by Clare Smith
Turning away he bowed to the man on the other side of his master, although he would have rather buried the knife he held in his guts. Cheum was a vicious man who held a grudge and never forgot it. He was also the senior of the Red Lion Set, to which he belonged, and had never forgiven him for his near failure at the test of the Strong Hand and the dishonour it had brought the set.
It was rumoured that Cheum had asked the masters for his death but had been denied. Instead it was he who had beaten him until he couldn’t stand, and would have beaten him to death if his master hadn’t intervened. He had no doubt that if he failed the final test, Cheum would take great pleasure in making his death as dishonourable as possible.
For now the man just laid the two weapons he was permitted on top of the clothes and stepped back with a sly smile. The first of the weapons was a knife with a long, thin blade which was designed for removing a target without leaving a gaping wound, but was good for very little else. He didn’t mind though. Unlike Cheum he wasn’t interested in making a man bleed. The second weapon was a garrotte. It was an ugly weapon that required you to hold a man close whilst he died, and he hated it. There was no doubt which one of his judges had chosen that for him to use.
“Twistirian, my son, your task is to remove the rings from the hand of the Emperor’s concubine, who must die without a trace of blood, along with her lover. These must be taken to the temple of the Golden Dragon and placed in the dragon’s jaws, and you must return here before the sun rises. Do you accept your task?”
“Yes, Master.” Of course he accepted the task, he had no other option, but it was impossible. The Emperor’s palace was the heaviest guarded building in Chang’an, and the temple stood on an island in the middle of a lake. What’s more, they were at opposite ends of the city!
“Twistirian, my son, you will not eat or drink, sleep or speak until your task is done.”
His master and Kingquin bowed and walked away, but Cheum just smirked and waited until they were alone. “I will have my revenge, and this time you will die one way or another.”
*
The Emperor’s palace stood on a hill at one end of the city. It was said that it had been built there so that the Emperor could keep watch over his people, and so they could look up to him and know that he cared for them. That was nonsense of course. It had been built on a mound so that it was above the noise and the smell of the city as well as being in a good defensive position.
As part of his early training and in order to develop his memory, Twistirian had studied the layout of the building and the ornamental gardens which surrounded it. That came in useful now otherwise he might not have known where to start. The first part of his plan had been simple enough. All he had to do was to climb the high wall which surrounded the palace and drop down into the gardens on the other side without the guards seeing him.
Of course the guards were waiting for someone to do just that, so on the far side of the wall there was a wide ditch lined with spikes. It was a clever trap disguised by netting and covered over with tree bark. In the past it had surprised several would be thieves and assassins who had ended up being impaled, but it would be no problem for him.
He’d waited until it was dark and had then climbed the outer wall of the city. It was higher than the palace wall, but it was unguarded and the handholds made it an easy climb. From there he’d moved swiftly along the top of the wall and then made the leap down onto the wall of the palace. It was a huge leap and few people could have made it, but the distance wasn’t a problem for him.
His problem had been the forward momentum which could have had him crashing into the ditch if he hadn’t been able to arrest it. Of course he could have landed and flipped off again in one move, but then he would have ended up almost on top of the guard post in the palace grounds. Fortunately he’d managed to twist himself around in mid air and had grabbed the top of the wall, although he’d skinned his hands and bruised his knees in doing so.
After that, it was just a matter of pulling himself back onto the top of the wall and running along it until he’d found the exit spot he’d chosen. He’d been in luck that there were no guards around, and had somersaulted off the other side of the wall leaving plenty of room between himself and the ditch. It was a difficult manoeuvre, but he’d been practicing such things since he’d been a small boy and they were second nature to him.
Now he was concealed beneath a small bridge that spanned an artificial stream, ready to put the second part of his plan into action. The palace was on the other side of the stream and up the rise, and was being patrolled by four pairs of armed guards. He’d counted them around the palace five times and thought he had the pattern of their patrol sorted out in his mind, but it was a lot less regular than he would have liked.
The other problem was that the gap between one set of guards moving out of sight and the next set appearing was a matter of seconds. That wasn’t going to give him enough time to move from where he was, cross the open area in front of the palace and climb the wall to the second level balcony. If he’d been a full brother on an assignment he would have made a careful withdrawal, leaving no sign that he’d ever been there, and would have found a different time and place to take out the target.
Unfortunately that option wasn’t open to him; if he didn’t complete his task tonight, then he never would. The thought occurred to him then that perhaps it was what the master’s wanted, although he couldn’t think why. His master had invested heavily in his training, as had the Brotherhood, and they wouldn’t throw that away unless there was a very good reason.
The only reason he could think of was his constant questioning of the Brotherhood’s outdated traditions and the petty rules that governed every aspect of their lives. He knew it had been a constant irritation for the masters, and some had even spoken out about his suitability, but he was certain that it was only the senior brother of his set who had demanded his death. His was a powerful voice of course, but nowhere near as powerful as that of his own master.
No, there had to be something he was missing, something he was doing wrong without knowing it. Hadn’t the Master of the Still Mind told him a dozen times to think before he acted, but yet again he’d rushed blindly into his work? Against everything he’d ever been taught about staying alert when moving in on a target, he closed his eyes and emptied his mind.
When he opened them again he had his answer. He’d been a fool of the worst kind. Not only had he put himself in danger for no good reason, but he’d wasted precious time, and all because he hadn’t stopped to think and work things through before he acted. He should have realised that the Emperor’s concubine was hardly going to take a lover right under his nose.
The question was where would the two lovers meet? Of course the answer to that was also simple; the temple of the Golden Dragon. He almost groaned out loud in frustration. Now he had to get out of the palace again, cross the city without being seen and swim across the lake before he could even begin on his task. Anxiously he looked up at the sky. It was still dark but he wasn’t certain how long it would stay that way.
Taking a chance that the patrolling guards would be too busy looking for intruders trying to get over the wall to notice him, he slipped into the artificial stream and let the current carry him along. The stream was deep enough here to hide him and ran straight downhill to a culvert which burrowed under the palace wall. At one time, there had been bars buried into the wall to prevent anyone crawling through, but they had rusted away to nothing and now the culvert was overgrown with thorn encrusted briars and stinging nettles.
He’d thought about entering the palace that way but had decided the pain and a good soaking wasn’t worth it. Now was different, now he needed to leave in a hurry. By the time he’d reached the culvert, most of the water had drained out of the artificial stream, and the hope that he could swim beneath the thorns and the nettles disappeared.
He wasted a few precious seconds to cover his face with his head cloth and to tuck h
is hands inside his sleeves, but when he made it through to the other side he was a mess. Tending to his stings and scrapes would have to wait though as time was running out and he needed to be elsewhere. He set off at a jog, keeping to the shadows so no one would see him, and followed the back streets which he knew so well.
Chang’an was his city. He’d been born there in one of the overcrowded hovels at the back of the rice market. His mother had been a whore and he’d been the unwanted product of her trade. Fortunately his mother had the sense to leave her squalling brat on the doorstep of the local temple, and as he was a boy child, they took him in. He’d been almost six when he’d escaped from their abuse and went to live on the streets.
Even then he’d been fast. He could remove goods from a market stall and be gone before the stall holder could turn around, and his ability to lift a purse without his target knowing was almost miraculous. From there he’d moved to breaking into warehouses along the riverside where his agility and ability to climb almost anything made him the ideal door opener for a wharf side gang of thieves.
Inevitably he’d moved onto burglary, breaking into the mansions of the rich and that was his downfall, or his salvation, depending on which way you looked at it. He’d been eight when his gang gave him a leg up over the high wall of the newly occupied pagoda in the Bird Song district. It was an exploratory visit really, just to see what was there and whether it was worth the risk of an all out raid.
It was the first job he’d done for his new gang and he was eager to impress, so instead of just having a look around he climbed to the second level, let himself into the dressing room of what appeared to be a very wealthy man, and helped himself to a couple of rings and a gold chain. It was when he was on his way out that he was caught by two men dressed in black who moved even faster than he did.
The punishment for a street thief who was caught stealing from a market stall was to lose a hand, so he guessed that being caught in a rich man’s house with his jewellery in his pocket was going to be considerably worse. He was right. They took him to a long room at the back of the mansion and strung him up by his wrists. Then half a dozen boys in grey tunics, who looked to be a year or so older than he was, came in and started throwing knives at him.
Fortunately they were not very good and he was very agile but it was only a matter of time before one of the knives had him. Then the old man had come in and everyone had dropped to their knees. The man was tall and thin with the longest drooping eyebrows and moustaches he’d ever seen. He also wore the two rings and the gold chain which had so recently been in his pocket.
With a snapped command one of the men in black had lowered him to the ground and he had just stood there, rubbing his wrists and waiting to see what would happen next. That was a mistake. The old man took three steps forward and backhanded him so hard across the face that he flipped completely over. After that he’d stayed on his knees with his head touching the floor whilst the man had walked around him and prodded him with his foot.
“Did you try to steal from me, boy?”
There didn’t seem to be much point denying it since he’d been caught with the rings in his pocket. “Yes, Master.”
“That makes you a thief and you know what happens to thieves?”
“Yes, Master, they come to a sticky end.” For a moment he was certain that he heard the man chuckle so he thought he’d chance his luck. “But I don’t want to be a thief, I want to be like one of these men who serve you.”
“Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, Master. It means I get to live here instead of in the gutter and I get to eat every day.”
Now the man did laugh. “If you wish to serve me your life will be one of constant devotion to your studies and absolute obedience to your master, and if you fail, your sticky end will be far worse than the death my brothers had in mind for you tonight. Are you prepared to give yourself to that?”
Strangely enough he was. “Yes, Master.”
“Then stand, Twistirian, my son.”
That had been twelve years ago, but he could still remember standing in front of his master and for the first time in his life feeling that he belonged somewhere. It was a feeling to die for.
*
Twistirian pulled himself out of the water and flopped onto the grass like a dead fish. He’d swum across that lake several times before, but never that fast or after running the entire length of the city. He rolled onto his back and stared anxiously into the sky. It was still dark, but the bright star that heralded the dawn was just starting to rise. Time was running out, but he needed to get his breathing under control if he was going to break into the temple without anyone hearing him. In any case, he needed a few moments to finalise his plan.
It was fortunate that he knew the temple of the Golden Dragon well, so he wouldn’t have to waste time looking for the lovers. He’d spent almost a year in the temple serving the monks, and in return they had taught him to read and write and the art of meditation. That had been the most difficult of all the disciplines for him to master.
The Golden Dragon temple was a place where the goddess of love was said to reside, and the monks taught about love and caring. He’d always thought it was odd that an order which preached such things should have a close relationship with a brotherhood of thieves and assassins, but it seemed to work well enough. He supposed that if your temple had no other secure source of income, then caring for the spiritual needs of the Brotherhood in exchange for their patronage and protection was a good arrangement.
Of course the temple did have one other source of income, which was why he was there. However, he suspected that after tonight, the temple’s rooms, which they let to those who wished to show their devotion to the goddess of love would remain empty for a while. That was probably why he had been commanded to take the concubine’s rings and donate them to the temple instead of giving them to his master. It seemed to him to be fair enough compensation for their loss of trade.
With that thought in mind he picked himself up from the grass and ran lightly in the direction of the low building to one side of the temple. It was just starting to get light, but he thought it was unlikely that he would be seen even if he did encounter some of the monks walking around the grounds. Fortunately they always chanted their devotions wherever they went so it would be easy for him to avoid them.
When he reached the building he hesitated for a moment. He knew that the interior was divided up into a number of cells that would contain a sleeping mat and very little else. The question was which cell would the concubine and her lover occupy? The last thing he needed was to have to search for them, or even worse, end up despatching the wrong ones. If he knew who the man was it might have helped, as the more wealthy the man was, the larger the cell was likely to be.
Behind him the first bird of the morning called and made up his mind for him, he was just going to have to search for the couple and quickly too. He eased the outside door open and slipped through into a small vestibule with six, inward facing doors. It was dark inside but that didn’t bother him, he knew the layout well enough to find his way around.
It was unlikely that the lovers would be occupying either of the first two cells as they were quite small, so he missed them out completely. When he reached the next pair he stopped to listen for any sound from within, but he was pretty certain they were empty. Just in case he was wrong, he slid the doors open a fraction and glanced inside. It was very dark but he could just make out the empty sleeping mats.
That just left the last pair, which were the largest and best appointed of the cells. He crept up to the door on his left, placed his hand on the edge of the wooden door frame ready to slide it open and stopped. There wasn’t the slightest sound from within or even the smell of someone being there, but the skin on his arms prickled in warning, and he instinctively knew there was something within which he didn’t want to disturb.
Carefully he withdrew his hand and moved silently to the other door. When he tou
ched this one, the hairs on his arm relaxed, and he was certain he’d found what he’d come for. He was right. When he slid the door open, he could make out the dark forms of the two lovers.
Now came the difficult bit. With the lightest of treads he crossed to where they were sleeping, and then knelt by the side of his victims. In the dark he couldn’t see the girl’s features, which was fortunate. She was bound to be beautiful and that would make what he had to do more difficult. The man’s features were also hidden in the dark, but from the outline of his body, which was covered by a single sheet, he appeared to be young and strong, which was worrying.
He was lucky that the two lovers were slightly apart and not in each other’s embrace, so it was a fairly simple matter for him to cover the girl’s mouth with one hand and slide the thin blade in and out of the hollow at her throat. She struggled of course and kicked out a couple of times whilst the whistling sound of the air escaping from her body through the hole in her neck was louder than he thought it was going to be. He managed to hold her away from her lover though and, within a minute, she lay with her eyes wide open without having disturbed the man’s sleep.
Carefully he wiped the small trickle of blood from her throat and moved around to crouch behind the sleeping man. When he’d practiced with a garrotte, his victims had always been standing, but he guessed the technique would be the same. He moved the knotted cord from his pocket, wrapped the ends around his hands as he’d been taught and then dropped the river stone he’d picked up onto the man’s stomach. As expected the man sat bolt upright giving him the chance to slip the cord around the man’s throat.
He’d been right about the man being strong. His target kicked and pounded his heels on the floor and did his best to pull his assailant over his back, but he couldn’t get any leverage on the padded mat. Twistirian hung on for all he was worth, hoping that there was no one around to hear the man’s struggles. When his target started to weaken he pulled back, crushing the man’s windpipe and ending the man’s life as quickly as he could. Now all he had to do was take the girl’s rings, lay the bodies closely together and cover them with the sheet.