Intruder (37 page)

The interesting bit was the date, which was
after
Murini’s fall from power,
after
Murini had allegedly become anathema among the Kadagidi and the Kadagidi had become innocent as the driven snow. The associations in that letter nailed the Kadagidi as possibly complicit in the assassination of Geigi’s sister—and as backing a shadow Guild power grab as recently as current history.

If push came to shove, Tatiseigi might well know what to do with that letter.

Ilisidi had her own copy of that little store of documents, and when it came to interclan gossip, Ilisidi knew things. She collected things. Remembered things.

And delivered little tidbits of information when they most suited her.

Had that letter gone to Tatiseigi—along with the supper invitation?

One wondered. One did indeed.

Following Lord Tatiseigi’s agreement—and an unprecedented exchange of bows and courtesies of reconciliation with Lord Geigi—there was perhaps just a bit more brandy than was judicious. But it was an occasion, and the mood was optimistic, at least for the hour. Cajeiri, as a minor, went home earliest with his young aishid, without having committed a single indiscretion—exemplary behavior, and one the dowager noted with a deeper than usual nod in parting. They all left at once, Lord Tatiseigi down the hall to his residence, and Bren and Lord Geigi off to Bren’s apartment, on Cajeiri’s track.

They were not that late getting in, except for the brandy, and one thought even of one more glass, which was entirely foolish. He and Geigi were both tired. They needed to go straight to bed and have their wits about them in the morning.

Bren said his goodnight to Geigi—“A success, a very great success, Geigi-ji,” and received a reciprocal courtesy, the both of them happy with the evening. Valets were waiting to put them to bed; bodyguards were headed for their own well-earned late suppers in the apartment kitchen, after their own very long evening.

And Bren delayed for one compulsive, foolish look at the message cylinders waiting in the basket.

The design of the cylinders said they came from several departments of the government and Machigi’s representative, one surmised the fifth one to be. For the morning, he said to himself, resolutely.

But Tano and Algini turned up again from the inner hall, and Tano pulled a very thick envelope out of the front of his uniform jacket.

“This is from the dowager, Bren-ji. Cenedi’s company provided an extensive briefing.”

A slight cold chill went through him. Tano and Algini, as usual, had been door detail, Banichi and Jago standing duty in the dining room and the sitting room. It was always the door detail who talked with the resident Guild.

And learned the unofficial scuttlebutt.

“The nature of these, Tano-ji? Should one be alarmed?”

“These are in main the dowager’s final drafts of the agreement, Bren-ji. And also Cenedi’s intelligence report regarding the East. There is controversy rising regarding development on the coast, regarding the proposed rail service, regarding road building. Cenedi says these are routine matters, which can be handled with accurate information and negotiation.”

“We had a very interesting conference,” Algini said, “with the collective security details—we dodged Tatiseigi’s aishid to some minor extent, but we were very careful to give them every impression of full disclosure and full inclusion. That the two of the young lord’s bodyguard are Guild was convenient. We were able to include them, to warn them for the sake of their principal, but as juniors, with certain restrictions of information. Maneuvering around them covered our more focused talk with Cenedi. We have filled him in regarding the business already discussed. We are confident of his position. We have also passed nand’ Geigi’s guard a document not to be opened until they are on the station, and we have their undertaking to respect that.”

“However,” Algini said, and proffered another envelope, “this should be kept guarded and given to the aiji directly.”

One was not going to sleep well on that account.

The envelope was sealed without a signet seal. And Algini himself might not know its contents. One would bet it came either
from Cenedi or directly from the Guild and was another bypass of Tabini’s bodyguard, who might—or might not—have been given it directly had Tabini attended the dinner.

Giving it to Cajeiri’s earnest young guard—no. This envelope was not that sort of message.

B
ren opened his eyes, a little muzzy from sleep, and made space for Jago on the convenient side of the bed. She was shadow, all shadow, and settled quietly under the covers…and he suddenly became aware that it was late in the night
.

That his bodyguard had been up
very
late.

“One wished not to disturb you,” she said quietly.

“Is something amiss, Jago-ji?”

“Not amiss, Bren-ji,” she said. “Algini and Tano went down to the town to meet with Guild from Lady Siodi’s establishment and from elsewhere. Nawari also.”

Cenedi’s right-hand man. Bren wiped his hand across his face, rising on an elbow and thinking—the place was almost certainly bugged by Tabini’s establishment. There were midnight consultations going on between his bodyguard, Ilisidi’s, Guild leadership—and those Guild the Guild itself had attached to Machigi and his representative. He hadn’t had time yet to get the personal envelope to Tabini.

But something must already be moving in the situation in the south.

And
that
realization drove the last residue of sleep right out of his head.

“Are there things I should know, Jago-ji?”

“There is progress on several fronts, since sundown, nandi. There is now an establishment in Sungeni and in Dausigi protecting those two lords.”

Lords loyal to Machigi— not necessarily loyal to him out of deep passion, but due to the economic and political realities of the Marid. Two small, financially weak clans had long found alliance with the powerful Taisigi their only means of survival—fearing they could be swallowed up by Dojisigi.

The two clans in question
might
have taken exception to Machigi’s sudden acceptance of the northern Assassins’ Guild. Their reaction had been a great worry in the whole arrangement with Machigi. But now the Guild had moved in on
them,
and the last of the Marid clans without a strong Guild presence…now had one.

“Do we know Machigi’s view on this?” he asked delicately, not to tread too closely on things on which Jago might have to preserve secrecy.

“He wrote a very helpful letter,” Jago said, “introducing the Guild delegates. The first was accepted among the Sungeni at sunset and by the Dausigi an hour later.” She turned onto her side, facing him, a darkness in the dark. “Machigi has also written a letter to Tiajo-daja, suggesting that acceptance of the Guild’s close guidance would secure her life and her father’s. And that rejection would not be a healthful decision. The Guild has provided a younger bodyguard, with close senior supervision, for the young lady,” Jago said. “Unhappily, the young lady is quarrelsome. She has already tried to enlist her new bodyguard to assassinate a list of enemies. The Guild naturally refused, and the young lady actually threw and damaged a number of atiendi items…” That was to say, artworks and antiquities belonging to the clan. It was shocking, uncivilized behavior. Shocking as a murder of sorts.

“One is dismayed.” What could he say?
He
had argued to safeguard Tiajo, which necessarily meant she would assume power. Such a childish act did not recommend her self-restraint.

“The Guild has made this act known in other houses where it has taken up guard. We have notified persons who were on the young lady’s list of intended targets; and we have consequently taken
up guard and an advisory presence in those houses…so it has all flown back in the young lady’s face with a vengeance.”

“I intervened, Jago-ji. One begins to understand this was not my best idea.”

Jago shrugged. “She is having a difficult adolescence, and if she does not improve within the month, one doubts she will remain in any influence, if she remains alive. In fact, one of the persons she finds most objectionable has just proven quite sensible regarding Guild presence, and consultation is flowing back and forth, with very valuable information forthcoming from that source, which we can pass to certain other houses at a time of our choosing. Tiajo and her father have both been warned that if this person, her third cousin, Adil, does File Intent against her, the Guild may well withdraw her bodyguard and her father’s rather than continue to defend them.”

“Did she listen?”

“She immediately flew into a temper. Her father is now considering his position in some depth and attempting, far too late, to exert his paternal influence over the young lady.” Jago shifted up on an elbow and propped her head. “We are trying to preserve her, Bren-ji, and to amend her upbringing. But it is difficult. The next step is to remove her from power and send her off with her bodyguard for the next number of years and teach her more things her education hitherto has never mentioned. She will be the better for it.”

“I was wrong, Jago-ji, and I fear I may yet be wrong at the cost of lives.”

“The Guild can always remedy a mistake of leniency, Bren-ji, and the Guild will preserve other lives, should the time come. But the team assigned to her will try their best to bring her to reason. Further sacrifice will not be asked of them: They will simply be pulled out of the way if she cannot be redeemed.”

“I cannot conceive of it. One cannot conceive it, Jago-ji. One wonders if we could just pull the child up to the space station and put her under Lord Geigi’s care…”

“Lord Geigi would not thank you for that!”

“One doubts he would.” God. A
child,
a damned spoiled child, who grown old enough to be corrupt without ever growing up. And he had put himself in the middle of it.

“You are exactly right,” she said, with no doubt at all. “Banichi and I and Tano and Algini all agree. To reform her in place is the best thing, because the environment she understands is the easiest, and we can contain her. One will suggest the space station as an alternative. We all agree the child is immature. Her father and her father’s supporters have put her in a position for which she is entirely unfit. One is not sure of her intellectual capacity. That might be to the good, if she can be diverted to minor pursuits and let advisors rule.”

He fell back. “One only hopes for it. And Tano and Algini may have told you I need to speak to Tabini-aiji in the morning. They gave me a sealed message for him of some urgency.”

“It regards some of these very matters, Bren-ji. And you do indeed have a breakfast appointment with Tabini-aiji in the morning. All that is arranged. Meanwhile, it has been useful to have Siodi-daja in the city—particularly useful to have an arm of the Taisigi Guild accessible to central authority. Messages are passing very efficiently, and as we have reported an agreement here in Shejidan, Siodi-daja has reported herself satisfied with the security arrangement available to her lord and has sent that word to Tanaja. Things need to move quickly at this point. The dowager will be informed so in the morning. Preliminary copies of the agreement are being hand delivered to Machigi before sunrise.”

Night courier. Someone going down by train or plane.

“That fast, Jago-ji.”

“Definitely, Bren-ji.”

He had the envelope. He had within it, he now suspected, the Guild outline for its intended operations in the South; and he had the breakfast appointment—the message advising Tabini going directly, not even using something as safe as a message cylinder
delivered between households. His fingerprints were to be on this one, only his fingerprints. There would be no vague report making its way from house to house among servants that a message had gone between the dowager’s household and Tabini. There was to be secure contact every step of the way. And spies who wanted to report would report that the paidhi, after supper with the aiji-dowager, had had breakfast with the aiji.

From the Guild to Cenedi to Algini to him to Tabini.

So people would, psychologically, be able to say exactly when and how information had passed, and it would be officially the paidhi-aiji’s fault, whatever happened as a result.

It was his job to get some sleep before he had to think.

It was his job to go next door and give Tabini-aiji a chance to stop what they were doing or to urge it forward, maintaining perfect deniability until it was a fait accompli.

He did not feel communicative in the morning, pre-tea, and pre-breakfast. He stood staring at the painted woodwork while Supani and Koharu fussed with his shirt and coat. The envelope he had put in the dresser drawer last night went back into the coat pocket without comment. Supani and Koharu had that very useful quality in valets—a good sense of when conversation might be welcome and when not.

This morning it was not.

This morning, while, across the hall Lord Geigi was still sleeping the sleep of a weary late night reveler, Bren was in his best morning coat, and he arrived in the foyer at the precise time his bodyguard and his staff and Tabini’s bodyguard had agreed upon. His bodyguard, in spit-and-polish, escorted him fifty feet down the hall to Tabini’s door, with all due ceremony.

After that it was up to Tabini’s staff to get him quietly to the small breakfast room, with only Tabini and his bodyguard in attendance; there was to be no Cajeiri and no Damiri, he strongly suspected.

A light breakfast. That would suit. He felt himself incapable of anything elaborate.

And when it was done, Bren simply took the envelope from his pocket and slid it quietly across the little table.

“Do you know the contents of this document?” Tabini asked him bluntly.

“No, aiji-ma, I do not. Cenedi passed it to my bodyguard under seal.”

“And the tenor of the meeting last night, paidhi-ji?”

“Have you—have you spoken with your son, aiji-ma?”

“I have not spoken to my son yet, no. Nor will I, on this matter.”