Steven Brust - Dragon

At their worst they are brutal and ugly.

Aliera said, "Greetings, Vlad, Cawti."

We both bowed. Cawti said, "How is Norathar?"

"Adjusting. Becoming reconciled. She'll make a good Empress."

I glanced at my betrothed, but if the subject was still painful for her, which I was certain it was, she gave no sign of it. Every once in a while I wondered how the House of the Dragon felt about its next Empress having once been a Jhereg assassin, but chances were good I'd be long dead by the time the Cycle turned, so I didn't give it that much thought, and it was one of the things Cawti and I still had trouble talking about so I don't know how she felt about it.

I said, "I have a proposal for you."

Aliera put down her book—I didn't catch the title—and tilted her head. "Yes?" she said, in a tone that indicated, "This is bound to be good."

"It comes from Sethra the Younger."

Her green eyes narrowed and appeared slightly grey. "Sethra the Younger," she repeated.

"Yes."

"What does she want?"

"Kieron's greatsword."

"Indeed? The sword of Kieron the Conqueror. She wants me to give it to her. Well, isn't that sweet."

"I'm just passing on a message."

"Uh-huh. And what is she offering for it?"

"I think you can guess, Aliera."

Aliera studied me, then slowly nodded. "Yes, I suppose I can, at that. Why don't you both sit down."

She looked at us, her grey eyes squinting. She held her wineglass, a fine piece of cut crystal, so that the chandelier made a rainbow through it that decorated the dark wood table next to her.

"What do you two think?" she said at last.

"We're delighted, of course," I said. "We'd like nothing better than to have Sethra the Younger butcher a few thousand Easterners."

She nodded. "There's more to this than that, however."

"Yes," I said. "There is."

"I'm surprised you're even bringing me the proposition."

"I wasn't going to," I said. "But Cawti talked me into it."

Aliera turned an inquiring gaze at Cawti, who said, "It's something you should know about."

She nodded. "Morrolan claims to have an idea what it is, but Sethra the Younger claimed it, and he didn't have the—well, he chose not to dispute it."

"If you get it," I said, "he still won't. Unless you give it to him."

"It may be," she said, "that, whatever it really is, a Great Weapon, as we suspect, or something else entirely, it has been trying to come to me all along."

I thought back on the Serioli, and on the Wall, and on everything that had happened, and I said, "That is a disgusting thought."

She turned her glance to me, frowning as if I'd spoken in a foreign language, but continued her thought without answering me. "If so, to fail to take it would be to ask for more trouble, and greater."

"On the other hand," I said, "I seem to remember Kieron the Conqueror promising to come after you if you gave his sword away."

"Yes," said Aliera. "And that is, of course, another advantage."

11—Breakfast with Chef Vladimir

There was a certain amount of doubt in the eyes of the soldiers in front of me, either because they weren't all that happy about cutting down a single unarmed Easterner or, more likely, because Ori was not authorized to give them orders. But for whatever reason, they hesitated; Ori, on the other hand, did not. He took a step forward, and as his arm came up, I let Spellbreaker fall into my hand, and then there was something black and ugly crackling and coming toward me.

And here my memory plays tricks on me again, because I know how fast such things move, and so I know I didn't really have time to make the cold, disinterested observation that I remember making, and I certainly wouldn't have had time to deliberately fall over backward while swinging Spellbreaker before me, and to listen to the crackling in the air, and notice that particular odor that accompanies thunderstorms, and be simultaneously planning what I was going to say if I were still able to say it, but that's how I remember it happening, and if my memory is to defy reason, well, I still have to go with my memory, and so there is the smell, the crackle, the roll, and even now the muscle memory of Spellbreaker's weight in my hand, and the feel of the ground beneath me, and even a small rock that bruised my shoulder as I hit, rolled, and came up, aware that my left arm was numb, and my brain was going tick tick tick as I made deductions and decisions and was able to keep my voice cool and rational as I said, "That was uncalled for, Ori. Do it again and I'll destroy you. I'm here to talk, not to kill, but if I change my mind I'll burn you where you stand even if your bodyguards slice me to ribbons in the next instant. Now stop it, and we'll talk."

I caught his eye and held it, and for a moment I didn't even notice the twenty-odd Dragonlords who might or might not be about to cut me down. I waited. Before me stretched gentle, green hills; behind rose the cliff called the Wall, with the plain flat monument to Baritt, his "tomb" standing up before it; and around me were the Eastern Mountains; they all seemed to hold their breath with me. I wondered if I were to die here. It would have been appropriate if I'd had some sort of premonition, but I don't get premonitions, at least, not reliable ones. In any case, I'd had no premonition when I had first reached the Eastern Mountains.

At their feet, I had learned when we first reached them, long miles from where I now stood, the day arrives suddenly. For once I was almost glad to be made to wake up early, because otherwise I should never have seen the red and gold tickling the peak of Mount Drift in the false dawn, with the overcast, very high and thin, looking like a product of the mountain, and the splintered light turning the camp into a giant field of mushrooms and the river into a ribbon of purple.

Forgive me; you know we hardened soldiers are all philosophers, and philosophers are all poets. Well, actually, we hardened soldiers are usually drunks and whoremongers, but philosophy's a good way to pass the time in between.

I was poetically given latrine duty that day. Rascha explained, apologetically, that there hadn't been enough "defaulters" to do the job, so lots had been drawn, and my name had come up. But I could breakfast first. I took it philosophically.

I won't spend a lot of time describing latrine duty, but I can say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be—a lot of digging, mostly, and, in any case, everyone else was involved in digging more earthworks under the guidance of the engineers, so it wasn't much more work than what everyone else was doing, just slightly more unpleasant. I did get a laugh out of a few of my comrades by taking a piece of salted kethna, throwing it into the pit I'd just dug, and covering it over. "Just thought I'd cut out the middle part," I explained.

But I learned one thing of real value that impressed itself upon my consciousness even more than it had during the march, which is when I first began to suspect it: A Dragonlord squatting over a field toilet looks no more dignified than anyone else in that position. That is knowledge I am happy to carry with me.

We held the position on the riverbank for three days, three relatively pleasant days, in fact. It was hot, but we didn't have anything to do except relax or bathe in the river, and, best of all, no one tried to kill us. I had thought we were waiting there with the expectation of being attacked, but I learned later that, in fact, what we were doing was letting the other divisions move into position for a three-pronged attack on the heart of Fornia's realm. Fornia, of course, was busy with marches and countermarches to defend against exactly this. We heard rumors of skirmishes on our flanks, and they turned out to be true, but they were only minor, unimportant little probes of our defenses—unimportant, that is, except to whoever was killed or maimed in the actions. Since the fatalities were all in other companies, we didn't have funeral services for them.