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.
He had recommended, too, the assignment, temporary or permanent, of plain-clothes Assassins, who took the positions of servants—valets, cooks, doorkeepers—who served the lords, and who were supposed to be on strictly defensive assignments.
He even appointed the investigators who served the Guild Council, who approved the other assignments, investigators who delved into the truth or lack thereof in a Filing.
Shishogi. The Guild never released the names of its officers, but they knew that name now. One old man from Ajuri, the same minor clan as Haikuti, the same minor clan as Cajeiri’s mother—and the same clan that Cajeiri’s lately-deceased grandfather, Komaji, had ruled—until his assassination.
Shishogi was the tenth individual to have held the Office of Assignments in the entire history of the modern Guild. He had outlived his clerks and secretaries and not replaced them. His office, Algini said, was a cramped little space, massively untidy, with towering stacks of files and records. The filing system might have become a mess, but Shishogi had always been so efficient and so senior, a walking encyclopedia of personnel information, that the Council had never had a pressing reason to replace him. His antiquated, pre-computer operation had been, Algini said, a joke within the Guild.
No one was laughing, now. And one had no idea—because Algini had not said—how many of the current Guild administration thought they owed personal favors to this man.
One had no idea what resources Shishogi might still have. There were pockets of Shadow Guild activity in the world, potentially able to carry out assassinations—last night had proven that—and there were people whose actions during Murini’s rule left them very, very afraid of what Tabini’s investigators might find in the records. Increasingly, honest people who had lived in fear under Murini’s administration were coming forward and talking. But a few people who had things to hide were very anxious about what they knew that the Shadow Guild might want buried.
The little old man in Assignments had had the whole atevi world in his hands just a year ago.
But as of this morning, the Tactician was gone.
Now, on this train, headed back to the capital in secret, the aiji-dowager was taking direct aim at the Strategist.
5
Cajeiri waked, straightened in his seat, smoothed his coat, and saw that Jegari was awake, too, across the aisle. Nobody else was. Gene, Irene, and Artur had nodded off, Irene and Artur leaning against the wall of the car, Gene with his head on his arms on the table. Antaro, Lucasi, and Veijico were asleep, arms folded, heads down . . . one thought they were asleep.
The train had begun slowing down. That was a little scary . . . since that could mean all sorts of things, and they still could not raise the window shades to see what was outside.
“Where are we, Gari-ji?” he asked Jegari.
“One believes we are actually entering Shejidan, nandi. We should switch tracks soon.”
Shejidan. He had not thought he had possibly slept that long. “Is there any news?”
“We are still running dark, nandi, not communicating with anyone, not even using the locators. We have no news.”
“But we are still going to the Bujavid.”
“One believes that we are, yes.”
Others in the car were waking up, too, having felt the change in speed, and he saw no distress among the senior Guild. The rest of his aishid woke up calmly, and had a quiet word with Jegari.
Gene lifted his head, blinked, raked his hair back. “God,” Gene said in a low voice. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep.”
“So did everybody for a while. Jegari thinks we are coming into the city now. We definitely should not touch the shades.”
The others were stirring, Irene, then Artur, who wanted the accommodation, and got up and went to the back of the car.
“We are in the city now,” Cajeiri said. “Any moment now, we will switch tracks. Rene-ji, lend me your book and I shall show you where we are.”
She turned to a blank page and handed her notebook to him. He leaned forward to draw so they could see. He drew the hill of the Bujavid, and the Bujavid at the top, and he showed how the tunnel went through the hill, turning as it went.
“We will go slowly here,” he said, pointing at the hill itself. “And we shall climb to the train station. And then we shall take lifts up into the Bujavid itself.” There was a gap in his explanation, there, a big one, because he had no idea where they were going once they got into the Bujavid. But how to explain it did occur to him. “The Bujavid is a place like the ship. Like the station. Hallways. Passages. Quarters.”
“A ship on a mountain,” Gene said with a little laugh.
“A hill,” he said, measuring with his fingers. “Little mountain.”
“Hill,” Gene said, and everybody said it.
“With passages all inside,” Irene said.
“Indeed,” Cajeiri said. And then he thought he should explain other things. “There are a lot of storage rooms below.” He pointed on the diagram between the circle that was the train station and the Bujavid’s ground floor. “Here, stairs come up to the Bujavid from the bottom of the hill, on the street outside. Everybody can go on the first level of the Bujavid—they used to have to climb all those steps, but now there’s a tram from the street—a kind of train, very short track. Upper levels are restricted residency. Third level is us. Me. My parents. My great-grandmother, my great-uncle. Nand’ Bren, too.” He hesitated to promise them anything, when an order from his father could change every arrangement, so there was no good even thinking where they would end up, or even if they would be together. He was never to draw how the rooms in the Bujavid were laid out, anyway, his father had told him, because of security. So he just said, “I think we shall probably stay with nand’ Bren.” There was adult business going on and he decided his great-grandmother was likely not going to want children underfoot, hearing things they should not. He could not think his great-grandmother would send him and his guests to his father’s residence—with his mother on edge, about to have the baby. It was why his father had sent him out to Tirnamardi in the first place.
Though maybe he should send Boji and his cage t
o his own rooms, along with his servants. Boji’s cage was huge and he did not know how nand’ Bren was going to deal with all of them and nand’ Jase and Kaplan and Polano.
But that was a bad plan. He really did not want Boji shrieking out as he sometimes did, and disturbing his mother . . . which was why he had taken Boji with him.
He by no means wanted Boji disturbing Great-grandmother or Great-uncle, either. Nand’ Bren would probably take Boji in, because nand’ Bren tried to do everything he asked—but Boji was just a problem.
He had no idea what to do. His life was suddenly surrounded with problems. They were all little problems that he was supposed to be able to deal with himself, true, but they were big ones to his guests, who could not be happy locked in a room, however comfortable. The Bujavid could be miserably dull, if one were locked in a room with nothing to do.
“We shall at least have a lot of time to talk,” he said, trying to find something cheerful about their situation. “And at least we shall not have to go down to the basement if we have a security alert.”
“That was interesting, though,” Gene said, meaning Great-uncle’s basement. “With the skeleton and all.”
Great-uncle had managed a little machimi for them in his basement. There had been rows and rows of books and brown pots, and them wondering all the while if an assassin was going to come at them out of the dark. Then Great-uncle had turned out the lights and shown them the scariest things by hand-torch.
But the scary things at Tirnamardi had not just been taxidermied beasts and a skeleton—since, despite all the precautions everybody had taken, there really had turned out to be Dojisigi Assassins in the house. . . .
His guests had no idea that what was going on could get as bad as it had gotten at Najida, when there had been shells coming at the house, and assassins in the basement who had no intention of apologizing for their actions. He had killed somebody. He had killed people. He was fairly sure he had, once almost a year ago, and another man this spring that still gave him nightmares. He was not proud of it. He was not sure he should be ashamed or not, but it upset the grown-ups, who had not been able to handle it themselves. So he was not sure at all whether he had done something good or bad, or even whether he should be having nightmares about it, or not. He had not even figured how to ask mani or nand’ Bren. He had not even wanted to ask his own bodyguard, who were not happy about it, because it was their job, and he had had to do it instead. He had no idea what he ought to feel, but it was nothing to talk about now, with his guests, who had already come close to a scary moment of that sort.
And he was supposed to keep all that sort of thing quiet. His guests were going back to the space station when his party was over, and he was not supposed to tell them anything detailed about the fighting, or the politics, or about the troubles grown-ups were trying to solve, or too much about which clans in the aishidi’tat were problems. Great-grandmother had said to him, privately, looking him right in the eye in a way she rarely did: “It is much more than keeping your young guests happy, Great-grandson. It is that, while we trust Jase-aiji and his bodyguard, and have confidence in his discretion—we are given to understand that the parents of your young guests represent a faction aboard the space station. Politics are in it. Understand that—and do not tell your young guests things that might upset their parents. Remember that humans do not really have man’chi, and that while you may believe you understand your guests, it is very doubtful you understand them as deeply as you may wish. We are not born equipped to understand them, and you should not bestow any information that may frighten them or be useful to our enemies. Let nand’ Bren communicate such things to nand’ Jase, where it may regard the nature of threats or danger to your father. And if your guests become distressed, refer them to nand’ Bren. Do you understand me, Great-grandson? This is extremely important.”
“Yes,” he had said. “Yes, mani.”
Politics was not his favorite word. It was, in fact, one of his most unfavorite words. Politics had his mother mad at his father, because politics had made his grandfather act like a fool and try to break into the apartment—and now his grandfather was dead. Politics had meant those scary moments in Najida’s basement, with Shadow Guild bent on killing him and mani and Great-uncle.
And politics meant they could not raise the window shades and see the city.
Deep inside, facing the necessity of lying to his guests, he longed to throw a tantrum the like of which he had not thrown since he was, well, much younger. Doing that, however, would definitely upset his guests and raise the very questions he was not supposed to answer.
It would also annoy his great-grandmother, and draw one of those troubled looks from nand’ Bren—which were almost as hard to face as Great-grandmother’s temper—and it would upset his great-uncle besides, who would just frown at him as if he were a stain on the carpet.
The thump of the wheels came slower and slower as the train began to climb that track he had sketched for his guests. Definitely they were entering the Bujavid tunnel now.
• • •
Bren came aware with a stiff neck, realizing he’d nodded off finally with his computer braced open in his lap, and the teacup beside his hand mostly empty—not, unfortunately, without contributing a stain to his coat, his lace cuff, and his trouser leg. Most all the Guild and the personal servants were on their feet getting hand-luggage and equipment. The train was climbing slowly, a familiar sound and motion that meant they were now in the Bujavid tunnel—and his bodyguard—including Banichi—were all on their feet, arming, preparing for arrival at the station.
He was tired and dull-witted. God, he hadn’t been able to sleep at all on the train, except at the last, and now he wanted nothing more than just to shut his eyes and wake up in his own bed—but that wasn’t going to happen. The next half hour or so might present more hellish problems than where they’d been, if their linking into Bujavid communications turned up trouble in the capital: they had had no word of such, but then, successful conspiracy didn’t advertise its moves. They just had to hope the situation in the Bujavid was business as usual.
He put his computer away. It was a question how long the story they’d given the Transportation Guild would hold—which might tell them whether or not the Bujavid was under an active alert. The ordinary process that brought in an upbound train from the provinces was far from speedy these days. Security had grown incredibly meticulous since the coup. There would be a query. The question was how far to maintain the cover, and whether to invoke Bujavid security to secure the platform.
It was not his decision, however. The dowager’s Guild senior, Cenedi, in charge of their prisoners in the next car, would make the call to tell certain people in the Bujavid station office who they really were—and granted the Bujavid station office was operating without problems, they would make adjustments and get reliable people into position to assure they could disembark smoothly, without, say, meeting a random work crew or other waiting passengers. Cenedi might have made that call as they switched onto the Bujavid spur, but if not, it would come very soon.
The operation came down, now, to hoping they were informing the right people, and hoping the Bujavid was serenely unaffected by the dust-up up in the Padi Valley. It was all riding on Cenedi’s judgment.
Banichi was talking to Jago, nearby, discussing the situation. Banichi ought to have been lying down the entire trip. Banichi had refused, and insisted on staying armed and on active duty.
“Is everything in order?” Bren asked Tano, who was nearest him.
“Everything is in order, nandi,” Tano said. “We are still not using the locators, not even our short-range communications. We shall run dark until we are in the lifts. But we are on passive reception, and our story seems to be holding up. We seem not to have roused any questions yet.”
Security-wise, they were story within story within story—within story, since they were all supp
osed to be at the dowager’s estate across the continent. It was still a little worrisome that they were arriving in the most secure building on Earth, blithely breaching their own security . . . but when they did lie, they could at least do it from inside knowledge.
Someone eventually had to advise Tabini-aiji, too, that they and his eight-year-old son were back—and Tabini would have to make a decision to let them go on hosting a collection of bright-eyed young humans, or take the youngsters himself. Natural, that a father would take custody of his own son—but the aiji-consort, who had just lost her father, was about to give birth, didn’t approve of humans, and the marriage was in trouble, politically.
It was one mundane problem, in the midst of others not so mundane. But it was a large problem. They had to put the youngsters somewhere. Somebody had to make a decision, and it had to be one that calmed, rather than exacerbated, Tabini-aiji’s domestic problems. God knew whether Tabini had told the aiji-consort the public story—or the truth about where her son had been staying.
There was at least time, in that slow climb, for everybody to get organized. “I am perfectly well-arranged, nadiin-ji,” Bren said to his two valets, when they came to assist him. He needed a change of coats, at very least, but they had not packed with that in mind. “Kindly help any of the heir’s guests who need assistance. We are not going to delay for precedence once the doors open. Our intention is to get off the platform as quickly as possible until we know the situation here. Help keep them in good order.”
They moved immediately to do that, quietly assisting Jase to lift his duffle down, for starters, from an atevi-scale storage rack. The dowager’s own servants had gone to the other end of the car, assisting with the fair lot of hand baggage the human party had with them—a significant amount of it belonging to Jase, equipment that they had not wanted to leave behind for later shipment.
Their personal wardrobes and such, two very large crates, were due to arrive with one of Lord Tatiseigi’s staff and security, on another train. They had not wanted anything to delay their boarding or hold the train any longer at the local station than absolutely necessary. On the official records, that train might not even have stopped, for all he knew.
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