Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “How’s that possible?” says Kandri. “I thought this was where they started.”

  “Mab Makkutin is the largest port of departure,” says Talupéké, “and winter’s the best season for a crossing. But they’re not crossing this year. They’re afraid.”

  “Of the desert?”

  “Of course,” says Eshett. “If you don’t fear the desert, you’re as stupid as a cow. But this year, they’re also afraid of the Darsunuk. The Time of Madness, remember? Atau’s men spoke of it. Today, it was the camel drivers. A night of blood is coming, they said. And tears of fire from the Gods. And senseless killing, neighbor against neighbor, clan against clan. It’s a sweet little legend, the Darsunuk.”

  “And is the White Child part of that legend?” asks Mektu.

  Both women start. Chindilan’s response is closer to a gasp. “Of course not,” says Eshett. “What put that into your head?”

  Mektu shrugs. “I don’t know. I just thought maybe.”

  “Because it sounds awful, and the Darsunuk sounds awful?”

  “Because people are afraid of it,” says Mektu.

  “People are afraid of all kinds of things,” says Talupéké. “I told you before, I’d never heard of the White Child before those Rasanga brought it up.”

  But you have, thinks Kandri, still looking at Chindilan. His uncle is shaken and trying hard not to show it. What is this thing you’re so afraid of? That the Rasanga are afraid of? And why the fuck aren’t you telling us everything?

  “These days, most of us don’t believe in the Time of Madness,” says Talupéké. “But camel drivers are superstitious fools. They wouldn’t even talk to us; they just waved us away. Or laughed, or tried to pinch us.”

  “Pinch you?” says Mektu. “Harach, those horny bastards. Let them try it when I’m around.”

  “Actually,” says Talupéké, “it just happened once.”

  Kandri smiles at her, but Talupéké shakes her head. “Don’t look at me. It was Eshett who cracked that fucker’s jaw.” She mimes a hard backward strike with an elbow. “Serves him right, the fool. You don’t pinch a Parthan’s ass.”

  “I was the fool, to strike without looking,” says Eshett. “He could have been a nobleman. I might have been jailed. Fortunately, he was just a drunken pest. Men laughed and started joking with us, and when they learned our business, they introduced us to the owner of a caravan—one of the few preparing for the desert. They were strange folk. Nervous, and not exactly friendly. They kept away from the others at the Desert Market. From the south, they said, and trying to get east to Shefet Ang.”

  “They sound perfect,” says Kandri.

  “And you two look like someone pissed in your coffee,” puts in Chindilan. “What happened? They turned you down like the rest?”

  “Oh, no,” says Eshett. “They’re willing to take on passengers.”

  “So what’s the matter?”

  Talupéké gives a snorting laugh. “They’re plain fucked, that’s what. The mercenaries they hired for protection? They demanded half their pay up front, and as soon as it was in their pockets, they ran off down the Smoke Road. I told the owner that you three would be their protection. That made him laugh. Come back when there are thirty of you, he said.”

  Kandri’s eyes widen. “Thirty guards?”

  “Thirty soldiers, battle-tested,” says Eshett. “Or else they won’t move an inch.”

  “Pitfire, why so many?” asks Chindilan. “They’re crossing the empty desert, not Važenland.”

  “‘Empty desert,’” says Eshett, shaking her head. “No Parthan would use those words.”

  “Who the hell cares?” says Mektu. “Finish the story! You did something. You had to get somewhere fast.”

  Talupéké smiles broadly. It is so unlike her usual range of expression that she seems almost to become another person. Ang’s tears, thinks Kandri, she’s a sixteen-year-old girl.

  “We’ll show you,” says Talupéké. “And we don’t even have to cut through Mab Makkutin. We can follow the wall around to the market outside the Dawn Gate.”

  “The Desert Market?” says Kandri. “You found someone, then?”

  “Oh, she found someone,” says Eshett.

  They walk north, in the wall’s growing shadow. Blackbirds flash overhead, dark leaves in a whirlwind. Atop the wall, the crenellations stand in decay like rows of carious teeth. Grass and brush sprout between them: Kandri thinks of the aqueduct back home. The guards above seem tiny, and too few.

  “Never trust people,” says Talupéké, as if for the first time. “That’s my weakness, that’s what I do. One day I’ll be killed because I’ve trusted again. I mean that: it’s the way I will die.”

  “Nobody knows how they’ll die, sister,” says Eshett.

  “If a God tells you, you know,” says Talupéké.

  Chindilan clears his throat. “Tal and I talked quite a bit in the Yskralem, boys.”

  Kandri’s mouth twitches. Tal.

  “The massacre of her general’s forces was an ambush. Someone betrayed them.”

  “Someone inside Black Hat’s ranks?” asks Kandri.

  “Yes,” says Talupéké, “someone deep inside. The general doesn’t share his battle plans with many. Only senior officers would have known we were making for the Megrev Defile. I hope I’m the one who catches the traitor, whoever he is. I want to cut his feet off and watch him try to walk. I want to hold his gaze as he dies.”

  “Who could such a traitor be working for?” asks Mektu.

  “How should I know? Everyone’s betrayed us. The Ursad, who threw us out of Mab Makkutin. The Lo’ac royal family, who worship the Prophet now. And the worst shit-eating pig of all, the Sartaph of Sendu. He was a Chiloto, but we trusted him. He called himself ‘the Last Free Prince,’ said he would fight the Prophet to his last man. When he asked for contributions, my people paid. In cattle, in gold. And every year he asked for more.”

  “But then the rumors began: Sendu wasn’t fighting the Prophet at all; they were in league, fighting together in southern lands. Of course we stopped paying that pig of a sartaph. He sent us presents, and a letter denying it all.”

  She picks her teeth with her empty lamb skewer. The letter, she says, ended with an invitation: send your military commanders to Sendu, see the fighting for yourselves. Black Hat Tebassa (only a major, then) smelled treachery and urged his superiors to refuse. But the letter guaranteed their safety, and bore the sartaph’s royal seal. Days later, the entire Lutaral-Lo’ac War Council rode for Sendipre, capital of Sendu. And never returned.

  Sendu abandoned all pretenses. It seized lands from the devastated Lutaral clans and mounted their leaders’ heads on stakes. There was even a rumor that Jihalkra, the Prophet’s Firstborn, had been waiting in Sendipre when the War Council arrived.

  “But the sartaph was no match for my general,” says Talupéké. “A year after the killing, he led a shadow team right into Sendipre. They dressed as rag-pickers, slept in the slums. And each day they kept watch on the sartaph. Everyone he met. Every festival and tavern and whore’s den he visited. And one day—”

  “This story’s much too long,” blurts Mektu.

  “Be quiet, you ass,” says Chindilan. “Tell us what happened, Tal.”

  “There were baths,” says Talupéké, glaring at Mektu, “for rich people, but poorly guarded all the same. The general and his team slipped in through the laundry and killed the sartaph’s men, and tied the pig himself hand and foot. General Tebassa took a brick from the fire where the bath water was heating, and wrote his name on it in charcoal and took the brick to the sartaph’s skull. When he was done, he put the brick in the corpse’s hands. ‘I did this to you,’ he said, ‘but it is also true that you did it to yourself.’ Then he led the whole assault team out of the baths and home from Sendipre, unharmed.”

  “That’s a fine story.” Chindilan turns her a crooked smile. “Didn’t exactly change the world, though, did it? The sartaph’s nephew was crown
ed before the corpse was cold.”

  Talupéké glares at the smith. “He stopped advancing. He doesn’t dare cross the general.”

  “Who cares, who cares?” says Mektu, almost prancing with impatience. “All this old crap, what does it have to do with us?”

  “Don’t you understand?” Talupéké’s gaze moves to Mektu. “He’s coming, with all his forces. My general is coming here.”

  Chindilan stops in his tracks.

  “Ang’s blood, little sister. Black Hat Tebassa, here?”

  “Keep your voice down. Yes. And if anyone can persuade a caravan master to take you over the desert, it’s him.”

  “Is that where you’re taking us?” says Kandri. “To see your general?”

  “Only”—Talupéké gives him a piercing look—“if I can trust you not to ruin everything. And even then it won’t be easy to arrange. You can’t just drop in on him, like a visit to the fucking neighbors. The general’s fought every evil bastard from Gathen to the River Shev. He’s the most wanted man in Urrath.”

  Despite her ferocity, she is clearly pleased. But Eshett glances at the brothers and shakes her head. “Not anymore,” she says.

  Chindilan spoke the truth: the Dawn Gate is a thing of beauty. An arch of wind-smoothed sandstone the color of sunrise, irregular in form but serene and graceful, it stands out sharply from the Kasraji wall that has subsumed it. That wall is centuries old, but somehow Kandri senses that the Dawn Gate’s age is of a different order entirely, one for which centuries are scarcely the measure. He could almost imagine that he is looking at the tip of some vein of bedrock as old as Urrath itself—and rising, unbroken, from the heart of the world.

  Within the stone arch, and built to fit its curious shape, are two doors of latticed iron. The bars are corroded but still massive, thick as a man’s leg at the knee. Kandri finds himself oddly comforted by these relics. Mute, mysterious, their story long forgotten; yet all the same, they are here. Perhaps a few things do last forever.

  But then again.

  The gate looks down on a scene of utter transience: the desert market. There are tents beyond counting, tents of wool and canvas and sewn-together hides; and shops, thatched-roof and ramshackle. There are stockades of camels, horses, desert asses, goats; there are numberless men pushing handcarts, hawking dumplings and sausages, brandied olives, pickled eel, groundnuts steaming in their shells. Men just arrived or soon departing. Laughter, embraces, arguments. The rites of the open road.

  The path along the wall crosses another here, cutting east toward the Arig Hills. For the first time, Kandri is struck by the size and severity of those hills, the mighty barrier they raise against the desert beyond. Once through the Arigs, will they find safety in those obliterating sands?

  Right at the crossroads is a tiny hut—a model, really, barely three feet high—and in its open doorway stands a clay figurine. It is a shrine to Atalanith, patron saint of travelers. Offerings of nuts and flowers lie at Atalanith’s feet, but his candles have succumbed to the wind.

  Before the shrine is a flat stone plaque. Kandri brushes off the sand and withered flower petals, and reads:

  By this road the modest traveler may

  To fair Lupriz pass living.

  And if his camel does not stray

  And the moon of kindness light his way

  And the sacred fire of love’s first spell

  Burn in that black and secret well

  And the Gods be yet forgiving,

  Then on to the blessed eastern lands

  He may with faith aspire

  To Shefetsi and Shefet Ang,

  And Kasralys the Jewel Entire.

  But woe to the man whose heart is proud:

  For him the Bright Death, or the Shroud.

  “Oh happy day,” says Mektu.

  “The Bright Death means thirst, or any death caused by the sun,” says Talupéké. “I’ve heard of Kasralys, but not those other places. As for the Shroud”—she hesitates, glances at Eshett as if for support—“that’s something out of a story book, isn’t it?”

  Eshett’s gaze is severe. “My people do not speak of the Shroud,” she says. “This way.”

  The women lead them deep into the warren of shops, the men hiding their eyes from the brighter lamps. The air is pungent: sweat and cloves, simmering onions, spoiling fruit. They slide, swim, squirm through packed isles of goods, much of it clearly for long expeditions. Wineskins, faskas, dried fruits, salted meats, fodder, tent stakes, whetstones, ghoul’s bane, tea in bundles, molasses in rock-hard lumps. Boot laces. Prayer books. Playing cards to keep from going mad.

  “Why is the market out here in the open?” says Kandri. “There’s plenty of room inside the wall.”

  “There’s nothing but room,” says Talupéké, “but in the city proper you pay taxes, and bribes to the Ursad’s treasurer. Out here, you just pay the bribes. My grandmother was still angry about them on her deathbed.”

  “Did she have a booth here?”

  “A booth?” Talupéké snorts. “She had a circus. A real one, with eight wagons, acrobats, fire-eaters, spirit-summoners. And an elephant: Vuceku, she called him. Stormcloud. I used to ride him when I was small. But ten years ago the Ursad took him: unpaid fines, he said.”

  She pauses, as though weighing the value of saying anything more. Then she shrugs. “Our whole family was in the business. My uncles taught me climbing and such. And I told you already about Kereqa, my grandmother. She taught me knives.”

  The girl shuts her mouth, unsettled by this rush of confessions. Chindilan stands near her, almost protectively. Mektu just stares. “You really are a circus freak,” he says.

  Kandri wonders if the others catch the envy in his voice. Circus life: that is what Mektu has always needed, the life he should have had. Surrounded by onlookers. Swallowing fire, juggling swords, sticking his head in the tiger’s mouth. Hidden in a tent, protected from the heartless world. Fearless, outrageous, loved.

  Kandri’s mind is churning. The last thing he wants is to get entangled with Talupéké’s lethal general, this man who beat a sartaph to death. But the little farm will not be safe much longer. Word of Ojulan’s death, and perhaps that of Garatajik, will reach Mab Makkutin, and the city will be gripped with bounty fever. Lethal or not, Tebassa is the only card they have to play.

  After much searching, Talupéké stops at the intersection of two crowded alleys, between a tea stand and what Kandri takes for a barber’s booth. Talupéké nods to the barber, then turns to Chindilan.

  “Here you are, Uncle,” she says. “Delousing. Sit down, wait your turn.”

  She points with her chin: a wooden bench, and two ragged men waiting, one of them scratching busily at his scalp.

  Chindilan grows stiff, speaks through his teeth. “What is this?” he says.

  “Go ahead, sit down,” says Eshett.

  “I don’t have fucking lice.”

  “No lice, no charging!” shouts the barber, in broken Kasraji. “Only pay for the haircut. Yes, yes, you need it, sit down now, hair like wild monkey.”

  Both he and the women are strangely firm, and at last Kandri understands. This is a performance. Someone is watching, waiting for a sign.

  Chindilan has caught on too. He lowers himself with dignity to the bench, keeping as far from the itchy customers as possible. Time passes. Talupéké orders tea. Somewhere, a voice is wailing above the throng. Darsunuk! The Time of Madness! It is come, brothers and sisters, the end of all things and the breaking of this world. Who among us will find shelter on the Night of Blood? Who among us shall be spared?

  A beggar priest. Someone mimics him in high falsetto; a nervous laugh bubbles through the crowd. Many, however, do not laugh. Darsunuk. How many of these peasants, he thinks, lie awake at night worrying about the end of the world?

  The priest moves on, his voice like a crank-siren. Mektu, Kandri notices with alarm, is surreptitiously probing his wound.

  Who among us shall be spared?

>   Then he starts. An older man in a laborer’s plain shirt and trousers stands before them. His bright green eyes study Kandri and Mektu over a pair of black spectacles. He has a face of sharp angles, the flesh stretched tight over cheekbones and chin. His hands are still powerful, his chest broad and strong; this is a man resisting the arrival of old age.

  “The brothers Hinjuman,” he says.

  The travelers, men and women alike, are shocked. Mektu glares at the women, accusing. But the man makes a gesture of restraint.

  “They told me nothing,” he says. “They didn’t have to. I knew you both at a glance.”

  The women look appalled: clearly, they expected no such encounter. Kandri feels the world closing in on him fast, as though the crowd surrounding them were bristling with hidden enemies.

  “When did word reach Mab Makkutin?” he murmurs.

  “Word?” The man’s confusion seems genuine. “Word of what, my boy?”

  Kandri looks at the others, bewildered. If he hasn’t heard—if no one’s heard, yet—

  “How did you know our names?” Kandri asks.

  “He didn’t,” says Mektu, twitching with anxiety. “He just knew to be on the lookout for us. He tried his luck. And you just stood there, you stupid ass, and let him look in your eyes.”

  “His . . . eyes?” says the older man. One emotion chases another across his face. Bewilderment. Suspicion. Comprehension. Fear.

  “Get up,” he says. “Hell’s choir, I thought I’d seen everything. Go back, back to the crossroads. Wait for me at the shrine.”

  He is turning away already. “That’s it?” says Kandri. “We just wait there until you return?”

  The man hesitates, not looking back. “You might consider a prayer,” he says.

  They wait a long time at the crossroads. Mektu buys a bottle of something; he and Talupéké pass it back and forth, taking small, grim nips. Kandri feels a dreadful unease. Everyone is watching them, everyone a potential foe. That beggar: is he faking his club foot, is he a spy? That man with the thick black beard: did he just look at Talupéké strangely? Have you seen him before?