Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

  The council chamber is all but deserted; only the travelers, Stilts, and Mansari remain. The fire is snapping and gnawing through a last armful of cedar. Stilts is winding a bandage around Chindilan’s ankle. Mansari is trimming his beard.

  “I told Kandri not to mention that letter,” says Chindilan. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. What you do when you open your mouth is as hard to ignore as what a skunk does when it lifts its tail.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s fucking charitable!” snaps Chindilan. Then he sighs, and grips Mektu’s shoulder. “Knowing would have just made you feel worse. You’d just stabbed Lord Garatajik.”

  Kandri slides the calfskin pouch, newly resealed, safely down into the depths of his pack.

  “We should be celebrating,” says Eshett. “Shouldn’t we?”

  “It would be unlike you to squander a chance to bicker like, hmm, imbeciles,” says Mansari.

  “Shut up and trim me,” says Chindilan.

  “We should all be celebrating,” says Stilts. “This is an earthquake. We may live to see the end of Quarantine, the transformation of the world. Unless Garatajik is a liar.”

  “We can’t even read the damned thing properly,” says Mektu, for the fifth or sixth time. “Why would he do such a thing? Why would he deliberately make it unreadable?”

  The letter, as they all learned when Tebassa let them approach, switches languages after the first page, from Kasraji to some entirely different tongue, and only returns to Imperial Common in the final paragraph, exhorting Dr. Tsireem to act with courage, but trust in very few, for our foe has a million eyes. Between the opening paragraph and these closing words are four mystifying pages. Not even the characters are familiar.

  “He must have chosen a language known to Dr. Tsireem,” says Kandri. “He wanted to keep the cure a secret from everyone but her.”

  “What for?” says Mektu.” Why didn’t he scream it from the rooftops? Or at the very least take the cure to the Xavasindrans?”

  “Lack of time?” says Stilts.

  “No, not that,” says Chindilan. “He didn’t even try to contact anyone, at least in the five weeks I served him. Maybe he was only certain of what he’d found in those last days. He was acting oddly then—almost as if he were drunk. This in a man who never touches the bottle.”

  “But why only tell Dr. Tsireem?” Mektu insists. “Why not a hundred letters?” He stands straight, cups his hands to his mouth. “‘SEE HERE, WORLD: THIS AND ONLY THIS WILL PROTECT YOU FROM THE WORLD PLAGUE! PASS IT ON, PASS IT ON!”

  “Money?” says Eshett.

  “Very likely,” says Stilts. “The Plague kills one in seven outlanders, doesn’t it? They must want a cure more than all the silver, gold, and diamonds in this world put together.”

  “You think he planned to sell the cure?” Chindilan shakes his head. “Garatajik was no mercenary. A quiet life and enough money for books is all he ever wanted. Or wants, if the man’s still breathing. He’d never have muddied his hands with power and influence if his mother hadn’t threatened the world.”

  “What did he intend to fight her with, hmm?” says Mansari. “Not books, I think.”

  “Your general ordered you to give me a haircut,” snaps Chindilan. “Obey him, will you, and then clear out? We’re doing fine without your wit.”

  Stilts chuckles. “Let go of that bone, smith. You forced Mansari’s hand—or his foot, if you like. You’re terribly dangerous men, and not even a child is permitted to approach the general in a threatening way. During the council, Mansari was assigned the guardianship of the general’s person. If he hadn’t struck you, he’d be breaking his oath.”

  Mansari gestures with the scissors. “And if I had wished to break that ankle rather than bruise it—”

  “Enough,” says Stilts. “We’ve no cause to taunt them any longer.”

  Mansari makes an extravagant bow. “Forgive me, master ironmonger, I beseech you. And now listen. Your bags are repacked, your stocks of food and water replenished, your absurd boots have been replaced with fine desert sandals, your, hmm, curious notion of survival gear has been supplemented. Even your beards have been tamed.” He steps back, considering Chindilan’s face. “Done. You are hardly ready for the desert, but you are as ready as forty minutes can make you.

  “And now we must be off. The night is passing, and the caravan will increase its speed at first light. We must catch it tomorrow or risk losing it altogether.” He turns to Stilts. “The high road, is it?”

  “The high road,” says Stilts with a nod. To the travelers, he adds, “There’s a way into the desert that skips along the top of the Arig Hills. It’s a marvelous shortcut, as long as your guide knows his business. In this case, he does, for that guide is me.” He smiles. “Mansari will come along as well, to the high peak of Alibat S’Ang. I shall see you all the way to the caravan. And I’m authorized to speak for the general. Mr. Ifimar will take you on, I guarantee it.”

  Kandri feels a burst of affection for the Naduman. But there is still so much he does not understand. “Why did Tebassa change his mind, Stilts? What did that letter mean to him? It shocked everyone, of course. But with him, it might as well have brought the mountain down.”

  “That it did,” says Mansari.

  “We’ll speak of that later, on the trail perhaps,” says Stilts. “Mansari is right. We must go.”

  “I will take them to the general’s chamber,” says Mansari. “He will wish to say some last word before—”

  Stilts touches his elbow, shakes his head. Mansari lowers his eyebrows in a frown.

  They make final adjustments to their clothing, their packs. “Another march,” grumbles Mektu, bending to tighten a sandal. “I’ll be glad when we’re on camelback at last.”

  “That day will only come if you are sick or wounded,” says Mansari. “The camels carry provisions, water, trade goods. Sometimes a pregnant woman, or a royal guest of the caravan. Not lazy, hmm, tagalongs. You will cross the desert on foot, like any common man.”

  “That’s not much of a joke.” Mektu stares at him.

  “It is no joke at all. You will walk.”

  “Fuck a monkey!” says Mektu. “My legs still ache from the Stolen Sea.” He looks at the others as if hoping for deliverance. “Thank the Gods I slept in that bathtub. It was heaven. Did you sleep at all, Eshett?”

  She shoulders her backpack. Her elbow, no doubt accidentally, grazes Kandri’s cheek.

  “I closed my eyes,” she says.

  Once more up the winding staircase. Stilts, again the torchbearer, moves with surprising energy, as though an old mode of being, an expedition mode, has suddenly been dusted off and returned to service. They pass straight through the high chambers, where no sign of their brief visit remains save for Kandri’s teacup, forgotten on a windowsill. Beyond the servants’ entrance are several further rooms, all deserted now, and then another long passage, broken repeatedly by lesser staircases. They climb half a dozen of these and turn at several junctions. Then Stilts slows. He and Mansari raise their left hands to the wall, fingers trailing over the stone. Stilts is mumbling, and Kandri realizes that he is counting his steps.

  “Thirty-six from the corner,” he says at last.

  “Your steps are short, old man.”

  “We’ll see about that. With me, now—”

  He counts aloud, and on three, both men slam their shoulders against the wall. There is a soft, deep click, and a door-shaped block of stone swings back into darkness. A puff of cold wind vexes the torch. Stilts looks at his companion, smiling.

  “Smugness does not, hmmmm, become you,” says Mansari.

  Beyond this strange doorway is a small, chilly room containing nothing but the dead remains of a fire and a small stack of logs. In the opposite wall is an archway, the source of the wind. Kandri sniffs: clean mountain air. They have reached the cavern’s end.

  The stone door is well over a foot thick and mounted on an axel secreted in the wa
ll. He helps Mansari swing it back into place, and marvels at how completely it vanishes: by torchlight, he cannot even make out the crack. “How do you open it from this side?” he asks.

  “You do not,” says Mansari. “I will be returning to the Cavern by another path.”

  He turns, glancing sharply at Stilts. The Naduman is bent double, studying the floor. His free hand moves over the stone.

  “Someone’s been here, see? And not so long ago—a day or two at the most. What’s your guess? Boots or sandals?”

  “How can I guess now?” snaps Mansari. “Give me the torch, you lumbering, hmm, hmm—you lumberer. Stand aside.”

  Mansari, it appears, has some expertise with tracks. But after a meticulous examination of the floor, he sits back on his heels in defeat. He wags a finger at Stilts. “Ruined, obliterated. Why didn’t you speak up, if you saw tracks?”

  “I didn’t see them ’til we’d all stomped in like elephants.” He grimaces. “We can hope it was a goatherd getting out of the wind. But keep your voices low, and your eyes open. And I don’t mean just for enemies. They’ll be cliffs and cracks and slippery places along this trail, and we’re going to have to do without torchlight, I’m afraid.”

  He snuffs the torch in the dead fire’s ashes and leads them out through the arch.

  A great cloak of stars drapes the sky. They are on the spine of an enormous, barren hill, very nearly a mountain. The night is cold and still. On both sides, the ground falls sharply, decaying into cliffs on one side, rising in crags and boulders on the other. All about them are the Arigs, range upon range of black, heaving stone. A narrow path winds away along the ridge top.

  The way is treacherous. The path climbs and plummets, and the stones feel loose underfoot. Chindilan shuffles, cursing under his breath. Kandri walks close behind him, ready to pounce if he should stumble but not wanting to embarrass him by taking his arm.

  Suddenly, Eshett grips his elbow. She is far more frightened than Chindilan: heights, of course. Her touch wakes his whole body to the memory of the bath chamber. He cannot steady them both. He should tell Eshett to lean on Mektu, but he does not.

  Only Mansari walks with perfect ease. Kandri recalls his first glimpse of the man, the fluid leap he made in the darkness, landing at Talupéké’s side.

  Then Stilts freezes. His hand flies to his mattoglin, and the others draw their weapons in turn. Kandri, knowing he cannot possibly stand alongside the others on the narrow trail, nocks an arrow to his bow. Mansari crouches low, one hand on the ground, the other gripping a curved knife, tip downward like a giant fang.

  “Who walks there?” hisses Stilts.

  “Only me, commander,” says a man’s voice from above them. Kandri looks up to see a dark form squatting on a boulder, black against the stars.

  “Spider—good!” says the Naduman. “Come down, let’s have your report.”

  “Captain Sorfik, here?” Mansari is flabbergasted. “Did you know of this, Stilts? When was this man dispatched, and by whom?”

  Stilts gives him an all-in-good-time gesture. Spider, meanwhile, turns and shimmies down the rock face, almost without effort, like a man descending a ladder. When he reaches the trail, he is barely winded. Talupéké’s teacher, Kandri recalls. By the starlight, he can just perceive the blue birthmark on the man’s forehead.

  “The path ahead is clear,” says Spider. “I’ve run it twice, all the way to Alibat S’Ang. Not so much as a lost goat bleating in these hills.”

  “That ought to make me feel better,” says Stilts, “but it doesn’t, somehow. You drop behind us, but not too far behind. Stay close enough to shout a warning, if it comes to that.”

  “A warning?” says Chindilan. “Who in Jekka’s hell do you think is behind us?”

  “No one,” says Stilts, “and if I’m wrong? Hill people. They’re out before dawn, setting nets for birds, snaring rabbits. We must have scattered them like rabbits when we passed. Still, you can’t be too fucking careful. There are brigands in the hills, and ghouls. And worse things crawl out of the desert once in a while.”

  “Yes,” says Spider. “Just look at what Talupéké dredged up from the Stolen Sea. How she loves her surprises, that girl.”

  He nods to the travelers, a mocking gesture. Stilts looks him up and down. “You’re a good man, Sorfik,” he says. “I won’t pull rank on you for talking down a fellow soldier. But if you go on speaking ill of my niece, I will shame you. By kicking your ass.”

  Spider lifts his chin. “She is a danger to the company. I will feel shame the day I betray it, and not before.”

  Stilts sighs. “Loyalty’s a great virtue, Captain. And wisdom’s another. Now fall back, but stay close on our heels.”

  There is a hint of mockery in Spider’s salute. What happened between him and Talupéké? Kandri wonders, watching him vanish down the trail. How did he come to despise her?

  Stilts is moving forward again. Kandri watches Mansari hurry to catch up with the older man. He murmurs something: a harsh question or demand, but Kandri catches nothing save for Spider’s name. The Naduman’s answer does not satisfy: Mansari only shake his head. The men’s voices begin to rise.

  “It was not your decision to make, Stilts.”

  “Someone had to act, didn’t they? The man was comatose.”

  “The general overcame his, hmm, discomfort, enough to issue various orders. But not this order. What excuse do you have?”

  “Excuse? That I’m his loving servant, that’s my fucking excuse.”

  “I do not wish to report you.”

  “Go ahead and report me. I’ll take the punishment. This is the World Plague we’re talking about.”

  Mansari says nothing, and they walk on in silence. Heat lightning sizzles; the forlorn voices of the owls ring from crag to crag. The path levels off, and the footing improves. Looking back over his shoulder, Kandri sees a few faint glimmers up and down the cliff wall: fires still burning in the Cavern.

  “Will you answer the question now?” says Chindilan. “Why did that letter affect the general so? He acted like a man whose life has just passed before his eyes.”

  The Naduman heaves a sigh. “I’ll answer. It’s not much of a story, though. You know that we’re immune to the World Plague, we Urrathis, save for an unlucky few.”

  “One in eight thousand, according to the Xavasindrans,” says Kandri.

  Stilts shrugs. “Perhaps that’s accurate; I don’t really know. What I do know is that the vulnerability tends to run in families. Tell me, have you ever watched someone die of plague?”

  “I have,” says Chindilan. “and it’s a horrible sight.”

  “First a cough that won’t abate,” says Mansari. “Then a burning, as the cough irritates the throat. Finally, the rust itself, which grows inward, closing the windpipe. Nothing can be done about the rust, hmm. It cannot be removed without tearing the patient apart.”

  “The poor souls can’t speak, can’t swallow,” says Stilts. “In the end, they’re breathing through straws, narrower and narrower. When the straw closes, they die.

  “One in eight thousand: good odds, you might say. But again, the risk runs in families.” Stilts’ eyes are downcast. “When Tebassa was sixteen, the Plague carried off his mother and her four other children—all his brothers and sisters—in a matter of days.”

  Kandri almost stumbles. Eshett’s sharp breath beside him is almost a sob.

  “Jeshar,” says Chindilan. “No fucking wonder.”

  “His father became insane,” says Stilts. “He declared that the boy’s survival proved he was illegitimate, that his dead wife had taken a lover. He started drinking, and then moved on to wax and graverobber’s snuff. He died of the latter within a year.”

  “It was not only memories that pained the general tonight,” says Mansari. “It was that he’d made sport of you, and that letter. Perhaps he came close to tossing it to the company to mutilate. Or into the fire.”

  “But he didn’t, did he?” says Mekt
u. “And now he’s making amends. He’s a good man, your general.”

  “I doubt you truly believe that after tonight.”

  “I believe it,” Mektu insists. “You and Stilts serve him, don’t you? That’s reason enough.”

  “Hmm.” For once, Mansari sounds pleased.

  “We have a last climb ahead,” says Stilts. “Be careful. The morning fog can wet the stones.”

  He sets off at a brisk pace, and soon they are ascending, mounting the shoulder of the highest hill yet. The rocks are indeed slippery, but Stilts keeps them to the center of the path. When it divides, he does not hesitate; when hazards loom, he warns them in advance.

  But five or six times, he pauses and gestures for silence, facing back the way they have come. Kandri listens but hears only the owls’ forlorn voices, far below them now. After each pause, Stilts frowns and shakes his head, then quickly resumes the climb.

  The wind rises, but their exertion keeps them warm. Kandri finds his thoughts awash with all that he has learned that night. His father and the Prophet. The treachery of Father Marz. Tebassa’s heartbreak. And a cure—a cure for the World Plague! A miracle, entrusted to his care.

  And that’s not the only miracle. He permits himself a smile in the darkness, remembering Eshett’s kiss. Once again, she has taken his arm.

  Horror and beauty, a broken general and a girl’s sweet love. Has he betrayed his brother? Or Ariqina, the love of his life? He is not certain, and yet if he is honest with himself (if not now, when?) he feels no regret. Touch is a sacrament, not a sin. Ari herself had had said that, naked with him and entangled, on their last night by the streamside. I’ll never apologize for it, not to anyone. Because I’ll never do this unless I’m in love.

  Hardly Eshett’s philosophy, was it? Eshett, who wondered why he could possibly hesitate: after all, she was clean. But rather than guilt or confusion, Kandri merely feels humbled by joy. These women. Great hearts, brilliant minds. Their honesty equal, if opposite. And he the lucky bastard who is somehow, in a death-drunk world, a Night of Blood without certainty of daybreak, allowed to love them both.