The Assassins of Thasalon Read online

  It was near sunset of the lingering summer day before Pen made it back to his own front door. His conference with Jurgo had been long, complicated, and ultimately fruitful. He’d borne those fruits back to the chapterhouse for a shorter but packed parley with Sioann, Iroki, and the still off-balance Alixtra. Only the fervor with which Nikys greeted his return betrayed her worry about his extended absence. Hoping she’d saved him out his portion of supper, he was touched to discover that she’d put the meal off altogether until his return.

  His favorite table under the back pergola had lost its privacy to Jurgo’s sentries, so the family met in the little chamber normally devoted to breakfasts, served only by Lin: half meal, half urgent council.

  Nikys took in his account of the god’s shattering visit to the dungeon with as much wonder as Idrene, and more understanding; she’d been goddess-touched herself, once. It wasn’t an event one forgot, or that ever grew cloudy in memory. Unlike Jurgo, Pen didn’t need to persuade her of the truth of his encounter. She could doubtless see it in his face, set and shaken; hit with a falling fish as she’d once vividly dubbed the look. Encounter with the numinous, the theologians would put it. Pen thought Nikys’s description closer to the mark.

  He wondered if Iroki’s experience of it was more on the order of hit with a falling sky.

  “The god was not more present than the other times I’ve seen something like this,” Pen tried, faltering, to explain. “Just more… perceptible. I think Iroki is a wider aperture than usual, even for a saint. Strange man.”

  “Pot, kettle,” murmured Idrene. Sounding much like Des; Pen was too prudent to pursue the remark. She held Rina in her grandmotherly lap, feeding her tidbits from her plate to divert her wriggling, like trying to bribe an escaping octopus.

  Pen took a breath before delivering his more ambiguous news. “But it seems I am instructed to conduct Iroki to Thasalon, and bring him, and thus the god, before Tronio. Removing the man, or at least his demon and powers, from the gameboard.”

  An indrawn breath from Nikys; Idrene’s head went back. But neither woman protested aloud.

  “Alixtra as well, to rescue her son. I’m not sure if she’s meant as means or end or if it makes any practical difference, but that she’s been given into my charge is plain.”

  Nikys’s eyes skimmed from Pen to Rina, as if to say, You have children closer than Thasalon to safeguard. But she only removed her palm from her mouth to say, “And bring all back safely.”

  Though Pen wasn’t sure the god’s concern extended so far, he nodded heartfelt agreement. To both the spoken and unspoken sentiments. “This isn’t a task set by Jurgo, or my Order, or the archdivine. If all three lined up against it, I would still have to go. Fortunately Jurgo has chosen to support us.”

  “How will you travel?” asked Idrene.

  “Overland by coach to the western border. Across the mountains on the same spy trail Nikys and I used when we came for you, then a hired coach to Thasalon again, and after that… we’ll have to make it up as we go.”

  “Shall you divert to Tanar?” asked Nikys. “She and Master Bosha were of enormous help to us before.”

  Especially Bosha, Lady Tanar’s extraordinary eunuch secretary. The Xarre estate, not far outside of the walls of Thasalon, had made a superb staging area, but… “I’m not sure we should. Harboring us on the way in might be dangerous, and on the way out, worse.”

  Nikys frowned. “She’ll want word of Adelis. Leaving her, and Bosha, in ignorance of his plans on the eve of his arrival could serve them a worse turn. Which of you do you think will get there first?”

  Pen’s mouth screwed up as he calculated. Vilnoc and Thasalon lay near the same level on a map of the Cedonian peninsula, three hundred miles from east to west in the straight line that no real road ran. It was twice nine hundred sea miles in the longways loop around the northern tip and back the other side. “Even Adelis can’t make that journey by ship in less than eighteen days. Add more for contrary winds. He left five nights ago. By land, if there are no more setbacks than we encountered before, it will take us a week. Depending on when we leave Vilnoc, we could well beat him there.”

  Idrene frowned, too. “Here’s another hazard to consider, then. Adelis’s safety depends in part on his secrecy. If anything you do in Thasalon betrays that secrecy, it could be fatal to him.”

  After a moment, Pen merely said, “Ah.”

  Idrene added, a little wistfully, “Did you get any sense that the gods support Adelis in his venture?”

  It didn’t come up, Pen did not say. He offered instead, “Only indirectly. Defanging Tronio would remove one powerful support to Methani, I expect. I’m not sure the gods care who is ruler of Cedonia, or of anywhere else. Though I suppose they care for the soul of the person who holds the office the same as any other soul.”

  The gods might watch over Their sorted flocks, but judging from all the premature fatalities Their protection seemed spotty. That’s because it’s not the destruction of our material bodies that the gods protect us from, but that of our spirits generated by them. Pen wasn’t sure but that the Five celebrated death as gladly as birth, conjoined aspects of the unending immigration of souls into Their realm. So did the son of an empress weigh any more in Their scales than the son of a chambermaid? Or any other mother’s son? Pen suspected not. Finished or unfinished might matter to Them, though, whether souls arrived in Their arms healthy and splendid, or miscarried or stillborn or crippled or mutilated by their truncated gestations in the world of matter.

  Uncomfortable reflections, better saved for the bat-hours. Which would be upon him soon enough.

  * * *

  Upstairs in his study, Pen lit his good lamps and stared around at the piles of his projects in disoriented dismay, as though he could only snatch up one to save from a burning building. Since he couldn’t take any of them along with him, he supposed such imagining was pointless.

  He knew which one he most regretted leaving unfinished, though—he drifted over to finger the careful stacks of demon-etched metal printing plates of four-fifths of Learned Ruchia’s great work on medical sorcery. Three years of work so far in translating it into Cedonian, updating and expanding as he went, and all of it useless to the ducal press without the final fifth. And the closing chapter, yet to be written even in first draft, with all the trailing addenda still to be tested and developed, like his scheme for the medical use of induced narcolepsy. The late codicil should even capture those things he’d not yet thought of.

  Hands that could not hold the skills of a practicing sorcerer-physician anymore might yet give them away, and this was the means.

  He wondered if anyone but himself thought that pile of metal sheaves could be more important to more people than which lordling was emperor this year in Cedonia.

  Learned Master Ravana, Des put in, with a not-really-spurious air of helpfulness. And Master Rede. They’re almost as obsessed with this as you. A thoughtful pause. Possibly because they’re the only other people in Orbas who understand it all.

  “The whole aim of this effort is to increase that number,” said Pen. But he snorted at himself, turning to tidying piles in simulation of any actual progress. His eye was snagged by the letter he’d broken off this morning partway through a sentence. He had no memory of what he’d intended the rest to be. He cobbled together a closure just so something would be finished, and sealed it ready to go out.

  He looked up to find Nikys, arms crossed and leaning against the doorjamb, contemplating him like a woman studying a difficult mosaic. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been there.

  “Are you two coming to bed soon?”

  Ah. There is the one treasure I would save from the flames. Which makes it easy.

  And another of your unfinished projects, too, quipped Des.

  That’s right, be amused at me, see if I care.

  Charmed, Pen, I promise you.

  “Yes, directly,” he told Nikys. “Gods, yes. Um…”

  P
en had drawn up the first will of his life upon the occasion of Rina’s birth, appointing Nikys his executor just as she stood for her brother. There was nothing in it that he needed to update yet, except… “If, um, it should become necessary, all the plates and drafts and notes for Ruchia’s second volume should go to Ravana in Dogrita.”

  Her grimace conveyed both understanding of the request, and profound disapproval in prospect of any such necessity. But she said only, “I think we’d all prefer for you to finish it yourself.”

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “I thought, you know, when I married a scholar and not a soldier, that I was done with these sorts of farewells.”

  “Sorry…”

  He went to her then, gathering her in his arms. She gathered him back convulsively. He kissed her forehead with tender promise, releasing her only long enough to put out his lamps. At the last moment, he swung back to grab a copy of Ruchia’s first volume, cheaply bound in waxed cloth, from the stack delivered a while ago from Jurgo’s printer, before following his wife around the atrium to their own bedchamber.

  * * *

  Next morning, while waiting for his travel documents both forged and unforged to be delivered from the ducal chancellery, Pen addressed himself to packing. In this he was efficiently assisted by Nikys, long practiced at following the camp on behalf of her late first husband, as well as her equally military father and brother.

  Rina and her cat drifted about the bedchamber adding elements of chaos and disorder that were, in Pen’s view, as good as a prayer to his god—Patron of all two-year-olds whether legitimate or not? Only childless theologians would argue. Or humorless ones, of which, Pen granted, there was a sufficient supply. He rescued his sash with the bright silver cord from Rina’s grubby grip; she was still trailing the red cloak.

  Nikys unearthed his medical case from a chest. “Shall you want this?”

  “It doesn’t fit my persona this trip.”

  This had been a matter of debate with Jurgo yesterday. Pen had rejected the suggestions that he travel as either a physician, or learned divine or other Temple functionary, as being too close to his real identity, a scribe as being too lowly, and a merchant in cloth or spices as being too far outside his expertise—though he’d briefly considered being a wholesale apothecary. They’d finally settled on him feigning to be a dealer in rare books and manuscripts. Jurgo was to supply him with the documents of a Wealdean expatriate residing in Patos, which covered his foreign looks. There was every excuse for such a man to travel eagerly to Thasalon seeking new goods even in unsettled times, and to rub shoulders with any sort of person whether highborn or low.

  Pen’s seed stock was a selection of books and scrolls pulled, regretfully, from his own library. Choosing which volumes he could bear to trade away—or lose in a river crossing—yet still be valuable enough to support his identity had been a wrench. That small trunk, he’d packed himself.

  “If not for your disguise, then for yourselves?” said Nikys, holding up the medical case. The offer was chipper, no hint of her apprehension allowed to leak into her voice.

  “The book antiquarian doesn’t risk any injuries worse than a paper cut,” Pen told her in a matching tone. “Or maybe a strained back from lifting his wares.”

  She sighed and allowed this lie to pass, replacing the case in its chest.

  Then she drew him down to the kitchen to deal, yet again, with his foreign hair. She whimpered at Pen’s request to trim off the bottom length of his queue, leaving just enough to gather in a thick hank at his nape, but complied. Rolling the cut braid up, she tucked it away in a cloth like a treasure. Her version of the red cloak?

  There followed a practiced session with dye that left his hair a less memorable sandy color that went with his skin and did not clash unreasonably with the faint gold of his body hair. She did not forget his eyebrows. Rina was restrained from decorating much more than her hands, her shift, her face, and the cat.

  At last the messenger arrived from the chancellery with the documents, which Pen tucked away into their own slim leather case. In the atrium, Pen steeled himself for the real goodbye to his household. He swung his daughter up to a perch in his arms.

  “Hey, Rina-Rina. Be good for Mama while I’m gone, eh?” He gave her a kiss on her brow.

  “I good girl, Papa,” she asserted with great authority. She eyed his altered hair in suspicion, finding his shortened queue disappointingly less grabbable, but agreeably enough gave him a damp smack in return on his cheek. He wasn’t sure if she imagined him as departing for anything more than a routine errand across town, to be back by dinner.

  Nikys’s fiercer kiss, when he handed Rina over to her, was naked of such illusions. “Take care,” she whispered.

  Saying, truthfully, My god goes with me did not seem all that reassuring to Pen. “I’ll try,” he whispered back, less promise than hope. He managed the last gestures: embracing Idrene, laying a hand on Lin’s head, turning back at the door to bestow the formal five-fold tally on his household and all within it, with the double tap of the back of his thumb to his lips. The red door swung shut behind him. The scrape of the bolt relocking sounded both comforting and weirdly final.

  Jurgo’s sentries, still littering his front steps, gave him a nervous salute, so he returned them a blessing as well. “Please take care of things for me here, guardsmen,” he told them, command or prayer. Then it was time to set out upon the cobbled street, trailed by the household’s scullion-and-lad-of-all-tasks trundling a hand cart containing his valise, his goods-trunk, and a heavy hamper of food and drink put up by the women for the first day’s travels.

  Pen made one brief detour to Vilnoc’s main temple. At this hour on a working day, only a smattering of supplicants shared the great atrium and its five holy niches stationed around the walls. Pen’s ordinary garb, giving no hint of either the learned divine or the daunting sorcerer, drew no eyes as he pulled a prayer rug from the stack by the Bastard’s altar and laid it down, and himself upon it prone in the attitude of deepest supplication.

  For a man whose trade was words, he found himself achingly bereft of them in this moment. There were customary invocations for journeys, but the safety he sought was less for what lay ahead of him than what lay behind.

  I think He knows, Pen, Des consoled him.

  Aye. Everywhere, the same.

  He rose after only a few minutes. On impulse, he veered aside to repeat his deep entreaty and wordless prayer before the altar of the Mother of Summer, a goddess he did not usually address, on behalf of the unborn child of his house they had not yet dared to name Llewyn. He wondered if the Great Lady would be willing to take Kittio’s rescue as an offering on Her altar, bartering blessings.

  Only if we succeed in it. Des’s thought was indistinguishable from his own.

  Pen went back out to collect the boy and cart he’d left under the portico, and continued to the chapterhouse.

  Chapter 8

  Learned Sioann met Penric in the chapterhouse vestibule.

  “Did my charges spend a peaceful night?” he inquired.

  “I think the saint is a naturally peaceful man. Your, ah… should I call her your apprentice? Your disciple?”

  Better than your assassin. And your prisoner was uncomfortably on-the-mark. “Student is close enough.”

  “Let’s say her exhaustion overcame her nerves. They’ll be down directly. I hope you’ll be pleased with how we’ve decked them out for their roles in your traveling play. Lencia and Seuka, when they learned you’d brought her, took over guiding her through the women’s quarters, and fitting her with clothes from the charity stock. The Blessed as well.”

  “That must have been…” Pen’s imagination faltered. What tales had the two dedicat sisters told? “Seuka can be a little overwhelming. And Alixtra has good reasons to be, um, reserved. You did instruct them not to gossip about her around the chapterhouse? Or anywhere else?”

  “Oh, yes, they took that to heart. No one told t
hem not to gossip about you to her, though, so they were happy.” Sioann eyed his look of vague dismay with amusement. “Your student took no harm from the hen party, I promise you.” Her lips pursed. “Which brings me to another question. Do you wish a female attendant for her upon your journey? Because I have two eager volunteers.”

  “Ah. No. I’d just have to send them back at the border anyway.” Alixtra had managed to get here in company of no one but a Thasalon bravo, after all, with her demon for sufficient duenna. “And we have Des. She’s ten women. It’s going to be a crowded coach as it is.”

  Sioann’s shrug accepted this.

  A glad cry of “It’s Penric!” in a light female voice turned Pen’s head around.

  Alixtra and Iroki were descending the stairs in company with two girls in dedicat’s tabards. An assortment of light luggage was distributed among them, but the younger dedicat dropped her burden at the foot of the steps to scamper over to Penric and greet him with a spontaneous hug.

  “Hey, Seuka!” Grinning, she ducked a return hair-ruffle.

  Her more restrained older sister, almost grown to a young woman, strolled up to smile at him as well. “Learned Penric. Does Madame Nikys continue well?”

  For greeting, blessing, and answer all together he gave them a tally that was more of a check-mark waved over his torso, and a thumbs-up. “Very well. You two should go visit her next week. She’ll be glad of your company. As soon as Adelis leaves and Jurgo’s sentries are gone, say, and the household is back to normal.” The public fiction that the general was still recovering in his sister’s house had to be breaking down by now, but Pen felt obliged not to speed its collapse.

  Iroki and Alixtra had been dressed in clean used clothes suitable for servants of a traveling merchant of modest means, tunics near-matched for color by, Pen had no doubt, the girls, to suggest their shared employment.

  “My apologies, Blessed, for casting you in this menial role,” Pen said to Iroki. “I promise you may be the laziest of servants.”