The Assassins of Thasalon Read online

  Dubro was dressed in his smock from the infirmary over ordinary tunic and trousers, hustled away from his tasks without even being allowed time to don his Bastard’s whites. Pen could only think Good, for all the rural divine might be daunted at his introduction to this high household in his low garb. Fortunately he was still fairly clean at this point in his day’s labors.

  He brightened as he saw Penric. Maska, within him, shrank at the dense presence of Des, vastly older and more powerful. At least the dog-demon had got over cringing, whining, and trying to run away from her in the past two years of their sojourn in Vilnoc, where Dubro had divided his time between training at the Mother’s Order in medicine, tutorials from Penric in magic, and assisting the fort physicians with what he’d learned from both.

  Almost seventy, Dubro had never anticipated taking up a third and demanding profession at this stage of his life, but the god of chance and mischance had a way of upending all plans. Two chaos demons in the same space was seldom a good idea, and not just for the discomfort it engendered in them; still, it was Dubro’s, Pen’s, and Vilnoc’s good fortune that they’d been thrown together as mentor and student. Pen, too, had entered his calling backwards, demon first, training second, which was not the way the Temple preferred to arrange things, but it had made the two mages a good match.

  By sheer ingrained habit the former soldier started to salute the seated Adelis, gradually recovering as he rested, but grinned at his own lapse and converted it to a five-fold blessing. “Sir. Glad to find you’re alive.” Adelis waved a muzzy agreement. Dubro turned to his fellow sorcerer-divine. “What’s this all about, Pen? The courier fellow couldn’t tell me much, for all he was in a sweating hurry. Something about some woman attacking the general?”

  Pen ran through a compressed account of the events on the steps, leaving out the secret meeting in Jurgo’s writing cabinet. Dubro’s gray eyebrows climbed, and he stared more carefully at Adelis. So had he seen, or heard rumors of, the mysterious visitors to the fort last night? Pen grabbed the chance to have Dubro give Adelis a medicinal dose of uphill magic against what must still be a throbbing migraine, as he’d now had time to absorb most of the one Pen had given him when he’d first rigidly not-collapsed onto the chair.

  Then Pen drew Dubro to the side of the atrium for the fastest tutorial in defensive chaos-interception he could devise. The guards edged away. To his relief, Dubro quickly picked up the skill, less subtle if far more forceful than the medical magics he’d been learning lately.

  Dubro’s lined face creased in amusement at Pen’s praise. “I’ve been a guardsman before, y’know,” he pointed out. “Maska too, in his own way.”

  “Exactly what we’d hoped.”

  Adelis had been engaged in some low-voiced consultation with the guard commander. Master Stobrek came scuffing back down the marble staircase, to escort this new protector to the duke and to impart news.

  “One of the palace maids was found concealed in a straw pile in the mews. Or found herself there, I gather, when she’d regained her wits. Stripped of her outer garments, with a bad knock on the head, but otherwise not violated.”

  “How long ago was she attacked?” asked Pen, as Adelis’s brows drew down.

  “Not that long. Probably during your audience with the duke.”

  Implying… what? The assassin seizing a belated opportunity, maybe, else she might have abstracted her disguise much earlier and less violently. How long had she been trying to ambush Adelis? Or had she just come in on Gria’s trail from Cedonia? Whatever the case, she was still out there.

  Adelis was rising determinedly to his feet, and Pen was even more anxious to decamp. “Bring the maid to Dubro to examine for traces of magic,” he told Stobrek. And turning to Dubro, “Send me a page with a report if you find anything.” The other mage nodded understanding. Although given the knock, an uncanny attack might have seemed redundant. Or the assailant had been saving her demon’s resources for her real target. Or, or…

  Finally they were able to depart the palace, escorted by what both Pen and Des thought a perfectly pointless squad of guardsmen. Adelis refused the offer of a sedan chair and bearers. He must be feeling somewhat better; even if not, he’d still have wanted to put on a show of vigor in front of the duke’s men to scotch any rumors of his disablement. Or, given the nature of rumor, sudden death.

  Though there might be ways to turn such a tale to good account, Des murmured, given the context.

  We don’t know enough yet.

  The party turned out of the bright noon of the square into a shadier street. Practiced, Des’s senses sifted silently through the buildings and their occupants to either side like an advancing twilight, closing up again as they passed, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Pen wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or sorry. “What were you saying to Jurgo’s man?” he asked Adelis.

  “Working out a search for the sorceress. If she hasn’t made it to the city gates and gone already.”

  “I… hm. Good question if his guardsmen would be in any more danger than from any other lone woman, if she’s saving her one shot for you.”

  The pacing guard sergeant kept a properly blank face, but Pen thought he was listening closely. And worriedly.

  “Even without another sorcerer, she may not be working alone,” said Adelis. “She could still have some assistant or escort, maybe a superior, maybe more. Her spare shot might not be demonic. As you observed, arrows work too.”

  “Oh. Ouch. That wouldn’t pass as a natural death, though.” Did Adelis’s shoulder blades itch, under that cuirass?

  “On the bright side, it’s harder for a group to go to ground and hide than a person alone, in a city this size.”

  Veteran of Thasalon, Adelis tended to see Vilnoc as little more than a minor provincial capital. Which, to be fair, it had once been.

  “They’re to send a runner for you if they spot her,” Adelis went on. “And hang back till you arrive.”

  Pen could scarcely object. His duties for the duke had never been only literary, and Jurgo’s support had never been stingy. He nodded acknowledgment.

  As they approached Pen’s town house, in the middle of a whitewashed row of similar domiciles along its cobbled street, the sergeant detailed two men to stand sentry at the front and sent two around to the back. Pen supposed this could do no harm, apart from alarming the neighbors. He and Adelis had no more than set foot on the stoop when the red-painted door slapped open and Nikys and Idrene darted out to seize and draw them inside. The women must have been on the watch.

  In the central and sole atrium, Nikys grasped Pen’s hands; Idrene embraced Adelis hard and searchingly, not the sort of salute he was used to, but accepted with a sheepish smile nonetheless. “I’m all right, Mother. Just a little dizzy.”

  “What in the world is going on?” Nikys demanded.

  Neither woman seemed panicked, army widows after all. But both wildly anxious—army widows, after all.

  “Where’s Rina?” were the first words out of Pen’s mouth.

  “Upstairs napping with the cat,” Nikys told him, turning back from shooting the door bolt tight again, “though probably not for long. I have Lin watching over her.” Their trusted maid-of-all-tasks.

  As good as they could do for now, likely. Pen nodded. “Adelis has taken the equivalent to a nasty knock on the head. He should sit or lie down in a quiet room, and drink some cold tea or lemon water.”

  “I don’t need to—” Adelis began to demur, before he realized he was standing in front of the three people in the world least likely to attend to the manly posturing that worked so well on his troops. “That would be good,” he finished in a smaller voice.

  “To your bedroom,” Idrene began, together with Nikys’s “Equivalent to?” and Pen’s “We need to talk, right now. All of us.”

  “Yes and yes,” said Nikys, cutting through the debate. “Get him into bed, you two, and I’ll bring the drink.”

  If not into his bed in the upsta
irs chamber that was Adelis’s when he visited, Pen and Idrene at least managed to get him settled on it, banked up by pillows, by the time Nikys arrived with a pitcher and four beakers on a tray. Covertly, Pen called up his Sight to check her continuing health. Which was just as robust as when he’d left her three hours ago.

  She’s fine, Pen, said Des. You don’t really need to check her ten times a day, unless you’re admiring your work.

  There was much to admire in his wife. The five years since he’d first met her back in Patos had only deepened her Cedonian-style beauty, he fancied. Curling hair shining like the best black ink; eyes the rich brown that Adelis’s had probably been before they were destroyed and then resurrected into garnet coals; skin less sun-reddened brick than her brother’s, more a lighter copper. Her innate vitality only augmented by the new pregnancy, not yet showing on her generous form.

  With much less throwing up this round, Des approved.

  Stay on watch, Des.

  No hedge sorceresses yet within a hundred paces of this house.

  Which of you will sense the other first?

  Hard to say. But she won’t spot us before we spot her. Content you, there will not be a second surprise like the one on Jurgo’s steps.

  Nikys disposed herself on a chair with another set out for Pen. Idrene took the end of the bed. She was a slightly taller, less plump, and more silvered version of her daughter, in her mid-fifties still straight-backed and energetic, if not, she complained, as supple as she’d used to be.

  Pen made sure Adelis drank a full beaker of lemon water and part of another before letting him speak. He opened his mouth, then paused, mustering what had to be an army of thoughts jostling behind his eyes.

  “One of Minister Methani’s assassins caught up with me again, as I was coming out of the ducal palace,” he began bluntly.

  Idrene’s lips thinned in distress, though her voice remained even. “I thought you’d finally shed that, here in Orbas.”

  “For most of the last five years, I thought so too. Although Methani may have just been hoping the Rusylli, or plague, or some other hazard would do the job for him. Until the death of the emperor and the disaster at Vytymi moved me again to the forefront of his thoughts. Six weeks back, a small squad infiltrated the fort.”

  “You didn’t tell us!” said Nikys.

  “I told the duke. There seemed no immediate need to trouble you, since none of them survived to report back to Thasalon. Nor to us, so we didn’t learn as much as I’d have liked.”

  “You should have at least told me,” reproved Pen.

  “You would not—” Adelis began, then backed up. “Apparently so.”

  “I take it from the page’s message,” said Idrene, still in her careful tone, “that your sweep this morning was not so complete.”

  “Methani tried something different this time. I should tell you, General Gria of the Eighth arrived in secret at the fort last night.”

  She merely nodded. So Gria had to be an officer known to Idrene when she had been old General Arisaydia’s legal concubine—second wife in all but name, Adelis’s mother in all but blood.

  “Someone wants to call you back to Cedonia?” Nikys guessed instantly. “Not Methani, obviously.”

  Adelis snorted. “No. Princess Laris and Lord Nao.”

  “Makes sense, if they mean to oppose Methani. Although there’s a troubling dilemma with respect to young emperor Mikal.” Idrene touched her mouth in dismay. “Wait, it was never Gria who tried to kill you?”

  “One is never completely sure, but he would have had a couple of good chances last night if so. He might have been followed here, though. Or merely have crossed lines with Methani’s agent due to the timing, which the disaster at Vytymi Valley seems to have sped.”

  “Tried something different…?” said Nikys, circling back to that key phrase.

  “Very different. Penric and Madame Desdemona had better tell it. They saw things I didn’t. Couldn’t.” He sat back and swallowed more lemon water, eyeing Pen. And Des.

  Succinctly but as clearly as he could, Pen detailed what both his sight and his second sight had seen on Jurgo’s steps, and what he and Des had done. It took more time to describe than it had to take place. Nikys caught her lower lip between her teeth. Adelis’s eyes were lidded in his concentration.

  “Best guess is,” Pen concluded, “they’d meant Adelis’s death to pass as a natural stroke, not a murder at all. It wouldn’t just have looked like an aneurism on autopsy, it would have been one. Creating no diplomatic fuss with Orbas, or none anyone could come to grips with. In its favor, such a scheme may well have recently succeeded with Prince Ragat.”

  “Ragat was twenty years older than Adelis!” said Idrene indignantly.

  “Such a sudden taking-off is not impossible in a man of thirty-five, especially one who’s lived as hard as Adelis. Nor is an apoplexy of the heart. Actually,” Des put in atop Penric, “they should have targeted his heart, considering the old general. It would have added verisimilitude.”

  By the way his lips twitched up, Adelis recognized the source of this brisk critique. Really, Des’s bloody-mindedness was equal to his own, once leading him to dub her rather fondly as my demon-in-law.

  “Our father was fifty years older than us!” said Nikys.

  And had died of a seizure of the heart when Nikys and Adelis were in their late teens, leaving two widows and their promising offspring. Pen thought the more lethal risk in Adelis’s bloodline came through his noble mother Lady Florina’s connection to the prior imperial house, and was political rather than physiological.

  “So are you going back to Cedonia with Gria?” asked Idrene. Her tone achieved a good simulation of neutrality. Even Pen couldn’t guess her true wish.

  Adelis scraped his hand through his short military haircut. “When I stepped out of Jurgo’s cabinet, I was thinking not. When I stepped out his front door… my mind was changed for me. I don’t care to be driven, especially into a ditch. But if I must, I’m going to hold the bit in my own bloody teeth.”

  Nikys looked down speculatively at the beaker of lemon water cradled in her hands. “And are you thinking of Lady Tanar?”

  Adelis’s mouth compressed, as if chewing on that bit already. “She wasn’t a factor I chose to mention to Jurgo. Or to Gria. As far as I know, our letters have never yet been intercepted.”

  Nikys choked a laugh. “And you such a verbose correspondent.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You know it endangers her. Almost, I wish she’d give me up.”

  “Oh? Look me in the face and say that, brother dear.”

  Adelis looked away, and Nikys smirked, for a moment echoing him in one of his more sardonic moods. “Thought so.”

  Lady Tanar Xarre was the one member of this meeting more invisible than Des, present only in the shadows of Adelis’s expression and his selective silences. He had first courted the young heiress six years ago, before his last and too-successful campaign against the Rusylli for the Cedonian emperor. The prospective couple had been well-matched in looks and wealth, until Adelis’s demotion to Patos, then his blinding and flight, had stripped him of both.

  Penric, having met the young woman during their rescue of Idrene from her Cedonian arrest, thought Tanar’s emotions toward her exiled suitor might be more complicated than true love, but he was entirely willing to attribute true loyalty. By any count, six years was a long time to wait for one’s bridal bed, yet she had. And so had Adelis.

  “I had gauged the border of Orbas to be a protection for us all,” said Adelis. “As it seemed, for a time. If this is not to be the case anymore… best I move swiftly.”

  Always the general’s tactical preference.

  Pen sighed, and pointed out, “If you really had given up ever returning to Cedonia, you’d have come with me across the sea to Adria, as I tried to persuade you back then, instead of plunking yourself down right over the border in Orbas. Don’t try to tell me you haven’t been waiting for just this c
hance.”

  Adelis shrugged. “One can’t anticipate the details that far out. But… some such chance, yes.”

  Neither his mother nor his sister seemed the least surprised by this admission. Idrene said, “How soon?”

  “I’d prefer to leave tomorrow. No later than tomorrow night, for whatever cover darkness might lend. But there is this new sorceress-problem.” He blew out his breath. “Penric. Would you ride with me?”

  Nikys did flinch at this.

  “As uncanny bodyguard?” Five gods, they’d be like two escaping prisoners chained together. It would be the flight from Patos all over again.

  “The duke might let your family lodge temporarily in the palace, and share Learned Dubro’s protection. Until this is settled.”

  An empire tilting ought to give more sign, something massive like an earthquake. Not something to be settled like a dog fight in the street. And this seemed an undefined term covering a vast array of possible consequences, covering an unpredictable amount of time. More than six months? Pen exchanged glances with Nikys, who had to be doing parallel gestational arithmetic.

  “Des? Opinions?” Des always had opinions. Pen prepared to briefly cede his mouth to her.

  Even after all this time, his family stared in fascination at the subtle shift in ownership of his expression. Des did not immediately speak, and then slowly.

  “The snag is indeed this hedge sorceress and her poor little weasel. Capture her here, now, in Vilnoc, and Adelis would be as free to move as he ever was. And we might be able to gain useful intelligence from her.”

  “I doubt she’ll give it up willingly,” said Adelis, frowning. In consideration, not in disapproval.

  “I doubt that would be an insurmountable problem. For me,” Des said dryly. “And Penric is not without persuasive arts. Uncanny and otherwise.”

  Pen could guarantee his Wealdean shamanic skills would be unknown to the woman, though he was uncertain how well they’d work on another sorcerer, hedge or no. “Maybe…”

  “So for this stew,” said Idrene, following this, “first you need to catch your rabbit.”