“Tea, Bren-ji?” Tano asked, and there was that chair by the fire and the little side table.

“Yes,” he said. “For all of us. Thank you, Tano-ji.”

Tano didn’t act as if anything was amiss. Maybe Algini had gone back to the rooms down the inside hall.

He sat down, a little light-headed, and Jago fixed a pillow for his back. It was a situation of fair comfort, and Tano quietly made sufficient tea for the lot of them. The door opened without a knock, and Algini came back into the room, from the outside door. He spoke to Banichi, then left again.

Maybe seeing to the bus’s departure. But nobody was saying anything. The business worried him—but there were listeners. He said nothing, just took the teacup when Tano brought it to himc and wished he knew what was going on.

Maybe nothing. He let Tano and Banichi and Jago relax for a bit in the peace of a round of tea and contemplation. He tried to think peaceful thoughts. Tried to think about the maps he needed and whether to ask for them brought here, or whether he should request to go to the sunny map room or whatever library existed here—every stately home had a library.

Algini stayed gone.

He set his cup down. So did the others.

“Since we are allowed phone contact,” he said, “if we can arrange a call to the dowager, nadiin-ji, that would probably be a good start. I also need maps of the region, of the west coast, and detailed maps of the East, including the coasts. If they can bring them here, excellent. If I have to go to the maps, that will be fine, too.”

“Yes,” Jago said, and she got up and went to the door to talk to whatever servants were stationed with the guards.

“I have a report to give to the dowager,” Bren said to Banichi and Tano in the meanwhile.

“Tano-ji, Banichi may have told you that Lord Machigi has taken the position that I am his mediator as well as the dowager’s—” He used the ancient word for the office, with all it implied. “So I shall eventually be conveying his position, so far as I know it, as his representative. As yet, I have no idea exactly what that position is, except that he has said that the dowager is generally correct in her perceptions.”

Tano nodded—and probably already knew everything he had just said, unless the local Guild had been interfering with his aishid’s communications. He was stating things for their eavesdroppers, putting the slant on things he wanted. And he smiled somewhat grimly. “They will monitor what we say. Which is expected. And since our purpose here is exactly what we said it was, we have no reason to object. We can do very little until Lord Machigi tells us what he concludes, but I also have to advise the dowager what proposals I have made, so at least we can be accurate about her position. I have some hope this negotiation will work.

There is absolutely nothing gained for anybody by another war. And a lot to be gained for the Taisigi in particular if we can work this out.”

Solemn nods. They knew exactly what he was doing.

And they knew their own business, which was to keep the situation as quiet as possible as long as possible, give no information away, and hope that even if every assumption the dowager had made was wrong, he could still talk sense to Machigi.

The lord of the Taisigi, he told himself, was young but not stupid.

Thatwas the best asset they had.

Jago came back in and closed the door. “They will bring a phone, nandi,” she said. “And the maps, with writing materials.”

“Excellent,” he said.

Algini also—finally!—came back into the room, from the hall, and cast a look at Tano, then came and picked up Bren’s teacup; when he set it down again, it weighted a piece of paper. A note.

That ticked up the heart rate a bit. Bren quietly picked up the note and read it.

Certain Guild disappeared from Shejidan in Murini’s fall. Most of these, outlawed by Guild decree, entered service in the Marid, from which they trusted they would not be extradited to face Guild inquiry. Not all such are reliably in Guild uniform, and some may have falsified identities. My own presence here is known. Your mission here directly threatens the lives of these outlaws, since if Lord Machigi associates with the dowager, their sanctuary is threatened. Lord Machigi’s bodyguard is aware and is taking measures as of this hour.

Measures. When the Guild said that—there was bloodshed.

So there were high-level fugitives, then, the very highest— Guild members who, two years ago, had carried out the overthrow of Tabini-aiji and the murder of no few of Tabini’s staff, on behalf of the usurper Murini.

The Guild in Shejidan had cleaned house after Tabini’s return. Some of the people responsible for the coup had been killed. Others had run for it—mostly south, even those with no southern connections.

Outlaws. Desperate, skilled Assassins.

Machigi himself might be in increasing danger.

Should I have sent the bus off? he wondered. Here they sat, his four bodyguards isolated and out of touch with the Guild, and now with Machigi’s bodyguard evidently engaging in a purge of individuals who, until his arrival, might have assumed they had a permanent safe haven here.

Certainly the renegades would bear him no good will at all. Persons who employed them wouldn’t, either.

Andc my own presence herec was downright chilling. Whoever knew what Algini was, or had been, in the Guild, was notthe average Guild member. They were individuals possibly with very high-level skills, and were already proven to bear a very chancy man’chi to anything at all. There were a dozen atevi words for people who betrayed a service. On the one hand, they had the disposition to govern—to be aijiin. On the other— and a paper-thin distance removed from that—they had the disposition to be a problem to society.

The Guild itself was a focus for man’chi: in a sense it was a clan of its own.

But it had fractured during Murini’s takeover. It had become fragmented.

And now some of its problems were aiming at him andpotentially at Machigi himselfc with ambitions and intentions of its own.

That was not a comfortable thought. And now Machigi’s guard had found out and presumably had told Algini what Algini had just reported to him.

Nobody from Machigi’s bodyguard wanted to come here right now and explain things to the rest of them. Algini had gone outside to talk to—whoever he had talked to, and he had stayed out long enough to worry him.

Second point—Algini had written it out, not said it aloud, so it was something to be kept even from those elements of Machigi’s guard that were monitoring their conversations.

That was very worrisome.

Maybe the servants were equally suspect.

The cook they had to trust?

Damn.

Damn.

And damn.

Bloody damn it. He hadn’t expected local politics to come to a head this fast even with him stirring the pot.

But it was predictable, wasn’t it? He had come here in a pain-killered fog, upset the political situation with his brain just a little too closely focused on the good Machigi could become to the situation, and now Machigi himself had become a target.

Depend on it, Machigi’s potential enemies would have long since moved agents in on him, watchingc that went on in every noble house in the aishidi’tat. In whatever houses there had ever been marriages and associations with other houses, staff traveled, staff joined other houses, settled in—and functioned as an information network. If the lords were getting along nicely, it was two-way. Or information moved only one way if things had gone to hell.

Staff spied. That was a given. A sensible lord dismissed servants who were suspected of dual loyalties, but sometimes the most astute judge of man’chi made a mistake.