Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Only if you deserve it,” says Talupéké.

  The path hugs the ravine’s north bank; ahead loom the mill and the crumbling silos. As they proceed, the ravine grows wider, the hills receding to either side. Eventually, they emerge into a long, flat field, and Kandri sees that the farm complex is larger than he thought. In addition to the mill and silos, half a dozen barns, warehouses, and meager homes are scattered about the field. All of them look careworn; some are clearly abandoned. Kandri finds himself wondering how many homes, how many dreams, ended with the river’s demise.

  “You’re early, Tal.”

  Everyone but Talupéké jumps. The voice is like velvet, and it comes from the center of the stream. Kandri looks down and sees a rock come to life: a head raised, a pair of arms unfolding from around bent knees, a figure rising in one smooth motion. Not a rock, but a man balanced upon one, perfectly at ease. His face in shadow, a black cloak hiding one arm.

  “Were you seen?” he asks.

  “By a toad or two, maybe,” says Talupéké. “You know who these people are?”

  “I can guess, hmm,” says the man, his voice stranger with each utterance, “but guesswork is not for us, is it, Tal? Not for those who live hunted lives.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” says Kandri.

  The man pivots to face him. “You will get further if you don’t speak out of turn, Chiloto. A piece of friendly advice, that is. And here’s another: don’t walk any closer to the mill.”

  “Why not?”

  “Any number of reasons. You might find it a disappointment: a few tired donkeys, an old man who grinds corn. Or you might find yourself wriggling on the end of a pike, hmm? Hard to tell, hard to tell.”

  Talupéké sighs. “Mansari,” she says, “you haven’t changed a bit.”

  He leaps, a sudden blur, and alights soundlessly before them. Kandri can see his face now, and gives another start. Is he looking at a man or a woman? The purring voice is that of a man, albeit a strange one. The face is sleek, with dark eyes that taper at the corners, small ears, hair cropped short enough for the Prophet’s army. The body is compact and slightly curvaceous. Disoriented, Kandri watches him (him?) drop to one knee and lift Talupéké’s hand. Rather than kiss it, he rubs his temple along her wrist: a strangely sensual gesture.

  “I’ve missed you, Tal.”

  Talupéké frees her hand. “My sergeant’s dead,” she says.

  “Stilts informed me,” says the other, gazing up at her. “I hmm, grieve with you, my dear. Your sergeant had the soul of a prince.”

  “We’ll avenge him,” says Talupéké. “The general will see to that. I’ll ask his permission to lead the reprisal raid. Has he picked a target yet?”

  Mansari hesitates, then slowly rises to his feet. “We had better go inside,” he says.

  He leads them, hips swaying (Man, woman, both? Kandri wonders again) across the field and behind one of the larger barns. The structure is decrepit, listing, the wall planks rotted out along the ground. Pausing by a window, Mansari gives a low trill with his tongue. From somewhere within comes an answering trill. The man proceeds to a small door and swings it wide.

  With some apprehension, they follow the stranger and Talupéké into the dark. The barn smells of urine and hay. Soft nicker of horses, a few tittering hens. Dimly, Kandri perceives another man in the darkness. He approaches Mansari, exchanges a few whispered words.

  “Talupéké, what are we doing in a barn?” demands Eshett. “Is your General here or not?”

  A match flares up with a serpent’s hiss: Mansari is lighting a candle. “Step back a little, hmm,” he says. The second man crosses to a stall door and frees the latch. Inside, Kandri dimly perceives the shape of an enormous draft horse. The animal snorts and stomps as he leads it from the stall.

  “Slowly, girl, that’s the way,” murmurs the second man. The horse is laboring, pulling at two heavy ropes. Kandri follows them with his eyes: they pass through pulleys suspended from the ceiling, descend again into the stall where the horse had stood, and end in great iron hooks, from which a great block of stone now dangles, shedding dust and hay as it rises. Beneath it, a dark hole gapes in the floor of the stall.

  “Quickly, now,” says Mansari, plunging in with his trembling candle. Within the hole a staircase is concealed. “Go!” says the man beside the horse. “Don’t make her stand here bearing this weight!”

  In something of a chaos, they shuffle down the dark, steep stairs. Kandri, at the rear, has barely ducked his head underground when the man starts to urge the horse backward, and the great stone lowers into place. Boom. He gropes for a wall, stumbles against Eshett, furious with his racing heart. Don’t make a fool of yourself, Kandri. Talupéké’s on your side; this isn’t a trap.

  But it is a tunnel, narrow and roughhewn from the earth. Mansari’s candle is already bobbing away. They follow, single file, for a hundred paces or more. Chill air, clammy walls. A roof so low, they have to stoop.

  Eventually, the bedrock walls give way to brick. A few steps farther, Mansari leads them out into a much larger room, low-roofed like the tunnel but too large for the candle’s meager light to reach the walls. Kandri strains his eyes: is that motion in the darkness? A shoulder? A faint glint of steel?

  Mansari blows the candle out. And in the sudden darkness, feet approach from every direction at once.

  Kandri lunges for Eshett, pulls her close. He draws his machete, holding her tight in the crook of his left arm, brandishing the blade. There is a stab of lamplight, followed at once by other lights from every side. Dazzled, Kandri glimpses brutal faces, hard hands, lowered spears. They are surrounded by some twenty men.

  “Steady, Kandri!” says Chindilan beside him. “We’re here to talk, remember?”

  “I understood that you were, hmm, here to beg,” says Mansari.

  Their weapons are confiscated. The men are gruff and thorough but not overtly hostile. The room is plain stone, like a large prison cell, and now Kandri sees that the last, brick section of the tunnel projects well into the chamber—allowing, he realizes, for newcomers to be surrounded as soon as they emerge.

  “About face, gentlefolk,” says one of the warriors.

  Kandri turns and sees that Mansari is standing by a sturdy door opposite the tunnel. It opens a crack, and Mansari exchanges whispers with someone just inside. Then he looks over his shoulder, puts a finger to his lips, and beckons. The door swings wide, the guards step back. One by one, the travelers slip through the door.

  The chamber beyond reeks of smoke, liquor, bad breath, unwashed skin. It is very crowded. There is a round table, above which three iron lamps dangle, hissing. Around the table, a dozen men and women sit in high-backed chairs, their shadows flung behind them like capes. About them cluster another sixty or seventy figures, seated on crates and stools, or leaning with folded arms against the walls. The whole group is arguing, passionately but without shouting, as though they fear to be overheard.

  Heads turn to study the newcomers. Their eyes—wary, wounded, sizing up the travelers with unflinching directness—leave no doubt in Kandri’s mind. These are soldiers; they have seen blood. Their abundant weaponry an unneeded confirmation. Tebassa’s fighters, Kandri thinks.

  The debate does not pause.

  “Friendship?” someone is saying. “Did I hear correctly? Would you truly waste our time with that word?”

  The speaker is a large man with a dark purple birthmark, vaguely insect-shaped, upon his forehead. He stands behind one of the high-backed chairs, training his small, bright eyes on one warrior after another.

  “What friends have we?” he demands. “What friends has the Lutaral ever had? Oh, we have tactical partnerships—for a week, a fighting season, a year or two at the most. But friends? Not a one. Friends do not forget you, or begin to slander and conspire against you, the moment they feel that they can live without your aid.”

  “It required friendship to overthrow the Kasraj,” says a woman standing a
gainst the far wall, her muscular arms crossed over her chest. “The western clans fought as one then, Spider. And we handed the Emperor his head.”

  “Legends, sister,” says another woman—much older, with deep-set eyes and a thick mane of silver hair—seated at the table near the speaker. “Who can say why the Empire fell? You also hear that their cattle starved. That a volcano opened its jaws in the north, and cinders rained from the sky for five years, and not a blade of grass would grow.”

  “What does it matter?” asks the man with the birthmark. “The world is different now. The sea is gone; the Kasrajis are gone. The Imperial wolf has been replaced by lesser jackals, but they rend us still. We need territory and a hard-fisted battle plan, not hazy dreams of an Urrath united. We must—”

  “Talupéké!” says someone, barely repressing a shout.

  The girl has entered last of the travelers, and her appearance provokes a flurry of gasps. She herself is silent, aware of some breach of protocol, but as she moves through the crowd, her whole body becomes radiant with feeling as scores of comrades reach for her, squeeze her shoulders, touch her hands. Some faces light with joy. A lesser number, with aversion or scorn. The man with the spider mark looks pointedly away.

  “As I was saying—”

  “Just a moment, Captain.”

  The voice, deep and gravely, carves a space of silence in the room.

  “One of our own has just come back to us. Welcome, Sister Talupéké. It warmed my heart when they told me you still lived.”

  Tebassa, of course. From where he is standing Kandri cannot see him for the attendants crowding about his chair. But Talupéké can. She turns to face his chair, draws herself straight as a poleaxe, raises both fists to her forehead in a crisp salute.

  “General—”

  Her voice catches. Kandri and Chindilan exchange a look. This girl, who hurls knives and climbs towers, who fights like the devil incarnate, is afraid. Elated, perhaps even overjoyed—but afraid. Of displeasing Tebassa? Of something he might ask? Of accounting for herself since the loss of her unit?

  “You’ve made some new friends,” rasps the general. “Most peculiar friends, even by our standards. Take some wine, sister. We’ll talk presently, and decide what to do with these mongrels. Now carry on, Captain—but briefly, man. This isn’t dinner theater.”

  The laughter is too keen: these warriors like to flatter their general. As the captain with the birthmark resumes his address, Mansari crooks a finger, leads them toward an empty stretch of wall.

  Kandri endures the warriors’ merciless scrutiny. Who can blame them? Survival in war means grasping every possible threat, and their appraisal is no worse than what seasoned warriors show recruits on their first day of service to the Prophet.

  But that reflection does not sit well with Kandri, somehow.

  He claims his bit of wall—and turning, sees Tebassa at once. The man is large and haggard, with a broad brown face that is deeply scored rather than wrinkled: a face like an eroded cliff. Gray beard full and unruly, eyes full of wickedness and mirth. No hat, black or otherwise, but on his left forearm is a scar like a long purple centipede, trailing from the wrist into the sleeve he has rolled to the elbow. The arm, immensely strong, rests on the table. The hand is large and brutal, like a thing of hide.

  With his other hand the general is jotting with a quill pen in a ledger book. The instrument looks absurdly flimsy in his grip, but the words flow smoothly. Eight or nine men crowd around Tebassa’s chair. Stilts, the eldest by far, is pointing at a line in the ledger book and whispering in the general’s ear. Tebassa nods. His cunning eyes flick upward.

  “Thank you, Captain, that will do. Mr. Demaroc, you’ve paid our northern friends a visit, I believe. What have the Shôl to say for themselves?”

  A tall soldier with narrow cheeks pushes his way to the table. “Little to nothing, my general,” he says. “Their ranks have been decimated. They have a few men yet in the Shirisan Hills, but not enough to be of service to our cause.”

  “They were never of service to our cause,” says the general, “but in the past, they could be counted on to fight for their own. You can’t mean they’re abandoning the southwest corridor?”

  “Not officially, general: the flag of the Scarlet Kingdom still flies on the summit of Mount Inutuk. And the men there expect a relief force sooner or later. But later may prove too late. The Shôl have lost their other strongholds in this country already, and half their leaders are in chains. The relief force may find no one to relieve.”

  “And the provisions we bargained for?” demands the general. “Black rice and barley, and thirty cattle on the hoof? My men are peculiar, Demaroc: they like to eat.”

  The warriors laugh again. Discreetly, Kandri’s eyes travel the room. In fact, not everyone is a warrior: at the table are two well-heeled men (fine cloaks, jeweled fingers) he pegs as merchants; a small fellow in horn-rimmed spectacles behind a heap of books and scroll cases; and a youth of eighteen or nineteen, regal of bearing, in a fine blue high-collared shirt with buttons of gleaming pearl. The youth’s skin is dark olive, his hair glossy black. His hands, folded together on the table, have the cleanest nails Kandri has ever seen. His face is composed, but his eyes betray a certain anxiety.

  Kandri is bewildered by the debate. The general is apparently reviewing the whole tactical situation of the Lutaral, but the names fly too quickly: are they discussing clans, roads, factions, militia, mountains? He cannot say, and yet he feels a throb of hope in his chest. A glance at Chindilan earns him a nod: his uncle feels it too. This is a war council. It is a good sign that they have been allowed to be here at all.

  The council is a long one, however. For twenty or thirty minutes, the men speak of nothing but food. Another quarter-hour is devoted to speculations on the length of the winter, and when the first killing heat of spring will descend. Tebassa, even when silent, remains firmly in control. To some he is ravenously attentive; to others, mildly disdainful, scribbling in his ledger or muttering with Stilts as they speak.

  At length, talk moves to the Prophet and whether or not she is likely to advance on the Lutaral in the near future. Kandri and Chindilan exchange looks. The Lutaral?

  “She has the men for such an assault,” says the man with the birthmark. “But she has marched them too far, stretched herself too thin. Fighting on three fronts, pouring her legions up and down the Mileya like so much sand through an hourglass, exhausting them: these are a brute’s tactics, are they not?”

  Many look surprised at this remark. The silver-haired woman at the table eyes him scornfully. “Your brute has taken four hundred miles of territory back from the Važeks, Spider,” she says.

  “But can she keep it?” says one of the bejeweled merchants. “Can the old dog swallow that much meat?”

  “No,” says Spider. “It will be torn from her jaws. Remember, brothers and sisters: the Kasraj never looked stronger than in its final years. This much I will grant, however: that the Prophet caught the Važeks with their breeches down—”

  “Who can blame them?” interjects someone. “Who’d ever heard of organized Chilotos before she came along?”

  “Let alone a Chiloto army,” Spider continues. “But the Važeks aren’t fighting bare-assed any longer. They have retaken the lowlands, and with it the breadbasket of their kingdom.”

  “And that is nothing,” says the youth in the high-collared shirt, “compared to their alliance with the Shôl.”

  “Correction, my lord,” says Stilts, bowing slightly to the youth. “They have an armistice, not a formal alliance.”

  “What matter the word?” says Spider. “Važeks and Shôl are no longer killing each other. Both will have men to spare for killing Chilotos.”

  “All the same, you underestimate the Prophet,” the older woman insists.

  The man’s upper lip curls in amusement. “Far be it from me to doubt a grandmother,” he says.

  Someone hisses. The general, raising his eyes fr
om his ledger book, studies Spider wordlessly. The old woman is unmoved. She gathers her thick silver hair in her hands and ties it at the back.

  A look of great unease comes over Spider. He turns to the woman and bows. “Forgive me, elder sister. I referred to the Prophet only; not for all the world would I disparage you.”

  “Not twice, you wouldn’t,” says the woman.

  “Captain,” says the general, “finish your thought.”

  Spider nods. “It is merely this, sir: that the Prophet is no soldier. The great countries of the north are led by warrior-kings, men of iron and intellect, men trained in the oldest martial traditions of Urrath. But who leads this sloppy thing, this boneless mass called the Army of Revelation? I’ll say it plainly: a bitch. A ferocious bitch, but a failing one, with rotten teeth and addled dreams of Godhood. A stumbling old seer with a pet baboon, and her eleven precious sons.”

  “Ten,” says Talupéké, and the room goes silent.

  All eyes turn to the girl. She looks back at them, standing her ground. Spider at last has no choice but to acknowledge her presence. His glance is cold.

  “Ten?” he says.

  “Or maybe nine,” says Talupéké. “One of them was stabbed. I don’t know if he lived.”

  Silence. For a moment, the chamber feels like what it is: a basement. Then the general begins to laugh.

  “It’s true,” he tells the astonished crowd. “The Thirdborn, the maniac Ojulan, is dead. Chopped to pieces while savaging a child. And Garatajik, the scholar-son: he was ambushed and stabbed by an accomplice of the first killer. His soldiers found him at death’s door. The news reached me just yesterday, and our sister Talupéké has confirmed it.”

  A soft explosion follows his words. No one shouts, but every face changes, every throat makes a sound of astonishment. Stilts and several others wave their arms and hiss, “Order! Order, damn it all. You’re not in nursery school!”

  “But who were these people who managed to strike the Sons of Heaven?” asks the youth in the high-collared shirt.

  “Who indeed?” says Tebassa. “Master assassins, no doubt. They infiltrated the Prophet’s army some years ago, and fled like the wind after their deeds. That is all I can tell you. Pray for these men of courage, if you’re the praying kind.”