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.
In truth, all his marks thus far had been, if not exciting, then at least gratifying. Rustan earned his first mark while protecting a caravan bound for Kashgar from bandits, and his second while breaking up a fierce fight between warriors of the Kushan and Turguz clans. He’d killed the leaders from each side, ensuring that the rest laid down their arms and turned to Barkav to mediate peace. It was an achievement to be proud of.
Whereas this . . . this was an execution.
Rustan urged Basil on, but the sounds of lamentation followed him still, until he wanted to close his ears and shout: I did my duty. That is all.
*
A pale and bloodless moon had risen in the sky by the time Rustan returned to the Khur camp. A vast dune shimmered in the moonlight ahead of him like an immense silver shield. Rustan made out the cluster of tents at its base, and his heart lifted. He was home. He would make his report to the Maji-khan, and everything would be all right. He would sleep, and wake rested to a normal day. He would tell Shurik everything; Shurik would listen to him and grin and punch his arm, say he was too sensitive, that he was lucky to be selected by the Maji-khan.
An apprentice was waiting at the camel enclosure, rubbing his hands and shivering in the cold wind. Rustan handed over Basil to him, inhaling the familiar, pungent aroma of the enclosure with pleasure.
He stopped short outside his tent. A tiny, hooded figure was standing at the entrance: Astinsai, the seer and katari mistress of Khur. What was the Old One doing here at this hour? She barely deigned to speak even to the elders; her presence here could mean nothing good.
Rustan bowed. “Mistress,” he said warily, “you could have summoned me to your tent. I would have come anyway, after making my report to the Maji-khan.”