The Assassins of Thasalon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  She nodded. “He’s always been shy. It worried me once, but I was so grateful for his quiet after we’d moved into Methani’s palace and I began to realize how treacherous it had become.”

  “He didn’t seem shy this evening.”

  “Lady Xarre’s staff have all been very kind to him. This estate must seem like an undiscovered country to a boy his size. And then came the puppy madness. I didn’t realize how quiet he’d become till that. I never told him of our danger, but he must have picked up something from me.” She added abruptly, “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before you left this morning, but Arra’s dark-sight came in last night.” She spoke as if reporting her infant’s first tooth, with muted pride.

  He started to say Excellent! but bopped her atop the head with the edge of his hand, instead, which made her quirk a smile. “A good sign of you two settling in. Did getting Kittio back help your relaxation?”

  “I think it must have.”

  “Yet another skill that can serve you your life long, in all sorts of ways. I’ve occasionally mused that given second sight—of which dark-sight is a variant, at root—no sorcerer can ever be imprisoned by blindness, even with both eyes plucked out.”

  She regarded him wryly. “You lie awake at night thinking of these things, do you, Learned?”

  “Sometimes. I’m a light sleeper.” Except when he had Nikys in his arms. She was as good as teaspoon of syrup of poppies, without the side-effects.

  “Why am I not surprised.” Alixtra almost-laughed, closing the door on him.

  * * *

  Pen was in bed, not sleeping, when Iroki came back. He’d left one candle burning—Pen didn’t need it, but the saint’s residual second sight didn’t quite extend to dark-sight.

  “So did you say your prayers?” Pen asked as Iroki sat to strip off his sandals.

  “Ayup.”

  “Get any answer?”

  “Nope. Well, one fish jumped out at my feet. I put it back in the pond.”

  “Was that a sign that the god was listening?”

  “God’s always listening. Might’ve just been a jumpy fish, y’know. The god speaking was what you wanted, aye?”

  “…Maybe?”

  “Uh-huh,” Iroki said dryly, and blew out the candle.

  * * *

  They were awakened in the predawn dimness by the polite tapping on their door of a Xarre manservant, bringing them a too-early good-morning-sirs and hot shaving water. Pen ceded most of the latter to the saint—with Des’s aid, he only needed to rub a damp cloth over his face to rid himself of his night’s stubble.

  Iroki, when he’d washed his face in the basin, shaved, and put on trousers, shirt, and sandals, said, “I believe I’ll stroll out to that fishpond for one more prayer. Just in case.”

  Pen nodded gratitude, going to tap even more gently on the adjoining door to Alixtra and Kittio’s room. She answered at once, putting her finger to her lips and slipping through to Pen’s side.

  “Is he still asleep?”

  “Yes, though not for long. I’ll want to wake him up before we go. He shouldn’t be left among strangers with no goodbye. I mean to set him in Tanar’s charge, or at least oversight—he was impressed by her, yesterday.”

  “I’m sure she and her Xarre army can manage one small boy for a day.”

  Alixtra almost-smiled, and Pen kept to himself the reflection that their task might end up taking a lot more than a day, and her good-bye might have to bear more freight than planned. Especially if things went very wrong somewhere. And he could think of so many…

  Well, you’ll only have to deal with one or two, said Des, so stop fretting yourself with the entire imaginary barge load.

  They were all to meet in Tanar’s chambers for some sort of breakfast while the coach was called for. Alixtra slid back into her room to finish dressing, and Pen sniffed at his Wealdean whites, smudged and smelling of dried sweat. Even when fashioned out of Cedonian summer-weight cloth, the long sleeves and generous folds had been overwarm yesterday. The outer robe was really a disguise for Des, not for himself—maybe he could take it along to be donned later at need. He settled for just the inner shirt and trousers for now.

  He took a moment to pass through the latticed doors onto the room’s little balcony. Leaning on the balustrade, he looked over the quiet, dew-drenched gardens, still misty and gray. He imagined sitting in one of its shaded nooks in the drowsy part of the afternoon, all liquid birdsong and golden bee-drone. Maybe with a book, to complete the idyllic picture. It didn’t compose his nerves much. A few birds were starting to twitter. Lady Xarre did not presently keep peacocks, to screech imperiously at the dawn like outraged aristocratic roosters, though he guessed they must have featured here once. Eaten by the mastiffs, maybe.

  The distinctive barks of a couple of the dogs carried through the damp air to Pen’s ears—great bass woofs resonating from their deep chests. Apparently they’d not yet finished their night patrol and reported back to their kennel for their own breakfasts. Pen straightened, frowning. The beasts usually coursed the grounds in silence, unless they’d found something unusual to excite them. But these barks weren’t just excited—they sounded frantic. A couple more joined the chorus, then some pained canine shrieks. What…?

  There’s some kind of trouble at the front gate, said Des, as arrested as himself. She tensed, uncanny senses straining. Just outside my range. And, in a moment, Men. Breaking through or coming through, but either way, many.

  The din of barking and snarling redoubled, laced with men’s voices shouting and swearing, some also yelping in pain. Kittio pelted out onto the balcony, bed-rumpled and wild-eyed. “Someone is hurting the dogs!” he cried in alarm.

  And vice versa, sounds like, said Des.

  Alixtra came hot on his bare heels. The weasel’s senses too flared wide, though without the range and control of Des’s. In another moment, the influx of agitated souls became apparent even to her as this mob, whatever it was, made its way up the curving drive. Several pairs of individuals split off to the right and left of the main body, spreading out through the grounds. Intent and nervous. And… disciplined?

  Pen squinted as a couple of pairs came around the corner of the house, one taking the winding garden paths, the other starting along the house wall. He and Alixtra together grabbed Kittio and retreated back through the latticed balcony doors, shutting them hastily.

  “Uniforms,” said Pen. “Short swords. Not imperial soldiers…?”

  “Thasalon municipal guards,” said Alixtra, her voice going strained and high. “Oh, gods, have they come for me?”

  There were as many as in a soldierly company, anyway. Fifty? More? More than Des could handle, or even Des and Arra between them. Or all the dozen Xarre mastiffs put together, of which a few extra seemed to be rushing in, attracted by the commotion. More barks turned to yelps. Some new shouts seemed to be Xarre servants, trying to get them under control.

  Pen, said Des. They have sorcerers. Have to be local Temple folk. One… three… four… Some other Sighted as well, I think. A fifth one hanging back… it’s Tronio.

  Well. Now they knew what Tronio had been up doing all night. Not plotting a run for the borders after all…

  “To Tanar,” said Pen tightly, and dragged Alixtra, dragging Kittio, out onto the courtyard gallery. The uproar had reached the house doors, guardsmen both municipal and Xarre yelling at each other, servants protesting. Tanar, flanked by a frightened maidservant, had popped out of her door and was peering over the railing.

  “Go to Lady Xarre,” Pen told the maidservant. “Tell her to stay in her chambers.” And to Tanar, sharply, “Back inside.” He hustled Alixtra and Kittio into her sitting room before him.

  “What’s going on?” Tanar demanded breathlessly as he clapped her door closed.

  “It seems to be a city guard company somehow got up by Tronio to arrest… probably me, though you and Alixtra aren’t out of the running. Don’t rush out to them. Stay here in this chamber
with Kittio like the timid young noblewoman you aren’t, and buy time. Wait for your servants.” She was still in what Pen guessed was a night-wrap. “Insist you need an hour to dress.”

  She glared at him, but with a glance at the tearful Kittio and the distraught Alixtra, nodded agreement.

  “Alixtra.” Pen turned to her. “Get out the back way, go to the fishpond, bring Iroki back at once. Your weasel can help you avoid the men on the grounds. Both ways, I hope.”

  She huffed in several kinds of fear, but nodded, saying to her son, “Stay with Lady Tanar, Kittio. Keep out of sight of those men. Do what she tells you till I get back.”

  “They wouldn’t dare search in here,” said Tanar indignantly, undercutting herself with a smaller, “…would they?” If she was thinking of what lay in her stillroom’s locked cupboards, in the chamber beyond Bosha’s, she was right to be worried.

  “If so, maybe Kittio could pretend to be, I don’t know, a houseboy? Could you do that, Kittio?”

  Kittio stared back at him in timid bewilderment. So, maybe not… “In any case, be very quiet.” This less daunting suggestion won an apprehensive nod.

  Alixtra bent to hug him hard, then sped out the door.

  Pen looked up at nothing, other senses straining. “They seem to be forcing their way through your front doors. With bluster, not blades, so far.”

  “Oh, how I wish Sura were here!” cried Tanar. Pen couldn’t quite tell if her tone was heartbroken, or homicidal.

  Bosha’s blades, however swift and tainted, wouldn’t have been a match for this many men either, and Pen was by contrast deeply grateful the secretary-bodyguard wasn’t present to try anyway, crippled hands and all. Because he would, if he thought his ladies threatened. Though his edged and poisonous tongue might have served better to slow the invasion.

  Or get him spitted on the spot, said Des uneasily. As with Bordane.

  “Lord regent Bordane,” Pen said to Tanar. “Would he have sent the municipal guard for me? Or imperial soldiers?”

  “Imperial soldiers if this was official. His own household guard if he wanted to keep the affair more private and under his direct control,” said Tanar.

  “So it wasn’t Bordane Tronio ran to last night for this?” Pen guessed.

  She shook her head in equal mystification.

  “Only one way to find out. All right. I’m going down there to try to talk them into some sort of standstill, or stand-off, till Iroki can get back.”

  “Do you think Tronio would want to take you alive?”

  “Dead men tell no tales?” said Des aloud. “I’d invite them to try.” Fierce excitement shuddered through her.

  “Maybe not,” said Pen, “but if this is meant as a murder squad, I don’t think most of the Temple folk can know of it. Nor even all the guardsmen.” A small selection of them with more intimate orders, maybe?

  Not without the collaboration of at least a couple of the learned sorcerers out there to hold us down for it, said Des.

  More likely Tronio will try to engineer some moment where it looks like we’re violently resisting, said Pen. That would seem his nasty indirect style, and with fewer consequences to himself. He seems very adept at avoiding consequences to himself.

  Till now.

  Aye. But don’t give him his chance on a platter.

  I am in your hands. …As always.

  “Lock the door behind us,” said Pen said to Tanar. She nodded grimly.

  With more earnest sincerity than ever before in his life, Pen signed himself with the holy tally, tapped the back of his thumb twice to his lips, and stepped through. May our god go with us.

  As they ventured out onto the gallery to look down over the seething mass of quarreling people in the courtyard—remonstrating servants being thrust back roughly by irate guardsmen bleeding from dog-bites, benches knocked aside and flowers trampled—Des murmured, I believe He is already here before us, Pen. Who in the world would think it a good idea to collect six chaos demons into one small space? Seven, when Arra gets back.

  Someone who decided his years of theological training were to be edited for his convenience at his will?

  Good guess.

  Thumping groups of municipal guardsmen were lumbering up both branches of the gallery stairs from the entry arch, which would be cutting off Pen’s retreat if he’d planned one. The boards shook under their heavy feet. The main body, headed by the sorcerers, the officers, and some other folk in assorted Temple garb, had spilled out onto the flagstones before the fountain. Tronio kept himself well back.

  He has a line of retreat we’ll need to cut off somehow, noted Pen.

  One step at a time, love.

  The approaching guardsmen were inadvertently herding them into the first such step, which was going to be steep. Pen swung over the balustrade, hung for a moment from the floor edge by his hands, and dropped to the courtyard below, long legs folding to take up his impact. His bare toes tingled, and he wished he’d had time to don footwear. The guardsmen shouted and pointed down at him. No doubt to their confusion, Pen did not attempt to dash off, but rather, straightened and strolled steadily toward the crowd assembled, hands held out empty at his sides.

  His eye ticked off the Temple folk. Of those in whites of his own Order, two sorcerers were younger men—one of them was the fellow from Methani’s party, who certainly recognized Pen instantly even without Sight; one middle-aged sorceress; one man about Tronio’s age, stouter, in shabbier vestments. Another middle-aged man bore the silver chain and pendant-and-seal for the head of a chapterhouse. Which, therefore, must be where Tronio had gone to shop for his help after all.

  A man in Father’s summer grays with a divine’s braids on his shoulder also wore some significant chain of authority around his neck—probably a magistrate from the city office at which Tronio, or more likely the chapterhouse head at his instigation, had requestioned the guardsmen. The sergeant flanking the guard captain was, good grief, a petty saint of the Father of Winter. The god was not immanent in him at the moment, but the faint lingering gray haze in Pen’s second sight was distinctive.

  Tronio couldn’t possibly have wanted him along, said Des.

  Likely not…

  So, this support was not gathered from the neighborhood temples, which were too weak to serve Tronio’s purposes, nor from the greater Thasalon hierarchy, which would have been unmoved by his personal authority, but from those middle echelons that had been passed over in Lady Xarre’s earlier evaluation. Pen, surveying their numbers, had to give Tronio credit for not underestimating his opponent. Some of the guardsmen now manning the gallery had unshipped short, powerful bows, and stood with arrows nocked and strings ready to pull back.

  Got a line on those bowstrings, Des?

  Oh yes.

  Wait for it.

  Aye.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Pen called loudly enough to damp the din, winning a moment’s startled pause from all. Not quite what they were expecting?

  You never are.

  Now to spin that hesitation out to its maximum duration…

  The guard captain, the Father’s divine, and the chapterhouse head glanced at each other and all stepped forward, the sergeant, at a quiet hand signal, staying right behind his captain’s shoulder. The other sorcerers looked back at Tronio and parted to let him through, an invitation he seemed reluctant to take. But he advanced beside the other three authorities.

  He inhaled, lifted a stern hand to point at Pen, and intoned, “That’s the Orban spy who poisoned Minister Methani.” His delivery was very sonorous and convincing, Pen had to admit. An unpleasant frisson of memory shivered through him. That’s the spy! had been the very words that had prefaced his own first introduction to a bottle dungeon. And to Cedonia, come to think. He wagered great Thasalon harbored some very well-maintained bottle dungeons.

  “I did not,” said Pen mildly, “although I admit I’m an agent of sorts. But not, at this time, for either Duke Jurgo or the archdivine of Orbas. I�
��m more of a courier, assigned to conduct a message and its bearer through the hazards of its journey to its destination. Which would be you, Learned Tronio. I told you of it yesterday, but I don’t think you were listening.”

  Four matching glowers testified to shared disbelief, plus one deeply puzzled stare that didn’t. The captain glanced back at his sergeant, who murmured, “Well, he doesn’t think he’s lying.”

  Tronio had surely been tutored by Bosha yesterday in the hazards of letting a glib man talk, but this—two might keep a secret, but fifty definitely couldn’t. This had been over, Pen thought, from the moment he and Des had failed to either run or resist as planned. No tactical plan should hinge on one’s enemy making the right mistake—Adelis could have taught Tronio that.

  Pen turned to the Father’s magistrate. “I surrender to you, sir. But not to him.” He jerked a thumb at Tronio. “He and Minister Methani between them got up a sacrilegious scheme to—”

  So baited, Tronio had to strike. Jumping for it like the pike he is. He cast a bolus of chaos toward Pen, at the same time screaming up to the bowmen on the gallery, “Shoot him!”

  A couple of the men, confused about their chain-of-command, actually tried. Their bowstrings parted under their hands, snapping back into their faces while their arrows tumbled over the balcony. The bolus of chaos caromed into the flagstones like a fly being batted away. The two younger sorcerers looked briefly impressed by this double defense, before hastily bringing their own demons to the alert.

  “Ah-ah,” said Pen, prudently slipping around and taking cover behind the shocked magistrate.

  “No, sir, you can’t!” cried the sorceress, trying to grasp Tronio’s arm. “He’s surrendered!” He jerked away from her, his face working.

  With all the attention riveted upon Pen’s drama, no one had noticed the figure walking through the entryway at their backs. But guardsmen stepped out of his way without quite knowing why. All across the courtyard, petrified silence spread from his passage like the bow wave from a boat. Every Sighted person present wheeled, gaping, and every demon except Des went into a sudden panic, like horses bolting wildly around a paddock they could not escape. Tronio looked up and froze.