Pete and the Knee-high

 The meadow was green, though with clover not with grass.  There were cows moving around at the far end of it where a small stand of trees offered shade from the still-hot autumn sunshine and while they looked over, brown eyes gazing disinterestedly at Pete, they showed no inclination to leave the shade and investigate him.  He eyed them back, more cautiously: cows were big and, more importantly, valuable.  No matter how he might claim he was defending himself the local courts would be sure to demand that he paid for the costs of an injured or dead animal.  When he was sure that they weren’t interested in him he glared at the clover as though it had done him a personal wrong, and stalked through it across the meadow.

Insects darted up into the air, jewel like eyes and filigree wings fluttering and sparkling in the sunlight, as he walked stiffly, aggressively, across the ground cover.  He ignored them; a week ago he’d been trekking his way through a swamp and the insects there were viciously bloodthirsty creatures that had sapped his will to swat everything that moved.  These seemed happy to get out of his way and return to their business, whatever it might be, after he had passed and he was stoically delighted about that.  A smell, one he couldn’t place but assumed was that of crushed clover, rose up around him making him think of green things and freshness and he felt his shoulders relax just a little and his gait became less of a stalk and more of a stroll.

The end of the meadow came far too soon and a waist-high stone wall barred his progress until he vaulted it, one hand gripping a large rough weatherworn stone and his feet landing smartly on the mud-and-rocks path on the other side.  There was a slight squelch; clearly the path wasn’t entirely dry.  He made sure he had his balance, let go of the wall and looked around.

“Where the bloody hell is this Shire, then?” he muttered.  The path, and it was clearly something used mostly for driving cattle along and couldn’t be graced with a better name, led round a corner in one direction where more tall, old trees grew obscuring his view, and back around the edge of the meadow in the other direction.  It wasn’t quite the way he’d come, but it was close enough that he wasn’t going that way without something to justify it, and there was no sign of buildings, no smoke from fires or chimneys, and nothing but the likelihood of ending up back in the swamp.

“Onwards,” he muttered.  He had an idea that talking to himself like this was a sign of madness but there was no-one to ask about it except for perhaps the cows and he didn’t like to think about what it might mean if they answered him.  Even if they just moo-ed.

The path bent only reluctantly round the tree, narrowing substantially and making it feel like the tree was somehow an obstruction and an inconvenience. He edged by, his rough leather jacket, much weathered from his travels, rubbing scratchily against the bark of the tree trunk and wondered how the farmer who owned the cows ever got them past this.  Then the tree was gone again and he could see the stone walls that divided the land up into fields, meadows and paddocks and hinted at humans somewhere about, and the path that led up a gentle slope and then over the top.  With little else to do he sighed and stomped up the hill to see what could be seen from the top.

There was another stand of trees at the top and the path led up just to one side of them.  He stopped, resting a hand on the waist-thick trunk of a tree with yellow-green leaves that seemed to be fluttering in a breeze Pete couldn’t feel and looked out.  Finally there was signs of life, though they were odd: there were half-sized houses that seemed to be dug into the earth here there and everywhere.  Paths, mostly with low stone walls to the sides of them, did run through but rather than defining the settlement they seemed to be habitual routes between doors.  The whole thing had a distinctly organic feel to it that seemed unnatural to Pete.

“You can get lost now,” said a gruff voice from somewhere near the ground.  Pete looked around first, and only then down.  There was a short man with a shock of curly brown hair peering up at him and sucking on a briar pipe.

“Sauron’s breath!” Pete jumped backwards, one hand reaching for the hilt of a sword that wasn’t there.  “A bloody knee-high!”

“That’s hobbit to anyone who doesn’t want to be cut down to size,” said the hobbit taking his pipe out of his mouth.  “And I mean that entirely literally, just in case you’re having trouble with your thinking.”

“You’re all supposed to be dead!”

“Then I’m a ghost.  Boo!”

Pete shook himself, but didn’t approach the hobbit.  He was fairly certain that they weren’t a ghost but he’d seen some odd things on his journey, especially through the swamp, and wasn’t keen on meeting any more.

“I met a knee — a hobbit,” he said.  “They’re called knee-highs in the Lowlands, you know.  He was a bit odd.”

“There’re no hobbits in the Lowlands,” said the hobbit with the pipe.  He inhaled from it and a smell of blackcurrant rose up on the air.  “Hobbits don’t leave the Shire much, except maybe those over at Bree and they’re not real hobbits.  Halflings, they are, and a bit special with it.”  He tapped the side of his forehead as he said special and looked at Pete as though he should know what that meant.

“It was just the one,” said Pete.  “A traveller.  Well, a mercenary, actually.  Said his name was… something strange.  Happy, or Sneezy, or something like that.  Only had one arm.  Kept going on about the Shire and Froggo and a grand elf wizard.”

The hobbit with the pipe stared down at the Shire and smoked his pipe quietly.  After a minute or so, when Pete was wondering if he was just ignoring him, he said in a thoughtful voice, “Would that be Frodo by any chance?  And perhaps Gandalf the wizard?”

Pete thought about it. “Maybe,” he said, reluctantly.  “Froggo had a bag of some kind, I recall that.  And the Shire was empty, all the knee-highs were killed by some trees.  Though that had to be Happy raving as trees don’t kill people unless they fall on them.”

“Frodo Baggins,” said the hobbit.  He took the pipe out of his mouth and carefully tapped it out on a flat stone that looked like it was used a lot for the purpose.  “Oh dear, oh dear.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

“Look, I’m just here to see if the Shire exists,” said Pete.  He hesitated.  “And Happy might have said something about a valuable ring.  So if you just hand a nice ring over, say gold, or maybe silver, I’ll take it and go and we’ll say no more, right?  I’ve had to kill a lot of things on my way here, and will probably have to kill more on the way back. A knee-high or six isn’t really going to bother me.”  For a moment he had a flashback to the swamp and the thing that had an orc’s head and six legs and strange arms that seemed to grab at things that weren’t there but somehow were and had limped off with his sword sticking out of its chest.

“Look,” said the hobbit sounding sad.  “It’s a bit more complicated than you think.”

“I don’t think much,” said Pete.  “I just do.  And I really, really want to go home right now.  So ring, cash, whatever.  Just find something to make it worth my while and I’ll be on my way.  Pick someone you don’t like and I’ll throw in killing them for you too.”

“No,” said the hobbit.  “You make a convincing argument, I’ll give you that, but it’s not me you need to talk to.”

“You’ll do,” said Pete.  “Do I have get my knife out?”

“No,” said the hobbit.  “And it won’t do you much good, neither.  That wizard you mentioned?  Well, he’s here.  And he’s already collected up all the valuable stuff.”

Pete drummed his fingers on his empty scabbard.  “That sounds like stalling to me,” he said.

“It’s the truth.  Gandalf the Magnificent, Gandalf the White, whatever he’s calling himself this morning, is holed up, hah, in the Inn of the Shire and is holding the whole Shire hostage.  You want to kill someone?  Go kill him.  But he’s been killed once, by a Balrog no less, and he came back, so you need to do a better job of it than the Balrog did.”

Pete stopped drumming his fingers and eyed the hobbit warily.  The hobbit eyed him back just as warily.

“Happy might have mentioned PTSD,” he said.

“That’d be the only thing he didn’t lie to you about then,” said the hobbit.

“Right,” said Pete.  “Right.  Only… I shouldn’t go believing any knee-highs then, should I?”

The hobbit glared at him.  “You’re only making trouble for yourself calling us that,” he said.  “How’d you like it if I called you Whitey Too-tall, huh?”

Pete nodded.  “I’d probably cut your throat.”  He drew his knife.  “And every way I look at this, that’s probably the right thing to do at this point anyway.”

No-one need be spared

 The beach at Baida fil-Einek was short and wide and had pristine white sand in a rough oval contained by the sea and limestone escarpments.  The waves were small and gentle and the beach quite gradual which would have made it ideal for parents and children.  The sun was pretty much exactly overhead and the sky was a deep azure that was common for much of the summer.  The heat wasn’t yet at its worst, but it was hot enough to make the sea look increasingly inviting.

At the back of the beach, dug into the escarpment so that yellow-white limestone, marred here and there by blue-green lichen, overhung the terrace, was a café.  Expensive designer chairs were set cautiously around equally expensive tables; no table had more than three chairs at it, and the chairs were always spaced as far apart as possible.  Two of the tables were occupied other than Chretien’s: one had the Minister of Finance in deep conversation with suited men who Chretien did not recognise, and the other had one of the two Ministers of the Interior sat with her Deputy.  Potted plants were laid between the tables to form sound baffles; Chretien could see, if a little indistinctly, the people at the other tables, but their conversations were murmurs at most.  Occasionally a word might escape the maze of greenery and fall into his ears but rarely enough that they were essentially meaningless.

He sipped a non-alcoholic cocktail and tapped at the iPad nestled in his lap.  Messages from the security details for both Ministers present were updating in real time.  Soon he learned that the Minister of the Interior had been coming here with each of her Deputies all week under the pretence of conducting performance reviews and that the Finance Minister had declined to update his security detail with any more information than that he was meeting important foreigners.

“Corruption as usual,” murmured Chretien to himself.  He touched the button on the top edge of the iPad to turn it off and sipped his drink again.  The sea produced more noise than the other conversations and he rather liked the soft rushing of the tiny waves breaking on the beach and the lacy patterns of foam they created.  Each design lasted mere seconds before breaking up and fading away, but there was always another to replace it.

The iPad lit up briefly; a new message had arrived to tell him something banal about European football results.  He noted only that the first team was AC Milan; this meant that Mahrie im-Mantis, Mistress of the Treasury, was arriving for their scheduled meeting.  Twenty-five minutes late, but a lack of punctuality was one of the hallmarks of the im-Mantis family.  He walked inside, carrying his drink, and when he returned holding two drinks he found Mahrie approaching the terrace across the white sands.

He returned to his table, where the iPad was now discretely tucked in at the side of his chair, and set the drinks down.

Mahrie was short and dressed as though she were taller.  Despite everything her tailor attempted her skirt was too long and too heavy for the heat, her blouse was overbroad in the shoulders and her chest was flatter than she wanted it to be.  She had a green jacket slung over her arm and a black leather handbag dangled from her fingers and she gave the impression of having learned how to dress from a book.

“Cretin,” she said.  She never bothered to use Chretien’s actual name and barely even bothered to look at him now; her eyes were on the drink.  “Did William make this?”

“Yes,” said Chretien as she called out to the barman loudly, ignoring him and drowning his response.

“William?  Did you make this?”

When the affirmative reply came from the bar, muffled by the plants and seating arrangements, she sat and tasted it.  Her lips pursed a little; Mahrie im-Mantis only really liked Champagne and so had all other alcoholic drinks made equally as acidic.

“Why are we meeting here?” she said.  She met Chretien’s gaze briefly then looked away again.  She clearly disliked him but all of his attempts to find out what the cause was had met dead ends.

Chretien placed the stained envelope containing the demands that Allabar im-Mantis had refused on the table in front of her, and then took a clear plastic case from his pocket and set that down next to it.  Her son’s shrivelled finger was nestled inside it in cotton wool.

“Qasqar’s finger?”  She sneered and returned to her drink.

“The demands in the letter are quite clear,” said Chretien.  While Allabar refused to read almost everything his ex-wife was compulsive about gathering information.  “Allabar has provided his response.  I am curious only if you have anything to add.”

“I agree with Allabar that the perpetrators of this crime need to be found and brought to justice,” she said.  “The Fort is appropriate.  Other than that, I do not see why we are meeting here.”

Chretien sat back and tasted his drink.  The barman had topped it up with water so that it looked fresh; now, diluted, it was less pleasant.  The Mistress of the Treasury looked at him after the silence drew out to a surprising level, and then she looked around more carefully.

“Ah,” she said.  “I see that Mehrab is here, with people I have not been informed about.  This… finger is a pointer, isn’t it, little Cretin?  You think you’re so clever, so sneaky, and yet all I have to do is ask a question and I find the answer.”  She sipped her drink; despite seeming to only sip the glass was already half-empty.  “I can replace you any time I like, Cretin.  You’re only still here because my hus— ex-husband — finds you useful.  You should remember that.”

“My concern,” said Chretien, “is simply to ask if your ex-husband should be advised against his current course of action.  Such advice would carry more weight if it came from an office equal to his own.”  It was, he reflected, nice to be able to use proper words instead of having to choose from a restricted list more suited to tabloid newspapers.

“You are not to tell him that I want anything other than what I just said!” Mahrie’s reply was as fast as a striking snake.  She was now watching her Finance Minister, moving her head this way and that to try and get a better view of the people he was entertaining.  “I want Qasqar revenged and that is it.”

“The letter is quite clear that they may attempt to harm Qasqar again if no ground is given,” said Chretien.

“Empty threats.”

“They have managed to show signs of competence.”  Chretien rubbed his hands together beneath the table.  Playing mental chess was certainly more interesting than listening to the blunt stupidities of Allabar im-Mantis but, he reflected, it would be nice if sometimes he could just be blunt with Mahrie.  Bluntness however reminded her of her ex-husband and made her recalcitrant. 

“Rubbish!  Qasqar was stupid and paid the price.  You’ve increased his security?  You’ve certainly increased mi— ah, Mehrab is getting up!”  She half-rose, hesitating until the Minister of Finance had gone inside.  “Don’t wait for me.”

Chretien set his still-mostly-full drink aside and picked up the iPad.  He waited until he heard hints of Mahrie introducing herself to Mehrab’s companions and then unlocked it.  He opened the browser and went to a bookmarked page, selecting an article from it seemingly at random and then sent an encrypted message containing only the link.  To all intents and purposes it looked like he was simply commenting on the outcome of a chess tournament in Las Vegas.  The coded message, to those who understood the code, was simply no-one need be spared.

Mr Scarecrow

 There was silence in the house.  Halibut — a stupid name, given to him by stupid parents — stood in the entrance hall, listening for any sound at all.  There was a steep wooden flight of stairs in front of him, and a narrow hallway ran past it to a closed, green-painted door at the end.  Unusually for houses of this build there were no other doors off the hallway, but the recesses where they had been, now bricked up and wallpapered over, remained.  They formed odd niches and someone had stood chipped stone plinths in each one.  Atop the closest was a pair of scuffed brown leather shoes and even though James had been wearing blue shoes Halibut got a sense of dread just from looking at them.

The silence dragged on until his own breathing seemed loud and when he held his breath, the pounding of blood in his ears seemed to deafen him to all other noises.  He tensed, realising that he was either alone in the house, or whoever else was there was better at waiting than he was, and took a step towards the brown shoes.

Underfoot a floor-board creaked.  He stopped immediately and started listening again.  The house was supposed to be empty, but the shoes on the plinth also suggested that it hadn’t been empty all that long ago.  Would the creak be interpreted as the house settling by anyone here, or would they come and investigate.  He felt his heart thump in his chest, almost unpleasantly hard, and wished that he were braver.

The floor was brown and bare and looked as though it had never been carpeted.  There was just on it, but not enough for him to look for footprints — not that he’d even thought about that, he realised.  The wallpaper was white with a faint yellow pattern on it; where the sunlight through the window to the side of the door struck it it glimmered, but he couldn’t make the pattern out.  Yellow on white seemed like a poor-contrast choice.

He made himself take another step.  The floor remained silent now, and he reached the plinth without any more creaks or groans or worrying noises.

The plinth was rough sandstone bricks piled up in a rectangular column with a  larger red tile on top.  He thought it might have been a paving slab before its current job.  The edges were slightly discoloured, in some places paler and in some places darker, as though plants had grown around it and been peeled away.  The shoes were neatly placed side by side.

He picked one up and looked inside it, pulling the tongue up to get a better look.  He found the size — European 38 — printed in tiny gold letters that were barely worn away.  He turned the shoe over again, looking at it more carefully now, and saw that while the uppers were scuffed the sole looked almost new and the laces were still stiff with disuse.  James wore a European 41 though, so they couldn’t be his.

Halibut set the shoe back down and the plinth grated for a second.  He started, stepping back, and the plinth, as though freed by his movement, started to turn on top of the pillar of bricks.  The grating of stone against stone seemed painfully loud in the silence and he instinctively retreated again until he was back by the door, facing the stairs and staring at the plinth.  It stopped turning after it had moved through ninety degrees.

“Hey mister,” said a voice and he started so violently that his leg jerked and he almost fell over.  He stumbled, throwing out a hand and catching himself against the door.  “You ok, mister?”

The voice seemed to be coming from above him and when he looked at the stairs he saw a young boy, perhaps nine or ten, standing at the top.  He looked at the boy’s feet next, and was unsurprised to see that he was wearing only socks.

“I’m fine,” he said.  His voice was firm and calm and didn’t indicate that he was clenching as hard as possible to avoid wetting himself.  “I just wasn’t expecting to see… a ghost.”

The boy took a step down the stairs and there was a creak as he did so.  “I’m not a ghost, mister.  Why’d you want to call me names like that?”

“You’re a ghost,” said Halibut.  Everyone knew that the kids that came into this house never left.  The Scarecrow saw to that.  “Everyone knows the kids in this house are ghosts.”

“You’re mean, mister,” said the boy, taking another step down the stairs.  His shadow seemed to be growing longer as he did, but Halibut knew that the light was coming in the wrong direction for that shadow to be real.  He reached behind him for the door handle.  His fingers skittered across painted wood for far too long, then found the satisfying coldness of the iron handle.  “Mr Scarecrow wouldn’t let you say things like that if he was here.”

“He’s not at home?”  Halibut’s heart jumped and he fought to control his excitement.  Perhaps he had arrived before the Scarecrow; if James wasn’t here yet then there might still be a way to save him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!”  The boy stuck his tongue out at Halibut and took another step.  The staircase seemed to groan under the weight, even though Halibut was sure that a ghost should be weightless.

“You just said he wasn’t,” said Halibut.

“So you’re deaf as well as stupid?”  The boy sounded more adult now and Halibut realised that he’d grown taller too.  It was as though he was aging as he descended the stairs.  Halibut gripped the door handle tightly and wondered if he’d know when it was time to run.

“I just came looking for a pair of shoes,” said Halibut.  “Looks like you’ve not found them though.”

“There are shoes right there,” said the boy.  His voice deepened suddenly as though breaking and he took another step down.  There were, Halibut counted, only four steps left.  Unless the boy jumped down the rest.  “You were looking at them, weren’t you?  You must be really stupid.”

Halibut pulled on the door handle deciding that it was time to get out.  The door didn’t move.

“Doors have locks, you know,” said the boy.  He stepped down again and he no longer looked like a young boy at all: now he was a man in his early twenties and looked like he worked out regularly.  Halibut tugged on the door again, hoping it was just stuck, but he could hear a rattle behind him that might just be a lock jiggling against the doorframe.  The sense of dread from earlier returned like night falling and seemed to seize him a freezing cold grip.

“Well, would you look at that,” said the figure on the staircase casually.  He stepped down the last two steps as one.  “Looks like Mr Scarecrow is at home, after all.  Why don’t you say hello to me, Halibut?”

Choosing sides

 “What is the meaning of this?”

Allabar im-Mantis held up a red-stained envelope in one hand and then, with a disdain that his advisor could only envy, the middle finger of his only son.  The finger had been neatly amputated from the man’s hand and the stump end had dried and shrivelled somewhat.

“A demand,” said Chretien, im-Mantis’s advisor-without-portfolio, “and a middle finger.  I expect you’re supposed to take it metaphorically, though the fact it comes from your son would seem to make it less offensive that you would otherwise expect.”

“What?  Speak normally!”  Allabar had spent much of his adult life spending money that, strictly speaking, wasn’t his, and he had enjoyed it.  He was obese, struggled to get in and out of bed by himself, and got short of breath just walking from one office to another.  He travelled everywhere in a bullet-proof limousine and was growing steadily more fearful of the world around him.  He was also getting steadily more impatient with everyone and everything.

“It’s both a warning and an insult,” said Chretien.  He waited for im-Mantis to think about that.

“I get the insult,” said Allabar testily.  “I think I can see when someone’s giving me the middle finger!”

“This is your son’s middle finger,” said Chretien.  He waited again, resisting the urge to drum his fingers on the folder of paperwork he was carrying.

“My son wouldn’t dare give me the middle finger!”

Chretien nodded.  “And that is the insult, Sir.  Your son is, if you like, being forced to give you the middle finger.”

“Bah!”

“And it is s-also a warning,” said Chretien, narrowly avoiding saying ‘simultaneously’.  “That if you do not take the demand in the letter seriously then your son might come to more harm.”

“Where is the little idiot?”  Allabar looked around the long, narrow office as though expecting Qasqar to be hiding beneath a desk or in a cupboard.  Chretien allowed himself a tiny smile at the thought that if Qasqar were here he would almost certainly be trying to hide from his father.  “Why have I only got his finger?”

“Qasqar is still at the hospital,” said Chretien.  He had received a report an hour earlier from one of Qasqar’s security guards that the man was refusing to leave until he was certain his father had calmed down.  “I believe they are dealing with his… injury.”

“They’d better be regrowing his damn finger!  Why’s it taking so long?”

“I have no idea,” said Chretien.  “I can ask for an upda—“

“Leave it!  What is this demand about?”

Chretien nodded again, mostly to himself.  He had expected Allabar’s concern for his son to last for less time than it had.  “As you have read yourself,” he said, knowing that Allabar rarely took the time to read things, “the letter is a demand for changes in the way the country is run.”

“I’m not stepping down!”

“Quite.  In fact, the demands are more about socio-political policies, and the release of Jacques Humtaine from prison.”

“Absolutely not!” Allabar’s face reddened.  “He conspired against me!  And he’s still not told us who his conspirators are.  He can stay there and rot for all I care.”

“And the policies?” Chretien didn’t bother trying to explain the demands as he was sure what Allabar’s response would be.

“Nothing doing!”  Allabar glared about the office as though still trying to find his son hiding somewhere.  “I’m giving in to nothing.  Double the security on Qasqar and myself and find out how they managed to get to him.  And then have the people who let it happen sent to the Fort.”

“I have already taken the liberty of increasing security about you and your family,” said Chretien.  Allabar im-Mantis was separated, officially, from his wife but had been unable to remove her as Mistress of the Treasury and so some of his everyday frustration came from their sniping at each other as they attempted to run the country.  “However, I cannot send Qasqar to the Fort.”

“Of course you can’t!  I didn’t tell you to, I told you to send whoever failed to protect him!”

“That would be he himself, Sir.  He dismissed his security guards, went to the Hotel Amadeo, and drank heavily there.”

“So blame someone in the hotel.”  Allabar stamped over to a window and stared out of it.  Chretien shifted uncomfortably where he was standing; the window actually offered a view of the Hotel Amadeo and he wasn’t sure if Allabar knew that or it was just chance.  “They have security themselves, don’t they?”

“They do,” said Chretien.  He had spent several hours earlier that day reviewing the security cameras in the hotel, and talking to the guards and the barstaff.  “Unfortunately the incident cannot be placed with them.”

“Of course it can!  Just make something up!”

Chretien sighed.  “Sir,” he said firmly, “your son was alone in a locked bathroom when he was assaulted and his finger removed.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, did everything they could to keep him safe and he still managed to lose a finger.  The only person I can reasonably blame here is Qasqar.  His security guards would have joined him in the bathroom if they had been there.”

Allabar turned away from the window and Chretien noticed that the reddening of his face had increased and his neck was almost purple.

“Make.  Something.  Up.”

“I see,” said Chretien.  “Yes, I shall do that.”  Privately he decided that he would make up having made something up.  Allabar rarely checked unless there was money involved.

“At last,” said Allabar.  His shoulders sank a little as though he were relaxing.  “I don’t know why I keep you around, Cretin.  Sometimes you’re as bad as Mahrie.”

Chretien said nothing.  Allabar often called him ‘cretin’ and occasionally told him it was just a little joke between old friends.

“Laugh.”

Chretien forced a laugh that might have been a cough.

“This is boring,” said Allabar.  He dropped the letter and the finger on a nearby desk.  “Find out who’s behind this and put them in the Fort.  And quickly, I don’t want to have to see security guards everywhere I go.”

“Indeed,” said Chretien impassively.  “There is the small matter of other paperwork—“

“Later,” said Allabar.  He walked over to the door and just before he reached it, he looked back.  “You’re annoying me.  Make it tomorrow.”

“Very good, Sir,” said Chretien as the door closed behind Allabar.  He waited, unmoving for two minutes according to his phone and then sat down in an empty chair.  He scrolled through several news reports on his phone before selecting one that seemed innocuous, something about the rise in inflation rates and the cost of living, and sent a link to it to a number he had to type into his phone from memory.  The real meaning behind the message was that he had picked a side.

A dirty business

 The assassin lay quietly on the bed, his hands folded across his ribcage so that his fingertips just barely touched, and concentrated on his breathing.  It was slow and steady, each intake of breath measured in seconds and each exhale as gradual as the rising of the tide.  His muscles were relaxed and his mind was alert.  He paid attention to the hardness of the mattress he was lying on and the narrowness of the bed.  The air in the room was warm — it was in the low thirties outside and the air-conditioning in the building did not extend here — and there was a smell of cloves mixed with coffee.  There was a faint hum of white noise which was the sounds from the hotel bar adjacent to this room and which rose and faded irregularly.  There was also a sense of stillness and he appreciated knowing that in that peace he was a coiled spring, well-looked after and ready to unleash stored energy at a moment’s notice.

His phone beeped.  It was on the floor next to the bed.

He rose with the least movement he could achieve: he swung his legs around and off the side of the bed, lifting his chest and shoulders as he did so.  He reached down and picked the phone up, silencing it with a click of button and not needing to check the message: something banal from the bartender, some comment about the news or the weather, whose actual purpose was to let him know that Qasqar im-Mantis had gone to the toilet.

He left the room barefoot and walked unhurriedly along the beige-marbled corridor outside.  He allowed himself a half-smile; the marble was known as Mantis marble because the im-Mantis family still had a business importing it as cheaply as possible.  There were cracks in it already yet the building was barely a year and a half old.  At the end of the corridor was the outline of a door but no handle.  The assassin pressed on a part of the wall that looked no different to any other and waited until he heard a soft click and then pressed on another part.  The wall swung inwards silently and revealed a janitor’s closet and another door.

He left the secret door ajar and opened the janitor’s closet door into the public toilet.  This was also done in Mantis marble though the floor was polished concrete.  There were mirrors but they were over the sinks and Qasqar, a florid man who wasn’t yet thirty but looked to be forty-five or even fifty, was leaning against the wall and pissing into a pristine white urinal.  The smell of it rankled the assassin’s nostrils and the sight of the man — a clear roll of fat around his waist covered by expensive but poorly cleaned clothes, shabby unpolished shoes and sweat stains spreading out from his armpits and across his back — was offensive.  He was the son the so-called Prime Minister, a dictator in all but name, and dressed and acted like a near-homeless alcoholic.

“Qasqar,” said the assassin.  The handle on the door to enter the toilets rattled but the door had been automatically locked by the bartender at Qasqar’s request.  Someone banged on the door and yelled about hurrying up.

Qasqar’s head jerked up and then fell back, bumping gently on the wall.

“Not done,” he mumbled, struggling to produce coherent words.  A smell of alcohol briefly pushed the acrid notes of piss away and the assassin shook his head; the change in stench was not an improvement.

“You will be,” said the assassin.  He waited several seconds while Qasqar’s sluggish brain worked out that the words weren’t from outside.  Finally the man lifted his head and turned it.  Dull, bloodshot brown eyes squinted at the assassin, trying to focus.  When they finally managed it he half-moaned a question, “Who-ooo?”

The assassin reached down and pulled up his left trouser leg to get to a suede-leather sheath and removed a knife from it.  The fifteen centimetre blade was blackened and nearly invisible in the dim lighting of the toilets but Qasqar had no trouble guessing what it was.  He turned his whole body, now spraying the floor with his dark-yellow, stinking piss, and his sallow face managed to turn paler than it already was.

“You’re disgusting,” said the assassin.  He didn’t often offer personal commentary as his opinion wasn’t paid for, but im-Mantis had stepped over the line where he felt obliged to hold back.  He stepped forward, his body language switching from neutral to threatening in a single pace.

“Whaddya wan’?” Qasqar was so drunk even terror couldn’t sober him and unslur his words.  He tried to to back away but sat down heavily in the urinal he’d just been using.

“You,” said the assassin.  “You’re to deliver a message.”

“I’m rich!” Qasqar’s brain finally seemed to understand the situation.  “I can pay.  I can pay!”

“You mean your father will pay,” said the assassin.  “Or perhaps your mother.  Depending on who you tell first, yes?  I don’t care, and my clients don’t care.  You are, however, requested to give either of your parents this.”  He now slipped his free hand inside his shirt where, unusually, a pocket was sewn.  He extracted a white envelope that was as smooth as expensive paper could be.  He set it down on the counter where the sinks were.

“Give it to me,” said Qasqar.  He was starting to sober up, the assassin noticed, and his eyes were starting to shine and dart about.  “I’ll give it to both of them.”  He tried to stand up but his hands slipped on the porcelain of the urinal and he fell back again.

“In a moment,” said the assassin, taking another step closer, watching Qasqar carefully.  Even a drunk could lash out and get lucky.  “We need to know that the message will be taken seriously.”

“It will!”  Qasqar’s dread was now engraved on his face, deeply inscribed in his tired, alcohol-soaked skin.

“Indeed.”  The assassin looked to the left and Qasqar’s eyes followed instinctively so when the assassin’s hand leapt out like a salmon leaping upstream to seize Qasqar’s right hand im-Mantis didn’t even notice until the hand was pressed against the wall, stretched out by the length of his arm.

“No no no no no,” gabbled Qasqar, his eyes now locked onto the knife in the assassin’s hand.  “No, please no!”

The assassin pressed the point of the knife against the middle knuckle of Qasqar’s hand and pressed inwards until it popped.  A little jiggling and then the knife cut through the skin and tendons, severing the middle finger.  Qasqar’s scream echoed around the toilets and he struggled, trying to pull his hand free.  The assassin held it easily in place until the finger dropped to the floor, then let go.  As im-Mantis clutched his hand to his chest, blood staining his already filthy t-shirt, and moaned to himself the assassin picked the finger up and set it delicately on the envelope.

“Don’t forget to pass the message on,” he said.  “Or next time it’ll be something you value more.”

He walked back through the janitor’s closet and closed the secret door behind him.  Taking his phone out, he sent a message to the bartender, a random Instagram picture whose actual meaning was that the task had been achieved, and then went to find somewhere to wash his feet.  Dealing with the im-Mantis’s always seemed to be a dirty business.