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action—and Murini’s actions on the first full day of his rule had alienated the people beyond any easy fix. It had also rung alarm bells with the legitimate Assassins’ Guild and sent
them
to Mospheiran sources for better information.
    From that day, the tone and character of Murini’s administration was set and foredoomed, and while the Shadow Guild had begun to treat Murini as replaceable, and to ignore him in their decisions . . . the Shadow Guild had chosen to use the fear Murini’s actions had created and just let it run for a year or so, while they launched technical, legal maneuvers through the legislature. The Strategist had taken the long view. The Tactician just let Murini run, to stir up enemies he could then target.
    Unfortunately—the second mistake—neither had understood orbital mechanics, resources in orbit—or Lord Geigi’s ability to launch satellites and soft-land equipment. They had
thought
grounding three of the shuttles would shut off the station’s supply, starve them out, and that Geigi’s having one shuttle aloft and in his possession was a very minor threat.
    Third and final mistake, Haikuti had had a chance to run for it this morning when he had realized it was
Banichi
who was challenging him. But his own nature had led him. Haikuti had shot first. Banichi had shot true.
    That had been the end of Haikuti.
    The Strategist, Shishogi, Haikuti’s psychological opposite—was a chess player who made his moves weeks, months, years apart, a man who
never
wanted to have his work known and who was as far as one could be from the disposition of an aiji. He had no combat skills such as Haikuti had—to take out a single target in the heart of an opposing security force.
    Deal in wires, poisons, or a single accurate shot? No. The Strategist had killed with paper and ink. He was still doing it.
    Papers that sent a man where he could be the right man—a decade later.
    Papers that, in the instance of the Dojisigi, could undermine a province and kill units in the field.
    For forty-two years, in the Office of Assignments in the Assassins’ Guild, Shishogi had recommended units for short-term assignments, like the hire of a unit assigned to carry out a Filing by a private citizen, or the unit to take the defensive side of a given dispute. He had recommended long-term assignments, say, that of an Assassin to enter a unit that had lost a member, or the assignment of a high-level unit to guard a particular lord, or a house, or an institution like the Bujavid, which contained the legislature.
    He had recommended, too, the assignment, temporary or permanent, of plain-clothes Assassins, who took the positions of servants—valets, cooks, doorkeepers—who served the lords, and who were supposed to be on strictly defensive assignments.
    He even appointed the investigators who served the Guild Council, who
approved
the other assignments, investigators who delved into the truth or lack thereof in a Filing.
    Shishogi. The Guild never released the names of its officers, but they knew that name now. One old man from Ajuri, the same minor clan as Haikuti, the same minor clan as Cajeiri’s
mother—
and the same clan that Cajeiri’s lately-deceased grandfather, Komaji, had ruled—until his assassination.
    Shishogi was the tenth individual to have held the Office of Assignments in the entire history of the modern Guild. He had outlived his clerks and secretaries and not replaced them. His office, Algini said, was a cramped little space, massively untidy, with towering stacks of files and records. The filing system might have become a mess, but Shishogi had always been so efficient and so senior, a walking encyclopedia of personnel information, that the Council had never had a pressing reason to replace him. His antiquated, pre-computer operation had been, Algini said, a joke within the Guild.
    No one was laughing, now. And one had no