The Assassins of Thasalon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Merely getting to Thasalon had never been the challenge. Getting into Methani’s palace, in such a way as to remove Kittio and bring Iroki before Tronio, was a white blank in Pen’s imagination. On getting out again, amid whatever uproar this was going to leave in their wake, his imagination had many vivid pictures to offer, none good.

  When in doubt on tactics, channel Adelis. The general had a mania about terrain and logistics; start with terrain. “I need to learn much more about Methani’s palace, and what goes on there,” Pen told Alixtra.

  “With all that you know, you don’t know this?” She looked surprised, which was both flattering and flattening.

  “I’ve never been to Thasalon before, and neither has Desdemona in any of her lives. I’ve visited a variety of palaces, from Martensbridge to the Weald to Lodi to Vilnoc and Dogrita, and each one was different from every other one.”

  Pen spread goat cheese on flatbread, decorated it with honey, and went on, “I need to know everything you can tell me, no matter how trivial it seems. The layout, the daily rounds for the scriptorium, the kitchens, the laundries, the guards, the whole back side of the tapestry. How various kinds of guests are dealt with, and supplicants—the minister-regent has to suffer many, most of them too high-born to brush off. Minister Methani’s daily routines, and what he alters them for. And Tronio’s, when he’s there. Is he there all the time, by the way, or does he live elsewhere?”

  Alixtra looked inundated with this spate of questions, and they didn’t even cover half of what Pen wanted to know. She grabbed the last like a floating branch hanging over a river in which she was being swept along. “He stays in the same room whenever he’s visiting, but he also keeps chambers in one of the Bastard’s chapterhouses. He has a small summer house of his own beyond the eastern suburbs, where he goes now and then.”

  That could be a complication. One by one, Pen led Alixtra back through his questions as they ate, and on long after they were all replete, and the maid came to collect the trays and vessels. Iroki just listened.

  At one point, growing confused, Pen drew out his limited supply of paper and ink, and had her sketch floor plans. The palace was built in the blocky Cedonian style, too different to compare to the canton or Wealdean examples Pen knew, but it was certainly larger than Jurgo’s summer palace in Vilnoc, and at least equal to the duke of Adria’s. And it was only one of dozens of such nobles’ residences, equally grand, scattered about the great city. That reflection awed Pen more.

  Alixtra was richly informed about the under-workings of the palace, as useful as Pen had hoped; vaguer about the minister’s high dealings. Pen’s original notion, of presenting himself at the door as a rare book dealer wishful to examine the minister’s library and perhaps add to it, was by no means discarded, but it was beginning to feel thin. Alixtra’s thoughts all clustered around how she was to extract her son, with plans ranging from seeming-reasonable to tinged with panic, as she thought through everything that could go wrong.

  She rubbed her brow. “And what will we do after? I’d pictured going to ground in the city, but Methani’s people will be looking for us, won’t they? Or of going home to my village, but they’ll know to look there, too. Would I be sought as a murderess by the Imperial judiciary?”

  “Mm, not without incriminating Methani and Tronio. So they will certainly not deploy official aid—the last thing they must want would be for you to fall into the hands of regular justice. Your main risk is private murder, as long as you are anywhere in their reach in Cedonia. Which is why I undertake, if I hadn’t made it clear before, to bring you and Kittio back to Vilnoc with me. From that safety, you can make more sensible future plans for you both.

  “Another factor on my mind, that I didn’t bring up with Jurgo as it was out of his ambit… We may be able to dress up as any sorts of persons we please, but we aren’t going to be able to conceal our inner selves from any Sighted we encounter. Des can only mute herself a little, and Arra not at all. Any Temple sorcerer, hedge sorcerer, saint, or petty saint we cross will know at once that we are two sorcerers and a saint. In thinly populated places, we can pass because there are so few Sighted. In Thasalon, I had thought we could pass, at least in the street, because there are so many.” With the possible exception of Iroki. The most ordinary of them in physical appearance, his holy aura when god-touched would stand out even more than Des’s density to the spiritually sensitive, and far more alarmingly. “Within the palace… hm. Alixtra will certainly risk being recognized there even if Arra is not perceived. Fine if by a friend, not if by a foe.”

  She buried her face in her hands, overwhelmed. “Is there any hope at all of success?”

  “The white god would not have sent us into certain death.” I’m almost sure. Nearly. “And we should be unexpected. Even if Rach returned to report, if he’s ahead of us, he won’t know we left Vilnoc, and if he’s behind, we’ll be there before him.”

  A faint, unconvinced moan.

  “A night’s sleep,” Pen offered, “often delivers inspiration.”

  This won a deserved glower. “You imagine I can sleep, after this?”

  A fair question, which Pen evaded. But when they’d sorted themselves into their beds—Pen won the argument with the saint by seizing a pallet before Iroki could lie down—her exhaustion overcame her anxiety. Her breathing evened out into slumber before Pen’s did.

  * * *

  Departure was delayed the next morning by Pen’s frustrated quest to secure them a private coach, everything with wheels at the inn being bespoke. He turned down two friendly offers to share carriages and their expenses. Mid-morning, one aging vehicle at last lumbered in whose passengers were stopping in this town, and Pen was able to procure it. It wasn’t in the best condition, so the fact that only a pair of horses were left in the stable to be hired for it was perhaps just as well. He was able to get everyone and their luggage loaded aboard before lunch, and they rattled on west.

  Alixtra, for want of other occupation, plowed through to the end of Ruchia’s book. Its final chapter, On the Destruction of Demons, had been difficult for Penric to understand in his first, long-ago reading of it. Alixtra, who had experienced most of what it addressed first-hand, might have found it disturbing, but her understanding was very clear. Frowning, she paged back to one of the earlier chapters that she had found hard going, and started it again.

  Pen had no illusions that he’d imparted anything like mastery to her in a mere week, but at least she now knew the lay of the land unrolling before her feet—like getting to study a map before commencing a long journey. Pen had even less idea where she would find herself at the end of it than he’d had at the same point in his career.

  Iroki amused himself by watching the passing scene, all new to him. The scrub supporting only goats on the heights had given way, as they’d descended yesterday, to sheep interspersed with woodlots, then cow pastures, olive groves, and grape vines. As the land leveled, orchards and other crops yielded to the rich grain fields that fed the city at the river’s mouth. Iroki eyed the river, which the road bridged a few times here at its narrower reaches, with thwarted longing. Not much farther along, it would be possible to board boats going downriver to the city, but they were even slower than dilapidated coaches.

  Pen… fretted.

  On his prior trip, he and Nikys had managed to reach the outskirts of Thasalon in one taxing day by starting at dawn and driving long past sunset. Now, it might be more prudent to stop for the night enough changes short of Thasalon to deter Alixtra from any attempt to run ahead on her own. And they could arrive at their destination in daylight.

  Which, he finally conceded, was going to have to be the Xarre estate after all. He could not forgo such informed local intelligencers, sure to be up on the latest news from the city, the ports, and the Imperial court. He hated like poison to involve Adelis’s betrothed Lady Tanar and her faithful secretary Bosha—or Bosha and his beloved mistress Tanar, whichever—in this dangerous business. But he could
not question their familiarity with just those levels of Thasalon society that had been over Alixtra’s head.

  The decision did not ease him much. He sighed and joined Iroki in gazing, tourist-like, out the window.

  Chapter 11

  At the last posting house short of Thasalon, the next day, Pen dismissed the coach and hired a local carter to transport his party the remaining few miles to the Xarre estate, not least because he wasn’t sure he could find it again relying on his five-year-old memories. Even the carter had to stop and ask directions. Back when it had first been built, the mansion had appended to an outlying farming village, since subsumed by the growing city. The carter navigated the maze of streets to deposit them at last at the Xarre front entry. Pen paid him off and sent him on his way before turning to bang at the postern door set in the high and solid wooden gates.

  A head popped up atop the long stucco wall, porter or guard or blend of the two. The man looked down in suspicion at the three people and their baggage. But he was polite enough: “Your business, sir?”

  “I’m a book dealer from Patos, who has been in correspondence with Master Surakos Bosha over some items of interest to me.”

  “I wasn’t told you were expected.”

  “My apologies, but we ended up arriving early. Please give Master Bosha this note, and all will be settled.” The head disappeared, and the port in the postern, door within a door within a door, opened at eye level. Pen passed the screw of paper through. He sank down on his small trunk to wait in some relief—he’d been worrying that the secretary and his lady might be out when they arrived.

  “Will they let us in?” asked Alixtra nervously.

  “If Bosha is given my note, quite promptly, I should think.”

  “What did you write on it?”

  “Penric.”

  “Only that?” She frowned in anxiety more for her welcome than his, Pen thought, ever since the relationship between Adelis and Tanar had been belatedly explained to her. “Do you have any idea how awkward this is going to be?”

  “Yes,” said Pen. “So let me do the talking.” A redundant instruction; her mouth was as tight as a clamshell. Iroki bore his usual air of a man just along for the ride.

  After a few more minutes, the port opened once more, showing a known face. “Oh,” said Bosha, in a peculiar tone. “So it is.” The postern swung wide, and Pen entered, motioning his party to follow.

  Now in his mid-forties, the eunuch secretary was still lean and fit, an impression augmented by his clothing—a closely woven, long-sleeved white shirt with ruffles at the wrists, slim trousers tucked into soft boots—and by the weighted wooden practice sword held casually in his hand. The braid of his snow-white hair was wound up in a knot at his nape, and his pale albino skin was flushed and sweaty with recent exertion. He was flanked by a youth, obviously a page in training, holding another wooden sword.

  “Run to the house and let them know we have visitors,” Bosha instructed this follower. He eyed the baggage Iroki was re-piling on this side of the door. And to Pen, “I gather you plan to stay?” Taking in Pen’s ordinary dress, he offered no revealing honorific. No question the man was quick.

  “If it so please the ladies.”

  “Send someone to carry in their things,” Bosha continued to the page. “And tell the majordomo to let Lady Tanar know I’m bringing her callers, and to prepare adjoining guest rooms. The ones next to mine.”

  The lad said plaintively, “But sir, it was my turn to spar with you!”

  Bosha’s voice dropped to a sterner register. “You’ll have to wait.” He tossed his sword to the page, who caught it, gulped, and trotted dutifully off.

  “Did we interrupt a lesson?” Pen asked, wondering if he should apologize, and to whom.

  Bosha shrugged. “I take it as a side-duty to keep all the pages and guards of the household in training.”

  “And yourself?”

  “If any of them were better swordsmen than me, it might work that way. As it is, I’m as like to pick up bad habits as they are good ones. At least it keeps me limber.”

  In the bright late afternoon light, he redonned a pair of green glass spectacles plucked from his sash, taken off for his sparring. He glanced over them at Pen’s two companions and waited; when no introduction was forthcoming, he merely said, “So. Follow me.”

  Mansions in the crowded city might display their wealth with ornate facades. The Xarre manor was a plain, if large, stone rectangle built around its inner court. Instead of architectural decoration, it boasted surrounding and extensive gardens, rich right now with summer blooms, fountains, and winding walkways both rustic and formal, with a hive of gardeners wandering it like bees. Bosha kept himself to the shade of the cedars lining the curving graveled drive as they approached the main doors.

  Another porter-guard hurried to swing them open for Bosha and his train, waiting attentively while they passed through under an archway and a gallery into the main courtyard, again graced with a garden and fountain. “Sir…?” the porter inquired after the senior retainer.

  Bosha waved him back to his post. “I’ll take them up myself.” He mounted the leftward staircase to the lower of the two galleries circling the court, leading them along its echoing boards to a familiar door: Lady Tanar’s private sitting room. The page was just coming back. “Is my lady within?” he asked the breathless youth.

  “Yes, sir. She awaits you.”

  Bosha nodded, knocked, waited for the “Come, Sura!” in a light feminine voice, and conducted them through this final barrier.

  At a writing table pushed against the far wall, a young woman turned to see what visitors her most trusted servant thought important enough to present so directly to her. Almost twenty-five, Tanar was shorter and more slender than Nikys, with paler skin copper-tinged, her dark auburn hair wound up in complicated jeweled braids. She wore just a light ankle-length shift, finished with fine embroidery, in the summer-close chamber. When her vivid hazel eyes fell upon Penric, she jerked to her feet, crying, “Five gods!” and started forward. Grasping his hands, she looked up earnestly into his face and demanded, “What news of Adelis?”

  “Much, but first, you should know he is well.”

  The breath went out of her in a relieved huff. “Thank the gods. We’ve been receiving such bizarre rumors here in the past few days.”

  “I’ll want to hear them all,” Pen promised her, “but first I must introduce my companions. Lady Tanar, this is Madame Alixtra, my student sorceress”—she managed a stifled sort of curtsey as he waved at her—“and Blessed Iroki. The saint is traveling incognito, mind. As I am.”

  This brought Tanar’s and Bosha’s heads around in a hurry. “Blessed—” choked Tanar in shock as Bosha stepped back a pace. Both offered the gesture of obeisance—Bosha, his eyes widening behind the green spectacles, taking them off and bowing low.

  Iroki returned his ever-amiable five-fold tally. “Ah, how d’you do. Thank you for having me?”

  Tanar offered faintly, “My household is at your service, Blessed.”

  “Just call me Iroki. Everybody does.” He blinked and smiled, looking around the noblewoman’s well-appointed chamber. “My, what a nice room.”

  Bosha hurried to set chairs around the small table fronting the doors onto the balcony, their pierced lattice leaves open to catch what moving airs might be obtained. “Blessed Iroki. Learned Penric. Learned Alixtra. Will you sit?”

  Pen led the way; Alixtra followed, though with an uneasy correction of, “I’m not a learned divine.”

  Bosha raised his white eyebrows at Penric.

  “Yet,” said Pen, which won a startled glance from her. “Still in training, which is a tale we’ll get to.”

  After seeing Iroki seated, Bosha excused himself, exiting the gallery door. Tanar joined them at the table, looking searchingly from face to face, only one known to her.

  “Is Nikys well?” she asked Penric. “And Madame Idrene?”

  “Very,” said Pen.
“We’re expecting our second child in about six months.”

  “Second! I didn’t know you’d had a first. Adelis’s messages have been far too brief!”

  “His sister complains of that, too.” Penric filled a few minutes with an account of their life in Vilnoc, which Tanar took in avidly, peppering him with questions, especially on the parts in which Adelis featured.

  Bosha returned via his own bedchamber adjoining the sitting room opposite to Tanar’s, where he’d paused to wash his face and hands and don a long, loose vest, making himself more formally presentable. Indoors, he’d left the sun-protecting spectacles aside. The trio of Xarre maidservants he’d summoned entered to offer a hand basin and distribute drinks and a light repast. Bosha saw them out and locked the door behind them. He caught his lady’s eye, and they both grew graver, bracing for the serious business that must have brought Pen and his odd company so great a distance to them.

  “Start with the rumors that have reached you,” said Pen, “and when they arrived.” A major part of the Xarre wealth was the shipping business that Tanar’s mother Lady Xarre had inherited twenty years ago from her late husband, and had actively nurtured since to twice its original size. Her captains, agents, and merchants were very alive to rumors of all sorts that might affect their trade, reporting regularly to their shrewd noble owner. Whatever news reached Thasalon, they were sure to have it first, sometimes even before the imperial government.

  “The first was six nights ago,” said Tanar, “and claimed that Adelis was either slain or had died suddenly in Vilnoc. I was… extremely distraught, but Sura encouraged me to wait on more certain word.” She cast a glance of gratitude at her retainer, who returned her a seated shadow-bow with his hand over his heart. “The next day’s rumor said no, but he was fallen into a deep swoon and not expected to recover.”