The Assassins of Tamurin (38 page)

“I tried to help him,” I gasped. “I tried, but he just slipped away.”

“Oh, the poor man,” she wailed. “And you risking your own pretty self. Come aboard here, mistress, let me help—” My scullsman was approaching with the periang. “It’s all right,” I said to the woman, supporting myself on the wale of her craft. “There’s my boat.” I glanced along the canal toward the wine shop, but there was no sign of my minder. He and his colleague didn’t know it, but they had just ended their careers in the Chancellor’s service, and serve them right.

The periang glided up to me. The scullsman helped me aboard and I said, “Take me to Jade Lagoon.”

I was still dripping when we reached the palace mooring basin; I was also shoeless, my right foot still bled, and I was filthy from the canal. A less impressive specimen you could not have met, and I had to speak firmly to the guard captain before he agreed to summon a very alarmed Kirkin, who took me to the Chancellery. It happened that both Terem and Halis Geray were there, and after some difficulty with the underlings I got in to see them.

“Lale, what’s happened?” Terem asked. The Chancellor watched me without expression. I could hear the faint whistle of his breath going in and out, in and out.

I hesitated, just for a moment, or I would prefer to think I did. For I’d liked Tsusane, and she was the first friend I’d made in the city. But now my words would be her death, for it was clear that there was a plot against the Sun Lord, and she was in it. I tried to make myself feel better with the thought that a genuine friend wouldn’t have put me in such terrible danger, which was true; but I didn’t think she’d done it willingly.

“My lord, I think someone means you harm during the Ripe Grain Festival,” I said, and then I told them everything, except the part about my killing two people. I said the man upstairs had fallen, that I’d made a lucky kick with the second, and that the third one must have been a poor swimmer, while I was a good one.

When I finished, Terem’s face was cold and white. I’d never seen him look like that. He said, “Lale, you might have been killed.”

This had been very unlikely, but I realized I was a little too calm for a girl who had just escaped murder. So, with a tremble in my voice and a fiightened look on my face, I answered, “I know. I’m just starting to realize it.”

He hurriedly poured me a cup of unwatered wine and held my hand while I drank some. His touch was pleasantly reassuring, for he was right—I
might
just possibly have been killed. It was three against one, after all.

I set the cup down and murmured, “Thank you, my lord.” Still looking distressed, he kept my hand in his. “This girl Tsusane—she told you no details.
Why
do you think there’s a plot to assassinate me?”

“Sir,” I said with some asperity, “if they were planning something joyful, they wouldn’t have attacked me to conceal it.”

The Chancellor asked, “Did you recognize any of the three men?”

“No, lord. I have no idea who they were.”

“But I do,” Halis Geray said, which made me very glad indeed that I’d reacted as I had to Tsusane’s proposal. He and Terem scrutinized me for several moments, and I began to wonder a little nervously what the Chancellor was thinking. At length he said, “You keep your head in a crisis, don’t you?”

I bowed slightly. “I do my best. Lord Chancellor.”

“Also you’re very resourceful. Unusually so.”

That was an avenue best left unexplored. “Sir, I think I’m very lucky. By rights they should have killed me twice over. But they were so, well, inept.”

“Inept is the word for it,” Geray said dryly, and tumed to Terem. “I think we’ve let them run long enough. They’ve tried to reach inside these walls through her, and that we shouldn’t permit. Also, we didn’t know about the musician girl until now, and that bothers me.”

Terem nodded. “Bring them in,” he said.

Afterward, people called it the Hot Sky Plot. At its center was a man named Laykan. It so happened that his family had, for almost a century, managed the govemment salt monopoly at the coastal city of Gao. However, Laykan had skimmed most of the profits during the past twenty years, and when the Inspectorate discovered this, the monopoly was taken away and Laykan had to pay a ruinous fine. Angry over this perceived injustice and his family’s resulting impoverishment, he began to think treasonous thoughts. He moved to Kurjain and began to look for people with grievances of their own, and in such a large city he soon found them. Among his recent recruits was Tsusane’s younger brother, a rancorous youth who had failed the Universal Examination twice, blamed the govemment examiners, and wanted revenge. Through him, Laykan discovered Tsusane’s connection to me, and the assassination plot flowered.

Unfortunately, poor Tsusane was blind to her brother’s defective character and believed the lie—which he himself concocted—that he’d be killed if she didn’t persuade me to join the conspiracy. As if that weren’t enough, they’d threatened her life as well.

Laykan was a much better embezzler than a conspirator, and his incompetence had doomed the plot from the beginning. He was so maladroit that Halis Geray had known about his machinations since early summer, but the Chancellor had merely watched the conspirators to see how far the contagion would spread. It was fortunate for me that he didn’t discover Tsusane’s involvement until I revealed it; otherwise I might have been under deep suspicion as well.

Tsusane tried to flee the city, but they caught her just a few miles upriver. The rest, a round dozen excluding the two I’d already done for, never got out of Kuijain. The speed of the arrests shook me, and I realized that I’d been entirely too indifferent to the danger the Chancellor represented; he was not an enemy to be trifled with. My minders were promptly changed, too, though Terem never let on to me that I’d had any.

My connection to the affair inevitably got out, and to my gratification it tumed me into a popular heroine. I became the brave young woman who risked her life to wam her noble sovereign of treachery, just like Jian in
Maylane Unyielding.
I pointed this out to Master Luasin, and he immediately ran four special performances of the play in the Rainbow, with me as Jian—over Harekin’s furious protests—and we packed the theater each time. Rumors began to fly as well that Terem was my lover, but even though his mouming year wasn’t quite finished, nobody thought the worse of us for it. We were being somewhat improper, but he was well liked and I was brave, beautiful, and loyal, so the people of Kuijain were happy to forgive us.

I didn’t give evidence during the treason trials, since most of the conspirators confessed in the hope of obtaining mercy. This speeded everything up, and all the trials were over by the middle of Ripe Grain. By that point the mood in the city was vengeful, Terem being so admired, and the magistrates were not inclined to mercy despite the confessions. They condemned all the convicted to execution by slicing, the hideous and prolonged death reserved in those days for traitors. The sentences went to Terem for confirmation and he, in the name of compassion, commuted most of them to hanging. Only Laykan and two others suffered the full penalty.

Tsusane was among those to hang. I hadn’t seen her since that dreadful aftemoon, and didn’t really want to. She could have gotten me killed, and her disregard for my health still annoyed me. But I didn’t think she should die, since she was in the plot under duress. I put this to Terem on the day before the executions.

“I understand why you’re sympathetic,” he said. “She was your friend. But she should have reported the threats to the magistrates. You know what the law is, and so did she. To be aware of a conspiracy against the sovereign, and not reveal it, is a capital offense.”

“I know she
deserves
to die,” I answered. “All I’m saying is that mercy wouldn’t be amiss. She’s hardly a threat to you now.”

“I’ve shown enough as it is. Halis wanted to arrest the plotters’ families as well, just in case we’d missed some people, and I wouldn’t let him. Anyway, you might have died because of her. I can’t forgive that.”

“But that’s the point,” I said. “If I can still want her pardoned after what she did to me, why shouldn’t you consider it?” I touched his hand. “Please, Terem.”

It was a kind of test. He’d already thanked me profusely for my courage and loyalty and given me a very fine emerald necklace to show his appreciation. But would he free Tsusane for me, when his inclinations were so much toward executing her? If he would, I could be much more confident that we had a future together. In the uproar of the past half month I'd hardly thought about the Elder Company’s impending departure, but now that things were settling down I had to attend to my task again.

“Is this what you truly want me to do?” he asked.

“Yes. Please. Give Tsusane her life, for me.”

He sighed. “I'm very unwilling, but for you I’ll do it.”

I felt a flush of gratification, some of it on Tsusane’s behalf. “Thank you,” I murmured. “When will she know?” “I’ll sign the conunutation this aftemoon. She is to be exiled from Bethiya. Do you want to tell her?”

“Yes.”

I went to the Arsenal later in the moming. Tsusane showed the usual marks of imprisonment; although these were mostly pallor, gauntness, and dirt, for her confession had spared her judicial torture. She wept when I told her she was to be pardoned and exiled, and I left some money with the Arsenal's govemor to help her on her way. The next day she was gone. I heard later that she went to Istana to look for work, but Yazar’s lovely city was bumed and pillaged a few months later, and I never found out what became of her after that. I suppose she cursed the day she met me; I would have, if I'd been her.

A few days after the executions, I received one of my usual summonses to the palace. That particular day marked the beginning of the Ripe Grain Festival, and as the periang bore me toward Jade Lagoon I saw preparations everywhere. Windows were wreathed with autumn flowers, bridges bore garlands of plaited grain stalks, and people had taken their little plaster statues of the Bee Goddess and Father Heaven out of storage and put them in the niches over their doorways. There were extra flambeaux ready along the canals, and the bakers were making the traditional festival cakes, heavy with raisins and almonds. Street jugglers and mimes were already out, although the festivities didn’t formally begin till sundown. Only in the palace were the preparations subdued, because the official mouming for the Surina was still in effect.

I observed Terem carefully as we settled into our accustomed seats on the Reed Pavilion’s veranda. He seemed very preoccupied, but I wasn’t sure why. We avoided any talk of the conspiracy and instead chatted desultorily about the festival. But after a while he fell silent. Around the margins of the pool, the reeds whispered to each other; the torch lilies were fading and their fallen petals drifted on the water like ships with orange sails.

He said, “You visit spirit summoners from time to time, particularly a Taweret summoner. But you’ve never mentioned this to me. Why?”

A tremor of fear ran through me. Why did he mention this now, with so little waming? Had Halis Geray, in rooting out the conspirators, dug too deeply for my safety?

If so, I could only play the inncent. I stared at Terem as if in disbelief and said, “How did you know?” Then, as if light dawned, I went on, “You mean you’ve had me
watched?
Whatever for?”

“Lale,” he said, “you recently stumbled into a plot against me. Halis watches people to forestall exactly such things.” This didn’t sound like an accusation, so I maintained my tone of vexed surprise. “All right, but why should he watch me? I’m no conspirator, as I must have proven even to the Chancellor’s satisfaction. Are his minions still peeking at me from around every comer or is he satisfied now that I can be trusted?”

“I was satisfied about that almost from the beginning. And it’s been for your protection as much as mine. You insist on going alone about the city, and Kurjain is not the safest of places, as you’ve discovered.”

Much relieved to be under no suspicion, I allowed myself to appear mollified. “Yes, I can see that. Perhaps I’ll forgive you----What was it you wanted to know about the

summoners?”

“You’ve never told me you visited them.”

I looked away as if abashed. “I was embarrassed to admit what I was doing. I know you don’t keep a court sorcerer because you think they’re charlatans. I suppose a lot of them are. Yazar has one, and the man’s a fraud.”

“Some are less fraudulent than others. Is—” he stumbled over Nilang’s tongue-wrenching name—“Dasetmeryj Netihur an adept?”

“I’m not sure. I only go because I sometimes have bad dreams, and because I... well, sometimes I ask her who I’ll marry.”

His eyebrows rose. “And does she tell you?”

“Not exactly. She says there is uncertainty around my future, but she thinks he’ll be a rich foreigner and very tall and handsome.”

He laughed. “No summoner forecasts an ugly spouse and poverty, not if they want to keep their customers. Have you ever asked her to try raising one of your ancestors?”

“No, I haven’t. I suppose she might get
something,
but who knows if it would be an ancestor or something nasty? Or she might be making it up as she went along. Anyway, since I don’t know when I was bom or where my ancestors’ tombs are—or if they’ve even got tombs—there’s not much point. I did try a calling ritual when I was at school, but it didn’t work, and I’ve never bothered since.”