A lesser man would have been discouraged. With over a hundred billion citizens in the Alliance, the Fleet tried not to settle for lesser men. Even with his latest plan demolished, Gill Kanard continued doggedly with the problem. He applied every formula he had learned in his decade as a PR specialist.
By the Mother’s wrath, they were in the right this time! It was hard to view this assignment with perspective. The Fleet was struggling to protect the Alliance against THE ENEMY, just like the charter said. All he had to do was sell that fact to the populations of some three hundred major and countless sparsely populated planets.
Maybe I can scare them. That raid on Eire was savage enough, even if it did give the Fleet the excuse to move in and clean up a wretched social system. Idly he wished he knew more about the Khalia, or even a world they had occupied.
JIWI SHARED THE thin, hard-black shade of the twisted shrub with a pair of mating lizards. The hot wind from the edge of the Black Desert ruffled the fine, scaled feathers on Jiwi’s neck, bringing with it the sounds of intruders upon his solitude.
The Master of Assassins shifted his perception, heightened his senses, but did not move his body. He continued to sit seiza on the warm sands, motionless and emotionless, waiting.
Three came. Two males and a female, of his own species, rather than the off-world Khalia. He had no love for the ratlike aliens his people called Panya, but they had had sense enough to avoid antagonizing the Guild. So far, at least. That the majority of Ndege was slaves bothered Jiwi not at all; his loyalty was to the Guild, as it must always be.
He knew the males. They were his, members of his Guild, more than students, but not yet fully trained. But the female? Why did they bring her? What could be so important that they would disturb his meditation? It was true that strange things had come upon the world of late ... the Panya, with their delusions of being Overlords, whispered together in their harsh language of an impending attack by a mysterious force calling itself “the Fleet.”
But the Guild With No Nest had weathered the winds of a thousand years, and Jiwi expected that this latest storm would pass, as had all the others.
The copulating male lizard exhausted himself. He withdrew and crouched behind the female, his bent-needle ribs showing through his gray-scaled skin. Perhaps he hoped for a rebirth of energy, to continue his alliance, but the female had apparently been satisfied. She scurried across the black sand, heedless of the male’s intentions. She did not look back.
“Master?” That would be Wembe, the senior of the two tyro assassins. He was fifteen summers, not yet come into his full avian splendor.
“Speak.”
“In the court of the Dying Eagle, we found an unContracted killing. Fat Bata Mzinga, the swizz dealer, was slain.”
“One of the Panya?” The question was natural; only an alien would be so stupid as to slay one of the Ndege without official sanction.
“Sir,” the nestling blurted, “it was this one.”
Jiwi regarded the female in shock. Avicide? By a female?
He held his face carefully calm as he examined her. She was tall, perhaps half a feather length less than his own height, and slender. Her face was high-boned and thin-nosed, her head scales particularly fine and feathery. Her fire-green eyes were fixed in their stare upon him, and there was no fear in those eyes.
Jiwi considered that. There should be fear, for she was condemned by her action, dead upon the perch where she stood. Nobody was allowed to kill another Ndege, save for Guild members, and the barbarian rats, who had enough weaponry to enforce their stupidity. There were laws, there were customs, and they must be observed to avoid chaos.
“Why?” Jiwi finally asked. To be so direct was proper, among students and females; neither had training in fugue. He matched her stare. Young, he saw, maybe twenty. No. Twenty was not young. At twenty, he had killed his father and thus become Master of the Guild With No Nest. And that only three summers past ...
“For money,” she said. Matter-of-fact.
Saykomo, the younger of the tyros, sucked in a quick breath. Sacrilege!
Jiwi suppressed his own outrage. This was not done.
Passion, though inexcusable, could be acknowledged. But coldly, and for pay? A non-Guild member and a female?
“And who promoted this illicit contract?” The female stared at him, defiant.
Jiwi now had to suppress a smile. She was dead, and yet she showed no lack of confidence. A brave one, this. Good. He liked her for it. She had to die—some things were sacred, after all—but one admired bravery where one found it, friend or enemy. It was only proper.
“Master,” Saykomo said, “I-I would ... question her.”
Ah. Once, Jiwi would have leaped to do the same. But the Guild did not deal in torture, had not for ten generations. Death must be clean, even though the old methods of interrogation were still taught. Barbaric ways from barbaric times, but part of the Way. Security lay in tradition. Always.
The male lizard, perhaps alarmed by the sudden nearness of so many giants, managed to scuttle to the base of the twisted shrub. He moved as if the weight of a thousand years rode upon his spine. Sometimes, Jiwi felt like that.
“No person may enter into a Killing Contract, save with the Guild With No Nest,” Jiwi said formally. “We will know who has set you to this before you die.”
“Master—” Saykomo began.
And at that instant, Jiwi thrilled at the sudden knowledge of what the female intended. Her posture was subtle, but he was a Master: he felt it, tasted it, knew it. She wore nothing more than a simple chub shift and the two tyros would have searched her very thoroughly for weapons, doubtless delighting in it, so she could hardly be armed. And yet—
She moved. The female slashed the stiffened edge of her hand across Saykomo’s throat, faster and harder than Jiwi would have thought her capable of doing. Before Saykomo could block, he was choking and falling.
Wembe was more skilled, and he had a second’s warning.
He shifted, spun, and kicked, his heel driving for her solar plexus—
She moved around the kick and clawed, stabbing her fingers into Wembe’s face—
Jiwi allowed himself to smile, finally. He came up in a single move, thick black sand chee-cheed under his bare feet and he took a single step.
Wembe fell back from the female’s attack, blinded. Jiwi took another step.
The female spun, sensing his motion.
By all the Feathered Gods, she was good! Better than any he had ever seen outside the Guild, and a female, besides!
She punched and kicked at him, a smooth and controlled series—
Jiwi became liquid, wrapped in the perfection of the Amaji Trance. Once initiated, the dance of a fully trained Master did not stop, until the opponent was defeated or the Master himself dead. But even as it gripped him, Jiwi recognized the female’s attack: she cast Hummingbird-to-Flower, from the Fourth Kata.
Impossible. A Guild Dance. She could not know it! There was no way for Jiwi to stop his dance, but he could, as a Master, alter it somewhat. He could stun instead of kill. She had to live, this female, for this had to be explained.
Hummingbird-to-Flower was best answered by Dying Dervish. Jiwi’s body spun, and his arm became the wing of the mythical bird, slicing the hot air. His tight fist slammed into the female’s temple, just there, at the precise spot. She went boneless and into the sand. Her impact threw a thin cloud of black dust, which ran before the desert wind.
The vibration sent a shiver into the male lizard under the shrub. Still wrapped in the fighting trance, Jiwi watched the lizard scale the rough bark and climb for the sun.
“Your name?”
She shook her head and stared at Jiwi. “What?”
She was not yet fully conscious, he saw. He waited.
They were in his room behind the main hall in the orgy
palace. The walls were adobe, proof against the day’s heat, and the room was courtesy of the unfrazilian madam and her current raptor, the bouncer. Thin, gummy, white paint peeled from the darker tan under it; the air circulator set into the dark ceiling, run by piped-in water, rattled and vibrated like an angry snake in a cage.
The woman lay on the gel cushion that was his bed, her breathing still ragged. “Berq,” she finally said. “I am called Berq.”
Jiwi nodded and turned his back to her. His plain brown robe swirled across the catskin carpet; static electricity stirred the blue of the rug in a rippling wave. He said, “How is it you move with such—?” He stopped speaking. To simple folk and females, a Master spoke directly. To one who might be capable of fugue, one composed questions differently. One had to be circumspect, one had to dance about the edges, one needed to be oblique. She was a female, and yet he had seen her perform a Guild kata. There were only a certain number of possibilities, but they must be examined to determine the true answer. One who knew Fourth Kata might—and should—know fugue.
Instead of a question, he made a statement.
“You must have had an interesting childhood.”
In saying this, he had discarded several thought-lines. No chance encounter or even a lover from the Guild could have taught her Fourth Kata skills. Such a level of complexity and performance took at least ten years.
Assuming she knew no more than she had already demonstrated, a thing yet to be determined.
Was that the ghost of a smile on her lips? He watched her only peripherally, and when he shifted gaze the smile—if indeed it had been one—was gone.
“My father made my childhood most interesting.”
Ah. So she was familiar with fugue. No real surprise, but interesting. That she could not possibly know either fugue or kata would have been a given yesterday. Today had proved that assumption wrong.
She had learned from her father, if her fugue was pure. That meant he must have been highly ranked in the Guild. Assuming average onset of his puberty, this female’s father would now have to be in his mid-thirties, at least, and possibly older. Assassins were usually retired or dead by such an age, and ex-assassins were not allowed to stay on the main continent, but were banished to the Fire Lands to the south. So her father was most likely dead or gone.
“I would likely have enjoyed meeting your father.”
“I am certain he enjoyed knowing you.”
Ah! Two more things. His assumption that her father was no longer around was correct, and that the traitor had been somebody he had known. That narrowed things considerably. Only a few would fit the cloak. Of these, Atler was of the castrati and obviously no one’s parent; Mugabi had been monosexual and had borne a hatred of females; Mkono still lived, so that left—oh.
Jiwi’s mind ground to a halt. He looked more carefully at the female’s face, searching for signs of parental genes. Yes.
Now that he knew, he could see the father in the daughter. Njia. Master Njia.
Even as he thought to deny it, Jiwi knew it could well be so.
But—why? The old man had never done anything without deep purpose. He had been the most convoluted worker of fugue in the Guild. Even teaching a female would have been within his bent, so twisted as to be opaque to all but the finest fugue players. No one had known Njia well, but Jiwi had known him as well as any. He should.
Master Njia had been his father, too.
Jiwi’s mother had died at his birth; therefore, Berq was Jiwi’s half-sister, if what she said—and he saw—was true.
Damn. Here was a nicely embedded thorn.
The canon continued:
“Your father was a great man.” I know who he was and therefore who you are.
“Yes.” I acknowledge your knowledge.
“He was often very abstract in his thinking.” What in the Thirteen Hells did he mean by creating you?
“The motives of a great man often are.” This is your problem, brother. You figure it out.
Ah. Purpose. Likely she knew what, but she was testing him. The audacity!
An inconsistency tumbled into his mind. Berq was superior to the two students who had “captured” her after her crime; therefore, she had willed it so. Why? And the charade in the desert, the fight, what had been the point of that? She would have only needed to approach him and state any part of what she had just said and he would have been intrigued enough to pursue the matter to its end. She must have known that. Why hadn’t she done it that way?
What did she want?
If she had the kata skills and she could play fugue, it seemed likely that she would also know the Law. That she was his half-sister meant nothing, the Law allowed no exceptions. She must die. Yet, she had allowed herself to be taken. Why?
On the gel pad, Berq shifted her position. The thin cloth of her garment slid back, revealing her slim, muscular legs. Her knees parted slightly and her attitude ... changed. Suddenly, her pheromones called to him, along with the shadowy darkness of her mons, revealed just there. More important, her ki spoke to him, her spirit singing to his: she wanted him, as a female wants a male.
Jiwi became aware of his response. This female was the most attractive creature he had ever met. To be sure, her body was no better than a dozen others he had known carnally; but her essence, her being, was far superior to all of those. She was his counterpoint, as much as any female could be. She was trained, she carried the genes of his father, she was an enigma. More than anything, Jiwi, Master of the Guild With No Nest, wanted to catch this beauty to him, to become part of her, to make her part of him. To join in that oldest of dances ...
None of this showed, of course. The Way taught much more than how to fire a weapon or mix a poison or kill with a hand or foot. Body control began early.
Blood that wished to trap itself there, engorging sensitive tissue and swelling this organ found itself shunted elsewhere. The pulse that would race slowed instead. Jiwi was a Master and his control was very nearly perfect. Nothing showed.
None of that mattered. She knew.
She smiled, shifted her pose slightly, and the invitation was gone. But only for now. She wanted him and now she knew that he desired her, as well.
And Jiwi knew that she knew he knew.
Fugue. Canon. Contrapuntal melodies from the dawn of time, from the days when his kind ruled the skies, these tunes lived, all covertness and circularity. Obvious to one trained in fugue, as obvious as though they had been shouted. He had never met a female who could play other than instinctively, and none at this level.
Jiwi suddenly felt unsure of himself. This was thin air for flight, too dark to see the trees, too windy to hold steady. What did it all mean?
“I have matters to which I must attend,” he said. “I shall return here to discuss things with you shortly.” I’ve got to chew this bolus; you would be wise to wait here until I return.
“Of course.” No fugue play needed for that.
Small waves lapped at the fat pilings under the heavy dock. From ten thousand times ten thousand spans the wave had come, only to find the barnacle and slime-crusted wood waiting. The sea winds turned at this city, bringing storms that failed to venture deep enough inland to slay the desert. The air carried salt-smell and fishy odors, and the sounds of the little brothers of the air, searching for some fisher-woman’s chum scraps left imprudently unguarded. Normally, such background aided his meditation, the waves crooning peacefulness: not to worry, all things circle in their time.
But not today. Today, the waves were discordant. They calmed themselves, maybe, but not the Master of Assassins.
The female. He wanted her. Wanted her legs wrapped around his hips, wanted above all for her to live. And yet, she must die. It was the Law, and he was the highest keeper of that tradition. The Assassins had their niche, it had been that way for a thousand years, and it must be continu
ed. But the female was something never seen before.
Choice. Dilemma. Problem. Trouble.
Why did this thing exist? Master Njia, blood-father and greatest modern Master of the Guild had designed it so, that was why. What purpose, old man? What have you done?
Above, on this very pier, Jiwi had killed Master Njia, three years past. The old man had been convoluted, had known his own death was needed for his son to develop. He had arranged it so that Jiwi had not known he was being led to it until much later. And now there was this female.
He remembered another female, one who had died the same day as his father. He had loved her, or so he had thought, but even she had been a tool shaped by the old man. An assassin must know love, else he was nothing but a killer. Njia had set him up to love her, and then killed her to provoke Jiwi. Gods, what a complex soul he had been!
What were you thinking of when you trained my half-sister, old man? Why have you set her at me? It was you who taught me the Law, you who laid the traditions before me. Not in two thousand years has there ever been a female in the Guild, never, and yet, you taught her.
Sire of my flesh, molder of my spirit, what deviousness have you designed now? To haunt me from beyond?
The edge of Jiwi’s left hand itched. He scratched at it idly as he watched the waves cycle in.
Abruptly, he stood and stripped the thin robe from his lean body. The pattern of his scales gleamed in the sunlight as he stood naked on the slippery rocks beneath the dock, but his feet were sure, his balance precise. He stepped easily into the water. The waves sucked at his ankles and then his knees as he walked; when they lapped at his chest, he put his face down and began to fly in the water.
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