Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

The assassin had traveled to Acacia in complete secrecy because he had no other option. Had anyone known of Thasren’s mission, there would have been far too many opportunities for him to be betrayed. Many throughout the empire complained about Acacian domination, but he could trust no one outside the gates of his capital city. He did not even call on the agents already hidden within Acacia, many of them for years, some for generations. Who could tell how life in these southern climes may have corrupted them? Instead, he found his own way into the lower town and from there through the main gates in the guise of a laborer. He walked unnoticed through the thronging city streets with an ease that filled him with loathing of these people. No stranger could have likewise roamed unquestioned through Tahalian. What was the use of living in such a formidable fortress if an enemy agent could so easily penetrate it? The island was wasted on these people. Gazing around at the naked riches of the place set his heart racing with anticipation. Under Mein control a renamed Acacia would be an impenetrable bastion. He reveled in imagining it, even though he knew he would not live to see that glorious time with his own eyes.

By asking a few questions of dusky-skinned passersby he found his way to the district that housed foreign dignitaries. While seeming to keep busy, he set about waiting for the single contact he planned to make. He did not loiter long. His third afternoon in the city he recognized his people’s ambassador to Acacia. Gurnal’s once blond hair had taken on a metallic sheen, as often happened when men of the Mein stayed too long in the south. At first he saw only his head through the crowd, but when the ambassador passed nearer to him, he saw that he wore loose robes like an Acacian, sandals, and wool socks. Only the medallion on his chest attested to his origins. Maeander had been right in his suspicions; Gurnal had forgotten himself. Why was the lure of soft things always so powerful to weak men? Why was a nation built on lies so attractive to people who should know better?

Thasren still had these questions in mind that evening when he scaled the stone wall and dropped down into the back courtyard of the ambassador’s compound. He believed from his afternoon of surveillance that he knew exactly how many people lived in the grounds. He went in search of each of them methodically. He traveled slowly through the sleeping house, pausing in each room so that his eyes adjusted to any change of light or shadow. He made sure not to bump into anything, quite a task as the house was crowded with useless items, decorative urns and life-sized statues, chairs too small to sit in, stuffed animals in living postures. Each room had a different fragrance. He realized-perhaps more readily than he would have in the daytime-that the scents were those of different flowers.

He found the ambassador’s daughter sleeping and bound her without making a sound. All she did was lift her hand a moment as he pressed a ribbon of cloth over her open mouth, as if she did not wish to be woken from a pleasant dream. The man’s teenage son was a light sleeper and strong, and the two of them struggled for a few moments in the dark. It was a peculiar, muffled sort of wrestling, stranger still because the boy did not speak the whole time, even when the assassin twisted his arms into contortions that nearly broke them. The children’s mother gasped when the back-curved blade of his knife touched her windpipe. She opened her eyes and stared up into his face and mouthed her husband’s name, but whether this was meant as an entreaty or accusation he was not sure. He bound each of them where he found them, keenly aware of how merciful he was being. The three house servants were another matter. They slept close to one another and all woke to fight him. It was almost a relief, a release, to slit them open and listen as they went silent and still. The scuffle had been a loud enough commotion that he did not move for some time afterward, listening lest any movement or noise indicate that they had been heard.

Gurnal must have sensed something in the night. He should have been up, armed and deadly already, but these years in Acacia had dulled him. Just as the assassin entered, he rolled from one side of the bed to the other and back again, knotted in his bedsheets like a child. When he finally raised himself on his elbows, he mumbled something under his breath. He kicked his legs over the edge of the bed, touched his bare feet to the floor, and stretched himself upright. Did he know something was wrong? If so, he did not act like it. He failed to notice Thasren standing in the shadows beyond the corner of his wardrobe. He muttered something, and then rose and walked toward the hall.

The assassin rolled out from behind the wardrobe, low to the floor. His knife slashed the man behind the knee, first one leg and then the other, two cuts like those of a practiced butcher paid for speed. As Gurnal collapsed, the assassin grabbed the neck of his gown and yanked back. The next moment he had the man’s arms pinned beneath the hard squares of his knees, with pressure such that he felt the man’s biceps slip around the bone. Gurnal screamed with all the breath he could muster, until the assassin pressed the bloody blade of his knife to the tip of his nose. This sufficed to silence him.

“To whom are you loyal?” Thasren asked. He spoke his native tongue, a language of discordant tones, words like river stones cracking beneath a chisel.

The man stared without recognition into his attacker’s gray eyes, the same color as his own. “To the Mein. To the blood of the Tunishnevre, to the thousands who perished, with whom…I am one.”

“It is good that you utter such words. They are the right ones, but are you a right man?”

“Of course,” Gurnal said. “Who are you? Why have you maimed me? I am-”

“Hush! I will ask the questions.” The assassin repositioned himself so that he could press his knee against the man’s chest in a posture more comfortable for himself. “When are you next to be close to the king?”

Gurnal made much of showing his discomfort with sighs and grimaces of pain. The assassin shifted more of his weight onto the man’s chest, until he coughed out an answer. At first he spoke with wide-eyed disbelief, as if it were simply not possible that he had woken to this, that he was injured as he was, and that his mouth was managing to answer such a random inquiry. His attacker had more questions, though. He asked them as if such an interaction was normal enough. Gurnal responded, detailing aspects of his daily life, his duties, the places he was expected in the next few days and the things he was to do there. Before long he seemed to take comfort from his answers, as if all of these various commitments assured that his place in the living world would continue.

Eventually the questioner came back to where he had begun. “You will meet him this evening?”

“Yes, of course. Not in person, you see, but I am to be in the hall when he greets the Aushenian party. I will be one of many-”

“There will be a banquet?”

“At the palace two evenings from now. I will personally attend. A small party of us only. It is rare to dine at the king’s table, but I…” The man’s words dribbled to a halt. His eyes took on a perplexed expression. His jaw worked for a moment before he could produce more words. “I know you. Thasren! Thasren…”

The assassin hissed him silent and spoke close to the man’s ear, letting his lips brush the soft skin and cartilage. “Who I am does not matter to you. What matters is that you have grown weak. You speak with your mouth instead of your heart.” The ambassador protested, his eyes casting about side to side, as if help might have slipped in quietly and been awaiting eye contact to act. “Perhaps the Callach who judge all before the gates of the mountains will hear you and permit you entry. But in this world you look to a different master to evaluate your worth; this master is not pleased with you. Hanish Mein no longer values your life, but as you are a Mein, you will have one last chance to prove your loyalty.”

During the next few hours he explained to the man and to his family how it was to be. He described the depths of pain and torture Hanish would inflict upon them if they failed at any of what was asked of them. He charged them with duty to their race, and he reminded them that the reach of the Tunishnevre was such that no Mein could escape their wrath. They had only a handful of things to do to save themselves. The wife and the children would show themselves in public with no sign that anything had changed. They would simper and fawn and flatter the Acacians, as seemed natural to them. They would find excuses to explain the absence of their servants and they would allow no one inside the house. For his part, Gurnal would tutor Thasren in all the things he would need to know to get near the king, what customs needed to be followed, whom he might encounter, what security he might meet. In short, they would help him kill the king.

When Thasren left the house that afternoon he wore a wig cut from one the slain servant’s heads, tugged into place and secured with a headband of woven horsehair that crossed his forehead, a traditional decoration at occasions of importance. There was a reason other than just his skills as a killer that he was best suited for this task. The structure of his face was very similar to Gurnal’s, the same basic shape, almost identical in the cant of the eyes and the bones of the jawline. They were, after all, part of the same family tree, second cousins on their mother’s side. The most markedly different thing about them was their hair, but that had been remedied.

He found his way up toward the palace easily enough. He entered the royal gates as one of a flow of people, not questioned by the guards at all but simply waved through. As none of them were meant to be anywhere near the king they were not searched for weapons of treachery, just watched and contained in preordained spaces, spectators but not participants. He hated the smell of the place, such a confusion of different scents, the colognes and perfumes of so many foreign lands. It was just as Hanish had said it would be: the representatives of so many different nations, races of men who now bowed and smiled before the Acacian masters. Had the entire world forgotten pride of race? They were like so many hoofed creatures-deer and antelope-gathering to sing the praises of the lion that devoured their children. It made no sense at all.

He stood near the exit the entire evening, casually feigning comfort in the ambassador’s strange clothes, nodding greetings to others when they made eye contact with him. Several times he turned away from people who seemed prepared to speak with him. Twice he held conversations with men who seemed to know him well. He coughed into his hand and explained his quiet by claiming he had caught a chill. The humor inherent in this was not lost on the Acacians. He had been too long on the island, they joked. He was becoming Acacian himself, prey to the slightest cold in the air. Both men departed smiling.

The effort of these deceptions wrung his body to exhaustion. His heart pumped furiously the entire time. Beads of sweat seeped out of his nose and perched on his cheeks and ran unseen down his armpits. A film of moisture developed between himself and the underside of his wig. But to the eyes that touched him, he appeared composed. When a hush fell across the throng and the crier called for attention and he watched the monarch enter, adorned with a golden crown, a wreath that prickled with thorns in imitation of the island’s namesake-then he knew he was close, very close to earning his place in the history of his people. This evening he would not try to get any nearer. This was but a flirtation; the deed itself was better consummated on the morrow.