The Assassins of Thasalon Read online

  The saint’s smile was untrammeled. “Keeping it simple seems like a good idea to me. Plus, you’ve been down this road before and I haven’t.”

  “Only as far as the walls of Thasalon.”

  “And on the other side we’ll have Miss Alixtra.” Iroki nodded, seeming content with a plan that looked shakier to Penric the closer it drew.

  The coach rolled up to the chapterhouse doors then, and further exchanges were lost in the bustle of loading. Light coach, postilion, and pair had all been requisitioned by Pen from the Temple courier system. He would retain the coach out to the western border; horses and their handlers would be traded off as needed at assorted courier stations, sufficient to their needs along this well-traveled main road. One less thing to beg from Jurgo, and underlining just whose responsibility the not-quite-prisoner was.

  Jurgo had been dubious about releasing Alixtra from his justice, but Pen had at length persuaded him that the true author of the insult on his ducal steps lay farther afield, in Thasalon. And, while she still bore her demon, that the assassin was nothing that his ordinary prisons and courts could handle anyway. And with his leave Pen would be carrying the knotty problem out of Orbas forthwith. That last argument had seemed the clincher.

  They boarded the close confines of the coach. Pen took the rearward-facing seat, leaving the forward-facing better one to the saint, and Alixtra to choose for herself. The woman, and most certainly her demon, didn’t really want either seatmate, but with a faint whimper she sat next to Iroki, who obligingly made room. She shrank to the farthest side. Pen waved farewell out the window to Sioann and the dedicat sisters, who called good wishes for their journey after them as the coach rattled away over the cobbles.

  For the next few minutes Iroki was occupied with gazing out at Vilnoc, and Alixtra with gathering her composure. The town scene held no novelty for Pen, but he did lean to the window when the road cut past the top of his own street. He couldn’t see his door from here, though.

  Beyond the town gates, the postilion set his horses into a brisk trot. Pen settled back to study Alixtra. She returned his regard with marginally less wariness than before, he fancied, and more curiosity.

  “Did you give thought to the problem I set you yesterday afternoon of naming your demon?” he asked her. Lesson One, or maybe Lesson Zero, of the coming course.

  She moistened her lips. “Not like a pet, you said.”

  “Right. Because it’s going to become a person, in time. And the name will shape your relationship, will or nil.”

  “I thought… perhaps… Arra.” She swallowed. “It was what we were going to name Kittio, if he’d been a girl. I don’t expect I’ll ever get to use it for another child.”

  Likely not, but the negative effect of chaos demons upon female conception was a subject for a more advanced lecture. “Good choice,” said Pen. “Very promising. We can give—was it a girl weasel?”

  “Yes?”

  “We can give her a naming blessing later, to make it official.”

  “Like an infant? That’s not an offense?”

  “Not to the god of anyone here, I promise you. A divine and a saint between us should bear as good witness of her welcome to the world as any Temple ceremony.”

  Alixtra looked dubious. Iroki, who’d turned his face to them to listen over the road-rumble, just looked agreeable.

  “Did you decide how to explain me as your woman-servant?” Alixtra asked.

  A manservant in the train of a modest merchant needed no explaining. A well-looking young woman was likely to inspire more prurient gossip. “Your speech is too different for you two to pass as siblings. Should anyone tax you, which, in my experience, they mostly don’t, you can explain Iroki’s guardianship as that of either your husband or a distant cousin, as seems best at the time. Except keep track of which tale you’ve told in any place.”

  “Orphaned cousin?” suggested Iroki.

  “If you like.” Pen glanced at Alixtra. “Do you have any family back in your home village? Or kin of your late husband?”

  “Some.”

  “I did wonder why you didn’t return there.” Death? Estrangement?

  She shrugged one shoulder, implying nothing so dire. “At first, I was waiting for Kavi. By the time I gave up hope, I’d become used to my Thasalon stopgaps. I thought I could do better later, when there was more time, except there never was. We grew poor slowly enough that I barely noticed when it became”—her eyes flicked away—“a pit I could not climb out of.”

  Pen tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Well, you’ve acquired a new vocation now, and it isn’t that of an assassin. I should mention, both I and Learned Dubro contracted our demons before our training, too. My Desdemona was already a highly gifted and developed Temple demon, who became my own best teacher. Dubro’s old farm dog Maska was closer to your case. Dubro was hauled to Trigonie and made to learn theology before they let him loose.”

  Iroki chuckled. “Must have been before my time, or I’d have been the saint to send him to his studies.”

  “A few years before, I believe, yes,” said Pen. “The magical part of his training was slighted, before he met me, though only for lack of the right teacher. The point is, if all this wasn’t going on”—Pen’s wave around took in their whole mad situation—“if, say, you’d found your demon by accident on the roadside, and then received the seal of the god, the Temple would adopt you as it did Dubro. The Temple wants its god-approved sorcerers. Culturing a demon is the work of decades, even lifetimes. By preference, my Order matches a new elemental with an older divine, since a mature, principled rider will leave a mature imprint. Very good for starting a demon off on its long road.

  “The great prize at the end of the road is a demon developed and stable enough to gift to a physician, to make a Temple physician-sorcerer. Dubro’s demon is precocious, because he’ll make a physician on his next transfer. Granted Maska started as a very good dog.”

  Alixtra grimaced. “I’m not a very good woman.”

  “The white god differs.” It had been hard to make Jurgo understand that, yesterday. It might prove equally hard to convince Alixtra herself. One step at a time. Even if we have to run. “Ideally theology should come before sorcery, but we’ll make do. Can you read in a moving coach without getting seasick? I can’t, sadly.”

  She looked taken aback at this sudden turn. “I’ve never tried.”

  He dug into the hamper, occupying a goodly square of the floor at their feet, and extracted Ruchia’s first volume. “Try this, then. It’s as close as I can come to giving you your own Desdemona.”

  Bewildered, she riffled through it to the title page. “Essentials of Sorcery and the Management of Demons,” she read aloud with fair fluency. “The Work of Learned Ruchia of Martensbridge, Senior Divine and Sorceress of the Bastard’s Order. With Aid from Learned Amberein of Saone and Learned Helvia of Liest. Translated into the Cedonian Tongue by Learned Penric of Martensbridge, Lodi, and Vilnoc. Volume One.” She looked up. “Wait. That’s you?”

  “Yes?”

  “You wrote this?”

  “Translated. It was written by Des’s prior rider Ruchia, in Wealdean, back in the cantons some years ago.”

  “Yes,” Des put in, “and we thought the writing of it the most tedious task in the world, till we came to Penric’s so-far three translations of the selfsame text. The white god avert him learning any more languages, or we shall discover if he can actually kill a demon with boredom.”

  Pen grinned at the familiar plaint. “This book was my own primer, when I first came across it back in Martensbridge.”

  “He stole it out of a locked cabinet,” Des put in, aside.

  “You told me where to find it. And how to defeat the lock,” Pen said. “Anyway. It existed then only in a few hand-written copies. Two fires and a flood would have erased it from the world. Transcribing the Wealdean original onto my wooden printing plates for the princess-archdivine’s press was my first task as a vowed Temple
scholar.”

  “But… then… it’s inside of your demon as well?”

  “That and more.”

  She frowned at the book, turning it over. “Is there a Volume Two?”

  “Yes. It’s devoted to medical sorcery. Longer and more complicated. I’m not done with its Cedonian translation yet. But all that’s in it rests upon skills taught in the first, like a house upon its foundations. Or you could say this gives the carpenter’s toolkit, and the second tells how to build a house using it.”

  Iroki looked across at the book with less aversion than Pen would have guessed. “I’d like to read that too, when you’re not using it. Might tell me things about what I do that the Dogrita divines didn’t.”

  “Very likely,” said Pen. “Oh, I should have brought two copies. I’ll give you one of your own when we get home.”

  “Obliged!”

  If we get home. That was one conclusion Pen was willing to assume with all his might.

  * * *

  Alixtra read until the first change, only looking up when they swung into the courier station fifteen miles out from Vilnoc. They did not linger longer than for drinks sold by the station girl and a visit to the privy. The pair of horses was replaced by a team of four with an additional postilion in anticipation of the climbing roads ahead, and they were on their way again.

  When Alixtra betrayed her fatigue by closing her eyes for the third time, a good way into Chapter Two, Pen said, “That’s enough reading for now. Let’s break it up with something more practical.”

  She watched in bafflement as he dug into the hamper once more, withdrawing a ball of twine. Iroki crossed his arms and sat back with the air of a man about to enjoy a marketplace juggling act.

  “The first three magic skills Des taught me were how to kill fleas in my bedding, how to light a candle, and how to unlock a lock, which is a more advanced variant of undoing fastenings generally. All downhill magics, which you will learn is an important distinction. We’ll save fires for when we’re not in a moving coach, and use flies for fleas at the next station stable, but I thought we could start with undoing right here.”

  He had her full attention. Her inner weasel had given up its initial terror of being squeezed so close to Des and Iroki in sheer exhaustion, not so much tamed as quiescent. Which was a start on taming, as nothing bad continued to happen to it.

  “Watch with your second sight.” Pen held up a short length of the twine delicately pinched between his two hands, cutting it in half with a touch of chaos slightly more than the task actually took, but this needed to be clear, not subtle. Alixtra jerked. “And again.” He demonstrated several more times, then handed the ball across to her. “Now you try.”

  If she’d borne a cat-demon, this might have been even easier, but the weasel was… interested. She made two or three frustrated attempts at it, then, her lips compressing in her concentration, called on her older skill, which was indeed a variant of the same underlying destruction. The twine exploded between her hands.

  Iroki jumped; Pen, or maybe it was Des, laughed. “Very good!”

  Alixtra hunched, glaring at him in suspicion.

  “No, really,” said Pen. “It was the correct move, just a little too much of it. Try again.”

  The coach floor was soon covered with twine bits. There was a brief moment of excitement when they caught fire, and the startled passengers all collaborated on stamping it out, Pen cheerfully explaining that no, this was a good start on a later lesson.

  “Wait,” said Alixtra suddenly, the twine going slack in her hands. “The rope in the atrium—it didn’t just break. You did it!”

  Pen’s brows rose. “I… did not realize you hadn’t sensed that?”

  “No! I thought it was just me, or ill-luck, or something Rach did—we’d been arguing.”

  “Ah, no. I needed to control where you fell—if you’d hit that flagstone floor from that height, you could have been badly hurt.”

  “I didn’t hit my head and get knocked out?”

  “Mm, no, that was me, too. Given the circumstances, I can’t really apologize.”

  She stared at him in bewilderment; her lips parted. Closed again. Opened again, only to trail off in a mutter of, “No, just… never mind.”

  With an effort, she returned her attention to her lesson. After several more repetitions, she was finally able to part the twine at will, with no unwanted side-effects.

  “This would be easier with scissors. Or a knife,” she said.

  “That’s exactly right. There is almost no downhill magic that could not be accomplished by ordinary physical means. Most of it, like rot or rust or fire, takes place naturally in the world without people having anything to do with it at all, very like a rock rolling downhill faster and faster once it’s given only a little push. The magic just directs the location, amount, and speed of the destruction or disorder.”

  He picked two short lengths of twine off the floor, lining them end to end on his knee. “It’s uphill magic that starts to look obviously unnatural.” He restrained himself from passing a hand over them, however much the gesture helped his focus, to again make the demonstration utterly clear. With an odd little blur, the two ends spliced themselves together. He picked the single length up, pulled it to show its restored integrity, and handed it across to Alixtra.

  She took it with the dismay of a woman being handed a live worm, but was unable to resist testing it herself. When she glanced at Pen again, she almost nearly smiled.

  * * *

  Partway into the next chapter, she looked up and said, “I don’t understand what this is trying to say about, what do they call it, magical friction.”

  “Oh, you’re that far already? Good. This one is critically important, because it has directly to do with the bodily limits on what any one sorcerer can accomplish with demon-magic. Working any magic, uphill or down but especially up, generates heat in the human’s body. If one tries to work too much too fast, it creates a kind of heatstroke, from which one can pass out or even die.”

  “Oh.” She touched her mouth, startled. “Learned Tronio never mentioned that.”

  “I suppose I should stop even being surprised,” Pen sighed. “One of the, hm, less obvious things about new elementals is that none inherently has any more raw power than any other. As demons in the world build up their density, every generational imprint piled atop the prior, they do gain more ability, but it very soon exceeds any human capacity to channel it. What makes any sorcerer more, oh, not more powerful but more effective, is the cleverness and speed with which they can handle the friction, swapping it out of their bodies before it does them harm.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll show you at the next stop,” Pen promised.

  * * *

  At the second courier station, Pen escorted Alixtra through the stable and out behind it to the manure pile, taking a quick look around to make sure they were alone.

  “This will be roughly the same move as splitting the twine. It’s the consequences that are different. Pick a fly, any fly.” A big black one buzzed up and landed on his foot. God-given fly? All right, maybe not. He pointed; it dropped dead.

  Alixtra made an odd little sound.

  Oh. Magical killing. Right. He should have thought of the troubling aspect to this lesson for her. Should he pursue that weasel into its dark hole now, or wait?

  Wait for Alixtra, Des advised. She’ll circle back on her own when she’s ready, and ready for you to touch that wound. Physician.

  Pen took a breath and went on steadily: “The point here is that life is the greatest instance of order that exists. When it is destroyed, more chaos is released than went into provoking the destruction. For a sorcerer trying to shed magical friction before he passes out or dies of heatstroke, the killing of theologically allowed vermin is by far the most efficient means of doing so.” He cleared his throat. “Other animals at need. When I was working as a sorcerer-physician, and had to deal constantly with chaos overloads from
all the uphill magics, I made arrangements with local butchers to do their daily slaughtering. Not enjoyable, but it served.”

  She looked startled. “So you really did heal Arisaydia’s eyes! Learned Tronio said you couldn’t have!”

  “I think,” sighed Pen, “that we can just assume henceforth that if Tronio’s mouth was moving, he was lying to you. But yes. It was the most delicate feat of uphill magic I’d ever attempted, paid for with a week of night-slaughter among all the vermin in Patos I could find. Exhausting on both ends.

  “Anyway. Flies. Among the most allowable of vermin to destroy. I could just fetch you a swatter from the stable, but it would miss the point of the lesson.” Saying This should be easy for you would have been deeply counterproductive, so he merely pointed. “Try that one.”

  Swallowing, she followed the direction of his hand with her own. Her face scrunched.

  Pen ducked several dismembered flies and a splatter of manure. Should have seen that coming. “Good,” he said, keeping his voice even. “And again, but narrow down on just one fly. And this time, try to be mindful of its effects not on the fly, but on yourself. You should sense an easing of heat in your body, and of tension in your demon.”

  She did and… she did. Her lips parted. “Oh.”

  “Exactly,” he said, with great satisfaction. “Try a few more, as long as we’re here.”

  When he was assured that she could repeat the skill at will, he said, “Good, enough for now. And here’s the other half of the lesson, the more important part.”

  She attended, what a delight.

  “If you do not learn to shed chaos mindfully, your body will leak it anyway, but in a random manner that you won’t even be aware of. Did you notice, when you bore your other demons, more little accidents happening around you than usual? More clumsiness, food spoiling faster, things breaking or breaking down?”