'Thank you.' Osh smiled. 'Now, let me see, who do we have? Ah, Anton, you shall go. And Kylos of the little islands. And you – yes, Baso, I see you – you shall go also. Good, three of our finest.' The others returned to their seats, leaving those three standing alone above a sea of heads. 'You must leave tonight, I am afraid. We may already be too late to intercept Kirkus dul Dubois before he is able to return to Q'os, but we must still make haste before the Empire has sufficient chance to prepare for our retaliation. For retaliate we must, despite the obvious threat to our own order.
'Remember, an innocent woman lies dead tonight. Her life ill-taken by this young priest. For once, and we all know this for the rarity that it is, the righteousness of our task is clear. This time, we are not merely hunting the killer of a wealthy thug, or a patrician who has caught his brother sleeping with his wife, or a woman cornered into actions in which she had no reasonable alternative. There is no greyness here, as there so often is, and for which we so often seek forgiveness in our hours of quietness.'
Heads nodded in agreement, but there was a notable exception, Nico noticed. Baracha, sitting beside Ash, looked troubled and obviously wished to speak.
'We hunt a monster of the very real kind. And we have a pledge to keep, which we shall fulfil regardless of the cost. For truly, if we Rshun are to be of any worth to the world, then we must prove it now. This is it.'
He bowed his head. 'That is all.'
*
'It is a bad business,' announced the head of the Rshun order, the next morning, from the padded chair in his study at the top of the monastery tower. He spoke in their native Honshu, its syllables harsh and short-lived, as he always did when they were alone together.
Ash, sitting on the window seat at the other side of the room, did not respond.
'We take on an entire empire by pursuing this one vendetta,' continued Osh. 'I pray it will not prove our undoing.'
'We have stood against powerful enemies before, master,' Ash reminded him softly.
'Aye, and lost all.'
A muscle in Ash's jaw flinched at that remark.
'Perhaps we had no other choice then,' he replied. 'As we have none now. What else can we do but honour our pledge, and act from our Cha?'
It was an interesting word, Cha. In the common language of Trade, many words would be needed to describe it, like 'centre', or 'stillness', or 'clear heart'.
'Cha?…' mused Osh, irony evident in his vague smile. 'My Cha seems always clear to me, my friend, when I slice cheese or drink chee or fart in my old pine bed. But when I sit and ponder such things as this, affecting the future of the monastery itself, and the many hazards I must be aware of for the sake of all our futures, my Cha muddies itself with uncertainty. And then I wonder if perhaps I have not lost my way.'
'Nonsense,' snapped Ash. 'Last night you stood and explained to us why we must pursue this vendetta, regardless of the consequences. Your actions decided the issue. What more certainty can you expect?'
Osh sighed. He responded quietly, as though talking only to himself. 'And all the time, I wondered if my words were not leading us to yet another massacre, or at the very least, another exile from our home.'
Ash returned his gaze to the window. He felt tired today, like on every other day since his return to the monastery, for his head pains had grown more common, and he had been sleeping poorly. Ash had been expecting this to happen. Often, when intent on a vendetta, his body would wait until it had reached a safe haven again before allowing any sickness or injury to run its natural course.
He had always tended to keep his own company while living here in the monastery. Since returning, though, he had become even more secluded than before. When he felt well enough, he trained outside the monastery walls, or undertook long walks through the mountains, avoiding others he spotted on their own hikes, his young apprentice amongst them. Mostly, though, he stayed alone in his cell, sleeping when he could manage it, or reading poetry from the old country, or just meditating. He did not wish the other members of the order to perceive that he was ill.
'It is not that kind of certainty I ask for,' Osh pressed. 'I have been more in my life than merely Rshun. I have led armies in the field, you recall? I have commanded a fleet across the great ocean of storms. My dear Ash, I once slew an overlord in a chance encounter that lasted for the entirety of three seconds. 'No, it is not certainty in my actions that I am lacking, or have ever lacked. I think perhaps it is Chan that I have lost, and I fear it makes my decisions weak.'
Another interesting word, Chan. Like Cha, in Trade it could mean many things: passion, faith, love, hope, art, blind courage. Sometimes, it could mean the mysteriously clever ways of the Fool. It was, in actuality, the outer manifestation of Cha in action.
'I grow tired of this business, that is all. Too much of my life have I spent as Rshun; soldier, general, nothing more. It has become a life hardly worthy of breath. When the time is right I will hand over the reins to Baracha. He is much more the scheming politician than I, even if his Cha is unclear.'
'Phff, if he were in charge now, he would have us parlaying with the Mannians and discussing a pay-off in return for the young priest's life.'
'Then perhaps Baracha is wise beyond his years. Who is to say he would be wrong, if it resulted in our survival?'
Ash felt the blood rush to his face, but kept silent.
'You were never Rshun; back in the old country, Ash, as I was,' continued Osh. 'You do not know how it was – not truly. Our patrons there wore a simple medallion for all to see and if they were slain, we gathered what information we could that might lead us to the killer. It was a messy business, I assure you. Sometimes we killed the wrong person. Often we were never able to track down the true culprit at all. Even today, here in the Miders, with our seals and our mali trees imported all the way from the Isles of Sky, we have sometimes failed to finish vendetta.'
'Yes, but we have always tried. It is the promise that we make.'
'Our promise, yes,' Osh agreed. 'But in the old country, our promise was always a practical one. I doubt that we would have ever risked our entire order in such a way as this.'
Ash shook his head. 'That may be. But we are a different thing here, in this land, than the old assassins. We have remained detached from the politics of the world, and neither do we manoeuvre for our own gain. We simply offer justice for those that are in need of it. If we do not risk ourselves now, then our promise to all those people means nothing, and we mean nothing, and all we have ever lived for is merely a sham.'
Osh considered his words. It seemed he could not find fault with them.
Ash continued: 'What did you yourself always say to me when I was most anxiously facing a decision?'
'Many things, most of them nonsense.'
'Yes, but what was the same thing you said to me, time after time?'
'Ah,' growled the old general. 'Grin, and roll the dice.'
'A worthy sentiment, I always thought.'
Osh's sigh was audible. It was an expression of release, though, not exasperation, and he relaxed further into his deep chair, his eyes regarding something on the chee-table set in the middle of the room, perhaps the play of sunlight across its surface. The table itself was of wild tiq, carved from the planking of one of those ships that had brought them both here all the way from Honshu thirty years before.
Ash studied this old man he had known for so much of his life. His master seemed unaware of his own hand scratching idly at his left leg. Ash noticed it, though, and he smiled to himself, without commenting.
It appeared that, in some way, the debate was settled for now. They fell into one of their comfortable silences, the kind that could last for hours without any need for talk. A clatter sounded somewhere beneath the floorboards, distant enough to be subdued, probably someone dropping an armful of training weaponry, or perhaps a stack of platters from the nearby kitchen. Nearly lunchtime, Ash thought, so more likely platters. Friendly smells wafted in though the open window: keesh baking, and spicy stew.
Osh stirred in his chair, glanced down at his hand, saw it scratching his leg. He snatched it away, bemused. 'Over twenty years I've been with this wooden leg of mine, and still I scratch at phantom itches as though they really existed.'
Ash barely heard him though. The dull ache in his head was worsening, and he clasped a hand to his forehead.
