Namaste (25 page)

The groaning monk on Amit’s back took the brunt. Amit fished the small knife from his robe’s inner hem, looked up, saw a bare inner thigh, and resisted the urge to slash its femoral artery lengthwise. He could kill, but for the first time did not want to. It seemed wrong. Too obvious, for a doomed sacrifice to eliminate a few of his less-prepared attackers on his way down. Somehow, he had to find the difference between himself and those he’d come to find. He had to know how Woo was different from him. Without that difference, his quest held no meaning.

Instead, Amit slashed one ankle, then another, and another. Cuts were deep but nonlethal, and in the press of bodies none of the otherwise-infallible fighters saw them coming. He grasped their uncut legs and yanked. Three monks hopped, staggered, and fell. Amit pulled them down onto his body. The three he’d cut were geysers of blood, calf muscles ripped and unable to flex.
 

Wherever a shadow monk fell, surrounding Sri began to stomp and kick. Order had vanished, and the entire gathering — all highly trained killing machines — degenerated to the panicked flails of a rioting crowd.
 

Amit reached a spot where he could finally move. Before rising, he snatched the mask from a fallen monk beside him. At least two Sri knew that he’d been the true, original target and saw the switch, but two on one, with room to maneuver, was something he could handle. Still on his back, Amit reached up and grasped the first monk by the robe, then pulled hard, at the same time driving his foot upward into the other monk’s throat. A woman’s mask shattered as she fell to the dirt, gasping for breath, face coated with spilled blood from another’s gushing leg.

He sprang up to face the other, who charged with the same two-fingered eye jab Amit had used on the next-to-last of Alfero’s men. He scrunched his head back; his longer arm reached the man’s forward-thrust face in plenty of time. His mask cracked but did not fall. His head tipped back, and Amit saw his chance to slash the attacker’s throat. Instead, he slammed it with his elbow, leaving the man and woman choking side by side like a matching set.
 

Masked, Amit pushed his way into the crowd rather than from away from it. The others were too distracted and confused; Amit wore an unbroken white mask above a blue robe with a saffron sash, same as the monks around him. He threw a few token kicks, always moving forward, surging toward the front, where Woo watched behind a vague smile.
 

Amit was halfway to Woo when something large struck him from behind and drove him to the ground. Curry assaulted his nostrils. A rough voice came from behind his right ear as his chest pressed into the dirt.
 

“You have blood on your sash.” Rafi’s hot reeking breath was all over Amit. “If anyone was paying attention, they’d have easily seen you.”
 

“A good magician understands that the real magic comes in misdirection.” Amit managed to keep his voice calm, even as the ox pressed him flat.
 

“Is that what you are? A magician, now that you no longer have Woo to protect you?”
 

Someone’s blood spattered on his face as Rafi pressed Amit to the dirt. The monk assassins were apparently fighting each other in their confused attack-and-defense; no one seemed to realize that the pair on the ground held their target.
 

“You can have Woo,” said Amit. “I am tired of him.”
 

Rafi spun to keep Amit pinned while swinging an elbow into his nose. Amit heard a crack, and wondered if he’d still be as handsome once this was over.
 

“You weren’t good enough. Haven’t you figured that out? You thought you were special. Woo’s special project, the poor little boy with the dead mother. But when it came down to it, he left you behind, because you weren’t shit.”
 

Amit turned his head slightly, catching Rafi’s ugly eyes through the holes in his mask. “You have learned the American slang. Let me try it:
‘Shit.’”
He chuckled. “It is a delightful word.”
 

Rafi hit him again, this time with his fist. Amit had always been able to take him easily on equal footing, but there was little he could do when pinned.

“Fuck you.”
 

“Ah!” said Amit, laughing through his broken nose. “So delightful!”

Rafi rolled him halfway over, still carefully keeping him pinned to the ground with his superior weight. He ripped off his mask. Rafi was repugnant as ever.

“I’m going to make the sacrifice myself.”

“I am so proud of you.”
 

“I don’t know why you came here,” Rafi snarled. “But I’m glad.”
 

“Me, too.” Amit smiled, tasting his blood. “This has been mutually enjoyable.”
 

Rafi reached for his neck, placed one strong hand around Amit’s throat, then another, and squeezed.
 

Amit had strong hands, but Rafi’s, mostly by virtue of their size, were almost as strong. Amit felt his windpipe compress, then nearly flatten. He slowed his breath, trying to summon control. His heart wanted to beat with adrenaline, but he held it down, staring into an interior ball of light and feeling it power him like a battery. Amit’s mind began to swim. His vision wanted to dim. He tried fighting his way to the surface, but couldn’t move or flail. It seemed easiest to surrender.

Something came from the right side of Amit’s vision and embedded itself in Rafi’s neck. A great flood of gushing red spilled onto Amit’s face and robe. He turned as the large hands began to relax and gasped, taking giant gulps of air, trying to control himself through a slow return to the surface. The blood stream moved from his face, and Amit found he could look back up. He spit what had gathered in his mouth. Rafi’s hands were on their way to his throat, looking like two great red gloves. Amala was behind and above him, holding Rafi by the hair with one hand, four fingers of her other hand buried in his neck.

She withdrew her fingers with a large glut of dangling pulp, dropped him to the side, still twitching, then held up her hand and inspected her long fingernails — painted red in Rafi’s blood.

A large, loud voice boomed from the group’s front: Woo, yelling for all to stand down.
 

“A sacrifice is a sacrifice,” he said with what was almost a laugh. Amit came up on his elbows and saw Woo looking over as the crowd parted around them. “Thank you, Amit, for proving me right.”
 

Chapter 27

“D
ON
’
T
,”
SAID
W
OO
. “I
T
’
S
TOO
obvious.”
 

Amit was palms to the arms of Woo’s chair, preparing to rise. Woo was across the sparse room, facing the window, his hands in front of himself, rolling his prayer beads. It was a thoughtful pose, and bait. Amit had fallen for it.

Woo turned. “I trained you better than that. You would strike when my back was turned?”
 

“I would strike whenever I could, whether it seemed ‘correct’ or not.”
 

“As I taught you. But you knew what I was doing, and that I’d know what you were thinking. An attack would be foolish. Were you responding to anger, letting your need for vengeance interfere with your logic, as you used to?”
 

Amit thought. That’s what Woo said Amit always used to do: act rashly because an emotion overtook him instead of stopping to consider that action’s logical outcome. Stopping to think was something every person should do, but it was very much something a shadow monk — who was like a perpetually loaded weapon — should have mastered before they could use a toilet on their own. Amit didn’t think he was angry now, or vengeful, or anything else. He was more or less calm, as he’d managed to stay throughout the battle with his brothers and sisters.
 

Woo shrugged.
 

“You didn’t kill them. In the battle. You could have, you know.”
 

“Why would I kill them?”
 

“Because they were trying to kill you.”
 

“They were following your instructions,” Amit replied.

“My instructions
to
kill you
. Did that not anger you?”

“If it did, my rage would have been for you, not my brothers.
 

Woo laughed. “‘Your brothers.’ You sound like the abbot.”
 

“Are they not my brothers?”
 

“Not during battle. It matters not how they would have greeted you upon arrival, or how they might smile and bow when greeting you now.”
 

Amit had come to kill Woo, and here he was with another lecture. Woo controlled this place, and could probably defeat Amit in a fair fight. He had stopped the battle outside. If he hadn’t, Amit would be dead. Whether his vengeance still extended to his sensei or not, he had to proceed logically, without excess emotion. When Woo died, it must be because it made sense and because it was correct, not because he had driven Amit to action through anger.
 

“All the more reason to leave them alive. Their temporary desire to kill suggests that I rise above to see the bigger picture.”
 

“That is what makes this place different from the monastery where we once lived together. I know you have been to see Suni. What did he say? Did the abbot swear that we have turned dark? Do you feel we serve crime? That we have betrayed our vows in the service of money?”
 

“I do.”
 

“Or can you see how we are rising above to see the bigger picture? There are many wrongs in this world, Amit, and we serve but a small slice of those wrongs. There are larger foes — not to us, but to humanity itself. To the spirits of nations. What is the planet’s prevailing mood, Amit? Where are we going as a people? Do you think it’s in the correct direction? Do you even know of the strings behind it all, holding it up and making the puppet dance?”

Amit wanted to answer, but Woo’s cobbled questions made it clear that none wanted answers. He waited, relaxed but ready, unsure which way the encounter might tip.
 

“The organization thinks it controls us. They do not. We
choose
to serve them because of that old expression: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Their funds allow us to reach those who would upset the world’s balance of power in a direction that would be incorrect overall. Most cannot see it, but we do. Sometimes, bad things must happen before good can occur, just as the Christians believe the world had to flood — and everything had to die — before all was reborn.”
 

Amit’s skin crawled. “You want to manipulate the power structures. You want to kill and twist truths until the world’s governments do what you feel is right.”
 

Woo turned, then made a small gesture toward Amit with his beads. “No, Amit. That is exactly the point. We do not
want
to do any of it. We do it because we must, and because no one can. Just as those monks out there did not
want
to kill you. They were attacking you because I declared a sacrifice drill. We do them from time to time, because we must. Someone will volunteer to be prey, the others will fight until he or she is dead. We must always remind ourselves: Life on this plane is temporary and means little in the scheme of ascension, and we must always remember that it is our duty, when required, to kill.”

Woo continued rubbing his beads, eyes boring into Amit.
 

“In the old monastery, they say a monk must never fight or kill. Monks must train and become
potentially
deadly, but never cross the line to become
actually
deadly, as you yourself have recently crossed. I thought it a waste. I kept thinking of all the things we could do if we were willing to set aside prejudices about right and wrong. The Sri have always agreed with that, more or less — with one exception. You remember how I told you to question everything, even my teachings? How you must never fall into the trap of thinking, ‘We will walk our own path instead of blindly following orders … just as our teachers command us?’ That was the way with the Sri, and they never saw it. If the shadow monks had removed themselves from society and trained hard because they believed it was right to suffer short-term sacrifices for longer-term benefit, why would they never question themselves? Why would the Sri, who claimed to rise above, never question their own ways?”

Amit was trying to take it all in, and not react rashly. Woo had been like a father, and Amit’s inborn tendency was to listen. His words sounded almost rational. But unbidden, somewhere deeper in his mind, he saw the image of a beautiful girl with her throat slit, lying in a puddle of blood.
 

He swallowed, blinking it back.
 

“The monks were not all cold and dispassionate. Rafi
wanted
to kill me.”
 

“Rafi, yes,” Woo said. Amit cocked his head, watching as the older man paced, then paused by the window’s edge. “Rafi didn’t pick on you because you were smaller, Amit. Maybe at first, yes, but later, as you both grew older, Rafi had a second, more powerful reason that was not your fault. Rafi had a love. He should not have, as a monk of the Sri, but boys will be boys. The one he loved did not love him back. She loved another instead. Another, as it turned out, who did not appreciate her affections … just as she did not appreciate Rafi’s.”