The Assassins of Tamurin

by S. D. Tower

  “Describe her and the other one.”

  I did so. When I fell silent we stood there, three paces apart. His face was that of a soldier who has taken a sword in his belly and thinks he is going to die. I had never seen Terem look like that, not even at Bara. It was more terrible to me than murderous fury.

  “I have much to do,” he said in a toneless voice. “I'm sending you back to the villa, where you’ll be put under guard. While you’re there I want you to write everything down. I will send someone for it before midnight. You are not to speak of this to my officers or anyone else.”

  “I will be dead by midnight,” I said.

  “No curse works that fast, even a Taweret one. When I've beaten Ardavan, I'll consider what to do with you.”

  I bowed my head in submission. He was right about the curse; Adrine would have needed days to die from the attentions of the wraiths. But I had my httle bottle. I would write as much as I could, then drink from it.

  He took my arm in a painfully tight grasp and led me back into the keep. We’d been gone for some time. The officers looked up from their tablets and tallies, expressions of perplexity on their faces at first, then alarm. I bore the mark of his hand on my face, and we could not be mistaken for a happy couple.

  “The Inamorata has been threatened with assassination,” Terem said. “So have I. Captain Sholaj, find six men and a subcaptain. Have them escort her to the villa and put her into the bedchamber. They are to place a guard at her door and below her window. Clear the building of servants. No one is to go in or out. Tuhan, I need a hundred men to search the city for a pair of women. As soon as you’re ready I'll give you particulars. Get to it, both of you.”

  Thus he dismissed me, and Sholaj took me away and de-hvered me to the soldiers.

  I suspected I had little time before Nilang’s daughters came for me, and I was right. As we neared the city gate a subtle unease began to penetrate my strange calm. I took it at first for apprehension about what was to happen to me.

  but as we passed through the gate I saw the shadows clustering beneath the arch, and I knew.

  But it was not as bad as I'd feared, and the soldiers around me noticed nothing. I didn’t tear at my face or shriek or throw myself from my horse, although in another hundred yards my heart was pounding with an eerie, unfocused dread. But I mastered it, though my hands shook and I knew my face was white. The subcaptain glanced curiously at me once or twice but said nothing and delivered me as ordered to the compound.

  And then, as I dismounted by the villa entrance, the dread left me. I was astonished. Was this what had sent Adrine into paroxysms of terror? If such tremors were all Nilang’s wraiths could achieve, perhaps I could manage them. Against my will, a tiny thread of hope began to weave itself through my heart. Perhaps, I thought, time had wom the curse away. Perhaps, with me, Nilang had got it wrong. Perhaps my love for Terem would armor me against the wraiths.

  So, as the soldiers escorted me upstairs to the bedchamber, a foolish part of me began to build temples in the air. I would manage Nilang’s daughters after all. Then all I'd need was a little time; I'd deal with the guards, slip over the wall and out into the countryside. I'd vanish. I'd be free at last, free of everyone.

  And then what? My hopes crashed in mins. I would have to mn forever, with not only Mother, Nilang, Dilara, and all my former sisters on my trail, but also a furious and vengeful Terem. Even with all my skills, I'd never find a place to lay my head. And I would always carry with me my own curse: that I loved Terem, yet had so utterly betrayed him. What good was escape to me now?

  The bedchamber door closed behind me and I was alone. Faint heat radiated from the brazier near the balcony shutters. The sun lay close above the westem horizon, and the light through the window was tinted with copper. On the table by the wmdow lay reed pens, ink, and a sheaf of the paper Terem used for dispatches.

  There was a lot to tell him, and I must get started. I kindled a lamp from the brazier and set it on the table. Then I bowed my head and asked Our Lady of Mercy for her protection, that she might shield me in spite of the evil I had done.

  I was still praying when they came for me. It was not like the first time. It began painfully, like a coarse cloth drawn over an exposed nerve. Then the comers of the room darkened and began to writhe. My calm slipped away to be replaced by a clammy sensation of dread, and then, suddenly, everything in the room terrified me. The pen on the table seemed a writhing worm, the window glass was full of malevolent eyes, and I knew that the lamp wanted to crawl into my mouth and feed on me.

  I looked down at my hands. My fingers had curled into talons. From the comers of my eyes, I saw the shadows flicker and slither toward me. My muscles gave way and I sank to my knees, then to the floor. A paralysis took my limbs. My tongue was frozen in my mouth. I could not even scream.

  The shadows touched my face. And then they were inside me.

  Nothing could have prepared me for it. I became inhabited, unspeakably, disgustingly inhabited. Nameless things squirmed through my flesh, wriggled in my blood. They rose through my throat and invaded my eyes and made me see the hving horror I would become. They coiled in my ears and made me listen to my screams, slithered into my nostrils and made me smell the stench of my degradation.

  Yet they would not allow me to shriek as Adrine had shrieked, and I could emit only husky grunts, like those of an animal. I don’t know how long I lay on the floor, jerking and drooling and making such noises, but the sun was just below the horizon when they left me.

  When they were gone, I remained there in stunned, quivering silence. Their departure was no relief, for I knew they would come back, just as they had come back for Adrine.

  But now I knew what was going to happen to me and how I would feel when they took my mind and body for their pleasure. It was the last refinement of agony, this knowledge of the horrors to come. Now I understood why Adrine had wanted to tear out her eyes.

  At that, I felt my hands creeping toward my face, and I sat up with a gasp. My fingers were hooked claws. I straightened them slowly, one by one.

  The hght in the bedchamber was red, and in its comers lurked msty clots of shadow. After a while I was able to stand up. Paper and ink beckoned me. I stumbled to the table and stared down at them. How could I write what he wanted to know? My hands trembled in uncontrollable spasms, and I could think of nothing except what was going to happen to me again. My cold serenity had abandoned me. I could barely master my fear.

  Something fluttered darkly near the bed. I cringed and it was gone. My imagination. Or perhaps not.

  For the first time in my hfe, my courage failed me. I couldn’t face them again. I had done as much as I could; I had confessed to Terem and given him the waming he needed. The rest he must manage for himself. I was past helping him.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and fumbled through my pouch until I found the vial. My fingers trembled so badly that I could barely loosen the wires that secured the stopper, but I managed it at last, broke the wax seal, and got the vial open. The scent of Blue-Tinted Cloud drifted from it. I was safe, or soon would be.

  I put the vial to my hps and drank. The poison was thin and watery, not like the first I had taken. When the vial was empty, I let it fall to the floor, where it broke.

  It seemed very strange to me that this was to be the final hour of my life. I had come to such a sorry end, after all my dreams of glory and triumph. But I felt no dread of death, only a vast relief. I knew dying was going to hurt, because it had hurt Adrine. But it wouldn’t go on very long. And compared to the horror of the wraiths, it was nothing.

  I lay back on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and waited. The room slowly darkened as the daylight failed. The pains would begin soon, and I awaited them eagerly, as a woman awaits the soft footsteps of her lover on the stair.

  Twenty-nine

  Outside the window, the murky light of winter dusk dimmed toward blackness. An hour had passed since I emptied the second vial, and still th
e venom had not touched me.

  In growing despair, I lay on the bed until full night had fallen. But at last I accepted that it was useless to wait any longer. The poison had failed. I didn’t know why. I had taken it soon enough after the first dose for it to act.

  I wept for a while. Then I got up and tore a long strip of gossamin from one of my skirts and twisted it into a thin cord. There was an iron hook in the ceiling beam, from which the hanging lamp was suspended; it looked as if it would bear my weight.

  I was braiding the noose when I glimpsed motion from the comer of my eye. They were coming again. Frantically I tried to complete the noose and almost dropped it.

  The movement again. It wasn’t right. Shaking with fear, I made myself look.

  The latch on the balcony door was slowly lifting.

  Dilara, it must be Dilara. My fear abated, to be replaced with sudden hope. Perhaps I could save Terem before I died. I had the advantage of surprise, and the cord in my hands would serve as a garrote. I hid it in my sleeve and took a step toward the door.

  The door opened. Nilang was there.

  Frozen with dread, I stopped in my tracks. I was certain

  she had come to watch my torment, and that she had brought her daughters with her.

  The gossamin cord slipped from its concealment and fell at my feet. “No,” I whispered. “Please.”

  Her gaze went to the broken vial on the floor. In a low voice she said, “Have you taken both, you fool?”

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I nodded. Then a faint spark of defiance woke in me. “It didn’t work. You’re not as smart as you think you are.” I could call the guards, but I would kill her myself, if the wraiths gave me time.

  In two swift steps, watching me all the while, she reached the vial’s fragments and picked one up. Sniffed.

  “You put perfume in it?” she said in a disgusted tone. “No wonder you’re alive. The scent took its power. Did I not instruct you in this?”

  I moved a little toward her. “I don’t remember. But it doesn’t matter, because you’ll never reach him now. He knows about you and Dilara and Mother. I told him everything.”

  “Ah,” she said. “So I was right about you, after all. Do you want to live?”

  My mouth dropped open but no words came out of it. I had no idea what had come over her.

  “Fool of a girl,” she snapped. “I can release you, but not here. Come quickly, if you want your freedom.”

  / can release you. I heard only that and clutched at its forlorn hope. “The guards,” I said.

  Nilang made a dismissive gesture and blew out the lamp. In the sudden darkness I felt her hand on my sleeve, tugging me onto the balcony. Outside, a quarter moon shed a thin illumination over the city’s roofs.

  She’d come up by a soot-black rope and a padded grapnel. In moments we were over the rail and on the ground, the rope slithering down after us. At my feet lay the form of the guard who’d been stationed below the balcony. I wondered if he was dead.

  Again the tug on my sleeve. We kept to the shadows by the wall, until we were well away from the villa and behind the stables. Up the steps to the wall walk, the rope again, down the other side and we were in a narrow, deserted street.

  I felt the tingle along my nerves again, and a stealing sense of horror. “They’re coming,” I gasped. “Stop them.” “I cannot,” Nilang whispered. “I must exorcise them. Just a httle farther.”

  Around a corner, then another. She opened a door in an alcove, pulled me into a narrow courtyard. Another door closed behind us and I stood blinking in a dim yellow hght. A lamp bumed on a stone floor; near it lay a satchel, a leather bag, a water jug, and a wine flask. We were in a win-dowless room and I saw shadows moving in its comers. “Hurry,” I croaked. “Please. They’re close.”

  Nilang left me by the lamp, rummaged in the satchel, and drew out a pottery jar. “Put out your tongue,” she ordered. I obeyed and she smeared a paste from the jar onto it. It tasted foul and I gagged, but whatever it was, it worked quickly. In moments I felt drugged and stupid, too befuddled even to fear the wraiths. I sank to the floor and tried to keep my eyes open.

  Nilang ht something in a shallow bowl and I smelled the scent of burning sweetcup. She inhaled the dmg several times, then seized my chin and pulled my head up. Her gaze locked on mine. I tried to look away but could not. She began to whisper to me, murmurs in a language I almost knew. Sometimes her voice deepened as if others spoke through her mouth; then the speakers seemed to converse gravely among themselves at the edge of hearing. I could not tell what they spoke of, but it frightened me.

  At length I could see nothing but her eyes, like blue pools in which I softly drowned. I felt her slender dry fingers touch my hps. I opened my mouth. Nilang’s voice hardened and she spoke three harsh words, as if to call something from deep within me.

  My sight retumed. A cataract of nausea bolted into my throat. With it came a rush of vaporous substance, foul as the exhalation of a charnel house. It poured from my mouth like smoke, clotted in the dim light into a wavering shadow. Nilang spoke to it in that same harsh voice, her face drawn with strain, and I knew it did not want to go. It wanted to live inside me, consuming me from within until I died.

  She gestured and spoke again, and it went.

  I fell over sideways and vomited onto the stone floor. I had little in my stomach and not much came up, but I retched for a long time. Finally Nilang brought me wine and water in a pottery cup, and made me drink it. There must have been sometliing else in the mixture, too, for my head cleared almost immediately.

  We sat on the floor and studied each other. I felt a most peculiar sensation of lightness. I had not realized until now how much a part of my life the wraiths had been. I had never given them much thought, because it was easier not to, but they had always been there, like invisible jailers. Now I was free of them.

  “Why have you helped me?” I asked. “I betrayed her.” “That betrayal is precisely the reason.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do. Use your wits, girl.”

  From across the years. Mother’s words in the sickroom at Repose retumed: Remember that you are bound to me. And now I remembered other hints: the taint of contempt I’d once heard in Nilang’s voice when she spoke of Mother; the fleeting perplexity I’d felt in Kuijain about her real allegiances; and in the last few months, her ambiguous probes of my loyalty—^not, as I’d imagined, on Mother’s behalf but rather on her own.

  “You don’t serve her willingly, do you?” I asked.

  “I do not.”

  Furiously I burst out, “Then why didn’t you tell me before? I could have done something. Stopped her somehow.” “Don’t be a fool. How could I take that risk unless I were sure you had tumed on her? I have tried to sound you for disaffection, the gods know I have—^when your friends died in

  Istana, and you knew their deaths lay at your door, and when I told you that she’d made the girl Ashken her heir. And I did so again today, in the Aviya house, after I sensed the shade of the Surina with you.” Her mouth twisted. “But you are a fine actress, I give you that. It wasn’t until I saw the soldiers bringing you here, and sensed the wraiths come to you, that I was sure.”

  I said, “She always knew Merihan was my sister, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. Or she was almost sure of it, when she brought you to Repose. I probed you soon afterward to be certain.” Memory stirred in me. “It was the first time I saw you. It was in the palace. I fell asleep.”

  “You did not. There was a drug. With its help I opened the deep levels of your thought, where your awareness of your sister hes hidden.”

  This startled me. “It does? How?”

  “The awareness arises when two minds share the same womb; it persists after birth but is difficult to draw forth. But when I questioned you, you revealed it, and the Despotana knew you were the one. Then I placed an injunction in you to forget my questions.”

  “But how
did she even know I existed? I don’t understand why she looked for me in the first place.”

  “It was through me. When she heard about the Sun Lord’s betrothal years ago, she wished to know more about the Aviyas and the Surina-to-be, so she sent me to Gultekin to accomphsh this. I estabhshed myself as a summoner, then arranged for the child to become ill with a harmless malady. When her parents brought her to me, I perceived a difference in their essential natures.”

  “In other words, that she wasn’t their daughter.”

  Nilang made a gesture of assent. “More than that, when I secretly probed the girl, I discovered her awareness of a womb sister, although in a place hidden from thought. I told the Despotana of your existence, and she realized that controlling the blood sister of the Surina might bring advantage in her secret wars. So she began the search, and five years later she found you.”

  “And she intended to substitute me for Merihan, even then?”

  “She has always spun many threads; that was only one among them. But when you were fifteen, she sent me to Gultekin, and on my retum I told her how closely you resembled Merihan. So she chose that particular strand to weave into her design.. . . How did you find out?”

  “Ilishan told me. Then, this moming, I spoke with Merihan in the garden. She appeared in the form of a child, but she was my sister.”

  Nilang nodded. “I felt her presence from the street. It was why I came into the courtyard—I wanted to know what you might have learned. But as I said, you are a fine actress. I still could not tell for certain if you had tumed your coat.”

  I sat for a while, revolving many thoughts. Then I said, “She’s mad, isn’t she?”

  “As a lunatic babbling in the street? No. But as one driven by a ghost, yes.”

  “But it’s a real ghost,” I said. “Not something out of fancy. Am I right?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You know about this?”

  “I saw it,” I told her. “It came when I was with her on the Water Terrace. She said it was her son and that she called him every year—and that you’d taught her how, in the Taweret manner.”