The Assassins of Tamurin (46 page)

His wife put a hand on his arm. “Ilishan, wait, perhaps—” “No. I don’t want her here. She’ll bring us nothing but suffering.” To me he said, “I don’t care if you have a dozen

guardsmen outside my house. Get away with you, or I’ll have you thrown into the street. Veraj!”

The porter took a tentative step. Eyes brimming with tears, shaking with humiliation, I stumbled through the gate and heard it slam behind me. A woman carrying a basket of squash glanced at my face as she passed, then hurried on.

I could do nothing more. I’d already done too much. I walked back to the inn, paid for the room I’d never used, and collected my few belongings. Then I trudged down to the river docks, and before the supper hour came I was aboard a waterspoon heading east.

I caught up with Terem at Tanay, which in imperial times was Bethiya’s prefectural capital. It stood on the shores of Blue Sea Lake, which was the source of the Jacinth. Twenty miles east of Tanay, over a range of low hills, was the River Savath and the border with Lindu.

In the years since the Partition, Tanay had become a fortress city, guarding Bethiya’s eastem frontier against the Exile Kings. Terem had strengthened its already tremendous walls, and adjoining them built a huge, fortified compound that could accommodate a dozen infantry brigades and three of cavalry. But the multitude overflowed even this; when I arrived, the lakeshore beyond the compound was dark with leather tents and smoking from a myriad field kitchens. It was the greatest Durdana force gathered since the end of the empire: ninety thousand men, the Army of the East.

Terem was ensconced in Tanay’s citadel, which towered over the lakeshore gate. The sentries at the citadel entrance didn’t want to let me in, but while I was arguing with them, a brigadier who knew me from Jade Lagoon came along. After some exclamations of disbelief he took me to the map room on the uppermost floor of the keep. Terem was there, reviewing the army’s marching orders with his senior commanders.

He wasn’t pleased to see me, although he didn’t say so in front of his men. The officers had no idea what to make of my escapade, and gawked at me until Terem sent me to wait in an adjoining chamber, which proved to be his private quarters. He joined me there a short while later.

He was infuriated, but at the same time I sensed that he was secretly happy that I'd showed up and also that he had a sneaking regard for what I'd done—^he had plenty of audacity himself and admired it in others. So we had it out, Terem fuming about the risk I'd taken in traveling alone and how I'd disobeyed his instructions. I countered that I had arrived intact and that all he had to do now was let me tag along with his escort. In response he said I wasn’t going farther than Tanay, and I told him I'd slip away and join the laundrywomen then, and was he going to lock me up to prevent it? Then I told him I could ride as well as he could, and if he gave me a good horse I'd be just as safe as he was. And finally, I said, if he really wanted the troops to see how confident he was of our victory, what better way than to let his Inamorata come along?

I got away with it. He finally threw his hands up in exasperated capitulation, and I ran forward and kissed him. We hadn’t seen each other for almost three hands; one thing led to another, and there was a camp bed in the comer of the room. After that I was in no danger of being sent anywhere I didn’t want to go.

The Army of the East marched from Tanay two days later, on 14 Cold Dew. The cavalry screen set out at first light, and as the sun rose over the hills the infantry vanguard followed. On its heels came Terem and me with our escort, and finally endless colunms of foot soldiers flanked by masses of horsemen. Farther back lumbered the supply column and the siege train, then the rear guard, and at last the disorganized throng of camp followers that follow any army.

The city had tumed out to see us off, and enormous crowds jammed the ramparts. As Terem and I rode from the main gate, they saw his golden helmet and crimson cloak, and cheered until I thought the stones of the walls would crack. Behind us swayed the standards of the army, flowing banners on tall gilded staffs, and among them was one that signified Terem’s great dream. He’d kept it secret even from me, and I didn’t recognize it at once. But when I did, my breath caught in my throat, for high above the helmet crests of our bodyguard blazed the three golden roses of the empire. The crowds saw it and like me they gasped; and then the roar came like thunder, for the Rose Standard had not glearned over a Durdana army for a hundred years. A chill ran down my spine, and I must say that even Master Luasin could not have staged a better spectacle. So I have to give credit where it’s due: Terem certainly knew how to manage an audience, including me.

It was profoundly, grandly, gloriously impressive. The grumble of drums, the metal-tongued boom of signal horns, the rumble of marching men and cantering horses, armor and weapons jangling, moming sunlight gleaming on steel and bronze, and all the brave banners ... it is as vivid to me as if I were again in the midst of it. I’d never ridden with an army, let alone one of this size and strength, and it made my blood sing.

For a while, in spite of my exhilaration, I tried to remember that this tide might someday roll over Tamurin, and reminded myself that I was among the enemy. But the splendor of it soon drove such thoughts from my mind, and I found myself longing for Terem’s victory.

The first day’s march took us to the village of Bittersweet, on the west bank of the Savath. A cavalry brigade had already crossed upstream at Black Carp Ford and had driven off the Exile pickets on the far shore, thus clearing the way for our engineers to span the river. This was made easier by the mins of an old bridge that had been broken long ago in the civil wars. Its piers remained, and the engineers were already fixing timbers to the masonry to form a crossing. A castella stood just outside the village, where a border garrison was stationed; Terem set up his headquarters there.

By now I was wondering which of my Three Springs sisters my clandestine contact might be and when she’d show herself. I knew there hadn’t been enough time for Mother to both receive my message and get an agent as far as the Sa-vath. However, Nilang seemed able to act without Mother’s direct instructions, and before I left Kuijain she’d promised that someone would find me before we left Bethiya. But the frontier was now at hand and I was becoming concerned.

The answer came as I was washing the journey’s dust from my hands and face in the room Terem and I were to share. I felt the numbness and the tingling, the water in the basin puckered and rose in a thin stalk, then flattened into a disk at the tip. The disk grew a face like Master Luasin’s, which leered at me disgustingly. Then Nilang’s voice in my head whispered,
Dilara, camp followers,
and the water collapsed into the basin, splashing me.

Dilara! I was so happy I did a little dance. Months had passed since we’d last seen each other, and so much had happened to me since then. I could hardly wait to tell her about it.

As it tumed out, though, I had to wait until evening, when Terem finally went into an orders council with his officers. As soon as he left me to myself, I slipped out of the castella—in the bustle of soldiers dashing to and fro, nobody took much notice of me—and hurried into the city of tents that surrounded it. Sunset was near as I walked along the riverbank, watching the last of the camp followers straggle in: the laundrywomen I’d threatened to join, kitchen girls, trinket hawkers, spirits-of-wine peddlers, women with lovers in the ranks, seamstresses, horse dealers, and the inevitable contingent of stmmpets. They were a cheerful, rowdy crew, squabbling over the best campsites like a flock of finches over spilled grain. Excitement hung in the air, sharpened l>y tension: tomorrow we would be across the Sa-vath, where no Durdana army had trod since the Partition. It wasn’t exactly hostile territory, for over there the common people were our kin. But looming beyond them were the Exiles, who would kill us all if they could.

In my travel clothes I didn’t stand out in the mob, and nobody recognized me. But nobody approached me, either, and I found no sign of Dilara. Dusk drew on; I knew I'd have to retum to the castella soon. With growing alarm I began to imagine all sorts of nasty things that might have befallen her.

As I went around the comer of a tent a voice at my elbow said, “And would the noble lady need her skirt or jacket mended? No expense at all, the best work you could ask, only a copper spade or two, thanking the lady’s generosity.” “No,I—D//ara.'”

“None other,” said my old friend, grinning. On her face was the same infectious, impudent grin I'd missed for so long. She fingered my jacket’s weave. “Very fine cloth, the honored lady is clearly well-to-do.”

I wanted to hug her but dared not. All we could do was exchange a warm touch of the fingertips as she examined my jacket. I said, “I got the sending a few hours ago. I didn’t dare hope it would be you. Where have you come from?” When she answered, I caught the odor of wine on her breath; unusual, because she’d never been a drinker. “Gultekin. I’ve been there for a while. I’ve got a public scribe’s booth in the Miscellaneous Market. Then a sending came from Nilang, ordering me to join the army at Tanay and stay with it until you found me.”

“I'm so glad to see you! I came through Gultekin six days ago. If I'd only known you were there . . .”

“I left some time before that. But you’d better not stay here long or he’ll start wondering where you are. What were your orders?”

“Nilang said to tell you if he’d changed his plans, but he hasn’t. He’s going straight for the throat, straight to Bara. He hopes to draw Garhang’s forces on him in dribs and drabs, so he can defeat them as they come. If Garhang hangs back, he’ll take the city by storm.”

“Good. Nothing for me to do, then, but tag along. If you need to talk to me, find some mending to be done.”

“I will. What were you supposed to do if he’d changed things?”

Dilara shrugged. “Go down the Savath to Konghai and leave a message with one of our sisters. Then I would have come back and tried to catch up with the army, and you.”

I frowned. “We’re a lot closer to Lindu than Tamurin. If Terem changes his plans, the news won’t get from us to Mother in time for her to do anything about it. What good is that to her?”

Again the shrug, a reminder that unlike me, Dilara never puzzled over Mother’s intentions. She was too single-minded; she followed instructions with perfect fidelity but remained indifferent to the reasons behind them.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But listen, we’ve got at least one battle ahead of us. If things go badly, find me. We can probably fight our way out together, if we have to.”

I’d tried not to think about being on the losing end of a battle, but she had a point. “I’U bear it in mind. But now I’d better go back where I belong. Keep yourself safe.”

“And you. But try to find some mending fi-om time to time.”

“I will,” I said, and after a surreptitious squeeze of her hand, I hurried away to the castella. Terem never noticed I’d been gone.

Th e next morning the main body of the army crossed the Savath. I rode with Terem just behind the three thousand men of the Iron Shield Brigade who had the honor of being the first infantry unit to enter Lindu. Ahead of us lay the conquered lands we had come to free.

I’d heard about the misery of the Durdana under Exile rule, but nothing had prepared me for the reality. Because only Exile settlements were allowed within ten miles of the Savath, these were all we saw at first. They were rough, wattle-built farmsteads with thatched byres and outbuildings, and each had a good-sized horse corral, fenced with thombushes or palisades. Before the Partition there had been Durdana villages here, but all that remained were green mounds with the stubs of walls here and there. Nor were there any crops waiting to be harvested, for the Exiles had tumed all the land over to pasture for their horse herds.

But for many miles we saw no barbarians, for they’d taken their families, horses, and possessions and fled before our advance. Some had bumed their farmsteads to deprive us of shelter, or so they thought, although none of us would have willingly entered such stinking places. Sometimes we saw their roughly constructed tower tombs, dark stone fingers poking nastily into the sky, but their only decent buildings were the wooden temples they built to their bizarre single god, who condenmed our Beneficent Ones as demons. Terem had forbidden looting or wanton destruc-tion—^because it encouraged indiscipline, not out of any regard for Exile sentiments—^but whenever we came across one of these temples, he ordered it bumed. So the army’s path was marked by rising columns of black smoke, and I began to perceive the desolation that hes beneath war’s glitter, its brave music, and its rattle of dmms. But the desolation was happening to the enemy, so it seemed very good to me.

Later that moming I saw my first Exiles. Our patrols brought in a pair of stragglers, who were hauled before Terem and our interpreters. I’d always had a vague idea of the Exiles’ appearance, but the reality took me aback even so. They weren’t the giants their fearsome reputation suggested, being of common height, although they were very burly. Their hair was straw yellow, like that of the Daisa, wom in thin braids that swung at neck and cheeks, and their eyes were so dark they were nearly black. They had fair skin, much of it covered by swirling multicolored tattoos. Exile women are not allowed these designs, but any barbarian could tell a man’s station by the hues and pattems he wore. I’d never seen anything so alien, and winced at the thought of such creatures enslaving my people.