The Assassins of Thasalon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “He’s never had a pet before,” Alixtra murmured apologetically to Pen. “It wasn’t possible in our little city room. Still less in Methani’s palace.”

  “I imagine not,” said Pen. “I grew up in the country myself, on the mountains’ knees—someone once called Jurald Court a fortified farmhouse, which wasn’t far off the mark. Animals all around. Looking back, pretty idyllic for a boy. And your girlhood?”

  “It was in the village, but yes. Something like that. Good parts taken for granted, dreary constraints spurned, finally, when there seemed a chance of something grander.”

  “So how did Kittio come to acquire a dog?”

  “Not acquired,” said Kittio’s mother fervently. “Only loaned. I pray.” A worried glance at the generous Tanar.

  Now, there’s a vision for the trip home, said Des.

  If we get as far as a trip home still alive, I’ll be willing to put up with anything. But don’t you dare encourage it.

  You could use your shamanic weirding voice. That works on animals. …And children.

  Sh. Nikys doesn’t like it when I use it to get Rina to sleep.

  Oh, she’s just jealous that she can’t.

  Pen stifled another spasm of longing at these reminders.

  “Waiting today was tense for everyone,” said Tanar. “Blessed Iroki kindly offered to take Kittio off to see the fishpond, on the other side of the kitchen garden, and the kennels are just beyond that. I gather Kittio made a good impression on our kennel master, admiring his charges, and the puppy somehow happened.”

  She gestured toward the house, and Alixtra, taking the hint, called Kittio to order.

  “We need to take the puppy back to his mama and his bed, now,” she told him. “And you as well.” She raised her lantern, meaningfully.

  Kittio’s protests were undercut by a yawn, which made them both laugh. He went along the garden path with her, bumping her hip much as the puppy bumped his knees, apparently received with the same pleasure. “So where is that all-white man?” his voice floated back out of the dark. “I wanted to see the white man.”

  “Master Bosha will be back later,” she told him, “and you mustn’t stare rudely when you meet him…”

  That will be a challenge, said Des. I stare at Bosha.

  I daresay Kittio’s interest will be less prurient.

  Given my physical state and his, I don’t think prurient is the word you want, Pen.

  Aesthetic, then.

  Better.

  Tanar took up her own lantern, and Pen escorted her toward the house.

  “You were so long away,” she said. “I thought you’d be back much sooner.”

  You were right to worry probably wasn’t something he should say to her, for all that it was true. “There were unforeseen complications, overcome, but they spawned new ones. Give me a chance to wash up, and to get a bite, and I’ll explain them all.”

  “Mother won’t care if you come in your day dirt. And we can bring you something to eat in her room.”

  “I’ll take you up on the food, but Alixtra is going to need to scrub her boy before putting him to bed. I may as well do the same.” It would give him a bit more time to think, though not even the long ride in the wicker cart had helped much with that. He couldn’t be more tired if he’d pulled the thing himself.

  She mastered her impatience, and nodded.

  “So… I really didn’t expect you and Alixtra to become friends,” Pen ventured cautiously as they passed along the row of cedars, aromatic sentinels in the shadows. “When did that happen?”

  “Not friends, exactly. But she’s proved an interesting woman to talk to.”

  “She’s not very forthcoming to me. Reasonably enough.”

  “I drew her out when we were devising her clothes and story for Methani’s party, day before yesterday. I wanted to understand how she did what she did. Not the mechanics of it, which weren’t anything I could copy, but how she mustered her nerve. I can’t say as I admire her, and I certainly don’t envy her. But she gave me a good example of what one woman might do, if she was determined enough.”

  Maybe not a good example, murmured Des.

  “Fired by a spirit of emulation… were you?” said Pen dryly.

  Tanar shrugged. “I couldn’t sit on my hands once I realized how perfect the opportunity was. With the kind of strategic timing Adelis calls a god-gift, to regret ever after if you miss it. …And there was a poetic justice to it, if no other kind.”

  Oh, several other kinds, I’d say, said Des.

  Tanar… wasn’t wrong. Pen chose not to argue.

  * * *

  Lady Xarre, still dressed for her household’s earlier dinner, met with them as before in her brilliantly lit sitting room. Five chairs had again been set around hers in the circle, one doomed to go empty. Pen wondered if it was left there as a silent reminder. Or reproach. Iroki was before him, flanking the house’s mistress like an odd new retainer. Alixtra arrived last, having settled a clean Kittio into her bed; Pen had overheard them in the baths, where Kittio had been torn between resistance to washcloths, and a fascination with the facilities almost equal to the saint’s.

  Pen was grateful to discover the promised tray of edibles set out for him on a small table beside his own seat. Lady Tanar poured him watered wine with her own hands, less as a mark of favor, he thought, than an effort to speed things up. Obliging her, he launched into the long and involved account of the day’s doings, much interrupted by everyone but Iroki.

  As he’d foreseen with trepidation, Tanar was enraged by even his brief description of what had been done to Bosha’s hands, but those injuries weren’t something that could be concealed. He softened the account of the worser but invisible torture that Tronio had inflicted to almost nothing—the last thing he wanted was for Tanar to be inspired to go after the sorcerer on her own. He’d be a vastly more dangerous opponent than an aging high minister. Alixtra read between his lines better, her scowl deepening, but thankfully she had the presence of mind not to comment about this misuse of magic.

  Pen defended Rach from unscheduled Xarre reprisals by pointing out, heavily, that the man was turning his coat and looked to be offering testimony soon against his late masters, including Tronio, an effort that shouldn’t be impeded. “The man’s won plenty of trouble for himself, I promise you.”

  “Not nearly enough,” Tanar growled, but subsided.

  Alixtra’s face tightened, as she perhaps mulled on just how much harm Rach’s testimony could do to her in turn.

  Pen finally was able to get back to his own most pressing problem.

  “So Blessed Iroki and I need to find this missing sorcerer—somewhere in Thasalon, probably, unless he’s made for the coast or the borders already. Lord Nao is ordering a watch by his people on those, and he has a longer reach for that than we do. Yet I don’t think Tronio would flee Cedonia until he’s exhausted every other course. You know Tronio better than anyone else here, Alixtra. So, what are his other courses? Would he go after you as another witness he needs to silence? He certainly wouldn’t want you falling alive into the hands of any authorities.”

  Bait? said Des brightly. Seems like Iroki’s sport.

  “I wish he would,” she said darkly. “It would save steps. But does he even know I’m here?”

  “I’m not actually sure. He found out this morning that Kittio was removed from Methani’s—it was one of the things that came up with Bosha that Bosha drowned in his morass of misdirection—but I don’t know if he’s connected the Xarre’s noble country visitors from last night with you.”

  “Then you’d seem a far greater threat to him. Would he go after you?”

  “I’m sure he’d like to. His demon definitely doesn’t want to encounter Des again, though. Fortunately, neither of the pair seemed to suspect Iroki’s presence.” Yet another key element that Bosha had managed to keep out of his grueling interrogation.

  “Tronio is a man of lies,” Alixtra said slowly. “Even to himsel
f, I think, or he could never have been persuaded to undertake this scheme by the minister. So if he’s afraid to clash with you directly, I’d think he’d try to attack you at a distance with lies.”

  Pen’s lips screwed up. “He has plenty of plausible ones to choose from. Even Laris and Nao wondered if I was sent from Orbas as a spy or an assassin. They had only my word about the white god. If they doubted that, they had wit not to show it, but who knows what their later reflections might bring.”

  Lady Xarre pointed out, “As long as you seem to serve their cause, they won’t air such doubts. Whatever reservations they may hold privately.”

  “So who else might Tronio run to with lies?” asked Pen. “Or misbeliefs, even. Aside from Lord Bordane, which… seems to have been an ambiguous encounter. Who could he expect to credit him? How corrupt, or gullible, is the greater Temple hierarchy here in Thasalon?”

  Lady Xarre sat back as every face turned to her. She touched her beringed fingers to her lips as she contemplated this. “The neighborhood temples are much the same as in any other place,” she said at last. “Mostly people honestly trying to help each other and their gods, doubtless a few bad stems. The highest echelons are not corrupt, I wouldn’t say, but have developed a certain suppleness from surviving their centuries of imperial duties. The present archdivine has a reputation for probity—how deserved, I’m not close enough to Temple affairs to guess. He came up from years of service in the Father’s Order. I think he may not be quite as rigid as some templemen from that house. But even if he approved the political outcomes I don’t believe he would be drawn knowingly into Learned Tronio’s demon-murders, if they are sacrilege as you say. Gullible, no. Misleadable, maybe.”

  “I’d guess,” said Iroki, “if your Temple here isn’t just rotten top to bottom, somebody in it must be taking a long look at Methani and everyone around him today. What with him being so openly sundered and all. It’s not like he’s a gutter criminal or even just some mean shriveled soul, all dried in on itself, a life wasted that no one would miss alive or dead. Shouldn’t think anyone owned rug enough to sweep such a big man under.”

  “Not with so many people pleased to have it otherwise,” said Lady Xarre. “If for a host of conflicting reasons. And so many witnesses. This sundering scandal has already exploded out of last night’s reception and its widening aftermath. There will be no putting it back.”

  Tanar said nothing. With quiet satisfaction.

  “So the question isn’t who Tronio would lie to,” Pen began.

  “Anyone,” Alixtra muttered. “Everyone.”

  “—but who would believe him, and for how long.”

  “A quagmire of delay,” Lady Xarre observed, “has trapped efforts at righting wrongs before.”

  “Adelis’s arrival is going to clear out a lot of bogs,” said Tanar, her jaw setting.

  “So delay could help as much on our side as Tronio’s?” said Pen. “Except we know it, and he doesn’t.”

  “I wish Sura were here,” sighed Tanar, with a sad look at the empty chair. “He’s so clever at this sort of twisty thinking. I’d wager he’d see a way through.”

  “Mm.” Pen couldn’t disagree. “I’ll wager Tronio isn’t going to be getting much sleep tonight. Whatever he may try, he’ll be trying at panic speed.” Pen considered. “I don’t know if he’s realized, or can find out, that Rach was arrested by Nao. And he can’t know that the man has confessed already.”

  Alixtra put in, “It would seem unlike Tronio to have faith that Rach wouldn’t betray him. …Though he might believe that Rach would keep silent on his own behalf.”

  “And then there’s lord regent Bordane,” Pen was reminded, “another powerful piece of this puzzle that has to be moving on its own today. And far into tonight. Although in what direction, I cannot fathom. Did he actually love or even like his murdered uncle, as Laris seems to feel something for her late uncle Ragat?”

  “Cupboard love,” judged Lady Xarre, “And long association. Which must add up to something. How much he chafed under his uncle’s thumb in turn, he’s not displayed that I’d heard of.”

  Even the lowly Rach, Pen recalled, had said Methani treated his nephew as a tool. However much Bordane had accepted being a junior apprentice when younger, he might have been growing tired of such disregard with so many years of his own experience under his belt. He’d seemed shocked last night, as many were, but not grieved.

  “Well, he’s inherited the whole cupboard now,” said Pen. “As Bosha pointed out. Rather publicly. I don’t think that jibe could have got up Bordane’s nose so badly if it hadn’t struck some nerve. Fear of being thought a suspect, if the two were known to be in conflict over other matters?”

  Lady Xarre turned out her hands in a ladylike version of a shrug.

  One member of this night council had not yet spoken. “Des?” said Pen aloud. “Do you have anything to suggest?”

  A thoughtful pause before she took over Pen’s offered mouth. “It seems to me we’re not making full use of the main god-given resource we have packed along all the way from Vilnoc.” She gestured at Iroki, who blinked.

  Tanar and Lady Xarre seemed startled by her sudden emergence, familiar enough with Pen by now to perceive the difference in his expression and cadence but not, like the other two, with direct Sight and grown used to it.

  “There is One who certainly knows exactly where Tronio is,” Des continued. “If the god sent us here, why not ask the god to bring us the last few steps?”

  “Pray?” said Pen doubtfully. “Are you sure? The last time He answered me so directly, it was with a dose of plague.”

  “You were dealing with that plague,” said Des. “It was very much to the point at the time. …Also, it was quite a mild dose.”

  Pen shied from trying to imagine a Thasalon political version of that.

  “Maybe,” said Tanar cautiously, “the saint could pray for us? I mean, I thought that’s what saints were supposed to do.”

  “Not saints of the Bastard,” said Iroki. “We just eat bad demons. And nasty they do taste, I can tell you. We kind of specialize, that way. But anyway”—he held up and twiddled his fingers—“our hands are supposed to be His. Says so right on the Order’s seal.”

  “It couldn’t hurt to try?” said Tanar.

  Yes, it could, thought Pen. Very painful indeed. But when he had arrived before at his wit’s uttermost end, it was often face down on a temple floor. Though any floor would do, from forest to sea.

  Iroki, in a way familiar to Pen, was weakening under the limpid gaze of those big hazel eyes. “I could try. I guess?”

  She waited.

  “Not here in front of everybody!” said Iroki, sounding harried. “Maybe I can go out by that fishpond in a bit. That was right restful, this afternoon.”

  “Oh, were you performing a religious meditation?” asked Tanar. “I thought you were napping.”

  “Well, if the one don’t work, t’other makes almost as good use of the time.”

  “And did it, ah, work?” asked Pen.

  “Not as good as my river,” sighed Iroki.

  Pen tilted his head back and stared at the fine plastered ceiling, if not for long, as his neck and shoulders ached. As did the rest of his body. Although not, he suspected, as much as Bosha’s did tonight, in his lonely bed in Nao’s infirmary. He straightened back up with a thump. “All right. Here’s another idea.”

  He couldn’t have held his fascinated audience’s attention more firmly if he were a marketplace juggler. This rabbit had better run. “Chaos and random disorder, give it a chance to work in our favor. I propose that I, Iroki, and Alixtra go into the city tomorrow and let Iroki lead us in whatever direction he’s moved to. And we’ll see where the white god’s hand guides us.”

  “To getting right lost, I should think!” said Iroki.

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” murmured Alixtra. Not very loudly.

  “Alixtra knows her way around,” Pen asserted, choo
sing to ignore that last. “She can get us unlost, after.”

  Alixtra’s lips pursed in doubt, but she didn’t deny this.

  “All we need,” Pen went on persuasively, “is to bring Iroki face to face with Tronio, in any way we can. All the rest of this huge political mess is just a digression, from the theological point of view.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Tanar, a bit tartly.

  A handwave of acknowledgement. “You only need a moment, yes?” Pen said to Iroki.

  “Well,” said Iroki, “it’d be nice if it was a moment of quiet. But I suppose so?”

  “Anyone have a better idea?” Please?

  Silence, alas, reigned in the sitting room. Even Des didn’t critique.

  Lady Xarre spoke at last, with her usual generosity—though with her daughter drawn in this deeply, she was committed will or nil to supporting Pen’s venture. “Shall I have our coach ready to convey you to the city gates, at, what, dawn?”

  Pen nodded reluctantly. “Soonest begun, soonest done. As my mother used to say. …So did my late princess-archdivine, come to think.”

  “Do you wish to take the wicker carts? If so, how many?”

  The three of them, Pen calculated, were all skinny enough to fit on one cart seat, though it would make a lumbering load for the wickerman. He wasn’t sure if there was more benefit to making sure everyone stayed together, or to having a second cart available to dispatch at need. Though in the daytime, spare carts might be hired at almost any street corner… “Not sure. Maybe none. Can we decide in the morning?”

  She nodded.

  With this, the group broke up, Iroki trudging out to the fishpond, Pen and Alixtra returning to their adjoining rooms, and Tanar again lingering with her mother.

  At Alixtra’s door, Pen peeked in over her shoulder at the sleeping Kittio.

  “He did all right with his sudden relocation today, I take it?” he murmured.