And in fact, while they stood there, shots sounded outside, maybe out on the road.

More came from their roof.

“Not safe yet,” he said under his breath. “I hope they’re alive up there.”

“That may have been an all-clear signal, Bren-ji,” Algini said. “But we should not rely on it. Best go back to the station and wait.”

Strong hint. There was mop-up yet to do. And Cenedi’s men would bear the brunt of it, if there was more to come. They had someone dead, likely, in their attic, bleeding a puddle onto the hallway floor. Someone down that hall was likely dead, right in front of the dining room, having shot a piece out of the paneling near the office. Bren found himself angry, a sense of outrage for the broken peace, for an attack his domestic staff hadn’t deserved, except for their service to him.

“Yes,” he said, to Algini’s strong suggestion, and began to walk in that direction, Algini walking with him.

Algini had to let them in: the door had shut and the lock had tripped. And Algini went right back to his console. In a very little time Tano came back and joined him, and took his former seat.

“Two of them,” Tano said.

Algini nodded. “Yes. That seems to have solved the immediate alarm.”

Bren took his former seat, trying to find in himself what he had used to feel, some sense of sympathy for a dead enemy, regret for the waste. It was there, but it was scant at the moment. Far stronger was his concern for Banichi and Jago, for the dowager’s pair with them; concern for the village, which had little protection but the general Guild policy of not involving such places—and the Marid had broken no few pieces of Guild policy. Hell, the Marid had tried to subvert the Guild itself, charging it was overly Ragi in leadership.

That hadn’t held. The Guild had solved its problem when Murini went down.

Murini was dead. His own clan had repudiated him. The Guild was the Guild again.

But that didn’t mean the Marid Association had reformed. And the quiet behavior of the Marid since the Troubles didn’t guarantee anything.

Worse, since the Troubles, with new weapons, new techniques—the old rules about keeping Guild business out of civilian venues were weakening. It was more than the traditional weapons and equipment at issue. Traditional limits of warfare were in serious jeopardy. Atevi hadn’t, historically, tended to have wars, just local skirmishes. Guild work. Professionals against professionals. Only a handful of times had it escalated to involve non-Guild. That was more than custom. It was a foundation of society. When somebody crossed that line, as Murini had—

“Tano-ji,” he asked. “How isthe village? Have you any word?”

“We have no reports of difficulty there,” Tano answered him. “We have observers able to report.”

Good for that, he thought, but decided not to accord the Marid any points for civilized behavior: not yet.

Things could get much, much worse than the attempt of just two Assassins to get inside.

Maybe, on the other hand, they were lucky: maybe that waswhat they had to deal with tonight, and the Marid didn’t have reinforcements ready to move in.

Failure of intelligence on the Marid’s part, perhaps. Failure of the local crew keeping tabs on Baiji to seek new instructions in time—either not having been told that the aiji-dowager had moved in with her guard; or being unprepared with higher-level Guild where they most needed them: inside Baiji’s household. They’d missed killing him. This was the second try—a better one than the first, for damned certain, but again—not with massive force.

Dared one think—they hadn’t been ready to deal with him yet?

Maybe Baiji had in fact made a try at warning him when he’d showed up at Baiji’s doorc give Baiji credit, he’d been sending signals. Or fear had been getting the better of him, once he was faced with the reality of the paidhi and the aiji’s son walking into a trap. Baiji had started sweating, and known he wasn’t lying with any skill, which had made him more and more nervous—which had blown everything.

If he’d never come calling on Baiji, if Geigi ever did pay his long-threatened visit home, Geigi might not have survived the first day on the ground. And everything would have been tolerably quiet, if the Assassins had managed it with some finesse.

Baiji would have inherited—married that Marid girl. The whole thing could have played out over five or ten years in which things on the coast just went from bad to worse. Like sitting in the stewpot with the water heating slowly—at what point would the aiji have made a countermove?

Sooner than they’d hoped, maybe. But all that was moot, since the kids and the sailboat. Baiji had taken his boat out—

Maybe Baiji really had wanted to make a break for it.

Maybec Baiji or his handlers had had other plans.

He’d never seen Baiji’s yacht—seen its lights in the distance, or thought he had; but he hadn’t stayed for conversation. He’d picked up the kids, turned around, rather rudely, but necessarily, and gotten them back to safety—to call on Baiji this morning. Contact made. Bait set. They’d have taken him out last night if they’d gotten a chance. But maybe they’d kept the operation to low-level Guild, who might not be traced to the Marid.

Mistake, if that was the case. Hisbodyguard had gotten him out, and the whole thing had blown up when Banichi had grabbed Baijic with all Baiji knew. All the key pieces. All the agreements.

Damned sure somebody had to be sweating now, and not just Baiji. Maybe the Marid had just called in higher-level operatives, and thatmakeshift fix had just failed.

He sat there listening to operations he couldn’t wholly hear and watching what he had only the most general means to understand, watched until a little of the recent affair had drained out of his veins. The report came in—Tano told him, that two of Cenedi’s men, on the roof, had been killed—by darts. Ancient Guild weapon, silent and lethal without the necessity of foreign technology. The perpetrators had gotten through the roof, into the attic of the house itself. They had likely been assigned to penetrate the inner defenses, but the attic, a defensive measure, was partitioned into strongly fortified rooms. The intruders had broken out of the area they had gotten into, and then used what amounted to a central walkway agreeing with the main hall of the house itself. It was a centuries-old, traditional building pattern—not that different from other houses of the period. So they hadn’t had much trouble figuring where they were, once they had hit that central hall. They had been trying to get to their target, in his suite of roomsc him, specifically, only he hadn’t been there. He’d been with Tano and Algini, listening to that hurrying step in the overhead. One of them had gotten into the servant’s wing and broken through down therec Tano had attempted to gain that man’s surrender. But that movement had been a diversion.

The other one had gone for the main hall, and hadn’tfound an access panel. It was, Tano said, tricky up there. There was such a panel, to get down into the building on the east side of the house. But one had to be inhis suite to get to it. Comforting thought. He’d never even thoughtto take a personal tour of the attic.

“It was used once,” Tano said, idly, “to enable the Maladesi lord to get Guild to the dining room to poison his wife. It is in Guild records. They used a string, let down from the ceiling, in the preparation area, and dripped poison into the dish. A servant spotted what she thought was a flaw in the preparation, tasted it with a finger—quite imprudent. She scarcely recovered.”

“One takes it that that marriage ended in divorce.”

“Actually in the assassination of the Maladesi by the wife’s relatives,” Tano said. “This left a younger daughter. She married into the Farai. Another imprudent move.”