The Assassins of Tamurin (6 page)

They looked at each other and laughed. “We’re not her bloodline,” Dilara said, “so we’re not really her daughters. But she
calls
us her daughters, and we feel as if she’s a mother to us.”

Mystified, I stared from Dilara to Sulen and back. “I don’t understand.”

“We’re her students,” Dilara explained. “She has a school. It’s for girls like us, and like you. You see, Sulen and I don’t have any ancestors. We’re orphans.”

“You
are?"

“Oh, yes,” Dilara told me. “But in the school we have lots of sisters, because every one of us is an orphan, and none of us knows our bloodlines or our ancestors. But it doesn’t matter, because we’re our own family.”

“And we learn all
sorts
of things,” Sulen said. “When we get back to Tamurin I’m going to be studying
The Dream Pool Essays
and the
Analytical Dictionary
and
The Spring and Autumn Annals^

“Where’s Tamurin?” I asked her. I wished wretchedly that I wasn’t so ignorant, so that I could be in such a school.

“You mean you’ve never heard— All right, it’s up north, by the sea. A long, long way from here. As far as the mouth of the Pearl River.”

Even to me, this made no sense. “But why are you so far from home? Why are you going to Riversong? There’s nothing there for anybody, let alone a Despotana.”

“We don’t actually know,” Sulen admitted. “But it’s been exciting. On the way here we stayed with three different Despots at their palaces. She brought us with her—and Tossi, too—because she said it would further our education.”

“Did you know Master Lim?” I asked.

“No,” said Dilara. “We didn’t even know he existed. But I guess we’re going home, now that she’s found out he’s dead.” She turned her gaze to the cooking fires, where the Despotana was speaking with Ekrem. “He must have been important for her to come all this way to look for him. She’s never done something like that.”

“Maybe she was just tired of staying home.” Sulen leaned toward me and lowered her voice confidentially. “You see. Mother’s a widow. Once she lived in Kuijain. She had a son there but he—”

“Shut up, Sulen,” Dilara interrupted. “Nobody wants to hear about that. Look, here’s Sertaj.”

The soldier came up to me and said, “Girl, you must speak with the Despotana now. When you come to her, show respect. You may call her either ‘honored mistress’ or ‘honored lady’ or ‘ma’am.’ ”

Sulen, Dilara, and I followed him to the largest tent, which was of a fine, close-woven fabric dyed deep crimson. The Despotana sat in front of it on a small collapsible stool. The beautiful young woman, who must be Tossi, sat cross-legged on a cushion next to her. The sun, low in the west, sent copper bars of light through the trees.

I bowed to the Despotana, touching the fingertips of both hands to my throat. Then I stood quietly, kept my gaze on the ground, and waited for her to speak.

After what seemed a long silence she said to me, “The men who killed Master Lim will be found. Not soon, perhaps, but I will find them.”

“I’m glad, honored mistress.”

She tilted her head a little to one side. “Do you want to go back to Riversong, Lale?”

“No, honored mistress.” I looked up at her, hoping for the best.

“Hm. You’re not a stupid girl, are you?”

“I’m not sure, ma’am. I don’t think so.”

“Do you know how to read?”

I shook my head, wishing with all my heart that I did. She said, “I have a school for girls like you, Lale. For girls who have no ancestors. Do you know what I say to such girls?”

A small crack opened in the darkness of my heart and admitted a tiny ray of light. “No, honored mistress,” I whispered, “I'm afraid I don’t.”

“I say to them, ‘You shouldn’t worry that you have no ancestors, because you
are
an ancestor.’ Do you like the sound of that?”

The crack widened and more light poured through. “Very much, honored mistress.”

“For now, please dispense with ‘honored mistress’ and such. It wastes time. Do you want to learn to read?”

Not even in my most bizarre fantasies had I ever imagined I might possess that secret. “Yes. Oh, yes!”

“Then you may come to my school, Lale, if you wish. Your belly will never be empty under my roof; and as for your mind, it also will have as much as it can hold. You will know as much as a learned magistrate of Kurjain, if you can contrive it. Would you like that?”

The darkness in me was bumt up in a flame of rapture. I managed to squeak, “Yes!”

“You’ll travel with us, then,” she said. “This is Tossi, my first and best student. If she tells you to do something, you will do it. And these are Dilara and Sulen, who I see have already introduced themselves. They’re girls at my school, just as you will be. They can’t give you orders, but pay attention to what they tell you. Go with them now and eat your supper. Then we must all sleep, for we’re heading for Tamurin in the moming.”

Sulen and Dilara grinned at me. They had no ancestors, no more than did I, but somehow it didn’t matter. I was in the middle of a forest, among strangers I had known for less than half a day, and for the very first time in my life, I was home.

But what I did not know was that our meeting, which looked so much like chance, was not chance at all. Many years would pass before I discovered what lay behind that encounter on the Riversong road: that the Despotana had been searching for me, without pause and in perfect secrecy, from the time I was six years old.

My education began the next morning, as we set out for Tamurin. I felt very grown-up in the clothes Dilara had lent me, for this was the first time Fd discarded a child’s smock for adult garments. I had a tunic of pale linen with blue dragonflies around the hem and a garment I'd never seen before—the loose, calf-length divided skirt that Durdana women wore for riding. There were blue dragonflies on the skirt, too, and I had a straw hat and a duster to keep off rain and mud. I didn’t want anything on my feet, but Sertaj said I had to wear boots with a heel, to keep from being dragged if I fell off my horse, and Sulen lent me a spare pair that luckily fit well enough.

The first thing I learned was that horses were not boats. I'd imagined that guiding the animal would be much like steering a boat, and I'd overlooked the fact that the creatures had minds of their own. I was given the least skittish of the spare riding mounts, but the chestnut mare did not take to me, nor I to her. Despite the coaching I got from Dilara, the wretched creature insisted on barging off the road to nibble leaves, and I nearly fell off a dozen times in my efforts to dissuade her. So, about mid-morning, I was consigned to the back of a placid and unadventurous packhorse. My humiliation and chagrin left me almost speechless for a while, but Dilara and Sulen didn’t snicker as I'd feared they would; instead, they rode alongside me and told me I just needed more practice.

Rain came and went as we trotted along, but my duster and hat kept me marvelously dry and warm. Dilara, Sulen, and I formed our own little group, while the Despotana and Tossi rode some yards ahead; around us the soldiers formed an armored, moving wall. About midday we reached Gladewater, and as I gazed around the place, I realized that it was nearly as poor as Riversong. If I’d had to make my living there, I would have starved.

But now I was on my way to High Lake, and Dilara said we would reach the town by nightfall. I could hardly wait to see it, although Sulen sniffed and said that High Lake was a run-down place and not nearly as big as the city of Chiran, where the Despotana’s school was. That turned our talk to the school, and soon I was getting very uneasy—how could anyone be expected to learn so
much?
But Dilara and Sulen seemed to manage tolerably well, as far as I could tell, and I decided I’d probably do no worse.

The forest thinned as we traveled, and the road became a little broader, with occasional remains of pavement jutting through the turf. After a while I asked hopefully, “What happens after you learn all you’re supposed to learn? Does the Despotana find you a rich man so you can get married?”

“I’m not sure,” Dilara said. ‘Tossi is the oldest of us, and she’s not getting married. I don’t think so, anyway. She told me that Mother Midnight says we shouldn’t bother about— Oh!” Sulen had twisted around in her saddle and was making shush-shush gestures, but she was grinning. Dilara giggled, and I said, “What’s the matter? Who’s Mother Mid—”

I shut up as I realized she meant the Despotana. Then, lowering my voice, I asked, “Why did you call her that?” “We all do,” Dilara told me. “But we don’t say it if she can hear. Usually we call her Mother, or if we’re speaking with her, we call her ma’am. Her Midnight name—it’s kind of a joke. It’s because of the story.”

“What story?”

“It’s in
The Book of the Pearl Garden Mistress,
Don’t you know it?”

“No.” I'd never even seen a book, but I was determined not to admit it. “I can’t read, remember?”

“Then I’ll tell it to you tonight before we go to sleep. All right?”

“All right.”

“You’ll learn to read just fine, too. I’ll help you.”

I felt better for her promise. I was already coming to like Dilara a great deal, with her pert grin and her nimbleness and her quick, nervous gestures. And I sensed that she liked me as well. For the first time in my life, I seemed to be making a real friend.

We rode on through the rain-washed day, with only a brief rest in the late aftemoon. Well before then I was saddle sore and too tired to talk much. Dilara’s and Sulen’s chatter also diminished, and eventually they both looked as weary as I felt. But neither grumbled about being tired, so I didn’t complain either—though back in Riversong I’d never kept quiet when I was uncomfortable, even if piping up eamed me a cuff on the ear.

The ground rose slowly as we approached High Lake, the lowland forest giving way to scrub meadow with scattered stands of bead trees, gums, loquats, and wait-a-bit thorn. The loquats were in fruit, and when the sun looked out from behind the rain clouds, the clusters of small bronze globes shone like metal. More people lived in this region than around Riversong, and during the aftemoon we passed through two farming villages. One was as miserable as Gladewater; the other was abandoned, its roofs falling in and its gardens choked by weeds. But every so often we saw big fortified manors, with tilled fields all around them, and scores of men, women, and children stooping among the furrows with their hoes. I asked what the manors were. Sulen said they were the homes of wealthy landowners, and that the people in the fields were the tenant laborers who worked the fields for them.

Not all these workers were of my race; some were Erallu, the people that had inhabited these lands before we Durdana came. I could tell, because they were small of stature, with bronze skin and long blue-black hair adorned with copper rings. The priestess of the Bee Goddess in Riversong had been an Erallu, but she was the only one I'd known. Clearly they were more common here.

We reached High Lake as the first fireflies began to sparkle in the dusk. The town didn’t have a wall, which disappointed me because I'd wanted to see one. Sertaj told me this was because the place was only half a day’s march from the fortress garrison at Shiragan, the capital of Indar’s Despot, and so was reasonably well protected. To discourage malefactors, a gibbet stood on the edge of the town, a pair of corpses dangling from the crosspiece.

The town’s civic boundary was marked by a ceremonial gate that consisted of two tall posts and a curved lintel. The vermilion paint on the lintel had almost all worn away, and its exposed wood was silvery with age. By one upright was a place god shrine, with a lichen-stained tile roof and a gnarled wooden image in the central niche. I thought of the shrine by the flame magnolia, and of Master Lim, and I was ashamed at how quickly I'd stopped thinking about him. So I whispered a prayer to Our Lady of Mercy, to ask that Master Lim might be happy in the Quiet World and that he might be allowed a new sivara, or whatever instrument a fabulator’s spirit used.

Then I saw how the town got its name. We rode past some acacia trees and suddenly there was Myriad Mirror Lake, a great plain of water that glittered indigo and copper in the setting sun. Fishing boats scudded across it, sails white against the wooded green hills rising from the far shore. The breeze blowing off the waves smelled of cool water and citrus.

Sulen, who had a tutorial streak in her nature, now decided that she must pass on to me what she’d learned about High Lake. She told me that before the invasion of the Exiles, which brought about the Partition and the end of the old Durdanian Empire, the place was a famous resort town. Wealthy families of the empire’s southwestern prefectures used to come to these forested hills to escape the hot season, and the richest of them built villas of spectacular magnificence along the wooded shore. But after the Partition, the southern part of the empire broke up into the Despotates, and many rich families became poor or died out. Eventually their mansions fell into ruin, just as the Stock House in Riversong had done. But a few of the town’s palatial inns remained, among them the one where we were to stay tonight.

An inn! I’d never imagined I’d sleep in one. I desperately wanted to ask Dilara what it was like, but I’d already displayed enough ignorance for one day.