“Has there been any news?” Bren asked Jago quietly, not to disturb Geigi.
“None yet,” Jago said. “Guild to Guild, Lord Pairuti has been informed officially to expect visitors. They have not phoned the Marid. We know that.”
Thatwas interesting. His bodyguard, over the years, had increasingly taken to informing him on things lords often didn’t find outc things somewhat in the realm of Guild secrets.
“But then,” Tano said, “the Marid Guild has its own network.”
“Illegally so?”
“Oh, indeed illegally, Bren-ji,” Banichi said in his lowest voice. “But then, they are no longer privy to our codes.”
Tano said, from the facing seats: “The Guild has at least taken pains to keep them out. But we take care not to rely on that.”
“If there is any Marid Guild in this district,” Jago said, “they will not be minor operators. And they will not be taking orders from the Maschi.”
“The Maschi lord,” Tano said, “directs nothing regarding any Marid operation. If Barb-daja is there, she will not be in his hands.”
“Therefore she will not be there,” Bren said glumly, “and we may expect they will move her as rapidly as possible to the Marid, I fear too rapidly for us to overtake them.”
“Plausibly so,” Algini said. “The best we may hope for, nandi, is to settle the Maschi.”
“By reason or otherwise,” Tano added. “And one very much doubts reason.”
“Nandi.” Algini, who had had a finger to his ear, listening to something relayed to him, took on a very sober demeanor. “Go to the convenience.”
At the rear of the bus. It was not better shielded back there. It was not the potential for gunfire that Algini meant, not so, if he was to be leaving Geigi behind. It had to be informational, a consultation waiting for him back there.
He got up and quietly walked down the aisle to the vicinity of the several strangers who had boarded with them. Algini was right behind him, and so, he saw, turning, was the rest of his aishid.
Which had to alarm Geigi’s bodyguard. He cast a look back down the aisle and saw none of that lot stirring.
The next glance was for Algini, who said, in a low voice, “The aiji has Filed, Bren-ji. Word has just now come through.”
“Filed.”
“On Pairuti, on Machigi, on every lord of the Marid.”
“One believes,” Jago added dryly, “that the Farai will be quitting your apartment tonight.”
The strangers near them could hear, surely. So could the domestics sitting nearby, and several of the dowager’s guard.
“Lord Geigi—should not know this, nandiin-ji?”
“His bodyguard, nandi, is simultaneously receiving the same information,” Tano said.
Then a glimmering of the reason came through. But he was not sure. “But Lord Geigi—”
“His honor and his position,” Banichi said, “would require he advise Pairuti, Bren-ji. His bodyguard need not do so. They will not advise him.”
“One understands, then.” He almost wished hehad stayed ignorant. Far better, indeed, if Geigi were not put in a delicate position. His own, human, sense of honor was hard-put with the information—how to approach Pairuti with apparent clear conscience—how to walk into that hall and betray nothing. It was not fair play. It was not honest. It was not—
It was not easy for his aishid, either, to breach Guild secrecy and bring their lord in on the facts—on Tabini-aiji’s business. He had no good instinct for what had moved them to do so, except that, he, more than Geigi, was adjunct to Tabini-aiji. Hell. He needed to understand that point.
“Why have you told me, nadiin-ji?” he asked outright.
“Tabini-aiji has specified you may be advised, nandi,” Algini said. “But that Geigi should not be.”
Use his head, then. That was what Tabini expected of the paidhi-aiji. Function in his official capacity. Think his way through. Advise the Guild, for God’s sakec nobodyadvised the Guild, except he had Banichi and Jago in his aishid, who had been Tabini’s; and Algini, who had been the Guild’s; and God knew what Tano had been, or why he had come in attached to Algini. His brain raced, finding connections, finding his own staff was a peculiar hybrid of high-level interests and that there was a reasonhis bodyguard told him things.
The west coast was a damned mess, was what. The dowager hadn’t meant to get involved out here. She’d been on her way back to the East to spend a quiet spring. Tabini hadn’t intended to have his son come out herec
“Is the aiji protecting Najida?”
A nod from Jago. “Yes. Definitely.”
“And these four, with us?”
“Specialists,” Algini said.
Don’t ask, then. He didn’t.
But Algini said, further, “There are many more moving in, from all directions.”
Bren cast an involuntary glance at the windows. There was only rolling meadow. But they were not alone. Out in that landscape forces were moving, major forcesc and he had told Toby they would get Barb back. He had believed it when he said it. But the operation had just mutated. Tabini-aiji was backing them, all right, but suddenly the dowager’s phone calls to Shejidan and the Filing all made one piece of cloth. Tabini had behaved for months as if exile might have changed him, made him more timid, more willing to ignore longstanding situations, anything to avoid another conflict that might destabilize the government.
Negotiating with the Farai, who had occupied the paidhi-aiji’s apartment and refused all hints they should quit the premises.
Negotiating with Machigi over old issues, as Machigi rose to power over the dead bodies of certain relatives who had supported the usurper Murinic
All leading to this.
Suddenly the argument between the dowager and Tabini about the Edi assumed a wholly different character. Reshaping the balance of power on the coast, hell! Reshaping the entire western half of the aishidi’tat, was what. Tabini had had an operation underway and Ilisidi had moved right into the middle of it with heragenda.
And co-opted the paidhi-aiji into it.
He felt a little sick at his stomach. He looked at four faces gone utterly solemn, four close associates who absolutely understood how the game had changed—and changed in ways that profoundly affected the mixed company on this bus.
“Indeed,” he said, “I see.” Pairuti, like Geigi, had no children. Baiji was, in fact, the governing line’s main hope in that regard. So there was no family to get swept up into the order, but— “Is there a chance, still, nadiin-ji, that we can still go through with our plan and give Lord Pairuti the chance to resign?”
Banichi, Jago, and Tano all looked to Algini for that one. And Algini frowned.
“The order is without prejudice,” Algini said, “regarding his situation. He isgiven that latitude.”
“Is he viewed as complicitous, Gini-ji?” Bren said.
“As having cooperated with the Marid during the Troubles, nandi,” Algini said. “Complicitous to that extent.”
“Many did,” Bren said. “There is that extenuation. The demise of Lord Geigi’s sister, however—”
“He is not faulted in that,” Algini said.
“Can we give him at least the chance, then?” Bren said. He had never participated in an assassination order. He had the most extreme qualms, even to the extent he wanted to order his own aishid to hang back and not get involved. “Nadiin-ji, the paidhi-aiji is neutral. I am an intercessor, not—not the lord of Najida, in this matter. But one cannot jeopardize the mission, either, to the aiji’s detriment—or to the risk of his agents. One finds oneself in a most uncomfortable position.”