The Troubles

The Troubles names the political upheaval associated with Murini’s rule and its lasting disruption of the Assassins’ Guild. Even after the coup ended, the period continued to shape who would serve, whom the Guild would obey, and whether its authority could be restored by law rather than imposed by force. Its legacy was not only the absence of senior officers from Shejidan, but a crisis over the Guild’s ability to prove that its own leadership had broken the rules it was meant to uphold.

The Guild Under Murini

When Murini came to power, some of the Guild’s senior members went underground. Several were listed as dead despite being alive; some maintained those identities in the records, while the most senior claimed retirement. Among the hidden members were people who had helped organize the network that restored Tabini. After the coup ended, the current Guild leadership repeatedly ordered them back to duty, but they refused. The stand-off became a continuing struggle within the Guild, shaped by personal disagreements as well as distrust of its leaders.

The exiled members had watched the Guild purge itself twice and believed its neutrality had been breached. They objected to attacks on civilians that had not been formally filed, violations of Guild codes, and the Council’s refusal to bring charges in cases including Haikuti. They had also reconstructed how appointments to particular offices had helped prepare the coup, and knew that Haikuti had been involved in the attack on Tabini at Taiben. The Guild’s own files concealed his records, and Tabini’s ban on the Kadagidi lord had helped keep Haikuti safe from arrest. These findings troubled Algini and Banichi, who had received information from the exiles; at the Kadagidi estate, Banichi expected trouble but withheld the source to protect it and because the allegations had not yet been proved.

A Dispute Over Law and Legitimacy

The exiles’ position was complicated. They did not favor humans, distrusted the space program, and feared Lord Geigi. They had once supported Shishogi’s demands to reject computers as a human gift, a decision they later recognized as a serious mistake. Nor did they support Tabini simply because of his association with humans. Their stated commitment was instead to the Guild’s law: during Murini’s rule, they had worked with humans on Mospheira to restore it, and they now promised to support the effort to reclaim the Guild.

Jago warned that a direct assault on Guild Headquarters could cost innocent members their lives and destroy the records needed to establish the case. If Shishogi believed he was about to be dismissed, he might destroy evidence. The aim was therefore not merely to defeat the Council, but to stand before the membership in the Council Chamber and prove that the Council itself had broken the law. Without that proof, Tabini might have to act by decree and the power of the aijinate; even a successful intervention of that kind would leave the Guild’s legitimacy damaged.

The Troubles in Institutional Memory

The Guild’s neutrality had deep institutional roots. In the era when the railroad from Shejidan to the west was being built, the Assassins’ Guild began as a cross-clan authority empowered to protect the aiji from assassins serving individual lords. When powerful lords later sought to break the railroad agreement into administrative districts, the Guild backed the aiji in enforcing the agreement. Its role had grown alongside associations that crossed clan and regional boundaries, making shared purpose—not clan separation—the basis of a wider political order.

After the war, the aiji proposed that guild membership and appointments should depend on qualification rather than clan, region, or kinship. Guild masters gained authority over their own membership. The Assassins’ Guild also agreed that its members could not seek political office or lordship, receiving statutory protections from political pressure in return. That history makes the post-coup crisis more than an internal personnel dispute: a Council that ignored Guild law threatened the institutional independence and neutrality that had made the Guild a check on powerful lords.

The Return and Its Consequences

The exiles eventually gave their word to return, leaving their identities for a second time, as well as families and marriages, to reclaim the Guild, examine its records, and restore the law. Their return brought the long absence of senior officers to an abrupt close. Veijico reported that Tabini and Ilisidi had brought officers back to Shejidan; the Guildmaster who had held office since Tabini’s restoration was overthrown, the Director of Assignments was dead, senior Council figures had stepped down, and two were under arrest. The returning officers took charge, though Veijico withheld names.

The Troubles thus ends as an aftermath rather than a clean resolution: command has changed hands, but the deeper test is whether the Guild can recover authority by exposing violations and applying its rules. Meanwhile, the wider political strain persists. As Tabini became suspicious that neither the atevi nor the Mospheirans had been told the truth about events in space, he sent Bren Cameron, Ilisidi, and Cajeiri to investigate. The decision reflected the fragile conditions surrounding the post-coup order: the shuttle fleet had brought wealth to neglected regions but also intensified social instability, while decisions made in the heavens without atevi participation remained unacceptable.