Master Assassins

by Robert V. S. Redick

  “Why do you stand there?” shouts the Ursad at his men. “Drive her off. If she resists, stake her body to the earth!”

  The Child hisses at the Ursad. With a spastic motion, the captain of the Guard leans forward and jabs at the Child with his spear. The girl’s only response is to lower her hand to the elephant’s leg.

  At her touch, a violent shudder passes through the animal. It throws its head back, lifts its trunk to heaven—

  And dies. The front legs buckle; the men on its back are pitched like dice into the street. The animal topples forward, tusks scraping the cobbles, and falls with a leaden boom onto its side.

  Absolute panic ensues. The Guard scatters; the townsfolk stampede. One of the elephant’s handlers has been crushed under the creature’s shoulder; the other is trampled by the mob. Two guards rush to lift the Ursad, bloodied and barely conscious, but when they see the Child approaching they simply drop him and flee. Kandri and Mektu kneel by the window, gasping and swearing. Mektu is the first to come to life.

  “Get up! Move!”

  Kandri lets his brother haul him to his feet. They edge around the broken floor. “Wait, wait!” hisses Kandri, astonished at himself.

  “Like hell! Get your ass up!”

  “Mek, this could be it. Our only chance.”

  “Chance?”

  “She’s going to take that key to the Rasanga. They’re going to open the gate and charge in, searching for us. But they won’t expect us to be right here, will they?”

  “You said we had to go over the wall.”

  “Maybe not,” says Kandri. “Maybe we can just . . . slip out.”

  He drags Mektu back to the window. The Ursad’s body lies face down in the plaza beside his elephant. The White Child is pawing at his clothes.

  “Your stitches,” says Kandri. “You’re not supposed to run.”

  “Well fuck that up and down!”

  “Just be as careful as you can. Please, brother. I want you to live.”

  The Child has found the enormous key. She rises, holding it with both hands, and starts to walk toward the gate. The Rasanga stands waiting, stretching her hand through the bars. Behind her, the Shessels’ stallions nicker and prance.

  Six feet from the gate, the White Child stops walking. Her head lifts, searching; it is as if she has been startled by an odor, or a noise somewhere. The Rasanga calls out, but the girl ignores her. Extremely slowly, she turns around.

  Her black eyes fix on the warehouse.

  The key falls from her hand.

  She tilts her head. Listening, fascinated. Her lips move as though she is sounding out words. Then she speaks, and the voice is the same little girl’s voice Kandri heard from the palanquin in Eternity Camp. And that is bad enough, but what she says—

  Gods of death, what she says.

  It is just one word. Impossible, ludicrous, depraved. The brothers look at each other again, and once more Kandri sees his own feelings mirrored in Mektu’s face: denial. A total incapacity to believe.

  The Rasanga gropes for the key with her sword.

  Then the Child starts to walk toward the warehouse, and horror takes them so completely that they cannot even gasp. They just run. The staircase cracking and shattering as they slide down its length. The door sticking horribly, the door stuck fast and every lower window bricked, tears of horror on Mektu’s face, tears in Kandri’s own eyes, what the fuck, what in the Pits, until they remember that the door swings outward, not in, and they fling it wide and burst into the street—

  She is there, ten paces away. Her flesh aglow like white embers. She lifts both hands and smiles, and her mouth, like her eyes, is a black hole as she speaks the word again.

  Kandri surrenders any thought but flight from this nightmare. He runs with his arm around Mektu, trying to steady him, expecting to smell the blood of a reopened wound, crying uncontrollably although he can’t say why, do any wounds heal, is evil done ever truly erased, and what was it, Papa, what did you do, what sin that took root in the mind of this girl, this monster, to make her turn to us and speak your name?

  Perhaps it will end as it began, that night with Ojulan’s corpse steaming at his feet: in darkness and panic, an unforeseen horror thrust upon him, a child’s voice ringing in his ears. But then at least Mektu was unhurt, and Kandri knew a way out, and no search for them had started.

  They are running in near-darkness now, Kandri supporting his brother. Avoiding crowds, avoiding lamplight, glancing over their shoulders for the creature that pursues them with calls of “Lantor, Lantor,” in that drawn-out singsong voice, as though summoning their father to a game. At times, they pull ahead, and the voice disappears. Then a wall or a locked gate stops them cold, and suddenly she is closing: that lambent, stick-thin, dead-eyed girl. From the left or the right, or directly behind. Never stopping, never blinking, reaching for them like a prize.

  They pause for breath in an alcove. Each brother studies the other’s face, searching for answers, reasons, some least thread to tug.

  “She thinks one of us is Papa.”

  “I know. I know.”

  They keep the wall in sight, hoping against hope for an open gate. “Him and his fucking secrets,” says Mektu. “I hate the Old Man.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I hope he didn’t fake his death. I hope it was real. How could he send us off into the army, knowing that was waiting for us, and not say a thing? You’d never do that, Kandri. No decent person would do that.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know.”

  Mektu shoots him a disgusted look. “That creature knows his first name. She says it like he’s her fucking sweetheart.”

  Kandri has no answer. Just weeks before, they had laughed about the Old Man’s ways. But there was no laughter that first night in prison, when his father came to him alone. Something I should never tell. And if you care about Ariqina, or your family, you’ll never ask me again.

  So Kandri hadn’t. Was he right to keep that silence? To give his trust once more, when the Old Man so clearly refused to do the same?

  A flash of light. Sudden shouting. Kandri whirls and sees a red glow above the wall. The cries are from guards along the parapet, gazing down at the plain.

  “Fun to be had out there as well,” says Mektu.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” says Kandri. “We’re going to be left behind. The others must already be on their way to that hill.”

  “Uncle Chindilan won’t abandon us.”

  “Uncle Chindilan’s not in charge,” says Kandri, “and he heard what Black Hat said about being late. He knows it won’t do any good to wait for us at Yehita’s house. No, he’ll go straight to the Hermit and expect us to do the same.”

  “Black Hat doesn’t much like us, does he?”

  “Why should he?” says Kandri. “What have we done for him besides—oh, Jeshar.”

  The White Child has rounded the corner.

  Lantor. I see you.

  They run. At least the Child does not run. If only they can reach the plains, put miles between them. Did she walk all the way from Eternity Camp, Kandri wonders? Straight over the Yskralem, leading the Rasanga, tracking the brothers like a hound on the scent? No, impossible. She had not even been aware of them at first. It was only when Kandri gazed at her, when his mind filled with the horror of what he was seeing, that she had sensed him, turned, and called their father’s name.

  Mektu stops dead.

  “Do you see where we are?” he says. “The Xavasindrans’ clinic, where we started. Look, that’s the alley right there.”

  “Gods damn,” says Kandri, for his brother is right. “We’re going to run out of wall. It turns a corner soon, back toward the cliffs.”

  “And she could trap us in that corner,” says Mektu.

  Another burst of red light. This time, Kandri sees it plainly: a shooting star, lovely, dazzling, with a bright tail of crimson. But the star does not wink out. It plummets, blazing still, at a sharp angle like a d
ownward sword-stroke, and vanishes behind the wall. For an instant, the light flares brighter than ever, and the men on the ramparts let out a wail. Then the light goes out.

  “I think it struck the earth,” says Mektu.

  “A shooting star can’t strike the earth.”

  “Yes, it can. Read a book.”

  The thought comes in a flash: he will never read another book, never learn if Mektu is mad or well informed, never stargaze with Ariqina or show their children the night sky. No matter how long death walks at your elbow, the thought of it can still pounce and astonish. And that is how it will happen, finally. In the long storm of arrows, one at last knows your name.

  Somewhere off to their right, a sivkrin growls. Ahead, another cat gives an answering cry. Two Rasanga, very close. And that, yes. That is the pounding of hooves.

  “They’ve opened the Dawn Gate,” says Mektu. “The whole force must be looking for us now.”

  Soldiers ahead, soldiers to their right, and behind them a girl who kills with a touch. They flee in the only direction remaining: straight to the foot of the wall.

  There is no gate in sight. But not far to their left is another spot where the inner wall is crumbling. Or, rather, has crumbled, into a steep, leaning hill of rocks and masonry, almost as high as the outer façade.

  They scurry closer. Two sentries pass overhead, bearing no light, picking their way along the broken parapet. Kandri sees no others sentries, but lamplight shines from the windows of a turret some five hundred yards to the south.

  The rocks are massive; the pile has the look of a deathtrap. Kandri tugs at a great chunk of stone at shoulder height. It does not visibly yield, but his hand senses a looseness there, and gravel pelts his feet.

  “Mek,” he says, “can you climb this?”

  He feels heartless, putting the question to his brother. But Mektu’s thoughts have run in the same direction. “Watch me,” he says, and begins to scramble like a goat.

  “Be careful, damn it!”

  At first, the going is simpler than he feared. But the higher they climb, the more the pile narrows, and the more unstable it becomes. They slow their ascent. Then slow further. Rocks grind and shift; gravel sluices like water around their feet.

  “Gods,” whispers Kandri, “this whole thing could come down.”

  Mektu says nothing. Kandri can sense his terror: this is a far greater danger than the rotten stair. The ground feels distant, but the parapet is still six feet above. He reaches up for the next handhold, and a stone the size of a bucket gives way. The whole pile trembles as it crashes to the street.

  “Don’t . . . move,” whispers Kandri.

  “I won’t,” says his brother.

  They are two flies on a sleeper’s lips. A very light sleeper. Kandri looks his brother in the eye.

  “I’m going to pull myself up on the platform, then turn and lift you. By the armpits. You protect those stitches with your hands.”

  “All right.”

  Kandri reaches up to the walkway, probing for a handhold. Stones move underfoot, but not too many, or too large. If only Mek were like this more often. If only he would say, All right. Life would be sweeter, the struggle more bearable, his urge to kick the fool in the face would—

  “Hinjuman!”

  Kandri’s head snaps around. Three Chiloto soldiers are scaling the rubble behind them. Awkwardly, gingerly, their horses abandoned in the street. “I told you!” crows the same voice. “It’s them! The Abominations! Follow the White Child, I said—”

  “Betali?” says Mektu. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Mek!” cries the second soldier. Kandri winces, but there are the grouse-wing ears to prove it. The man is Betali, his brother’s best friend.

  “They really did let you join the cavalry,” says Mektu, his voice almost proud.

  “Mek, Mek,” says Betali, “you’re a traitor. Oh, Mek. You have to die.”

  “Shut your mouth and watch your balance!” snaps the third soldier, an officer by the tone he takes. “And you, blood traitors: you know it’s over, come down. There’s no way off that wall.”

  “How could you do it?” says Betali. “How could you shed their holy blood?”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You cut Lord Ojulan to pieces,” says Betali. “And Lord Garatajik. You stuck a knife in his chest.”

  They are within ten feet. Debris cascades at their every movement, but somehow their confidence is unshaken.

  “Betali,” says Mektu, helpless. “You and I, we’re—”

  “No, fucker, no! I’m not your friend anymore, I can’t be.”

  A catch in his voice. Kandri gropes along the platform overhead.

  “If you reach the wall, the city guard will only kill you,” says the officer. “Come down, and we’ll slay you painlessly. I’ll tell the army you fought us to the end.”

  “No, he won’t!” shouts Betali suddenly. “They’ll torture you. Stab yourselves, stab yourselves or jump! The things they’re planning—”

  “Betali,” says Kandri, “is Garatajik dead?”

  The soldiers lunge. With a groan, Kandri pulls himself onto the walkway, rolls, grabs his brother by the shirt. Rocks are sliding, Betali and the third soldier snatch at Mektu’s feet, Mektu kicks and flails. Then the whole face of the slope peels away like a rind.

  The horses bolt. The soldiers’ cries are stillborn, dust choking them even before they are crushed, even before their bodies vanish from sight. Kandri, veins popping, heaves his brother onto the wall.

  “He touched my foot, Kan.”

  “They’re dead. Don’t worry.”

  “He touched my foot.”

  Mektu sobs like a baby in his arms.

  The officer was right, of course: the wall is sixty feet high and perfectly sheer on its outer face. How in Ang’s name are they to descend?

  Kandri looks north to the Dawn Gate: twenty or more Shessel are stationed by the iron doors, which have indeed been opened. Atop the wall, still distant, a few lantern-bearing figures are moving their way. He cannot tell if they are the city’s soldiers or the Prophet’s. What difference will it make?

  Night has fallen, but the plain is alive with light. Some of the shops and stalls of the Desert Market are on fire; the braver merchants are fighting the blaze. North of the city, one of the lookout towers is burning like a torch. And in the dark miles between the city and the Arig Hills, other fires are burning, crescent-shaped and low.

  Brush fires. And a stiff wind to fan them. Kandri says a quick prayer for the people of the Lutaral, their winter crops, their homes. He pulls his brother up and leads him south.

  Falling stars. Tears of the Gods. But who are they crying for? And who is to blame? Not us, that’s impossible. What God could weep for Ojulan?

  He looks south along the wall. No one between them and the next turret, but the windows of the latter are alight.

  “That way,” he says, gesturing. “If there’s a way out of this mess, it’s through that turret, somehow.”

  Mektu wipes his nose on his sleeve. Kandri puts an awkward hand on his back.

  “I’m sorry. About Betali.”

  “You called him a fool.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  Mektu shrugs off his hand. Of course, Betali was a fool. Only a fool would risk closeness to Mektu at Eternity Camp. And what does that make you, Kandri Hinjuman?

  They walk. The platform is spongy with moss, leaves, underbrush. Also pitch black. After a few yards, Mektu bends and lifts something from the stone.

  “What is it?”

  “A lamp. Hold it up.”

  “It’s broken, Mek. And we shouldn’t light it, anyway.”

  “Did I ask you to light it? Just take it, can’t you do that much?”

  Kandri takes the dead lamp. They shuffle on, increasingly dazzled by the turret’s windows.

  “Is there a bell?” says Mektu.

  “In the turret? I don’t know; I can’t see one. Wh
at the hell does it matter? Don’t tell me you have some crackpot—”

  “Why did it have to be him, Kandri? Do you think he volunteered?”

  Figures move past the windows. Not many. Perhaps just three or four. Kandri has the beginnings of a hunch about Mektu’s intentions, knows he wouldn’t dare such a thing himself.

  They are thirty feet from the turret when the door bursts open.

  “Oil!” snaps Mektu. “How much do you have? We’re in the dark here, and you’re lighting the place up like a grog hall.”

  His outburst appears to stun the young sentry in the doorway, both hands on his lowered spear. “We just have the one lantern, same as ever,” he says. “Who are you? Where’s Aggathon?”

  “Where’s Aggathon!” Mektu quickens his pace. “He’s dead, that’s where. They sent him for oil, and he fell in the dark and broke his skull. Now they’ve sent us, and we almost fell. Here, take our lamp and give us yours.”

  “He fell? Per Aggathon is dead?”

  “Sons of bitches!” Mektu has actually started crying again. “Don’t pretend he was your friend! Did he wait all day to see you in the dinner line? Were you the only one who could make him smile?”

  “Dinner line?”

  “Please,” Kandri hears himself say, “just give us the lamp.”

  Mektu is snarling, one hand covering his wound. Behind the sentry, Kandri has a brief glimpse of the tower chamber, and a thick rope passing through floor and ceiling. A bellpull.

  Two more guards join the first. They cluster in the doorway, peering into the dark. They are large, awkward, crowding each other, their spearpoints bobbing up and down.

  Younger than us, thinks Kandri.

  “Be reasonable,” says the first sentry. “We can’t give you our only lamp—”

  “Then fill ours, jackass, and hurry up,” says Kandri. He holds out the lamp, but it is his brother who seizes it. Brazen, Mektu swats the spears aside and thrusts the lamp into the sentry’s hands.

  The sentry turns sidelong. Light from the doorway falls on the lamp. It is a relic, a joke: the mantle crushed, the oil pan split open like a fruit. Mektu roars with indignation. He snatches it back, turns it, hurls it from the wall.