What is Not Diminished..

The duel had ended, no victory claimed.

The room no longer revolved around those who had sent him, but pivoted precariously on the silence that ensued.

Bosch looked towards Amuther.

The assassin noticed.

“I do not mistake my position,” he said.

His voice retained its superlative composure.

“I am aware of where I stand.”

He glanced briefly at the weapon on the floor.

All attention was upon him.

“And if you must treat me as prey to be played with after the hunt, then do your worst.”

A grimace crossed his face.

“I will not permit you to add insult to my injury.”

Amuther offered a tired smile, one that carried neither amusement nor contempt.

“Would it be asking too much for you to place yourself in our situation?”

The assassin’s attention sharpened.

“And discount, for the moment, the things we do not know that you are privy to.”

Another pause.

For a moment no-one moved.

“Shoot him.”

Jenny’s voice came without ceremony.

The words seemed to hang in the room.

Bosch looked towards her.

Then towards Amuther.

There was the faintest trace of recognition between them; the acknowledgement of a man who had heard a familiar language spoken by a stranger.

“That would be the conventional course.”

The assassin’s eyes returned to him.

“But if we are all agreed, I suggest we reconvene once Iscariot and Jenny have seen to your wound.”

The assassin’s eyes seemed still, and yet for an instant betrayed a sense of being somehow slighted.

Bosch turned towards the others.

“What say you?”

Before anyone advanced an opinion, a quiet preponderance of thought descended upon the occupants of Shanti Cottage.

Its duration remained unmarred, but when at last Shanti spoke, there was neither triumph nor reproach in her voice, only the burden of a truth that had long been settled within herself.

“Conflict is a poor arbiter of resolve. Let us first restore what necessity requires, then consider what justice demands.”

Her gaze rested first upon Bosch, then Cliftoval, and finally Amuther.

“There are ways of thinking that prepare the ground for violence long before a sword is drawn..and we are not that.”

The words settled differently upon each of them.

Bosch suddenly blinked his eyes, raising his hand as if troubled by something before them. He no longer saw the cottage but a family broken beneath a hail of bullets in the Netzarim Corridor. Above the gunfire, a security officer’s laughter zithered out of control.

Cliftoval found himself once more upon the Moldovan frontier, where he had been ordered to seize three Russian intelligence operatives purported to be plotting a coup against the installed Sandu government. They had proved instead to be three gaunt young men carrying little more than hunger, each seeking asylum beyond a border that had mistaken desperation for conspiracy.

Amuther lowered his eyes.

Baghdad returned unbidden.

Not as memory alone, but as debt.

The assassin observed them all in silence.

He could account for strategy.

He could account for discipline.

He could even account for mercy.

But this..

This curious obedience to things no one else could see..

He possessed neither the doctrine nor means by which to comprehend, let alone manipulate, it.

Jenny remained alert, unsure whether the duel had concluded or merely paused.

Bosch returned, knelt down and retrieved the PSS Vuhl.

He slid the magazine free and examined the chamber.

Satisfied, he engaged the safety, glanced briefly at Amuther before placing the pistol into a drawer beneath the sideboard. Locking it, he slipped the key into his shirt pocket.

Amuther crossed to where Dromil’s sword rested. He unfolded a small cloth upon the floor, settled the point upon it, then eased the blade back until it rested securely against the wall.

Only after that did he straighten himself.

In the background the vinyl continued its circular motion.

Boz, observing carefully, stood beside the gantry of shelves stacked with obscure literature.

Iscariot drifted into a space midway between Shanti and the assassin.

The assassin looked expectant, but instead of further travail, found himself surrounded by people who appeared content to leave the next move to him.

A faint scraping cut into the silence.

The stylus had reached the run-out groove, tracing an endless circuit against the distinctive red and blue CBS Masterworks label.

Jenny looked towards it.

She crossed the room purposefully.

For a moment her hand hovered above the tonearm.

Then she carefully lifted the stylus clear of the record.

A small mechanical click seemed to linger long after it had sounded.

Though disarmed, wounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the assassin’s posture remained defiant.

Amuther regarded him for a moment before ever so slightly inclining his head. Then, with the same unassuming courtesy he might have extended to any traveler arriving at the cottage, he gestured towards one of the chairs and asked,

“Would you care to take a seat?”

Jenny had placed the medical case upon the table and began to check its contents.

“Iscariot, can ya get a coupla hand towels and a bowl o’ warm water?”

“This is entirely unnecessary, I assure you.”

Jenny looked at his wound, then at him with a long, piercing glance and held his eyes.

The assassin approached the chair with measured care, all the while gauging the room before lowering himself into it.

Iscariot returned carrying a bowl of warm water and two folded hand towels.

She glanced towards the assassin’s leg.

“If ya’d be so kind.”

He remained motionless.

“It really isn’t necessary.”

Jenny replied without looking up. “Au contraire, necessary’s ’xactly what it is.”

The assassin looked towards Amuther.

“You’ve my word,” Amuther said quietly. “No one here will diminish you.”

For the first time since entering the cottage, a measure of uncertainty rippled through his marblesque composure.

His gaze fell to the dark stain spreading beneath the fold of his trouser leg.

Without a word he reached down, intending to free the cloth himself.

His hand faltered.

Jenny noticed.

She began to cut away at the trouser leg with a pair of scissors.

“We’ll soon know whether it’s only the muscle that’s taken the punishment.”

The assassin looked up.

“I have no wish to become an object of pity.”

Jenny’s hands hesitated above the dressings.

“Good, because that option was voided the moment ya came through the window uninvited, don’cha think.”

Though the words were acerbic she met his eyes without severity.

And there was an economy of sentiment in her actions.

She nodded towards Iscariot.

“Would ya help him with the boot?”

For the briefest instant the assassin’s expression hardened.

The request seemed to demand more of him than the discomfort of the wound.

With reluctance, he leaned back in the chair and allowed Iscariot to assist.

The leather yielded with a soft creak.

As the boot came free, everyone became aware of the extent to which he had attempted to conceal his injury.

Blood had worked its way into the stitching and darkened the stocking almost to the knee.

Jenny said nothing.

Years of training had taught him to search for the intention beneath the gesture; the calculation behind the courtesy; the advantage concealed within the act.

Yet nothing presented itself.

The wound was treated because it needed treating.

The absence of any further purpose unsettled him more than hostility ever could.

Every instinct insisted that something vital was eluding him.

He searched for a trace of triumph, satisfaction, or condescension.

There was none.

For a moment he considered whether they were naïve.

The assessment was almost immediately rejected.

Whatever governed their conduct belonged to no order he recognised.

Unexpectedly, a burden unlike any he had previously known settled quietly upon him.

A thought arose that, under ordinary circumstances, he would never have allowed himself to entertain.

It was almost inconceivable to him that, rather than being the instrument of terror he had always imagined himself to be, he had become something far more dangerous.

Something capable of rendering meaningless forty years of hard, gruelling training?

Had he himself become the liability?

His eyes fell again upon Jenny.

But she was too occupied with the task at hand to notice.

Iscariot handed her a wet towel.

Jenny lifted her hands away from the bandage.

The concluding turn had given her an unexpected sense of achievement. Sitting back on her heels, she took a moment to study her work, ensuring that nothing had been overlooked.

She stood up, avoiding his eyes, and went to the sink to wash her hands.

The water in the basin clouded briefly before clearing again.

Iscariot began tidying up the remainder.

“Does anyone want any tea?” she asked as she wiped her hands on the towel.

No one answered.

She looked first to Bosch.

He seemed not to have heard.

Then to Boz, who just curled his bottom lip undecided.

He was watching Iscariot.

As though something he had witnessed many times before had, for reasons he did not yet understand, acquired an entirely different meaning.

Jenny waited another moment.

Then, with a conciliatory flick of the wrist, began to refill the kettle.

Boz watched Iscariot as he gathered the remaining fragments of the discarded linen, folding each piece with considerable attention. The kind of action that was so ordinary it went almost unnoticed.

Except by him.

He had seen those unassuming gestures before.

A plate carried into a room.

A chair left by a fire.

A blanket appearing without being offered.

Things that scarcely registered as significant at the time, yet somehow the memory of them lingered long after everything else was forgotten.

As Jenny began to close off the tap, the pipes gave a sudden, prolonged rattle.

“Anyone for tea?” she repeated. “Speak now, or ferever hold yer peace.”

The question and its attempted levity drifted through the room.

Bosch, immersed in thought, gave a dismissive nod.

The assassin observed the room as if something invisible were being passed around.

Boz’s eyes rested on Iscariot.

Some memory hovered beyond his reach. But the unmistakable certainty that, at one time in his life, the sound of Iscariot moving quietly about a room had meant he was safe, resurfaced.

Jenny glanced around once more before reaching for the China.