The Assassins of Thasalon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  This seemed to be neither a new thought nor a great fear, for she merely shrugged. “I don’t think so. Before, he’d be afraid of my demon; after, there’d be no need. It was Kittio—”

  But Pen didn’t find out what was Kittio, because she’d regained enough presence of mind to change the subject.

  “I knew who you were,” Alixtra said. “Duke Jurgo’s second court sorcerer that he keeps in his summer capital. Married to the general’s sister. But you weren’t supposed to be like this.”

  Like what? “You weren’t sent off to Orbas completely ignorant, then. What did they tell you about me?”

  “Not enough.” She brooded, but the urge to complain about one’s job was too universal to withstand. Complaints might easily be led into confessions, Pen hoped. “They said I should avoid you. I thought I had. A sorcerer was still in the fort when the general rode out of it and we followed on from Tyno. They didn’t tell me there were two in Vilnoc.”

  “You sensed Learned Dubro, I gather?”

  She glanced up at the aperture, as dark as the cell. “Is that his name? A sorcerer, visiting the fort infirmary, as you were supposed to do sometimes. I checked. Not that we managed to get into the fort.”

  “Glad to hear Adelis’s guards did their job.” They had to have been on high alert since the prior attack, and no wonder. If they’d killed the half-a-dozen intruders that night, they couldn’t have gone unscathed themselves.

  “I was told you were an Adriac agent who helped the general and his sister escape Patos five years ago. You took false credit for healing his eyes after the application of the boiling vinegar was botched.”

  “I never took credit,” Pen began indignantly, before he remembered, “though we started that rumor about the vinegar ourselves. The blinding was thorough.”

  “Learned—the sorcerer said such a healing was impossible.”

  “He is welcome to believe so. What is the horrible son-of-a-bitch’s name, anyway? We can’t keep calling him Methani’s Pet Sorcerer. Or Learned Choke. It’s awkward.”

  Startled by his words, she looked down, buying herself time by starting to nibble on a roll. Pen let her. Though he pointed out, “It won’t be that hard to discover on our own. A hedge sorcerer might stay secret—in fact, he’d have to. A templeman in the retinue of a major minister and imperial regent could not.”

  She chewed, swallowed. Finally admitted: “Learned Tronio.”

  Not a name Pen recognized, but there were many Temple sorcerers in great Thasalon, which drew all men of ambition to it, whether like flies to honey or to manure a matter of opinion. The sorcerer’s name alone was a prize worth this painful breakfast, a key Pen had wanted in his hand even if he didn’t yet know what door it would open.

  If Learned Tronio was visible around Methani’s court, not kept secret and out of sight… “How old is the man?”

  “I don’t know. Fifty, maybe?”

  “Close to Methani’s age, then. Are they long-time associates?”

  “I thought so?”

  Not at all anonymous, then. Was this vile scheme something they’d been perpetrating for long? If so, it seemed more of Methani’s rivals ought to have dropped dead by now. Or was Alixtra their first such uncanny agent?

  “…How does one become an assassin, anyway?” Pen asked, overcome by his growing curiosity. “It doesn’t seem a position likely to be posted on the board in the marketplace. Not even in Thasalon.”

  A glower across at him for what was anything but levity to her.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound as if I made light of this,” Pen quickly apologized. “My demon has a reprehensible sense of humor, and sometimes it rubs off.”

  Oh, yes, blame it on the demon, scoffed Des. But she was as intent as he was.

  “I thought you already knew everything.”

  “Knowledge is not the same thing as understanding. I have a profound need to understand. Everything.”

  Now there’s a downright godly ambition. Scholar’s hubris, Pen?

  Alixtra was quiet for a little, but perhaps she had as profound a hunger to be understood, for she took a breath and began: “I was a maid in Methani’s palace. I was paid the same, but the other unmarried woman had a dormitory provided, and food. Because of Kittio, I lived out, in a rented room. We had more expenses, including paying a housemate to watch him while I worked. I lost days whether I was sick or he was, and I fell farther behind. It was time for him to start at a Lady-school—I’d taught him his letters and numbers already, he’s so very bright—”

  So she possessed at least a rudimentary literacy herself?

  “But I couldn’t afford the fees. I began to pilfer around the palace, just little things that I thought wouldn’t be missed.”

  “Explicable, but dangerous,” Pen said, careful to sound encouraging and not judging.

  “I’d no idea how dangerous. One day I found a purse full of silver left in a drawer. It was much more than I’d ever dared take before, but it would have kept us for a year. It was a trap. Methani’s guardsmen found it on me within an hour. I was terrified I’d be taken before the magistrate to have my hand cut off.”

  “Not before your fifth offense,” Pen observed. “Did you know that?”

  “I suppose so, but I was frantic. It hardly mattered. I was going to lose my post, and then what?”

  I could spell it out for you, Des offered Pen from her two hundred years of immensely varied female experiences.

  Not necessary. But it was clear Alixtra had been given a push down her slippery slope, and after shrewd study. “I take it you weren’t dragged to the magistrate.”

  “The guards took me to the minister himself, and left me. It was the first time I’d ever spoken to him, or rather, him to me. A magistrate would have been less frightening. Learned Tronio was there, listening. They told me I could redeem myself if I would do a special task for them, and if I did it well, Kittio and I would be given our own room in the palace, and Kittio could go to the palace Lady-school with the upper servants’ and retainers’ children.”

  “And you agreed, not knowing the task?”

  “Instantly.”

  “Go on.”

  “The first elemental was a bird, a wild pheasant. I was taken to a room alone and instructed to wring its neck just like a chicken. It felt so very strange when the demon poured into me. I can see how it would be mistaken for madness.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “About seven months?”

  After the death of the old emperor had thrown high Thasalon politics into a tangle, but before Vytymi Valley had plunged them into greater disarray, hm.

  Her voice fell further. Outside it was noon, but in this stone bottle midnight reigned, apt for secrets told in the dark. “They gave me a week to become accustomed, then Learned Tronio took me aside and instructed me how to cast chaos in a chosen direction. He said it was all I’d ever need to learn. I was relieved.”

  “Of all their lies, that may be the greatest, but continue.”

  “Then one night Learned Tronio took me to the imperial prison. I don’t know what he did about the guards, but we saw none. He conducted me to a cell where a prisoner lay sleeping, and told me he was due to be executed in the morning in the frightful manner for treason. He said the prisoner was an old acquaintance he wished to die more gently, and I was to deliver the mercy cut like a soldier dispatching wounded comrades on a battlefield. He’d be found dead on his cot in the morning with no one the wiser.”

  “And you believed this?”

  “I wanted to believe it.” She bit her lip. “And… I wanted to know if I was that powerful. Tronio drew back, I focused the chaos tightly as taught, the man shuddered and died without a sound, and, and…”

  Pen waited.

  “The elemental was ripped out of me like a bandage stuck to a wound. Into a vast darkness, more frightening than Tronio and Methani and the old emperor put together. I fainted. When I woke, Tronio was carrying me out of the pris
on in his arms, and praising me. Methani too, when we returned to the palace. He gave me back that bag of silver coins, to keep this time.” She stared down at her hands. “I can’t wish I’d thrown it into the fire and run, because I had nowhere to go and no way to take Kittio along.”

  “You could have gone for help within the city.”

  “Where?”

  Pen started to say, the archdivine of Thasalon, then thought better of it. “A saint of my Order would have been the best bet.” Though it would still have been a gamble for her.

  She looked taken aback. “Your Order has saints?”

  Ow, ow. “Never mind. Moot now. Go on.”

  “For a month, we lived well in the palace. I didn’t have to do maid’s work anymore. I could spend more time with Kittio, and when he started at the Lady-school, Methani let me begin training in his scriptorium as a scribe. I thought it meant I was being groomed for higher tasks. I hadn’t been that hopeful since… But then there was the second elemental, and the second man.”

  “Of course.”

  “Yes, even I began to realize that. The elemental was a meat rabbit, raised somewhere in Thasalon. It was tamer than the pheasant. The man… was another minister, a rival of Methani’s. There was no tale this time about a mercy cut, but I was told he was a traitor in correspondence with our enemies—the Roknari, and Adria.” Her gaze darted to Pen, the alleged—well, actual—Adriac agent. Former, he did not protest. She was well into the flow of her story now, and he dared not risk diverting it. “Tronio conducted me at night to the rival’s mansion. I don’t know if he used magic or money or both, but we slipped in without impediment. And out again. I didn’t faint that time, but it took me hours to stop shuddering. And not from the murder.”

  “That wasn’t Prince Ragat, was it?”

  “No. Not yet. Ragat was harder to reach, because he was much better guarded. No way to get near him sleeping, even for the sorcerer. It was the first time in daylight. We stood in the crowd, dressed like poor townsfolk, when his procession passed. The strike proved the easiest yet. His bearers and guards were far down the street before he fell from his sedan chair and anyone noticed. We were already walking the other way.” She added rather abstractedly, “That had been a swan. They had to truss its wings.”

  “Which makes me wonder where in the world Tronio was getting his supply of elementals,” said Pen. “They don’t exactly grow on trees, you know.” Nor in them. For whatever reason, the rare proto-demons were only found in higher animals. Pen posited that some necessary minimum of active life was required to sustain them. Maybe the ones that manifested in trees just evaporated away immediately, never witnessed? How would one—

  And you accuse me of distracting you, Des grumped.

  “I believe people turn them in to the Bastard’s Order, from time to time,” said Alixtra. “Learned Tronio said, to be destroyed, so I wasn’t doing anything to them that wouldn’t have happened already. Tronio just brought them to me instead.”

  “The man was embezzling demons?”

  She blinked. “Was he? I mean… I thought he had the right to them.”

  “Not for that,” Pen said fervently. He almost added, Trust me, but look where trusting the other learned Temple sorcerer had landed her. Tronio’s selection from this uncanny larder would have been limited to elementals in animals small enough for his assassin to kill herself, no horses or cows or bears… He frowned, waylaid by another thought. “I don’t want to distress you with a question that, um, no one in my Order would deem embarrassing, but where was Kittio’s father in all this?”

  She looked away, and said bitterly, “At the bottom of the sea.” Sighing, she expanded: “We were sweethearts back in our home village. When Kavi received a promotion to third mate on his merchant vessel, he returned for me, and we married and moved to Thasalon to be near his work. Kittio was born the next year. I was busy, but happy. Until his ship never came back. Sunk in a storm, they think, because the vessel was never traced to pirates, nor any goods or people found. Sometimes there’s a survivor, an escaped slave or even a pirate, who testifies if a ship’s been taken. Eventually.”

  “So I’ve heard. Three years…”

  “Should have been enough for that,” said Alixtra. “My hope died of starvation long ago.”

  “So… did Methani set you on any other targets after Ragat and before Adelis?”

  She shook her head. “But the general was to be the first one outside of Thasalon, by myself. By the way they praised me, I thought they’d come to trust me. A soldier of Cedonia, they called me, and I was proud to be one. They didn’t have to threaten—” That asthmatic closing of her throat again. But she was doing it entirely to herself, no shamanic geas for example. Which might be a way to keep a captured spy from talking, come to think. Next time Pen wrote to Shaman Inglis, he could ask—

  Attend, Pen. You’ve carved all the way to her heart in this premature autopsy. We’re nearly done.

  He made his voice as gentle as he could, as if he were trying to talk Rina to sleep. “What did they threaten? It must have been cruel.”

  She’d balled up again, talking to her knees. But still talking, good. “If I failed. Or if I tried to run away. Kittio would be cut and sold as a slave.”

  Emasculated, made a eunuch. Some highborn men chose that for themselves, to gain the most trusted positions in the imperial bureaucracy, that they would never put their children before their loyalty to the emperor. Or their families chose it for them, that they might favor other relatives, and so it all circled back to where it had started despite all. Methani himself was such a man. Pen had met another. The lowborn were not so richly rewarded. Slaves, especially beautiful boy slaves… Pen could fill in the rest. So could Alixtra.

  He ventured, “Is that also why you circled back for a second try at Adelis? Figuring if you brought his metaphorical head to lay at your masters’ feet despite all, they would forgive you for the better plan going awry?”

  “And spare Kittio. Yes.” It came out in gulps: “So not failed. Or at least—I thought at first. That if it were known I did not confess before I died. That they would have mercy. But why would they. Too late now anyway.”

  “A threat only works if its recipient is alive. If you were actually executed, they’d have no reason to carry it out.” That shouldn’t have been a heartening thought, but she uncurled a little.

  “Do you think so?” she asked uncertainly.

  Pen softened his honest Bastard’s teeth, I have no idea, to a “Maybe.”

  She rocked a little. “How will Orbas kill me?”

  “I don’t know. Not my decision, I’m not a judge. Wrong god. Thankfully.” Though, Bastard help him, there was no doubt he’d be nailed to advise.

  He gathered up his basket, but left the lantern and the uneaten food, and called for Dubro to lower the ladder. Before he climbed it, he offered Alixtra another five-fold blessing, more carefully this time. It felt like fleeing a shambles.

  “Well. That was an education,” Dubro observed in an under-voice as Pen clambered out and found his feet. “Things gen’rally are, around you.”

  Pen jerked his head. “Let’s go outside to talk.”

  “Aye.”

  Pen led Dubro around to the sunny side of the old building, and leaned his head back against the hot stones. Never had the light on his face felt more like a blessing. Companionably, Dubro leaned with him.

  “That was remarkably exhausting. Even apart from the night of no sleep.”

  “Daresay.”

  “I think it will be safe to leave her alone with just the guards posted at the top of the cellar stairs, on the other side of the doors, outside her range. Des’s magics can work at a long bowshot, but the weasel’s is much less. Though she could still do ill-controlled damage to someone close.” As Adelis had been. “So one of us does need to be at hand whenever they bring her food and take away her slops.”

  “That merchant was pretty unhappy to be locked out of his warehous
e. Can we let his people back in?”

  “Yes, though only for the most necessary tasks. I’ll make sure the guards know to keep everyone well away from the cellar, regardless. You going back to Jurgo’s palace now?”

  “Aye.”

  “Give Stobrek the gist of it.”

  “Suspect he might get more from you.”

  “I’m at his disposal when he wants me. I’ve a lot to think about, and too tired a brain to do it with. Oh, never forget there’s a Thasalon bravo still loose out there somewhere.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if he knocked on my door. Maska could give him a warm welcome.”

  Pen smirked, and echoed back, “Daresay.”

  With a wave, Dubro trudged off. Yawning, Pen went back inside to brief the guards.

  Chapter 5

  It was noon three days later when Pen was interrupted by a furtive knock on his upstairs study doorjamb. Pen swallowed a rude word in Wealdean and set down his quill halfway through his sentence. He looked up to see one of his front door guards, leaning in but not setting foot over the threshold. After the night they’d caught the assassin, Jurgo’s fellows had endured a dull time of it in their faithful watches. The fiction they helped maintain that Adelis was still in his sister’s house had to be fraying, but the assassin’s bravo-escort had neither sprung their trap here nor been caught elsewhere, so Pen could only be grateful for their continued presence. “Yes, guardsman?”

  The sentry ducked his head, curious eyes flitting over the disappointingly mundane clutter spread across the sorcerer’s lair. “Learned sir. There’s a fellow at the door we don’t recognize, says he wants to see you.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No, sir. Alls he said was that the paint’s the right color.”

  A quick check by Sight; Nikys, Rina, Idrene and Lin were gathered upstairs in Nikys’s workroom, engaged in setting her loom, though he wasn’t sure if Rina was being much more help than her cat. “I’m expecting a message from my Order at Dogrita. This might be it.” And if so, early—good.