She was known, or more her work was known, under the alias, -I-. Even those in the secret council of the Alliance, those who sent her on her missions, had never seen her face. What they knew was her black cloak, her silk boots, the speed and grace of her sword. And they knew her mask, a blank white shell with two small circular eye holes and a small circle for a mouth. She killed swiftly, simply and accurately and moved like an eel through a sunken pasture in the escape. Most of her victims practiced sorcery. The Alliance had secretly declared war on all magic, fearing its promise of hope to the powerless. In -I-’s years of killing, her prey had thrown spells at her, frightening illusions, distracting dreams, creatures of the imagination. She trusted in her sword, her darts, her leather club, and dagger. Once she parried with an enchanted hog, wielding a sword. Once she wrestled with an angel in the heat of the afternoon. She kept her focus as sharp as the blade, able to cut through illusion, sharper than magic.
In the summer of her 40th year, she was sent on a mission to kill a witch, the crone of Aer, who lived on the outskirts of the city of Camiar. There, in a small cottage, she kept a vast flower garden from which she drew her sorcery. The warm sun and cloudless blue skies did their best to distract the assassin as she rode out of the city to the edge of the Forest of Sans. Along the way, she repeatedly caught herself daydreaming. When she neared the spot where the council had told her she’d find the witches’ cottage, she slipped off her horse and sent it silently away to graze in the pasture of tall grass. Moving against the breeze, she crept amid six foot stalks, swarming with yellow butterflies. Some small pest stung her on the back of the neck but she ignored the distraction. At the edge of the pasture, with the place finally in sight, she drew her sword.
She found the door of the cottage wide open and a black cat sitting on the top of three short steps. It never so much as cast a glance her way. Stepping through into the cool shadows of the cottage, she felt the adrenalin pulse and crouched into the fighting stance known as the fly trap. Her eyes immediately adjusted and she noted the basket of fruit on the table, the collections of animal skulls and cleaved rocks, displaying green and purple crystals at their centers. Melted candles and crudely fashioned furniture made from tree branches. Crystals hung by twine in the place’s one window, blown glass bottles on the sill held nasturtiums. -I- moved cautiously from one room to the next till she’d searched all three. Then from the kitchen, through a back door, she let herself into the garden.
The aroma of the blossoms was relaxing. She felt the muscles in her sword arm slacken and released a sigh she’d not intended, which she knew was enough of a slip to get her killed. The garden had a fountain and diverging paths lined with egg-like stones, shining in the summer sun and radiating warmth through the soles of her boots. More butterflies and grasshoppers and thickets of flowers of all types and colors spilling onto the edges of the walk. Passing a shock of blue daffodils twice her height, she was startled by a figure, standing amid a bed of foxglove. Her blade instantly swept through the air, and stuck with a knock three inches in the neck of a wooden statue. Its eyes were sea shells, its heart a puffball. She pulled the sword free and spun around to see if anyone had heard. There was only a breeze and the sun in the sky.
-I- found her target further down the path, sitting in a wicker chair beneath an awning of huge, broad leaves. Beside the old woman there was a table on which sat a tea pot, two cups, a lit taper and a pipe. Upon noticing -I-, the witch smiled, and motioned for the assassin to join her. She pointed to the empty wicker chair across from hers. -I- was startled by the realization that she’d let herself be detected.
The witch pushed her grey hair behind her ears and said, “Come sit down. There’ll be plenty of time for killing later. And take that ridiculous mask off.”
Disarmed as she was, realizing that any chance of surprise was gone, she walked forward, sheathed her sword and sat down. “Did you hear me coming?” she asked.
“I smelled you two days off,” said the witch. “Sweet enough but somewhat musty. Please, dear, the mask.”
“Brave for a woman who’s about to die,” said -I-, unable to believe she was speaking to her prey. Until that moment, she’d never have conceived of the possibility. By every measure, it was bad form. Still, she removed her mask and set it on the table. The witch’s glance made her blush.
“Do you mean me or you?” asked the crone of Aer.
“You intend to kill me?” -I- went for her sword.
“Easy, dearest,” said the witch. “For someone who’s killed so often, you know little of death.”
-I- returned her sword and sat back. From her years of assessing her prey, her glance instantly registered the woman’s lined face and hunched form, noted her strange beauty—ugliness made a virtue—and the grace with which she poured a cup of tea.
“If I’d wanted you dead, I’d have sent a thought form servant with a silver rope to strangle you in your sleep two days ago,” said the witch. She pushed the steaming tea cup across the table.
-I- shook her head at the offering.
“Drink it.”
She reached for the tea cup at the same time she wondered which poison the old lady had used. Bringing it to her lips, -I-’s senses were enveloped with the aroma of the pasture, its steam misting her vision. She meant to ask herself what she was doing but felt it would have to wait until after she’d tasted the tea. It was soothing and made her body feel cool in the breeze of the hot day. Drinking in small sips, she quickly downed the cup while the witch packed a pipe with dried leaves from a possum hair pouch.
As -I- placed the empty cup back on the table, the witch handed her the smoldering pipe—a thin hollowed out tibia with a bowl carved to resemble the form of an owl.
“What was the tea? And what is this?” asked the assassin.
“The tea was clippings from the garden, stored underground through a frost, drying in sugar. The smoke is Simple Weed.”
“It makes you simple?”
“Does everything need to be complicated?”
-I- laughed and accepted the pipe and candle with which to spark it. She forsook caution, drew deeply, and woke in the middle of the night, the stars shining overhead. She sat up suddenly, confused, her joints aching from the cold ground she’d slept upon. She staggered to her feet and drew her sword only to find she was completely alone. The starlight was enough to show her she’d lain among the ruins of an old stone building, roof gone and walls three quarters shattered. Grass grew up around the fallen masonry and crickets sang.
She reached her free hand to the back of her neck and found the tiny dart she’d put off to an insect still lodged there. It was instantly clear that she’d been out cold since the moment she’d felt the sting amid the tall grass and all else had been a dream. She called for her horse and it approached from the pasture. Mounting it, she rode fiercely toward Camiar, and within the first mile realized the witch in the dream was her future-self. It was then she decided to assassinate all in the secret council of the Alliance of the Back of the Hand.
And she did just that. Five fat, miserable old men. She stalked them and dispatched them without remorse. Each of the four remaining after the first councilor was found, his head stuffed in his hind quarters, hired their own small army of body guards and assassins, but -I- cut through all of them. It was a time known to those in the know as the ‘Hemorrhage,’ for there was a great bleeding although none of the blood seeped into public view. She killed the councilors and their minions, quietly, secretly, each assassination merely a whisper. She killed the head of the Alliance, the so called ‘middle finger of the Back of the Hand,’ so exquisitely that it took him an hour to realize he was dead before dropping over. And when the last was opened like a mackerel to let the insides become the outside, she rode out of Camiar and lost herself in the Sussuro Mountains.