The Assassins of Thasalon Read online

  Pen sat contemplating his human-demon puzzle for a time in the faint flickering lamplight, till a stir and voices above heralded the welcome form of Learned Dubro climbing down the rope ladder. Sometime in the interim he’d retrieved his everyday vestments, pale in the shadows. Pen stood to help him dismount in the constricted space without stepping on the prisoner. He found his balance with a huff implying a poor opinion of aging.

  “Thank you so much for coming, and I apologize for drawing you out on such an unpleasant duty at such an ungodly hour. What time is it, by the way?”

  “Sky was just graying up as I walked over from the palace. So you caught her, eh? Your first note didn’t sound sure you could.” He frowned down at the sleeping form.

  Pen nodded. “Des—well, Ruchia, her prior rider, who served the Order as an agent for years—not for this sort of task, of course—thought properly trained assassins should have withdrawn at the miss, gone to ground, fled, and let a second plan and person take their place, but I think this pair was too far from home for that. Or if there have been any more of these abominable agents created, maybe they’ve been sent off to murder someone else, who knows. In any case, she came back for another try at Adelis, and here we are.”

  Dubro’s seamed mouth pursed. “Something funny about that. If it was meant to pass as a sudden stroke. Second time around wouldn’t.”

  “Yes. I’m anxious to question her. There was another man with her, not a sorcerer—I haven’t heard if the guards caught him yet.”

  “Not as anyone’s said to me.”

  Pen didn’t like that loose end. Might he return to try to rescue his colleague?

  Or to silence her, Des put in.

  A very Adelis-thought, but Pen suspected this was pure Des. Not while she bears her demon. Or, well, it would be a dicey task. If he carries any such orders, they would have to be for after she’s shot her arrow, disarming herself. Or had the man simply fled? It would be a long way to run to report back to his masters in Thasalon; even-odds whether he could arrive before Adelis. Still, Pen would remind the guards to be alert for him. Capturing a second source of information would be a boon.

  “Anyway. Now we have her bottled up, first I must stop at the chapterhouse to send an urgent message about this to the Bastard’s Order at Dogrita.” Jurgo’s winter capital, sheltered two ridges and valleys south of Vilnoc, and the archdivine of Orbas’s principal seat. Though its curial bureaucracy was not exactly Pen’s concern today. “I’d likely better report in at the palace as well. We’ll need to discuss jurisdiction, though Jurgo may be just as happy to leave her to the Order. Well, he’ll have to, happy or not.” And Penric might have to tell him so, urgh. “I’ll bring back breakfast.”

  Dubro ran an experienced eye over him. “If you need to grab a nap, I’m good for a longer watch.”

  “That would be a blessing,” Pen said sincerely. “Though I’m not sure I could sleep right now. Howsoever, we’re going to have to work out our watch rota, because it will be you and me taking turn-about. Even if she can’t climb out, we can’t have the regular guards going near her without one of us present.”

  “How long, d’you figure?”

  “Depends on how long it takes to hear back from Dogrita. Three days at the least estimate.”

  “Then you do have time for that nap.”

  “We’ll see. Oh. Speaking of naps.” Pen knelt to the woman’s head to renew, with even greater care, what he named with medical precision induced narcolepsy, and everyone else in his household dubbed, that weird thing you do to those poor rats. He’d had very few chances to practice it on people, so far. It was more than a little terrifying, since if he missed locating the exact spot in the brain that yielded the effect when touched with controlled chaos, he risked doing by accident something very like what the woman had been trying to do to Adelis, much more crudely, on purpose.

  Dubro watched with keen professional interest, and not just with his eyes. “Is that that weird thing you do to those poor rats?”

  Pen cleared his throat. “Yes.”

  “Tricky.”

  “Very. I’d first hoped it might make a non-lethal defensive skill to stop an attacker with less, um, pain and screaming than roughing up peripheral nerves. But a fight’s too frantic for it to be safe. Thinking it through, though, it’s occurred to me that it might be a way to put patients to sleep for amputations or other surgery, more effective than getting them blind drunk and safer than those big doses of syrup of poppies.”

  Dubro’s gray brows rose. “That’s an interesting idea. I had to help hold fellows down for amputations a few times back when I was a young man in the army. It wasn’t much fun for any of us.”

  “When I get time, I mean to go and present the idea to Learned Master Ravana at the Mother’s Order in Dogrita. It’s not something I’d want anyone but an experienced sorcerer-physician attempting. Too finicky. Probably too finicky to count on for defense.”

  “You just did,” Dubro pointed out.

  “I’d had all evening to think about it first. I was mentally prepared, not taken by surprise. Bit of a calculated risk, but quieter than my old nerve tricks. I didn’t want my neighbors woken up in the bat-hours by a woman shrieking like she’s being dipped in boiling oil. Too hard to explain.”

  Also, you were irate, observed Des. Not that I don’t like that in a man, but… maybe not a risk to take often. A more amused pause. Plus you were itching to try it out.

  Embarrassed, Pen did not reply. After checking over their sleeping prisoner one more time, he followed Dubro up the rope ladder, and they pulled it up after themselves.

  Chapter 4

  Pen did not return to the warehouse-prison until the morning was well advanced. Sadly, his string of tasks had not included that nap. In the dark cellar corridor, he found Dubro sitting against the wall on the cushion he’d sensibly brought along.

  Pen lowered himself cross-legged beside him and unpacked the spare lantern from the basket carried from home. A touch, and its brighter light pushed back the shadows. “All quiet here?”

  “It is now. She woke up a while back. Spent some time banging around in her cell yelling and trying to climb the walls, till she realized it wasn’t going to help. Then she flopped down on her mattress and just cried. Even more troubling to listen to, somehow. Finally wore herself out and stopped. Which should have been a relief, but, mm, isn’t.”

  “I imagine she expects to be hanged.”

  “There’s that.” Dubro accepted a roll from Pen’s basket. “Thankee. No, that’ll do, I’ll get more from the palace kitchen when I report over to Master Stobrek. An old soldier knows where to make friends.”

  “And an old dog?”

  “Aye, Maska too.” Dubro’s lips tweaked up. “He used to make himself popular with my wife hunting rats out of the pantry even before his new advantages. We turned the cooks up sweet in no time.”

  Eyeing the dark hole in the floor, Pen pushed himself again to his feet. Dubro helped him drop the rope ladder, handing on the lantern when he was partway down. Pen kept a wary lookout, but the woman attempted no attack either physical or magical, instead spasming off her mattress and hunching up in a defensive ball against the wall, gasping. Pen set the lantern on the stone floor and went back for the lowered basket. Dubro prudently pulled the ladder up before settling again on his cushion, out of sight though not second sight, and in earshot.

  Pen had changed back into his everyday vestments, to clarify his status. He underscored this now with a five-fold blessing, plus that tap to his lips for the god’s-luck he’d surely need. He studied the shuddering clutch of human and demonic despair, and, with a sigh, took a seat on the far side of the cell from her. Which wasn’t very far, the tick between the two of them no wider than a table and less a barrier.

  You just tried to kill my brother-in-law! Twice! did not seem a fruitful way to begin this conversation, and a soothing, There, there, young woman, you’ve no need to be afraid of me was patently untrue
. While he puzzled, Penric spread the cloth across the flattened mattress as if it were a table in truth and began laying out the contents of his basket: a jug of tepid tea sweetened with honey and another of watered wine, new-baked rolls, soft white cheese, hard-boiled eggs, fresh grapes and figs, fat olives; no dried fish planks, though, because Pen drew the line at those, traditional Cedonian snack or not.

  The ball did not uncurl at these temptations. Maybe she was too sick-hearted to be hungry. Pen poured himself a beaker of tea and set a second toward her, and began peeling an egg. “Breakfast,” he announced. “My wife made it. She’s a very good cook.”

  Surprised eyes, lantern light gleaming off them, rose above the barrier of her arms at this remark. But she growled, “I won’t tell you anything.”

  “In the main, we already know. Minister Methani in Thasalon had his tame sorcerer prime you with an elemental taken from a weasel, train you in one lone skill, and send you in secret to murder General Arisaydia by feigning a brain aneurysm. And this wasn’t your first time.”

  It wasn’t exactly a shot in the dark, but it won a sharp indrawn breath as it hit. “Did you catch Rach?”

  So her associate had a name; it was a start. Pen saw no need to admit Not yet. “Anything he knew, there’s no point in you struggling to conceal,” he said instead. “But I’m not that interested in Methani’s plot, which is old news to the man he once tried to have unjustly blinded. It’s his method this time that’s arrested my attention. It has theological implications, d’you see.”

  Plainly, she did not, for her head rose a little more as she stared at him in confusion.

  “No one is going to be sent to your rescue after your failure, by the way. Your employers’ notions of loyalty only run one way.”

  “I know that,” she snapped. Riled, but whatever thought this trailed made her shudder and draw in again. “But maybe if,” she began. She gulped the rest as if it choked her, then just shook her head, burying her face in her arms again.

  Penric salted his egg and ate it while he reflected. “There is nothing essential we don’t already know, but I confess to a burning personal curiosity as to the details.”

  Her very voice was a scowl. “Why should I ease it? No one is going to ease me into anything but my grave.”

  And wasn’t that a summation of despair. Which was counted as a sin, Pen was reminded, and he began to see why. “Not as eased as all that. They can’t hang you. As I demonstrated last night, no rope will hold a sorcerer. A pyre makes an ugly death. Poison isn’t as painless as it’s advertised to be. There’s always the Roknari method, taking a sorcerer far out to sea and leaving him to drown and his demon no place to jump. Vilnoc does have a sea handy. You don’t seem to be taking any thought for your elemental, though someone would have to. Probably me. This would be the first time a demon survived you.” He went on at a hazard, “Rather like taking thought for one’s surviving child.”

  Woah, said Des, as covertly attentive as Penric. That got a reaction.

  Showing not on her body, which only hunched a little harder, but within her churning soul, thrown into a vortex of dismay. Tears began to leak between her tight-shut eyelids.

  “If you drink and eat something,” Pen pointed out in his most clinical tone, “it’ll help you get control of your breathing.”

  A headshake.

  “Our demons are supported by our bodies just as our souls are. It’s not quite eating for two, but they do draw on our nourishment to sustain themselves.” He decided not to point out that starving was another way to dispose of a sorcerer. If his prison-keepers back in Patos had chosen that slower method, they might well have succeeded. “I know you’re hungry after last night’s commotions, because I am.” He pulled a soft fragment from a roll, folded it around a cube of cheese, and consumed it.

  As gingerly as he would reach a hand into a fire, he added, “You have a child.” At least one, he knew from his earlier medical survey of her, though not whether alive or dead or possessed of siblings. It was speculation, but Pen figured it might have more effect as a statement: “Methani holds it hostage against you.” Because how else could one control a sorcerer at a distance?

  Or at all, said Des.

  Affection works better. Love. Loyalty. Awe. All those sorts of intangible cords. Though a braid of both love and threat might be the least breakable of all. Pen began to feel a little sick, and it wasn’t from Nikys’s good food.

  By her swallowed sobs, the woman seemed as near to asphyxiating herself as an asthma patient. Pen watched in concern. He tried interrupting this inward spiral with, “What is your name, anyway? I can’t keep thinking of you as Methani’s Assassin.”

  Her gaze flickered up. She regained enough breath to say, “Didn’t Rach tell you?”

  “It wasn’t me who questioned him,” Pen said truthfully.

  She looked away. As reluctantly as though her interrogator was extracting troop movements along with her fingernails, she said, “Alixtra.”

  She didn’t offer a surname, and, really, it likely didn’t matter. It wasn’t just her demon that was disposable to her masters. “Thank you, that helps.” And because this net seemed to be drawing up at least some catch, added, “And your child’s name?”

  “Kittio.”

  “About five, is he?”

  “How do you even know these things?” She sounded almost indignant. “Even Rach didn’t know about Kittio. I made sure he didn’t.”

  “Were you apprised of everything your employers told him?”

  A breath, a pause. If she imagined such a betrayal, it didn’t surprise her that much, for she subsided again.

  Pen ventured on. “Have you and your demon achieved dark-sight yet?”

  A nonplussed look. “What’s that?”

  Oh… dear, said Des.

  “Seeing ghosts?”

  “Only in my dreams.”

  “Huh. Didn’t your employers give you even basic instructions in demon-keeping?”

  “They taught me how to kill. What more did I need?” A surly hunch.

  “Education for a sorcerer-candidate is generally six years in seminary, then passing the examination for learned divine. Oaths to the Order. And more specialized training beyond that before they even receive their demon. So, quite a lot.” He cleared his throat. “Although there are alternate routes into the calling. But theology always turns up sooner or later. One way or another. Preferably not the practical sort.”

  Bafflement leaked into her stare. A better state of mind for her than the anguish? Yet he was starting to draw her out of herself, confirmed when she at last reached for the beaker.

  She raised it to her lips. “Maybe it’s poisoned. That would be good.” Defiantly, she gulped it down. Then looked surprised. It was their best tea; Pen was drinking it himself, after all.

  “Oh,” said Penric. “I didn’t introduce ourselves, did I. I’m Penric and my demon Desdemona. Say something, Des.”

  “Idiot child,” said Des dispassionately. “Could you be a more witless tool?”

  “Uh, not sure that’s helpful, Des.”

  “She tried to kill my favorite Cedonian general. You can’t expect me to like her.”

  Firmly, Penric took back control of his mouth. But couldn’t help asking, You have a second-favorite?

  Chadro, of course.

  Ha. He wasn’t revisiting those memories here.

  Alixtra’s eyes had widened at this. It didn’t take deep knowledge of Pen for her to realize who was speaking; she could perceive it directly. “It talks? Learned—the other sorcerer didn’t let his demon do so. I didn’t know they could.”

  “Your Thasalon man?” Oh, crap, crap, Temple not hedge. A hedge sorcerer might plead ignorance; a templeman had to be dangerously corrupt. “It wasn’t a Learned Kyrato, was it?”

  No recognition in her; she shook her head.

  Pen breathed relief.

  What, said Des, just because you once read poor Kyrato a stern sermon doesn’t make you
responsible for his actions ever after. …Though I grant you it was a memorable speech. Even I was impressed.

  Pen ignored this, because if he followed Des down every rabbit hole her quips invited, they’d never get through this interrogation. Also, he would sound demented.

  “Mine doesn’t speak,” said Alixtra. “None of them did. Just screamed or cried or snarled. I didn’t see how sorcerers could stand it.”

  “Speech is a gift each demon must take by imprint from its rider. Your new elemental could only bring you weasel-speech, which I don’t imagine is very articulate, and the emotions and memories of being an animal. Deep down in Des, in her very first layers, are a wild mare and a lioness. I still get dream fragments from them sometimes, but not much else. If you carried your demon long enough, it would start to grow into something more humanized, and begin to talk. Rather like a little twin sister.”

  This parallel did not appear to soothe her.

  He offered after a moment, “Persons who contract an animal-elemental by accident, unknowing, often think they have gone mad, and even act so. You, at least, knew what was happening to you. In control from the start.” And he really wanted to know more about her start, only beginning with How many elementals?

  Which was tantamount to asking How many people have you murdered? Not likely to induce more confidences. He angled away for now. The other question he couldn’t ask straight out, since he’d implied the fellow had already been captured, was Where do you think your partner went? “Was Rach your commander or your courier?”

  “Escort… I suppose? He’s been one of Methani’s errand-men for a while.”

  “A bravo?”

  “You could call him that. He’d been a soldier once.”

  No hint of others in her party. Methani had already tried with six men; an even larger assassination squad would be harder to hide and travel more slowly. Two could slip in and out like smoke. “When the task was over, or if you failed or were captured, or if you tried to run, was Rach supposed to kill you?” In other words, would he circle back, or flee?