THE DASHINI
A few hours later we were in another small alley and had very nearly made it to the outer wall when the two Dashini found us. Dashi’nahiri Tahazu, to give them their full title, is actually a phrase which means, ‘The hunt once started ends only with blood’. They are difficult to find, expensive beyond the value of any man’s life, and have a bad reputation for occasionally killing their employers after the target is eliminated. They are the most secretive order of assassins in the civilised world, though it’s hard to call any world ‘civilised’ if it can produce murderers of this calibre.
The Dashini wear dark blue silk from head to toe, covering them completely. The fabric is as ingenious, in its own way, as the leather used to make our greatcoats. A man wearing Dashini garb can see out with near-perfect clarity, but his opponents can’t see anything, not even the colour of his eyes, which works out well for all concerned since the true identity of a Dashini hunter is never revealed – not even to the other members of his order. They enter the temple at Zhina as babes, sacrificed to – well, whichever God you sacrifice your newborn child to, I suppose. A dark-blue-clad monk wraps the child in its first silken swaddling clothes, and that’s it; the child’s face will never be seen for the rest of its life. They always fight in pairs, but even their Azu – their partner – knows neither their name nor their face.
Over the years the child learns how to move without being seen or heard, to make poisons from whatever plants, fish or animals exist where they are sent, to play mind-tricks on their enemies, and, of course, to be able to defeat any opponent. And in case you’re wondering, yes, that includes Greatcoats. A great many Greatcoats, in fact.
The King spent several years trying to devise a way for us to beat them, but it was a bit difficult to test his theories, and the solution he finally settled on wasn’t entirely reassuring. On the other hand, at that precise moment it was all I had.
‘Girl …’ I started, reaching each hand across my chest and into the inner folds of my coat.
‘I know, I know,’ she said, slipping a few feet behind me.
‘We come for the girl, not her coat,’ one of them – or maybe it was both of them (the fabric covering their faces makes it hard to tell) – whispered at me. ‘Trust your fear and turn your back.’
‘Viszu na dazi,’ I said. It was just about the only phrase I knew in their language. It means, ‘no one saw’, and it refers to the fact that the Dashini don’t leave witnesses.
They moved like snakes, dancing sinuously with their long stiletto blades flicking out like tongues. We had never figured out how, but somehow those thin, light blades could pierce through our greatcoats more easily than a regular sword could.
‘Better one chance in a thousand than no chance at all,’ they whispered, and, almost imperceptibly, they started to move apart, positioning themselves to get on either side of me. I backed up a step and drew my rapiers. The girl was smart enough to step back as well, keeping the distance behind me.
‘Could we get started with that shit-breath you call a poison?’ I called. ‘We’re sort of on the run, and I’m feeling a bit exposed out here.’
Their faces, of course, revealed nothing other than the usual expanse of dark blue cloth, but I fancied they probably got at least a tiny surprise from that. You see, the Dashini, good as they are, have absolutely no notion of a fair fight. That’s why, although they’ll always finish you off with the point of their stiletto blades, they don’t take chances, and, above all, they don’t let pride get in the way of a good murder. So before the fighting starts, they like to get in a little close, do their little dance and then blow a thin, almost mist-like purple powder into your face. They call it the ‘fear-tongue’, and it does pretty much what you’d expect: makes you terrified and disoriented, and does something to your throat that prevents you from talking. It pretty much guarantees you’re going to end up with a long, thin piece of metal buried deep inside your eye, which is how they like to wrap things up.
The way they moved, undulating back and forth while leaning backwards, made it easy to miss that they were bridging the distance between you. They probably could have spat the poison into my face from that distance, but the Dashini don’t get cocky; they don’t rush. They make murder the way a master baker makes bread, knowing that timing is everything. So they slipped back and forth to gain those few extra inches they needed to know they’d hit me with the fear-tongue and paralyse me with nausea and dread.
A wiser man than I once asked a question, though: if the fear-tongue is so powerful, why doesn’t it affect the Dashini? After all, they hold the stuff in their mouths, so they must inhale a lot more of it than their target does. The answer is fairly simple, really: they build up a resistance to it. It turns out that the first time you get hit with it (which is usually the only time, since you don’t survive your first encounter with the Dashini) the effects are extremely powerful. The second time, you’re still terrified and disoriented, but you don’t tend to get the constricted throat. And the third time the disorientation goes away and all that’s left is the fear. That never really gets any better, but who can’t handle a little terror? Fear-tongue is incredibly expensive to buy, and it’s no easy trick to find, but fortunately for us we had a King with all kinds of money and contacts who was of the opinion that it might look bad if his Magisters pissed their pants falling over themselves and crying in vain for their mothers whenever a Dashini assassin hove into sight. So, at great expense to the country, every Greatcoat in the order was lucky enough to experience enough fear-tongue so that, if they did just happen to get attacked by Dashini assassins, they wouldn’t piss their pants before they died. Money well spent, your Majesty.
So when they blew the sparkly purple dust straight into my face, I took in a nice deep breath and let a pair of throwing knives fly from my hands towards their chests. Their long stilettos flicked out and beat away the knives. It was a neat trick that I doubt I could have pulled off – Kest, maybe, but not me. I would have liked them to have said something complimentary about my little surprise, but they don’t really talk when they don’t need to. However, it threw their weaving dance off just a hair, and that was all the satisfaction I could expect at this point.
They did, however, do me the honour of finally attacking me. Their blades were perfectly synchronised, so I used the parry we call ‘the dismissal’, so-called because it looks a bit like you’re making a tiny, disdainful gesture to send someone away. In reality, it’s a double-circular parry that works well against long, straight blades. The manoeuvre threw their points out of line, but they had plenty of tricks of their own and I couldn’t count on guessing the counter for each one, not with two of them coming at me at the same time.
We circled some more, and as the dust of the alley started stirring up I could feel the edges of that drug-induced terror start to reach up to my chest from my stomach. I did my best to ignore it. I needed to focus on the King’s big idea.
‘It’s nice seeing you again, Toller,’ I said to no one in particular.
The Dashini said nothing but flicked out their blades again. This time they intentionally went just slightly out of time, which would mean trying another double-dismissal would fail as the timing on at least one of my parries would be off. I focused instead on blocking the one on my right and doing a counter-clockwise half-slip with my left foot. The blade missed me and the assassin’s attempt to draw a cut on his return draw didn’t even scratch my coat. Their points are sharp as hells, but the blades themselves won’t cut through our leather, not with that weak a blow.
‘You know, your timing is still off, Toller,’ I said conversationally.
I kicked hard against the ground in front of me and as the dust went up like a cloud I double-lunged straight at the one on my right, all the while keeping my left blade guarding against a thrust from the other side. My attack failed, of course, as the Dashini skipped backwards out of range. The assassin tried to get a thrust into my arm over my blade, but a small lift of the wrist let the point clang against my guard.
‘Almost got your friend there, Toller. Are you ready to quit playing and help me end him?’
‘You wish to be asleep,’ they whispered, and I almost did. Fucking Dashini mind-tricks. Don’t know how they work, but you just have to deal with it.
‘You know how we beat you?’ I asked the one on the right. ‘It’s kind of a funny story.’
‘You wish to be silent,’ they whispered again, but this one was much easier to ignore.
‘No, really, it’s a great story. You see, a few years ago, the King had this idea – to be frank, it’s something you people should have figured out long ago. You see, the thing about all that secrecy? You know, never showing your face to one another, never knowing each others’ names? Those lovely face-masks that disguise your voices so well that you wouldn’t know if it was your own mother behind the thing? Well, the King, clever fellow that he was, realised that if, let’s say, we caught a pair of Dashini and killed them, and if – and do follow along with me here – if we just replaced them with two of our men … well then, it would be awfully easy for them to blend in, wouldn’t it?’
They tried a rain of thrusts, but I flicked my points straight up and out and used my greater range to keep them back.
‘Now, what do you suppose we might do with two of our own inside the temple?’ I shook my head, and said, ‘No, no, we wouldn’t waste our time on some heroic attack that would just get our fellows killed while you all found a new hole to hide in. That would be a real waste, wouldn’t it? So what if, instead, we had our two fellows split up and set them to spy on the temple? That way, if – and I know this sounds far-fetched, but just go along with this for now – if say the bastard monks at the temple took on a contract to kill Greatcoats, then one of our fellows could make sure he was one of the Azu sent on the mission. And then— Well, why don’t you show him, Toller?’ I asked.
For a second, just a split-second, they froze in their dance and looked at each other with an instant’s distrust. Then they looked down at the blades of my rapiers stuck, point ends first, just below their chests. I’ve heard stories that the Dashini can slow the flow of their own blood – that they can survive a wound that would kill a normal man. So I pulled the blades out and stabbed them a few more times each, just to be sure. I’m not sure if that countered their preternatural resistance to injury or if their dignity finally demanded they do something – anything – to stop getting stabbed over and over, but they finally slid down onto the ground.
I resisted the urge to fall down on my ass and sit there for a while and instead took a small cloth from my coat (I didn’t want to risk some other contact poison on their dark garb), and carefully pulled their silken masks from their faces.
‘Well, that makes sense,’ I said out loud. ‘Turns out they have some very exotic and, I expect, individualised tattoos on their faces. I suppose that would make them hard to impersonate. I wonder if they all have them. Seems like a lot of work, considering most of them are killed by their own teachers before they can be given their first mission.’
The girl came up behind me and put one hand on my arm. She stood looking down at them but still staying well out of reach. ‘You mean, you didn’t get any men inside their temple?’
‘Hmm? Of course not – I mean, the King tried to send spies a few times, but they all turned up dead. They took some rather creative liberties with the return of the bodies. As for capturing two trained Dashini assassins and getting them to talk? Ridiculous idea.’
‘But you made them believe … The King’s idea?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the King figured that people who spend their entire lives learning the art of murder and never being around books, people, conversation, or even the occasional dirty limericks are probably prone to a little paranoia now and then.’
She looked up at me like I was an idiot.
I was feeling a little giddy. I’d just defeated two Dashini assassins. Let’s see Kest do that. I smiled back at Aline and let out a big, long breath. Her eyes went wide and she did something strange: she turned away and started running as fast as she could. That was when something hit me hard in the back of the head and I lost consciousness.
*
I awoke a few times between where we were captured and arriving at the Duke’s palace. My hands and feet were tied to a sturdy wooden pole and I was swinging from side to side. The man in front of me was tall and broad-backed; the one behind must have been a bit shorter, because my head seemed to lag lower than the rest of me.
‘He’s awake,’ I heard the man behind me grunt.
‘Hit ’im again, then,’ replied the one in front.
‘No, not yet.’ The new voice was male, but lighter, the accent higher class and somehow familiar. Suddenly a face came into view: long golden-blond hair hung down and almost touched my nose. The face was handsome, and not nearly bruised enough for my liking.
‘Lorenzo.’
He smiled. ‘Imagine us meeting again, First Cantor.’
‘Lorenzo, your face looks remarkably healed for such a short time.’
‘Magic – expensive. And can you believe this? It does nothing at all for the pain – it hurts just as much as when you finished putting your boots to me, Falcio.’
‘Yes, I meant to apologise about that. I’m sorry, Lorenzo, really sorry.’
I looked to my right, trying to catch a glimpse of where we were. From the thick press of people we had to be on one of the main streets – probably Kestrel Way, the road that ended at the Ducal Palace.
Lorenzo grabbed my face with a strong hand – his left, I noticed. I’d done some fairly nasty things to his right.
‘I’m not sure I can accept your apology, Falcio. Not until I’m absolutely sure of your sincerity.’
I tried to shrug, but my limbs were numb so I’m not sure it produced much effect.
‘Where’s the girl, Lorenzo?’ I asked.
‘We’ve taken her on ahead,’ he replied. ‘We want to get started on her as quickly as possible.’
I sighed. Aline had kept the soft candy, so she would certainly be dead by now. At least she had got to pick the time herself. I wondered how they’d caught up with us, but then a different question came to mind.
‘We,’ I said.
‘Hmm?’
‘You said, “We want to get started”. I assume you mean the Duke. How do your so-called “New Greatcoats” feel about the fact that a light slap is all it takes to make you abandon your high and mighty principles and go running to the Duke?’
Lorenzo looked at me with a quizzical expression on his face. ‘Are you serious?’ he asked, genuinely. Then he gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Really? You don’t know?’ More laughter. ‘Saints, Falcio! You didn’t know? And yet you beat me blue and bloody – for what? Because I offended your sense of the grand dignity of the Greatcoats?’
‘Ah. Well, that makes more sense now, doesn’t it.’
He sounded highly amused. ‘Falcio, you may be a fool, and you’re certainly going to die a gruesome death, but you’ve got style.’
‘So these New Greatcoats of yours—?’
‘Useful, potentially. I suppose in one sense you were right, though – they do lack a great deal of dignity. But that was the whole point: bring back the people’s beloved Greatcoats, but with more tractable – more noble – dispositions.’
‘You mean, make sure they’re stupid, vain and largely useless?’
He smiled. ‘Not an entirely unfair characterisation, I suppose. But yes, give people something that looks like a Greatcoat and talks like a Greatcoat, but who can judge a case in a way that produces a more satisfactory and predictable outcome.’
‘And when people start to realise they can’t trust them?’
‘Then they’ll turn away from the Greatcoats and the result will be just as good.’
I thought about that for a few moments. ‘I must apologise again then, Lorenzo.’
‘For what?’
‘Next time I beat you down I’m going to have to make sure you never get up again.’ The swinging was starting to make me nauseous. ‘Hey up there,’ I said to the man in front, ‘keep it steady or there’ll be no tip for you when we get to the palace.’
‘Ha! See, that’s the Falcio I’ve learned to admire in such a short time. You’ve got a sense of humour, of style.’
The swinging stopped. ‘Ah, but see, we’ve arrived at the palace. It was nice seeing you again, Falcio val Mond. I regret that we are unlikely to ever meet again.’ Then Lorenzo pinched my nose with the fingers of his right hand and put his left over my mouth until I passed out.