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

“Have a couple of your men take him outside. You had better make it at least four men. Have them run him around the house. Don’t let him pretend to collapse: make him run. When he truly can’t run, make him walk. When he’s completely exhausted, bring him back here.”

Geras nodded, expressionless. “I’ll handle it myself, my lord.”

“If you think that’s best, Troop Leader.”

“There’s no one else!” the young man cried out. “There’s no one but me! No one helped me! Just kill me!”

“I truly wish I could,” Aras said to him. “But even if you’re telling me the truth, that’s impossible.” He nodded to Geras, who gripped the assassin’s arm and took him out, along with most of the soldiers.

I did not go with them. I stayed where I was. Esau stayed as well because I did, and the three soldiers who had the duty to be here. No one else was present. I ignored them all and looked only at Aras.

He sighed. Then he said, “He’s deliberately making himself sick with fear. He’s doing it to block me from his mind. It’s very effective. Complete exhaustion will make that much harder. If he manages to prevent me from seeing the information I need even then, I’ll force him into a collapse and see if I can get the answers I need while he’s at the edge of consciousness.”

I nodded, but I asked, “What is the punishment for what he tried to do?”

“Ryo ...” But he took a breath. Then he told me, “A person who attempts assassination against any lord of the summer country is put to death. If he used a bladed weapon—an arrow counts—then he’s hung upside down by a thong through his ankles, between the bone and the tendon, and his belly is cut so his intestines fall out, and he’s left like that to die. Then his body is left to rot. Dogs and pigs are allowed to carry away the bones.”

This was not as bad as I had thought it must be, except for letting animals take the skull—the bones. Lau put all the bones of their dead in an ossuary, not only the head. But they do not care as much about the disposition of their bones as my people, so altogether it seemed to me the manner of death was not that bad. A man cut across the belly that way would not live even a full day, probably less. Much less, if dogs pulled out his intestines. If the punishment were no worse than that, Esau would have told me when I asked him. I said, “That is for a lord of the summer country. For you, it is different?”

“I’m a scepter-holder. Trying to kill me is exactly like attempting to kill the king. The penalty for that is the same. But it doesn’t just fall on the assassin. The punishment also falls on his family, out to the third degree.” Aras met my eyes. “His parents and sisters and brothers, his wife and children if he has any, that’s the first degree. His grandparents and all their children—that is, his uncles and aunts—and their wives and husbands, and all their children, constitute the second degree. And his grandchildren if he has any, though as young a man as that obviously won’t have grandchildren. The third degree includes great-grandparents and all their children, and the husbands and wives of their children, and all their descendants to the third generation below the assassin.”

I had been trying to imagine this as he explained it. Now I shook my head because I did not want to imagine it. If that were done to a tribe, it would be the whole tribe. Everyone would die. It would reach farther than that. Everyone has cousins and aunts and many other relatives among many different tribes. I thought of the young man begging me to kill him. Trying to make me so angry I would do it. No wonder he had said I don’t care what you do to me. I could not have done anything to him remotely as bad as this. For bringing this punishment down on his whole family, he deserved to die every death.

I asked, to be sure I understood, “This penalty is for every Lau, whatever the circumstances? If there were a war between one county and another, what if an arrow struck you then?”

“That’s not assassination, Ryo. That’s bad luck—or bad management on my part, perhaps, to put myself in the way of that arrow.”

I nodded. This distinction between deliberate assassination and the fortunes of battle made the custom seem less appalling. But it still seemed terrible enough. I said, “That day, after you had accepted me as tuyo, when I tried to kill you ... you said then it was good I was not a subject of your king. This is why, because the penalty is only for Lau? If an Ugaro killed you now, this moment, no one would attempt to exact that kind of vengeance against his people?”

“Yes, exactly. None of that applies to an Ugaro. If that were otherwise, I’d have had to ... define that unfortunate incident differently, I suppose.”

He meant he would have pretended I had not tried to kill him. Obviously that kind of pretense was impossible now.

I said, “Esau, I wish to speak to Lord Aras alone. My lord, perhaps you would send your guards away. They do not need to be here now.”

He probably knew what I wanted to say to him; I was upset, but it was very clear in my mind. Even so, he gestured to them, a small movement of one hand, and said, “You may all step out. When Troop Leader Geras returns with the assassin, you may all come back as well.”

His guards did not want to leave him. Even Esau did not want to leave. After