Steven Brust - Jhereg

I thought about it. I brought up my memory of seeing him again, and the bulge that had to be that blade, but I couldn’t quite pin it down. “I don’t know. I’m sure he has something, I mean, one or the other, but I just can’t tell which one. Hmmmm, it just occurred to me, that if he has the reverse draw type, he won’t use it for what we’re talking about doing, so it really doesn’t matter. We can assume—”

“Say, Vlad,” said Kragar suddenly. “Remember that he’s been trained as a master swordsman. That means he’ll figure on fighting sword and dagger. Chances are, he’s got the spring mechanism, so he can just twist his wrist and have a blade pop into his left hand.”

I nodded.

Kiera said, “Do you have a forearm sheath, Vlad?”

It made me uncomfortable to discuss it, but I realized what she had in mind, and it was a reasonable question. I nodded.

“Spring, or right-hand draw?”

“Right-hand draw,” I said.

She stood up. “Those are easier,” she said, “but that will make up for the fact that you’ll be watching for it. Let’s see what I can do . . . ” She crossed in front of Cawti and Kragar and stood in front of my desk. She set her wineglass down a few inches from my own. I was holding it loosely, and the cuff was open a little, which should work to her advantage.

I kept my eyes on my arm and her hand where she set the glass down. So far as I could tell, her hand never came closer than three inches from mine.

She walked back to her chair and sat down again.

“How was that?” she asked.

I pulled back my sleeve, and checked the sheath. It held the same dagger it always had.

“Fine,” I said, “except for the little matter that—” I stopped. She was smiling that smile of hers that I knew so well. She reached into her cloak, pulled out a dagger, and held it up. I heard a gasp, and saw Kragar staring at it.

He gave a quick twist to his left wrist, and suddenly a knife appeared in his hand. He looked at it, and his mouth dropped open. He held it as if it were a poisonous snake. He closed his mouth again, swallowed, and handed the dagger back to Kiera. She returned Kragar’s to him.

“Misdirection,” she explained.

“I’m convinced,” said Kragar.

“Me, too,” I said.

Kiera looked pleased.

I suddenly felt a lot better. This thing might actually work.

“ I saw the whole thing, boss. ”

“ Sure you did, Loiosh. ”

“Good,” I said. “Now, Aliera, did you see that stroke I made at Kragar, with a bind following it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you make the exact same attack?”

“I suspect so,” she answered drily.

“Okay. I’ll work on it with you. It’s going to have to be perfect.”

She nodded.

I turned to Cawti. “You’re going to have to do a simple takeout.”

“Any particular fashion?”

“Very quick, very quiet, and very unnoticeable. I’ll be providing a distraction, which should help somewhat, but we have to be absolutely sure that no one sees you do it, or Mellar will be alerted too soon, and the whole thing blows up.”

“Can I kill the guy?”

“No problem. Your target is an uninvited guest, so anything that happens to him is his problem.”

“That makes things easier. I don’t think I’ll have any difficulty.”

“Remember, he’s a damn good sorcerer, and you aren’t going to have much time to check him over.”

“So? I eat sorcerers for breakfast.”

“You’ll have to cook me up one, sometime.”

She smiled, slightly. “Does he have any protective spells up at the moment?”

I looked over at Aliera, who had checked the two of them out after I had left her.

“No,” she said. “They’re both good enough to get defenses up quickly if they have to, but I guess they don’t want to call attention to themselves by using spells in Castle Black unless they actually have to.”

“You keep referring to ‘they,’ ” said Kiera. “Which one am I going to be taking out?”

“That’s just the problem,” I said. “We don’t know. It will be whichever one is on Mellar’s left, and we don’t know which one that will be. Does that present a problem?”

She gave me what I call her I-know-something-you-don’t-know smile, and made a dagger appear in her right hand. She spun it in the air, caught it, and made it disappear. I held myself answered.

“Daymar,” I said, turning to him, “you’re going to have to throw an illusion at me. It’s going to have to be fast, thorough, and undetectable.”

Daymar looked suddenly doubtful. “Undetectable? Morrolan will be able to tell that I’m throwing a spell in his castle no matter how subtle I am.”

“Morrolan won’t be there, so you don’t need to worry about him. It does, however, have to be good enough so that a topnotch sorcerer, who will be there, doesn’t notice it. Of course, he’ll be rather busy at the time.”

Daymar thought for a minute. “How long does the illusion have to stay on?”

“About five seconds.”

“No problem, then.”

“Good. Then that’s everything. Now, here’s the plan . . . ”

“I like it, Vlad,” said Kragar, “up to the teleport. That leaves you in a pretty miserable position, doesn’t it? Why don’t we go back to the original plan that you worked up with Aliera at that point?”

“You aren’t thinking it through,” I told him. “We’re really pulling an elaborate hoax. It has to happen fast enough for Mellar to act while he’s disoriented and confused. In fact, we’re going to have to make him panic. Someone like Mellar isn’t going to panic easily, and it isn’t going to last very long. If we give him time to think it through, he’ll realize what happened and just teleport back. We’ll be right back where we started.”

“Do you think,” asked Kragar, “that we can get Morrolan to put up a teleport block around Castle Black so he can’t come back there? Or maybe Aliera can do it.”

“Aliera isn’t going to be in any condition to put up or keep up a teleport block, if you remember. And if Morrolan is there to do it, he’ll interfere in the earlier part of the plan, and we won’t be able to bring it off at all.”

“What about,” said Cawti, “letting Morrolan in on it from the beginning?”

Aliera answered for me. “He’d never permit me to do what I’m going to do, even if he agreed with the rest—which he wouldn’t, by the way.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s Morrolan. When this is over, if it works, he’ll agree that it was a fine thing to do. But in the meantime, he’ll try to stop it if he can.”

“What do you mean,” Cawti asked, “about his not permitting you to do what you are going to do?”

“Just what I said. Even if he wasn’t involved in any other way, he’d at least try to stop that part.”

“Why? If you aren’t in any danger—”

“I never said,” replied Aliera softly, “that I wouldn’t be in any danger.”

Cawti looked at her sharply. “I don’t pretend to understand Great Weapons, but if it isn’t safe—”

“Nothing is ‘safe.’ This is a better chance than I’d get if I did something that forced Morrolan to kill me.”

Cawti looked troubled. “But Aliera, your soul— ”

“So what? I think I have a good chance of surviving, and this leaves Morrolan with his honor intact, and the problem solved. The other way, Morrolan and I both end up worse off, with no chance at all for things to work out right. This is our best chance.”

Cawti still looked unhappy, but she didn’t say anything more on the subject.

Kragar said, “What about if Daymar throws a second illusion so I can get in on it?”