Steven Brust - Jhereg

what the murky depths conceal.”

Cawti knew me better than any other being that I’m aware of, with the possible exception of Loiosh. She suppressed any desire she might have had for conversation and allowed me to brood in silence as we ate. She squelched the suggestion that I take her turn at cooking since she’d taken mine, and carefully cooked something bland and uninteresting so that I’d feel no compulsion to compliment her on it. Clever lady, my wife.

Our apartment was a small, second-story number, which had two virtues: it was well-lit and it had a large kitchen. There is one way to tell an apartment owned by a member of the Jhereg from any other kind of apartment: the lack of spells to prevent or detect burglary. Why? Simple. No common thief is going to lighten the apartment of a member of the organization except by mistake. If a mistake like that happens, I will have everything back within two days, guaranteed. Kragar may have to arrange for a few broken bones to do it, but it will get done. The only other kind of burglar there is, is someone like Kiera; someone specifically commissioned to get into my place and get something. If this happens, there just isn’t any kind of defense I could put up that would matter a teckla’s squawk. Keep Kiera out? Ha!

So we sat, snug and secure, in our little kitchen, and I said, “You know what the problem is?”

“What?”

“Every time I try to think of how to do it, all I can think of is what happens if I don’t.”

She nodded. “It’s still hard for me to believe that the Demon would consciously and deliberately go out and start a Dragon-Jhereg war.”

I shook my head. “What choice does he have, really?”

“Well, if you were in his position, would you?”

“That’s just the thing,” I said. “I think I would. Sure, they’d chew us up and spit us out again, but if Mellar gets away with this, it’s slow death for the whole organization. If you get every punk on the street thinking that he can burn the council, one of them is bound to succeed, eventually. And then, even more will try, and it’ll just keep getting worse.”

It hit me, then, that I was parroting everything the Demon had told me. I shrugged. So what? It was true. If only there were some way to get rid of Mellar without a war—but, of course, there had been a way. The Demon had found one.

Sure, just kill Morrolan, he had thought. That was why he had given me that chance, back at the Blue Flame, to cooperate. Well, he was an honorable sort, after all, I couldn’t deny that.

I wondered what his next move would be. He could take another try for me, or Morrolan, or skip it and go straight for Mellar. I guessed that he would try for Mellar, since time was becoming rather critical, with people already starting to talk. How much longer could this be held under our cloaks? Another day? Two, if we were lucky? Cawti was speaking, I realized.

“You’re right,” she was saying. “He has to be taken out.”

“And I can’t touch him while he’s at Castle Black.”

“And the Jhereg isn’t about to wait until he leaves.”

Not anymore, they wouldn’t. How would the attack come this time? No matter, they couldn’t set anything up in a day, and Morrolan had tightened his security again. It would wait until tomorrow. It had to. I wasn’t good for much of anything today.

“Just as you said,” I told her. “Caught between a dragon and a dzur.”

“Wait a minute, Vlad! What about a Dzur? Couldn’t you maneuver a Dzur hero into taking him out for you? We could try to find one of the younger ones, who doesn’t know the story about him, maybe a wizard. You know how easy it is to manipulate Dzur heroes.”

I shook my head. “No good, beloved,” I said, thinking of Morrolan’s speech earlier. “Aside from the chance that Morrolan would figure out what happened, I’m just not willing to do that to him.”

“But if he never found out—”

“No. I’d know that I was the one who had caused his oath to be broken. Remember, Mellar isn’t just at the home of a Dragonlord, which would be bad enough; Morrolan in particular has made a point of having Castle Black be a kind of sanctuary for anyone and everyone he invites. It means too much to him for me to trifle with it.”

“ My, my, aren’t we the honorable sort today? ”

“ Shut up, Loiosh. Clean your plate. ”

“ It’s your plate. ”

“Besides,” I added to Cawti, “how would you feel if you had taken the job, and the target was holed up with Norathar?”

The mention of her old friend and partner stopped her “Hmmmm. Norathar would understand,” she said after a while.

“Would she?”

“Yes . . . well, no, I suppose not.”

“Right. And you wouldn’t ask her to, would you?”

She was silent for a while longer, then, “No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

She sighed. “Then I don’t see any way out.”

“Neither do I. The ‘way out,’ as you put it, is to convince Mellar to leave Castle Black of his own free will and then nail him when he does. We can trick him however we want, or set up any kind of fake message, but can’t actually attack him, or use any form of magic against him while he’s there.”

“Wait a minute, Vlad. Morrolan won’t let us attack him, or use magic, but if we, say, deliver a note that convinces him to leave, that’s okay? Morrolan won’t care?”

“Right.”

A look of utter confusion passed over her features. “But . . . but that’s ridiculous! What difference does it make to Morrolan how we get him out, if we do? What does using magic have to do with it?”

I shook my head. “Have I ever claimed to understand Dragons?”

“But—”

“Oh, I can almost see it, in a way. We can’t actually do anything to him, is the idea.”

“But isn’t tricking him ‘doing something’ to him?”

“Well, yes. Sort of. But it’s different, at least to Morrolan. For one thing, it’s a matter of free choice. Magic doesn’t give the victim a choice; trickery does. I also suspect that part of it is that Morrolan doesn’t think we’ll be able to do it. And he has a point there. You know Mellar is going to be on his guard against anything like that. I don’t really see how we’re going to be able to do anything.”

“I don’t, either.”

I nodded. “I’ve got Kragar digging into his background, and we’re hoping we’ll find some weak spot there, or something we can use. I’ll have to admit I’m not real hopeful.”

She was silent.

“I wonder,” I said a little later, “what Mario would do.”

“Mario?” she laughed. “He would hang around him, with no one seeing him, for years if he had to. When Mellar finally left Castle Black, however and whenever, Mario would be there, and take him.”

“But the organization can’t wait—”

“They’d wait for Mario.”

“Remember, I took this on with time constraints.”

“Yes,” she said softly, “but Mario wouldn’t have.”

That stung a bit, but I had to admit that it was true, especially since I’d come to the same realization when the Demon had first proposed the job to me.

“In any case,” she went on, “there’s only one Mario.”

I nodded sadly.

“And what,” I asked her then, “would you and Norathar have done, if the thing had been given to you?”

She thought about that for a long time, then she said, “I’m not really sure, but remember that Morrolan isn’t that close a friend of ours; or at least he wasn’t when we were still working. Chances are we’d put some sort of spell on Mellar to get him to leave and make damn sure Morrolan never found out.”

That didn’t help, either.