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 threatcthat, 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 Guildcas 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 mecwhich 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 nothingcas 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.