The Assassins of Tamurin (14 page)

And then, in one such foul place, a creature lifted its ghastly head, and I saw that it knew of my presence.

Terror seized me, but I could neither move nor cry out, for Nilang’s whispers had bound me tighter than manacles of iron. Yet the beast, if it was a beast, felt no such constraint. It slouched nearer; it stalked me. Spiritlike, it had no clear form, but within it swirled all the shapes of my darkest nightmares. And somehow, as if I perceived its awareness, I knew that it hungered after me. That hunger flooded me with horror, for I knew what it foretold: I was to be eaten alive, but I would find no release of death while I was devoured, and afterward I would live on within the beast, shrieking at what had happened to me.

Nilang’s words now struggled to keep my stalker at bay. It feared her, but not enough, and her power could not halt its relentless advance along the passage she had opened. I wailed a silent prayer to the Lord of the Dead who ruled this realm, and to all the Beneficent Ones, and to all my unknown and nameless ancestors. But still the creature came.

And then a woman’s soft voice, not Nilang’s or Mother’s, said from a place I could not see:
Go back. It is not her time.

The beast quailed at the sound, and Nilang instantly hissed a sharp word. The passage contracted and snapped shut, taking the creature with it. I suddenly lay in my bed again, as sick and fevered as ever, hearing Nilang’s breath rasp in her throat. I opened my eyes; she was staring down at me, her lips tightly compressed, brows knit. When she saw me wake, a flicker of relief passed over her face.

“What?” Mother asked. She was not in my line of vision, and I was too weak to look around. I shut my eyes again.

“She will not die,” Nilang answered. Her voice was without emotion.

“So you do have the power,” Mother said harshly. “Why did you tell me you couldn’t cure her? Are you playing some game of your own?”

“I did not say I have cured her, because I have not done so. What I said is that she will not die. But we are lucky that she is still with us. While I searched for a healing instrument, a
khnum
attempted to subsume her.”

A long pause. Finally Mother said, “I see. And if it had?”

“She would appear as if sleeping, but she would no longer be within her body. Eventually the body would die.”

Mother’s voice became worried. “She appears to be sleeping now.”

“The creature failed,” Nilang said. “There was an intervention that enabled me to close the nexus. It is from that intervention that I know the girl will live. It was an ancestor, I think, and no doubt one of hers.”

Sick as I was, I felt a tenuous comfort at this. An ancestor in the Quiet World knew me and had helped protect me from something very nasty.

“And you say she won’t die.”

“It is not her time,” Nilang answered.

A faint sigh of relief. “You may leave us.”

When Nilang had gone, Mother lay down by my side. I drowsed for a while, then found myself half awake. Summoning all my strength, I whispered, “Mother?”

“Yes, Lale?”

“I won’t die. I promise.”

“No, child. You’re safe here.”

“I love you. Mother,” I breathed.

“I love you, Lale. Now go to sleep and get well.”

I obeyed her, and by midnight my fever had broken and I was sleeping normally. But several days passed before I was strong enough to leave my bed, and during that time I thought about what Nilang had done. Mother said nothing of the incident, and I began to wonder if it was only a fever dream, so finally I plucked up the courage to ask her about it.

“Yes,” Mother answered, “I summoned her, and she did what she could. What do you remember?”

I told her about the creature and the rescuing voice. She nodded and said, “All men and women have ancestors in the Quiet World, even if we know nothing of them in this one, and so cannot summon them here. But you already knew this, Lale—the matter is examined in the
Discourse on the Eight Divinities and the Ineffable.'

“Yes, ma’am. But it’s still a surprise to find that it’s real, instead of just something in a book.”

“You are not the first to make this observation,” Mother answered in a dry voice. “But sorcerers dislike any gossip about their doings, so I strongly suggest you do not speak of this to anyone, not even Dilara. Now, what else do you remember?”

I hesitated. I wanted to ask why and how Nilang had bound herself to Mother, but that would resemble the gossip Mother had warned me against. And Nilang was very clearly no one to be trifled with. So I merely said, “You told Nilang I had been years in the making. What did you mean?”

“Ah,” she replied smoothly, “All my girls are years in the making, Lale, from the time I find them until they are ready to go out into the world. You are no exception. That is all I meant.”

I believed the lie, of course; she’d already given me so much, why would I not expect the truth as well? And as it happened, on the day I left the palace to return to the school, she gave me something more: the news that the murderers of Master Lim were dead. She didn’t tell me why she’d avenged him, or what he’d been to her, and I sensed it would do no good to ask. But she’d kept the promise she’d made to me after he died, and I was grateful to her on Master Lim’s behalf.

It did not then occur to me to wonder at how long an arm she had, to pluck two such distant birds from their perch. But in my heart, I believed that Mother could do anything, so I suppose I expected nothing less.

My teachers deemed me fully educated soon after I turned seventeen. Being no scholar, Dilara finished at the same time I did, although she was a few months older.

The completion of a girl’s studies was marked by two occasions, or three if she decided to take her Universal Examination. This last was a rigorous affair of several days, during which she must write authoritatively on history, literature, and the natural world, as well as develop an argument and support it with both rhetoric and fact. Finally, she must be able to compose poetry in four of the seven formal modes.

Only a handful of Mother’s students elected to take the Examination. It was very difficult and of no benefit to a woman except that it enhanced her reputation for intelligence and culture. But I thought this enhancement might prove useful, since I intended to move one day in intelligent and cultured circles, so I asked Mother if I might try, and she agreed.

As I wrote my papers, I was vividly aware that I was following a very ancient tradition, for the Universal Examination had long been used to select talented men for government office. The Examination was created by the great Emperor Jadurian, who disliked the way that imperial relatives and the rich military aristocracy passed these offices down to their sons, without regard for ability or merit. This had led to corruption and serious abuses of power, which he resolved to end.

So, drawing on the precepts of the
Golden Discourses,
Jadurian suppressed the magnate families, broke the power of the soldier nobles, forbade the inheritance of government positions, and established the Universal Examination to allow men of any origin—not women, of course—to ascend to the highest magistracies. After that, neither wealth, land, nor an ancient family name gave anyone the right to rank and power; the only path to these now ran through the gateway of the Examination.

This worked so well that our view of precedence became very different from that of other nations whose aristocrats and soldiers stand next after the ruler. We do consider the ruler to be supreme, but directly beneath him is the magistracy, followed by the farmers (since they feed everyone) and only then the soldiers. At the bottom, socially speaking, are the merchants, though if they’re rich they may have great unofficial status—money is as good as magisterial rank, if there’s enough of it.

But during the Era of the Warring Emperors and the Exile invasion, the soldiers got themselves back into the saddle. By my time, all Durdana rulers were warriors or descended from warriors, and all the great land magnates came of military bloodlines. Still, the tradition of the Universal Examination remained so strong that anyone who wanted to rise in the service of a Despot must still undergo a version of it. But the times had so corrupted the tradition that only the sons of the new nobility managed to pass. Their families had grasped power and were not about to share it with upstart offspring of merchants, craftsmen, or farmers.

Mother’s examiners, though, were scrupulously fair when dealing with her students, and to my surprise I passed with Meritorious Distinction, the second highest grade. I was especially proud of this because I’d done better than most male candidates would, whose usual grade was third or fourth.

The second of the three occasions was a ceremony before the whole school, when the girl received an adult’s seal ring with her name engraved on it. Soon after that came a private dinner with Mother, during which her future was assessed.

To Dilara and me, this third occasion was the most important of all. Most of us had a pretty good idea of where we were headed, either because of some particular skill or because a husband was in the offing. But while Dilara and I didn’t believe that Mother had looked for husbands for us, she’d given us no hints about our future.

I hardly recollect the ring-giving ceremony, since the events of the following day so overshadowed it. What I do remember begins with the next evening, when Dilara and I were on our way to our celebratory meal with Mother. Her tradition was to banquet her graduates a pair at a time, and she had instructed us to attend together.

It was the month of Late Blossom, close to the beginning of the Boat Race Festival. The afternoon had been sweltering, and in spite of the sea wind the evening was little cooler. The yellow lilies in the gardens drooped, and the very stones of the palace seemed to sweat. Dilara and I wore new clothes: linen shirts under stiff bodices with blue and silver embroidery and long skirts printed with flowers. We were both very nervous, not because we were dining with Mother but because our futures would be decided before we slept again.

“It’s so
hot,''
Dilara muttered. She brushed a strand of brown hair from her damp forehead. “I wish we didn’t have to dress up like this. I’m sweating so much the dye will run.”

“Maybe it’ll be cooler inside,” I suggested as we climbed the steps to the palace’s lacquered doors. A nondescript man was leaving as we went in. I’d noticed quite a few such men, and a few similar women, come and go over the years. Mother had landholdings throughout Tamurin, and I supposed that these were estate understewards bringing her news. One person we rarely saw around Repose, though, was Nilang. Sometimes she didn’t appear for a month at a time. But then she’d turn up, doll-like, looking down from a palace window or driffing like a tiny daylight apparition along the ramparts above the harbor.

Within the palace, the thick stone walls kept much of the heat at bay. A servant met us in the anteroom and escorted us to Mother’s private quarters on the topmost floor. I’d been there several times over the years, because Mother would invite a few of us in for meals or for visits, during which we would compose and recite poetry for her, sing classic songs or play a flute or sivara, or simply divert her with wit and conversation. We did our best to live up to her standards, since both we and our tutoresses suffered if we failed to meet them.

We were ushered into her private dining chamber. Unlike the enormous banqueting hall on the ground floor, it was an intimate place, witii a round table and only six chairs. Windows on the seaward side admitted late aftemoon sunlight and a brisk breeze, and I felt the perspiration dry stiffly on my upper lip.

Nothing had changed since my last visit. Mother’s tastes were not austere, and the clutter of alabaster carvings, ornamental fruit stands, and other curios made the room seem smaller than it was. A Twelve Lines board was set up by the windows, the pieces showing that Mother had a game in progress. In one comer was the Moon Lady’s blue-lacquered cabinet shrine, with the silver statue and crescent gleaming in the niche. At the statue’s feet a votive lamp bumed with a pure clear flame.

Mother stood at a window, gazing out to sea. She tumed to us, and we each presented an appropriate bow.

“My newest ladies,” she said in that wonderful voice. “Look what marvels my two daughters have become.”

Dilara and I responded with another bow and polite assertions of our unworthiness. Then we sat down at the table.

Mother was no more austere with her food than her furnishings. We began with prawns in clam broth, accompanied by leek soup. Then there was grilled breast of river hen with apple glaze, accompanied by pickled cucumbers and mock lettuce, and a puree of chestnuts and spices. After this came a layered honey pastry containing almonds and walnuts. And, as on every Durdana table that could afford it, there were rounds of bread and an oil sprinkler, and a dish of finely ground salt.

At school meals we drank only boiled water, as directed in the
One Thousand Golden Remedies
which prescribes boiling to drive out sickness demons. But this evening Dilara and I each had our own ceramic jug of young wine, the fragrant vintage of last autumn’s grapes. We drank it well watered, since only sots take their wine neat. We’d all been taught the reason for this in our sixteenth year, when each of us had been required to become intoxicated, under Mother’s supervision. This was so we’d know what drunkenness felt like and how treacherous it was.