Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  Old men of the cautious Jirga see no vital threat to their powers or class interest in a man with no High Caste claim or faction to back him. New men of the urgent Majlis want to lock in gains they can hardly believe they’re making. He’ll betray both Houses inside two months, then rule over the rubble of their ambition and pride. They’re wayang puppets to his shadow mastery.

  Underestimating his cunning more than his ambition, both Houses vote for him to preside as President of the Estates General, to be arbiter of their arguments and squabbles, perks and privileges. He already turned the offer down once, when the constitution he wrote was first proclaimed. But now he says: “I must bow to the wishes of the nation. I humbly accept to serve all, in this symbolic presidential office, because the whole nation asks it of me and I cannot refuse our people.” He accepts to wear the dark green robe of President and finally steps into public view.

  Now he holds an office above the joint parliament, whatever he says out loud. It’s an office nearly parallel to the Jade Throne, for it’s the only one besides the monarchy that spans the entire Imperium. He’s the only man besides the emperor who claims to speak for all Grünen, and the current emperor can barely babble what he wants for supper. It’s an office that all factions in the Compact think is powerless, but hapless billions hope is not. What anyone thinks or hopes doesn’t matter. He may even destroy this office he just took on. He’ll do it if and when it serves his larger purpose, which is to wreck the Old Families, cage the Workers Guilds, crush populist reform movements, take down SAC and the Broderbund and the military, and wreck the Imperium. It’s no more than he told Neaira, to gain her trust and access to the Mistletoe Project. Or he’ll use it to lay a legal basis for his dictatorship to come. He has yet to decide. But he’s now three steps ahead.

  ***

  He says to Naujock and Kahn, on the bright morning he leaves to preside over the General Estates for the first time: “I go to clear away the dung of Imperium politics. I go to the twin Houses as an enemy to both. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so I go to them.” His climb up the greasy pole of regime politics has been made easier by being hoisted from below by the “unwashed and unsuspecting masses,” even as he is being pulled upward from above by the best, most coiffed and perfumed, and arrogant headmen of the Old Families and Old Order.

  They all think they can control him.

  They’ll quickly find out they can’t.

  Seldom have men miscalculated so badly.

  They have no idea who they’re dealing with.

  The fools! The damned, doomed, bloody fools!

  While men in the General Estates argue, Takeshi acts. He sends secret orders to hired thugs, to his local cops and Naujock’s mercs, to create even more chaos in the streets of major cities. His agitators move among billions in Novaya Uda, and a hundred billion more on over two hundred worlds. Soapbox speakers rouse lower castes and outcastes to demand reform. They provoke itinerant hill folk and stateless farfolk to demand citizenship and representation in the Majlis. They urge mobs to harass and attack exposed family members from the three High Castes.

  Takeshi’s agents provocateurs stir up fresh trouble.

  Everywhere, there is apprehended revolution.

  Everywhere, riot and murder, ruckus and mayhem.

  Things start to fall apart. The center may not hold.

  He’s loosing anarchy upon all the worlds.

  Anyone is a target who tries in their High Caste arrogance to move around the capital or other cities unprotected, as they used to do without ever questioning the street protection that Pyotr provided. Even the most guarded and highest tower homes are unsafe, unless you pay off Takeshi’s thugs and his police, and he also calls off Kahn’s agitators and cowled killers. Proud nobles, who don’t understand how much has changed, die in the street or inside breached tower walls, protesting the affront even as the red knife plunges in. The wiser High Caste majority pay extortion. And pay and pay again, and pay some more. Immense funds that flow to his street agents keep the mobs and thugs busy and his cops loyal. To make the show more confusing yet believable, he sends mobs to attack police in one quarter or district, while elsewhere cops and rioters cooperate in violence. He’s master of an elaborate kabuki theater and more subtle and ancient wayang shadow dances.

  As Interior Minister, he’s in charge of police protection on all homeworlds. There’s no redress from his orders and no balance against his power. Police crack heads of rioters he secretly provokes into the streets, to show Old Families that only he can save the social order and protect property from the poor. He tells Guild Masters that only he can save them from the Old Families, while Maximilian Kahn agitates the faithful poor to receive a coming god, the messiah who will overthrow all the old oppressive castes and laws and change their lives forever.

  Takeshi uses part of his vast untracked income to buy a majority in the Majlis, whom he selects for their penury for just this purpose. With their bought loyalty, he pushes behind the scenes for radical reform. They’re happy to oblige, thinking he’s the leader who will bring them through to Enlightenment. It works, but not the way they think. Now, Old Family conservatives in the Jirga are so scared of revolution they ask Takeshi to save them. He’s the viper at the center of the nest. Always, his prey asks for help just as he readies to bite and feed on them.

  Seven months after Pyotr’s death, people from top to bottom of Grün society call on him to take more control, to end the chaos by providing strong leadership. The poor cry out that he must save them from brutal police who are trying to uphold old ways and privileges. The propertied and privileged classes call upon him to save them from the poor, who they say are trying to tear down everything sacred and valuable in traditional society. The two divided Houses of the General Estates jointly grant him Temporary Emergency Powers that go far beyond even those he gained in the Enabling Act. He’s a monarch in all but name, a de facto dictator.

  As President of the General Estates he calls for restored order under “social emergency decrees.” As Interior Minister he unleashes the police to make mass arrests. As provocateur extraordinaire, he pours bilious rumor and revolutionary acid on every problem, everywhere. In the swirling chaos that results, in the rising fears of street violence he daily stokes, there’s lethal opportunity. He sends out Naujock and his mercs to eliminate enemies wholesale, striking with an iron fist even as he sets coup factions at each other’ throats in a final orgy of violence. He hides political murder inside public mayhem, revenge inside riots, his own naked ambition under a cloak of lawful authority. He’s a true maestro of mass murder.

  He has willing killers on the payroll and in good supply. And now he also has an elite guard and a private army. Not just a horde of street toughs and mercs he gathered around Naujock. Not only swarms of police he can call out if he must or wants. He controls the Royal Canaries, lead regiment of the four regiment Palast Wache, after he converts the entire Jade Guard into his Presidential Guard. All of Pyotr’s veterans are very short, it’s true, but they’re handpicked men of the Eagle Corps who also somehow survived two coup d’états. They have real talent. They are elite of the elite, highly skilled Praetorian Guards who have protected the Jade Throne for over a thousand years. He buys them off, like other men buy bread.

  ***

  “Now they serve Pyotr’s murderer and our God Incarnate.” It’s a rare moment of candor about Takeshi by Maximilian Kahn. He’s worried that his Man God is delaying the spectacular announcement of the return of the Arahitogami. Worried that he choses protection by overdressed, Canary bird guards instead of devout cowls. Worried that the death rate among even the best hidden Broderbund cells offworld is inexplicably rising. Cowls are dying in droves. He accepts that he will and must lose monks on the upward path to power. But he’s losing far too many in his ongoing war with SAC, and far more to some mysterious illness he doesn’t understand and can’t explain. There’s no foretelling of any plague in the ancient prophesies, not one so near the
Proclamation of the Godhead in All the Worlds. He worries that it’s God’s Wrath, punishing the Broderbund for not being worthy of the Ascent of the Divine Human. But he hesitates to ask Takeshi directly.

  “They back the man who killed the emperor, a monarch they swore to protect,” says a postulant monk. “He ended Pyotr’s reign and will soon eliminate the whole Imperial Family, after fifteen centuries in absolute power. This is good for us, but how can the bird guards make such a shift in loyalty so easily?”

  “They’re praetorians of whomever rules from the Waldstätte Palast, used to changing loyalty from royal person to royal person several times over a normal career. Remember, Oetkert bodies slid on-and-off the throne many times over the centuries, with our holy green cords around their necks, and our black degen thrust deep inside their would be heir or some upstart rival cousin.”

  “Some died naturally,” the young monk daringly corrects his master.

  Kahn almost lets it pass. “Hardly a one, since the Jade Eye went cold into his family tomb.”

  The bold young monk persists. “Yet, the Dowager died in her sleep. Our holy dagger did not take her life, although we tried. Not a drop of her blood was…”

  That’s an error too far for Maximilian Kahn to tolerate. This is not a novice, after all. This is a postulant who has taken his final vows and entered the Order of Broderbund der Ritter. All that remains is his ‘Solemn Profession of Faith,’ after he finishes his high apprenticeship with Kahn. “You make me think I need a new assistant, you’re so arrogant yet naïve.”

  “Forgive me master.”

  “Once.”

  “I didn’t know about the Dowager.”

  “You should have worked it out. But I’ll tell you. Pyotr killed his mother with our assistance, as surely as the Hashâshīn strangled his father and I stabbed him. There has hardly been an emperor in 1,500 years who did not fall from the throne while choking their last breath under our taut silk cords.”

  “Dowager Mary is said to have died quietly in her sleep. So, it’s not true, and it was from one of our poisons?”

  “The most secret, which we gave to Pyotr. He put it in her wine.”

  “A mighty secret, and well kept.”

  “Not by him. Many whispered that he was a matricide.”

  “One whisper leads to a thousand more.”

  “Well learned, from your novitiate teachers on Fates. Yes, the whispers of matricide were part of the quiet rain that flowed into a nile of discontent with the last emperor. By the end, Pyotr was drowning in whispers about his many sins.”

  “All the Oetkerts that history says died in their sleep, we killed them too?”

  “Except for her, who was killed by Pyotr’s hand. And ten others we let live in secret, as hostages to our will and control. We kept them on Fates, where we kept the new emperor and his sister for Pyotr, for two decades.”

  “So very few died natural deaths, over all those centuries?”

  “Empire is the natural form of governance on the scale demanded by Orion, but it can never be ruled by natural means.”

  “Why did they let us do it, before the Dowager?”

  “It’s the original bargain we Brethren made with the Jade Eye. Ever since, it was our Hashâshīn who reached from behind to drip the poison cup or cut a royal throat with a holy degen. Farfolk have never understood this about the Imperium. Yet, it was a stable system that served the empire well. Until now, at its end.”

  “What of the royal guards?”

  “Washi stood and watched every time. Until the Dowager.”

  “Why?”

  “They knew another Oetkert must mount the throne, another royal throat we would surely choke out on some future day, but that the line would live. Besides, the ruling houses have always been well rewarded. And the guards.”

  “If they never stop the assassinations, why have any guards?”

  “Another fool question! They’re there to permit only approved assassinations! They guard against disorder, not death. They protect the idea of the Jade Throne, not its current occupant. How have you not learned this before today?”

  The postulant knows that he’s in real trouble, after two critical errors in one exchange with his Master. But his highly curious mind and nature got him this far, so he presses on. “Yet, the Dowager they defended against death. Why?”

  “You never met her or you wouldn’t need to ask. By the gods, that woman gave us trouble, even as a young queen! For a woman, she was formidable. She gained loyalty as few have in all the centuries that the Imperial Family ruled.”

  “Astonishing! Loyalty to a woman!”

  “Yes. It was so disturbing to the natural order we decided to end her and Pyotr, whom she debased with weakness in contrast to her own overstrong personality. We underestimated her, gravely. We paid too high a price for our error when she became Dowager. That’s why no error is tolerated in our postulants!”

  Again, the young cowl presses ahead. “What of the change made from Pyotr to Friedrich? Do the bird guards approve?”

  “They reason that the latest change of sovereign is not so different from what tradition held them to for centuries. Takeshi played them well, using the old ways to ensure traditional behavior on assassination day, gaining their acquiescence.”

  “Yet, we know that it is different this time, Master Kahn! Not a mere change of emperors on the Jade Throne. With godly Takeshi in power, this is the dawn of the Age of the Arahitogami!”

  “Yes, but the Royal Canaries don’t share our Black Faith. They think only on the greater rewards from this new, secular power, perhaps even a dynastic founder they think will ascend the throne in place of any Oetkert or Shaka. Or at least, the man who will control Friedrich while standing behind him. And there’s more.”

  “What more?”

  “They fear the lethal threat they see in his eyes. In that respect, bird guards are more shrewd than SAC or the Old Families prove to be, or Rikugun and Kaigun. They know murder better when they look upon a murderer.”

  “What should we do, Master Kahn? Should we strike them down, put poisons in their soup? We could kill the birds with our most secret mixtures brought from the Ordensstaadt.” He goes for broke. “I will do it, if you command me.”

  “Why would we do that? They’re useful to us and to the Arahitogami. Canaries will be the first men to chirrup in the coal mine of the Waldstätte should a threat approach out of the darkness!”

  “But I thought…”

  “I have had quite enough of your thinking! I cannot abide so much error. You remind me of all that is wrong with Creation! Return to Fates! Go back to your scrolls! Perhaps you have a future in scholarship, but you have none in strategy.” He sends the naïve postulant back to the Ordensstaadt on the next transport. Three weeks later, Maximillian Kahn will be told that the young man succumbed to a strange plague that’s ravaging that world, and devastating the ranks of all cowls.

  ***

  Once the Royal Canaries take an oath to Takeshi’s person, after his first large payoff, orders are to move into barracks and murder the other three regiments of the Palast Wache. Bloodletting and screams of dying men go on for two days and nights. It’s not that the other Eagle regiments are disloyal or deserve to die. But Takeshi understands that, far more than credits or elevated position at the Jade Court, this act of murder and betrayal must bind the Royal Canaries to his person as no mere reward or promotion or other act can or does. He plays the Mafia Don.

  Afterward, he supplements his undersized praetorians by raising an extra tall regiment he dresses in all black, but differently cut than the older black uniforms of the dead Eagles of the Washi Corps. He keeps the low height requirement for Canaries, but pushes height in the other direction for his new regiment. He calls them the “Royal Ravens.” The combined effect is comic, which is at least part of his intention: to visually mock the Jade Court and discredit the Old Order. Open contempt for a broken past is emerging as a signature of his rule and style. A
longside short Canaries and tall Ravens he raises a third regiment of thugs under the command of Gunsō Naujock. They wear brilliant crimson. Officially, they’re called “Royal Robins.” Unofficially, they’re quickly dubbed “Bloody Thrushes.” Their red uniform fits Naujock especially badly. His squat body is too round and rumpled in it. It makes him even more surly.

  It amuses Takeshi to see the old social and military elite of the Imperium jump in fear of Albert Naujock, a twisted, ethnic exile he brought to Kestino from Aral. A provincial thug with a crooked nose and scarred face, and manners of a warthog in heat. Dressed in bright, Bloody Thrush crimson, he looks like a phantasmal poison arrow frog squatting on an Amazon tree branch. Everyone knows this smushed man dressed in blood red awaits only Takeshi’s declared whim to whirl and cut any throat in the room. He has the joy of murder in his eyes and arbitrary death parked loosely in his hip holster. Behind him stand the hardened men of the remade, three regiment Washi: Black Ravens, Red Robins, and Royal Canaries in elevator boots. Each bird guard has a pistol on his belt and a diamond dirk tucked in a sheath in his boot or strapped to his thigh. When he appears in their feathered midst, there’s no mistaking a cobalt smell of mortal threat rising on acidic air.

  ***

  First to jump the blades are the heads of the old noble families, conveniently gathered in the short lived Meshrano Jirga, the House of Elders. In just their 100th Session, barely eight months into the new regime, the bird guards enter the Great Jade Hall where white haired old men stand jabbing boney fingers at each other, making empty points that no one hears or cares about at all. Secure in habits of privilege and power that come with unquestioned high birth, they dare discuss revoking emergency powers they gave Takeshi as President of the General Estates three months ago. They still think it isn’t dying but ruling that they’ll do. They’re bewildered when his shiny Washi arrive to arrest them, led by horrible, crooked Naujock, who leers down redly from a balcony.