The Assassins of Tamurin (19 page)

“Help her do what?” Dilara snapped. “We didn’t see her, so how could we have helped her do anything? Why won’t you tell us what’s happened to her?”

Tossi eyed each of us and then abruptly sat down on her stool. “She’s run off,” she said. “It was sometime last night. We found the rope she used to get down from the wall, and some of her things are gone. You were out at the same time, so I had to question you. I didn’t really think you’d helped her, but I can’t overlook anything.”

This passed belief. “But why?” I blurted. “I mean, why would she run away?”

“Jisrin thinks it’s a man,” Tossi said. “She told me Adrine took to writing poetry before she left Repose, and she saw some of it. There were three or four love poems that used a man’s name, but that’s common in the nine-seven form so she didn’t think anything of it. She didn’t notice, unfortunately, that it was the name of one of the Heron Guard troopers.”

“A man?” Dilara exclaimed. “Poetry? Adrine?”

I shared her incredulity. If I’d been asked who among us was most likely to lose her head over a male, I’d have picked

Kidrin without hesitation. But Adrine? It was hard to imagine that her colorless character concealed such sentiments. It was just as hard to believe that a man would notice her long enough to feel the same way. Which only shows how little I knew about such things.

“Yes, a man,” Tossi agreed wearily. “If Jisrin’s right, his name is Lahad. Do you know who he is?”

“He took service with the Guard last year,” I said. “I remember him because he got a kite out of a tree for me in the courtyard garden.” He’d seemed a very ordinary young man and had barely spoken to me, except to tell me his name."

“Do you think she’s gone back to Chiran to find him?” Tossi asked.

“She’s not a fool,” Neclan said. “I don’t think she’d run unless she was expecting Lahad to meet her near here. It’s a long way to Chiran and she’d never reach him before she got caught.”

“And she must know we’ll be looking for her,” Dilara said in a cold voice. “I bet they’ll try to get out of Tamurin altogether. Maybe down to Guidarat, through Crossbone Pass.”

Tossi stood up. “She’s got to be stopped. Tulay, get four of the senior girls together, and horses. We’ll try to catch her on the track. And ask Instructor Harakty to get a horse ready for himself, too. I have to send a message to Mother.”

They brought Adrine back a day later. Jisrin was right; she’d run away because of Lahad and had met him a few miles down the mountain. They hadn’t traveled much farther than that because Nilang’s wraiths got her. The couple had then attempted to hide in a cave, but Adrine’s shrieks betrayed them. Lahad tried to fight, but the girls and Instructor Harakty made short work of him and left his body for the forest scavengers.

The wraiths were giving Adrine a respite when they brought her back, but even so I had never seen a face so stark with fear. Tossi ordered her to be put into a storeroom on the Third Terrace, and immediately sent a message to Mother to say the boy was dead and Adrine taken and to ask what we should do with her.

For the next few days, Tossi took Adrine’s meals to her, although the food came back untouched. She wouldn’t talk about what she saw in the storeroom, but Nilang’s wraiths were paying regular visits, to judge by the dreadful noises that seeped through the thick door. I couldn’t understand how Adrine had hoped to elude them. Maybe she’d believed that love would be her armor or even that the wraiths were mere bluff. But it was clear that they weren’t bluff, and that love was no protection at all.

Mother’s instructions finally arrived, and Tossi assembled us in the reception hall to hear them. She had the letter with her, the seal broken. I remember that the moming was bright and cold, winter sunlight glowing through the thick oiled paper we’d glued over the window lattices.

“Mother reminds us—” Tossi began, and broke off. I couldn’t tell whether her voice had cracked from distress or from anger.

She swallowed and began again. “Mother reminds us that our secrecy is our strongest defense and that Adrine has compromised it. Furthermore, she did this knowingly and willfully. She has committed both desertion and treason, and cannot be tmsted anymore. She is a soldier who has mn away fi-om the battlefield and, worse, who has risked laying her general’s plans open to the enemy.”

Tossi stopped again. Then she said in a flat voice, “For these reasons. Mother declares Adrine no daughter of hers and condenms her to death.”

It seemed as if a silent shudder passed through all of us. No one spoke, though Jisrin made a soft noise.

“However,” Tossi went on, “Mother is disposed to be merciful. The wraiths will kill Adrine slowly. But she may avoid this if she chooses to take poison.”

Tossi fell silent and folded up the letter. It was as if she were folding up Adrine’s life at the same time.

I didn’t know what to think. I’d believed that while the world might be full of faithlessness, we at Three Springs were different, that we were steadfast and incorruptible. That was one of my deepest beUefs, and I clung to it as a child clings to its mother’s breast. Adrine had violated that belief, inflicting a bitter, shameful wound. But at the same time I wondered why Mother could not be merciful. Had Adrine betrayed us so utterly as to deserve death? She hadn’t told anyone about us except her lover, and he was dead. Moreover, he was dead because of her. Was that not punishment enough?

Dilara interrupted these thoughts by asking, “When will you tell her about the poison?” Her voice was cold, betraying not a qualm about Adrine’s fate.

“Now,” Tossi said. “But Mother’s instructions are that we draw lots for it.”

So Neclan brought broom straws and Tossi broke one short and left the others long, then held them out to us. I drew the short straw.

I went with Tossi to the storeroom. For once there was no sound from within, but I imagined Adrine, huddled in a corner of that small dark prison, waiting for the wraiths to come for her again.

Tossi was looking anguished and sick, and I was sure I looked the same way, because that was how I felt. She handed me the two ceramic vials, the double poison that Nilang favored. “After you explain it to her,” she said, “come out, and we’ll leave her alone for a while.”

“Tossi,” I ventured.

“What?”

“Why can’t she have another chance? She didn’t betray us to the Sun Lord’s spies or anything like that. She never intended any harm to Mother.”

Tossi bit her lower lip, and I knew she didn’t want this to happen any more than I did. But she said, “Would you have her die of the wraiths, then?”

“But Nilang commands the wraiths. Maybe she could make them stop, and then we could help Adrine see why she was wrong to run away. Then Mother might forgive her. Doing this to her is such a waste. Why can’t we at least write and ask?”

I wondered if Adrine could hear us, and was crouching at the door in an agony of hope and fear. Tossi hesitated, but then she said, “She’s sent her orders. We have to obey them.”

“But ...” I cast desperately about for words that might persuade her. “But maybe Motfier needs more time to think. You know ... you know she’s been grieving for her son and family for years. And you know how grief can make people do strange things, things that seem a little mad. So maybe, about Adrine, she’s, well ...” I trailed off, frightened at where this was leading me.

“Are you serious?” Tossi said incredulously. “Do you mean to suggest that Mother’s
mad?'
Her face went hard. “What foolishness is this, Lale? She’s not mad. You’re on the edge of lunacy yourself, if you believe such a thing.”

“I don’t believe it at all,” I said hurriedly, appalled at myself for even thinking it. “I just, well, I don’t want Adrine to die.”

“Nor do L But Mother knows what she’s doing. She always does. Now go in.”

TTiere was nothing more to be said, so I drew the door bolts. In the back of my mind was the memory of my own encounter with the wraiths, and I did not want to set foot in that storeroom. But I had no choice, so I opened the door and entered, and Tossi shut it behind me.

Because of the room’s tiny windows, the interior was dim. The smell of vomit and sewage was very bad. I blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the poor light, and took shallow breaths. Adrine was slumped on the floor by the far wall, on a heap of filthy blankets. In spite of myself I recoiled at her appearance. I would not have known her.

“Lale?” she whispered.

“Yes. It’s Lale. >^at—” I almost said.
What have they done to you?
but caught myself just in time.

“Have you come to help me?” she asked in a soft, broken voice.

By now I didn’t want either to help or harm her. I just wanted to escape from the horror before me.

“Mother wrote to us,” I blurted. “You have a choice. The wraiths or poison.”

She stared at me as if stunned. I realized she’d been hoping, even now, for Mother’s forgiveness.

“Poison?” she asked at last.

I showed her the vials. “These. They act quickly if taken together. It won’t hurt.”

“She won’t pardon me? She won’t send Nilang to ... to stop them?”

“No.” I hoped she wouldn’t start pleading and begging. But she was stronger than that. I suppose Mother had seen that strength, or she wouldn’t have sent her to Three Springs.

“Oh,” she said, and in that soft word was such a weight of loss that I could have wept. With so much against her, she had found a man to love. She must have dreamed of it hopelessly, in silent yearning, and suddenly it was hers. It must have seemed a miracle. And now this.

“Adrine, why did you do it?” I asked.

“I loved him.” She shuddered. “I’d thought and thought about it, about us escaping together. And even with what I was thinking,
they
didn’t come for me. So I told myself they weren’t real, and when we were running away I thought it was safe to tell him what I’d been doing here. They came for me right after that. If only I hadn’t told him, if only I’d believed Nilang . . . Did you know they try to make you bite your tongue off?”

Speechless, I stared at the lacerations and the crusted blood around her mouth. There were scratches and scabs all over her. I could see them through the rags she’d made of her clothes.

“I’ve stopped them so far,” she whispered. “But I think it will be my eyes now. That’s already starting. I ripped my nails off on my ... but that’s just... you see, it’s the fear. It makes you scream and it—”

She took a deep, trembling breath and said, “Give me the poison. I want to die before they come back.”

I was supposed to leave the vials with her, but her fingers were so maimed she couldn’t open them. I drew the stoppers and held the poison to her broken lips, and she drank it down without faltering. Then I helped her to her pallet and got her to he down. I wanted to go but could not bring myself to desert her.

“How long?” she asked.

“Soon.” I prayed to Our Lady of Mercy that it would be. “Will you stay with me until I . . . until it’s over?” She sounded both fearful and diffident, as if she were too frightened to let me go, but at the same time didn’t want me to think her a nuisance.

“Yes,” I answered. “I’ll stay.”

She closed her eyes. “I’ll see Lahad soon, won’t I? I’m sure he’s waiting for me.”

“Of course he is,” I agreed with an aching throat.

Adrine fell silent. The poison took longer to act than I’d expected, and I was starting to worry when she suddenly gasped and clutched at her breast. Stupidly I said, “Is it—” “It hurts,” she gasped. “Oh, Lale, it, oh sweet Lady of Mercy oh it hurts it hurts—”

Her back arched and she screamed. Then she slumped back onto the pallet and rolled her head from side to side. Sick with horror and pity, I seized her hands in a futile, stupid gesture of comfort. But in her agony she didn’t notice. She drew a sobbing breath, held it, let it out, drew another. Her eyes stared into mine. I couldn’t meet them. I wanted to scream, too.
Die,
I thought,
please die and get it over with. Please.

She shuddered, then went limp as her last breath flowed from her. I thought I sensed her idu-spirit rush past me on its way to the Quiet World to find Lahad, and I hoped fervently that that was where she’d gone. She would make a very unquiet ghost if she lingered.

After a while I closed her eyes and slowly got to my feet. Then I called out, “It’s done.”

Tossi entered and joined me in looking down at the poor, ruined body. Eventually she said, “You didn’t have to stay, you know. I said to leave her alone.”

“She wasn’t always a traitor,” I mumbled. “I stayed because of that.”

“She didn’t deserve it,” Tossi said.

The next day we buried Adrine beneath a camellia tree outside the walls. Then we bumed a lock of her hair, but because of her crime the ash couldn’t go back to Repose to be placed in our ancestor shrine. Instead we scattered it on the mountain wind, which we hoped would blow her away and prevent her ghost from troubling us.

After she had gone under the earth, Tossi instmcted me to dispose of her belongings. There weren’t many: a leather bag, a scarf, a copper necklace, a comb, and some hairpins. Nothing about them was memorable, just as there had been nothing memorable about Adrine herself, except her wretched death.