Intruder (32 page)

“One has inquired,” Algini said slowly. A pause. It was very quiet in the car. “If for some reason Tano and I are someday absent without explanation—”

Algini did not finish. He was, unheard of for Algini, visibly upset at that question.

“Gini-ji. Is there anything I can do?”

“If this should happen, Bren-ji,” Tano took up the statement, “rest assured our partners will advise you.
And
protect you.”

Now he
was
upset. Extremely. “Nadiin-ji. One is not willing to accept this. One is not willing to be protected when those persons I highly value, nadiin-ji, are put at risk! Is there anything you can tell me? Are you attempting to stand between me and a Guild action, nadiin-ji? Have I crossed a line, somewhere?”

Tano looked at Algini.

Algini said, “The Guild has been trusted for two hundred years. I have had representations made to me that, if they are carried through, will satisfy me. One begs pardon, Banichi.”

Banichi wore a very solemn expression. So did Jago.

“This visit to the representative, then,” Banichi said, “was a risk.”

“The guards near Machigi are not the problem,” Algini said.

“The guards near the aiji-dowager are not the problem,” Bren ventured to say. Unthinkable to him that there should be any breach of security under
Cenedi’s
watch. “Nor the aiji’s, one hopes.”

“No,” Algini said. “Specifically…” Algini got to his feet, walked a few paces across to the galley bar and used his communications for a moment, saying something Bren did not hear, but the others might have. Jago put out her arm a half second before the train began to slow.

It stopped. They sat dead still, with their train obstructing one of the two parallel tracks that ran up to the Bujavid’s most secure station.

And in that relative silence, with only the idling engine sound, but nothing from the wheels, Algini turned to look at all of them.

“Specifically, nandi, it is the Kadagidi.”

Murini’s clan, a Padi Valley clan, next-door neighbors to Lord Tatiseigi and longtime collaborators with problem lords in the northern Marid—including Murini. It made a sudden, thoroughly unwelcome sense that if there was going to be a problem involving the Guild, the Marid, and a prospective peace—the Kadagidi, as old and as influential a clan as Tatiseigi’s Atageini, were very likely to have their fingers on it, no matter that the Kadagidi had distanced themselves from their own clansman, Murini, disowned him, repudiated his acts…

Would one not repudiate a failure?

“As—infiltrated, Gini-ji? Or infiltrating?”

Algini said, solemnly, “Bren-ji, if one were surer of that matter, or exactly how one relates to the other, one would have more confidence in a good many things. This—this, Bren-ji, is my opinion—that the last Kadagidi lord to have
any
authority in Kadagidi clan was Murini. And that after him, much as Lord Aseida claims to have opposed Murini inside Kadagidi clan, he is a liar, and he has been a liar from before Murini overthrew Tabini-aiji. This man argued with Murini on trifles. Oh, yes, he withstood Murini. He distanced himself. He did all these things. He is served by an aishid led by one Haikuti, who has never yet misstepped in terms of Guild regulations, who came to Aseida from the Guild hierarchy, as I came to you, but I am not sure who sent him.”

“Can you be clearer, Gini-ji?”

“Haikuti is, in fact, one of the Guild that I personally would not have trusted. He is now, in this matter in the Marid, at odds with his lord, with Aseida, in supporting Guild action and arguing
for
supporting Machigi; but one has observed that Haikuti also argued with Lord Aseida in his initial support of Murini and later supported Aseida in backing the return of the old Guildmaster.”

“You think it is a show?”

“One believes, Bren-ji, that we have been witness to the longest, most
elaborate machimi play that ever took the stage, and I do not think the players are yet wearing their true colors.”

There was silence still. Then Banichi said, “This is news to us as well, Bren-ji. You mean Haikuti is giving the orders.”

Algini said, “I mean exactly that, nadi-ji. I think there are so many layers to this that one could peel it to the core before one ever got to a single truth—and then it might prove poisonous.”

“Haikuti should be taken out,” Tano said. “But if we remove him, we scatter the problem. We do not know all his subordinates…and we are not utterly sure he has no superior.”

A very cold feeling crept over the little gathering in the car. From far, far away in the tunnel system came sounds of machinery, and from closer, metal clicking as it cooled. They sat, an island of red velvet in the dank dark of the tunnels, and said things unsayable in other places.

Questions occurred to him. Of Tano and Algini—when did you learn this? And of Banichi and Jago: What should I do?

But the one he asked was: “Gini-ji. How informed are others? Does Tabini-aiji know this? Do his bodyguard? What of the aiji-dowager and Lord Geigi? Or Lord Tatiseigi?”

“As of this moment,” Algini said, “no one of those persons knows. Not even Cenedi. Only you, Bren-ji.”

Next question, in terrible, terrible silence. “Will you tell any of them?”

Algini took his time about the answer. Finally: “This is my suspicion. My search. My conclusion, which Tano shares. If I am wrong, I have made a correct deduction but misassigned the fault.”

“You are sure, however, about the situation.”

“I am
very
sure, nandi. And—” A little nod of respect toward Banichi. “By Banichi’s good grace—and with his cooperation—we should inform Cenedi and consult with him about informing the aiji’s bodyguard. As for Lord Geigi’s bodyguard, they are good men, but in my opinion, too little informed on too much on this earth to bring in this at this stage. We should inform them
the night before the shuttle leaves. They may know, in the heavens, and there they will keep their secrets. As for Lord Tatiseigi, being the neighbor to this situation, and Lord Keimi of Taiben, likewise—Tatiseigi’s bodyguard is not up to this; Lord Keimi’s bodyguard is, and should be brought current before Tabini-aiji or his bodyguard
or
young Cajeiri’s Taibeni bodyguards next visit that territory. This is a danger difficult to make any map. But controlling absolutely the flow of information is one of the few means we have to judge suspicious behavior. The web of triplines we have set, in that sense, is very scant, but it encompasses all of us here present. If we move against Haikuti—one hardly knows what it will set off. Right now, with information absolutely restricted, there is absolutely no reason Haikuti would move against
you,
Bren-ji; in fact, though Aseida would wish to, he will not, because Haikuti will wish not to call attention to himself. From the Kadagidi, you are as safe as you could possibly be. But once the information about my suspicions spreads into one mistaken channel—it becomes very likely he would move against you very quickly if he thought it would discommode me and give me and Tano divided concerns. One regrets to put it in those terms. But I believe I am right. Because of me, because of Tano,
you
will become a target of operatives far, far more adept than ordinary. Any one of your associates becomes someone whose demise might draw you, and therefore your bodyguard, into range. Everyone you know is under dire threat. Well that nand’ Toby is back on Mospheira at this juncture. There he is safely inconvenient.”

“What do you advise us to do, Gini-ji?”

“If Tano and I disappear, it might worry them, but they will not necessarily know it for a time. Tano and I often run internal operations and do not appear. Doing so puts an extraordinary burden on Banichi and Jago, especially in this season, when the public has access to the Bujavid, when the legislature is meeting, when you are on your way to meetings the schedule for which may be read on any bulletin board in the servants’ hallways
and every committee. If we disappear, we have a staff of very young, occasionally silly persons, country folk who do not remotely construe the danger, who might tell their mothers, their associates back home…they are not trained in security, they do not always think, and they are an extreme danger in this situation. One hardly knows whether to tell them, or what to tell them, that will not then become news to tell their families in Najida.”

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 silently…laughed, 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 connections to run under compromised doors. Even Tabini’s wife couldn’t say that. Definitely Damiri-daja could not say that.

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
were
the 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
else
had 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
thought
they’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 over…maybe with pockets yet to mop up.

But if the basic problem had
not
moved, if the problem was much, much closer to Shejidan…it 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.
He
had been worrying about a young girl succeeding to the lordship of the Dojisigi, as if
that
were 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 dangerous…and 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 innocent staff instead. In other circles it was suspected that the Guild around Tabini, before they died, had made moves to save Tabini’s life…knowing they were outnumbered, hopelessly outmaneuvered, and had no choice but get Tabini and his consort out of the region, fast.