King of Assassins

by Rj Barker

  I am a man, letting feral dogs loose on a group of women and children.

  frightened

  I am proud

  happy

  I am lost. I am three and I am one. I am unbecoming.

  We are unresolved.

  We ride a tide of gold, spume flying and foaming as personalities come apart. Two golden streams around a core of darkness. Twisting and shifting we fight, dive and dip. We explode and implode against a background of the yellowest, thickest, muddiest black. In the black are points of light, a thousand, hundred, million of them. We dart around them like fish around rocks in a stream.

  Fight and spin.

  We cannot touch. We are insulated by darkness.

  Spin and fight.

  This is beyond my control. My darkness is too different to their light. How can Barin be light? How can he be? Boros, yes—golden and glowing—but Barin. How? How?

  Fight and spin.

  Spin and fight.

  Spiralling around the bright lights, our orbit bringing us closer together, but there is a soft boundary that cannot be passed. We are connected by touch. The souring stops me connecting to anyone else and it stops Barin and Boros escaping, leaving, running, hiding. We are locked together. We are here until we are resolved.

  Fight and spin

  and

  d

  i

  v

  e

  They chant the word “Escape!” over and over again and all Club-Foot wants to do is hide, hide behind the sacking they use for beds in the slave pens, but White-Hair won’t let him. Blue-Eyes won’t let him. “They’ll whip you if you don’t watch.” So they drag him to the bars and he watches. He doesn’t know the boy, doesn’t associate with him. He is from a different cage and somehow he got out. He looks confused by the outside, this boy, not knowing what to do, where to go. Everyone in the cages is laughing and jeering but all Club-Foot wants to do is hide his face from the inevitable, hide from the blood and the screaming and the death and the ripping teeth. Slave-Father is there, and he’s saying something, but there are no words, only the roaring in his ears and the shouting, screaming, excited joy of the others.

  The barking of the dogs cuts through the noise, it is a knife in Club-Foot’s ears. The dogs are running. The boy is screaming, backing away, hands in the air as if to beg, but the dogs don’t care. They are on him, tossing his screaming body like a straw hobbydoll. Fight and spin. He screams: they scream. Club-Foot screams. So much blood. So much pain. The dogs: so fierce, so terrifying.

  The lizards are circling.

  Fight and spin.

  Grandfather laughing. Running through the forest ahead.

  “Come on, Boros!” The dogs pulling on the leads, fit to jerk his arms from their sockets as they shriek and bark in excitement at the scent of the maned lizard.

  Shouting, “Come on, Barin!” Where is he? Where is his brother? The forest moves around Boros. Trees shift, seeds spiral down in a rain of gossamer white, stirred up and twisted by the breeze—fight and spin—and he is so excited. So excited. Grandfather has never let them hunt before. This is where they stop being boys, become men. Men!

  “Come on, Barin!” Where is he? Always behind, always lagging behind. “Come on, Barin. Catch me if you want your dog back!” Laughing, laughing and running.

  “Come on, Boros.” Grandfather, somewhere in front. But where? The path diverges. One to the left: to the light, to the sun, to the trees and gently dappled clearings where wild mounts graze. And one to the right: to the darkness, where yearsage steals the coats from the trees and frost rimes the path.

  And the dogs pull on his arm and …

  One. Single. Moment.

  … he fights it. Wait. Wait for your brother. To the left the sun brightens. Wild mounts coo as the light warms their backs. The air is full of the scent of wildflowers.

  The dogs pull to the right. They bay and yap and scream with excitement. He hears the voice. Sad, desperate.

  “Boros, wait! Wait for me! Boros.”

  And the dogs pull Boros right, drag him on, into the cold, through the drifts of leaves, and Boros is running, heart beating, running down the path. Through the trees, past yearsage and on into yearsdeath. Into the dark, into the cold. Into the dark and the cold.

  To where the lizards wait.

  Long and lithe. Scales so small they can barely be felt under a hand, tight and bright. Teeth so sharp their cuts are barely felt. Bodies so quick they can barely be seen as the pack move through the snow. Dogs baying. Lizards growling. Cold biting Boros’s fingers and toes and nose. Iron-hard muscle smashing into him. Pushing him to the floor. Knocking the air from him. One of the dogs screams as teeth lock on to its hindquarters. The scream is cut short when another lizard grabs its throat.

  Dead gods, they’re so big and there’s so many of them.

  Four, five, six, seven, eight. Scrabbling for the blade at his hip. A movement. Cutting out at it. A growl. Only two dogs left. They are standing over him. They are being pulled down under a squirming mass of lizard flesh. White lizards. Winter lizards. Long manes slick with blood. The dogs are quiet. The lizards are quiet. All Boros hears is his breathing. He is hurt. It hurts. Bleeding from his leg. It hurts. Can’t stand it.

  The lizards are circling.

  Fight and spin.

  I stand apart from the twin streams of brightness around me. Boros and Barin are the work of a mad weaver: a hundred thousand million finely woven threads of life that tangle and twist and knot until one is another and another is one. I cannot find where one begins and the other ends. I cannot find where one starts and the other stops. What they are is so finely tuned, so delicately balanced. The scales of who they are could always, always, have tipped either way. I am the black birds of Xus gathering on the scales of their lives. I am the point of balance. I am the sword that cuts the knot. When does he become him? I could spend a lifetime untangling the threads and I have only moments. Only seconds. Only the blink of an eye.

  The lizards are circling.

  Fight and spin.

  “Wait, Boros! Wait, Boros!” He is always ahead. Always ahead. Better at the sword. Better at the bow, gets to hold the dogs. Takes his dog! His dog! The only thing that has ever really belonged to Barin. Ahead in the trees, running in front, Barin can barely see his brother. Boros: golden, feted, favourite. Boros vanishing, flickering in and out of being among the trees. Ahead on the path, ahead, ahead, always ahead. Where is he going? Not right, “Boros! Grandfather said always to the left. Go to the left to the clear areas.” Where is he going with my dog?

  “Wait, Boros! Wait, Boros. I don’t want to go the wrong way!” But Boros is running ahead. “Wait for me!” He’s running, running as hard as he can, out of breath as he never trains quite as hard as he should. “Don’t be weak, boy!” Barin can hear Grandfather’s voice in his head, always pushing him, always making him chase his brother. But his brother is going the wrong way. He is going the wrong way.

  “Wait, Boros! Wait!”

  The lizards come from nowhere. A big pack. Yearsdeath hungry. They don’t usually come this far out of the mountains but yearsdeath has been hard this year, colder and earlier than ever. That is why Grandfather said to keep out of the deep wood. Never go in the deep wood. The first lizard takes a dog. One hits Boros, knocking him to the ground.

  “No! Boros! Boros!”

  Drawing his blade. Running harder. The last dogs do what they’re trained to do. Fight and spin. “Run! Run!” Moving in front of Boros, guarding his brother. Giving their lives to protect him. He sees his dog—His dog!—go down, smothered by lizard flesh, cold and hard. His poor dog.

  “No! Boros! Boros!”

  A lizard leaps for his brother and Barin lashes out, cutting into it, and it hisses as the blade bites, scuttling away, licking at the wound. Then he is standing in front of his brother. Boros is bleeding!

  The lizards are circling.

  Fight and spin.

  An arrow cuts down
a lizard. Then a second. A whirlwind of strength and armour storms into the clearing.

  Grandfather! Cutting left and right. Face as cold as his armour.

  He’s magnificent and strong.

  He is huge and threatening.

  “Boros, are you hurt?” Grandfather picking him up, folding him in warm arms, the smell of sweat and old fat on his armour. The smell of comfort.

  “Barin, why did you let your brother run ahead?” Grandfather’s eyes blaze. He shouts the words, the threat of a beating in his face. “Don’t shrink from me, boy!”

  “Grandfather, I ran on …” He wants to stand up for Barin.

  “Of course you ran, and your brother should have kept up!” Why doesn’t his brother stand up for him?

  “It wasn’t his …”

  Blood is rushing in Barin’s ears. The unfairness of it. Always Boros. Always Boros. Barin opens his mouth, roars the words.

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Grandfather’s eyes widen. His hand comes back, winding up for the inevitable strike. Coming down on a frightened boy. The old man roaring, “Never make excuses!” As the hand comes down he steals himself for the pain.

  Sees his dog going down under the lizards.

  Watches his brother held tight in grandfather’s other arm.

  Is he smiling.

  Is he smiling?

  And all he can think is, “You killed my dog.” The blow falls.

  “You killed my dog.”

  And the blows keep on falling.

  The lizards are circling.

  Fight and spin.

  This will be the place.

  It hurts so much.

  Cut.

  I’m thrown from the darkness, cast into the heat and the stink and the filth of reality. Someone is screaming. I am shouting. I can still feel the heat of grandfather’s blow to my cheek. To my left Boros is curled around the agony of his body. His pain must have reached a new crescendo as the noises he makes are harder, wider, as if the hurt is new to him. In the other corner of the cell Barin is slumped in the corner. His eyes open. He stares at his hands as if he has never seen them before.

  “I am free,” he says. “It does not hurt. How did I become free?”

  And I know it worked.

  I have swapped the minds of the two men.

  “Look,” I say, scuttling across the floor, and Barin—no, Boros—recoils from me. I unsheathe my Conwy blade and hold it up, catching the light of the torch, letting him see himself reflected in it. He raises his hand to his face.

  “It is me?” he says. “Whole again. But how?” His gaze does not stray from the sword, it is as if he is hypnotised by his own beauty.

  “Look.” I take the blade away, use it to point at his twin who is curled in the corner, howling.

  The air is thick with the scent of magic, spices and honey.

  “That is me?” he says. His voice is very far away.

  “That is Barin’s face. I swapped you over.”

  “How?”

  “I am not sure I even know.” I notice new grey streaks in his hair, no doubt the same in his tortured brother’s, though there is no way to tell short of washing him.

  “I can serve my king again,” he says. His voice quiet, his eyes unfocused as though he is drugged.

  “No.” I shuffle over, taking his face between my hands and making him look at me. “You cannot tell anyone. Outside of myself, my master and Aydor, no one will know—and no one can know.” He stared at me, the truth dawning on him.

  “Magic.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you Dark Ungar himself?” He seemed amused, not angry or disgusted the way he had been previously when confronted with the magic in me. “You save me and damn me in the same act, it seems a hedging deal.”

  “It is the only deal available outside of death. To all intents you must become Barin. Make changes, yes, but make them over time. Make a reconciliation with your brother, lie if you must, but give him an easy death and maybe one day Rufra will trust you as Barin.”

  “Forgive my brother, and give him a swift death?” He stood and went to stand over his brother, still lost in agony. Then he turned back to me, clasped his head and fell to one knee.

  “Boros?” I went to him, but he raised a hand.

  “No.” He shut his eyes so tightly it screwed up his whole face. “Do you remember in Gwyre, Girton, they tortured someone to try and get us to come out?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked up, blue eyes wide.

  “I can remember it. Not doing it, exactly, but I remember it. As if I were outside my own body and watching another hold the blade, cut the flesh. Is that normal for this?”

  “Normal?” I stood. “I have no idea. As far as I know, no one has ever done such a thing as this before. There was a story, about a sister and brother, the boy was sick and could not leave his bed, the girl was well. Their mother was a wise woman and the girl wanted to help her brother, so each week the mother swapped their minds over until she found a cure for her son.”

  “You risked my life on a children’s story?”

  “I did not feel you had much to lose, but understand, this is as new to me as it is to you. Maybe who you are is changed over, but what he remembered is still there? Maybe it will fade with time. Maybe it was easier because you are brothers—and twins. I do not know.”

  But Boros was no longer listening. A tear ran down his face.

  “He loved that dog, you know. I never even thought about it back then. I just took it because it was his and I wanted it.”

  “So you will tell Gamelon to give him an easy death?” His face changed, eyebrows meeting in the middle, his mouth became a thin line.

  “Forgive? Dead gods, no, Girton. Just because you are soft-hearted does not mean I am.” He glanced at his brother, then back to me, and he smiled. “I want to watch him burn.” He turned and pulled his brother up by the front of his filthy tunic, grabbed his hair and forced him to look into his eyes. “Do you hear me in there, Barin? They ready the fool’s throne for me but it is you who will burn, and maybe I will take a bite of your flesh, eh?” He dropped his brother, who crumpled to the floor, and he laughed—a strange and cruel sound—before turning to me. “I will send the guards away so you may leave.” He glanced at his brother. “But I will remain here a while. Barin came to see me many times in this cell and the conversation was, unfortunately, very one-sided. I have much to say to him.”

  I held out my hand, palm open, the vial of nightsmilk poison on it. Boros stared at it and then he closed my fingers around it. “You keep it. My brother will have no need of it. Now, let me walk you out.” He banged on the door and waited until one of his guards appeared. I slid back into the shadows, unsure of how he would manage, hand on my sword hilt in case there were problems. At first, Boros just stared at the man.

  “Blessed?” he said. Boros continued to stare. “Are you all right, Blessed?” He jumped a little, as if waking from a dream.

  “Yes, I was just thinking about burning, that was all. You can go back to our camp and take the others with you. Leave the keys with me.”

  “But, Blessed—”

  “Are you questioning me?” He barked it out, and if I had not known it was not Barin—well, I would not have known.

  “No, Blessed.”

  “Good, then leave.”

  “But what if someone comes to—”

  “They won’t. Rufra is a coward and that is the second time you have questioned my orders. Will I need to talk to you about this further?”

  “No. Sorry, Blessed.” The man sounded like he had more questions, but I knew he would not ask them because he was every bit as frightened of Boros as he would have been of his brother.

  When he was sure the guards were gone I left the cell.

  “Go now,” he said. “I intend to talk with my brother a little. I will see you at the pyre, Girton.” For a moment, I doubted which of the brothers I spoke to and I wondered what I had done—and wheth
er I should have done it at all.

  I did not think I would sleep that night. The lives of the two boys still echoed through my mind, the single act that had turned them against each other. How similar they were in reality that night. I closed myself away in my room in the Low Tower and wrapped myself in a blanket. Sleep did not come but another did. I heard her come up the wall. Somehow, without ever really being aware of it, I had known she would come since the moment we had shared a touch in Leckan ap Syridd’s courtyard.

  In through my window crept Tinia Speaks-Not. Haunted by her own darkness she sought the solace that I did not even know I needed. She put a hand to her mouth, making a sign for quiet, and put out her other hand for me to take. When I touched her a calm settled on me, as if her touch was the balm for all that ailed me. Maybe I should have questioned it, but I did not. And though neither of us had lived lives that would let us lose ourselves in sleep easily, we could lose ourselves in each other, if only for a while.

  And sleep came to us. Eventually.

  Interlude

  This is a dream.

  She is standing on the black battlements of Maniyadoc, a keep that squats on a hill like a worn old tree stump, defying time and landscape. Wind whips her hair about her face and it whispers in her ear.

  You were never here.

  To the south a forest carpets the land, a jagged wavescape of pinetops undulating in the wind as they climb the escarpment, a huge evergreen breaker about to smash down on the fields below. Those fields are another sea: a sea of life. Of mounts and men and women all arrayed and gleaming for war. So many she can’t count them, and where the forest is an angry mass of angular vegetation the war host is like the placid surface of a lake. Flashes of sunlight are cast up from armour, like wavelets on blue water. But lakes, she knows, can be as deep and dangerous as any sea.

  Beside her stands Adran, not dressed as a queen, dressed as a serving girl—though the queen is there too: she is beneath the rags and sacking, beneath the dirty face and tangled hair. She stares from the battlements with all the hauteur of a ruler. She stares at the same landscape, but what does she see? What does she feel? Does she know something terrible is about to happen? Does she feel the flutter in her breast? The coldness in her swelling belly?