by Steven Brust
But, yeah. Sometimes you need to take a leap and accept that the improbable has happened. Sometimes you even need to accept that the impossible is more possible than you’d thought. I considered this and all its implications as I made my slow, painful way through South Adrilankha.
After taking an hour to make a ten-minute walk, we reached an area that for reasons I’d love to discover someday is called the Noose. I took Calf Lane to stay off the main thoroughfares. The houses here were wooden, old, rickety, three-story, and held eight or nine families each, and they all smelled bad. There were piles of refuse and rats to scurry around them, and here and there well-controlled fires in the middle of streets where someone was risking a conflagration in order to reduce his trash for a while. Some of the buildings had once been shops but now held families; a few of the houses now sported signs indicating a smith, a cobbler, a physicker, a tailor. I passed the place my grandfather had once lived, but I didn’t stop; I didn’t want to see what it had become.
A little past it was a tiny cottage with a tent attached to the front, looking both out of place among the larger buildings and absurd just by itself. The entrance to the tent was covered with a quilt that had floral patterns in red and blue. Often the home of a witch is indicated by any of several symbols that depend on which culture the witch came from; but a witch who is well known in the neighborhood needs no sign.
I pushed the quilt aside and entered.
She looked up at me from an odd legless chair—like a cushion with a back—where she sat with her knees drawn up, reading. She was around fifty years old but looked older: her face weathered, her hair stringy and mostly gray. Her eyes—a deep, penetrating brown—fell first on Loiosh and Rocza, then on the sword at my side, then on my face.
“You’re the young Taltos boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Auntie,” I said. My voice was still pretty raspy. I again almost cleared my throat, and again remembered in time to not do that.
“Tea?”
“Please.”
I sat silently while she puttered. She served us a strong herb tea with hints of cinnamon and orange. I waited while she tasted hers, looking me over with narrow, evaluating eyes. A few wisps of hair fell over her forehead. I was pleased that I could swallow the tea without discomfort. Thank you, Lady Teldra.
“Well,” said the old woman said after a moment.
“Thank you for the tea, Auntie.”
“What do you bring me?”
“Gold,” I said.
She sniffed. “Gold gold, or copper?”
I drew an imperial from my pouch and passed it over. She studied it, and I could see her trying not to show how impressed she was. Eventually she gave up the struggle, and let herself smile. She still had many of her teeth, though they were yellow.
“Are you hungry?”
I managed a dignified nod that understated my hunger by a great deal. She disappeared, then came back with large bowl and a small one.
“Oh my,” I said. “Are those what I think they are?”
“Probably.”
“Who grows red mushrooms around here?”
“I do,” she said and offered me the bowl. I took one, dipped it into the garlic butter, and took a bite. The burn spread over my tongue and mouth and I grinned. The last person I knew who grew red mushrooms had been my father, years and years ago. He had served them lightly steamed, coated in garlic butter, and with a scallion wrapped around each. These were just steamed and dipped in garlic butter, which is all you need. In a pinch, you can skip the garlic butter. I felt my face flush, I started sweating, and I ate another one.
I think it was just about there that I remembered that my clothes were covered in blood.
“Auntie,” I rasped. “About my appearance—”
“Eat first,” she snapped, as if annoyed that she had to explain something so obvious. I didn’t argue.
The burn from red mushrooms (which, fortunately, affects the front of the mouth and not the throat) hits immediately, but it also accumulates, so by the fifth one my mouth was seriously concerned that I was trying to get information from it, and it would have told me anything I wanted to hear if it had only known what to say. She brought out some langosh, however, and that helped.
“Thanks,” I said.
She sniffed. “I’m not a laundry service. You’ll have to find your own way to clean up.”
“I know, Auntie.”
“You need rest.”
I nodded.
“But that isn’t why you came to me. Nor was it for red mushrooms.” She sniffed again, as if red mushrooms were the only reason any right-thinking person would visit her.
I shook my head.
“Well?”
“I need a safe place to stay,” I said. “Just for a day or two, while I recover.”
She studied me, her eyes unblinking. “How is your grandfather?”
“Well. He’s in an Eastern province, just this side of the mountains. Lots of wildlife, lots of privacy. He likes it.”
“You’ll give him my regards?”
“I will.”
She considered a little longer, and I waited for her to decide.
Let me explain: Stabbing someone to death isn’t easy. I know how often you see it in the theater, but on the street, it doesn’t work like it does on the stage. You can’t simply put steel into someone and expect him to become dead. People just naturally don’t want to die, and have bodies that are designed to keep on living. If you have a thrusting sword like a rapier, or even better, a shortsword, and you can nail the heart, you’re going to be all right; but it needs to be perfect, and it’s hard to use anything as big as that without giving the target enough warning that it could turn into a fight—and you don’t want it to turn into a fight, because then it won’t be perfect, which means something might go wrong. That’s why most “work” is done with knives, and killing someone with a knife requires knowing what you’re doing.
There is a significant difference between a fight and an assassination. Usually, when I’m fighting, I try for wounds that will slow my enemy, or throw him off, or make it more difficult for him to fight me. That’s why I cut so much—cutting someone’s face, or arm, or belly, or leg, will interfere with his plans even if it won’t kill him. The times you can actually get in a perfect killing strike are rare in a fight. The whole point of assassination, in fact, is to get the target into a position where you can take one perfect shot for a vital spot, and hit it. Even then, a great deal of the time, the victim won’t die instantly; he’ll just lie there, in shock, until he bleeds to death or his organs shut down. I mean, it often isn’t even clear exactly when death occurs. But most of the time, it doesn’t matter. Nail a guy’s brain, and he’s dead, even if he’s still breathing for a bit. Generally speaking, that’s good enough.
But I didn’t have a pattern of movements, and I certainly wouldn’t agree to a meeting, which made it very hard for anyone to set me up with a perfect shot; it didn’t give them a lot to work with. In a situation like that, if I’d even agreed to take the job, I’d have just exercised patience and waited for the target (me, if you’re paying attention) to make a mistake. But the Jhereg wanted me really badly, and I was skilled enough to make it hard for them—so someone had just put out the word that anyone who managed to stick a Morganti blade in me would make a lot of money. They were spending a lot of money on having people watch for me, and they’d made some arrangement to get out word when I was spotted.
I mean, the death thing—if it’s a Morganti blade they’ve stuck into you, that’s different. Doesn’t much matter where you’re hit, you’re dead. Really dead. All the way dead. Depending on how strong the blade is, probably pretty fast, too.
The result was that a lot of incompetent people were taking shots at me. And that meant two things: one, that there were going to be a lot of attempts that were less than expert; and, two, sooner or later they were going to get me unless I got out of town really fast. It also meant that all of
the places I usually went would be watched: Kragar’s office, Cawti’s house—for all I knew they were even watching Castle Black and Dzur Mountain.
I’m explaining this to you; it isn’t what I was thinking about then. I sort of knew it, and I was sort of too messed up to care. Yeah, sometimes things are complicated.
What I did know was that I needed to be somewhere safe for a few days; to rest, to build up my strength. Just for a while. Someplace they couldn’t find me, at least until I was in shape to maybe survive another attempt.
Just because you figure that one of them is going to get you eventually is no reason to make it easy for them.
Well, is it?
She raised a hand, studied me, then let it fall.
“You cannot remove that amulet even long enough to be healed?”
“No, Auntie. If I do, I’ll be found.”
She sniffed. “You need longer than a few days. You’re already falling apart. You’ve been foolish, and are being more foolish every hour, and you need rest.”
“Yeah,” I said.
She considered. “Your grandfather would want me to help you.”
“You knew him well?”
“I knew him well enough to know he would want me to help you.”
“I’m pleased to hear you say so.”
She nodded. “Very well, young Taltos. I will keep you hidden for two days. After that, we’ll see.”
“Auntie, do you know from whom you’re hiding me?”
“No,” she said. “Now, come along.”
3
MAKING A HOLE OR MAKING PLANS
She led the way out of the tent. In a few steps, we were in front of a dilapidated wooden ironware store. We went in. Auntie had a key, which brought up some questions I never found the answers to, but meant we didn’t have to wake up a clerk. She led me through the place and out the back into an alley that was so narrow I rubbed against the walls on both sides. It was only a few paces, however, and then we went through a door and down several steps. After a moment, I smelled kerosene and there was light. She was holding a lantern, and I was in a narrow hallway of rough stone. It went thirty or forty paces before we came to a wooden door on the left. She opened it, and hung the lantern next to the door.
“Here,” she said. “I’ll bring you food and water, and a bucket so you needn’t leave.”
“All right.”
“And blankets.”
“You are kind.”
She scowled. “Take off your clothes, I’ll see they’re cleaned.”
“You are very kind.”
She sniffed. “Do not do anything foolish, young Taltos. Or rather, anything else foolish.”
“I’ll try not to, Auntie. And I can pretty much promise that I won’t at least until I have my clothes back.”
She looked at Loiosh, sitting calmly on my right shoulder, and nodded. They were communicating. Not psychically, just—you know—communicating. I suspect if I’d had a better idea of what they were telling each other, I wouldn’t have liked it, so I didn’t ask. I stripped down and handed her my blood-covered clothes; fortunately, the cloak hadn’t been in the way of the blood, so I didn’t have to show her most of my weaponry. She saw the harness, and determinedly ignored it while I removed it.
Yeah, yeah. I was wearing the harness you gave me, with the fancy strange sticky stuff you can pull off and put on again, and I had a few weapons attached to it. There. Are you happy?
She left. I sat down, mostly naked, with my back against the wall, and closed my eyes. Presently, she came back with a pile of bedding and a bucket, then left without a word.
“Boss?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you really hide down here, doing nothing, for two days?”
“It’ll make me crazy, but a different kind of crazy. I figure, right now, that’s an improvement.”
“Didn’t think you had it in you, Boss.”
“Never underestimate my sense of self-preservation.”
“Boss, I’ve been with you all along, remember? You just barely have a sense of self-preservation.”
“Shut up.”
I threw the blankets onto the hard floor, stretched out, and shook for a little while. When I was done with that, I closed my eyes. Sleep didn’t come, but I didn’t mind so much; it was good just to lie there. I did nothing for, I don’t know, maybe a couple of hours, and I think I dozed off for a bit in there.
I sat up, my back to the wall, legs stretched out.
“Boss?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m bored. Rocza is bored.”
“Get used to it. Remember when I was in jail?”
“Which time?”
“The first time. It was a lot like this.”
“Tedious?”
“Exactly.”
“How much longer?”
“Loiosh, don’t start counting the hours. It’ll make it worse.”
“What then?”
“I’ll get the door. You two head out. Fly around. Eat dead things. I’m going to stay here.”
“Just leave you here?”
“Loiosh, all I want to do for a while is nothing. There isn’t any good reason for you two to do nothing. The whole idea is for nothing to happen.”
“I know that’s the idea, Boss.”
“Go.”
I walked down the hall, opened the door, and let them out.
“And be careful,” I said.
“You telling me that is pretty funny,” he said.
I went back to the room, stretched out on the blankets, closed my eyes, and did nothing for a while.
Oh, relax. I’m not going to make you listen to how I did nothing for two days. It was hard enough to make myself go through it once; I have no interest in living it again. I did the things you do when your life involves sitting around and waiting. That my prison term was self-imposed helped a little; I always knew I could walk out if I wanted to.
The next day she came back with my clothing. I felt less helpless wearing clothes, although I know how stupid that is. While I dressed, I said, “Why can I still speak with my familiar, when I can’t send or receive psychic messages, or perform witchcraft?”
“You think I’m an expert on Phoenix Stone?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, I’m not.”
“So it was just a wild guess when you identified it so quickly.”
She glowered for a moment. Then she said, “You are bonded with your familiar.”
“Yes.”
Her face twitched, and I realized she was trying to find words to describe something that words weren’t good for. “If you removed the amulet, I could show you,” she said.
“I think I’ll pass.”
She nodded. She frowned, then said, “When you communicate with your familiar, it is more like speaking with your own arm than it is like psychic communication.”
“I don’t use words when I speak with my arm.”
“I’m surprised you can use words at all.”
Okay, I asked for that.
She said, “Psychic messages for the elfs can come through their device—the Orb—to make it easier for them. Or directly, mind-to-mind the way we do. Either way, it is a question of attuning your mind to resonate with the mind of the other.”
I was right, she knew something about this stuff. It would be amusing—on several levels—to hear a conversation between her and Daymar. Alas, I was denied that pleasure.
“I think I’m with you,” I said.
“The Phoenix Stone interferes with and changes how your mind emits the vibrations on the psychic levels, so none can hear you, and, at the same time, you cannot reach out.”
“And when I communicate with Loiosh?”
“He does not receive the vibrations of psychic energy. He is part of what emits them.”
I spent some time trying to make sense of that. Then I said, “All right, so knowing someone well enough to reach him psychically means knowing how his mind works
well enough to permit your mind to be in sync with it, whereas you’re bound to your familiar in such a way that he is almost thinking your thoughts with you.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why he can help with spells.”
“Yes. For a witch, the training is the opposite.”
“I don’t—”
“Hush. When communicating with another, you must learn to alter your brain’s emissions enough to adjust to another. When communicating with your familiar, you must learn to separate your thought from his enough to hear and send words.”
“I understand,” I said. “Well, I don’t, but I understand more than I did. Thank you.”
She sniffed, nodded, and went back upstairs.
She came back a few more times and we had a few more conversations. Some of them were interesting, but that is the only one that had any effect on the matters we’re discussing today, so I’m afraid you must go the rest of your life without learning what they are. If that bothers you, feel free to write a letter. Fill it with threats and obscenity and send it to Sethra Lavode, Dzur Mountain. Let me know how that works out for you.
I sat, rested, recovered. I let things play out in my mind, things like how they’d found me, and what I might have to do to keep them from finding me again. I started to go through the list of enemies I’d made, but it was too long and just made me feel hopeless. And a stupid part of me—the part that had never grown older than six, I suppose—cried out that it wasn’t fair.
