The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois
my left hand on the ground for stability. I kept my eyes on the hawk, letting everything fade into the background except the bright reflections from the sharp beak and talons, like a constellation in the night sky.
The hawk loomed in my vision. A light breeze brushed the back of my neck. The raptor extended its talons and flapped its wings, trying to slow its dive at the last minute.
“Who is to say that one governor is right? Or that another general is wrong?” she asked. “The man who seduces his lord’s wife may be doing so to get close to a tyrant and exact vengeance. The woman who demands rice for the peasantry from her patron may be doing so to further her own ambition. We live in a time of chaos, and the only moral choice is to be amoral. The great lords hire us to strike at their enemies. And we carry out our missions with dedication and loyalty, true and deadly as a crossbow bolt.”
I got ready to spring out of my crouch to slash at the hawk, then I remembered the words of my sisters.
“ … What can be seen is not all … I still have a scar on the back of my neck.”
I dropped to the ground and rolled to the left, the talons of the hawk who had been trying to sneak up behind me missing only by inches. It collided with its companion in the spot where my head had been but a moment ago like a diver meeting her reflection at the surface of the pool. There was a tangle of beating wings and angry screeching.
I lunged at the storm of feathers. One, two, three slashes, quicker than lightning. The hawks tumbled down, their wings crumpling as they struck the ground. Blood from the clean cuts in their throats pooled on the stone platform.
There was also blood seeping from my shoulder where the rough rocks had scraped the skin during my roll. But I had survived, and my foes had not.
“Why do we kill?” I asked again, still panting from the exertion. I had killed wild apes before, and forest panthers and bamboo-grove tigers. But a pair of mist hawks were the hardest kill yet, the height of the assassin’s art. “Why do we serve as the talons of the powerful?”
“We are the winter snowstorm descending upon a house rotten with termites,” she said. “Only by hurrying the decay of the old can we bring about the rebirth of the new. We are the vengeance of a weary world.”
Jinger and Konger emerged from the mist to sprinkle corpse-dissolving powder on the hawks and to bandage my wound.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“You need to practice more,” said Jinger, but her tone was kind.
“I have to keep you alive.” Konger’s eyes flashed mischievously. “You promised to get me some pagoda-tree flowers, remember?”
The thin crescent of the moon hangs from the tip of a branch of the ancient pagoda tree outside the governor’s mansion as the night watchman rings the midnight hour. The shadows in the streets are thick as ink, the same color as my silk leggings, tight tunic, and the cloth mask over my nose and mouth.
I’m upside down, my feet hooked to the top of the wall and my body pressed against the flat surface like a clinging vine. Two soldiers pass below me on their patrol route. If they looked up, they’d think I was just a part of the shadows or a sleeping bat.
As soon as they’re gone, I arch my back and flip onto the wall. I scramble along the top, quieter than a cat, until I’m opposite the roof of the central hall of the compound. Snapping my coiled legs, I sail across the gap in a single leap and melt into the shingles on the gentle curve of the roof.
There are, of course, far stealthier ways to break into a well-protected compound, but I like to stay in this world, to remain surrounded by the night breeze and the distant hoots of the owl.
Carefully, I pry off a glazed roofing tile and peek into the gap. Through the latticed under-roof I see a brightly lit hall paved with stones. A middle-aged man sits on a dais at the eastern end, his eyes intent upon a bundle of papers, flipping through the pages slowly. I see a birthmark the shape of a butterfly on his left cheek and a jade collar around his neck.
He is the jiedushi I’m supposed to kill.
“Steal his life, and your apprenticeship will be completed,” Teacher said. “This is your last test.”
“What has he done that he deserves to die?” I asked.
“Does it matter? It is enough that a man who once saved my life wants this man to die, and that he has paid handsomely for it. We amplify the forces of ambition and strife; we hold on to only our code.”
I crawl over the roof, my palms and feet gliding over the tiles smoothly, making no sound—Teacher trained us by having us glide across the valley lake in March, when the ice is so thin that even squirrels sometimes fall through and drown. I feel one with the night, my senses sharpened like the tip of my dagger. Excitement is tinged with a hint of sorrow, like the first stroke of the paintbrush on a fresh sheet of paper.
Now that I’m directly above where the governor is sitting, once again I pry off one tile, then another. I make a hole big enough for me to slink through. Then I take out the grappling hook from my pouch—painted black to prevent reflections—and toss it to the apex ridge so that the claws dig in securely. Then I tie the silk cord around my waist.
I look down through the hole in the roof. The jiedushi is still where he was, oblivious to the mortal danger over his head.
For a moment I suffer the illusion that I’m back in the great pagoda tree in front of my house, looking through a hole in the swaying leaves at my father.
But the moment passes. I’m going to dive through like a cormorant, slit his throat, strip off his clothes, and sprinkle corpse-dissolving powder all over his skin. Then, as he lies there on the stone floor, still twitching, I will take flight back to the ceiling and make my escape. By the time servants discover the remains of his body, barely more than a skeleton, I will be long gone. Teacher will declare my apprenticeship to be at an end, myself an equal of my sisters.
I take a deep breath. My body is coiled. I’ve trained and practiced for this moment for six years. I’m ready.
“Baba!”
I hold still.
The boy who emerges from behind the curtains is about six years old, his hair tied into a neat little braid that points straight up like the tail of a rooster.
“What are you doing still up?” the man asks. “Be a good boy and go back to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep,” the boy says. “I heard a noise, and I saw a shadow moving on the courtyard wall.”
“Just a cat,” the man says. The boy looks unconvinced. The man looks thoughtful for a moment, then says, “All right, come over.”
He sets the papers aside on the low desk next to him. The boy scrambles into his lap.
“Shadows are nothing to be afraid of,” he says. Then he proceeds to make a series of shadow puppets with his hands held against the reading light. He teaches the boy how to make a butterfly, a puppy, a bat, a sinuous dragon. The boy laughs in delight. Then the boy makes a kitten to chase his father’s butterfly across the papered windows of the large hall.
“Shadows are given life by light, and they also die by light.” The man stops fluttering his fingers and lets his hands fall by his side. “Go to sleep, child. In the morning you can chase real butterflies in the garden.”
The boy, heavy-eyed, nods and leaves quietly.
On the roof, I hesitate. The boy’s laughter will not leave my mind. Can the girl stolen from her family steal family away from another child? Is this the moral pronouncement of a hypocrite?
“Thank you for waiting until my son has left,” the man says.