Peacemaker by C. J. Cherryh Page B

they’d missed Tabini.
    Had Tabini’s bodyguard, on nothing more than a sudden bad feeling—taken him and his consort for a sudden vacation in his maternal clan territory of Taiben?
    Certainly the rest of the legitimate Guild, hearing that a group in their guild’s uniform had invaded the aiji’s apartment and killed the aiji’s servants—among them, other senior Guild members—was not going to fold its hands and hope for better news in an hour.
    The legitimate Guild, realizing the aiji was the target of an assassination, and that Tabini might have escaped, had immediately launched an emergency plan to protect key people and networks and secure the government against disorder. They’d been too late to prevent the second strike against Tabini, at Taiben, but records, people, and accesses had gone unexpectedly unavailable to the conspirators—the same way, Bren thought, that his own servant staff, carpets, and furniture had been loaded onto a train and reached Najida before Murini’s hangers-on could lay hands on them.
    The conspirators had had far more important things than the paidhi’s household furnishings vanish in those initial hours—things like the shuttle manuals; the access codes for the state archives and records; the aiji’s official seal—any number of things that would have let them do more harm than they had done.
    Once the legitimate Guild had begun to question the new administration’s orders, very senior Guild officers had begun to retire, an hour-by-hour cascade of retirements—which the conspirators had at first mistaken for the old guard’s acquiescence to a new administration. They had neglected to go after those officers and kill them. Or perhaps they’d tried—and lost a few teams.
    These Guild officers, in those first few days, had needed to find out what had happened to Tabini—but they dared not risk their search leading the enemy straight to him, either. No, the legitimate Guild’s next move had been further afield, to establish contact with, of all people, the
humans,
the Mospheirans. That not-quite-high-tech linkup operation had required several men and a small boat loaded with explosives in case the navy, under the orders of the new aiji, should overhaul them.
    Mospheiran authorities had been extremely glad to see them. Mospheira had stayed in close contact with the station, and the station included Geigi and the atevi community aboard the space station.
    Individuals among the Missing and the Dead had linked up with Lord Geigi and set themselves at least nominally under his command.
    Establishing contact with Tabini, even finding out whether he was alive—had posed a far more formidable problem. They had hesitated to invoke any network that might contact Tabini until they knew, first, that they could protect him and, secondly, that their own ranks were not infiltrated. But they had to take it on the thinnest of assurance that he was still alive.
    When Tatiseigi opened his doors to Ilisidi on her return from space—Tabini knew about it almost within the hour. Tatiseigi’s security and their outdated communications equipment had leaked like a sieve in those days; but one of those leaks had gone in a very good direction . . . and kept Tabini minutely aware of what was going on in the world.
    In just two years of rule, Murini had set himself and his supporters on the wrong side of public opinion. From one shore of the continent to the other, ordinary citizens had been organizing in small groups, considering what they could do on their own to get rid of Murini.
    And when Tabini turned up alive, with the aiji-dowager and his son appearing at his side and reporting success in the heavens, he had met widespread public support. In that rising tide, the Shadow Guild had made one attempt on Tabini, the dowager, and Lord Tatiseigi—but they’d stopped that, with unfortunate damage to Lord