Steven Brust - Orca

I shook my head. “I should have listened to my instincts, you know? I was telling some friends of mine just the other day that I had a bad feeling—”

All of a sudden Domm was no longer relaxed. “What friends?” he snapped. “What did you tell them?” Then he caught himself and looked at Timmer, who was looking at him and frowning. And that made the fourth “Ah ha” of the day, which I decided would have to be enough, especially because one of the things I learned from this one was that they—or at least Domm—had no intention of leaving me alive.

I reached back, grabbed my sword, and nailed Domm in the side of the head with the flat, trying to knock him both out and into Timmer, but I couldn’t get quite enough power for either to work with my thin little blade. Timmer was fast. Really fast. She was up, weapon out, and coming at me before I’d stood up, and I had to squeeze into the corner and parry with both hands or she’d have spitted me; as it was she did violence to my arm, which I resented. But before she could withdraw her steel I cut at her forearm, then sliced up at her head, and—because of one move or the other—her blade fell to the floor. She bent over to pick up her weapon while I reached down and got my parcel of clothes from next to my chair. Among other things, it had my boots in it.

Domm was shaking his head—I’d at least slowed him down. Timmer came at me again, but I knocked her sword aside with my parcel, then hit her with the parcel, and I came up over the table and on the way by I thumped Domm’s head with the pommel of my rapier. As I came over the table it tipped and I was able to put it between me and Timmer for a second, which then I used to turn and dash out the back door. I couldn’t go as fast as I’d have liked, because of those Verra-be-damned boots, but I made it before they caught up with me.

I’d had an escape route planned, but I hadn’t intended to be bleeding when I took it. I headed out of the alley and into another one while sheathing my weapon. I heard footsteps and I knew that Timmer was behind me. I wasn’t terribly keen on killing her—you know as well as I do what sort of heat it brings to kill a Guardsman—but I was even less keen on her killing me, and there was no way I could escape her by running—not in those boots. And if I tele-ported, of course, she’d just trace the teleport; no future in that.

I was just considering where I should make a stand when I got lucky. I turned a corner and someone vanished—some guy had just stepped out of some shop and teleported home with his purchases. If I hadn’t been wearing the black Phoenix Stone, which prevents Devine contact, I would have given a prayer of thanks to Verra; as it was, I ran right through the spot where he’d teleported from, held my arm against the parcel of clothes in the hopes that I wouldn’t drip any more blood, and ran another twenty feet and through the curtained entrance to the shop.

It turned out to be a clothier, and there were a couple of customers in it. The man behind the counter—a real Chreotha—said, “May I be of some service to you, my lord?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “Do you have something in red?”

“You’re bleeding!” said one of the customers.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s the fashion, you know.”

“My dear sir—” said the proprietor.

“A moment,” I said, and I pulled the curtain aside just a hair, just enough to see the end of Timmer’s teleport. “Never mind,” I said. “I think I like the pattern it’s making. Good day.”

I went back into the alley, and then to another one, and did my best not to leave a trail of blood. With any luck at all I had a good couple of minutes before Timmer realized that she’d followed the wrong man, and, I hoped, Domm was too far out of it to be a problem.

“Well, Loiosh?”

“You’re in the clear for the moment, boss.”

“Okay. Hang on for another minute, then join me.”

I found a little nook I’d noticed before, and spent a minute and a half becoming a bleeding Easterner instead of a bleeding Chreotha. I put the remains of the Chreotha disguise in the bag, took off the gold Phoenix Stone, and tele-ported the bag to a spot I knew well just off the coast of Adrilankha, where it went to join a couple of bodies who wouldn’t mind the intrusion. Loiosh arrived on my shoulder with a few choice words about how clever I thought I was compared to what a fool I’d been acting like. I thanked him for sharing his opinion with me.

Since I’d taken the chain off, anyway, there was no reason not to teleport back here, so I arrived at a point I’d memorized a little ways away into the wood, and here I am, Kiera, happy to see you as always, and has anyone ever told you that you’re lovely when you’re disgusted? Interlude

“I’ve never heard of that Stony you talked to. If he’s just sort of midlevel in Northport, what made you think he’d know anything about Fyres?”

“That’s one of the things I can’t tell you.”

“Oh. There are a lot of things like that, aren’t there?”

“I told you there would be, Cawti.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve never known Vlad to use disguises before.”

“Neither had I. It was probably something he picked up while traveling.”

“What about the old woman? How was she taking all of this?”

“I suspect it bothered her a great deal, but she never let on. In fact, the whole time she had an attitude like none of it had anything to do with her.”

“I can’t blame her, I guess. It would be strange.”

“Yes.”

“It’s funny, you’re summarizing for me Vlad’s report to you about his conversations with others, which is three steps removed from the actual conversations, but I can still almost hear him talking.”

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“He misses you, Cawti.”

“Let’s not start on that, all right?”

“If you wish.”

“It’s complicated, Kiera. It’s difficult. I don’t know any of the answers. Yes, I miss him. But we couldn’t live together.”

“He’s changed, you know.”

“Are you trying to get us back together, Kiera?’

“I don’t know. I think at least he should know about—”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“All right. Maybe I should summarize even more.”

“No, you’re doing fine.”

“I have to say, though, that I don’t have a very good memory for conversations, so a lot of this I’m reconstructing and making up. But you get the gist of it.”

“I do indeed. You must have had a few words for him when he got back to the house. I know I would have.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well,” I said slowly. “Congratulations, Vlad.” He looked at me and waited for the punch line. I said, “You’ve now not only got the Jhereg after you but also the Empire, and, as soon as they tie you to the documents we stole, the House of the Orca will want you, too—and me, by the way. That leaves only fourteen more Houses to go and you’ll have the set. Then you can start on the Easterners and the Serioli. Good work.”

“It’s a talent,” he said. “I can’t take credit for it.” I studied him while considering his story. He was looking—I don’t know, smug wasn’t quite right, but maybe something like, amused with a veneer of self-satisfaction. Sometimes I forget just how devious he is, and how good he is at improvising, and his skill at calculating odds and pulling off improbable gambits. Sometimes he thinks he’s better at these things than he actually is, and it is likely to get him killed one of these days—especially now, when, between the gold and the black Phoenix Sx he wears, he is entirely cut off from those who would be most willing and able to help him.