9. Ten Years on the Mountain

It had been her; older, taller, with longer hair and more filled out (though still slender), but unmistakably, irrefutably, her. Illumi's mind was racing even as he himself was running back to the landing site just outside of the city, where the airship waited to take him back to Kukuru Mountain.

Usually, he liked to use this time to go over the mission in his head, replaying the event and noting what worked well, what, if anything, went wrong, or could have been improved upon, and how closely the actual assassination had followed the expected course he had previously made for it in his preliminary plans. Then on the airship he would write his reports, the main one for the head of the Zaoldyeck Family, his father, and occasionally a second one just for himself. The job wasn't done until the official report was made, so this was a good use of otherwise wasted time, and it meant he was free that much sooner for the next job. And that job was more and more frequently, one of his own lucrative personal contracts.

This hadn't been one of those, though. This had been a general Zaoldyeck job that had been given to him. He still did those when he wasn't already booked, so he hadn't been too surprised when he saw his name written next to it in the family Schedule/Assignment book. He had been a little curious about the fact that it was a Political, with a very high price and profile, and that it was for Padokia. All his recent work had been Criminal or Commercial, and Padokia's de facto one party rule had made it an enviable model of stability for corrupt republics around the world. It had been years since the last one, and that had been the much more typically requested "alone at home" type. The kind that could be hushed up, leaving just the intended persons intimidated, not an obvious public murder that would shock and agitate the entire populace.

Why had she been there? That was something for his private report, where he logged his most embarrassing failings. Illumi had thoroughly researched the layout of the hotel, the catering staff he would enter with, and the head table occupants, i.e. the candidate Groesbeck, during whose Victory Celebration this was supposed to occur, his family, and of course, the target, Chairman Dewalt. He had clearly omitted something important, because he had been completely unprepared to see her there. He knew he had let his interest in Padokian politics lapse due to the lack of Political jobs, but wasn't she part of the other Party? How was it possible she was there, dancing in the arms of his target?

Upon his reaching the airship, the steward greeted him at the door and then pulled up the stairs and closed it, preparing for take off. He brought Illumi a tray with a light supper, setting it down beside the mission logbook already on the table. Illumi still was trying to make sense of what had happened.

It had been going exactly as choreographed, but Illumi had elected to make a change on site in the original plan, because the crowds partially obscured the head table, and Chairman Dewalt could slump over dead and just be thought, for hours, to have fallen asleep. That wouldn't fulfill the customer's request for an obvious assassination. He waited until the target got up to leave. After all, as his Party's Chairman he would have to put in an appearance at other candidates' parties that election night, even if those would be losses. Groesbeck's daughter got up and moved toward the front door and the target followed. Illumi thought the front door was probably going to be the best spot for the kill and started to move to get the clearest line for it. But both the daughter and the target stopped short of the door to talk to a woman. From his current position, he could only see the Chairman's face with his almost laughably easy to target striped head. But then Dewalt took the woman's arm and turned, heading back toward the dance floor, and Illumi saw the woman's face.

Even on Kukuru Mountain, where things change at a different pace than the rest of the world, ten years is a long time. His first thought upon seeing her had been, 'I still have her shoes.' Now, all kinds of other thoughts and memories were surfacing. How he had expectantly waited, counting the weeks, then the months; and the first time, about a year and a half later, that Minister VerHoffen had come to visit…alone. The gradually dawning realization that, if you have just barely escaped being eaten alive, even if you got away unharmed, you might not want to go back to that place again. He had been unreasonably angry at Mike then, refusing to have anything to do with him. Until one day, when he had been doing some endurance training in the woods, and Mike had approached him whimpering piteously until he petted him and scratched his ear, and he had remembered how the last thing she had said to him had been her apology to Mike. He had replayed that day in his mind over and over, trying to see what he should have done, how it could have been changed to insure a different outcome, and he must have watched every airship arrival for four or five years hoping to see her again.

But even if time doesn't heal all wounds, they do scab over, and there had been the need for the Hunter's license, and the troubles with Killu, and the training of Kalluto, and his growing private practice to attend to, and so he had to admit that he hadn't thought about her in years. He wondered if she had ever thought about him again at all.

He started to write his report. Since his surprised reaction hadn't changed the successful outcome of the mission, he was going to omit it from the official report; but he was going to include her name in the description of the kill, because, in hindsight, it couldn't have worked out better for the job. Pictures of the Opposition Party Chairman, dead in the arms of his rival's daughter would soon be all over the news. It would look as if Illumi had planned brilliantly for the maximum desired effect, and Illumi was certain someone had planned brilliantly. In fact, when he got back home, for once he hoped he didn't have another job right away, because he was going to do something he had never done before. He was going to do research on an already completed job. And he was going to start by finding out the identity of the client.