Skillful Death (45 page)

“So they wouldn’t know me? I could come along?”

“I have my pitch already honed. It’s a solo thing. If I brought along someone who didn’t speak, they would assume that he was the real boss and they would direct all of their negotiations at you.”

“That’s perfect then,” Dom said. “I couldn’t cave in because I wouldn’t know the details of the deal. You can use me as a prop.”

“I really can’t,” Pemba said. “Why don’t you go find a housewarming gift for your daughter. You said you didn’t give her one last time. Now we know how tight she is with her money, I’m sure she could use something nice. Why not find her some perfumes or incense?”

“I suppose,” Dom said. “I wish you and Tashi would let me help out more with the business. I still have insight, you know.”

“And you’re very helpful with those insights every time we come to you. But you know how business works—you have to give us enough room to operate. There are some things that I must do by myself because I’m the only person who deals with this every day. Can’t you just enjoy your enormous wealth and your early retirement? So many men would kill to be in your position. I would love to not need to travel all the time.”

“I think you enjoy your travel just fine,” Dom said. He raised his arms and gestured to the opulent dining area where they had taken their breakfast.

“Being good at something and enjoying it are two different things. Just because I’m particularly good at traveling doesn’t mean it’s my ambition.” Pemba dabbed his face with his napkin and rose. “I’ll leave you to your travels.”

Dom sat in the dining room for a few moments and sipped coffee. Perhaps if he moved away from his small village, he could find a place to spend his money and live a life on par with his income. These people didn’t judge him. They didn’t resent his rise from Denpa’s small shack to a mansion. Maybe all he needed to reinvent himself was a change of venue. Is this why Tashi had tried to convince him to stay away from the city? Was even Tashi invested in keeping Dom in his place?

Dom finished his coffee and walked through the big doors to the street. The sun reflected off the marble statue in the hotel’s courtyard. It was a leaping fish, rising from a little pool of blue water. Dom crossed the courtyard and headed up the street towards the markets.

He walked several blocks before he oriented himself. Once he did, he retraced his path to the tobacconist. The shopkeeper was just opening his doors to the morning sun.

“May I help you?”

“I was here a few months ago. There was an older gentleman sitting in the corner.”

“Yes?”

“I was hoping to continue a conversation we started.”

“You could be referring to one of several men. They sometimes meet here, but never this early. You might find them at the cafe at the corner.”

“Thank you.”

Dom followed the shopkeeper’s directions and found a bright, bustling cafe. He squeezed down the narrow aisle between tables crowded with loud patrons. At the counter, he waited for someone to address him, wondering what he would ask. He couldn’t really describe the old man, and most of the people in the busy cafe were old men. Dom felt eyes on him, and glanced towards the back of the cafe. A pair of narrowed eyes were locked on Dom.
 

It was the old man from the tobacconist.

Dom wound around several tables. He bumped a man and apologized. Soon he stood before a table with four withered old men. The one Dom recognized gestured for him to sit down. Dom borrowed a chair from another table and dragged it forward.

“Osman,” the man said. His voice seemed to vibrate out from his neck, but Dom understood him over the din of the cafe. The back corner where these men gathered seemed separated from the rest of the cafe.

“Why do you call me that?” Dom asked.

“Why did you stop calling yourself that?” another man asked. “And how are you so young when the rest of us have aged so much?”

“I’ve come to reassure you—you have me confused with someone else.”

“No, Osman,” yet another man said. “We have never been confused about you.” The man didn’t look at Dom as he spoke. He calmly packed tobacco into a pipe with his fat thumb.

“So you are all convinced?” Dom asked. “When did we last see each other?”

“Far away from here. Across the land and sea, in another world. Decades ago,” the first man said.

“My son is about as old as you look now. We last saw you before he was born,” a second man said.

“At least you have a son,” another old man said. “I am cursed with all daughters.”

“So you haven’t seen me for decades,” Dom said, “and somehow in all that time I haven’t aged at all?”

“If anything, you look younger now,” the first old man said.

“How do you explain that? Wouldn’t it be more logical to assume that I’m not the person you think you remember? Doesn’t it make you doubt yourselves when I’m clearly so much younger than you?”

The fourth man of the group remained silent until this question. When he opened his mouth, the other men all held their replies and turned to hear his wisdom.

“When you left us,” the fourth man said. “When you sailed off and left us to die, we cursed you from the shore. Tell me that you don’t remember that curse. We said, ‘We curse you, Osman. You will die by our hands.’ You replied, ‘I will never die. I am the Providential.’ So, no. Your apparent age does not make me doubt myself. Your apparent age only serves to convince me more.”

The other men nodded and agreed with the fourth man.

Dom grew frustrated with old men. They were intractable in their impossible beliefs.
 

“So you swore to kill me?” Dom asked. “You swore that I would die by your hands?”

“Yes,” the first man said.

“Then do it,” Dom said. “This is your chance. I’m right here. I am here before you, the man who will never die.” His voice rose as Dom pushed up from his chair. Dom almost felt like he was seeing himself from over his shoulder, as if this was one of the distant memories he had of himself in the forest. Suddenly, something occurred to Dom—the words leaving his mouth tasted bitter and chewy. These were not words of the language that Denpa taught him. These were older words, thick and unmusical. These words came from a tongue that Dom had long since forgotten, and he’d been speaking them with these four old men the entire time. Somehow, despite all these thoughts coursing through his head, Dom kept speaking. “So fulfill your curse now, if you dare. Come and kill Osman, the Providential. Let your rage fill your old hands and bring them to my throat. Or perhaps my hands will find your neck, old man.”

The crowded cafe had fallen silent. All eyes looked to Dom, who lorded over the four small men with his arms raised and his eyes blazing with the challenge.

The man closest to Dom spoke. “My hands are too old and tired to make good on our curse.”

Dom looked to the first man—the man he’d met in the tobacconist—and raised his eyebrows. “And you?”

“Wait,” the man closest to Dom said. “My hands are too tired, but my knife is spry.” The man barely moved. If he rose from his chair at all, Dom didn’t see it. All he saw was a flash of sleeve and then he felt the sharp steel pressing into his side. Bells jingled as the man stabbed. The old man pulled the blade back and thrust it again and again before Dom stumbled away.

“Let’s see you survive that, Osman.”

The old men cackled.
 

Dom crashed through a table. Cups and plates shattered as they hit the floor. Patrons pushed out of Dom’s way. A young waiter came to Dom’s aid and propped him up to help him outside.

A phrase of musical gibberish came from the waiter’s mouth. Dom cast a glance back over his shoulder. The old men were still sitting at their table as if nothing had happened. Then Dom turned his focus to the waiter’s lips. The language of the young waiter—the language of Denpa—suddenly made sense to Dom once more.

“Are you okay, sir?” the waiter asked.

Dom held his hand to his side where the blade had pierced. Dom dropped to his knees on the street.
 

“I don’t know,” Dom said.

He pulled his hand from his side, expecting to find a river of blood. Three clean holes opened in his new suit, and a trickle of coins fell out.

“Sir! Your money,” the waiter said. He held out his hands to catch the coins.

Dom kept looking back towards the cafe to see if the old men were coming, but he couldn’t see them anymore. They were too far back in cafe. Dom pulled up his jacket and shirt and removed the coin purse, strapped to his side. More coins fell from the purse and clattered to the street. Beggar children appeared from doorways, alleys, and from under tables, like water running downhill. They dove into the street and gathered up Dom’s spilling money.

Under his shirt, Dom probed his side. He found a damp spot. Dom ran.

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Back at his hotel, Dom disrobed to inspect his injury. Only the tip of the knife had penetrated the bag of coins and found Dom’s skin. He cleaned the dried blood and made a bandage from his ruined shirt.

Dom put on a fresh suit, and meditated. He left his room in the early afternoon, picking his way through the shadows. He found his way to a perfume shop across the street from the tobacconist. An old man left the tobacco shop. It was the man who claimed to be cursed with all daughters. As the man limped down the hill, Dom made a hasty purchase and tucked the perfume into his bag.

It was easy to follow the old man. He moved so slowly that Dom could shop and browse at different vendors and still match the man’s pace. The old man stopped at a fountain and washed his hands in the water. He turned down a residential street and Dom stalked after him.
 

Now, Dom had nowhere to hide. There were only houses here—no vendors or shoppers to disguise Dom’s spying. Dom walked as slowly as he could, but he still inched up on the old man.

The old man turned left down an alley as Dom caught up.

Dom tapped him on the shoulder.

The old man made a startled noise and turned slowly, moving his whole body around instead of turning his head.

“What will it take?” Dom asked.

“Pardon?” the man asked. His eyes grew wide as he recognized Dom.

Dom forced his tongue into that old language. He couldn’t think of the words, but when he let them come, they spilled from his mouth. “What will it take to satisfy the debt between us?”

The old man’s eyes grew wider still, like they would never stop opening farther. His pupils were cloudy, but recognition was spread across his whole face. The old man’s mouth slipped open, revealing a bottom jaw of rotted teeth and a gray, scarred tongue.

“Tell me,” Dom said. He reached for the man to steady him, but the old man stumbled backwards. He fell. It wasn’t a violent crash to the ground. The old man seemed to crumple until he landed in a heap in the alley.
 

Dom shot forward to help him up. When he knelt by his side, Dom already sensed it was too late. He checked the old man’s wrist to be sure. The old man had perished.

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Dom: Do you see now why I thought to call Denpa’s death a murder?

Malcolm: No. This sounds like an accident, just like Denpa.

Dom: We’ll see if your opinion changes.

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Dom turned and ran to the end of the alley. He established his composure by the time he reached the street. He turned the opposite direction from the way he’d come and ventured down the residential street at a brisk walk. He looked at the sky and tried to appear lost in thought. In truth, he waited for a hand to clamp on his shoulder, and for someone to accuse him of murder.

By circling left, he meant to lose himself in the busy markets so he could wind his way back to the hotel. He never expected to stumble on yet another of the four old men. In fact, lost in his guilt, Dom might never have recognized the shuffling old man across the street except for the fact that the man recognized him. When he saw Dom coming towards him, the man stopped, turned, and lunged for a staircase that led down to a public square.

“Wait!” Dom shouted. He jogged across the street and reached the head of the stairs just as the first screams rang out from below. Dom stopped at the top stair and gaped down at the scene. The old man—this was the one who had stabbed Dom’s coins—was curled at the foot of the long stone staircase, surrounded by a crowd.
 

Dom ran.
 

He knew that running was just drawing attention to himself, but he couldn’t still his own legs. People stopped to watch him sprint by.
 

Dom ran up the hill and turned west. He ran through neighborhoods until his legs grew too tired to do anything more than walk. He turned back downhill, towards the river, as the houses thinned and he walked between fields of rice and vegetables.

When he ran out of road, he found himself at the muddy bank of the river, upstream of the city. Dom sat and shivered in his sweaty clothes.

The sun began to set and a cold wind blew down the river.

Dom pushed to his feet. His legs bunched and cramped as Dom trudged along the river, back towards his hotel.

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Pemba spotted Dom crossing through the lobby and he followed Dom to his room.

“You’re a mess! What have you done to your beautiful suit?” Pemba asked.

Dom didn’t answer. He stripped his clothes.

“Dom. Tell me what happened.” Pemba picked up Dom’s muddy pants and began to fold them. Dom tore them from his hands and stuffed them into a cotton bag.

“Dom, stop,” Pemba said.

Dom dropped his bag and collapsed to the floor. He cradled his head in his hands. Pemba knelt next to Dom and placed his hand on his shoulder.

“I just wanted to talk to them. I wanted to try to make amends.”

“Who? Who do you owe amends?”

“The old men,” Dom said. “They said I was Osman and I left them to die on the desert peninsula.”