Steven Brust - Jhereg

“Information he could just send over. Dammit, he’d better not be jogging my sword-arm. He knows better than that.”

“Sure he does,” snorted Kragar. “But what the hell are you going to do about it if he decides to do it anyway?”

“There is that, isn’t there?”

He nodded.

“When, and where? No, let me guess, same time and place, right?”

“Half-right. Same place, but noon.”

“Noon? But isn’t it already—” I stopped, concentrated a moment, and got the time. By the Great Sea of Chaos, it was barely half an hour before noon! That whole conversation had taken less than an hour. Verra!

“That means he’s buying me lunch, doesn’t it?”

“Right.”

“And it also means that we don’t really have time to set up something, in case he’s set up something.”

“Right again. You know, Vlad, we’d be within our rights to just refuse to meet with him. You aren’t bound by something like this.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

He thought for a minute, then shook his head.

“Neither do I,” I said.

“Well, would you like me to put someone in there as a guest? We could arrange for one or two people—”

“No. He’d pick up on it, and we can’t let that happen at this point. It would indicate that we don’t trust him. Which we don’t, of course, but . . . ”

“Yeah, I know.”

He shrugged and changed the subject. “About this business with Aliera and Sethra, do you have any ideas on how we’re going to convince Mellar to leave Castle Black?”

“Well,” I said, “we could invite him to a business meeting.”

Kragar chuckled. “Next idea,” he said.

“I don’t know. That’s been the problem from the beginning, hasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

I shrugged. “Maybe something will come up. By the way, if there’s anything more we can do in terms of digging into Mellar’s background, let’s do it. I’d dearly love to find a weak spot in him just about now.”

He nodded. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“Dammit, he came from somewhere. The information we got from the Demon doesn’t start until he joined the Jhereg. We don’t know a damn thing before then.”

“I know, but how are we supposed to dig up more than the Demon could?”

“I don’t know . . . Yes! I do! Aliera! That was what I’d wanted her help with in the first place, and then when things got hot over there I never thought about asking her.”

“Asking her what?”

“Well, among other things, she specializes in genetic research.”

“So?”

“So tell me—what House was Mellar born into?”

“I assume Jhereg. What makes you think differently?”

“I don’t, but we have no reason to be sure. If it is Jhereg, there’s a chance that Aliera could lead us to his parents, and we could start digging there. If not, that would tell us something worthwhile in itself and might lead us in other directions.”

“Okay. I guess that isn’t something the Demon would have been able to check out. Are you going to contact her yourself, or do you want me to set up another appointment?”

I thought it over before answering. “You set it up,” I decided. “As long as this mess continues, we do everything formally. Make it for this evening, early, if possible. If I’m still alive. Ask her to check him over.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it. If you’re dead, I’ll apologize to her for you.”

“Oh, good. That’s a great load off my mind.”

Once again, I had my back to the door. My right arm was next to my wineglass; I could get a dagger from my left arm-sheath and throw it well enough to hit a moving wine cork from fifteen feet away in less than half a second. Loiosh kept his eyes fixed on the door. I was keenly aware that if I were, indeed, about to be removed, none of these things would really give me enough of an edge.

My palms, however, were dry. There were three reasons for this: first, I had been in many situations before where I might suddenly have to move at top speed to save my life. Second, I really didn’t think it very likely that the Demon was going to take me out. There are simpler ways to do it, and I was pretty sure by this time that everything was legitimate. And third, I continually wiped my hands on the legs of my breeches.

“ Here he comes, boss. ”

“ Alone? ”

“ Two bodyguards, but they’re waiting by the door. ”

The Demon slid smoothly into the seat across from me. “Good afternoon,” he said. “How are things coming?”

“They’re coming. I recommend the tsalmoth in garlic butter.”

“As you say.” He signaled over a waiter, who took our orders with enough respect to show that he knew who I, at least, was. The Demon picked out a light Nyroth wine to go along with it, showing that he also knew something about eating.

“Things are looking a little more urgent now, Vlad. May I call you Vlad?” he added.

“ Tell him, ‘no,’ boss. ”

“Of course.” I chuckled. “I’ll call you ‘Demon.’ ”

He smiled, without showing how bored he must have been at the remark. “As I was saying—things are starting to look serious. It seems that a few too many people know already. The best sorceresses in the Left Hand have figured out that someone big is interested in finding Mellar, but there wasn’t any way to avoid that. On the other hand, there are a few others who are wondering about some cutbacks we’ve had to make in our operations. All it’s going to take is for someone to start putting the two things together, and then things get unpleasant real fast.”

“So, are you—” I stopped, as the soup came. Out of reflex, I passed my left hand over it briefly, but there wasn’t any poison, of course. Poison is clumsy and unpredictable, and few Dragaerans knew enough about the metabolism of an Easterner to leave me seriously worried about it.

I continued when the waiter left. “Are you saying you want me to push it a bit?” I held down my annoyance; the last thing this side of Deathsgate I wanted just then was for the Demon to get the idea that I was upset.

“As much as you can without risking mistakes. But that wasn’t really what I wanted—I know you’re moving as fast as you can.”

Sure, he did. The soup was flat, I decided.

“We’ve learned something that may interest you,” he continued.

I waited.

“Mellar is holed up in Castle Black.”

He looked for a reaction from me, and, when he didn’t get one, continued.

“Our sorcerers broke through about two hours ago, and I got in touch with your people right away. So, you can forget checking out East. The reason we couldn’t find him for so long was because Castle Black is close to two hundred miles from Adrilankha—but, of course, you know that. You work for Morrolan, right?”

“Work for him? No. I’m on his payroll as a security consultant, nothing more.”

He nodded. He worked on his soup for a while, then, “You didn’t seem surprised when I told you where he was.”

“Thank you very much,” I said.

The Demon let me know that he had teeth and raised his glass in salute. Smiling, say the sages, comes from an early form of baring the teeth. While jhereg don’t bare their teeth, Jhereg do.

“Did you know?” asked the Demon, bluntly.

I nodded.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “You move quickly.”

I continued to wait, while finishing up my soup. I still didn’t know why he was here, but I was quite sure that it wasn’t in order to compliment me on my information sources, or to give me information he could have had sent over by a courier.

He picked up his wineglass and looked into it, swirled it around a little, and sipped it. Crazily, he suddenly reminded me of the Necromancer. “Vlad,” he said, “I think we may have a possible conflict of interest developing here.”