Namaste (8 page)

They passed Suni at the door. He met Woo’s eyes with a steely glare, then looked at Amit. Almost imperceptibly, the abbot’s eyes flicked upward, toward Woo’s silver-white hair. Woo pulled Suni’s eyes back to his, and silently sent him a message:
Not now. We will discuss the boy later
.
 

They returned to the garden, alone. The compound’s rhythms settled to normal around them. Woo sat in Lotus on the grass. Amit, with a small effort, crossed his legs then pulled his own feet up, matching Woo’s position. The boy, with his own small shaved head, blue robe and saffron sash, looked up at his mentor.

“Am I in trouble?”
 

“With some, yes. In the coming weeks, you will have more practice allowing insults from the other boys to lay at your feet. They are Sri — many are old enough that they should be enlightened and know better — but they are still boys. Other weapons will be laid at your feet by adults like the abbot. Those will be more subtle and elegant, for flaying rather than beheading, but they are similar. If you do not
allow
the judgments of others to harm you, then you cannot be harmed by them. They are toothless snakes hissing around your ankles, full of menace but unable to strike.”
 

“I meant, will I have to leave?”
 

Woo shook his head. “I will not allow it. You are young, with a violent past that, for now, will give you an excuse. Pity is a weapon that
you
can lay at the feet of adults. They believe they are above such things, but are not used to pitying children. I can twist those knives for you — remind the others that you have great challenges to surmount, that you have no one else, that you need our help, that we may be the only ones capable of saving you. But you dull my knives with every new incident.”

“I did not create that incident. Sanjay and his group did.”
 

Woo frowned. The Sri were not supposed to form “groups”; only the order was supposed to matter, and the order always came above the individual. That was how it was supposed to work, and for the most part did. But boys were still boys, and still formed allegiances and traveled in packs. Among the adults, there were those who didn’t find idea of individuality beneath notice, like Woo.

“Of course, you did. Could you not deflect their barbs? Could you not walk away?”
 

“They nudge me. They knock me down. It was not only words.”
 

“Could you not fall when they nudged you? Could you not accept their attacks without retaliation?” Woo looked to his right and left, then leaned closer and almost whispered. “Could you not sneak up to Sanjay’s cot in the middle of the night, use a blade to draw a line down his middle, and allow him to wake and see it, knowing what might have happened — and what might happen next?”
 

The order’s official decree was to turn the other cheek until it could no longer be turned, but Woo felt that often, action resolved disputes faster by a subtle hand.

“I have told you, Amit. You came to us with great anger inside. Others, like the abbot, would have you meditate until that anger was buried or gone. I do not agree. We must summon anger when we fight. We are taught to spar as machines, but a fist cannot move as fast as it sometimes must without a modicum of anger. The Sri have long denied emotion in this context, but a warrior with passionate strikes will always defeat a highly skilled automaton. But it still must be controlled, Amit. You must tuck it deep like a seed beneath the soil. You must learn to control its blooming by giving it only sunlight allowed by you. Your anger and hatred have the potential to be a tremendous asset, but only if you learn where and when to use them. Do not deny your anger. Let it fill you like a hot core when you practice your disciplines, and give it expression with each strike. Your hands will become harder. Your placements will become more precise. Because unlike so many of the others here, if you learn to channel your rage you will always be able to summon a
reason
to fight.”
 

The boy looked up at Woo, then after 30 long seconds nodded slowly.
 

“You understand.”
 

Another five seconds. The boy was again in control, practicing what the order had taught him: To always think, to never react without thinking actions out in advance — a failure that had so recently risked his presence at the compound.
 

“I understand.”
 

“Good,” said Woo. “Now, we meditate.”
 

Chapter 9

P
RESENT
D
AY

“H
E
KNOWS
,
YOU
know.”
 

The enormous black man in the bright-white T-shirt was well over 6 and a half feet tall, towering over Amit’s 5’9”, and twice as wide. His bare arms were a mural of tattoos, but his skin was dark enough that they vanished into scribbles. He held an automatic gun, and while it wasn’t trained on Amit, it wasn’t pointing toward the ground. From where he stood, Amit could see that the safety was off. One of the man’s big black fingers was over the trigger guard, an inch from firing position. Amit was fast, but could never reach the man before getting cut down.
 

“What does he know?” Amit asked.
 

“About the Right Hand. That Mr. Hayes is dead. Killed by a monk in blue robes.”
 

Amit looked down. He’d returned to his rented room and had changed into a new robe and sash, because the other was too bloody. He’d been drawing stares, and a shaved-headed monk in robes attracted enough glances under ordinary circumstances.
 

“It was not me. Perhaps it was another monk in blue robes.”
 

The big black man nodded. “We get a lot of them. Worse than trick-or-treaters.”
 

Amit gave the man a genuine smile. He felt good. He had erased the squad who had ended Nisha’s life, filling a war chest of eyes for her eye, and karmically correcting the wrong actions of the man who had issued the order. It was a beautiful day, and the sun was shining. Now he had this charming conversation to be thankful for.

“Do the police wonder why men stand outside this house with illegal weapons?”
 

The big man ignored Amit’s implication, but didn’t contradict the suggestion of the weapons’ illegality — something which Amit, who’d never trained much with firearms, wasn’t sure of. “Nope.”
 

Amit was 30 feet down an enormous driveway. A massive, decorative gate loomed slightly uphill. The guard engaging him had a booming voice, so Amit had no trouble hearing every nuance of his words. Amit’s own voice was soft and conversational, but the guard seemed to have no trouble hearing him. He hadn’t smiled, and was wearing sunglasses, but seemed friendly enough. The kind of man Amit might like to have a cup of tea with under different circumstances — although Amit was gregarious and enjoyed sharing tea with most anyone.
 

He’d been at the gate outside the Right Hand’s boss’s house for 10 minutes. The guards (Amit counted six, two of them in small guard towers) either didn’t see him as a threat or were friendly, because they hadn’t raised their weapons. But at some point, at least the two flanking the gate had flicked safeties to off, and while no one had to explain anything to anyone else, it was apparent that if Amit took more than a few more steps forward, he would be perforated like a page in a coloring book.
 

Amit withdrew his prayer beads. The big guard didn’t flinch. He’d either figured out that Amit had no weapon or didn’t care. It was probably the latter. All six wore body armor over their shirts.
 

Amit rubbed the beads between his fingers, thinking.
 

“What does your boss do?” Amit looked at the guard on the other side of the door, over to the two in their towers, then the pair 15 feet farther down the wall on either side. Only the black man responded.
 

“Olive oil importing. Waste management. Gaming.”
 

Amit nodded, getting the joke. There wasn’t much in the way of visual entertainment in the Sri compound, but he’d been outside many times, and that was enough to understand the supposed ways of crime lords. Retroactively, he justified that time spent as research.

“What if I told you why this other monk — who was not me — did what he did to the Right Hand?”

“I’m not particularly interested.”

Amit paced, rolling beads in his fingers. He’d come here because he’d needed the lay of the land. Of course, the boss would have heard about the monk; Amit himself had instructed the Right Hand to tell him that this monk would be coming for him next. Of course, his security would be raised. He could have hidden, but given that he’d already gone out of his way to make his mission known, showing up in person was logical. It was always possible that the guards would try shooting him out of hand the moment he arrived, but Amit didn’t think they would. For one, powerful men maintained low profiles with the law as best they could, and firing automatic weapons needlessly would surely attract attention. He’d kept his distance, and while he could never strike in time to outrun six separate lines of fire, he’d be able to run in plenty of time if those guns started to chatter. Mostly, he’d come — after following the cues he’d sussed out from the boss when meeting with the Right Hand — in order to show himself. Every magician knew that the best tricks were built on misdirection, and that meant giving your audience something to look at.
 

“I am actually a very nice person.” Amit turned and smiled, showing his teeth so the guards would see his mirth. “I long to kill your boss, but wish you no harm. You must know that. I do not want you to see me as a threat to you, personally. This is important. I have many friends and would always like to have more.”

“Charming,” said the big man.
 

“When I come back, if I get closer to you than two lengths of my arm, please consider dropping whatever weapons you are holding and raising your hands. If you do, I will merely incapacitate you. Like this.”
 

Amit had noticed the empty guard station — above the main gate, on a small walkway — upon arrival. He’d watched the remaining guards before walking from the small clutch of trees and into the open. He saw how they were all watching certain areas more than others out of habit. By watching their eyes, he could see their collective blind spot. Their sweeping guns never sufficiently covered the driveway’s center.
 

A twig snapped behind Amit.
 

He dropped to the ground, knowing the man behind him would fire his weapon the minute he saw rapid movement from the man in his sights. The seventh guard did not disappoint; the gunfire’s cough etched a tattoo in the lawn and caused the large guard to leap back in alarm. Amit had been monitoring the man’s breathing. When he heard it — intermingling with the slight breeze but still distinct — he knew the man was close enough for Amit to guess his weapon’s aim, and reach with his foot after a quick crab-scuffle backward.
 

Amit hooked his forefoot around the man’s ankle and yanked, dropping him hard to the ground. A half second later, he’d popped up and stepped on the man’s gun hand, careful not to hurt him. The guard, also in a white T-shirt with a bulletproof vest over the top, tried to wriggle toward his weapon. Amit shifted and drove his heel into the man’s throat.
 

He coughed, gasping for breath.
 

Amit picked up the gun and looked it over with childlike curiosity, then looked down at the coughing man. “Please. Join your friends.”
 

The man gaped. Amit chuckled, pulled the clip from the gun and tossed it downhill, then extended it toward the guard. The guard took it and, with constant glances backward, stumbled toward the gate. Fifteen seconds later he was holding his neutered weapons beside the others.

“Remember, two arm lengths.” Amit raised his own arms to indicate what they should do. He didn’t want to kill them, and hoped they’d listen.

His message understood, Amit gave a small bow then walked back the way he’d come. The guards did not follow. He was disappointed but not surprised. There had always been a chance that they’d chase him. If they did, he could lose them, circle back, and maybe get past the diminished ranks. But although today was glorious and beautiful, it was apparently not lucky. To the guards, who were big men with armor and weapons, Amit was one tiny, crazy man. All that mattered was protecting the gates, and the boss behind them.
 

He paced the grounds, keeping the wall in sight but staying out of the range of prying eyes, and circled the perimeter. There was only the one gate, and the place was fortified like a castle. Here and there, guards paced the wall’s perimeter, all with the same automatic weapons, in pairs with at least 20 feet between them. It was an impossible configuration for one man to attack; if he reached one guard, the other would either shoot them both or call for help. There was no way inside.
 

Amit began to traverse the path back from where he had come, taking his time. He strolled for a half hour, keeping a keen ear to the sounds of pursuit. He found a high rise and a stunning view of the valley, then a solid rock where he sat with crossed legs. He ran his palm over his head, feeling stubble. He would need to shave again soon if he found the time, but was mostly beyond caring. What he’d told the Right Hand was true: He was no longer part of the Sri in any meaningful way. He probably shouldn’t be wearing his robe and sash, but Amit had earned them and wished to wear what was comfortable.