Hawk

4

“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.

I nodded. “Good then. And thank you once more.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think a great deal. But not just now.”

“Oh? What, then?”

“I’ll get back to you.”

“All right. I’ll open up for a few minutes on the hour.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But-”

“Oh, right. You won’t be able to reach me.”

“So, I’ll be spending yet more time flying around Pamlar University?”

“Unless you have another idea.”

“I’m not the idea guy.”

“No, you’re the one who flies off to find Daymar.”

He called me something impolite.

Daymar vanished with a pop of displaced air. It got me more glances from those in Len’s. Then he popped back in.

“Oh,” he said. “Was that rude? Should I not have done that?”

Sometimes I just have no idea what to say. Daymar went through the door this time.

I left a few coins on the table at Len and Nieces and headed out to deal with urgent matters that had been building up since my third klava. Then I walked about half a mile away and found a flophouse. Loiosh and Rocza took a flight around the place to make sure it was safe.

“So, Boss, about this plan.”

“Yeah. Give me some time to think about it.”

“All right.”

Then, “Boss?”

“More time, Loiosh.”

“All right.”

Then he said, “Just tell me one thing: Will the spell work?”

“Daymar just said it would.”

“I know. Will the spell work?”

“Trying to build up my confidence, are you?”

“That’s my job.”

I gave the landlord some money, started the room fumigating, and walked back outside. I strolled a bit, but it made me nervous, so I went back to the flophouse, hanging out near the desk where the landlord determinedly didn’t look at me. After a while, I went back to the room, smothered the burning herbs, and let the place get started on airing out. I’d have opened the window except that it couldn’t close, so there was no need.

I sat on the bed, I stood up, I paced, I sat down, I leaned against the wall, I struck my palm with my fist, and I said, “Yeah, Loiosh, I think we can maybe do this.”

“Boss, do you know what you’re saying?”

“Yeah. There’s a chance I can get my life back. Or get killed, of course.”

“You’ve almost gotten killed in worse causes.”

“Yeah.”

“What do we need?”

“A way to make a Jhereg think like an Orca.”

“That seems possible.”

“Yeah, if we can make him see things like a Hawk.”

“That sounds harder.”

“There may be a way. We’ll need some things. Lots of things. The first steps will be to get a good supply of cash, and to find Kiera.”

“Which one first?”

“It doesn’t matter. All right. Let’s go steal the Jhereg Council.”

“And we’re off!”

Loiosh sounded positively excited. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d sounded excited about something that wasn’t on the order of telling me that if I didn’t duck I was going to be dead.

I was feeling somewhat the same. It wasn’t just the last few days, of course; I hope I’ve gotten at least that much across. The Jhereg had been after me for years-wanting me not just dead, but dead dead. Soul dead. Killed with a Morganti weapon. I’d been looking over my shoulder all that time, running around, too scared to settle anywhere even for a while. I’d learned that my ex-wife had given birth while I was gone, and I now had a son. I’d fought personal demons and impersonal gods and wandered through buildings that couldn’t exist to do impossible things. I had discovered that I had a destiny, and blown that destiny right off the table. I’d run, fought, hid, and schemed. I was tired of the whole thing. And now, maybe, maybe. After all of this, a “maybe” was more precious than platinum, more delicious than Piarran Mist. In all of these years, this was the first maybe I’d had. I gripped it, held it, studied it from every side. I was pretty close to giving it a name and a food dish.

A beautiful, beautiful maybe.

Now to make it real.

I threw my cloak back on and headed out to get things started.

The first step was easy enough, just tedious. I had to pass through pretty much all of South Adrilankha and then cross the river. I’ve been told that before teleportation became commonplace, the city used to be full of carriages, but now you can only find them near the Palace where they charge too much to take too long to get to too few places. There are cabriolets, but I just didn’t like the idea of having my face exposed while not being under my own power. That left renting a horse, or walking, and I’d ridden on horseback before, so that was out.

I’d gotten used to doing a lot of walking in the last few years, so it wasn’t too bad-it just took a long time. Adrilankha, in case you’ve never been there, is not a small city. It was afternoon when I finally reached the part of Adrilankha where I used to be important-which was also the part where I was most likely to be spotted by those who wanted to do harmful things to my person. Loiosh and Rocza flew above me in slow circles, alert to anything.

I felt a quickening of my heartbeat, and tried to relax. There was a lot to do, and a lot that could go wrong; this wasn’t the time to let my emotions drive the team.

There were four different places where, in the past, I’d left messages that I wanted to see Kiera. The message I left this time was the same at all four: “Please tell Kiera that the little guy is hungry for apples.”

And something happened in there that’s worth relating, because it turned out to be important, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

The Hook is a tiny area on the western side of the city, just touching Lower Kieron. There are no Jhereg operations there. I was leaving a message at a place called the Fruit Basket, and I saw a kid being hauled off by a couple of Phoenix Guards. He wore the colors of the Orca, and if there’s any House I hate, that’s the one. But he was young. He was Dragaeran, not human, so the ages don’t line up, but he looked like the same age as my son. I guess that’s what did it.

Anyway, I couldn’t help it. I approached them.

“Move along, whiskers,” said one of them, not even stopping, and I got annoyed. I dug into my pouch, pulled out my signet and showed it to them. I got all the reaction I could have asked for: wide eyes, open mouths, and I think they even turned a little pale.

The woman said, “My lord, apologies. I didn’t know-”

“That any Easterners had Imperial titles. Yeah. I’m Count of Szurke by the grace of Her Majesty. What is the boy accused of?”

“Cutpurse, m’lord.”

One look at him said he was guilty.

“May we proceed?” said the man.

I considered. “Not yet.” I turned to him. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Asyavn, my lord.” The name wasn’t unlike that of a Teckla boy I liked. I frowned and turned toward the Phoenix Guards. I started to say, “Let him go,” then reconsidered. I was going to need to collect a lot of things. “Get his imprint, and suspend the arrest.”

“Until?”

“A year and a day. If he’s done nothing in that time, it never happened.”

“As you say, m’lord.”

When they’d taken a psychic impression of him, they left. I turned to him, and he seemed a little frightened. He said, “You could have just freed me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I prefer being able to find you to collect the favor you owe me.”

He looked even more frightened, and seemed very close to bolting. “What do you want me to do?”

I said, “Nothing just now. I may need some help in the future though. What do you do besides cutting purses?”

“I dive and salvage some,” he said.

I smiled. “Do you indeed? Well. If I need some diving and salvaging, or a purse cut, how do I find you?”

He told me a few places he could usually be found, and I told him that a Jhereg might come looking for him, then sent him on his way. It was a minor stroke of good luck, as such things go, but it turned out to help.

I went back to arranging to make contact with my old friend Kiera the Thief.

It was long, slow, and painful to get into each of the places I wanted to leave a message without taking more chances than necessary; but not all that interesting to relate, so let’s just say I did it, and by the time I was done I was seriously hungry-for apples or anything else. I stayed on major streets and hung with big crowds as much as I could while heading past Malak Circle to Windchime Market, and from there north to a tiny place called, appropriately, Tiny’s, where they made a decent if not outstanding peppered breaded kethna. The real attraction, though, was across the street where there was a smaller place selling baked cinnamon apples filled with sweetened flavored iced cream; fresh apples when in season, dried when not. Kiera had heard me talking about it often, and I was pretty sure she’d take the hint.

Good news: She had. Bad news: She’d gotten the message sooner than I’d calculated on, so I didn’t have time for the kethna.

She smiled and kissed my cheek. Somehow, she never made it seem like she had to bend over to kiss me, even though she did. “Hello, Vlad.”

“Kiera. You look wonderful. You haven’t changed at all.”

That was a sort of joke, by the way; Dragaerans live for a couple of thousand years if someone like me doesn’t kill them first. Kiera either missed the joke or ignored it. She said, “Are you safe here?”

“Not terribly. But I needed to see you.”

She looked around. “Maybe another place?”

“Loiosh and Rocza are watching; this is about as safe as it gets. The Jhereg would have real problems setting something up here, even if I were spotted. Although-eh, never mind.”

“Although what, Vlad?”

“They’ve taken a couple of tries without any set-up. Just random attacks, hoping for the best. As you can see, I lived.”

“You look pale. Were you wounded?”

“A bit.”

“Vlad, you need to be careful.”

“Yeah, well.”

“All right. You know best.”

“You haven’t been speaking to Loiosh.”

She chuckled politely. “What’s been going on?”

“Someone’s been trying to kill me.”

“Yes. The whole organization.”

“That isn’t what I mean. I know they want me, but someone wants me even more.”

“I’m listening.”

“They took some random shots at me.”

“So you said.”

“Sloppy stuff-just finding me and taking a whack. That isn’t how it’s done.”

She nodded; even though she wasn’t an assassin herself, she knew how this sort of thing was generally handled. “Go on.”

“Unless I’m completely missing what’s going on-which is possible, but not likely-they used at least eight guys. And they were Jhereg, not hired Orca. I mean, they were getting paid.”

“Eight?”

“Eight. Following me, taking shots two at a time, following me to the next place. Yeah.”

“Eight?”

“At least.”

“That’s…”

“I know.”

“Think it’s something personal?”

“Could be. Someone is behind it, and it’s costing that guy a lot. A whole lot. It’s a bad investment. A bad gamble.”

She nodded. “Who do you think it is?”

“No idea, no good way to find out.”

“I could ask around.”

“And?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Probably nothing.”

I said, “Anyway, that brings us to this meeting.”

“What do you need? If I can do it, Vlad, you know I will. What is it?”

“A couple of things. First, I need the Jhereg shaken up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need them talking about something that isn’t me. There’ll be rumors flying around about me-I know, because I’m going to start them-and at the same time, there has to be something else going on that takes their attention. Something big. I need them wondering about me, and looking away at the same time.”

“Well, you could always kill someone high up in the Organization. That generally does it.”

I winced. “Maybe,” I said. “I’m not terribly partial to, you know, just killing someone for effect.”

“I could steal the Jhereg treasury.”

I chuckled. “That didn’t work out so well the last time someone did it.”

She spread her hands.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

“What else do you need?” she said.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “A long time ago-by my standards-”

“So, a few years?”

“Yeah. About eight years, nine years. And the incident in question must have been a hundred or so before that.”

“Wait. What?”

“Sorry. Eight or so years ago you made a reference to an incident that had happened a hundred years or so before that.”

“I keep forgetting what a good memory you have.”

“I have a terrible memory, Kiera.”

“You have a good memory for the oddest things. All right. What incident?”

“You mentioned a phoenix made of gold jade.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.”

“Was I drunk?”

“A little.”

“All right. What about it?”

“You were talking about the lock on the display case.”

“I remember that lock.”

“And you mentioned using an enchanted lockpick.”

“I must have been really drunk,” said Kiera.

* * *

I was going to need Kiera’s enchanted lockpick.

I need to explain.

I got this story from Kiera, and most of the names are probably wrong because she was drunk and most likely lying about them. But that’s fine because you don’t need to know the names anyway; I just want you to understand a bit of the background, all right? If all the names and stuff confuse you, forget it; that isn’t the point.

It was never about stealing the jade. Not that gold jade isn’t beautiful, and three-quarters of a pound of it was worth a fortune even before Nescaffi had put his genius to it. But stealing the jade was only a means to an end. There was a man named Scaanil who coveted anything and everything by Nescaffi. It was all about Scaanil, and that made it about the jade.

Which made it about the lock on the display case.

Nedev, who owned the jade phoenix, had good taste in art, and a lot of money; the case had been designed by Tudin of Threehills, which meant Kiera was far and away the best choice to steal it, if she could be persuaded to take the job. She could.

The enchantment that secured the lock was by Heffesca of Longlake, which sent Kiera to Litra.

Litra wasn’t the name she was born with; she took it five hundred years ago when she moved to Adrilankha. No one knew where she came from or who she was before. She had the dark complexion and sharp features of the House of the Hawk, though of course she was now a Jhereg. She took the name Litra, which was the Dragaeran form of a Serioli word that means “to scrounge.”

Litra lived in the Captain’s Corner district, surrounded by the ramshackle dwellings of petty merchants. Her own home blended in, but in fact it continued down more than fifty feet below street level, and it was in the subbasements that Litra did her work. Since the Interregnum, she was known as one of the best at what she did.

So, Kiera gave her details of the position and composition of the pins, the position of the stepper, the weight of the hammer, and the complex interleaving of spells that would preserve the integrity of the lock, verifying the identity of anyone attempting to open it, and sounding an alert if it was opened.

Litra listened carefully, then said, “I’ve always wanted to go against Heffesca.”

“I’ve always wanted to go against Tudin,” said Kiera.

“Three days,” said Litra.

“I’ll be back then.”

And she was, and she got the jade, and she put it into the hand of the man who’d hired her, and a week later Scaanil’s severed head turned up on the street outside the Undauntra’s Arms, where the sorceress who’d hired Mario for the job ran her business.

And that’s what a very drunk Kiera had told me that evening. Some conversations you remember.

* * *

“Well, yeah, you were kind of drunk.”

“All right. What about my lockpick?”

“Mind if I borrow it?”

She looked at me. “I’m not sure what to ask first.”

“You want to ask why.”

“Yes. You’re right. Why?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why didn’t I see that coming?”

I smiled.

“All right. How long will you need it?”

“Not long. A week at the most.”

“What are the chances that I’ll get it back?”

“Fair. If you’re willing to find my dead, soulless corpse and loot it, they go up to excellent.”

“It’s like that, is it?”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Pretty much.”

She studied me through slitted eyes. “Give me a hint.”

“I might be able to get myself out of trouble with the Jhereg,” I told her, because she deserved to know, and because I knew I’d enjoy watching her face when I said it.

“Really!”

The expression on her face was all I could have wanted. I was beginning to enjoy this.

“Maybe,” I told her. “I’m not sure yet, but, yeah, I just might manage to pull this off. It’ll be tricky, and I’m going to need help, but yeah.”

She nodded and her eyes seemed to light up. “How?”

“By offering them something they want as much as my head.”

“I can’t imagine what that might be.”

“I have a good imagination,” I said.

She glanced around the area again, then turned her attention back to me. “Money, of course. But it would have to be a lot of it. Are you planning to knock over the Dragon treasury?”

“Nothing so direct, or impossible.”

She studied me for a minute or two, then said, “It has to be either a scam, or a new business.”

“A scam would be temporary.”

“That was going to be my next sentence. What’s the business?”

“Remember when I said I don’t want to tell you?”

She looked like she was about to argue, then she said, “All right.”

“So I can use the lockpick?”

“You’re sure it wouldn’t be better to just have me open the lock?”

“I’m sure. I may not even need it. In fact, if things go as I hope, I won’t need it. But if I do, you wouldn’t be-never mind. I’m sure.”

“All right. What’s the best way to get it to you?”

“Do you have any favorite drops?”

“Several. Do you know Filsin’s tannery?”

“I’ve seen it.”

“Go around to the back, face the door, turn and take three paces to your left, and at knee level is a loose stone. The pick will be there by this time tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Kiera.”

“Good luck,” she said. She kissed my cheek again, then she was gone.

I knew what I wanted to do next. I couldn’t think of any way to do it, and it wasn’t at all necessary to my plan, but I wanted to go visit my estranged wife and my son, because if this was going to kill me I really ought to say good-bye. But the Jhereg would be watching her and watching the house.

So much for what I wanted.

I only learned of my son when he was about four. That kind of thing happens when you’re on the run, and is one of the reasons I was tired of running. One of the big reasons. Do you have kids? It’s kind of a big deal. You don’t know how much kids matter until you have one. He was eight now, and I’d only seen him a few times. The last time I’d shown up to see him, he’d smiled and run toward me with his arms out.

Loiosh was silent while I tried and failed to figure out a safe way to see Cawti and Vlad Norathar. Eventually I sighed and said, “All right. On to the next step.”