by Steven Brust
Q: The witness is reminded to address the Court as “my lord.” How is it you weren’t there when it happened?
A: I was taking the mule and the kethna to Nuvin’s, to keep them safe from the monsters.
Q: The witness is reminded for the last time to address the Court with respect, and speak of the Imperial soldiers—
A: Imperial monsters. [witness is removed]
“All right,” I said at last. “Tell me about it.”
“How much do you know about the Left Hand of the Jhereg, Vlad?”
“Last time we spoke, about as much as you, and you knew nothing.”
“That was several years ago. You made me curious. I’ve been learning things.”
“Then maybe it’s time to fill me in on what you’ve learned?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have—”
“That isn’t funny.”
“Yes it is.”
“Uh, all right. It is. But tell me anyway.”
She nodded. “You know how they started?”
“I’ve heard stories. Sorceresses expelled from different Houses for illegal sorcery banding together, that sort of thing.”
She nodded. “From me, as I recall. Well, they’re pretty much true, as far as I can tell. And, yes, they’re involved in illegal magic; everyone knows that, and it’s even true.”
“Rare for something everyone knows,” I suggested.
“But they’re also—I don’t know how to say this without insulting your culture, Vlad.”
“I have a pretty thick skin.”
“They have customs like an Eastern cult.”
“Um. I’m less insulted than I am confused.”
“Eastern magic—at least, in reputation—is secretive, yes?”
I thought about my grandfather and started to object, then remembered the other witches I’d encountered, and grunted an agreement.
“The Left Hand is like that, complete with oaths of silence and obedience and rituals of membership.”
“Huh. Doesn’t sound very businesslike.”
“That was my thought, too.”
“If the Jhereg tried to operate that way, they’d be laughed—”
“We used to.”
“What?”
“Before the Interregnum.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” She extended her hand and crossed her middle fingers and intoned, “For the breath of this life I bind myself to protect my protectors, to provide for my providers, to—”
“You’re kidding!”
She shook her head. “Not too many laughed about it, as it happened.”
“Good thing I wasn’t around then. I’d have laughed, and chances are they wouldn’t have cared for that.”
“Chances are,” she agreed.
“All right, so they wallow in childlike superstition in between making people unrevivifiable and eavesdropping on private conversations. What else?”
“All sorts of arcane rules.”
“Rules. The kind that are good for business, or the kind that interfere with business?”
“Some of one, some of the other, and some that depend.”
“Dammit, don’t be coy.”
“I’m giving you what information I have; you have to decide what’s useful and what isn’t. Isn’t that what you always do?”
“Uh. I guess. So, the beating?”
“The Left Hand doesn’t want you interfering with their machinations.”
“Then why not kill me?”
She shook her head. “You aren’t their problem. You’re the Right Hand’s problem.”
“But—”
“And don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re all one cohesive whole, Vlad. Individuals, factions—some might have wanted to take you out for the bounty, others don’t care about that, just want this interfering Easterner out of the way. But the big thing is this: the Jhereg—our Jhereg, the Right Hand—wants it Morganti. Having a few people dress up as Dragonlords to beat you up is one thing; putting a dull shine on you in the Imperial Palace is something else again.”
“A dull shine. I’ve never heard that euphemism before. It’s very, uh, vivid.”
She shrugged. “The fact that it has to be Morganti is protecting you. Isn’t that amusing?”
“I’m laughing on the inside; laughing on the outside hurts too much.”
She winced in sympathy. “Anything broken?” she asked.
“A rib cracked, I think.”
“Let me bind it.”
“You know how to do that?”
“You pick up a bit of everything, after a while. Take your shirt off.”
I sat up without assistance, but she helped in the shirt removal process. When a dagger dropped out from under my left armpit, she pretended not to notice. She also pretended not to notice various things strapped to my wrist. She pressed on the bruise, and when I hissed, she nodded sagely, just like a real physicker. She allowed as to how she’d be back shortly, and then teleported out. She was back shortly—under a minute—with a roll of bandages.
I declined her help in standing up, for what reason I couldn’t say. Raising my arms hurt a lot. The process of wrapping the ribs wasn’t any fun, but I did feel better afterward, and even remembered to tell her so. She said, “Good. I’d give you all sorts of instructions about what to do and not do, but I don’t actually know them, except for the ones you’re going to ignore, and the ones you can’t help but follow, so let’s just pretend I did.”
“We also could have pretended to do the part where you poked my cracked rib.”
“Then how could you have trusted me to bind it? Let’s get back to untangling this mess.”
“I’m not sure I can think about anything except breathing right now, but I’m willing to try.”
“If you’d take that amulet off for a minute, I could—”
“No, thanks.”
“As you please. So, why were you beaten by people pretending to be Dragonlords?”
“Pretending.”
“Yes.”
“You just seem awfully convinced of that.”
She gave a Kiera shrug—more implied by the twitch of her lips than by any movement of her shoulder—and said, “I won’t say I can’t be wrong. I just don’t think I am.”
“Then you think it was the Left Hand?”
“Thugs hired by them, yes. At least, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”
“So then, why?”
“To get you to do something you wouldn’t otherwise do. What did you do?”
“I saw Norathar, and used the event to pry some information out of her.”
“What information? Oh, right. You won’t tell me.”
“I’d rather not. It wasn’t anything she wanted to tell me.”
“So?”
“If you need to know—”
“I will never, ever, understand Easterners.”
“What, that we have scruples?”
“Not that you have them; where you keep them.”
Sethra would have understood completely, but this time I kept my mouth shut about it. “So, anyway, there’s your answer: I was able to get information from Norathar that I wouldn’t otherwise get.”
She nodded. “And does the Left Hand know you well enough to have predicted you’d do that?”
I started to say no, stopped, considered, and said, “It’s not impossible, I suppose. But it’s a little scary if they do. Think of how much they’d have to know, how many implications, how many possibilities.”
“Maybe. But, you know, they wouldn’t have had to know you’d do it. Just knowing you might do it would be enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Vlad, I understand that you might not pay attention to what I say, but you ought to pay attention to what you say, don’t you think?”
“Kiera, you know I love you. But I swear by all I despise that I would hit you over the head with a chair if I could lift one right now. Please just
explain it? Please?”
“You’ve just said that, after the beating, you got Norathar to tell you things she wouldn’t have otherwise.”
“So? How does that benefit them?”
“The Left Hand, Vlad. What do they do?”
“Illegal magic. Devices for gamblers to cheat. Defeating spells to prevent eavesdrop—oh.”
“Yes.”
“They were listening.”
“We’d best assume so.”
“Norathar is going to kill me.”
“I don’t much care about that,” said Kiera sweetly. “I’m worried about who else she’s liable to kill.”
“Oh. Yes. Um. If they’re clever enough to know what I’d do, aren’t they clever enough to know what Norathar will do?”
“You’d think so.”
“Well?”
She spread her hands. “Maybe they’re counting on her years in the Jhereg to have given her some sense. Or maybe they think it’s worth the gamble. Or maybe that’s exactly what they want.”
“Coming up with a complex plan that, if it works, will result in your throat being cut seems like a lot of wasted thinking. But maybe that’s just me.”
“I don’t know, Vlad.”
“Can you find out?”
“How? I have no sources in the Left Hand. No one does. However stupid you may think their rituals are, they work: No one who isn’t one of them knows anything.”
“Ugh,” I suggested. I wondered what had happened to the side of my left shoulder to make it hurt so bad; I didn’t remember getting hit there. “You can’t do what they do without leaving a trace. That means there are ways to find out.”
She nodded. “Let me know how that works out for you.”
“Kiera—”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
“I don’t know. Kill someone. Steal something. Figure something out.”
“The first and last are your business. I’ll be glad to steal something as soon as you tell me what you want me to steal.”
“Maybe I’ll hire Mario.”
“Heh. As if—” She stopped. “You might, you know.”
“And pay him with what?”
“Vlad, he’s Aliera’s lover.”
“Um. Yeah, I’ve heard that. Is it true?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. It might be worth finding out.”
Mario, in case you’ve never heard of him, is to assassins what Soramiir is to sorcerers. If you’ve never heard of Soramiir, don’t feel bad; I hadn’t either until a few days ago.
I thought about it. “It’s certainly something to keep in mind. At the moment, however, I’m not sure just who I’d ask him to kill.”
She nodded.
I said, “This business of them guessing what I would do, and planning on it, would make me uncomfortable if I believed it. Like, I couldn’t do anything because they’d know just what I’d do.”
“I think you’re overstating it a bit.”
“I know. But it’s strange. Ever had someone try that on you?”
“No. But then, I’ve been pretty scrupulous about Jhereg rules.”
I winced. I guess I had that coming. “My first reaction,” I said, “is to just find some Left Hand business somewhere and start messing it up, to see what they do. Pick one at random, so they can’t predict it. It’ll give me something to take my frustrations out on. I suppose that would be stupid. Unless I can find some useful aspect.”
“There are worse ideas.”
“Also better ones, I suspect. But if they really have this planned based on predicting my actions—which I still don’t believe—then doing something unpredictable might have some benefit.”
“Suppose I’m right—using this to kill you is just a grace note in a larger concert.”
“All right. What then?”
“Who is playing the instrument? That is, who in the Left Hand have you especially pissed off?”
“Triesco,” I said.
“You don’t aim small, do you?”
“What’s the point of having weak enemies? They just waste your time.”
“It would make sense,” said Kiera. “From what I know of her, she’s powerful, ruthless, skilled, and not all that nice. And, yes, she’s quite capable of hatching a plot like a Yendi.”
“Matches what I know,” I said. “Think it’s her?”
“If you annoyed her, probably.”
“Well, then.”
“So,” she said to the air. “How did it go down? What are they planning? Or her, if it’s her.”
“Kiera?”
“Hmmm?”
“Thanks.”
She nodded absently, her eyes focused over my shoulder, a frown of concentration on her brow. “The more I think about it, the more I think your idea of randomly messing up a Left Hand cover business isn’t that bad. It’ll make them respond to something new. It could cause a slip.”
“Hear that, Loiosh? It’s from Kiera. You can’t argue.”
“Sure I can.”
“But you won’t.”
“Sure I will.”
Sure he would. “In that case,” I said, “I need to find out a few of their businesses, so I can pick one to mess up. I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Are you in any shape to do any messing? Or, rather, will you be tomorrow?”
I grunted. “Maybe not. Maybe that’s why they did it. Can’t ignore the possibility that they beat me in order to beat me.”
She laughed. I hadn’t thought it was that funny, but you never know what will strike Kiera as amusing. “I’d volunteer to help,” she said. “But messing people up isn’t my talent.”
“It isn’t a talent, Kiera. It’s a learned skill.”
“I never learned that skill, then.”
There was a lot I could have said to that, but nothing that would have been well received. “Do you happen to know any of their places of business?”
“A couple of the more obvious ones: There’s a sorcery supply shop on Lockwood, just west of the market. I’ve seen them go in and out of the place after hours. And there’s a tinsmith on Dencel that has to have some other source of income, and I know it isn’t Jhereg—I mean, our Jhereg. But give me a day or so and I’ll see if I can find a few more, so you have a good list to pick from.”
I nodded. “I appreciate it.”
“We have friends in common,” she said.
“Yes.”
“For now, if you won’t remove the amulet—”
She broke off with an inquiring look. “I won’t,” I said.
She nodded. “Then I think you should get up and come with me.”
I gave her a suspicious look. “Where are we going?”
“Down two flights of stairs.”
“Why?”
“Trust me,” she said.
Put that way, I had no choice. I reached for my shirt, but she said to leave it off, so I buckled on my rapier and Lady Teldra, and threw my cloak over my shoulders, feeling distinctly odd with a cloak and no shirt. Then I followed her out the door.
We went back down to the main level of the inn, then followed a vine-covered stone walkway outside and around, back into the building, and down another flight of stairs, at which point I began to smell something rotten and sharp—it nearly stung my nose—and vaguely familiar.
“What am I smelling?”
“Brimstone.”
“Oh. Uh, that doesn’t bode well.”
“Trust me.”
We emerged at last into what looked like a wide underground cavern, though some of the walls had been smoothed and there were sculptures here and there of impossible beasts, many of them with steaming water coming out of their mouths. There was a large pool in the middle, and screens set about it. Kiera led me to one of the screens. Stuck into it was a small green flag, upside down. She removed it, stuck it in right side up. “After you,” she said. I went past the screen, which she replaced behind me. In front of me was a small pool; the brimstone smell wa
s very intense here, and the water was steaming heavily and bubbling.
“Get in,” she said.
“What will this do?”
“Make you hurt less tomorrow.”
“Really?”
“Either that or boil the skin off you. One or the other. Maybe both. Get in.”
I started to argue, stopped, shrugged, and removed my cloak. “Are you going to turn your back?”
“No,” she said.
I removed my boots and pants with as much dignity as I could; the pain helped keep my mind off my embarrassment. “What about the bandage?”
“Keep it on. I’ll change it when you get out.”
Loiosh and Rocza complained about the smell and flew over to the side, staying well away from the water. I couldn’t blame them.
My first reaction was that it was, indeed, going to boil the skin off me. But it was either immerse myself, or stand there naked in front of Kiera, and I’d rather hurt than look absurd.
It was very hot, and it also stank. I hoped like hell it would do enough good to be worth it.
Soaking yourself in hot, bubbling water is odd: the first touch burns, then you find you can stand it, and then after ten minutes or so it gets too hot again. I have no idea why that is; I just knew I wanted to get out. Kiera explained that if I got out she’d push me back in again, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stop her. Loiosh thought the whole thing was pretty funny.
I stayed in there for another five minutes or so, then Kiera produced a towel from somewhere and said, “That should do it.”
I stood up and wrapped the towel around myself. “How many sorcerers does it take to keep all this water so hot?”
“None,” she said. “It’s natural.”
I looked at her face to see if she was kidding, but I couldn’t tell, so I let it drop.
“How do you feel?” she wanted to know.
“Scalded.”
“I suppose.”
“But not bad, really.”
“Good,” she said. “I heard somewhere that Easterners couldn’t take that much heat, that their hearts would explode. But I didn’t believe it.”
I stared at her. She smiled sweetly. I shook my head and decided not to think about it too much.
“Go get some rest,” she said as I dressed myself. “I’ll try to get you some useful information, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
