Phoenix

by Steven Brust

  * * * *

  I fitted myself in as best I could. I'd done something like this once before, sneaking into an Athyra's castle in a barrel of wine, but I expected this to be of shorter duration. It was uncomfortable, but not too bad except for the angle at which my neck was bent.

  Yinta nailed in the top, then left me alone for what seemed to be much longer than it should have been; long enough for me to consider panicking, but then the crate and I were picked up. As they carried me, I was tempted to shout at them to try to take it easy, since each step made a bruise in a new portion of my anatomy.

  "I see you, boss. They're carrying you down the dock now, to a wagon. You've got about three hundred yards of pier ... okay, here's the wagon."

  They weren't gentle. I kept the curses to myself.

  "Okay, boss. Everything looks good. Wait until they finish loading it."

  I'll skip most of this, okay? I waited, and they hauled me away and unloaded me in what Loiosh said was one of a row of sheds a few hundred feet from the dock. I sat in there for a couple of hours, until Loiosh told me that everyone seemed to have left, then I smashed my way out; which is easier to say than it was to do. The door to the shed was not locked, however, so once my legs worked, it was no problem to leave the shed.

  It was still daylight, but not by much. Loiosh landed on my shoulder. "This way, boss. I've found a place to hide until nightfall."

  "Lead on," I said, and he did, and soon I was settled in a ditch in a maize field, surrounded by a copse of trees. No one had noticed me coming in. Getting out, I suspected, was going to be more difficult.

  This particular bit of island was heavily farmed; very heavily compared to Dragaera. I wasn't used to a road that cut through farmland as if there were no other place for it to run. I wanted to be off the main road, too, so I wouldn't be so conspicuous, which left me walking parallel to the road about half a mile from it, through fields of brown dirt with little shoots of something or other poking out of them and feeding various sorts of birdlife. Loiosh chased a few of the birds just for fun. The houses were small huts built with dark green clapboard. The roofs seemed to be made of long shoots that went from the ground on one side to the ground on the other. They didn't look as if they would keep the rain out, but I didn't examine them closely. The land itself consisted of gentle slopes; I was always going either uphill or down, but never very much. The terrain made travel slow, and it was more tiring than I'd have thought, but I was in no hurry so I rested fairly often. The breeze from the ocean was at my back, a bit cold, a bit tangy; not unpleasant.

  A few trees began to appear on both sides of the road; trees with odd off-white bark, high branches, and almost round leaves. They grew more frequent and were joined by occasional samples of more familiar oak and rednut, until I was walking in woods rather than farmlands. I wondered if this area would be cleared someday, when the islanders needed more land. Would they ever? How much farming did they do, compared to fishing? Who cared? I kept walking, checking my map every now and then just to make sure.

  We stayed to the side as we walked. We caught glimpses of travelers on the road, mostly on foot, a few riding on ox-drawn wagons with wheels with square bracing. Birds sang tunes I'd never heard before. The sky above was the same continuous overcast of the Empire, but it seemed higher, as it were, and it looked like there could be times here when the sky was clear, as it was in the East.

  It was late afternoon when another road joined the one we paralleled. I found the road on the map, which told me the city was near, and the map was right. It wasn't much of a city by Dragaeran standards, and was quite strange by Eastern standards. There were patches of cottage and there: structures made of canvas on wooden frames, or even stone frames, which seemed very odd; and a couple of structures, open on two sides with tables in front of them, that could be places of worship or something else entirely. I never did find out. It looked like the sort of town that would be empty at night. Maybe it was; now was not the time to check. There weren't many people near us, in any case.

  I hid in a garbage pit while Loiosh flew around and found me a better hiding place, and a safe path to it. Loiosh did some more exploring, and found one grey stone building, three stories high, set back from the road and surrounded by a small garden. There were no walls around the garden, and a path of stones and shells of various bright colors led to the unimposing doorway. It matched the location of the Palace, and the description we'd been given for it. There you have it.

  Lesson Three

  The Perfect Assassination

  There are millions of ways for people to die, if you number each vital organ, each way it can fail, all of the poisons from the earth and the sea which can cause these failures, all the diseases to which a man, Dragaeran or human, is subject, all the animals, all the tricks of nature, all the mischances from daily life, and all the ways of killing on purpose. In fact, looked at this way, it is odd that an assassin is ever called upon, or that anyone lives long enough to accomplish anything. Yet the Dragaerans, who expect to live two thousand years or more, generally do not die until their bodies fail, weak with age, just as we do, though not quite so soon.

  But never mind that. I had taken the task of seeing to it that a particular person died, and that meant that I couldn't just take the chance of him choking on a fish bone, I had to make sure he died. All right. There are thousands of ways to kill a man deliberately, if you number each sorcery spell, each means of dispensing every poison, each curse a witch can throw, each means of arranging an accidental death, each blow from every sort of weapon.

  I've never made a serious study of poisons, accidents-are complicated and tricky to arrange, sorcery is too easy to defend against, and the arts of the witch are unpredictable at best, so let us limit discussion to means of killing by the blade. There are still hundreds of possibilities, some easier but less reliable, some certain but difficult to arrange. For example, cutting someone's throat is relatively easy, and certainly fatal, but it will be some seconds before the individual goes into shock. Are you certain he isn't a sorcerer skilled enough to heal himself? Getting the heart will actually produce shock more quickly, but it is harder to hit, with all those ribs in the way.

  There are other complications, too: such as, does he have friends who could revivify him? If so, do you want to allow this, or do you have to make sure the wound is not only fatal but impossible to repair after death? If so, you probably want to destroy his brain, or at least his spine. Of course, you can do this after your victim is dead or helpless, but those few seconds can make the difference between getting away and being spotted. As long as the Empire is so fussy about under what circumstances one is allowed to do away with another, not being spotted will remain an important consideration. You do the job, then you get away from there, ideally without teleporting, because you're helpless during the two or three seconds while the teleport is taking place, and you can be not only identified but even traced if you get really unlucky.

  So the key is to make sure all the factors are on your side: You know your victim's routine, you have the weapon ready, and you know exactly where you're going to do it and where you're going to go and how you're going to dispose of the murder weapon after you're done.

  You'll notice that these methods have little in common with wandering into a strange kingdom, with no knowledge of the culture or the physical layout, and trying to kill someone whose features you don't even know, much less what sort of physical, magical, or divine protection he might have.

  It was still fully night, and the darkness here was considerably darker than in Adrilankha, where there were always a few lights spilling out onto the street from inn doors or the higher windows of flats, or the lanterns of the Phoenix Guards as they made their rounds. In the East there might be a few stars—twinkling points of light that can't be seen in the Empire because they are higher than the orange-red overcast. But here, nothing, save for the tiniest sparkles that came from curtained windows high in the Palace, and a th
in line from the doorway in the front. We waited there, at the edge of the city, for several long, dull hours. Four Dragaerans left the building, all holding lanterns, and one arrived. The light on the third story of the Palace went out, and we waited another hour. I wondered what time it was, but dared not do anything even as simple as reaching out to the Orb.

  We returned to our hiding place before dawn. I spent most of the day sleeping, while Loiosh made sure I wasn't disturbed, scrounged for food to supplement the salted kethna, and observed the Palace and the city for me. Yes, the town was pretty much deserted at night.

  After dark had fallen, I went in to town and got a better picture of the Palace and looked for guards. There weren't any that I could see. I checked the place over for windows, found a few, and then looked for various possible escape routes. This was starting to look like it might be easier than I had thought, but I know better than to get cocky.

  The next night I moved into town once more, this time to sneak into the Palace so I could get the layout of the place. I sent Loiosh to look around the building once, just in case there was something interesting that he could hear or see. He returned and reported no open windows with rope ladders descending, no large doors with signs saying, "Assassins enter here," and no guards. He took his place on my shoulder and I stepped up to the door. I'm used to casting a small and easy spell at such times, to see if there is any protection on the door, but Verra had said it wouldn't work, and for all I knew it might even alert someone.

  This was the first time I'd ever gone into someone s house in order to kill him. In the Organization you don't do that. But this guy wasn't in the Organization. Come to think of it, this was also the first time I'd shined someone who wasn't one of us. It felt, all in all, distinctly odd. I gently pulled on the doors. They weren't locked. They groaned quietly, but didn't squeak. It was completely dark inside, too. I risked half a step forward, didn't stumble across anything, and carefully shut the door behind me. It felt like a large room, though by what sense I knew that I couldn't say.

  "Loiosh, this whole job stinks."

  "Right, boss."

  "Is there anyone in the room?"

  "No."

  "I'm going to risk some light."

  "Good."

  I took a six-inch length of lightrope from my cloak and set it twirling slowly. Even that dim light was painful for a moment, as it lit up about a seven-foot area. I set it going a little faster and saw that the room wasn't as big as I'd thought at first. It looked more like the entry room of a well-to-do merchant than a royal household. There were hooks on the wall for hanging coats, and even a place by the door with a couple of pairs of boots, for the love of demons. I kept looking, and saw a single exit, straight ahead of me. I slowed the lightrope and went through the doorway.

  I had the feeling that, in normal daylight, this place wouldn't have been at all frightening, but it wasn't daylight, and I wasn't familiar with it, and half-forgotten fragments of the Paths of the Dead came back to haunt me as I gradually increased the speed of the lightrope.

  "Can this place really be as undefended as it seems, boss?"

  "Maybe." But I wondered, if these people were so un-warlike, why their King had to die. None of my business. I moved slowly and kept the light as dim as possible. Loiosh strained to catch the psychic trace of anyone who might be awake as we explored room after room. There was one room that seemed quite large, and in the Empire would have been a sitting room of some sort, but there was a large carved orca on one of the walls, with a motto in a language I couldn't read, and in front of the carving, which seemed to be of gold and coral, was a chair that was maybe a little more plush than the rest. The ceiling was about fifteen feet over my head. Assuming the other two stories to be slightly smaller, that agreed with my estimate of the total height of the building. There was some sort of thin paneling against the stone, and parts of it had been painted on, mostly in blues, with thin strokes. I couldn't make out the designs, but they seemed to be more patterns and shapes than pictures. Possibly they were magical patterns of some sort, though I didn't feel anything in them.

  I made more light and studied the room fairly carefully, noting the line from that chair to the doorway, the single large window with carvings in the frame that I couldn't make out, the position of the three service trays, which appeared to be of gold. There was a vase on a stand in a corner, and flowers in it that seemed to be red and yellow, but I couldn't be certain. And so on. I passed on to the next room, still being totally silent. I can do that, you know.

  The kitchen was large but undistinguished. Plenty of work space, a little low on storage space. I would have enjoyed cooking there, I think. The knives had been well cared for and most of them seemed to be of good workmanship. The cooking pots were either very large or very small, and there was plenty of wood next to the stove. The chimney ran from it out of the wall behind it to the outside. The opposite wall held a sink with a hand pump that gleamed in the dim light I was making. Whose job was it to polish it?

  And so on. I went through every room, convinced myself there wasn't a basement, and decided against trying the upstairs. Then I went back out into a chilly breeze full of the salt water and dead fish, and circled the place again, this time without a light. I didn't learn much except that it is difficult to remain silent while stumbling over garden tools. By the time I returned to my hiding place, dawn was only an hour or so away. There was now enough light in the east so that I could almost see, so Loiosh and I used the time to look for a place near the Palace where we could hide. To turn an hour-long search into a sentence, we didn't find one. We left the town and walked off the main roads until we were well into a thicket that seemed safe enough. It was still chilly, but would warm up soon. I pulled my cloak tightly around me and eventually drifted off into something that passed for sleep.

  I awoke late in the afternoon.

  "We going to do it today, boss?"

  "No. But if all goes well today, we 'II do it tomorrow."

  "We're almost out of salted kethna."

  "Good. I'm beginning to think I'd rather starve."

  Loiosh was right, however. I ate some of what was left and sneaked up to the edge of town. Yes, the Palace did seem to be completely unprotected. I could probably have gone in right then and done it if I'd known for certain where the King was. I crept a little closer, staying hidden behind a rotting, collapsed fruit stall that had been tossed aside some years before.

  The sky had just begun to darken, and I decided this would be about the right time of day to do it; when there was enough light so I could still see, but when the approaching night would shield my escape. I consulted the notes I'd made about entry points and the layout of the Palace, and figured that today I'd make a test run: doing everything I could to try things out.

  Getting inside was easy, since the kitchen staff didn't lock the service door, and there was no one in the kitchen after the evening meal. I listened for a long time before proceeding down the hall and into the narrow aperture below the stairs. It was nerve-racking waiting there, hearing footsteps and bits of the servants' conversation.

  After half an hour I found the right time: when the king left his dining hall to go upstairs. I saw him walk by: a slinky-looking fellow, moderately old, with plastered-down hair and bright green eyes. He was dressed fairly simply, in red and yellow robes, and bore no marks of office except a heavy chain around his neck engraved with one of the symbols I'd seen in his throne room, or audience chamber, or whatever it was. He was walking with a young fellow who carried a short spear over his shoulder. I could have taken them both, but one reason I'm still alive is that I'm always very careful when my own life is on the line.

  They walked by, as I said, right in front of me, not able to see me in the dark stairwell. As they were walking up the stairs over my head, I tested my escape route back through the kitchen and out, around the Palace, and back to my hiding place.

  "Well, how does it look, boss?"

  "Everything
seems fine, Loiosh. Tomorrow we do it."

  I spent the rest of the night memorizing landmarks in the dark so I could get as far away as possible, and, as the sky was just beginning to get light, I pulled my cloak around me and slept.

  Once upon a Dragaeren time, they say, there was a Serioli smith who, at the request of the gods, built a chain of diamonds that was so long it went up past the top of the sky, and so strong the gods used it hold the sky up when they got tired of the job. One day one of the gods took a diamond as the wedding price for a mortal she had a hankering for, and all the other diamonds went flying about the heavens, and the gods have been holding the sky up ever since. They couldn't punish the goddess who did the deed, because if they did, the sky would fall, so instead they took it out on the smith, turning him into a chreotha to walk the woods and, well, you get the idea.

  I mention this because it came to mind as I sat in the woods, trying to stay alert for anyone coming near me and considering that the only reason I was on that island was that my personal goddess had sent me there. It also occurred to me again that this would be the first time I'd ever killed someone outside the Organization. Coming as it did just while I was going through the sort of moral crisis an assassin has no business having, I didn't like it much. It began to start bothering me that I was taking life for money. Why, I'm not sure.

  Or maybe I am, now that I think about it, from the perspective of the other side of the ocean (metaphorically). I think everyone knows someone whose opinions especially matter to him. That is, there's this person whose image lives in the back of your head, and you sometimes find yourself saying, "Would he approve of this?" And if the answer is no, you get a kind of queasy feeling when you do it. In my case, it wasn't my wife, actually, although it hurt badly when, she, in the course of two years, went from a skilled assassin to a politico with a save-the-downtrodden complex as big as my ego. No, it was my paternal grandfather. I'd suspected for a long time that he didn't approve of assassination, but in a moment of weakness I'd made the mistake of asking him directly, and he'd told me, just as all the rest of this nonsense was going on, and all of a sudden I was unsure about things that had been basic up until then.