Individuals among the Missing and the Dead had linked up with Lord Geigi and set themselves at least nominally under his command.
Establishing contact with Tabini, even finding out whether he was alive—had posed a far more formidable problem. They had hesitated to invoke any network that might contact Tabini until they knew, first, that they could protect him and, secondly, that their own ranks were not infiltrated. But they had to take it on the thinnest of assurance that he was still alive.
When Tatiseigi opened his doors to Ilisidi on her return from space—Tabini knew about it almost within the hour. Tatiseigi’s security and their outdated communications equipment had leaked like a sieve in those days; but one of those leaks had gone in a very good direction . . . and kept Tabini minutely aware of what was going on in the world.
In just two years of rule, Murini had set himself and his supporters on the wrong side of public opinion. From one shore of the continent to the other, ordinary citizens had been organizing in small groups, considering what they could do on their own to get rid of Murini.
And when Tabini turned up alive, with the aiji-dowager and his son appearing at his side and reporting success in the heavens, he had met widespread public support. In that rising tide, the Shadow Guild had made one attempt on Tabini, the dowager, and Lord Tatiseigi—but they’d stopped that, with unfortunate damage to Lord Tatiseigi’s grounds—and a bedroom.
And when that attack failed, when it all began to fall apart, Murini and his closest staff had run for the Marid and Murini’s government had disintegrated.
In the one year since their return, Tabini and the aiji-dowager had been systematically turning over rocks left in that landscape, seeing what crept out from underneath—forgiving a few, putting some on notice, and doggedly going after the leaders. Murini had been among the first to go.
The rest had been harder. But the Shadow Guild had made truly interesting enemies in their two years in power. To firm up a deal with their allies in the northern Marid, they had made the mistake of targeting young Machigi, lord of the southern Marid, and run up against Machigi’s high-level but locally-trained bodyguard.
Now Machigi, seeing the way the wind was blowing, had signed a trade agreement with Ilisidi—the first step toward an agreement with the aishidi’tat, granted only that Machigi kept his fingers off the west coast.
The Marid clan from whose territory the Shadow Guild had targeted Machigi—the Dojisigi—had now fallen to the legitimate Guild, who had lately taken the Dojisigi capital and forced the Shadow Guild out.
But not entirely. In the last month, the Shadow Guild still hiding in that mountainous province had tried an entirely new maneuver. By an order ostensibly from the legitimate Guild—they were still asking who had issued that order—they had first disarmed the best of the native Guild units, then sent them out to defend the rural areas—without returning their equipment.
That matter had only turned up last night, when the dowager had taken up two of the Dojisigi Guild who’d been thus mistreated—and made a move to rescue several hundred innocent countryfolk. Her units in the south had just last night laid hands on two of the Shadow Guild’s surviving southern leadership—and what she learned had given the dowager the legal cause she needed to go against the Kadagidi in the north, this morning.
Now the Kadagidi lord, Aseida, was up ahead of them on this train, being grilled nonstop by the dowager’s bodyguard—men themselves extremely short of sleep, and who had just been shot at by Shadow Guild operatives that Lord Aseida had been harboring.
Lord Aseida, who himself was no great intellect, had claimed innocence of everything. Aseida’s chief bodyguard—Haikuti—had been the Shadow Guild’s chief tactician, the man who for two years had ruled the aishidi’tat from the curtains behind Murini. Haikuti might have conducted the attacks on Tabini’s residence.
The Tactician had not made many mistakes in his career. But the ones he had made had finally come home, on a red and black bus from Najida Province.
First—Haikuti having himself the disposition of an aiji, a charismatic leader whose nature would accept no authority above him—he would have done far better to set himself in Murini’s place. There had been a point . . . with the panicked legislature agreeing to whatever Murini laid in front of them . . . when Haikuti, despite his unlordly origins, could easily have done away with Murini and seized power in his own name—except for one very important fact: Haikuti belonged to the Assassins’ Guild; and anyone once a member of that guild was forbidden to hold any political office. Ever.
Haikuti, had he held the aijinate, would not have frittered away his power in acts of petty-minded vengeance. But, personally barred from rule, Haikuti hadn’t seen fine control over Murini as his own chief problem. He was busy with other things.
Second, he was by nature a tactician, not a strategist, which meant he should never make policy decisions . . . like letting Murini issue orders.
Unfortunately, the Shadow Guild’s Strategist had not always been on site to observe Murini in action—and Murini’s actions on the first full day of his rule had alienated the people beyond any easy fix. It had also rung alarm bells with the legitimate Assassins’ Guild and sent them to Mospheiran sources for better information.
From that day, the tone and character of Murini’s administration was set and foredoomed, and while the Shadow Guild had begun to treat Murini as replaceable, and to ignore him in their decisions . . . the Shadow Guild had chosen to use the fear Murini’s actions had created and just let it run for a year or so, while they launched technical, legal maneuvers through the legislature. The Strategist had taken the long view. The Tactician just let Murini run, to stir up enemies he could then target.
Unfortunately—the second mistake—neither had understood orbital mechanics, resources in orbit—or Lord Geigi’s ability to launch satellites and soft-land equipment. They had thought grounding three of the shuttles would shut off the station’s supply, starve them out, and that Geigi’s having one shuttle aloft and in his possession was a very minor threat.
Third and final mistake, Haikuti had had a chance to run for it this morning when he had realized it was Banichi who was challenging him. But his own nature had led him. Haikuti had shot first. Banichi had shot true.
That had been the end of Haikuti.
The Strategist, Shishogi, Haikuti’s psychological opposite—was a chess player who made his moves weeks, months, years apart, a man who never wanted to have his work known and who was as far as one could be from the disposition of an aiji. He had no combat skills such as Haikuti had—to take out a single target in the heart of an opposing security force.
Deal in wires, poisons, or a single accurate shot? No. The Strategist had killed with paper and ink. He was still doing it.
Papers that sent a man where he could be the right man—a decade later.
Papers that, in the instance of the Dojisigi, could undermine a province and kill units in the field.
For forty-two years, in the Office of Assignments in the Assassins’ Guild, Shishogi had recommended units for short-term assignments, like the hire of a unit assigned to carry out a Filing by a private citizen, or the unit to take the defensive side of a given dispute. He had recommended long-term assignments, say, that of an Assassin to enter a unit that had lost a member, or the assignment of a high-level unit to guard a particular lord, or a house, or an institution like the Bujavid, which contained the legislature.