Namaste by Sean Platt, Realm, Sands, Johnny B. Truant Read Free Book Online

footsteps of five men, and five heartbeats.  
    A voice said, “Well, lookie what we got here.” And then, from the other four, a light chorus of laughter.  
    Amit closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  
    He had to be still. Calm. Focused.
    It seemed he would be getting his catharsis after all.  

Chapter 6

    9:20 PM ON F RIDAY

    The Right Hand sat on the floor with his back against the bed, two of his fingers broken far enough that they looked like they didn’t belong, his wrist so shattered he had to hold it with his left hand to keep it from flopping over like a rag. Even if the Right Hand still had any fight left in him (which he did not), or if he’d posed a threat even fully functional (which he definitely did not), Amit wouldn’t have had to worry. All the man had right now to fight with was his legs. And if he was going to use them for anything, it’d be for running away.  
    “We are taught to be calm and pure of thought in my order,” said Amit, sitting on a seat at the bedroom’s bay window, looking out at the front lawn. He had one knee up and his hands knitted around it, reclining, looking casual and not at all monastic save his garb. “In a way, it was my fault. She came to us for protection. If I hadn’t broken from the discipline of my training and grown enamored, she might never have been in danger. We might have sheltered her as she wanted, hidden her as requested. She might not have ever felt compelled to leave the compound to escape the elders’ disapproving eyes to be with the monk she’d come to love. In a way, I and my imperfect hiding place led her straight from our protection into your hands. Do you agree?”  
    Amit turned to look at the Right Hand.  
    “I keep telling you, I don’t know anything about this woman … ”  
    “Nisha. Her name was Nisha.”  
    “I don’t know anything about … ” He looked at Amit, saw something in the monk’s eyes that bothered him, “ … about Nisha . An order was given to me. I passed it on. That’s all it was. Business. Nothing personal.”  
    Amit stood. He crossed to the Right Hand, then glanced back through the window. He could see a long line of lights in the distance, approaching on the main road. Reds and blues, the oranges of ambulances. Thanks to the second call he’d had the Right Hand make, white headlights were probably the news.
    “I assure you, it was personal to her. And to me.”  
    The Right Hand flinched as if waiting to be struck, but during the past day, Amit had managed to regain the control he’d lost so early this morning. Ironically, he was more emotionally in control now than he had been in weeks, now that Nisha and her distracting, muddling love were out of the equation. He’d already gotten the information he needed from the Right Hand, and there was no real logical point in torturing him further. He deserved to die as had all of the others — the five men from the barn, the Right Hand’s guards — but his more important function was to convey a message, and an emotion. Uncertainty, and fear.  
    Amit returned to the window seat, but this time he didn’t sit. He watched and waited as the line of lights approached the closed main gate.  
    “If it makes you feel any better,” said the Right Hand, looking down at his destroyed paw, wincing in pain, “you couldn’t have protected her, even if she’d stayed at the monastery. Not from our people. Not from my bosses.”  
    Amit laughed — a good-natured laugh, because he was a kind-hearted man who still saw beauty in the world. “Oh, but then you don’t realize who it was she came to. The five men you sent to kill her this morning did not.”  
    Judging by the look on the Right Hand’s face, Amit realized that news must not have made it up the chain yet. He didn’t know the elite assassination squad, if that’s what the group was, had failed to return. Amit took a step closer, then flexed his bare foot with its blood-dyed skin for the man on