The White Dragon (48 page)

"Can you understand?" Zarien asked eagerly. "Can you accept your—"

"I can accept," Tansen said slowly, "that I'm evidently obliged to keep you with me for the time being."

Frustration boiled over in Zarien's blood. "Why are you so unwilling to—"

"And I suppose I'll have to count on that
stahra
to protect you when I can't." Tansen frowned as he added, "If Sharifar's weapon is a match for a waterlord."

Zarien considered this, then looked over his shoulder to where the others awaited them. "Perhaps I should not leave it lying on the ground."

"Perhaps not." Tansen's voice was dry.

Zarien eyed him suspiciously. "And you will not try to leave me behind again?"

"No, I won't leave you behind again." Tansen added wryly, "I've learned that it's more trouble than it's worth."

"
Please,
siran,
a gift, a gift, spare me a gift." The beggar didn't look much older than Armian, but he was worn down by life. Dirty and smelly, with red-rimmed rheumy eyes and rotting teeth, he was also more persistent than a Valdani priest of the Three collecting tribute goats. "A gift
, siran,
if you please."

"A gift?" Armian repeated, brushing past the beggar and proceeding through the streets of Shaljir.

"Money," Tansen clarified to Armian as the beggar followed them, encouraged by Armian's having noticed him.
 

"Money? Then why doesn't he just say so?" Armian said.

Tansen shrugged. "It's good manners to say 'gift' instead." He said to the beggar, "Go away. We have nothing for you."

"A gift, a gift," the beggar demanded. "Give me something!"

Tansen shrugged off the dirty hand that tugged at his arm. Valdani-ruled Sileria was full of beggars. Tansen had always accepted this as normal, but he learning differently from
Torena
Elelar. She insisted that Valdani laws were responsible for the homeless, starving beggars crowding the streets of every city and wandering the roads of every district.

He'd asked Armian if he thought Elelar was right when she said that someday things would be different. Armian doubted it. A few men were born to wield power, the rest were born to obey them, and some were born to scramble for scraps. That, Armian said, was the way of the world.

"Give me something!" the beggar demanded again, following Tansen and Armian.

Tansen ignored him.
 

"You who have so much—you will offer nothing?" the beggar cried, attracting attention with his loud voice. "You are sheep molesters! You are dung-eaters!"

Now Armian turned to stare at him.

"A gift!" the beggar insisted.

"I will only say this once." Armian's voice was calm, even pleasant, but Tansen felt a chill of tension creep through him. "The boy told you that we have nothing for you. Now do as he says, and go away."

"Go," Tansen urged. His heart was starting to pound.

To speak to a beggar, to acknowledge a beggar and engage him in conversation... It was encouragement. Tansen should have known better. He should explain this to Armian now.
 

The beggar put his hand on Armian's sleeve, crumpling the material in his fist. "A gift, and I will go," he promised, breathing into Armian's face.

Armian looked down at the hand on his arm.

No one else noticed. Not a soul in the street seemed alarmed. No one but Tansen realized what would happen now.

"No," Tansen said, dread flooding him. He started forward. Too late.

In a flurry of movement so fast Tansen could scarcely follow it, Armian clapped his hand over the man's fist, trapping it, then sharply rolled the edge of his forearm down into the beggar's wrist, driving him to his knees with a cry of pain.
 

The beggar lashed out, ineffectually flailing at Armian with his free hand.

"
Father, don't!" Tansen blurted.

Armian grabbed the beggar by the hair, let go of his hand, and seized his chin. With one sharp, experienced twist, he broke the man's neck.

A woman shrieked as the corpse fell to the ground.

Tansen stared stupidly at the lifeless body. His heart raged as if it were on fire. His breath sounded like wind gusting through a mountain pass.

Dar help me! Dar shield me. Dar...

He felt a hand on his arm, dragging him away from the sight. He heard Armian's curses ringing in his ears.
 

"Come
on,"
Armian urged him through gritted teeth.

"Wh—what?"

Tansen looked up in a daze, stumbling as Armian dragged him through the crowded street. He saw Valdani faces everywhere. That was bad, he knew. Unlike Silerians, Valdani would tell the Outlookers what they had seen.

"They'll be looking for you," he murmured, his mind still locked on the vision of the beggar lying dead in the street.

"Who?" Armian asked, still hauling him along.

"The Outlookers. They'll hunt for you."

"Because one Silerian killed another?" Armian gave him an amused look. "I doubt it."

Wyldon the waterlord was notoriously bad-tempered. He'd been known to kill men for smiling the wrong way or for interrupting him once too often. Excessively skinny due to bad health, he'd been heard grumbling more than once that Kiloran, though twenty years older, was just waiting for him to die so he could increase his power by taking over Wyldon's territory.

Tansen figured that if anyone could be driven to disrupt the Society with swift, rabid, unreasoning fury, it was Wyldon.

Now, in the middle of the night, Tansen addressed his men. Their faces, like his, were blackened with soot. The moons overhead, both on the wane now, were eerily red, lending no charm to the occasion. The men were attacking Wyldon's stronghold tonight, and timing was crucial. The ambush must be swift, and they must be well out of Wyldon's reach by dawn.

Tansen went over their objectives one last time. "I must kill an assassin with one of Kiloran's
shir
and leave it behind as evidence," he said. "The rest of you give them a good battle and then get away fast. Even if you can, don't kill them all. We want a few of them left alive to talk about how Kiloran's assassins ambushed them at Wyldon's very door." He paused and added, "Above all, don't let them kill
you
."

He hadn't allowed Lann or Yorin to accompany him here because Lann's immense size and bushy beard, like Yorin's scarred one-eyed face, were too distinctive. If one of Wyldon's assassins saw them up close and survived to describe them, someone might soon realize that the attack had been a ruse by Josarian's loyalists. The five men who'd come here with Tansen tonight were, like him, fairly average in size and appearance. The brand on Tansen's chest was his only distinguishing feature, and it was covered now by his black tunic. He was leaving his two swords, as notorious as his Kintish scar, in Zarien's care for the duration of the attack.

There were six assassins Kiloran couldn't account for, since Mirabar had burned their bodies on Mount Dalishar. Now six assassins, apparently Kiloran's, would be witnessed harassing another waterlord. Tansen and his men had already ambushed and killed four of Wyldon's assassins, prior to encountering Zarien, and they made sure that some local
shallaheen
saw them in the area, so Wyldon was bound to hear about it. The waterlords enforced
lirtahar,
the law of silence, but they expected the people dependent on them for water and goodwill to tell them everything that happened in their territories.

"And if we see Wyldon himself?" Radyan asked.

"Retreat immediately," Tansen replied. "We're not here to kill him or be killed by him. We just need to make sure he wants to kill Kiloran."

He ensured that everyone knew the positions they were to take in anticipation of his signal, then sent them off into the darkness. Then he turned to Zarien and said, "And you are going to stay here, exactly as ordered. Right?"

"Yes, Tansen."

"And what will happen if you don't?" he prompted.

Zarien heaved a sigh and replied, "You'll kill me yourself." They had gone over this before. More than once.

"Good. I'm glad we've got that clear at last."
 

Tansen glanced at the metal-tipped oar in Zarien's hand. The
stahra
had led the boy to him after he'd left him behind at Dalishar, and Tansen had learned by now that some things were better quickly accepted than long resisted. He knew it frustrated Zarien that he didn't agree this meant he was Sharifar's mate, let alone that he should abandon his responsibilities and go to sea. He was, however, convinced that it meant he must protect the boy and keep him close for the time being. Inconvenient, but evidently inescapable. As for the possibility that he might be the sea king... He shook off the thought, knowing that tonight he must focus on the task at hand.

When Tansen turned to go, Zarien forestalled him by saying, "I would appreciate it..."

He paused. "Yes?"

"... if you wouldn't get yourself killed."

He smiled at the boy's irritable tone. "I'll do my best."

Armian was wrong. The Outlookers might not care that one Silerian had killed another, but they minded very much—as did their citizens—that a Silerian had committed a violent murder in the streets of Shaljir, surrounded by hundreds of Valdani.