Intruder (10 page)

Machigi lord of the Marid to Bren-paidhi, salutations.

The Dojisigi and the Senji agreed together to back Murini of the Kadigidi in a coup against the Ragi Association to overthrow Tabini-aiji.

The plan was presented to me. Their scheme seemed to me no more likely to succeed than what their predecessors had done in every generation, but if it failed, and if we did not actively participate, I judged that Tabini would likely content himself with removing only the most active aggressors. In our perception of the situation, saying yes would delay a problem with Tori of the Dojisigi. So we said yes—but delayed lending any forces to their effort, expecting any day to hear that the plan had come down on their heads and that they were dead by Guild action.

When Murini’s coup actually succeeded and Tabini-aiji was thought dead, we were at once appalled and alarmed, expecting retaliation now to come down on us from space. But since the speed of Murini’s takeover had stranded two of the shuttles on the ground, it had thus, we thought, prevented intervention from orbit. We faced a very different situation from that we had anticipated. We knew that the third shuttle was still capable of return, and we estimated that retaliation might take a different form—that Lord Geigi himself might attempt to overthrow
Murini-aiji. This, however, seemed distant—until the reports began, later, that strange machines were landing in various parts of the continent.

But from the very outset, when Murini immediately began to take apart the political alliances of the north, we began to worry that we had a far more dangerous situation than under Tabini-aiji. He was creating chaos in the north and tightening his hold in a merciless assault on those who spoke against him. The Dojisigi and Senji, since they had been more actively involved in his accession, were higher in his favor, and we were sure neither Dojisigi nor Senji would hesitate to move against us and all the southern Marid.

But Senji and Dojisigi themselves grew uneasy in their ally. Murini’s measures were bloody. We understood that he was purging the Guild itself of any support for Tabini…but there were rumors, relayed through my own aishid, that certain Guild elements had gotten away to the wilderness and would begin to move against Murini-aiji, that a counterrevolution would begin with assassinations in remote areas—and that, my aishid thought, might mean a strike at me.

Murini-aiji meanwhile gave no appearance of stability or coherence in his governance or his personal behavior. Excess ruled. Temper and whim governed. And no one was safe. If Murini-aiji noted a slight to himself, someone died.

Dojisigi and Senji began to think, one supposes, that the harsh measures taken in the north might in due time come south and that they had allied with a fool and a bully. They wanted to know Murini’s plans in that regard. That was the impetus for Farai of the Senji, invoking an old inheritance, to lay claim to your vacant apartment in the Bujavid. Murini-aiji had occupied Tabini’s apartment; your apartment shared a wall and they risked a great
deal in this move— which was successful. Their spying gave Senji and Dojisigi some oversight of doings in Murini’s apartment, but my aishid thought information was possibly being fed to them, since while Murini was sunk in drink and abandon, the Guild that had put him in power was not.

Then Senji began to say that the Farai had deserted the man’chi of Senji and begun to follow Dojisigi, and that they were in fact attempting to curry favor with Murini—utterly betraying their own subclan and attaching their actions, whether or not detected, to Dojisigi.

At the same time Senji moved into Maschi territory to our north. The Maschi lord, with Lord Geigi stranded on the space station and Murini-aiji seeming to favor the Senji lord personally, far above Torii of the Dojisigi, accepted a secret alliance with Senji and would not receive our representative. Lord Pairuti was more terrified of Senji than of us—and we dared not press too hard for fear our approach to Pairuti would get to Murini’s ears. And Pairuti’s alliance with Senji meant a lord under Senji influence sat directly against our border.

We know now what we suspected then, that Senji was moving agents into Targai, completely taking over the Maschi authority in the north.

At this point, we dared not confront Senji directly. Instead we approached the southern Maschi—Lord Geigi’s sister at Kajiminda, who now had great reason to worry about her future. We offered her alliance if she would marry at our direction.

Immediately the Senji sent a representative toward Kajiminda, which we forcefully prevented. And as we hoped, Murini was too busy at that moment with the situation on the northeast coast to divert attention to a mere Marid squabble over an estate bordering Taisigi territory. He would let us quarrel among ourselves and then devour
the survivor: that was his pattern with situations in the north.

I sent to Lord Torii of the Dojisigi, who were not pleased to find Senji abed with Murini. I offered him a close alliance in our enterprise at Kajiminda, reasoning as follows: Lord Geigi posed a great threat to Murini’s regime. Geigi held the vantage of the space station, he was allied with the humans in space, he was alleged to be closely allied to the human enclave on Mospheira—who did not need a space shuttle to pose a threat to Murini—and we were entirely prepared to pull the trigger on that threat if Murini made a move toward us. It was my private notion to marry the lady of Kajiminda. This would have given us a position with Lord Geigi to wipe out old feuds, and we were convinced that Lord Geigi’s intervention was no empty threat…that, in fact, it would ultimately happen.

But the lady died. So did several of my agents. I cannot prove what happened. The Edi were high on our list of suspects. It was poison. They had opportunity. Hatred of us was certainly a credible motive. But most embarrassing, the agents I now most suspect of the murders were old in my service. I relied on these men. It is personally embarrassing to say, and one hesitates to claim blindness as an excuse, but one suspects they had been reporting directly to the Senji for years. They revealed themselves only in their recent attack on you and their subsequent cooperation with the renegades.

At the time, we were caught at a loss. I have no marriageable relatives at my disposal. But Torii of the Dojisigi suggested we immediately approach young Baiji with an offer to marry young Tiajo, my cousin, on my mother’s side, a close relative of Torii. It would create an avenue to negotiation with Lord Geigi, it would give Murini-aiji pause in coming at me or at Lord Torii, who thus would be
reassured, and it had one other benefit: the offer of Tiajo quietly worsened the rift between Senji and Dojisigi—so much so that the Dojisigi thereafter had to pay the Farai with bribes to be sure their information from inside Murini’s regime was accurate and frequent.

Senji then found out about the bribe—I personally confess to that indiscretion—and the Farai began to snuggle even closer to the Dojisigi for protection. That gave us an inroad into Senji and Murini-aiji when we might care to use it.

Meanwhile, it was not expected that you would return, since your absence stretched on beyond all expectation. The skirmishes against Murini-aiji continued in the north.

Then Lord Geigi began taking actions that troubled the regime—landing mysterious machines of war in certain districts. We feared it might be a precursor to landings of a different sort, and we would have to negotiate with Lord Geigi.

But Baiji had contrived every excuse to delay the marriage. Worse, he had proved an utter fool, squandering the estate, indulging himself; the Edi had deserted the place. And Baiji had, in an exchange of messages we did not commit to paper, wanted money, a great deal of money. We feared he could at any moment swing toward Murini or the Senji—he knew it, and redoubled his demands. We found ourselves dealing with a thorough, shallow-minded scoundrel who was as apt to go one direction as the other, and who had no sense about what should be committed to paper. Should Geigi descend from the heavens with force, Baiji would swing to any prevailing wind: we saw that. Worse still, he had squandered estate money, and his servants had left. We attempted to carry the marriage forward in greater haste, to put Tiajo’s father’s servants in charge of the estate before it was entirely ruined. Simultaneously
we knew the Dojisigi were already scheming to move us out of the way once that marriage to Baiji took place—but so long as it was not Senji or Murini, at the moment we were satisfied. We simply planned to take Baiji into our keeping.

This was the situation at the time of Murini’s greatest power. We assumed that should the dowager ever return from her voyage, the dowager would either ally with Geigi, or oppose him in a battle for the aijinate on the station, and we might not know it until the winning side made a move on earth. I was still betting strongly on Geigi coming down from the heavens, perhaps landing on Mospheira and gathering human allies for an invasion of the mainland. And if that happened, I was prepared to hand Kajiminda and his nephew over to him, as intact as I could manage.

Your return was a shocking surprise. Your survival after you landed seemed impossible. You did none of the expected things, and once the aiji-dowager burst the bubble of Murini’s claims of man’chi from the Padi Valley, and once Tabini’s return brought the former Guild out of hiding, it was all over in the north. Murini’s power melted away like ice in the sun. They made their best try at assassination, and lost. Murini’s advisors counseled immediate retreat.

And that fool Lord Torii, still believing reports from the wrong people that Tabini could never take the capital, accepted Murini and his staff in his territory, which allied him with Senji and left me with the unresolved mess at Kajiminda.

We know now that Torii’s staff and advisors had been well infiltrated with Murini’s Guild…as Senji’s long since had been. Thanks to the common sense of my own bodyguard, they had at no time allowed Murini’s people close to me…which was why I was on the outside of all this
connivance, and I was not receiving bad intelligence—I in fact was receiving very little intelligence. Things settled. Murini left. And died. It seemed the situation was stable, with Tabini-aiji back in power.

But things in the Marid were not stable. And here is where we had made our mistake: I believed Lord Torii was still giving orders, and now I know that the renegade Guild had not followed Murini to destruction.

I was quietly advised, after Murini’s death, that Dojisigi would negotiate with me directly regarding an alliance against Senji, but my aishid advised me against accepting such talks with them—they flatly warned me to temporize with that offer by whatever excuse I could muster and not to go to any conference with Dojisigi—who refused to come to Tanaja.

We strongly suspected that the problems in the Baiji operation were due to the Dojisigi. My aishid, at the same time they advised me to avoid going to Dojisigi territory, also advised me that the Baiji operation had to continue, that it was exceedingly dangerous at this point to betray our knowledge that it was infiltrated, and that we should deal with it as if we knew absolutely nothing…as if, under Tabini-aiji’s rule now, we would allow that marriage to go forward, and then let Tabini-aiji sort it out. My aishid warned me that I must give Dojisigi no chance to break officially from our agreement, that the polite fiction of our alliance served to keep things quiet for the while. I personally resisted my bodyguard’s strong suggestion to retreat to the Isles. I would not detach myself from my people: if my bodyguard and I were going down, we would go down fighting for Taisigi land. So we simply closed our borders so far as we could and stalled any appointment for negotiation with the Dojisigi—still thinking that it was Lord Torii giving the orders in that district.

My bodyguard was now isolated. They could not rely on
any allies except Sungeni and Dausigi, who rely on us for protection, not the other way around.

My bodyguard had not contacted the new Guild leadership in Shejidan, they say that they had discussed doing so. But they did not want to stir that pot and find attention coming on us—from either the Guild in Shejidan or from Dojisigi, since we felt Shejidan’s interest was purely in seeing war between Dojisigi and Taisigi.

We decided that if we stayed very quiet, Dojisigi might yet make a move that drew action from Shejidan, which was our best hope: that Tabini-aiji would send agents there and not to us.

My enemies in Dojisigi were not, however, idle. They began a campaign of rumors. They blamed me as the power that had backed Murini from the start. It was not at all difficult to persuade Tabini that I was a problem and the son and grandson of a problem. Indeed, it was not a coat that fit that badly. I had no man’chi for Tabini-aiji and if I at that point had had an approach from the Dojisigi Guild that would not threaten to kill my bodyguard in the process, yes, I would have taken it, not even understanding their existence at that time. If I could have taken out Lord Torii, I would have, because I could never trust him, not given our relationship.

That was where things stood when you arrived on the west coast and walked into ambush at Kajiminda.

Possibly the people the Dojisigi had put there were convinced that you were there to reconnoiter, with inside information that I might have provided you. Possibly their own suspicion of plots under every hedge sprang their trap prematurely.

Baiji, being the fool he is, immediately panicked; ran for shelter with you, likely because you are an ally of his uncle, and things blew up. The aiji-dowager became involved. Tabini arrived, invaded a Dojisigi operation in Separti, and
the survivors there delivered intelligence, blaming, of course—me. And promptly the Guild in Shejidan was debating having me assassinated. Tabini had already Filed Intent.