by P. J. Fox
Inching forward, he peered through a seam in the tar paper.
Four men with weapons were crowded into the small front room, which was also the hut’s main room. They were thugs. He could tell by their swagger, and the fact that they were obviously enjoying themselves. They had no military training, but they’d learned to fight on the street and that could be worse. A street fighter didn’t wait to assume the proper form before throwing a punch or landing a kick. Which was why, in real fights, martial arts masters usually died. He’d killed one or two martial arts masters himself, in his day. Ceres was a martial arts master too, of course, but he’d also grown up fighting with the children of slaves.
Udit’s sisters couldn’t have been more than ten. Twins, obviously. One of the men had one twin, and one had the other. There was a slight complication, in that that first man was holding a knife to his captive’s throat. Even the slightest jerk would be enough to part the delicate skin, and she’d bleed out before help could be gotten—if any could be gotten. Her little body only had about seven pints of blood, maybe less because she was so small.
And the man would jerk, one way or the other. He’d spasm in his death throes, or maybe even make a mistake. He’d seen it happen.
He inched forward.
“Take me instead,” said Udit, meeting the man’s leer with a clear gaze.
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t worry.” He laughed unpleasantly. “We’ll take you, too.”
“You have no need to do this.”
A man’s voice. Her father. Ceres slid forward another inch, almost at the door now, and his changing angle allowed him to see the man for the first time. He was short, and thin. He wore brown robes and a skullcap, and he had a neatly trimmed beard.
God, her father was a cleric? This just kept getting better and better.
“We told you what would happen,” said one of the other men, obviously speaking as their leader.
“We run a hostel for the terminally ill,” stressed the cleric. “Even if we wanted to pay you, we couldn’t.”
“Well then,” he said, smiling to reveal missing teeth, “that’s just your loss and my gain, now, isn’t it?”
Ceres had to wait until the man with the knife moved, or moved the knife, or he wouldn’t get a clear shot.
“Please,” begged the cleric. “Hurt me, not them.”
Ceres generally had no respect for men who refused to fight, but in this instance he could appreciate the man’s bravery if not his methods. Of course, some clerics did fight, but this cleric clearly belonged to a pacifist sect. There was no sign of conflict, no sign of distress anywhere that would signal he’d even made an effort: no overturned chair, no scattered dishes. Clearly, he’d let them walk right in and take possession of his entire family.
And now that the girl was being held hostage, there was nothing he could do.
Fucking pacifists. They pranced around on their moral high horses, enjoying the privilege of doing so because they had people like him to look down on and revile. And so.
The man with the knife groped his captive’s nonexistent breast, leering horribly.
Her mother sobbed.
“You,” he told her, “get to decide which one goes first.”
Ceres controlled his breathing, and waited. His chance was coming up.
The man spun her away roughly, apparently planning to throw her down and rape her right on the floor.
Ceres fired.
The man’s head blew apart in a satisfying explosion of gore.
Too stupid to understand what was happening, his companions just stared at him as, almost gracefully, he toppled over and lay still.
What was left of him, that was.
Both twins were now screaming.
It said something about this neighborhood that screaming made people run inside, instead of out to investigate.
Kicking the front door open, Ceres picked off a second man.
Now both of his weapons needed thirty seconds to recharge. Fuck that.
Now Udit’s mother, a sweet-seeming woman but obviously useless, had started to scream as well.
He tossed the chicken on the table, feeling ridiculous, and squared off against the group’s apparent leader. He didn’t have time to look around and see what anyone else was doing. He could only hope that, given their apparent lack of martial skill, as a family, they weren’t doing anything too stupid. Which, of course, they probably were.
At least they were alive.
The man lunged at him and Ceres pivoted into a kick, his heavy boot connecting with the man’s temple.
He dropped like a stone, dead.
Either his neck had been broken, or Ceres had cut off the blood to his brain.
Either way, same result. He didn’t care.
The last man stared at him. He was terrified. He was, also, the other man who’d been holding one of the twins.
“So,” Ceres began casually, “do you think it’s fun to rape children?”
The man shook his head furiously from side to side.
“That’s not what it looks like,” Ceres replied, in the gently warning tone a teacher might use to a first form student.
“It looks like,” he continued, advancing on the man, “you think it’s wonderful fun and can’t wait to try it. Or is ‘try’ the wrong word.” He pretended to think. “Perhaps you already know you enjoy this fun.” He grinned at the man, revealing perfect, very white teeth.
Most satisfyingly of all, the man pissed himself.
Thirty seconds had passed. He drew his weapon and shot the man in the head.
He’d have drawn it out longer—he’d always enjoyed tormenting people who really deserved it, and pedophiles topped that list—but he didn’t think he had the right audience for his performance. His chances of making a good impression on her parents seemed rather poor, now. Although, on further reflection, perhaps not; he had saved their lives—or, at the very least, their daughters’ virtue. He hoped that that might count for something.
He turned and, ignoring the dead bodies littering the room, bowed formally to the cleric.
“Imahd,” he began, “I apologize for this intrusion into your home. It was not my plan to arrive unannounced, and I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.” He gestured to the table, where the much abused chicken lay forgotten and alone. He hoped very much that it would still be edible. “I have, however,” he continued, in his most serious tone, “brought you a chicken.”
The cleric’s eyes widened.
Behind him, Udit exchanged a look with her mother.
The absurdity of the situation was suddenly too much to bear. He threw back his head and laughed.
“Dodi,” whispered Udit’s mother, “there’s a crazy person in the house.”
He realized how this must look to them and laughed even harder. Here he was, a complete and total stranger, standing in the middle of a heap of dead bodies and laughing at the moon like a drunken hyena—all the while having just offered them a chicken for dinner.
And a rather sorry one at that.
Udit hushed her mother. “No, Mami, it’s okay, he’s a nice crazy person.”
“Wait,” bellowed the cleric, “you know this person?”
Udit colored. “We’ve met.”
The cleric looked back and forth between his daughter and the new arrival.
Ceres got himself under control. “I will, of course, remove the bodies.”
And without waiting for things to get any more awkward, he began to do so.
Luckily for him, Udit’s house was near the river. No one made any move to stop him as he carted out first one dead man, and then another. The twins watched him with identical pairs of wide eyes. As he worked, outside, he heard them talking about him. They’d evidently forgotten, in their excitement, that tar paper wasn’t much of a sound proofer. He smiled as Udit attempted to give a rather, for lack of a better term, redacted account of their meeting.
He stayed outside for a while longer than he need
ed to, giving them space to talk. And he watched the moonlight glint on the river—which wasn’t nearly as reflective as it should have been—and thought. And thought about Udit. He’d been…concerned when he’d thought something might have happened to her. He’d never felt like that before, and wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. Also, too, there was another experience to examine: how he’d felt when he’d first confirmed, for himself, that she was in fact still alive. It had been….
He shook his head. He didn’t know.
Since his parents had died, he’d realized, perhaps just tonight, that he’d been…the word, he thought, was lonely. For years, now, he’d neither needed nor wanted anything but his brothers, his guild, his life as he understood it. And now…for the first time, he found himself thinking about the possibility of sharing that life with someone. Even in the abstract, this was a novel concept. But if he did…maybe he could have something of his own.
Udit’s agenda was very different than his, that much was clear. She was a deeply religious woman, and unimpressed with him. She certainly had no interest in his skill as an assassin. Quite the opposite. He could scare her—he was bigger, and stronger, and he killed people for a living—but, more and more, he was realizing that he wanted to make her laugh.
Some might argue that he was an evil man with no conscience, and that he should exercise whatever claim to ethics he might have and stick to his own kind.
He thought about leaving, disappearing into the rising ground mist and letting her live her life.
And discovered he didn’t want to. Would it be the best thing for her? Maybe, he didn’t know. What he did know was that he was too selfish to part with the first thing in his life that had ever been his. Because even if she hated him, even if he realized that he was indifferent toward her, she was the first person since his mother died who’d looked at him and seen another human being. She’d been afraid of him, yes—but she’d been afraid of the man.
When he came back inside, they seemed to have reached a decision.
Udit was sitting at the table, her head in her hands. The twins were sitting by the hearth. They continued to ignore him but, hearing the door creak, Udit looked up and met his eyes.
Her parents shifted, exchanging glances, both nervous.
The chicken seemed to have disappeared.
“We’d like to thank you,” said her father hesitantly, and perhaps also slightly unwillingly, “for what you’ve done for us. We know you saved our lives tonight, and for that we’re profoundly grateful.” He exchanged another glance with his consort, who nodded encouragingly.
“We’d be honored if you stayed for dinner,” he finished.
I just bet you would.
He was about to respond—more politely—when, thin chest heaving with a sudden sob, Udit stood up from the table, turned and rushed out of the room.
She disappeared up a small staircase that curved behind the crumbling chimney. It presumably led to some sort of loft. The hut was miniscule, and didn’t have much of a second story.
The noise that had escaped her had been heartbreaking.
He started after her, then stopped. He was in her father’s house and, despite not using the manners he’d been raised with, he still had them. And her father might, indeed, not want his unmarried daughter alone and unchaperoned with a strange man. Although Ceres already detested the cleric, the last thing he wanted to do was give him cause to feel he’d been dishonored.
The two men exchanged a look.
The cleric’s eyes narrowed. Evidently he had no problem facing down men who meant him no real harm.
Ceres returned the gaze, green eyes clear. This was a staring match the other man would not win.
The moment stretched. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity as the two men faced off. For a man whose life had just been saved, the cleric seemed remarkably hostile. He was embarrassed, Ceres realized. Embarrassed that a man whose morals he did not share had done what he could not—and ashamed at the failure of those morals to protect him. Ceres knew the type; they went through life believing that their supreme confidence in their own virtue would protect them, wearing it like a shield.
And then, when they suffered and died like everybody else, they felt betrayed.
Finally, the cleric shrugged. “If she’s lasted this long in the streets,” he said with a certain resignation, “she can hold her own against you.”
Resignation…and confidence. He didn’t think there was the faintest chance in the world that his daughter wanted anything to do with the, in his mind, disreputable creature standing before him.
Ceres turned and, without further comment, disappeared up the stairs after Udit.
He didn’t care what her father thought; he cared what she thought.
The stairs—little more than a series of rotted wood planks laid across a pair of crumbling brickwork risers—bowed and groaned under his weight. He passed a sleeping loft—empty—and then emerged onto the roof. And there was Udit. He’d spotted her immediately; she was sitting cross-legged, her back to him, staring out over the darkened slum.
Her shoulder shook with silent sobs.
He wanted to hold her, he realized, to comfort her. He recognized in her an emotion he himself had never felt and, although he didn’t feel it now, he disliked the idea that she did.
How was it possible to feel these things for someone, so quickly?
He’d only known her for two days, but already he knew that his life would never be the same.
He’d been perfectly happy before she’d come along. He’d been content with who he was and what he had. And now….
And now he still was. He was the only thing he’d ever wanted to be, and he was proud of what he’d made himself into. But he wanted her, too.
He walked over to her, moving soundlessly on the corrugated metal.
Was it him? Had she finally realized what he was, and now she was horrified that she’d ever—what? Had she cared for him? Even a little? He’d all but kidnapped her—no, he had kidnapped her, he had to be honest with himself—and the only reason they’d spent the time together that they had was because she’d struck a bargain with him so he’d let her go.
Except…she didn’t have to come back. Did she?
He sat down next to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, surprising him, “sorry I’m being such a ninny.”
“You’re not—”
She leaned against him, and he put his arm around her.
He’d never…touched someone like this before, and it was nice.
“Yes I am,” she sobbed into his chest, as he held her against him. “It’s just that, it all happened so fast and I didn’t know what was happening….” She broke off, unable to keep talking.
In a strange way, she was echoing his own thoughts, although he knew of course that she was talking about something else. He wondered how to respond. He was not an emotional man, and had no store of platitudes or comforting assurances. So, in the end, he decided to go with his own strengths. Post-battle stress, at least, was something he understood.
“A real fight is over almost before it begins. Indeed, your goal should always be to end a fight as quickly as possible. Dragging it out only does two things, which is give you a chance to tire and your enemy a chance to think of how to defeat you. Most people associate the word ‘fight’ with the long, artfully choreographed performances they see in films; the average director can even make a street fight seem graceful.
“You stood your ground, and you kept your wits,” he said, stroking her beautiful raven-colored hair. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I couldn’t do anything.”
At least you wanted to. “What you said took real courage.”
She looked up him, face tear-stained and beautiful. “You heard that?”
He nodded.
Her eyes were a deeper, darker green than his, and they seemed to glisten now in the moonlight.
&
nbsp; “You couldn’t fight,” he said carefully, “because you weren’t trained to. But you could be, if you wanted to. You don’t need to be an assassin, to know how to defend yourself.”
She shook her head slightly. “I’m too little,” she said sadly.
“No,” he told her, “you’re not. The only force that matters is the force of spirit.”
Raising his hand, tentatively, he stroked the side of her face, wiping away a tear with his thumb. She bit her lip, uncertain, and in that moment she looked so vulnerable and sad that he wanted to kiss it. Kiss her.
He searched her eyes for some sign of what she wanted. He was used to reading people very easily but she, she was an enigma and had been from the start.
Her lips parted slightly and he couldn’t help himself; he kissed her.
He wanted to throw her down onto the roof, to devour her, but he forced himself to hold back. She was, clearly, inexperienced. And frightened. Still, her lips felt warm, yielding, against his, as she tentatively returned his kiss. He slid his hand up the back of her neck, into her hair, as he pulled her to him. Her lips opened slightly as his tongue brushed against them—
And then she pulled back, looking down at the small hands folded in her lap.
This was it, then: she’d tell him he was disgusting, and how could he possibly be thinking about sex after killing four people, and he was taking advantage of her, and to leave her alone.
“There’s something you need to know,” she said in a small voice.
He waited.
She drew a breath, let it out again. “I’m not a virgin,” she said quietly, refusing to look at him. For the first time, he saw shame in her face—and something else. Disgust. “And not by choice,” she continued, in that same small voice, “although I realize that that doesn’t matter to most people. If a woman’s virtue is compromised,” she continued, her tone turning bitter, “it’s surely because she didn’t fight hard enough to keep it. That’s what the scriptures say, isn’t it? That it’s better for a woman to lose her life, than to lose her virtue?”
“I don’t believe that,” he said quietly. He tipped her chin up, so her eyes met his. “It doesn’t matter to me. Virtue is in the heart.”