by Steven Brust
I nodded. You don’t survive as a cleaner for the Jhereg if you’re weak.
“I can’t protect you from the Left Hand,” I said.
“I know.”
“But they can’t protect you from me, either.”
He considered that for what seemed a very long time. I let him think. At last he said, “All right. Make me an offer.”
“Twenty.”
“Thirty.”
“Done.”
I passed him over enough money to keep a family eating well for several months, and he said, “Unless they’ve moved it, it’s in the back room of an inn at the very end of Western, in the false back of a three-shelf bookcase.”
Well, that ought to be precise enough. “Any traps or wardings on the false back?”
“None that I saw, but I wouldn’t recognize any.”
“Yeah, all right.”
Loiosh and Rocza checked the street, and I went back out there and down the street to the tunnel into Kragar’s office, where I found Deragar hanging around.
“Need something?” he said.
“There’s an inn at the tail end of Western.”
He nodded. “Black Rose,” he said. “It’s a Left Hand place.”
“Yes,” I said. “Can you check it out for me?”
“What do you want checked?”
“How hard would it be to get me a minute alone in the back office?”
He nodded. “There’s going to be sorcery.”
I fished out my purse and handed him fifteen gold imperials. “That’ll do it,” he said. “Should I have some food sent in before I go?”
“That’d be great.”
“See you soon, then.”
Half an hour later there was ginger-roasted kethna, wine, and Forbidden Forest soup, and I was feeling fairly good about life.
“So, you trust this guy, Boss?”
“You think I’ve been poisoned? I feel fine.”
“Oh, now is a good time to ask.”
“Kragar trusts him.”
A couple of hours later Deragar was back. “You get it?” I asked him.
“When it’s open or closed?” were the first words out of his mouth.
“Whichever is easier.”
“Open, then. That gets rid of everything at the entrances and windows, and eliminates the passive sorcery detection.”
I nodded. “I’m listening.”
He unrolled a piece of paper, and held it spread open on the table in front of me. It had a detailed drawing of what I assumed was the inside of the Black Rose. “The two Xs are sorceresses, keeping a watch on the office door at all times. There’s no window into the office, so the front and back doors are your only way in. The back door is locked and sealed—sorcerous seal and alarms—except for deliveries and special requests.”
“Two sorceresses,” I said. “Are you sure you didn’t miss one?”
He looked at me.
“Good answer,” I said. “All right, go on.”
“The door into the office has what’s called a Ferni Seal. A Ferni Seal—”
“I’m familiar with it,” I said. It was serious security.
He nodded. “Also, the knob on the door has a ten-candle alarm tied to a bell in the bar, and something inside the office; obviously, my sorcerer couldn’t tell what.”
“Right. Understood.”
“That’s it,” he said.
“That’s plenty,” I said. “Good work.”
He nodded. “Any kethna left?”
“Help yourself.”
He did, while I tried to figure out a way in. The sorcery was no problem—I had a Great Weapon called Lady Teldra, which meant I still had, albeit in a different form, what had once been a gold chain I’d called Spellbreaker. The trouble was the sorceresses. They weren’t going to just stand there while I walked into the office to look around; not to mention whoever worked in that office.
“You’re sure open is easier?” I said after a while.
He swallowed a mouthful of kethna and wiped his lips on the back of his hand. “Two more in the office, one more in the bar, plus more sorcery.”
Plus the fact that even walking in would be a signal to start the mayhem. I could maybe take them all out, but right now was not when I wanted the Left Hand after me as well as the Right. “Yeah, okay,” I said.
He went back to eating.
“I can’t wait to hear your plan for this one, Boss.”
“Shut up.”
I considered. “Okay, we walk in and ask to see the lady in charge. They—”
“Identify you and kill you for the reward. With you so far, Boss. Then what?”
“I was more thinking they let me in to see her.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of that, Boss. Bet they won’t think of it either.”
“I could use a disguise.”
“First thing they’ll do when you ask is check you for sorcery and find your Phoenix Stone.”
“I could take it off.”
“Oh, then the Jhereg would kill you instead. Good plan.”
“All right, smart guy. What’s your idea?”
“Mock you mercilessly until you think of something better.”
“Does that usually work?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
What I wanted to do was charge in, kill everyone in sight, then search the place. Even without the benefit of Loiosh’s penetrating insight, I understood that wasn’t practical.
Of course, there was the fallback position: ask Kiera for help. Again. I hated the idea of running to her every time I needed to steal something, but I was willing to do it if there was no other way.
“Yeah, Boss. Now is exactly the time to be too proud to—”
“Shut up.”
Maybe some capers are out of the reach of a lone Easterner. Maybe. Can’t say as I liked the idea much.
“You don’t have to like it, Boss. It’s the only thing that makes any sort of—”
“Loiosh, if you can’t be useful—”
I broke off and started chuckling.
“Boss? Boss, what’s funny? I don’t like the sound of that.”
Three hours later, he was telling me it wasn’t funny.
I said, “Go,” and opened the door. He and Rocza flew into the Black Rose. I counted to ten, then followed them in, hugging the wall. There was the sizzling and popping of spells, and people moving everywhere. Lots of people; twenty at least. The sorceresses were having trouble hitting the jhereg without hitting the customers. The door to the office opened as I was approaching it. I pressed myself against the wall. A woman came out; when she was past I slipped in behind her, and there I was.
There was a three-shelf bookcase, just as promised. There were, supposedly, sorcerous alarms on it. There was an easy way to disable them: draw Lady Teldra, strike at it, and let her handle the rest (handle, you see, is kind of a joke, because Lady’s Teldra’s hilt, you know, handle, was really Spellbreaker, which—this is dumb, right?). The trouble was, once I drew that blade everyone in the other room would know instantly, and they’d lose interest in chasing jhereg.
So instead I leaned in and gave that bookcase a big hug. In case you’ve forgotten, I was wearing a Phoenix Stone amulet.
Then I pulled books off the bottom shelf, carefully, keeping them in neat stacks. I spotted the compartment built into the back of the shelf, studied it, flipped the catch, and looked inside. Hoping I’d disabled everything nasty, I reached in and took the ring. My hand came out with as many fingers as it had gone in with, and I had the ring. I closed the compartment and replaced the books.
Then I slipped out of the room, hugging the wall again.
“Okay, Loiosh. Out.”
“We’re no longer speaking, Boss.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You know you enjoyed it.”
I made it out onto the street. I walked for a quarter of a mile or so, then Loiosh and Rocza landed on my shoulders. Loiosh bit my ear,
but not very hard. I patted my pouch.
“Well, you got it,” said Loiosh.
“Yeah.”
“Is that about everything?”
“No,” I said.
He didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to.
He and Rocza left my shoulders and started circling above me. I made it back to Kragar’s office, inspected the ring, and wondered if I’d been played. It really did look like a plain, unadorned platinum ring. No marks, nothing.
I shrugged. I’d find out eventually.
I put the ring back in my pouch; with any luck, the same amulet that kept anyone from finding me would keep anyone from finding it. With no luck, I was dead anyway.
I found a chair, sat down, and stretched out.
“You see, Loiosh, here’s the thing you don’t get. All—”
“This is going to be good.”
“Shut up. All of those Jhereg bosses—all of them, every one as long as the Jhereg has existed—what they loved was building their organization. Becoming more powerful. Becoming more secure. Becoming more wealthy.”
“I’m missing something, Boss.”
“Becoming, not being.”
“Oh.”
“The trick is, I’m not sure if the Demon sees that; it might matter a lot.”
“Is that what you meant about making the Jhereg see things like a Hawk?”
“I keep forgetting you pay attention,” I said. “Yeah, I need the Demon to focus on the details, and miss the big picture.”
I picked up volume nine of the Imperial trade laws and tried to read them, but I couldn’t concentrate.
“What is it, Boss?”
“Kragar.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“It was a close thing. I could see from Aliera’s face how close it was.”
“You should eat something, Boss.”
“Just did.”
“That was hours ago, before the excitement.”
“Not hungry, Loiosh.”
“All right.”
I hadn’t admitted to myself how scared I was when I saw Kragar lying in a pool of blood; or when I saw the way Aliera looked at him. There’s no point in dwelling on that stuff. I picked up the heavy legal book, again tried to concentrate, again put it down.
Too much on my mind, I decided. Too much at once. It wasn’t just how seeing Kragar like that had affected me; it was also the fact that I was involved in two major projects at once: killing Terion, and getting the Jhereg off my back. When I’d taken on projects in the past, I mean big projects, like an assassination, I’d only done one at a time. Now I was finding out why.
“We should get something to eat, Loiosh.”
“Good idea, Boss.”
An hour later, Deragar was back with bread, cheese, wine, and river-fried herring, which I gobbled down furiously. He joined us, and looked pleased when I complimented him on the cheese selection. He talked about it for a while, but I don’t remember what he said.
As I ate, I studied him. He had broad shoulders, a square head with barely a noble’s point, and astonishingly thick wrists. He looked like someone who could break any bone you cared to name with his bare hands. In a strange way, he reminded me of a guy named Sticks I used to know. Not physically, but in the sense of always having a sort of half-asleep look that I knew was deceptive. He also reminded me of someone else, but I couldn’t quite figure out who.
“Deragar,” I said. “Did you ever work for me, a few years ago? I don’t remember you.”
“Not directly,” he said. “I was collecting for Gasto until, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. So, how did you end up with this job? I mean, helping me.”
He looked at me.
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
“The job is keeping an eye on you.”
“Of course.”
“For your protection, I mean.”
“Yeah. What happened to Gasto?”
“Throat cut first, then—”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, why? Who’d he piss off?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just a power struggle. Might’ve been personal. Never heard.”
“All right.”
Around then one of Kragar’s people came in and handed me a sealed piece of paper. I looked at him and waited. “Just delivered,” he said.
“From?”
“A messenger.”
“Uh. All right.”
On the outside was written “V. Taltos” in expensive blue ink. I broke the seal, unfolded it, and read: “Come. I can help.” The signature was a stylized dzur. I’d seen it before.
“Trap, Boss?”
“Nope.”
“How can you be—”
“Loiosh. No one, I mean, no one is going to be so stupid as to fake this.”
“Uh. Yeah.”
If I knew anything, I knew the note was real.
Leaving me only the problem of figuring out how I was going to make my way to Dzur Mountain, the home of Sethra Lavode.
10
MAKING TROUBLE OR MAKING PROGRESS
Teleportation was the obvious choice, and only required doing what I’d been doing an awful lot lately—removing the amulet that kept me invisible to any Jhereg looking for me, and immune to anyone trying to cast a spell on me. Now, admittedly, I also had Lady Teldra to protect me from random spells meant to kill me from a distance. Still, if I kept taking the amulet off, someone was going to come up with a way to sneak past her. Which meant I needed to be wearing that amulet. And I was beginning to get irritated about the whole thing. I very much wanted this plan to work, if for no other reason than I could get rid of that bloody damned amulet. Even having it hanging around my neck was starting to annoy me.
I came up with several ways to reach Dzur Mountain without removing the amulet; unfortunately, they required between three days and three weeks to work. Deragar said he hadn’t made much progress on finding how to take a shot at Terion, but had left some messages and hoped to be getting word. I grunted and continued trying to figure a safe and fast way to get to Dzur Mountain, which was tricky because there was no such thing.
Oh. Unless—
I smiled. Why not?
“Deragar,” I said. “Feel like teleporting to Castle Black?”
“Not really,” he said. “I prefer my skin whole.”
I removed a ring from my pouch—no, not the ring I’d just acquired, the other ring: the one with my seal as an Imperial nobleman—and handed it to him. “Show them this. It’s proof you came from me.”
“And that will matter to them—why?”
“Trust me.”
“All right. Then what?”
“Then get a message to Lord Morrolan.”
He listened; I told him the message. He looked confused, but repeated it to make sure he had it right. “Anything else?” he said.
“When you’re done, ask him to teleport you back here. It’ll be less traumatic that way.”
“I can trust him to bring me here, and not to somewhere a mile deep in the ocean-sea?”
“Yes,” I said. “Probably. Almost certainly. Yeah.”
He looked doubtful, but nodded and headed out. I settled in to wait.
“Okay, Boss. Not bad.”
“Glad to hear it.”
You see, the Lord Morrolan e’Drien, who is such an arrogant little shit that he calls his home Castle Black, has a tower full of windows, and each window can be a doorway to wherever he wants, including to some places that don’t exist in the same reality as the rest of us—and don’t ask me what I mean by that; I’m quoting the Necromancer. The point is, it isn’t teleportation, it isn’t even sorcery. It’s something else. I’d used those windows before. And Morrolan, for whatever reason, was usually inclined to help me out when I needed it.
It was less than half an hour after Deragar had left that the air in front of me started shimmering. In a few seconds, there was a man-sized ring of golden sparks in front of me. I stepped into it.
Yeah, remember the part where I said it couldn’t be a trap? What happened next will take some explanation.
The point is, I stepped into the shower of golden sparks and then things happened fast. Too fast for me to react to. Even too fast for Loiosh.
I hate it when that happens.
Here’s what I figured out later: Picture, if you will, this idiot Easterner stepping through a necromantic gate, mind in the clouds, no weapons ready. My first warning was that unmistakable feeling that indicates the presence of a Morganti weapon. If you’ve never felt it, you’re lucky. It’s like a horrible, gray oppression settles over you; but that isn’t right, it doesn’t settle, it smacks you down, it beats at you. There isn’t anything else like it.
At the same moment, Loiosh screamed, “Boss!”
But of course, by then, it was already too late.
Apparently, some bright fellow had figured out that if I wanted to travel without removing the amulet, a necromantic gate would be the only way to do it; confirmed that Morrolan had such a thing; and decided, correctly, that sooner or later I’d use it. I had one thing right: No one had forged a note from Sethra. Instead, they’d watched Morrolan’s tower, waiting for a gate to open between there and Kragar’s office. Then they opened their own gate over it, and I stepped into it.
Well, it isn’t that simple, really. It required a skilled necromancer. I hate to think what it had cost. But it was money well spent, in the sense that when I appeared, there was a guy with a Morganti sword, and he was in a good position to put a permanent, final, all-done-with-it-forever shine on me.
I had enough time to see the sword, and to get a vague impression of someone tall, dressed in gray and black.
I had enough time to see the blur as he took a step in toward me and swung, cutting down and to the left.
I had enough time to realize what was about to happen.
I had enough time to feel terror such I had never before felt in my life—the kind of terror where, however much practice you’ve had, you freeze. Your limbs lock, you can’t breathe, and you can’t even formulate the wish to be elsewhere; but you have the strong desire to be curled up on the ground.
It’s strange how, at moments like this, you seem able to experience so many different and contradictory emotions at once. And while you don’t have time to move, you have time to be aware of each emotion you’re feeling.
