The Assassin Read online

  They ate their vegetable samosas and drank their iced tea—or food that resembled these things, at least—in silence. But, even after their earlier conversation, it was a comfortable silence and one he was content to share with her. In truth, he already thought of her as his; the idea of actually leaving without her hadn’t really crossed his mind.

  Although kidnapping her had.

  “People like your father,” he said finally, aware that he was treading on dangerous ground, “preach that violence is wrong. The circle of life, they claim, is best respected by non-interference. Let the plant grow, wither and die. Let animals live in peace. Let men and women do the same.” He sipped his iced tea. She was watching him intently; he had her attention.

  “But nature is full of predators. No one asks the elephant to sacrifice its calf to the crocodile in service to some abstract belief. The elephant isn’t considered immoral if it fights the crocodile—and the crocodile isn’t considered immoral for wanting to eat the elephant’s calf. Even though, of course, the crocodile chooses the calf because it’s weak and easily killed.”

  She nodded slowly, in understanding.

  “But suddenly, when it comes to men, the law of the jungle is no more and it’s the noble thing to do, to sacrifice your children.”

  “You haven’t grown up here,” she countered.

  Your father didn’t grow up here, either.

  “You don’t understand what it’s like—the brothels, the protection rackets. It’s the next best thing to Hell. I’ve seen what a culture of violence can produce, and I think that this idea that there’s ‘good’ violence and ‘bad’ violence is a lie people tell themselves, so they can sleep.”

  “Maybe so,” he countered. “But refusing to fight men like the ones who came to your house last night doesn’t make them disappear. It’s a collective action issue, don’t you see that? For society to change, society has to change. Which, as long as there’s something in it for the other guy to screw over his neighbors and steal the advantage, it won’t. Get used to it.”

  His voice had turned hard toward the end, and she flinched. But she pressed on.

  “So you’re telling me—what? That you only kill people who deserve it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the man who purchases the service deserves death, more than the man he pays to have killed.”

  Ceres inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Maybe so.”

  But do you really think that a man offers a million darics to another man, to kill someone when that someone hasn’t done something horrible?

  She sipped her tea, waiting for him to convince her.

  A monkey—not the same one that’d so charmed Udit, he noticed—dangled down from the tarp and, chattering, glared pointedly at the last of his lunch. He passed it up to the mangy thing, which undoubtedly had rabies. He hadn’t much cared for the vegetable samosa, anyway.

  Udit’s smile was warm.

  “There are no perfect men,” he said quietly, holding her eyes with his own, “only perfect intentions. I won’t claim that everything I do is justified, or right—and no man should. Any man that does,” he continued, “is a liar, or so blinded by pride that he can’t see the truth of his own failings. But what I will claim is that I believe in the truth of what I’ve told you.”

  The silence stretched for an agonizing minute.

  And then she smiled—a small smile, almost imperceptible, but there.

  He relaxed.

  “We should go home,” she said, “and see if you can learn to be friends with my father.”

  He, he felt like pointing out, wasn’t the one who needed lessons in friendship.

  Chapte Seven

  Udit’s mother started shrieking, the noise cutting right through his skull.

  Grabbing her daughter by the arm—once again ignoring Ceres, everyone seemed to ignore him, here—she pulled her inside.

  They disappeared into the gloom, leaving Ceres alone with her father.

  The cleric glared.

  Ceres smiled benevolently. Two could play this game.

  A naked child ran by, waving a stick. A dog followed along behind, but it did not appear to be rabid.

  Somewhere, a woman started cursing out her neighbor, accusations about missing undergarments.

  The cleric stepped forward, squinting in the pitiless light as he stared up at Ceres. He shielded his face with his hand. For a man who’d lived here at least two decades, he was kind of a wimp.

  “Have you dishonored my daughter?” he demanded.

  Ceres shook his head. “Your daughter’s virtue is safe with me.”

  As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter how many times he fucked her; she’d still be the most virtuous person he’d ever met.

  The cleric was unmoved. “I know how safe it is,” he spat.

  Then why are you asking?

  Ceres shrugged noncommittally and turned to go inside.

  The cleric’s bony hand shot out, grabbing his wrist. Ceres let him. Breaking her father’s arm was no way to convince Udit to marry him. Besides, he knew where this was going; better to get it over with now, then leave Udit to answer awkward questions by herself.

  Lifting up his wrist, the cleric kept a death grip on it while he used the other hand to grab at his sleeve. Pushing it up, he revealed the smooth skin of Ceres’ inner forearm and the death’s head he’d had tattooed there, right beneath the bend in his wrist.

  He looked up, and their eyes met.

  He dropped Ceres’ wrist. “I knew it,” he hissed. “Assassin scum.”

  “Watch it, old man,” Ceres said warningly.

  “Or you’ll what?”

  “Or I’ll nothing. I wouldn’t want to upset your daughter.”

  “You stay away from her!”

  Ceres went inside. This time he didn’t let the old man stop him. Instead, he came in after, yelling and banging his stick like the announcer at an insane processional.

  “This man,” he announced to his shocked family, “is a godless, devil-worshipping pig.”

  His consort’s mouth dropped open.

  Udit, too, looked appalled.

  “What did you say to him?” she demanded accusingly.

  What did I say? Sure, blame the psychopathic contract killer.

  “He said nothing!” The cleric pointed at Ceres, extending a single gnarled finger. “This man is an assassin.”

  “I don’t care what he is,” said Udit’s mother, suddenly developing a backbone as she stared down her husband. “He saved our lives, and regardless of his profession he’s still a child of God—and God loves all his children, or hadn’t you forgotten?” Her tone had turned glacial.

  The cleric grumbled something.

  “And he’s staying for lunch,” she finished.

  No I am not.

  “No he is not!”

  “Yes he is,” announced Udit.

  “There’s chicken!” said her mother, with a brightness she obviously did not feel.

  Ceres and Udit exchanged a look. He wondered if this was like eating the rat.

  “We,” said the older woman, forging on, “are Sanah and Dodi Ominipoor, and we both welcome you to our home.”

  She shot her husband a look, which he returned in spades.

  Now he knew Udit’s surname. It hadn’t mattered, because he didn’t care who she was; and she’d be with him. He had his own life.

  They sat.

  Her mother, Sanah, served them. The chicken had been shredded, and mixed with some sort of sauce. He hated to imagine what was in it, and decided he didn’t want to know.

  “I,” announced the cleric, “will say grace.”

  Ceres’ family, what there was left of it, didn’t stand on ceremony much in private. And the guild had its own observances.

  The cleric sat, head bowed and eyes closed, hands together. Ceres, Udit, and the cleric’s consort followed suit. Ceres wondered where the twins were.

  “Dear God, The
Bringer of Judgment, The Guide to the Right Path, bless us here, now, that we might savor the food before us. We recognize that, regardless of its origins, it is a gift from You. Even food purchased with ill-gotten gains is still nourishing to the body, if not to the spirit. So we ask that You bless it to our health and to Your glory, that we may be sanctified.”

  He drew a breath, and paused meaningfully.

  “And we thank You, once again, for all Your goodness towards us and beg that, in Your wisdom, You see fit to protect us from those agents of Satan—

  Wait—did he just call me an agent of Satan?

  This just kept getting better and better.

  The cleric droned on, while Ceres thought.

  He knew marriage by capture wasn’t practiced much in some of the more remote colonies, and Charon II was out there. The Alliance was composed, at present, of sixteen planets—the six home worlds plus ten colonies—although there had been talk of adding another. If peace could be reached with the Moche, the Alliance would have access to raw materials that, so the engineers claimed, would allow the production of far superior weapons.

  The most advanced guns on the market still had a thirty second lag time between shots, making them next to useless in close combat. He’d heard that some of the criminal organizations were switching back to projectile weapons. He wouldn’t credit it, except he’d learned not to discount anything, simply because it sounded impossibly stupid. Often, the other guy was impossibly stupid—so stupid, in fact, that he won. His smarter, more sensible opponents anticipated things they’d do, ignoring entirely those things they thought no one in their right mind would do. Like, for example, investing in a gun that used saltpeter.

  They might as well bang each other over the head with sticks and stones.

  The cleric would like that.

  He was still talking.

  Rather than marriage by capture, people here seemed to prefer a more informal arrangement. Which made sense: no one had anything, except themselves. It made them all highly independent. Considerations such as a man’s career, or his ability to support a family, so important on Brontes, were largely irrelevant in a place where people couldn’t afford necessities.

  A man was successful, if he was alive; Ceres understood that.

  The cleric finished.

  “Madam Ominipoor,” Ceres told her, “this is delightful chicken.”

  “Please,” she said, smiling and seeming flustered, “call me Sanah.”

  “Sanah.” He returned her smile.

  She blushed.

  Ceres knew he was a handsome man, although he didn’t think about it much. His appearance hardly impacted his life. But he’d made an effort over it this morning, in anticipation of just such a confrontation. His haircut was conservative; his clothes were well cut and well made, if plain, and he smelled a good deal better than his surroundings. It was unfortunate, then, that he’d killed four people in his future in laws’ living room before having a chance to introduce himself. No chance, now, of convincing them that he was a sweet, pacifistic man with a heart of gold who wanted nothing more than to giggle and pet puppies.

  Although, judging from Sanah’s reactions, he thought he might have at least one ally.

  “So.” The cleric’s beady eyes were cold. “Are your parents religious?”

  Ah, the interview portion of the program.

  “My parents,” Ceres replied, “are late.”

  “That is, perhaps, for the best.” The cleric’s implication was clear: they’d been spared the knowledge that their son was a murderer.

  Udit put down her fork and stared at her father.

  Ceres said nothing. Dodi, the cleric, was doing all his work for him. Instead, he took another bite of chicken. He’d prepared to eat it, no matter how revolting it was, but it actually wasn’t bad. He could’ve eaten the rat, if he’d had to; he’d once ripped a man’s throat out with his teeth.

  “Imahd Ominipoor,” he began, as though the cleric hadn’t just suggested that he dishonored his family simply by existing, “I understand that you run a hospice? I’d love to hear more about your work there.”

  Udit sighed, relieved. What had she expected? That he’d kill the man at his own table?

  Ceres felt a twinge of irritation.

  “I received the call while I was training to become a cleric; it was so clear, almost as if a voice were speaking directly to me. I was to leave, and help the poor while living among them.

  “And so, after living and working here for some years, I received permission to found our hospice: the Dharavi Home for the Destitute. And, there, we care for all those who are unloved, unwanted, and uncared for. The starving, the naked, the crippled, the blind. The lepers.”

  “That,” said Ceres, meaning it, “is noble work.”

  The cleric seemed taken aback. He recovered himself quickly, though.

  “Our first year in particular was fraught with hardship. We had no income—and we still don’t, of course. Ultimately, we had to resort to begging for even the most basic of necessities. Food, bandages, things like that. It was a humbling time, and one filled with doubt.”

  Sanah, the cleric’s consort, was beaming at him as though he were God Himself rather than merely an envoy. It wasn’t love, Ceres saw at once, but religious devotion; she might revere his piety, putting him on a pedestal, but their marriage he thought was an act of service.

  “Of course,” continued the cleric, rather more self-importantly, “I walked and walked until my chest burned and my limbs ached, searching for a permanent home for our hospice, but as I looked around me I thought, how much worse must this be for the poor? They ache in body and soul, looking for a home of a different sort. And then, as I beheld the hopelessness around me, Satan came to tempt me. He reminded me of life on Brontes and I knew that all I had to do was say the word and all that comfort would be mine again.”

  Sanah sighed, transported.

  Ceres was less impressed. This was no true holy man. He ministered to the poor as an act of condescension; he didn’t see himself as one of them.

  He exchanged another glance with Udit. She was, he saw, perfectly aware of her father’s failings.

  “I did not let a single tear come,” sighed the cleric, enraptured with his own piety.

  “The people here are fortunate to have you,” said Ceres.

  The cleric’s answering look was sour.

  Chapte Eight

  Because he had a little time to kill—no pun intended—before his real work began, Ceres decided to have some fun.

  He’d located the target’s place of residence and, as he’d suspected, the target was shacked up with a girl. It didn’t seem serious, at least not to Dharun, although he had doubts about how well he’d communicated his intentions. The girl bustled around their flat, for all the world looking like some fat suburban consort. She’d spent the afternoon baking a bundt cake, for God’s sake. While it was in the oven she’d dusted, hung laundry out to dry, that sort of thing.

  It was pathetic, really. Not because these activities were pathetic in of themselves but because she had absolutely no sense that she was being used. A slow-moving cow of a woman, it had apparently never occurred to her to wonder where her man had come up with the funds to purchase ingredients for a cake. A cake took eggs, and flour—Ceres had watched the slaves baking, growing up—two valuable protein sources that were in short supply around here. Most people wouldn’t waste them in a sugary confection that served no purpose.

  He’d prefer it if he didn’t have to kill her, too. Not because he cared whether she lived or died—he didn’t—but because a sloppy kill had a poor aesthetic. He killed who he’d been sent to kill, and he left. Nothing more, and nothing less. If he was meant to send a message, he sent a message; if it was meant to look like an accident, he made it look like an accident.

  But if she was there, that night, he might have to kill her and the target knew that. Oh, yes, he was so deserving of sympathy.

  It seem
ed to elude people, when they sat around weeping for the plight of the poor rogue agent, that he’d taken vows, too. Yet, in their minds, the mere fact of his turning his back on all his responsibilities transformed him into a hero. In what other area of life was it acceptable to do this? If an accountant walked out of his office, leaving his clients in the lurch, because he’d decided that he’d rather be a sailor, would those same people hail him as a hero?

  Dharun Ravi was an assassin, too.

  Ceres wasn’t planning to strike until almost dawn. The target prepared for an attack every night, just before sunset, and remained vigilant into the wee hours of the morning. But then, having decided that he was safe for another night, he drifted off to sleep for a few hours.

  That left him some time.

  His lunch interview over, he’d taken leave of Udit and her parents and spent the rest of the afternoon doing a little research. Then he’d crashed for a couple of hours and now he was here, waiting. Watching. He’d situated himself between a hanging tarp and a crumbling block of concrete, about fifteen feet up from the street. Below him and a few yards to the left was the door to a bar called The Camel Driver. Better than the camel toe, he supposed.

  The Camel Driver was a loud establishment, clearly not catering to those with any sort of dignity. It produced a throbbing din, even outside, and every so often the door would swing open, the noise would spike and some unfortunate patron would be ejected out onto the street.

  There were no windows, of course—there never were, in places like this—and the peeling green paint on the door had seen better days.

  The door swung open again and, at long last, three men emerged. Watching them try to get through the door was, in and of itself, a comedy of errors. All three men had had so much to drink that their depth perception was exceedingly off. First one, his arm around his friend, walked smack into the doorframe. This resulted in roars of laughter as the man, clearly used to being the butt of jokes, grinned sheepishly and tried again. Not their leader, then.

  At most, this man would commit crimes of opportunity: picking a woman up in a bar and taking advantage of her, or pulling a passerby into a darkened alley to rob him. What had happened to Udit took careful planning, preparation. Which meant that this man had a leader.