Master Assassins
Page 20
“That was a risky hand you just played.”
“I couldn’t do it,” said Kandri. “I tried to form the words but they wouldn’t come.”
“Don’t start lying to me,” said Lantor Hinjuman. “You didn’t want to answer her question.”
“Papa,” says Kandri, desperate, “the last thing on earth I could want is to offend Her Radiance, the soul of our people, the mother of eleven future kings! I love the Prophet. You know that.”
“Does she know you love her? That’s what matters.”
“I’ll prove it. I’ll show her with deeds of righteousness.”
Kandri was parroting Revelation doctrine—but why not, if the doctrine was true? He was, in those few fleeting months, a believer: no one made it through Army training without at least believing that they believed. And the Ghalsúnay massacre was still a year away.
His father startled him by taking his hand. The Old Man’s eyes focused on the copper ring Ariqina had placed on his finger. “Where did that come from, anyway?”
“A fever-syrup bottle.”
“And to hell with my questions, too.” The Old Man smiled as though in approval, but he had yet to recover his poise. He took a flannel from his pocket and mopped his brow.
“Well, she didn’t punish you this time. Just keep your head down, for Ang’s sake. And Kandri—” The Old Man looked him straight in the eye. “If you hear that I’m dead—some terrible accident, some brawl—don’t you believe it.”
“Dead?”
“I’ve told your brother the same, but I’m not sure he was listening.”
“Papa, what in Jekka’s hell are you talking about? I may be in uniform, but I’m still your son. You can tell me.”
“Telling’s the easy part. Can I untell you later? For my own sake? For yours?”
“Are you in trouble? Is something wrong back home?”
“I may not be home much longer. Your mother’s provided for, and your siblings, and the help. My books will be hidden. And the library’s a goner, your mother’s after it, she wants a sewing room, why is every woman in the world obsessed with clothes—”
Kandri grabbed his shoulders. His father looked up, startled by the new, Army strength of Kandri’s hands.
“Don’t you pull this shit, Papa. We’re grown men. Where are you planning to be, if not at home?”
His father pursed his lips. “Grown men. Yes, of course. Even your sisters are growing up. Emi has a young man in her life, can you believe it?”
“Oh, Papa, he’s been hanging around for years.”
“And Nyreti is devout,” said the Old Man. “Very, very devout.”
His voice was suddenly bitter, but why? His elder daughters’ religious zeal was even older news than Emi’s suitor. For as long as Kandri could remember, Nyreti had slept beneath a painting of Her Radiance, youthful and strong, leading her people along Heaven’s Path through the Wilderness of Sin.
What was his father trying to tell him? Where did he mean to go, and what did Nyreti have to do with it? Lantor Hinjuman shook his head, muttering that he’d said too much. Kandri would learn nothing more on the matter for a year.
That evening the Old Man dined with his sons. Mektu chattered about the rigors of training, the survival tips passed on by Betali (recruited six months earlier), the terrifying spectacle of the blackworms at feeding time, how the Rasanga reminded him of figures from the War Choral. Lantor shot Kandri looks across the table. Finally, he interrupted Mektu’s harangue.
“Your birth-mother, Kandri: she had an elder brother who still lived by the old ways, out in the desert. A real rough character, although his heart was good. We met just twice. I don’t know what became of him, or if he’s still above the earth. But when I look at you now, I see his face looking back.”
Kandri was stunned. The Old Man rarely spoke of his birth-mother. He thought again to ask the name of her clan, but the question always made his father irritable.
A drum sounded, and the brothers shot to their feet. “Night patrol, Papa,” said Mektu.
Their father rose and kissed them, then saluted with a touch of his old rascally grin. His hand tapped his forehead: remember. Before sunrise, he was gone.
Kandri was deeply worried about the Old Man. But a letter from Dyakra Hinjuman soon confirmed that he had ridden straight home, and was busier than ever. More letters followed, over several months, full of trivial news about the household, cheerful nothings about life in the Valley. Nothing changed. The Old Man labored on.
“It was just talk, all that ‘Don’t believe I’m dead’ shit,” said Mektu. “Fathers get nervous when their sons go to war. He wanted to impress us, to prove he’s still a man.”
Kandri disagreed. “Papa never tries to impress anyone. He’s just . . . impressive.”
Mektu shrugged. Then, with a loud laugh: “The old donkey! Where would he be without his secrets? He’d be nude.”
In autumn, a grim-faced major pulled the brothers aside. Their father was missing, he said. The Prophet had sent him a summons the week before, calling him once again to Eternity Camp. “I don’t know what the Enlightened One had in mind for him, boys. I do know he set out in this direction. We know he passed the first checkpoint in the mountains—his name is in the station log. But he never reached the second. The army’s investigating. Don’t lose heart.”
Two days later the Old Man’s pony was found wandering near Green Pass, and his checkered scarf was recovered nearby, snagged in weeds at the edge of a cliff. A fool could read the signs: the pony had slipped or shied, flinging Lantor Hinjuman over the precipice. He was decomposing in some crevasse, or in the foaming river a thousand feet below.
The boys knew better, of course. Their father had staged his death. He had needed to disappear, and so he had. Neither of them would entertain another version of events for an instant. But the mystery only deepened: why had the Prophet called him back to Eternity Camp? And why had he responded to that call with such a charade?
The answer came sixteen months later, when Kandri lay recovering from his skull fracture in the army hospital. Dyakra Hinjuman had been allowed to care for him. She came with Nyreti, twenty-two herself that year and immensely helpful on the journey from Blind Stream; and Perch, their little brother, who was not at all helpful but strangely insistent.
The three of them stayed a fortnight; Dyakra rented a shack in the village. Perch, now eleven, remained a troubled child and still slept with a knife, but his behavior in the hospital was exemplary. Day after day he sat with Kandri and their mother and sister, never complaining, listening to talk he was too young to understand. Mektu joined them when his duties permitted, entertaining and infuriating the family by turns. Kandri had thrown him out when he asked a burn victim if he ever expected to enjoy grilled meat again.
One morning Nyreti slept in, and their mother, after an hour at Kandri’s bedside, excused herself to take a walk. No sooner had she left the ward than Perch leaned close to Kandri and whispered. “The Old Man’s gone to the desert, Kandri.”
Kandri grew still. He stared at his youngest sibling for what felt like an age. At last he cleared his throat. “He told you?”
The boy nodded sagely. “Only me. Just before he faked his accident.”
“Why you, Perch?”
“Because no one thinks I know anything. So no one ever asks questions. But I have a question, Kan. Where’s the desert? Can I walk there from Blind Stream?”
Kandri sat up and kissed his brother on the forehead. The effort sent a crazed bat of pain flitting around inside his skull.
“It’s too far, Perch. Now listen: do you know why he left?”
Again, the solemn nod. “He didn’t tell me, but I know. It’s all Nyreti’s fault.” The boy looked over his shoulder, as if Nyreti might have snuck up behind him. Leaning close to Kandri’s ear, he said, “I hate her. She says mother’s a heretic and that Lord Jekka is going to claim her as a bride in hell.”
“She said that?”
“Oh, Gods,” said Kandri. “No.”
“She blabbed about him, too—I’m sure she did. ‘Ya ya ya, my Papa can build anything.’ Until finally an army boss came to see him. A big man with medals on his chest. He wanted Papa to build war machines. He said, Every Chiloto has a duty, Hinjuman. And yours is mechanical.”
“What did the Old Man say?”
Perch gave him a funny look. “Papa was not very nice. He said the Prophet was well supplied with mechanical servants. I don’t know what that meant, but it made the boss really angry. He told Papa to get his clever ass to Eternity Camp by the end of the week. Then he walked out without drinking his coffee. The next day, Papa left.”
“And they really think he’s dead, back home?”
Perch gave him a fragile smile. “Everyone but me,” he said.
Kandri’s headache was searing. He had not done so much thinking since the day of the massacre. He told Perch to wait for New Year’s Day, and then to take their mother aside and tell her everything. By then, he reasoned, no one would be looking for the Old Man any longer. By then, it would be safe for her to know he was alive.
“But Perch, the desert’s fuck—the desert’s enormous, right? Didn’t he say anything else about where he was going?”
“A little bit.”
“Tell me, for Ang’s sake! Before someone comes.”
Perch fidgeted. “I was crying. I didn’t want him to go. He said I’d been bellyaching since the day I was born.”
“That’s Papa,” said Kandri.
“He said that he had to go to the desert to put an end to some nonsense. I asked him what kind of nonsense. Do you know what he said to me?”
“Something nasty, I’ll bet.”
“No,” said Perch. “He said, ‘The nonsense that started because I was afraid.’”
Two hours to sunset. Chindilan, who has the last watch, is standing outside with his back to the ruined vessel. Kandri crawls from the wreck and stands beside him.
“Cooler out here now,” he murmurs.
“So it is,” says Chindilan. He gestures with his head in the direction of the fortress. “Five hours we’ve watched that island. No movement, no sign that anybody’s home. Mektu says the shadow of a bird passed over us, but that was hours ago.”
He stands straight and looks at Kandri. “Still no way to know,” he says, “whether we’d save or doom ourselves if we go up there.”
“True enough,” says Kandri.
There is an uncomfortable pause.
“I don’t want the girl to die, Kandri. But my first priority is you.”
Kandri kicks at the earth.
“You think I’m a race-hater,” says Chindilan.
“Are you?”
The smith frowns and looks away at the island. He begins to tell Kandri about his parents’ years in the distant south, before his birth. How his mother worked the edges of the Nfepan jungles, keeping bees, tapping trees for latex, milling and boiling tetemurih vines into brilliant blue dye. How his father cooked for two hundred men on a logging crew gnawing its way through those same jungles. How they’d met at a dance.
Kandri, irritated, wonders how a single word of this addresses his question. He bends and looks back through the hole in the boat. His brother and Eshett are awake. She appears to be extracting a splinter from his foot.
“I’m not narrow-minded,” says Chindilan. “I’ve seen a fair bit of the world. Not as much as your father, of course, but a fair bit.”
“Why didn’t you two ever travel together?” Kandri asks.
Chindilan is startled. “Don’t you know? Lantor asked me to keep an eye on all of you. He wanted me in the village whenever he couldn’t be.”
“Couldn’t be?” Kandri snorts. “Didn’t choose to be, you mean.”
Chindilan gives him a careful look. “How much do you know about his travels, boy?”
Another irritating remark. “What do you expect me to know? Exactly as much as he wanted me to know, that’s how much. The days he left and the days he walked back in the door.”
“So you don’t know why he went away.”
Kandri’s toe digs a recalcitrant stone from the ground. “I know he showed up with kids. He called them orphans, but half of them were probably his bastards. And I’m one more. He gave me his name because I was the first, maybe. Because my birth-mother was the first. She was lucky that way.”
Chindilan shook his head. “They weren’t Lantor’s,” he says. “You’re the only one of his children not born to Dyakra’s womb. I thought he might have talked to you about the orphans, and other things. Before you enlisted, I mean.”
“We were a little distracted.”
“By Ari’s disappearance. I know.”
Both men stiffen. The air between them is suddenly harder, more laced with fear. Kandri looks at his uncle, willing him to speak. This weapon-maker, his father’s best friend. Whose side would he take, if it came down to choosing?
Then Eshett calls from the wreck, “Where is Talupéké?”
The men jump, bend to stare through the hole. “She was right there,” says Chindilan.
“I didn’t ask where she was,” snaps Eshett. “Ang’s tears, were you sleeping on watch?”
“No!” says Chindilan. “She didn’t leave this way. I couldn’t have missed her.”
“She must have climbed out through the cargo shaft,” says Mektu.
Kandri steps back. The girl is not atop the boat. He turns in a circle, scanning the horizon. Then, an awful thought descending, he rushes to the stern.
“Fuck a frog!”
Talupéké is a mile off, running hard for the island. A single faska over her shoulder, salt dust shining behind her in the evening sun.
“Idiot!” cries the smith. “Come on, boy, let’s go after her. Your brother can guard Eshett; he’ll love that assignment.”
“No,” says Kandri.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean you stay right here, Uncle. Haven’t you done enough?”
Outrage and guilt in the eyes of the smith. Kandri has no time for either. He dives into the wreck, snatches up his machete and headscarf. Moments later he is off, the salt pan thumping underfoot like a whitewashed roof.
His stride is longer than Talupéké’s, but she has a big lead. He can see now that she will reach the island long before he can catch her. But what the hell is she doing? Leaving them after all? Or taking on the fortress herself, to make up for nearly beheading one of their party?
She passes the first of the outlying shipwrecks. Damn her. If the army is up there, beheading is the best they can hope for. Darkness will fall in little more than an hour, but for now they are excruciatingly visible, their sharp shadows etched on the plain.
Footfalls behind him: Kandri’s hand flies to his machete. But it is only Mektu, catching up, his loose scarf trailing behind him like a flag.
“Uncle’s in tears,” he huffs. “He’s afraid she’ll kill herself.”
Kandri lowers his head and runs faster. The thought has already occurred to him. Some suicides drink poison; others fall on their swords. But Talupéké?
That mountain of rubble. She’s going to climb it, climb it to the fortress and—
She reaches the mouth of the cove, vanishing at once among the black stumps of the fallen piers. Two long minutes later, they reach the cove themselves, and in a matter of yards, they are wading in sand—fine, wind-drifted sand, trapped like dust between the cliff walls. They flail on, weaving through the forest of stumps. High above, the fortress walls stand within feet of the eroded cliffs: horrible, to be running beneath something so vast and precarious, ants under the wheel of a cart.
Then Kandri sees her: already climbing the rubble mound. It is enormous, like the debris left by an avalanche, and at its top is the dark hole of the former gate. By the time they reach the
mound’s foot, she is halfway to the top.
Turn around, Kandri pleads as he climbs. Just turn and see us. Don’t force me to shout.
And she does turn, a few steps from the broken gate. She does not appear surprised to see them. Kandri lifts his arms and shakes them desperately: Wait there!
She studies them, still too far for them to see her expression. Then she walks into the fortress.
“The bitch!” says Mektu. “What if she knows the army’s up there?”
Kandri looks at him sharply. “Talupéké may be sick, but she’s not evil. Two minutes with her should tell you that.”
Mektu flinches at the reprimand. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t think it’s me talking, Kan.”
Kandri rubs his sore eyes. “Let’s go and find her,” he says.
The climb is steep and awkward. When at last they near the fortress, they drop to their bellies and crawl toward the gate. Kandri locks his eyes on the jagged hole. Among the many things it may confront them with is Talupéké’s dead body. Or Talupéké gagged and beaten, in the hands of the Rasanga.
A bow, thinks Kandri. Why didn’t I grab a bow?
What they find beyond the gate, however, is simply a courtyard, huge and stark. The outer walls of the fortress may be intact, but the interior, it appears, has been razed. There are knee-high rectangles of crumbled brick, the outlines of ruined storehouses or barracks or armories, remains of campfires, a shattered millstone, a rusted cauldron too huge and heavy for anyone to cart away.
“Pitfire,” says Mektu. “This place has been dead longer than the Sea.”
They move inside. The shadows are long in the waning light. Against the east wall, stone stairs climb to the battlements. To their left a square pit like a mine shaft plunges down into the hill.
Nowhere to hide, he thinks, unless one leaped into that pit, or curled inside the cauldron and prayed. But in the north wall are two stone archways, letting into another great court or yard. Beyond, looming high above over the fortress, is the broken tower.