The trees around the road silently passed by unacknowledged, Arkady paying little attention as the headlights picked them out, a moving picture frame of brown and green to his inattentive focus. The Russian was barely even aware that he was driving his car. Time seemed to have slipped his mind and ceased to work, the road ahead like an endless loop of slow corners and straight narrows. The inside of his head was numb and without feeling, stealing his thoughts away to make way for the faces which stared coldly at him through the windshield. The faces weren’t angry, but their milky eyes accused him all the same before disappearing when the wipers arced the enveloping rain away again. The face which bored through him the most was the last. Sasukia Felder, twenty-seven, Trier. She had high cheekbones which set a gaunt face with sunken eyes and small pouty lips which had made her reasonably attractive in life. Dyed red hair flowed like seaweed in a current from her grim visage. Like the others her skin was pale and washed out, matching the illuminated trees.
Arkady kept her cold stare as she took her place with the others in his mind, consigned to staring at him from the corner of his eyes, in the reflection of the passenger window’s glass or from the backseat in the mirror.

Gently, the wheels of the black Nissan 350Z turned into the drive of a small oceanside mansion. It had belonged to Arkady for six months, a stone house of European-Mediterranean architecture. The drive terminated at the front door instead of being round with a centrepiece, the garage spanning away leftwards in a lazy L shape.
The front door was actually on the second floor, accommodating for a steep dropoff in the block of land before it reached the Springtime teal Pacific behind, and while the first floor was technically a semi-finished basement, the rear opened onto the lawn. The gray shingled roofing gave the building a composure, as if the hideaway of a wealthy recluse author or upper-echelon anonymous corporate.
Splashing through a puddle near the gates where the cobbles had not joined the tarmac of the road outside, Arkady peered wearily through the rain at the mansion, seeing only the front stair light faintly, aside from the beckoning corona coming from the single open arch of the three bay garage to its left. The small hedge guided him in on his right, the black and the rain swallowing all beyond it save for a scant few meters of cold grass.

He felt nothing. There was no relief to be home.
Arkady didn’t feel many feelings at all anymore. Sasukia could attest.

*****

Anne flattened the creases in her dress and apron as the black car slowly took it’s place in the second bay, next to the electronic winch and grease pit. She hadn’t come in the garage while her employer had been away except to access her rusting old Vespa when she needed groceries or cleaning products. There was little reason to enter otherwise.
The entire place smelled wetly of degreaser and old engine oil, but there were few stains on the concrete floor. The house wasn’t old, after all. The basement hadn’t even been completed.

Anne was tall, approaching one hundred and seventy centimetres. She was reasonably thin but still obsessed about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, lest she become an abomination to look at in her maid uniform. Her brown hair was back in a dignified ponytail, tied tastefully with a cream ribbon as dictated to maids with her hairstyle by the lecturers in her maid academy in the hills above Nice. The lace headdress of her uniform separated the body of her hair from her forward hanging fringe which touched her thin eyebrows gently. Anne’s face was soft featured and gentle, and her nose turned up a little at the end slightly. As a child she had been teased for it.

Hands folded before her, she slowly approached as Arkady closed the dripping black door of his car. He looked exactly as he had days ago, veiled in this jaded weariness thick enough that it was visible. It seemed to follow him like a miasma, making her wonder whether Arkady had lost someone close to him recently. Not that she would ever be so blunt as to pry, or address him by his first name. She was a properly ordained maid after all, not some glorified cleaning lady.
“Good evening, mister Soverna.” Her greeting flowed softly as she bowed. Arkady nodded solemnly, saying nothing as he walked. Stepping to keep up, she followed in his wake as he entered the laundry adjoining the kitchen, their footsteps echoing on the wooden floor.
“May I take your briefcase?”
“No, I’m fine.” He layed his coat over the bench and placed the keys to the car on a small hookboard. The maid bundled the brown coat in her arms neatly as Arkady turned to her. “I trust there were no problems here?”
“No mister Soverna, everything is well. The house is in good order, and I dusted this morning, not including the rooms I have been forbidden of course.” Before leaving, he had let her know the two rooms which were off-limits and never to be entered barring under his direct instruction. The request reminded her of the tale of Bluebeard and his wife, but seeing she didn’t have brothers who could come rescue her she had dispensed with her curiosity with professional tact. Whatever was in those two rooms was none of her business.
“Was your trip pleasant?” she asked as she hung the jacket in a small coat alcove just inside the laundry, waiting for a response which was absent. Anne felt the heavy, awkward tension and shifted uncomfortably. She had expected the young man to react, but nothing. He looked just as preoccupied as he had when he arrived. How was she supposed to get to know him if he did not talk to her? Sighing inwardly, she walked the few steps through the archway to the kitchen proper. “Would you like your dinner prepared now?”
“Please.” Arkady looked at the new maid for a moment as she turned to pose her question. The face of the dead woman looked over her shoulder, stared at him through milky eyes, pouty lips purple in the house light. She had followed him in, leaving the others behind.
He tried to think of something to say to Anne, but depressingly nothing came. Sasukia’s shade loomed in the way of his words. Unsure what to do, he walked awkwardly away, past the granite great room and to the master bedroom on the other side of the elevator, leaving the maid with a tart sense of unease. Putting it aside after a moment, Anne drew out ingredients for grilled fish and rice, remembering his minimalist dietary habits from their introduction.

She had met Arkady briefly on her first day as a live-in maid a week ago, and his dry manner and far-away personality had stuck out then as well. She had hoped that his manner would have improved while he was on his business trip in Germany, but it had obviously not been the case.
Maybe that’s just how he is… she thought dejectedly. This was nothing like the life she had imagined in the academy. When she first saw the mansion it had been a met her expectations, but she had expected to become fast and firm friends with her employer. Nothing like what the Russian had shown her. In truth, it did not depress her terribly, but the change from what she had expected and hoped for was taking it’s time. But hey, at least she was away from the academy and the bullshit Byzantine power struggles which washed the students like a foaming blood sea.
She bit her lip in thought as she deftly boned the flounder on the cutting board. I’m probably over-reacting. Mister Soverno’s had a long trip and is probably just tired. A pause. Well, that’s some of it at least. He is strange, no doubts there.
She frowned as the flat fish yielded it’s white flesh. But still, he’s only a little older than I am! And he has gray hairs! What made him like that at his age?

*****

Arkady sighed, putting his leather briefcase on the giant bed he had slept in so few times. It didn’t seem right after living so Spartan for many years, but he had dedicated himself to breaking old habits. Normal people enjoyed comforts; he had to learn to as well.  
With a few flicks of the brass combination dials the briefcase snapped open, the crisp sound breaking the droll tapping of the rain against the great windows on the far side of the room. Leaving the silenced handgun where it was for the time being, Arkady took the bundle of Euros out and put it in his safe alongside his small black leatherbound handbook. The safe underneath the fireplace endtable was one of a few scattered around the house. It didn’t make sense to keep everything in the study.

Closing the metal door and repositioning the removable wood planks so they sat flush with the rest of the floor, he wearily bundled the briefcase up and walked into the smaller of the two walk-in wardrobes which sat between his room and the master bathroom. If he had a wife or lover, they would keep their clothing in there. Arkady had no-one like that.
A dim blue light flickered to life as he entered. Closing the door, he pressed the release button underneath the ceiling’s skirting and pulled out one of the drawers, the lock disengaged. Within sat the tools of his trade. For a moment he cast his eyes across the collapsible sub-machineguns, sniper rifles and pistols, mind languorous as he slowly unfastened the suppressor from the Walther P22 he had retrieved from his briefcase and placed both them and the ejected magazine back into their moulded homes, the gun already cleaned in Trier. Everything in it’s place, all ordered and neat.

He had no need to worry about Anne finding the weapons. Alongside his study, this room was forbidden her, and his tamper alert had not been triggered. Even if she got curious, she would need some serious know-how to uncover anything alarming. That said, Arkady was still going to check the motion logs in his study later to be sure. It wouldn’t hurt to be sure.
As the drawer closed with an electronic click, he hung from his hand on the catch lazily, eyes resting on his reflection in the full size mirror. He took stock of his own appearance unconsciously. Twenty two years old, one hundred and sixty-eight centimetres tall, seventy-four kilograms, athletic, Caucasian. Eastern European appearance.
People not of Europe would categorise him merely as Eastern European, not being able to tell the difference between an Albanian and a Russian like him. This had it’s benefits though. When he was on task he could switch to another accent, maybe Estonian or even Swiss or German.
While only twenty-two, his dark hair already was flecked with gray, and it came through his stubble as well. Despite feeling little emotion, he still preferred to be clean shaven for that reason, a small streak of vanity. His nose had a thin bridge but was straight, nevertheless he looked worker class through and through.

Arkady breathed in deeply through his nose before exhaling. Without looking over his shoulder he knew the ghost was there, had again followed him. In a way he empathised. It was their prerogative to follow their assassin about, try and interfere with his life. That’s what he would do too if given the choice when he was killed.
But Arkady had long lived with the ghosts of the dead, long since learned to ignore their relentless stare, their wordless damnation. He had been forced to. Killing is not a glorious business, everybody feels bad about it at some point. If you don’t learn to block them out then you break. Then you make mistakes, then you are found by assassins or Interpol or someone else who wants you dead. So instead you simply give over a portion of yourself, so that you can continue living.
He let his hand drop from the catch loosely before turning to leave, the red haired ghost blankly staring. It still wore the black turtleneck sweater and jeans she had worn when she died.
And what of this one? He thought emotionlessly, staring straight back. She seems bolder than the others. How much of me does she want, I wonder?
Immediately Arkady grimaced at his own analogy. His conduct with Anne a few minutes prior may have been a stark reminder that he was selling too much of his soul, that he may need more than a few tattered scraps someday.
“Excuse me.” He said conversationally to the dead woman standing before him. Padding across the wooden floor of the hallway past Sasukia’s ghost, he took some casual clothing out of his real wardrobe, closing the door to his concealed armoury and watching the blue light go out under the door before heading to the master ensuite. The ghost turned and watched him go, silent.

*****

The mansion’s dining room was not particularly large. Arkady was thankful for that. On the odd occasion that he travelled to a wealthy client’s home he found they were predisposed to having a monumental dining room with a painted roof and expensive tapestries, replete with a needlessly long table, fifteen or twenty seats and endless trinket counters and cupboards which remained largely empty and ornamentary. Little men playing at being Tzars, as if the clocks would rewind for their corner of the world.
And while yes, he was trying to change his way of thinking and live the lifestyle that most well-off people did, he allowed himself to keep this room, his kitchen and his breakfast dome modest. His own dining room had no frescoes, no granite busts.
Nevertheless it was impressive. The dark stained mahogany panelling climbed the wall halfway, the rest of the wall papered a deep but attractive red. The South wall situated a window, rain drumming against the panes, while the North and East walls had open double doors which led to the great room and foyer respectively. Above, the roof was coffered barrelling, unadorned by the depiction of some mythological scene of greatness. The table he sat at was a dark square which seated eight and matched the walls. In the center was a modest vase of freshly picked tulips of yellow and pink. They were new. Arkady took a moment to study them.

“You purchased these today?” he asked Anne, who was politely standing behind him.
“Er, yes mister Soverno. To brighten the room for your return.” Anne replied, snapping out of a daydream. The silence had allowed her mind to wander, the ticking of a grandfather clock out in the great room and the rain dulling her purpose. She chided herself for allowing it.
Arkady nodded silently before turning to look at her over his shoulder. “If you like, you can sit.” He gestured to an empty chair. Her position put her directly into his blindspot. After dealing with assassins numerous occasions anyone blindsiding him made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
“I’m sorry, but it would be inappropriate for me to sit with you. Please don’t worry about me, I am used to standing and I will eat later.” Anne replied respectfully, as etiquette demanded. Trying to ignore his feeling of vulnerability from her position, Arkady looked across the table. Sasukia had not waited for a like invitation to take a seat, her blank stare like two fingers pressed against his forehead. Arkady felt his gorge rise in response to the harassment, but made no outward show of it.
“Well could you please not stand behind me? People where I cannot see them makes me… uncomfortable.” It was phrased bluntly, Arkady breaking eye contact with the ghost sitting opposite. The request threw Anne. Unsure, she moved to his left.
“Is this better?” she asked quietly, the clock’s ticking clear.
“Yes, but you can still sit if you like.” He said, gesturing the chair again. Anne hesitated before stepping forward and resting her hands on the back of the chair as a compromise.

Arkady had been making an effort to eat quietly. For years he had lived alone, which meant that chewing like a dog hadn’t particularly mattered one way or the other. Being accustomed to bolting food and getting on with other work, this meal was taking an eternity.
‘Is it to your liking?’ Anne had started to ask out of a sense of needing to fill the silence better than the rain, but Arkady cut her off unintentionally.
“You aren’t wearing your glasses. When I left, you were wearing red wire-framed glasses.”
“Oh. I’m wearing my contacts.” Anne replied, surprised that he remembered the colour. She didn’t like wearing her glasses unless she had to.
“I used to have glasses.” Arkady put forward.
“You don’t need them anymore?”
“I had surgery.”
“You’re lucky, then.” she said, pouting her bottom lip in a delicate fit of envy. “I can’t get surgery.”
Her lips were drawn just like Sasukia’s. Arkady grunted in acknowledgement before continuing eating. “That’s a shame.”

Anne stood uncomfortably for a time, her master eating in silence. Her teachers had drummed into her that a maid’s place is behind the master, ready to give or take food or utensils around the right shoulder at a moment’s notice. The casual dismissal of a maid’s guidelines was not to be undertaken lightly. ‘Rules, routine and stricture remind a good maid that she is of the household, but not a part of it. Without firm guidelines a maid will forget her place, quickly becoming as an unwelcome guest.’
And rightly so. But Arkady had insisted, and she did not want to get off on a bad foot over some silly stricture. Nevertheless, she still felt odd about it.
Gripping the back of the empty chair like an eagle she watched for a moment more, waiting for him to be done with a mouthful of mood before interrupting his meal.
“Pardon my asking, but your accent is not strongly Russian. Did you attend University abroad?” It was true, his Russian heritage only shined vaguely through what was otherwise accentless English style speech on his L, R and Y syllables.
Arkady pondered his answer. “Yes and no. The Institution I attended was in the Kamchatka Peninsula. We had very few Russian teachers working with us.” Putting his fork down, he drank a mouthful of water before continuing. “I did much of my schooling there also.”
“Kamchatka?” Anne stated questioningly. “I wouldn’t think that there would be any sorts of University in Kamchatka, it’s really far away from anything. If you’ll forgive me saying so mister Soverno.” She remedied the last part hastily. Arkady shrugged. No offence taken.
Interesting choice of Universities. Anne thought, a little more at ease with her master. At least he did try and reach out a little sometimes.
“So what did you study?” she asked, Arkady either grinning in fond reverie or smirking at the empty place across from him.
“Life Studies.”

*****

The night went on, rain outside incessant. From the marble-floored recreation room in the basement Anne could hear the rain clearer as it slapped down onto the pavers outside the glass concertina door wall. A small fire had been lit in the large fireplace on the wall opposite the half-circle grand staircase, a gentle glow left to illuminate the body of the room. Arkady tried not to use more lights than he needed. Old habit.
At dinner Arkady had decided on a few nips of vodka before bed and asked his maid to join him so they could continue their ‘polite conversation’, once he finished his check of the security sensors in the study. She now sat in front of the wet bar, allowing him to prepare the vodka so she had a reference in the future. Arkady didn’t seem to mind, backlit by the blue flouro lights set into the spirit shelving.
“Okay, so the vodka is poured to half a nip glass.” He accompanied his tutorial with a demonstration, pouring two of the shot glasses as stated before putting the red bottle down on the black marble benchtop. It matched the floor.
“I see.” She answered, humouring him. Her bar training was quite extensive.
“Next: the pepper.” A pepper mill was produced, Arkady cracking the peppercorns rough so that they still had weight, before taking a pinch of fragments from his palm and dividing them between the glasses. This last step was new to Anne, and she sat up.
“Why the pepper?” she asked, noting that it had been heavy enough to sink to the bottom.  
“If not distilled correctly or long enough, homemade vodka can be poisonous. Broken peppercorns absorb the toxins.”
“I highly doubt that store-brought vodka would contain any of these toxins.” Must think assassins are out to get him, she thought humouredly. He shook his head.
“I didn’t think it would. Old habits die hard. And I am used to the aftertaste as well.”
The small tidbit actually did interest her. At Arkady’s motion, she picked the glass up in her slender hand and looked through at the peppercorns in the glowing firelight away from the flouros. “Do we drink them?”
“No, the poison would still be inside them. You just sip the glass and leave them in the bottom. Salut.”
“Salut.” She repeated, letting Arkady sip his first and following suit, as etiquette demanded. The small mouthful still found a way to scald her throat and she hacked a little. Arkady leaned back in amusement.
“You’ll never pass for Russian like that.”
His smile froze solid for a second. Sasukia stood near the fireplace, the shadows concealing most of her. The light gleamed off her milky eyes like errant stars, unblinking and unwavering. Arkady ignored her now he knew she was still there.

“Merde!” Anne swore in French under her breath, a single drop marring her long black dress near her thigh. Arkady didn’t seem to care about the profanity so was silent as she cleaned it up with a napkin as best she could without leaving.
After sipping some more, Arkady nodded toward Anne. “Your accent is a French English. Tell me where that came from.”
Anne had been sitting straight, her free hand folded neatly in her lap after retaking the glass. She did not lean on the counter like Arkady. It was a form of slouching, and unseemly for a maid. Besides, nothing is worse than a maid with filthy elbows on her uniform. Hearing the question, she took a longer sip and put the glass down again for the time being, second hand returning to her long skirt.
“My family were from Sheffield, but they died when I was five. I was put into foster care, and when I was eight the Head Mistress of my academy purchased me and took me to France to be schooled as a maid.”
Arkady listened, nodding in understanding where he thought he was supposed to. Canvassing orphanages was an old method of these kinds of Academy, used to bolster their numbers when the attendance role was light.
At least it was a maid academy and not a prostitution ring, he thought as she spoke on. Escort academies gathered new students much the same way as the maid academies. Orphans had no families to return to, and were easily replaced if they didn’t make it through their tutelage. With maid academies, at least they could have a future if their chosen field didn’t work out. Their life skills learned allowed them to enter a career other than housekeeping, and they didn’t get burned out by their profession. In many ways, becoming an Escort was ultimately a death sentence preceded by a life detached from anyone emotionally. When phrased such, the assassin felt he could understand why many turned to drugs or suicide.
“I see.” Arkady said in finality, taking another sip of his vodka. Long ago he had become used to drinking spirits, it did not burn him.
Anne didn’t pick the shot glass back up. She had been polite enough and joined him for one, but it would be unseemly to get drunk. Besides, he was a new client, who knows what he might be expecting.
“So…” she started, swinging her legs slightly from the barstool despite her height as she looked around the dark room. “If you’ll pardon my asking, why a maid?”

The question was answered with a lie. Arkady couldn’t tell her the real reason.
The life of an assassin is a life of eternal solitude. You travel alone. You eat alone. When you come home, it is to an empty house. It becomes harder to relate to the world. Television does not interest you; people look so fake. Your mind becomes obsessed with the things you’ve done, the people you’ve known, how they died. Paranoia assumes it’s dictatorship. You stay close to a bolthole of money, passports and weapons at all times. Sleep is dreamless, like a gray sheet has draped your hopes. You see normal people walking about, finding someone, starting a family. And you know that can never be you. That the world will see you in a grave before any of that.

All Arkady wanted was to come home and not sit on the side of his bed, alone with only the silent ghosts from his past like Sasukia. Was that too much to ask? That he be able to come home to someone he could talk to, like any other human being?

*****

Two hours passed. Anne had bid Arkady a fair evening in the great room upstairs before finishing her work for the day and eating a late supper of extra fish.
After being so talkative and even making a few jokes, he seemed to grow distant after she pressed him about his University days. He had quite a lot to drink, but he just grew more spaced from reality the further his inebriation took him. Anne had taken over the bar duties after a time, but the conversation never truly returned.

Now, Arkady slept dreamlessly in his lavish master bed, the rain hammering against the great windows. Standing at his bedside silently, Sasukia looked deep into him in his nocturne. She could do no more until he woke.
Below, Anne prepared herself for the next day’s work. Her own quarters were directly underneath the master bedroom. Arkady slept less than ten meters above her.
Reverently a maid uniform was selected from the walk-in wardrobe and the elements placed on the top of the dresser next to the small vanity table in the corner of her room. A long black skirt and sleeved blouse offset by a lace-edged white apron. Black stockings and some featureless slip-on shoes. White cotton underwear, another cream ribbon to tie her hair up and her white maid’s headdress.
Her particular maid academy gave all its graduates traditional black and white maid uniforms. Some academies gave out colours according to specific proficiencies or their grading. Others gave them out to set their maids apart from their rivals. The school outside of Nice declared that the quality of its maids was a glimpse to the past and that as such, any wearing the green rose should be clothed appropriate to their station.

Tired, Anne sat at the vanity table. Her red-rimmed glasses were next to her in their case on the small table, which she donned having cleaned her lenses and washed them with Saline earlier. After removing the ribbon from her hair the brown ponytail fell loose from its binding. Her reflection looked like a shy librarian.
It had been a very long month since she had first learned of her assignment and left the academy, and if she said that she was ecstatic about her first housemaster it wouldn’t be the truth. She had conjured a certain image during her earlier years at Nice, and even though she had not expected to come close to that dream the small kernel of hope she had seeded deep inside her burned as it went unrealised, her mood almost melancholic.
No. I can’t think like that! Anne resolved, staring blankly at her furrowed brow in the mirror but not seeing herself for her thoughts. It was good to be grounded from her fairytale straight out the gate. Yeah, in a way she had actually been blessed. Being thrown in deep would toughen her quickly. She wouldn’t turn into a coddled daydreamer. And Arkady seemed interesting, once one got past his social issues.
No, he would be a good first master. All said and done he seemed nice enough, he hadn’t shown himself abusive and didn’t seem to be a pervert, which was always a big plus.
But her biggest consolation was that at least he wasn’t a crazy. At the academy horror stories drifted back from time to time, of horrible beatings, of mutilation and of much, much worse. For some weeks she had laid awake at night, praying that she would not end up like those unfortunate few, and it seemed to have worked. Arkady didn’t strike her as one of those sick fiends. But he definitely was creepy. Just not in the same way she had thought she would have a creepy employer in her darker moods at the academy.
He seems so… detached from reality at times. And when I asked about the University he attended he really clammed up, she thought as she brushed her hair with her fingers absently in the few minutes before she would take her shower. <i.And who names a walk-in wardrobe as an off-limit area, anyway? A study I can kind of understand, but what’s special about the wardrobe?
Ill feelings and mysteries wouldn’t affect her work, of course. She was a professional maid from Nice academy, and he was her master. In reverence she reached back and touched the small green tattoo of a flowering rose on the back left of the neck just under the hairline before walking to her ensuite, fresh towel and sleeping wear bundled under her arm.  

*****

Outside, eyes watched Anne switch off her bedside light and retire for the evening through an illuminated rangefinder, the equipment penetrating the downpour and showing her clearly even after the room had gone dark. Stef smiled as he zoomed in for a better look at her. Arkady must have gone soft.
No matter. Too bad for her, but Arkady was to blame for bringing the young woman into this.

Rechecking the range from his position under the hedge near the rear gazebo to the window into the unfinished areas of the house, Stef exfiltrated back toward his entry point near the beach. The rangefinder was stowed in the waterproof pack with his prized Ruger MK III as he walked calmly, unaffected by the pitch black which welcomed his return.
The mission wouldn’t be going ahead tonight. He had homework to do first.

**********