Inheritor by C. J. Cherryh Page B

remember me in the next."
    "One indeed will. Beyond a doubt."
    Clearly Tano and Algini weren't going to relax until he was out of the province.
    But he trusted they had heard the news of the assassination before the news services had heard, unless reporters of the same news services had happened to surround lord Saigimi at the very moment of his death — and then only if they had the kind of communications the Guild had. His security had heard as fast as they had because the agency responsible (or Saigimi's guard) was electronically plugged into the Assassins' Guild, which was able to get direct messages to Guild members faster than the aiji's personal representatives, who weren't always told what was going on.
    And it
was
a Guild assassination, or there'd be real trouble. The Guild was a fair broker and a peacekeeper. It might authorize a contract for an assassination to be carried out by one member but it didn't withdraw resources from other members in good standing who might be defending the intended target. It most severely frowned upon collateral damage —
biichi'ji
, finesse, was a point of pride of the Guild in authorizing and legally notifying targets as well as in carrying out contracts — and the Assassins' Guild did pass warnings where warnings were due in order to prevent such damage.
    So, of course, did Tabini-aiji pass warnings of his own intent to his own security, who might not be informed by their Guild — even the aiji filed Intent, as he had seen once upon a time. But lords and lunatics, as Tano had once said, didn't always file, and defense didn't always know in advance. If Tabini had taken lord Saigimi down, Tano and Algini might possibly know it from Tabini's sources.
    Unless it was Geigi who had done it. He was very conscious of the rather plump and pleasant ateva weighing down the seat cushion beside him, in this car that held the pleasant musky scent of atevi, the size and mass of atevi. It would certainly make sense. Geigi was not the complacent man he'd seemed, and Geigi had shifted loyalties last year
away
from lord Saigimi's plots against the aiji.
    It made thorough sense that Geigi, with his new resources, had placed Guild members as near Saigimi as he could get them; it was an easy bet that Saigimi had done exactly the same thing in lord Geigi's district.
    So there was very good reason, in the direct involvement of lord Geigi with past events, for the paidhi's security to be very anxious about that gesture of stop ping and picking up the flowers. Sometimes, Bren thought, he had an amazing self-destructive streak.
    Geigi leaving his own security to other cars, to sit beside him surrounded by Tabini's agents, was a declaration of strong reliance on the paidhi and on the aiji in Shejidan; but it also tainted the paidhi and the aiji with collusion if Geigi had done it.
    Damn. Surely not.
Tabini
knew where he was and what was going on. Tabini's security wouldn't let him make that mistake.
    Meanwhile all those reporters who had gathered to cover the plant tour were back there to report his inviting lord Geigi under his protection the length and breadth of the peninsula, not to mention reporting the gesture to all the lords of the Association.
    Among them, in the Padi Valley to north, was the lady Direiso of the Kadigidi house, who truly did wish the paidhi dead, and who was alive herself only because the power vacuum her death would create could be more troublesome to the aiji than her living presence.
    Direiso.
That
was an interesting question.
    ----

CHAPTER 3
    « ^ »
    T he cars of the escort passed like toys under the right-hand wing as the private jet made the turn toward home. A bright clot of flowers, more bouquets and wreaths, showed on the concrete where the plane had stood. Now they surrounded a cluster of black car roofs.
    So lord Geigi hadn't driven off once the plane's doors had closed, nor even during the long wait while the plane had taxied far across to the east-west runway. Geigi