Peacemaker by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

investigation, some had been added as a result of Tabini’s investigation into the coup and their refusal to be contacted. It had been disturbing—but credible—that persons who had never felt attached to Tabini and who were approaching retirement might just neglect to report back and go through the paperwork and the process after his return to power. Perhaps, the thought had been, these individuals had never appealed the matter or shown up in Shejidan to answer questions and have their records cleared . . . because they were just disaffected from the Guild itself, disillusioned and still angry over the handling of the whole matter.
    Senior officers of the Guild had deserted in droves when Murini had taken over the government; they remained, his bodyguard had said, disaffected from current Guild leadership, opposing changes in policy. There was also old business, a lengthy list of Missing still on the Requests for Action which pertained to every Guildsman in the field: if one happened to find such a person, one was to report the location, ascertain the status if possible, request the individual to contact Guild Headquarters and fill out the paperwork—so Algini said. But there was, since Tabini’s return, no urgency on that item, Algini also said, and in the feeling that there might be some faults some of these members were worried about, there was a tacit understanding that nobody was really going to carry out that order. Some junior might, if he was a fool, but otherwise that list just existed, and nobody was going to knock on a door and insist a former member report himself and accept what might be disciplinary action. Certain members had left to pursue private lives under changed names.
    A message had come from two former Guild Council members, stating that, in a new age of cooperation with humans and atevi presence on the space station, the old senior leadership felt themselves at the end of their usefulness. It was a new world. Let the young ones sit in council. With marks against their names, with records tainted, who knew what was true, or which of them to trust? They were not anxious to come back to hunt down other Guild. The idea disgusted them. They disapproved of the investigation and refused to submit to a Guild inquiry.
    That was the only quasi-official answer to the demands of the infamous list that the Guild referred to as the Missing and the Dead.
    The stalemate still continued. Those on the list would not answer a summons or account for their movements during the coup. The list was a farce and an insult. The reconstituted records, they said, were corrupt. They would not divulge information that might reveal contacts or the location of fellow Missing.
    And, no, they would not come back. And they would not ask Tabini to be included in the amnesty afforded other guilds and given on a case-by-case basis to the Assassins. They maintained the executive branch had no authority to intervene in the guilds and that the list violated that principle. It was principle.
    There had been a few resignations
since
the events out at Najida. The list had grown a bit.
    Angry resignations, his aishid said.
    And his aishid, and the dowager’s, had kept investigating . . . month after month.
Tabini’s
aishid, however, couldn’t. The current Guild Council refused to grant those four, who were Taibeni clan, Tabini’s remote cousins, any higher rank or a security clearance, because
Tabini,
of the executive of the aishidi’tat, had ignored the Guild’s recommendation for his bodyguard, and chosen his own, who were not classified as having a security clearance, or even advanced training.
    It had been more than inconvenient. It had been damned dangerous . . . so much so that the aiji-dowager had finally ordered part of her own bodyguard to go into Tabini’s service and back up
and train
the four Tabini had appointed. The Guild knew about the four new bodyguards: