The Assassins of Tamurin (23 page)

I was much better off, since Mother had sent a generous note of exchange with me, which I banked with the Wayfarers’ Guard office and drew on as I needed. I was deliberately vague about my resources, though, and I lived as the others did, allowing them to believe that Mother kept me on a tight financial rein. Pretty soon they accepted me, showing in this the best quality of artists, which is that they judge you on your abilities and not your bloodline or wealth.

On the other hand, while most artists are indifferent to rank, they also tend to be self-absorbed, spiteful, envious of each other’s successes, and as likely to cooperate as rats in a sack. We theater students were no exception, being arrogant by nature and having the usual braggadocio of youth. However, we had a certain fellowship through being collectively at the mercy of Master Mourken, and we got along well enough to spend much of our spare time together, both within the school and outside it. I tended to be the leader in our city excursions, since I was at least as brash as the men and more inventive.

On the night I first killed a man, five of us had gone to a punch house near the prefecture. The palace quarter was quite safe because of the Despot’s patrols, and it was in this punch house that we spent most of what spare time we had. I remember it because of its peculiar name, which was the Frolicking Stoat.

Punch houses had recently become fashionable in Istana, especially among the youthful smart set. You could buy wine or distilled spirits in them, but their specialty was punches.

made from water boiled and cooled, and then flavored with various nectars and syrups. One popular type had the elixir of a southem bean added to it. If you drank it in the evening you’d be awake all night, but it was very useful for perking one up in the moming after one had made a night of it.

There were no such nights for me, though, partly because I didn’t like being dmnk and partly because drinking might make me drop my guard. Even in my most carefree moments I never forgot that among these not-yet-professionals I was already a professional, in ways that none of them could be allowed to suspect. For this reason I liked punch houses, because nobody expected you to swill wine in them, and I could relax as much as I ever did.

On that particular evening, the Stoat was crowded and fearsomely hot, and I had the inspiration of going to one of the lower-class places by the river docks, where it might be cooler. That was an unsafe neighborhood at night, but after some debate I persuaded everybody to go. There were five of us, after aU, and we had our belt knives, although these were not much use except for cutting meat and bread.

We left the Stoat and headed for the river. A full moon hung in the sky, and bats squeaked faintly as they hunted through the thick air. Many people, made restless by the heat, were out and about, and we encountered a crowd around the doorway of a fried-fish shop. In the darkness—^foolishly, we didn’t have a lantem—^we got ourselves mixed up in it. After some confusion I disentangled myself and followed the dim shapes of the others into the darkness of the next street.

I was thinking about a part I was to act the next day, and I’d gone a few dozen yards before someone ahead of me spoke. But I didn’t recognize either his voice or the one that answered, and with a shock I realized that I’d been following the wrong people.

I stopped. I was on a narrow street, whose second-floor balconies shut out the moon and most of the stars. Above me, only a few seams of dim orange betrayed window shutters with lamps behind them.

What to do? I didn’t know this quarter of Istana, but I could tell it wasn’t among the better ones. I considered trying to find my companions, but decided it wasn’t worth it; I would be better off going home. So I tumed around and went back along the street until I found the crowd outside the fish shop. I skirted it and hurried into the alley through which I’d come with the others. Or I hoped it was the same alley. I was now going in the opposite direction and everything looked different.

At the next comer was a wider avenue, and I heard a fountain off to my left. Here I could see the stars better, and the position of the Hammer told me that the prefecture must lie to my left. I set out in that direction, keeping to the shadows along the walls. Dogs barked and I heard the dusk watch dmms sound the fifth hour. It was getting late. I stepped in something mushy the street cleaners had overlooked, and swore because my shoes were nearly new.

Finally, after a few more alley intersections, I worked out where I was—^not far from the palace quarter, so I’d be home in no time at all. I was so sure of myself I began walking in the moonlit part of the street, so I could see if I were about to tread in anything unpleasant.

Abmptly a man stepped out in front of me, not two paces off. I stopped, smelling the wine on him.

“Come here, woman,” he said. He had a young voice.

“I’m not a whore,” I said. “Let me go by.”

“I’m not after that,” he said, taking another step toward me. He raised his right hand and I saw the glint of moonlight on a leaf-shaped blade. “See this? Keep quiet and give me your money.”

Nobody had threatened me with violence since Riversong, but I felt neither angry nor frightened, just very alert. Without thinking about it, I shifted my stance to the guard position.

“Leave me alone,” I said. “Go away.”

“I'll cut you, woman. Give me your coin now or I'll slit your eyeballs.”

“No,” I said. “Go away. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He laughed drunkenly. “Hurt me? Aren’t you the saucy one? Maybe I’ll have you, after all.”

“Go ahead,” I replied, “if you think you can do it.” And because I wanted him angry, I added, “Except your blade’s not stiff enough for the work, is it? You’re a harbor bum-boy, aren’t you?”

He cursed and hurled himself at me, knife sweeping toward my belly. I danced aside, grabbed his wrist, and with two quick twists I broke it. He screamed as the knife fell, and tried to grab my hair with his good hand.

He missed. I jabbed him under the breastbone with my stiffened fingers, but darkness spoiled my aim. He only grunted, and suddenly he had me by the forearm and was trying to slam me against a wall. I pulled him forward as hard as I could, bent double, and rammed my hip into his belly. He let go of my arm and hurtled over my shoulder. I heard a
crack
as his head struck stone and the thud of his body hitting the pavement, and then he was only a huddled shape at my feet, a shadow among shadows.

It had all happened so quickly. I stared down at him, quivering with reaction. Had I killed him?

Hinges creaked above me and a shutter banged open. A man called, “Get away from my door, you. I know you’re there, so try your mischief somewhere else.”

If people found me with a corpse. I’d have some explaining to do. I drew back into the shadows and waited until the man grunted and the shutter banged shut. As soon as the street was quiet I hurried away, keeping out of the moonlight and walking as softly as I knew how.

But nobody else bothered me, and I found my way to the prefecture where the porter let me in. My compatriots retumed shortly afterward, having searched fmitlessly for me. They’d intended to get reinforcements and go out again, and there was much relief when they discovered they didn’t have to.

By that time I’d recovered my poise, and made little of getting lost. But I was almost sure I'd killed a man, and it made me feel very different, as if I'd changed into somebody else. I went to bed and tried to sleep, but a long time passed before I drifted off.

The next day I was tired and distracted, and botched a rehearsal. I wasn’t afraid of being caught and accused of murder, for nobody had seen me strike the man down, and anyway, he might not be dead. Even if he were, he’d been trying to kill me, and neither gods nor men could condemn my act of self-defense.

What did trouble me was this: Had I gone too far? Nilang and Master Aa had drummed into me that fighting was a last resort, to be undertaken only when concealment and avoidance had failed. Had I violated this precept in accepting battle with my attacker, whether I'd killed him or not?

It was no defense to tell myself that I was so well trained I'd acted without thinking. I was
supposed
to think, even in the tightest situation. I was fast on my feet and he was drunk, and I might have been able to escape him by running away. But I hadn’t even thought of running, and my instructors wouldn’t approve of that at all—^not so much because I'd fought him but because I hadn’t looked for alternatives.

I finally had to face the truth of it: I hadn’t thought about running away because I'd wanted to try out my skills, not against a partner in the exercise yard, but against a real attacker. Contrary to all the training of my instructors, I had allowed impulse and desire to rule me. I had failed my first real test.

I spent a full day simmering in a mixture of shame and chagrin. Then, because brooding over my ineptitude was ultimately useless, I resolved that next time I would do better, and tried to put the matter out of my mind. Still, I couldn’t help wondering whether I had, indeed, killed the man.

Some three days later, I found out. My fellow student Simi gave me the news; she’d gone to the fish shop around the comer for something to eat and had heard the story. Her eyes glowed with excitement as she told me how everybody in the shop had been talking about it.

‘Talking about what?” I asked. We were on the prefecture’s garden veranda, where I’d been memorizing lines. “The Moonlight Girl. A man saw her.”

“Bad luck for him,” I said. Nobody wanted to see the Moonlight Girl. It meant that the Moon Lady was very displeased with you and that your life was going to be either very short or very unpleasant, or more probably both.

“Well, yes, it was his bad luck because he’s dead. But he said the Moonlight Girl killed him.”

I pricked up my ears at that. “What are you talking about? You mean she killed him and then his ghost told a spirit summoner about it?”

Simi frowned. “No, he said it before he died. She didn’t kill him outright. He died after he met her.”

“And does anybody,” I asked as indifferently as I could, “know why she was annoyed with him?”

“Oh, yes. It was because he killed his wife. Nobody found her for two days—^it was in that next village up the canal. When they did, they started looking for him and somebody came across him lying in a street here, the night you got lost. They thought he’d fallen off a roof and hit his head, and they took him to Our Lady’s hospice by the harbor. He was unconscious till last night, and then he woke up and told the priestess the Moonlight Girl had broken his wrist and then felled him with her silver axe, and it was because he’d killed his wife. He asked for cleansing and died a bit later.” Her eyes shone. “But isn’t it
weirdl
You might have been close by when it happened. Didn’t you
see
anything?”

“No,” 1 answered. I’d killed him, then. I might have been a little bit sorry about it, except that he’d murdered his wife. “That was all he said? That he met the Moonlight Girl?” “As far as I know.” She shuddered dramatically. “Isn’t it scary?”

“Indeed,” I said. I feh, however, a certain relief. I’d served justice without knowing it, and perhaps that was the reason

I hadn’t thought to run away—^perhaps the Moonlight Girl really had been after the man and had used me as her instrument. That was far preferable to a failure to live up to my training, and I felt much better after I decided that she must have been with me that night, and that I hadn’t been so inept after all.

But whatever the truth of it, I had changed. I now knew that the world was divided into two kinds of people, those who had taken a human life and those who had not, and I’d crossed from one to the other and could never get back. I’d wondered more than once if I could kill, and now I knew; I just hoped I wouldn’t ever need to do it again.

As the month of Ripe Grain ended. Master Luasin’s Elder Company returned from its tour in Bethiya. The Elder Company was his original troupe, the one I’d seen in Repose, and I was looking forward to meeting Perin again, since she’d encouraged my dramatic ambitions during that long-ago visit.

We ran into each other the day after her retum, in the gallery outside the students’ stage, as I was heading for the women’s costumery after a full-dress rehearsal. On seeing her I said, “Good morning. Lady Mistress Varvasi,” and bowed.

Perin didn’t answer. She had stopped short, wide-eyed.

I smiled. I assumed she was astonished at seeing me here, and was gratified that she remembered me, since it meant my early acting must have impressed her. Also, I was wearing the costume of an emperor’s daughter, which made me look quite regal. Still, her reaction seemed overly dramatic.

A moment passed as she examined my face; she herself had aged a bit but remained very lovely. Finally she said, “And who on earth are you?”

I stiffened. So much for being memorable. “I’m Lale Navari,” I said coldly. “We met in Chiran some years ago. I was in a student play you saw there.” And I added pointedly, “I’m the daughter of the Despotana of Tamurin.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “I remember meeting you.” Then she laughed, a sweet honeyed sound. “But you’ve grown up, and of course people look so different in paint and costume. And you startled me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was so alarming.”