Memory of a Fool
I sat high up in a building, the descending sun casting long shadows behind the tiny people going about on the marketplace below. If any of them had turned their heads up their gazes would've easily caught a white hooded man leaning his head against the wall of a church tower, but none looked up. – They rarely do.
The wind stroking my cheek was soft and warm, carrying with it smells of people, dust and most pronounced salt and fish. I couldn't see the harbour from where I sat, but the glittering, silvery ocean endlessly wrapping it's arms around the horizon was impossible to miss while watching the sun set. Seagulls and pigeons fought, in air and on ground over what they managed to steal from an angry fish merchant who was about to close his business for the day. Their shrieks pierced the otherwise fairly quiet afternoon, seagulls laughing viciously as they glided through the air before they flapped their wings and vent for a sought out target of fish guts.
Resting my wrist against a bent knee I studied my left hand. Warm sun rays coloured my tanned skin a fiery orange, the hair on the back of the hand a golden bronze. It was a calloused hand, broad and strong, evidently used to wield a blade, ride a horse or climb a wall rather then writing letters or painting portraits. A fighters hand, a weapon even.
I spread my fingers wide and stretched, pain stung from my ring finger, well from where it used to be and washed down my hand and wrist, I quickly withdrew my fingers and closed them into a fist. I was still sore all though the ceremony of me leaving the life of a novice felt ages ago. The pain disappeared almost immediately leaving only warmth and itching. Turning my palm upwards I eyed the construction of my hidden blade before I slid the knife to its fully extended position. Just like my skin the silvery metal caught the burning orange of the sun.
As strange and frightening it had been to loose a finger as empowering had it been to gain this new part of me, for a part of me the hidden blade had started to feel. Whenever I took it off I felt naked and exposed, but most disturbingly weak. When I had it on, I even slept with it on sometimes, it was a great feeling of power and control. Floating trough crowds I used and shaped the surroundings to my favour, when the target least expected it I would strike with my deadly secret, retracting it as quickly as it had been brought into a neck, spine or abdomen. My silent deed would go unnoticed for a few precious seconds, well enough for me to be on my way. When panic would strike amongst the crowd, the guards cursing and shouting I would smile, not because of the death I had caused, I've never enjoyed death, but because of the proof of my success, of my skill, of my wit.
Once I was foolish and it was still a fool that retracted his blade, rose and entered the shadows on the top of the church. I remember how a few pigeons hooted and entered the sky as I neared the edge of the roof. I watched them, after they had circled a few moments in the air above me, settle on the square where the fish merchant was long gone. Looking towards, where I knew the harbour was, the last rays of sun disappeared behind the roof tops, soon the sun would descend fully behind the horizon leaving the city of Acre in darkness and I would set my plan into workings.
It was a fools smile which spread on my lips as I leaped from the edge into the air, aiming for a cart full of clothing and wool. I was looking forward to the night, ready as I had been for several days to complete my mission, exited as the fool I was, the tool I was. My mind was so young...