The Assassins of Tamurin (7 page)

As we continued along the esplanade, Sulen went on with her lecture, pointing out the remains of the famous parks and floral displays of the town, now forlorn with neglect. We passed shrines to Father Heaven and his consort, the Bee Goddess, and one to the Lord of Starlight. Although they had graceful domes and spacious sanctuaries with columned porches, they looked worn and old, and the two priests I saw wore shabby robes.

Beyond the gardens were the buildings of the town itself. Its streets were busy even at sunset, mostly with Durdana but with a few Erallu among them. Petty merchants called their wares from beneath the awnings of their stalls; people haggled for fresh fish, loquats, plums, and rounds of bread sold cheap at the end of the day. A barber shaved a man in a porch; a public scribe, pen in hand, huddled with a worried-looking young woman over a sheet of paper. Lanterns like yellow moons glimmered at the street comers and over the stalls, their light wan in the early dusk.

At length we reached High Lake’s main square. The buildings around it were two stories high and sided with overlapping boards, their windows covered by pattemed latticework. All had verandas and balconies with elaborately carved and painted balustrades. Above the buildings’ omate eaves the roofs varied in design. Some were low pitched and drably shingled, while others rose with a curving sweep like a hawk’s wing and were covered with red and blue tiles.

At first I thought the square magnificent, but very quickly I realized that its wonders were less than they appeared. Most of the square’s paving remained, but in the side streets many flagstones were missing. The alleys between the buildings were thick with refuse and smelled worse than the middens of Riversong. Many of the carvings on those elaborate balconies were broken, and their paint had mostly worn away. Shingles and roof tiles showed gaps, and I realized that many of the buildings, even those in the center of the town, were falling into ruin.

But I was used to tumbledown places, so the shabbiness didn’t take me aback. What did surprise me was the effect our cavalcade had on the townsfolk. The Kayanese soldiers had terrified me during the raid on Riversong, but this was my first experience of the fear that commoners everywhere in the Despotates had of armed men, even those who were behaving themselves. Many people vanished as soon as they saw us, scuttling away down fetid alleys or sidling through the nearest doorway. A few bolder ones stayed on the verandas and watched us sidelong as we passed, our horses’ hoofs clattering and the lance pennons waving above the troopers’ helmets. Most merchants hurried to close their stall shutters at our approach, although some of more courage called out, “Noble lord, noble lady, fine cloth, fine silver, fine wares” as we went by. But nobody got too close to the horses, and our soldiers were clearly ready to use their lance butts on anyone who did.

We left the square and rode farther along the esplanade. Eventually we came to a big wooden building of two stories, secluded within a stone-walled compound on the lakeshore, and unlike the town it still possessed a faded magnificence. A tall sign by the compound gate had writing on it, which Dilara said announced the inn’s name: the House of Lofty Grasses.

The gate stood open. Ekrem led our party into a large courtyard with stables left and right. A man was lighting a cluster of lanterns that hung on a pole in its center. Attendants appeared, and a huge-ruffed watchdog with an iron collar barked angrily from its cage. Then an elderly woman came out of the inn and bowed repeatedly to the Despotana, and before I could blink I was inside the inn, up a flight of stairs, and in a dim corridor paneled in dark wood. A door opened and closed and I found myself with Dilara and Sulen in a high-ceilinged room of—to me—stunning opulence. Lamps in wall sconces burned with clear yellow flames. The walls were smooth plaster painted in alternating panels of cream and red, and on the polished floor were thick mats and a pair of sleeping couches, each a size for two people, with coverlets of a fine green fabric. Next to each couch stood a low table with washbowls, ewers, towels, and a basket of ripe citrines. A tall, latticed window looked toward the lake, fading now into darkness.

I must have gaped at my surroundings, for Sulen said, “Oh, Lale, this place isn’t all
that
wonderful. Wait till you see the Despot’s piace in Shiragan. We stayed there on our way south.” She giggled. “He liked looking at Tossi, so I bet he’ll want us to stay there again. I think he wanted to keep her.”

“Why didn’t he?” I asked. “A Despot can do anything he wants, can’t he?”

They both laughed, though not nastily. “Don’t be silly,” Dilara said. “Of course he can’t. We’ve got safe passage from him and the other two Despots between here and Tamurin. Molesting any of us would ruin his honor.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. Until now I hadn’t wondered how the Despotana could be traveling so freely through another ruler’s domains. If Kayan’s Despot put his nose into Indar, for example, our Despot would slice it off at the neck.

“Look,” Sulen said, and I recognized the tutor’s tone, “it’s like this. Tamurin isn’t at war with anybody. Mother doesn’t bother other Despots and they don’t bother her, even though Tamurin is a rich place.”

“Why don’t they?” I asked, lowering myself gingerly to one of the couches. I was very saddlesore and extremely hungry.`

“Because Tamurin’s got a lot of mountains and our pike-men are very fierce and they all love the Despotana. A general from Brind tried to conquer Tamurin back in the old days, just after the Partition, and he lost his whole army. Also, the other Despots hope that if they’re nice to Mother she’ll help them if they’re attacked by another ruler, for example, or if there’s a rebellion.”

“Does she do that?” I asked. Dilara had lost interest in the conversation and was washing her face.

“Not so far. But she might. Also, each of them hopes she might marry him, so he’d get Tamurin along with her.”

“
Is
she going to marry anybody?” I asked in dismay. I didn’t like the idea of some man telling the Despotana what to do, and maybe having a say in my education.

“Not very likely,” Sulen answered, with a snort of disdain. “I don’t think she likes men very much. Don’t you know what happened to her?”

“No. What was it?”

“Don’t get started on that,” Dilara said as she dried her face on a towel. “You sound like our history tutoress. Can’t it wait till after supper?”

Sulen ignored her. “Mother’s bloodline name is Seval, but she was married into the Danjian family and had a baby son. Her husband’s father was Sun Lord of Bethiya, so she was of very high rank indeed.”

“Bethiya?” I said, trying to imagine how she’d ended up being the Despotana of Tamurin, and failing.

“Yes,” Sulen went on. “Her husband was to be Sun Lord, you see, after his father died, but his enemies assassinated him. So the old Sun Lord named Mother’s little boy as his successor.”

This was my first introduction to the complicated dynastic affairs of Bethiya’s rulers. I listened patiently.

“They lived in Kuijain,” Sulen went on, “where the Danjian bloodline had been feuding for years with the Tanyeli, the other great bloodline of Bethiya. That was because the Tanyeli thought they had the better claim to rule, and there were a lot of assassinations on both sides. Then, soon after Mother’s husband was murdered, the two clans started fighting in earnest. They ended up almost exterminating each other and the old Sun Lord was killed. Mother’s little boy was murdered, too, during the fighting, but she survived because she wasn’t in Kuijain when it happened.”

“Oh,” I said. “What happened to her then?”

“She went to Tamurin, for her safety, and married its Despot. Then he died of a fever and she became Despotana. Then she started her school. That was seven years ago. Tossi was her first student. There are thirty-nine of us now.”

“So who became the Sun Lord? There
is
one, isn’t there?” I had visions of a vast empty palace with no one at home.

“Yes, of course there’s one.” Abruptly Sulen seemed angry. “He’s sixteen years old now. But he’s a usurper, and anyway, he doesn’t really rule Bethiya. The Chancellor does. The Chancellor’s a very wicked man, you know. He pretends to justice. Mother says, but he’s really a cauldron of vipers. He could have kept her baby from being killed but he didn’t. In fact, he made sure the Danjian and the Tanyeli would wipe each other out, so he could put the usurper onto the dais and then have his own way in everything. Mother hates him. We all hate him, don’t we, Dilara?”

“Yes,” Dilara said. “Now, can we
please
find out when we’re going to eat?”

We women didn’t dine in the inn’s conmion room with the soldiers and other guests but instead were taken to a private chamber with paintings of herons and wild geese on the walls. It was a quiet meal, not because the Despotana forbade conversation but because we were all weary. I watched Tossi so I’d know how to eat in an approved manner, and remembered not to spit bones and pits onto the floor. One thing I found strange was the food spear, an instrument I'd never seen. It looked like a tiny fish trident. You used it to convey morsels to your mouth, which I decided was a very good idea, as it kept one’s fingers from becoming greasy.

When we’d finished eating, the Despotana sent the others from the room but told me to stay. I sat quietly, gazing down at my dish. It had a blue rim and a white center with yellow grasses painted on it.

“Lale,” she said, and I looked up at her. I saw again that the Despotana was a very ordinary-looking woman, no longer young, not yet old. There were lines at the comers of her small mouth, she had tiny wrinkles at the comers of her eyes, and there was a tracery of gray in her hair. She could have been any of the stall vendors in the streets of High Lake. But, oh, her wonderful voice. It was rich and smooth as the honey of the Bee Goddess. When she spoke, I could do nothing but listen.

“I’ve been watching you,” she said as she studied me. “Did you know that?”

I did. I’d been aware of it all day. But my years with Detrim’s family had taught me never to be open about what was in my mind, so I hesitated, unwilling to admit that I knew how close her scrutiny had been.

“Lale,” she said, seeing my hesitation, “now that you have been accepted into my school, you are my daughter. I will forgive my daughters all transgressions except two. One of these is lying to me.”

I’d been about to do exactly that, and I shuddered inwardly at my narrow escape. I said, “I knew you were watching me, Despotana.”

She tilted her head a littie and pressed two fingertips to her mouth. I later learned that the mannerism meant she was thinking.

“That was perceptive of you,” she said at last. “I’m pleased.” I felt a warm flush of gratification. She was happy with me, and more than that, she had told me I was her daughter. No one had ever told me that.

“However,” she went on, “I am now going to give you your first lesson in deportment. Do you know the precept in the
Noon and Midnight Manual
that says, ‘A closed mouth catches no flies?’ ”

I’d heard the saying, but didn’t know somebody had written it down. “Yes, Despotana.”

“I have noticed that you’re a chatterbox, Lale, but I know why this is the case. Do you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“It is this. All your life you have talked as fast as you could, to keep people from detecting your private thoughts. In the
Compendium of Important Military Techniques,
this is called the strategy of distraction.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I’d never thought about why I talked so much. But what she said made sense.

“The technique is admirable,” she went on, “but it fails in the face of a clever enemy who refuses to be distracted. Also, it grates upon the ear. So, beginning tomorrow, Lale, I want you to speak less and listen more. I already know you’re quick-witted and resourceful. You don’t have to prattle on, as you did today, to convince me of this.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said humbly. I felt shamed at my behavior yet deeply relieved that she still thought I was worthy of her school.

“Do you have any questions about this?” she asked.

One sprang to mind. “Well... please, ma’am, what’s the other thing you won’t forgive? I don’t want to do it by accident.”

She gave me one of her rare smiles. “I doubt you could commit that fault at your age, but I’ll tell you nonetheless. The second thing, Lale, is disloyalty.”

“Oh,” I said.

“The
Golden Discourses of the Five Elder Sages
tell us that disloyalty is among the worst of the Eight Iniquities. Disloyalty overthrows the natural order and causes all things to descend into confusion. Therefore it is to be avoided at all costs.”

“I won’t be disloyal,” I told her stoutly, “ever.”

“I’m sure of this, Lale. But let me tell you why loyalty is so important for my daughters. It is because they don’t know their bloodlines; and so they have only me, each other, and the school. For this reason you must always be loyal to the other girls, who are your sisters, and to the school itself, which is your home, and to me, since I have become the mother of you all. Nothing is more important than that loyalty. It gives you a family, Lale, and to be disloyal is to break that family apart. A girl who is disloyal not only has ruined herself but has also tumed on the only family she will ever have.” She paused and then added softly, “It has never happened, but such a girl would be sent away. She would never see her sisters or me or Tamurin again. She would be as alone as she was before she came to me.”