of Tabini’s investigation into the coup and their refusal to be contacted. It had been disturbing—but credible—that persons who had never felt attached to Tabini and who were approaching retirement might just neglect to report back and go through the paperwork and the process after his return to power. Perhaps, the thought had been, these individuals had never appealed the matter or shown up in Shejidan to answer questions and have their records cleared . . . because they were just disaffected from the Guild itself, disillusioned and still angry over the handling of the whole matter.

Senior officers of the Guild had deserted in droves when Murini had taken over the government; they remained, his bodyguard had said, disaffected from current Guild leadership, opposing changes in policy. There was also old business, a lengthy list of Missing still on the Requests for Action which pertained to every Guildsman in the field: if one happened to find such a person, one was to report the location, ascertain the status if possible, request the individual to contact Guild Headquarters and fill out the paperwork—so Algini said. But there was, since Tabini’s return, no urgency on that item, Algini also said, and in the feeling that there might be some faults some of these members were worried about, there was a tacit understanding that nobody was really going to carry out that order. Some junior might, if he was a fool, but otherwise that list just existed, and nobody was going to knock on a door and insist a former member report himself and accept what might be disciplinary action. Certain members had left to pursue private lives under changed names.