The Assassins of Tamurin (49 page)

“I’ll be in Tanay while you are,” she told me then, her face a white blur in the gloom. “Come to the Serpentine Market and find me there if you have news.”

“I have some now,” I said. “He’s going to put eight brigades into winter quarters in Tanay, and bring them up to strength by taking men from the other ten. Then he’s sending the ten depleted units to Gultekin for reinforcement over the winter. Then we’re going back to Kuijain, where he intends to raise more men, enough for four more infantry brigades and one of cavalry.”

“I'll send it on.” She secretively touched my hand. “Take care. I wouldn’t want to lose you.”

“Nor I you,” I said. “When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, “but you will.”

Terem and I returned to Kuijain on 15 Lesser Frost, two hands after the campaigning season ended. The Chancellery had put it about that the invasion of Lindu was a punitive expedition, intended to warn the Exiles that we Durdana were no longer to be taken lightly. The original intent of freeing Lindu was quietly set aside, and the Battle of Bara was described as a great victory. All Kurjain tumed out to welcome us home and you’d have thought, from the celebrations, that we’d slaughtered Ardavan’s troops to the last man. But the truth was that Ardavan now ruled in Lindu, with the bulk of his army in winter quarters there. Terem’s most dangerous adversary now sat on the east bank of the Savath—the very situation he had wanted to avoid.

I settled into the Reed Pavilion again, with occasional forays to my villa. I apologized to the Chancellor for vanishing as I had, but he appeared to be amused at my audacity and to consider my escapade a sign of my devotion to Terem.

The truth of what I felt for him was far more complicated. My fear for his life at Bara had been real enough, and such feelings had not arisen merely because I so willingly shared his bed, as Mother had suggested they might. They’d also grown because we had so many things in common. Some were small, of course: a taste for sticky almond pastries, for the bird paintings of Master Sudai, and for silly popular comedies about mistaken identities.

But others were not so minor. Terem didn’t think great

magnates should be allowed to subvert the laws for their own gain, and neither did I. He didn’t think people should go hungry and ragged while their Despots gorged themselves on dehcacies and dressed in gossamin, and neither did I. And he thought it reprehensible that we Durdana should be as weak and divided as we were. To remedy this, he wanted our empire back, and I was no longer perfectly convinced that this would be the disaster Mother had forecast.

Such speculations defied everything I’d been taught, but they wouldn’t go away. Unhappily, I had nobody to talk to about them, and often wished Dilara were nearby. Yet I knew that even if she were, I could never speak to her about my doubts, for she would certainly not share them.

And with this, I became even more acutely aware of how much I had changed since I arrived in Kuijain. I had begun to care for Terem; I had begun to imagine a world free of Exiles, Despots, wars, and injustice; and now I was beginning to be wary of my closest friend.

On many nights now, I slept badly. And in my worst moments, in the hours before the tolling of the dawn watch bell, I acknowledged that Mother intended to kill Terem someday and that I could probably not prevent it. I dealt with this in the only way I could, by telhng myself that it was still too far off to worry about. But it was always there, like one of Nilang’s wraiths trembling at the edge of vision.

A few days after we got home, Terem told me that the Despot of Brind had sent him a secret proposal. It so happened that the pay of Yazar’s army was severely in arrears, and his men were simmering with mutiny. Unfortunately, Yazar had run out of people to lend him money, and he dared not raise taxes further.

Moreover, he noted in his letter, his cousins were of an insubordinate nature and might use the army’s discontent to Yazar’s great disadvantage. He suggested, therefore, that if Terem would supply money to pay his grumbling troops, he would, in retum, name Terem as his heir, both to his estates and to the dais of Brind itself. But until the arrangement was concluded, secrecy was of the essence.

The offer was very attractive, and Terem told me he intended to continue the negotiations. So the next morning, after he left for work, I went to the villa, then to the Round, and then to Nilang.

I had to wait in the garden until she finished with a legitimate client. When the man left, she admitted me to her summoning room, a whitewashed cubicle with Taweret signs painted on the walls. I sat on the stool opposite hers, and as usual she asked, “No one dogs you?”

“No. I’m never followed now.”

“He may be waiting for you to grow careless.”

“I’m never careless,” I said, because I wasn’t.

“What news have you brought for the one we serve?”

I told her about Yazar and his secret offer. Nilang looked distant for a few moments, as if digesting its implications. I waited.

Her brilliant blue eyes suddenly focused on me and she said, “You’re troubled by something. What?”

I stared at her dumbly, fumbling for an answer. What had she perceived in my face? Or could she actually see into my mind?

I found my tongue, and with an expression of demure embarrassment I said, “Mistress, he keeps me awake much of the night with his erotic appetites. I’m tired, that’s all.” Nilang’s gaze didn’t waver. “I said troubled, not tired. What is it?”

I cast about frantically. “I have bad dreams. From Bara. It was ... bloody. And we had to kill so many of our wounded, to keep them from the Exiles.”

“Ah. Blood and death trouble you, do they?”

“Sometimes. Because there was so much of it.” In fact I’d never dreamed about the battle.

“For someone of your training, this seems peculiar. You’ve killed.”

“Yes, but that seemed different.” I felt as if I were trying to clamber out of a sand pit, but my struggles only dug it deeper.

Nilang appeared to study the Taweret signs she’d applied to the walls. I’d never been sure if the polychrome pattems were writing or images; perhaps they were both. But when I saw them from the comer ofmy e}^ theyalways seemed to writhe a little, and I never looked at them too closely.

“Proximity to another person,” she said softly, “can sometimes bend one’s convictions—even if these convictions are strongly held—toward that other person’s point of view. Such influences become all the more powerful if one senses an affinity with that individual.”

I felt a spasm of fright. Did she suspect my growing uncertainty, or was this merely a general waming? “My convictions are unshaken, mistress. But I will take your words to heart and redouble my guard against improper influences.”

Her gaze was still on the wall, but I knew she was observing me. “I wonder if they are as unshaken as you would have me believe. Or as you would have yourself believe.” How could she suspect anything? These must be merely probes, as if she searched for signs of infection in a wound.

“I can only repeat what I’ve said,” I told her. “My convictions are not influenced by his.”

She folded her arms and slid her narrow hands into her sleeves. Then she said, “Mothers and daughters arise in several ways. There is the natural way, by which we all enter the world. There is the merciful way, by which a woman cares for the girl of a deceased relative. There is the charitable way, by which foundlings are brought under a mother’s care, although there is no conjunction of bloodline.”

She paused, leaving me not only uneasy but mystified. “Yes, mistress,” I murmured.

“And then,” she said, “there are the other ways. I have my daughters, too, Lale. You’ve met them.”

Her gaze slid to mine and held it. I felt the blood drain from my face. This was a waming, and no doubt about it. And in that moment my understanding of my plight crystallized, as swiftly and icUy as frost flowers bloom on a winter window.

I was trapped. I had been trapped from the moment I set foot in Three Springs, although only now did I understand the unseen manacles that bound me: my love for Mother, my filial obligation to her, and my duty to my sisters, all stronger than iron links could ever be. But there were other fetters, too: my terror of the wraiths, my fear of Nilang’s sinister powers, my dread that the Chancellor would discover me and that I would die the foul death of a traitor. I was chained hand, foot, and neck.

Even so, I thought:
What if I told Terem what I really am? What if I confessed everything?

Clammy sweat broke out all over me. Adrine’s shrieks rang again in my ears as the wraiths made her tear at her flesh. She said they’d begun to go for her eyes. What would it be like, to lose control of my hands, to feel my fingemails ripping at my eyelids, thumbs digging into the sockets, screaming at myself to stop? Bile rose in my throat and I choked it back, barely.

And the wraiths weren’t all that awaited me if I confessed. For I was far more a traitor than poor Tsusane had ever been; for me there would be no exile. If the wraiths didn’t finish me off, I would die by slicing, unless my confession moved Terem to commute it to an easier end. But my treachery was so profound and complete that perhaps he would not.

As for running away and keeping silent about Mother’s secrets, I remembered what Tossi had told me at Three Springs: Nilang and my erstwhile sisters would hunt me down, and I’d be watching my back for the rest of my life, which would probably be short.

Perhaps I could try to help Terem covertly, by giving Nilang false or inadequate information, but I had no confidence that I could deceive her for long. And when she uncovered my deceit, what would she do to me? What sor-cerous punishments could she inflict? The thing that had almost devoured me in the Quiet World, could she give me to
thatl

I didn’t want to go into the Quiet World, either by death or sorcery. I had so much: wealth, fame, youth, a measure of power. I wanted to stay alive to enjoy it for as long as I could. But the only hope of that was in perfect, unstinting loyalty to Mother. Every other road led to death, or worse.

All this went through my mind in the space of a few heartbeats. Then, with a dry mouth, I croaked, “Lady mistress, my loyalty is untainted.”

She pursed her lips a little as she scrutinized me. Then she said, “There is news from Chiran. The Despotana has adopted a daughter.”

I was so relieved at the change of subject that I hardly wondered why Nilang thought this worthy of mention. I said, “The girl is very fortunate. I was destitute and abandoned once, and I know how much better the child’s life will now be.”

“This is not that kind of adoption. The girl is of the Laloi bloodline. She is no waif.”

I said, “Oh.” I knew of the Laloi. They were an old, wealthy Tamurin family with roots going back to the empire, in whose magistracies they had been prominent.

“Her name is Ashken,” Nilang continued. “The Despotana has made the girl her heir and has also taken her into the Seval bloodline. Ashken Seval, as she now is, will rule Tamurin on the Despotana’s death. This news will be in Kuijain soon. The Despotana wished you apprised of it beforehand, as a courtesy.”

Incoherent thoughts swirled through my brain. Of course Mother wouldn’t live forever; she needed an heir. I’d never given the matter much attention, for it seemed to have little to do with me. Yet now I felt a sharp twinge of jealousy. It wasn’t because I’d ever dreamed of being Mother’s heir; that could never happen. No, it was because Mother had given some other girl her bloodline name. Now the girl was a

Seval, while I was just a Navari. It was silly to feel this way, and I was lucky to have a family name at all. But Mother’s act stung my heart nonetheless, though my mind understood the need for it.

“I will write and tell the Despotana how pleased I am for her,” I said.

“Do so, but wait until someone at the palace tells you it’s happened. Now, is there anything else for our beloved mistress?”

Something pecuhar in the way she said
beloved mistress,
and the fact that she’d never spoken of Mother that way before, gave me pause. There was a hint in the tone of something sardonic, almost of contempt. Yet I wasn’t sure I’d really heard it, or if I had, what Nilang meant by it.

But then, if she did suspect that I might contemplate treachery, as I indeed had with my thoughts of confessing all to Terem, would she not try me in just this way? Was her tone a provocation, a test to see if I might respond to hints of disloyalty on her part, and thereby condemn myself? Or was it something else?

I wasn’t about to be drawn into whatever lethal games she might be playing. So I merely said, “No, there’s nothing.”

“Go, then.”

I did, and gladly. On the way home, I thought about Terem, the wraiths, and about Mother having a new daughter and a real heir. For no clear reason I became so frightened I started to tremble and didn’t stop until after I reached my villa. Usually I felt very snug and secure under its roof, but hours passed before the fear left me, and even then I kept wondering how much Nilang suspected of my disloyal thoughts.

Lesser Frost ended. With its end came the New Year’s Festival of the five Solstice Days, with lavish celebrations both in the palace and in the city. I made myself appear to enjoy them, but my enjoyment was tainted. I slept badly and twice dreamed of Adrine’s death, except that I was