The Assassins of Tamurin

by S. D. Tower

  Chiran was a fortress city, and the Despotana’s palace was a fortress within a fortress. It was named the Citadel of Serene Repose, but everybody just called it Repose. It stood atop the highest and broadest of the city’s three ridges, and overlooked the port and the estuary of the Plum. We reached it only after a long ride, for the street wound back and forth as it ascended the ridge, and I kept looking down on roofs that had been above me earlier. The crowds thinned as we climbed, and the air, happily, got fresher. Chiran smelled no better than any of the other cities Fd been in, although it was in much better repair than most of them. Indeed, when we finally topped the ridge and I had my first sight of Repose itself, I saw that everything was fresh and bright, as if newly scrubbed, polished, and painted.

  Because this was to be my home for the next several years, I took a good look around while we rode through Prefect’s Square toward the gate. The square was paved with cobbles, and on three sides of it were large houses where the Despotana’s ministers and senior magistrates lived. On the fourth side rose the fifty-foot walls of Repose, built of red brick and capped by white stone parapets. Tall, gilded flagstaffs stood in niches in the walls, and from their peaks flew heron banners that swirled and danced in the breeze from the sea. Above the walls was the uppermost story of a very large stone building with tall windows flanked by red shutters, most of which were flung open.

  “That’s where she lives,” Dilara said, seeing the direction of my gaze. “High up in the palace, just like Mother Midnight in the story. The school’s on the far side of the compound. You’ll see when we get in.”

  We rode through the fortress gate. Here was the courtyard, the five stories of the palace rising on the right and a wall to the left that must, from the neighing of horses, have stables on its other side. In front of us was a lush, tree-shaded ornamental garden, with white graveled paths and pools of water like silver mirrors. Beyond this were several stuccoed buildings with steeply pitched roofs; each had large windows with fretwork lattices and red shutters. Behind them, at a good distance, rose the fortress’s far wall.

  “That’s the school,” Dilara said, pointing at the buildings in the garden. “Everybody’s at lessons now, but you’ll meet them when we eat dinner.”

  And so I came to the School of Serene Repose, where my life as a scholar, or so I thought, began.

  My memories of the school are unfaded. Here is the fabric of Repose itself: the parapets overlooking the harbor, the rough, comforting touch of their white stone warmed by a summer sun. Here are the high-ceilinged schoolrooms, with their plaques bearing aphorisms from the Golden Discourses and poems from the Book of the Sapphire Hall Master. I can smell the fragrance of grilled fish in the refectory and see pale sunlight burnishing the oiled paper that sealed our dormitory windows against the winds of winter. Here are the spring mists hanging over the stables, ripe with the damp smell of horse dung, and here the courtyards and passages of Seaward Yard, where the fortress spilled down the north slope of the ridge in a maze of bakeries, baths, armories, and storage magazines.

  Like any ancient stronghold, it had several ghosts, like the old man who occasionally appeared in the laundry house and the little hound that trotted along the west battlements when dank autumn fogs billowed in from the sea. Only one specter was of the frightening sort; she’d been the wife of an imperial magistrate who unjustly executed her because he wanted to marry his mistress. The poor lady haunted Beacon Tower and the wall adjacent and often appeared on the anniversary of her death, when she was especially angry. There had been several priestly attempts to release her from her torment, but she was a very stubborn ghost and nothing worked. I saw her once, from a distance, and it was not nearly distance enough.

  Repose was a big place, and months passed before I became completely familiar with it. We girls didn’t have full run of everything, of course. We could not go near the barracks where Ekrem’s men lived, nor down to the armories; also parts of Seaward Yard (though not the baths or the laundry house) were off limits, as was the palace building itself. We could go anywhere else, though, provided we didn’t leave the circuit of the fortress walls.

  But we didn’t spend all our time within Repose. There were excursions to the country for riding lessons, and every second market day a group of us went down to Plum Market next to the harbor, where we inspected the merchandise for flaws or adulteration and learned how to haggle if we hadn’t learned it already. This was because our education had a very practical bent to it. By the time her students were sixteen, Mother expected them to know how to run a large household, from cleaning to brewing to cooking to weaving and sewing, and along with that to know every trick that a cheating servant or tradesman might get up to. We had a Domestic Tutoress who made sure we learned these skills.

  But all that came later, for the first two things I had to learn were reading and writing. I was lucky in that I had a knack for them, which was a profound relief. But then I must not give myself too much credit, for we Durdana have the simplest way of reading and writing in the world. The people of Abaris, for example, have myriads of signs for ideas and sounds and whole words, and a student there needs years to leam their proper use.But we have just thirty-two signs, each of which stands for a different sound, and by arranging these signs on paper, we preserve the sounds of our words for the ears of others. With this advantage I learned to read in less than a month, and from then on there was no stopping me.

  All Mother’s students were Durdana by race or close to it, just a handful having some Erallu blood. To teach us we had eleven tutors, nine of whom were women; these were well-educated ladies of good family who had come on hard times through widowhood, war, or other bad luck, and had found a home in Repose. Six were Tamurines, two came from Guidarat, and the ninth, to the awe of us girls, was from great Kurjain itself. She was the Tradition Tutoress and taught deportment and manners; she appeared to know the Golden Hall precepts and the Noon and Midnight Manual by heart, and she was very, very strict. Our Arts Tutoress was more fun, since she taught us the games that well-bred women played: Twelve Lines, Courts, Crossing the River, and the like. I was not very good at them, especially the classic Twelve Lines, which was very simple to leam and very difficult to master. As any scholar will tell you, it is the purest and most perfect of all games that are played with pieces on a board. Mother was extremely good at it; she loved games of all kinds and especially those that tumed on strategy rather than on luck.

  Our two male tutors made up the eleven. They were retired magistrates and taught us geography and mathematics, and were almost as severe as the Tradition Tutoress. The Mathematics Tutor also instructed us in reckoning by the calendar. I found working with dates to be tricky at first, since I wasn’t good with numbers. In Riversong we never paid much attention to exactly what day it was, because we lived by the rhythm of our crops and of the solstices. But now I had to get used to the Sun Calendar and learn that a year had twelve months of thirty days apiece, and that each month was made up of six “hands” of five days each. And then there were the extra five days at the New Year that didn’t belong to any month, but were for the Solstice Festival and therefore sacred. I’d always known about the festival, since people celebrated it everywhere, but the rest of the calendar had always been vague to me. And I’d never even thought about year dating, which we Durdana calculate from the founding of the city of Seyhan, long ago at the beginning of the Commonwealth. So I was somewhat surprised to find that I’d been living in a year with a number and hadn’t known it.

  But now I could record the date of a most important event. It was this: on the twenty-third day of Early Blossom, 1306, not quite two months after I came to Repose, I received my very own surname.

  Detrim’s family had a surname, but because I was a foundling I couldn’t use it unless they adopted me—and they never did. But Mother was the Despotana, who had the power to bestow not only official titles and ranks but also actual names. The surname she had selected for her daughters was Nava
ri, which in an archaic form of our tongue meant “wanderer.” So I became Lale Navari, and was very pleased and proud about my new identity. To go along with it. Mother also fitted me out with an ofiicial birthday. She gave one to every girl who entered the School, according to the day and month we arrived at Repose. Mine was 10 Furrow, while Dilara’s was in the fifth hand of the summer solstice month, 27 Hot Sky.

  Thus equipped with a name, a birthday, a family, and a mother, not to mention being well fed and well clothed, I began the happiest time I’d ever known. Mine was a big family; when I arrived there were nearly forty students, and by the time I left there were still that many, plus another two score who had completed their training and moved on.

  Of course it was not all harmony. With so many girls living cheek by jowl, there were furious rivalries and snarling fights and storms of tears. But each of us had arrived at Repose friendless, destitute, and starving, so nobody could claim ascendancy of rank over anyone else; in that way we were all equal. So beneath the squabbling and childish insults a close bond persisted, strengthened by our shared surname and by the wretched pasts we’d all endured. I had my share of quarrels, but they never amounted to much, at least after I gave one girl a bloody nose for suggesting I was stupid. I never even waited for her to finish her insult, I just hit her three times as hard as I could, even though she overtopped me by a hand span. After that, I got all the respect I wanted.

  As for Dilara and I, our friendship deepened steadily, and by the time Hot Sky rolled around, it had become a sturdy bond. We were sisters in the school, of course, but it went beyond that. We were so attuned that we might have sprung from the same womb, and we never doubted that we would be friends as long as we lived. Sulen was jealous, because she’d imagined herself to be Dilara’s chief confidante, but Dilara and I made a circle of two that excluded all others.

  My status rose because of my friendship with her. This was because most of the girls, even the older ones, were a little afraid of Dilara. She was very strong and very agile, and like the rest of us had learned how to fight in a hard world. But no one else possessed her aura of dangerous efficiency, as if she were a blade that could shce through any armor. I had seen this aspect of her in the inn, when she snuffed out the life of the basket vole with such matter-of-fact precision. But she was not fully aware of this menacing side of her nature, nor of the effect it had on people. Or at least I don’t think she was, though she had a secretive streak and might have hidden such an awareness even from me.

  Dilara’s story, which I had learned by the time we reached Chiran, resembled that of many of the girls in the school. She was fairly sure she’d been bom in Dirun, a coastal city across the Gulf of the Pearl, but her parents had either abandoned her or died. All she knew was that she had no relatives. For the first nine years of her life she had lived with a potter’s family, kneading clay and carrying charcoal for the kiln. Then the oldest son began to abuse her, so she stowed away on a Tamurin-bound ship and ended up on the streets of Kalshel, where a magistrate took her up for thieving. He saw in the waif a possible candidate for Repose, and sent her to Chiran instead of placing her into penal servitude. Mother agreed with him, and Dilara had been her student now for three years.

  So that was the School where the river of my life had washed me up, just as the Wing had washed me into Riversong: the fortress-palace of Repose, crowded with soldiers, servants, officials, teachers, and students.

  And one other: Nilang.

  We all knew Mother kept a sorceress. This was normal, since Despots usually employed someone who, they hoped, could compel the powers of the Quiet World to act for their benefit. Most such adepts were men, however, and Nilang was therefore unusual. The name Nilang wasn’t foreign, though, so I assumed her native one was something else. She’d entered Mother’s service several years prior to my arrival at Repose, and came from the Country of Circular Paths, far across the waters of the Great Green. Apparently she’d been on the run from her homeland, for reasons that remained obscure, and her pursuers finally caught up with her in Chiran. What happened next was equally obscure, but Mother had ended up giving sanctuary to both Nilang and her handful of followers, and turned the pursuers out of Tamurin. The followers vanished a while later, but where they went or why, nobody seemed to know.

  We rarely talked about Nilang, however, and then only in undertones. A real sorcerer is not like your neighborhood spirit summoner, who consults spirits on behalf of people afflicted with illnesses, evil dreams, or possession by ghosts. Despite the name, a summoner has only a suppliant’s status in the Quiet World and must humbly ask for help rather than command it. But a sorcerer is different, for where a summoner must petition, a sorcerer can compel—although exercising such compulsion can be a very perilous undertaking indeed.

  Consequently, while everybody gossips about a sum-moner’s doings, there is little such prattle about sorcerers. Idle talk might invite their attention, and that is an interest that only a fool would welcome. Not that most self-styled sorcerers were as dangerous as they made themselves out to be. Even the ones who served Despots were often no more than convincing charlatans, and equally often were merely people with a tiny occult ability who knew how to make it appear a huge one. But, as I was later to discover, Nilang was one of the very few whose talent was real, significant, and skillfully used.

  I first met her in midsummer, about three months after my arrival at Repose. We had one half day in every hand that was free of schoolwork, and Dilara and I were in the courtyard between the classroom wing and the refectory. We were making a kite to fly from the fortress’s ramparts, where a brisk wind always blew from the sea. I was busy with a glue pot when a young man in the green-and-silver livery of the palace staff appeared. He looked me up and down and asked if I were Lale.

  “Why?” I asked, impudent as ever. “Who are you?”

  “Feras the undermessenger,” he said. “You have to come with me.”

  I showed him the glue pot. “See, I’m busy.”

  “The Despotana says you are to come,” he told me with a frown. I instantly handed the pot to Dilara and followed him.

  I had not yet been inside the palace, but that was where we were going. Its five stories of gray stone rose far above me, all its shutters and lattices thrown wide because of the heat. Above the roof the heron banners coiled lazily in the sea wind, and the gilding at the eaves glearned as yellow as the sun. The courtyard smelled, as it always did in summer, of dust and warm stone and flowers.

  We ascended the seven broad steps to the porch; the big lacquered doors to the interior stood open. I peered around, and as my eyes adjusted to the dimness I saw a long room with carved and padded benches arranged along its walls. Several doors led off the hall, and from its far end rose a staircase.

  “We go up,” Feras said, and led me toward the stairs.

  “What does she want?” I asked, in a half whisper, because the palace was so silent.

  “She didn’t tell me,” he said. “Save your breath—it’s a long climb.”

  It was, because we went all the way to the top. Long straight corridors, paneled in dark wood below cream-colored plaster, opened off the stair landings, lit dimly by windows at their far ends. Beginning at the third floor, these had clear glass in their lattices. I marveled at this, for in those days even the thick, whorled windowpanes that you could barely see through were very expensive.

  On the fifth floor the staircase ended, and we went along a corridor to a door painted with reeds and blue swallows. I could smell incense, and under it drifted the burnt-leaf scent of sweetcup smoke. I knew the latter smell because some of the Riversong villagers had used the drug.

  Feras stopped at the door and tapped on it. A woman’s voice, not Mother’s, said, “Enter.”

  Feras gingerly lifted the latch and eased the door open. Then he grabbed me by the elbow and pushed me through the gap. The door thumped shut behind me.

  I found myself in a light, airy room at a comer of the b
uilding. The walls were painted with the most wonderful landscapes, and in them were birds and animals such as I’d never imagined. A wooden chest stood under a window, and in the center of the room was a low table of blue and white marble. Four straw mats and some kneeling cushions were arranged on the floor around it.

  But all this held my attention for only a heartbeat, for a woman was sitting by the table, cross-legged on one of the mats. She was as small as Mother and near Mother’s age. At first glance she could have been an Erallu woman, except that her eyes were not narrow and black. Instead, they were big and round and of an intense sky blue, their color a startling contrast to the bronze of her skin. Nor did she wear Erallu hair rings; instead, her black hair was coiled high on her head and fixed there with silver combs. Her face was triangular, with a wide forehead, high cheekbones, and a pointed chin.

  I bowed with the fingertips of my left hand at my throat, as the Tradition Tutoress had drummed into us. The woman on the mat fixed those enormous azure eyes on mine, and I felt a quiver of apprehension. She seemed to be seeing all the way to the back of my head.

  “I’m Nilang,” she said. “You’re Lale.”

  “Yes, mistress,” I squeaked. The sorceress’s voice was high and brittle, not pleasant on the ear. Her words were accented, too, just at the edges. But even in my unease I was puzzled. If this was where a sorceress lived, where were her books, her bottles of weird substances, her arcane instruments? Even an everyday spirit summoner owned such things. I decided they must be in the wooden chest under the window.

  “Sit,” she instructed, pointing at the mat on the opposite side of the table. I edged across the polished floor and obeyed, covertly examining her clothes as I did so. Instead of the customary skirt and bodice she wore a loose, high-collared robe, in vibrant hues of orange and indigo, woven of the finest gossamin. Her small slender feet, peeping from beneath its hem, were bare, and her toenails were painted gold. I nervously wondered where Mother was, and hoped she’d put in an appearance.