by Steven Brust
“Have I? And here I thought things were going swimmingly.”
“I can help.”
“All right, I’m listening.”
“First, you’re going to want to know why you should listen to me.”
“Not at all. I’m listening to you because I like your accent.”
He laughed. “You and I could get along, Lord Merss. All right, then, why you should believe me.”
“That’s going to take some work, yes.”
“I’m here as a favor for a friend.”
“What’s his name?”
He laughed again. “You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?”
“Not really, no.”
“So then, this friend thinks you might be in a position to do him some good, and that he could do you some good in exchange.”
“I’m still listening.”
“I’m guessing that what you need more than anything is information.”
“Good guess.”
“Well, here I am. Ask me things. Preferably things you can check.”
Nice idea, that. Only it wasn’t so simple: You can learn a lot by what someone wants to know, and I wasn’t inclined to let this guy learn a lot. So far, he’d done exactly nothing to convince me I could trust him.
“Anyone else around, Loiosh?”
“No, Boss.”
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me why this town is so strange.”
“Mmmm,” he said. “Haven’t been in Fenario long, have you?”
“No.”
“This town isn’t any more strange than any other in this country. Each has its idiosyncrasies.”
“Idiosyncrasies.”
“The King rarely exerts much control over the counties. They go as they go, and whatever oddities crop up determine the nature of that county. Now, if you want to see a really odd place, head all the way east into the mountains, not far from my country. There’s a place called Tuz where they train goats to smuggle by getting them to—”
“All right,” I said. “I get the idea. Each county is on its own.”
“Yes. And this one took a turn, oh, I don’t know, a few hundred years ago, maybe, when some peasant turned up an old recipe for making really good paper, and making it in quantity. He sold it to the Count—probably in exchange for a wagon and two horses to get himself out of town—and since then—”
“Tell me what you can about this friend of yours. What does he imagine I can do for him?”
“You have a common enemy, that’s always a good basis for an alliance of some sort.”
“All right. Who is the enemy?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Don’t play games with me, Dahni.”
“Eh, this is all a big game, Lord Merss. That’s why I’m here; I play games well, because I can always find the cracks in the rules.”
“And you’re careful never to spell out what the rules are to any other players who don’t know.”
“Exactly.”
“Good, then. I’m happy for you. Have your fun. Who is the enemy?”
“I’m sorry, Lord Taltos.”
There are any number of ways of dealing with someone who is trying to get information from you, and who you think might be good enough to pull it off. I thought about the simplest one: I almost killed him right then and there. I could have, too. I couldn’t see him, but Loiosh knew where he was. I came very close. It would have been a mistake, certainly—I had no real reason to, and if I had, things would have gone, let’s say, differently. But I wanted to.
“Turn and walk away,” I told him.
I guess he must have picked up something from my tone, because he didn’t say another word. I heard his boot-steps receding.
“Loiosh, keep track of him. I want to make sure he isn’t waiting somewhere.”
He flew off and did so, reporting that he’d gone back to town, and was last seen entering a house. Loiosh marked which house it was, then came back. He also made sure I was walking the right way back to town.
The light from the inn grew quickly, until it was hurting my eyes. I walked more slowly to give my vision time to adjust.
“Well now. That was certainly interesting. Did we get more information than we gave away?”
“You’re the expert on that, Boss. I’m just eyes with wings.”
“And a good sense of the arcane.” We had reached the door of the Hat.
“Is that a question? No, I haven’t picked up any witchcraft.”
“All right.”
I muttered. The strange practice of the Art in this strange town was one of the things I needed to know about.
There were only a few people in the inn by this time, and the host was having a quiet conversation with a couple of them.
The barmaid had left, so I interrupted Inchay long enough to get a cup of the summer ale he was so proud of. I was hungry but I didn’t feel like eating; I was tired but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep; I was angry but I didn’t have anyone to kill. Random killings, power-hungry guilds, witches with practices—or at least beliefs—that made no sense. It was irritating. There was just too much going on. I didn’t know the details of any of them, and I didn’t know which ones fit together, or how. I took out a dagger and started flipping it, chewing my lip, trying to make sense of the whole thing.
“Boss … .”
The host was staring at me. I gave him a warm smile and put the dagger away. It was either that or carve him with it, and I didn’t feel like standing up.
“How many days have we been here, Loiosh?”
“Years, Boss. We’ve been here years.”
“It does sort of feel like that, doesn’t it?”
“Does that mean you’re thinking about leaving?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay.”
“How is Rocza doing?”
“Picking up my moods, Boss. Sorry.”
“It’s all right. This is tough for all of us.”
“But why—”
“I need to do this.”
“You could always just go poking around and stirring things up with no plan and see what happens,” he said, meaning that’s just what I’d been doing.
“You’re pretty funny,” I said, meaning he wasn’t.
He was right, though. Stumbling around to stir things up can be effective, up to a point. It can work; you might learn things that way. But sometimes when you do that people get killed, and sometimes it’s the wrong people.
Loiosh nuzzled the side of my neck.
“Yeah, I know,” I told him.
I got bread and cheese from Inchay and made myself eat some, and fed some to Loiosh and Rocza. The cheese was salty. I don’t like salty cheese. I got some more summer ale to wash it down, which was probably why he sold salty cheese. Bastard.
“Tell me something,” I said as I picked up the ale. “What sort of witchcraft do they practice around here?”
“Eh.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “The clean, decent kind, so far as I know. But I don’t practice myself. Ask someone who does.”
“Who would that be?”
“Hmmm?”
“Who practices the Art? Point someone out.”
“In here?”
“Sure.”
There were four people in the place, all by themselves, drinking quietly. Two of them were watching us, the other two were drunk.
“I don’t keep track,” he said. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell a stranger. All right?”
I shrugged. “Then let me ask you something else.”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw set. “What?”
“Do you sell salty cheese on purpose, just to get people to buy more ale?”
After a second, he chuckled, then moved down to the other end of the bar. I went back to my table.
“Well, how about that. You try the direct approach, and it works. I’ll have to remember that.”
“What do you mean worked, Boss?”
“You weren’t watching his
eyes.”
“He gestured at someone?”
“Not on purpose.”
“Who?”
“Middle of the room, long gray coat, curly hair, looks like he’s about to pass out.”
“Should I follow him when he leaves?”
“Might be a tad obvious for me to follow him out, and then come back in shy one jhereg.”
“Window to the roof, and I’ll watch the door from there.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
I took another swallow of the beer, set the mug down, and went up to my room. I opened the shutters, and Loiosh flew out the window and up. I settled back to wait.
About twenty minutes, that’s what it took. He flew back in the window like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Got it, Boss. He was just down the street. I’d have been back sooner if he hadn’t fallen on his face a couple of times on the way home.”
“Hmm. So, by now, he’s probably asleep.”
“I thought it was called passed out.”
“So if … yes. Okay, show me this place.”
“You’re the boss.”
So, down the stairs, and then once more out into the dark and the stench. And if you’re getting tired of hearing how much it stank, imagine how tired I was getting of walking through it. Phew.
Loiosh, who has better night vision than I do—which is to say, he has at least some night vision—flew just a bit in front of me, and guided me down the middle of another of the surprisingly wide roads of the town. I quickly had no idea which way we were going, or where we were in relation to the inn, but quite soon Loiosh said, “This is it.”
“All right.”
I listened and heard snores. I tried the door and found it unlocked; it didn’t make too much noise when it opened, and then I was inside.
“One step forward, Boss. Another. Hold out your hand. Right. A little more. There. That’s a candle.”
There seemed to be a wall between me and the snoring. “Anyone in this room?”
“No.”
It’s amazing how bright a single candle can be, and how much it hurts your eyes. There was a simple enchantment to adjust one’s eyes to the dark or to the light; but of course I wasn’t about to remove my amulet to cast it, so I waited.
The snores stopped, and a drunken voice went, “Huh, what?”
I strained, and there was whispering, followed by the drunk again: “Lemme sleep.”
The whisper again, and this time I could make out words: “Lahchi, someone’s in the house!”
I considered calling back, “No there isn’t,” but it didn’t seem like that good an idea. I set the candle down.
My eyes had adjusted enough that I was able to position myself next to the door. I turned to the side and pulled up the collar of my cloak. I could hear him fumbling around in the room, and when the door opened I got enough of a glimpse of the bedroom to note the position of people and objects.
I reminded myself that with humans, the throat is more intimidating than the back of the neck; I’m not sure exactly why that is, but it’s the sort of thing worth knowing.
This was going to have to be fast. The dagger I carried at my belt had the heaviest pommel, so I picked that; as he walked by me, I gave him a sharp one to the back of the head; I had no idea if he’d lose consciousness, but in his present state it ought to be enough to complete his disorientation. Before he hit the floor I was next to the bed pressing the back of the dagger against the woman’s throat. Cold steel against your throat in the dark is going to get your attention, and by using the dull side I could press hard without getting blood everywhere. I spoke in a normal tone of voice.
“Not a sound, not a motion, not a whisper, or you’re both dead.”
The moment when she might have screamed came and went. I heard him moaning a little.
“Got an eye on him, Loiosh?”
“Got it, Boss.”
I said, “I have no intention of killing, hurting, or even stealing from you. Don’t do anything to change my mind. I have questions. You’ll answer them, then I’ll leave. Nod your head.”
She nodded once. Her eyes were very wide.
“Your husband is a witch. Are you as well?”
Her eyes widened. I repeated the question.
She nodded again. Good, that saved some trouble.
“Are you a member of the Coven?”
Hesitation, then a nod.
“Who runs it?”
“I, we, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“The heads of the Coven, they appoint each other, secretly. They wear hoods at gatherings. When they invite you, they’re all hooded and you never know who they are.”
Well, okay; Noish-pa had mentioned that it worked that way sometimes. At least I had confirmed that there was a Coven; that was progress.
“I need to know about the two sorts of witchcraft in this town. You’ll explain it to me.”
From ambient light from the candle in the next room, I could see her just well enough to observe that she looked puzzled. I pulled the knife from her throat, but kept it in my hand. I said, “Take a moment to think. It is important to me to understand, and no one will answer my questions. You will answer my questions. Yes?”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“You don’t need to understand, you just need to tell me what I want to know.”
“Who are you?”
“The one with the knife. Someone said something about witches who follow the light, and those who follow the dark. What does that mean?”
I had a certain amount of sympathy for the woman. You wake up in the middle of the night, your husband is dead drunk and then he gets slugged by a stranger who’s invaded your home, and the stranger wants to ask you esoteric questions about the nature of the arcane arts. It can’t be easy to wrap your head around that well enough to give a coherent answer, no matter how much you want to, so when her mouth had opened and closed a few times, and I saw panic building in her eyes, I said, “All right, let me try something easier. Why did most of the Merss family leave town?”
“The Merss family?”
“Yes. The ones who weren’t killed yesterday.”
“But they left years ago.”
“I know. Why?”
“I don’t know. It was years ago. Before I was born. I just heard about it.”
“What did you hear?”
“They were the last of the followers of the dark way.”
“What do followers of the dark way do that followers of the light way don’t?”
“They practiced forbidden magic.”
“What magic is forbidden?”
“They summoned demons.”
As far as I could tell, she actually believed that. She was a witch, and she believed that. How can you practice the Art and yet remain so ignorant of it? It was nonsense, of course. There are such things as demons, and, yes, they can be summoned, but not by witchcraft. To summon a demon requires breaking through the barriers that separate realities—and no, that makes no more sense to me than it does to you, unless you happen to have studied necromancy, in which case you know a lot more about this stuff than I do so why are you asking me? But the point is, the art of the witch is simply to use the energy of the mind to manipulate probabilities, and there are strictly limited ways in which that can be done. Yeah, one time I caused a small object to be transported to me from thousands of miles away using witchcraft, and I know you aren’t supposed to be able to do that, either; but that is a lot different from bending the entire shape of reality within a given space to make a rift in something that doesn’t exist in the first place.
Besides, I was desperate that time. I don’t want to think about it.
What mattered here wasn’t whether the “dark” witches had actually done this, what mattered was that this woman thought they could. And this whole “dark” and “light” business had a smell to it that reminded me a lot of the mill—meaning it sta
nk, if that was too subtle for you. The dark way? The light way? Who thinks like that? Who sees the world in those terms? It isn’t something to be believed by anyone with any sense, it’s something to convince the gullible of.
Which was the answer, wasn’t it? Someone was trying to put one over on a lot of people. And, to judge from this woman, it was working.
So, then, why? In whose interest was it to believe that there were a group of people with this sort of power? Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to sell one hell of a big lie, and there had to be a reason for it.
And my family had been the casualty of a big lie; at least, those who hadn’t gotten out—
“Wait, you said they left before you were born?”
She nodded.
“I thought they had only left ten or fifteen years ago.”
“Oh, them. I don’t think they were witches. They just left because, well, because having the name Merss isn’t easy around here. I think they went to the City. It wasn’t me!” she said suddenly, looking frightened again. “I mean, I didn’t do anything to them, or even say anything about them. It was the others, you know.”
“What about the ones who were witches?”
“They left the country. Some say they went West to sell their souls to the elfs.”
Yeah, some would say that.
“And the ones who were killed—who did it?”
“I don’t know!” She sounded close to panic.
“I’m not accusing you. But you must have an idea, a theory. You heard about it, you must have had a thought about who it was.”
She shook her head.
Was there any way to get more information out of her? Probably not. I could spend an hour getting her calmed down and she still wouldn’t want to name anyone. And if I applied pressure, she’d be much more likely to lie than to point the finger at someone who deserved it. That still might be useful information, though. I was in a sort of mood to apply pressure anyway, just for the satisfaction of seeing someone sweat. But I had something to do, and I’d get more pleasure out of squeezing when I knew it was the right person being squeezed.
Which brought me back to the point that this woman might well know who that was, if only I could find a way to convince her to tell me. Without spending all night at it. Damn, damn, damn.
“Are you going to kill me?”
