by Steven Brust
Then I stood in front of the window and looked down at the other two, spreading my hands in a “now what?” gesture.
They turned and walked away.
What I really wanted to do next, just for effect, was to go back downstairs and demand a new room of the landlady on the basis that mine was full of vermin, the washbasin was dented, and the door was broken. But I didn’t. I went back down the stairs and, ignoring her, walked out the door. If she had any presence of mind and a few connections, she’d sell that Morganti broadsword on the gray market for enough to retire on.
I took a sharp left, taking me off in a different direction than the two button-men had gone.
I wondered how they’d found me.
After a couple of blocks I stopped, rested against a building, and let myself shake for a while. I don’t know, maybe two minutes, maybe five.
Evening was coming on.
I’d been in Adrilankha for several months; too long to be in one place with assassins after you. Loiosh was no longer bothering to tell me how stupid it was for me to hang around. I couldn’t argue with him, even before the Jhereg stationed outside Cawti’s place confirmed it. The price on my head was high enough to be tempting to anyone.
I had to get out of the city, but I didn’t want to. My son was here, and I’d only managed to see him a few times. My friends were here, and I’d hardly seen them at all. My life—no, my life was no longer here; my death was here. Sorry if that sounds a bit over-the-top, but as far as I could tell, it was simply true.
“Quit whining, Boss.”
“I’m not whining, I’m reflecting.”
“Then quit reflecting with that tone of mind.”
“Maybe we should go to Szurke and see my grandfather.”
“Good idea.”
“Or I could spend some more time back East.”
“That’d be good.”
“Or maybe the Kanefthali Mountains.”
“I’ve always wanted to see those.”
“Or—”
“Oh, stop it, Boss. If we’re just going to wait here until you’re killed, at least don’t pretend—”
“Damn, Loiosh. Getting a little bitchy in our old age, are we? Ouch. Cut it out. I’m not saying we’re going to stay here—”
“No, you just don’t plan to leave.”
I didn’t answer him, a policy I should have adopted several minutes before. Or maybe years.
“Ha,” he said.
Rocza, who’d been flying around for the last minute or so, landed on my shoulder again, shifting from foot to foot, which was her way of saying she was hungry. We found a bakery, where I paid too much for a couple of buns stuffed with too little kethna that was too sweet. The baker’s assistant tried very hard to keep his eyes off the weapon at my side. I didn’t speak to him. I picked up a can of weak beer from a street vendor nearby and walked, looking around.
Eventually I found what passes for a park in South Adrilankha—a place where some grass and weeds had grown up in a large vacant lot with a few low bushes and couple of scrawny trees. I sat down and leaned against one, and ate the buns and fed some to Loiosh and Rocza. It was a good place, because no one could sneak up on me without my familiar seeing him. Although here, in the middle of the Easterners’ district, I should be safe enough.
When we were done eating I relaxed for a while. There was a nice breeze coming in from the City, so for once South Adrilankha didn’t smell like the slaughterhouses to the southeast. My mind kept coming back to the conversation with Loiosh, and I kept shoving it aside. What I needed to be thinking about was how I’d been found in that flophouse. There were very few possibilities, and all of them were bad. Or it was something I hadn’t even considered possible, and that was worse.
Okay, relax. Let’s look at all the possibilities, one at a time, and figure out—
“Boss,” said Loiosh. “You’re being watched.”
“Yeah?” I said, looking around. “Where? Who?”
“Other end of the park. Sight-spell. Dragaeran. Jhereg colors.”
I felt my breath catch, and my heart gave a couple of test thuds to make sure it was ready. I was in South Adrilankha. I was in the Easterners’ quarter. I had walked away from the flophouse and gotten lost among back streets and unmarked alleys. There’s no way the Jhereg could have found me here. No way.
Except that they had.
I didn’t reach for a weapon; I didn’t even move. Not yet.
“I need to see,” I said. “And send Rocza on a sweep of the area in case there’s more than one.”
“Already doing it, Boss.”
“Good. Here I come.”
Colors swam; some of them disappeared, new ones occurred. My vision wavered, steadied, and I could see the man he’d spoken of. We moved closer. He was staring into something in his palm, then glancing in the direction where my body waited.
And, for just a second, his eyes flicked up toward me. It wasn’t much, he didn’t hold it for long, but it was enough. I returned to my body.
“Loiosh! You and Rocza, out of there now!”
“Boss, what—?”
“Get height and distance. Move!”
And I could feel Loiosh’s response—the jolt of fear—and could only assume Rocza had been given the message as well.
I had, it seemed, gotten to my feet, and drawn Lady Teldra. I was walking toward the Jhereg. I was aware that there was probably another assassin around, maybe more. I hoped so. I was suddenly in a mood to kill as many of them as presented themselves. I had just enough presence of mind to have Lady Teldra stay alert for the minuscule wavering around objects that tells you that someone is using an invisibility spell. It’s always the little things that bite you in the ass.
The Jhereg turned and ran. It was very undignified. I was never going to catch him, and I had no intention of throwing Lady Teldra. I looked around for someone else to kill, but I saw no other Jhereg in the area. In fact, I saw no one at all.
Yeah, well, pull a weapon like Lady Teldra out, and that’s what’s going to happen. The least sensitive lout will get the feeling that there’s something bad out there. Anyone with any psychic ability will feel like all the denizens of the Nightmare Abyss have come climbing out singing “Dirge of the Red House.” So, no, there was no one around.
“Boss? What’s going on?”
“Where are you?”
“Half a mile up on an updraft, and almost over the ocean-sea. What’s—”
“Stay there for a bit.”
“Boss—”
“Just for a bit.”
I looked around the area again, carefully. I moved around just enough to make sure the spindly trees and weeds weren’t concealing anyone.
“What’s going on, Boss?”
“A fluffy kitten tea party.”
“Boss—”
“Just wait.”
It felt like all of my nerve endings were right on top of my skin—like all of my senses were strained to the limit. There’s a kind of exhilaration that comes with this feeling, but I don’t recommend it. There was movement in a tree off to my left. I spun that way, raising Lady Teldra, who had taken the form of a shortsword for the occasion. It was just a fucking squirrel. I looked around some more. There was still someone. Somewhere nearby.
Lady Teldra was naked in my hand, and there was still someone around the edge of the park, moving from tree to bush, trying to stay out of my sight. I had to give him credit for balls, if not sense. Just one? Too soon to say.
There was almost a hundred feet between me and anything that could be used for cover. There is no way they’d come at me in the open like this, and I’d be fine with it if they tried. And no invisibility spell or illusion ever cast would fool Lady Teldra if she was alert and looking. She may not be the best at casting spells, but she can detect and disrupt them like nothing you’ve ever seen. So I waited.
I don’t know how long I waited, because when you’re standing like that, no idea what will happen, tryin
g to be ready for anything, it’s hard to keep track of how much time is passing. But after what felt like an hour but was almost certainly closer to five minutes, I smelled smoke. Then I saw it rolling toward me; thick smoke, thick enough to let someone get right up to me before I could see him. He needn’t cast a spell on me; he just needed to cast a spell on himself to permit him to breathe and see through the smoke. He? I hoped he, not they. If there were more than one, I could be in trouble. Jhereg assassins usually work alone; but, like I said before, sometimes there are teams of two. And I’d just proven that sometimes there are four. Four, for the love of all things broken.
“Boss?”
“Stay where you are, Loiosh. I got this.”
There are times when—no, I won’t explain. I turned and ran just as fast as I could away from the smoke. And, yes, I knew there was a pretty good chance that either I was doing just what they expected, or they had contingencies for me running like that. Barlen’s scaly arse. Sophisticated trick they’d pulled on me. Flint, steel, a pile of leaves, and a wind spell. To get me, the button-man probably had a big stick.
I’m not all that fast a runner, and Dragaerans have longer legs than we poor, short humans; but there was always the hope no one was chasing me. There was a puddle of water in the middle of the park from yesterday’s rain—a big enough puddle to slow me down. I swung right to avoid it, and in front of me was a long, low shrub; perfect for someone to be hiding behind. Just in case, I swerved at the last minute, dove over it, and rolled to my feet. And, sure enough, there he was—just where he should have been. If I’d had time, I’d have been astonished—how often do you find an assassin where you’re expecting one?
But I didn’t have time.
He was very fast, that one. He drew a Morganti longsword and had a dagger in the other hand, and he was showing every sign of knowing how to use them. The sword came down in a fast arc from my left, toward my head. I took a step back and parried with Lady Teldra, while drawing a fighting knife from behind my back, but he was awfully quick, and very good, and there was what at first felt like a dull, weak thud in my right arm just at the elbow, but then there was a whole lot of pain, then there was numbness and Lady Teldra dropped to the ground; then there was panic. Well, almost.
He came at me with both blades then; I stepped back, tried to draw my rapier, but my right arm wasn’t working. He missed me, and then came in again, both weapons from the same angle, this time coming down from my right. I didn’t have a clear idea of what was behind me. I couldn’t look. Loiosh and Rocza were a long, long way away. My primary hand was disabled, and he had a Morganti sword and a long fighting knife coming at me. More important, Lady Teldra was on the ground and I kept getting farther away from her. And this guy may not have been the best assassin I’d ever met, but he was an awfully good fighter.
I was becoming concerned.
I took a step back and to my left as he struck again, this time the blades coming from completely different angles; I only just barely avoided the knife. I felt wetness on my right hand, which meant there was some feeling there, and it was bleeding. I threw my knife at him, aiming at his chest. It hit him point-first, which wasn’t bad for a left-hand shot, but there wasn’t enough strength for it to stick. It checked his progress for a moment. The good news was, a whole lot of the stuff I keep around to throw was set up to be drawn with my left hand, figuring I’d have a more convincing argument in my right. I drew out three shuriken and sent them at him, and one went into his cheek, making him pause again. I tested my right hand to see if I could do anything with it yet. I couldn’t. I continued circling to my left, hoping to make my way to Lady Teldra; if I could pick her up, I knew she could heal me.
He apparently figured out what I was doing—which was disturbing on several levels—and moved to interpose himself. For the first time, I got a look at him: a narrow face, dead gray eyes, broad shoulders, hair cut short enough to be bristles. Neither of us said a word.
I carelessly threw a handful of darts in his direction—he couldn’t know that I hadn’t gotten around to dabbing poison on them—and pulled a knife from my boot. Then, with the same motion, I stepped in to him, committing everything I had to a shot at his right arm, hoping for a combination of surprise and an unexpected angle of attack from inside the arc of that big fucking sword.
I got it; the knife sank in, and something connected with my right side, feeling like I’d been punched there, but I had gotten a good, satisfying thrust at his sword arm. The Morganti sword fell slowly, like I could watch it spinning on the way down. And with the same slowness, I drew the blade from his arm at the same time as he pulled his from my side.
Insofar as you do anything that can be called thinking in situations like that, what I thought was that he’d either stoop to pick up his Morganti weapon, or, more likely, stab me again with the knife in his left hand. I didn’t figure him to punch me in the throat.
I drove my knife up under his chin at the same time as he brought his right fist into my throat. He hit my throat in the right place—I mean, for him—and really, really hard.
I’d gotten him. Yay.
Now all I had to do was figure out a way to breathe.
His knees went, and he started to go down; it seemed to me that it was only then that the Morganti sword hit the ground. I don’t know. Most of my attention was on my throat; my brain was screaming that it really wanted some air, please. Right now.
When your windpipe is crushed, you can go maybe a minute or two at the best of times—and already panting from the exertion of surviving a fight is hardly the best of times. How much time did I have before I blacked out, then died? Twenty seconds? Twenty-five? I think Loiosh said something into my mind, but I didn’t have the attention to spare.
My first thought was Lady Teldra, but I was too disoriented; I had no idea which way to move, and whatever odd arcane sense might have told me where she was, was too busy screaming about getting air.
And my right arm still wasn’t working.
Seriously. This was starting to become a problem.
I had a knife in my hand. A fighting knife—mostly blade. It was good for cutting and slashing bellies and faces; it was never made for stabbing, or, if you will, puncturing. But it did have a point—ask the guy who’d just tasted it.
If there’s no other way, you can always cut your own throat.
I really, really, really do not recommend this as a way to pass an evening. Listening to someone with a monotonous voice recite an epic poem in a language you don’t speak while you’re hungry and need to find a privy is better than cutting your own throat. Well, okay, maybe as bad. Fortunately, I didn’t have time to think about it; if I had, I probably wouldn’t have done it.
I was, somehow, on my knees, and black splotches were forming in front of my eyes. I found the spot with the fingers of my left hand. My left hand was still holding the knife, so I gave myself a shallow cut on the right side of my neck, just so I’d be able to feel stupid later when I realized it. My fingers searched my neck. Take your time. Breathe! There’s the throat-knob, now down—Need need need to breathe!
I slid the point in. It hurt. Harder than sliding the knife in, though, was not sliding it in too far; you don’t have much leeway in there before going all the way through the windpipe, or even nailing an artery, and if I did that I’d see a red spray through the black splotches, and then nothing, ever. Worse (though I didn’t give it any thought at the time) was that, while I had made a very careful and thorough study of Dragaeran anatomy, I hadn’t ever bothered to find out the differences between Dragaeran and human. But, like I said, I didn’t think about that as I was doing it; this was just not the moment to consider that, and, as the man said, there was no time to learn it now.
But here I am talking to you, so I must have managed it.
I held the knife where it was, sticking out of my throat, then I twisted it a little to open a gap for air. That really hurt. I leaned forward so the blood would flow out that
way instead of going down my throat and making me cough.
And I inhaled.
Let me summarize: It was absolutely no fun at all.
And yet, I’ll tell you, that first rush of air felt so good, I wondered why I had never thought of doing this before.
Then I almost fell on my face, but with the knife still stuck in my throat holding my windpipe open, that would have been a tactical error. I reminded myself that, if I didn’t do something fast, I’d just bleed to death, and having gone through all the work of cutting my own throat only to have it prove useless would be more annoyance than I could stand. Of course, if the other assassin was still lurking nearby, and he managed to find me, the whole thing was moot. And I couldn’t see how he wouldn’t.
But you deal with one problem at a time.
“Boss!”
I couldn’t concentrate enough to make a coherent reply. My right arm wasn’t working, and my left was weak, and getting weaker. I knew I’d been badly stabbed in the side; I couldn’t tell exactly where, which was almost certainly a bad sign. But I became aware, then, of Lady Teldra; maybe six feet away. I went toward her, trying to move the knife as little as possible while walking on my knees, until, just short of where I needed to be, my knees refused to work any more and the world started spinning. I became aware that I was on my side and I made sure I hunched over so the blood wouldn’t go down my throat and pushed myself with my feet and rolled over on my back on top of her and then blood did go down my throat and coughing was maybe the worst thing ever, except I don’t remember much of it. I knew, as the world collapsed into a contracting tunnel of light, that she could heal me. I knew because she’d done so before; but then I’d been holding her in my hand. I wondered if she could do that while I was just sort of lying on top of her.
Interesting question, I decided.
