The Assassins of Thasalon Read online

  “I…” Her mouth opened in astonishment. “How did you know?”

  “Because that’s what chaos demons do. They do it the way you exhale, equally naturally and equally necessary. It’s their inherent nature. It’s both overt, as when a cup or an axle breaks, and much more subtle. Among the more lethal side-effects is the generation of tumors and like disorders in the sorcerer’s body. Quite a hazard for untrained hedge sorcerers. Several of Des’s earlier riders, before she fell into the hands of the Temple in Brajar on her seventh life, died prematurely of such causes. Most notably Mira of Lodi of a tumor in her womb in her mid-forties. But, of course, since many other people die in just that way, it’s seldom remarked, even by the hedge sorcerers themselves.”

  An alarmed glance down at her torso. “Learned Tronio never told me any of this!” It was almost a wail.

  “Of course not. He wanted a tool, not a rival. Remember the part about all demons being born equal? When gifting you with such a weapon, his first concern must have been that you would never, ever realize that you could turn it on your masters. He couldn’t give you a lesser elemental, there being no such thing, but he could sap your powers by keeping you ignorant.”

  She was panting in her growing outrage. But still she turned it inward: “I was so stupid. So weak.”

  “Neither, actually,” said Pen briskly, a matter-of-fact approach seeming the best way to stopper this self-castigation. “No one smart or strong enough to do the job they wanted could be, though I’m sure your masters wished it otherwise. So they compromised by selecting a strong tool with an inbuilt vulnerability through which it could be controlled.”

  “Kittio,” she breathed. “They picked me for Kittio?”

  “Precisely. Otherwise they could have just hired some bravo like Rach. Who wouldn’t have taken very long at all to realize his new possibilities, and revolt or bolt with his prize.”

  “How do you know all this, how can you see so much…”

  “I learned how bit by bit, over years, and Desdemona before me. You can learn, too. Although not all in a day. Or a week, but I’ll do everything I can. If you will, too.”

  All her words—and there must have been many—choked up in her throat, but she gave him a fierce, fractional nod.

  Chapter 9

  The long summer day would allow them to squeeze in one more stage before darkness fell, just. Pen circled the coach, inspecting it before they boarded again. With Alixtra’s still-half-wild elemental aboard—which both he and she needed to start thinking of as Arra, yes—reaching the border without a wheel coming off, an axle breaking, or a horse pulling up lame would be a feat. But the bleed-off of chaos with the flies should hold things till the next courier station.

  They could push on through the night, but progress would slow to a crawl on the dark hill roads, it would be grueling for all aboard, and his student had started the trip already exhausted. Better to reach the mountains more rested. Also better for her lessons.

  On the road again, Alixtra attempted to read for a little longer, but then sighed and gave up the book to Iroki, withdrawing into herself. Her meditations did not seem to grant her serenity. Iroki read slowly, his lips moving, but with good understanding, as his occasional questions revealed.

  Penric mused on the missing Rach. It was maddening not to know whether the man was ahead of them or behind. Each choice suggested different hazards. He’d not been seen in Vilnoc since the night of Alixtra’s capture. Had he hung about spying, or hurried straight back to Thasalon to report his bad news? And which news? That Alixtra was still in the bottle dungeon awaiting execution? That she’d been removed? That she’d left Vilnoc with Penric? That Adelis still lay recovering in his sister’s house? That he’d sailed several days ago? Any combination of the foregoing?

  Pen had once imagined the greatest threat from the bravo lay in some ambush or attack, but it might be more in what intelligence he bore back to his masters. He could be almost to Thasalon by now if he’d left directly. Or was he tracking them? A fit man on a relay of hired horses could make good time…

  “Has Rach any money, or had you carried all the travel funds?” Pen asked Alixtra.

  A slight indrawn breath; her hand went protectively to her waist. The linen coin belt still circled it under her tunic, never confiscated. She might have feared this was an oversight about to be corrected. “We each had half.”

  “Hnh.”

  She settled back slowly as Pen did not demand she hand it over. “Why didn’t you take it from me?”

  “It wasn’t the possession of yours that concerned me.” Pen supposed, if she’d been de-demoned by the saint and passed on to the ducal judiciary, it would have been stripped from her then.

  “You don’t worry I’ll escape?”

  “We’re taking you back to Kittio just about as fast as it’s possible to go, and at no charge. No, I don’t worry.” Not until they reached Thasalon, at any rate.

  It occurred to Pen that he was using her son as the chain to control her much like Tronio had, and the thought made him slightly ill.

  Not quite like, Des consoled him.

  “Besides, keeping your coin makes you feel better,” he added on a note of cheer. Which won him a baffled look. “Safer? More powerful, maybe? Certainly having no money makes for the opposite.”

  A grim tilt of her head conceded this.

  * * *

  The courier station offered simple accommodations, fortunately not crowded tonight, bunk rooms for men and women and a small refectory. They managed a trestle table by themselves, and supplemented the station cook’s offerings with food from the hamper. When the other guests left the room, Pen borrowed a candle for the last lesson of the day: starting a flame. Besides being the most basic of downhill magics, it was a necessary preamble for the skill he planned to teach tomorrow.

  With that little accident with the flammable twine shreds for an example, Alixtra caught on quickly. Faster than Pen had, his first time. He had her blow out and rekindle the candle flame a few times, till he judged her body starting to warm up, then drew her attention to that as well.

  She eyed him in new curiosity. “Is it true you once burned down a pirate port, and sank all the ships in the harbor?”

  The dedicat sisters telling tales? Pen cleared his throat. “Just a few buildings along the shore. And it was only five ships. …And the piers, I suppose.” Taking the opening, he went on, “But that’s what makes fire so powerful an agent of chaos. Once you get it started, it goes on its own, naturally, until it runs out of fuel or air. Downhill magic is all about small causes with large effects. Uphill magic the reverse. Putting out a fire by magic would be vastly harder.” Or by any other means, to be fair.

  Pen would have been willing to leave it at that, but Iroki begged him to tell all about the pirates, so Pen allowed that reminiscence to be drawn out of him. The saint was by no means above enjoying something more dramatic than fish stories; Seuka’s version might have been more pleasingly vivid. Pen… still did not like pirates. “They’re slavers, you know.”

  Alixtra winced at this reminder of the threat to her son. Though after a moment she frowned and asked, “Were many drowned?”

  Sinking ships were no jest to her, right. “All the ships were at anchor or at dock in the harbor on a calm day, and the crews had time to get off. So possibly not any. Or none that were brought home to my magics. I’d have known.”

  For that, at least, she needed no explanation.

  * * *

  Midmorning of the next day’s continuing coach journey, Alixtra laid the book in her lap and rubbed her eyes. “I feel so stupid.”

  Pen glanced at the open page, upside down. “Not at all, but you’ve come to a dense section. I nonetheless recommend plowing straight through to the end, and then circling back for closer study. It will give you more context, and sometimes the illumination wanted for an earlier page will be found some pages further along. But it’s a good time for a break. Give the book to Iroki and
attend.”

  Iroki took it willingly, but instead watched Pen dig around in the hamper for his next prop. Pen straightened up and unfolded the cloth from around a handful of iron nails. Both members of his audience looked mystified.

  “Rust,” Pen announced happily. The looks of mystification deepened. “Another of the basic downhill magics. Even more oddly, it’s the same one that you learned last night. We don’t imagine metal burning like wood, but iron does. At least in the terms of chaos magic. Second sight, Alixtra, watch.”

  Pen held up one nail, which was about four inches long, and ran a finger down its side leaving a bright orange trail of corrosion. He turned the nail and showed her again. And again, several times, till he’d reduced the thing to a stub.

  He handed Alixtra a fresh nail. “Now you try.”

  It took her longer than lighting the candle, in part perhaps because she didn’t quite believe the fire skill could work like that, but at length she managed to make a few specks of rust. The nail had grown quite warm.

  She looked pleased but confused. “I —we—Arra can do this, but I don’t understand what use it is. Something that would stop rust, or take the tarnish off silver, seems more practical.”

  “There are skills for those, too, which we can get to later. In fact there are dozens of small, useful domestic magics, as my wife has learned to appreciate.” Pen grinned. “But if someone is coming at you with a sword or a knife, you can do this.” He tossed a new nail into the air and exploded it in a shower of orange flecks, which rained down all over the rocking coach floor.

  Both Alixtra and Iroki jerked back, gratifyingly startled. Pen loved that demonstration. So did Des.

  “Although if your demon isn’t extremely fast, you’ll just get stabbed with a rusty knife.” The time-slowing or, more precisely, reaction-speeding skill…

  Is not for Day Two, Des advised. Or even Day Six.

  Likely not. Though he hoped to get to dark-sight by the time they reached the mountains.

  “A more efficient—remember efficient?—thing to do is just run a very thin sheet of rust through the blade.” He held up another nail and did so, then broke it neatly in half with a light pressure. “Or through the chain that’s holding you to the wall, or manacles. Or cell bars. Or weaken a lock, if you can’t quite manage the unlocking trick.

  “Between this, and the undoing you learned yesterday with the twine, nothing short of a bottle dungeon can impede or imprison you. The skills also work on belts, ties, ropes, girths, traces, hauling chains, really any fasteners. Ship’s rigging. Bowstrings. You can knock out arrows, but it’s more efficient to go for the bowstrings, if they’re in range. A rapid and clever enough application can turn a concerted enemy attack into a scene of stumbling uproar, and that’s not even getting to the advanced things a trained demon can do to nerves.” Pen frowned. “The rust trick doesn’t work on bronze or gold, though. I’m not sure why not. Silver isn’t too hard to corrode.”

  “What in the world could ever defeat a sorcerer in a fight, then?” Alixtra said in wonder.

  “Other sorcerers,” said Pen. He gestured to Iroki. “People like the Blessed, here. Numbers. A sorcerer may be able to stop a dozen men, but if he’s attacked by fifty, he’ll be overwhelmed. Also, the danger of accidentally killing someone. That’s very inhibiting.”

  “I… see,” said Alixtra.

  Pen traced the toe of his sandal through the dusting of rust on the coach floor. “Turning a nail into this is the work of an instant. Turning a handful of rust back into a nail would take a week, and significant sacrifice. Vastly cheaper and easier to just fetch a new nail. Uphill magic is only worthwhile for restoring or repairing something irreplaceable in any other way. Even medical magics need to be used with utmost frugality.”

  Alixtra’s lips twisted. “Tell me. Are you or are you not a sorcerer-physician? Because you confuse me.”

  “I was for a time, some years ago. I’m… retired from the calling. Also, my demon’s earlier riders Learned Amberein and Learned Helvia were both physicians, back in their day in their home countries, so I’ve inherited their knowledge through Des.”

  “Wait.” She twitched the book out of Iroki’s hands and flipped to the title page. “Were those two women still alive when they helped write this book?”

  “And that very good question,” said Pen, his smile stretching, “brings us right to the theology…”

  * * *

  The courier station that night was even more rustic than the one before, but it offered the essentials: flat bunks that weren’t moving, clean drinking and washing water, a small refectory that gave onto a pergola, its grape leaves glowing green-golden in the quiet evening light, sheltering another table. Pen at once seized it for his party. They supplemented the plain food with the remains from the hamper, and Pen brought out the last bottle of good wine from home.

  “A naming ceremony,” he said, extracting the cork, “should be a celebration. So here.”

  He shared cups around, took a swallow from his own, stood and dipped a finger, and leaned in to touch a drop to Alixtra’s forehead. She flinched away, but then held herself and her demon still, both watching him warily.

  Laying his hand formally upon her head, he intoned, “In the Bastard’s name, newest of Temple demons, I bless you and name you Arra. Welcome to the world and our Order. May all your lives be long and fruitful.”

  Iroki raised his cup in cheerful salute. “And so I bear you witness, Arra.” They were the words spoken by a naming-day godparent. He drank with appreciation. “Ah, tasty.”

  Alixtra rubbed at the damp spot on her brow with the back of her wrist. “It’s not—you two don’t think this is just a jape. Do you?”

  “Not at all,” said Pen, reseating himself on the bench. “As I and Desdemona are real, and Blessed Iroki is real, and you and Arra are real, and all five present stand in this place on the white god’s behalf, this blessing is real as well. Drink up. Arra shall enjoy it with you, you know.”

  As cautiously as if she expected the cup to be snatched away, she raised it to her lips, and did so.

  * * *

  There were two problems with trying to teach dark-sight, first being that they had to wait until dark. The other being that since it was a perception rather than an action, it was hard to demonstrate, and not only due to the shadowed surroundings. Nonetheless Pen took his student out to sit on the pergola steps after the last of the summer sky’s luminosity leaked away, and tried.

  “Can you sense anything? Some change in Desdemona or myself?” Much of the color was leached from the world around him, but he could see it all as clearly as broad noon.

  “I have no idea what you’re doing,” she said frankly.

  “Hm. I was hoping that the weasel, being a nocturnal hunter, might give you a leg up with this one. Perhaps just knowing that it’s a possible skill will help you to hone in on it, given a bit more time.”

  “I’m sorry I’m so slow.”

  “Slow? Certainly not! The skills you’ve discovered in two days took me that many weeks, when I first contracted Des. Though the dark-sight took longer, come to think.” He rested his elbows on his knees. “You aren’t receiving them in as logical an order as they’re taught in a Bastard’s seminary. I’m just shoving them at you in the bundle I think most likely to help keep you two alive in an emergency. I’d love to teach you how to extract water from the air, but that’s definitely uphill. Still too soon. But a sorcerer need never die of thirst in a desert. Or in a bottle dungeon, for that matter.”

  “You can do that?”

  Pen had worked this trick so often that he didn’t even have to think. He extended his hand and pulled the condensation into it, letting it freeze for good measure, until he had an ice ball the size of a walnut. “Here.”

  When he tipped it into her palm, she yipped in surprise, dropping it in her lap. Cautiously, she picked it out from the folds of her skirt, rolling it from hand to hand it as it melted again. “It real
ly is…”

  “Very clean and pure, too, it turns out. Also a good skill when the only water around is foul. It does create a deal of friction which must soon be dumped.”

  “You’re… not…” Her head swiveled; no dying insect life came to her view.

  “As one’s demon grows and grows more experienced, the amount of chaos it can safely hold for a time also increases.” He decided not to offer some material metaphor about bladder capacity.

  Thank you, said Des wryly.

  He bent his head back to study the spangled indigo sky. “You’re doing very well,” he offered to Alixtra, and marked her habitual cringe. “So… what did that fool Tronio do to you, that you treat all praise like poison?” So much hunger. So much fear.

  She glanced aside at him, rocked a little. “Do I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just, that’s what he said to me, whenever I did what he wanted. You’re doing so well, Alixtra. It was what I longed to hear. I lived in hope of it, even when what he wanted was hard, and frightening, and terrible. I suppose it was a sort of sweet poison. I’ve learned to not want more.”

  And just when Pen imagined he couldn’t despise the Thasalon sorcerer any more than he did already… “It’s going to make it tricky to teach you, if I can’t tell you when you’ve done something right. Maybe I should find myself a painted fan, like the ones Sora Mira used to carry when she was swanning around Lodi, and snap you coquettishly on the head with it from time to time for a signal, instead.”

  She actually almost snorted a laugh. “Maybe you should.”

  Chapter 10

  Late the next afternoon, their coach reached the westernmost garrison town that guarded the three-way border between Orbas, Grabyat, and Cedonia. Penric had the Temple postilions drop them at the fort gate, sending them on their way with an extra thank-you of coins. His display of the sealed order from the duke sped them to the commander’s office, and the announcement of his name brought them the rest of the way inside.