Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “And you know what followed,” says Chindilan, squatting on his heels by the fire. “Or at least a version of it. They were flesh traders—Tirmassil, if you like. They didn’t need to buy pussy from a hayseed pimp like Samidya. They wanted young girls to sell—especially girls with huge, dark eyes. And they found one, thanks to a young kid named Marz.”

  “No.”

  “He took shelter in divinity school, the phony bastard, when he saw what he had done. Of course, it was too late by then. And Lantor—he’s been making amends all his life. Traveling to war-torn lands, snatching up orphaned kids before the Tirmassil arrive, finding homes for them all. But it’s never enough, is it? There’s one kid he can’t go back and save.”

  Chindilan pokes at the fire with a stick. “I met him three years later, and we’ve been best friends ever since. I don’t believe he’s told another soul, except Dyakra, of course.” The smith looks at Kandri, desolate. “It’s consumed his life.”

  “He was nine,” says Kandri.

  “Try telling the Old Man that. I have, for damned near fifty years.”

  “What did they do with the girl?”

  Chindilan sighs. “Don’t go stupid on me now, Kandri. They had a buyer already. A man who paid in diamonds for big-eyed girls. The fact that he was a cave-dwelling, Važek-slaughtering Chiloto warlord didn’t matter one bit.”

  Kandri stands clutching his ridiculous teacup. He cannot speak. Like his father half a century ago, he feels himself falling, head over heels, into a lightless pit.

  “Warlord?” he croaks at last.

  “The warlord,” says Chindilan. “Bitruk Uslor, who made his base at Hunger Cliff. Who added that girl to his stable of wives, and sired four sons on her.” Chindilan raises his fingers, counting. “Jihalkra. Ojulan. Garatajik. Etarel. I don’t know where this White Child came from—whether she created it, or called it up from hell. I don’t know how she came by her gifts. But that girl was our Prophet, Kandri. And the vision that came to her a few years later? The rising of the Chiloto, Heaven’s Path, and the War of Revelation? I suppose that was the fate she was trying to avoid.”

  The water is only lukewarm, but while he is soaking, a youth from the hill clans appears with a great clay vessel held by tongs. It is glowing at the base. Kandri stands, numb and naked; the youth empties it into the copper bathing tub. Kandri sits. Now the water is too hot, burning really, but the pain is a distant thing. The dried blood lifts from his forearms in translucent flakes.

  He scrubs himself. There is a feast laid out in the main chamber that he could not make himself touch. He is soaking in the blood of the tower watchmen; he is drowning in the blood of the world. Like his father, those three guards were told to stand and wait for trouble to find them. Three weeds, cut down by all-powerful happenstance, the great mower of mankind.

  No, Kandri. Cut down by your brother and you.

  The youth is also waiting, peering anxiously at Kandri’s face. “Thank you,” says Kandri. “Go away now. I don’t want anything else.”

  “Dethen sara nanasin, ko.”

  Kandri cannot even identify the language. “Kasraji?” he tries.

  The youth shakes his head. No Imperial Common. Maybe it never penetrated these hills. Kandri puts his hands together, palm to palm, hoping his thanks will at least be understood. The youth hesitates, then bows and slips away.

  As he lifts the curtain, Kandri sees Mektu in his own bath, twenty feet away. His head is thrown back as though his neck is broken. He is sound asleep.

  The Prophet’s name is Tamahín.

  Or was. Kandri has never heard so much as a whispered rumor that she possessed an earthly name.

  A Kasraji name. The Mother of All Chilotos is only part Chiloto. We worship a mongrel. And without her, we’d still be in chains.

  Kandri slides down, plunging his head below the surface. Too hot. Stay down anyway. Burn out your eyes.

  Endless war. Misery, horror, theft, poisoned fields, burning villages, burning houses, screams of children within. A liberation become a march of hate and slaughter, a fever dream of eleven sons on eleven thrones, all Urrath bowing before one family, before one twisted, unstoppable lie.

  That was what his father was carrying: the blame for all of it. Because he’d been afraid to open a door.

  Egotist! How can you cling to that? You were a child, Papa. No child can be held to the standards of a man.

  He rises. Next to the tub stands Eshett, wrapped in a white sarong.

  He sits up so quickly that water sloshes onto the floor.

  “What’s the matter?” he demands, covering himself.

  “Nothing’s the matter. Hush.”

  She is freshly bathed; steam rises from her skin. Something about her face has changed, as though some force has taken hold and reimagined it, the knowing eyes, the wet locks plastered against her cheeks.

  “That servant,” she said. “He was trying to tell you that we’re expected below. In ten minutes. You and your uncle talked a long fucking time.”

  “Ten minutes?”

  Eshett shrugs. “Forget I told you. If they want you on time, they should send someone who can speak your language.”

  She steps closer, until she is alongside his knees. Through the wet muslin he can see all of her, save the breasts concealed by one arm. He tries to avert his eyes. Succeeds in averting one of them, momentarily. Why hasn’t he looked at her before? This desert woman. This Parthan who held him in a tunnel beneath a grave.

  “Eshett, my brother is in love with you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “In a few days, I’ll rejoin my clan. I’m a sand rat, and he’ll never be. It doesn’t matter what we feel.”

  “And me—I love—there’s this woman—”

  “Don’t say it, don’t say her name again. You think I don’t know?”

  “Where’s my uncle?”

  All at once she is exasperated. “Somewhere else! Echim baruk, can’t you ever stop talking? I am clean. Hurry up.”

  He lifts a hand from the water, reaches for her, grazes her hip through the sarong.

  “You don’t understand,” he pleads, withdrawing the hand. “What Uncle told me was too terrible. There’s no way.”

  She puts a hand under his chin.

  “You’re afraid that you’re a bad man,” she says. “Stop thinking that. It’s not true.” Her fingers rise, trembling, teasing his lips. “When I go, I’ll never see you again. I want anga with you, sweet anga, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, turning away.

  “So I disgust you, maybe.”

  “What?”

  “You have ideas about Parthans, our bad habits, our smell.”

  “Eshett, Eshett, no.”

  “Why don’t you say it? I’m still dirty, in your eyes. Once a whore, always—”

  He puts his lips to her sex, clumsy, the muslin between them thinner than smoke. He no longer knows anything, the world is broken, his arm is tight around her hips, her body shudders, her dark curls wet his face. Maybe he’s crying. There are yards of this white stuff. Her hands strong on the back of his neck, she leans into him and whispers his name and no he’s not crying, except with gladness maybe, Eshett, beautiful Eshett, and then the muslin parts and her leg hooks over his shoulder and his tongue finds the way.

  When they return to the general’s council, it is as if no time has passed at all. The whole company is present, the fire bright, the wine making the rounds. Chindilan is brooding. Mektu, his hair still wet, looks sleepy and disoriented; Kandri is disoriented for very different reasons. Only Eshett is perfectly herself.

  Tebassa, who warned them to reach the Cavern on time or not at all, makes no mention of their lateness. He asks if their new clothes fit, if the food is to their liking. They answer yes without hesitation. All of them, even Kandri, have just wolfed down beef and yams and bread and apples, squatting in a circle, eating with both hands.

  “And the baths?” asks the general.

/>   Kandri swallows. Chindilan’s mouth works, as if he were chewing a lemon.

  “The baths were perfect,” says Eshett.

  “You’ve treated us like princes, general,” says Mektu.

  “Better,” says Tebassa. “Our young Prince Nirabha is out there with the camels and dogs.”

  The room explodes with nervous laughter. Suddenly, Mektu drops to one knee, crosses the knee with his forearm, and bows his head until eyebrows meet wrist. Kandri and Chindilan glance at each other and quickly mimic the gesture, as they know they must. It is an old and formal salute.

  Tebassa looks very pleased. “Rise, rise,” he says, and they do. The whole room is beaming, none more so than the general himself. “I grant favors only to the deserving,” he says. “And tell me: who is more deserving than the killers of the Prophet’s sons?”

  Silence, quick as a candle snuffed. The general twists around to look at his men.

  “You heard me. These are the assassins who struck Eternity Camp. No cheering, now; there are civilians nearby. We don’t want the whole of the Arig Hills to know who we’ve added to our company.”

  Kandri feels the prickling of hairs along his arms. Our company. He knows at once that he must speak, must shatter Tebassa’s implication before it can harden into fact.

  “We haven’t joined your company,” he blurts.

  “You’ve not had the chance until now,” says Tebassa.

  “But General, we can’t. And we never asked to. We have our own plans.”

  Sharp looks from the soldiers. Chindilan clamps his big hand on Kandri’s shoulder. Slow down. The general shows no surprise, but his smile has faded.

  “What do you suppose we’re discussing, here, Mr. Hinjuman? A social club? A farmer’s cooperative? No doubt there are some houses where a man may come begging and pounding on the door, and then hesitate when the door is thrown open, but this house is not among them. We are the Unified Survival Forces. As long as you’re willing to aid that survival, you’re our brothers, and we’ll move heaven and earth for you.”

  “We need your aid, General,” says Chindilan, “but we need it to make good our escape. From the very start, we’ve known what we had to do: reach the Great Desert and vanish from the Prophet’s sight. We’re almost there. All we need is your good word to that Mr. Ifimar.”

  “My good word,” says the general. “Is that so slight a thing?”

  “You know we can’t remain in the Lutaral,” says Kandri. “There’s no safety for us here.”

  “One can live without safety,” says the general. “Some of us have done so all our lives. A true soldier dwells on other things. Honor, to start with—and, as my grandfather used to say, honor to end with, and honor at every point in between. Make that your focus, Corporal Hinjuman, and let safety take care of itself. You will learn once you’ve been among us awhile.”

  Kandri feels a stab of cold in his chest. Here it is: the doctor’s bill. The cost of keeping Mektu alive.

  “But they’re not soldiers,” says Eshett, looking hard at the general. “Not good ones, anyway. They’re bunglers, idiots. They’d be useless to you.”

  “They take knives to the Prophet’s children,” says Tebassa. “The ones she claims the Gods themselves have chosen to be her ministers, when she rules over Urrath—and you call them bunglers? That is fanciful, I must say. Now be still.”

  He straightens, and Kandri has the impression that he would like very much to rise from his chair. In the room’s perfect silence, he looks from face to face. At last his eyes settle on Eshett again.

  “You, Parthan woman, can go your own way with our blessing. Seek your people, resume your life. But for you three”—his gaze swivels to the men—“I suggest you pause and reflect. You are still not so very far from home. One day we will emerge victorious, not just in the Lutaral but in all these western lands, and men like you will return to the Sataapre Valley as liberators. But cut the cord, and who knows what you will become? Drifters, faithless men. Vassals of some country so strange to you that your hearts will only sleep there, and your days be dross. If you even live to see such a place.”

  “You’re trying to scare us, General Tebassa,” says Kandri.

  “It is your plight that should scare you,” says Tebassa. “The choice you face is stark. Join the Survival Forces and have a family. Embrace our code, our dangers, our loves. You may find lifelong mates among us. You will certainly find satisfaction for your natural wants. But above all, you will find honor. We are true men and women. We do not fuss and fiddle about and tell half-lies for the sake of convenience. We live and die by our word. And we fight for the restoration of a just rule in our corner of Urrath. It is a fight Lantor Hinjuman understood, when he sat beside me in this room.”

  The thought flashes instantly through Kandri’s mind: But he didn’t join you, did he?

  “General, sir, where is he?” Mektu pleads.

  “Join us,” continues Tebassa, as though he has not heard the question, “or strike out alone into a hostile world: no other way for you exists. I know the dream you have followed thus far. I know there is a certain face that teases your hearts: a girl’s face, and a sweet voice to go with it. But that girl is no more, lads. She left you cold in the Sataapre. She has either perished or found another love, and built another life in which you play no part.”

  Mektu is trembling a little. Kandri, abashed and furious, looks at Chindilan and Eshett, but their wide eyes protest their innocence. Who told this old monster about Ariqina, then? Talupéké? What had Chindilan shared with her on that hilltop in the Stolen Sea?

  “I’ve struck the mark, haven’t I?” says Tebassa, for once without a hint of a smile. “An exquisite lover, was she? Hands made to touch you, a voice to cut your heart, the closest thing to perfection in this world? Don’t be ashamed, lads: you’re hardly alone. Look at the faces around you. Everyone’s perfect love is lost. Fortunately, imperfect love comes at need, and with care and dedication grows into something fine, if unimagined. Wait and see.”

  He makes a flicking gesture with two fingers and a thumb. “Or don’t wait,” he says. “Keep running from life, and good luck to you. But do not base your choice on an illusion.”

  “An illusion, General?” says Kandri.

  “Lad,” says Tebassa, “all the miles and wounds and visions and noble suffering a soul can endure will not restore her to your arms.”

  He sits back, crossing his arms. His perfect seriousness, the disappearance of any teasing or derision, somehow unsettles Kandri immensely. The whole room waits in silence: clearly the travelers are to tender their decision here and now.

  Kandri turns to the others and sees the same terrible anxiety he feels. Pledge themselves to Tebassa? Ridiculous. Not this side of hell. And yet, whispers a second part of himself, it would be an answer of sorts, a refuge. To become soldiers again, once more a part of a whole—and this time, a whole small enough for the mind to grasp, small enough that everyone would soon learn your name. To be executing another’s decisions, to lose this exhausting burden of choice.

  And with it, Ariqina.

  Kandri pinches shut his eyes. All rubbish, manipulation, a steaming pile of goat shit. Black Hat Tebassa cannot protect them from the Prophet. He can’t even protect himself, the old fool.

  Don’t lie to yourself, Kandri. Tebassa’s no fool. Even a wise man’s luck runs out eventually. Look at Garatajik.

  Ah, Garatajik. Who else is going to see that his letter reaches Dr. Tsireem? And suppose I agree that Tebassa’s intelligent. That doesn’t mean he’s not a conceited old prick. How dare he talk of abandoning love? What does he know of our bond, mine and Ariqina’s? Whatever made her run off wasn’t lack of love for me.

  But you’ve just been with Eshett. What does that say about your bond?

  Kandri will not answer that question. He wants to be with her again, tonight, as soon as possible. Then persuade her to stay with you. No, no, no. Imagine the madness that would erupt in your brother
. He’d never forgive you. Not after Ari chose you as well.

  Hundreds of eyes on them. Tight, calm smiles. The general always gets his way. So think once more, Kandri: what if it is the best way? What other allies have you found since you crawled under that fence at Eternity Camp? And isn’t he already working to put you in touch with your father?

  More to the point, wouldn’t you be dead already without Tebassa’s help? How is dead the better choice than alive and delayed?

  Kandri shakes himself. He knows all about delay.

  There is nothing for it. They must refuse; they must go to the outer cavern and buy passage with that caravan, help Eshett reach her village, brave the desert and all it contains. And yes, find their way to Kasralys, and to Ariqina. Sometimes, the fate you see is a good one, not a horror. Sometimes, you shouldn’t try to escape.

  To his immense relief, he sees the same resolve in his brother’s face. Silently, Mektu mouths, We should leave. Kandri has to smile: it is what his brother has been telling him for months.

  Eshett meets his eye and nods, places a hand on her chest. I’m with you. Kandri smiles at her, loving her, grateful beyond words. How had Tebassa’s offer even made him hesitate? The absurdity, the sheer lunacy of the idea—

  Chindilan. He is staring at the entrance. Talupéké has slipped into the room.

  She is winded, gasping, her riding clothes soaked through with sweat. Mouth sarcastic, eyes imploring. Holding herself as still as possible and holding the smith like a bird cupped in a hand.

  Eshett, fearful, touches Chindilan on the arm. The smith shrugs her off with a twitch. Then he draws a deep breath and turns away from Talupéké. “Time we were leaving,” he whispers in Chilot.

  Their decision causes an uproar. Growls give way swiftly to hisses, muttered oaths. Tebassa sits quietly, bemused. Stilts, with a worried look in his old eyes, attempts once more to change their mind, but he and everyone else know the struggle is over.