The Assassins of Thasalon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

“Assassin,” said Pen. “Not so easy or safe a prey as a rabbit. But… it’s a task no one else in Vilnoc dare take on without me.”

  Nobody else in the room seemed to think this an alarming pronouncement. All were gazing at him with interested confidence, as if he were a marketplace performer about to pull that rabbit out of the air. Nonetheless, if his choices were, Pen! Ride to Cedonia yoked to Adelis! versus Pen! Go hunt around in the dark for a murderess! he knew which he’d pick first.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he sighed.

  He hoped that guard runner might come soon.

  * * *

  The afternoon passed quietly, with Adelis lying up in his bedchamber but certainly not sleeping. At dinnertime, he felt well enough to come down and join the family, where the table talk, in front of Pen’s few servants, did not include politics of any flavor. Afterward the general retreated again to his bed-bastion, this time armed with a lap board, paper, and ink.

  Soon after dark, a discreet knock at the back door heralded not the guard runner Penric hoped for, but Master Stobrek conducting General Gria, the growing shadows and their cloak-hoods lending them a thin anonymity. Pen took them upstairs.

  Adelis’s rumbling voice floated out of his chamber door: “No, no, honeycomb, we eat the secret messages after we read them. Next year, likely, at the rate you’re going.”

  They entered to find the general’s bastion had been surrendered to the invasion of his niece and her attendant cat. The spoils of war included his red cloak, on which Rina was sitting in triumphant possession. He’d fended her off from his work with a bribe of scrap papers and a fortunately dry quill, nib now squashed and feather molting in her firm fist for pretend-writing in earnest imitation of her uncle.

  He held up one of her efforts and studied the pattern of holes punched through it. “Really, Penric, I don’t know if your daughter is going to grow up to be a scribe or a spy. This could make nice secret code.”

  Pen grinned and collected her from her cloth nest, the cloak dragging along in one grabby hand, quill still clutched in the other. The cat, upended from the warm spot, made a peeved noise. On the high side of two, Rina was growing leggier with a speed almost as alarming as the explosion of her word-hoard. She had her mother’s eyes, and fine hair of an indeterminate color that Idrene predicted would eventually settle on a rich brown with, perhaps, amber highlights. Trying to imagine her at twelve made Pen’s mind boggle a bit. Or twenty-two, five gods permit. I look forward to meeting you, future Rina.

  “Unk Dels!” Rina protested her removal. She could actually pronounce Adelis Arisaydia now, with prompting, but her earlier effort looked fair to sticking as a permanent nickname.

  “How the ladies do love a uniform,” Adelis murmured to Penric. “She can keep the cloak.” His head bent, the visitors could not see the surprisingly soft smile that accompanied the words.

  “Seducer,” Pen returned under his breath. “Get your own daughter.”

  “I mean to.”

  Gria spoke anxiously: “Have you recovered, sir?”

  Adelis straightened. “Much improved, under my brother-in-law’s care. Although it might be well to put it about that I’m expected to be laid up here for, oh, another week.”

  Spoken like a man who meant to ride tomorrow?

  “I hope to hear your thinking,” said Gria. The scatter of papers hinting there’d been much.

  “The duke does as well,” added Stobrek.

  “Yes,” said Adelis simply, and jerked his head at Pen, who nodded back and withdrew, the cat following in historical hopes of tidbits dribbling down from its mistress.

  He closed the door quietly behind himself and Rina, who was still clutching the cloak, and only then realized that Adelis had meant it not for a temporary sop but as a permanent gift. He wouldn’t be wearing an Orban uniform in Cedonia, after all. Pen blew out his breath and went off to find Nikys and Idrene.

  * * *

  His visitors remained closeted with Adelis for almost two hours, emerging abstracted and silent, each holding his own ration of sealed notes. They didn’t linger. Pen politely did not ply them with questions. After escorting them out his back door, Pen took himself up to get the report from Adelis.

  In the low lamplight, Adelis was leaning back against his headboard with his eyes closed, weariness shadowing his face. Ready for one more dose of uphill magic, Pen guessed. He closed the door behind himself and said quietly, “So you mean to head for Cedonia?”

  Adelis’s eyes flicked open, the shadow at once masked by his intensity. “Tomorrow, if I can. Find that hedge sorceress, Pen.” He sat up to wrap his arms around his raised knees. “I may go whether you find her or not. And wish her the Bastard’s own luck trying to keep up with me. Any word from those guardsmen?”

  “Not so far. What did Stobrek have to say about the duke?”

  Adelis shrugged. “Jurgo’s feelings and thinking are both naturally mixed. He’s offended by the attack on his own doorstep, but it’s not an option to take on a realm a dozen times the size of Orbas with anything more than a strongly worded diplomatic note. He’s offered me a purse, and full use of his courier remounts to speed us to the border, or a navy sloop to take us around the peninsula and land us secretly on the coast outside of Thasalon.”

  “Sounds like a pretty strongly worded note to me. Which do you favor?”

  “Ship,” said Adelis firmly. “It wasn’t an offer I—or Gria—was expecting, but it only took a moment to see the advantages. Horseback might be faster, but the sloop would be less expected and watched-for. And harder to follow.”

  “This was never intended to even be recognized as an assassination. Until someone reports back to Thasalon that you’re alive, they won’t guess you’re coming, whatever route.”

  “So I hope, but would never count upon.”

  “Once you’re clear of the coast, you’d be safe for a time,” Pen allowed. “Might sleep better. Arrive fresher.”

  Adelis huffed a laugh. “There’s a happy thought. How easy would it be for your sorceress to follow us at sea?”

  Wait, how did your assassin become my property? “That sorceress? With a completely untrained demon leaking chaos all over the rigging? She might embark, but I doubt her ship would arrive anywhere its crew intended. I’d trust she’d have the sense not to try, but if she doesn’t, she’d become a problem that solves itself.”

  “Hm, yes, I remember those poor pirates. I expect they remember you, too.”

  “I wasn’t an untrained demon,” Des put in, snootily.

  Pen’s grin flickered. “Better still, I’d only have to escort you as far as the harbor. Once your ship left, I could hunt for the sorceress without having to simultaneously keep watch over you. I like that choice. A lot. Very generous, for a duke who’s losing your services.”

  “But gaining future friends in Thasalon.”

  “Only if the princess’s party comes out on top. He might be gaining future enemies.”

  “Scarcely more than he has now.”

  “True,” conceded Pen. “But the moment you arrive, you should urge Laris to obtain her own trusted sorcerer. Or more than one, if she can lay hands on them. To share.”

  “Already figured that out.”

  “Good.”

  “Did she love her uncle Prince Ragat?”

  “I have no idea. He was allied with Nao on the regency council against Methani, but Ragat may have had ambitions for his own son Ello. Or for himself. Moot now.”

  Pen’s wave granted that. “You now know everything about Jurgo’s military dispositions in Orbas. Has the duke any, shall we say, concerns about you sharing them should Cedonia again turn its eyes on its former province? Willingly, if in the princess’s party, unwillingly if, gods forbid, you should fall into Methani’s hands?”

  Adelis’s wintry smile was the one without much amusement behind it. “You’re not thinking it through, Penric. You’re planning to stay here in Orbas, right?”

  “Yes, the white
god and Jurgo allowing…?”

  “With your family. Which is my family.”

  “I’d think you’d be glad to keep them far away from Thasalon.”

  “Oh, I am. And under your protection, even better.”

  “And Jurgo’s, as long as I serve him.”

  “Just as long as that, yes.”

  Pen’s brows climbed. “Protected, or hostage?”

  “I would never say that. Out loud. You shouldn’t either. Word to the wise.”

  “I… see. You don’t leave any holes in your strategic thinking, do you.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  On that sober note, Pen offered one more treatment against the fading concussion, accepted with awkward thanks, and withdrew to leave Adelis to whatever sleep he could obtain.

  Chapter 3

  At noon the next day, Adelis’s aide brought his personal gear from the fort at Tyno. Pen thanked him and fended him off saying that the general was dozing after a bad night, but Pen as his physician expected him to be on his feet as good as ever in a week. Which was true, if misleading. From his upstairs room Adelis glumly watched the man go, and charged Nikys with all the private farewells he would be unable to make himself.

  Pen escorted the general to the navy docks in the cloaking dusk. They both wore unassuming street clothes. Des spread her senses wide along the route. Pen was sure that the sorceress, if she was still lurking, did not spy Adelis, because Des did not spot her in turn, but that said nothing about any unknown supporters blending in with the thousands of ordinary folk in Vilnoc. Unsettling notion, but one could count on Adelis that way—if it was something horrific, he’d think of it.

  The sloop was a small swift ship with a crew of twenty, that had spent the day provisioning. None aboard would know where they were going or why till they put out and the captain opened the sealed orders setting him at Adelis’s disposal. That a ship had left, as such ducal courier vessels did from time to time, would be witnessed; all else would be conflicting speculation.

  Gria and his aide were already aboard. At the foot of the gangplank, Adelis gripped Pen’s arm in the gesture of military brotherhood. Pen returned him a heartfelt five-fold blessing.

  “Don’t waste my work,” Pen murmured.

  Adelis touched the burn scars by his eyes and smiled grimly. “I’ll try not.”

  The ship, without lights, rigging barely creaking, slipped away on the reliable land breeze that funneled down the valley at this time of evening. Pen tilted his head back to study the emerging stars, then sighed and walked home through the balmy night. A gods-speed-you wish would be worth a detour to the temple, praying on his face in the attitude of deepest supplication, but Pen’s task was only beginning. He made the extra double tap of the back of his thumb to his lips for his own god’s luck, instead.

  Is this plan going to work, Des?

  If the woman is gone, she’s gone. If she’s not, she’ll be back. Because there is no other reason for her to linger.

  Pen paused in the shadows at the end of his block to consult with the guard on duty who was dressed like a workman, making sure he understood to lie low until the right time. Pen would have preferred to set his trap at any other place in Vilnoc than his own home, but this was where the bait was believed to be, so. Everything about his household could carry on just as if its beloved relative was still recuperating in that upstairs chamber, even to the sturdy sentries at both doors.

  He did send Nikys, Rina, Idrene and Lin to spend the night with their most sociable neighbor down the block, feigning that one of Pen’s experiments gone wrong had filled the house with a stink that made it temporarily uninhabitable, and they refused to return till he’d cleaned up after himself.

  There was a certain convenience to this ambush; he was able to while away the later evening ensconced in his own study. He might have put more of a dent in the scattered piles of his scholarly efforts if he’d not been so utterly distracted. As the peace of midnight settled in, he went down to the atrium floor and made himself moderately comfortable on a couple of cushions tucked discreetly below the first gallery. And waited.

  Des couldn’t make them disappear from second sight, but she could make herself relaxed and diffuse as if they were sleeping. Pen could wish the effect was not so soporific upon himself. Guard duty, he reflected, was not as easy a task as it looked.

  Two hours into this, convinced he was going to be up all night for nothing and nodding off in truth, he came abruptly alert as Des murmured, Right. She’s here.

  Alone?

  One fellow with her. To hold the rope, I suppose.

  He called up his night-sight to resolve the moving shadow occluding the stars at the lip of the atrium, the only aperture left unguarded. The woman had changed out her stolen maid’s garb for some close-fitting tunic and trousers in a dark dye, more suited for scrambling up and down knotted ropes. Whatever intelligence she had gathered had put her on the correct side of the atrium, toward the front and at the right level for Adelis’s bedchamber. He could tell when she realized the bait-pan was empty when she emitted a muffled curse and started back up the rope.

  Des clipped it through just above her straining hand.

  She fell with a startled yelp; Pen caught her with a grunt. Happily her remaining distance to the stone-tiled floor had been short, so he was only knocked to his knees. Within her, the weasel-demon squealed in terror, struggling but unable to flee, wildly shedding unformed chaos that Des ably absorbed. Pen managed to clap his spread hand to the back of the woman’s head, which was just the range he’d wanted for this most delicate trick.

  Her wail, right before she lost consciousness, was neither fear nor pain nor rage, but heartrending despair.

  Pen blinked, a little nonplussed. Above, he could hear footsteps pelting away across the roofs. He trusted the guards who had watched the pair ascend up the end of the house row would be ready to intercept her associate coming back down. He laid the sleeping woman on his cushions and went to call in the door sentries.

  * * *

  Finding a bottle dungeon in Vilnoc had been a challenge. None of the municipal prisons boasted such an archaic feature, and the palace had no dungeons at all. Stobrek had helped locate the only ones remaining, in an Old Cedonian shore fortress that, after some centuries, was no longer at the shoreline, which had advanced eastward with the city following, but nearer the western walls. After a stint as provincial offices and then a ducal prison, it was ending its life as a crumbling private warehouse.

  Two of Pen’s sentries had been pressed into service as stretcher bearers, the sergeant leading with the lantern. Pen, needing no light, brought up the rear, keeping a close eye lest his prisoner begin to awaken prematurely. At this dead hour they encountered no one in the streets, which grew narrower and more winding on this side of town. Two more men with lanterns awaited them at the old building’s heavy doors, dragging them open for the little procession. The cellar corridors were dank, and Pen had to hunch or bang his head.

  They came to a halt by a circular hole in the paving. The men set down their burden and shuffled awkwardly around each other in the narrow space, readying the rope ladder to drop down. The line of pits had been used as trash dumps for a long time, and some unfortunate army squad had spent the whole afternoon clearing one out. It was, if possible, even less pleasant than the one Pen remembered so unfondly from Patos. But it was the only kind of cell Pen was sure could hold a sorcerer.

  “I’ll go in first,” he said, and climbed down the twisting ladder. This chiseled-out space was only six feet in its roughly circular diameter, but almost ten feet deep. Climbing out or jumping for the opening would be impossible even for a tall canton mountaineer—ex-mountaineer—and there were no door locks for a demon to defeat. It was drier than Pen had feared, but smellier than he’d hoped—vermin had been nesting and apparently dying in the trash heap, and though the trash was gone, their aroma haunted the walls like a small-scale ghostly curse.

  Th
ere was a decent straw-stuffed mattress, though, a chamber pot, a covered bucket of clean water and a wooden cup, and a lamp, because he wasn’t sure if this woman had mastered dark-sight.

  “You sure about that lamp, Learned Sir?” a guard called down. “She could set her straw on fire.”

  Pen refrained from pointing out that no sorcerer needed a light to start a fire, even one with the most rudimentary skills. “And then what?”

  “Force us to pull her out. If you want her alive, that is.”

  “I do. But I’m getting you some help to take care of any problems.”

  More shuffling, and Pen reached up to receive the descending woman for the second time that night. He laid her out on the straw tick and straightened her as comfortably as he could, squatting to study her more closely with both sight and second sight.

  Of modest height and slender build, she seemed healthy, and, as he’d seen, fit enough to sprint, climb a rope, and probably ride. The spine of the ridge between Orbas and the next Cedonian province north was a barrier to armies, wagons, and most pack animals, but determined spies on foot could slip over it unseen; he could imagine her doing so. She carried no gear tonight—that must have been her assistant’s job—but a linen coin belt, still half filled, circled her waist under her dark shirt. She hadn’t borne her demon long enough for its leaking chaos to start generating tumors in her body, thankfully.

  Not a virgin; she was young but no maiden. By the tell-tale traces in her bones, she’d had at least one child. That was… less expected.

  The weasel-demon was presently coiled up within her, in part prisoned by her sleep, more in terror much like Des in the presence of a god, and far more bewildered. He couldn’t exactly pet it to comfort it, and wasn’t sure how to ease it past its hysteria. The dog-demon Maska did all right these days, but it had started in an animal already domesticated and tame, and had absorbed several years of imprinting from its steadfast human. This elemental had plainly been taken straight from the wild, and no one had bothered to pacify or nurture it before its animal host had been sacrificed. Disposable. Pen grimaced.