Namaste (28 page)

Amit met Woo’s eyes. “You are a monster.”
 

“It was all necessary, Amit. To open you like a nut, crack your shell, and release the leader inside you.”
 

“I am not your leader.”
 

Woo shoved him. “I told them to film it. To record the moment they slit her throat. My monks found a cellular phone on the bodies you left, and brought it to me. They made her beg. They told her she would die, but that it would take time. We knew you were coming; we are Sri and do not miss such things. We wanted to watch you watch her die. I have
that
on video, too. Would you like to see?”
 

A red wall of rage boiled up like a wave. Amit watched the sunlight reflecting in his mentor’s eyes, seeing their intensity and menace. Was this what anger did? Was this the insanity inside? Was this his path, if he succumbed to the devil inside him? He’d been the sword of fate; he’d made those responsible for ills pay with their pain and lives. But in the end, Woo was right. He hadn’t
needed
to do what he’d done. He’d
wanted
to — just as he wanted, right now, to drive his fist through the pulpy gray matter of Woo’s brain.

Woo shoved him harder. Amit did not resist. His back struck a table set with glasses, and they chattered as they wobbled.
 

“She was nothing,” Woo said, his own anger beginning to show on his usually-sedate features. “She was an innocent girl who had harmed nobody. Her mother was a seamstress. They were poor, but happy. We watched them, so that we’d know if they — and she — were the tools we needed. The others knew, you know. We used organization men to kill her, but the order came from the top. We all knew what was at stake. Just as you must know what is at stake.”

Amit watched Woo, now more fascinated by his face than his words. He was doing exactly as Woo had taught him: setting his anger aside without banishing it, holding it ready but refusing to pick it up. Now no weapon could harm him.

Slowly, Amit shook his head.

“Stop listening to the voice of the abbot!” Woo spat. He struck Amit in the chest, but the strike was small and pathetic, almost petulant. “You have a right to your darkness! We meditate on existence, but existence is not clean and pure! You have desires! We
all
have desires! Rafi loved Amala. Amala loved you. Rafi hated you. I lusted after Nisha, and you loved her. You are only powerful because of your vulnerability, don’t you see? As is the order! We cannot evolve inside the lines! The world makes rules, and we must not blindly obey them. You are permitted to hate me. To do otherwise is to be less than human!”
 

“No. I will not play your game.”
 

“This is the
world
, Amit! You cannot understand what hangs in the balance! You cannot turn your back! You have embraced your rage already. There is no return to innocence! You have become what you must be — the only leader who can take this order to what is next!” He shook his head. “There are growing tumors, Amit. Suni has turned his back. More and more, the elders meditate for peace. But peace is not realistic, because the other side carries a knife. He would have the Sri sit with crossed legs, humming mantras as evil rises. How
dare
you be so selfish as to turn away? The greater good, Amit! The greater good!”
 

Amit did the one thing Woo wasn’t prepared to counter. He put a hand on his shoulder and said, “I forgive you.”

“You cannot! What about my crimes? What about the order? What about the world, Amit, and doing what must be done?”
 

Amit shook his head. “You told me to embrace my anger, but to never choose my courses of action based upon it. To never pick up a weapon laid at my feet by another and impale myself with it. An insult is only as sharp as I allow.” He closed his eyes, then made a tiny bow using only his head. He spoke the truth that had been turning inside his throat like a rusty screw: “Nisha is dead, and nothing I have done has changed that.”
 

Woo shoved him again, now devolved into a schoolyard bully rather than the highly trained leader of a league of elite assassins. “You are weak! I was right to leave you behind!”

“I am not weak.”
 

“You will not do what must be done! You are choosing yourself over what is necessary! You see the inevitable, yet put hands palm to palm on your chest and wish me well? Do you not see, Amit? Do you really not see how the Sri are necessary? Is your mind truly so blind, after all your training? Will you really turn your back?”

Amit reached out, took the older monk by the shoulders, and pulled him into an embrace. Woo thrashed, kicking at him. The sensei had been unquestionably right about one thing: Amit was always the best among them. Woo was unable to escape.
 

“I forgive you.”
 

“I killed her! I killed the girl you traveled the world to avenge! I gave the order!”

“I forgive you.”

“I tricked her! I betrayed her! I used her! She was never more than a pawn! I slaughtered her mother and orphaned her brother! I ordered her throat slit, her blood spilled, and her last breath documented!”
 

“I forgive you,” Amit repeated, squeezing tighter.
 

“You are a fool!” Woo spat, still thrashing. “You are blind! You are turning away from what is sensible and logical! The order, Amit! The world needs us!”
 

Amit squeezed tighter. The embrace was warm, and necessary. Inside his mind, the red rocks washed clean. He watched the red fog disperse to mist and then nothing. The world stopped revolving, and his head cleared.
 

There was a small crack, like the sound of a piece of kindling broken over a knee, and Woo stopped struggling.
 

Amit released his father, who collapsed to the floor. His perplexed face looked up at Amit, neck broken into a strange angle.

“I forgive you,” he told the corpse. “And I understand.”
 

Chapter 29

A
MIT
KNELT
ON
THE
GROUND
, in front of the large stone, with the small, dark boy by his side. Behind them was a tall woman with a birthmark on her neck and long fingernails, somewhat red-stained on the underside. The woman stayed back. This was between the monk and the boy.
 

“I have nothing to give,” said Sameer.

“It does not matter. This is not a grave. But none of that matters. Your sister is gone. It does not matter if you kneel over her remains or her ashes, and she is beyond caring if you bring an offering to lie at the foot of a stone marking her place of rest. We are more than bodies. She was good, and innocent. She has moved on. This is about you.”
 

The boy looked at Amit, waiting. His eyes had become hard over the past weeks, and were now little like the soft, naive eyes Amit had encountered months ago.
 

“And me,” Amit added.
 

Sameer lowered his head, chin to chest. His hands made a small motion, as if laying something on an imaginary grave. Amit closed his eyes and did the same, though his hands were still. He imagined Nisha as she was, now gone or in her next life. He had never mourned, and only now knew why. He was afraid of losing control. Anger protected him from despair. Amit had spent too long learning to braid leashes for his true feelings, and would do so no more.
 

When Sameer was finished crying over the grave that was not a grave, he wiped his eyes, sniffed, and stood tall. Together, they walked to the dormitory. Amala followed, and did not speak until Sameer was off with the other children. Amit turned from Sameer to find her looking at him.
 

“You bested Woo in battle.”

Amit nodded slowly. She hadn’t asked a question; it sounded more like a challenge.
 

“Because it was vengeance. He killed this girl. The boy’s sister.”

“Nisha.”

Amala nodded. She’d grown into her oddities. The sharp fingernails he’d thought were so strange had saved his life. He thought of what Woo had said about Amala and Rafi and himself, and he thought about the many moments he’d spent with Amala, unaware. This moment, with Woo dead, felt like a strange beginning. Amit looked at her with new eyes, and found that she was beautiful.
 

“It was an eye for an eye.”
 

“Well … ”
 

“Or was it for the order?”
 

“I … ”
 

Amala didn’t wait for his answer. She turned and began walking, leaving him to follow.
 

“I remember a day when you saved me.” She turned to look at Amit, then nodded knowingly. “That is why I saved you. I was facing a cobra, and you crushed it to rescue me. You were facing a cobra, and I crushed it to rescue you. That is all.”
 

Amala wasn’t talking to him. She was talking, and he happened to be nearby. He felt suddenly at a loss and scampered to keep up. With Woo dead, he was in charge at the second Sri monastery whether he liked it or not. He didn’t want to step into the old man’s shoes, but a league of dangerous assassins needed a head. Woo had wound them up, Amit had to wind them down. Several warriors, knowing this, had asked if they should cease with their training and drills. Amit didn’t know what to do, so he let them continue. Somehow, dismantling the machine without fully processing the papers left by Woo — and assessing the threats facing the order — seemed foolhardy. He would wait, and lead the order. Then dismantle later.
 

“I was so angry that day,” said Amala, her voice nostalgic. Her short female monk’s hair — dark chestnut but not black, thick but not like the others — bounced on her head as she walked, tickling her ears. “I was very close to hitting you. The feeling was deep, and it surprised me. It almost surprised me so much that I forgot that hitting you to make you atone for hurting another living creature was the height of absurdity.” She stopped to face him. “But I didn’t know, Amit. All the time you had your problems, always so angry, always taking extra time with Woo … I never truly understood what it was like to be surprised by emotion. I grew up with the Sri. I came when Woo called me, and did as told. I have never, before Rafi, made a sacrifice.”
 

Amit remembered the cobra, her anger, and how incensed he’d been in return. To Amit, killing the cobra was an obvious response. But then he realized what she was saying, and how this time, she’d killed the cobra instead of trying to drive it away.

Amala closed her eyes, put her palms together in a peak against her chest, and bowed. “I never thanked you. So, now that I understand: Thank you, Amit, for saving me from the creature that was going to kill me.”
 

“You’re … you’re welcome,” he stammered. He was going to return her thanks, but she was already moving. A score had been settled. The girl who hadn’t seen the value of killing understood: You could not always approach decisions of life and death rationally. Sometimes, the animal inside did what had to be done.
 

“You did not snap at Woo. You did not kill him in battle.”
 

Amit didn’t see the point in lying. “No.”

“He talked about you, Amit. Often. Enough that once I asked him when he would send for you. He said you were not ready, and that when the time was right, you would come to us. He sent for the rest of us. I didn’t see why you were different, until I realized that you always were. Like Woo.” She shrugged, then held up her fancy fingernails. “Like me, though I did not know it. I remembered the way he’d always taken you aside as a special project, and how it seemed like he was grooming you to step out of line: a good Sri monk, but a disruptor. For a while, I couldn’t figure it out, then finally did. I knew when you came, Woo’s leadership would end.”
 

“Why?”
 

“Because if you want to create a warrior, you train one. There was only one reason to train a disruptor.”
 

“Why is that?”
 

“To disrupt.”
 

Amala gave Amit a small smile, then sat on a large rock that looked out across the western valley. The sun was low, orange, and almost set. Amit sat beside her.
 

“So, disruptor,” she said. “Will you dismantle the order? Will you merge us with the other monastery, reunite us with Suni?”
 

“I must assess.” He heard Woo in his mind:
Question everything, including me
. “I must study what he left me, and to take nothing for granted. I must not be swayed by prejudices, be they mine or Woo’s or anyone else’s.”
 

“But if true inspiration comes from within,” Amala said, touching her chest, “what does your heart suggest that you will do, now that you command us?”
 

Amit thought. The sun was touching the saw-toothed mountains across the valley. Those points of reference allowed him to actually see the sun’s progress. He watched as it melted into the land below.

“I will do whatever serves the greater good.”

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