The Assassins of Tamurin Read Online Free PDF

“I’m going to come for the food, then,” I shouted into the humid afternoon. “Then you’ll be done with me.”
    I realized that my hands were clenched into fists. O Lady of Mercy, I prayed, make them give me what I need.
    I set off along the lane, intending to begin at Detrim’s house. When I went around to the back, no one was in the cooking porch. The basket of bread was gone. The fish still simmered in the pot but I had no way to carry a portion of it. I’d have to go inside and look for what I needed. They might throw me into the street, but given what I’d promised, they might not.
    But before I could try this, Rana came through the house doorway. She carried a woven bag with a strap, worn but still serviceable. It was the bag she used when she went clam digging in the Wing’s shallows. I stared at her in puzzlement, and then Rana looked up, and for the space of three heartbeats I gazed into her eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it. She put the bag on the earthen floor of the porch, then went back inside and shut the door.
    My sight blurred. I stumbled into the porch and picked up the bag. It smelled fiercely of old clams, but in it were three rounds of bread and a bundle of smoked eelpout wrapped in leaves. It was enough to keep me walking for a whole day, and the tight weave of the bag would keep out the rain.
    I didn’t understand why Foster Mother had been so generous. I got a lump in my throat at first, but then I thought: Ah, but it's just to make sure I leave, so she'll never have to see me again. That's all it is.
    This made me even more sad, so I pushed the thought fi’om my mind and slung the bag over my shoulder. Then I got a length of stout cane from the firewood pile and set out for the next house. The people there had left a few scraps outside the front door. I packed them away and moved on.
    It was the same at the next house, and the next. Before the sun had moved much farther, I had all I needed. I went to the edge of the village, where the road began and ended. It ran northward away from me, toward the mysteries of those distant lands.
    I settled the bag on my hip, took a firm grip on my staff, and walked out of Riversong forever.

Four
    By the second morning of my great adventure, my enthusiasm for it had somewhat waned.
    I’d slept, or tried to, in a thicket by the road, under a leaky roof I wove from the big round leaves of a butterfly acacia. Showers came and went, and when the night wasn’t full of the patter and hiss of rain, I heard noises: hoots of night birds, the chirr of crickets, the guttural creak of tree frogs.
    But I was used to these natural sounds and wasn’t troubled by them. What did scare me a bit was the thought of bemg visited by something from the Quiet World. For that realm, as the village priest had taught, is separated from our human one by less than the thickness of a leaf, and in the dark of the night, those thin partitions become thinner still.
    And just as our world has its fearsome and hungry beasts, so does the Quiet World—not only demons and ghosts but also nameless things worse than these. Fortunately, however, our ancestors reside there, too, and with the help of the Beneficent Ones they protect us from such evils as best they can. But such protection can fail, and in the middle of the night, in the middle of a forest, I was very worried that it might—especially since I didn’t know who my ancestors were, and could only pray to Our Lady of Mercy that they’d notice me anyway and keep me safe. Perhaps they did, for nothing came whispering and sighing out of the rainy blackness to trouble me, and toward dawn I fell into a broken sleep.
    Finally the light woke me. The forest had emerged from
    the darkness, dripping wet and hung with mist. Sodden and chilled, I jumped up and down on the road’s rough turf until I’d warmed up a little. Then I ate sparingly of my dried fish and bread, drank from a pool that had collected in the