Part II: The Vigil
What does it take for a mortal to hold the affections of a god? Sky's dedication to his love never wavered, and he stood proudly by her side, enforcing her will without question. Over the years his name became more dreaded than Death's Hand, for Sky worked in the shadows, and his informants were everywhere. There were moments when Sky would lie alone in the middle of the night – for no god needs sleep – and he would question the path his life had taken. It was invariably on those nights that the Empress would find time to come to him, and the next day would always find more steel in his eyes and a dark resolve burning in his heart.
In the distance, thunder boomed with the deep resonance of war drums. A rising tempo of hard rain cut across the rumble in the sky, blurring the world into the same gray-tinted mass. In his tent, Sky sat and watched the flicker of a candle wick gasping its last breath. The melted tallow ran in liquid red rivulets across the table. It was past their appointed hour, and though a goddess was infallible, tonight she was late.
Sky disliked these moments when he could only wait. In his hands, a whetstone traveled swiftly up and down his blade, a little canyon worn into the side where he passed it along the sharpened sword. Of course, this was not the first time she had been late. Sometimes she was absent altogether. Usually she was fine, though once or twice she had returned to him barely recognizable with injuries and caked in blood – her own as well as her enemies'. He remembered the Four Celestial Generals had given her some difficulty, Lei the Thunder God, in particular, and even in his hardened heart Sky ached with pity when he remembered how she had stumble in on her return, barely able to stand, her arms and legs a latticework of lacerations. How could he bear to lose her again? More than once he had asked her to let him fight by her side, but in a battle amongst the gods, what could a mere mortal do? He took bitter comfort in the knowledge that she had Death's Hand and Ya Zhen with her. Even still… he disliked the waiting.
The candle bled away as Sky turned his mind to happier times, his blood warming as he remembered the night she returned victorious from the defeat of the insufferably smug Forest Shadow. There were no words to express the heat of their celebration that night, nor the one after, but the sweet aphrodisiac of victory suffused every element of her being and he burned in the glory of her passions. He hungered for the taste of her flesh and sweat against his mouth; still just as madly in love with the fine eyes and glorious hair that had not aged a day since she defeated Emperor Sun Hai and took the power of the Water Dragon for her own.
Afterwards, when he was spent and she pretended to sleep softly by his side (she indulged him in such normalities), he would look fondly on her youthful face and trace the tantalizing curvature of her lips with his hands. It was the unspoken understanding between them that just as he worked without fail to tame the people of the Empire beneath their feet while she was away, so in return she rewarded him with these moments of imagined domesticity. Earlier in their reign they had even escaped on rural "getaways" and traveled through the Empire disguised as simple peasants. They visited the cities of the Prosperous East, enjoyed the night pleasures of the Phoenix Gate, and chartered their way down the Silkworm River back to the Golden Delta, but after the third assassination attempt, Monshuiye (1) herself put a stop to their trips, and in any case, the matters of the Empire and Heavens had taken precedent over their own pleasures. Larger, more pressing issues demanded both their attention, and there was no longer time to spend pursuing trivial matters. But it was on nights like these that Sky missed those moments together most.
A rustling at the tent entrance broke his reminiscences.
"Enter," he commanded and a slight man with dark-stained hands and matching armor entered.
"The prisoner is prepared, my Lord," bowed the man, his shaven head wet from the rain and reflecting red in the candlelight. Sky stopped polishing the edge of his blade and waved the man away. Never rising from his bow, the Assassin backed silently out of the tent and disappeared into the shadows. Sky stood and followed into the rain, tasting the iron in the air as he walked across his camp and feeling the thick fluid cling to his shoulder-length hair before slicking down black robes. His sentries stood diligently to attention as he passed into the prisoner's tent.
The bronzed light of a single brazier revealed a man in the tan robes of a monk, his body and hands bent and clapped by heavy metal stocks, his head shaven save for a tight bun at the top. The prisoner was suspended by chains that ran from the central pole to his mental claps and his weight was uncomfortably balanced between his bonds and his bare, blistered feet. His face was a scarred and bloodied map of pain, his lips were split, his right eye was swollen like a purple patch. The hands of the prisoner were stained just as darkly as Sky's Assassins', though this man had abandoned the Lotus ranks years ago. As Sky approached, he stirred and moaned softly with effort, slowly cracking open his one good eye.
"What do you want, Sky? I won't tell you where they are, and I am no stranger to torture. The vermin you employ will not find it easy to break me." In his younger days Sky would have retorted with a clever comeback, something that both taunted and reminded his prisoner of his bondage, but the humor of the past was past. Now, he merely stood where he was, a darker shadow in the dim light.
"I'd die rather than tell you anything. Why don't you kill me? Or does your bitch have you wound up so tight around her finger that you won't even dare touch me without her permission?"
Ignoring the taunts, Sky unwound the gray silk sash around his waist and tenderly lifted his prisoner's head. He dabbed gently around the corners where the blood was still fresh and worked his way gently across the face, taking care to clean carefully around the swollen eye. The man tried to break away, or open his jaw to spit, but Sky held him firm.
Sky smiled as if the two men shared a secret joke. "I don't want you dead, Zu. I want you to live a long, long life. Very painfully," He added as he flicked his wrist and a slender blade appeared between his fingers, "so I can enjoy every moment of it."
He scrapped the tip of the blade against Zu's cheekbones, not yet drawing blood, but allowing the weight of the metal to settle against the skin as he traced around the purple swollen eye. To his credit, Zu did not tremble as Sky toyed with him. A rising scream of first surprise, then excruciating pain was torn out of Zu's broken form however, as Sky plunged the knife with surgical precision into the bad eye, releasing blood and tears down the prisoner's face until the pain became intolerable and he fainted.
When the screaming subsided, Sky wedged his silk sash against Zu's eye and removed the blade, wrapping the long sash around the wound and Zu's head. Yellow puss dripped from the socket of the right eye, like a sallow river across the cheek. Sky had a certain interest in the study of the human anatomy, and this technique of bisecting the mind was just one of the many tricks he had picked up in his years of study. The blade inserted through the eye had the effect of dividing the mind, making it difficult for the victim to plan or organize coherent thoughts. When he awoke, Zu would break sooner than he expected. It was crude and sometimes had the unfortunate effect of rendering a mind completely useless, but with practice, and study, Sky had made it a most effective technique when a prisoner was particularly resistant.
Sky wiped his hands on the makeshift bandage, pleased with his handiwork though he was disappointed that Zu had not managed to stay conscious to scream for long. Never mind. No doubt Monshuiye would be able to sustain him when she arrived; her talent for manipulating chi energy included even the healing of others, most useful when immediacy was required to continue working with a subject. He did hope she'd enjoy his gift. It had taken some planning to feed the false information of their whereabouts to Zu's spies without alarming the rebel's forces, but the prize was worth the effort. With one swift motion he signaled to the sentries that a doctor was to be brought to tend to the prisoner more fully. Venturing through the dark rain again, Sky returned to the candlelight vigil in his tent.