The boy had learned quickly that any amount of empathy he felt for the prisoners he killed would only make the act of killing more difficult. Over seven years he had effectively destroyed what remained of his empathy and compassion.

It may have been the only thing that saved him. Even after removing his mask and showing Azadeh what she thought she wanted to see, he'd held onto his ridiculous crush on her. Even as her friendly smile grew less friendly when she greeted him, he held onto that crush. Even as she withdrew from her studies to avoid him, he hoped things could get better.

At first, she had tried to speak to him the way she always had, but eventually she ceased all contact with him and became engaged to a young man from a country the boy had never heard of. He remained alone in his bedchamber for more than a week when he learned the news.

It had been three years since she had gone off to marry that man, and though the boy tried to tell himself that she wouldn't have been able to love him anyway, he still felt a pain in his heart at the thought of her. And she still crossed his mind far more than he cared.

It was always at night that she crept into the corners of his mind. She'd treated him more kindly than most. Still distant, still never touching him or showing him any amount of love, but she hadn't ever tried to hurt him. Not until that fateful day that he'd first been paid to take a life.

It felt like forever ago now that the boy was well into his adulthood. He'd been perfecting the art of hardening his heart for close to a decade now.

It was late at night when a young slave knocked on the door to his bedchamber. Though he had been lounging in bed, he had not been sleeping.

"Come," he called lazily as he sat up. The door creaked open and a small child stepped in. She couldn't have been much more than eight or nine years old, and she looked positively terrified to be sent to the darkened bedchamber of the frighteningly tall man who always wore a mask. He sat forward, curious. It was rare that he was summoned at night, rarer still that the slave sent to retrieve him was a female.

But the girl did not speak. She stepped into the room, closed the door, and looked uneasily into the dark abyss that surrounded her. The boy slipped a mask onto his face, leaned over and lit the lamp that sat at his bedside, more for the girl's comfort than anything. The addition of light only seemed to frighten her further.

"Are you lost?" he asked, his voice even and low. The girl shook her head, no. "Is there a reason you've come to my bedchamber?"

"I am a gift from the Shah," the girl whispered. Her voice was so quiet that it barely reached his ears, but he was certain he'd heard her correctly. He exhaled hard, as though he'd been punched in the chest. Visions of the night he'd caught Firouz in the act danced in his head.

The very thought of what the Shah could have been thinking, sending him a child. There was no questioning his intentions. One needed only look at the girl's posture to see how much she feared what would happen next. When he stood, she let out a whimper of surprise. He ignored it. He knew he stood far taller than most men, and to the tiny girl that stood on the opposite end of the room he had to look like a giant.

As he approached the door, she shrank into the shadows, inching away from him and making no attempts to hide her fear.

"Come with me," he said, extending one long, bony hand in her direction. She stared at it, unsure of his intentions. He rolled his eyes and reached for her arm. He took her firmly, yet gently, by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. As his fingers wrapped around her tiny wrist, she gasped at how cool his skin was against her own. "You have nothing to fear from me," he said. He could feel the girl trembling from fear anyway within his grasp.

Of course, he thought, everyone fears the assassin.

The guards that stood just outside of the Shah's bedchamber seemed to be expecting him as he approached. They stepped aside for him and drew back the curtains that separated the chamber from the hall. The boy, hardly a boy any longer as his features had stretched and shifted into some semblance of that of an adult, had been to the Shah's bedchamber in the night many a night, summoned from what the guards had assumed to be the deepest sleep. In fact, he hardly slept anymore.

Sleep meant that the screams of the countless fools whose lives he'd ended would reach his ears and torment him all night long. Sleep meant restless dreams of Azadeh and Firouz and Saeed. Sleep meant he'd likely wake up even more exhausted than he'd been when he'd nodded off.

Now it was his turn to wake the Shah from his slumber.

"Is this some variety of joke? Because I do not find it amusing, Highness," he said in his smooth, velvety baritone. No longer did his voice crack or falter as he spoke. As he'd hardened himself against the atrocities he had seen and participated in, he'd found a strange calmness that did wonders for keeping his voice level, even as he grew more enraged by the minute.

What kind of sick bastard sends a child to the bedchamber of a man like me?

The Shah snored loudly and seemed to jump, opening his eyes. He was awake by the time the masked man had finished what he was saying. "Hmm?" he grunted as he heaved himself up to a sitting position. The women who stood at his bedside rushed to move cushions behind the Shah so he could rest comfortably. "Ah, I see your gift finally reached you."

"Gift? What kind of gift is a small child?" There was no masking the anger in his voice. The Shah laughed.

"You have not shown interest in any of the women I have paraded before you and I fear you have been neglecting yourself in your refusal to take a wife. And so I have sent Fautimeh to you. If she is not to your liking, perhaps in a few years—"

"I will not bed a child." To punctuate his words, he shoved the girl forward and released her wrist, sending her hurtling forward until she hit the foot of the Shah's bed and stopped, staring up at him with wide, fearful eyes.

The Shah's eyes flashed in the limited lamplight.

"All right, I can see that this was not one of my better thought out gifts… Dispose of it, then." The girl whipped around and looked up at the Shah in horror.

"Dispose of…"

"You said yourself you've no use for Fautimeh, so dispose of her. You know what to do with useless people. Why have you brought your problem before me at this late hour? The moon is about to set and there are dreams yet to dream. Leave me." With a wave of his hand, the Shah summoned forth his guards who escorted the girl and the masked man out of his bedchamber.

Now the girl kept her distance, ever watching the freakishly tall man. She kept her arms tucked tightly in against her chest and was actively trying to make herself as small as possible. The man stared back at her, stunned at the Shah's outburst. He'd never been contracted to kill a woman or a child.

The youngest he'd killed had been seventeen; the Shah's own son who had defected and was planning a rebellion—

—or had he been? The boy doubted it now. It wouldn't have been the first time that the Shah had tricked him.

He moved suddenly and the girl gave a shriek.

"Please don't kill me!" she exclaimed, backing away from him. For the first time in years, he wanted to cry. His eyes filled with sorrow as he knelt before her and extended his hand to her. Even crouched down on his knees, he was far taller than she was.

"I meant it when I said that you've nothing to fear from me, Fautimeh," he whispered. "I may not have use for you, but I will not end your life before it has even begun."

The girl had no reason to believe him, but with a shaky hand she reached out and took the one he offered. Slowly he stood, so as to not startle her further, and led her back to his bedchamber with a sigh. The last thing I should be allowed to do is care for a child, he thought with no small measure of misery.

He relinquished use of his bed to the girl, resigning himself to the lounge he'd pulled out onto his small balcony and left her to her own devices. When the sun came up, he found her sound asleep amidst his pillows and blankets. Even as she slept, the girl looked positively terrified. He imagined that was how he had appeared through his childhood.

Was I ever so small as this girl, he wondered as he watched her sleep, was I ever so afraid?

He was not expecting to be summoned by the Shah that day. If anything, he expected that the Shah would ignore him for at least a week.

So when he heard the telltale knock at his door, he was more than a little surprised.

He strode across the room to the door, which he flung open with the same violence he had for the past eight years. When the door hit his visitor, he realized that it wasn't his usual summoner. Instead, he found himself face to face with a scruffy-looking, aged man who appeared so very familiar. His name eluded the boy.

"You," the man exclaimed angrily. "What have you done with my daughter?"

"What—"

"Where is my Fautimeh?" the man demanded.

"Fautimeh is sleeping there in bed," the boy said, stepping aside to allow the man a glimpse of his bedchamber. It was all the man needed to barrel past him and scoop the girl up in his arms.

"Daddy!" the girl squealed joyously as she woke.

"My little princess," the man said tearfully as he hugged her tightly. "Has he harmed you?" The girl shook her head, no. "Has he touched you as a husband would?" Again, the girl shook her head, no.

He whipped around then to look at the masked man once more. "There is talk that the Shah's assassin has killed the girl who was meant to be his child bride," he said quietly. "I had not learned the fate of my daughter until after the rumors had already reached my ears. It seems that one cannot trust all that he hears."

The masked man said nothing, so the other man continued.

"I don't know if you remember me, boy. But I remember you. How you've changed since the day Yousef and Nazir threw you unceremoniously into the back of our cart, so many years ago."

"Saeed?" The name was merely a whisper, but Fautimeh's father smiled as he heard it.

"The disgraced Saeed Rahimi, former head of the Shah's police."

"Disgraced? How?"

The man grimaced as he finally set his daughter back on the bed. "Come, we shall not talk of such things in front of my daughter."

The masked man gestured to the balcony, and Saeed nodded as they walked out into the sun. It was shaping up to be a hot day already, and before they began to speak once more, the masked man excused himself to cover himself with a scarf to protect his skull from the sun.

"That day so long ago, how can I remember it so clearly still?" Saeed asked as the other man joined him once more on the balcony. "Why do you stand out in my memory, when I cannot even recall the face of my late wife?" He sighed.

"Where have you been all this time?"

Saeed looked up at him. "I was stripped of my title once my brother's sentence was carried out. Without my job, my family suffered. My wife and I had to sell our children to the Shah—" He glanced nervously over his shoulder at his daughter. "—and still we couldn't afford to continue living. My wife died in the pain of childbirth, the very same as the wife of the Shah. Not two hours passed after her last breath and officers I once commanded were at my doorstep with a message from the Shah."

He paused then and sighed. "Two of my children had been sold and were already in a caravan heading east. This was four years ago. They did not tell me which of my children had been sold, so I did not know who was still here, alone, at the palace. And then last month I was told in passing that my child who had remained here had perished in an accident. It was only because one of my men— my former men, excuse me," he corrected himself. "He saw you with her last night. He had spent many weeks with my family before everything fell apart. He knew that you had been gifted my Fautimeh and I had been lied to."

When Saeed had finished speaking, the masked man stared at him in awe. What have I done?

"That man in the cell… That first man that I…"

"That was my brother, you heard correctly." Saeed laughed darkly. "Did you think that he was kept alive because the Shah wished it? My men had a standing order that no one was to execute my brother. My hope was that the Shah would realize how foolish it was to blame my brother for his wife's death. Azadeh was followed by twins and then another son within three years; the Shah's wife was simply worn out. My brother tried to convince the Shah of this before she fell pregnant, but he obviously was not willing to listen."

"And you lost your job after the execution because of your insubordination."

"Yes, and no. When the Shah decided to use you for your particular… skill… there was no further use for me. He absorbed the police back into the ranks of his guards and convinced you to dispose of the ones he didn't trust."

He turned his attention back to the girl who had fallen asleep once more across the masked man's bed. "I want you to come with us, boy. Before you protest, think back on all I just told you. Does the Shah really seem to be a man you want to continue to serve?"

"But— All of this had already begun when you brought me to the Shah, how could you speak so highly of him then?"

"A man in your position ought already know the answer to that," Saeed said. "It's illegal to speak ill of the Shah. Punishable by death." He looked at the man expectantly.

There was a long, not exactly uncomfortable silence between the two men.

"There's nothing for me out there," the man in the mask said finally.

"There's life beyond those walls," Saeed countered. "You might have a life here but you aren't living. You take lives for money. All your finery, your masks, your silks… paid for with blood money doing an easy job that just about any man can be trained to do. Beyond the palace walls—"

"Beyond the palace walls there's nothing for me but the opportunity to be caught and sold as a slave once more."

"You're no longer the child Yousef found so many years ago, boy. Now you're simply a nameless killer. A coward."

"I am no coward."

"You are afraid to leave here because you fear nobody will ever accept you the way the Shah has. I hate to be the one to tell it to you, but the Shah sees you as little more than the freak you see in the mirror. Sure, you might be capable of performing odd tasks for him, but he's used you to strike fear into the hearts of his subjects and to inflict death upon those he does not care for.

"I don't know what your definition of a coward is, but from where I'm standing, I can see two people: a coward and my sleeping daughter." With that, Saeed walked back into the main of the bedchamber and sat beside his sleeping daughter on the bed. The masked man followed him.

"If I go with you, can you promise that I will not be sold back into slavery?" Saeed looked up at the overly tall man. "And that I will not be sold to another freak show?"

"You have my word that all I want is to get out of the country with my daughter. I have limited resources, but what I have I have to share." Once again, the man in the mask fell silent, and Saeed turned his attention back to his daughter.

The man in the mask inhaled sharply, startling the girl awake and causing Saeed to jump. "I do not know why, but I trust you, Saeed. If you say that it is in my best interest to leave here, then I will go with you."

"Gather your belongings, then. We leave at nightfall."