Steven Brust - Issola

Eventually, I sat back, stretched out, and said, “Okay, Sethra. Give me a couple of hours to digest, and I’ll take on every Jenoine you have, all at the same time.”

“Careful what you promise,” said Sethra Lavode.

“All right,” I said. “Let me rephrase that.”

Morrolan chuckled. So did Loiosh. I’m quite the jongleur when out of danger and with a meal inside me. Eventually we made our way back to the sitting room, and Tukko brought out a liqueur that was older than Morrolan and much sweeter, fea­turing the smallest traces of mint and cinnamon—an odd com­bination, but a successful one, and I’m pretty sure there was some honey in there, too.

I moaned softly. Sethra said, “Is the arm beginning to hurt?”

“No,” said Aliera. “That’s his moan of contentment after a good meal.”

“Now, how would you know that?” I asked her.

She gave me an inscrutable smile that she must have learned from Morrolan. I grunted and drank some more, and enjoyed the transitory sense of contentment I was feeling.

Sethra looked at my arm some more—and when I say she I looked at it, that’s what I mean. She stared at it so hard I’d say she was looking right through the skin, which is probably what she was doing, at least on some mystical level that I’ll never understand.

After several minutes, she said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure if I can do anything about it, but it looks like I may not have to.”

“How, it’ll fix itself?”

“I think so. It seems like it might be a temporary condition. I’ve been watching the signs of activity in the nerves, and it now seems clear that it is getting better rather than degenerat­ing.”

“Degenerating,” I said. “Okay. What would that have meant?”

“Paralysis, then death, probably from suffocation when you became unable to breathe, unless your heart became paralyzed first, which would have killed you more quickly. But, as I say, it isn’t going that way, it is repairing itself.”

“Hmmm. Okay, that’s good news. Any idea how long?”

“I can’t say.”

“Remember, we Easterners don’t live more than sixty or sev­enty years.”

“I doubt we’re talking about years.”

“Good. Then I imagine you’re not going to ask me to do anything until I have two good arms, right?”

“I’m not sure we can wait, Vlad.”

“Oh? You mean, after two hundred thousand years, or whatever it’s been, things suddenly got urgent? When, yesterday?”

“Yes,” said Sethra. “I believe things have become urgent. They became urgent when Morrolan and Aliera were taken. Everything is at a new level now, and developments are taking place quickly.”

“But—”

“More important,” she continued, “I doubt they will give us time to do anything at all.”

“They wouldn’t attack Dzur Mountain again, would they?”

“I hope so. Anything else they might come up with would be worse, because we haven’t any preparations for it.”

“Hmmm,” I said, because that always sounds wise. “Have you spoken to the Empress?”

“Yes.”

“Well then—wait. You have?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” I said. “And, uh ... what does she say?”

“She wants me to deal with it.”

“She wants you to ... with all of her resources, she has no one else to call on except—”

“Me? And Morrolan e’Drien, and Aliera e’Kieron?”

“Uh ...”

“Go ahead, Boss; talk yourself out of this one.”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

“I was referring to myself, Sethra,” I said.

“Ah. Well, she is calling on me, and I am calling on you “

“You are—”

“Traditionally, this is exactly the sort of thing the Empress has called upon the Lavodes for; it is what we were created for. Now, as it happens, I am the only Lavode left. Well, there’s one other, but he isn’t ready yet.”

“The Lavodes were created to fight the Jenoine?”

“The Lavodes were created to handle threats or potential threats to the Empire that were fundamentally non-military.”

“I see.” I thought about it. “But I thought the Lavodes were disbanded before the Interregnum.”

“That is true, but I always thought that was a bad idea. The Empress, as it happens, agrees with me.”

“Ah. She agrees. Well, how nice. And evidently the Demon Goddess agrees with you, too. And Aliera agrees, and Morrolan agrees. And Teldra, of course, can’t help being agreeable. So I you’ve got agreement all the way around except from the Verra-be-damned Easterner who’d really like to have his left arm working again before doing anything stupid.”

“You might have a choice,” said Sethra. “But most likely you won’t.”

“Great. So we’re going to be in for it, whether we want to or not. What do we do?”

“Do you have any suggestions, Vlad?”

“For handling rampant Jenoine? No, that has never been a specialty of mine.”

“Then, perhaps, you’d care to shut up and let us figure something out.”

“Ouch,” I said. “All right. I’ll just sit here like any good weapon, and wait to be pulled from my sheath, blunted edge and all.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s just what I want.”

That hadn’t been the answer I was looking for, but I decided to be content with it before I encouraged something worse. I fell silent, just sitting there with my left arm hanging limp and useless in my lap.

“I wish,” said Aliera abruptly, “that we could find a way to carry the war to them.”

Morrolan looked at her. “Since that is such an obvious observation that you could not possibly have any reason for making it, I must assume you have an idea as to the particulars.”

She smiled sweetly at him, and suggested where he might put his assumptions, but caught herself, glanced at me, and eventually said, “No, as it happens, I was musing. I can’t think of any way to do so.”

Morrolan nodded. “If we’re speaking of wishes, I wish we understood them better.”

“I have a few guesses about them,” said Aliera, “based on what we’ve just been through, and what I’ve picked up from Sethra and my mother.”

“All right,” said Morrolan. “Keep talking.”

Sethra leaned forward attentively; I pretended to be bored with the whole thing.

“My first guess is that, whatever their long-term plans are, their next objective is Verra. We know that she has been then enemy for her entire existence, and everything that has happened can be seen that way—even the nonsense about trying to convince Vlad to kill her might be second-level deception, or even a straightforward attempt to convince him to do so.”

“Yes,” said Sethra. “I agree with your reasoning. Go on.”

“All right,” said Aliera. “My second guess is a little more daring.”

Morrolan muttered something under his breath.

“I believe,” said Aliera, “that their second target is the Orb.”

Sethra stirred. “The trellanstone?”

Aliera nodded. “The best way to attack the Orb would be with a device with similar properties.”

“Then why,” said Morrolan, “were we allowed to see it?”

“You think you were allowed to?” said Sethra. “I thought you had managed to penetrate their illusions, and see it in spite of them.”

“That’s what I had thought, too. But if the trellanstone is important, then why, of all the places in the Universe, would they put us near it, illusions or no? In fact,” he continued “there’s been too much of that going around with these things. Too many coincidences. Too many times we have to ask ourselves, ‘Why would they do that?’ All the way from asking Vlad to kill Verra, to doing nothing while Vlad broke us out of the manacles, and doing nothing again while he broke himself and Teldra out, and then allowing us to see the trellanstone, and—”