Markswoman (Asiana #1)(8)
But no words escaped her lips and her mother faded away, still smiling, still beckoning. Kyra collapsed, sobbing in frustration and despair. Then she smelled ash, and felt the metallic taste of blood in her mouth.
A blue-skinned, four-armed woman with a vermilion-streaked forehead and bloodshot eyes stood over her. Twice as tall as Kyra, her black hair rippled in turbulent waves over her wolfskin skirt to her bare feet. A garland of skulls rattled around her neck as she presented Kyra with a lotus in one hand, a pair of scissors in another, and a sword in the third.
Kyra gaped at the fearsome form in disbelief. It cannot be. She wanted to grovel at her feet. She wanted to run away. In the end, she did neither. And as the Goddess flicked out her long red tongue and held out the final hand in benediction, her eyes bore into the depths of Kyra’s soul, and Kyra’s world went dark.
Chapter 3
The Judgment of Khur
There was no glory in being a Marksman.
Rustan had learned that quickly living with the Order of Khur, in the cold desert that festered in the heart of Asiana.
And yet, did it have to be quite so inglorious?
“Please,” said the kneeling man—the mark—again, tears running down his cheeks and dripping to the dusty street. “I am innocent. Please don’t kill me.” He continued to blubber, a bald, middle-aged man with the paunch that came from too much kumiss and too little labor.
They all said that, when confronted with the katari. They all became innocent and fearful and pitiable, no matter how heinous their crime. And this man’s crime was of the most despicable kind. He had been found guilty of the murder of his own estranged father by the elders of the Kushan council—a matter of greed and inheritance, the council had concluded. And yet, it took all of Rustan’s willpower to ignore the man’s entreaties. It had been too long since he’d done this.
It was the first such case in Tezbasti in several years. This close to the camp of Khur, violent crime was rare; premeditated murder even more so. People kept to the law and paid their tithe to the Order of Khur, and the Marksmen kept them safe from marauding bands of outlaws. This was the compact, had been since the Order of Khur was founded hundreds of years ago.
Go with my blessing, the Maji-khan had said. Deliver the judgment of Khur.
I will be honored, Rustan had replied, not knowing how little honor he would find in the task.
He suppressed his disquietude and slid off his camel’s back. Time to put a merciful end to the man’s whimpering. “It will not hurt,” he said, withdrawing his katari. “That I promise. Do you wish to confess?”
“I have nothing to confess,” the man cried, stumbling to his feet. “My trial was a sham. The council wants my land. I’ve been framed.”
Rustan delved into him—lightly, so his presence would not be felt—and found nothing but anger, fear, and, overriding them both, a deep sense of guilt. If only I had reconciled with my father and asked his forgiveness while he was still alive.
It was enough for Rustan. “Your father forgives you,” he said, and let fly his katari, straight and true, right into the mark’s throat.
The man toppled over, still maintaining that expression of outraged innocence, while a fountain of blood gushed out of his severed artery. Rustan waited before bending down to recover his blade. He wiped the blade against his sleeve—a gesture born of habit, nothing more, for it was clean as always—and exhaled the breath trapped in his chest. It was not his first mark, or even his second, and it would not be his last. So why this knot of tension in his stomach? Why this feeling of things unfinished or badly done?
No matter. Tezbasti would be safer, cleaner, without this patricide breathing its air.
The sand-blown streets were empty, eerily so for midday. The inhabitants of Tezbasti would not emerge until Rustan had gone. But a sound came from one of the mud-walled huts, a high, keening noise that echoed in the flat horizon, setting his teeth on edge. The man’s wife, perhaps. Or a sister. Or a child. Rustan did not know if the man had had a family. It was better not to know such things, for then you would find yourself mourning with them, for them.
Rustan sheathed his katari and leaped on his camel’s back. “Let’s go home, Basil,” he muttered. “Our work here is done.”
The camel snorted and heaved itself up. Twenty miles across the sandy wastes to Khur—they could make it before midnight, even with a short break in the afternoon. Rustan had hoped to rest his camel in Tezbasti itself, but all he wanted now was to put as much distance as possible between the wailing noise from the hut and himself. As if distance could make him forget it, grief made audible, and the guilt of his own hand, his own heart. As if distance could answer the questions, rearing serpent-like inside him: What if he was truly innocent? Who am I to take a life, even a wicked one? And—what is wrong with me, that I feel this way?
This was foolish. He had simply obeyed orders. He was a Marksman and this was what he was trained for. In the two years since his last mark, he had become soft, forgotten the dark edge of a Marksman’s reality. No wonder the Maji-khan had selected him for this assignment. The Order was testing him.
But the mark two years ago had been different; he had ridden with Shurik and the others between the dunes, chasing a band of outlaws, dust tearing his eyes, his throat hoarse with shouting. There had been excitement and danger, even a kind of heroism to it. The outlaws were armed with bows and arrows, and two of the Marksmen had suffered flesh wounds.