Jhegaala

by Steven Brust

  After a while, his mouth open, his hands tried to grip the floor, wet and sticky with his blood, as was the front of his clothing. There was a lot of blood. A whole lot. His eyes took on a glassy look, open-eyed, and he became mostly still except for some twitching, jerking motions for some time.

  Eventually, he stopped twitching.

  "Lord Merss?"

  Still watching the body, I nodded. I think I nodded; I tried to nod. Hands I didn't know took me and unstrapped me and moved me from the table. I know I screamed then as they moved me, which is very odd, when you stop and think about it.

  I saw a face I recognized. "Well, hello there, Dahni. What with one thing and another, I prefer your method of interrogation."

  His face was like iron. He seemed not to hear me, which was possible. I didn't seem able to generate much volume. I tried again, but this time said, "Can you find my things?"

  His expression became, if anything, sterner. "I’m sorry, we can't take the time," he said.

  "Gold chain," I said.

  "What?" He leaned closer. I repeated it.

  He shook his head. "No, I'm taking you out of here."

  "Bad move," I said.

  For the first time, a bit of humor returned to his expression. "This time, Lord Merss, you're in no condition to be threatening anyone."

  "Wrong," I said.

  "Wait," he told those carrying me; four men I didn't recognize, but who had that same quality as people I'd known during my brief stint in the army. Odd situation, and not worth going into now. But I was convinced they were soldiers of some kind, which fit in nicely with my conclusions. Of course, the fact that Dahni had shown up at all pretty much confirmed my conclusions. Which, like so many things, was good and bad.

  "Okay, let's hear it. I'll be curious about what you're going to threaten me with when you're so weak you can't even speak above a whisp—"

  Their timing was perfect. Right in the middle of his sentence, they leaped up and flew at him. He ducked. They circled his head like they'd planned it, then perched next to me and hissed at him.

  He stood back up, eying them warily. In his hand was a big, curved, clunky-looking sword with a wide blade, narrowing near the hilt. He seemed hesitant to use it—with good reason.

  "The venom is very fast-acting," I said, as loudly as I could—which wasn't very. "You'll feel chest constrictions first, then be unable to breathe. Heart palpitations, sweat, and your body will shake as you become incontinent. The last minute or so you'll be entirely unable to move. You'll die by suffocation. The entire process will take about four minutes. There's no known antidote."

  Just for the record, almost none of that was true; but few people actually know about the bites of poisonous reptiles; they know they're poisonous and that's enough, so you can tell them anything and have a good chance of being believed.

  Dahni studied me carefully, then glanced at the four men holding me. "Set him down," he said. "Gently. I'll go look for your gear."

  "Loiosh will keep you company," I whispered.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "You know, Boss, that was fun."

  "Why am I not surprised?"

  "Someday, you're going to have to explain how you knew he'd rescue you."

  "Someday," I agreed.

  "Tomorrow would be good."

  "If there is a tomorrow, I'll consider the matter."

  After what seemed a long time, Loiosh flew back into the room, accompanied by Dahni, who was carrying a large box that had arcane writing on it that I guess described some sort of paper product. "Got it all," he said. "Want to look it over and see if everything's there?"

  "Yes," I said, and I think I half fainted there. I'm not sure what happened next— maybe they just stood around the place waiting for my senses to return, or maybe it was only a second or two. But Dahni held the box while I looked inside, and then moved things around so I could see everything. My purses and my money belt seemed intact, and, more important, Spellbreaker was there. I tried to reach for it and I guess I passed out again.

  The next thing I remember is a breeze in my face that felt so good I didn't even mind the stench. It was night, and the mill wasn't working. I saw a bit of wall, some sky, and the backs of those who were carrying me; evidently they had found a blanket somewhere and were toting me on that, though I had no memory of how or when they'd worked that.

  "All right, the boat's waiting down there," said Dahni. "After that, I know a safe place—"

  "No," I said, almost killing myself to make sure I was loud enough to be heard.

  "Eh?"

  "No," I repeated. "Bring me to the manor. The Count,"

  He shook his head as if he hadn't heard me. He probably hadn't. He leaned closer and I repeated it.

  "Boss! You aren't thinking! He's the one who—"

  "I know.”

  "Think, Boss. I know you've—"

  "Back me on this, Loiosh. Make sure he brings me to the Count. If he doesn't, I'm dead."

  "What makes you think—"

  "The same thing that made me think he'd rescue me."

  There was a pause, then, "All right, Boss." He sounded worried. Yeah, me too.

  Meanwhile, Dahni had been saying things I'd missed while talking with Loiosh. I shook my head. "The manor," I told him. "I must insist."

  Loiosh and Rocza hissed. Dahni looked at those who were carrying me, and I could see his thought process. The soldiers, or, if you will, Vlad-bearers, were giving the jhereg nervous looks. Thinking back, I have to admire them. Those fangs were inches from the hands of a couple of the guys; if it had been me, I'd have dropped me and bolted. But I was concentrating on Dahni. This was the crucial moment of the whole thing. I wondered if I was going to have to tell Loiosh and Rocza to attack. I hoped not. For one thing, there really is no way to predict how jhereg venom will affect any given individual; it could be anything from dropping helpless in seconds and dying within minutes to only becoming mildly ill, and I didn't like to chance it. For another, however it ended it was liable to leave me flat on my back, unable to move, at the mercy of someone who made a career of being merciless.

  I told Dahni, "You can't make it."

  After a moment, he said, "And what happens to me?"

  "Once I'm at the Count's, you can go. The jhereg won't hurt you."

  "Why should I trust you?"

  "I trusted you to rescue me, didn't I?"

  He gave a short, bitter laugh.

  "Think it over," I said. "You were my best shot so I took it. Right now, doing what I want is your best shot."

  He hesitated another second or two, then nodded to the men holding my blanket. "Get him to the wagon, then take him back home. On my authority."

  One of them said, "Yes, lord," and they started moving with me again. I think I might have passed out somewhere in there, because I don't remember the boat trip across the river.

  I remember the wagon ride, however. It wasn't as much fun as you might imagine. I'm sure I can't have been awake and aware for the entire journey, but it sure seems like it. Days. It took days. And it's funny how a wagon catches even the tiniest rut or pothole in the road. The worst part was when we stopped, and I thought we'd finally arrived; but it turned out the Count's guards were having words with a patrol. When the jolting and bouncing started up again I bit my lip because I didn't want them to hear me cry out.

  At last it really stopped. They came around, and opened the back, and then I was slipping in and out of consciousness again for a while. It wasn't pain, it was just exhaustion. I remember the butler, looking down at me, and saying, "The east room," and thinking how appropriate it was, what with me being an Easterner. I tried to say something about that but it didn't get far. As I stared into his face, I wondered what he was thinking: How much of that bland indifference was hiding his emotions, and how much was training himself not to have any. He wasn't like an Issola; it wasn't a desire to make someone feel comfortable. It was something else. A natural or cultivated distancing of himself f
rom anything beyond what he ought to display.

  The more I thought about him, the less I thought about anything else, which was the point of the exercise, in case I need to spell it out for you.

  The butler's face turned into that of the Count himself, and I couldn't read his expression, but he didn't give the appearance of someone about to kill me. I saw him walk away with Dahni, the two of them speaking in low tones. I don't think it was paranoia to conclude that my name might have come up in that conversation. I asked Loiosh if he could listen in, but they were being careful. Still, I was pretty sure he wasn't planning to kill me.

  Not that I could have done anything about it at that point anyway. I'd pitched all my flat stones and now I was going to see where the round stones stopped rolling.

  They carried me up a flight of stairs, which wasn't as bad as the wagon, and put me on a soft bed. Loiosh curled up by my ear with Rocza next to him. I could feel his head moving back and forth, watching everything. I could almost hear him thinking try something; let anyone just try something. That's my last memory for a while.

  Later—I have no idea how much later—there was a bearded, gray-eyed older man bending over me, looking at me with great concern and speaking—I couldn't see to whom—to a low voice in an uncouth language I'd never heard before.

  I tried to take an inventory of how I felt, but all I felt was numb—not that I was complaining about that. I also felt too weak to move, but I didn't mind so much. Then I became aware that my left arm wouldn't move at all and I started to panic. The old man said, "Shhhh," and held his palm out. "It's all right," he said in a strange accent, with a sort of singsong quality to the end of his phrases. "It was me. I have tied down your hand so you can't injure it more."

  I tried to ask if something was wrong with my hand, but talking seemed like a lot of work.

  Confused flashes of faces and lights in my face and concerned looks, soothing voices, worried voices, one fading into the other and the smell of herbs steaming reminding me of Noish-pa while I floated there, still, things happening to me as if they were happening around me and all the time my familiar's voice in mind, saying I know not what, but soothing and warming. I slept and dreamt and I woke and, I don't know how to say it, at some point the world stopped slipping in and out of the dreamland and I started to know what was real. I think it was getting toward morning when I finally fell into a real sleep that lasted more than an hour.

  I remember Loiosh asking me if I was able to carry on a coherent conversation yet. I told him I was, but I preferred not to. He didn't seem happy about it, but let me alone for another timeless time.

  I won't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure everything I've mentioned was the same night, that first night I was there, all before dawn. It was an event-filled time when nothing happened, and I wouldn't care to repeat it.

  Sometime later, I think it was the next day, Loiosh said, "Is it time for you to tell me how you figured out Dahni would rescue you?"

  "No.”

  "That's because when I hear, I'm going to panic, aren't I?"

  "Yes.”

  A servant I didn't recognize poked his head in while I was awake. Loiosh and Rocza instantly became fully alert, but I decided he really was just a servant. He asked if I needed anything and I couldn't speak to answer. He went out, but returned later with another. They gave me thin soup and brandy—good brandy. I refrained from asking if it had been drugged.

  The next several hours went that way. They seemed to think I needed to eat every five minutes or so, but that I couldn't be permitted much when I did. I was most often served by the butler, who never let a human remark pass his lips. If I'd had more energy, I'd have worked on him. After the first time, they didn't give me any more brandy, which was a shame. If the soup had any effect I didn't notice it.

  "How much time do you think we have, Boss?"

  "Before what?"

  "Before whatever you haven't told me about happens."

  "Oh. Maybe a day, maybe two. Hard to say."

  Later, the old man made me sniff something pungent and peppery to knock me out, and the amulet was removed from my chest. I know this because he told me about it when I was awake again; I have no memory of any of it. He also put some sort of powder where it had been so that the wound wouldn't mortify.

  When I woke up, it was lying by my pillow, and there were fresh bandages around my chest to add to the collection. He hadn't told me what he was going to do; if he had, I might have wanted to keep it there. Think how much trouble it would save. Then again, maybe not.

  I spent a day there doing nothing except being fed and looked at by the old man, and nothing bad happened that day or that night, except that I didn't sleep particularly well. The next day, two men and one woman came, introduced themselves as witches, and tried to do what they could.

  They worked, and had whispered conversations, and worked some more, and, at last, tried the measure of desperation: they talked to me.

  "Our spells seem unable to aid you."

  "Yes," I said. "The Art has no direct effect on me. I don't know why, it's been like that all my life. My maternal grandfather was the same way."

  This seemed to throw them, but they didn't question it. One said, "You say, 'direct' effect?"

  "Herbs, infusions, and things of that nature, prepared with the Art, appear to work normally, it is just that they cannot be prepared by me or close to me, and a glamour cast upon me will have no effect, and my aura is invisible. I have no idea why this might be."

  I lay on my pillow next to the amulet of black Phoenix Stone and looked sincerely puzzled at them.

  They ended by making poultices and infusions and such. They concealed what they were doing, or I might have been able to offer suggestions, but they did seem to know what they were about except for making infusions that looked and smelled like poultices.

  I drank soup and infusions, and tried to decide if the poultices smelled worse than the paper mill, and let them tend me. The Count owed me that much, by Verra's tits! I dozed off, woke up, dodged Loiosh's questions, stared at the ceiling. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out a way to keep all of their work from being wasted.

  I didn't come up with anything.

  Loiosh was getting jumpier by the moment. He finally said, "Boss, if I know what I'm scared of, it can't be worse than this."

  "Yes it can.”

  "And I have been known to come up with an idea once in a while.”

  "Okay, that much I'll agree with."

  "Well?"

  I sighed. "All right. Dahni said that talking to me in the dark like that would give him an edge"

  "And?"

  "And why would it give him an edge?"

  "Because you have—oh"

  "Right. How could he know that?"

  "Uh, how could he know that?"

  "Only one way I can think of. He'd been in touch with the Jhereg. You know how we work. You know how I work. When I'm planning to take someone down, I find out everything about him. Everything. I learn what color hose he prefers, and how hot he likes his bathwater, and—"

  "The Jhereg would have learned that you have bad night vision."

  "Yes."

  "And told Dahni, because it might give him an edge in—"

  "In taking me and hauling me out to them, so they don't have to make a stir by coming into town as Dragaerans, excuse me, 'elfs.' Much less as elfs with a Morganti weapon."

  "You say 'them’."

  "Probably just one"

  "You're telling me that there is a Jhereg assassin here?"

  "Not here, exactly. But nearby, probably within an hour or so of town."

  "Boss! We—wait, I still don't see—Dahni is working for the Jhereg?"

  "Not working, exactly. I'm guessing they just found a local willing to do some things for them. You know, 'Deliver this guy to me, and I will make you a wealthy man indeed! That sort of thing."

  "But then, you must have—oh. He'd be willing to rescue you because if he didn't,
he wouldn't get paid."

  "Right.”

  "So, he was going to bring you—"

  "Right to the assassin, yes. I had to count on you, chum."

  "When did you put this together, Boss?"

  "When Dahni made the remark about talking to me in the dark giving him an edge."

  "Pretty clever."

  "That's why you work for me, instead of the other way around."

  "It thought it was the opposable thumbs.”

  "That too.”

  "You might have told me."

  "It wasn't the time for long explanations and recriminations. And hearing about how I should have gotten out of town when you said, and about how—"

  "—you shouldn't have taken the amulet off just because your muscles were tired?"

  "That, too.”

  "So you think that's how they found you?"

  "Probably. If they'd trailed me they'd have taken me before I got to a town. A day to teleport into the mountains to somewhere someone has memorized, and, with a good horse, maybe another day or two to get here. Yeah, it's about right."

  "So here you are, flat on your back, can hardly stand up, with your left hand..."

  He trailed off. "What's wrong with my left hand?"

  "We'll know when the physicker is done, maybe nothing."

  A chill went through me.

  "Two word's, Boss: Castle Black"

  "You know I won't do that to Morrolan. Besides, we'll never make it there."

  After a moment's thought, he agreed with the second.

  "What will they do now, Boss? Sneak in here and put a shine on you?"

  "They know about you and Rocza. They'll need to come up with a way to disable you."

  "Which is why they tried to—no, that doesn't make sense."

  "No, that was the Count."

  "But then, I still don't understand why the Count is protecting you, if he's the one who first took you."

  I sighed. "Let me rest for a bit, Loiosh. That's going to take more explanation than I can deal with right now."

  "Okay, Boss. Get some rest. I'll try to get us out of this mess, since it's obvious that you can't."

  "You just always pick the right thing to say to cheer me up."