Steven Brust - Issola

“Please do.”

I stood up slowly, put my knife away, and found my firekit close at hand. I lit a candle and held it up and away so we would both be illuminated. There was, fortunately, little wind. I saw her standing before me, looking very beautiful and incredibly out of place. She gave me a courtesy, and I bowed in response.

“Lord Taltos,” she said.

“Lady Teldra,” I replied. “Welcome to the wilderness.”

She looked around. “Yes. Well, shall I start, or should it wait until morning?”

“If it is urgent enough to track me down in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, can it wait until morning?”

“It can, Lord Taltos. My urgency was to find you before you moved on, thus making the search more difficult. Again, I apol­ogize for disturbing you.”

“Not to worry. Did you bring any blankets?”

“I...”

“I know how difficult this must be for you, Lady Teldra, and I can’t wait to hear about what brought it all about, but, believe me, we’ll both be better off if you let me handle things for tonight. I’d prefer it that way. Please.”

“Very well.”

“Did you bring any blankets?”

“No.”

“Is anyone following you?”

“No.”

“Are you—forgive me—are you certain?”

“Yes.”

I studied her face. Lady Teldra was worried about something. She was worried enough about something that she had allowed it to appear on her features, and something was wrong enough for her to have deliberately woken me up. This was almost more startling than her sudden appearance in the forest between Appertown and Ridge.

Startling. Yes.

When one knows an Issola, such as Lady Teldra, one gets so used to the grace, elegance, and manners of the House that one forgets its other side. The issola is a beautiful white bird. I’d seen several during my recent travels. One usually saw them standing, graceful and lovely in the early morning or late eve­ning, in swamps or the shallow banks of rivers. They stand as if their only reason for being were to look lovely and graceful. And then the issola would be holding a fish in its beak, and you’d never see it strike. And then the fish would be gone in a single swallow, and the issola would be standing on one leg, looking lovely and graceful.

Lady Teldra looked lovely and graceful. I felt plain and clumsy. On the other hand, now that the adrenaline was no longer coursing through my system I realized that I was still pretty tired.

“Let’s sleep,” I said. “You can share my furs, as long as you don’t get forward with me.”

“My lord—”

“I’m kidding. Climb in.”

I blew out the candle. It had been a long time since I’d slept curled up with a warm body—it brought back memories that I’d been trying to suppress, and the fact that she wasn’t human did little to help me forget. There had been a time when, every night, I had gone to sleep next to a woman I loved, and, even better, woken up with her. Those days were over and beyond recall, and allowing myself to dwell on them could take from me the edge I needed to stay alert and alive.

It took a while, but eventually I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was dawn, and she had climbed out of the furs and had a fire going.

“Have you klava?” she said, when she saw I was awake.

“Not even coffee,” I said. “But we’re within a few miles of a town.”

“Really? I’d have thought you’d stay at an inn, then.”

“Loiosh works better out here, and these days I’m thinking more about survival than comfort.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and seemed to mean it. But, of course, she was an Issola: she would always seem to mean it. In the light of dawn, I saw that she was dressed in white and green, in a gown suited less to the wilderness than to her duties at Castle Black, home of the Lord Morrolan, where she’d welcome you into his home, serve you wine, and convincingly seem delighted to see you. For almost the first time in the years that I’d known her, I wondered: Just exactly what were her duties for Morrolan? She looked an inquiry at me, then held out her hand. I nodded and Loiosh flew over to her, landing delicately. Her hand was stiff and slightly tilted, her elbow sharply bent: she knew the technique, though as far as I knew she’d never held a jhereg before. This failed to startle me.

“A pleasure to see you,” she told my familiar. He gracefully lowered his head until it was below the level of her hand, then raised it again.

“I believe,” said Lady Teldra in an amused tone, “that I am being mocked.” I heard Loiosh giggle inside my head. He turned around on her hand, launched himself, and returned to my right shoulder. Rocza, by now on my left shoulder, shifted and wrig­gled, which she often did in the morning. It probably meant something. There are many interesting facets to the character of the wild jhereg—poisonous reptilian scavengers of the jun­gle—but for some reason I got stubborn and decided not to learn about them. I imagine Teldra knew a lot about the wild issola.

“I’ll bet you know a lot about the wild issola,” I said.

“I know a bit about them,” she said. “But, your pardon Lord Taltos, I should imagine that isn’t the question foremost on your mind.”

“No, foremost on my mind is breakfast. There’s bread, cheese, and the remains of a dried and salted wild boar in my pack, as well some dried gammon and jerky in my pouch. Help yourself while I vanish for a moment and get myself a little cleaned up. There’s a stream about a hundred feet this way, just over that rise.”

“Thank you, my lord. I found it earlier.”

I went off and did what was necessary and filled my water flask. When I returned Teldra had broken off several chunks of bread and, while they toasted on the rocks next to the fire, she was cutting up strips of cheese to lay across them.

“No questions before you eat?” she said.

“Exactly.”

“I can respect that.”

The bread started smelling good. When she put the cheese over it, and the boar, my mouth started watering. The cheese was a smokey honin; I usually prefer something sharper, but it went well with boar. We ate, and I passed the water flask over. I almost apologized for the lack of wine, but Teldra would have been mortified to hear me apologize, so I didn’t. The food was good. As I ate, I fed bits to Loiosh, some of which he passed on to Rocza.

When I was done eating, I wrapped my furs and few possessions in their leather cords so I could leave in a hurry if I had to. As I did so, I said, “Let’s have it, then.”

“Where should I start, Lord Ta—”

“Vlad,” I said. “I’m sorry, Teldra, but titles just don’t work with the surroundings.”

“Very well, Vlad. What would you like to know first? How I found you, or why I wanted to?”

“Start with how you found me; it might be more urgent. If you can find me, perhaps the Jhereg can find me.”

“Not the way I did.”

“Oh?”

She said, “Do you remember Morrolan’s private tower, and the windows in it?”

I stared at her for some few moments, then said, “Oh. No, I don’t suppose the Jhereg is very likely to find me that way. I don’t think. Although the Left Hand—”

“Oh, that isn’t the whole of it. By themselves, the windows could bring me here, but couldn’t find you. I—”

“That’s a relief.”

“—had help.”

“Of?”

“Well, Kiera the Thief, for one.”

“Kiera. Yes.” I did not believe Kiera would betray me, or do anything she knew would put me in danger without a very good reason.

“She knew more or less where you’d be—what part of the Empire, that is. She said you’d been nursing a sick boy back to health, and that he lived in this district, and that she expected you to be escorting him to his home by now.”