CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Serese A strange hush fell upon the monastery after Osh's announcement of vendetta, and the departure of the three Rshun set upon fulfilling it, inspiring a new sense of purpose that had been lacking before then. Even the older men, who had been spending more time cultivating their gardens than engaged in practice, began to re-hone their skills. Rshun huddled together, talking in serious tones, and laughter became altogether less common.
The apprentices remained largely unaffected by all this earnestness. They were still too ignorant of the gravity of the situation, and their punishing training regime was sufficient to keep their youthful minds focused on their own daily concerns.
*
Nico had never been able to make friends easily, and he discovered that had not changed much, even here in this high place of isolation. The constant company of others tended to drain him after a while, to the point where he often withdrew into himself for escape. At times, Nico knew, this made him appear aloof.
He had found, in the past, that this reticence had attracted its fair share of trouble, but here he found the opposite to be true. The other apprentices appeared to like Nico well enough, and joked and conversed with him easily. But they also sensed his distance and, knowing him at least a little better by then, took it not as arrogance but solely a desire to be left alone. They respected that desire, and in doing so often excluded him from those moments of true camaraderie that they shared amongst themselves, so that even when he genuinely wanted their company, he could never quite manage to breach the gap that had grown between himself and the others.
It was ironic, therefore, to discover, that another of the apprentices was afflicted by a similar condition and that one should turn out to be Aleas.
They all liked Aleas, too, but he was the apprentice of Baracha, who they roundly despised. More than that though was Aleas's manner. The young man was humble in his way, and naturally so, yet all the rest could see how brilliant he truly was. This unsettled his peers. Such talent and modesty combined suggested to them, in their own private thoughts, that Aleas was somehow superior to them, and they in turn his inferiors. Such personal dynamics do not offer a sound basis for friendship.
Yet it was because Nico and Aleas were both outsiders that inevitably their shared condition each spoke to the other. It suggested something of similar ways. At times, the two young men would both laugh at something only they considered worthy of humour, or one would find his words supporting the other's in some heated group debate. Often they would find themselves paired together for want of anyone else. Still, that distance remained between them as it did with the others – Nico somewhat intimidated by this confident young man, while Aleas felt restrained by his master's wish that they stay apart.
For Nico, a natural loner, life here was not at all as he had imagined it, though it was hardly as if he'd had any clear notions of what to expect upon his arrival. But whatever dim expectation he may have entertained of this strange place where men trained as assassins, it was not this.
For hours each day he hacked at the air in the practice square, stabbed and garrotted straw-stuffed mannequins, concealed himself from imagined foes, poured arrows on distant targets painted as men. Yet so engrossed was he in doing well, in maintaining his reputation, in surmounting the challenges of each new exhausting day, that rarely did he pause to connect these actions with the reality of what they meant, or the path that he was now set upon. For he was carefully being trained to cross a threshold without thought or hesitation. Some day, he would be expected to commit murder in cold blood.
Still, that was not on any day soon, and meanwhile the practice eventually made him insensitive to such a prospect, and hard effort obscured his contemplation of what it was all leading to. After a while, Nico did not dwell on it further.
It was a pleasant surprise for him to find how much he began to look forward to his daily sessions of meditation. They took place twice a day, for a full hour each time. Some of the apprentices struggled with these sessions, mostly those who still held to religious beliefs other than Daoism, which was odd, Nico thought, since all that was required of the apprentices was a commitment to the Daoist practices of stillness.
Nico was hardly much of a believer himself, having rarely connected with the rituals his mother had forced him to sit through, performed by those droning monks in their smoky temple whenever he had been unfortunate enough to be dragged along. Yet now he began to look forward to these hourly sessions in the quiet polished-wood confines of the chachen hall, or outdoors in the courtyard whenever the weather was fine. There was little religion involved, he found, for the Rshun did not concern themselves with doctrine. They merely knelt there, with hands in laps, and concentrated on the soft inrush and outrush of their breaths until a chime sounded the end of the session.
In time, Nico found that stillness was increasingly attainable once he learned how to relax while still maintaining his focus. Afterwards, he would feel refreshed and centred; altogether more comfortable in his own skin.
Weeks passed before he remembered to write a letter home. Nico felt somewhat chastened that he had forgotten about his mother so easily. In his untidy handwriting he let her know that he was well, and filled the rest of the page with an account of the more mundane aspects of his new life. He carefully left out anything that might suggest how desperate certain situations had been.
Ash's old friend Kosh was happy enough to arrange for its delivery, and had it taken down to Cheem Port along with some of the Rshun who were travelling down to purchase supplies. From there it was passed on to a smuggler who made his living by running the Mannian blockade of the Free Ports. Nico hoped that it eventually reached her. In truth though, after that, he did not think of his mother often.
Every Foolsday they were given a day off, and were free to do as they pleased. On such days, when the others would team up in groups of two or three, Nico would leave them to their bantering and their small complicities and take himself off for a hike into the surrounding mountains, to spend some cherished hours by himself in their high clean splendour. It was like nourishment to him, to be this alone with his thoughts, which on those particular days, after a long enough walk, were mostly a form of no-thought, the same as when he had been a boy, and he had ventured into the foothills near their cottage for an afternoon just with Boon; times of peace, a way of finding quietness.
The routine of it all carved its own particular grooves in him. For a time, Nico looked neither backwards nor ahead.
*
One morning, before breakfast, Nico spotted a girl crossing the courtyard, and was startled enough to drop his pail of water to the ground. It was not simply that she was female that gave Nico such a start and set his heart hammering. Neither was it her appearance: a simple black robe which matched the hair that swept long and straight down her back, framing a sun-kissed face of sharp angles and large eyes. Rather, it was the way she walked, long-limbed and confident, with a swinging grace evident beneath her robe that captivated his male eyes starved of such a sight for so long. Nico forgot his bucket as he darted after her, watching her enter the door leading into the north wing. He thought quickly of some excuse to follow and discover who she might be.
Nico hurried through the door, and glanced to his left and right. She was gone. He even wondered for a moment if he had imagined her.
*
Over the next few days he saw her several times again. But each time it was merely a passing glimpse, and always he was engaged in training or on his way to training, and could not linger. It was frustrating, and he soon found that his eyes kept darting constantly from here to there, looking out for her.
'Who is she?' he demanded of Aleas, one evening at supper.
'Who?' inquired Aleas, betraying himself with a feigned tone of innocence.
'You know who! The girl I keep seeing about the place.'
Aleas flashed him a wolfish grin. 'That is not just a girl, Nico. That is my master's daughter, and you would be best to keep your eyes off her – let alone your hands. My master is fearfully protective.'
'Baracha's daughter?' Nico was stunned at such a thought.
'Nico, your liking or disliking of a fellow hardly affects his abilities to sire children.'
'Well, what is her name?'
