The Assassins of Tamurin (15 page)

The meal would have been more comfortable for Dilara and me if we hadn’t been so nervous. Worse, Mother never once spoke of our future as we ate, and good manners forbade us to mention it. So we talked of other things, including the recent news from Kuijain, the capital of Bethiya. Apparently the Sun Lord had at last married the woman to whom he’d been betrothed when a boy. Her name was Mer-ihan, and she’d taken the title of Surina; this title, like that of Sun Lord, came down from ancient days and was the formal honorific of the wife of the Emperor’s heir—another example of how the rulers of Bethiya considered themselves the legitimate imperial successors, even if they couldn’t get rid of the Exiles.

“Dangerous times are coming,” Mother went on, as she mixed water into her wine. “Halis Geray schemes in secret to bring Tamurin and the other Despotates under the rule of the Sun Lord. Ardavan, the new Exile King of Seyhan, is an unknown but is said to have ambitions against Bethiya. And to our southeast, Abaris waits, hoping for easy pickings if Durdana and Exile exhaust and cripple each other. We all play a game: move an army here, send an ambassador there, put a word in this place, another in that.” She gestured at the game board by the window. “In Twelve Lines, if you don’t like the way it’s going, you can clear the pieces and begin again. But in the contests that rulers play, all moves are irrevocable.”

Her small mouth tightened. “And this is the look of the larger board, as I see it. We’ve had a long time of peace in the Despotates and the Kingdoms, except for the usual border raiding. But I think it won’t be long until the quiet ends—three years, five perhaps. Then there will be war.” We’d all been taught how important it was to understand what was happening in the world, and normally we would have been interested in this. But while we did our best to converse intelligently, we knew our fates were to be decided before the evening was out, and by the time the servants left us to ourselves, Dilara and I were rigid with tension.

After their footsteps died away. Mother looked at me and then at Dilara. And then she said, “Well. This is the time, I see.” I stared down at the polished wood of the tabletop. But I barely saw it. Would she send me to Master Luasin? I prayed fervently to all the Beneficent Ones that she would.

Mother said, “Lale and Dilara, each of you now has a choice. That’s a luxury that few people are given in these difficult times. But I’ve watched you carefully for a long while, and I think you both deserve it.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” we answered.

“I’ll tell you each the first part of your choice. Listen quietly until I’ve finished.”

She turned to Dilara. “There is a man in Dirun,” she said, “who saw you last year at the Ripe Grain Festival. A day ago he came to Chiran and informed me that he wished to marry you.”

Despite her training, Dilara’s mouth fell open and a choked gasp came out of it. Of all possible futures, this was the one she most despised. I went cold all over, then hot. Not only would we be separated, she’d be sent far away across the Gulf of the Pearl. I might never see her again.

“He’s a city magistrate rising in society,” Mother continued, as if she hadn’t noticed Dilara’s stricken face. “He may eventually go to the Despot’s court. He needs a wife who will not embarrass him, and he does not concern himself overly about bloodlines. It would be an excellent match for both of you.”

“Yes, Mother,” Dilara whispered. Her gaze was blank, as if she saw into the dry and barren years that lay ahead.

“Lale.”

My earlier nervous anticipation had been replaced by dread. If such a disaster had befallen Dilara, what awaited me?

“Yes, Mother?” I croaked.

“You might do well if you remained here, Lale. The Tradition Tutoress is elderly, as you’re aware. She would train you in all she knows, and in a few years you would assume her place.”

This was as bad as I could have imagined. The Tradition Tutoress didn’t like me, and I didn’t like her. How could I spend years under her thumb, being bored to madness by the minutiae of ritual, custom, and etiquette, the details of proper dress for all occasions, the honorifics by which one addressed this official or that? I’d be a dried-up husk, just like her, before I was twenty.

“Yes, Mother,” I whispered, from an aching throat.

“Or,” she said, “you may both have another choice, one I give to very few of my daughters. I am allowing you to choose it together, because I know that you are the best of friends and that you would prefer to stay together if you could.”

She paused. I felt as if my ears must be sticking straight out from my head, I was listening so hard.

“It is this,” she went on. “You may go to Three Springs Mountain, to join Tossi and the others there as devotees of the Moon Goddess. Take a few moments to think before you answer.”

I stared at her. It was rude, but I was helpless to do otherwise, for of all she could have offered us, this was the last I’d expected.

I did not want it. I knew it was an honor, but I had no bent for the religious life and neither had Dilara.

How could we sincerely devote ourselves to the goddess’s service, droning the prayers day in and day out, performing the daily. monthly, and seasonal rites, eating dried fish, coarse bread, and pickles? Would we have to spend all our lives at the shrine? Perhaps so—neither Tossi nor any of the other girls who joined her had ever returned to Repose, even to visit.

Withdrawing from the world, even in sacred service, was not the future I had in mind. But I
had
to accept one of the choices Mother had given me, and so did Dilara. To reject both would be the deepest filial ingratitude, both insulting and disloyal.

But choosing Three Springs did have something to be said for it. I wouldn’t have to become the Tradition Tutoress, to start with; and if Dilara chose the same, we could stay together. Also, I sensed that the choice would please Mother, and pleasing her was always very near to our hearts.

I did not quite realize, then, that she had really given us no choice at all. She knew us better than we knew ourselves and knew we’d choose anything other than marriage or tutorship, especially if it meant we wouldn’t be separated. She needed us both, me because of who I was, and Dilara because of her perfect loyalty and her ruthlessness, and she had made very sure that we would choose as she wished. Without each other present, Dilara or I might just possibly have hesitated. Together, we did not hesitate at all. We looked into each other’s eyes and, without speaking, agreed.

I said, “Mother, we accept the service of the Moon Lady.”

“I’m so glad,” Mother exclaimed. She rose from the table and embraced us, and the fragrance of the sandalwood scent she wore filled my nostrils. I was bitterly disappointed, but she was so happy with us that I could not let my feelings show.

“I made no mistake in choosing you as students,” she said. “Few can hope to reach the condition of the superior man or woman, but you’ll be of that company, I can see.” Her face grew serious. “Soon you’ll begin a time of very hard work, but you’re grown women now, and you’ll thrive on it. And make no mistake, you’ll be well repaid for your faithfulness to me and to the school.”

I hoped she meant that we wouldn’t stay at Three Springs for good, although I could hardly say so. But Dilara was more direct.

“Do we have to leave Repose forever?” she asked. And at her words I realized how much I’d be leaving behind: the protective ancient stones of the fortress, my friends, my sisters, the teachers who had so painstakingly transformed me from an ignorant and unmannerly child into a cultured young woman. And especially Mother. How could I live without her to nurture me? I was an adult now, but I still needed her.

“Not forever,” she assured us with a gentle smile. “How could I ask that of you? Of course you’ll see me again, and no doubt you’ll see some of your fellow students as well. Of that I’m sure.”

She kissed us both, then said, “You know there comes a time in every woman’s life when she must take leave of her mother. That has to happen, or she remains a child in a woman’s body. But you’ll always be in my most secret heart, my dearest daughters.”

I gazed on her small plain face, and loved her as I’d never loved anyone; in that instant I would have died for her, and she knew it. As Dilara would have died for her, and she knew that, too. And so we three were gathered into one perfect moment, there in that beautiful room in the palace of Repose: the woman who was our mother, and the woman who would betray her, and the woman who would not.

Three days later, glum and apprehensive, Dilara and I reached Three Springs.

Six Heron Guard troopers, with a pack train of supphes needed at the sanctuary, accompanied us to our new home. The place was northeast of Chiran, in a range of peaks so wom by time that their forested heights held snow only in winter. Nevertheless, the way there was very mgged, and even the tough upland horses of Tamurin found the going difficult.

The sanctuary’s buildings clung to a mountainside dense with beech, cedar, and evergreen oak. It hadn’t originally been a religious establishment. In the days of the empire it served as the summer residence of Tamurin’s prefects and was actually called Three Springs Mountain, after the height on which it was built. It was a very suitable place to withdraw from the world; nobody had lived in that stretch of the highlands since the Partition, and Mother’s late husband’s grandfather had declared it a hunting preserve, with ferocious penalties for trespassers. The region was also said to be haunted by emanations from the Quiet World, which discouraged wanderers and the curious.

We arrived in mid-aftemoon. The steep, overgrown track entered a small clearing, not much more than a broad ledge on the mountainside, and there before us was our new home. At the sight of it, Dilara exclaimed, “Holy Mother of Mercy!” and gaped. So did I.

Before us was a stone wall with a sentry tower above its narrow gate. Beyond the wall rose the mountain’s upper flank, an enormous cliff of pink and gray stone, thickly garlanded with rock cedar and spindly shrubs. In the cliff face was an immense cleft that stretched all the way to the distant summit.

The buildings of Three Springs nestled into this cleft. Constructed of black wood and russet stone, they rose in four levels above the clearing, each level like a step of a gigantic staircase, with the roof of each building forming a terrace for the one above it. A waterfall tumbled down the cliff beside the cleft and plunged into a pool at its foot. It was so beautiful that despite my unhappiness, I could not help but respond to it. If I had to endure the religious life, I thought, there were much worse places than this.

Still gawking at the heights above, we rode through the gate into a courtyard. It was a paved oblong with stables, a vegetable garden, a small orchard, and the building that formed the sanctuary’s bottom level. This had a single door lacquered in red, with doorposts and arch carved most whimsically with birds, tortoises, and fish. Several windows looked into the courtyard, but their lattices prevented me from seeing if anyone was watching us.

We dismounted and unloaded our satchels. Our escort took our horses and the baggage animals away to the stables.

“Where
is
everybody?” I said.

“At their prayers, of course,” Dilara answered grumpily, although I couldn’t hear any singing. “Just like we’re going to have to do.” She glanced up at the courtyard’s outer wall. “But there should be guards, shouldn’t there? There must be somebody to keep off robbers.”

“Maybe the Moon Lady does it,” I suggested. Even in these dangerous times it was a rare bandit who would attack a shrine of the Beneficent Ones, and it was particularly foolish to offend the Moon Lady. You might find yourself facing the Moonlight Girl, whose mere touch could bring despair, madness, and self-murder.

“Maybe,” Dilara agreed doubtfully “But—”

The door opened and a woman came out. It was Tossi. She’d changed in the six years since I’d last seen her, but I’d still have known her anywhere. She’d cut her flowing brown hair short and had become leaner, but the leanness only made her huge dark eyes more striking, and it had refined her oval face into a grave loveliness. An air of authority hung about her, as if she had become used to giving orders. A life of devotion clearly suited her.

I bowed and said, “Mistress Tossi, Mother sends her greetings and hopes that you and everyone here are well.” She smiled, which she had almost never done when I knew her at Repose. “We’re very well,” she said, looking us up and down. “You’ve changed, Lale. You, too, Dilara. Not girls anymore but women. And very lovely ones.”

This was so unlike her I blinked in surprise and blinked again when she said, “Mother has given me the charge of Three Springs, but we’re all sisters here, so you must call me Tossi, or Sister Tossi. Agreed?”

“Of course,” I said, wondering if life at Three Springs might not, perhaps, be as awful as I’d feared.

“Come with me now,” she said, “and we’ll go and meet the others. They’re all expecting you.”

I settled my satchel strap more comfortably on my shoulder as Tossi led us inside. Dimness enveloped us; we were in a small bare anteroom decorated with faded murals of hunting scenes. A masonry staircase ascended at the far end.

“This is the stair to the Second Terrace,” Tossi said as we began to climb. “We keep supplies and such down on the Lower Terrace, and the kitchens and baths are on the Second. The Second is where we eat, too. The Third Terrace is where you’ll be taking your lessons. We sleep on the Fourth Terrace, by the top of the waterfall. It’s very lovely up there.” “Lessons?” I asked. Were we going to have to study
theology?
My spirits sagged, for I’d hoped to be done with school. I could only imagine what Dilara must be thinking.