Blood and Money

by Unknown

  Part of him still refused to believe that Faris was behind the contract. After all, they were close.

  Friends.

  Isra dredged his memory for things that had transpired between them, trying to recall any possible slight, but coming up with nothing. Was it money? Jealousy? Some half-assed notion of prestige? Did Faris expect to inherit everything—the house, the businesses, the network of contacts and traders spread out across the kingdom—after his brother-in-law’s death?

  Isra barked out a bitter laugh. Faris was going to be in for one hell of rude awakening when the will was read and named the boy, Munir, as Isra’s heir, with Mirza as his agent, acting as trustee to ensure his interests were looked after until the boy was of an age to assume control himself.

  The assassin had never expected this to be a permanent arrangement, assuming that he would have a son of his own eventually. He had wanted to ensure that the family wealth would not only remain within the family, but be tied to it by blood, rather than by something as ephemeral as lust.

  Isra’s head was full of treachery as he walked through the bazaar.

  The Obari winds blew unfettered through the tents and stalls. The sea breeze offered blessed relief from the hot winds that had been blowing in off the Mwangi Expanse.

  The bazaar was full of bustling life. Everything they said about the Emporium was true: everything was for sale here, no matter how esoteric or exotic. Isra made his way to a less familiar part of the tent city, the air rich with heady spices that in no way masked the redolent tang of narcotics. Open pitches and overflowing tables spilled out into the narrow allies between the traders’ tents. Many of the merchants had traveled far from Katapesh to bring back the toys and trinkets of distant lands. The further, the rarer, the most costly.

  Representatives of the trade guilds walked the aisles, making sure that their pay masters weren’t being cheated out of their due. More often than not they looked like grubby-faced urchins and downtrodden souls. Without official emblems, their affiliations were impossible to tell.

  Over the belling tops of the tents, one of the many minarets of Katapesh pierced the clear blue sky. This one was part of Abadar’s temple. It was also the tower from which Hashim Rakhman’s guard captain had taken his swan dive.

  A shock of white hair cut across Isra’s path, the sharp-nosed Garundi turning to look him straight in the eye, then turning away. There was a moment, when their eyes locked, that Isra thought the Garundi was another one of his brother-in-law’s pets, but the man seemed to realize he was staring and broke eye contact without so much as twitching, never mind reaching for a hidden blade. Isra was tempted to ask for directions, just to prolong the man’s discomfort, but decided against it, primarily because he didn’t fancy removing the scarf from his face. Why increase the risk of being recognized just for a little sport? His intention was no grander than anonymity. He wanted people to see a man lost in the maze of stalls and tents. Thousands of people a day passed through the bazaar, making the chances of being recognized slim. Pulling away the scarf, even for just a moment, took that slim possibility and raised it. How high, he had no way of knowing, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

  The hook was baited. He had sent a message to Faris, supposedly from his hired knife, despite the fact that her corpse could quite happily rot in its current resting palace for months without ever being found. He didn’t need months, he only needed hours. The message had said simply: “Bara the Fortune-Teller’s tent. Sunset.”

  Isra arrived early and paid the fortune-teller off, buying the tent for an hour with enough coin to almost certainly buy the pitch outright. He didn’t want to be disturbed. He had a feeling things could quickly turn ugly, especially if his brother-in-law didn’t come alone. Isra had long since learned to trust his gut instincts.

  Faris sent his two bodyguards in first, then entered the tent himself.

  Isra stepped in close and grabbed the first guard, twisting his wrist until the man cried out in pain, then twisted some more, pushing hard on the elbow and breaking the man’s arm in one swift, precise movement. He cast the man aside, ramming an elbow into his temple as he stumbled. The guard’s legs buckled and he went down. He wasn’t going to be getting up in a hurry.

  The second guard had no more luck, despite the fact that he had drawn his knife and lunged towards Isra. The assassin’s instincts saved his life. He stepped aside from the blow, grasped the bodyguard’s arm at wrist and elbow, and turned the blade back on its wielder. The curved knife sank deep into the stunned man’s chest. A blood-red rose blossomed on his shirt. The moment of shock was all it took for Isra to finish him.

  Isra hadn’t wanted this; death had never been his intention.

  “Their deaths are on your hands,” Isra spat. “I hope your money’s good in the afterlife.”

  “Not even family comes between Faris and profit.”

  Faris turned on his heel, looking to flee, but Isra hooked a foot out and dumped him on his face. The man went down with a grunt, reaching out for the tent flaps of the door to stop himself from falling and nearly pulling the entire construction down on top of them. With all the noise, there was no way the other stallholders could have failed to hear what was going on, but discretion in this case was the best way to keep trouble from their own door. The bazaar lived on a basic premise: it’s always someone else’s problem.

  “Money?” Faris snapped, only hearing the one word and ignoring the rest as he blustered and struggled to rise. “You’ve had your money, and I’ve still no proof that the bastard is dead. Without his body, I cannot claim his place, so you can forget all about money.”

  So, when it came down to it, this was all about money after all.

  Blood and money.

  Isra removed the scarf from his face. He savored the shock and fear as it crept over Faris’s own.

  “How…?” The man sank back down. He looked, quite literally, as though he had seen a ghost, which of course he had. “You’re dead… I saw…”

  “The question isn’t ‘how,’ brother, it’s ‘why.’ Why would you want me dead? Why did you think that you’d be able to take my place? If you had asked me for anything, I would have given it to you. Anything at all.”

  “Give?” Faris spat. “I don’t want your charity! I want more than that. I deserve it!”

  Isra was torn. He wanted the best for his sister, Sana, and for his nephew. They were the innocents in all of this, but they were the ones that were going to pay the highest price. Killing Faris would destroy them, even if they never knew who was behind his death.

  “There’s only one thing you deserve, Faris,” he said slowly. “But fortunately for you, I love my sister more than I hate you. So there has to be away out of this—some way we can both get some sort of satisfactory resolution that doesn’t involve spilling your guts all over this tent.” He thought about it for a moment. “You want to be in charge? You want control over the family interests? You’d consider that a victory?”

  “Of course,” Faris said. “But that’s not going to happen now, is it?” He gestured to the two dead men.

  Isra followed the direction of his movement, but his mind was elsewhere.

  This was the moment. It all came down to this.

  Could he trust Faris? What would happen if he gave the man the opportunity to play the part he wanted so desperately?

  Suddenly, Isra wanted to laugh. They were in the middle of a fortune-teller’s tent, dead men left and right, and he was trying to look into the future. He might as well look into the crystal ball now and ask the mists to part…

  “What are you thinking, Isra?” Faris suddenly sounded like Isra’s brother-in-law again, rather than the man who’d paid money for his death. “Talk to me.”

  And then, as Isra knew it would, came the question he had hoped his brother-in-law wouldn’t ask.

  “Where did you learn to fight like that? How did you manage to overcome…?” Faris didn’t quite finish the thought. He didn’t need to.
>
  “The assassin you sent to kill me?” Isra said bluntly.

  Faris nodded.

  Isra made a decision. “I have a secret, Faris. I’m going to tell you something now that will change the course of your life, and mine; a secret that has been gnawing away at me for a long time now. It is an itch that needs to be scratched.” He locked eyes with the man on the floor. “You might say that I’m two people. There’s the Isra you know—or think you know—and there’s the other me, the other Isra that’s now consuming my life. Making money offers no thrill. There’s no pleasure in a deal well struck. Not compared to my other life.” He crouched down so that the two of them were on the same level. “You see, I am the one they call the Nightwalker.”

  The cogs whirred away behind Faris’ eyes. “You? No…” The fear returned, yet as quickly as it came, a look of cunning stole in to replace it.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking, Faris,” Isra said. “If you want to be the head of the family so desperately, then why not? I could disappear. It wouldn’t be difficult. I haven’t been seen since the party, and it’s not such a huge stretch of the imagination to pretend that your assassin succeeded.”

  Faris thought about it for a moment. “What would you do?”

  “I would be free of the bonds that weigh me down, free to do something that I get satisfaction out of. Something more challenging.”

  “Killing people?”

  “Or just starting fresh without the expectation of being a drunk with too much money and too little sense. I’m tired of this life, Faris.”

  Faris looked incredulous. “And you would be out of our lives for good?”

  Isra wasn’t going to lie. “No. Not for good. You’d have control of the day-to-day things, but I’d still want a hand in decisions that affect the business. You would be the public face of the family, the man everyone dealt with.”

  “I’d be your puppet, you mean?” Faris’s lip curled.

  “That’s not how I’d choose to see it.”

  “How you’d choose? Your words are slippier than a sand eel, Isra. I’d be your puppet, dancing to whatever string you decided to pull.”

  “Think about it, Faris. It’s the best I can offer.”

  Faris laughed. “Oh, I shall think about it. Long and hard, brother. I shall think about nothing but, but I shall bide my time. Decide in haste, repent at leisure, as they say. I have much to consider. Perhaps I should just reveal that our beloved Isra, patron of flophouses and pesh dens, is the fearsome Nightwalker? Let’s see what becomes of you then. You think you have enemies now… imagine what it’ll be like when half of Katapesh finds out you’re responsible for the death of a friend, or family member, or employer. Go on, imagine—think about what you’ve done, how your crimes have impacted their lives, and the ripples of them spreading out from person to person. Imagine how much they hate you.” Faris smiled grimly.

  “I wouldn’t make threats if I were you,” Isra said.

  “You wouldn’t? I don’t believe that for a minute. You’re a bastard, Isra.”

  The man they called the Nighwalker looked at the huddled merchant in front of him, seeing him properly for the first time, and realized that he may have made the biggest mistake in his life by sharing his secret.

  It had to end here, one way or another.

  “I tried to offer you a way out of this, Faris, but you’re a bigger idiot than I gave you credit for. I’m going to make you a promise now, and I want you to think very, very seriously about it before you say anything. If you so much as think the word Nightwalker, I will make sure you’re dead before the thought can reach your lips. I offered you a way out because I love my sister, not out of any kindness I feel toward you. You’ve mistaken love for weakness. Instead of taking me up on my kindness, you’ve proven I can’t trust you. So here is my final offer: leave Katapesh and live, or stay and die.”

  “Leave Katapesh?” The merchant’s eyes were wide, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly,” Isra said, and stood. “Take you wife and son and start a new life far away from here, Faris. Get on the first boat out of the city and start fresh somewhere else. Be the head of your own family, out of my shadow.

  “Because if you’re still in Katapesh when the moon rises, I will find you. And I will kill you.”

  Chapter Four: Death in the Family

  Blind optimism wasn’t a particularly useful trait for an assassin. Isra was neither blind nor optimistic. He knew full well that Faris could not be trusted, no matter how generous an offer his own skin was.

  Isra knew people, be they the rich and greedy of one tier of society or the guttersnipes and backstabbing thieves of another. He lived in both worlds. He was surrounded on all sides by the best and the worst, and the worst always outnumbered the best. That was just the way of things. He knew full well his sister’s husband wasn’t going to be true to his word. Nevertheless, he had decided to give the weasel a chance to prove him wrong. He owed Sana that much. Still, he was angry with himself for giving Faris the opening in the first place. He had known he couldn’t trust him with his secret, but had desperately wanted to believe he could. The old adage held that blood was thicker than water, with family being blood. But Faris was not blood. He was scum.

  Had Faris been anyone else in the world, he would not have left the fortune-teller’s tent alive. That Isra had allowed Faris to plot murder and walk back out into the Nightstalls without sporting a second smile cut into his throat from ear to ear was testimony to the fact that Isra was as capable of being willfully naive as the next man.

  But that didn’t make him stupid.

  He followed in shadows, slipping between stalls and tents. When their cover ceased to be available, he climbed higher, working his way onto another roof, never letting his traitorous brother-in-law out of sight for even a moment on the long walk back to the home the man shared with Isra’s sister.

  Faris kept glancing back over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. The movements were nervous, scared. But like a fool, he never looked up. This was not the behavior of a man grateful to be given his life and about to keep his end of a bargain. Far from it. This was the furtive, shiftless behavior of a man who trusted no one because no one had reason to trust him. It was the circle of lies. Faris was afraid for his life because, in Isra’s position, he would have been planning the exact moment to slip the knife in between his brother-in-law’s third and fourth ribs, ending his problem. So right now, even as he pushed and bullied his way through the crowded streets, Faris would be scheming, trying to find an angle, a way to gain some sort of advantage even as he ran for his life. That was just the nature of the beast.

  Isra had to give Faris credit, though—he was at least doing his best to make shadowing him interesting, slipping into a hovel and out the back door, climbing garden walls and cutting through one of the bathhouses. Had he just looked up he would have saved himself a lot of sweat and trouble, given the baking sun, but as it was dark stains ringed the loose white shirt that clung to him as he moved, while Isra matched him step for step.

  From his rooftop vantage, the assassin could see everything, Katapesh laid out like a doll theater beneath him. The height of the midday sun meant that he cast no shadow down onto the streets below.

  Faris showed no sign of being in a hurry to go home. Rather, he was making a tour of the city, visiting certain establishments, very particular houses and places of business. These were all places where messages could be left for the kinds of people who do not want to be found easily, those magicians and alchemists who did not wish to treat with the masses, but dabbled in unsavory concoctions to gain whatever effect they so desired.

  He was going to have to be on his guard for whatever nasty surprise Faris in mind.

  Another hour of this, and then Isra realized that Faris had retraced his steps, returning to a shop that had already benefited from his patronage. Only it wasn’t a shop, it was a pesh den. The one where he had first slipped out through the rear d
oor and made off over the wall. And suddenly it all became clear: the fool still thought he was being followed, but that the eyes watching him belonged to a bigger fool than him. His little detour was supposed to have gone unnoticed, with Isra tricked into thinking that Faris had been inside losing himself in some narcotic haze all this time. Perhaps the revelation of Isra’s second life hadn’t been enough to dispel the illusions he’d woven around his first one after all?

  He watched Faris walk tall, happy to be seen on his journey back to his home.

  The man was whistling.

  He deserved to die just for that.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “Every face is a mask.”

  Night fell fast. That was the twin curse and boon of living in a desert land.

  Isra visited the house he had bought for his sister and her family. He was an unwelcome guest. He had never resented the gift, nor even considered it an act of generosity. She had married for love instead of money, and that had always made him happy.

  The bargain he had struck with himself was simple enough: if Faris treated her well, then he would make sure sufficient money came in from investments for them to live well. And despite his duplicity, Faris at least loved and cared for her and wanted to provide for his family, just like any man would, even if no amount of money would be enough.

  They weren’t going to be on any boat tonight, meaning Isra was about to make a widow of her. For all his arguments to the contrary, Faris was right in one thing: Isra was quite capable of being a cold-hearted bastard.

  Under cover of darkness, Isra wore yet another mask, this one transforming him into the Nightwalker.