The Assassins of Tamurin (2 page)

Once our own Despot got the news, he sent horsemen to pursue the invaders, but by then the Kayanese were long gone. Our fate could have been worse; they hadn’t killed anyone and they hadn’t taken quite enough to starve us outright, That, of course, was so they could come back another time and rob us again.

Leaving aside raiders, poor soil, and meager crops, the

village was also poor because it was, quite literally, at the end of the road. Few outsiders found their way to Riversong—peddlers came from time to time, and four months ago a fabulator had wandered in and stayed for a day and a night. His name was Master Lim, and he sang his poems and stories to the music of a nine-stringed sivara. He was young and cheerful, and when I told him how I’d arrived in Riversong, he became quite interested and talked to me kindly about it, which was more than anyone else did.

But no one, not even wandering fabulators, journeyed farther than Riversong, because there was nowhere to go on the Wing’s far bank. Over there, a wall of russet stone erupted from a shingle beach and flung itself toward the clouds; it was some seventy feet high and marked both Indar’s southeast border and the edge of civilization. Beyond the rock wall rose thickly forested hills where only jungle barbarians lived. Beyond these, in the far distance, were mountains whose peaks bore caps of white.

The road to the village, which was really only a grassy track through the forest, came from the north. Long ago—at my age I was only vaguely aware of how long—the village had been a real town, and the road had a reason to go there. Scores of boats had carried freight on the Wing in those days, and they all used the Riversong Canal to bypass the rapids downstream. Traces of the canal’s now-silted-up channel still remained in the scrub forest near the rapids, and some weedy rubble showed where the garrison’s castella once stood. But only its foundations remained, for the building stone had long since been put to other uses by the villagers. The wooden warehouses on Riversong’s waterfront had likewise rotted away, and the sturdy wharves of another era had been replaced by ramshackle piers like long-legged water insects.

In the old days, Riversong’s merchants had built big houses in the town, but with one exception these were of wood and had decayed into the past along with their owners. The exception was a sprawling mansion that, being stone, had survived. We called it the Stock House, because its two largest courtyards contained a goat pen and a swine byre. Scattered around this building were the houses where we lived, built of dry-laid red stone and roofed with overhanging thatch. The doorways and windows were small, and at night we closed them with shutters of plaited reeds.

As I trudged down the muddy lane past the Stock House, the rain was tapering off to a mist and the sky was brightening. But hardly anyone saw me come home, for at this hour the men and the older boys were at work in the fields or on the river, while the women and girls were indoors at their perpetual dough making, cloth weaving, beer brewing, child nursing, and the myriad other tasks that made up their lives.

Including darning and sewing, with needles. Ah, the needles. I'd been telling myself all the way home that the loss wasn’t as terrible as my fear suggested. But I didn’t quite believe this, and I rehearsed, for the hundredth time, how I would present myself as the innocent and injured party.

Finally I arrived at my family’s house. It was neither the best dwelling in the village nor the worst, having four rooms and a roofed cooking porch at the back, handy to the privy. A pauxa cote built of poles and woven reeds stood at one side, and I could hear the sleek brown hens gabbling to one another as I approached the doorway.

When I got inside, I'd have to face three of the family— Foster Mother Rana, Aunt Adumar, and Aunt Tamzu. Foster Father Detrim would be out on the river, fishing with his eldest son, Burad, who was nineteen. The other son, Chefen, with Kefsen the youngest of the aunts, had gone downstream this morning to cut cane for the kitchen fire. There were no uncles; Kefsen and Tamzu had been widowed by a fishing accident on the Wing and had never married again because they were so clearly barren. Adumar had doomed herself to spinsterhood by her merciless tongue.

I squared my shoulders and entered the house. Inside was the common room; just within was the square stone pillar of the ancestor shrine, with the carved box where the ancestors’ ashes were kept, a pinch for each ancestor. Some of the ash in the box belonged to Foster Mother Rana’s youngest son and her only daughter. They had died of breakbone fever not long after I washed up in Riversong, and the fact that I had waxed healthy while they had died was another source of family resentment, especially to Aunt Adumar. Adumar sometimes muttered that if I’d had the decency to catch the fever and die, Rana’s children might have recovered. I thought this was probably not true, but I was careful not to argue about it, because Adumar had a brisk way with her long wooden spoon.

The room’s two windows admitted a watery light. Aunt Tamzu and Foster Mother Rana were slicing yams on the chopping block and Aunt Adumar was at the plank table, flattening breadnut dough into rounds ready for baking. They wore the everyday dress of the village’s adult women: short sleeveless jackets and calf-length wraparound skirts, both garments woven of bast fiber and dyed a deep tan. All three looked up as I entered.

“Ah,” Adumar said, and shook her graying hair away from her forehead. She flopped a dough round onto the pile of unbaked loaves. “So you’re home, are you? Home
at last,
I should say, you lazy, useless good-for-nothing!”

I was in serious trouble, and that added a spice of satisfaction to Adumar’s sharp voice. She was a tall, spare woman, and as she dusted flour from her long hands, the backs of my legs tingled with painful apprehension.

“Speak up, Lale,” Aunt Tamzu snapped. Tamzu was as gaunt as her sister, and through her eyes a malicious, narrow intelligence glowered at the world. She detested me almost as much as did Adumar.

I risked a glance at Rana, who was watching me glumly. Unlike her sisters-in-law, she occasionally showed me a little warmth: a pat on the head instead of a swat, a smile when I tried to make a child’s joke. But the aunts ruled her, and she never intervened on my behalf when they were at me.

Indeed, if she’d had a bad day with them or with Detrim, she was happy to apply the switch to me herself.

“Where were you, Lale?” Rana asked. Her voice was angry, though not as angry as Adumar’s.

I burst into tears, not altogether feigned. For more drama, I fell to my knees, hung my head, and sobbed piteously.

“What’s the matter with the child?” Tamzu exclaimed. My behavior had startled them. I’d sometimes cry during a bad switching, if only to make them think I’d been punished enough, but otherwise I never let them see me weep. I hoped that breaking down like this would make my story all the more convincing.

Adumar clamped her fingers on my shoulder and dragged me to my feet. “Stop it, this
instant.
Stop your blubbering, girl!” She gave me a tooth-rattling shake. “What are you going on about?”

“Soldiers,” I sobbed. “At the ford over Hatch Creek. I couldn’t stop them.”

Rana gave a frightened exclamation and Tamzu blurted, “What soldiers? Coming this way?”

“I don’t know. There were three of them. They talked about a boat. I don’t know where they were from.” My sobs redoubled. I was still frightened, but I felt things were going pretty well. “They made—they made me—” I lapsed into choked snuffles, which gave me a chance to see how they were reacting. Their faces wore peculiar expressions, which I interpreted favorably.

“What did they make you do?” Adumar demanded. She sounded odd.

“Auntie, they made me lose the
needles.
They caught me and they kept asking where our silver was in the village. I said we didn’t have any money—we’re so poor. But they just
laughed
at me. Then they hit me. I was afraid they’d
kill
me. They had swords, like the ones who robbed us before.” “You’re sure there were only three?” Tamzu said in a worried voice. “It must have been a scouting party. But how did they get upriver, if they were from Kayan?”

“Didn’t you
hear
her, Tamzu?” Adumar exclaimed furiously. “The little wretch has lost our needles! That’s what she’s trying to make us forget with this drivel about soldiers!” “But, Auntie, it’s true! They were
thereV
Adumar shook me again, eyes narrowed. “Then why didn’t they slit your gullet? They knew you’d warn us.”

I hadn’t prepared for this one. “I got away,” I said desperately. “They chased me but I got away.”

Rana said, “Maybe they didn’t dare go after her. She says there were only three of them. Or maybe they were bandits. Not soldiers at all.”

“Then which were they?” Tamzu snapped at me. “Soldiers or bandits?”

My hopes rose. Rana and Tamzu at least were nosing into my net. But before I could go on, Adumar said: “So you lost the needles while they were chasing you?”

“Auntie, I couldn’t help it! I was running downstream and I fell and I think I lost them then in the creek.” I burst into tears again.

“I don’t think so,” Adumar snapped. Her fingers tightened painfully in the hollow of my shoulder. “I think this is not what happened at all.”

“But, Auntie, I swear it did! I swear it on the shrine of the ancestors!” And if they didn’t like my false oath, they’d just have to put up with it. They weren’t
my
ancestors.

“They’re not your ancestors,” Adumar said in a voice like a grindstone. “TTiey wouldn’t have you in the family, you little liar. You’re a deceiver and a blasphemer—calling on our shrine to witness your lies. No soldiers would be upriver of us. There
were
no soldiers—^you threw the needles away out of spite! You knew how much they were worth.” She took a shuddering breath. “Those needles were the price of my brother’s boat.” She looked wildly around, took two swift paces to the comer, and seized one of the heavy canes that Detrim used to drive swine. Then she turned on me, hefting the stick in a white-knuckled hand. “You’ve ruined us, you little
shegesh.
And you did it on purpose.”

“I didn’t, I didn’t,” I cried, terror surging through me. That stick could break my bones. “Please, Auntie, it’s the truth. I swear it. They were chasing me. If I’d stopped they’d have killed me.”

“Small loss,” Adumar said in a terrible voice. My knees were weak as sand. I tumed to flee but Adumar’s talons seized me by the hair, hauHng me upright so that I was half dangling by my tresses. I shrieked and rose on tiptoes to stop the pain.

Before me, the doorway darkened as a man filled it. It was Detrim, back early from the river.

“What’s this?” he asked in his reedy voice. “What’s going on? Who’s been trying to kill who?”

“You’ll kill the little wretch yourself,” Adumar said furiously, “when you hear what she’s done.” She let me find my feet but kept her grip on my hair. I stood very still. I could not imagine what Detrim might do to me. Perhaps he
would
kill me. If what Adumar said was true, I might just as well have burned his fishing boat. He might not care much about his sisters or his wife, but he cared about that boat.

“What? What’s she done, then?” he demanded, scowling down at me. Detrim had large round eyes and a pursed, thinlipped mouth above a tiny chin; he had always reminded me of a hatchetfish. Now the resemblance wasn’t funny. Hatch-etfish had long sharp teeth and plenty of them.

“She’s tossed away the needles she was supposed to take to the Bee priestess,” Adumar said. “They’re lost for good.” Detrim’s eyes got bigger and his lips drew back from his teeth. “She
whatT
he said in a strangled voice.

“She threw them away,” Tamzu piped up. “She threw them away, but she won’t admit it.”

“Or she lost them,” Rana suggested diffidently. No one paid her any attention.

“I didn’t,” I wailed. “Soldiers came. They chased me and the needles fell. I couldn’t go back or they’d have killed me. Foster Father, that’s what happened, please believe me—” “She’s lying,” Adumar hissed, giving me a shake. “What would soldiers be doing upriver, if they were from Kayan?”

“Where did you see them?” Detrim demanded. His sinewy brown hands were twitching. “Where were they when you ran away?”

“At the Hatch Creek ford,” I got out in a choked voice. “I was on the way to the Bee Goddess shrine. I ran downstream to get away. To the sand spit. Their boat was there.”

Detrim said slowly, “Burad and I rowed past the spit at midday. There was no boat. There were no soldiers.”

A pit had opened at my feet and I was falling into it. A buzzing filled my head and my sight darkened. Knowing I was lost, I blurted, “But they were
there.
You just didn’t
see
them, Foster Father.”

His thin lips writhed. “The needles. You lost them.”

“I—I began desperately, and then Detrim’s fist was flying toward me. I flinched and his knuckles glanced from my left cheekbone. Half stunned, I twisted in Adumar’s grip but could not break it. Detrim was roaring curses, his bunched fist drew back, and I screamed and wrenched myself aside. Detrim’s blow missed me and hit Adumar in the stomach. She lost her breath with a vast gasp, let go of my hair, and doubled over. I lunged for the doorway. Detrim seized the hem of my cloak, but it pulled from my shoulders and I half fell into the street. Then, mindlessly, I ran toward the river. Detrim was yelling for someone to stop me, Tamzu screaming a shrill echo as they took up the chase. Some fleeting idea of jumping into a boat and shooting the rapids flashed through my mind, but Detrim was too close; I flew around a comer and ran for the woods. Women’s heads were popping out of doorways and windows. “Stop her!” Tamzu shrieked. “She’s ruined us—”