The Assassins of Thasalon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Adelis’s restored brows twitched up at this theological reminder. “A formal council order for her exile is to be delivered here soon, I’m told. They’re not planning to make her wait around for Tronio’s trial, as he’s broken down and is making confession. The impression I have from Laris and Nao is that the sooner she’s made Jurgo’s problem and not theirs, the better. To the point of offering swift transport to the border. Given you’ll have the blessed saint along, the Temple has made a similar offer.”

  “I still have some of Jurgo’s and my own Temple’s purse left, but I think I’ll take, hm, yes, the archdivine up on that. Just to be safest.”

  Adelis’s short nod acknowledged all the implications.

  He set down his emptied glass and turned to Tanar. “We should wait upon your lady mother next, I think.”

  “Yes.” She rose to capture his arm again. “I have more to tell you. In private.” They strolled away toward the mansion, walking close together.

  Pen watched Bosha watching them go. The self-mocking plate armor was back upon his face, concealing who-knew-what. It made Pen hesitant to prod.

  “I think,” sighed Bosha, attempting and failing to flex his hands, “I’m ready to lay down my blades and pass those duties of protection to another. My reflexes have been slowing of late. The pages can’t tell, but I can.”

  “But not your quill, I trust?”

  “…No.”

  Future Minister Bosha? suggested Des.

  Who can predict?

  “So is she going to tell him about Methani?” Pen asked.

  Bosha grimaced and sat back. “We debated the problem. Neither of us are keen on it, but I suggested it might be worse to let him blunder about in ignorance. She agreed.”

  “I have to back you up there. Knowing Adelis as I do by now”—probably better than either Tanar or Bosha—“I think it will be all right.”

  Pen marked the eunuch’s pensive stare off into nothing. His imagined prospects, perhaps. “Her heart is large, Sura,” he said quietly. “Spacious. I don’t think you’ll need to move out to make room.”

  A smile without a trace of irony fleeted over Bosha’s lips, like the reverse of a cloud shadow. “Ah,” he said.

  * * *

  Iroki arrived back in time for supper, sunblown and amazed.

  “How was your sea-trip?” Pen asked him.

  “Whales,” breathed Iroki, eyes wide. “I didn’t know about whales. Over a dozen came to see me, out on that boat. And calves. Shouldn’t think fish babies should be called calves, but there they were. They followed us almost back to port.”

  The last time Pen had witnessed anything like that expression on the saint’s face, he’d just seen their god.

  “I only asked for some good fish,” Iroki added plaintively. “Only that, for the nice sea fishermen. …Five gods be my witness, I’ll never ask too small again.”

  Epilogue

  Pen wanted to take the road home the instant Alixtra’s exile order arrived, but there was the complicating matter of Adelis and Tanar’s wedding. The principals would have been glad to set it in two days. Lady Xarre, who had more grandiose visions for her house’s only heiress, wanted two months. A compromise was reached for two weeks’ time.

  We could still go, said Pen to Des. Nikys…

  Will fry you alive if we fail to stay for her twin brother’s wedding and report every detail. And I’ll bring the oil.

  Pen sighed. All right. We’ll delay. But you have to note and remember all the bride dresses and whatnot for her.

  Agreed, said Des happily, whose interest in fine clothing was almost equal to Bosha’s—in a being that had, technically, no body, Pen had always found this a bit baffling. You can write her a longer letter now, you know, reporting all’s well.

  He’d sent his wife a brief note of reassurance the day after Adelis arrived, yes, but what he wanted was news back. Which would scarcely have time to get here before they left, true.

  It did allow Pen the chance to do a few more things in Thasalon. Of chief importance was accompanying Iroki, at his entreaty, upon that visit to the archdivine. “Because you can do the talking,” he told Pen.

  Pen didn’t think that was exactly what the archdivine had in mind, but he acquiesced. He seized the opportunity to discuss the problems of the spiritual supervision of sorcerers in Cedonia with someone who could actually do something about them. Once he felt he’d made his points, he abandoned the saint ruthlessly to their host and went off to view the monumental and splendid main temple, jewel of the capital. “Ask him about fishing,” he advised the archdivine over his shoulder as he made his exit. “I think you’ll find the Blessed can give you much to meditate upon in that humble task.”

  To treat Bosha’s moping because he could not assist Lady Xarre’s secretary in the flurry of correspondence and invitations required for the impending nuptials, Tanar detailed him to escort Pen and Iroki to the theater, twice. A more sun-resistant servant was sent to guide her guests to the horse races held at the famed imperial racecourse in honor of the Bastard’s Day. The city-wide celebrations were quite the equal, if differently flavored, of those Pen had seen in Lodi.

  Pen elected to make his devotions privately, and the fisherman-mystic had his own ways, but with Bosha they did attend the Bastard’s Order castrati choir concert held in the main temple, the acoustics of which turned the ethereal massed voices into something, well… the musical equivalent of the miracle of whales, perhaps, vast and overwhelming and to be remembered lifelong.

  * * *

  Though Lady Xarre might have commanded some grander venue, the wedding was held in the local temple usually attended by her household. Divines of the Bastard did not officiate at weddings, so Pen was off the hook for that duty, but as the only representative of Adelis’s family present, he did take on the task of the groom’s first witness. He wasn’t Adelis’s sole support, to his relief. Several army officers, old comrades from before his exile, turned up, with interested wives in the tow of those who possessed them.

  Tanar, though she’d had the choice of several young woman friends, selected Bosha for her chief attendant. Now as always, Pen thought. Bosha restrained his sartorial appetites and dressed more soberly than the bride, though the result was still quietly dramatic.

  The wedding luncheon was held in Lady Xarre’s restored courtyard, gorgeously garnished with flowers. Garlands looped along the balconies, which were peopled by the few servants who weren’t actually serving and the musicians.

  Among the men who came for Adelis, there was one familiar boot-face whom Pen could not, though he tried, manage to avoid. General Chadro of the Fourteenth Legion, following in the train of his friend General Gria, had numbered among the army men whose military support for Laris, if events had devolved to the civil war now averted, Gria had secretly pledged. Gria quite cheerfully introduced them—though Pen was presenting himself only as Adelis’s brother-in-law, Chadro had apparently been filled in about his more covert role by his companion.

  “We have so much to thank you for, Learned,” Chadro told him. He stared at Pen in some puzzlement. “Ah… have we met?”

  “No, sir,” said Pen firmly.

  Oh, be nice, Pen, said Des. Mira wants to come out and say hello!

  NO.

  Spoilsport, she pouted. Not very seriously, Bastard be thanked.

  “And is this Madame Chadro?” Pen, diverting disaster, made a bow to the woman on Chadro’s arm. Much better-looking than the general, perhaps in her mid-thirties, she had the self-possessed air about her of an experienced army widow. Pen knew the type. And missed her fiercely…

  Chadro brightened. “Yes, this is Oudora.”

  “We’re not long married ourselves,” she put in. They exchanged fond glances.

  “I’m glad,” said Pen sincerely. “You are both very fortunate.”

  “I certainly am,” Oudora agreed cordially.

  If she knows that, said Des, I approve.

  After a few m
ore aimless pleasantries, Pen escaped. With his life, among other things.

  * * *

  As Pen would be leaving tomorrow himself, Adelis and Tanar stole a few moments for a private farewell. It seemed too small a space in which to squeeze such a world of meaning; Pen was content to let wordless embraces bear most of the freight. Then, with much greater fanfare, the newly married couple boarded the Xarre coach to spend a few days at one of Lady Xarre’s more secluded outlying properties. For once, Master Bosha did not follow at his lady’s heels, remaining with Lady Xarre.

  He and Pen ended up that evening drinking on the balcony of Tanar’s sitting room overlooking the twilight gardens, as her chambers felt far too quiet and empty.

  “My one lingering concern,” Pen said, as Bosha refilled their wineglasses for the several-eth time, “is what Tanar and you plan to do if some innocent party is arrested for Methani’s murder.”

  “Well,” said Bosha judiciously, “that would depend on who it was.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I wouldn’t volunteer to change chairs with him, no.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting you should.”

  “Good.” Bosha drank. “So far, although several men’s movements at that party have been thoroughly investigated by the magistrates, none were proven to be absent or alone during the right time period. Even me.”

  “You’ve been following matters closely?”

  “Very. I have reliable sources.”

  Pen decided not to ask just what, or who. Or how.

  Bosha went on, “The imperial government has not, historically, been above fabricating a suspect for a high crime when none were otherwise forthcoming, quite knowingly. But the regency council may be content this time to let it run out as an unsolved mystery, or at least, not press to such extremes for a sacrifice. Otherwise, I should certainly be voted the most goat-worthy candidate—ah, from their point of view. I am exceedingly grateful for your saint’s good word, by the way.” He drank some more.

  “I suppose,” said Pen, “that once Alixtra is safely over the border, there could be no harm in letting suspicion rest on her, instead.”

  “Mm,” said Bosha, considering this neutrally. “I should not be averse to bearing some lingering public doubt, mind you, as long as it does not advance to charges. Or execution. I don’t think it would do the least harm to my reputation as Lady Tanar’s… Lady Arisaydia’s personal factotum.” A sly smile plastered over the momentary verbal lapse.

  “I shall pray so,” said Pen.

  The night was not so very far advanced when Pen poured Bosha into his bed; the secretary was still healing, and Pen had an early morning appointment with a borrowed Temple coach. Saints and divines, he reflected, were not the only people to make of their lives a gift to the Bastard. The white god loved his great-souled children, in whatever varied guises they might be found. Pen made a fivefold tally, tapping the back of his thumb twice to his lips, before quietly closing the door and returning to the gallery and his own welcome bedchamber.

  * * *

  Of course they were lumbered with the puppy.

  To Pen’s dismay, Lady Xarre’s kennel master was quite willing to give it up. The little beast was the runt of its litter, and too friendly, he told them, so he’d been considering culling it anyway.

  Kittio wanted to name it Tanar, in honor of the lady of his worship. Pen persuaded him to the more neutral Xarre, instead, as he thought the other would give him a crick in his ear, although, since the lady and the puppy were not to be living in the same household, more direct verbal embarrassments would not arise. Adelis would have been amused; Master Bosha, possibly not.

  The well-appointed Temple coach, with its glossy team of four horses, moved them—the saint plus them, officially—along much more briskly and comfortably than their earlier conveyance. Its pace was welcome, as they would be traveling this old military road the entire three-hundred-mile width of the peninsula to the opposite coast, to circumvent the mountain range and meet up with the shore route into Orbas at the eastern border.

  Young bladders and intermittent coach sickness necessitated more frequent pauses, cutting into their speed, till it was discovered the latter could be treated by letting Kittio ride on the roof. The boy, with his puppy on a short leash, was overseen in turns by his mother or by Iroki, who though not subject to the nausea of motion also preferred the open air. These quieter interludes inside the coach gave Pen the chance to give Alixtra some broader tutoring than the focused practicalities of their prior journey, and to start to plan her curriculum as a trainee divine in the Bastard’s Vilnoc chapterhouse.

  On the third day of their travels in one of these more private moments, Alixtra confided shyly, “Arra said her first word to me last night.”

  “Excellent!” said Pen in delight. “What was it?”

  She laughed a little. “It was just No. But it was very distinct.”

  Pen grinned. “That sounds about right, really. I think that was Rina’s, let me see, third word. The first was Kitty. The second was Mama. Sadly, Papa took a little longer.”

  Alixtra said wryly, “No was one of Kittio’s first words, as well. I think children pick it up so quickly because it’s the one they hear the most often.” Her lips quirked in thought. “I felt my demon as an animal, at first, or some monstrous haunting. Thinking of Arra as a strange kind of child… works better.”

  “As she is to become a person in time, yes. One of the duties of a Temple sorcerer is to pass their demon along, at the end of their life, as a better, fuller person than it started. Making the sorcerer a sort of foster parent and teacher rolled into one—quite literally, the demon’s modeler, as clay is molded by the shape of the hands that work it. Of Tronio’s many sins, the fatal corruption of what had probably been a perfectly good Temple demon back when it was first entrusted to him is not the least.”

  “I was so worried, on the way over, that you meant me to face Tronio with my shaky new magics, and I didn’t think I stood a chance against him.”

  “Well, I had no idea how things were going to go, or what the white god expected of us, so I tried to prepare you for the worst first. Now I think He didn’t send you to deploy your magic on His behalf at all—that was my task—but to do exactly what you did, which I could not, which was to bear witness upon Tronio and Methani.”

  And to deliver inspiration? suggested Des.

  Maybe. But we shouldn’t say that aloud.

  True.

  Pen frowned in consideration. “Really, I have no idea what the white god plans for you, His newest servant, in the long run. Except that it might be much longer than we can imagine. I certainly couldn’t have anticipated all that I would do, and learn, and become, at the same stage in my career.”

  “Do the gods foresee it all? Are we just Their puppets, then?”

  Pen brightened. “Ah, you’ve hit upon my favorite seminary debate! Predestination or parsimony? We students used to argue it long into the night back at Rosehall. Let me explain the sacred nature of free will…”

  * * *

  At the rocky ford that marked the border of Orbas, they bade a fond farewell to their Temple coach and its attentive postilions. Pen expected that he would now need to negotiate with the rapacious local coachmen who picked up parties lacking their own coach, whose Cedonian hirings turned back here. But his notes home, though they could have reached Vilnoc little before him, had borne fruit. An Orban Temple coach, if not so luxurious, waited to convey the saint and his retinue the half-day’s leg on to Jurgo’s summer capital.

  Pen watched out the window with scarcely less eagerness than Kittio as they topped the last rise and the town and its harbor came into view. His own first sight of the place, from this same road, had been all sunlit mystery and apprehension. Now…

  He hadn’t been back to the valley of his birth in the cold canton mountains in nearly a decade. It seemed far less home, now, than Vilnoc had become. The Orban port was no longer a place of strangers, but
of friends. And more. He was never lost in its winding streets, nor barred by ignorance from its secret treasures.

  Pen deposited the saint, Alixtra, Kittio, and Xarre upon the Bastard’s chapterhouse head, Learned Sioann, with ruthless speed. She could handle it all, he was sure. Temple couriers would see Iroki back to his beloved river on the morrow. Pen would be back then, he promised Alixtra and Sioann, to discuss the needs of the house’s newest residents in detail. He knew some lay dedicats here who would be delighted to help look after a boy and his pet, oh yes. Rest. Eat. Settle in. I’ll see you soon…

  Duke Jurgo too, Pen decided, could be put off until tomorrow. Leaving his luggage to be delivered by a dedicat when one could be found, Pen walked through the familiar streets, his weary stride lengthening, to, at last, his familiar door. The cheerful color of its paint against the whitewashed stucco always reminded him of some rich autumn fruit, ripe persimmon perhaps.

  Nikys met him in the entry with the most gratifying shriek of welcome imaginable. His arms were instantly full of her, rounder than ever, perfectly healthy and—Des, alive to his far-too-knowledgeable medical worries, offered up a glance from their second sight without his even having to ask—so was Llewyn-to-be. Idrene arrived with Rina who, Pen found to his relief, still remembered him, if in a slightly suspicious manner.

  “You have so much new correspondence piled up on your writing table.” Nikys told him. “It’s practically falling over.”

  “It can wait,” he told her, and hugged her harder.

  ~FIN~

  Author’s Note:

  A Bujold Reading-Order Guide

  The Fantasy Novels