CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The Art of Cali

They would never stop hunting him, Ché knew. Not unless he dealt with them first. And so he stalked them from the rooftops, closing in on their position even as they withdrew along the shadows of a wall.

They had alerted the soldiers to his presence, so that the men scanned about them and pointed their weapons one way and then the other. Ché stayed low, on the dark side of the sloping roofs, making sure not to skyline as he went. More soldiers were to the left of him, lurking in houses and garden plots; he saw the odd glint of steel, heard a cough. He could only hope that none of them spotted him.

Swan and Guan were retreating towards a temple at the end of the street, the lake visible just beyond it. Clearly, they didn’t like the prospect of being targets for sniper fire.

It was a shame he had no working gun.

The temple rose up at the end of the row of rooftops. A two-storey living annex lay dark and silent next to it. The twins stopped to speak with a squad of soldiers, and the men spread out along the houses. Ché heard doors being kicked in beneath him, rough searches of the rooms.

He squatted down and watched the two Diplomats look back to scan the street, the windows, the rooftops, and then step inside the temple. They left the door open.

He hung from the edge of the roof and dropped down into the alley between the houses and the temple. A glance in both directions, and then he was skirting around the back of the building, where the annex spread out into a small garden, using a low wall for cover. A window flickered in the structure; a candle brightening inside.

He padded over to the far end of the annex with the lakeweed soft and slippery beneath his feet, leaving the noise of the soldiers behind him. The gunfire to the south had risen in pitch since he’d last paid any attention to it. Curl would be there somewhere now, or so he hoped, making her way to the rendezvous.

How strange, he thought. Being here in Khos, in Tume, on this simmering lake, trying to kill a pair of my own people; hoping, too, that one of the enemy makes it out in one piece.

He noticed how the word felt wrong to him now; enemy. Something childish to it.

Over the lake another flare went up. He closed his right eye to preserve his night vision and waited until the flare had fallen. There was a window up there, and a tree leaning towards it.

In the gathering darkness, Ché took his knife out and clamped it between his teeth, then climbed up the rough bark of the tree until he dangled from a branch facing the window. He saw nothing but a dark room and an open door; a corridor beyond it bleeding soft light from where it turned a corner.

There was no time for subtleties, Ché decided. Take them out and hard and fast, and hope he was the last one standing. His old sparring trainer in Q’os had been right, he reflected, as he reached out to open the window. The Rōshun training of cali was in him whether he wanted it or not. Advance and attack was its creed. Boldness and speed and recklessness.

If only he had a sword with him, never mind a working gun. All he had was this simple knife.

Improvise, Ché thought, and he swung in through the open window and landed with the ease of a cat.

He clasped the knife in his hand, saw a chair. He picked it up and swung it hard against the wall. The crash was loud enough to stir the dead.

Quickly, Ché stepped through the scattered debris of the chair and snatched up a chair leg without stopping. The end of the leg had snapped off sharp and jagged. He improved the point with a swipe of his blade as he entered the hallway; shaved another slice off as he strode towards the corner.

They were waiting for him as he ducked his head around it, two figures with pistols aimed from the cover of opposite doorways.

Ché ducked back as a bullet ricocheted off the wall. He cut a final slice from the chair leg to finish its point, then stepped partly out and launched it with all his strength at the figure still aiming its gun at him.

The gun ignited and a sudden pain punched into his thigh. Ché tottered on his other leg, slumped against the wall for balance as the figure toppled out into the corridor. It was Guan, with the chair leg poking from his left cheek. His feet was scrabbling against the floor for purchase.

He saw a shadow flicker across the fan of light on the floor, and he tossed his knife into his right hand.

He launched it even as Swan came out of the doorway again and fired her pistol.

Ché fell backwards with his head ringing and a pain searing along the side of his skull. Swan was down too, holding the hilt of the knife sunk deep into her hip. The woman was crawling to her brother.

‘Oh no,’ she was gasping.

Since Ché was still breathing, he ignored the scalp wound and clutched his leg instead to probe it with his trembling fingers. The bullet had passed cleanly through the flesh on the side of his thigh. It had missed the bone, and blood flowed slickly from the ragged hole. He could barely move the numbed limb itself.

It was the first time Ché had ever been shot. He’d been expecting it to be much more of an agony.

He tugged at the sleeve of his tunic until it tore free, and used it to tie a tourniquet at the top of his thigh. He tried to stand. Ché hissed with the sudden shooting pain of it. Tried to see through the rising waves of nausea.

The Diplomat Swan was dragging her brother back into the room she’d emerged from. She paused as she strained to reach the empty gun lying on the floor. Ché managed a single step towards them, and Swan gave up on the gun and pulled Guan inside.

Ché stopped short, sucking air for a moment as Swan kicked the door closed behind her.

With grim determination he staggered to the door and tried to bend down to retrieve his bloody knife lying there. His head spun as warm blood dribbled down his face. His boot was filling up too. He tore off his other sleeve and used it to tie a wad of cloth against the wound itself, cinching it tight. For a moment he thought he might pass out.

‘Come out!’ he hollered, the knife heavy in his grip.

Grunts and muttering from within.

Ché steadied himself. Pushed a sticky hand against the door to swing it open.

The room was deserted, though a candle sputtered on the mantel piece above a hearth. Ché leaned further out. Another door lay open in the room. A trail of blood shone across the floor and through it. He limped inside and pressed his back to the wall, then slid around it towards the other doorway. A quick glance inside revealed a bedroom. Guan lay dead on the floor, his legs and arms spread-eagled. The stick of wood stood tall and unnatural from his face.

A creak behind him.

Ché was quick enough to get a hand up to the garrotte as it slipped around his throat. It bit deep into the edge of his palm, and he pushed back as hard as he could, hopping on his good leg as he shoved Swan backwards across the room. Swan crashed into something, a heavy wardrobe that clattered with hangers and open doors while they both struggled in its wooden embrace.

The woman’s hot breaths hissed next to his ear, charged with fury.

Ché tossed the knife once to turn it around in his grasp, then struck it into the Diplomat’s side. Once, twice, until Swan shifted and threw him sideways. Ché fell, and together they crashed through a table.

Swan managed to grip his knife hand as they rolled across the floor. With her other hand she maintained the pressure of the garrotte. The wire dug into his hand and the sides of his neck, blood spilling everywhere. ‘Is this what you want?’ Swan hissed in her hatred for him. ‘Is this what you wanted, you kush?’

Ché’s hand was a lifeless thing shoved between his ragged breathing and the garrotte’s worsening constrictions. He could barely see, barely breathe.

He reached his free hand back, felt his fingers press against her face. He hooked his thumb and scooped it viciously into her eye. The woman’s grip loosened a fraction.

Ché roared and pushed against the white-hot pain from his hand as he forced the garrotte off him.

He staggered to his feet as Swan did likewise, grasping a spilled chair for support and then the mantelpiece above the hearth. He turned just as she lashed out with the garrotte. The end of it wrapped around the hilt of his knife and she jerked it from his grasp. It was hard to stand now. Swan was doing little better. Her eye was a black mess running with blood.

A blow struck his cheek, stunning him. Ché shook it off as he blocked another punch, then another. He came out of his stance seeking a target, only to find her straightening with the knife in her hand.

Back he staggered, hopping again on his good leg as she dragged her own wounded limb across the floor after him. The knife was poised in her hand. It was a sliver of steel shining in the candlelight just beyond the range of his stomach. He shook his head to clear his dulling vision. Sweat scattered off him.

Ché backed through the door of the bedroom with Swan slowly closing the distance. She lunged at him suddenly. He was only just quick enough to sweep the blade aside. His foot caught against the prone body of Guan and he tripped backwards, shoving Swan to the side as he fell.

Gasping, he pushed himself off the floor again as Swan did the same. He managed to get a knee under his weight, then flailed his good hand around until it grasped the bed. Up, onto his feet, grunting and straining from the effort, seeing Guan’s body lying there. His balance lurched around a spinning point. His vision receded until he teetered in the darkness of his own head. He bore down on it, applying focus, seeing a crack of light appear like a doorway.

He came through it, and saw Swan coming at him with the knife.

A desperate sidestep, a slippery grip of an arm and a foot out-thrust to trip her. They fell hollering towards the floor with Ché riding her down with all his weight.

The stick of wood shot through the back of the woman’s neck with a crunch of teeth and bone. She quivered once, as though in a delayed shock, then lay there perfectly still.

A soft whine of air escaped her lungs as her body deflated.

Ché gasped for a breath and rolled himself clear. He lay for some moments with his remaining energy flooding out of him, his mind beyond thought or reason.

He had the shakes when he finally regained his feet. He looked down at the two dead Diplomats. Swan was sprawled with her face pressed against his brother’s, their bodies extended in opposite directions. They looked as though they were two lovers kissing.

‘Here I am!’ Ché spat at them with a hard slap to his chest.

In the shadows by the side of a minor canal, Ash finished his preparations and listened to the sounds of revelry in the distance. He observed the tall mansions on the opposite side of the canal, where priests walked past lit windows in suites they had made their own. Above the rooftops of the fine buildings, the rock of the citadel rose into the night air. Sasheen’s flag was still flying up there.

A window opened, and a woman threw the contents of a chamber pot out into the water. Someone was singing in the room behind her. Ash maintained his stillness, confident that he was hidden by the shadows, until she withdrew again and closed the window, cutting the song off in mid chorus.

Quickly, he removed his clothes and placed them in a neat pile beside his weaponry. Next to them sat a small wooden keg filled with blackpowder; a mine he’d appropriated from a Mannian munitions cart.

Goosebumps rose on Ash’s skin from the caress of cold air, and he rubbed his arms and legs to generate some warmth. His breath was visible in the shimmer of lantern light cast across the black surface of the canal.

The lakeweed had been shorn here to create the vertical sides of the waterway. Beams of wood shored them up further. He sat on the boardwalk at its edge then gently eased himself into the lukewarm water. It felt good against the tensions of his muscles, the abrasions on his skin, so he simply rested there for a while, near delirious with the relief of it. Beneath his feet, down in the depths of the clear water, he could see the distant glimmer of lights. He kicked to stay afloat, watching the brilliance of them between his toes.

When he felt ready, he rose up and grabbed the mine and pulled it into the water with a splash. He shook his face clear and checked the line of fuse that hung from a tarred hole in the bobbing keg; it floated out across the surface and up to the boardwalk above him, where it was tied around his Acolyte body armour, and then to a heavy portable reel fixed to boardwalk by a knifeblade, where the rest of the fuse line was tightly coiled.

He pulled on the line of fuse until the armour toppled into the water with another noisy splash. It sank instantly, and a moment later pulled the mine down with it. Ash looped a portion of the fuse around his wrist while he breathed hard and fast. He felt the tug of the line against his hand, and dived beneath the surface, letting himself be pulled into the silent depths while the reel of fuse played out above him.

His eyes stung, and he blinked and forced them to stay open. His chest tightened as he dived deeper, drawing nearer to the rock all the time. The lights were bleeding from windows of thick glass far below, carved from the steep flanks of the rock the citadel stood upon. Ash kicked towards them as he dropped, pulling the line with him even as it pulled him. He knew he had one good chance at this.

He scattered a shoal of fish from his path, and then at last he felt the weight slacken in his hand as the armour settled on the ledge of one of the windows. The mine spun slowly close to the glass. Ash uncoiled the line from his wrist and swam down. He chanced a look inside, saw a brilliantly lit chamber of couches and chandeliers; a priest talking to another; a pair of Acolytes next to a doorway.

Ash struggled to drag the armour to one side and the mine with it, so it would be less likely to be spotted.

His chest was bursting now. He kicked off for the surface, stars flashing in the edges of his vision. It took longer than the descent. He recalled his panic on the sinking ship; the weight of the world’s water pressing him down.

Ash floundered when he resurfaced, gasping with lungs that still did not seem to be working too well. The noise of the city returned to his draining ears, and he looked about and was grateful to find the side street still deserted.

In vain he tried to pull himself out of the canal, found he couldn’t manage it, couldn’t breathe hard enough to restore his energy.

He settled himself in the water. Calmed his breathing and tried once more. Ash rolled onto the boardwalk wheezing for air. He sat up, rested his arms against his knees and let his head hang between them. He stared at the little pools forming where the lake water dripped from his skin.

A man cursed not far away. Shapes at the dark end of the street, someone relieving himself while others waited, talking drunkenly.

Ash looked at the line of fuse hanging in the water. All he needed to do was slice through it and toss it in the water and run.

The knife suddenly drew his attention, standing as it was with its tip buried in the boardwalk. Its blade was stained dark with the blood of the priest he had murdered in the previous hour.

How many had he killed now in his pursuit of retribution? he wondered with a start.

He couldn’t recall; had lost count somewhere along the way; had made them something less than human, faceless, without worth. The two camp followers he had felled during the battle – simply to be clear of them – were nothing but vague impressions now, save for the crisp sound of a kneecap breaking.

Ash had come so far. In his revenge he had climbed a high pinnacle into the rarefied sky, forsaking the Rōshun order as he did so, the only home left to him, the only way of life where his anger had remained leashed by their code and by the better part of himself.

He felt as though all this time he’d been climbing upwards without a single glance behind him; and now, turning back to look, all he could see were corpses heaped along the steep track he’d been following; and past them all, Nico with his boyish laughter and a mother’s fierce love for him, and far beyond his apprentice, way down at the dim beginnings of the trail, his son Lin, throat-singing with the other battlesquires, and close by a whitewashed homestead struck by sunlight, his wife waiting for a husband and son who would never return.

The summit was almost within his reach. All he had to do was cut the fuse.

Sasheen deserved to die. All of her kind deserved to die.

With trembling fingers, Ash reached for the knife and plucked it free.

When Sasheen woke, the first thing that she saw was Lucian staring at her intently, and for the briefest of moments she thought they were lovers again, wrapped in each other’s arms.

But then she saw that he was only a severed head perched on the bedside table. She remembered how he had betrayed her, and her heart sank into bleakness.

‘I never wanted this, you know,’ she told him now.

His lips parted, spilling a dribble of Royal Milk down his chin. But he said nothing, only watched her.

‘I never even wanted to be Matriarch. It was my mother’s desire, not my own.’

‘I. Know,’ came his wet belching voice, and he glared with hatred in his eyes.

How to make him understand? The pain he had caused her, the loss of faith in the one person she’d thought she could finally trust. Sasheen had wanted this man like she had wanted no other, and he had cast her aside for the sake of his foolish insurgency and the fame that went with it.

‘I’m dying, Lucian,’ she told him.

He seemed pleased at that, for he smiled.

Even now he could hurt her.

‘Do you remember the time we spent together in Brulé?’

‘No.’

‘Of course you do. You hardly stopped talking about it. You said we should retire there. Grow olives, like simple peasants.’

‘I. Was. A. Fool.’

‘You were anything but a fool, Lucian. That was one of things I was attracted to, most of all.’ Wistfully, she said, ‘We were a good match, you and I.’

Sasheen could see it now, her life as it might have been, had she only found the courage to spite her mother’s wishes, to renounce her position as Matriarch, to live a simple life of luxury with her lover. What had it gained her, any of this? Only a lonely death in the damp innards of a rock; a few scratches in the memory of Mann.

‘I only wish . . . I only wish . . .’ and she closed her eyes, and felt a wetness on her cheeks, and an ache in her chest as if the whole awful world was standing upon it.

She fought for a breath, wheezing hard until sweat beaded her skin. She gasped, blinked to focus on Lucian again. Beyond him, through the glass of the window, the waters of the lake were a black nothingness waiting to engulf her.

‘What do I do?’ she panted, lost in herself. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

His stare possessed all the force of a thrust knife.

‘You. Die.’

A sudden flare lit the night sky over Ash’s head. Of their own volition his eyes were drawn to the brightly lit ground.

Ash saw, stretching out from the base of his feet, how he ended in shadow. He faltered.

For long heartbeats, he stared down at the knife and the fuse wire held in his shaking hands. A strange fellow, came the words in his head. Nico had said that once, about the Rōshun Seer.

Why did that come to his mind now?

The Seer had cast the sticks for them before they had set forth on vendetta to Q’os. He had told of a great shock in store for him, and of the paths that would face him beyond it.

After shock, you will have two paths facing you. On one path, you will fail in your task, though with no blame and much still to do . . . On the other, you will win through in the end with great blame, and nothing that would further you.

Great blame, Ash reflected. Nothing that would further you.

He blinked. Tears stung his eyes. His hand dropped to his side, and the knife clattered to the ground.

The flare faded, taking his shadow with it.