Steven Brust - Yendi

“By the way, Vladimir, Sethra is giving a banquet.”

“Really? In honor of what?”

“In honor of all of us being alive.”

“Hmmmm. They’ll probably be trying to pump you and Norathar for information.”

“I expect they—how did you find out her name?”

I did a smug chuckle.

“I guess,” she said, “I’ll just have to torture the information out of you.”

“I guess so,” I said. “ Okay, Loiosh, you can leave now .”

“ Jerk .”

“ Yeah .”

Ten

“I dislike killing my guests.”

It is possible to break meals down into types. There is the formal dinner, with elegant settings, carefully selected wines, and orchestrated conversation. Then there are Jhereg business meetings, where you ignore the food half the time, because to miss a remark, or even a glance, can be deadly. There is the quiet, informal get-together with a Certain Person, where neither food nor conversation is as important as being there. We also have the grab-something-and-run, where the idea is to get food inside of you, without taking time for either conversation or enjoyment. Next, we have the “good dinner,” where the food is the whole reason for being there, and conversation is merely to help wash it down.

And there is one other type of dinner: sitting around a fine, elegant table, deep under Dzur Mountain, with an undead hostess, a pair of Dragonlords, and a team of Jhereg assassins, one of whom was once a Dragon herself, the other of whom is an Easterner.

The conversation at a dinner of this type is unpredictable. For most of the meal, Morrolan entertained us with a few notes on sorcery that aren’t usually included in tomes, and probably shouldn’t be. I enjoyed this—mostly because I was sitting next to Cawti (by chance? With Aliera around? Ha!) and we generally concentrated on rubbing our legs together under the table. Loiosh made a few remarks about this that I won’t dignify by repeating.

Then, while I was distracted, the conversation changed. Suddenly, Aliera was engaging the lady known as the Sword of the Jhereg in a bantering exchange comparing Dragon customs to Jhereg customs, and I was instantly alert. Aliera didn’t do anything by accident.

“You see,” Aliera was saying, “we only kill people who deserve it. You kill anyone you’re paid to kill.”

Norathar pretended surprise. “But you’re paid too, aren’t you? It’s merely a different coin. A Jhereg assassin would be paid in gold, or so I assume—I’ve never actually met one. A Dragon, on the other hand, is paid by satisfying his bloodlust.”

I chuckled a little. Score one for our team. Aliera also smiled and raised her glass. I looked at her closely. Yes, I decided, she wasn’t doing any idle Jhereg-baiting. She was searching for something.

“So tell me,” Aliera asked, “which do you consider the better coin to be paid in?”

“Well, I’ve never bought anything with bloodlust, but—”

“It can be done.”

“Indeed? What can you buy, pray tell?”

“Empires,” said Aliera e’Kieron. “Empires.”

Norathar e’Lanya raised her eyebrow. “Empires, my lady? What would I do with one?”

Aliera shrugged. “I’m sure you could think of something.”

I glanced around the room. Sethra, at the head of the table and to my right, was watching Aliera intently. Morrolan, to her right, was doing the same. Norathar was next to him, and she was also studying Aliera, who was at the other end of the table. Cawti, next to her and to my left, was looking at Norathar. I wondered what was going on behind her mask. I always wonder what’s going on behind people’s masks. I sometimes wonder what’s going on behind my mask.

“What would you do with one?” asked Norathar.

“Ask me when the Cycle changes.”

“Eh?”

“I,” she said, “am currently the Dragon Heir to the Throne. Morrolan used to be, before I arrived.”

I remembered being told about Aliera’s “arrival”—hurled out of Adron’s Disaster, the explosion that brought down the Empire over four hundred years ago, through time, to land in the middle of some Teckla’s wheat field. I was later told that Sethra had had a hand in the thing, which made it more believable than it would be otherwise.

Norathar seemed faintly curious. Her eyes went to the Dragonhead pendant around Aliera’s neck. All Dragonlords wear a Dragonhead somewhere visible. The one Aliera wore had a blue gem for one eye, a green gem for the other. “E’Kieron, I see,” said Norathar.

Aliera nodded, as if something had been explained.

I asked, “What am I missing?”

“The lady,” said Aliera, “was no doubt curious about my lineage, and why I am now the heir. I would guess that she has remembered that Adron had a daughter.”

I said, “Oh.”

It had never occurred to me to wonder how Aliera came to be the heir so quickly, although I’d known she was since I was introduced to her. But sitting at the same table with the daughter of the man who had turned an entire city into a seething pool of raw chaos was a bit disconcerting. I decided it was going to take me a while to get used to.

Aliera continued her explanations to Norathar. “The Dragon Council informed me of the decision when they checked my bloodlines. That is how I became interested in genetics. I am hoping that I can prove there is a flaw in me, somewhere, so I won’t have to be Empress when the Cycle changes.”

“You mean you don’t want to be Empress?” I asked.

“Dear Barlen, no! I can’t imagine anything more dull. I’ve been looking for a way out of it since I’ve been back.”

“Oh.”

“ Your conversation is really gifted today, boss .”

“ Shut up, Loiosh .”

I worked all of this over in my mind. “Aliera,” I said at last, “I have a question.”

“Hm?”

“If you’re the Dragon Heir, does that mean your father was the heir before you? And if he was the heir, why did he try the coup in the first place?”

“Two reasons,” she said. “First, because it was the reign of a decadent Phoenix, and the Emperor refused to step down when the Cycle changed. Second, Daddy wasn’t really the heir.”

“Oh. The heir died during the Interregnum?”

“Around then, yes. There was a war, and he was killed. There was talk of his child not being a Dragon. But that was actually before the Disaster and the Interregnum.”

“He was killed,” I echoed. “I see. And the child? No, don’t tell me. She was expelled from the House, right?”

Aliera nodded.

“And the line? E’Lanya, right?”

“Very good, Vlad. How did you know?”

I looked at Norathar, who was staring at Aliera with eyes like mushrooms.

“And,” I continued, “you have been able to scan her genes, and you’ve found out that, lo and behold, she really is a Dragonlord.”

“Yes,” said Aliera.

“And if her father was really the Heir to the Throne, then . . . ”

“That’s right, Vlad,” said Aliera. “The correct Heir to the Throne is Norathar e’Lanya—the Sword of the Jhereg.”

The funniest thing about time is when it doesn’t. I’ll leave that hanging there for the moment, and let you age while the shadows don’t lengthen, if you see what I mean. I looked first at Cawti, who was looking at Norathar, who was looking at Aliera. Sethra and Morrolan were also looking at Aliera, who wasn’t focusing on anything we could see. Her eyes, bright green now, glittered with reflected candlelight, and looked upon something we weren’t entitled to see.

Now, while the Cycle doesn’t run, and the year doesn’t fail, and the day gets neither brighter nor darker, and even the candles don’t flicker, we begin to see things with a new perspective. I looked first at my lover, who had recently killed me, who was looking at her partner, who should be the Dragon Heir to the Orb—next in the Cycle. This Dragonlord-assassin-princess-whatever matched stares with Aliera e’Kieron, wielder of Kieron’s Sword, traveler from the past, daughter of Adron, and current Heir to the Orb. And so on.