Steven Brust - Hawk

“Aren’t they used to having humans in here?” he asked.

I didn’t take the trouble to correct him about who the humans were because, like I said, I’m too polite. I said, “Not humans who suddenly appear in the middle of their place, no.”

“Oh,” he said. “Why not?”

“It’s not done,” I said. “In the East.”

“Oh.”

Loiosh settled on my left shoulder, Rocza on my right. I called over for a klava for Daymar; when it was delivered, he said, “It’s good to see you, Vlad.”

“You too,” I lied.

“When I saw Loiosh, I concluded that you wanted to see me.”

“Good thinking.”

“He let me get the location from his mind, so I teleported.”

“Yes,” I said.

“So I was right?”

I nodded.

He sat back, tilted his head, and waited.

“I wanted to ask you about something,” I said.

He nodded. “All right, I’m listening.”

“You wish me to ask you, then?” I said, keeping my face straight.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s up to you. I wasn’t doing anything important. And I’m not in a hurry. So, take as much time as you want.”

Explaining the joke to Daymar seemed like a poor use of my time, so I said, “It goes back to a remark you made some years ago. We were sitting around Castle Black, and you mentioned a Hawk rite of passage you’d undergone.”

“I don’t remember that,” he said. “I mean, I remember the rite, but I don’t remember talking about it.”

“We were all a little drunk.”

He nodded, waiting, his big eyes fixed on me. He has a way of looking at you that simultaneously indicates total concentration, and a distant abstraction. I’m not sure how he does it. But then, I’m not sure how he does most of what he does.

“You said something about a time you’d hidden from the Orb. Could you expand on that?”

I hadn’t thought about predicting what he’d say, but if I had, I would have been right. “Why would you want to know about that?” he said.

“Just curious,” I told him.

I don’t believe there is anyone else in the world who would have accepted that as a reasonable answer under the circumstances, but Daymar just nodded and said, “All right. What exactly do you want to know?”

“How did you do it?”

He tilted his head as if I’d asked him the sum of two and two.

“The link to the Orb comes in on a particular set of psychic channels. You just route those around you for as long as you need to hide.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“I hadn’t realized it was that simple.”

He nodded. “That’s all it is.”

“Well, good then.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Yes. How do you reroute a psychic channel?”

He blinked a couple of times, tilted his head again, and frowned. “Vlad,” he said, “are you jesting?”

“Remember,” I said, “I’m an Easterner.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Sorry. What is this?”

“Klava,” I said. “You’ve had it before.”

“Have I? Oh. Did I like it?”

“I think so.”

He nodded and drank some more.

“So,” I said. “Rerouting the channels will make you invisible to the Orb. Is that something I could do?”

“Well, first you have to identify the right channels. Then it’s just a matter of-hmm.” He looked at me and his brow furrowed. I’m pretty sure he was trying to get inside my head to test my psychic abilities, or power, or something. After a moment of being unable to do so, he looked puzzled and said, “Phoenix Stone?”

I nodded.

“I can’t get past it to tell. Could you remove it?”

“Uh, that would be a bad idea. There are people looking for me.”

“Looking for you? I don’t-”

“To kill me. Were I to remove the Phoenix Stone, they’d find me, and then they’d kill me, and I would be sad.”

“Oh.” He considered. “Why do they want to kill you?”

“We’ve discussed this before, Daymar. It’s the Jhereg. I offended them.”

“Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. Can you apologize?”

“Sure. The trick is getting them to accept the apology.”

“Oh. They’re not very forgiving, are they. I remember that.”

“Right. But I’m beginning to think there may be a way to.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe.”

“How?”

“That’s why I’m asking about hiding from the Orb.”

He did the head-tilt again. “Hiding from the Orb will help convince the Jhereg to accept the apology?”

“Not hiding from the Orb, exactly. But the Orb is how most Drag-humans communicate psychically. I know, you don’t. But most of them do. That means that if it’s possible to hide from the Orb, then it might also be possible to tap into those channels of the Orb.”

“Tap in?”

“Identify the channels psychically, manipulate them with sorcery to direct them to, say, me.”

“But then you’d-oh!” His eyes widened. Then he frowned. “Wouldn’t that be illegal?”

“I imagine it would. So, if you’d be so kind, explain.”

He gave a sort of shrug. “All right. It’s pretty simple; after you’ve identified the channels, you just externalize your thought-stream so you can shape it, and-”

“Wait. Slow down.”

“Vlad, how much do you know about the basics of psychic manipulation?”

“Not that much.”

“How about how sorcery works?”

“Not that much either. I just use it.”

“All right. Do you understand the Sea of Amorphia?”

“I know what it is. I mean, I know it’s amorphia.”

“And you know what amorphia is?”

“Ah, sort of.”

“It is simultaneously matter and energy, and-”

“Wait. What does that mean?”

“It means-” He stopped, frowned, and it was like I could see him back up to take another run at it. He said, “Amorphia is chaos: material randomness.”

“Um-”

“The Orb is a device for imposing dimensionality on its formlessness, thus permitting sorcerous access to amorphia, through the Orb.”

“Daymar, does ‘imposing dimensionality’ actually mean anything?”

“I think so.”

“All right. Please explain how this relates to hiding from the Orb. Or, more specifically, to identifying the channels through which someone is reaching the Orb.”

He did, and we’d each had another cup of klava by the time I realized that I was never going to be able to manipulate the channels myself-whether I had the psychic power I didn’t know, but I most certainly didn’t have the skill. I also had a deeper understanding of the relationship between physics and sorcery, and between sorcery and amorphia. And the beginnings of a headache.

But I also understood manipulating the channels well enough to know my plan might work. I didn’t need to be able to do it, you see. Well, I sort of did, but only once, so I was perfectly willing to cheat on that part. The point is, it had to be possible to do it. If it were possible, I could make it happen. Because I know people. Like Daymar.

When he’d finished the explanation, I said, “Thanks, Daymar. I appreciate you taking the time. Now let me tell you what I’m going to try, and you tell me if it’ll work.”

“All right.”

He listened, and his eyes widened. “Why didn’t I ever think of that?” were his first words.

I bit back the obvious reply and said, “Because you aren’t both a witch and a sorcerer. There aren’t many of us who are. Morrolan might have thought of it, but it would never cross his mind to do that. Will it work?”

“I could do it.”

“Yes, but can I? Using the equipment I talked about?”

“I can’t think of why not,” he said.