Here lies Ranjid of Vermeria, who died well. May the folly of his masters leave no stain. To the Water Underneath he is commended.
The best warrior - the best of the best - does not pause in taverns to regale his friends. He does not swing home to kiss his lover, nor bundle children in his arms. The best warrior does not pause to smirk or play with words. He does not saunter on a street or wait for bounties. Such men are not the best. Only parodies.
The best warrior knows naught else. His life is a constant of fear and a routine of tedium.
The best warrior is the uninteresting one.
Here lies Grudlina of Daypere, who died well. May the folly of her masters leave no stain. To the Water Underneath she is commended.
Czar Lukesh kept a steady jog through the sand, the pump of arms and thighs making dust trail. At this hour the Wormwalk Road had been cleared for his morning run, as was tradition, and silence held between the southeast walls of Avarath. He was alone with his thoughts, with perception hemmed by the heavy robe he ran in.
Beside him, the lion Aukhmos padded in rhythm.
Here lies the Wizard Yasamere, who died well. May the folly of his masters leave no stain. To the Water Underneath he is commended.
He remembered that one. As Lukesh passed the grave marker it brought a memory of the killing. The Wizard had put a bomb in a whore's breast. Inventive. It was an assassination attempt not easily forgotten.
Strung along the towering section of wall, like nomad sentinels, as regular as the graves, were the ones who had lived. Lukesh's bodyguards - the assassins who had failed and been converted. They protected him now, and kept watch for any who might intrude upon his exercise.
Converted was perhaps a poor word. Sure, they served the Czar to preserve their own lives. But what separated them from those corpses in the ground - from the graves they were forced to look upon - was that they had something left to learn. Something left to do. And in that absence, Lukesh had provided. Each man who guarded him had a sentence. A number of years. And when that time was up, they would be permitted to try again. Each one carried a license to kill - a permission to finish what they first attempted. They would serve him, they would learn, and then they would have a chance to kill him once more.
To understand the
why of this absurd arrangement was to understand Kaustir. There were no gods but strength of will. If a man could kill Lukesh, then a fine man he was. Those bodyguards had a frame for their existence - a ticking clock - a light in the darkness by which to align their waking hours. They were the greatest warriors next to the Czar - men of tenacity.
Why? Because they felt ownership. They felt jealousy. Each knew that if they let the Lord of Kaustir die, they would have never have the chance to kill him themselves, and thus complete their circle.
Here lies a boy of Madrigus, who died well. May the folly of his masters leave no stain. To the Water Underneath he is commended.
Such was their routine. Lukesh and his honour guard. Boring men. Brutes with little else to occupy them. The greatest of warriors.
At a ruined gatehouse, where thorn-choked stone crumbled from either wall, they made their move. Klausen had used his Advent to cling to the high gutter. He dropped now, and brought a knee strike hammering to the Czar's shoulder. It was a savage takedown, earning time enough for the others to rush from hiding.
If Klausen was above then Yassir was behind. They shared that tactic all too often. In his pain Lukesh swept out a leg and caught him as expected. The second attacker went down, and Lukesh used him to pull upright. His wrist blocked a staff strike from the third man - Barnes - but his brother, Tyrel, was on the blindside. A wood shaft cracked across the Czar's ribs. He stumbled. He turned it into a roll, twisting with the motion to face them on the upright. His fist slammed Klausen's jaw, the elbow dropped to stun the knee of Barnes. He turned with it, rolled over the man's body and caught Tyrel with his heel.
The circle reeled, then closed again. Tyrel was the swiftest. Seven staff-strikes squandered the Czar's parries, and allowed Barnes and Klausen to flank. The wood slammed his back, knocked out his calves. The Czar fell. He knuckled-struck Tyrel's knee, brought him down, butted head to head, then hissed as a staff pummeled his shoulder. His arms were taken by the ex-assassins, wrapped in expert wrist locks. And each man bade their partner move in.
Lukesh screamed as his fingers were snapped.
He was overwhelmed. The strikes came quicker, length after length of wood hammering his body. He surged forward, jolting with every hit, cradling his broken fingers. The four men followed. Lukesh stumbled over a wall, slumped against a ruin, fell down in a patch of sand between two thornweeds. He was on his knees. His strength was gone.
The four bodyguards kept behind him, their staffs half-raised. The only noise was their breaths and the shriek of their Aux, who had surrounded the roaring image of the lion Aukhmos. To this cacophony the attackers closed, and Klausen spoke.
"Yield?"
Lukesh drove both mangled hands into the sand, his broken body trembling with pain. Dark hair hung across his lowered face.
"Do you yield?"
The Czar's thumbs hooked around something.
As the line of grave markers had told, and as their very lives attested, these four bodyguards were alive because the Czar had seen something in them. He had not killed them back then... because they still had potential. They still had things to learn.
And on this particular morning, the lessons were two-fold.
He who cannot form a fist is not without hands.
And...
Never fight a man in his home territory.
With a spray of sand, Lukesh clapped his hands together. In each palm, a vial erupted, mixing mercury, silver nitrate, and neat vodka in violent union.
Seiyr's latest offering, buried between the thornweed markers. The explosion swept around him like a ghost, flashing upwards and outwards. And each man was caught. The circle of attackers reeled, their eyes and airways seared. And as one their Aux dropped and Aukhmos among them roared.
The Czar rose. His palms were riddled with glass, great shards stuck through the flesh, wet with blood. He seized the advantage. With palm-strikes, slaps and swipes he cut a bloody swathe through his men, opening chests and limbs with the glass. And in their howls all was told. Confusion became rage, rage became anguish, and anguish became surrender.
"YIELD!" Barnes cried as he fell with bleeding arms.
"YIELD!" echoed Klausen, whose face was matted gore.
"YIELD! YIELD!" Yassir dropped in foetal curl and clutched the wounds upon his scalp.
Only Tyrel said nothing, standing off, one eye blinded. He saw his friends give in and shot a glare to the Czar. He was three years away from the end of his sentence. Impatience was creeping. He spat once on the floor and limped away, abandoning the fight.
The third lesson is an easy one.
Lukesh ran him down and put him in a headlock till he pissed himself.
* * * * * *
Leaving a dotted trail of blood, the Burning Czar came back into his penthouse with Aukhmos padding after him. There was glass and silver in his hair, and his robes were hung in half-burned tatters. He shed the last of them and crossed to his throne. It was cool against his naked skin.
Slumping, he let the the pain speak its piece and brought his head against the cushion.
For a moment his eyes his eyes fluttered closed. Then he nodded to a guard. His hands hung over the arm-rests, pierced with glass and dripping in blood.
"Bring me a healer."
He would need to rest for tomorrow's ambush.
"A pleasure to meet you, my friend," I reply to our new arrival in a cheery tone, "I have heard of you. By reputation, of course." People in my line of work have naturally heard of this upstanding officer of the empire.
As a court healer, Amalia was obligated to report to the court in Avarath. It was near the Czar's penthouse, and almost as big as the one in Zirako. But unlike Zirako whose court consisted of old families, many in the court were wealthy merchants with only money to their names. Every time Amalia came here she saw new faces among those in court and it made her uneasy. 
Theo collected his allocated meal from the communal mess hall and mooched to a quiet corner. Mealtime was always just a little awkward - for a start, they didn't make the tables with creatures of his stature in mind.
"
K'larr stay seated as he waited for his eccentric guests to conclude formailities. 
