His position involved a lot of document shuffling. Not only were most people in Loyata illiterate, but they were also quite stupid. For better or worse, Hassan was one of the few who could write in common Loyatan and the only one in Asayn. People didn’t care he was using a Ydazi dialect instead of the nomads’ historical one, not even state documents used it, he was just taught so because of his imperial status.
“Hm,” Hassan grunted as he read one of the most recent documents. He had received one similar a while ago, but now he also got a copy in Loyatan. It was weird for documents to be so important that they got translated.
“Do you know what this is?” He asked Grandmaster Nugar.
“Hmm,” the old assassin grunted and snatched the parchment from his hands. “Yes, I’ve heard of this, the cell in Sadina is looking for a girl. They wanted her to be their plant master but she’s on the run and has apparently killed her fair share of assassins.”
Hassan knew how lethal assassins could be, even if he wouldn’t be personally challenged with something short of a Grandmaster, but for a ‘girl’ to kill multiple of them, then she couldn’t be anyone. Either a turncoat assassin or… no, that was the only possibility, really. There wouldn’t be any fugitive cultivators, Aaliyah wouldn’t allow that.
Though at the same time, Hassan was one himself…
“What is the name of this girl?” He asked Nugar. The problem with assassin script was that they tended to omit the most relevant information. He understood it was a concern of secrecy, but it was of utmost tedious character. “If she’s from Sadina, maybe I would recognize her.”
Nugar raised his frowns in doubt as if saying ‘you don’t even know the names of your underlings, how are you going to know that of a random girl?’ And whilst that was true, he had enough presence of mind to keep those words to himself.
“Lemme see,” the assassin started parsing the text to decipher it.
Assassin script was heavily encrypted and even if Hassan should be able to decrypt it with ease, there was a mystical component to it. It wasn’t like you could only solve it with Enlightenment, but their drug magic put them in the right state of mind to decrypt it in a matter of seconds rather than hours, if not more.
And Hassan did his best to stay out of the influence.
He was practicing with Enlightenment, yes, and his Nurture had grown stronger in great strides thanks to their synergetic properties, but he couldn’t afford to down tens of different herbs per day like the assassins. His mind would turn to mush if he did so. And that was without considering the adverse effects on the body when combining certain drugs.
Booze proved to be the best ‘drug’ so far as it mostly bolstered the body. The increase in strength was mostly mental, liberating the limits of one’s body, but exactly for that reason did it synergize so well with Nurture.
“Girl’s name is Aloe Ayad,” Nugar answered.
“Oh fuck,” Hassan cursed at the mention of the family name.
“What’s the problem?”
“There’s only one Ayad family in Ydaz, let alone Sadina, and I kind of… killed their matriarch.”
The Grandmaster chuckled. “Well, you certainly are living up to the title of assassin. But what would lead you to do so? I don’t think this is a noble family of yours.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Hassan started, “when I was already sure I was going to be dethroned as Asphyxia, the plague that assaulted my emirate amongst many others, I decided to infiltrate someone showing the symptoms on the palace to slow down the local bureaucracy, somewhat of a parting gift for my half-sister.”
“I can’t condemn you, that certainly did buy us time, and it wasn’t like we’re vulnerable to sickness. Quite the opposite,” the old assassin smacked his lips together. “So that hijink killed that matriarch.”
“Yes,” the former emir nodded, “though I only learned of it months later. What I’m more worried about now is her daughter, Aloe. She’s the last of the Ayads, and the fact that she on the run and has killed multiple assassins is quite problematic.”
“Are the Ayad special?”
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“I wouldn’t say so, but their founder member was close to Aaliyah, and after hearing she has bested many assassins it could be possible Aaliyah had made them cultivators behind our backs.”
“Hmm, Ayad. That rings a bell. Ayad,” Nugar pondered. “Cultivator, plant master, Ayad, assassins…” His eyes shot wide open. “Wait, wouldn’t that founding member be called Karaim? Karaim Ayad?”
“Perhaps?” The assassin was right when he thought Hassan didn’t know the name of his underlings. Most names of lesser people were beyond him.
Though there was some offset of assassins that he could almost classify as equals, the hashashid. But that was a whole other matter.
“That was the plant master of Sadina, the best in the world. If her granddaughter is certainly on the loose then… we are not dealing with just a cultivator, but also an assassin and a plant master.”
“Who are these plant masters?” Hassan inquired. “You usually use that term for the herbalists that provide you with drugs, but I haven’t seen anything unusual with them.”
“They don’t have anything unusual,” the Grandmaster responded as a matter of fact, “they just provide us with the highest quality of herbs they can, more than your typical herbalist.”
“Then what makes this plant master such of a danger?”
“Karaim Ayad, amongst our circles, was thought to be the reason why Grandmaster Umar was so powerful. His plants were otherworldly, and some attribute the death of Umar to the fact that Karaim passed away and couldn’t supply him with plants any longer, therefore cutting his power and his lifeline.”
“So we are dealing with a more powerful assassin than normal,” Hassan summarized.
“Indeed,” Nugar nodded. “But you know how much of a synergy Enlightenment and Nurture can have. If Ayad is a cultivator like you suspect, then perhaps we are dealing with a Grandmaster in terms of power.”
The cultivator-assassin scowled. “That,” he emphasized with his finger, “is problematic. Especially when these reports indicate that she was heading to Loyata last time she was seen.”
“Do you believe that she’s after your life?” The old man inquired.
“I would not cross out that possibility…” Hassan was a coward, he would do anything to avoid death and obtain power, but a single Grandmaster wasn’t that intimidating. He could not only rival them and had some of them at his disposal, but he also had an army.
A gathering army of assassins.
“We must accept the proposal of the Sadina cell,” Nugar voiced out.
“Are you sure?” Hassan frowned. “I understand the need to capture, if not put down Ayad, but their petition is more than that. Declaring the Assassin States again will lead to immediate war. Even if we can buy our coexistence with the Loyatan Coalition, we will have the unmatched power of Ydaz at our doorstep.”
“There’s no rush,” the old man calmly stated. “There’s a simple way to take Master Tareek’s offer of a restoration of the states.”
The cultivator’s frown intensified. “And that is?”
“Escalation.”
Hassan and Nugar exchanged gazes, but the latter finally gave up with a chuckle. A very morbid one.
“I would have gone right for the throat if Umar was still alive, but we can’t afford to do so now. We must instead bolster our forces whilst weakening theirs. We bide our time.”
“So what we were already doing?” Hassan scoffed at him.
“A bit more involved, but yes,” Nugar admitted. “We have an army, but it is smaller than theirs, and our elites – whilst more numerous – are of lesser quality than theirs too.”
“I’m a sultanzade, I was involved in military affairs, tell me something that I don’t know.”
“We aren’t fighting a big war, but a series of small ones, guerrillas if you will,” he took a pipe out and lit it with a snap of his fingers. “We excel at skirmishes, and we are faster than them, or more mobile at the very least. We undermine their center of operations, we poison their wells, we sow discontent with their government.”
“I’m not foreign to frontier skirmishes, you will need to do better,” Hassan crossed his arms, ignoring the Grandmaster’s pipe fumes.
“We are assassins, we attack in the shadows, we don’t do ‘frontier skirmishes’,” Nugar scowled at him. “With Master Tareek’s help we can use Ydaz’s assassin cells to just chip at the country.” He put emphasis on the just word.
“Just chip?” The cultivator’s interest was piqued. “Now that’s unconventional. What do you intent with that?”
“We need years for this war, if we are as aggressive as we are being now, we risk much. For starters, we tone down the trade restrictions to make it seem as if we have surrendered…”
“Then we slowly increase them again.” Hassan interjected.
“You are getting it,” Nugar chuckled, his laugh laden with puffs of smoke. “Gradual escalation, slow enough that it just seems like a natural progression of events rather than something forced that must be answered.”
“So when Aaliyah responds…”
“It will be far too late,” the Grandmaster completed the sentence.
“I must pen a letter at once,” Hassan’s eyes shone in determination.
He needed not to be hasty. He had more to win by playing the long game than the other sultanzade. He was getting his two daily reapings, following a strict schedule even if he wasn’t in the mood or his body couldn’t handle such vicious quantities of sex every single day. Assassin herbal medicine helped with that, though it was also partly to the detriment of his body. The cultivator-assassin was still getting used and ironing out the kinks of Enlightenment-Nurture, there were many things yet to be discovered. He knew it.
Currently, the flowing stance was his main focus as it was the only stance that expelled vitality outward, and Enlightenment seemed to recover vitality through drug consumption. However, that was still in the works too.
He was only twenty-six years old, but he could rival assassin Grandmasters and the oldest of sultanzade. In a few years, once he unlocked the secrets of the vital arts, that gap would only grow.
And unlike his mother that safekept and obfuscated knowledge to harmful degrees, he didn’t have such a limitation and had an army at his disposal to dispense said teachings.