Steven Brust - Jhereg

Kragar snorted.

“Do you think,” I asked, “that he’ll back off if we finish this Mellar business for him?”

“Maybe. Probably, in fact, if we can do it in time—that is, before the word gets out too far. From what I hear, that isn’t too long from now. I guess the council members are starting to feel the bite of digging into their own purses. They aren’t going to be able to avoid giving an explanation too much longer.”

“That’s all right. They aren’t going to have to.”

He sat up suddenly. “You have something?”

“Yeah. Nothing I’m horribly proud of, but it ought to do the trick—at least part of it.”

“What part is that?”

“The hard part.”

“What—?”

“Wait a minute.”

I stood up and went over to the window. I made an automatic glance down at the street below, then opened the window.

“ Loiosh, see if you can find Daymar. If you do, ask him if he would mind putting in an appearance here. ”

For once, Loiosh didn’t make any remarks as he left.

“Okay, Vlad, so what is it?”

“Get a message out that I would very badly like to see Kiera. Then draw off a thousand gold from the treasury, and bring it up here.”

“What—?”

“Just do it, okay? I’ll explain everything later, after everyone is here.”

“ ‘Everyone?’ How many should I figure on?”

“Uh, let me see . . . five. No, six.”

“Six? Should I rent a convention hall?”

“Scram.”

I settled back to wait and went over the plan again. The rough spot, as I saw it, was whether or not Kiera could pull off the switch. Of course, if anyone could, she could, but it was going to be difficult even for her, I suspected.

There was, to be sure, an even rougher spot, but I tried to avoid thinking about that.

Alarms. “Bing bing,” and “Clang,” and everything else, both psionic and audible, went off all over the place. I hit the floor rolling and had a dagger ready to throw as my receptionist came bursting in, sword in one hand, dagger in the other. Then I realized what had happened—I saw Daymar floating cross-legged, about three feet off the floor.

I was rather pleased that before he had time to uncross his legs and stand up (or stand down, as the case may be), there were a total of four of my people in the office, weapons drawn and ready.

I stood up, resheathed my dagger, and held my hand up. “False alarm,” I explained, “but good job.”

Daymar was looking around him with an expression of mild interest on his face. My receptionist was looking unhappy about putting his weapons away. “He broke right through our teleport blocks like they weren’t even there! He—”

“I know. But it’s all right, never mind.”

They stood for a moment, then shrugged and left, casting glances at Daymar, who was now looking bewildered.

“Did you have teleport blocks up?” he said. “I didn’t notice any.”

“I should have thought to have them turned off. It doesn’t matter. Thanks for showing up.”

“No problem. What do you need?”

“More help, old friend. Sit down, if you wish.” I set an example by picking up my chair and sitting myself down in it. “How are you at illusions?”

He considered this. “Casting them, or breaking them?”

“Casting them. Can you do a good one, quickly?”

“By ‘quickly,’ I assume you mean fast enough so that no one sees the intermediate stages. Is that right?”

“That, and with little or no warmup time. How are you at it?”

He shrugged. “How is Kiera at stealing?”

“Funny you should bring that up. She should be here—soon, if I’m lucky.”

“Oh, really? What’s going on, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Hmmm. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to wait on the explanations until everyone shows up.”

“Oh. Well, that’s fine with me. I’ll just meditate for a while.” And, lifting his legs off the floor, he closed his eyes and began to do so.

At that moment, I heard Loiosh tapping on the window. I opened it. He flew in and landed on my right shoulder. He looked at Daymar, hissed a hiss of puzzlement, and looked away.

I reached out for contact with my wife, found her. “ Honey, could you come over to the office? ”

“ Certainly. I don’t suppose you have work for me, do you? ”

“ Not exactly, but the next thing to it. ”

“ Vlad! You’ve got something! ”

“ Yep. ”

“ What is — ? No, I suppose you want to wait ’til I’m there, right? I’ll be right over. ”

I repeated the process with Aliera, who agreed to teleport in. This time, however, I remembered to drop the protection spells before she arrived.

She looked around. “So this is your office. It looks quite functional.”

“Thank you. It’s small, but it suits my humble life-style.”

“I see.”

She noticed Daymar, then, who was still floating some three or four feet off the floor. She rolled her eyes in a gesture that was remarkably like Cawti’s. Daymar opened his eyes and stood up.

“Hello, Aliera,” he said.

“Hello, Daymar. Mind-probed any teckla, lately?”

“No,” he answered with a straight face, “did you have one that you wanted mind-probed?”

“Not at the moment,” she said. “Ask me again next Cycle.”

“I’ll be sure to.”

He probably would, too, I reflected, if they were both still around then.

Cawti arrived at that moment, in time to avoid any further clashes between Hawk and Dragon. She greeted Aliera warmly. Aliera gave her a cheery smile, and they went off into a corner to gossip. The two of them had become close friends in recent months, based in part on a mutual friendship with Lady Norathar. Norathar was a Dragon turned Jhereg turned Dragon, who had been Cawti’s partner, if you recall. Aliera had been instrumental in returning to Norathar her rightful place as a Dragonlord. Well, so had I, but never mind. That’s another story.

It occurred to me, then, that Norathar was another one who would be somewhat caught in the middle by this whole thing. Her two best friends were going to have to try to kill each other, and she had loyalties on both sides. I put it out of my mind. We were here to prevent her from having to make that choice.

Kiera entered shortly, followed by Kragar. He handed me a large purse, which I immediately turned over to Kiera.

“Still another job, Vlad? I ought to teach you the craft. You could save a lot of time and money if you could do it on your own.”

“Kiera,” I said, “there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to learn your art. Besides, my grandfather doesn’t approve of stealing. Are you willing to help me out in this? It’s in a good cause.”

She absently weighed the purse, no doubt able to tell within a few Imperials how much was in it. “It is?” she said. “Oh, well. I guess I’ll help you out anyway.” She smiled her little smile and looked at the others in the room.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Kiera, this is Aliera e’Kieron—”

“We know each other,” interrupted Aliera.

They smiled at each other, and I was surprised to note that the smiles seemed genuine. For a while I’d been afraid that Kiera had once stolen something of Aliera’s. Friendships do turn up in the oddest places.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s get down to business. I think everyone knows everyone, right?”

There was no disagreement.

“Good. Let’s get comfortable.”

Kragar had, without my mentioning it, made sure that there were six chairs in the room, and had sent out for a good wine and six glasses. These arrived, and he went around the room making sure everyone’s was full, before sitting down himself. Daymar disdained the chair, preferring to float. Loiosh assumed his position on my right shoulder.