Not Gegini-nandi, then, no title so high accorded to the Guildmaster who had walked into Tatiseigi’s sitting room and started laying down the law. The late Gegini-nadi, then, and his associates were no longer an issue in this action, or not an active one. Algini hinted there was no majority behind him, and did not think that the Guild as a whole would be too disturbed.
And Algini, their demolitions man, Bren suddenly suspected, had been intimately involved in taking them out.
Never the most forward of his staff, Algini. Always quiet, always ready to slip into the background. In Algini’s Guild, the thought suddenly struck him, one never sought publicity, one never discussed Guild affairs, one never gave up one’s secrets, not even to one’s closest non-Guild associates.
Perhaps, dared one think, not even to other Guildsmen?
And that dark thought having struck him, he looked down at Algini’s light-limned features, so tranquil a face, and he wondered what Algini actually was within this most secretive of all Guilds.
Granted Banichi and Jago had come from Tabini’s staff— exactly what agency had lent him Tano and Algini? And why, after all these years, did he know so little of Algini’s opinions?
Curious thought to have occured to him, bouncing along in the dark, face to face with Algini over a piece of enigma Algini politely—and correctly—declined to discuss. It was an embarrassing position, having asked questions, having gotten another, deeper enigma back.
And why? Why did Algini tell him as much as he had, after years of no information? It seemed maybe a direct hint to a very dim-brained human, a human with non-atevi wiring, that there was something else going on—the sort of hint Algini had never been the one to give, because the dim-brained human had always been Jago’s and Banichi’s responsibility.
But one knew that the connections that wove the great houses into associations were not all lines of marriage. The passing of staff from one house to another, even the less social act of spying on one’s neighbors, was an important surety between houses.
Verification meant honesty, behavior-as-advertised, creating trust between houses whose relationships spanned not just individual promises, but generations. Banichi and Jago had continually reported to Tabini, he was very sure, so long as they were neighbors within the Bu-javid. His cook Bindanda he knew reported constantly to Tatiseigi and his housekeeper likewise, making sure the paidhi pulled no humanish chicanery.
While Tatiseigi—being a key lord of the Padi Valley— Had Tatiseigi’s checking up on the paidhi’s household also been Tatiseigi’s way of checking up on Tabini’s behavior—a Ragi lord with an unprecedented lot of power, and married to an Atageini woman?
Perhaps his welcome in Tatiseigi’s house would have been better this time had he brought Bindanda with him. He had never been asked about Bindanda’s absence. It was hardly the sort of thing the old man could have asked himc Welcome, nandi, and where is my chief spy? If his brain had had atevi wiring, he might have had the basic cleverness to drop the information unasked, gracefully, without quite making it a challengec But nothing answered the essential question of why his staff on such short notice had felt entitled to blow the hell out of the Atageini premises and take out the self-proclaimed Guild officers on their own. The aiji’s staff should have been the ones to move—and he had the most uneasy feeling that Ismini hadn’t been involved; that Ismini hadn’t been consulted in the operation at all.
Do not take Gegini-nadi as the Guild, Bren-ji.
In a tone downright proprietary and prideful, as if Algini had a personal ax to grind in the removal of their visitor, as if he had conceived a personal offense in the shift of his Guild onto Murini’s side.
The old Guildmaster might be alive or dead at the moment. One had no idea what was going on in the Guildhouse, and one never knew.
But, in the way of atevi politics, not all the old Guildmaster’s personal operatives would be dead—the same as when a lord went down by assassination, there was always the chance of one or two still in the field whose man’chi might lead them to act.
And one doubted any such operatives would feel any man’chi at all toward someone Algini called self-appointed, a usurper of the Guild’s highest authority—possibly even the murderer of the Guildmaster, if the man had met his end.
And if such agents were still in the field, still where the old Guildmaster had placed them, where were they?
Had, for instance, Guild operatives been inserted in his house, a means of the Guild checking up on Tabini as well as the human official who was that close to Tabini’s ear? It certainly made sense that if he had an assortment of agents on his staff from the Ragi, from the Atageini, and a dozen other lords all watching him, the Guild not sending someone of their own would be odd, would it not?
They would move through channels that already had access. They would maneuver to get someone ideally not on domestic staff, who would not accompany the paidhi everywhere, at every moment, but into his security, which was only four people, two of whom he knew very closelyc two of whom found it so, so difficult to call him by anything but his proper titles, until very, very latelyc God, what a string of chilly perhapses!
“Here, nandi.” Algini handed him back the pistol, cleaned and reloaded.“You should get a holster for it.”
“I shall,” he said, feeling the air he breathed had gone a little rare. He tucked the heavy object into his coat pocket. “As soon as I find the opportunity, Gini-ji. Your advice and Tano’s, both, and one does take it to heart. But one still hopes we shall get through this without my ever needing it.”
“Stay behind us,” Tano said, out of the dark above his head. “And stay down. You shine in the dark, Bren-ji, and we are not facing farmer-folk, not in this action.”
“Yes,” he said, the way one took an order. He had been glad of the darker coat: Guild opposition would not hesitate to target any lord on their side, with the human one a priority, no question. But Tano’s jacket crushed him with its weight. He found the occasion to shed the jacket, and hung it on the seat back, the night air welcome relief. “With gratitude, Tano-nadi. I shall stay out of view, one promises, most earnestly. Take it. Take it.”
“Do,” Algini said, just that, and quietly, efficiently, Tano shrugged it on, a more potent defense to him and his than the jacket itself posed.
With that thought, he took himself, his fair skin, his light coat, his newly-cleaned pistol, and his surmises back to his own seat, where Cajeiri was kneeling backward, talking with Jegari and Antaro.
“Is there news?” Cajeiri asked.
News.
There was plenty of guesswork, was what there was in the paidhi’s mind at the moment, a good many scary surmises, none of them fit for youngsters’ gossip.
“We shall stay close behind your great-grandmother’s car, is all.”
The bus gave a violent lurch, scraped through brush, and then seemed to have gone onto a road. Bren caught a look outside the window, and suddenly they were blazing along a dedicated roadway, throwing gravel from the tires. “One understands we are going to the rail station,” he said to the young people. “That being the nearest fuel stop on our way. If your great-grandmother fails to stop there, one hopes we will have enough fuel to follow them to the next such place.”
“We shall find them. We shall persuade mani-ma to get onto the bus,” Cajeiri said. “And Lord Tatiseigi and Cenedi, too, and Nawari and all of them. The car can go on and be a decoy.” The boy had learned that tactic on the ship, under circumstances in which no boy his age ought to have to learn his lessons. “But she will be very stubborn about it, nandi. You can persuade her.”