There was another option. I could attack my master, a course of action he would no doubt be ready for. I would lose, and then die. So would Ray’fin and the people of Dorin.
Across the town square, Ray’fin giggled as he played at fencing with his soggy stick, whacking playfully at my sister’s legs. Sun’rie rolled her eyes. She deflected his blows with her basket and picked up a stick of her own, returning his attacks with equal energy.
Would you kill a child? the Recruiters had asked me. I’d answered immediately. Worst of all, I meant it.
The dart struck Ray’fin in the neck, right at the carotid artery. He issued a short scream, more a squeak of surprise, really, but to my ears it was a wail of purest agony. It bored into me like a fetid arrow, drilling into the pitch-black stone that had once been the heart of a simple village boy.
7. CHOICE
If you know about my Trial,” I say to Jen, “then you know I passed, and I cannot help you now.”
We complete our circuit of the plaza and stop back at Jen’s bedding of sailcloth. She lowers her hood to allow the sun to reach her face. I wince at her movement and signal again for the Mantis to HOLD. I don’t know where he is, but he either sees my signal or believes there is more to learn, because no dart or blade strikes Jen down. He won’t wait much longer, though; more people enter the plaza every minute. While a crowd can be useful in some operations, here, a press of people get in the way.
Jen looks skyward. The morning rays illuminate a tired but still beautiful face. “I asked if you believe in redemption, Ty, because I have to believe in it. I have to believe we can be more than what they make us.”
“You think I should feel guilty, the same as you.”
“I think they select us for our desire to escape, teach us how to kill, then remove any vestige of remorse. I wonder if we can rediscover that remorse once it’s gone.”
“It would seem you are proof we can,” I say.
“I failed my Trial, Ty. The remorse is all I have now. I am talking about you.”
“A Kyo’Assyn cannot be remorseful.”
“And what are we then!” Jen says, turning fierce. “Are we to be unfeeling weapons who murder at the whim of gluttonous tyrants? The Kyo’Vyar do not use us to protect the Imperiate. They use us to protect their own positions of power!”
Nothing she says is untrue. To say we serve a greater good is to be blind to the flaws of our puppeteers. Nevertheless, the Recruiters were clear on the sacrifice required to become Assyn. We joined this caste willingly.
“We agreed to be weapons of the Vyar,” I say. “You to escape the prison of your station, me to escape the tedium of farm life. It was selfish, and the balance is that we must kill who we’re told.”
“Then let us be selfish,” Jen says. “Your master is a dog who bites on command. So was mine. But we don’t have to be. We can choose to be something else.”
I remember a dreary day in a town a thousand miles west of here, where a boy and his sister played among the puddles, and I made a choice.
“It is too late for me, Jen,” I whisper.
“Then why do you still hear your brother’s voice when you close your eyes?”
I take an involuntary step back. How could she know that? I have buried it, layered stone and mortar over that scream until it is no more than a distant hum in my subconscious. Hidden from everyone, even myself.
Jen’s eyes widen at my reaction, and I understand the gamble she made. She didn’t know, she guessed. But she guessed correctly.
“I waited here in Xu,” Jen breathes, “because for a job as difficult as a release from service, I knew the Vyar would send an Assyn familiar with the islands.”
Someone familiar with Xu. Who more familiar than one who hails from here? “You knew they would send the Mantis.”
Illustration by Emerson Rabbitt
“And with him, you.”
A small crowd now occupies the plaza, nearing a hundred people. Petitioners wait at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone looks to the mansion. Tyressry Kaab must make an announcement each morning before hearing petitions.
Jen squints at the sun’s position once more. “It is time.”
The tall mahogany doors to the mansion creak open. “Time for Tyressry Kaab to make his appearance?”
“Time to discover if such as us can find redemption,” Jen says. “Ten days ago, I stood in this very spot, at this very time of day, waiting for my mark to appear. I chose to terminate the Firefly instead.”
“You said the Tyressry wasn’t your mark.”
“Tyressry Kaab doesn’t make the morning address. His wife does. Your nephew never leaves her arms.”
The world stops. My peripheral vision blurs, and it is as if I look down a long tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, my sister steps from the doorway onto the landing. Sun’rie is now nineteen and thicker in the waist, but still stunning in a belted gray gown and gold marriage choker. She cradles a bundled baby in her arms.
My sister walks to the top of the stairs, smiling and nodding as the people clap for her. My mouth goes dry, just like the last time I saw her. She doesn’t see me at the back of the crowd.
Whatever power my sister has over the Tyressry has spread to the citizens of Xu. They adore her—I can see it even before she speaks—and I understand why. She stands with authority but not arrogance, her face displays an honesty never witnessed among the People of the Eye, an earnestness that says she sees you, understands your plight, and is on your side. She is the epitome of what the Kyo’Vyar fear, a rising lowborn with the charisma and intelligence to inspire the masses, and she has an unprecedented platform in her marriage to a Tyressry.
Beside me, Jen’s dirty robe falls to the ground. Underneath she wears black cotton breeches and a tight-wrap shirt, a utility belt of pouches and throwing-daggers, a thin short-sword in a downward facing sheath on her back, incendiary grenades strapped to one thigh. No hiding now. No one except the People of the Carapace carry weaponry like that. Even if the surrounding patrons don’t recognize her as Kyo’Assyn, she stands out. It is a move to force my hand.
“I was to hurl a firebomb at your sister during her morning address,” Jen says. “An example to anyone who thinks to move above their station. I chose to hurl it at the Firefly instead.”
Sun’rie is orating now, telling a story of hardship and loss, of striving for more. It is a story of hope. Her voice is strong, maternal, resonant. The Vyar will never allow her to live.
Jen is trembling, her face flushed and her breathing fast. She knows the Mantis’s death stroke will come any second. She plays her last card.
“I have loved you since the night on the rooftop, Ty’rin. For I am a woman, not an instrument. I did this for me, and for the hope of what I saw in you that night. This is your true Trial of Devotion. Now. Choose.”
I have heard some few speak of the sensation that time slows during a near-death experience. Of the sense that during moments of great consequence, the universe pauses to appreciate the gravity of what transpires. I look now at Jen’lyn and know something similar, my heartbeat drawing out in an aching boom. It pounds my chest like some great slow-ringing bell, the air around us too heavy, the sunlight too bright. I realize then that this woman, who is no tool nor slave nor beast, is the single most courageous person I have ever known.
She is also an utter fool.
Time snaps back into cadence and I draw my left-hand blade in a blur, the draw itself an attack, slicing toward Jen’s neck in a move perfected over a hundred hours of practice.
She never breaks eye contact. Even when the flat of the blade slaps against her carotid artery and the poison dart pings off the steel. She’s foolish to think I knew how the Mantis would attack—he’s never so forthcoming. Still, one does not spend nine years studying every move a man makes without learning his preferences.
Je
n releases the breath she’d been holding and a look of joy I’ve never seen fills her violet eyes. Her smile is empyreal. “Good choice, village boy.”
With an effort, I break my gaze and follow the dart’s trajectory. The Mantis leans against the statue base to my left, in the middle of the square, his gray cloak making him near invisible against the weathered granite of the monument. He lowers his blowgun with an expression of puzzled shock, quickly replaced by irritated disappointment.
“Only if we survive the next twenty seconds,” I say.
8. CONSEQUENCE
Now …
The blowgun vanishes up my former master’s sleeve, and he draws one of his hidden twin blades, held in a reverse grip. He pushes off the statue and walks toward us.
There is no bravado in his approach. No salute or swaggering challenge. Such things are the conceit of storytellers. The Assyn do not fight, the Assyn kill. I can draw-cut a slice to someone’s liver and then hide the blade before my mark feels the wound, but I do not know any defensive parries or how to disarm an opponent. This duel will not be a prolonged affair.
“Any chance you’ve hidden a pistol on you?” I say to Jen.
“Afraid not,” Jen says.
“At least he isn’t carrying one either.” If he did, he would’ve shot one of us by now.
“What is that woman wearing?” someone in the crowd says.
“Is that chap holding a sword?” another says. People are beginning to notice us.
I know better than to suggest running. We might escape, but the Mantis would hunt us, then terminate us unseen. This is our best chance, with the man before us, in the open.
“He’ll go for me first,” I say to Jen. “It will be your best shot.” I have no illusions of surviving the attack myself. I am fast and skilled; the Mantis is legendary.
A slow-match flares in Jen’s hand. “I can give you a chance.” Her eyes flit to her feet and back.
“Guards!” a woman yells. “Those two carry swords!” Commotion among the people nearest us. Surprised murmurs, people backing away.
The Mantis continues his silent advance. Twenty paces away. I know he wonders what we will do.
Fifteen paces. My sister halts her speech.
Ten paces. Behind us, a deep voice yells, “You there! Get down on—”
Jen drops the burning match into her collection bowl, the one she’d proffered as a beggar. Not an empty bowl, but one with a trio of black-powder cartridges and sharp obsidian pebbles in the bottom. She times it perfectly. At the first hissing flare, her foot shoots forward, kicking the bowl away from us and straight at the Mantis.
The smoky bang rips across the square; men and women scream and cover their heads. The Mantis lifts his cloak against the blast, turning his face from the flying stones. The explosion is loud and flashy, but not lethal. It is a distraction. I let fly my blade in an underhand toss aimed at my former master’s throat. It is a throw he cannot see for the blinding smoke between us. It is a throw to save my life, the life of Jen, and the life of my sister and her newborn son. A throw for a chance to be something else.
And just like nine years ago, the Mantis counters it.
He moves with impossible speed, his sword flashing in an arc to deflect my blade and his other arm snapping forward in a throw of his own. The second of his twin blades twirls in the air and strikes me in the chest, right at my heart. It would kill me if I’d remained five paces away, but I jumped forward as I threw, leaping into acrid smoke. Instead of the blade tip, the hilt slams into me, making me grunt. I don’t slow. Three running strides and I’m there, slashing out my second blade. I do not expect to hit him, he’s simply too fast, but he must sidestep to avoid my attack. I roll as I miss and the Mantis’s counter-slash nicks across my hairline. Had I not gone low it would have cut my neck. I come out of my roll and feint, but don’t lunge. It’s enough to make the Mantis twitch to the side. And there, in that second, we both know. Jen and I have him flanked. Time slows again.
The next dragged-out moment lasts a fraction of a heartbeat, but I see it unfold with perspicuous clarity. The Mantis blinks and I see his face change. A constricting of the eyes, a whisper of a smile. I like to think he feels a measure of pride for me, but with him it is impossible to tell. The fleeting moment passes, and the Mantis twists to avoid Jen’s throwing-dagger whistling past his shoulder. The dodge leaves him unbalanced, and he is unable to escape my follow-up strike, slashing deep between his ribs. People run and scream around us, Jen’s explosion eliciting a general panic. The Mantis staggers and I dance back as some youth barrels into him, spinning him full around, and then Jen’s second throwing-dagger thumps into his back.
My former master falls to a knee. Blood gushes from his side as his blade drops from his fingers. He looks at me with his forgetful face and coughs blood onto his chin. He slowly shakes his head, until Jen’s third dagger skewers the back of his neck and he topples forward onto the cobblestones, released from service.
9. REDEMPTION
Would you kill a child? For me, the answer was clear. The truly difficult question would have been: And can you live with yourself afterward?
Both these questions are unfair, of course. No one can know such a thing until he or she faces it. I look down at the man who made me what I am, and I wonder whom he killed during his own Trial of Devotion, if it made him into the golem I knew. I wonder if I would have become the same, if not for Jen’lyn.
The plaza clears of people. Only the elderly fan merchant and the guards remain, the old woman gaping at us as if we are creatures risen from some nightmare, the guards stepping carefully toward us, three of them now, muskets at the ready.
“On the ground, both of you!” a deep voice yells.
Jen and I square to face them.
The one who spoke freezes. “Kyo’Assyn,” he whispers.
The new guardsman, a kid no more than fourteen years old bearing scars on his cheeks, waves his gun back and forth between the two of us, while the third sentry, a sweaty fellow who’s forgotten to pull back the hammer on his flintlock, stammers, “Wh-who are you? Identify yourselves!”
“He is the ghost of a boy I once knew,” Sun’rie says from behind him. She didn’t flee at the explosion like everyone else. Instead, she descended the stairs, baby still bundled in her arms. “It is you, isn’t it?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. Force myself to look her in the eye. “Hello, Sun.”
She pulls her child protectively close. “Ty’rin. Why … why are you here?”
I have only one answer. “To perform a release from service.”
She looks at the body beside me, blood soaking the stones at my feet. “That man’s?”
I shake my head. “My own.”
She is very still. “Was that man Kyo’Assyn?”
I nod.
“Is he the one who killed Ray’fin? I know the Assyn are responsible; I dug the poison dart from Ray’s neck. Is that the man who did it? Was it because of you?”
I can lie and spare my sister the knowledge of my fratricide. It might be a mercy. In a sense, it would only be a half-lie, for while the Mantis did not shoot the dart into my brother’s neck, he did orchestrate the mark. The Assyn flourish in this murk of misdirection and half-truth, but I am no longer Assyn, and there can be no redemption in a half-truth.
“No, Sun,” I say. “It was the other way around. I killed Ray because of him.”
Pain moves across her face in a rippling wave. A wash of betrayal and horror that starts at her left eye and moves in a diagonal down her nose and jaw, stopping at the right corner of her chin. Something cold follows. A pitiless hardness I don’t recognize on the sweet girl remembered from my youth.
“The Mantis gave him an impossible choice,” Jen says. “He sacrificed your brother to save an entire town. Today he sacrificed his future to save you and your—” Jen
stops. Something is wrong.
What do you see? My sister stands beside her three guards, her son cradled in one arm, her other hand placed over top. One guard remains awestruck by the sight of us, the third remains nervous, but the newcomer in the middle is different. The scarred young teen has his musket trained on Jen, a determined calmness about him. The elderly woman selling fans is … no longer to my right.
The youth taps the stock of his musket twice with his finger, a signal. Movement behind me.
A shot cracks across the square. Not from the guards but from the mansion beyond. A musket ball shrieks past my ear and I crouch instinctively. Behind me, the fan-seller halts in petrified stillness, a tessen war fan with sharpened iron spokes poised to decapitate me. She then crumples to the ground.
The Moth. Sometimes the Kyo’Vyar send more than one Assyn for a difficult task. A task such as a release from service. But if that is the Moth, then her apprentice—
“Jen!”
A second shot splits the air. Jen hops backward. Her face is bloodless. She stares straight ahead into the blue gun smoke curling in front of her.
No. Please no. Not after all this. Not her.
Jen doesn’t fall. Instead, the youth with the musket collapses, a gaping hole passing through both temples. Beside him, Sun’rie points a smoking pistol, a second flintlock in her off hand. The cloth wrap swaddling her supposed child pools at her feet, a ceramic doll’s head rolling across the cobblestones.
The two remaining guards are as confused as I feel. They swing their guns about wildly. Sun’rie catches the barrel of one, points it at the ground. “You have stumbled into Kyo’Assyn business. Go home. Forget everything you saw here. Do not speak of this. Ever. Am I understood?”
The chill in her voice does not belong to my sister. Nor do firearms. The two guards drop their weapons and run, all too happy to get away from this hard-eyed killer who swaddles flintlock pistols like a baby.
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35 Page 29
