Banichi and Jago got up. Bren picked up his briefcase and stood up, letting Banichi and Jago get to the fore. He walked behind them to the end of the car where the door was, where Tano and Algini were waiting. There they waited just a handful of seconds.
From now on, Banichi led, Banichi set the pace, and it was going to be precise, once they reached a certain street lamp on the plaza. From that point, it was sixty-one paces to the steps, seven steps up to the doors, and beyond that—
Banichi gave a hand signal. Algini opened the door and stepped out into the twilight, not at the usual platform height. Algini landed on his feet below, Tano did, and the two of them immediately pulled spring pins that released three more filigree brass steps.
Banichi descended. Jago did. Bren took the tall steps down and used Jago’s offered hand to steady him as he dropped to the cobbles.
The car was sitting close by the lamp post in question, in front of the featureless black of the Assassins’ Guild Headquarters . . . a building as modern-looking as anything one might expect over on Mospheira. Its design made it a block, slits for windows, black stone with inset doors, with none of the baroque whimsy that put a lively frieze of an ancient open-air market around the Merchants’ Guild, or a staid and respectable set of statues to the Scholars’ Guild that sat next to it. The Assassins’ Guild just looked . . . unapproachable, its doors, as black as the rest of it, set deep in a relatively narrow approach. Wooden doors, Banichi had told him. Ironwood. It took something to breach that material.
But those outer doors should not routinely be locked. Banichi had said that, too. They were not supposed to be locked. They could be. The inner door definitely would be.
They reached the lamp post. He thought Banichi might pause there, if they were somehow off their time—but Banichi and Jago kept going. It was his job to stay with them, and Tano’s and Algini’s to stay with him. It was a pace he could match if he pushed himself. Banichi said speed mattered. But it couldn’t look forced to any observer, just deliberate.
Sixty-one paces. They crossed the cobblestone plaza on a sharp diagonal, crossed the scarcely-defined street, and the modern paved sidewalk that skirted the Guild’s frontage.
Seven steps up to the iron-bound doors, which might or might not open.
At the last moment Banichi touched something on his locator bracelet and Jago pounded once with her fist on the dark double doors.
There was a hesitation. Then a latch clicked and the left-hand door, where they were not, swung outward—a defensive sort of door, not the common inward-swinging sort. Guards in Guild uniform confronted them.
“The paidhi-aiji,” Banichi said, “speaking for Tabini-aiji.”
Bren did not bow. He held up his hand, palm inward, with the seal-ring outward.
The unit maintained official form—the two centermost stepped to the side, clearing their path without a word of discussion.
They were in.
Bren went with Banichi and Jago in front of him and Tano and Algini behind. It was the tail end of a warm day at their backs. The foyer swallowed them up in shadow and cool air, and three steps up led to a hallway of black stone, where converted gas lamps, now electric, gave off a gold and inadequate light beside individual office doors. Antiquity was the motif here. Deliberate antiquity, shadow, and tradition.
Hammered-glass windows in the dark-varnished doors. Black stone outside . . . and that glass in those doors was, Bren thought, all but whimsical—a show of openness, even of casual vulnerability . . . in the fifteen offices that dealt with outsiders to the Guild.
These outer offices had nothing to do with Tabini-aiji’s order. A business wanting a guard for a shipment, yes. Someone with legal paperwork to file. A small complaint between neighbors. A request for a certificate or seal. It was the national judicial system, where it regarded inter-clan disputes.
The aiji’s business had no place in this hall, which led past the nine offices of the main hall toward an ornate carved door, and at the left, a corner, with six more offices in a hall to the left, just as described.
Two guards at their backs, down those three steps to the double-doored entry. Four guards at a single massive wooden door, this time.
“The aiji’s representative,” Banichi said, and a second time Bren held up his hand with the ring.
This time it was no automatic opening of the door. “Seeking whom, paidhi-aiji?”
“The aiji sends to the Guildmaster, nadi, understanding the Guild Council is in session this evening.”
There was no immediate argument about it. Guild queried Guild, communicating somewhere beyond those doors.
Bren waited, his bodyguard standing still about him. It was thus far going like clockwork. Neither of these outer units should have the authority to stop them.
“The paidhi-aiji,” the senior said, in that communication, not in code, “bearing the aiji’s seal ring, a briefcase, and with his own bodyguard.”
There was a delay. The senior stayed disengaged from them, staring across the hall at his counterpart in the second unit. There might have been a lengthy answer, or a delay for consultation. And there might yet be a demand to open the briefcase.
The senior shot a sudden glance toward Bren. “Nand’ paidhi, the Council is in session on another matter. You are requested to wait here.”
“Here?” Indignantly. They needed to be through that second set of doors. Bren held up his fist, with Tabini’s ring in evidence, and put shock in his voice. “This, nadi, does not wait in the public hall!” With the other hand, he held forward the briefcase. “Nor does the aiji’s address to the Guild Council! If the Council is in session, so be it! This goes through!”
“Nand’ paidhi.” The senior gave a little nod to that argument and renewed his address to the other side of the door. “The paidhi has the aiji’s seal ring, nadi. He strongly objects.”
There was another small delay. Nobody moved. There was an eerie quiet—both in their vicinity, and from all those little offices up and down the two halls that met here. What was going on back at the outer doors, at any door along that hallway, Bren could not tell. One could hear the slightest sound, somewhere. Atevi ears—likely heard far more than that, possibly even the sound of the transmission.
Or movements within the offices.
Were they expected? Was the place in lockdown? What was behind all those office doors?
Banichi and the others stood absolutely still, and Bren refused to twitch—as still as his own bodyguard. He could do it. He’d prepared himself to do it, and lean on their reflexes, not his own. The click of the door lock in front of them echoed like a rifle shot.
And that door, that single, massive wooden door, opened on brighter light, with four more guards the other side of it, at an identical intersection of hallways—again, a blank wall on the right, an ornate carved door, however, closing off the hall of offices on the left. A short jog over, and a short hallway, beyond these guards, led to barely visible closed doors, also guarded by a unit of four.
That was the Council Chamber, down that stub of a hall. The left-hand hall—that was Guild Administration. And at the other end of it sat the Office of Assignments.
Exactly as arranged, Bren stopped . . . not quite inside, as Banichi and Jago encountered the guards. He was in the doorway. So were Tano and Algini, just behind him, beside that thick outward-opening single door. The guards in front of them posed an obstacle, wanting to look them over. There were still the six guards in the outer hall, at their backs—and four automatic rifles, not just sidearms, to judge by the two men visible, guarded the Council doors ahead.
He was causing a small problem. The outer four guards could not shut the door, and were mildly unhappy about it, the inside guards were trying to move them on without a fuss—