Steven Brust - Jhereg

“She didn’t know, but she thought it was something pretty big. And she mentioned Mellar’s name.”

I knew what that meant, of course. We didn’t have much time left. Maybe a day, perhaps two. Three at the most. Then it would be too late. The Demon was certainly hearing rumors by now, too. What would he do? Try to get to Mellar, of course. Me? Would he make another try for me? What about Kragar? Or, for that matter, Cawti? Normally, no one would be interested in them, since it was I who was at the top. But would the Demon be trying for them now, in order to get to me?

“Shit,” I said.

He agreed with my sentiments.

“Kragar, do you know who this fellow’s girlfriend is?”

He nodded. “A sorceress. Left Hand. Competent.”

“Good,” I said. “Kill her.”

He nodded again.

I stood up and took off my cloak. Laying it across my desk, I began removing things from it, and from various places around my person. “Would you mind heading down to the arsenal and picking up the standard assortment for me? I may as well do something useful while we’re talking.”

He nodded and departed. I found an empty box in the corner and began putting discarded weapons in it.

“ Still ready to protect me, Loiosh? ”

“ Somebody has to, boss. ”

He flew over from his windowsill and landed on my right shoulder. I scratched him under the chin with my right hand, which brought my wrist up to eye level. Spellbreaker, wrapped tightly around my forearm, gleamed golden in the light. I had hopes of that chain being able to defend me against any magic I might encounter; and the rest of my weapons, if used properly, gave me a chance of taking out anyone using a normal blade. But it all depended on getting sufficient warning.

And, as an assassin, one thing kept revolving around in my head: Given time and skill, anyone can be assassinated. Anyone. My great hope, and my great fear, all rolled into one.

I took a dagger out of the box in front of me and checked its edge—Box? I looked up and saw that Kragar had returned.

“Would you mind telling me how you keep doing that?” I asked.

He smiled and shook his head in mock sadness. I looked at him, but learned nothing new. Kragar was about as average a Dragaeran as it is possible to get. He stood just about seven feet tall. His hair was light brown over a thin, angular face over a thin, angular body. His ears were just a bit pointed. No facial hair (which was why I grew a mustache), but other than that it was hard to tell a Dragaeran from a human by looking only at his face.

“How?” I repeated.

He raised his eyebrows. “You really want to know?” he asked.

“Are you really willing to tell me?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest. It isn’t anything I do deliberately. It’s just that people don’t notice me. That’s why I never made it as a Dragonlord. I’d give an order in the middle of a battle and no one would pay any attention. They gave me so much trouble over it that I finally told ’em all to jump off Deathgate Falls.”

I nodded and let it pass. The last part, I knew, was a lie. He hadn’t left the House of the Dragon on his own; he’d been expelled. I knew it, and he knew I knew it. But that was the story he wanted to give, so I accepted it.

Hell, I had my own scars that I didn’t let Kragar scratch at; I could hardly begrudge him the right to keep me away from his.

I looked at the dagger that was still in my hand, made sure of the edge and balance, and slipped it into the upside-down spring-sheath under my left arm.

“I’m thinking,” said Kragar, changing the subject, “that you don’t want Mellar to know you’re involved in this any sooner than you have to.”

“Do you think he’ll come after me?”

“Probably. He’s going to have something of an organization left, even now. Most of it will have scattered, or be in the middle of scattering, but he’s bound to have a few personal friends willing to do things for him.”

I nodded. “I hadn’t planned to advertise it.”

“I suppose not. Do you have any thoughts yet on how to approach the problem of getting him to leave Castle Black?”

I added another dagger to the pile of weapons in the “used” box. I picked out a replacement, tested it, and slipped it into the cloak’s lining sheath outside of where my left arm would be. I checked the draw and added a little more oil to the blade. I worked it back and forth in the sheath and continued.

“No,” I told him, “I don’t have the hint of an idea yet, to tell you the truth. I’m still working on it. I don’t suppose you have anything?”

“No. That’s your job.”

“Thanks heaps.”

I tested the balance on each of the throwing darts, and filled the quills with my own combination of blood, muscle, and nerve poison. I set them aside to dry, discarded the used ones, and looked at the shuriken.

“My original idea,” I said, “was to convince him that we’d stopped looking for him and then maybe set up something attractive-looking in terms of escape. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to do that in three days. Damn, but I hate working under a time limit.”

“I’m sure Mellar would be awfully sorry to hear that.”

I thought that over for a minute. “Maybe he would, come to think of it. I think I’ll ask him.”

“What?”

“I’d like to see him myself, talk to him, get a feel for what he’s like. I still don’t really know enough about him.”

“You’re nuts! We just agreed that you don’t want to go anywhere near him. You’ll let him know that you’re after him and put him on the alert!”

“Will he figure that out? Think about it. He must know that I’m working for Morrolan. By now, he is aware that Morrolan is onto him, so he’s probably expecting a visit from Morrolan’s security people. And if he does suspect that I’m after him, so what? Sure, we lose an edge, but he isn’t going to leave Castle Black until he’s ready to, or until Morrolan kicks him out. So what is he going to do about it? He can’t kill me at Castle Black for the same reason that I can’t kill him there. If he guesses that I’m the one who’s going to take him, he’ll guess that I’m revealing it to him so that he’ll bolt, and he’ll just hole up tighter than ever.”

“Which,” pointed out Kragar, “is exactly what we don’t want.”

I shrugged. “If we’re going to get him to leave, we’ll have to come up with something weird and tricky enough to force him out no matter how badly he wants to stay. This isn’t going to matter one way or the other.”

Kragar pondered this for a while, then nodded. “Okay, it sounds workable. Want me to come along?”

“No thanks. Keep things running here, and keep working on Mellar’s background. Loiosh will protect me. He promised.”

11

“When the blameless

And the righteous die,

The very gods

For vengeance cry.”

They say that the banquet hall of Castle Black has never been empty since it was built, over three hundred years ago. They also say that more duels have been fought there than in Kieron Square outside the Imperial Palace.

You teleport in at approximately the center of the courtyard of the Castle Black. The great double doors of the keep open as you approach, and your first sight of the interior of the castle shows you a dimly lit hallway in which Lady Teldra is framed, like the Guardian, that figure that stands motionless atop Deathgate Falls, overlooking the Paths of the Dead, where the real becomes the fanciful—but only by degrees.