Tarashana by Rachel Neumeier (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📗

began to walk back the way we had come. Not very fast. They all kept to the pace I set. I would have walked more quickly, except if the heat sickness came on me, that would be even more embarrassing than letting the assassin cut me. Eventually the other men drew somewhat ahead. Once there was a little space between us, I asked Esau, “What is the penalty for trying to kill a scepter-holder?”

“Ah.” He looked at me sideways. “Not your fault, anything that happens.”

So I knew it must be even worse than I had thought. When he said nothing more, I became sure of it. I asked, “Should I have killed the assassin as he asked?”

“What? No. Put that right out of your mind, Ryo. If we don’t make an example, there’ll be another arrow tomorrow or the day after or who knows when. Poison in the soup, maybe. We can’t have Lord Gaur dodging assassins every day of the month till his luck runs out! Plus, we don’t know who put this boy up to it, and we’d better find that out. Youngster like this isn’t likely acting on his own. No, we had to catch him if we could, and we have to find out who put him to this or who else he might be working with.”

I had not thought of this any of this. I could see Esau was right. Aras would discover all the truth. Then he would do whatever should be done. I still wanted to know what the punishment for such an act was supposed to be, but as Esau plainly did not intend to tell me, I did not ask again.

At the cliff, they bound the young man hand and foot and lowered him down that way, into waiting hands, giving him no chance to throw himself down.

Then we took him to Lord Aras.

 -2-

Lord Aras had a house here in the town. He had a different house in Erem Sen, which had been rebuilt a little way from the town of that name that had been destroyed in the war. He had another again farther to the east, in a town called Lohora Sen. If Aras remained in exile in the borderlands for many more years, I did not know how many more houses he might establish. But this one in Tavas Sen was to be his home. He had ordered it built in the southern style: square, with a private courtyard inside the square. The house was three stories high and two rooms wide all the way around the square; the outer rooms were for business and the inner for only the family—that was the custom in the south. He said his wife would prefer a house in that style, even though it was not warm enough in the borderlands for the lemon trees that should be planted around the pool in the center of the courtyard. I did not know much of any of these customs, but I was very curious to meet his wife and his daughters, who were to come to this house soon, when it was finished.

He had built more than this house. He had also built barracks for the two talons of soldiers he kept with him. He could call on many more talons than that, but some of his soldiers remained based in Gaur, his own county. Aras could not leave the borderlands himself, not until his king lifted the command that held him here, but he had many very experienced soldiers he sent elsewhere. But two talons, not always the same two, stayed near him, supporting him while he took care of trouble to the east and west, in the borderlands all along the river.

Some people had moved away from Tavas Sen, not liking to live near a powerful sorcerer. But some people had come, many from Gaur, where people knew him better and were not as afraid of him.

Tavas Sen itself lay within the border of the county of Kasurat, so the lord of Tavas Sen was Lord Kasurat. He did not live near Tavas Sen. He had gone south, farther from the borderlands, to a town he liked better ... to a town farther from a scepter-holder who was the king’s nephew and a much more important lord than he was, and a powerful sorcerer besides. He never came to Tavas Sen now. There was a headwoman, an older woman, a widow, who made decisions for people here.

Among the Lau, a woman is thought immodest to go out of her house, and young women of important families do not show themselves in public at all. But a woman who has come to great age, a widow, is free of many of the constraints set upon other women. The headwoman of Tavas Sen was very highly respected. Besides being the headwoman, she was a memory-keeper for the town, which seemed to me in some ways close to what Ugaro would call a poet—except that among Ugaro, poets are men, but among Lau, memory-keepers are all women.

Even after more than a year, I would not have said I understood the Lau. But men as well as women thought well of the headwoman of Tavas Sen. She had shown herself pleased to set the town into whatever order Aras wished. Aras paid for the work he ordered done, so the townsfolk liked to have him here. Also, they still remembered the war with my people. His two talons made them feel safe.

Aras had felt safe too. He had not felt much danger from the people here, and of all Ugaro in the winter lands, the inGara were most certain never to dispute with him. Because they had given me to Aras as a tuyo, it would have been dishonorable and disgraceful for any inGara warrior to lift a hand against him or his people.

I wondered if he still