by Steven Brust
My son would be about eight now. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been four. A lot goes on in those four years. By now—
No.
I stood still in a hallway deep in the heart of the Palace that controlled the mighty Empire of Dragaerans, letting humanity (to use the term loosely) flow around me, and tried to convince myself to attend to business. Seeing Cawti and my son would make me miserable and put them in danger. So, naturally, it was exactly what I wanted to do.
Cawti had named him Vlad Norathar.
I suddenly had the feeling that if I met with Norathar—I mean, the Warlord—I’d smack her on the side of the head. Probably best not to talk to her just now.
“Boss?”
“Mmmm?”
“We should visit Sethra.”
“I know.”
“You don’t want to?”
“Partly that. Partly, I don’t want the whole Jhereg knowing I went there. Castle Black is one thing, but Dzur Mountain—”
“You think you’d be in danger in Dzur Mountain?”
“No, not danger. I just don’t feel comfortable having the Jhereg know I’m there; at least right away.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe there’s a way. . . okay, let’s do it.”
“Uh, how, Boss?”
“How what? How do we get there? I have a clever and devious plan.”
“Oh, great.”
I worked my way around to the Athyra Wing and, eventually, out into the world. It was bright out there, making me think of the East where there’s no overcast to protect you from the Furnace. I blinked and waited for my eyes to adjust.
The Athyra Wing is usually pretty quiet and today was no exception; that meant that just in case there were any assassins who’d been following me waiting for an opportunity, I’d see them—pardon me, Loiosh would see them in plenty of time. I set out on the Street of the Athyra, turning to pass the obsidian monolith (oh, yes, we’re so impressive) of the House of the Athyra on my right, continuing just a few score of yards beyond it to Mawg Way. “Mawg,” I was once told, means “merchant” in some disused language that goes back to before there were any such things as merchants. That makes you wonder, you know? I mean, “mawg.” An ugly word. Where did they get “merchant” out of that? Maybe there are people who study things like that. If so, they’re probably Athyra.
A few doors down, on the left side, was a windowless cottage built of round stones. It had a thick door bound in iron strips; the door was standing open. Above the doorway was a particularly detailed sign in which an Athyra was flying over a map of the Empire.
“Boss, you aren’t serious.”
“Why not?”
“Ever heard of the Left Hand of the Jhereg, Boss? You know, the sorceresses?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Boss, the Left Hand doesn’t like you. And even if they did, the Jhereg could hire one of them to watch places like this. As soon as you teleport, a sorcerer can. . . what are you laughing about?”
“Just watch me, Loiosh.”
I went in. The entry room was just big enough, and held a door opposite. A young lady of the House of the Athyra sat in a wooden chair facing the door, looking serious and mystical and very business-like: she may as well have had “apprentice” stenciled on her forehead.
She looked me over, decided on just how noble I was (I was an Easterner, but I dared to wear a sword openly), and inclined her head slightly. “Yes, sir?”
“How much is a teleport?”
“One imperial, to a known location.”
“How much to have the sorcerer come to me?”
“My lord? Oh, you mean to teleport from somewhere else? Two imperials, if it’s within the city.”
“And how much to have it done surreptitiously, and untraceably? And add in a short-term spell to make me sorcerously invisible.”
“How short-term?”
“A minute. Half a minute.”
“Ten.”
“That’s fine. My name is Vladimir Taltos, I’ll be going to Dzur Mountain, and I wish to have a sorcerer meet me in the Temple of Verra on Waterhill in South Adrilankha.”
Her nose wrinkled and she hesitated, looking for an excuse to say no. Eventually she said, “I’ll have to ask.”
“I’ll wait here,” I said.
She gave me a suspicious look before going through the door. It isn’t like there was anything in the room to steal. She returned a moment later, asked for my name again. This time she wrote it on a small slab of some sort, and nodded. “She will meet you.”
“Want the money now?”
“If you please.”
I put two five-imperial coins into her hand and sketched a bow. I opened the door, standing far enough to the side not to be open to anything unpleasant that might shoot through it, but not so far as to make it obvious what I was doing. Loiosh flew out; I’d have loved to see the look on the apprentice’s face, but my back was to her. Loiosh said it was safe, so I stepped out onto the street.
Crowded streets make it harder to set something up reliably, but easier to get the drop on your target, and easier to get away safely afterward. Empty streets, of course, have the opposite problems. I compromised and took a mix of both, making my way to the Chain Bridge and so across to South Adrilankha.
“So, Loiosh, you get it?”
“I know what you’re thinking—the Jhereg won’t go after you in a temple.”
“Right.”
“But you still have to get to the temple.”
“I have complete confidence in you.”
One thing that cannot be done psychically is mutter, but Loiosh took a pretty good run at it.
There are scores of shrines to Verra in the city, and several temples to her in South Adrilankha. The one I’d chosen was a low stonework affair, set back from the road, with a flagstone walk flanked by scrawny trees. Moreover, it was in a neighborhood with a lot of space between the houses. Put it all together, and there were no good places for assassins to hide. Even Loiosh grudgingly agreed, after a few minutes flying around, that I could go ahead and venture up to the doors—after that, he made no guarantees.
Opening the door was scary. I didn’t care how stupid I looked; I listened, stood to the side, and was moving when I flung it open.
No one was there. Yeah, I looked stupid. I might have gotten some funny glances from people passing on the street, but I didn’t wait around to see, I just stepped inside.
It was a single room, with a black altar opposite the door, about ten paces from me. I knew from memory that there were small holes cut into the altar for candles, though I couldn’t see them from here. Beyond that, the place was utterly bare. The priest here believed that one should bring nothing to the Goddess but the desire to serve, or something like that. I don’t remember exactly how he’d put it; it was years ago. Services here were held two or three times a week, I forget the times and dates, and on the obvious feast days.
I positioned myself behind the altar and waited for the sorcerer—or an assassin, if I’d misjudged the Jhereg. Sorry, don’t mean to be mysterious. There are rules to how we operate: you don’t kill someone in front of his family, you don’t mess with him in his home, you don’t touch him in a temple or at a shrine.
The thing is, all of these rules have, at one time or another, been violated; one reason I was in trouble with the Jhereg was for violating one of them. I’d had a bad day that day. The point is, I was calculating on them following the rules, at least this time, and for a while. If I was wrong, things were liable to get exciting.
I got to be nervous for about twenty minutes before the sorceress showed up. No assassins came with her. Score one for me. She had the dark complexion of the Athyra but her hair was such a light brown it was almost blond, producing a slightly startling effect. There was a vague look in her eyes that was common if not universal among Athyra.
She gave the place a half-interested and disdainful look, then nodded at me. “Lord Taltos?” she
said.
I nodded.
“Dzur Mountain,” she said. “Untraceable, with a brief lingering cloud.”
I nodded again.
She looked like she might be considering offering me advice on going there, but she must have decided not to, and just said, “Are you ready?”
I pulled the amulet from around my neck and put it away, thus, no doubt, alerting a dozen or so Jhereg sorcerers. “Ready,” I said.
She didn’t even gesture, as far as I could see; for an instant the room seemed about to spin, but then it went through a familiar slow fade, going through all the colors from white to almost-white; interminable seconds went by when I was in two places at once, and I could feel myself pushing air out of the way. In that time, it suddenly hit me that she might have been bribed, and be delivering me to an assassin. In that empty, lingering time-space, I became so convinced of it that I was already reaching for a dagger when the world settled down to a familiar place on the lower slopes of Dzur Mountain.
My first reaction was relief, my second was annoyance. Yeah, this place was familiar—I knew how to reach Sethra’s home from this spot: it involved climbing more stairs than ought to exist in the world. I wondered if the sorceress had brought me to this entrance deliberately. I still wonder.
I replaced the amulet then entered through a wooden door that wasn’t nearly as flimsy as it appeared. You don’t clap when entering Dzur Mountain—depending on which door you use, at any rate. I’ve wondered about that, and I think it’s because in some way the mountain itself isn’t her home, only the parts of it that she claimed as her residence; and so I passed through the first door into the mountain, and started climbing stairs. It seemed much louder this time, my feet on the stone stairway made echoes and echoes of echoes; my memory was doing the same thing.
You don’t need to hear about it; it was a long, long way up. Partway up, I passed the place where Morrolan and I had almost slaughtered each other; it bothered me a little that I couldn’t identify the exact spot.
Eventually I reached the top, clapped, and opened the door without waiting for a reply. Her residence doesn’t seem all that big once you’re aware of the size of the mountain; but then there’s probably a lot I haven’t seen. And, at her age, I imagine she needs lots of space to store stuff she’s accumulated.
I wandered a bit, hoping to run into her, or her servant, or someone. The halls—dark stone here, pale wood there—all echoed strangely and gave me the sudden feeling that Dzur Mountain was deserted. It wasn’t, actually—I came across her in one of the smaller sitting rooms that she put here and there. She was drinking a glass of wine and reading a thick, heavy book with a cover I couldn’t see. She wore a black garment that seemed to wrap around her, pinned with a gold or copper bracelet at the left arm, and looping through a jeweled necklace high on her chest, with another loop on her right hip with similar jewels. She said, “Hello, Vlad,” without looking up. I took that as a cue to stand there like an idiot, so I did, and presently she marked the book with something that looked like it had silver tracings on it and gave me a nod. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“It takes a while for word to reach the outlands. That’s a nice dress you’re wearing. Are those sapphires on the necklace?”
“A gift from the Necromancer. Have a seat. Tukko will bring you wine.”
I sat in a chair that faced her at a slight angle. “And I will drink it. Good. We have a plan.”
A courtesy smile came and went.
Tukko showed up with wine and a scowl. The wine was less offensive; a strongly flavored red that should have had some heavily spiced meat to go with it, but I didn’t complain. I sipped, nodded, and said, “So, what can you tell me?”
“I was going to ask you that.”
“Heh. I just came in from out of town.”
“Yes, and found an advocate, got Aliera to accept him—which ought to rate you as a master sorcerer—and you’ve been snooping around the Imperial Palace since then. So—what can you tell me?” She smiled sweetly.
I stared at her, remembering things about her I sometimes forget. Then I said, “If you were trying to impress me, it worked.”
“Permit me my small pleasures.”
“I’d never think of denying them to you,” I said. “All right. In brief, the Empress seems to be prosecuting Aliera to distract attention from some massacre in some little town no one cares about. The mystery is that she picked Aliera, who I’ve always figured was a close friend. The charge, as far as I can tell, is nonsense.”
She nodded slowly. “It isn’t as if the Empress hasn’t known about Aliera’s studies for years.”
“Right.”
“When you spoke to Her Majesty, what was the Orb doing?”
“Eh? Floating over her head.”
“I mean, what color was it?”
“Green at first. Orange when I annoyed her. It turned blue around the end of the conversation. She said she had to go do something.”
“What shade of blue?”
“Um, shade?”
“Did it seem cold, icy?”
“Sorry, I don’t have that good a memory for colors.”
“All right,” she said.
“Can you explain—?”
“Not really. Just trying to learn everything I can. I wish I’d been there.”
“Yes. That brings up another interesting point.” I cleared my throat. “Why weren’t you?”
“Beg pardon?”
“That’s what I really wanted to ask you. Why is this my job?”
She frowned. “No one is forcing you—”
“That’s not my point. Aliera has friends coming out her—Aliera has a lot of friends. Most of them are more influential than an ex-Jhereg Easterner on the run. What’s going on here?”
She looked away from me. When everything in Sethra’s home is very quiet, there is a soft, continuous sound, as of air slowly moving down a tunnel. It seemed to me I’d noticed it or almost noticed it before.
Finally she said, “You’ve spent a day or two with the Justicers now. What do you think?”
That didn’t seem to have anything to do with my question, but I’ve known Sethra long enough to know that not every change of subject is a change of subject.
“They’re pretty obsessive,” I said.
“About what?”
“About the law, and its quirky little ins and outs.”
“And what do you think about the law?”
“Most of my thoughts about the law involve ways to circumvent it,” I said.
She smiled. “I always knew you had the makings of an Emperor.”
“Eh?”
She waved it aside. “What are all those laws for?”
“Oh, come on, Sethra. I know better than to try to answer a question like that, from you of all people.”
“Fair point.” She frowned and fell into thought for a moment. Then she said, “Some people think the law is about protection—you have the Imperial Guard and the local constabulary to make sure the innocents are protected. Others think it is about justice—making sure no one can do anything bad without getting what he deserves. Still others see it as revenge: giving peace to the victim by hurting the perpetrator.”
She stopped. I waited.
“The House of the Iorich is near the bottom of the Cycle right now,” she said.
I nodded. I always forgot about that stuff. Well, I mean, obviously since I’m unlikely to live long enough to see the Cycle move even once, whereas a Dragaeran might live to see it shift two or three times. And then there’s Sethra; we won’t talk about her.
“Okay, I trust that ties into this somehow?”
She nodded. “The Iorich is the House of justice.”
“Yes, I know. The courts, the advocates, the law-scribes, all of that.”
She shook her head. “That isn’t justice; that’s the law.”
“If you’re telling me that the law has nothing to do with justice, you aren’t giving me any ne
w information.”
“What I’m telling you is that sometimes it does.”
“Um. That would be when the Iorich are near the top of the Cycle?”
She nodded.
“Okay. And what happens the rest of the time?”
“What passes for justice is the result of machinations among the nobles.”
“That sounded like it should have made sense.”
She chuckled and Tukko appeared with a small glass of something clear. She threw it down like a soldier and nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Maybe you could—”
“The Empire perpetuates itself. It protects the nobles who support it, and the machinery of state it needs to keep itself going. Anyone who threatens those things gets ground up.”
“Except during an Iorich reign?”
She nodded.
“The Iorich reign must be an interesting time.”
“Follows the Jhereg, you know.”
“Oh, right. So they have plenty to keep themselves busy.”
She nodded.
“So then,” I said. “What did Aliera do that threatened the Empire?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?”
“Wrong place at the wrong time, if you want to call it that. Or, she was convenient. Or something.”
“Sethra, are you drunk?”
“A little.”
Okay. Well. This was a new one for me. I wasn’t exactly sure how to deal with it. The most powerful sorceress in the world: sloshed. Aren’t there laws against that sort of thing?
“Sethra, are you saying that to defend Aliera is to attack the Empire?”
“I thought that was obvious.”
Maybe I should get drunk, too.
“And that’s why none of Aliera’s friends will step in?”
“She’s pretty much forbidden it.”
“Morrolan must be about ready to burst.”
“He’s not doing well.”
I nodded. “So that’s where I come in. But, okay, I still don’t see why the Empress chose Aliera to do this to.”
“Who would you suggest?”
“Sethra, there must be hundreds, thousands of people who are violating some law that can be used to distract attention from whatever the Empress wants people not to notice.”
