by Sean Platt
The repetition stirred dormant pathways in his brain. Amit remembered his strength. He remembered his precision. Anger was not in the way. The group exercises disbanded, and they moved on to sparring. Amit easily bested his opponent. There was no animosity. His partner was a problem to be solved, and every time he tried to strike, Amit answered the flash of his riddling. A punch was too high. Amit ducked, countered, laid the other man flat.
At the front of the group, Woo sparred with one of his students. There was no mercy. Woo was more experienced and faster, but was not lowering his game or allowing another to win. Among the shadow monks — and Amit had seen this firsthand for most of his life — you learned through failure or not at all. There was no beginner level when it came to sparring. Elders and senseis would teach the boys and girls, then challenge them to use their skills to battle a random adversary. Sometimes, Amit drew an opponent his age and easily won. Sometimes, he drew an adult and returned to the dormitory battered and bruised. The adults and older children made a mockery of Amit’s acquired skills. They knew the countermovements, and Amit felt ridiculous trying his simple tricks to beat them. But because those adults never flinched from their counters, Amit learned to improvise and developed counters of his own. He taught himself to attack in unexpected ways. He’d thought he’d been doing what was sensible, but one day the abbot had called him aside and chastised him for striking too roughly. As a 9-year-old, he’d sent a man in his 20s to the infirmary. The abbot said he wasn’t fighting fair. Amit had asked if “fair” meant allowing himself to be easily bested. The abbot had no answer beyond his muttering.
Amit felled one monk after another. He grew more aggressive. His anger stayed buried, but his confidence — which had taken a hit after his non-battle with the abbot — was starting to return. The trick was to forget the rules. There were conventions in fighting, and winning came from discarding the laws. Amit had been taught attacks. He questioned their efficacy. He improvised his own, even here and now, as an adult whose training would typically have been fully entrenched and unchanging. His opponents — watching before they faced him, even while fighting others — began to look over. The mood in Amit’s immediate circle took on a tinge, as if charged with electricity. Heads turned more than they should have. By Amit’s fifth partner, those he fought had begun to anticipate his unconventional attacks. He changed them again, and made some conventional, spearing the throat of one man with two fingers — a basic move he’d learned when 6, when he’d been humiliatingly defeated by elders who’d learned the counterattack decades earlier.
Instinct took over. Amit couldn’t be hit, or even touched. He found a space inside of himself where everything moved like sap. He had all the time in the world. His sparring partner would launch a strike, and it would feel to Amit as if he paused the world before responding — as if watching from outside himself. He had eyes above and below, to the right and the left. Everything was simple to dodge and parry.
While fighting his seventh or eighth partner, Amit caught a flash of something that disarmed him: a large birthmark that looked almost like a spill of blood.
The second’s hesitation cost him. His opponent’s fist struck him hard in the cheek. It was the first strike of any size to touch him, and his aggressive sparring caused the other to shove his entire body behind the strike.
Her entire body.
Amit’s mask cracked at the strap, hung for a moment, wanting to balance on his nose, then fell.
A female voice behind his opponent’s mask said, “Amit?”
Amala removed her mask.
“Amit, is that you?”
Amala wasn’t asking because she was unsure; she couldn’t believe it.
One after another, monks around them stopped fighting. Amit looked toward Woo, and saw a small smile light the old man’s mouth at the corners.
“Brothers and sisters,” he said. “An old friend has returned.”
The other monks turned to look at Woo, then Amit.
“For a sacrifice drill,” Woo added.
Chapter 26
THE MONKS, ALL IN THEIR masks except for Amala, turned toward Amit. There was no malice in what he could see of their eyes or body language, nor was there hesitation. Amit had never heard of a sacrifice drill (it didn’t exist at the other compound), but he had a good idea of what it must be. If these monks were only barely willing to do what was required, then high-stakes drills — drills that ended with one pilgrim dead — would serve to remind them of what was at risk, and keep them practiced in what mattered most.
“Amit,” said Amala. There was much in that word. But she wasn’t able to say more, because others moved around her, squeezing her back like the slow surge of a thick liquid. They gave him space, but stood ready. Giving first move courtesy to the sacrifice.
Amit stood still. “I do not wish to fight.”
“Oh, come on,” said Woo from the gathering’s head. “Most of us know you better than that.”
The stalemate broke. A big man came at him, and although Amit hadn’t seen him in years and couldn’t see his face around the mask, he knew the attacker as Rafi. He hadn’t changed. The others were waiting, but Rafi was surging in, more stupid than mean. It was his weakness. Anger was Amit’s. Rage had allowed Rafi to beat him many times in his youth, in many informal battles. Amit was not angry now. He had stuffed it down, and his mind was still buzzing from his earlier flow. Rafi was still stupid.
The charge was, for a shadow monk, large, brash, and arrogant: a kill strike, coming for the head. Amit could see what would happen next as if his attacker had flashed a giant sign: He would take his arm, twist it across his body, then drive a pair of knuckles into the back of Amit’s neck at the spine. In the past, burdened by the baggage of years, Amit would have been weakened by Rafi’s aggression. This time he was ready. The attack was laughably obvious. He allowed Rafi to take his arm, then pivoted away, pulled, and rolled the big man across his back. Rafi struck the circle on the opposite side.
Amit stood tall, his face set. None of this was making him nervous or angry. It was what it was; what would be, would be. Any outcome was fine. The moment was his, but karma and fate owned the rest. If he died, he died, and it was good, because he would be reborn. If he won, he won, and it was good, because he’d be able to take the next step. But Amit didn’t think he would win. They were too many, and wouldn’t wait to face him one by one. This wasn’t a drill of delicacy and precision; it was one of blunt force.
The shadow monks buried their shame behind masks. They didn’t want to kill, but were willing to kill when needed. A sacrifice drill would remind them of what it meant to end a life, but it wouldn’t be savored.
Woo had taught Amit to question the obvious. To try new approaches, no matter how odd, and easily outmaneuver his adversaries by capitalizing on their resistance.
If they could only come all at once with a brute force attack. No one would land a precise blow, because there would be too many. They would simply converge, then crush him. They would step on him if they had to; they would wrap their many hands around his neck and squeeze. They would batter him with a fusillade of small punches because there would be no room for large ones. They would not be able to kick him, sweep his legs, or strike him broadside. He’d be able to see everything coming.
Hands reached for him. Arms cocked back. Eyes widened.
Fight, said a voice inside him.
Amit would fight if he could. He was good at sparring: strong, fast, and precise. He’d done all of the kill drills himself, on practice dummies or halfway on real opponents. He’d taken the old drills in new directions, ending the lives of those who’d ended Nisha’s. Fighting true meant fighting with honor, but it would be useless. You couldn’t overwhelm a circle of 10 once inside your radius, or when another 10 were coming right behind them.
You have to fight.
Inside him, like a coward, another voice said, Run.
He couldn’t run. They were all around him.
Amit could control his voluntary muscles (and plenty of the supposedly involuntary ones) to a degree most people could never imagine. Even among the shadow monks, Amit was one of the best. That advantage was nullified with so many against him, but that was only true if he fought. If instead he turned strength, speed and precision toward flight …
He ducked. His legs scissored to the sides, into a split, and Amit descended like a dropping stone. He struck at two of the encroaching monks on his way down, but wasn’t trying to fight. He drove his fists upward so that the counteraction would drive his body downward faster than gravity alone. Once down, in a split second, Amit brought his spread legs back together and tucked them up, becoming like a small round ball. He couldn’t roll like a marble to freedom, but could surprise the first shadow monk whose legs he tucked between, then find himself behind the first row and in front of the second.
Amit searched his mind, scrolling through a lifetime of training in less than a second. He wasn’t searching for what he’d been taught. He was searching for what he hadn’t been. Amit knew hundreds of strikes using his hands and hundreds more using his legs. He also knew how to fight a tall man or a short one, a fat man or a thin woman, an attacker with a knife, and an attacker with one gun or several. But Amit couldn’t think of a single time he’d been taught to fight someone crawling around his feet, and he’d never been taught to deflect a blow from below.
Shameless, Amit drove his fist hard into the monk’s crotch nearest to him. Robes were mostly genderless and the monks thin and lean, so it was difficult to tell men from women when faces were concealed. This one was a man; he crumpled like a wad of cheap paper.
Amit let the monk fall on top of him, draping him as he scampered like a horse’s saddle. A second later, all attention turned down, and the monks started to stomp like children. It wasn’t that no one knew how to defeat an enemy at their feet; it was that everyone knew the bluntest ways to try. In close quarters, they could only swing their feet in minute arcs, stomp and punch as far as the sea of others around them allowed. Superior numbers had been turned into a disadvantage. More was better until it wasn’t.
The groaning monk on Amit’s back took the brunt. Amit fished the small knife from his robe’s inner hem, looked up, saw a bare inner thigh, and resisted the urge to slash its femoral artery lengthwise. He could kill, but for the first time did not want to. It seemed wrong. Too obvious, for a doomed sacrifice to eliminate a few of his less-prepared attackers on his way down. Somehow, he had to find the difference between himself and those he’d come to find. He had to know how Woo was different from him. Without that difference, his quest held no meaning.
Instead, Amit slashed one ankle, then another, and another. Cuts were deep but nonlethal, and in the press of bodies none of the otherwise-infallible fighters saw them coming. He grasped their uncut legs and yanked. Three monks hopped, staggered, and fell. Amit pulled them down onto his body. The three he’d cut were geysers of blood, calf muscles ripped and unable to flex.
Wherever a shadow monk fell, surrounding Sri began to stomp and kick. Order had vanished, and the entire gathering — all highly trained killing machines — degenerated to the panicked flails of a rioting crowd.
Amit reached a spot where he could finally move. Before rising, he snatched the mask from a fallen monk beside him. At least two Sri knew that he’d been the true, original target and saw the switch, but two on one, with room to maneuver, was something he could handle. Still on his back, Amit reached up and grasped the first monk by the robe, then pulled hard, at the same time driving his foot upward into the other monk’s throat. A woman’s mask shattered as she fell to the dirt, gasping for breath, face coated with spilled blood from another’s gushing leg.
He sprang up to face the other, who charged with the same two-fingered eye jab Amit had used on the next-to-last of Alfero’s men. He scrunched his head back; his longer arm reached the man’s forward-thrust face in plenty of time. His mask cracked but did not fall. His head tipped back, and Amit saw his chance to slash the attacker’s throat. Instead, he slammed it with his elbow, leaving the man and woman choking side by side like a matching set.
Masked, Amit pushed his way into the crowd rather than from away from it. The others were too distracted and confused; Amit wore an unbroken white mask above a blue robe with a saffron sash, same as the monks around him. He threw a few token kicks, always moving forward, surging toward the front, where Woo watched behind a vague smile.
Amit was halfway to Woo when something large struck him from behind and drove him to the ground. Curry assaulted his nostrils. A rough voice came from behind his right ear as his chest pressed into the dirt.
“You have blood on your sash.” Rafi’s hot reeking breath was all over Amit. “If anyone was paying attention, they’d have easily seen you.”
“A good magician understands that the real magic comes in misdirection.” Amit managed to keep his voice calm, even as the ox pressed him flat.
“Is that what you are? A magician, now that you no longer have Woo to protect you?”
Someone’s blood spattered on his face as Rafi pressed Amit to the dirt. The monk assassins were apparently fighting each other in their confused attack-and-defense; no one seemed to realize that the pair on the ground held their target.
“You can have Woo,” said Amit. “I am tired of him.”
Rafi spun to keep Amit pinned while swinging an elbow into his nose. Amit heard a crack, and wondered if he’d still be as handsome once this was over.
“You weren’t good enough. Haven’t you figured that out? You thought you were special. Woo’s special project, the poor little boy with the dead mother. But when it came down to it, he left you behind, because you weren’t shit.”
Amit turned his head slightly, catching Rafi’s ugly eyes through the holes in his mask. “You have learned the American slang. Let me try it: ‘Shit.’” He chuckled. “It is a delightful word.”
Rafi hit him again, this time with his fist. Amit had always been able to take him easily on equal footing, but there was little he could do when pinned.
“Fuck you.”
“Ah!” said Amit, laughing through his broken nose. “So delightful!”
Rafi rolled him halfway over, still carefully keeping him pinned to the ground with his superior weight. He ripped off his mask. Rafi was repugnant as ever.
“I’m going to make the sacrifice myself.”
“I am so proud of you.”
“I don’t know why you came here,” Rafi snarled. “But I’m glad.”
“Me, too.” Amit smiled, tasting his blood. “This has been mutually enjoyable.”
Rafi reached for his neck, placed one strong hand around Amit’s throat, then another, and squeezed.
Amit had strong hands, but Rafi’s, mostly by virtue of their size, were almost as strong. Amit felt his windpipe compress, then nearly flatten. He slowed his breath, trying to summon control. His heart wanted to beat with adrenaline, but he held it down, staring into an interior ball of light and feeling it power him like a battery. Amit’s mind began to swim. His vision wanted to dim. He tried fighting his way to the surface, but couldn’t move or flail. It seemed easiest to surrender.
Something came from the right side of Amit’s vision and embedded itself in Rafi’s neck. A great flood of gushing red spilled onto Amit’s face and robe. He turned as the large hands began to relax and gasped, taking giant gulps of air, trying to control himself through a slow return to the surface. The blood stream moved from his face, and Amit found he could look back up. He spit what had gathered in his mouth. Rafi’s hands were on their way to his throat, looking like two great red gloves. Amala was behind and above him, holding Rafi by the hair with one hand, four fingers of her other hand buried in his neck.
She withdrew her fingers with a large glut of dangling pulp, dropped him to the side, still twitching, then held up her hand and inspected her long fingernails — painted red in Rafi’s blood.
&nb
sp; A large, loud voice boomed from the group’s front: Woo, yelling for all to stand down.
“A sacrifice is a sacrifice,” he said with what was almost a laugh. Amit came up on his elbows and saw Woo looking over as the crowd parted around them. “Thank you, Amit, for proving me right.”
Chapter 27
“DON’T,” SAID WOO. “IT’S TOO obvious.”
Amit was palms to the arms of Woo’s chair, preparing to rise. Woo was across the sparse room, facing the window, his hands in front of himself, rolling his prayer beads. It was a thoughtful pose, and bait. Amit had fallen for it.
Woo turned. “I trained you better than that. You would strike when my back was turned?”
“I would strike whenever I could, whether it seemed ‘correct’ or not.”
“As I taught you. But you knew what I was doing, and that I’d know what you were thinking. An attack would be foolish. Were you responding to anger, letting your need for vengeance interfere with your logic, as you used to?”
Amit thought. That’s what Woo said Amit always used to do: act rashly because an emotion overtook him instead of stopping to consider that action’s logical outcome. Stopping to think was something every person should do, but it was very much something a shadow monk — who was like a perpetually loaded weapon — should have mastered before they could use a toilet on their own. Amit didn’t think he was angry now, or vengeful, or anything else. He was more or less calm, as he’d managed to stay throughout the battle with his brothers and sisters.
Woo shrugged.
“You didn’t kill them. In the battle. You could have, you know.”
