One sultry afternoon, with dark thunderclouds pressing down upon the city, Che had been forced to watch a duel with blades, fought between his own father and hers, as was the custom of settling disputes of honour in Q'os. Though both men were wounded, they survived, and without a death it settled nothing. A few days later, a cannon shot exploded through the outer wall of Che's bedroom. Thankfully, he was not in the room at the time.
The shot had been launched from an artillery piece set up furtively on the roof of a neighbouring household, whose occupants were away summering at their vineyards in Exanse. Initially, Che's father was enraged by the act. Later as the dust slowly settled throughout the great house, his mood turned quiet and nervous.
Even within the military, blackpowder was the rarest of commodities. Yet this had not dissuaded their enemies. Neither, for that matter, had they been deterred by the seal which Che had worn around his neck since the age of ten, thus protecting him by means of the threat of vendetta. It was now clear that their enemies would stop at nothing to settle this dispute.
Che was the only son of the family, and some day he would take over the reins of their business empire. It was quickly announced to him that he must leave for his own safety. His father could think of no other way to guarantee it.
The very next morning, Che was smuggled by a covered carriage to the local agent of the Rshun order. Once safely inside the building, with the doors locked, the windows shuttered, the lamps turned low, his father offered the woman a small fortune in gold, trying to persuade her to send Che away somewhere to train as a Rshun apprentice. She was reluctant at first, but Che's father pleaded and begged, claiming that the boy's life depended on her.
Che left there a week later, after hiding out in the agent's cellar. Someone had turned up to collect him, a middle-aged Rshun with the sharp cheekbones and hard, violet eyes that signified a native of the High Pash. The man growled his name, Shebec, and after that hardly spoke again. Without any chance of saying farewell to his family, Che was smuggled on to a ship which set sail the moment they were aboard. In just over a week, it had crossed to Cheem, and from there began a strange and frightening journey through the island's mountainous interior.
And so it was that pampered Che spent the rest of his boyhood learning how to kill without mercy, and with whatever means came to hand. As the weeks passed into months, and the months passed into years, it surprised him to find that he did not miss his family at all, nor the life of luxury he had left behind.
Che had always been a fast learner, so as an apprentice assassin his progress was swift. He made friends readily, and he was careful not to make any enemies. Yet for all that, he was a youth troubled within his own skin.
At night, lying in his bunk in the dormitory that housed all the apprentices, Che would dream another's dreams.
He would dream of having lived another life entirely – a life in which his mother and father were not his real parents, nor their home his true home. So real were these sleeping visions, so founded in fact and minutiae of detail, that he would awake in the morning feeling a stranger to himself, floundering to grasp what was real and what was merely sham. Sometimes, secretly, Che suspected he was losing his mind.
As the years advanced, he did his best to hold himself together. He kept those dreams of another existence to himself.
Eventually he grew into a man. He became Rshun.
*
At the time it had seemed like any other day, save that it was the eve of his twenty-first birthday, which in fact meant very little to Che. His master, Shebec, had got his days mixed up as always, thinking it was already Che's birthday. Shebec made a bit of a fuss by preparing a honeycake crammed with nuts, then sat down and shared some wine with him. Che did not have the heart to correct his master's mistake, but when he retired to his room it was with a growing, indefinable sense of unease.
That night, for the very first time since arriving at the monastery, Che dreamed of nothing at all. He slept deeply, without constant shifting, without muttering into the darkness, and awoke on the morning of his real birthday to find that he was no longer himself.
Suddenly, like seeing through a window thrown open upon a vista that had always been there but never acknowledged, he knew the truth about his life. And in the privacy of his small, neat cell, in the early light filtering through the gaps in the shutters, Che shook with bitter laughter and tears welling out of relief, desperation, and all that he had lost.
He did not say goodbye to his master. He fought down the urge to seek Shebec out, to offer him even a subtle farewell, a smile perhaps. He feared the older man would catch wind of his intentions. Che walked out of the monastery gates as the rest of the order slowly awoke to the new day, leaving everything that he possessed behind him, save for a travel bag stuffed with dried foods.
He didn't descend the valley but headed across it instead. A stout, grey-sloped mountain, which they called the Old Man, reared above a twisting side-valley cut deep by a rushing torrent. In the dawn light Che began to climb the Old Man's steep pitch of shale. He knew where the closest Rshun sentinel was hidden in his lookout, watching out over the path below, and he made sure to cut a course leading behind him. When Che reached the top of the peak, he looked back at the monastery of Sato with his heart in confusion.
Che then turned and descended the other side.
He was to climb many high passes in the days that followed. He hiked in the tracks of mountain goats, picking his way along trails that ran along sheer cliff faces, with great airy drops yawning below him. Always Che sought routes that would lead him gradually downwards. His meandering became purposeful like water seeking the sea as he steadily left the heart of the mountain range behind him.
He was ragged and starving by the time he came down from the foothills to the coast, twelve days having passed since he had first set off from Sato. He purchased food from the occasional dour homesteaders he passed, and a mule at the first harbour town he reached, and so made his way along the coast road to Cheem Port.
From Cheem Port, he caught a fast sloop straight to Q'os.
Che never returned.
*
Now, many floors up, three years later, Che perched within a fingertip's reach of an open window. If he had chanced to look down just then, he would have spotted a diminishing sequence of solidified rags spiralling down around the curvature of the tower – for he had climbed not simply up but around it as well, fixing new handholds and footholds as he went. However, Che did not look down.
The sound of love play tumbled from the open window above him. It was loud and reckless, and he waited without thought until it was finished. It did not take long.
A daring glance into the room revealed a man's fat backside, pale and dimpled, before it was covered by a hastily donned robe. 'My gratitude,' the fat priest breathed to the woman sprawled naked on the tussled bed, before hurrying out without a further glance.
Che failed to gain a proper look at the woman's face, but something about her, unconsciously, sent a thrill of warning along his spine. He waited out of sight, and listened to the whisper of silk as she too threw on some clothing.
Che placed the garrotte between his teeth.
Then, fighting his body's resistance, he sprang.
He was into the room, and stretching the length of wire between his fists, even as she turned and put a hand to her mouth as if to stifle a scream.