The Assassins of Tamurin (33 page)

I'd expected nothing like this . . . this what? This secret confidence? Did he want to be
friendsl

“Then what do you like, for entertainment?” I asked.

He looked almost guilty. “The popular drama. The plays the High Theater sniffs at so scornfully.”

I'd have warmed to him if he hadn’t been so dangerous. “Well, I rather like those, myself. But do you ever have a chance to see one?”

He nodded. “A year ago I arranged for some performances in the palace, very unofficially. We had several comedies.”

I knew whom he meant by that
we,
and I knew infallibly that the Surina had liked the plays, too, and that he’d arranged them for her. I imagined the two of them in the Porcelain Pavilion, side by side in their chairs on the dais, laughing till their ribs hurt.

“The Magister of Protocol must have sent me a dozen memoranda of protest,” he went on. “But he’s happy now, because I haven’t seen one since last summer. But you say you like the common theater?”

“A great deal. The Rainbow’s playing
The Tale of the Glass Mountain
soon. I'm going to go, if I can find the time.”

“I haven’t seen that one. It must be new. But you have very cleverly evaded my question. So I ask it again: Are you willing to come to see me again?”

I ran my fingertip around the cool rim of my cup. Then 1 said, “Yes, I am. But I can’t come when the company’s performing, even if I’m not onstage. Master Luasin is very strict.”

My effrontery appalled even me. The Sun Lord himself, the absolute ruler of great Bethiya, had asked me to visit him. And what did I answer? That I might find time to do so, provided I didn’t have something more important at hand.

To my relief, Terem chuckled. “Indeed, both duty and propriety must be acknowledged at all times. But perhaps Master Luasin might be willing to make an occasional exception.”

We both knew he would, without hesitating for an instant. I said, in my politest voice, “Perhaps he might.”

“Good. I’ll send word in a few days. Refuse me if you must, and I’ll try again.”

“All right,” I said, and he stood up. I rose and touched my throat. “Good-bye, my lord.”

“Good-bye, Mistress Lale Navari.”

I watched him go, and then he was gone, and our first meeting was over. But to this day I remember every word that passed between us, as if we’d spoken them no more than an hour ago.

And I remember the rain. Was it an omen? I don’t think so. I don’t believe in omens like that. But it remains forever in my memory, that sound of soft, cool rain falling on the pavilion roof, like tears.

My life had been simple until that meeting. I merely had to convince people that I was Lale the aspiring actress, while concealing the secret self that was Lale the spy. Trained to duplicity, I accomplished this with ease; just as naturally as I painted my face for the stage, I painted my nature as other than it was.

But by the time the month of Early Blossom slid into Hot Sky, I realized that I was changing. It was as if the paint were sinking imperceptibly through my skin, so that sometimes I really was the Lale of the Elder Company, as well as the Lale of Three Springs. Occasionally, especially when I was with Terem, I would pass a whole day without thinking of myself as a spy. I wondered uneasily about this at first, fearing that such forgetfulness might lead to self-betrayal. But then I realized that I should welcome it, for when I
was
only Lale the actress, I was playing my role to perfection. I'd heard older actors say that to actually become their character was the highest achievement of their art, and I was proud that I'd already learned to do it—especially since my life might depend on the quality of my performance.

But even when I was most completely Lale of the Elder Company, I was always faintly aware of that other Lale’s unwavering scrutiny. Her presence was a comfort, because I knew that if I needed her she’d be there, capable and merciless. It never occurred to me that I might someday be uncertain about which of these two women, if either, I truly was.

Terem didn’t fall easily into my arms, for Merihan had been in her grave less than a year; her tomb stood in the palace necropolis called the Garden of the Ancestors. Despite this he didn’t quite feel that she was dead, and when he was with me he could sometimes let himself believe that he’d got her back.

But to do him justice, he was perfectly aware that he wanted me near him because I sometimes seemed to be Merihan. Yet he also rather liked me, simply as me, which unsettled him. Though he never said so, I suspect he sometimes half wished I’d never crossed his path, because I complicated his emotions so much. But as long as his heart could not let Merihan go, he could not let me go, either.

For my part, I knew that Mother would care Uttle how I snared him, as long as I did. But I knew better than to throw myself at him. Instead I held myself slightly aloof, forcing him to come to me. Neither did I try to act as I imagined Merihan might have, because he’d have seen through that in an eye-blink. Instead, I played the role of the scrupulous and clear-sighted woman, modeUng my part somewhat on that of the general’s sister in
The Omens of Dawn,
I reckoned this would impress him with my virtue, which it seemed to do.

As the summer days drifted past, my visits to Jade Lagoon became ever more frequent. Each time I arrived, I was met at the Wet Gate by Kirkin. Because he was a clerk in the Chancellery and knew things Mother might find useful, I tried to charm him into talking about his work, and before long I succeeded. In his eagerness to impress me, he sometimes dropped nuggets of information I would otherwise never have learned.

Kirkin conducted me each time to the Reed PaviUon, where Terem and I always met. The pavilion was very private, nestled in an angle of the outer palace walls and screened by a tall boxwood hedge. A pond sprinkled with blue water UUes lay alongside the pavilion, and in its shallows grew the fronded reeds that gave the paviUon its name. Around the pond were thickets of flowers: sea lavender, basket-of-gold, and orange torch lilies, all chosen for their colors and their fragrances. The veranda where we sat was built out over the water, so that you could look down and see rainbow carp shinunering in the cool depths.

In the beginning, Terem and I talked a great deal. I told
him
about my childhood in Riversong, which interested him because, he said, he knew little of how the poor of Durdane lived and what they suffered. I, of course, assumed that he merely feigned his concern, in order to impress me with his virtue. For he was courting me, there was no doubt of it.

He was also curious about my life at Repose. Here I needed to be careful, although I had carefully rehearsed a version of it that did not betray its central fact—that Mother had taught her daughters to regard the Sun Lord as their deadly enemy. I gave a fine performance, and deceived him without any trouble at all.

It was during this time that I discovered something quite unusual about him, something that was to have the most profound consequences: he was a very good listener. Most people are not; they hear you with half an ear, while thinking about what they are going to say when you’ve finished. But when I spoke, Terem gave me and my words his full attention, and it pleased me.

That pleasure was the first hairline crack in the protective shell of loyalty I’d forged, over so many years, at Mother’s direction. It was so subtle a thing that I felt no alarm, and why should I? The flustered sensations I’d experienced at our first meeting no longer assaulted me, and only occasionally did I feel a curious weakness in my knees when I looked at him.

Not that he didn’t attract me; I or any other woman would need to be dead not to feel his allure. But the attraction didn’t trouble me, for it would make my eventual role as his mistress all the easier to play—and that prospect, I had to admit, became more pleasing as time passed.

So, because I thought I was keeping such a level head, I failed to see the danger in which I stood. That danger was not that I might lose my judgment to passion; I'd been trained too carefully for that, and besides, I had Nilang’s wraiths to keep me loyal. The real peril was a more subtle one: its portent was the happiness I felt when we did no more than talk.
That
was the danger: not lust, who rules the body like a conqueror, but rather love, the thief in the night who comes to steal the heart.

As we grew more familiar with each other, we discovered that we both liked games. Often we played Twelve Lines, though I was no match for him and usually lost. Occasionally we played Over the River, or Odds and Evens, with pebbles for stakes. Eventually I acquired a pack of cards and taught him Six Roosters, which he enjoyed enormously. I was good at gambling and won more often than he did, but he lost cheerfully, something I hadn’t expected in a man so accustomed to taking precedence.    
.

Occasionally we tried poetry competitions, a then-fashionable pursuit in which you had to compose a lyric on the spot, and your opponent must respond with a poem of the same form, mood, and imagery. To my surprise, although Terem was a brilliant and polished orator, poetry completely escaped his grasp. I was a dismal poet, but he was even worse. In desperation he resorted to such ludicrous images and language that our contests were never completed but were invariably cut short by peals of helpless laughter.

At other times, we walked in the secluded garden behind the Hall of Records, a quiet place reserved for the Sun Lord’s privacy. Terem was a fine archer, and that was where he liked to practice. When I discovered this, I asked if he would lend me a bow, and thereafter we passed many happy hours shooting at straw targets. In those days, upper-class women often played at archery, so he found nothing odd in my interest—^I merely had to pretend to be much less skilled than I was.

Perin had wamed me to expect his erotic approaches almost as soon as we met, but she misjudged him. Despite all the time we passed together, we didn’t exchange even a touch of the hand, much less become intunate. In fact, gossip had given him very few lovers even before his marriage, and after he and Merihan were wed there had been none at all. In this he was quite unlike his predecessors, who were notorious for the number and expense of their mistresses.

There was calculation in this. Halis Geray had put Terem on the dais with the intent that he would behave according to the precept of the
Golden Discourses,
which goes: “If a ruler cannot rule his own conduct, how can he rule the conduct of others?” The decorum that now reigned in Jade Lagoon suggested that the promise had been kept, which helped obscure the brutal slaughter and infanticide by which Terem had ascended the dais.

Meanwhile, outside the palace walls, the world went on. Terem’s War Ministry continued to strengthen the army and the defenses of Bethiya’s border with Lindu, and the Ministry of Supply searched high and low for good cavalry mounts and recruits. Ardavan sent emissaries and gifts to Terem, as well as to every other ruler who might conceivably become an enemy or an ally. These were accompanied by effusive assurances of Ardavan’s desire for peace.

Nobody believed him, and his multiplying armies and ambiguous intentions unsettled the sleep not only of Garhang, Lindu’s king, and Terem’s military officials, but also that of the Despots of Anshi and Panarik. These two men remembered all too well how Ardavan had built troop barges before he tumed west and overran Jouhar. If he ever made good his earlier threat and got his Exile horsemen across the river, he would make short work of both Anshi’s and Panarik’s infantry brigades. And nobody except Ardavan knew what he would do then.

By the middle of Hot Sky, I was visiting Jade Lagoon as much as one day in three, not including the days of the Elder Company’s performances in the Porcelain Pavilion. Master Luasin, having done his part in getting me into Terem’s company, no longer risked the ire of the other actresses by substituting me for them. Consequently I only performed twice more in the palace, both times because Imela had a cough.

Even by this time, surprisingly few people knew about Terem and me. I came and went at Jade Lagoon very quietly, by hired periang and not by a palace sequina, and Kirkin never identified me to anyone we encountered. I also wore my hair pulled straight back and fastened with a silver clip, which changed the shape of my eyes and cheekbones so that I looked much less like the Surina. Moreover, I was only one person among the many who had business at the palace: magistrates, bureaucrats, messengers, officers of the army and the fleet, tradesmen and tradeswomen went in and out at all hours. With so many other minnows in the stream, I passed almost unnoticed.

But I was watched as I went about the city. I’d expected this and would have been very surprised if Halis Geray had ignored me, given my budding affair with the Sun Lord. Four of the Chancellor’s people followed me, working in shifts of two. They were fairly good at their trade, and an untrained person would not have detected them. I never tried to shake them off, not even when I went to Nilang’s, because giving them the slip would be a clear signal that I was more than I appeared to be.

As for actively seeking out military and diplomatic secrets, Nilang had forbidden me to do this, for I was far too precious an instrument to risk in humdrum spying. However, I did have to report on my conversations with Terem, and on anything else interesting I might observe in Jade Lagoon. I never wrote any of this down, not even in the poem code we’d learned at Three Springs—the domestics at the Chain Canal villa might be working for the Chancellor, and scribbling such stuff would be unforgivably stupid. I gave my reports orally to Nilang, who encoded them onto slips of paper that resembled the jottings of a very mediocre poet; if necessary, she added further information using invisible ink. The paper became packing for small items that she sent by