Ajidita’s Political Status Under Murini’s Rule

Ajidita’s Political Status Under Murini’s Rule was shaped by a coup that seized government through a fracture in the Assassins’ Guild, then tried to isolate the mainland from the heavens and suppress opposition through fear. Murini’s apparent authority did not amount to a stable political settlement: the conspiracy failed to eliminate Tabini, the population’s resentment outlasted its terror, and Tabini’s return prompted a mass rising. Restoring the aijinate proved easier than repairing the institutions and trust the coup had damaged.

Political Foundations and Vulnerability

The coup overturned a political order built through associations that increasingly crossed clan and regional boundaries. Before the Foreign Star appeared, eleven regional associations had agreed to construct a railroad from Shejidan westward without fighting over the project. As construction continued, guilds such as the Transportation Guild and the Builders began to exceed both clan and regional limits. Aijiin, once elected as warleaders, were chosen to coordinate the work across districts and uphold agreements made by clan lords. The Assassins’ Guild developed as a force protecting those aiji from attacks by assassins serving individual lords.

That history matters to the crisis: the Guild was not merely a security service at the edge of politics. It had helped enforce agreements that made wider cooperation possible. The Guild later backed an aiji against three powerful lords who sought to revise the railroad agreement, demonstrating its capacity to uphold a political settlement against powerful interests. Its own institutional position was also unusually independent. Guild membership and assignments were to depend on qualification rather than clan or kinship, while Guild members were barred from political office. In exchange, the Assassins’ Guild received protections from political pressure, including control over its own records and internal investigations. These arrangements gave the Guild authority and autonomy, but also made an internal takeover especially dangerous: a body meant to safeguard law could use its institutional reach to seize government.

The Coup and Murini’s Rule

The conspirators moved while Tabini, Ilisidi, and Cajeiri were away on a mission into space to investigate what the ship-folk had disclosed. The account leaves open whether a message or signs of Tabini’s precautions alarmed them. Within the year, they attempted to assassinate Tabini at his residence. Finding him absent, they correctly suspected he might be at Taiben and intensified their attack there. Murini of the Kadagidi had already proclaimed himself aiji, although Tabini was still alive.

The attacks were coordinated to control the means of reaching the heavens. The conspirators seized shuttles undergoing service, the radio station, and facilities at the Shejidan airport and Mogari-nai. They believed that taking Mogari-nai would prevent communication with the heavens and that the absence of mines there left no way to replace the shuttles. They also believed Geigi had been removed as a threat. Tabini and Damiri escaped from Taiben, but their bodyguards did not. Rather than expose Lord Tatiseigi by seeking immediate shelter at his neighboring estate, they crossed Kadagidi territory and remained out of contact for a year, relying on Tabini’s survival skills.

Control of territory and communications did not give Murini an uncontested claim to legitimacy. The coup’s origin lay within the Assassins’ Guild: part of the organization had fractured and seized the government, placing it in the hands of a man who should not have held office. Early investigations were difficult because the Guild’s secrecy and procedural rules obstructed inquiries. Tabini and his bodyguard gradually learned that evidence from former associates contradicted accounts reaching them elsewhere; meanwhile, some people who might have been consulted were dead or had been replaced. The Guild’s internal structure had become both the instrument of the coup and an obstacle to establishing what had happened.

Resistance, Return, and Public Support

The effort to restore Tabini depended on discreet intelligence gathering as well as survival outside the capital. Members of the old Guild leadership had gone underground when Murini took power. Some people officially listed as dead were alive; others maintained their dead identities, while the most senior members claimed retirement. They helped operate the network that brought Tabini back. The returning leaders had not favored Tabini because of his association with humans, but they were committed to restoring the Guild to the law. They had even worked with humans on Mospheira during Murini’s rule, and ultimately pledged to return, leave their identities behind again, and help retake the Guild and examine its records.

When Phoenix returned, Ilisidi learned that Tabini had been overthrown and moved quickly. With Cajeiri and Bren, she took the shuttle Geigi had kept ready, landed on Mospheira, and crossed to the continent with Mospheiran assistance. They travelled through Taiben with Taibeni help and reached Atageini territory. Lord Tatiseigi opened his estate to them and supported them with his resources despite the fear Murini had instilled among the citizenry. Tabini and Damiri received word and arrived there.

News that Tabini and his household were alive changed the political balance. So did the confirmation that humans had kept their word, and that the station in the heavens and the humans on Mospheira were allies. Fear had initially aided Murini, but it had produced resentment rather than durable consent. Once word of the returning allies spread, hundreds of thousands of people found the courage to support Tabini and Ilisidi. The restoration was therefore not simply a transfer of power by a small group: it was accompanied by a broad public response to the survival and return of the legitimate household.

Institutional Reckoning and Lasting Damage

Removing Murini did not settle the Guild crisis. The restored government continued to face a splinter group whose fighters had been misled by forged orders. Many had acted against Tabini’s forces, but the orders carried no name that could be proved accurate. This distinction complicated the response: the attack had to be confronted, yet the available evidence did not justify treating every participant as a knowing conspirator. Ilisidi recognized that not everything wrong in the Aishidi’tat bore Murini’s name.

The post-coup struggle also involved the sitting Guild Council. Exiled senior members refused repeated orders to return, while two Council members were suspected of pushing Office of Assignments recommendations through without debate and delaying support during fighting in the west. At a critical point, the Guild had diverted forces to arrest two senior retirees rather than assist Tabini and Ilisidi. The returning old leadership sought to establish individual histories, loyalties, kinship, service, and references, beginning with assignments to Bujavid. This review was necessary to identify compromised personnel, but it also made the recovery a test of whether the Guild could investigate itself without turning the process into arbitrary punishment.

The danger of losing evidence shaped the takeover. A direct assault on Guild Headquarters risked the lives of members who might have joined the returning side if they knew the facts, and could have destroyed records needed to prove the case. The law depended on proof; if the Guild’s opponents could prevail only by decree, the institution would lose the legitimacy it was meant to defend. Shishogi died in an incendiary fire, apparently by suicide, but the records survived. One man was intercepted carrying several notebooks from the Office of Assignments. The resulting accounting recorded two resistance members dead, three including the target, fourteen people wounded in the building, 147 voluntarily standing down pending resolution, and sixteen under arrest for questioning and assessment. Tabini later reported that everyone had come out alive from the Council confrontation, while the restored leadership continued its interviews and review of appointments.

The coup’s political legacy was thus a double recovery: Tabini’s government returned, and the old Guild leadership returned to restore law and examine the institution that had enabled the seizure of power. Neither return erased the damage. The episode exposed how autonomy designed to protect the Guild from political pressure could become perilous when the organization itself fractured, and how quickly control of government could be challenged when public trust and institutional legitimacy were weakened. Murini’s terror failed to secure lasting support; rebuilding lawful authority remained the harder task.