The Assassins of Tamurin by S. D. Tower Read Free Book Online Page A

say, “Nothing?” and Ekrem answer, “No, my lady, they took his last stitch.”
    He cut a lock of Master Lim’s hair for the ritual ashes and set some of his men to digging a grave. Nobody paid much attention to me, but they didn’t tell me to go away either, so I stayed put. Then other soldiers began unloading the pack horses and I realized they were setting up camp. The sun was now well into the west, rain clouds were gathering again, and I wondered if the Despotana might be gracious enough to give me shelter as well as a meal.
    The soldiers were very quick and practiced. In short order the horses were tethered in neat lines, the roadside had sprouted tents, cooking fires were alight, small iron cauldrons had appeared on tripods over the flames, and I smelled herbs simmering. My mouth watered. Surely they wouldn’t begrudge me a little something, if only for telling them what had happened to Master Lim?
    I’d already noticed that the two girls had been watching me. Finally they came over to where I was sitting. I didn’t know how to act toward aristocrats of my own age—or of any age for that matter—and, besides, I was tired. So I didn’t act particularly respectful but simply nodded and said, “Hello.” They were dressed in traveling clothes much like the Despotana’s, but wore no hats. One seemed about a year my senior, the other a bit older than that. Both had straight brown hair trinmied into sleek helmets, beside which my long tangled mane looked like a pile of underbrush.
    “Hello,” the older one said. The stockier of the two, she had a round face like the Despotana’s. “I’m Sulen. This is Dilara.”
    Dilara was thin and sinewy, her eyes dark green on each side of an upturned snub nose. Her mouth was a touch too large for her chin, which was square and firm. She eyed me thoughtfully. I eyed her back.
    “Are you running away from home?” she asked in a manner that suggested she knew all about such undertakings.
    I nodded. Their accent was like Ekrem’s. “Are you the Despotana’s daughters?” I asked.
    They looked at each other and laughed. “We’re not her bloodline,” Dilara said, “so we’re not really her daughters. But she calls us her daughters, and we feel as if she’s a mother to us.”
    Mystified, I stared from Dilara to Sulen and back. “I don’t understand.”
    “We’re her students,” Dilara explained. “She has a school. It’s for girls like us, and like you. You see, Sulen and I don’t have any ancestors. We’re orphans.”
    “You are?"
    “Oh, yes,” Dilara told me. “But in the school we have lots of sisters, because every one of us is an orphan, and none of us knows our bloodlines or our ancestors. But it doesn’t matter, because we’re our own family.”
    “And we learn all sorts of things,” Sulen said. “When we get back to Tamurin I’m going to be studying The Dream Pool Essays and the Analytical Dictionary and The Spring and Autumn Annals^
    “Where’s Tamurin?” I asked her. I wished wretchedly that I wasn’t so ignorant, so that I could be in such a school.
    “You mean you’ve never heard— All right, it’s up north, by the sea. A long, long way from here. As far as the mouth of the Pearl River.”
    Even to me, this made no sense. “But why are you so far from home? Why are you going to Riversong? There’s nothing there for anybody, let alone a Despotana.”
    “We don’t actually know,” Sulen admitted. “But it’s been exciting. On the way here we stayed with three different Despots at their palaces. She brought us with her—and Tossi, too—because she said it would further our education.”
    “Did you know Master Lim?” I asked.
    “No,” said Dilara. “We didn’t even know he existed. But I guess we’re going home, now that she’s found out he’s dead.” She turned her gaze to the cooking fires, where the Despotana was speaking with Ekrem. “He must have been important for her to come all this way to look for him.