L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35

by L. Ron Hubbard

  I sat on the sloping tiles and wetted an oilcloth, then ran it over each of my twin blades. They were my favorite weapons, somewhere between a dagger and a short-sword. Each was thin and curved, forged with a single edge and almost no cross guard, identical to the pair my master carried. The Mantis had designed them to kill quickly and with stealth. We Assyn do not fight battles, he taught. We do not fight at all. We terminate threats to the Imperiate in the most efficient manner possible. The twin blades and the blowgun were my master’s preferred methods—each of the seven had their specialties—but poison, arson, suffocation, musketry, all were on the table when terminating a mark. Stealth and anonymity remained our best weapons, but for myself, the twin blades were a close second.

  A shadow materialized atop the roof edge to my left. I kept oiling my blades as if I hadn’t noticed. The shadow slid across the tiles, moving behind me.

  “If you’re going to impale me with another dart,” I said, “I’d prefer you stick my shoulder. Sitting is rather uncomfortable right now.”

  Jen cursed under her breath. “You heard me climbing.”

  I pointed at the three moons rising in the eastern sky. “Caught your shadow as you crested the rooftop. You needed to approach from farther west.”

  “Ugh,” she groaned, plopping beside me. “Amateur mistake. I must be overtired.”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  She smiled at me, violet eyes catching moonlight and taking my breath away. “Haven’t slept enough the past few nights, for which I accept fifty-percent blame.”

  I schooled my body with an effort of will. “Do not think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Oh? What am I doing, village boy?”

  “Practicing. The Firefly is a seductress. She uses her beauty and charm to get close to a mark. She teaches you to do the same.”

  “Did you just call me a harlot?”

  “I called you beautiful and charming.”

  Jen laughed. “Good save. And we’re certain I am the one doing the seducing here?”

  “I’m not following you up onto secluded rooftops in the middle of the night.”

  She pursed her lips and considered me for three heartbeats. “I’ll give you this: you’re perceptive for a bumpkin farmer from the countryside.”

  “The Mantis didn’t pick me for my knowledge of turnips.”

  Jen lifted her palms. “So I’m practicing. And you know I’m practicing. Doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it.” She touched my forearm with the tip of her little finger. “And don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it.”

  I took a deep breath. “As long as we both know what this is.”

  “You afraid you’ll wind up engaged?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her.

  She said, “I’ll tell you a secret: I’m not the marrying type.”

  I set my blades aside. “What I’m afraid of, Jen, is that at some point they’re going to test us. The Mantis keeps hinting at it, calls it the Trial of Devotion. We’ll need to prove ourselves willing to take out any mark assigned to us.”

  “A test?” Jen said. “All they ever do is test us.”

  I shook my head. “This is just training. The Trial will be a different kind of test. A mark we won’t want to kill. If we fail, they will release us from service. If that mark turns out to be you, I must be able to follow through.”

  Challenge flashed across her face. “For your sake, you better hope it’s not me.”

  “That’s the problem, Jen. I already hope it’s not you, and not because you’re good with darts.”

  She peered at me without speaking for long enough to make it awkward. Finally, she bit her lip and said, “We’ve chosen our path, Ty. I will terminate any mark the Vyar assigns me. That is the deal I made to escape my mother’s tyranny, and it includes you. Until then, I take my enjoyments where I can.” She touched my arm again. “I expect you to do the same.”

  “Are we still talking about killing each other, or something else?”

  She leaned close to nuzzle my ear. “Take your pick.”

  It was too much for me. I could partition my feelings, hold a part of me separate to do what I must, should that day come, but I was not a golem like the Mantis. I needed connection, to feel something for someone who wasn’t a mark or a master. I needed someone who understood the loneliness.

  Jen’lyn acted casual, but I knew she felt that same need. I only hoped our masters wouldn’t use it against us.

  5. DISILLUSION

  His son?” I exclaim.

  Jen gives a sad nod. “The Kyo’Vyar sent us here to kill a baby, Ty.”

  I slump back against the building. An image tries to push its way forward in my mind. A cherub face filled with innocence. I slam the mental door shut.

  “Why in the world would the Vyar mark a baby?” I ask.

  Instead of answering, Jen rises to her feet. I join her, hastily signaling behind my back for my master, wherever he is, to HOLD.

  Jen says, “Will you walk the square with me?”

  “As you wish.”

  We begin a slow circuit of the plaza. Perhaps Jen hopes to glimpse the Mantis along the rooftops. He is likely up there somewhere, but I do not see him.

  “The Vyar marked the baby as punishment,” Jen eventually says. “Tyressry Kaab stepped outside his caste, and you know how the People of the Eye respond to things like that.”

  “Yes, but marking an infant for death is harsh even for them.”

  Jen scoffs. “And you call me naive. You don’t know them the way I do. The caste hierarchy is everything, and those beneath them are dispensable. A single life in a lower caste means nothing.”

  “But the Tyressry is also Kyo’Vyar,” I say. “His son would be, too.”

  “You’re not listening. I told you, Tyressry Kaab stepped outside his caste.”

  I realize what she means. “The baby’s mother is of lower birth.”

  “Kyo’Wosyn,” Jen confirms. The People of the Blood. They are the lowest caste, the Imperiate only considers foreigners beneath them. The Kyo’Wosyn are the tradesmen: the cobblers, the coopers, the rope-makers, the blacksmiths. They are also the farmers. My former caste.

  We move past the central statue, a granite carving of some great Imperator, or maybe a former Tyressry, I can’t really say. He wasn’t Kyo’Wosyn, whoever he was. No one carves statues of Kyo’Wosyn.

  “They must consider the child an abomination,” I say. “Still, the worst they would do would be to remove the Tyressry from office. Strip him of wealth and reputation. They wouldn’t go so far as to kill the child. There must be more to this.”

  “There is,” Jen says. “Tyressry Kaab didn’t just impregnate some country girl. He married her.”

  I lift my brows at that. An administrator having an affair with someone of lower standing is far from accepted, but nor is it unprecedented. Any resultant child led to disgrace, but again, nothing that warranted our presence. For the Tyressry of a city to wed a Kyo’Wosyn … That is unheard of.

  “I didn’t believe it either,” Jen says. “But then I investigated and yes, Tyressry Kaab fell in love with a young farm girl, married her in secret, moved her into his estate, and then conceived a child. The other Kyo’Vyar want to make an example of him.”

  The old woman selling hand-fans cackles at us as we walk past her stall, trying to woo me into buying one of her “lovelies.” A fan would feel nice in this heat, but I want both my hands free. I wave her off and say, “Marking a child is savage. I won’t pretend otherwise. But we may not choose our marks, Jen. You know this.”

  “That is exactly what the Firefly said. Right before I killed her.”

  Underneath my cloak, I shift an arm back, ready to draw a blade should she make a move.

  Jen notes the subtle change. “You’re still not listening,” she says. “I’m no
t going to kill you, Ty. You are going to save me.”

  “I’m not, Jen.”

  She reaches out, deliberately slow, and touches my arm, just as she did five years ago. “I believe you’ll try.”

  I step out of reach. “You know I’m beyond sentimental trappings. What makes you think I would, even if I could?”

  “Redemption, Ty’rin. I know what happened in your Trial.”

  6. TRIAL

  Three years ago …

  “Master, what are we doing here?”

  “This place does not please you?” the Mantis asked.

  “Please me?” I said. “You’re asking if I’m pleased you brought me to this worthless collection of hovels in the middle of this worthless backwater province? No, nothing about this hole of a town pleases me.”

  Grime-caked homes lined both sides of the muddy wagon ruts that served as the main thoroughfare, most houses no larger than a single room. A few shops broke up the proceedings: a basket-weaver here, a thatcher on the corner. This backward town was so far behind the times the homeowners still used thatched roofs. People in dun clothing huddled in small groups amid the drizzling rain, conversing about the weather, wasting-sickness in someone’s flock, a shortage of good brass, more about the stupid weather. No one hurried anywhere. No one had anywhere important to be.

  We passed a stake in the ground tacked with a ragged sign stating: Town of Dorin. In an earlier life, I’d lugged my family’s soybean and turnip crop past this sign twice a year. Five miles dragging a loaded cart across the countryside, just to hand it off to some oily snake in merchant’s clothing who looked at me with a disdain often reserved for rats and cockroaches.

  I hated Dorin.

  The Mantis didn’t address my complaints. Instead, he said, “Do you know why there are only seven Kyo’Assyn?”

  I took a deep breath, considered the question. “Conformity to the balance of sevens,” I guessed. “Seven castes, seven great cities, seven People of the Carapace.”

  “Partially,” my master said, “but there are more practical reasons.” He didn’t say what. He waited for me to work it out on my own.

  “The same reason we may never select a mark,” I reasoned. “We are a caste of shadows trained to kill. In greater numbers we might pose a threat to the Vyar.”

  The Mantis nodded. The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes crinkled, an indication I’d impressed him. “Very good. But there is a third reason, even more practical than that.”

  I worked through what I knew of my caste. Seven instruments of death: The Mantis, the Moth, the Locust, the Firefly, the Spider, the Wasp, and the Beetle. Each one specialized, each one a master of the trade. Only the People of the Eye and the Imperator himself stood above us. We’d spent years learning our work, moving about the Imperiate and the outside world with silent impunity, never wanting for food or money or resources, everything provided.

  The Mantis and I strolled past the blacksmith’s forge as I rolled these things over in my mind, the sound of hammer-strikes banging into my ears. The man working the bellows was a skinny, sweat-covered youth, the one at the anvil older and covered in burn scars. In their shop hung horseshoes and farm implements, some metal cookware, a few wagon axles. Across the street, a bakery offset the blacksmith’s stench of charcoal and hot metal. In dryer weather, the baker would likely be displaying her loaves.

  “Economics,” I eventually said. “We provide a service, but we do not contribute to the economy. We are expensive.”

  “Correct,” the Mantis said. “We are a standing army outside the military, but like any army, we cost a great deal. The more specialized the soldier, the higher the cost, and we are the most specialized soldiers in the world. Between the army and the navy and the extravagances of the Vyar, the Imperiate cannot afford a large number of Assyn.”

  “I understand,” I said. What I didn’t understand was what any of this had to do with Dorin. I didn’t say as much though. The Mantis never rambled—he would make his point soon enough.

  We entered the town square, a swampy, open space with a circular stone well in the center. We’d dressed as poor farmers, maybe a father and son from some outlying homestead, our cowls pulled up against the spitting rain. The townspeople didn’t give us a second glance.

  The Mantis said, “You are an investment, Ty’rin. A tremendous expenditure of time, energy, and resources. Like any investment, you come with risk. The Vyar wish to mitigate this risk as much as possible. The recruitment process is the first stage of mitigation. My tutelage is the second. We are here for the third.”

  I grasped his meaning. My mouth went dry.

  The Mantis stopped at the well and placed his hands against the stonework. “What do you see?”

  I answered without thought. “Two village women ten points to the east, leaving the square. A middle-aged man lugging firewood due south, coming toward us. A maid and a child taking shelter underneath that wayward pine at the edge of …”

  The maid was missing the tip of her middle finger.

  Sun’rie was no longer the child I remembered, instead a young woman of sixteen. Her smile remained the same though, a radiant sweetness that lit the world around her. She beamed down at my little brother, wiping dirt from his face where he’d splashed through a mud puddle. Ray’fin had grown into a cute boy of nine, chubby in the cheeks and still full of energy. They both wore traveling cloaks, Sun’rie holding a covered wicker basket, Ray’fin clutching a soggy stick like a sword. They must have traveled to Dorin that morning to purchase supplies, bread from the baker, maybe.

  “When a Kyo’Assyn feels an apprentice is ready,” the Mantis said, “he or she will petition the Kyo’Vyar for a mark of sufficient challenge.”

  “Sufficient challenge,” I whispered. I could not take my eyes off my siblings.

  “This challenge is not one of skill,” the Mantis said, “but one of conviction. This is why we call it the Trial of Devotion.”

  “You petitioned for a mark on my family.”

  “I may not choose the mark,” the Mantis said, “but I may make recommendations. Do you consider my recommendation cruel?”

  The question was part of the Trial. An assessment of how I would react, just like during my recruitment. I answered honestly. “Sun’rie and Ray’fin are no enemies of the Imperiate. They pose no risk to anyone or anything. Marking them is malicious, nothing more.”

  “I agree,” the Mantis said.

  I turned to look at my master, trying to understand. He dug into his satchel and produced a stoppered waterskin and a blowgun, setting both on the lip of the well. He removed the stopper from the skin and positioned it upright, so the contents wouldn’t spill. A foulness like a midsummer latrine wafted from within. The Mantis then produced a blowdart capped with a glass vial. The dart’s steel tip rested within a thimbleful of milky liquid.

  “Your assessment of this town is accurate,” the Mantis said, removing the dart from the vial and loading it into the blowgun. “It is useless to the Imperiate. In fact, it is more than useless. It is a drain. The cost of sending the Kyo’Rusalk out here, purchasing the harvest, and then transporting it back to the nearest city is more than the crops are worth.” He set the loaded blowgun back on the lip of the well. “One remedy is to simply stop sending the People of the Hand out here. Allow the farmers and tradesmen to keep what they produce and utilize a barter economy. However, that separates them from the Imperiate and sets a dangerous precedent. Thus, the second option is to eliminate them.” He pointed to the waterskin. “A gift from the Locust. The blood of a diseased cow mixed with the excrement of a man dying of cholera. Drop it into the well, and it will wipe out a majority of this—how did you put it?—hole of a town. The suffering will be great and prolonged, but the Locust knows his pestilence. Do you consider this course of action cruel?”

  I regarded the bag of slow, indiscriminate dea
th. The reek of it made me gag. “I do.”

  “Ah,” the Mantis said. He indicated toward the blowgun. “A second gift, this one from the Spider. She extracts the poison from a tiny octopus found in the island colonies. A coated dart will cause paralysis within twenty seconds, unconsciousness within a minute, and death within five. Quicker in a child. It is a painless and merciful end.” He lifted his chin toward my brother and sister. “The young boy or the town. The choice is yours.”

  My jaw trembled. I felt too hot, suffocating within my oilskin cloak. The Mantis watched me, soaking up my every physiological reaction.

  The local with the firewood labored past. He gave us an affable nod. My master transformed into a man to return the greeting, his empty face suddenly open and friendly, making some jibe about lazy youth these days unwilling to work in foul weather. The local man laughed and said he’d voice as much to his sons when he got home. He then continued on his way. As my master turned back to me, the amicable good humor sloughed from his face like rainwater, replaced by the hollowness of the golem, a creature knowing no joy, nor sorrow, nor mercy.

  “How can I have a choice?” I croaked, barely audible for the ash in my mouth. “We never choose. Ever. That is the central pillar of our creed.”

  “No,” the Mantis said. “That is a fiction. We always have a choice. We are instruments of the Kyo’Vyar, but we are mortal instruments, every one of us, and so we choose the weapon we will be. We can be a blunt explosive or a hidden blade. We can refuse our duty altogether. There is nothing stopping us, only the consequences of our actions. Will you be the blade and place the betterment of this community—a place you despise so much—above some sense of fraternal kinship? Or will you be the blunt instrument of carnage, exerting mass cruelty to spare an innocent boy? This choice is the Trial.”

  “And if I refuse to be either?” It was an absurd question. I already knew the answer.

  “I will release you from service, and you will leave this world a man of principle, instead of an instrument of death. I will then terminate both your brother and the town of Dorin. The Kyo’Vyar will know the fruits of their investment, Ty’rin. As will I.”