Warfare, where it regarded the Marid, was endless. If it wasn’t directed outside, at the aishidi’tat, it was inside, clan against clan.

The aishidi’tat, under Tabini’s newly restored regime, was too busy reconstructing itself after surviving the lastattempt to kill it off. They would not want to involve themselves in an internal Marid quarrel, and they might think a Dojisigi-Taisigi power struggle would play itself out much more slowly, and give them time.

They didn’t havetime.

Young Baiji, not the brightest intellect on the west coast, had played for power of his own, and landed himself in very deep waters, which Baiji stillfailed to figure out. He didn’t, he protested, deserve being locked up, a prisoner, in the paidhi-aiji’s basement. He was innocent. He was misunderstood. He had been spying for the aiji all the while. He should be a hero to everyone. Of course he should.

Just ask him.

Baiji’s unfortunate machinations had put bullet holes in the hall outside this little office. They had caused the death of one of the aiji-dowager’s guard, the serious wounding of a young man from Najida village, and the complete ruin of the large front portico over at Kajiminda estatec not to mention the hole Bren’s own estate bus had plowed through the garage gate here at Najida, to the detriment of the adjacent garden.

Forgive Baiji? The paidhi-aiji was a generous and patient man. He was, more than anything else, a man for whom policy and the aiji’s welfare counted more than personal affront.

Baiji, however, had exceeded his tolerance in any reasonable consideration.

The quiet since the assault, about two days, had been welcome. Bren did not count on it lasting. Nor did his guest, the aiji-dowager.

They’d had the time, among first business, to recover this cache of papers from Lord Geigi’s estate at Kajiminda.

They’d had the time, too, to patch a largish hole in Toby Cameron’s boat—Bren’s brother Toby had been visiting here when all hell had broken loose, and Toby had been instrumental in thwarting the Marid in a secondary attack.

So, down at the harbor at the foot of the estate, the Brighter Dayswas now calmly at anchor beside Bren’s own Jaishan. Toby and Toby’s companion, Barb, were living aboard, not that it was safer down there on the boat, but that Najida estate was running out of room in the house. It was dangerous for Toby and Barb to be down there, exposed to view whenever they went out on deck. But it was more dangerous, potentially, to put out to sea and try to head home across the straits, in the event some southern ship was lurking offshore.

It was dangerous for them to come and go up to the house for meals. But Toby and Barb had stubbornly elected to take that risk, since the perimeter seemed secure and the walk up the winding slope from the dock was now safe from snipers—so they argued.

Toby’s presence on the continent, however, posed a risk in all senses, including political sensitivity, and Bren earnestly wished he could find one single twenty-four-hour window in which Toby could safely make a run home to Port Jackson, back to the human-run island of Mospheira, where there weren’tmembers of the Assassins’ Guild laying plans.

The grounds were under close and constant surveillance by the dowager’s young men, at least, and the aiji’s navy was out there somewhere—exactly where was classified.The house had reinforcements, besides: local fishermen and hunters. Najida villagers, ethnic Edi, had opted to support their local lord and his estate with their own informal armed force against the unwelcome intruders from the Marid. Edi folk were no strangers to violence or guerilla action, and their help was certainly not inconsiderable.

Add to that, the aiji’s forces, Assassins’ Guild from the capital at Shejidan, who had taken possession of Kajiminda grounds in support of Lord Geigi. Opposition forces had melted away from that threat—and the aiji’s forces, not to mention the Edi irregulars, were busy trying to ferret at least a dozen Marid agents out of Separti Township—having already run them out of Dalaigi. The infestation had moved, and was still dangerous—but at least it was on the run.

Further southc no word from that operation either. But one expected none.

Bren’s own bodyguard, of the Assassins’ Guild, had their own opinions of their situation, and refused to let him move about even inside the house without their being constantly aware of where he was and with whom. The aiji-dowager’s bodyguard, twenty members of that same Guild, counting Cenedi, who led them, was cooperating in house defense. And the aiji’s eight-year-old son, Cajeiri, had just acquired two young members of that Guild to back up the two Taibeni youngsters who were his bodyguards-in-training. That was twenty-six Guild personnel under the same roof, a tough objective for their enemies. They were on round-the-clock high alert, and thus far the Taisigi hadn’tmade another try.

Servant staff, too, were encouraged to stay on the estate grounds and not to go up and down the road to Najida village; and Najida fishermen were asked to stay away from the estate perimeters. The less traffic that moved on Najida estate perimeters, the easier it was to track anyone who didn’t belong there.

They were all wired for the slightest hint of trouble. Expecting it.

And a slight rap at the door drew Bren’s instant sharp attention.

Household staff never waited for an acknowledgement when they knocked. Neither did his bodyguard. And indeed, the door immediately opened. It was Banichi himselfc a looming shadow in the black uniform of his Guild. Ebon-skinned, golden-eyed, and a head and shoulders taller than a tall human, Banichi fairly well filled even an atevi-scale doorway.

And when Banichi ran errands, it wasn’t about tea or the delivery of mail.

“Bren-ji.” They were on intimate terms, he and all his bodyguard: he preferred it that way. “Tabini-aiji is approaching the front door.”

“The aiji.” Bren shoved back from the desk, appalled. Tabini was supposedto be safe in the capital. And he was here? On the decidedly unsafe west coast? Unannounced?

Bren got up and immediately took account of his coat—it was a simple beige and blue brocade for office work on a quiet day. The shirt cuffs—a modest amount of lace—he had carefully kept out of the ink in his writing a few notes. His fingers, however—

But it was late to make any improvement. Tabini didn’t stand waiting for anybody, and safety dictated Tabini should move fast if he was moving about the region.

In very fact, Bren heard the outer door open in the instant of thinking that. Banichi turned to check, took his station at the open door, and in a moment more, his partner Jago arrived and took her place: bookends, on one side of the office door and the other, while a heavy tread in the hallway heralded a second, armed advent through that open door.

The aiji’s senior bodyguard, two grim-faced men in Guild black, arrived and took theirpositions, automatic rifles in clear evidence.

Then Tabini-aiji himself, aiji of the aishidi’tat, lord of all the world except the human enclave, walked into the office. Black and red constituted the Ragi colors, the clan to which Tabini belongedc but Tabini wore no red today: Tabini blended with his black-clad bodyguard, right down to black lace cuffs. It was a mode of camouflage Tabini had used occasionally even in the halls of the Bujavid, since his return to the aijinate. He had used it habitually in that uneasy year he had spent on the run, and narrowly avoiding assassination.

A blond, pale-skinned human in a pale beige coat stood in quiet, domestic contrast to that dark and warlike company. His little office was now entirely overwhelmed with Guildsmen, all armed with automatic weapons, on alert and on business— not to mention Tabini’s own forceful presence.