Chapter 24 - Nocte Sicarius
Hours later, Fiela slid silently from the bed and retrieved a bag containing her running clothes and shoes. The culmination of five millennia of breeding notwithstanding, Fiela recognized that she could not remain in top form if her only activities at Steepleguard we eating, making love, and reading poetry. She did not intend to become a pudgy, indulged serretu, unable to protect Ben and Lilitu. Her uncle had been very clear that protecting them was her mission, which was why he had arranged for her to be a member of the marriage contract.
Not that the girl was unhappy with her present situation - far from it. She had tired of the war, just as she had told her new husband. She had come to understand that surviving was not the same thing as living. The Peth often felt guilty about having made the distinction because it went against everything she had been taught by her superiors, which was that her life meant nothing if she was not offering it for the protection of the her kingdom. To live meant to do one’s duty. A member of the Peth-Allati should expect and desire nothing more.
She moved silent down the stairs.
Yet, she did. In her heart she desired much more. She desired to love, and be loved, and to read poetry, and maybe to write it, someday. This was plainly scandalous and she would have never dared to voice her dreams to anyone, at least not until she entered the life of the former Ardoon. She had told him because he did not know that such desires were wrong for a Peth and so would not judge her.
She walked to the main entrance. To the right of the giant doors were four metallic knobs marked “EXT. LIGHTS” that would activate the two-dozen electric lampposts the circled Steepleguard’s giant courtyard. She ignored them and went outside. The darkness beyond was absolute. There was no moon and the clouds blocked the stars like a canopy over the earth. Steepleguard was so utterly remote that even the light pollution of Denver could not reach it.
It was, to Fiela, magnificent.
The Peth-Allati, like any military organization, was divided into branches, and the Peth of those branches were specially bred and trained for specific functions. Typically, Peth begot Peth, so that the physical attributes and innate skills of one generation could be improved upon in the next through the Nisirtu’s selective breeding program. Fiela was a thirty-second generation Nocte Sicarius, a Night Assassin, bred and trained to fight in almost absolute darkness without reliance on the technological gadgets the Ardoon were forced to use, such as night vision equipment.
She closed the door behind her and commenced a slow trot toward the grass courtyard. The size of a polo field, with a large granite fountain and benches at its center, the courtyard was separated from the main building by the wide cobblestone drive that led to the hotel’s parking lot. Waist-high hedges surrounded it, with openings for pedestrians every ten feet or so. The lampposts were interspersed around the hedged perimeter at regular intervals, though they were invisible now. Surrounding the hedges was the dirt path she intended to use as a track.
The Peth jogged toward it, or rather, to where she knew it was. One of the first things a Nocte Sicarius was taught was to always - always - count their paces and to mentally record all their turns and orientations. For the first few years of Fiela’s life she had found this terrifically difficult and the punishments for not doing so terrifically painful. But in time, her subconscious took over the task, efficiently compiling its record of distances and orientations as her conscious was freed to do other things.
Consequently, the Peth was able to navigate areas she was passingly familiar with in complete darkness just as others could navigate from their kitchen to the bedroom in middle of the night based solely on their memory of their house’s layout. She had spent her childhood at Steepleguard and so had a solid mental map of the entire estate. That alone was sufficient to allow her to navigate the property without the benefit of vision, provided there were no unexpected obstacles.
Had there been stars or a sliver of a moon, she would have used her eyes, which were so finely tuned that she could differentiate between a hundred shades of black. The girl’s ancestors had been paired by the Nisirtu in part due to the unusually low levels of melanin pigment in their choroids - the middle, vascular coatings of their eyes. This meant that instead of reflecting light, the eyes of a Nocte Sicarius, like those of nocturnal animals, absorbed and used it.
This effect was only achieved by introducing albinism into the gene pool and, while most of the side effects had been mitigated, she was still highly sensitive to bright light and so wore sunglasses constantly when outdoors. Another side effect was that her hair, when not dyed, was as white as snow. White hair wasn’t exactly a perk for a night assassin, so she had colored it since she had hit the streets a decade prior. Someday soon she would have to tell Ben this, but for now she was hiding the dye, unsure what he would think of her in her natural state. Her irises, at least, were violet, so she did not have to wear the colored contacts that some of her white-eyed peers used when circulating amongst the Ardoon.
Fiela made a turn and jogged faster, her conscious mind free to roam the events of the past few days as her subconscious busied itself with navigating her around the dirt path.
She pondered Ben and her mission. She held most slaves in contempt for their ignorance and weakness yet had found her new husband to be the first man, Ardoon or Nisirtu, that she had ever truly desired. He was handsome in that unique, random manner that only nature allowed, whereas the polished good looks of Nisirtu men, though irresistible to Ardoon women, were too boilerplate and predictable for her.
Too, he knew the terrors, the shadows that haunted the dreams of warriors who had the audacity to survive battle as their comrades fell around them. Few things intimidated the Peth, but the terrors did more than that. They paralyzed her, stopped her from breathing, ripped apart the flesh of her friends, and chased her until she woke screaming covered in cold, humiliating sweats.
The Ardoon fighting overseas were being treated for the same affliction she suffered from, and there was no way to breed away demons of the mind, at least not that she knew of. She had contemplated appropriating some Ardoon medication, having been told they could deter the terrors, but did not know what to take, or in what doses, and she was certainly not going to consult a physician about such a weakness. Fiela had hoped that Ben had some of the drugs, but he had already abandoned the treatment, to her disappointment.
Still, she had known instinctively that the terrors would not attack if she and Ben united against them, and so had asked (certainly not pleaded, though her memory sometimes played tricks on her) for the man to hold her while she slept. He understood her demons, had fought in a far-off war, had seen terrible things, and had the same doubts as her about his role in a war that did not seem winnable. As they lay together that first evening, his arm around her, and the demons scuttled away, she knew she would love him.
True, he had been far easier on her than she would have liked, as a Peth, but he had also shown indications of a desirable assertiveness. She smiled remembering how he had chastised her for correcting Lilitu’s slave driver and how he had not backed down when she’d confronted him. He had even threatened not to allow her any fetches, which was absurd, but promising.
Fiela assured herself that once her husband better understood and grew more confident in his new role in life, he would truly take command of her, which she wanted very much because the one thing she knew how to do better than anyone, to include her sister, was obey. She was Peth - to obey and fight was her life. She would become his confidant, his lieutenant, and his protector. She might even become a Bad Christian, though she was unclear what that entailed. It sounded far easier than being a Good Christian, though that denomination was equally mysterious to her.
The young woman increased her speed and began racing through the void at a pace that made unknown obstacles, like fallen branches or cars or trashcans, a problem. Her mental map was based on an accurate record of her environment as it had been and c
ould not account for changes that had occurred since. Her night vision would normally supplement her internal navigation system but the darkness was so absolute this morning that even hers was useless.
She began to systematically pull air in through her teeth and over tongue to make almost imperceptible clicking sounds, her ears trained to detect the subsequent echo, however slight. The Ardoon were only now beginning to understand the benefits of human echolocation. The Peth-Allati had perfected it centuries ago.
Fiela wondered if Lilitu loved her selected husband. Probably not, she decided. Her sister had no time for emotional entanglements, spending almost every minute of her waking days plotting how she would gain the throne she so desperately sought. She knew that Lilitu would not be content merely waiting for the Seven to die off, as she proclaimed was her plan. Nisirtu were not the kind to go quietly into the night, so Fiela speculated that the princess’s true plan was to take the war to them once the Ardoon had been dealt with.
Fiela did not think Ben would have consented to bear Lilitu’s father’s ring if he knew of the woman’s cruelties. When she was slighted, or far worse, when her father was slighted, Lilitu would employ her secret henchmen to seek out and brutalize the offenders in ways that only Moros would deem justifiable. Worse, Lilitu was old school. She punished not only the offending parties but also the innocents around them merely for their association.
The exiled princess had been trained well by her clandestine supporters and was a master of disassociation. No one had ever managed to connect her to any of the ghastly fates that befell her detractors. The woman’s ability to reach out from the shadows and her cruelty when she did so had served her well. She was loathed, yes, but she was also feared, so while many Nisirtu scorned Lilitu in private, none save the royal families or their Peth lords would ever dare speak against her in public.
The Peth sprinted for another hour before finally going to the middle of the courtyard for calisthenics. By the time she was done, the sky over the eastern mountains was pink. She lay down on the ground and stared at the sky, the fresh morning air cooling her skin, and allowed herself to drift off into sleep. There she might have lain indefinitely if not for the sound of the approaching engines.