Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

It is very big, the darkness, she had murmured. But it is only a stomach, not a mouth. It cannot swallow you without your permission. I know this, child. I am in the dark all the time.

  The third person is Mektu, who had tried for years to wear him down with questions. “It happened after you came to live with us, right? You weren’t afraid at the seaside, when I taught you to swim. Did those Sharp’s Corner bastards hold you down in a cattle trough? Did you fall into the Sataapre, hit your head on a rock?

  To such pestering Kandri never yielded a word. But one day Mektu inquired with such unusual gentleness that Kandri decided to tell him everything. Mektu had stood speechless, which almost made it worthwhile. He never raised the subject again.

  Nor had Kandri ever again shared the story. Dyakra Hinjuman asked and learned nothing. His inquisitive sisters, nothing. He even managed to hide his secret from the Prophet.

  Kandri’s stubbornness on that last occasion had terrified his father. It was on their third full day at Eternity Camp. The Old Man had accompanied the boys from Blind Stream and was still lingering about the base, mostly in Chindilan’s shop. Late that afternoon, he and Kandri were summoned to the Prophet’s house in the palace compound. She kept them waiting outside for forty minutes, watching the light bleed from the Gallows Courtyard, listening to the shrieks of her baboon.

  Such interviews with the Prophet were not unheard of. She had an extraordinary memory and liked to stock it with details from her soldiers’ lives. Where had they lived? What foods were they raised on? Had they fished? Had they ever skinned a coyote? How often did they rise to urinate in the night? How long did coitus last? Did they ever think of the Gods during coitus? Did they dream of the victory of Orthodox Revelation?

  No one knew just how much she retained of their answers. And perhaps that was the point: she asked everything; therefore she might know anything. Safer to assume that she did.

  When the doors opened at last, a half-dozen enormous Orthodox Guard had searched them head to foot, confiscated their shoes and headscarves, and slipped red mittens over their hands. The mittens were famous in the camp: made of thick cowhide and joined at the wrists, they were fastened with fine chain and padlocks. One could, with difficulty, grip a bowl or cup, if the Prophet should honor you with an invitation to dine. But little else.

  The mittens were just one security measure, of course. Another, darkly rumored, was a silent dwarf from the Opapku clan, a being without name or tongue or genitals. This dwarf was said to lurk unseen in the shadows whenever the Prophet had visitors, and to possess some means of killing so swift and certain that no other bodyguard was needed.

  They entered, alone, and Kandri almost stumbled: the room was dark enough to hide any number of dwarves. The Enlightened One sat on the floor behind a low table upon which three small candles burned. Sleepyhead, the white baboon, was chained a few yards to her right. The doors closed. They sat down awkwardly before her, mittened hands in their laps.

  “This is the eldest, Lantor?”

  His father inclined his head. “Kandri Hinjuman, Your Radiance. My son and your proud servant.”

  Kandri, astounded, suppressed an urge to turn and stare at his father. She knows your name, he thought.

  There were no further pleasantries: the Prophet turned to Kandri and launched into a string of questions, which he tried in good faith to answer. Why do you wish to be a soldier? To hasten Urrath’s liberation, Your Radiance. What weapon feels best in your hand? The machete, Your Radiance. Could you kill a man with your machete? Yes, if Your Radiance requires it. How do you know that? Have you killed already? No, never, but your Radiance, for our people, I’m certain that— Yes, so am I. What is your birth sign, corporal? The Well of Fire, Your Radiance; I was born under a red full moon.

  “The Well of Fire!” she said. “Auspicious indeed. Tell me, have you seen it in your dreams, or in a waking vision? Have you drunk from the blessed Well?”

  “Not yet, Your Radiance. But I will find it one day. Every hour in your service brings it nearer my lips.”

  So it went, faster and faster, while his father sat rigidly beside him and the baboon chewed and slobbered over a platter of bones. When the Prophet asked him to name his greatest fear, the answer came without hesitation.

  “Drowning, Your Radiance.”

  The scrawny woman looked up in surprise. “Drowning? A curious fear for a boy raised in the Valley. Where could one drown?”

  Kandri’s nails bit into his palm. “There are deep clefts on the Sataapre River, Your Radiance. And our cousins live by the sea.”

  “Did you fall into one of those clefts?”

  “No, Your Radiance.”

  “Let yourself be swept offshore by the tides?”

  “No, my Prophet, no.”

  “Well, then?”

  A silence followed. The baboon cracked a bone. The Prophet gazed at Kandri with a look of some annoyance, and Kandri found himself staring helplessly back, thinking of the murderous dwarf. The Old Man began to squirm. “Answer our Prophet’s question!” he hissed at last. “Your Radiance, with all my heart I beg your pardon, the boy’s in shock at your benevolence in granting this interview. And he has always been clumsy in speech.”

  “Not this clumsy,” said the Prophet. “He is in the grip of memory, Lantor. Look at him sweating, smell that ecstatic fear. He is recalling something that left his mind bruised, and his heart in pieces. That copper ring on his thumb is part of the story. Am I right, Kandri Hinjuman?”

  “In this and all things, Your Radiance.” But I won’t tell you about it, never, some things are mine.

  “The Xavasindrans might like a word with him,” said the Prophet. “They are intrigued by sudden fits of this kind.”

  His father turned him a blazing look: Proud of yourself, jackass?

  “Those foreign doctors,” the Prophet continued, “are exceedingly clever in matters of the flesh. But of our minds they know little—and of our spirits, nothing at all. They would speak of this or that portion of the brain, or certain salts and humors therein. But they would not understand this boy as I do. Shall I tell you, Lantor, why your son does not explain his fear?”

  His father was pale. “I—Your Radiance—Kandri, bethink yourself, by all the Gods!”

  “Because he cannot,” said the Prophet. “This break, this rupture in his soul: he has recalled it from a previous life. It is hidden from his waking mind, though it taps every night at his dreams. Tap tap. Tap tap. Am I correct, my child?”

  A previous life. That was it, exactly. A life before the Valley was lost to him, before religion was hammered into his heart, before Ariqina fled and this war claimed him, this meaningless march to a sterile future in a country emptied of love.

  Kandri bowed low. “You see through me, Enlightened One. Truly, your feet walk Heaven’s Path.”

  His words satisfied the Prophet, and let his father breathe again. But Sleepyhead, the white baboon, looked at him with cunning, as if he understood that Kandri had not truly bowed in spirit, had not submitted to the Prophet’s will. The animal bared its teeth, blew bubbles of spit in Kandri’s direction. The old woman laughed fondly at her pet. The monkey began to shriek and throw bones.

  III. YSK RALEM

  “Six years and thirty have I ruled Urrath from this throne,” said Ut’xing to the magician. “Men have come with daggers in the night and I have killed them. Other kings have opposed me and I have laid them waste. I slew the tiger of the Thrukkun Marshes and the Ogre of Chahiyin. I have drunk from the Well of Fire and glimpsed the Mountain of the Gods. Now you say that a new foe, this yatra, will challenge me. Very well, I care not. Only tell me when I should expect it.”

  But the magician continued to bow, unmoving, and when the guards nudged him they found him already a corpse. And a voice was heard from the shadows, saying, “No one foresees my visits, Prince of Nations. Does the oak foresee the lightning, when the night is clear and still?”

  ANNALS OF UT’XING

  Fo
ur fugitives on a clifftop, overlooking the Stolen Sea.

  Kandri shades his eyes, gaping at the monstrosity. A dazzling white canyon, blurry with heat, descending by a series of shelves to the old sea floor, many miles from where they stand. The land is scabrous, reflective, like the shed skin of some doomsday reptile. There are vast protrusions and pinnacles of rock, hazy and shimmering. There are boulders, trenches, rippling undersea hills. Over everything, the salt. In some places it is a slippery egg-white glaze, in others solid enamel.

  “Gods of death, it’s big,” says Mektu. “I can’t see the other side.”

  Chindilan raises his hand and gestures vaguely. “That way, somewhere, on the far East Rim, is the city Lord Garatajik spoke of. Mab Makkutin—that’s Ghost Port in the local tongue. And it was a port, when the Yskralem was still a sea. Hardly an ideal refuge, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  “You’ve been there?” says Kandri.

  “Years ago. Her Radiance sent a team of us to inspect their ironworks. Strange place, it is. A great city in Imperial times, and the old wall’s mostly intact. But the city’s shrunk inside it, like the flesh of a gourd.”

  “Due east, you say?”

  “Well, now, I couldn’t swear to that. We reached the town from Loro Garrison, not Eternity Camp. It was a hellish long march up the East Rim, but exactly where it stands, well—”

  “So this Mab Makkutin could lie straight across the Sea,” says Kandri, “or fifty miles north or south along the Rim.”

  Chindilan nods reluctantly. Mektu’s shoulders slump.

  “It doesn’t matter,” says Eshett. “This is the only place to cross. If all goes well, we could do it in six nights.”

  Mektu turns to her, eyebrows raised. “How would you know? Have you been down there, or do you just like to talk?”

  “I remember things,” says Eshett.

  “For example?”

  Eshett’s mouth twists. Gods, how she must hate him, Kandri thinks.

  Chindilan makes a gesture of impatience. “Mektu,” he says, “what do you see back there, to the west?”

  Startled, Mektu squints at the horizon. “I can’t see anything, Uncle. There’s a mirage.”

  “That’s right, genius: a mirage. And the next Wolfpack could ride out of that mirage while you stand there yipping like a pariah dog. Come along, all of you. And stop calling me Uncle. You’re too daft to be my blood.” He starts to walk, gesturing even as he goes. “Look ahead, where the cliff juts out. What am I seeing, bricks?”

  Bricks, indeed: a round, low ruin of some sort, very close to the precipice. “Come on, Mek,” says Kandri, taking his brother by the arm.

  But Mektu’s feet are planted. He crosses his arms, looks his brother fiercely in the eye. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, “until you tell me the truth.”

  So Kandri tells him.

  Mektu makes a small sound in this throat. For the first time in living memory he has nothing to say.

  “You’d have done the same to help that little girl,” says Kandri.

  “Would he?” says Eshett.

  Mektu looks from Kandri to Eshett to Kandri again. “You killed Ojulan.”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “I don’t believe it. Kandri. You’re a mad fucking dog.”

  Chindilan, already exploring the ruin, turns and shouts for rope. They walk toward him, Mektu’s expression changing with every step: denial, suspicion, confusion, rage. The mood that finally claims him is sheer blazing excitement. He starts to cackle, then to whoop.

  “Ojulan, dead! Her ass will split open! She’ll piss herself a lake!”

  “Stop it, fool,” says Eshett. “Your wound.”

  Kandri is pleased to see her smile—a small, dazed smile, but a smile nonetheless. His brother has noticed it as well. He stares at her, works his lips. Finally, he clears his throat.

  “I’m sorry I called you names. Bitch and things. It’s not you who’s the bitch, it’s us soldiers, we’re dogs. I mean we’re all taught to behave worse than dogs.”

  When her smile does not entirely disappear, Mektu is deeply moved. “We’ll protect you,” he blurts. “That’s a promise, vegetable girl. I myself will protect you with my life. From insult. From the groping hands of men.”

  Kandri shuts his eyes. When he opens them, Eshett, little wonder, is marching stiffly away. Mektu turns to Kandri, ecstatic. “I understand now. I don’t mind.”

  “About Ojulan?”

  “About everything. She’s beautiful, that Eshett. I’m glad she helped you hide the body. I’m glad we’re running away.”

  Some knot or tangle loosens abruptly in Kandri’s chest. He has dreaded this confession more than he knew, and can barely look Mektu in the eye. “I should have told you,” is all he manages to say.

  “That’s all right. Shake my hand, brother. Gods of Death, you killed the Thirdborn! And then I killed—devil’s prick.”

  “Maybe you didn’t, though,” says Kandri. “Garatajik was still breathing when we ran. Mektu, listen, there’s more to all of this—”

  “She likes me,” says his brother, “can’t you tell?”

  Brothers should never serve together. So said Kandri’s legion commander, a thick-necked colonel who had died on the banks of the Shev. The colonel believed this so strongly that he had taken on the task of separating such pairs throughout Eternity Camp, usually by dispatching one brother to some distant campaign.

  Kandri and Mektu had escaped this fate when his aide revealed that they had only a father in common. The colonel had snorted, contemptuous: “Half-brothers? What’s a half-brother, can anyone tell me? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. The hell with it, let them stay.”

  Kandri has never quite understood the colonel’s meaning. But he recalls those words whenever Mektu disgusts or repels him. Which is often enough.

  The groping hands of men. Bastard. You can start with your own.

  Of course, the true bastard in the family is Kandri himself. Chiloto men take but one wife. When Kandri still lived with his birth-mother Uthé, the people around them had assumed that she was that wife. But who were those people? Ragged farmers and herders. Gap-toothed, unschooled. You couldn’t expect them to grasp the truth.

  Blind Stream was a proper town, and a part of the larger world of the Sataapre. They had laws, teachers, rooftop water tanks, a store with hours written on a sign. Astonishingly, they had a man who lived by nothing more than cutting other people’s hair.

  Naturally, the wife from Blind Stream was the real one, then. Even Kandri was sure of it, once he glimpsed the splendor of the Valley. But what did that make his birth-mother? There were words, he learned soon enough. Concubine, kissing maid, spare sandal, bush wife.

  “Bush wife?” he had asked Mektu on their first night as brothers.

  “Pay no attention,” said Mektu.

  They sat side by side in their shared bedroom. An hour before, it had not been shared. All his life Mektu, had enjoyed the privilege of a room of his own. When his new mother declared that he and Kandri would be sharing it from now on, Kandri had quickly offered to sleep on the floor. Mektu had screamed in indignation: But I need my floor!

  “Bush wife.” Mektu shook his head. “I suppose you’d better get used to it. You’ll hear much worse at school. If people learn about you, I mean. If someone tells.”

  His face was brightening. He rocked on the edge of the bed.

  “But what does it mean, bush wife?” asked Kandri.

  “Oh, nothing.” Mektu rocked faster.

  “Tell me.”

  “Nothing, really.” Mektu laughed and shrugged. “Absolutely nothing. Almost nothing. I mean, it’s not actually an insult, just the word for what she was, a nobody out there, someone you could screw—”

  Kandri hit him. It was a clumsy rabbit punch to the stomach, but delivered with all the strength of his pent-up misery. His mother was but three days dead.

  Mektu collapsed, and Kandri thought he had killed
him. He bent low, touched Mektu’s shoulder. Mektu reached up and slammed Kandri’s temple against the bedframe. Ten years later, he can still feel the scar.

  “The rope, you pair of clowns! Why the hell are you dawdling?”

  The brothers hurry to catch up. The “bricks” Chindilan has noticed are in fact great blocks of crumbled granite, arranged in a circle on a tongue of rock protruding from the cliffs. In the canyon beyond, the spires of rock Kandri had noticed earlier rise like gnarled fingers from the seabed.

  “This is where we’ll descend,” says Chindilan. “The cliff’s low, no more than sixty feet to the first shelving. But I can’t work out what used to stand on this spot. A lookout tower? Why here, where there’s no sign of a town?”

  Kandri shrugs. “Grain silo?”

  “On a sea ledge? Makes no sense at all.”

  Mektu looks from one to the other, as if amazed at their stupidity. “It was a lighthouse,” he says.

  Chindilan snorts, and Kandri represses a smile. But then he glances again at the stone formations rising from the canyon, and suddenly everything is clear.

  Islands. Ang’s blood, those are islands.

  The first two rise gently, wind-smoothed hills of naked stone. The third is tall and sheer, with a flat summit like a tabletop. Others, more distant, run in a straggling line from north to south. They are facing a small, perished archipelago.

  Kandri looks at the back of Mektu’s head. Drooling idiot, buffoon. And the one who just might see what no one else does. He turns to help Chindilan with the rope.

  The heat is fierce now, but the descent is a simple matter. One bend of the rope around a solitary stone, the two ends braided together and dropped over the cliff. Mektu scurries down without incident and stands waving at the bottom. Chindilan follows. But when her turn comes, Eshett goes suddenly stiff. She says she is afraid of heights. Always has been. Her nails bite Kandri’s arm.

  “I thought you would lower me.”

  “We can’t do that,” says Kandri. “The rope is shit. The rocks would slice through it in no time.”