Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

  We’re fucking thirsty.

  For one terrifying moment, they fear they have aimed for the wrong summit, lost their friends in this sea of once-drowned hills. Then a flash of sunlight on metal. It is Chindilan, atop the next ridge, signaling with the side of his axe.

  He comes reeling down the slope; they meet at the bottom and embrace. His eyes are sunken and his shriveled skin has a waxy sheen. Grinning, he takes the faska from Kandri’s hand.

  “Finish it!” says Kandri. “Just please be careful, Uncle. We can’t afford to spill a drop.”

  The smith takes only a mouthful, dribbling the water through lips like cicada skins. After swallowing with concentration, he speaks in a pained, dry whisper.

  “Saved . . . one mouthful . . . so I could yell . . . Ang’s tears . . . glad to see you . . . come on.”

  He leads them west around the hill, to a small escarpment where Talupéké lies sprawled on Chindilan’s riding coat, a rough bandage covering her eyes.

  She is utterly motionless as they approach, but when the smith kneels and lifts her head, she frowns and starts to fight him. “Shh, dear,” says Chindilan. “They’ve found us. . . . We’re safe.”

  Her lips have dried together; Chindilan has to split them open with his fingers, like a rind. He whispers their story as she drinks.

  Talupéké’s madness had carried her almost to the hills. Then her legs had collapsed. She had lain in the sun, screaming and thrashing awhile, and finally slept. Chindilan (after taking away her knives) had dragged her on his riding coat through the worst heat of the afternoon. Up to that point, he had merely followed her voice; he was too blind even to make out the horizon. He prayed they were still making for the hills, where there would be some hope of shade. He had walked face-first into cacti and stumbled into holes. He had heard the chirrup of a deadly khela lizard, a poison-spitter, and felt a snake pass like the crack of a bullwhip across his boot.

  “Then your flare . . . couldn’t answer . . . had some arrows but . . . nothing . . . wanted to burn.”

  “But you found something finally,” says Eshett.

  The smith nods, makes a chopping gesture, then points at Talupéké. “Her braid . . . oily . . . as a wick.”

  “I’ll bet she loved you for that,” says Mektu.

  Chindilan looks at Talupéké thoughtfully, and rasps, “Still . . . delirious . . . said they’d make fun of her . . . at school.”

  They drink the faskas dry, lavishing water on the smith and Talupéké. The big hill provides shade until almost midday, and again from midafternoon until dusk. Then Kandri climbs to the summit, and even without the telescope, he can see the lamps of villages along the Rim.

  V. GIVE YOUR SOUL

  After six hours, Ut’xing tired of the yatra’s teasing. He clapped his hands, and his priests lit a fire of silphium, and the demon hissed and rattled the window casings. Throwing them open, the Emperor laughed: “How simple a matter it is to drive you off!”

  The demon fled the palace as a whirlwind, never to return. But its parting words echoed in the courtyard, and long in the mind of Ut’xing.

  “Simple as well to cast a stone, Prince of Nations. But who may retrieve it from the sea?”

  ANNALS OF UT’XING

  Mektu is bringing water to the pigs. Kandri, smoking under a persimmon tree, watches his advance across the blazing yard, the ghost-white farm dog padding at his heels. In the four days they have sheltered there, the animal has grown quite fond of Mektu, but bristles and growls at Kandri himself. No justice. Kandri even tossed it a chicken bone. The dog had shied from the offering, which later crossed the farmyard on the shoulders of ants.

  Chindilan, near the fence, is hacking at a stump with a splitting maul. The old woman who owns the farm is a war widow and somehow indebted to Talupéké. She asks nothing of them, but they mean to earn their keep.

  Kandri leans back against the tree. Swallows, grasshoppers, a blossoming vine along the fence. How can it be that they are fugitives? How can the world have little places like this one, and legions of men who want them dead?

  Kandri lifts his gaze. The little homestead crouches on the rim of the Yskralem, half a mile north of Mab Makkutin, the city withering inside its Imperial wall. He can see the whole of the dusty road to the northern gate: deserted, save for a few children kicking a rag ball in the distance.

  No Eshett. No Talupéké. He snuffs his cheroot against a rock and pockets the stub.

  Damn the both of you. It’s past noon. You promised to come back hours ago.

  Four days since they crawled from the Stolen Sea. The first two given over entirely to sleep. This is the breather that Chindilan spoke of, that first day, while they still clung to the shade of the western cliff. But already, Kandri worries that they have stayed too long.

  Yesterday, the women had set out for the city to bargain for the men’s passage across the desert, and Eshett’s as far as her village. The men had balked at the idea of sending them alone, but Eshett and Talupéké held firm: the last thing they wanted was an escort of deserters from the Army of Revelation.

  “You want to protect us?” said Eshett. “Hide your damned tinted eyes.”

  And that makes sense. The eyestain would betray them to anyone close enough for a handshake. No one is safe in their company; even the war widow had come close to turning them away. They have the mysterious stain-suppressing ointment from Garatajik’s pack, but so little of it, and who can say when their lives might depend on such a trick? Nor do they fancy the ointment’s “burning and irritation”—not in eyes still recovering from salt blindness.

  So the men had stayed behind, seething more than resting, while the women scoured the city. They had focused their efforts at the Dawn Gate, the east-facing gate, which in addition to having some holy significance was also the point from which all caravans set out. “There’s a market for travelers heading east—the Desert Market, they call it—just outside the wall,” Talupéké had said. “And the Dawn Gate brings good luck to everyone”—she glanced at Mektu—“if you’re respectful.”

  But the Dawn Gate, whatever it was, had brought no luck at all, and at noon they had returned discouraged. Passage for strangers in hiding? No one had wanted to discuss the matter. Today, the women had set out at sunrise, steeled for a longer search.

  Someone will need the money, Kandri thinks for the hundredth time. With the gold and rubies from Garatajik, they should be able to hire men to carry them on their shoulders. And then there is the mattoglin, a fortune in itself. No one contests Eshett’s claim to the blade. But since the incident at the Snakeskin, she has been muttering about “that cursed weapon” and joking (was she joking? Can she joke?) about dropping it into a well. Kandri is not about to let that happen, but what to do with the thing? Fence it here in Mab Makkutin and hope it isn’t recognized? Or carry it with them—heavy, desperately hidden, a temptation beyond words—and pray that they are never searched?

  In any case, gold is clearly not enough. Desert caravans are not stagecoach services, apparently. And even a stagecoach driver will whip his horses past suspicious men on the roadside. What can the women be saying? Gods’ peace, stranger: how far can you take us, and how soon? One of us is a Parthan; will you pass close to her village? Will you ask no questions? Will you trust us, and the men we haven’t brought along?

  No, it can’t be easy. But for the moment, all he wants is to see Eshett and Talupéké emerge from the road’s shimmering heat. They had promised to return by midmorning, and now his thoughts are full of dark conjectures.

  He rises, crosses the farmyard, wipes his feet by the kitchen door. Within the house, the light is dim. He moves to the corner of the main room, where the four of them have spread their bedrolls, and retrieves the telescope from his pack. Then he climbs the stairs to the rooftop terrace.

  The old woman, Yehita-Chen, is hanging laundry along one wall. She smiles vaguely at him, her eyes clouded with cataracts.

  “Don’t you fear for them,�
� she says. “That soldier girl of yours was trained by General Tebassa. She knows how to stay alive.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, mother,” says Kandri, but his words are mere politeness. Talupéké’s hints have made him wonder if the great Black Hat himself is alive.

  He raises the telescope. Mab Makkutin’s Imperial wall is vast and cold. Chindilan spoke of it as a ruin, but Kandri can see no breach in the massive structure, only the occasional crumbled rampart or turret in disrepair. But he can see over the wall: Yehita’s farm stands on a bluff, and Mab Makkutin, the former port, straddles the lowest stretch of cliff for many miles. Dying or not, the city is strangely beautiful. There are barnacle-like clusters of tiny houses, smooth-walled and white and devoid of sharp corners, with round chimneys and windows like holes punched in dough. There are shops and teahouses crowded with customers, teeming schoolyards, dogs basking in the sun.

  But between these brighter districts—looming over them—are crumbling halls and towers and warehouses built on an entirely different scale: the remains of the Imperial city, wreckage from the time of kings. They stand shunned, these monstrous buildings. Tomb-like, they look down on the living city with dismay.

  And somewhere in that city, that Ghost Port, walk Eshett and Talupéké. Merciful Ang, what’s keeping them? What danger have they landed in for us?

  But Ang has no comment, and Kandri sweeps the telescope to the east.

  The land is a fragile green. The rivers that fed the Yskralem are gone, but many thin, trickling streams still water the plain of the Lutaral. In the distance, Kandri spots antelope and wild buffalo, and farther yet, the steep Arig Hills that form another sort of wall: between this gentle country and the desert. Sumuridath Jal, the Land that Eats Men. Will they lose the hunters in that inferno, or just their lives?

  Don’t think about that. Study life while you can. Prancing colts in a barnyard half a mile away, carts heaped with winter oranges, red herons strung like jewels along a stream.

  And to the north, a bamboo watchtower, new-built, soaring. Kandri frowns: why place it there? What danger does Mab Makkutin face from the north?

  “Mother,” he calls to the old woman, “how far off is the war front?”

  “One hundred miles, give or take,” she says. “Your Prophet’s men are dug in north of Harul Makkut, last I heard. Now get down from here before you’re spotted. The women will be along.”

  Kandri descends to the farmyard. Chindilan is leaning on the splitting maul, soaked in sweat.

  “Take a rest,” says Kandri. “I’ll finish off that stump when the heat breaks.”

  “That’s what I told him,” says Mektu, emerging from the henhouse. Clutched awkwardly in his hands are nine or ten almond-brown eggs.

  “You’d do better with a skirt,” says Kandri.

  “You’d do better with this egg up your ass.”

  Kandri giggles despite himself. The joke is less in the words than the voice Mektu has adopted: an uncanny impression of their mother, Dyakra, who even at swordpoint would never say anything so vulgar.

  “Stop that, it’s creepy,” says Chindilan. “How are those eyes of yours, anyway? Still improving?”

  “I found the eggs, didn’t I?”

  Kandri lifts a corner of his brother’s shirt. He winces. The spot where the arrow pierced Mektu’s side is healing swiftly, but the exit wound is another matter: red and tight as a blister. Closest to the scar, red flesh gives way to yellow. Kandri’s fingers, hovering over the wound, can sense the heat without touching it.

  “Charming,” says his uncle. “Something you can brag about with the ladies.”

  His tone is light, but when Kandri catches his eye, he knows Chindilan feels the same dread that he does. The wound is festering. Mektu needs a doctor—a real doctor, not some village sawbones with grimy fingernails. And that will be the end of secrecy. Unless the doctor is as good a soul as this old woman.

  A growl: the dog has heard something on the road. Kandri turns and sees a man in ragged uniform, still far off but coming their way. It is one of the sentries from the tower.

  “What are they after now?” says Kandri. “This morning it was sweet limes. Yesterday too. They buy a lot of sweet limes.”

  “I don’t think we need to hide from those kids,” says Mektu. “They don’t even come into the yard. If they’re snooping, it’s only because they’re bored. You know what tower duty’s like.”

  “Don’t assume they’re harmless,” says Chindilan. “They serve at the pleasure of the Ursad of Mab Makkutin, and he is a ruthless man. Tight-fisted, charming, murderous when necessary. He was a soldier, then a warlord, and then he seized Mab Makkutin and made it his own private piggy bank. He’s incredibly rich. They say he has a war elephant, and brings it out on special occasions to amaze the rabble. I don’t know about the elephant, but I know he has spies. Every tenth man is a spy.”

  “How long ago did you say you were here, Uncle?” says Mektu.

  “Don’t call me Uncle. Eleven years, maybe twelve.”

  “Maybe he’s grown gentler with age,” says Mektu.

  “Rubbish,” says the smith.

  “That’s what happens to some men. They get gentler. Also slower, and fat.”

  Chindilan looks daggers at him. “The Ursad’s a bit like that dog you’re so fond of,” he says. “He can sit quietly, play favorites, keep watch on his little kingdom. Or he can rip your throat out for looking at him cross-eyed. Or because you look like a nice slab of meat. And who do you think tosses him the sweetest morsels? The Prophet, that’s who. You can bet your bread and butter that whatever his spies learn, Her Radiance learns soon enough. So get your asses into the house.”

  They know the drill. Close the shades. Sit in silence at the table. Wait for Yehita-Chen to fetch whatever the sentry is buying, to lie again about her guests. Wool merchants: that is the story they have settled on. Readying themselves for a journey by camel-train, south to Sendu where wool is in demand. No, they’d prefer not to meet anyone. They’re a bit timid, you see. A bit ashamed of their rags.

  The dog has slipped inside with them; it nudges Mektu, who smiles and scratches its ear. Kandri’s nails bite into his palm. If he is ashamed of anything, it is that he hasn’t found Mektu a doctor. They had to rest, he tells himself. Even with the Prophet seeking them everywhere, even knowing another Wolfpack might ride out of the Stolen Sea. Their eyes had to heal, their burned skin recuperate, their dry flesh take on water. To light out into the desert otherwise would have been unthinkable.

  But for Mektu, lighting out untreated would be a death sentence.

  Late afternoon. Yehita-Chen has stopped telling them not to worry. The men put on the anonymous clothes she provided—her dead husband’s, presumably—and set out for Mab Makkutin, surly and swift. The brothers have strapped their machetes across their backs, underneath their robes. Chindilan brings only a dagger: no wool merchant, he concedes reluctantly, ambles into town with a battle axe.

  The smith chatters as they walk, betraying his unease. “We’ll start at the Dawn Gate, and that Desert Market. You two should see the Gate anyway; it’s a marvel. So old, even the Kasrajis couldn’t say who built it, when they came here a thousand years back. They built it into their own wall, you see: whatever fortification it was part of was gone, eradicated, but the old gate’s still sound. I passed through it myself, with my garrison. I still see it in my dreams.”

  “How close is the Great Desert, uncle?” asks Mektu.

  Chindilan turns his face to the wall of hills. “Close enough to touch,” he says. “From the peaks of the Arigs, you look right down into its jaws, and you can’t believe this green country can go on existing. It’s like a baby snuggled up to a crocodile.”

  The heat is lifting, the road busy again. Peddlers and farmers pass in both directions, leading horses and camels, fodder tied in enormous bundles on their backs. Voices like a lazy river: Good day, brothers, Ang keep you. May fortune smile on your journey. The three men ret
urn the pleasantries but keep their distance, hiding their eyes.

  They near the wall and the city’s north-facing gate. This close, Kandri can see the decay his uncle spoke of. The wall’s great corbelled turrets are shedding their roof tiles; the iron gates are gnawed by rust. Still—

  “It’s so damned huge.”

  Chindilan nods. “And this was the periphery of the Empire, the lacy trim. Imagine the great cities at the height of Kasraji power. Imagine Kasralys, to this day. Jeshar, is that . . .” He points straight ahead at the city. “Ang’s blood, lads, it’s them!”

  Eshett and Talupéké are running out through the city gate, making straight for them. Mektu gropes for his machete, but Kandri stops him with a wave. “Don’t draw! No one’s chasing them. Keep that blade out of sight.”

  The women skid to a halt before them. “What are you doing here?” hisses Eshett. “Are you trying to ruin everything? Have you forgotten your eyes?”

  “Have you forgotten what midmorning means?” Kandri counters. “What did you think, that we’d stay back there shooting marbles?”

  “Something happened,” says Talupéké. “I had to go somewhere fast.”

  “Well, then, don’t mention it.”

  “Let her explain, boy,” says Chindilan. Since the Yskralem, he has become almost maddeningly tolerant of Talupéké’s quirks.

  “Harach, we can’t just stand here,” says Eshett, “and you can’t pass through the gate until nightfall, or twilight anyway.”

  They look around, awkward as hell, and at last spot a man with a two-wheeled food cart making for the gate. Pouncing on the startled fellow, they buy five lamb skewers, and crouch in a circle by the road’s edge, gnawing like wolves.

  “Bad luck again,” says Eshett through a mouthful. “Only three caravans preparing for the desert.”