CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR

At the end of the corridor, sixty feet from the door into the courtyard with the tower and the machine, Jane sat on a block of stone that had been carved into a seat, and she watched the assassin, who didn’t once look back at her.

The assassin stood with a slight stoop. He had his fingers clamped in front as though he held something against his belly. His face had been banged together, like some hard, earth coloured, stone. His eyes were like two slithers of steel. His mouth had been set in a position that could only be described as grim.

The corridor ran into darkness one way, and into the wavering light of torches in the other (the direction of the courtyard where Tom had entered). The tunnel was made of dark blocks, forming an arch. The floor was a pattern of lighter stone, perhaps sandstone.

Jane sat with her hands folded over her knee, with her foot swinging back and forth, nervously.

The assassin didn’t move a muscle. Jane stared at him in a way that would have been rude if she were back in England staring at a stranger. He stood very still, as though he was an automaton that needed the intervention of a master to switch on the movement.

Presently Jane stood and brushed the dirt from her bottom, and said, ‘Come on, let us wait outside the door into the courtyard. Once the ‘special’ people finish their business they will come for us.’

The assassin didn’t look at her when he replied, ‘I only take orders from the King of Coronet.’

‘The Emperor,’ Jane corrected him.

Now the assassin glanced at her, although he didn’t say anything.

Jane began walking backward along the torch litten corridor, making grabbing gestures toward the assassin, to beckon him to follow. She was amused by the assassin's dourness, amused and strangely compelled by it. He might be someone she could talk to. Better than the psychiatrist provided for her by the Health Services after she had caved her fathers head in with a hammer.

She tried to entice the assassin.

‘There is no reason for you to stay here. Your order was to remain here until the Emperor was safely inside the courtyard with a disarmed Trinket.’

He thought about this. He thought deeply as though this was a cryptic puzzle like the type of puzzle the Chinese posed where a solution only came after a thousand years of thought.

He said, ‘I have the authority to make battlefield decisions. My own council holds as long as it adheres to the will of the … Emperor.’

Jane shrugged as though to say, prove it.

She turned and walked along the stone corridor to the door, not looking back. Presently she heard the gentle heaviness of his footsteps following, the sound of weight being carried lightly.

At the door, Jane sat on one of the three steps that went from the corridor up to the door.

She watched the approaching assassin, although he didn’t look at her.

He stopped three feet away, in an upright but relaxed pose, and his eyes darted all around as though he expected problems. He had his bow slung on his back, but his hand rested on the hilt of a dagger sheathed to his belt.

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Jane said, ‘Are you allowed to make your own decisions?’

‘I am a soldier of the kingdom of Coronet. My allegiance is to this kingdom. My decisions are for this kingdom.’

His no-nonsense growl had an underlying meaning: this is the last I will speak of this matter.

‘But a ‘kingdom’ doesn’t give orders.’

‘I take orders from the King,’ said the assassin, his tone increasingly menacing.’

‘The Emperor,’ Jane corrected his mistake of referring to the Emperor as the King.

The assassin growled, and Jane wondered for how much longer he would keep his humour. She didn’t fear him because she sensed that he wouldn’t harm her without the Emperor’s blessing.

‘Anyway, Elion will appoint a new King,’ said Jane.

‘That King will be my new master.’

‘What if the new King is a despot? What if he wants to torment and torture people?’

The assassin didn’t answer or look at her.

‘You want to kill me, don’t you?’ Jane said.

‘I have not been given that order.’

‘What if I tried to kill you?’

He looked at her suddenly, his eyes running over her like a fearful mouse skittering across a wooden floor. His shoulders tensed and his right hand reached into a split in his tunic where it remained, ready.

She put two hands up, palm out, to show that she was unarmed and not about to try anything.

‘I don’t have any intention of attacking you,’ she said. ‘I am not capable. Surely you must see that.’

The assassin’s uniform jangled, and the dagger clicked against a metal buckle in his belt.

Although the assassin was trying to ignore her, Jane was being toey and insistent. She was nervous about what was happening behind the locked door, and whether Tom had managed to get to the top of the tower to sit in this fabulous machine. The nervousness had translated into over-talking.

She said to the assassin, ‘If there was no Emperor, and there was no King, how would you make a decision?’

The assassin grunted again, clearly irritated.

‘Would you kill me if ordered?’

Now the assassin looked at her again, with an expression of incredulity, as though he couldn’t believe how unbelievably stupid she was.

‘I always follow the order of my liege Lord.’

‘That is a comforting thought.’

The assassin sensed that he was being mocked. His bottom lip drooped.

Jane pressed on, ‘Have you thought of forming your own idea of morality that doesn’t involve killing on someone else’s request?’

‘Cease. In Coronet a woman remains silent before the King’s assassin.’

‘The Emperor’s assassin.’

For a second Jane thought that the assassin was going to draw a weapon. Rage expanded his irises and darkened his eyes. His lips tightened outward and became thin, and his throat rose and dropped.

‘Would you kill Elion?’ Jane asked.

The assassin was trembling now, and Jane wondered what she was doing. This could be the stupidest thing she had ever done.

‘Would you kill Elion?’ she asked again.

‘You do not kill a god.’

Jane blurted. ‘I killed my father.’

The assassin's throat raised and lowered.

‘I caved his head in with a hammer when I was eleven years old.’

The assassin said something in a low growl that Jane couldn’t hear. She leaned forward, gripping her knees so that she didn’t fall from the step.

‘What did you say?’

‘You killed your authority figure. That makes you a traitor.’

The assassin spoke with a bitterness that made Jane think that the assassin had done awful things while following his orders from the ruler of Coronet.

Jane suddenly had an idea that she could help this man. If she could get him to talk, she could help him. She opened her mouth to speak, only she didn’t have time to form the words, because just then the door into the tower square was opened from the inside.