The Assassins of Tamurin

by S. D. Tower

  But even when I was most completely Lale of the Elder Company, I was always faintly aware of that other Lale’s unwavering scrutiny. Her presence was a comfort, because I knew that if I needed her she’d be there, capable and merciless. It never occurred to me that I might someday be uncertain about which of these two women, if either, I truly was.

  Terem didn’t fall easily into my arms, for Merihan had been in her grave less than a year; her tomb stood in the palace necropolis called the Garden of the Ancestors. Despite this he didn’t quite feel that she was dead, and when he was with me he could sometimes let himself believe that he’d got her back.

  But to do him justice, he was perfectly aware that he wanted me near him because I sometimes seemed to be Merihan. Yet he also rather liked me, simply as me, which unsettled him. Though he never said so, I suspect he sometimes half wished I’d never crossed his path, because I complicated his emotions so much. But as long as his heart could not let Merihan go, he could not let me go, either.

  For my part, I knew that Mother would care Uttle how I snared him, as long as I did. But I knew better than to throw myself at him. Instead I held myself slightly aloof, forcing him to come to me. Neither did I try to act as I imagined Merihan might have, because he’d have seen through that in an eye-blink. Instead, I played the role of the scrupulous and clear-sighted woman, modeUng my part somewhat on that of the general’s sister in The Omens of Dawn, I reckoned this would impress him with my virtue, which it seemed to do.

  As the summer days drifted past, my visits to Jade Lagoon became ever more frequent. Each time I arrived, I was met at the Wet Gate by Kirkin. Because he was a clerk in the Chancellery and knew things Mother might find useful, I tried to charm him into talking about his work, and before long I succeeded. In his eagerness to impress me, he sometimes dropped nuggets of information I would otherwise never have learned.

  Kirkin conducted me each time to the Reed PaviUon, where Terem and I always met. The pavilion was very private, nestled in an angle of the outer palace walls and screened by a tall boxwood hedge. A pond sprinkled with blue water UUes lay alongside the pavilion, and in its shallows grew the fronded reeds that gave the paviUon its name. Around the pond were thickets of flowers: sea lavender, basket-of-gold, and orange torch lilies, all chosen for their colors and their fragrances. The veranda where we sat was built out over the water, so that you could look down and see rainbow carp shinunering in the cool depths.

  In the beginning, Terem and I talked a great deal. I told him about my childhood in Riversong, which interested him because, he said, he knew little of how the poor of Durdane lived and what they suffered. I, of course, assumed that he merely feigned his concern, in order to impress me with his virtue. For he was courting me, there was no doubt of it.

  He was also curious about my life at Repose. Here I needed to be careful, although I had carefully rehearsed a version of it that did not betray its central fact—that Mother had taught her daughters to regard the Sun Lord as their deadly enemy. I gave a fine performance, and deceived him without any trouble at all.

  It was during this time that I discovered something quite unusual about him, something that was to have the most profound consequences: he was a very good listener. Most people are not; they hear you with half an ear, while thinking about what they are going to say when you’ve finished. But when I spoke, Terem gave me and my words his full attention, and it pleased me.

  That pleasure was the first hairline crack in the protective shell of loyalty I’d forged, over so many years, at Mother’s direction. It was so subtle a thing that I felt no alarm, and why should I? The flustered sensations I’d experienced at our first meeting no longer assaulted me, and only occasionally did I feel a curious weakness in my knees when I looked at him.

  Not that he didn’t attract me; I or any other woman would need to be dead not to feel his allure. But the attraction didn’t trouble me, for it would make my eventual role as his mistress all the easier to play—and that prospect, I had to admit, became more pleasing as time passed.

  So, because I thought I was keeping such a level head, I failed to see the danger in which I stood. That danger was not that I might lose my judgment to passion; I'd been trained too carefully for that, and besides, I had Nilang’s wraiths to keep me loyal. The real peril was a more subtle one: its portent was the happiness I felt when we did no more than talk. That was the danger: not lust, who rules the body like a conqueror, but rather love, the thief in the night who comes to steal the heart.

  As we grew more familiar with each other, we discovered that we both liked games. Often we played Twelve Lines, though I was no match for him and usually lost. Occasionally we played Over the River, or Odds and Evens, with pebbles for stakes. Eventually I acquired a pack of cards and taught him Six Roosters, which he enjoyed enormously. I was good at gambling and won more often than he did, but he lost cheerfully, something I hadn’t expected in a man so accustomed to taking precedence. .

  Occasionally we tried poetry competitions, a then-fashionable pursuit in which you had to compose a lyric on the spot, and your opponent must respond with a poem of the same form, mood, and imagery. To my surprise, although Terem was a brilliant and polished orator, poetry completely escaped his grasp. I was a dismal poet, but he was even worse. In desperation he resorted to such ludicrous images and language that our contests were never completed but were invariably cut short by peals of helpless laughter.

  At other times, we walked in the secluded garden behind the Hall of Records, a quiet place reserved for the Sun Lord’s privacy. Terem was a fine archer, and that was where he liked to practice. When I discovered this, I asked if he would lend me a bow, and thereafter we passed many happy hours shooting at straw targets. In those days, upper-class women often played at archery, so he found nothing odd in my interest—^I merely had to pretend to be much less skilled than I was.

  Perin had wamed me to expect his erotic approaches almost as soon as we met, but she misjudged him. Despite all the time we passed together, we didn’t exchange even a touch of the hand, much less become intunate. In fact, gossip had given him very few lovers even before his marriage, and after he and Merihan were wed there had been none at all. In this he was quite unlike his predecessors, who were notorious for the number and expense of their mistresses.

  There was calculation in this. Halis Geray had put Terem on the dais with the intent that he would behave according to the precept of the Golden Discourses, which goes: “If a ruler cannot rule his own conduct, how can he rule the conduct of others?” The decorum that now reigned in Jade Lagoon suggested that the promise had been kept, which helped obscure the brutal slaughter and infanticide by which Terem had ascended the dais.

  Meanwhile, outside the palace walls, the world went on. Terem’s War Ministry continued to strengthen the army and the defenses of Bethiya’s border with Lindu, and the Ministry of Supply searched high and low for good cavalry mounts and recruits. Ardavan sent emissaries and gifts to Terem, as well as to every other ruler who might conceivably become an enemy or an ally. These were accompanied by effusive assurances of Ardavan’s desire for peace.

  Nobody believed him, and his multiplying armies and ambiguous intentions unsettled the sleep not only of Garhang, Lindu’s king, and Terem’s military officials, but also that of the Despots of Anshi and Panarik. These two men remembered all too well how Ardavan had built troop barges before he tumed west and overran Jouhar. If he ever made good his earlier threat and got his Exile horsemen across the river, he would make short work of both Anshi’s and Panarik’s infantry brigades. And nobody except Ardavan knew what he would do then.

  By the middle of Hot Sky, I was visiting Jade Lagoon as much as one day in three, not including the days of the Elder Company’s performances in the Porcelain Pavilion. Master Luasin, having done his part in getting me into Terem’s company, no longer risked the ire of the other actresses by substituting me for them. Consequently I only performed twice more in the palace,
both times because Imela had a cough.

  Even by this time, surprisingly few people knew about Terem and me. I came and went at Jade Lagoon very quietly, by hired periang and not by a palace sequina, and Kirkin never identified me to anyone we encountered. I also wore my hair pulled straight back and fastened with a silver clip, which changed the shape of my eyes and cheekbones so that I looked much less like the Surina. Moreover, I was only one person among the many who had business at the palace: magistrates, bureaucrats, messengers, officers of the army and the fleet, tradesmen and tradeswomen went in and out at all hours. With so many other minnows in the stream, I passed almost unnoticed.

  But I was watched as I went about the city. I’d expected this and would have been very surprised if Halis Geray had ignored me, given my budding affair with the Sun Lord. Four of the Chancellor’s people followed me, working in shifts of two. They were fairly good at their trade, and an untrained person would not have detected them. I never tried to shake them off, not even when I went to Nilang’s, because giving them the slip would be a clear signal that I was more than I appeared to be.

  As for actively seeking out military and diplomatic secrets, Nilang had forbidden me to do this, for I was far too precious an instrument to risk in humdrum spying. However, I did have to report on my conversations with Terem, and on anything else interesting I might observe in Jade Lagoon. I never wrote any of this down, not even in the poem code we’d learned at Three Springs—the domestics at the Chain Canal villa might be working for the Chancellor, and scribbling such stuff would be unforgivably stupid. I gave my reports orally to Nilang, who encoded them onto slips of paper that resembled the jottings of a very mediocre poet; if necessary, she added further information using invisible ink. The paper became packing for small items that she sent by

  Wayfarers’ Guard to a trading company Mother owned in Su&agin. From there the package went by courier to Repose. Mother reversed the method to communicate with Nilang.

  I sometimes wished Nilang’s sendings could be used to transmit such complicflted messages, for the discovery of even one would be enough to hang us both. Still, we were reasonably safe from detection. To catch us, HaUs Geray would have to intercept a package, realize that the packing paper was more than it seemed, decipher the code somehow, and finally trace it to Nilang—^not easy, for she never sent a dispatch unless she knew she was free of watchers, and nothing in the package indicated its origin. And to muddy the waters further, I took to visiting two or three other spirit summoners, so Nilang wouldn’t stand out. The Chancellor’s men did watch her house for a while, but she never did anything suspicious, so eventually they left her alone.

  Nevertheless we had to be careful. Halis Geray’s men were skilled enough to be dangerous, and Mother had a healthy respect for his deviousness. Much depended on hiding her activities from his searching eyes, and to this end she had steered clear of Kuijain until I was ready to go there. I suppose if he’d suspected the existence of her web, and bent all his energies to uncovering it, he might have had some success. But to him, the greatest threat was the Exile Kingdoms and especially Ardavan, and that was where he spent most of his money and directed most of his agents. The others he devoted to watching those citizens of Kuijain whom he suspected of disliking the Sun Lord’s rule.

  I was soon sure I was not among these latter, if only because Terem was, or seemed to be, very open with me. Just as I recounted my years in Riversong, Repose, and Istana, he told me about his early childhood in the coastal city of Jil-main. He also told me about his adolescence at Jade Lagoon, as he came to manhood under Halis Geray’s tutelage. But what he never mentioned, until one sultry aftemoon in Hot Sky, was how the Chancellor put him on the dais of Bethiya.

  I’d brought a copy of a new comedy. The Scandalous

  Mother-in-Law, and we’d just finished reading it to each other. On the table were a plate of honey cakes and a pitcher of white wine diluted with the juice of blackberries. Terem picked a cake and ate half in a single bite.

  “You’re very fond of those, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Yes. Gluttonous. My mother used to make them.” His face took on a distant expression. “I was seven when we came to Kurjain. She’d baked us some for the journey. I was eating one when the sequina carried us through Wet Gate. I still remember that.”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering what was to come next.

  “I didn’t understand clearly what was going on,” he continued. “Neither did my mother—^if I was puzzled, she was astounded at what Halis planned for me. And not much wonder. My father’s bloodline was very old, but it was also very minor, with no important connections. In fact, we’d almost died out—^he was a regimental commander in the Red Stag Brigade, but he was lost in a shipwreck when I was three, and my mother had been very ill ever since. The only other relatives I had were an aunt and uncle.”

  He flicked a cmmb of honey cake into the water and watched a carp rise to take it. “It was a month after the Water Terrace massacre, and there still wasn’t a Sun Lord. A few Tanyelis and Danjians were left, children and remote branches of the two bloodlines—^but nobody wanted them on the dais, and the Council of Ministers was still wrangling over who should sit there. Everybody thought they’d eventually pick a man from one of the old magnate lines.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “No. They would have, except for Halis. But he persuaded them that it was warring bloodline interests that had nearly wrecked Bethiya and it would be better if the new Sun Lord didn’t have a big family that would cause trouble. He’d known my father and thought well of him, and I certainly didn’t have many relatives. So in the end he induced the Council of Ministers to choose me.” He smiled sardonically. “They weren’t inclined to argue, because Halis already had the support of the army. He’d promised most of the confiscated Tanyeli and Danjian estates to the senior officers, to get them on his side. So I mounted the dais, and the Council named Halis regent as well as Chancellor. One condition he made was that my aunt and uncle couldn’t reside within a hundred miles of Kuijain—^his worries about relatives abusing their position, again. He was even reluctant to let my mother come to Kuijain with me, but he did because she was so ill. She died here when I was ten. My aunt and uncle are still alive, but I rarely see them.”

  “But why didn’t Lord Geray .. .”

  “Ascend the dais himself? There were some who wanted him to. But Halis didn’t want to be Sun Lord. Also, he knew that the officers who supported him wouldn’t like a scholar-magistrate, which he is, as ruler. But they could abide him as regent, as long as the new ruler was of a soldierly bent. Mine was an old military family, so I was deemed suitable.” “But why did he choose a child instead of an adult?”

  “Ah. He said it was because a child wouldn’t be corrupt, and as my regent he could correct my moral shortcomings as I grew.”

  We had gotten to the stage where I could tease him a little. “How well did he succeed in this?” I asked.

  “Alas,” Terem replied in a mournful voice, “even now, my shortcomings outweigh my virtues as the sea outweighs a raindrop.”

  I gave him the disbelieving smile he expected and said, “You quote from the Moral Discourses of Master Kostan. Nevertheless, you see yourself as a person of high character. You invoke Master Kostan only for the sake of modesty.” “Indeed?” He smiled. “Perhaps I do. And you? Are you as exemplary as you seem to be?”

  “Not at all. I’m an actress. Everyone knows that actresses have very bad characters indeed.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Not High Theater actresses. And anyway, you’re a Despotana’s adopted daughter. You’re more than an actress.”

  This was certainly true, although not quite in the manner that Terem imagined. “I suppose I am. But as for that, perhaps I’m really the daughter of some terribly rich and virtuous family in... I don’t know, in Panarik or somewhere, and they’ve been grieving over my loss for twenty years.”

  His face tumed somber, and without an
y waming at all he said, “Would you like me to look for them?”

  I wasn’t sure I’d understood him. “Look for who?”

  “Your parents.”

  I felt as if somebody had knocked my breath out of me; my throat closed up and for a dreadful moment I thought I might burst into tears. I controlled myself, although I don’t know how. Perhaps it was because I knew I had to think, for if anybody had the power to find my mother and father, this man did.

  But what was I to answer? I could cry Yes, oh please, find them. But suppose he succeeded? What would I do then, faced with parents and possibly siblings? There would be filial demands on me, and everybody would expect me to meet them. I might have to leave Kuijrdn, and if that happened, everything Mother and I had worked for would be at risk. And suppose my parents were of tmly low station? Terem knew me as a Despotana’s adopted daughter, as fit company for his rank. But suppose he discovered that I had spmng from a family of gravediggers or porters of night soil? What would he do then, despite his protestations of regard for me?

  I couldn’t let him look. But I couldn’t simply refuse. No normal foundling would reject his offer.

  Watching me carefully, he said, “You don’t have to answer now, Lale. But didn’t you ever ask the Despotana to do this for you?”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t.” But I remembered how, a very long time ago, I had thought about asking.

  “She gave me everything,” I said slowly. “She lay beside me when I was sick, and she risked dying of the sickness herself, in doing that. How could I not consider her my tme mother?”

  “Ah. You mean you didn’t want to seem disrespectful to her?”

  He’d thrown me a lifeline without realizing it. “Exactly so,” I said. ‘To ask the Despotana to find my real family would suggest she’d failed me somehow. It would have been exceedingly disrespectful.”

  Terem considered this. “But perhaps she wouldn’t feel that way, now that you’re grown.”