Protector

“Taibeni are saddling up,” Banichi said, “but they will not come within range of the house stables. One doubts they will find anything. A malfunction—a blowing scrap lofted on the wind, to the roof . . . it might be either. But we had a great deal going on at once just now, and Komaji’s assassination is still unattributed. We cannot dismiss this.”

“Yes,” Bren said, asking himself what in all reason butan exit from the building could have caused that alarm.

Evidently whoever it was hadn’t kept going, but had come back inside again. A servant who’d accidentally caused an alarm should be contacting house security immediately and explaining the problem.

All the youngsters were apparently accounted for. Theyhad gone out the other door, come back in when the alarm went off.

“This isn’t good,” he said to Jase. “We have a serious worry, here. I don’t want the kids spotting that little creature and creating a problem.”

“I’ll go find them. Make sure they understand.”

“Do,” he said, relieved to have someone covering that angle.

The people the dowager’s staff had sent to Tatiseigi weren’t novices in any sense, and Cenedi had furloughed every servant and guard whose records gave any doubt. None of the ones still on duty were the sort to forget the alarms and sensors they’d installed and blunder into them. Even the youngsters had gone properly past a checkpoint and come back the same way. How did one avoida checkpoint?

Banichi spoke to someone in verbal code.

And Algini and Tano came in from the hall.

“There seems no present danger,” Algini said. “Nor any reason at the moment to raise the level of alert. But we have asked Lord Tatiseigi to order all persons assigned to an area to stay in that area, and not to have staff moving about until we resolve this matter.”

That seemed a very good idea, in Bren’s estimation. “Is there any word from the capital,” Bren asked, “or should one be asking that question?”

“There is no alarm from the Bujavid,” Banichi said. “We have Taibeni moving on foot to the site of the disturbance, to locate any visible clue, and in case there is another such movement.”

Jago had been listening to something, sitting silent at the side of the room. “Word is now officially passing,” she said, standing up, “that the assassination this morning was carried out in a Guild manner. There has still been no public notice of a Filing.”

Without a public Filing.

No way was that legal, under any ordinary circumstances. A within-clan assassination could be kept quiet—but it still had to go through Guild Council to show cause and it required substantial support within the clan.

“Gini-ji,” Banichi said quietly, and Algini looked Banichi’s direction a moment. Then Algini nodded.

“Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Algini will tell you something which the dowager knows—but Lord Tatiseigi does not. This has been affecting our decisions and our advice. This is the information we sent Lord Geigi. We are not, at this point, briefing Jase-aiji. This regards the inner workings of the Guild, and howthe coup that set Murini in power was organized, how the organization persisted past Murini, and why Tabini-aiji barred Ajuri from Shejidan. The aiji also is informed. Whether he has informed the aiji-consort is at his discretion. We have urged him not to.”

Answers. God.

If they had figured all thatout—on the one hand it was possible they had found what they had been trying to find for most of the last year; and on the other it was possible what they had been trying to find had located them,and this whole rearrangement of key individuals and their security was under threat.

Algini rarely gave anyone a straight and level look. He did now, arms folded, voice quiet: “We have known much of this since the affair on the coast, Bren-ji. Information we sifted out of the Marid confirmed what we increasingly suspected: that Murini was no more than a figurehead. Convenient, capable of some management, yes, but he was at all times only nominally in charge. He appeared. He gave orders. But there were individuals who pressed a more organized agenda on him. That agenda involved isolating the aishidi’tat from the station—which they accomplished, as you know, by grounding all but one shuttle. Once isolated, they intended to put a completely new power structure in place in the Bujavid, and, once the aishidi’tat was secure under their rule, to restore contact with Mospheira and the station. Geigi would be removed in some fashion, with the specific goal of putting the atevi side of the station—and its capabilities—under their control.”

Bren pressed his lips on a burning question and Algini said: “Ask, Bren-ji.”

“ Isthe station compromised? Havethey agents up there?”

“No.”

Bren took a slow, deep breath, greatly relieved. Without firsthand knowledge of the station, any hope of threatening it as outsiders was sheer fantasy. Atevi in general simply had no idea what Geigi could do from his post in the heavens.