Steven Brust - Jhereg

JHEREG

By Steven Brust

Book 1

1

of the Adventures of Vlad Taltos

Let the winds of jungle’s night

Stay the hunter in her flight.

Evening’s breath to witch’s mind;

Let our fates be intertwined.

Jhereg! Do not pass me by.

Show me where thine egg doth lie.

Contents

Prologue

The Cycle

Phoenix sinks into decay

Haughty dragon yearns to slay.

Lyorn growls and lowers horn

Tiassa dreams and plots are born.

Hawk looks down from lofty flight

Dzur stalks and blends with night.

Issola strikes from courtly bow

Tsalmoth maintains though none knows how.

Vallista rends and then rebuilds

Jhereg feeds on others’ kills.

Quiet iorich won’t forget

Sly chreotha weaves his net.

Yendi coils and strikes, unseen

Orca circles, hard and lean.

Frightened teckla hides in grass

Jhegaala shifts as moments pass

Athyra rules minds’ interplay

Phoenix rises from ashes, gray.

next

Book 1 by publishing order,

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internal series chronology.

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Prologue

There is a similarity, if I may be permitted an excursion into tenuous metaphor, between the feel of a chilly breeze and the feel of a knife’s blade, as either is laid across the back of the neck. I can call up memories of both, if I work at it. The chilly breeze is invariably going to be the more pleasant memory. For instance . . .

I was eleven years old, and clearing tables in my father’s restaurant. It was a quiet evening, with only a couple of tables occupied. A group had just left, and I was walking over to the table they’d used.

The table in the corner was a deuce. One male, one female. Both Dragaeran, of course. For some reason, humans rarely came into our place; perhaps because we were human too, and they didn’t want the stigma, or something. My father himself always avoided doing business with other “Easterners.”

There were three at the table along the far wall. All of them were male, and Dragaeran. I noted that there was no tip at the table I was clearing, and heard a gasp from behind me.

I turned as one member of the threesome let his head fall into his plate of lyorn leg with red peppers. My father had let me make the sauce for it that time, and, crazily, my first thought was to wonder if I’d built it wrong.

The other two stood up smoothly, seemingly not the least bit worried about their friend. They began moving toward the door, and I realized that they were planning to leave without paying. I looked for my father, but he was in back.

I glanced once more at the table, wondering whether I should try to help the fellow who was choking, or intercept the two who were trying to walk out on their bill.

Then I saw the blood.

The hilt of a dagger was protruding from the throat of the fellow whose face was lying in his plate. It slowly dawned on me what had happened, and I decided that, no, I wasn’t going to ask the two gentlemen who were leaving for money.

They didn’t run, or even hurry. They walked quickly and quietly past me toward the door. I didn’t move. I don’t think I was even breathing. I remember suddenly becoming very much aware of my own heartbeat.

One set of footsteps stopped, directly behind me. I remained frozen, while in my mind, I cried out to Verra, the Demon Goddess.

At that moment, something cold and hard touched the back of my neck. I was too frozen to flinch. I would have closed my eyes if I could have. Instead, I stared straight ahead. I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time, but the Dragaeran girl was looking at me, and she started to rise then. I noticed her when her companion reached out a hand to stop her, which she brushed off.

Then I heard a soft, almost silky voice in my ear. “You didn’t see a thing,” it said. “Got that?” If I had had as much experience then as I do now, I would have known that I was in no real danger—if he’d had any intention of killing me he would have done so already. But I didn’t, and so I shook. I felt I should nod, but couldn’t manage. The Dragaeran girl was almost up to us now, and I imagine the guy behind me noticed her, because the blade was gone suddenly and I heard retreating footsteps.

I was shaking uncontrollably. The tall Dragaeran girl gently placed her hand on my shoulder. I saw sympathy on her face. It was a look I had never before been given from a Dragaeran, and it was, in its own way, as frightening as the experience I’d just been through. I had an urge to fall forward into her arms, but I didn’t let myself. I became aware that she was speaking, softly, gently. “It’s all right, they’ve left. Nothing is going to happen. Just take it easy, you’ll be fine . . . ”

My father came storming in from the other room.

“Vlad!” he called, “what’s going on around here? Why—”

He stopped. He saw the body. I heard him getting sick and I felt ashamed for him. The hand on my shoulder tightened, then. I felt myself stop trembling, and looked at the girl in front of me.

Girl? I really couldn’t judge her age at all, but, being Dragaeran, she could be anywhere from a hundred to a thousand years old. Her clothing was black and gray, which I knew meant she was of House Jhereg. Her companion, who was now approaching us, was also a Jhereg. The three who had been at the other table were of the same House. Nothing of any significance there; it was mostly Jhereg, or an occasional Teckla (each Dragaeran House bears the name of one of our native creatures), who came into our restaurant.

Her companion stood behind her.

“Your name is Vlad?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“I’m Kiera,” she said. I only nodded again. She smiled once more and turned to her companion. They paid their bill and left. I went back to help clean up after the murdered man—and my father.

“ Kiera ,” I thought to myself, “ I won’t forget you. ”

When the Phoenix guards arrived some time later, I was in back, and I heard my father telling them that, no, no one had seen what had happened, we’d all been in back. But I never forgot the feel of a knife blade, as it is laid across the back of the neck.

And for another instance . . .

I was sixteen, and walking alone through the jungles west of Adrilankha. The city was somewhat more than a hundred miles away, and it was night. I was enjoying the feeling of solitude, and even the slight fear within my middle as I considered the possibility that I might run into a wild dzur, or a lyorn, or even, Verra preserve me, a dragon.

The ground under my boots alternated between “crunch” and “squish.” I didn’t make any effort to move quietly; I hoped that the noise I made would frighten off any beast which would otherwise frighten me off. The logic of that escapes me now.

I looked up, but there was no break in the overcast that blankets the Dragaeran Empire. My grandfather had told me that there was no such orange-red sky above his Eastern homeland. He’d said that one could see stars at night, and I had seen them through his eyes. He could open his mind to me, and did, often. It was part of his method for teaching witchcraft; a method that brought me, at age sixteen, to the jungles.

The sky lit the jungle enough for me to pick my way. I ignored the scratches on face and arms from the foliage. Slowly, my stomach settled down from the nausea that had hit when I had done the teleport that brought me here.