There is a thrilling new story from Jim Shepard in the newest Zoetrope: All-Story. The story—”The Track of the Assassins“—is not unlike much of Shepard’s recent short fiction: slowly-revealed characters lodged in alluring moments in history. The setting of “Assassins” is the 20th century Iraqi and Irani deserts, where Freya Stark searches for Alamut, ancient home of the Hashshashin, the infamous Persian sect of assassins of the middle ages. (It is also the setting of a recent Disney blockbuster.) Shepard’s story begins:

My mother liked to remind me that at the age of four I left a garden party one rainy afternoon with my toothbrush in my fist, fully intending a life of exploration, only to be returned later that afternoon by the postman. Her version of the story emphasized the boundaries that her daughter refused to accept. Mine was about the emancipation I felt when I closed the gate latch behind me and left everyone in my wake, and the world came to meet me like a wave.

On April 1, 1930, the first night of my newest expedition, I had a walled garden overarched by thick trees all to myself, and still was unable to sleep. I considered rousing my muleteer early but summoned just enough self-discipline to let him rest.

Orion wheeled slowly over the village roofs, and the wind stirred the wraith of a dust storm. I lay listening to the soft and granulating sound of the fall of fine particles. In the starlight I could see the mica in the sand as it gathered on my palms…