Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

  There is the nurse, the owner of those eyes. Tall, elegant, impassive. Sky-blue uniform, and skin of a pale amber-yellow. The guards’ skin is identical. “Welcome to the Xavasindran Medical Mission,” says the nurse.

  Xavasindrans. Of course. The best doctors in Urrath are not Urrathis. He has heard the claim a hundred times, but has never been close to one of these outlanders—has never glimpsed one, save for that single man in the crowd at Eternity Camp.

  Don’t gape, idiot. They’re just another kind of people, just one more clan.

  For the second time in a matter of hours, they are frisked and disarmed. Then the nurse waves them inside. “Quickly, twenty-seven. The door must not stand open.”

  The chamber is a stark, bright rectangle. There are two additional doors, one desk, five or six wooden chairs. A window behind the desk is covered with a fine metal grille, like chain mail nailed to a frame. What the hell can it be for? But even stranger are the lamps, which are innumerable and recessed into the ceiling—one every few inches, wall to wall. Their light is emerald-tinted and blinding. Kandri cannot look at them for long.

  The door closes softly. There is a whirring sound, like a great beehive waking, and Kandri feels a sudden pressure in his ears. The guards take up position around the walls of the chamber. The nurse extends an exquisitely clean hand, drops something into Kandri’s palm. It is a round plug of lead engraved with the number 27.

  “Do not lose this coin,” she says. “If you lose this coin, your weapons will not be returned.”

  Kandri finds he can only nod. The nurse looks them up and down.

  “By your expressions,” she says, “I infer that you have never visited a Mission before”—she glances at Mektu—“or never been admitted.”

  She slips into the chair behind the desk. She does not invite them to sit.

  “Do you have a number too?” Mektu asks, already leering. The woman ignores his question but asks many of her own, jotting Mektu’s answers in a notebook.

  Kandri listens agog to his brother’s effortless falsehoods. Very soon he is angry: unreasonably angry, for at this moment his brother is only saying what he must. No, his anger is for other moments, other lies, for the years of small performances.

  You’re a terrible actor, Kandri.

  You’ve never understood, have you, Mek? I was never acting at all.

  “Dr. Skarrys will attend you presently,” says the nurse, without looking up. “The waiting chamber is to my left. You may proceed.”

  The chamber into which they pass is strangely chilly. There are four chairs, a second door, and a low table with an odd, globular sculpture: a mushroom, maybe, or a clot of worms. Dominating one wall is a large glass window. No daylight enters there; in fact, Kandri can see nothing beyond it but darkness.

  With another hiss, the door shuts behind them. Mektu turns to Kandri, his face transformed. “We shouldn’t have come here,” he whispers. “They look like demons. This place is all wrong.”

  He is terrified. His behavior outside even more a performance than Kandri understood.

  “Enough nonsense, Mek. Your flesh is rotting. And the Xavasindrans are from across the ocean; naturally, they don’t look like us.”

  “Nothing is natural here,” says Mektu. “The lamps, that noise in the walls. And the cold in this room, it’s sorcery. Not even father could build this sort of thing.”

  “No, not even him.”

  “I don’t want them touching me, Kan.”

  “Not even that nurse?”

  He winks, desperate to lighten the mood. If Mektu panics they will be tossed out yet.

  His brother glances at the door. “I don’t know. She was beautiful. But what if they do something to me?”

  “All they’re going to do is ask you questions about the Plague. Now relax. This isn’t sorcery. Chindilan said they had tools unlike anything in Urrath, and he heard it from the Old Man.”

  “Why don’t they share it, then? If it’s natural, why don’t they show us how to make that sort of lamp?”

  Kandri hesitates. The Quarantine? The fabled Xavasindran oath of noninterference?

  “I can’t explain that,” he admits. “Princes play games with the world, and we’re just the chips. Nobody explains things to the chips. It’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter today.”

  “I’m not a chip,” says Mektu.

  “You’re sick, and they’re going to heal you,” says Kandri, “so don’t piss the bastards off.”

  Mektu paces. Kandri tries one of the chairs but jumps startled to his feet again: it is like sinking into a cake. He leans against the wall across from the window. He tries to distract his brother with something pleasant. Tell me a joke, Mek. Give me that bit from the War Choral about the old king and his swine.

  But Mektu just remarks that the pigs end up as sausages.

  Kandri moves on to Eshett: “She’s become a little fond of you, I think.” Mektu’s face brightens, but only for an instant. He says that Eshett has a husband in her village.

  “A husband? Eshett is married?”

  “Or a lover, anyway. She told me there’s someone she’s thinking about all the time.”

  Kandri shrugs. “That could be just about anyone. Her mother, or some favorite niece.”

  Mektu shakes his head. “I bought her pussy for a night and forgot about it.”

  “That doesn’t help,” Kandri agrees.

  “She’s no more fond of me than that nurse is.” He stops his pacing, lifts his hands to his temples. “It’s back,” he says. “That feeling I had in the ravine that something horrible’s coming. Let’s just go, can’t we, please? Before it’s too late?”

  “Don’t start that again,” says Kandri.

  “They might take something while I’m cut open. They might take my balls.”

  “Good. You’re not using them, anyway.”

  Mektu glares at him, says he isn’t afraid. Kandri smiles with one side of his mouth. But when Mektu’s own expression hardens, he knows he has made a mistake.

  “I use them,” says Mektu. “I’m not the one who buys time with a girl and then just sits there like a lulee.”

  Kandri shuts his eyes. So Mektu knows about that.

  “What’s the problem?” asks Mektu. “You can’t get it up? When you’re finally alone with a woman, your candle melts, is that it?”

  “No,” says Kandri, “and shut your vulgar mouth.”

  “You should have told the girls to shut theirs,” says Mektu. “Ah, but you did, didn’t you? You probably even paid them: otherwise, the whole camp would have known. But they told me because they were worried. It’s incredible: even the whores were worried about Kandri. You’re the one people always worry about. And you have a go at my manhood.”

  “It wasn’t about that, Mek. Calm down, for fuck’s sake.”

  His brother’s chest is heaving. Kandri cannot fathom what has set him off. Unless—

  He looks Mektu in the eye. Unless you really are in that kind of trouble. Pitfire, on top of everything else.

  Once again, Kandri’s face has given him away. Mektu looks at him, sneering. “Don’t worry about me,” he says. “I’m just fine with women. And you know who could have told you that.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “You should have asked her. ‘Tell me, Ariqina, do you sleep with my brother?’ Why didn’t you just ask?”

  Kandri feels a loathing settle deep in his limbs. This freak. This twisted little shit who’s plagued his life for ten years. This mean-hearted, worthless, unwanted brother. Yes, they could just walk out—and go their separate ways. Kandri could ditch him at the first street corner, leave him to his lies, let his wound burst like a pressure cooker, let him rot, let him go.

  His brother’s face is defiant, but his jaw is trembling: he has gone too far.

  “You want to leave?” says Kandri. “Take our chances in the city? Find some Mab Makkutin sawbones with ale on his breath?”

  Mektu blinks at him. “You me
an it?”

  Kandri doesn’t know if he means it, but he knows he must beat Mektu at his own game for once. He grabs his brother by the arm and starts to drag him toward the door.

  “Come on,” he snarls. “There’s a rusty knife with your name on it.”

  “Get your hands off me,” says Mektu.

  “You’re right,” says Kandri, releasing him. “I’m doing this the hard way.”

  He is almost to the door. Mektu stands rooted to the spot. “Where are you going?” he says.

  “On with my fucking life,” says Kandri, gripping the doorknob.

  “Brother,” says Mektu. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Kandri’s looks over his shoulder. Mektu stares at him, beseeching. Never in his life has Kandri seen him so vulnerable, so crippled by doubt.

  “Kandri,” he says, “this place scares the shit out of me.”

  There is a blaze of light.

  Kandri flinches; Mektu all but jumps out of his skin. It is the window, suddenly shining. Beyond it are eight seated figures, staring at them through the glass.

  The brothers recoil, as though caught in some indecency. Four women, four men. All of them studying the two soldiers with a quiet intensity, like theater-goers waiting for the show. Most are amber-skinned like the nurse and the security guards, but one woman is blacker than Chindilan; and one man, to Kandri’s slight disgust, is a pale gray with shades of pink, with veins clearly visible in his neck and forehead. All eight have notebooks in their laps.

  Kandri, shaken to his senses, takes a few halting steps in their direction. “Is one of you the doctor?” he demands.

  No answer. Kandri is not certain they can hear him. One of the men leans close to his neighbor and whispers, pointing at Mektu with a pencil. The man beside him nods.

  Kandri feels a sudden revulsion for the figures. To be examined thus, with such indifference, the way a butcher might examine his hogs . . .

  Gods of death. What if Mektu is right?

  But look again: they are not all indifferent. One person in the back row—a short man with black, braided hair—seems positively anxious: fidgeting, frowning, glancing sidelong at the others. What’s wrong, what’s happening? Kandri asks him silently. But the man will not meet his eye.

  The door near Mektu opens, and a smiling Xavasindran steps into the room. He is tall and graying at the temples; the effect is startling against his amber skin. He settles a pair of thick black spectacles upon his nose.

  “Twenty-seven,” he declares. It is neither question nor greeting. It is more formal than either: a labeling, perhaps.

  “Yes, that’s me,” says Mektu. “I had the Plague last year. I lay in bed—”

  “I am Dr. Skarrys, Epidemia Omnic. The Plague last year, and thoracic trauma earlier this month. An arrow. Very good. The Mission is glad to be of assistance in exchange for your interview. It is an equitable arrangement.” He turns to Kandri. “You are the brother escort. Will you please participate?”

  Kandri swallows. “Of course,” he manages to say.

  “Very good. Elder brother or younger?”

  “Elder.”

  “By just three days,” says Mektu under his breath.

  There is a stirring among the figures behind the glass. Kandri starts, looks over his shoulder. They can hear our every word!

  “Three days?” says Skarrys. “Your mother must have been exhausted. Were you tangled in the umbilicus?”

  “Oh, no,” says Mektu. “We were poor folk. We didn’t use such things.”

  The doctor looks from brother to brother. “Let’s sit down,” he says.

  The interview is strictly physical: age, diet, habits of exercise, hours of sleep. Most of the questions are for Mektu, and a good quarter of his answers are deranged. I can go two days without pissing if I want. I decided to stop seeing the color red. Kandri wants to kick him. The figures behind the window scribble furious notes.

  After some forty minutes, Skarrys takes off his glasses and just stares. Kandri cannot decide if he is angry or defeated. Mektu, his mask of bravado very much in place, gazes back at him.

  “You are a drug user, I think?” says Skarrys.

  Mektu nods solemnly.

  “Mek!” Kandri forces a laugh. “He’s not serious, Doctor. That was years ago, and even then it was just vaha-vipi, joyflowers. You chew them. Some people make tea.”

  “Kids’ stuff.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I imagine the Prophet put an end to that.”

  Silence. The eight behind the window look up from their notes. Skarrys has had a good look at their eyes.

  “Doctor,” says Kandri, “let me explain.”

  Skarrys stands, gives a curt little bow. “This interview is concluded,” he says, and moves toward the door.

  “Wait!” cries Kandri. He pulls up Mektu’s shirt: the wound is bulging and hideously discolored. “We answered all your questions,” he says. “You’ve got to help him, you promised! He’s going to die!”

  The doctor’s hand is on the doorknob. “Do you know why we come to Urrath, Soldier of Revelation?” he asks quietly. “To fight death, that is why. Not to conquer the next clan. Not to seize territory or demand revenge. Make no mistake: we are soldiers too, and missions like this one are outposts in a war. In our years in Urrath, we have eliminated two terrible diseases, and driven a third almost to ground. But our true enemy, our mortal enemy—he still has the upper hand. I mean the Throat Rust, of course. The World Plague. Have you ever watched a man die of Plague?”

  “I haven’t,” Kandri admits.

  “Of course not,” says Skarrys. “This continent is barely affected. Few Urrathis ever contract the World Plague, and those who do mostly recover on their own. Your resistance is almost supernatural. Only one in eight thousand Urrathis dies of Plague. But in the rest of the world? Have you any guess?” He slices the air with one hand. “Do not guess; I can stand no more chatter. The figure is one in seven.”

  Both brothers gape in horror. “Ang’s sweet tears,” says Kandri. “Why?”

  “Why, why!” booms the doctor. “That is the question that consumes us. We are glad to treat your lesser diseases, your parasites, your foolishly neglected wounds. But our quest is for the secret of your immunity to the great butcher of mankind. Urrath has a treasure for the world, sir. But it is buried somewhere in this wilderness, buried in your pitiful disorder. We must dig for that treasure. Nothing else matters in the end.”

  “My brother matters.”

  Skarrys opens the door and stands aside. “I said the interview was over, not your visit. Wait here, brother escort. Twenty-seven, kindly follow me.”

  They depart, the door closes, and the figures behind the window stand and rearrange their chairs. The new focus of their attention is the window on their left. Bright lamps have been lit behind it now, but from Kandri’s angle, the glass is merely translucent. Dimly, he sees his brother and Skarrys entering the room, the doctor’s gesture, Mektu unbuttoning his shirt. They stand thus for several minutes, the doctor bending closer to the wound. He can hear the faintest pulse of their voices. Then they move away from the window, and Kandri can see nothing at all.

  But the watchers can see everything, clearly. They are, Kandri notices, all rather young. His own age or younger, probably—but who can be sure with faces like that? In any event, they have forgotten him. Whatever is happening to Mektu holds them transfixed.

  Kandri begins to pace the room. Trust them. Miracle workers. Just look at these lamps. But that doctor was angry. Yes, and who can blame the man? He’s fighting the World Plague, and Mektu lied through his teeth.

  What about the general’s odd remarks in that bunker, though? He wasn’t eager to help us; and Mektu seemed to worry him especially. Is he looking for a way to divide us? Could the Xavasindrans somehow be part of that plan?

  Kandri thinks suddenly of Chindilan’s words in Eternity Camp. There’s nothing I can do for your brother. I’ve tried, Kandri. More than
you know.

  And again, the chaser: a feeling that scalds him with shame. The knowledge that he, Kandri, would understand Tebassa’s decision—for who in their right mind would consent to any journey with Mektu Hinjuman, the “unhinged clown”? Yes, he understands it. He could even forgive it, could he not?

  Even, in some rotten wormhole of his heart, feel a certain gratitude?

  But the general does not know his heart. No matter his brother’s idiocies, the general must have assumed that Kandri would never abandon him, or take up with anyone who meant him harm. So what does a cold-blooded bastard like Tebassa do with that fact? Abandon them both, abandon all the travelers?

  Or find a way to eliminate the clown?

  A way Kandri will have no reason to connect with Tebassa himself? And if that is the plan, how fortunate, how perfect, that the clown is already in danger of death. But could Tebassa really have such sway with these foreigners? Could any doctor, foreign or Urrathi, be so depraved as to kill a patient for the convenience of a warlord?

  Kandri freezes: music. Someone is playing a piano, a jaunty and rather cloying tune. It seems to be coming from the wall opposite the window.

  He goes to the wall and touches it. The wooden planks vibrate on the low notes. A beer-hall musician in a surgery. What the fuck, what the fuck.

  He sits down in a sponge-cake chair. His fears are running away with him. You had to bring him here. You don’t want some local jackass wielding that knife.

  Then, faint and distorted, he hears a voice shout, No!

  “Mek?”

  “NO!”

  Kandri sprints to the door. Locked. Mektu is bellowing, No no no get it away from me stop! Kandri flies across the room to the door they entered by. Then stops short. A dozen guards wait in that chamber. Mektu cries out again. Kandri grips the doorknob and turns.

  Locked.

  He hurls himself against the door. He runs to the window and pounds with both fists. He begins to shout at them, to demand they release his brother, to threaten and curse. The watchers do not spare him a glance.