Ilisidi’s Operations in Dojisigin Marid

Ilisidi’s operations in Dojisigin Marid were both a security intervention and an evidence-gathering effort: she reported rescuing a village, defusing a bomb, and disrupting hostile leadership while documenting how local Guild forces had been handled. The operation did not end with a simple victory. Two officers remained in custody, their partners were missing, and the possibility of further threats made careful coordination with Lord Machigi essential.

Background and Stakes

The operation unfolded amid a prolonged struggle over the Assassins’ Guild after Murini’s coup. Some senior Guild members had gone underground; others had been officially listed as dead or had claimed retirement. They had helped restore Tabini, but they did not trust the current Guild Council and had refused its repeated orders to return to duty. The dispute had lasted beyond the coup’s end, leaving the Guild’s authority and internal loyalties unsettled.

Jago told Bren that the Council’s two dominant members had rapidly approved recommendations from the Office of Assignments, including the recent appointment of chief officers in Dojisigin Marid. In earlier trouble in the west, the Council had moved forces so slowly that Tabini had taken the field himself. At another critical moment, it diverted resources from assisting Tabini and Ilisidi to pursue the two most senior retirees. These actions made the Marid appointments more than a local administrative issue: they formed part of a broader concern that the Guild’s leadership was acting without adequate scrutiny and obstructing efforts to restore the law.

The exiled senior members had finally agreed to return, despite having to abandon their identities again and leave families and marriages behind. They were prepared to help retake the Guild, examine its records, and restore lawful practice. But their support did not remove the need for proof. A direct assault on Guild Headquarters risked harming members who had not been safely contacted and destroying records needed to establish the case against the Council. The law depended on evidence, and its legitimacy could not rest solely on Tabini’s decree.

The Marid Operation

When Tabini asked what had been done with two Dojisigi officers, Ilisidi described the immediate results of her actions. Since the previous midnight, her party had liberated a Marid village from armed men, defused a bomb, removed a traitor from a lordship, taken down a Shadow Guild leader in the Marid, and brought Tabini’s son safely home. The range of these actions joined local protection to the larger struggle over who could exercise authority in the region.

Ilisidi had the two officers fed and housed, but kept them in their quarters and available for questioning. She did not treat their capture as proof that every member of their unit was culpable. Instead, she explained that local Guild members had been disarmed, held under arrest, and then released to protect their respective villages. Units were split apart and sent into districts where trouble was expected without even sidearms. That arrangement reduced the immediate danger of leaving armed, coordinated units in place, but also dispersed them into vulnerable areas.

A ribboned and sealed deposition set out these actions in detail. Ilisidi said it was signed and witnessed, ready to be placed in evidence at the appropriate time. The document recorded how the officers responsible for the local Guild had handled the disarming, detention, release, and dispersal. Its value lay not only in what it alleged, but in its form as testimony that could be examined later rather than a private accusation resting on Ilisidi’s authority alone.

Missing Partners and Precautions

The two detained officers had been separated from the rest of their unit. At the time Ilisidi reported, their partners’ whereabouts and orders were unknown, as was the possibility that hostages were at stake. The prisoners asked permission to go south and find their partners; Ilisidi refused. Their request could not resolve the uncertainty, and allowing them to travel would have meant sending them into an unfolding operation without knowing what commands they might follow or what dangers awaited.

Ilisidi warned Lord Machigi that he might be a target of a second operation based in Dojisigin Marid. She personally asked him to seek a bloodless surrender if the missing partners entered his territory. She also planned to urge him to make a public statement about what had happened in the Marid once the next phase of her operation went forward. These measures extended the response beyond the detained men: they sought to prevent further violence, alert a likely target, and establish a public account of the local Guild’s conduct.

Tabini accepted Ilisidi’s plan without criticism and passed the documents to Cenedi. The exchange presented her actions as more than a field operation: the deposition and the proposed public statement were intended to preserve a record that could support later judgment, while the precautions around Lord Machigi aimed to keep the next encounter from becoming another armed confrontation.

Guild Restoration and Aftermath

The Marid evidence belonged to a wider effort to recover the Guild without destroying the institution it was meant to restore. Shishogi later died in an apparent suicide after an incendiary fire at the office. The records were damaged but not destroyed, and a man was intercepted carrying several notebooks from the office. Those surviving records mattered because the struggle over the Council depended on establishing what had been done through assignments and official decisions, not merely asserting that the leadership had acted improperly.

The confrontation had a substantial human cost: two of Bren’s side were out of action, including Banichi; two members of the resistance were dead, three if the target was counted; fourteen people in the building were wounded; and 147 voluntarily stood down pending a resolution. Sixteen others were under arrest for sorting and testimony. A new Council was about to meet, declare a quorum, record the change, and close the meeting. These figures show how the attempt to reclaim lawful authority had to manage both immediate security and the question of which members could be trusted.

Tabini subsequently reported that the old Guildmaster was back and that missing or retired members had returned, while five officials installed during the preceding year could not be found. The restored leadership began interviewing members, starting with assignments to the Bujavid, and assessing loyalties, kinship, past service, references, and other testimony. In that process, Ilisidi’s signed account of the Dojisigin Marid offered a concrete record of local actions at a moment when the Guild’s leadership, membership, and claims to legitimacy were all under review.