Tarashana by Rachel Neumeier (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📕

Lord Aras did not come out to see the young man in the outer courtyard of the house, as I had thought he might. Townspeople followed us from the cliff and looked through the gate into the courtyard, but they did not try to come in. They stayed back in the street, talking and pointing. I wondered what they thought of this assassin. I wondered how many of them distrusted Aras so much they wished the assassin had succeeded in what he had tried to do.

Geras met us in the courtyard, with a frown for me and a nod for Esau and a long, summing look at the prisoner. “You all right, Ryo?” he asked me first. “You look like you’ve been wrestling weasels.” He frowned at the cloth wrapped around my hand.

“There were thorns,” I told him. “The cut is not at all serious. I am perfectly well.”

He looked me up and down and finally said, “Well, I guess you’re in halfway decent shape, for a man who’s been rolling through thorn scrub. A proper hair-raising tale I had. Up a cliff by your fingernails and off after an assassin on your own! What if there’d been a pack of ’em? You’d have looked a proper idiot stuck full of arrows.”

“There was only one man,” I said patiently. Geras had once been my guard. Now he had charge of the soldiers who guarded Lord Aras. This was an important duty, but sometimes he forgot that he was not also responsible for me. I added, “He threw down his bow so he could run more easily. He had only a knife. There was not the slightest danger, except the danger I would not be fast enough to come up to him.”

Esau did not say that I had neglected to carry water. He said, “Ryo did fine. If he hadn’t got up that cliff quick as a cat, we’d have lost the assassin for sure.”

Geras studied the assassin, frowning in a different way than he frowned at me. The young man stood between two soldiers, surrounded by more soldiers. He was still half naked. He stood with his head bowed, not resisting the men who held him. He looked young and thin and entirely hopeless. Geras said, half disbelieving, “This is our assassin?”

I said, “He is determined and clever. He planned carefully. Only the kindness of the gods prevented his arrows from striking Aras, and though he failed, he nearly got away. His mistakes were small. He did not know I could climb that cliff. No Lau could have climbed it. He does not look dangerous now, but I would not take him lightly.”

“No,” Geras agreed. “I don’t think any of us would be stupid enough to take him lightly.” He added, “Terau isn’t dead, but the arrow went in low, near the kidney. He might live, if the gods are kind, but it’s a bad injury. If he hadn’t taken the arrow, the surgeons would’ve been cutting the arrowhead out of Lord Gaur’s back instead. We aren’t likely to forget that. Come up, Ryo. You’ve earned it, and I know Lord Gaur’ll want to see you’re all right.”

So we brought the prisoner into the house, the finished part of it, to a large room on the second floor, where Aras had laid out the books and scrolls and papers that he needed for some of the work he did. There were three windows that looked out to the west, so there was plenty of light. A full carafe of wine waited with several goblets on the sideboard below the row of windows so that the light of the lowering Sun shone through the wine, which glowed red in that light. Beads of moisture stood on the glass; someone had used a cantrip to chill the wine. A plate of cakes sat on the sideboard too, but no flies buzzed around the cakes. Someone had used a cantrip there as well. During the past year and more, I had seen too many Lau use too many cantrips to take much notice—and I had seen too much true sorcery, and been too hurt by it, to think cantrips were the same in any way. I still did not really like cantrips, but this small kind of magic did not much trouble me anymore.

Aras had known we were coming. Of course he had. I could see from the set of his mouth that the young assassin’s fear and desperation hurt him. But he pretended, partly from long habit and partly because the pretense made people more comfortable, that he did not know we had come until we were at the door. Then he looked up and laid down his stylus. He rose to his feet, picked up his scepter, came around the table and stood there, waiting. Three soldiers stood behind him, close to the walls, watching carefully. I did not know them, only their names. They were from a talon that had not been here in Tavas Sen very long.

The soldiers with us brought in the assassin. They did not let him go, even though there were so many of them and the young man looked completely helpless. They gripped his arms. He stood with his head down, breathing fast, not struggling.

“What’s your name?” Aras asked him. “What is your father’s name?” He paused, flinching a little, his mouth twisting. He didn’t look away, but he said, “You’re doing that deliberately, aren’t you.” It was not a question. He sighed, and tapped his scepter lightly into the palm of his left hand. For some time he said nothing else, only gazed steadily at the young man, who stared at the floor. Tremors shook him. I tried not to think that he was a coward, but to become so overwrought with fear and show it so plainly seemed contemptable to me.

Finally Aras said to Geras,