The Assassins of Thasalon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “It’s Methani!” said the young sorcerer. “Himself!”

  The bewildered guardsmen, seeing nothing, were taken aback at this. Neither seemed anxious to attempt to restrain a mad or even just drunken sorcerer. After some low words with each other, one hurried away, probably to find an officer.

  A number of heads turned to Pen. “Was he murdered?” someone had to ask.

  It said something about either Thasalon or Methani this this was the first question on everyone’s tongues. Pen temporized, with a touch of secret maliciousness, “I can’t tell. Men of his age and girth often pass quite suddenly of an apoplectic stroke, either of the heart or the brain. Even in their sleep.” He allowed, “I don’t see any obvious fatal wounds, although sometimes ghosts don’t reflect them. I’m sorry I can’t confirm his identity. Have any older gentlemen here gone missing?”

  This triggered a general flutter, as a scattering of people went off in a panic to check on the senior members of their parties. That was going to spread the news in a hurry…

  The gray Methani was darting back and forth between the sorcerer and one of the exits, for all the world like a dog trying to convince its master to take it for a walk.

  “I think it’s trying to guide us to its body,” the young sorcerer guessed, probably correctly. He began to follow the ghost out of the courtyard, leading a procession of the concerned and curious, including the worried guardsman. Some other guests evidently decided that now would be a good time to leave this party, and began to circumspectly not-hasten to the street.

  A hand grasped Pen’s arm, and he almost had a heart attack himself. Bosha’s voice hissed in his ear, “Bastard’s teeth, what is going on here? Where’s Tanar?”

  “Safe. I bundled her and Iroki into a cart and sent them off a few minutes ago, before this all erupted.”

  Bosha exhaled, ungripping Pen’s arm. Pen trusted he hadn’t left a bruise. Despite the stylish manicures, the secretary-swordsman’s hands were strong.

  “Where were you?” Pen asked.

  “Looking for Tanar. This place is an accursed maze. What’s the racket about?”

  Pen lowered his voice. “A fresh ghost that is probably Minister Methani’s popped up a bit ago. Iroki and I encountered it down by the cisterns. It was drawn to the saint, uselessly—Iroki says it’s sundered. Very sundered. The minister was almost certainly murdered, somehow. I expect everyone’s about to find out how.”

  A long indrawn breath reemerged as an under-voiced, “Someone has my gratitude.”

  “It wasn’t you?” Pen was almost surprised.

  “No.” Bosha’s scarred lips thinned as he glanced around. “But you shouldn’t be seen to know me.”

  “We came in together,” Pen pointed out.

  “All right, yes… So we just met for the first time this afternoon. Gah. Why would a Wealdean Temple sorcerer be visiting Tanar?”

  “Not Tanar. Lady Xarre. I bore a letter from, from my archdivine’s merchant brother to her regarding some sea trade. I don’t know what was in it, I delivered it sealed. I invited myself along tonight as a goggling tourist.”

  A knife-sharp grin. “Welcome to Thasalon, traveler. …This ghost, you can really see it? It’s there, it’s real?”

  “Yes. Shouldn’t we get out of here before the uproar spreads?”

  “Too late. I’ve already been noticed.” Bosha’s gaze flicked over a few guests staring at him in doubt or open suspicion. “It would be fatal to bolt now. And Lady Tanar and Lady Xarre need news of the event, undistorted by rumor. Shall we follow the crowd?”

  This wasn’t hard. They just trailed the growing hubbub.

  “Someone was clever in their choice of both time and place, if this was a murder,” Bosha commented out of the side of his mouth. “There must be a dozen high bureaucrats here tonight who would be delighted by their rival’s death. Not to mention a few military officers.”

  “Lots of suspects, then,” said Pen, and didn’t add, Besides you.

  He didn’t have to. “Yes,” sighed Bosha. “Unfortunately, most of them would be equally delighted to sacrifice me in their stead, and not just the guilty one.”

  “Let’s find out what actually happened, first,” suggested Pen. Before panicking. Though it was already too late for that, for his own part. Bosha maintained his usual air of ironic detachment, but his complex soul was churning with tension.

  The next courtyard was small, of an odd triangular shape, poorly lit, and not decked out for hospitality. A cluster of people around a ground-floor door tucked under the single gallery led them to the right place. “Make way for the physician!” called a guardsman, some senior officer who had arrived to take belated charge, and the cluster rippled. Methani probably kept his own medical man for the palace’s needs, though this might be a hastily conscripted guest.

  When Pen came up, trying to see over heads, another voice said, “It’s the Wealdean sorcerer. Let him through.”

  Pen pushed past the jostle into a small private cabinet of some sort, office not bedchamber. Bosha followed at his shoulder, to slip sideways and take up a vantage leaning against the wall. If he was trying to blend with it, it was a hopeless task. His striking pale looks, set off by his somber garments and darkly shimmering brocade coat, would make him stand out anywhere, even without the slim sword at his hip to add its note of understated menace.

  The fleshly twin of the ghost lay on its back on the floor, evidently just pulled out from concealment under a writing table. Lord Bordane stood with his arms tightly folded, watching closely over the corpse, flanked by the appalled guard officer. A huddle of senior party guests encircled this centerpiece, crowding the chamber.

  An older woman in formal dress knelt beside the body, quick hands checking its eyes and their lids, spittle-flecked mouth, stiffening and faintly discolored hands. The young sorcerer knelt on its other side, dividing his worried glances between the physician and the hovering ghost. “It seems to want you to look behind his upper arm,” he quavered.

  She had been pressing the dead man’s fingernails, but at this gave a doubtful searching look somewhere left of where the ghost actually hovered. At her gesture, the sorcerer gingerly helped her roll the body onto its side. She reached for a small bloody tear in the upper right sleeve, but then drew her fingers more cautiously back. She ripped the fabric apart instead to expose a round, deep puncture wound, as if a nail had been driven in, to the rear and just below the shoulder.

  Pen glanced back at Bosha to check his reaction to this. The eunuch’s eyes widened in a moment of genuine shock, instantly masked, his face growing as bland and still as a white marble statue.

  Further examination discovered another puncture, like to the first, piercing Methani’s plump belly. Squeezing found no instrument left in the wounds. At a nod from his officer, one especially attentive guardsman dropped to his hands and knees and began searching the floor. Feet shuffled aside for him.

  “There will have to be a proper autopsy, under the supervision of the imperial magistrate,” the physician stated the obvious. “The sooner, the better.”

  A whisper of Poisoned! susurrated through the watchers. Pen’s Sight and medical training agreed. Something paralyzing to the nerves, leading to convulsions and swift and near-silent death, apart from some last bit of thumping around. No outcry, or none that was heard outside this room. Within the last hour, or even last half-hour—the encounter with the ghost by the cistern set a minimum time since death, but this physician would likely guess it closely enough without that clue.

  About half the heads in the room turned to Bosha, including Lord Bordane’s. His eyes narrowed. “You,” he growled. “You’re known to carry poisons…”

  “That’s no secret.” Bosha managed to inject his voice with disdain. “Given the gravity of my charge, I equip myself with every aid available.” He held up his pale hands. “But acquit me of stupidity, if you won’t of malice. If I wanted to murder in stealth, and not just defend, I’d pick any other
method but that one. For obvious reasons. …Also, I’d hide my traces much more cleverly.”

  “You have always thwarted my courtship of Lady Tanar.”

  “But that would move me to murder you, my lord, not your uncle,” said Bosha with spurious reasonableness. “I get no benefit from this.” Pen wasn’t sure what evil impulse compelled him to add, “You do, of course.”

  After a moment of bitter tension, Bordane abruptly ordered, “Search him.”

  Bosha clenched his teeth on a wince, but submitted to having his sword and all four knives taken from him.

  The thin, flat blade in his arm sheath was handed cautiously down to the physician, who compared it to the puncture and shook her head. “Not this, I promise you. Nor any of the others.”

  For a moment, Pen breathed again, till Bordane said, “Check that pouch on his belt.”

  It yielded some coins, a comb, a handkerchief, and a small leather folder which, when opened, revealed a row of nail-like larding needles, each in its own tiny sheath.

  “Be very careful handling those,” Bosha advised in a dry tone.

  The physician compared one’s diameter to the puncture, then demanded someone hand her down a quill from the writing table, which she used to test the depth of the small wound. Withdrawing it, she compared it to the larding needle. “Perfect match. Driven in with some force.”

  “May I point out,” said Bosha tightly, “the case is still full. None are used.”

  She frowned at this. “None of these are, no.” Implying there could have been others, easily disposed of almost anywhere? She replaced the sample needle in its slot and gave the pouch into the keeping of the guard officer.

  With a short, rancorous nod toward Bosha, Lord Bordane ordered, “Arrest him.” The officer and his men in the chamber began to move toward the wall.

  Bosha began angrily, “You surely can’t imagine lord regent Methani would—” but cut his own words short midsentence, hands clenching.

  In a weak voice, the young sorcerer pointed out, “The ghost is not reacting very much to him. I’d think it should be gesturing violent accusations, if it had them.” The revenant was however making baffled movements back and forth between Bordane and Bosha.

  Several men looked to Penric.

  “I don’t see anything special, either,” said Pen, not quite truthfully. “I must agree. This soul is still fresh enough to remember its death clearly. Ghosts have accused their murderers before. A few on record have even managed to make false accusations, if they died with enough malice in their hearts to render them sundered from their god.”

  It was the first time anyone here had dared to say the word sundered aloud, and most of the witnesses flinched, including Bordane. Methani’s funeral, which must follow soon in this summer heat, was going to be a disturbing show, assuming no one tried to tamper with the responses of the sacred animals. It would be made plain to all then that this was no temporary detour on his soul’s path, but that in truth no god would have him.

  Pandemonium, Des predicted with relish.

  Pen wondered if his vows as a divine required him to muster more charity toward the dead man. He considered his god, and decided not.

  Pen’s misdirection was not enough to prevent Bosha’s arrest, but it at least seemed to reduce the violence with which it was carried out. For now. That, and the quelling effect of the array of high-ranking witnesses present, many with posts in imperial justice, and not all of whom were members of Methani’s cabal. Pen wasn’t sure what chaos was happening in the palace at large by now, but in here, the preponderance of senior and experienced men and women, however upset, was forcing some order on the events.

  Addressing Pen by his Wealdean alias, Bosha called him to his side. “I am so sorry, Learned, that you had to be exposed to this unpleasantness tonight. This is not the way the Xarre household normally treats its honored guests, I promise you. But will you please bear report of this to Lady Xarre and Lady Tanar?”

  “Certainly, Master Bosha,” said Pen. He didn’t have to feign his worry. “I’m sure Lady Xarre will send you her best lawyers tomorrow.” He wanted to ask Bosha what he had been going to say about what the lord regent would, or would not, but there was no way.

  A wry smirk stretched Bosha’s scar. Lowering his voice, he returned, “I don’t think lawyers are going to be enough for this one. But at least my arrest wasn’t in secret. Those are more directly dangerous.” He allowed himself to be bustled out, surprisingly docile in the guards’ hands.

  Pen tried to follow, but was delayed by a spate of questions about the ghost put to both the Thasalon sorcerer and himself, by the senior men, the physician, and Bordane. Pen kept his answers truthful about anything the young divine could also see and report, but uncolored by opinion, as befit a stranger here.

  So wholly unsustained, the ghost was already starting to lose its definition of both shape and intent. By tomorrow, Pen guessed, it might be well on its way to the indifference and forgetfulness that was the fate of the sundered. Would that it could have happened faster—Methani’s body might still be undiscovered, and the Xarre party all safe away an hour ago.

  He finally managed to extract himself, but not before inquiring of one of the judicial men, distinguished by vestments of the Father’s Order and braids of high rank, “Where will they take Master Bosha? I’m sure Lady Xarre will want to know.”

  “Imperial prison,” the man told him. He added, in case Pen’s foreign origin left him ignorant of the nuances, “Minister Methani was a lord regent. This isn’t just murder, it’s treason.”

  “Oh,” said Pen. All right, he’d known that, he just hadn’t had time yet to think the consequences all the way through. He withdrew without letting anything more escape his mouth.

  * * *

  The guests had thinned out greatly while Pen had been in the murder chamber. The majordomo, wildly distracted, nonetheless managed to find a servant to secure a wickerman, though Pen had to wait outside on the steps for several minutes. Pen gave the man general directions to the Xarre estate, trusting he knew his way around much better than Pen did. The city wickermen who worked the hours between midnight and dawn were paid double for their trouble, and might expect to receive extra for an especially brisk delivery. Despite the long distance, the man seemed pleased to be making his night’s income on one fare.

  Pen sank onto the flimsy seat, brain dizzy with speculation, and with a lurch they started off. He spared a moment of deep regret for his lost bookseller ploy. This really wasn’t my plan.

  So whose plan was it, do you think? asked Des. Since the first encounter with the ghost she hadn’t interrupted nearly as much as usual—cautious of the god, intent on events, or just enjoying the play? Night of Chaos should, as staged productions went, certainly appeal to her.

  I won’t deny it, she said, but it’s most unfortunate about Bosha. I’d wish them all joy of one another except for that.

  Mm, Pen agreed. He didn’t doubt the eunuch bodyguard was capable of carrying out such a killing, but he really didn’t seem to have done so.

  The larding needle loaded with who-knew-what concoction had certainly been recognized at once for what it was by the physician, but unless everyone in Thasalon routinely carried around packs of little steel adders on their persons, Methani’s death must have been very much premeditated, and craftily planned. Who benefits?, wasn’t that the legal question? Pen’s old Easthome friend who worked as an investigator for the Father’s Order there would have known, and Pen wished he had him to hand. Locator Oswyl would have been in his element, if out of his jurisdiction.

  It must have been some trusted colleague or agent who’d cornered the minister alone and unguarded, however briefly. The missing Tronio was… not out of the running, though Pen could not offhand think of a motivation. Yet Pen would swear the sorcerer hadn’t been present by that time. An angry general? A bureaucratic colleague anxious to inherit his position, as Bordane seemed to have acquired the late Fasso’s? Some j
ealous lover? Eunuchs sometimes had them, female as well as male, though Pen, despite his medical training, wasn’t exactly sure how that worked in all variants.

  Mira could instruct you, Des offered, an interjection Pen ignored.

  Pen, reluctantly, had to acquit Bordane, at least for any motive of financial gain. He was rich and had been growing richer under his uncle’s patronage. Pen wondered if the prior Prefect of Shipbuilding had been assassinated to free that post, or if that was just a happy side-benefit of some other aim. How deep was Bordane in his uncle’s more secret affairs?

  And then there was Methani’s cabal, a whole association of government men of like mind and ambition. With the hub of their wheel taken out, would the spokes fly apart? Would they turn upon each other in a struggle for ascendance? The entire imperial government could be in upheaval by the time Adelis landed. Whether that would benefit Princess Laris or the opposite was hard for Pen to guess.

  If Methani had thought himself above reprisal, he need not have been nearly so careful in staging Prince Ragat’s death as natural. Would Laris and Nao have sent an assassin to their rival regent? They hadn’t tried such a ploy before, so far as Pen knew, but if Laris had somehow learned of the method used to murder her uncle, she might have decided that the rules had changed.

  Exiting Thasalon at night proved to be a swifter task than entering it, or else the wickermen had arrangements to speed their passage through the ramparts. In less time than Pen had expected, they drew up before the front gate of the Xarre mansion, and he paid the hard-breathing man off handsomely. Cressets were burning on the walls; the porter was on the watch to let Pen inside.

  “Isn’t Master Bosha with you, sir?” the man asked, barring the postern door again behind them. “Is he coming?”

  “Master Bosha was… detained in Thasalon. He won’t be back tonight.”

  “Ah. I suppose I can let the kennel master know he can let the dogs out now.”