The Assassins of Thasalon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  After the savories and the sweet wine—Iroki had been bemused when the courses kept coming—Lady Xarre was helped by her servants upstairs to the sitting room of her suite, laid out much like Tanar’s on the opposite side of the courtyard. Five years ago, she had needed only a cane, but the joints of her hips and knees, Pen observed with a flash of Sight, were more painfully deteriorated now. She was otherwise not greatly changed in appearance, with her gray hair elaborately dressed in its jeweled braids, and her slight body swathed in light summer robes.

  Once settled into a cushioned chair, she dismissed not only her servants but her female secretary, an older woman who served her with the dedication that Bosha did Tanar, minus the bodyguard duties. “I promise we’ll discuss it later, dear,” Lady Xarre murmured to the woman. Not accustomed to being excluded from confidential business, she took this in with a thoughtful frown. The two reasons might be that the discussion was going to be too trivial for her witness, or too dangerous, and Pen didn’t think she guessed it was the first. But she withdrew without further protest.

  Bosha arranged five chairs around Lady Xarre’s, awarding the other one with cushions to the saint, seated Tanar, locked the doors, and awaited his lady’s pleasure.

  “Blessed, you honor my house,” Lady Xarre began, with an obeisance to Iroki that made him smile in discomfort and return her a tally-blessing. “Learned Penric… you bring me knotty puzzles. Again.”

  He made her a half-bow at this inarguable observation, and said, “My apologies. Again. But leaving you unadvised of events seemed a worse course.”

  “I agree.” She studied the silent Alixtra with neither pleasure nor dismay, more the concentration of a woman totting up difficult accounts. “Surakos told me the gist of your tale, Learned, but it left a number of questions…”

  Which she asked, drawing from Pen a more complete description of the past two weeks than he’d given in the other chamber. She was keenly interested in the movements of her potential son-in-law, but gave equal attention to the lethal schemes of Minister Methani. “Ragat and Fasso both, was it? That explains much about recent disruptions in the imperial court. I do wonder at the identity of that first man, the prisoner. It would seem unfrugal of Methani to waste even a test shot.”

  She looked to Alixtra, who shook her head unhappily, unlocking her lips just enough to say, “I supposed they didn’t want me to know, so I never asked.”

  “Hm. It should be possible to discover it, but it does not seem the most urgent part of this. For what exactly do you seek my aid, Learned Penric?”

  “Besides shelter, which you have so generously given us… what we were called to do seemed plain enough, there in the bottle dungeon.” His halting description of the god had left Lady Xarre silent and sober, uncharacteristically out of her depth. “Rescue Kittio, bring the saint before Tronio may be summed in half a sentence. It was the how that was lacking.” He held up his hands in some frustration, in evocation of his Order’s famous motto. “Left to us, seemingly.”

  “Had you any plan at all?”

  Pen tried to persuade himself that she didn’t sound appalled. “Up to a point. I have papers for the Patos bookdealer that will get us past the city gates. I thought to present myself at Methani’s palace as seeking or selling rare books—he has a library, and a librarian to look after it. Alixtra says Methani collects obscure histories and works on magic. Once within, send Alixtra to find and abstract Kittio, and make some pretext for me and my assistant to meet with Tronio. After Tronio loses his demon, I can silence him for long enough to escape. Rendezvous with Alixtra, leave the city as swiftly as we can.”

  “There are so many things that could go wrong with that scheme,” Lady Xarre observed mildly. Bosha snorted. So did Des.

  “I am very aware, my lady. If anyone here can offer a better, I’d be pleased to hear it.”

  “I may,” said Lady Xarre slowly. “I must give it some thought, and make a few inquiries. You’ll be going nowhere tonight, in any case.”

  Pen shrugged agreement, but Alixtra burst out, “We must not delay!”

  All the faces around the circle turned to her.

  “Who knows what Rach has reported, or when? They could be cutting or selling Kittio even as we sit here. Or worse—boys and men die of that operation, you know!”

  Pen knew the medical odds, which could be quite poor. He imagined Bosha did, too.

  She gestured jerkily at Bosha. “Though maybe it does not seem so great a thing to you. Or to Methani, for all I know.”

  Bosha, eyes narrowing, leaned back with his arms folded. In an arid voice, he stated, “I was not a volunteer, at the time.”

  Alixtra bit her lip, distraught in her chair.

  A slow blink from Lady Xarre. “It might be instructive to our guest, dear Surakos, if you would tell that tale.”

  Tanar looked anxiously across at her. “Must he, Mother?”

  A circle of her beringed and somewhat arthritic hand. “I leave that to Surakos’s judgment.”

  After a moment, he gave her an acceding nod. There wasn’t much, Pen thought, that he would deny her.

  “It’s brief enough, and a quarter-century old by now. I was the fifth of five sons in the family of a petty noble, in a household not unlike this one, not far from here in the outskirts of Thasalon. Born odd as you see.” A wave summed up his unusual lack of coloration, so ill-fitted to this climate. “While my mother was alive, she protected me, but after she passed away in my late teens, my father and brothers renewed their pressure to allow myself to be cut, and enter the imperial bureaucracy, there to rise to the point of being able to do the family favors. I refused. At that age I’d wanted to become a sword-master, that being one of the few martial arts I’d been able to pursue indoors. On my eighteenth birthday, my brothers got me very, very drunk, and carried me in to the surgeon my father had summoned. And helped hold me down, when what was happening penetrated my mind along with the knife that penetrated my parts. Why they imagined I’d be disposed to do them favors, after, has always escaped me.

  “Nonetheless. There was no going back. When I’d recovered from the wine-sickness, and the injury, and the fever”—his hand opened in concession to Alixtra’s fears—“I acquiesced to being apprenticed in the imperial chancellery, if only to escape that household. Eight years of my inky labors ended with the civil war that put the new emperor on the throne. My father, showing his usual judgment, managed to ally our family on the wrong side. I was caught up in his affairs for the last time on a very bad day, escaped here, found a shelter that has never betrayed me, and have served Lady Xarre ever since.”

  He turned to Alixtra, grave. “But that my life came around well enough in the end does not mean I was ever happy with the event, even in retrospect. I promise you, I do not take the threat to your son lightly.”

  In a small voice, she said, “I am sorry.” For her words, for his fate, for finding her fears well-founded?

  Long, pale fingers twiddled the apology away. With a return to his usual sly humor, he added, “My one consolation was that none of my brothers nor our family’s prosperity survived the war, and my father did, to find me the only heir left of his house. Though I don’t think he appreciated the irony nearly as much as I did.”

  “I’d not heard this story before,” said Penric.

  “Oh? I recall I told some part of it to Madame Nikys and Madame Idrene. That’s right, you weren’t with us on the drive down to Akylaxio.”

  “Perhaps they took it to be told in confidence?”

  “Perhaps so.”

  It occurred to Penric for the first time that if it weren’t for Bosha’s long-ago betrayals, his birth and fortune might almost have qualified him to aspire to Lady Tanar’s hand himself. Had it occurred to Bosha, to Tanar, to Lady Xarre?

  Had to have, opined Des, who had listened to it all with arrested fascination. There’s still the twenty-year age gap, though.

  For both ladies, up and down?

  Just so.r />
  Yet, certainly, without the histories that had made them what they each were, Bosha and Tanar could not have grown to be the same people to love each other, so very silently, now. Not a thought he could ever voice.

  Wise, said Des.

  The night conclave broke up without any more definite schemes laid, to Pen’s disappointment. But this day could hold no more. Tanar lingered with her mother, and Pen and the rest retired across the gallery to their beds.

  Chapter 12

  This was not my plan, Pen thought apprehensively as, two nights later, he boarded the Xarre coach in the dusk. His party, so unexpectedly augmented by Tanar and Bosha, climbed in after, disposing themselves on the padded seats. At Bosha’s word, the coach rattled off down the graveled drive to the front gates that swung wide for it.

  Lady Xarre, exerting herself on the morning after their arrival, had confirmed through her agents that regent-minister Methani would soon be holding a reception at his palace: in part to launch the festive lead-ups to the impending Bastard’s Day, that intercalary holiday at Mother’s Midsummer to honor the fifth god, and in part to mark his nephew Lord Bordane’s accession to the lucrative post of Prefect of Imperial Shipbuilding. The next best thing to penetrating the palace under cover of darkness—and Alixtra’s descriptions made it plain that not only did the place never sleep, but that it was very closely guarded at night—would be to arrive amidst a crowd large enough that not everyone would know each other. Alixtra had been half frenzied at the two-day delay that waiting for this opportunity had required, but had been convinced by Tanar that all their goals could be served at once by it.

  They had all been unexpectedly costumed for the play, or ploy, to come, as well. Alixtra and Iroki had been outfitted in formal summer clothes and jewelry suitable for a visiting noble couple of sober tastes, Alixtra with borrowings from Lady Xarre’s extensive wardrobe that lent her an air of matronly conservatism. Tanar had topped this with a gauzy lace headdress that fell over her forehead and in part concealed her face. Only her closest fellow-servants would recognize the former chambermaid under the fine linen and embroidered silks, and they were going to be very busy tonight; even the nervous Alixtra assured Pen that the more elevated persons in the palace wouldn’t recognize her, or any other maid, out of uniform, as they barely attended to their faces in the first place. Iroki, as the lady’s taciturn husband, wore even more receding colors, if in costly fabrics to support his role, mostly borrowed from Bosha.

  Pen had been more difficult to account for. The larger the crowd, the more certain that there might be more than one spiritual sensitive among them, from whom Des could not be concealed. They’d finally cobbled up a fair copy of the Temple vestments of the Weald, decking out Pen as a visiting sorcerer-divine from that distant realm; which would also give him a good excuse to ask after Tronio and, with luck, draw him apart to one of the many side chambers or little courts with which the complicated palace was, Alixtra said, well-supplied. Tronio’s encounter with Iroki was definitely going to require a private moment, however brief.

  If anyone asked after Alixtra’s demon, she was to say she was a novice who had put aside her vestments for the exciting Thasalon reception. No one, looking at her lady’s finery, would wonder why.

  Tanar wore what Pen supposed was her usual garb for such events: fine linen dress, brocade over-robe, a silk purse attached to her jeweled belt. Bosha was as darkly sober as Iroki, though he’d chosen trousers and soft boots under his sleeveless ankle-length coat, rather than long tunic and summer sandals. The better, Pen supposed, to move at speed and to conceal the slender knife in each boot-top, the larger one fastened at his back, the scalpel-like blade in a flat sleeve sheath, and who-knew-what in the pouch as his waist, every one tainted. At that point, the jade-hilted sword he bore was likely just for decoration.

  Pen studied what he could see from the coach window in the deepening shadows. This far out, the scenery was broken up by market gardens, but closer in the buildings began to crowd, until they reached the broad cleared space before the massive and legendary walls of Thasalon. This barrier ran for three miles, from the sea that bounded the peninsula on two sides to the river, now broad and sluggish, coursing down from the hinterland that bounded the third. The walls were pierced by fifteen great gates, every one of them crowded with traffic at all hours; in the daytime, by the business of the city, at night by an endless stream of oxcarts supplying it.

  Even the very wealthy did not maintain horses inside the walls, where the crowded, crooked streets were not accommodating to coaches. Instead, those who wished to keep their feet out of the dubious detritus on the cobbles employed either sedan chairs and bearers, or light wicker carts mounted on two large, thin-spoked wheels, pulled by men. The Xarre coach had trailed a pair of these behind it, with Lady Xarre’s tabarded wickermen riding on the roof. As the coachman lit the lanterns, they jumped down to unfasten and bring their carts around for the distinguished visitors, who were then sorted as much by weight as volume, Penric with Iroki, and the two women squeezed with Bosha.

  Waxed-cloth awnings could protect cart riders from the rain, or paper parasols from the sun, though neither were required tonight. Pen had been told that a sturdy young man, quick on his feet, who owned such a cart could make a decent living hiring himself out by the ride. On the Son of Autumn’s Day, wicker-cart races were held at the imperial racecourse between equine events, taken with avid seriousness by participants and the wagering audience alike.

  The two carts still had to wait in line to be admitted by the gate guards, though the inspection was perfunctory and Bosha’s negotiation practiced. Pen spared a moment of regret for hauling that trunk of books all the way from Vilnoc to be not-used at this juncture. They passed through what amounted to a stone-arched tunnel under the wall, echoing like a well, and then, at last, Penric found himself for the first time in great Thasalon. His persona as a visiting Wealdman allowed him, he assured himself, to goggle. Any Wealdman would. Ten of its capital Easthome could have fitted into Thasalon, with room left over.

  Both he and Des soon lost their bearings as they wended their way through the city. People of all physical types and degrees of dress parted casually around the carts, the rich with lanterns of glass and link-boys to carry them, the poor with lanterns of stiffened cloth held on sticks, the poorer still just tailing the glow of someone better supplied. Pen caught scraps of conversation in six different languages atop the Cedonian, two of which he did not speak and one of which he didn’t even recognize. They encountered half-a-dozen graceful neighborhood temples, any one of which could have stood for the main temple in most towns; crossed several market squares, some still active by lantern light even at this late hour; wound through streets lined with apartments three and even six stories high; spied bathhouses well-supplied with water from the municipal aqueducts, patrons still coming in and out; and passed two splendid palaces Pen thought must be their destination, but weren’t.

  The well-trained wickermen brought them at last to the very broad steps of a long and even more splendid facade, all marble and porphyry, with fluted columns flanking double doors open to the balmy night. The soft air, so close to the sea, reminded Pen for a homesick instant of Vilnoc.

  Castles and palaces in the Weald or the Cantons might daunt the eye with high spires and towers. This building did it with breadth. The newer front was built more for display than defense, though the rest of the exterior was a stern high wall, broken only by a few utilitarian back entries. By Alixtra’s drawn map, this barrier enclosed a maze-like series of courtyards, with colonnades, galleries, fountains and gardens, linking archways, and occasionally short bridges between upper floors.

  Flickering cressets had been lit at the base of the steps, with brighter and steadier glass lanterns hung under the lintels in welcome. Sedan chairs and wicker carts were still disgorging a few late guests, or picking up a trickle leaving early.

  Bosha set his lady on his arm, Iroki copied him not too clums
ily with Alixtra, and Pen followed both couples up and inside. They were greeted by a superior sort of majordomo, who recognized Lady Tanar and her escort at once, welcoming the Xarre heiress with some surprise, but much courtesy. Bosha smoothly introduced his lady’s country visitors, who all said as little as possible, and then they were gated through to the first of the several interlocking courtyards devoted tonight to the regent-minister’s hospitality.

  Pen gathered that most of the many guests collected here were as unknown to Tanar as they were to himself, but not all. A middle-aged lord and his female companion, probably wife, paused to speak to her in a familiar fashion.

  “Lady Tanar, Master Bosha! I would not have thought to see you here. Lord Bordane will be delighted, I’m sure. But you are rather too late—you’ve missed all the speeches.”

  “Just on time, then,” murmured Bosha, which made the man, whose face was flushed with wine, snort appreciation. By polite necessity, Bosha made introductions of Tanar’s guests. Fortunately, the need for extemporaneous dialogue in character was cut short by the fellow spying another crony. He did direct them toward the chamber with the most lavish food and drink before treading off. Only the size of the place kept the crowd from being a crush—everyone in Thasalon with an agenda to pursue, political, social, or romantic, must be here tonight.

  The timing was not accidental, being calculated to bring them inside when the maximum number of people still lingered, but, like Tanar’s acquaintance, were beginning to be fuddled. Alixtra pinched Bosha’s arm. “Time to go in.”

  He nodded, having helped bribe her to agree to the delay by a promise to assist her in extracting her child. “Tanar, stay with Penric and Iroki.”