The Assassins of Tamurin (58 page)

He questioned us a little more and then dismissed us. Nilang requested shelter until more of the night had passed, so the Sun Lord’s men would be sleeping when we slipped back through the lines, whereupon Ardavan ordered an attendant take us to a small oxhide tent near his own. It was full of bundles and bales, and lit only faintly by campfire light seeping through the door slit. The attendant grudgingly brought us a blanket and sonae hard Exile bread, at which we nibbled. Then, with the smelly brown blanket wrapped around us, we settled down to wait.

Time crawled by. The wind rose, shaking the tent’s walls. I peeped outside occasionally; sleet was falling heavily now, forming an icy crust on the trampled ground. The sounds of the camp waned as the fires bumed lower and as men sought their tents and sleep. Finally I could hear only the hiss and bluster of the wind and the occasional distant neigh of an uncomfortable horse.

It must now be far past midnight, with the late winter dawn no more than a few hours away. “Now?” I whispered. In the gloom Nilang gave an almost invisible gesture of assent.

We renewed the blacking on our faces and hands; I rolled up the blanket and tucked it under my arm, and then we crept from the tent. Outside it was very dark, the faint glow of banked fires dimmed further by veils of freezing rain. I was very glad of my padded trousers and jacket, and I pulled my hood closer about my hair.

The rear of the royal tent was not far away. Sure enough, silhouetted against its paleness, there was the guard I’d expected. I stood up, trusting the darkness to conceal my movements, then made my way toward him. He saw me coming but didn’t speak, frightened perhaps to wake his master on the other side of the tent wall.

I giggled softly in my most girlish voice, and stopped just a foot away from him. He made a noise of surprise and anticipation and reached for me. I backed away.

A shadow rose behind him. He made another faint noise and fell into my arms, though not in the way he had intended. I eased him to the ground and Nilang leaned over him and slit his throat. He gurgled once, but the wind covered the sound. When we covered the body with the blanket, it was almost invisible in the murky darkness.

I squatted by the tent wall, used the Taweret murder knife to make a tiny slit in the hide, and peered through. A hanging lamp bumed dimly, revealing the bed with a man lying on his stomach under a heap of
furs,
his face tumed toward me, asleep: Ardavan. No guard stood by him, although one probably lurked beyond the hanging that hid the chamber doorway.

Thanking the Beneficent Ones for the wind’s hiss, I carefully made a long slit in the thin leather, just above ground level. Then I checked Ardavan again. He had moved, but only to tum his face away from me. So much the better.

I eased myself through the slit, while Nilang remained outside to guard my avenue of escape. Ardavan didn’t stir. I crept to the bed where he slept and went up on my knees, the murder blade in my hand.

The Taweret weapon was thin and narrow, made to slide between bones and reach vitals. His braids had fallen aside, leaving the nape of his neck bare. I studied it, so pale and defenseless, and selected the place where the blade would best sever the cord that enables both movement and breath. Now the steel tip hovered a finger’s breadth above his skin.

I hesitated, suddenly repelled by what I was about to do. When I killed the other men, it was because they were trying to kill me. But this strong and vibrant young King was asleep and defenseless, and I was about to dispatch him hke an animal. The tip of the knife wavered.

And then I remembered the town of Sila in Lindu, the gallows with its poor flayed corpses, the ragged men and women, the children huge-eyed with hunger, the whip scars and the desecrated shrines, and I remembered that the man under my knife thought that we deserved no better and that all this awaited us under his hand.

I drove the blade deep, and Ardavan died without a sound. There was very little blood, since his heart stopped almost at once.

I waited a few moments to make sure he was dead. Then I pulled his hand from beneath the furs and removed his seal ring. Clutching it tightly, I slid back through the opening in the tent wall. The wind was cold enough to take my breath away. “He’s dead,” I whispered as I slipped the ring into my pouch. “Let’s go.”

We hurried toward the perimeter of the camp. My heart was pounding now in fear that someone would find him and sound the alarm, but all remained quiet. The weather was so foul that no one except the sentries were out, and Nilang’s medallion got us past them without incident.

Now we were in no-man’s-land. As we hurried away from the Exile camp, my apprehension eased. But I was not, oddly enough, thinking about how I had killed the great King Ardavan and thus changed the world, nor of how the historians might write of my courage and resolution, as I’d always dreamed. What I felt was that I had atoned, if only to a tiny degree, for my many treacheries, and that perhaps Terem might now hate me a little less than before.

We stopped at an ice-glazed puddle to scrub the charcoal from our faces, and then went on. Our watch fires and the black wall of our camp palisade drew nearer. I was taking us toward the riverbank and the castella, hoping that was where Terem was passing the night. I was very cold now, for the wind was as keen as my knife; snow had displaced the sleet and was collecting in thin drifts on the frozen earth. As we went, I rehearsed again and again what I would say to Terem, hoping he would believe me, and hoping, too, that what I’d told Nilang was right: that he would at least give us our freedom for what we’d done.

I knew something untoward had happened as soon as we came through the palisade. The campfires were freshly stoked, although it was too early for the men to be at battle preparations. Yet they were awake, standing in knots around their fires, talking and gesticulating.

“What’s going on?” I asked the second-captain who was taking us to the castella. I’d expected him to clap manacles onto us both when I identified myself, but although he was beside himself with curiosity about the Inamorata’s nocturnal wanderings, he was properly respectful. This suggested either that nobody knew I’d escaped from the villa or that it was known at higher levels but was being kept quiet.

“There’s a rumor that somebody tried to kill the Sun Lord a little while ago,” he said. “But he’s not hurt, they say.” “Thank Father Heaven,” I said, relief making me weak in the knees. Even given my waming, I hadn’t been sure that Terem would escape Dilara’s skill. “Who tried to kill him?” “It was a woman, or so people are saying, and she’s dead.” I blinked hard. Dilara had died trying, then, as I knew she might. I tried to feel satisfaction but could muster only a duU grief. I could no longer bring myself to judge her. She was my sister’s murderer, tme enough, but how much better was I? I had caused Perin’s death, and Master Luasin’s, and many more besides.

We reached the castella, where the second-captain tumed us over to the officer of the watch, who happened to be Sholaj. He almost lost his tongue at the black-clad, charcoal-smudged apparition of the Inamorata before him, with her equally sinister companion. But when we handed him our weapons, he recovered enough to send a message upstairs and promptly searched us for further lethal devices.

While we waited in the courtyard for Terem’s summons, I saw a slender shape lying in the shadow by the wall. Snow had covered it, but I knew who it was and did not look at her again. Nilang gave the body one swift expressionless glance, but she said nothing, and neither did I.

Word came that we were to ascend. Sholaj took us to the upper floor to the council room. Three charcoal braziers warmed the low-ceilinged chamber; all the lamps were ablaze, although only Terem and his two bodyguards were there.

“So you didn’t run for it, after all,” he said. He looked at Nilang. “And her?”

“She’s the Taweret sorceress I told you about. But Terem, she can’t be here when I tell you certain things. I beg you to excuse her for a little.”

“Why? What things?”

I hesitated, then said in a low voice, “She and I—

Nilang made a quick movement of negation. I dared not go farther.

“You and she what?”

‘Terem, I beg you, send her from the room. There’s sorcery here, and it’s for her safety and mine. Please.”

I was sure he would refuse me, but perhaps the urgency in my voice and on my face made him think again. He gestured brusquely to one of the guards. “Very well. Avshan, take her to the anteroom and hold her there.”

When the door closed behind them, Terem lowered himself wearily into a chair. “I have lost track of your loyalties. Whose side are you on tonight?”

“Yours. That hasn’t changed. Nilang is also your ally, if you’ll allow it. She helped me escape from the villa.”

“She did, did she? Unfortunately for her, I do not consider that to be an act of loyalty, since I put you there.” He looked me up and down. “Why should I not send you both back to Kuijain in manacles and throw you into the Arsenal cells for a very long time?”

“Because we’ve given you tomorrow’s victory. Ardavan is dead.”

The remaining guard made a startled noise. Terem sat up straight, disbelief written plain on his face. “Dead?”

“Dead. Nilang helped me cross the lines into the Exile camp, and then she took me to see him, pretending I was a spy for the Despotana. Ardavan thought Nilang was on his side, you see, and that gave me my chance to kill him. I did it silently, while he was alone, and his officers may not even know he’s gone. If you strike at first light, you’ll catch them leaderless.”

“Why should I believe you killed him, assuming he
is
dead?”

“Because I’m as good an assassin as Dilara was. We had the same training.” I fumbled in my pouch and the guard tensed, but Terem waved the man to stillness.

“Here,” I said. “It’s Ardavan’s seal ring.”

Terem took the ring and held it to the light. The ruby scorpion bumed in its nest of gold and onyx. He studied the thing, then lowered it and looked at me. “Because of this, you expect me to trust you?”

“How much proof of loyalty do you need? Nilang and I could have been on our way to Tamurin by now, and Ardavan would still be breathing. And Dilara tried to kill you and failed, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“You’re alive because of me. Without my waming, she would have succeeded.”

Slowly, he nodded. “Yes, I think she would. She came at me as I was making rounds of the camp. I thought we were prepared, but she almost had me, even so.”

“What of my loyalty now?”

He said dryly, “It seems to be to me.”

“Exactly. But there’s still the Despotana. This part should be for your hearing only.”

I waited, wondering if he believed me enough to dismiss the guard and leave himself alone with a confessed assassin. But without hesitation he told the man to leave. When we were alone, he said, “Continue.”

I did, telling him as much as I could without making a book of it: about Three Springs and about the wraiths, about Nilang’s binding and its consequences, and about her rescue of me. And then I told him the core of it all, which was how Mother’s grand design would have swept Bethiya into the hands of Ardavan and ultimately into hers. He was not quite as astonished as I had been, but I could tell from his face that it shook him.

“With Ardavan gone,” I ended, “her plans to rule an Exile empire are ruined. But none of us will be safe while she’s alive. Dilara may be dead, but the Despotana has plenty of killers like her.”

“And Nilang?” he asked thoughtfully. “Why are you so certain she’s on my side?”

“Because she hates the Despotana. She’s a slave to the binding, Terem—she couldn’t even stay in the room to hear all this or it would have driven her to kill me. All she wants is to be free of Makina Seval and to find her daughter again.” “And she hopes you will kill the Despotana for her, to make those things happen.”

“Exactly.”

“Which leads me back to you.” He looked at me with pain in his eyes. “What am I to do with you? What?”

“I have been a traitor,” I said. “I confess it. But I hope that what I’ve done tonight will help you forgive me.”

“You betrayed everything,” he said bitterly, as if I hadn’t spoken. “The dream I thought you shared. My love for you. All the people who served me faithfully. You betrayed everyone and everything.”

“I am most humbly sorry,” I said, my voice breaking. “Do to me whatever you want. But first let me have revenge for my dead sister. Let me go with Nilang to Kuijain and give the Despotana the justice she deserves.”

Terem frowned. “Why should I not simply order Halis to arrest her? Or go after her later, after she’s back in Tamurin?”

“Because it would be better for us all if her end is quiet. If you allow her to retum to Tamurin and later attack her, or if you arrest her in Kuijain and publicly execute her, you risk frightening the other Despots into combining against you. I don’t think you’d want that. Even with Ardavan gone, there will be a lot of fighting before the Kingdoms are destroyed.

and you don’t want a war with the Despotates into the bargain.”

He regarded me appraisingly. “And here I once thought you had no deviousness in you. So, if Makina Seval dies of natural causes, shall we say, there is nothing to frighten the Despots.”