Intruder Read Online Free PDF Page B

excellent bus, if extravagant. Power to all wheels was a very good idea.
    It was gravel roadway now, and generally solid all the way down the hill to the first city pavement.
    Tanaja was laid out as a bowl set in a hillside, and bottommost was the harbor. On a hillock overlooking the harbor—a height that the histories said had once commanded the waterside with cannon—sat the Residence, partly composed of the old fortress which had stood here but mostly, Bren understood, of the scattered stones of that fortress. Gunpowder had exploded, that being the business of gunpowder, when a Dojisigi ship with a monstrous unwieldy cannon had scored a chance hit on the Taisigi powder magazine.
    The fortress had fallen, and Dojisigi clan had taken over the Taisigi lands until the Dojisigi lord had injudiciously eaten a dish of berries a Taisigi serving girl had provided.
    A cannon shot from a heaving deck and a dish of berries: both had caused the city to change hands.
    A Taisigi lord of that day had then built the Residence out of the rubbleand thrown a great chain across the harbor, from the breakwater to the treacherous midharbor rock, that bane of careless captains, and then to the promontory that ended the harbor deep. That had saved them from the second Dojisigi attempt.
    The Residence had stood safe on the hill from that time. Taisigi clan had prospered, in Dojisigi’s decline. They had had Sungeni and Dausigi and Senji for allies and were bidding fair to take Dojisigi clan as well.
    Then humans landed from the heavens, and the north had accepted human technology, which left the Marid in the dust.
    Worse, a war had started that had ultimately caused the evacuation of atevi from the island of Mospheira and the ceding of the whole island to humans.
    And the settlement of those displaced island clans on the west coast had changed everything. The aishidi’tat, with its capital up at Shejidan, had fought the war and now controlled the west coast. The Marid had no strength to oppose the united strength of the North. And the Dojisigi and Senji snuggled closer to the aishidi’tat, playing politics for all they were worth.
    The attempt to unify the Marid fell apart. The Taisigi, pent up in the bottle of a smaller sea that was the Marid, joined the aishidi’tat, in name at least.
    Every generation replayed that struggle, in one form or another—Dojisigi and Taisigi, with Senji clan rising to partner, generally, Dojisigi, and the impoverished southern clans of the mainland faithfully allying with Taisigi, knowing that Dojisigi and Senji would swallow them up in an instant, if it were remotely convenient to do so.
    That was the last two hundred years of history in a nutshell.
    It was an ambitious undertaking, to try to shoulder history out of a deep, deep rut.
    Bren folded up the notes which proposed to do exactly that and tucked them into his briefcase as the view in the front windshield became buildings and city streets.
    The streets were sparse with rain-soaked foot traffic, a few trucks were out and about. One truck stopped in midturn at an intersection, doubtless to get a look at the huge red and black foreign vehicle rumbling through the ancient streets of the harbor district, causing a little delay and causing Jago and Banichi both to come forward in the bus, with Tano and Algini behind. But the truck went on, and the bus no more than slowed.
    Bren drew an easier breath, and his bodyguard went back to give orders.
    The Assassins’ Guild had come into Taisigi district in force a handful of days ago, with none of its usual finesse…protecting Machigi, who hadn’t been in town to be protected, but never mind that. The Guild had taken over Taisigi territory. It removed several high-ranking officials in the first hours.
    It had landed far, far harder up in Senji and Dojisigi territory, taking out the lords and several others and now controlling the capitals of those districts while operatives went down into Dausigi and Sungeni clans