Steven Brust - Hawk

Deragar collected a couple of toughs and gave them a meeting place not far from where the secret passage let out. I went through the tunnel, met up with them, and we walked down the street, a little parade of Jhereg, looking all, you know, tough and like that. In that area, we didn’t call much attention to ourselves.

“Boss?”

“Yeah.”

It was about a half-hour walk, so we got there early. It was a nice-looking place-I’d have guessed wheelhouse Orca or higher. Deragar waited with me while his people went in and looked around. They came back out, nodded, and we entered; one of them remaining outside.

Eventually a couple of Jhereg walked in, looked around, saw us, nodded, walked out again. Apparently, he’d sent his people in early. There’s so little trust in this world.

I sat down at a table with Deragar and the other guy, whose named turned out to be Nesci. He didn’t say much. Neither did Deragar or I, for that matter. I bought us a bottle of wine, but didn’t drink much more than half a cup of it.

After a while, I saw Deragar’s eyes narrow a little. He was watching the door. He said, “They’re here,” at the same time Loiosh said it into my mind. I resisted the temptation to turn around. Loiosh said, “He’s talking to the hostess now.”

“All right.”

“She’s going down the hall, now she’s unlocking a door. He’s going in.”

I stood up, turned around, and followed him into the room. There was a table there of dark wood that had been polished until it gleamed. The hostess lit a fire, though it wasn’t all that chilly. The Jhereg glanced at Loiosh, and shook his head.

“Boss.”

“Go.”

He flew out of the room. Then the hostess left, leaving me alone with the Jhereg seated across the table. He looked at me, and his eyes narrowed. There was only about four feet between us-he really did think highly of himself.

“Lord Chesha?”

“You’re Taltos, aren’t you?” He pronounced it Tahltoss, and I somehow didn’t think he’d much care that he was saying it wrong. From the sound of his voice, he wasn’t all that pleased to discover I was the one he’d come to meet. I tried not to be hurt.

“Yeah,” I said. “I want to talk to you about-”

“Can you come up with any reason I shouldn’t kill you?”

“Well, at least one. You don’t have a Morganti blade on you, and without that, you won’t get paid.”

“You sure I don’t have a Morganti blade on me?”

“Well, most people don’t, you know, just carry them around as a matter of course.”

“You do.”

“Yeah, but I’m special.”

“What did you want, then?”

“I want you to leave Terion open for me.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “let’s talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to-”

“Oh, nonsense. There’s always something to talk about.”

“I don’t talk with-”

“Don’t say it. You’ll just piss me off. I assume you don’t care about gold, or you’d have listened sooner. I assume you aren’t personally loyal to him, because no one is. That leaves me wondering just what it is.”

“Maybe you should just walk away, right now.”

“Or? Do you really want to throw away an opportunity before you even know what it is? Of course, I’m worth a lot of gold, but to collect it, you’d need a Morganti weapon, and we’ve already established that you don’t-”

He reached into his cloak, and, very slowly, removed a long, slim dagger. I knew it was Morganti before it was in sight.

“Boss?”

“I got this.”

“Of course,” I said aloud, speaking to both of them at once, “I might be wrong.”

He didn’t lunge, he didn’t even point it at me; he just held it and said, “Get out of here.”

“Or what?” I said. “Or you’ll use that? Here and now?” With my left hand, hardly moving, I pulled Lady Teldra about an inch from her sheath. “Because if you want to do it now,” I said, “I’m fine with that. Let’s get it over with, this terrible thing you’re going to do to me.”

He caught my eye and held it; I waited.

“Or,” I said after what seemed enough time. “We could talk a little first. After a bit more conversation, if you’d like, you can still do those awful things that you have contemplated, and that I can do nothing to prevent, helpless son-of-a-bitch that I am, oh, woe is me.”

He held my eye a little longer, then grunted and put the knife away. I pushed Lady Teldra back into her sheath.

“So,” he said. “It’s true. I’d heard that you had…” His voice trailed off as he gestured with his chin.

“Yeah,” I said. “Now. What is it that makes it so out of the question for you to leave Terion open?”

“Because,” he said, “I don’t like you.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot. What else?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Then you haven’t checked up on me as well as I’ve checked up on Terion. Or you, for that matter.”

He stared at me as if his eyes were weapons, which they weren’t. I’ve been glared at by experts, and, whatever else he was good at, his glaring powers didn’t come up to scratch.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give you one minute. What do you have?”

“What Terion has.”

He kept staring.

“You get his area, his connections, his-”

“What makes you think I couldn’t have all that if I wanted, just by taking him out myself?”

“Because then everyone would know you had. You’d be that guy who betrayed his boss to get his territory.”

“And this way I wouldn’t? How do you figure that?”

“You leave me an opening. I take it. I don’t take his area. You’re positioned to move in. And it doesn’t trace back to you.”

“How do I leave you an opening without it tracing back to me?”

“We need to work that part out,” I said.

He arched an eyebrow and gave me a look in which skepticism was about equally blended with disdain; and I didn’t care, because I knew I had him.

“What do you get out of this? You just don’t like him?”

“That’s part of it. He’s been a hole in my boot for a long time, and I’m tired of it. And he just tried to shine a friend of mine. But more important, I’m working on something, and he’s liable to get in the way.”

“What are you working on?”

“I’m trying to set up a store to sell baskets of none-of-your-fucking-business at wholesale prices.”

His lips twitched. “All right.”

“So, how does it happen?”

“Is it true what they say? That you have a pet jhereg?”

“I wouldn’t call him a pet, exactly. He works with me. What’s your point?”

“One of the regulars has a terror of the things; just have it show up, and he’ll collapse.”

“And the guy who works with him?”

“Can be gotten to.”

“Money?”

He shook his head. “I have something on him.”

“And making sure it doesn’t blow back on you?”

“I’m going to put it on the guy I have something on.”

I worked that out. “You were going to shine him anyway, weren’t you?”

“Sooner or later.”

“Personal?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. “Then we’re in?”

“When do you need it.”

“In the next day.”

He stared at me. “Look-”

“Maybe two.”

He continued staring at me, then frowned and said, “Actually, that works out. Can you do it tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah. This evening.”

Served me right, I guess. If I was going to rush him, it was only fair. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes,” I said.