The Assassins of Tamurin (35 page)

“That was our intent. But Ardavan’s rise has changed matters. He’s very dangerous, and now I could use some allies.” “I see. So you may marry outside Bethiya, for an alliance against Ardavan?”

“It’s possible.” He grimaced. “It’s too bad Yazar never gave up his preferences long enough to make a daughter or two.”

All this would be interesting information for Mother, coming as it did from the Sun Lord himself. It would be even better if he’d name some of the women, but I didn’t dare press him. Perhaps he’d go on by himself.

Unfortunately, he didn’t. Turning from the pool to me he said, “I thought it better that you know how things stand between us. I hope you’re not disappointed.”

“I am not in the least disappointed,” I said sharply. “Let me remind you that I didn’t seek you out; you sought me out. I never came here hoping to climb onto the dais with you, and it does not disappoint me that I can’t.” Then I couldn’t resist adding, “Even if I had the best bloodline in Durdane, I still wouldn’t be your wife.”

No man likes to hear such a thing from a woman, even if he has absolutely no intention of marrying her. Terem was no exception. “\^y not?” he demanded.

“You love Merihan. You’ll take your next consort for state reasons, and she’ll have to live with your memories. But I don’t.”

He frowned. “I don’t see Merihan in you, not now.”

“So you’ve told me. I still don’t believe you.”

“Oh, very well, I do, but not as much as before. You’re more.. .”

“Difficult than she was?”

He laughed, but without much humor. “That would be a word for it.”

“If I were not difficult, would you enjoy my company as much?”

“No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” He glanced up at the sun. “But that was the third hour bell a little while ago, and now I must go and see Halis, and you must go home. Without being difficult.”

“Very well,” I said, rising. He often broke off our meetings this way, abruptly. He was annoyed with me, too; I could tell from the set of his mouth. But he’d get over it, and my departure now would be convenient—I could stop at Nilang’s on my way back to the villa and tell her what I’d learned. So far I’d had little useful information to give her about Terem’s intentions, but at last I was making progress.

After we left the Reed Pavilion, Terem and I parted in the courtyard behind the Chancellery, where I would remain until Kirkin arrived to escort me back to Wet Gate. I waited patiently for some time, but Kirkin didn’t appear and I began to get restless. We were performing in die Rainbow that evening, and if I didn’t see Nilang in the afternoon I’d have to go to her tomorrow morning. That would interfere with the picnic in the Mirror that Perin and I had planned. We were supposed to meet several of her friends there, as well as Tsusane, and go gambling afterward.

More time passed, but still Kirkin didn’t arrive. I now had a choice. I could either retum to Wet Gate without him, which would allow me to go to Nilang’s, or I could seize this chance to reconnoiter the palace and its grounds. I’d been hoping for an opportunity to do the latter, and here it was. The pendant Kirkin always gave me on my arrival at Jade Lagoon was a high-ranking one, so I reckoned I could go most places without interference. If anyone questioned me. I’d say I’d gotten lost; and given the labyrinth of gardens, covered walks, galleries, pavilions, and other buildings that made up Jade Lagoon, that was plausible enough.

Feeling as if dozens of eyes were watching from the Chancellery’s upper windows, I left the pavilion and slipped out of the courtyard by way of the gallery on its west side. The gallery ended in a glade among a stand of laurels; here I should have tumed left, to take the gravel path toward the

Wet Gate. Instead I tumed right, to cross in front of the rambling House of Felicity, the Sun Lord’s personal residence. Beyond this was a region of the palace where I’d never been, and I set off to explore it.

I wasn’t alone among its glades and shaded avenues and pavilions. The day had tumed very sultry and most people who could stay indoors were doing so, but inclination or duty had brought others outside. Men wearing multicolored rank sashes strolled along the avenues, some accompanied by their wives, for many senior officials and their families lived in the residential pavilions of Jade Lagoon’s northeast quarter. There were also a few unescorted ladies, wearing pendants that denoted various kinds of high status.

I received some curious glances, but no one questioned my right to be where I was. Soon I came to a big round shrine with a dome; it was for the Beneficent Ones, and I slipped inside to see what it was like. It was very richly appointed, the interior all gold leaf and vermilion and blue paint, with a floor of polished white stone. Under the dome, the Seven stood in a half circle, gazing down at me with varying degrees of benignity. I knelt before them to send up a general prayer for mercy, success, protection from enemies, good luck, riches, beauty, and health: in other words, what I saw as the essentials of a complete life. When I was finished, I added a silver dram to the flowers and coins already in the offering tray, and slipped back out into the sunlight.

Shortly after that I came across a second shrine, this one standing within a grove of dark cypress trees. The trees told me whose place it was, but I went inside anyway. Standing over the offering tray was the Lord of the Dead, his robes carved from black pitchwood, his haunting visage cut in ivory to show the pallor of death. His face was tumed down and aside, in the classic pose. The artist who made him had a fine hand, for he’d caught perfectly the mingled sternness and sorrow of the one who takes our lives, not because he is our enemy, but because it is the way it must be. He reminded me of my brief and unpleasant sickbed encounter with the Quiet World, so I quickly left him some silver and went on my way.

Eventually I emerged into a glade bordered by lime trees. To my right, a stone wall rose above the treetops, its height pierced by arrow slits and crowned by battlements. That, and the tower rising from one comer, told me it was the Arsenal; the Treasury would be adjacent, and the Mint behind. It was a well-guarded area, and as I was leaving the glade a half-dozen soldiers tramped past me, going off watch under the command of a bored-looking troop captain.

After they went by, I walked for a long time but saw no one else. Cicadas buzzed, grasshoppers sang, bees hummed, the breeze was warm and smelled of the sea and flowers. It was such a lazy summer aftemoon that I almost forgot why I was here and imagined how nice it would be to find a secluded bench where I nught take a little nap.

Eventually I came to a wall, which angled out of the bushes ahead of me. It was half again my height and, like so much of the palace, built of amber brick. An open archway pierced it, and beyond the arch there was a big rhododendron bush that concealed whatever stood within.

I walked under the arch, around the rhododendrons, and stepped into a place of tombs. I'd discovered the necropolis of Jade Lagoon, the Garden of the Ancestors. All the Sun Lords of Bethiya would be here.

And their Surinas. That thought bothered me. I wanted to leave, but there crept over me a peculiar notion that I ought to find her grave, and . . . what? What should I do there, I who was the enemy of the man she’d loved? I should go nowhere near her. Tliere was a whiff of sacrilege about it, as if I exulted over the death that had brought me such good fortune.

But I didn’t tum back. Impelled by a need I did not understand, I went looking for her.

She wasn’t hard to find, since her grave was the newest in the garden. It was set among willows and cypresses;

marigolds had been planted around it, bright as gold and copper coins. The tomb was of northern design, like a little house with a peaked roof and swept-up eaves, the walls painted white and blue and the roof tiles glazed yellow. Where the windows and doors would be, in a real house, were tinted carvings of the dead woman’s life: Merihan as a child, Merihan at her wedding, Merihan enthroned next to the Sun Lord, sitting straight and proud, her hands resting serenely on the arms of her state chair.

I stared at her various faces. She did look like me, although she was prettier, or the sculptor had flattered her memory. I was sorry in a way that she was dead, for by all reports she’d been a sweet-natured and gentle woman, which I certainly wasn’t. But now I wasn’t sure why I’d come looking for her. I really had nothing to say to the Surina, being who I was.

With that, it occurred to me that hanging around her tomb might not be wise. She’d certainly have had the proper rituals at her death, so her idu-spirit presumably wouldn’t trouble anybody, but I wasn’t exactly her friend and it might be foolish to risk drawing attention to myself. I bowed respectfully to her largest image, the one with her and Terem together, and departed. But as I left I saw a cleared place among the trees next to her tomb and I thought:
That's his, he's keeping that so he can lie next to her someday.

It was a thought tinged with sadness, so I brushed it off and went looking for the arch by which I had entered. But I’d got tumed around somehow, and instead I found myself in front of a different stretch of the necropolis wall.

This part had a slatted wooden gate between blue pillars. Discreetly, I opened it a hand’s breadth and peeked through the gap. Beyond it, another garden awaited me, but it didn’t appear to have any tombs in it, so it wasn’t part of the necropolis. I put my head around the gatepost for a better look, saw that it was deserted, and slipped through.

It was a larger garden than my first glimpse had suggested, rising away from me in three shallow terraces to end at a high wall; above the wall, on its far side, rose the roof of a pavilion.

And filling the air was the sound of running water. In fact, water was everywhere: in streams, in miniature cascades, in tiny waterfalls, in brooks and rivulets, in pools and fountains. The vegetation beneath my feet was not grass, but a springy green carpet bearing tiny flowers with orange petals. Here and there stood wooden benches, and almost at my feet was an oval pool, containing red and blue fish whose fins waved like gossamin veils in the slow current.

It was quite the most wonderful place I had seen in the palace. I could imagine spending a whole summer here, with books and conversation, surrounded by the murmur of bees and the splash of water. But today I couldn’t linger, because Kirkin, assuming he’d missed me by now, would be beside himself with anxiety. Spotting a gate in the far wall, which would lead in approximately the right direction, I started across the garden.

I was halfway to the gate when I realized where I was.

I stopped in my tracks and looked all around, but there was no doubt about it: I had wandered into the Water Terrace. Men and women and children had died here, hacked to ribbons by swords and axes, impaled on spears, screaming as tiiey died. I might be standing in the very place where Mother’s baby was murdered.

Every trace of loveliness fled. The scent of flowers tumed to the sickly reek of blood, the springy turf felt like a corpse underfoot. Sickened and disgusted, I ran to the gate, wrenched it open, and hurried through.

I found myself in a covered walkway, one of the open-air galleries that connected several of the palace buildings. After closing the gate firmly behind me, I stood still for a bit, catching my breath and swearing to myself that I’d never go this way again. Then I tried to work out where I was.

The walkway resembled a very long curved veranda, but open on both sides. Because of the curve I couldn’t see all the way along its length, but a glance outside showed me that it led to a large building. From the roofline and the colors of its shutters, this was the House of FeUcity, where Terem lived. Now knowing where I was, I started along the gallery’s curve, intending to cut around the back of the residence and head for Wet Gate.

I was a quarter of the way along the gallery when the woman came into sight. She was proceeding slowly away from me, with such a graceful ghding walk that she seemed to float over the ground. Her clothes were very rich: white shoes, a skirt of gleaming silver gossamin with a water design at the hem, and a high-collared silver jacket embroidered with blue and red swordtail butterflies. On her head was a hat with a broad floppy brim, not quite in the newest fashion, with an amethyst ribbon and a white plume.

Not wanting to overtake her—with those clothes she must be of very high rank and might ask questions I’d have to answer—^I slowed my steps. I expected her to draw away from me then and vanish around the curve, but she also seemed to have altered her pace, for she remained in view. I slowed even more, but still she didn’t vanish. Now there was something vaguely famihar in her aspect. Had I seen her in the Porcelain Pavihon, among the audience? That hat, those butterflies ...

No, I’d seen them just a little while ago. They were very like the ones Merihan worn in her tomb carvings. Indignation rose in me. It was truly tasteless for a court lady to wear clothing so much like the Surina’s, less than a year after her death. It bordered on insolence, and at the very least was highly disrespectful. Who did this woman think she was?

Or was she up to the same game as I? Did I have a rival? Had Terem really been going to see the Chancellor, as he’d told me, or was it this woman he went to meet? The possi-bihty of competition hadn’t occurred to me. There had been no gossip to suggest a rival, and if Terem were sharing his bed, I was sure I’d have sensed it. But still—

I was now annoyed enough to disregard caution; I wanted a look at her face, so I’d know her again. I picked up my pace, intending to overtake her before we reached the gallery’s end.