Farlander hotw-1

by Col Buchanan

  Che had always been a fast learner, so as an apprentice assassin his progress was swift. He made friends readily, and he was careful not to make any enemies. Yet for all that, he was a youth troubled within his own skin.

  At night, lying in his bunk in the dormitory that housed all the apprentices, Che would dream another's dreams.

  He would dream of having lived another life entirely – a life in which his mother and father were not his real parents, nor their home his true home. So real were these sleeping visions, so founded in fact and minutiae of detail, that he would awake in the morning feeling a stranger to himself, floundering to grasp what was real and what was merely sham. Sometimes, secretly, Che suspected he was losing his mind.

  As the years advanced, he did his best to hold himself together. He kept those dreams of another existence to himself.

  Eventually he grew into a man. He became Rshun.

  *

  At the time it had seemed like any other day, save that it was the eve of his twenty-first birthday, which in fact meant very little to Che. His master, Shebec, had got his days mixed up as always, thinking it was already Che's birthday. Shebec made a bit of a fuss by preparing a honeycake crammed with nuts, then sat down and shared some wine with him. Che did not have the heart to correct his master's mistake, but when he retired to his room it was with a growing, indefinable sense of unease.

  That night, for the very first time since arriving at the monastery, Che dreamed of nothing at all. He slept deeply, without constant shifting, without muttering into the darkness, and awoke on the morning of his real birthday to find that he was no longer himself.

  Suddenly, like seeing through a window thrown open upon a vista that had always been there but never acknowledged, he knew the truth about his life. And in the privacy of his small, neat cell, in the early light filtering through the gaps in the shutters, Che shook with bitter laughter and tears welling out of relief, desperation, and all that he had lost.

  He did not say goodbye to his master. He fought down the urge to seek Shebec out, to offer him even a subtle farewell, a smile perhaps. He feared the older man would catch wind of his intentions. Che walked out of the monastery gates as the rest of the order slowly awoke to the new day, leaving everything that he possessed behind him, save for a travel bag stuffed with dried foods.

  He didn't descend the valley but headed across it instead. A stout, grey-sloped mountain, which they called the Old Man, reared above a twisting side-valley cut deep by a rushing torrent. In the dawn light Che began to climb the Old Man's steep pitch of shale. He knew where the closest Rshun sentinel was hidden in his lookout, watching out over the path below, and he made sure to cut a course leading behind him. When Che reached the top of the peak, he looked back at the monastery of Sato with his heart in confusion.

  Che then turned and descended the other side.

  He was to climb many high passes in the days that followed. He hiked in the tracks of mountain goats, picking his way along trails that ran along sheer cliff faces, with great airy drops yawning below him. Always Che sought routes that would lead him gradually downwards. His meandering became purposeful like water seeking the sea as he steadily left the heart of the mountain range behind him.

  He was ragged and starving by the time he came down from the foothills to the coast, twelve days having passed since he had first set off from Sato. He purchased food from the occasional dour homesteaders he passed, and a mule at the first harbour town he reached, and so made his way along the coast road to Cheem Port.

  From Cheem Port, he caught a fast sloop straight to Q'os.

  Che never returned.

  *

  Now, many floors up, three years later, Che perched within a fingertip's reach of an open window. If he had chanced to look down just then, he would have spotted a diminishing sequence of solidified rags spiralling down around the curvature of the tower – for he had climbed not simply up but around it as well, fixing new handholds and footholds as he went. However, Che did not look down.

  The sound of love play tumbled from the open window above him. It was loud and reckless, and he waited without thought until it was finished. It did not take long.

  A daring glance into the room revealed a man's fat backside, pale and dimpled, before it was covered by a hastily donned robe. 'My gratitude,' the fat priest breathed to the woman sprawled naked on the tussled bed, before hurrying out without a further glance.

  Che failed to gain a proper look at the woman's face, but something about her, unconsciously, sent a thrill of warning along his spine. He waited out of sight, and listened to the whisper of silk as she too threw on some clothing.

  Che placed the garrotte between his teeth.

  Then, fighting his body's resistance, he sprang.

  He was into the room, and stretching the length of wire between his fists, even as she turned and put a hand to her mouth as if to stifle a scream.

  With a sigh, Che sagged back against the windowsill. He rested the garrotte in his lap as the woman dropped her hand.

  'Can you not use the door like everybody else?' she demanded, scowling now.

  'Hello, mother,' he said.

  The woman busied herself for a moment with tidying up. She dragged the sheet from the bed, sprayed a mist of cloying perfume into the air, which smelled of wild lotus and scratched at the back of his throat. Finally she paused and, with a questioning frown disturbing her fine features, turned back to him.

  'Are you here to kill me?' she inquired, with a nod towards the garrotte wire.

  'Of course not,' he protested 'I was instructed to count coup, then return to the Temple immediately.'

  'So you are here on an exercise then. But what possessed them, I wonder, to send you after your own mother?'

  Che remained calm on the surface, as always, though within him a quiet rage was building. 'I don't know,' he admitted. 'You normally live on the floor above this one, surely?'

  'Ah,' she purred, as though realizing a sudden truth. 'Yes, of course. They had me moved here just this morning.'

  As she stepped closer, he could smell a musky after-scent. She smiled at him, almost seductively, the only smile that she seemed to know.

  'I wonder,' she mused, 'what you would have done if they had ordered you to throttle the life from your own mother?'

  Che frowned. He tucked the garrotte away among the folds of his robe, unable to meet her eyes. 'I wonder, too, if you would have enjoyed your lovemaking quite so much had you known your only son was dangling just outside the window.'

  She turned away at that remark, pulling her thin robe tighter about herself.

  'You shouldn't goad me, then,' he said to her stiffened back.

  She crossed to a table, poured water from a jug into a crystal glass, several slices of orange peel bobbing upon the surface.

  His mother – though that term still came to Che with some difficulty – remained beautiful for all her years. She was forty-one now he reckoned, despite any vain lies to the contrary. She was also in no way the same woman he had remembered being his mother when he was a youth, living in Q'os's most affluent suburb, without a care in the world.

  In fact, that mother of his childhood memory had never existed at all. Nor had that life.

  What Che had suddenly discovered in the monastery, on the morning of his twenty-first birthday, was this: every memory he retained of life before his exile to Cheem had been fake. They had all been implanted within his head for the younger Che to assume as real.

  Upon awakening that morning he had realized this quite clearly; and that his mind had, in some way been instructed to remember it on the precise day of his twenty-first birthday. Like a surging tide his real memories had washed through the previous foundations of his life, carrying them away like so much useless flotsam. In their place, Che had suddenly known that he was no son of a rich merchant family at all. Instead he was a simple bastard, his father unknown, and his real mother a devoted Sentiate in one of the many love cul
ts found within the Mannian order, in which Che had originally been raised as an Acolyte, a priest in the making.

  When the tide of recall had swamped him, Che had been left floundering and breathless and with only a single purpose in which to hold on to: leave Cheem, return to Q'os.

  It wasn't until his eventual return to the capital that he discovered precisely what had been done to him. Che had been used for the Empire's own purposes. They feared the Rshun, it seemed, and years before, they had deemed it prudent to send one of their own novices to train as one of these secretive assassins, in the hope of gaining information on them not only of their ways and methods but more importantly their location, in case the Empire ever had need to combat the order.

  They had chosen Che for this particular task by a selection process unknown to him. Perhaps it had been a random choice. Perhaps he had shown some aptitude for such work. For several moons they had subjected his thirteen-year-old self to an intensive regime of mental manipulation, drugged beyond stupefaction as they talked him clear out of his young mind, repressing crucial memories, planting and reinforcing others.

  Of course it had shocked Che to the core, these revelations. Without time to find his feet again after his return, even to be certain of his own identity again, the imperial Regulators had questioned Che for a full moon by using truth drugs and hypnosis to strip the smallest of details from him. Satisfied that he had been plucked clean, they ordered the tip of each little finger to be chopped off as part of his initiation into Mann. And let it be known how pleased they would be if he continued in his vocation as an assassin – not as Rshun, of course, but as one of their own.

  They had left him no choice in the matter.

  'Water?' asked his mother, crossing the room with the glass held out to him.

  Che accepted. He drank it in one swallow, and for a moment he simply sat there, savouring the taste of it in his mouth.

  The world intrudes, though, on all moments of quietness.

  I must know why they sent me here today, to feign the murder of my own mother. Sweet Ers! Look at her, the empty-headed bitch. In her devotion to them, she believes they are merely playing games with us.

  For a moment he wanted to seize and shake her slender body in his grip, then slap her hard across the face, again and again, until she woke up to all of this – these lives that he and she were both living.

  Instead, Che cleared his throat. 'How are you?' he asked.

  'Mm? Oh, I am well, thank you.' She was seated in front of her mirror now, untangling her long golden curls with a fine-toothed comb carved from bone, her hair a luxury of her Sentiate calling. She paused to glance at his reflection. 'Really, I am well. It has been a good season, what with the festival and all.' As her comb encountered a stubborn knot, she held out a fist of blonde hair and tugged the comb lightly to tease it through. 'In fact I am better than well – I feel wonderful, as though I was a young girl again. I have become the main object of desire for one of Sasheen's high priests. Me! Can you believe it?'

  'Yes, I think I caught sight of his bare arse just now.'

  'Rainee? Oh no, my dear, oh no, the very thought of it. No, he is merely one of my regulars. Farando is of a different mould entirely. Alas he is indeed a little ugly, but he has strength, power, position, and he plies me with gifts and fine nights out in the city. I could not ask for more.

  'And you,' she asked, twisting to face her son. 'How are you?'

  Che was scratching at his elbow; not absently, but with a will. 'I am fine,' he said, and inside he thought: She does not recall it is my birthday.

  'Your skin looks better today. Is the ointment working?'

  Yes, she had given him another new ointment to try out, in the hope that it might soothe the scaly rashes that forever afflicted him. He shrugged – a measured, careful gesture, like all his movements.

  'If only I could remember what I used on you when you were young.' She shook her head, exasperated. 'It's lost to me. Am I getting old, do you think? Mm?' She studied her reflection in the mirror. 'Has my face begun to turn away from the sun at last – along with my memory?'

  'You're old enough for melodrama, I'll give you that. I'm glad that you are well, mother, but I must leave you now.'

  'So soon?'

  'I'm being timed on this exercise. And I must find out what this is about.'

  Che climbed on to the windowsill, but turned back for a final remark. 'Something is wrong in this,' he said. 'Be careful.'

  He was gone even as she opened her mouth to say farewell. 'Oh,' she said, instead.

  She returned to her reflection, humming softly as she raked her golden curls, taking care not to notice the rhythm of a heaving bed resounding through the floor just above her head.

  *

  'You counted coup as instructed?'

  'I did,' replied Che.

  'Excellent. Any collaterals?'

  'Two Acolytes. Their deaths were… necessary.'

  'Two? You could not have found some way around them?'

  'It would have taken more time. I chose the most direct course of action.'

  'You always do. It is the Rshun in you, I fear. Fine. And how, please tell me, was your mother?'

  Che drew back a fraction from the wooden panel facing him. He sat in an alcove within a shadowy chamber, somewhere within the intricate maze comprising the lower floors of the Temple of Whispers. The alcove itself was pannelled in darkly varnished teak. At its rear, at head level when sitting, was a small lattice-work screen, the vacant spaces in between dark with the mystery of who and what might lie behind. A cool and spicy draught wafted through the gaps, though the absence of sound suggested that the space beyond was small, and private.

  'My mother seems well enough,' the replied flatly to the unseen inquirer.

  'I am pleased by that. She's fine woman.'

  The voice was pitched annoyingly high, making the speaker sound perpetually on the verge of hysteria. Che knew of four different voices that would speak to him from this alcove – all four of them acting as his handler, though he had no idea who they might be. Neither, for that matter, had he any idea who his fellow assassins were, for they were all trained separately and so rarely allowed to meet.

  Again Che leaned closer to the panel as he waited for more.

  'Will you not question me, Che, as to why you were sent there today?'

  'Would you tell me?'

  A soft chuckle. 'No, I would not. But I do know of someone who will, in her own, roundabout way. She would like to talk with you now, young Diplomat.'

  'Who do you speak of?' he kept his voice steady, though his heart had skipped into a faster rhythm.

  'Report to the Storm Chamber immediately. She awaits you there.'

  *

  Che rode in a noisy climbing box, flanked by two masked Acolytes gripping naked daggers; smeared in poison, he knew, for a scent of the stuff was evident in that confined space. The climbing box creaked and cranked alarmingly as its massive counterweight pulled it slowly towards the very peak of the steeple. When it stopped, with a lurch that caused all three of the men to wobble, the doors were pulled open by another guard already waiting on the other side.

  The rooms at the top of the tower were large but windowless, and their footsteps echoed as they strode beneath high ceilings adorned with friezes of ornate plaster, depicting faces frozen in every conceivable emotion. The gleaming floors underfoot were of polished wood laid with the furs of exotic animals, their fierce heads still attached and snarling silently at the passers-by. The furniture, though sparse, was elaborately plush and stoutly crafted. The air was stuffy, the light dim.

  Acolytes stood guard at the occasional closed door, through which voices could be heard, distant and muffled. Everywhere drifted smoke, carrying the reek of narcotics; it seemed to gather around the yellow orbs of the gaslights hanging along the panelled walls.

  The Storm Chamber itself was approached by a broad flight of steps carved from pink-veined marble. On either side of eac
h step stood an Acolyte with a naked blade held ceremonially across the crook of his left arm. Here Che's escorts came to a halt, motioning for him to continue alone. Che did as instructed, and climbed.

  Through their masks, he noticed the guards' eyes were glazed as though drugged. They stood like statues, breathing so shallowly that even their chests failed to visibly rise. Boredom washed off them like heat.

  At the very top of the steps, a huge embossed door of cast iron barred his progress. At that point, the female guard standing next to it turned and pounded it with a gauntleted fist. After a brief delay, the mighty door creaked and swung inwards. A torrent of sounds burst forth: the twittering of birds, the cascading of water, music and laughter. An old priest appeared at the threshold and bowed.

  Che entered, uncertain what to expect.

  Windows ran from floor to ceiling for the entire circumference of the circular chamber. They sloped inwards as they rose, giving a clearer view of the sky. Right now they showed a wrapping of white clouds and showers of early autumn rain as it gusted against their transparency.

  Che squinted about, taking in every detail possible of the Storm Chamber with a single sweeping glance – just as he had been meticulously trained to do. In truth, he had been expecting something different from this; perhaps something darker, less inviting. More holy. Instead it was a warm and open space. A fire crackled in a stone fireplace in the very centre of the room, hooded by a metal chimney which ran up through the middle of the floor of a platform built above it; an upper storey, reached by steps, and enclosed by thin wooden walls. Retiring rooms he supposed; private areas of relaxation where the caged birds could still be heard.

  In the cosy space around the hearth itself, plush leather armchairs were arranged so as to face towards an easel, on which was displayed a detailed map of the Empire. A group of priests slouched upon the armchairs, with their feet propped upon padded stools, drinking spirits, smoking hazii sticks, or just talking amongst themselves. Servants moved among them, bearing platters of fruits, and seafood, or else bowls of narcotics, and Che knew their tongues would be missing and their eardrums punctured. As for the priests themselves, he recognized each and every one of them gathered around the fireplace.