“What do you remember?” asks Eshett.
The girl stares into the distance beyond the pools. “That there are only so many ways up the East Rim,” she says at last. “The cliffs are taller on that side. There are a few staircases, but they’re hard to spot. We need to find one of the old ports like Mab Makkutin.”
“You’ve been there?” says Kandri.
“I grew up on the East Rim,” says Talupéké. “But Mab Makkutin is barely a city anymore. The name means Ghost Port; but they called it Makkutharem, King’s Port, before the Theft of the Sea. My grandmother says that a hundred thousand lived there in its richest days. But now?” She shrugs. “Nine thousand, ten? No one can tell you, really. No one counts anymore.”
“How close are we, girl?” asks Mektu.
Talupéké scowls at him, struggling. “A day’s march?” she says.
“A long day, maybe,” says Eshett. “This time, it’s all uphill—”
She stops abruptly. The others turn to her in surprise. “This time?” says Kandri.
Eshett’s jaw is tight as she speaks. “I made the crossing once,” she says, “in the other direction. A Tirmassil gang brought me to Eternity Camp over the Stolen Sea. They had too many Parthan girls in the east, they said. They had to spread us around.”
“So you are a Parthan,” says Chindilan.
Again, the hesitation. “Parthan, yes,” she says at last, “but you Chiloto don’t know the meaning of the word. There are many of us, far more than you imagine. And many kinds of desert blood. Some of us build great townships, grow grain where the land permits. Some are hunters only. Some follow the wild herds.”
“What about your people?” Kandri asks.
“We are Nine-Year Parthans. We are nomads, travelers. But when we find a good place, we build a House for the Dead and live around it for nine years. My kin built their House three years ago. I have time to find them, time to get back.”
“Atau looked a little frightened of you,” says Chindilan.
“He should be,” says Eshett. “Everyone fears my people, but the Tirmassil most of all: if we catch them, we slit their throats. But they keep coming, pretending to be merchants, bringing knives or lamp oil or other things we need. They cheat us, but that is not why we kill them. Everyone cheats us. Only the Tirmassil buy and sell us like dogs.
“They raise some of our children themselves, and teach them to hate their Parthan blood. To hide it, to be ashamed. They tell the children that their parents are cannibals, and would kill and eat them if they returned. By the time those children are half-grown, they are ready to go back and steal more Parthan women and children.” She takes a deep breath. “That’s how they got me. They sent a man with a Parthan face, who said he had come from Shefetsi. He seemed kind. We trusted him. One day he surprised me early in the morning, on my walk back from the well. ‘I’ve come to save you from this life,’ he told me, and threw a sack over my head.”
She looks at Chindilan. “You and Talupéké are both right: Tirmassil are bad warriors but very good with disguises, with tricks.”
“What happened to you then?” asks Kandri.
Eshett looks away to the west. “They locked us in a shed. We were there for a week, and two girls died of thirst. When they came for the bodies, they told us that we were going to Eternity Camp to work in the kitchens. The kitchens! I believed that, even though I’d been dragged away from my village by force. I didn’t want to believe anything else.
“They brought us down the cliff by a long staircase, and then they stacked us on camels and brought us here. We were blindfolded, but I could hear the talk about the Snakeskin, and feel the camel wading across. Not all the pools are dangerous. The men walked ahead, smashing the salt-ice, searching. It took a long time. Then we traveled south to a hidden cave where the Tirmassil meet to do their business. You can get anything there. Wine, drugs, sapphires, holy relics, books. And children. And whores.
“I was lucky. The Tirmassil didn’t rape me, because they wanted me clean.” She looks at Kandri and Mektu. “The Prophet’s warriors need new girls all the time. Fresh girls, virgins. They don’t ever have enough.”
Kandri drops his eyes. He feels ill; he wishes he had something to break or stomp to pieces. But Mektu is gaping. “You!” he says. “I remember! We made love.”
Eshett looks capable of murder. “We did not,” she says, “make love.”
“You’re wrong, we did,” says Mektu. “You were a substitute for the chubby girl, I’d saved up for her especially, but it was all right, you were perfectly adequate, I decided then and there not to ask for a discount, and later we talked about—”
Eshett slaps him. The sound so odd and intimate. The silence that follows is different as well, out of place somehow, the hush of a bedroom in that vast open land.
The smells that began in the night grow stronger, especially the rotten-egg sulfur stench. But the wind remains cool. Talupéké says that she has known such days in midwinter: days that start with a flood of cold air from the southwest. Chindilan has heard of them too: cold roars is the army term. Blissful, but not to be counted on. The scalding heat could return in a day’s time, or an hour’s.
“And when it does, where are we going to bed down? Not much shade near the Snakeskin, and those hills must be eight or ten miles off. Garatajik knew what he was about when he told us to travel by night.”
“Well, we can’t wait for nightfall here,” says Mektu. “There’s no shade at all. We’ll fry like shrimp in a skillet.”
The choice is clear enough: to press on while the cool wind lasts, or backtrack more than an hour and dig in at the foot of the rift. Chindilan and Eshett favor a retreat; Mektu and Talupéké are for pressing on.
“If we run out of water, we die,” says Eshett softly.
“Listen to her, listen to the Parthan!” says Chindilan. “We have water for two days and nights. If we’re caught out in the heat, we could drink that much before the sun sets today.”
“And if we’re caught by the Rasanga, it won’t matter how much water we have,” says Mektu. He looks around for Kandri. “Brother, are you even listening? Why don’t you say something?”
“I will, but you won’t like it,” says Kandri, pointing west across the flats.
Two men are walking swiftly in their direction. “Son of a bitch!” says Mektu. “It’s the same Gods-damned Tirmassil, I’m sure of it!”
Chindilan whips out the scope. “Mektu’s right,” he says. “It’s Atau, and that bald fellow with the club. They must have left the third man with the camel, looking for another way down.”
The man in front makes the familiar gesture: Chop chop.
“No,” says Mektu.
“What do you mean, no?” says Kandri.
Mektu turns him a dismayed look. “No, he’s not looking for a way down. He’s riding back to alert the Rasanga. Riding hard. They’ve finally realized that they can’t fight us, and that we’re not going to die before we reach the Rim. So they’re going back to find the Wolfpack. And I’d bet my last gham they have a horn or a drum, something to call those bastards in.”
“Then why aren’t they sounding it?” asks Kandri.
Mektu bites the middle of his thumb, as he has always done when thinking furiously. Suddenly, his eyes light up. “Because they’re waiting too! Waiting for a signal. They’ve already met the Wolfpack, right? So someone in the pack must have a horn as well, and he’ll sound it when they’re closing in. That’s how they’ll find each other. That’s how they’ll find us.”
“Spotters,” says Chindilan. “Why didn’t we think of that before?” He looks at Mektu with grudging respect.
“If they are spotters,” says Talupéké, “then we need to kill them. Right now.”
Kandri looks across the glittering half-mile. “We can try,” he says.
Covertly, they check their belts and weaponry, then turn and charge the Tirmassil. But as expected, Atau and the bald man turn tail once again. After sever
al pointless minutes, Kandri calls a halt. “This is crazy,” he says. “They’re as fast as we are.”
“We’ll have to lighten our load,” says Talupéké. “Two of us can kill those fools. The others can wait with the packs.”
“They’re cowards, no doubt,” says Chindilan, “but which of us are the fools? Here we are, chasing them, wasting our water, wasting our strength—”
“Going blind,” says Mektu.
“Damned right we are. And all the while . . .”
The others look at him, and the same thought is written in all their faces. The real pursuit, the Wolfpack. “Let’s get out of here,” says Eshett.
They turn east and run. The Tirmassil hoot and jeer: Food for the worms, worms, worms! Kandri fights down a tremor of panic. The sun is now directly in their eyes. He pulls his headscarf forward and lowers his gaze, but that solves only half the problem: the salt-glazed earth is dazzling enough. Worse yet, the wind is still rising, and carrying with it a fine grit, almost a powder. Each gust seems determined to fling the grit in their faces. Kandri’s eyes are streaming. The world flutters when he blinks.
At daybreak, he had thought the Snakeskin close, but now it seems to recede the more they rush toward it. For two hours, they slog into the wind, increasingly dazzled, hands cupped around their eyes. When Kandri glances back, he finds that the Tirmassil have donned large, floppy hoods that hide their faces. It seems a poor solution—if the grit can blow up Kandri’s sleeves to his armpits, it can blow into those hoods—but bandits too get desperate, don’t they? Especially if they’ve nearly had you, nearly served you up for dinner with an apple in your mouth, only to find you’ve caught wind of their trick and might yet escape.
The ground goes soft: and there at last is the Snakeskin, blazing and shimmering before them. As Talupéké has said, the pools are topped with flat crystal skins, very much like ice. The rims of the pools are jagged walls of salt-scree, like irregular pie crusts. Some reach a height of several yards, but most barely rise above the pools. None are more than a few inches wide.
Kandri creeps to the edge of the nearest pool—a lovely, bird’s-egg blue—and gingerly tests the ice. There is an audible crack. A web of fractures radiates from his boot.
“No way in hell,” he says.
“They’re all different, though,” says Eshett. “Some have ice strong enough for a caravan to cross. Some are boiling, others very deep. The Tirmassil believed that the light green pools were perfectly safe: they broke the ice there and let the camels wade. But other pools scared them so badly, they wouldn’t go near. Don’t ask me which. They seemed afraid even to talk about them.”
As expected, Atau and the bald Tirmassil have stopped again—this time somewhat closer to the travelers. With their hoods over their eyes, they look more foolish than menacing, but they go on laughing and jeering. “Fuck them,” says Kandri. “Girl, do you remember anything about how you crossed?”
“We walked on the rims,” says Talupéké, “but also on the ice. We did both.”
“That’s an enormous help,” says Chindilan. “Lucky we brought you along.”
Talupéké spins like a top and kicks the smith in the ass. Chindilan goes sprawling. As the others shout at her, she turns and runs along the shore. When she reaches the edge of the light blue pool, she steps out nimbly onto the rim. The top inch of crust shatters like fine crystal, but the rim bears her weight. She runs a dozen yards, pivots on one foot, and looks back at the others.
“Well?”
They follow. Talupéké makes the task look easy (“Circus freak,” mutters Chindilan), but no one else finds it so. Kandri and Eshett move with some confidence, but Mektu sways and lurches, and Chindilan takes only mincing steps. Behind them, the Tirmassil move nearer to the shore.
Impatient, Talupéké roams ahead and tests the skin of the nearest pools. None will bear their weight. Kandri, at the rear of the procession, looks hopelessly across the beautiful, threatening mosaic of the Snakeskin. Which pools could a man wade if necessary? Which would kill him at a touch? Or draw him down into bottomless, slowly thickening mud? How many travelers were entombed there already, suspended forever, ants trapped in glue? He has seen a legion of ghosts in the skies above him; is there another trapped below?
Old friend Fear, he thinks. Always turning up with gifts. Churning stomach, wasteful sweat. But Gods, Gods, to die that way, in a closed, black trap. Kandri is almost grateful for the distraction of pain in his eyes.
That pain is real and growing. The powdery grit blows unimpeded over the salt-ice, and the wind is rising still. With each step, they must fight harder for balance; even Talupéké is concentrating now, fists rubbing brutally at her eyes. Chindilan is bent almost double. He looks like an old man fording a stream. Uncle, Kandri thinks, how could I do this to you?
The next three pools—pea-green, sky-blue, sapphire—also prove too fragile to cross. Some of the taller rims are impassable as well, walls of teeth as high as their chins. Time and again, they are forced to retrace their steps.
An hour into the effort, they are less than halfway across. The two Tirmassil have now reached the shore of the Snakeskin. They stand there facing the travelers, deep hoods flapping in the wind. No longer bothering to gesture or to laugh.
“Brother?” says Mektu.
“What is it, Mek?”
“I was all wrong, you know.”
“About crossing today?”
“No. Well, maybe yes. Or definitely yes. Of course, you never even hazarded a guess.”
Kandri is fighting savagely for calm. “Will you please,” he says, “just spit it out?”
“They’re not helping a Wolfpack,” says Mektu. “They want the bounty for themselves. And I think they might get it.”
“What, by killing us? Just the two of them? Why the hell do you say that?”
“Because I’m blind.”
“Mek—” Kandri gropes for his shoulder. “Don’t fuck with me. You’re totally blind?”
“Almost totally. And I know their plan now, Kandri. This time, I know. Your eyes are going too?”
“They’re going. I’m not blind yet, but—”
Waves of color, of mesmerizing light, travel constantly across his gaze; he is seeing the world through schools of fish. Blinking hard, he looks at the others. Eshett staggering, Talupéké furiously rubbing her eyes. Chindilan, still creeping along with that exaggerated caution of his.
Exaggerated? Or the caution of a blind man?
Kandri looks back over his shoulder. And suddenly the whole game is clear.
The two Tirmassil have thrown back their hoods. They are wearing tight masks over the upper half of their faces. Masks, and goggles. A circle of darkest glass for each eye.
“Salt blindness,” says Mektu, “like snow blindness in the mountains. We should have guessed, Kandri. Eshett said they kept her blindfolded.”
Salt blindness. And the Tirmassil have guarded themselves against it. Probably during every daylight hour, except when their faces might have been seen.
“We’ve got to run, Mek. Right now.”
“No!” hisses Mektu. “We’ve got to keep up appearances. They’re hungry, can’t you feel it?”
“Hungry?”
“They’re set to pounce, Kandri. They’re just waiting on our blindness, waiting—”
Crash.
Talupéké has fallen through the ice. She rises, staggering, covered in turquoise mud. Chindilan and Eshett grope for her, pawing at the air.
“—for us to give ourselves away.”
All bedlam erupts. Talupéké climbs from the pool with a sustained howl of madness or agony. The Tirmassil step onto the rim and move swiftly toward Kandri and Mektu. The brothers try to double their speed and barely save themselves from a headfirst plunge. Talupéké backhands Chindilan, still reaching for her blindly, and when Eshett tries to steady him, they fall and vanish through the ice of the adjacent pool. Talupéké shows no concern for their plight, or no awarenes
s. She draws her knives and slashes at random, screaming her bestial scream.
Kandri tries to shove his brother forward. “Move your ass, they’re drowning!” But Mektu has told the truth: he is very nearly blind. Kandri could force his way past him—but what then? Leave him standing here, waiting for Atau?
Curtains of fire, sprays of orange stars. Kandri blinks furiously. There, thank Ang, are Chindilan and Eshett, surfacing, clawing at the pool’s rim, breaking off large chunks of salt.
Behind them, the bald Tirmassil shouts with laughter. At the sound, Talupéké whirls, swaying in the wind. Then she lunges toward the sound, thrashing waist-deep through the turquoise pool she has just escaped.
Sudden, searing pain in his leg: one of the Tirmassil has thrown a rock. A second rock flies past his ear. What if they have bags of rocks? They could stand at a distance, stone the four of them to death. “Gods, brother,” he says, “I’m going to have to fight them.”
“We should split up,” says Mektu. “They want both our heads. I can’t fight; a six-year-old could kill me now. But I might draw one of them off.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
Talupéké wades closer, smashing ice with her fists. Kandri shuts his eyes for a precious moment. They can’t have many rocks; the shore is all fine scree. Nock an arrow. Hold them off. He opens his eyes again: pain and fire. But for a moment, he does see more clearly. The effect is slight and lasts not half a second. But it is real.
He shuts his eyes for a full five seconds. Again, fleeting clarity, followed by deeper blindness, searing pain. As if his eyes have shed a burning garment and then passed naked, when he opens them, back into a flame.
“Kandri, why are you stopping? Talk to me!”
Red pinwheels, spools of burning wire. The Tirmassil are within thirty yards. Forget the bow. If one of them gets past it, you’re dead. Use the machete. Don’t kill Mek on the backswing.
Talupéké is closer than the men, still erupting with high, horrific screams. They reach the next pool, and Kandri kicks at it with his boot. The ice seems to hold.
Master Assassins Page 24
