As Jik walked the street of Ullulia, he should have felt the overwhelming calm of being home. Or at least that’s what he told himself.
The last few decades of modernization had transformed much of the city. Stark Tinarian architecture had replaced much of the traditional Yarvan building styles, but to Jik all that was normal. It wouldn’t have felt as much like home to him if the Tinarian additions weren’t there. He had grown up around them—and as much as his father and grandfather had hated them—he hadn’t minded that there was a constant, permanent reminder to all of Yarva that things were continuing to transform.
As a child, he had had a natural tendency to question what his father taught him, not out loud but in his own mind. It always felt like a necessary way to balance out what seemed like a very extreme set of ideas. They weren’t even his father’s ideas really, they had been passed down from Jik’s grandfather. Even as a child, after observing the acidity his father inherited, Jik wasn’t sure he wanted to participate in that legacy. The way his family had always talked about the Tinarian Republic rubbed him the wrong way. In his mind, the military occupation came to represent an opposition to the old ways they expected him to uphold.
The fact that it was illegal to speak wrong of the Republic never seemed to bother Jik’s father. Sure, the man had never been too loud with his protestations, but if he really got talking you were sure to hear something about how the Crusades. He would take any opportunity to expound on the ravaging of Yarvan lands and the uprooting of their culture. It was the sort of thing that could get someone in a lot of trouble, especially back then.
Around the time Jik entered adolescence, he learned what it had all really been about, not the war his grandfather had fought in, but the grandfather himself. Apparently, when the old man had returned from the war, he had never been the same. Jik’s father had blamed it on Tinaria, but Jik felt like he could confidently lay the blame on one man who became broken and unable to heal enough to take care of his family. Jik’s father couldn’t bring himself to see that truth. It had been much easier to simply hate a large, faceless governmental body—to paint them as a manifestation of pure evil.
Jik had always been able to see nuances his father couldn’t. He had been able to realize that things like war, politics and government were never going to be clear-cut, black-and-white subjects, and he had made peace with living inside that ambiguity. He had accepted that Tinaria was the power he would obey, and after years of quietly observing, he even welcomed it.
At least it used to be that way.
It was funny how things all went sort of topsy turvy when certain situations presented themselves. The situation this time had been the fact that a year before being enlisted in the Tinarian Militia, Jik had become somewhat involved with the new Yarvan rebellion.
It had been a cousin who introduced him to the group. At the time they had been nothing more than a ragtag bunch of men and women, barely more than children. Jik recognized immediately that their cause would go nowhere. What could a bunch of teenagers do against the strongest military organization in the world? It was only secret meetings filled with empty speeches—a group of nobodies who convinced themselves they were doing something important.
Over the several months that followed, Jik didn’t know why he kept going back. The speeches that seemed so frivolous started to… affect him. He found himself wanting to be there more and more—wanting the feelings the words gave him. And people in the group—as more and more members found themselves sworn in—Jik found himself noticing that he had a lot in common with them.
He started liking them.
Which was a problem. He supported Tinaria—that wasn’t about to change. In the back of his mind, he told himself he was merely collecting information—valuable, useful information he would dutifully divulge to his Commander as soon as he was made to enlist.
He hadn’t thought of it as any kind of betrayal, not until he met Commander Genys, not until he saw the fierceness in her eyes. Hearing the imperialistic fire in her voice did something to him as well, and it wasn’t positive.
As the first few weeks in the Militia passed, he told himself each day that as soon as they finished training he would go straight to Genys’ tent. He would divulge everything. But when the time came, he couldn’t do it. Thoughts of the rebels filled his mind, thoughts of his friends.
So he did nothing. For months he felt torn between the desire to serve Tinaria and a duty to the people he had come to love.
But then there was the attack in the meadow. He had long heard rumors of the Thori involving themselves in the conflict. Mostly they had just been hushed words spread quietly throughout the rebellion, but apparently, something had happened while he was gone—some sort of development he was unaware of. Upon hearing they had a mysterious new leader called only The Shadow—that had steeled him against the rebellion, and that was the reason he had decided to try and position himself as Genys’ right-hand man. If he could win her trust, maybe she wouldn’t punish him for keeping information from her. In fact, he had been the only one she trusted enough to let him leave the Militia compound alone at night, and he intended to use that freedom to gain as much information as possible.
Yes, the rebels might be his friends, but they had chosen the wrong side. Thori was the biggest threat Tinaria had faced in a hundred years, and the rebellion couldn’t be allowed to make those kinds of alliances and get away with it… not even if they were people he wanted to protect.
Jik came to the correct street and darted down a side alleyway. After turning left and right and left again, he could see the old woman sitting on the rough cobbles just as she had months before, that was a good sign. Jik quickly approached, and after a moment of rifling through his pockets, he produced a single Yarvan coin. It was old, not the kind you could buy anything with anymore. He looked around before dropping it into her bronze cup. The old woman turned the cup upside-down into her palm and inspected the old heavy money piece. She nodded solemnly and tapped on the door behind her.
It opened inward to reveal a torchlit stairway heading straight down.
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Hitten scurried down the tall hallway. Ancient black Tinarian stone carved in fastidious arrays went unnoticed by the small sweating man. He passed tapestries that were once a hundred colors but now hung faded, floor tiles made of painstaking mosaics built before there was even knowledge of a northern sea—massive statues marbled in hues of deep violet raw glitz ore too diffuse to otherwise explode but breathtaking to see. The Chancellor noticed none of it.
Make me run! He complained to himself silently. As if I were their servant. As if they could do anything without me.
The running hadn’t been necessary, not in his opinion anyway, but it was just like the Senators to Make him wait around for hours and then hurry at breakneck speed to their beck and call. It was just like them to give no heed to their ‘underlings’. They used that word to refer to every single inhabitant of the Republic who was not on the Senate or belonged to one of the families of the Great Lines. The word had long since filled Hitten with the acrid feeling of absolute spite. He figured that because of his close work with the Senate, he had been called underling more times than any other citizen.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Him! Larso Hitten!
Underling, he cursed internally. It’s ‘Your Eminence to anyone else.
Suddenly he was at the dense wooden doors, he quickly instructed the doorman to ring the metal bells to announce his arrival. The nervous man did so.
But then he waited—a half a minute, then a full one. The rage inside was growing almost too much to keep hidden. Another minute passed before the bell rung in reply. The doorman jumped and lugged the door open and Hitten had to stop himself from rushing forward.
Inside, practically draped over a fur-lined couch, was Senator Sallen Torn. It was an old and great line—Torn. The family had been majorly influential during the Yarvan crusades and built up their personal, familial empire within Tinaria’s senatorial class. Torns of repute had done heroic deeds over the generations that followers and Sallen Torn was a disgrace to all of them. The premature death of his father meant he had full reign of the family's power, and he wielded it as a child would—a vindictive, dangerous child.
The man was young and lithe, but his body held the apparent paleness and softness of a lack of manual work of any kind. Hitten wondered if the youth even remembered what the sun looked like, or if he had existed too long inside this—
Dungeon of depravity.
The room was in semi-disarray. It was called an office, but it was one in name only. This was the room in which young Torn engaged in any and all of his debaucheries. It was something he had never even bothered to hide—which Hitten thought he should have. Torn’s ‘official governmental work’ usually involved proclivities that the other Senators would keep a bit more quiet.
“Ah Hitten, finally,” The young senator said. “Hate it when you keep me waiting like that. Had to distract myself.” He motioned to the young man and woman who stood at the end of his couch. Hitten didn’t meet their eyes, and they wouldn’t have met him even if he looked at them. They had as little choice in that as they had in being here in the first place. Besides, he didn’t want to see whatever there was to see in those eyes—whatever was left of the humans they had been before Torn got a hold of them.
The Chancellor swallowed his flowing rage and twisted his face into a smile. “And in what matter can I assist you, Senator?”
“I wish to speak to you of the tragedy, of course,” Torn said.
“Ah, of course,” Hitten said. “Very sad indeed. High General Pyrn was a noble servant of Tinaria.”
“I assume you’ve arranged his services? Traditional military honors?”
“Of course,” Hitten said tipping his head slightly. “He will be given the customary burial.”
Torn sat up slightly on the couch. He did it in a way that was made to look natural, but it was intentional. “The entire burial?”
Hitten froze. He should have answered right away, but he hadn’t been expecting the question. “But—but of course Senator,” he mumbled.
“I just want to be sure he isn’t lacking in any of the… essential pieces,” Torn said. There was an intensity in his eyes. Hitten wished he hadn’t said it like that. It was too obvious. He almost stole a glance toward the two servants standing by the couch, but he mastered his eyes long ago. That had been a necessity in his line of work.
“I will verify myself,” the Chancellor said. “I give my official guarantee.”
“I’m sure you will,” Torn said. “Anyway, come when I ring you,” and then he waved Hitten away cavalierly. It was the hand gesture one would use for a matter of little importance.
But it hadn’t been. It had been a code, all of it—the whole conversation. The Senator had expressed doubt that Pyrn was truly dead. It was a legitimate worry, but it had also been a clear attack on Hitten and his methods. The Chancellor had guaranteed that the assassination would be flawless, and there could not be any doubt in that, he couldn’t afford for there to be any.
Someone told Torn about the arm. It was the only conceivable option. Hitten had gone to extreme measures to hide the fact that it was the only piece of Pyrn’s body that was recovered. The likelihood that the General had survived the escape was low. His massive body would turn up in an alleyway or canal soon, and when it did Hitten would be the first to know, but the fact that it was still unrecovered was a problem. The General had been stronger than he had estimated, and that was something Hitten couldn’t afford—not now, not when he was this close.
And the way Torn had so openly defied him, right in front of two servants. That was the Senator’s largest flaw—all of the Senators suffered from the same thing—seeing their subjects as objects.
It was something that would become dangerous for them all as far as Hitten was concerned.
A short while later, back in his own offices, the Chancellor sat in one of his plump, lustrous deep orange-leather chairs. A few breaths was all it took to still his mind and quiet the negative emotions he had been experiencing.
It will not be long. Not long until no one can speak to me this way.
“The general escaped,” said a voice suddenly. Hitten did not startle, not on the outside anyway. That was one of the things he had trained himself to do for years at his own personal academy of political affairs. The training he had put himself through was extreme, and he was thankful for it in times like this. There was no gasp or jump or even a turn his head toward the voice, he merely spoke back.
“I assume you exhausted all your resources confirming this?” he asked the shadowy corner behind him.
“All of them,” the voice said again. “I suspect he smuggled himself away on one of the shipping freighters. It would be impossible to determine which one.”
Hitten took another deep breath before turning toward the shadows. “I would have thought my investment would have bought a more… definitive outcome.”
There was silence from the corner. Hitten thought he sensed rage coming from his shadowy visitor, but he could have been projecting. He hoped it was rage anyway.
“I examined the arm,” the voice said finally. “I have determined it is likely enough poison passed into Pyrn before he removed it. It may take some time, but he will eventually die.”
“The deal wasn’t for him to eventually die, it was for him to be dead,” Hitten said. He carefully crafted his tone to be as annoying to his visitor as possible—less anger and more condescension. That was the way, he needed the assassin to feel insulted above all else. It needed to seem as if Hitten had expected it to fail as if it was inevitable. “It would seem to me that to possess the title of ‘most effective assassin in the world’ one would usually have to espouse that title.”
“The deed is done. Pyrn is a dead man walking.”
“I recall paying for the kind of dead which excludes walking,” Hitten said, pausing so his words could drive as deep as he wanted before turning back to his desk. “But I suppose I could look into hiring another—”
He was cut off by the knifepoint, it was less than an inch from his left eye. Again he had to steel his nerves, if he would have startled this time, he would have done so fatally. From here he could see the greenish stain on the poisoned tip. He slowly looked up at the cloaked and hooded figure now standing directly in front of his desk.
“Do not forget who is serving whom,” the figure said. And then, all in one moment, the knife was sheathed and the assassin turned toward the door.
Hitten internally scrambled for something to say. He couldn’t not have the last word, that was vital.
“Find me the freighter!” the anger was obvious this time, he hadn’t hid it well. The figure stopped and without looking answered.
“I do not hunt dead men.”
After the door closed, Hitten took another breath. He slowly stood and walked calmly to one end of the room. There was a shelf with objects of great historical and cultural value from all over Tinaria and the surrounding countries. Most of them were gifts, brought from ambassadors or given by the Senate for excellent services rendered.
He picked up an ancient piece of glazed pottery. Historians had told him it was thousands of years old—made by one of the scattered tribes that would eventually form together and take the name of Yi upon themselves. There was no other single piece like it ever recovered.
He shattered it against the wall.