THE DASHINI
A few hours later we were in another small alley and had very nearly made it to the outer wall when the two Dashini found us. Dashi’nahiri Tahazu, to give them their full title, is actually a phrase which means, ‘The hunt once started ends only with blood’. They are difficult to find, expensive beyond the value of any man’s life, and have a bad reputation for occasionally killing their employers after the target is eliminated. They are the most secretive order of assassins in the civilised world, though it’s hard to call any world ‘civilised’ if it can produce murderers of this calibre.
The Dashini wear dark blue silk from head to toe, covering them completely. The fabric is as ingenious, in its own way, as the leather used to make our greatcoats. A man wearing Dashini garb can see out with near-perfect clarity, but his opponents can’t see anything, not even the colour of his eyes, which works out well for all concerned since the true identity of a Dashini hunter is never revealed – not even to the other members of his order. They enter the temple at Zhina as babes, sacrificed to – well, whichever God you sacrifice your newborn child to, I suppose. A dark-blue-clad monk wraps the child in its first silken swaddling clothes, and that’s it; the child’s face will never be seen for the rest of its life. They always fight in pairs, but even their Azu – their partner – knows neither their name nor their face.
Over the years the child learns how to move without being seen or heard, to make poisons from whatever plants, fish or animals exist where they are sent, to play mind-tricks on their enemies, and, of course, to be able to defeat any opponent. And in case you’re wondering, yes, that includes Greatcoats. A great many Greatcoats, in fact.
The King spent several years trying to devise a way for us to beat them, but it was a bit difficult to test his theories, and the solution he finally settled on wasn’t entirely reassuring. On the other hand, at that precise moment it was all I had.
‘Girl …’ I started, reaching each hand across my chest and into the inner folds of my coat.
‘I know, I know,’ she said, slipping a few feet behind me.
‘We come for the girl, not her coat,’ one of them – or maybe it was both of them (the fabric covering their faces makes it hard to tell) – whispered at me. ‘Trust your fear and turn your back.’
‘Viszu na dazi,’ I said. It was just about the only phrase I knew in their language. It means, ‘no one saw’, and it refers to the fact that the Dashini don’t leave witnesses.
They moved like snakes, dancing sinuously with their long stiletto blades flicking out like tongues. We had never figured out how, but somehow those thin, light blades could pierce through our greatcoats more easily than a regular sword could.
‘Better one chance in a thousand than no chance at all,’ they whispered, and, almost imperceptibly, they started to move apart, positioning themselves to get on either side of me. I backed up a step and drew my rapiers. The girl was smart enough to step back as well, keeping the distance behind me.
‘Could we get started with that shit-breath you call a poison?’ I called. ‘We’re sort of on the run, and I’m feeling a bit exposed out here.’
Their faces, of course, revealed nothing other than the usual expanse of dark blue cloth, but I fancied they probably got at least a tiny surprise from that. You see, the Dashini, good as they are, have absolutely no notion of a fair fight. That’s why, although they’ll always finish you off with the point of their stiletto blades, they don’t take chances, and, above all, they don’t let pride get in the way of a good murder. So before the fighting starts, they like to get in a little close, do their little dance and then blow a thin, almost mist-like purple powder into your face. They call it the ‘fear-tongue’, and it does pretty much what you’d expect: makes you terrified and disoriented, and does something to your throat that prevents you from talking. It pretty much guarantees you’re going to end up with a long, thin piece of metal buried deep inside your eye, which is how they like to wrap things up.
The way they moved, undulating back and forth while leaning backwards, made it easy to miss that they were bridging the distance between you. They probably could have spat the poison into my face from that distance, but the Dashini don’t get cocky; they don’t rush. They make murder the way a master baker makes bread, knowing that timing is everything. So they slipped back and forth to gain those few extra inches they needed to know they’d hit me with the fear-tongue and paralyse me with nausea and dread.
A wiser man than I once asked a question, though: if the fear-tongue is so powerful, why doesn’t it affect the Dashini? After all, they hold the stuff in their mouths, so they must inhale a lot more of it than their target does. The answer is fairly simple, really: they build up a resistance to it. It turns out that the first time you get hit with it (which is usually the only time, since you don’t survive your first encounter with the Dashini) the effects are extremely powerful. The second time, you’re still terrified and disoriented, but you don’t tend to get the constricted throat. And the third time the disorientation goes away and all that’s left is the fear. That never really gets any better, but who can’t handle a little terror? Fear-tongue is incredibly expensive to buy, and it’s no easy trick to find, but fortunately for us we had a King with all kinds of money and contacts who was of the opinion that it might look bad if his Magisters pissed their pants falling over themselves and crying in vain for their mothers whenever a Dashini assassin hove into sight. So, at great expense to the country, every Greatcoat in the order was lucky enough to experience enough fear-tongue so that, if they did just happen to get attacked by Dashini assassins, they wouldn’t piss their pants before they died. Money well spent, your Majesty.
So when they blew the sparkly purple dust straight into my face, I took in a nice deep breath and let a pair of throwing knives fly from my hands towards their chests. Their long stilettos flicked out and beat away the knives. It was a neat trick that I doubt I could have pulled off – Kest, maybe, but not me. I would have liked them to have said something complimentary about my little surprise, but they don’t really talk when they don’t need to. However, it threw their weaving dance off just a hair, and that was all the satisfaction I could expect at this point.
They did, however, do me the honour of finally attacking me. Their blades were perfectly synchronised, so I used the parry we call ‘the dismissal’, so-called because it looks a bit like you’re making a tiny, disdainful gesture to send someone away. In reality, it’s a double-circular parry that works well against long, straight blades. The manoeuvre threw their points out of line, but they had plenty of tricks of their own and I couldn’t count on guessing the counter for each one, not with two of them coming at me at the same time.
We circled some more, and as the dust of the alley started stirring up I could feel the edges of that drug-induced terror start to reach up to my chest from my stomach. I did my best to ignore it. I needed to focus on the King’s big idea.
‘It’s nice seeing you again, Toller,’ I said to no one in particular.
The Dashini said nothing but flicked out their blades again. This time they intentionally went just slightly out of time, which would mean trying another double-dismissal would fail as the timing on at least one of my parries would be off. I focused instead on blocking the one on my right and doing a counter-clockwise half-slip with my left foot. The blade missed me and the assassin’s attempt to draw a cut on his return draw didn’t even scratch my coat. Their points are sharp as hells, but the blades themselves won’t cut through our leather, not with that weak a blow.