The Assassins of Tamurin (45 page)

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to persuade the Despotana,” I told him as I gazed at the painted screen before us. It was Sudai’s most famous work.
Doves Resting on a Peach Branch.
I’d heard of it in school but until recently hadn’t known it was right here in Kurjain. It was an astonishing achievement. You’d swear that if you offered seeds to the three plump birds, they’d lean from their branch to pluck the morsels from your fingers.

“Your adoptive mother and Yazar were the least difficult of the whole crew,” Terem said grumpily. He was very disappointed, not least because his usual ability to inspire devotion and allegiance had failed to shift the Despots’ obstinacy. He was accustomed to getting his own way, and was deeply annoyed when he didn’t.

“She’s having trouble with Khalaka sea raiders,” I reminded him. “She needs her troops. Also, she doesn’t trust Guidarat’s Despot.”

“Who would?” Terem snorted. “Somebody wrote, ‘What will be said of the ruler who lets his people starve?’ It could have been written about him.”

“Indeed. What are you going to do now?”

He looked around. A male domestic stood motionless near the hall’s door and there were probably three others just out of sight beyond it. In a low voice he said, “We’re going to war with Lindu.”

I pricked up my ears. “We are? Why?”

“Because a victory over an Exile Kingdom is the only way to convince the Despots to join an alliance. And the time’s ripe. Garhang’s becoming more and more frightened of Ardavan, and he’s ready to talk about opening the border. So I’ve encouraged more discussion with him.”

“But you just said we’re going to attack Lindu.”

“Of course we are. But if he thinks I’m contemplating some kind of defensive agreement, he may relax his guard against us. Halis and I are hoping he’ll shift part of his cav-ahy from our border to his frontier with Jouhar.”

“You wouldn’t
really
make an ally of him, would you?”

He laughed. ‘There’s no chance of that. Can you see me helping an Exile King keep his throne, so he can go on oppressing his Durdana slaves? People would call me traitor.”

“Garhang must be singularly inept if he doesn’t know you’re playing him like a fish.”

“He is not completely inept, but his judgment is made defective by his fear of Ardavan. My guess is that Ardavan intends to gobble up Lindu next spring, as soon as the weather’s good enough for fighting. Then we’ll have him glowering at us across the Savath. I don’t want him that close.”

“So we strike first?”

“Exactly. I’m leading twenty infantry and ten cavahy brigades into Lindu before this year’s campaigning season ends, and I’ll have Garhang’s neck under my heel before winter.”

He smiled, and in that grim hard smile I saw an aspect of him I’d suspected but never witnessed. I knew many sides of him now, among them the boyish companion of our night in the Mirror, the passionate lover of the Reed Pavilion, and the grave and thoughtful sovereign of Bethiya. But in that moment I perceived the essence of him, the true nature that underlay the faces he presented to the world. Beneath them all he was a brilliant, ruthless visionary, whose dreams were glittering and dangerous.

“Can we beat them?” I asked.

“Yes. We can beat them.”

He never doubted it, then or later, even when catastrophe loomed over him like a mountain. That perfect certainty could, and did, inspire men and women to follow him to the death. For he appeared to know, as if a god had told him, that our victory was ordained, and how could anyone imagine defeat when he did not? Hardly anybody around him
did
imagine it, except me, and that was l^ause I was in a position to make it happen.

“When will you attack?” I asked, as I calculated how soon I might get this news to Nilang.

“We’ll march into Lindu at the middle of the month,” he

said. “There will be no announcement of the invasion until after it’s under way. I want to catch Garhang by surprise.” “I’m looking forward to this,” I told him. “I’ve never seen an Exile Kingdom or a war.”

He frowned at me. “Lale, this is an army on the march into enemy territory, with a battle at the end of it. It’s no place for a woman of rank. You’ll stay here.”

“No, I won’t,” I retorted. “I’m coming with you. I’ve never seen a war, and I want to. Besides, there are lots of women camp followers. Who else does the laundry? I could do yours, if I had to. I learned how at school.”

Terem sighed. “You will not do laundry or anything else. I give way to you in most things, dearest, but not in this. You are to stay in Kuijain. I want you safe.”

“Is that the Sun Lord’s injunction?” I hoped he’d back away from a direct order.

“It is. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Be that as it may, you must remain here until I retum. It shouldn’t take long. Garhang’s realm is a house of sticks. One good kick and the whole ramshackle pile will come crashing down.”

“And suppose Ardavan doesn’t wait for spring and marches over the border at you instead?”

“A risk I must accept. But I expect to cmsh Garhang and seize Bara, his capital, before month’s end. By then it’ll be too late in the season for Ardavan to mount a serious attack against us, so we’ll have the winter to build up our strength in Lindu. Next spring he and I will try conclusions in eamest, but it will be on his territory, not ours.”

“But I’ll miss you!” It was the expected thing to say, but as I said it, I realized that it was tme—and that I’d miss him a great deal. But at the same time I was worried about being left in Kuijain, not knowing what he was up to. I was just as much a soldier as he was, and I had my orders. If I failed to obey them by letting him get out of my sight. Mother wouldn’t like it at all.

He took my arm and led me to a wooden pedestal on which was a little stone sculpture. “I’ll miss you, too. But it’s how it must be. Look, I had these brought out of storage. They’re said to be from the late Commonwealth, two ladies in white jade. Perfection.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “perfection.” The argument was finished, he’d made up his mind, and there was no more to be said.

Terem left for the east on 28 White Dew, traveling by boat up the Jacinth River. The attack on Lindu was still a deep secret, so it was given out that the Sun Lord was inspecting the border fortresses. His strategy was not as secure as he imagined, though; I had sent the news to Mother the day after he told me about it.

A few hours after Terem’s departure, I left the palace for my villa on Cloud Mirror Canal. Before I went, I informed the Chancellery that I would reside there until the Sun Lord came back to Kuijain. I spent the night at the villa and then, very early the next moming, I told my domestics that I was returning to Jade Lagoon. Since I came and went at odd intervals, they saw nothing peculiar in this; nor would they have seen anything peculiar in the plump-cheeked young matron with braided hair who, about an hour later, boarded an eastbound river lorcha in Feather Lagoon. She carried a journey-bag over her shoulder, and wore unmemorable traveling clothes and a pair of sensible weatherproof boots.

What wasn’t visible was the fighting knife beneath my jacket and my well-packed money belt. The garments and bag I’d bought in the Round, while the braided wig and the wax cheek pads were fi-om the theater stocks at the Porcelain Pavilion. The knife came from Nilang. We reckoned that I had several days before people at Jade Lagoon and the villa compared notes and realized I was at neither place. By that time I would be far from Kuijain. Mother akeady knew I was on the road, for Nilang had transmitted a sending to Tossi back in Chiran that said:
Lale follows sun eastward.

The lorcha took me as far as the city of Gultekin, six days’ travel up the Jacinth; there I intended to transfer to a smaller waterspoon for the rest of the journey. As soon as I got ashore, I found an alley and discarded the cheek pads and the wig; Gultekin was a middling-sized city and I thought it unlikely that I'd be recognized so far from Kuijain.

Despite the urgency of following Terem, I was curious to see Gultekin because it was Merihan’s home, and as far as I knew her parents still lived here. I might even have time, I reflected as I sauntered out of the alley, to see the house where she grew up.

This idea, once it came to me, took on an oddly compelling force. Instead of following my original plan, which was to proceed upriver without an overnight stop, I found the best inn Gultekin had to offer, and took a private room overlooking the garden. I then determined the whereabouts of the Aviya residence from the landlady, and in the early aftemoon went out and found it.

The house stood where Nine Grasshoppers Street opened onto the round plaza called Gold Sand Circle. This was a well-to-do quarter of Gultekin, and only the dry, cmmbling fountain in the plaza’s center suggested that it had decayed from a more opulent state. The Aviya villa—a small mansion, really—stood on the east side, surrounded by a brick wall pierced with a single carriage gate. Next to that was a smaller entry for pedestrians, with the Aviya bloodline emblem of a white hare painted on it. Rising above the wall were the green-tiled roofs of the various wings of the mansion, which was of two stories.

Having found the house, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I wasn’t even certain why I'd come here. As I stood a few paces from its entrance and puzzled over this, a heavyset street peddler came around the comer and banged on the pedestrian gate. Judging by the reed cages he carried, he was an itinerant toad seller; householders bought the little creatures to eat garden slugs and other pests. Soon a snub-nosed young man opened the gate and the peddler lumbered through it.

In the madness of the next instant I utterly forgot myself. I called, “Please wait,” and hurried after the peddler. The young porter looked startled but said, “Yes, mistress?” as I slipped past him into the courtyard.

I stopped and looked around. Through an archway to my left I glimpsed a garden, with tall autumn sunflowers and an old apple tree in full
fruit
At any instant I expected the porter to express astonishment at my resemblance to the daughter of the house, but he didn’t—^he must be a recent addition to the household, one who had never seen Merihan.

At that moment I might have tumed and fled, and much that followed would have been very different. But instead I took further leave of my senses and asked, “Is your master or mistress at home?”

“Honored lady, they’re in the garden.” He frowned. “Did you have an engagement to see them today? I was not informed.”

“I’m from Kuijain,” I said. “We have ... acquaintances in common.”

“May I tell them who calls?” He akeady didn’t think much of me, tuming up unannounced and without attendants. I hesitated, trying to think of who I might pretend to be. Saying I was the Sun Lord’s Inamorata would merely convince him that I was demented.

I was spared answering by a woman who came through the arch. She was about Mother’s age but slender, with a small oval face and gray hak cut short. She must have been gardening, because plant stems and sunflower petals clung to her skirt, and she held a small pmning knife. But she was no servant; her clothes and her smooth skin told me that. I wanted to flee but stood as if rooted to the earth.

She said to the toad seller, “I’ll need five of them.” And then she saw me. She stopped in her tracks and the knife tumbled from her fingers onto the courtyard stones. It made a soft
ting,
like the chime of a tiny bell.

There was a long silence.

“Ilishan,” Merihan’s mother called in a trembling voice. “Oh, lUshan. Look.”

“What is it, Nirar?” A man appeared in the archway. It was Merihan’s father, silver haired and sharp nosed, with the bearing of an officer and the heavily muscled arms of a man trained to weapons. At the sight of me he went white and put his hand on the wall for support.

'‘Merihan?**
he said, and the pain in his voice seared my heart.

I didn’t know what to do. I cursed myself for having come anywhere near this place. What had I hoped to accomplish with my morbid curiosity? All I could do was hurt them.

“My lord Aviya,” I blurted, “I’m not her. I grew up in Chiran, in Tamurin. I’m Lale Navari. I’ve come from Kuijain.”
‘‘You!**
Merihan’s mother said. But of course they would know my name. How could they not have heard that the Sun Lord had an Inamorata called Lale and that he’d taken her the instant his mourning for Merihan was finished?

“Why have you come here?” her father demanded. “The Sun Lord passed through Gultekin days ago.” He was still staring at me, as if he could scarcely believe the evidence of his eyes.

“I—^I know he did,” I stammered. “He doesn’t know I’m here. I just wanted to see where . . . where she grew up.” “She’s so like her,” Nirar whispered. “And yet. .. not.” “How could you do this to us?” Ilishan burst out. An angry flush had replaced his pallor. “Do you think we don’t know how you snared him, you with your look of her, and Merihan not a year in her tomb? Have you no pity, to come here and throw yourself in our faces? No respect?”

“I’m sorry,” I answered, my gaze cast down, my face burning with shame. “I meant no harm. I didn’t think.”

“I don’t care if you’re his Inamorata or not,” he went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Nor that you can dispossess us with a word to him. Do that if you will. But get out of our house. You’re not welcome.”