The Assassins of Tamurin by S. D. Tower

quarrels, but they never amounted to much, at least after I gave one girl a bloody nose for suggesting I was stupid. I never even waited for her to finish her insult, I just hit her three times as hard as I could, even though she overtopped me by a hand span. After that, I got all the respect I wanted.
    As for Dilara and I, our friendship deepened steadily, and by the time Hot Sky rolled around, it had become a sturdy bond. We were sisters in the school, of course, but it went beyond that. We were so attuned that we might have sprung from the same womb, and we never doubted that we would be friends as long as we lived. Sulen was jealous, because she’d imagined herself to be Dilara’s chief confidante, but Dilara and I made a circle of two that excluded all others.
    My status rose because of my friendship with her. This was because most of the girls, even the older ones, were a little afraid of Dilara. She was very strong and very agile, and like the rest of us had learned how to fight in a hard world. But no one else possessed her aura of dangerous efficiency, as if she were a blade that could shce through any armor. I had seen this aspect of her in the inn, when she snuffed out the life of the basket vole with such matter-of-fact precision. But she was not fully aware of this menacing side of her nature, nor of the effect it had on people. Or at least I don’t think she was, though she had a secretive streak and might have hidden such an awareness even from me.
    Dilara’s story, which I had learned by the time we reached Chiran, resembled that of many of the girls in the school. She was fairly sure she’d been bom in Dirun, a coastal city across the Gulf of the Pearl, but her parents had either abandoned her or died. All she knew was that she had no relatives. For the first nine years of her life she had lived with a potter’s family, kneading clay and carrying charcoal for the kiln. Then the oldest son began to abuse her, so she stowed away on a Tamurin-bound ship and ended up on the streets of Kalshel, where a magistrate took her up for thieving. He saw in the waif a possible candidate for Repose, and sent her to Chiran instead of placing her into penal servitude. Mother agreed with him, and Dilara had been her student now for three years.
    So that was the School where the river of my life had washed me up, just as the Wing had washed me into Riversong: the fortress-palace of Repose, crowded with soldiers, servants, officials, teachers, and students.
    And one other: Nilang.
    We all knew Mother kept a sorceress. This was normal, since Despots usually employed someone who, they hoped, could compel the powers of the Quiet World to act for their benefit. Most such adepts were men, however, and Nilang was therefore unusual. The name Nilang wasn’t foreign, though, so I assumed her native one was something else. She’d entered Mother’s service several years prior to my arrival at Repose, and came from the Country of Circular Paths, far across the waters of the Great Green. Apparently she’d been on the run from her homeland, for reasons that remained obscure, and her pursuers finally caught up with her in Chiran. What happened next was equally obscure, but Mother had ended up giving sanctuary to both Nilang and her handful of followers, and turned the pursuers out of Tamurin. The followers vanished a while later, but where they went or why, nobody seemed to know.
    We rarely talked about Nilang, however, and then only in undertones. A real sorcerer is not like your neighborhood spirit summoner, who consults spirits on behalf of people afflicted with illnesses, evil dreams, or possession by ghosts. Despite the name, a summoner has only a suppliant’s status in the Quiet World and must humbly ask for help rather than command it. But a sorcerer is different, for where a summoner must petition, a sorcerer can compel—although exercising such compulsion can be a very perilous undertaking indeed.
    Consequently, while