“Who sent you?” Yama said. He was aware that one of the statues was only a few paces from his back. Remembering what Sergeant Rhodean had taught him, he carefully watched as the man moved toward him, looking for weaknesses he might exploit if it came to a fight.
“Put up that silly pricking blade, and I’ll tell you,” the man said. His voice was deep and slow, and set up echoes in the vaulted roof of the apse. “I was asked to kill you slowly, but I promise to make it quick if you don’t struggle.”
“It was Gorgo. He hired you at the Water Market.”
The man’s eyes widened slightly under the mask and Yama knew that he had guessed right, or had struck close to the truth.
He said, “Or you are a friend of Gorgo, or someone who owes him a favor. In any case, it is not an honorable act.”
The man said, “Honor has nothing to it.”
Yama’s fingers sweated on the hilt of the knife and the skin and muscles of his forearm tingled as if held close to a fire, although the knife blade gave off no heat. Pandaras had not known to leave the knife in sunlight while I was ill, he thought. Now it takes the energy it needs from me, and I must strike soon.
He said, “Did Gorgo tell you who I killed? He cannot have forgotten, because it was only two nights ago. It was a rich and powerful merchant, with many guards. I was his prisoner, and my knife was taken from me, but he is dead and I stand here before you. Go now, and I will spare you.”
He was calling out to any machine for help, but there were none close by. He could only feel their distant, directionless swarm, as a man bears the many voices of a city as an unmodulated roar.
The assassin said, “You think to keep me talking, that I may spare you or help will come. Those are foolish hopes. Put up your knife and it’ll be a quick dispatch. You have my word.”
“And perhaps you talk because you do not have the stomach for it.”
The assassin laughed, a rumble like rocks moving over each other in his belly. “It’s the other way around. I was paid to kill you as slowly as possible, and to withhold the name of my client until the last possible moment. You won’t put away your silly little blade? You choose a slow death, then.”
Yama saw that the assassin favored his right arm; if he ran to the left, the man must turn before striking. In that instant Yama might have a chance at a successful blow. Although the shrine was dark and fading sunlight had climbed halfway up the walls, laying a bronze sheen on the cloudily opaque torsos of the gigantic soldiers, everything in the square apse shone with an intense particularity. Yama had never felt more alive than now, at the moment before his certain death.
He yelled and ran, striking at the man’s masked face. His opponent whirled with amazing speed and parried automatically with such force that Yama was barely able to fend off the blow. The knife screamed and spat a stream of sparks, and notched the assassin’s sword.
The assassin did not press his advantage, but stared distractedly at something above Yama’s head. Yama struck again, lunging with the point of his knife; Sergeant Rhodean had taught him that the advantage of a shorter blade is the precision with which it can be directed. The assassin parried with the same casual, brutal force as before and stepped back, pulling the percussion pistol from his waistband.
Suddenly, dust boiled around them in a dry, choking cloud.
Chips of stone rained down like hail, ringing on the stone flags of the floor. In the midst of this, Yama lunged again.
It was a slight, glancing blow that barely grazed the assassin’s chest, but the knife flashed and there was a terrific flash of blue light that knocked the man down. Yama’s arm was instantly numbed from wrist to shoulder. As he shifted the knife to his left hand, the assassin got to his feet and raised the percussion pistol.
The man’s mouth was working inside the mask’s slit, and his eyes were wide. He fired and fired again at something behind Yama. The pistol failed on the third shot and the assassin threw it hard over Yama’s head and ran, just as Pandaras had run when the woman had appeared in the shrine.
Yama chased after the assassin, his blood singing in his head, but the man plunged through the curtain of black mesh and Yama stopped short, fearing an ambush on the other side.
He turned and looked up at the soldier which had stepped from its niche, and asked it to go back to sleep until it was needed again. The soldier, its eyes glowing bright red in its impassive face, struck its chestplate with a mailed fist, and the apse rang like a bell with the sound.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Thing Below
A short way down the shadow-filled atrium, in the glow of a palm-oil lantern which had been lowered on a chain from the lofty ceiling, two men bent over something. Yama ran forward with his knife raised, but they were only priests tending to Pandaras. The boy lay sprawled on the mosaic floor, alive but unconscious. Yama knelt and touched his face. His eyes opened, but he seemed unable to speak. There was a bloody gash on his temple; it seemed to be his only wound.
Yama sheathed his knife and looked up at the two priests.
They wore homespun robes and had broad, wide-browed faces and tangled manes of white hair: the same bloodline as Enobarbus. Although Yama had guessed that this was the place where the young warlord had received his vision, he still felt a small shock of recognition.
He asked the priests if they had seen who had wounded his friend, and they looked at each other before one volunteered that a man had just now run past, but they had already discovered this poor boy. Yama smiled to think of the spectacle the masked assassin must have made, running through the temple with a sword in his hand and blood running down his bare chest. Gorgo must be nearby—if he had sent the assassin, surely he would want to witness what he had paid for—and he would have seen the rout of his hireling.
The priests looked at each other again and the one who had spoken before said, “I am Antros, and this is my brother, Balcus. We are keepers of the temple. There is a place to wash your friend’s wound, and to tend to your own wounds, too. Follow me.”
Yama’s right arm had recovered most of its strength, although it now tingled as if it had been stung by a horde of ants. He gathered up Pandaras and followed the old priest. The boy’s skin was hot and his heartbeat was light and rapid, but Yama had no way of knowing whether or not this was normal.
Beyond the colonnade on the left-hand side of the atrium was a little grotto carved into the thick stone of the temple’s outer wall. Water trickled into a shallow stone trough from a plastic spout set in the center of a swirl of red mosaic.
Yama helped Pandaras kneel, and bathed the shallow wound on his temple. Blood which had matted the boy’s sleek hair fluttered into the clear cold water, but the bleeding had already stopped and the edges of the wound were clean.
“You will have a headache,” Yama told Pandaras, “but nothing worse. I think he struck you with the edge of his vambrace, or with his pistol, rather than with his falchion. You should have stayed with me, Pandaras.”
Pandaras was still unable to speak, but he clumsily caught Yama’s hand and squeezed it.
The old priest, Antros, insisted on cleaning the shallow cuts on Yama’s back. As he worked, he said, “We heard two pistol shots. You are lucky that he missed you, although I would guess that he did not miss you by much, and you were hurt by stone splinters knocked from the wall.”
“Fortunately, he was not aiming at me,” Yama said.
Antros said, “This was a fine place once. The pillars were painted azure and gold, and beeswax candles as tall as a man scented the air with their perfume. Our temple was filled with mendicants and palmers from every town and city along the length of the river. That was long before my time, of course, but I do remember when an avatar of the Preservers still appeared in the shrine.”