Jhereg

Let the winds of jungle’s night

Stay the hunter in her flight.

Evening’s breath to witch’s mind;

Let our fates be intertwined.

Jhereg! Do not pass me by.

Show me where thine egg doth lie.

Prologue

The Cycle

Phoenix sinks into decay

Haughty dragon yearns to slay.

Lyorn growls and lowers horn

Tiassa dreams and plots are born.

Hawk looks down from lofty flight

Dzur stalks and blends with night.

Issola strikes from courtly bow

Tsalmoth maintains though none knows how.

Vallista rends and then rebuilds

Jhereg feeds on others’ kills.

Quiet iorich won’t forget

Sly chreotha weaves his net.

Yendi coils and strikes, unseen

Orca circles, hard and lean.

Frightened teckla hides in grass

Jhegaala shifts as moments pass

Athyra rules minds’ interplay

Phoenix rises from ashes, gray.

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Book 1 by publishing order,

internal series chronology.

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There is a similarity, if I may be permitted an excursion into tenuous metaphor, between the feel of a chilly breeze and the feel of a knife’s blade, as either is laid across the back of the neck. I can call up memories of both, if I work at it. The chilly breeze is invariably going to be the more pleasant memory. For instance . . .

I was eleven years old, and clearing tables in my father’s restaurant. It was a quiet evening, with only a couple of tables occupied. A group had just left, and I was walking over to the table they’d used.

The table in the corner was a deuce. One male, one female. Both Dragaeran, of course. For some reason, humans rarely came into our place; perhaps because we were human too, and they didn’t want the stigma, or something. My father himself always avoided doing business with other “Easterners.”

There were three at the table along the far wall. All of them were male, and Dragaeran. I noted that there was no tip at the table I was clearing, and heard a gasp from behind me.

I turned as one member of the threesome let his head fall into his plate of lyorn leg with red peppers. My father had let me make the sauce for it that time, and, crazily, my first thought was to wonder if I’d built it wrong.

The other two stood up smoothly, seemingly not the least bit worried about their friend. They began moving toward the door, and I realized that they were planning to leave without paying. I looked for my father, but he was in back.

I glanced once more at the table, wondering whether I should try to help the fellow who was choking, or intercept the two who were trying to walk out on their bill.

Then I saw the blood.

The hilt of a dagger was protruding from the throat of the fellow whose face was lying in his plate. It slowly dawned on me what had happened, and I decided that, no, I wasn’t going to ask the two gentlemen who were leaving for money.

They didn’t run, or even hurry. They walked quickly and quietly past me toward the door. I didn’t move. I don’t think I was even breathing. I remember suddenly becoming very much aware of my own heartbeat.

One set of footsteps stopped, directly behind me. I remained frozen, while in my mind, I cried out to Verra, the Demon Goddess.

At that moment, something cold and hard touched the back of my neck. I was too frozen to flinch. I would have closed my eyes if I could have. Instead, I stared straight ahead. I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time, but the Dragaeran girl was looking at me, and she started to rise then. I noticed her when her companion reached out a hand to stop her, which she brushed off.

Then I heard a soft, almost silky voice in my ear. “You didn’t see a thing,” it said. “Got that?” If I had had as much experience then as I do now, I would have known that I was in no real danger—if he’d had any intention of killing me he would have done so already. But I didn’t, and so I shook. I felt I should nod, but couldn’t manage. The Dragaeran girl was almost up to us now, and I imagine the guy behind me noticed her, because the blade was gone suddenly and I heard retreating footsteps.

I was shaking uncontrollably. The tall Dragaeran girl gently placed her hand on my shoulder. I saw sympathy on her face. It was a look I had never before been given from a Dragaeran, and it was, in its own way, as frightening as the experience I’d just been through. I had an urge to fall forward into her arms, but I didn’t let myself. I became aware that she was speaking, softly, gently. “It’s all right, they’ve left. Nothing is going to happen. Just take it easy, you’ll be fine . . . ”

My father came storming in from the other room.

“Vlad!” he called, “what’s going on around here? Why—”

He stopped. He saw the body. I heard him getting sick and I felt ashamed for him. The hand on my shoulder tightened, then. I felt myself stop trembling, and looked at the girl in front of me.

Girl? I really couldn’t judge her age at all, but, being Dragaeran, she could be anywhere from a hundred to a thousand years old. Her clothing was black and gray, which I knew meant she was of House Jhereg. Her companion, who was now approaching us, was also a Jhereg. The three who had been at the other table were of the same House. Nothing of any significance there; it was mostly Jhereg, or an occasional Teckla (each Dragaeran House bears the name of one of our native creatures), who came into our restaurant.

Her companion stood behind her.

“Your name is Vlad?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“I’m Kiera,” she said. I only nodded again. She smiled once more and turned to her companion. They paid their bill and left. I went back to help clean up after the murdered man—and my father.

“Kiera,” I thought to myself, “I won’t forget you.”

When the Phoenix guards arrived some time later, I was in back, and I heard my father telling them that, no, no one had seen what had happened, we’d all been in back. But I never forgot the feel of a knife blade, as it is laid across the back of the neck.

And for another instance . . .

I was sixteen, and walking alone through the jungles west of Adrilankha. The city was somewhat more than a hundred miles away, and it was night. I was enjoying the feeling of solitude, and even the slight fear within my middle as I considered the possibility that I might run into a wild dzur, or a lyorn, or even, Verra preserve me, a dragon.

The ground under my boots alternated between “crunch” and “squish.” I didn’t make any effort to move quietly; I hoped that the noise I made would frighten off any beast which would otherwise frighten me off. The logic of that escapes me now.

I looked up, but there was no break in the overcast that blankets the Dragaeran Empire. My grandfather had told me that there was no such orange-red sky above his Eastern homeland. He’d said that one could see stars at night, and I had seen them through his eyes. He could open his mind to me, and did, often. It was part of his method for teaching witchcraft; a method that brought me, at age sixteen, to the jungles.

The sky lit the jungle enough for me to pick my way. I ignored the scratches on face and arms from the foliage. Slowly, my stomach settled down from the nausea that had hit when I had done the teleport that brought me here.

There was a good touch of irony there, too, I realized—using a Dragaeran sorcery to bring me to where I could take the next step in learning witchcraft. I hitched the pack on my back, and stepped into a clearing.

This one looked like it might do, I decided. There were heavy grasses for perhaps forty feet in what was, very roughly, a circle. I walked around it, slowly and carefully, my eyes straining to pick out details. All I needed now was to stumble into a chreotha’s net.

But it was empty, my clearing. I went to the middle of it and set my pack down. I dug out a small black brazier, a bag of coals, a single black candle, a stick of incense, a dead teckla, and a few dried leaves. The leaves were from the gorynth plant, which is sacred to certain religions back East.

I carefully crumbled the leaves into a coarse powder; then I walked the perimeter of the clearing and sprinkled it before me as I went.

I returned to the middle. I sat there for a time and went through the ritual of relaxing each muscle of my body, until I was almost in a trance. With my body relaxed, my mind had no choice but to follow. When I was ready, I placed the coals in the brazier, slowly, one at a time. I held each one for a moment, feeling its shape and texture, letting the soot rub off on my palms. With witchcraft, everything can be a ritual. Even before the actual enchantment begins, the preparations should be made properly. Of course, one can always just cast one’s mind out, concentrating on the desired result, and hope. The odds of success that way aren’t very good. Somehow, when done the right way, witchcraft is so much more satisfying than sorcery.

When the coals were in the brazier and placed just so, I put the incense among them. Taking the candle, I stared long and hard at the wick, willing it to burn. I could, certainly, have used a flint, or even sorcery, to start it, but doing it this way helped put me into the proper frame of mind.

I guess the mood of the jungle night was conducive to witchcraft; it was only a few minutes before I saw smoke rising from the candle, followed quickly by a small flame. I was also pleased that I felt no trace of the mental exhaustion that accompanies the completion of a major spell. There had been a time, not so long before, when the lighting of a candle would have left me too weak even for psionic communication.

I’m learning, Grandfather.

I used the candle, then, to start the coals burning, and laid my will upon it to get a good fire going. When it was burning well, I planted the candle in the ground. The scent of the incense, pleasantly sweet, reached my nostrils. I closed my eyes. The circle of crushed gorynth leaves would prevent any stray animals from wandering by and disturbing me. I waited.

After a time—I don’t know how long—I opened my eyes again. The coals were glowing softly. The scent of the incense filled the air. The sounds of the jungle did not penetrate past the boundaries of the clearing. I was ready.

I stared deep into the coals and, timing my breathing, I spoke the chant—very slowly, as I had been taught. As I said each word, I cast it, sending it out into the jungle as far and as clearly as I could. It was an old spell, my grandfather had said, and had been used in the East for thousands of years, unchanged.

I agonized over each word, each syllable, exploring it, letting my tongue and mouth linger over and taste each of the sounds, and willing my brain to full understanding of each of the thoughts I was sending. As each word left me, it was imprinted on my consciousness and seemed to be a living thing itself.

The last sounds died out very slowly in the jungle night, taking a piece of me with them.

Now, indeed, I felt exhausted. As always when doing a spell of this power, I had to guard myself against falling into a deep trance. I breathed evenly, and deeply. As if sleepwalking, I picked up the dead teckla, and moved it to the edge of the clearing, where I could see it when I was sitting. Then I waited.

I believe it was only a few minutes later that I heard the flapping of wings near me. I opened my eyes and saw a jhereg at the edge of the clearing, near the dead teckla, looking at me.

We watched each other for a while, and then it tentatively moved up and took a small bite from my offering.

It was of average size, if female; a bit large, if male. If my spell had worked, it would be female. Its wing span was about the distance from my shoulder to my wrist, and it was a bit less than that from its snakelike head to the tip of its tail. The forked tongue flicked out over the rodent, tasting each piece before ripping off a small chunk, chewing, and swallowing. It ate very slowly, watching me watching it.

When I saw that it was nearly done, I began to compose my mind for psionic contact, and to hope.

Soon, it came. I felt a small, questing thought within me. I allowed it to grow. It became distinct.

“What is it you want?” I “heard” with surprising clarity.

Now came the real test. If this jhereg had come as a result of my spell, it would be female, with a nest of eggs, and what I was about to suggest wouldn’t send it into an attack rage. If it was just a jhereg who was passing by and saw some carrion lying free for the taking, I could be in trouble. I had with me a few herbs which might prevent me from dying of the jhereg’s poison—but then, again, they might not.

“Mother,” I thought back to it, as clearly as I could, “I would like one of your eggs.”

It didn’t attack me, and I picked up no feeling of puzzlement or outrage at the suggestion. Good. My spell had brought her, and she would be at least receptive to bargaining. I felt excitement growing in me and forced it down. I concentrated on the jhereg before me. This part was almost a ritual in itself, but not quite. It all depended on what the jhereg thought of me.

“What,” she asked, “do you offer it?”

“I offer it long life,” I answered. “And fresh, red meat without struggle, and I offer it my friendship.”

The animal considered this for a while, then said, “And what will you ask of it?”

“I will ask for aid in my endeavors, such as are in its power. I will ask for its wisdom, and I will ask for its friendship.”

For a time then, nothing happened. She stood there, above the skeletal remains of the teckla, and watched me. Then she said, “I approach you.”

The jhereg walked up to me. Its claws were long and sharp, but more useful for running than for fighting. After a full meal, a jhereg will often find that it weighs too much to become airborne and so must run to escape its enemies.

She stood before me and looked closely into my eyes. It was odd to see intelligence in small, beady snake eyes, and to have nearly human-level communication with an animal whose brain was no larger than the first joint of my finger. It seemed, somehow, unnatural—which it was, but I didn’t find that out for quite some time.

After a while, the jhereg “spoke” again.

“Wait here,” she said. And she turned and spread her batlike wings. She had to run a step or two before taking off, and then I was alone again.

Alone . . .

I wondered what my father would say, if he were alive to say anything. He wouldn’t approve, of course. Witchcraft was too “Eastern” for him, and he was too involved in trying to be a Dragaeran.

My father died when I was fourteen. I never knew my mother, but my father would occasionally mutter something about the “witch” he had married. Shortly before his death, he squandered everything he had earned in forty years of running a restaurant in an effort to become even more Dragaeran—he bought a title. Thus we became citizens, and found ourselves linked to the Imperial Orb. The link allowed us to use sorcery, a practice which my father encouraged. He found a sorceress from the Left Hand of the Jhereg who was willing to teach me, and he forbade me to practice witchcraft. Then he found a swordmaster who agreed to teach me Dragaeran-style swordsmanship. My father forbade me to study Eastern fencing.

But my grandfather was still around. One day I explained to him that, even when I was full-grown, I would be too short and too weak to be effective as a swordsman the way I was being taught, and that sorcery didn’t interest me. He never offered a word of criticism about my father, but he began teaching me fencing and witchcraft.

When my father died, he was pleased that I was a skilled enough sorcerer to teleport myself; he didn’t know that teleports made me physically ill. He didn’t know how often I would use witchcraft to cover up the bruises left by Dragaeran punks, who would catch me alone and let me know what they thought of Easterners with pretensions. And he most certainly never knew that Kiera had been teaching me how to move quietly, how to walk through a crowd as if I weren’t there. I would use these skills, too. I’d go out at night with a large stick, and I’d find one of my tormentors alone, and leave him with a few broken bones.

I don’t know. Perhaps if I’d worked a little harder at sorcery I’d have been good enough to save my father. I just don’t know.

After his death, it was easier to find time to study witchcraft and fencing, despite the added work of running a restaurant. I started to get quite good as a witch. Good enough, in fact, that my grandfather finally said that he couldn’t teach me any more, and gave me instructions in how to take the next step on my own. The next step, of course, was . . .

She returned to the clearing, with a flapping of wings. This time she flew right up to me, landing in front of my crossed legs. In her right claw, a small egg was clutched. She extended it.

I forced down my excitement. It had worked! I held out my right hand, after making sure it was steady. The egg dropped into it. I was somewhat startled by its warmth. It was of a size that fit well into my palm. I carefully placed it inside my jerkin, next to my chest.

“Thank you, mother,” I thought to her. “May your life be long, your food plentiful, and your children many.”

“And you,” she said, “long life and good hunting.”

“I am not a hunter,” I told her.

“You will be,” she said. And then she turned from me, spread her wings, and flew out from the clearing.

Twice in the following week I almost crushed the egg that I carried around next to my chest. The first time I got into a fight with a couple of jerks from the House of the Orca; and the second, I started to carry a box of spices against my chest while working in the restaurant.

The incidents shook me up, I decided to make sure that nothing happened again that would put the egg in danger. To protect myself against the former, I learned diplomacy. And to take care of the latter, I sold the restaurant.

Learning diplomacy was the more difficult task. My natural inclinations didn’t run that way at all, and I had to be on my guard all the time. But, eventually, I found that I could be very polite to a Dragaeran who was insulting me. Sometimes I think it was that, more than anything else, which trained me to be successful later on.

Selling the restaurant was more of a relief than anything else. I had been running it on my own since my father died, and doing well enough to make a living, but somehow I never thought of myself as a restaurateur.

However, it did bring me up rather sharply against the problem of what I was going to do for a living—both immediately and for the rest of my life. My grandfather offered me a half-interest in his witchcraft business, but I was well aware that there was hardly enough activity to keep him going alone. I also had an offer from Kiera, who was willing to teach me her profession, but Easterner thieves don’t get good prices from Dragaeran fences. Besides, my grandfather didn’t approve of stealing.

I sold the place with the problem still unresolved, and lived off the proceeds for a while. I won’t tell you what I got for it; I was still young. I moved into new quarters then, too, since the place above the restaurant was going to be taken by the new owner.

Also, I bought a blade. It was a rather light rapier, made to my measurements by a swordsmith of House Jhereg, who overcharged me shamefully. It was just strong enough to be able to counter the attacks of the heavier Dragaeran sword, but light enough to be useful for the ripostes by which an Eastern fencer can surprise a Dragaeran swordsman, who probably doesn’t know anything beyond attack-defend-attack.

Future unresolved, I sat back and tended my egg.

About two months after I had sold the restaurant, I was sitting at a card table, doing a little low-stakes gambling at a place that allowed Easterners in. That night I was the only human there, and there were about four tables in action.

I heard raised voices from the table next to me and was about to turn around, when something crashed into my chair. I felt a momentary surge of panic as I almost crushed the egg against the edge of the table, and I stood up. The panic transformed itself to anger, and, without thinking, I picked up my chair and broke it over the head of the guy who’d fallen into me. He dropped like a hawk and lay still. The guy who’d pushed him looked at me as if deciding whether to thank me or attack me. I still had the chair leg in my hand. I raised it, and waited for him to do something. Then a hand gripped my shoulder and I felt a familiar coldness on the back of my neck.

“We don’t need fighting in here, punk,” said a voice behind my right ear. My adrenalin was up, and I almost turned around to smash the bastard across the face, despite the knife he held against me. But the training I’d been giving myself came to the fore, and I heard myself saying, evenly, “My apologies, good sir. I assure you it won’t happen again.” I lowered my right arm and dropped the chair leg. There was no point in trying to explain to him what had happened if he hadn’t seen it—and even less if he had. When there’s a problem, and an Easterner is involved, there is no question about who is at fault. I didn’t move.

Presently I felt the knife being taken off of my neck.

“You’re right,” said the voice. “It won’t happen again. Get out of here and don’t come back.”

I nodded once. I left my money on the table where it was, and walked out without looking back.

I settled down somewhat on my way home. The incident bothered me. I shouldn’t have hit the guy at all, I decided. I had let my fear take over, and I reacted without thinking. This would never do.

As I climbed up the stairs to my apartment, my mind returned to the old problem of what I was going to do. I’d left almost a gold Imperial’s worth of coins lying on the table, and that was half a week’s rent. It seemed that my only talents were witchcraft and beating up Dragaerans. I didn’t think that there was much of a market for either.

I opened the door and relaxed on the couch. I took out the egg, to hold it for a while as a means of soothing my nerves—and stopped. There was a small crack in it. It must have happened when I banged against the table, although I’d thought it had escaped harm.

It was then and there, at the age of sixteen, that I learned the meaning of anger. A sheet of white fire flashed through me, as I remembered the face of the Dragaeran who had pushed the other into me, killing my egg. I learned that I was capable of murder. I intended to seek out that bastard, and I was going to kill him. There was no question in my mind that he was a dead man. I stood up and headed for the door, still holding the egg—

—And stopped again.

Something was wrong. I had a feeling, which I couldn’t pin down, that was getting through the barrier of my anger. What was it? I looked down at the egg, and suddenly understood in a burst of relief.

Although not consciously aware of it, I had somehow gotten a psionic link to the being inside the egg. I was feeling something through it, on some level, and that meant that my jhereg was still alive.

Anger drained from me as quickly as it had come, leaving me trembling. I went back into the middle of the room and set the egg down on the floor, as softly as I could.

I felt along the link, and identified the emotion I was getting from it: determination. Just raw, blind purpose. I had never been in contact with such singleness of aim. It was startling that a thing that small could produce such high-powered emotion.

I stepped away from it, I suppose from some unreasoning desire to “give it air,” and watched. There was an almost inaudible “tap, tap,” and the crack widened. Then, suddenly, the egg split apart, and this ugly little reptile was lying amid broken shell fragments. Its wings were tightly drawn up against it, and its eyes were closed. The wings were no larger than my thumb.

It—It? He, I suddenly knew. He tried to move; failed. Tried to move again, and got nowhere. I felt that I should be doing something, although I had no idea what. His eyes opened, but didn’t seem to focus on anything. His head lay on the floor, then moved—pitifully.

I felt along my link to him, and now felt confusion and a little fear. I tried to send back feelings of warmth, protection, and all that good stuff. Slowly, I walked up and reached for him.

Surprisingly, he must have seen my motion. He obviously didn’t connect the movement with the thoughts he was getting from me, however, for I felt a quick burst of fear, and he tried to move away. He failed and I picked him up—gingerly. I got two things for this: my first clear message from him and my first jhereg bite. The bite was too small, and the poison still too weak for it to affect me, but he was certainly in possession of his fangs. The message was amazingly distinct.

“Mamma?” he said.

Right. Mamma. I thought that over for a while, then tried to send a message back.

“No, Daddy,” I told him.

“Mamma,” he agreed.

He stopped struggling and seemed to settle down in my hand. I realized that he was exhausted and then realized that I was, too. Also, we were both hungry. At that point it hit me—What the hell was I going to feed him? All the time I’d been carrying him, I’d known that he was going to hatch someday, but it had never really sunk in that there was actually going to be a real, live jhereg there.

I carried him into the kitchen and started hunting around. Let’s see . . . milk. We’ll start with that.

I managed to get out a saucer and pour a little milk into it. I set it down on the counter and set the jhereg down next to it, his head actually in the saucer.

He lapped up a little and didn’t seem to be having any trouble, so I scouted around a little more and finally came up with a small piece of hawk wing. I placed it in the saucer; he found it almost at once. He tore a piece off (he had teeth already—good) and began chewing. He chewed it for close to three minutes before swallowing, but when he did, it went down with no trouble. I relaxed.

After that, he seemed more tired than hungry, so I picked him up and carried him over to the couch. I lay down and placed him on my stomach. I dozed off shortly thereafter. We shared pleasant dreams.

The next day, someone came to my door and clapped, around mid-afternoon. When I opened the door, I recognized the fellow immediately. He was the one who’d been running the game the day before and had told me not to come back—with a knife held against the back of my neck for added emphasis.

I invited him in, being the curious type.

“Thank you,” he said. “I am called Nielar.”

“Please sit down, my lord. I’m Vlad Taltos. Wine?”

“Thank you, but no. I don’t expect to be staying very long.”

“As you wish.”

I showed him to a seat and sat down on the couch. I picked up my jhereg and held him. Nielar arched his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

“What can I do for you, then?” I asked.

“It has come to my attention,” he said, “that I was, perhaps, in the wrong when I faulted you for the events of yesterday.”

What? A Dragaeran apologizing to an Easterner? I wondered if the world was coming to an end. This was, to say the least, unprecedented in my experience. I mean, I was a 16-year-old human, and he was a Dragaeran who was probably close to a thousand.

“It’s very kind of you to say so, my lord,” I managed.

He brushed it off. “I will also add that I liked the way you handled yourself.”

He did? I didn’t. What was going on here?

“What I’m getting at,” he continued, “is that I could use someone like you, if you have a mind to work for me. I understand that you don’t have a job at the moment, and—” He finished with a shrug.

There were several thousand questions I wanted to ask him, starting with, “How did you find out so much about me and why do you care?” But I didn’t know how to go about asking them, so I said, “With all respect, my lord, I can’t see what kind of things I can do for you.”

He shrugged again. “For one thing, preventing the kind of problems we had last night. Also, I need help from time to time collecting debts. That sort of thing. I normally have two people who assist me in running the place, but one of them had an accident last week, so I’m shorthanded just at the moment.”

Something about the way he said “accident” struck me as strange, but I didn’t take any time out to guess at what he meant.

“Again with all respect, my lord, it doesn’t seem to me that an Easterner is going to look very imposing when standing up to a Dragaeran. I don’t know that I—”

“I’m convinced that it won’t be any problem,” he said. “We have a friend in common, and she assured me that you’d be able to handle this kind of thing. As it happened, I owe her a favor or two, and she asked me to consider taking you on.”

She? There wasn’t any doubt, of course. Kiera was looking out for me again, bless her heart. Suddenly things were a lot clearer.

“Your pay,” he continued, “would be four Imperials a week, plus ten percent of any outstanding debts you are sent to collect. Or, actually, half of that, since you’ll be working with my other assistant.”

Sheesh! Four gold a week? That was already more than I usually made while I was running the restaurant! And the commission, even if it were split with—

“Are you sure that this assistant of yours isn’t going to object to working with a hum—an Easterner?”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s my problem,” he said. “And, as a matter of fact, I’ve already discussed it with Kragar, and he doesn’t mind at all.”

I nodded. “I’ll have to think it over,” I said.

“That’s fine. You know where to reach me.”

I nodded and showed him to the door, with pleasant words on all sides. I looked down at my jhereg as the door snicked shut. “Well,” I asked him, “what do you think?”

The jhereg didn’t answer, but then, I hadn’t expected him to. I sat down to think and to wonder if the question of my future were being settled, or just put off. Then I put it aside. I had a more important question to settle—what was I going to name my jhereg?

I called him “Loiosh.” He called me “Mamma.” I trained him. He bit me. Slowly, over the course of the next few months, I developed an immunity to his poison. Even more slowly, over the course of years, I developed a partial immunity to his sense of humor.

As I stumbled into my line of work, Loiosh was able to help me. First a little, then a great deal. After all, who notices another jhereg flying about the city? The jhereg, on the other hand, can notice a great deal.

Slowly, as time went on, I grew in skill, status, friends, and experience.

And, just as his mother had predicted, I became a hunter.

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I slipped the poison dart into its slot under the right collar of my cloak, next to the lockpick. It couldn’t go in too straight, or it would be hard to get to quickly. It couldn’t go in at too much of an angle, or I wouldn’t have room left for the garrotee. Just so . . . there.

Every two or three days I change weapons. Just in case I have to leave something sticking in, on, or around a body. I don’t want the item to have been on my person long enough for a witch to trace it back to me.

This could, I suppose, be called paranoia. There are damn few witches available to the Dragaeran Empire, and witchcraft isn’t very highly thought of. It is not likely that a witch would actually be called in to investigate a murder weapon and try to trace it back to the murderer—in fact, so far as I know, it has never been done in the 243 years since the end of the Interregnum. But I believe in caution and attention to detail. That is one reason I’m still around to practice my paranoia.

I reached for a new garrotee, let the old one drop into a box on the floor, and began working the wire into a tight coil.

“Do you realize, Vlad,” said a voice, “that it’s been over a year since anyone has tried to kill you?”

I looked up.

“Do you realize, Kragar,” I said, “that if you keep walking in here without my seeing you, I’ll probably die of a heart attack one of these days and save them the trouble?”

He chuckled a little.

“No, I mean it, though,” he continued. “More than a year. We haven’t had any trouble since that punk—What was his name?”

“G’ranthar.”

“Right, G’ranthar. Since he tried to start up a business down on Copper Lane, and you quashed it.”

“All right,” I said, “so things have been quiet. What of it?”

“Nothing, really,” he said. “It’s just that I can’t figure out if it’s a good sign or a bad sign.”

I studied his 7-foot frame sitting comfortably facing me against the back wall of my office. Kragar was something of an enigma. He had been with me since I had joined the business side of House Jhereg and had never shown the least sign of being unhappy taking orders from an “Easterner.” We’d been working together for several years now and had saved each other’s lives often enough for a certain amount of trust to develop.

“I don’t see how it can be a bad sign,” I told him, slipping the garrote into its slot. “I’ve proven myself. I’ve run my territory with no trouble, paid off the right people, and there’s only once when I’ve had even a little trouble with the Empire. I’m accepted now. Human or not,” I added, enjoying the ambiguity of the phrase. “And remember that I’m known as an assassin more than anything else, so who would want to go out of his way to make trouble for me?”

He looked at me quizzically for a moment. “That’s why you keep doing ‘work,’ isn’t it?” he said thoughtfully. “Just to make sure no one forgets what you can do.”

I shrugged. Kragar was being more direct about things than I liked, and it made me a bit uncomfortable. He sensed this, I guess, and quickly shifted back to the earlier topic. “I just think that all this peace and quiet means that you haven’t been moving as fast as you could, that’s all. I mean, look,” he continued, “you’ve built up, from scratch, a spy ring that’s one of the best in the Jhereg—”

“Not true,” I cut in. “I don’t really have a spy ring at all. There are a lot of people who are willing to give me information from time to time, and that’s it. It isn’t the same thing.”

He brushed it aside. “It amounts to the same thing when we’re talking about information sources. And you have access to Morrolan’s network, which is a spy ring in every sense of the word.”

“Morrolan,” I pointed out, “is not in the Jhereg.”

“That’s a bonus,” he said. “That means you can find out things from people who wouldn’t deal with you directly.”

“Well—all right. Go on.”

“Okay, so we have damn good free-lance people. And our own enforcers are competent enough to have anyone worried. I think we ought to be using what we have, that’s all.”

“Kragar,” I said, fishing out a slim throwing dagger and replacing it in the lining of my cloak, “would you kindly tell me why it is that I should want someone to be after my hide?”

“I’m not saying that you should,” said Kragar. “I’m just wondering if the fact that no one is means that we’re slipping.”

I slid a dagger into the sheath on the outside of my right thigh. It was a paper-thin, short throwing knife, small enough to be unnoticeable even when I sat down. The slit in my breeches was equally unnoticeable. A good compromise, I felt, between subtlety and speed of access.

“What you’re saying is that you’re getting bored.”

“Well, maybe just a little. But that doesn’t make what I said any less true.”

I shook my head. “Loiosh, can you believe this guy? He’s getting bored, so he wants to get me killed.”

My familiar flew over from his windowsill and landed on my shoulder. He started licking my ear.

“Big help you are,” I told him.

I turned back to Kragar. “No. If and when something comes up, we’ll deal with it. In the meantime, I have no intention of hunting for dragons. Now, if that’s all—”

I stopped. At long last, my brain started functioning. Kragar walks into my office, with nothing on his mind except the sudden realization that we should go out and stir up trouble? No, no. Wrong. I know him better than that.

“Okay,” I said. “Out with it. What’s happened now?”

“Happened?” he asked innocently. “Why should something have happened?”

“I’m an Easterner, remember?” I said sarcastically. “We get feelings about these things.”

A smile played lightly around his lips. “Nothing much,” he said. “Only a message from the personal secretary to the Demon.”

Gulp. “The Demon,” as he was called, was one of five members of a loose-knit “council” which, to some degree, controlled the business activities of House Jhereg. The council, a collection of the most powerful people in the House, had never had an official existence until the Interregnum, but they’d been around long before then. They ran things to the extent of settling disputes within the organization and making sure that things didn’t get so messy that the Empire had to step in. Since the Interregnum they had been a little more than that—they’d been the group that had put the House back together after the Empire began to function again. Now they existed with clearly defined duties and responsibilities, and everyone who did anything at all in the organization gave part of the profits to them.

The Demon was generally acknowledged to be the number-two man in the organization. The last time I had met with someone that high up was in the middle of a war with another Jhereg, and the council member I’d spoken to had let me know that I’d better find a way to get things settled, or he would. I have no pleasant memories of that meeting.

“What does he want?” I asked.

“He wants to meet with you.”

“Oh, crap. Double crap. Dragon dung. Any ideas why?”

“No. He did pick a meeting place in our territory, for whatever that’s worth.”

“It isn’t worth a whole lot,” I said. “Which place?”

“The Blue Flame restaurant,” said Kragar.

“The Blue Flame, eh? What does that bring to mind?”

“I seem to recall that you ‘worked’ there twice.”

“That’s right. It’s a real good place for killing someone. High booths, wide aisles, low lighting, and in an area where people like to mind their own business.”

“That’s the place. He set it up for two hours past noon, tomorrow.”

“After noon?”

Kragar looked puzzled. “That’s right. After noon. That means when most people have eaten lunch, but haven’t eaten supper yet. You must have come across the concept before.”

I ignored his sarcasm. “You’re missing the point,” I said, flipping a shuriken into the wall next to his ear.

“Funny, Vlad—”

“Quiet. Now, how do you go about killing an assassin? Especially someone who’s careful not to let his movements fall into any pattern?”

“Eh? You set up a meeting with him, just like the Demon is doing.”

“Right. And, of course, you do everything you can to make him suspicious, don’t you?”

“Uh, maybe you do. I don’t.”

“Damn right you don’t! You make it sound like a simple business meeting. And that means you arrange to buy the guy a meal. And that means you don’t arrange it for some time like two hours past noon.”

He was quiet for a while, as he tried to follow my somewhat convoluted logic. “Okay,” he said at last, “I agree that this is somewhat abnormal. Now, why?”

“I’m not sure. Tell you what; find out everything you can about him, bring it back here, and we’ll try to figure it out. It might not mean anything, but . . . ”

Kragar smiled and pulled a small notebook from inside his cloak. He began reading. “The Demon,” he said. “True name unknown. Young, probably under eight hundred. No one heard of him before the Interregnum. He emerged just after it by personally killing two of the three members of the old council who survived the destruction of the city of Dragaera and the plagues and invasions. He built an organization from what was left, and helped make the House profitable again. As a matter of fact, Vlad,” he said, looking up, “it seems that it was his idea to allow Easterners to buy titles in the Jhereg.”

“Now that’s interesting,” I said. “So I have him to thank for my father being able to squander the profits from forty years of work in order to be spat upon as a Jhereg, in addition to being spat upon as an Easterner. I’ll have to find some way to thank him for that.”

“I might point out,” said Kragar, “that if your father hadn’t bought that title, you wouldn’t have had the chance to join the business end of the House.”

“Maybe. But go on.”

“There isn’t much more to tell. He didn’t exactly make it to the top; it would be more accurate to say that he made it somewhere, and then declared the top to be where he was. You have to remember that things were pretty much a mess back then.

“And of course, he was tough enough, and good enough to make it stick. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t had any serious threats to his power since he got there. He has a habit of spotting potential challengers while they’re still weak, and getting rid of them. In fact—do you remember that fellow, Leonyar, we took out last year?”

I nodded.

“Well, I think that may have come indirectly from the Demon. We’ll never know for sure, of course, but as I said: he likes to get rid of potential problems early.”

“Yeah. Do you think he could see me as a ‘potential problem?’ ”

Kragar thought that over. “I suppose he might, but I don’t quite see why. You’ve been staying out of trouble, and, as I said before, you haven’t really been moving very fast since the first couple of years. The only time there’s been any problem was the business with Laris last year, and I think everyone knows that he forced it on you.”

“I hope so. Does the Demon do ‘work’?”

Kragar shrugged. “We can’t say for sure, but it looks like he does. We know that he used to. As I said, he took out those two council members personally, back when he was getting started.”

“Great. So in addition to whatever he could have set up, he might be planning to do the job himself.”

“I suppose he could.”

“But I still can’t figure out—look, Kragar, with someone like the Demon, something like this wouldn’t happen by accident, would it?”

“Something like—?”

“Like carefully arranging a meeting in just such a way as to arouse my suspicions.”

“No, I don’t think he—What is it?”

I guess he caught the look on my face, which must have been simply precious. I shook my head. “That’s it, of course.”

“What,” he asked, “is what?”

“Kragar, arrange for three bodyguards for me, okay?”

“Bodyguards? But—”

“Make them busboys or something. You won’t have any trouble; I own half interest in the place. Which, I might add, I’m sure the Demon is aware of.”

“Don’t you think he’ll catch on?”

“Of course he’ll catch on. That’s the point. He knows that I’m going to be nervous about meeting him, so he deliberately set up the meeting with an irregularity to make me suspicious, so I’ll have an excuse to have protection there. He’s going out of his way to say, ‘Go ahead and do what you have to, to feel safe, I won’t be offended.’ ”

I shook my head again. I was starting to get dizzy. “I hope I don’t ever have to go up against the son-of-a-bitch. He’s devious.”

“You’re devious, boss,” said Kragar. “I sometimes think you know Dragaerans better than other Dragaerans do.”

“I do,” I said flatly. “And that’s because I’m not one.”

He nodded. “Okay, three bodyguards. Our own people, or freelance?”

“Make one of them our own, and hire the other two. There isn’t any need to rub his nose in it, in case he recognizes our people.”

“Right.”

“You know, Kragar,” I said thoughtfully, “I’m not real happy about this. He must know me well enough to know that I’d figure out what he was doing, which means this could be a setup after all.” I held up my hand as he started to speak. “No, I’m not saying that I think it is, just that it could be.”

“Well, you could always tell him that you can’t make it?”

“Sure. Then, if he isn’t planning to kill me now, he’d be sure to after that.”

“Probably,” admitted Kragar. “But what else can you do?”

“I can bitch a lot and go meet with him. Okay, that’s tomorrow. Anything else going on?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Some Teckla got mugged the night before last, a couple of blocks from here.”

I cursed. “Hurt bad?”

Kragar shook his head. “A fractured jaw and a couple of bruises. Nothing serious, but I thought you’d like to know.”

“Right. Thanks. I take it you haven’t found the guy who did it?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, find him.”

“It’ll cost.”

“Screw the cost. It’ll cost more if all our customers get scared away. Find the guy and make an example of him.”

Kragar raised an eyebrow.

“No,” I said, “not that much of an example . . . And find a healer for that Teckla—on us. I take it he was a customer?”

“Everyone around here is a customer, one way or another.”

“Yeah. So pay for a healer and reimburse him. How much did the guy get, by the way?”

“Almost two Imperials. Which could have been the Dragon Treasury, to hear him tell it.”

“I suppose so. Tell you what: Why don’t you have the victim come up and see me, and I’ll pay him back personally and give him a talk about crime in the streets and how bad I feel, as a fellow citizen, of course, about what happened to him. Then he can go home and tell all his friends what a nice guy Uncle Vlad the Easterner is, and maybe we’ll even pull in some new business out of the deal.”

“Sheer genius, boss,” said Kragar.

I snorted. “Anything else?”

“Nothing important, I guess. I’ll go arrange for your protection tomorrow.”

“Fine. And make it good people. As I say, this has me worried.”

“Paranoia, boss.”

“Yep. Paranoid and proud.”

He nodded and left. I wrapped Spellbreaker around my right wrist. The two-foot length of gold chain was the one weapon that I didn’t change, since I had no intention of ever leaving it behind me. As its name implied, it broke spells. If I was going to be hit with a magical attack (unlikely, even if this was a setup), I’d want it ready. I flexed my arm and tested the weight. Good.

I turned to Loiosh, who was still resting comfortably on my right shoulder. He’d been strangely silent during the conversation.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him psionically. “Bad feelings about the meeting tomorrow?”

“No, bad feelings about having a Teckla in the office. Can I eat him, boss? Can I? Huh? Huh?”

I laughed and went back to changing weapons with an all-new enthusiasm.

previous | Table of Contents | next

previous | Table of Contents | next

The Blue Flame is on a short street called Copper Lane just off Lower Kieron Road. I arrived fifteen minutes early and carefully selected a seat that put my back to the door. I’d decided that if Loiosh, working along with the people we had planted here, couldn’t give me enough warning, the difference it would make if I were facing the door probably wouldn’t matter. This way, in case the meeting was legitimate, which I strongly suspected it was, I was showing the Demon that I trusted him and negating any feelings of “disrespect” he might get from seeing that I had brought protection. Loiosh was perched on my left shoulder, watching the door.

I ordered a white wine and waited. I spotted one of my enforcers busing dishes, but couldn’t identify either of the freelancers. Good. If I couldn’t spot them, there was a good chance that the Demon couldn’t. I sipped my wine slowly, still chuckling slightly over the meeting I’d had earlier with the Teckla (what was his name?) who’d been mugged. It had gone well enough, though I had had to work to avoid bursting out laughing from my trusty jhereg familiar’s constant psionic appeals of “Aw, c’mon, boss. Please can’t I eat him?” I have a nasty familiar.

I kept a tight control on the amount of wine I was drinking—the last thing I needed right now was to be slowed down. I flexed my right ankle, feeling the hilt of one of my boot-knives press reassuringly against my calf. I nudged the table an inch or so away from me, since I was sitting in a booth and couldn’t position my chair. I noted the locations of the spices on the table, as objects to throw, or things to get in the way. And I waited.

Five minutes after the hour, according to the Imperial Clock, I received a warning from Loiosh. I set my right arm crosswise on the table, so that my hand was two inches away from my left sleeve. That was as close as I wanted to come to holding a weapon. A rather large guard-type appeared in front of my table, nodded to me, and stepped back. A well-dressed Dragaeran in gray and black approached and sat down opposite me.

I waited for him to speak. It was his meeting, so it was up to him to set the tone; also, my mouth was suddenly very dry.

“You are Vladimir Taltos?” he asked, pronouncing my name correctly.

I nodded and took a sip of wine. “You are the Demon?”

He nodded. I offered wine and we drank to each other’s health; I wouldn’t swear to the sincerity of the toast. My hand was steady as I held the glass. Good.

He sipped his wine delicately, watching me. All of his motions were slow and controlled. I thought I could see where a dagger was hidden up his right sleeve; I noticed a couple of bulges where other weapons might be in his cloak. He probably noticed the same in mine. He was, indeed, young for his position. He looked to be somewhere between eight hundred and a thousand, which is thirty-five or forty to a human. He had those eyes that never seemed capable of opening to more than slits. Like mine, say. Kragar was right; this was an assassin.

“We understand,” he said, swirling the wine in his glass, “that you do ‘work.’ ”

I kept the surprise off my face. Was I about to be offered a contract? From the Demon? Why? Perhaps this was just an effort to get me off my guard. I couldn’t figure it. If he really wanted me for something, he should have gone through about half a dozen intermediaries.

“I’m afraid not,” I told him, measuring my words. “I don’t get involved with that kind of thing.” Then, “I have a friend who does.”

He looked away for a moment, then nodded. “I see.

“Could you put me in touch with this ‘friend?’ ”

“He doesn’t get out much,” I explained. “I can get a message to him, if you like.”

He nodded, still not looking at me. “I suppose your ‘friend’ is an Easterner, too?”

“As a matter of fact, he is. Does it matter?”

“It might. Tell him we’d like him to work for us, if he’s available. I hope he has access to your information sources. I suspect this job will require all of them.”

Oh, ho! So that’s why he’d come to me! He knew that my ways of obtaining information were good enough that even he would have trouble matching them. I allowed myself a little bit of cautious optimism. This just might be legitimate. On the other hand, I still couldn’t see why he’d come personally.

There were several questions I very badly wanted to ask him, such as, “Why me?” and “Why you?” But I couldn’t approach them directly. The problem was, he wasn’t going to give me any more information until he had a certain amount of commitment from me—and I didn’t feel like giving him that commitment until I knew more.

“Suggestions, Loiosh?”

“You could ask him who the target is.”

“That’s exactly what I don’t want to do. That commits me.”

“Only if he answers.”

“What makes you think he won’t answer?”

“I’m a jhereg, remember?” he said sarcastically. “We get feelings about these things.”

One of Loiosh’s great skills is throwing my own lines back at me. The damnable thing about it was that he might be simply telling the truth.

The Demon remained politely silent during the psionic conversation—either because he didn’t notice it, or out of courtesy. I suspected the latter.

“Who?” I said aloud.

The Demon turned back to me, then, and looked at me for what seemed to be a long time. Then he turned his face to the side again.

“Someone who’s worth sixty-five thousand gold to us,” he said.

This time I couldn’t keep my expression from showing.

Sixty-five thousand! That was . . . let me see . . . over thirty, no, forty times the standard fee! For that kind of money I could build my wife the castle she’d been talking about! Hell, I could build it twice! I could bloody well retire! I could—

“Who are you after?” I asked again, forcing my voice to stay low and even. “The Empress?”

He smiled a little. “Is your friend interested?” He was no longer pronouncing the quotation marks, I noted.

“Not in taking out the Empress.”

“Don’t worry. We aren’t expecting Mario.”

As it happened, that was the wrong thing for him to say just then. It started me thinking . . . for the kind of gold he was talking about, he could hire Mario. Why wouldn’t he?

I thought of one reason right away: The someone who had to be taken out was so big that whoever did the job would have to be eliminated himself, afterwards. They would know better than to try that on Mario; but with me, well, yes. I wasn’t so well protected that I couldn’t be disposed of by the resources the Demon had at his disposal.

It fit in another way, too: It explained why the Demon had shown up personally. If he was, in fact, planning to have me take a fall after doing the job, he wouldn’t care that I knew that he was behind it and wouldn’t want a lot of other people in his organization to know. Hiring someone to do something and then killing him when he does it is not strictly honorable—but it’s been done.

I pushed the thought aside for the moment. What I wanted was a clear idea of what was going on. I had a suspicion, yes; but I wasn’t a Dzur. I needed more than a suspicion to take any action.

So the question remained, who was it that the Demon wanted me to nail for him? Someone big enough that the man who did it had to go too . . . A high noble? Possible—but why? Who had crossed the Demon?

The Demon was sharp, he was careful, he didn’t make many enemies, he was on the council, he—wait! The council? Sure, that had to be it. Either someone on the council was trying to get rid of him, or he finally decided that being number two wasn’t enough. If it was the latter, sixty-five thousand wasn’t enough. I knew who I’d be going after, and he was as close to untouchable as it is possible to get. In either case, it didn’t sound hopeful.

What else could it be? Someone high up in the Demon’s organization suddenly deciding to open his mouth to the Empire? Damn unlikely! The Demon wouldn’t make the kind of mistakes that led to that. No, it had to be someone on the council. And that, as I’d guessed, would mean that whoever did the job might have a lot of trouble staying alive after: he’d have too much information on the fellow who had given him the job and he’d know too much about internal squabbles on the council.

I started to shake my head, but the Demon held his hand up. “It isn’t what you think,” he said. “The only reason we aren’t trying to get hold of Mario is because there have to be certain conditions attached to the job—conditions that Mario wouldn’t accept. Nothing more than that.”

I felt a brief flash of anger, but pushed it back down before it showed. What the hell made him think he could stick me with conditions that Mario wouldn’t accept? (Sixty-five thousand gold, that’s what.) I thought a little longer. The problem was, of course, that the Demon had a reputation for honesty. He wasn’t known as the type who’d hire an assassin and then set him up. On the other hand, if they were talking about sixty-five thousand, things were desperate in some fashion already. He could be desperate enough to do a lot of things he otherwise wouldn’t do.

The figure sixty-five thousand gold Imperials kept running through my head. However, one other figure kept meeting it: one hundred and fifty gold. That’s the average cost of a funeral.

“I think,” I told him at last, “that my friend would not be interested in taking out a member of the council.”

He nodded in appreciation of the way my mind worked, but said, “You’re close. An ex-member of the council.”

What? More and more riddles.

“I hadn’t realized,” I said slowly, “that there was more than one way to leave the council.” And, if the guy had taken that way, they certainly didn’t need my services.

“Neither had we,” he said. “But Mellar found a way.”

At last! A name! Mellar, Mellar, let me see . . . right. He was awfully tough. He had a good, solid organization, brains, and, well, enough muscle and resources to get and hold a position on the council. But why had the Demon told me? Was he planning to kill me after all if I turned him down? Or was he taking a chance on being able to convince me?

“What way is that?” I asked, sipping my wine.

“To take nine million gold in council operating funds and disappear.”

I almost choked.

By the sacred balls of the Imperial Phoenix! Absconding with Jhereg funds? With council funds? My head started hurting.

“When—when did this happen?” I managed.

“Yesterday.” He was watching the expression on my face. He nodded grimly. “Nervy bastard, isn’t he?”

I nodded back. “You know,” I said, “you’re going to have one bitch of a time keeping this quiet.”

“That’s right,” he said. “We just aren’t going to be able to for very long.” For a moment his eyes went cold, and I began to understand how the Demon had gotten his name. “He took everything we had,” he said tightly. “We all have our own funds, of course, and we’ve been using them in the investigation. But on the kind of scale we’re working on, we can’t keep it up long.”

I shook my head. “Once this gets out—”

“He’d better be dead,” the Demon finished for me. “Or every two-silverpiece thief in the Empire is going to think he can take us. And one of them will do it, too.”

Something else hit me at that point. I realized that, for one thing, I could accept this job quite safely. Once Mellar was dead, it wouldn’t matter if word got out what he’d tried. However, if I turned it down, I was suddenly a big risk and, shortly thereafter, I suspected, a small corpse.

Once again, the Demon seemed to guess what I was thinking.

“No,” he said flatly. He leaned forward, earnestly. “I assure you that if you turn me down, nothing will happen to you. I know that we can trust you—that’s one reason we came to you.”

I wondered briefly if he were reading my mind. I decided that he wasn’t. An Easterner is not an easy person to mind-probe, and I doubted that he could do it without my being aware of it. And I was sure he couldn’t do it without Loiosh noticing.

“Of course, if you turn us down and then let something slip . . . ”

His voice trailed off. I suppressed a shudder.

I did some more hard thinking. “It would seem to me,” I said, “that this has to be done soon.”

He nodded. “And that’s why we can’t get Mario. There’s no way we can rush him.”

“And you think you can rush my friend?”

He shrugged. “I think we’re paying for it.”

I had to agree with that. There was, at least, no time limit. But I had never before accepted “work” without the understanding that I had as much time as I needed. How much, I wondered, would it throw me off to have to hurry?

“Do you have any idea where he went?”

“We strongly suspect that he headed out East. At least, if I were pulling something like this, that’s where I’d go.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Dragaerans out East are treated about the same as Easterners are treated here—worse, if anything. He’d be considered, if you’ll pardon the expression, a demon. He’d stand out like a Morganti weapon in the Imperial Palace.”

He smiled. “True enough, but we have the fewest resources there, so it would take a while for word to get back to us. Also, we’ve had the best sorceresses from the Left Hand looking for him since we found out what happened, and we can’t find him.”

I shrugged. “He could have put up a block against tracing.”

“He definitely has done that.”

“Well, then—”

He shook his head. “You have no idea of the kind of power we’re pouring into this. We could break down any block he could put up, no matter how long he’s been planning it, or who the sorcerer is who put the block up. If he was anywhere within a hundred miles of Adrilankha we’d have broken it by now, or at least found a general area that we couldn’t penetrate.”

“So, you can guarantee that he isn’t within a hundred miles of the city?”

“Right. Now, it’s possible that he’s in the jungle to the west, in which case we’ll probably find him within the next day or two. But I’d guess he’d bolted for the East.”

I nodded slowly. “So you came to me, figuring that I can operate out there easier than a Dragaeran.”

“That’s right. And, of course, we know that you have an extremely formidable information network.”

“My information network,” I said, “doesn’t extend to the East.” That was almost true. My sources back in my ancestral homeland were few and far between. Still, there wasn’t any reason to let the Demon in on everything I had.

“Well, then,” he said, “there’s an additional bonus for you. By the time this is over, you’ll probably have something where you didn’t before.”

I smiled at his riposte, and nodded a little.

“And so,” I said, “you want my friend to go out to wherever Mellar is hiding and get your gold back?”

“That would be nice,” he admitted. “But it’s secondary. The main thing is to make sure that no one gets the idea that it’s safe to steal from us. Even Kiera, bless her sweet little fingers, hasn’t tried that. I’ll add that I take this whole thing very personally. And I will feel very warmly toward whomever does this particular little job for me.”

I sat back, and thought for a long time, then. The Demon was politely silent. Sixty-five thousand gold! And, of course, having the Demon owe me a favor was better than a poke in the eye with a Morganti dagger by all means.

“Morganti?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It has to be permanent, however you want to do it. If you happen to destroy his soul in the process, I won’t be upset. But it isn’t necessary. Just so that he ends up dead, with no chance of anyone revivifying him.”

“Yeah. You say that the Left Hand is working on locating him?”

“Right. The best they’ve got.”

“That can’t be helping your security any.”

He shrugged. “They know who; they don’t know why. As far as they’re concerned, it’s a personal matter between Mellar and me. You may not realize it, but the Left Hand tends to take less of an interest in what the council is doing than the lowest pimp on the streets. I’m not worried about security from that end. But if this goes on too long, word will get out that I’m looking for Mellar, and someone who notices that the council is having financial trouble will start counting the eggs.”

“I suppose. Okay, I suspect that my friend will be willing to take this on. He’s going to need whatever information you have about Mellar as a starting point.”

The Demon held his hand out to the side. The bodyguard, who had been standing politely (and safely) out of earshot, placed a rather formidable-looking sheaf of papers in it. The Demon handed these over to me. “It’s all there,” he said.

“All?”

“As much as we know. I’m afraid it may not be as much as you’d like.”

“Okay.” I briefly ruffled through the papers. “You’ve been busy,” I remarked.

He smiled.

“If there’s anything else I need,” I said, “I’ll get back to you.”

“Fine. It should be obvious, but your friend is going to have all the help he needs on this one.”

“In that case, I presume you’re going to continue with your searching? You have access to better sorcerers than my friend has; you could keep going on that front.”

“I intend to,” he said drily. “And I should also mention something else. If we happen to run into him before you do and see an opportunity, we’re going to take him ourselves. I mean no disrespect by that, but I think you can understand that this is a rather special situation.”

“I can’t say I like it,” I said, “but I understand.” I wasn’t at all happy about it, in fact. Sure, my fee would be safe, but things like that can cause complications—and complications scare me.

I shrugged. “I think you can understand, too—and I mean no disrespect by this—that if some Teckla gets in the way, and my friend thinks the guy’s going to bungle it, my friend will have to put him down.”

The Demon nodded.

I sighed. Communication was such a fine thing.

I raised my glass. “To friends,” I said.

He smiled and raised his. “To friends.”

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“Work” comes in three variations, each with its own effect, purpose, price—and penalty.

The simplest is not used often, but happens enough to have acquired the term “standard.” The idea is that you want to warn an individual away from a certain course of action, or toward another. In this case, for a fee that starts at fifteen hundred gold and goes up from there depending on how hard the target is, an assassin will arrange for the selected individual to become dead. What happens after that doesn’t much matter to the killer, but as often as not the body will eventually be found by a friend or relative, who may or may not be willing and able to have the person revivified.

Revivification costs heavily—up to four thousand gold for difficult cases. Even the easiest takes an expert sorcerer to perform, and it is never a sure thing.

In other words, the victim will wake up, if he does, with the knowledge that there is someone out there—and he usually knows who—who doesn’t really care if he lives or dies and is willing to expend at least fifteen hundred gold Imperials to prove this.

This is rather chilling knowledge. It happened to me once, when I started pushing into the territory of a fellow who was just the least bit tougher than I was. I got the message, all right. I knew just what he was telling me, without any room for mistakes. “I can take you any time I want, punk, and I’d do it, too, only you aren’t worth more than fifteen hundred gold to dispose of.”

And it worked. I was returned to life by Sethra Lavode, after Kiera found my body lying in a gutter. I backed off. I’ve never bothered the guy since, either. Of course, someday . . .

Now you should understand, to begin with, that there are some rather strict laws concerning the circumstances under which one person may legally kill another, and they involve things like “authorized dueling area,” “Imperial witnesses,” and the like. Assassination just never seems to qualify as a legal taking of a life. This brings us to the biggest single problem with the kind of job I’ve just mentioned—you have to be sure that the victim doesn’t get a look at your face. If he were to be returned to life and he went to the Empire (strictly against Jhereg custom, but . . . ), the assassin could find himself arrested for murder. There would follow an inquisition and the possibility of conviction. A conviction of murder will bring a permanent end to an assassin’s career. When the Empire holds an execution, they burn the body to make sure no one gets hold of it to revivify it.

At the other extreme from simply killing someone and leaving his body to be found and, possibly, revivified, is a special kind of murder which is almost never done. To take an example, let us say that an assassin whom you have hired is caught by the Empire and tells them who hired him, in exchange for his worthless soul.

What do you do? You’ve already marked him as dead—no way the Empire can protect him enough to keep a top-notch assassin out. But that isn’t enough; not for someone low enough to talk to the Empire about you. So what do you do? You scrape together, oh, at least six thousand gold, and you arrange to meet with the best assassin you can find—an absolute top-notch professional—and give him the name of the target, and you say, “Morganti.”

Unlike any other kind of situation, you will probably have to explain your reasons. Even the coldest, most vicious assassin will find it distasteful to use a weapon that will destroy a person’s soul. Chances are he won’t do it unless you have a damn good reason why it has to be done that way and no other. There are times, though, when nothing else will do. I’ve worked that way twice. It was fully justified both times—believe me, it was.

However, just as the Jhereg makes exceptions in the cases where a Morganti weapon is to be used, so does the Empire. They suddenly forget all about their rules against the torture of suspects and forced mind-probes. So there are very real risks here. When they’ve finished with you, whatever is left is given to a Morganti blade, as a form of poetic justice, I suppose.

There is, however, a happy middle ground between Morganti killings and fatal warnings: the bread and butter of the assassin.

If you want someone to go and you don’t want him coming back, and you’re connected to the organization (I don’t know any assassin stupid enough to “work” for anyone outside the House), you should figure that it will cost you at least three thousand gold. Naturally, it will be higher if the person is especially tough, or hard to get to, or important. The highest I’ve ever heard of anyone being paid is, well, excuse me, sixty-five thousand gold. Ahem. I expect that Mario Greymist was paid a substantially higher fee for killing the old Phoenix Emperor just before the Interregnum, but I’ve never heard a figure quoted.

And so, my fledgling assassins, you are asking me how you make sure that a corpse remains properly a corpse, eh? Without using a Morganti weapon, whose problems we’ve just discussed? I know of three methods and have used all of them, and combinations, during my career.

First, you can make sure that the body isn’t found for three full days, after which time the soul will have departed. The most common method for doing this is to pay a moderate fee, usually around three to five hundred gold, to a sorceress from the Left Hand of the Jhereg, who will guarantee that the body is undisturbed for the requisite period. Or, of course, you can arrange to secrete the body yourself—risky, and not at all pleasant to be seen carrying a body around. It causes talk.

The second method, if you aren’t so greedy, is to pay these same sorceresses something closer to a thousand, or even fifteen hundred of your newly acquired gold, and they will make sure that, no matter who does what, the body will never be revivified. Or, third, you can make the body unrevivifiable: burn it, chop off the head . . . use your imagination.

For myself, I’ll stick with the methods I developed in the course of my first couple of years of working: hours of planning, split-second timing, precise calculations, and a single, sharp, accurate knife.

I haven’t bungled one yet.

Kragar was waiting for me when I returned. I filled him in on the conversation and the result. He looked judicious.

“It’s too bad,” he remarked when I had finished, “that you don’t have a ‘friend’ you can unload this one on.”

“What do you mean, friend?” I said.

“I—” he looked startled for a minute, then grinned.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “You took the job; you do it.”

“I know, I know. But what did you mean? Don’t you think we’re up to it?”

“Vlad, this guy is good. He was on the council. You think you can just walk up to him and put a dagger into his left eye?”

“I never meant to imply that I thought it was going to be easy. So, we have to put a little work into it—”

“A little!”

“All right, a lot. So we put a lot of work into the setup. I told you what I’m getting for it, and you know what your percentage is. What’s happened to your innate sense of greed, anyway?”

“I don’t need one,” he said. “You’ve got enough for both of us.”

I ignored that.

“The first step,” I told him, “is locating the guy. Can you come up with some method for figuring out where he might be hiding?”

Kragar looked thoughtful. “Tell you what, Vlad; just for variety this time, you do all the setup work, and when you’re done, I’ll take him out. What do you say?”

I gave him the most eloquent look I could manage.

He sighed. “All right, all right. You say he’s got sorcery blocked out for tracing?”

“Apparently. And the Demon is using the best there is to look for him that way, in any case.”

“Hmmm. Are we working under the assumption that the Demon is right, that he’s out East somewhere?”

“Good point.” I thought about it. “No. Let’s not start out making any assumptions at all. What we know, because the Demon guaranteed it, is that Mellar’s nowhere within a hundred-mile radius of Adrilankha. For the moment, let’s assume that he could be anywhere outside of that.”

“Which includes a few thousand square miles of jungle.”

“True.”

“You aren’t going out of your way to make my life easy, are you?”

I shrugged. Kragar was thoughtfully silent for a while.

“What about witchcraft, Vlad? Do you think you can trace him with that? I would doubt that he thought to protect himself against it, even if he could.”

“Witchcraft? Let me think—I don’t know. Witchcraft really isn’t very good for that sort of thing. I mean, I could probably find him, to the extent of getting an image and a psionic fix, but there isn’t any way of going from there to a hard location, or teleport coordinates, or anything really useful. I guess we could use it to make sure he’s alive, but I suspect we can safely assume that, anyway.”

Kragar nodded, and looked thoughtful. “Well,” he said after a time, “if you have any kind of psionic fix at all, maybe you can come up with something Daymar could use to find out where he is. He’s good at that kind of thing.”

Now there was an idea. Daymar was strange, but psionics were his specialty. If anyone could do it, he could.

“I’m not sure we want to get that many people involved in this,” I said. “The Demon wouldn’t be real happy about the number of potential leaks we’d have to generate. And Daymar isn’t even a Jhereg.”

“So don’t mention it to the Demon,” said Kragar. “The thing is, we have to find him, right? And we know we can trust Daymar, right?”

“Well—”

“Oh, come on, Vlad. If you ask him not to talk about it, he won’t. Besides, where else can you get expert help, on that level, without paying a thing for it? Daymar enjoys showing off; he’d do it for free. What can we lose?”

I raised my eyebrow and looked at him.

“There is that,” he admitted. “But I think the risk involved in telling Daymar as much as we have to tell him is pretty damn small. Especially when you consider what we’re getting for it.”

“If he can do it.”

“I think he can,” said Kragar.

“All right,” I said, “I’m sold. Quiet a minute while I figure out what I’m going to need.”

I ran through, in my mind, what I was going to have to do to locate Mellar, and what I’d have to do so that Daymar could trace him afterwards. I wished I knew more about how Daymar did things like that, but I could make a reasonable guess. It seemed that it would be a pretty straightforward spell, which really should work if Mellar had no blocks against witchcraft.

I built up a mental list of what I’d need. Nothing out of the ordinary; I already had everything except for one small matter.

“Kragar, put word out on the street that I’d like to arrange to see Kiera. At her convenience, of course.”

“Okay. Any preference on where you meet?”

“No, just some—wait!” I interrupted myself, and thought for a minute. In my office, I had witchcraft protections and alarms. I knew these were hard to beat, and I wasn’t happy about taking any chances at all of this information leaking out. The Demon would be upset, anyway, if he knew that I was dealing with Kiera. I didn’t really like the idea of having one of his people see me talking with her in some public place. On the other hand, Kiera was . . . well, Kiera. Hmmm. Tough question.

Hell with it, I decided. I’d just shock the staff a little. It’d be good for them. “I’d like to meet her here, in my office, if that’s all right with her.”

Kragar looked startled and seemed about to say something, but changed his mind, I guess, when he realized that I’d just gone over all of the objections myself. “All right,” he said. “Now about Daymar. You know what kind of problems we have reaching him; do you want me to figure out a way?”

“No, thanks. I’ll take care of it.”

“All by yourself? My goodness!”

“No, I’m going to get Loiosh to help. There, feel better?”

He snickered and left. I got up and opened the window.

“Loiosh,” I thought to my familiar, “find Daymar.”

“As Your Majesty requests,” he answered.

“Feel free to save the sarcasm.”

A telepathic giggle is an odd thing to experience. Loiosh flew out the window.

I sat down again and stared off blankly for a while. How many times had I been in this position? Just at the beginning of a job, with no idea of where it was going, or how it would get there. Nothing, really, except an image of how it should end; as always, with a corpse. How many times? It isn’t really a rhetorical question. This would be the forty-second assassination I’d done. My first thought was that it was going to be somewhat different than the others, at some level, in some way, to some degree. I have clear memories of each one. The process I go through before I do the job is such that I can’t forget any of them—I have to get to know them too well. This would certainly be a problem if I were given to nightmares.

The fourth one? He was the button man who would always order a fine liqueur after dinner and leave half the bottle instead of a tip. The twelfth was a small-time muscle who liked to keep his cash in the largest denominations he could. The nineteenth was a sorcerer who carried a cloth around with him to polish his staff with—which he did constantly. There is always something distinct about them. Sometimes it is something I can use; more often it is just something that sticks out in my memory. When you know someone well enough, he becomes an individual no matter how hard you try to think of him as just a face—or a body.

But if you take it back a level, you once more wind up with the similarities being important. Because when they come to me as names mentioned in a conversation, over a quiet meal, with a purse handed over which will contain somewhere between fifteen hundred and four thousand gold Imperials, they are all the same, and I treat them the same: plan the job, do it.

I usually worked backwards: after finding out everything I could about his habits, and following him, tracking him, and timing him for days, sometimes for weeks, I’d decide where I wanted it to happen. That would usually determine the time and often the day as well. Then it was a matter of starting from there and working things so that all of the factors came together then and there. The execution itself was only interesting if I made a mistake somewhere along the line.

Kragar once asked me, when I was feeling particularly mellow, if I enjoyed killing people. I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know, but it set me to thinking. I’m still not really sure. I know that I enjoy the planning of a job, and setting it in motion so that everything works out. But the actual killing? I don’t think I either consciously enjoy it or fail to enjoy it; I just do it.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. The beginning of a job like this is like the beginning of a witchcraft spell. The most important single thing is my frame of mind when I begin. I want to make absolutely sure that I have no preconceived notions about how, or where, or anything. That comes later. I hadn’t even begun to study the fellow yet, so I didn’t have anything to really go on. The little I did know went rolling around my subconscious, free-associating, letting images and ideas pop up and be casually discarded. Sometimes, when I’m in the middle of planning, I’ll get a sudden inspiration, or what appears to be a sudden burst of brilliance. I fancy myself an artist at times like this.

I came out of my reverie slowly, with the feeling that there was something I should be thinking about. I wasn’t really fully awake yet, so it took me awhile to become aware of what it was. There was a stray, questing thought fluttering around in my forebrain.

After a while, I realized that it had an external source. I gave it some freedom to grow and take shape enough for me to recognize it, and discovered that someone was trying to get into psionic contact with me. I recognized the sender.

“Ah, Daymar,”I thought back. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” came the clear, gentle thought. “You wanted something?” Daymar had better mental control, and more power, than anyone I’d ever met. I got the feeling from him that he had to be careful, even in mental contact, lest he burn my mind out accidentally.

“I’d like a favor, Daymar.”

“Yes?” He had a way of making his “yes” last about four times as long as it should.

“Nothing right now,” I told him. “But sometime within the next day or so, I expect to need some locating done.”

“Locating? What kind of locating?”

“I expect to have a psionic tag on a fellow I’m interested in finding, and I’ll want some way to figure out exactly where he is. Kragar thinks you can do it.”

“Is there some reason why I couldn’t just trace him now?”

“He has a block up against sorcery tracing spells,” I told him. “I don’t think even you can get past them.”

I was damn sure Daymar couldn’t get past a block that was holding off the best sorcerers of the Left Hand, but a little judicious flattery never hurt anything.

“Oh,” he said. “Then how do you expect to put a tag on him?”

“I’m hoping he didn’t protect himself against witchcraft. Since witchcraft uses psionic power, we should be able to leave a mark on him that you can find.”

“I see. You’re going to try to fix him with a witchcraft spell, and then I locate him psionically from the marks left by that. Interesting idea.”

“Thank you. Do you think it will work?”

“No.”

I sighed. Daymar, I thought to myself, someday I’m going to . . . “Why not?” I asked, with some hesitation.

“The marks,” he explained, “won’t stay around long enough for me to trace them. If they do, they’ll also be strong enough for him to notice, and he’ll just wipe them out.”

I sighed again. Never argue with an expert.

“All right,” I said, “do you have any ideas for something that would work?”

“Yes,” he said.

I waited, but he didn’t go on. Daymar, I said to myself, some day I’m definitely going to . . . “What is it?”

“The reverse.”

“The reverse?”

He explained. I asked a few questions, and he was able to answer them, more or less.

I began thinking of what kind of spell I’d have to do to get the kind of effect he was talking about. A crystal, I decided, and then I’d start the spell out just like the other one, and then . . . I remembered that Daymar was still in contact with me—which, in turn, brought up another point that I really ought to clarify, given whom I was dealing with.

“Are you willing to do the locating for me?” I asked.

There was a brief pause, then: “Sure—If I can watch you do the witchcraft spell.”

Why am I not surprised? I sighed to myself once more. “It’s a deal,” I said. “How do I get in touch with you? Can I count on finding you at home if I send Loiosh again?”

He thought about that, then: “Probably not. I’ll open up for contact for a few seconds on the hour, each hour, starting tomorrow morning. Will that do?”

“That will be fine,” I said. “I’ll get in touch with you before I start the spell.”

“Excellent. Until then.”

“Until then. And Daymar, thanks.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

Actually, I reflected, it probably was. But it wouldn’t have been politic to say so. The link was broken.

Sometime later, Loiosh returned. I opened the window in answer to his knocking. Why he preferred to knock, rather than just contact me, I don’t know. After he was in, I closed it behind him.

“Thanks.”

“Sure, boss.”

I resumed reading; Loiosh perched on my right shoulder this time, and pretended to be reading along with me. Or, who knows? Maybe he really did learn to read somehow and just never bothered to inform me. I wouldn’t put it past him.

The job was under way. I couldn’t really go any further until I had some idea of where Mellar was, so I turned my attention to who he was, instead. This kept me occupied until my next visitor arrived, a few hours later.

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My receptionist, in the two years he’d been with me, had killed three people outside the door of my office.

One was an assassin whose bluff didn’t quite work. The other two were perfectly innocent fools who should have known better than to try to bluster their way past him.

He was killed once, himself, delaying another assassin long enough for me to escape heroically out the window. I was very relieved when we were successful in having him revivified. He fulfills the function of bodyguard, recording secretary, buffer, and whatever else either Kragar or I need. He may well be the highest-paid receptionist on Dragaera.

“Uh, boss?”

“Yes?”

“Uh, Kiera is here.”

“Oh, good! Send her in.”

“That’s Kiera the Thief, boss. Are you sure?”

“Quite sure, thank you.”

“But—okay. Should I escort her in, and keep an eye—”

“That won’t be necessary,” (or sufficient, I thought to myself). “Just send her in.”

“Okay. Whatever you want.”

I put down the papers and stood up as the door opened. A small Dragaeran female form entered the room. I recalled with some amusement that I had thought her tall when we had first met, but then, I was only eleven at the time. And, of course, she was still more than a head taller than I, but by now I was used to the size difference.

She moved with ease and grace, almost reminiscent of Mario. She flowed up to me and greeted me with a kiss that would have made Cawti jealous if she were the jealous type. I gave as good as I got, and pulled up a chair for her.

Kiera had a sharp, rather angular face, with no noticeable House characteristics—the lack of which was typical for a Jhereg.

She allowed me to seat her and made a quick glance around the office. Her eyes clicked from one place to another, making notes of significant items. This wasn’t surprising; she’d taught me how to do it. On the other hand, I suspected that she was looking for different things than I would be.

She favored me with a smile.

“Thanks for coming, Kiera,” I said, as warmly as I could.

“Glad to,” she said softly. “Nice office.”

“Thanks. How’s business been?”

“Not hurting, Vlad. I haven’t had any contract jobs in a while, but I’ve been doing all right on my own. How about you?”

I shook my head.

“What is it, problems?” she asked, genuinely concerned.

“I went and got greedy again.”

“Uh, oh. I know what that means. Somebody offered something too big to pass up, eh? And you couldn’t resist, so you’re in over your head, right?”

“Something like that.”

She slowly shook her head. Loiosh interrupted, then, flapping over to her and landing on her shoulder. She renewed their acquaintance, scratching under his chin. “The last time that happened,” she said after a while, “you found yourself fighting an Athyra wizard, right in his own castle, as I recall. That kind of thing isn’t healthy, Vlad.”

“I know, I know. But remember: I won.”

“With help.”

“Well . . . yes. One can always use a little help.”

“Always,” she agreed. “Which, I imagine, brings us to this. It must be something big, or you wouldn’t have wanted to meet here.”

“Perceptive as always,” I said. “Not only big, but nasty. I can’t risk anyone catching wind of this. I’m hoping no one saw you come in; I can’t risk being seen with you and having certain parties guess that I’m letting you in on what’s going on.”

“No one saw me come in,” she said.

I nodded. I knew her. If she said no one had seen her, I had no reason to doubt it.

“But,” she continued, “what are your own people going to say when they find you’ve been meeting me in your own office? They’ll think you’ve finally gone ‘into the jungle,’ you know.” She was smiling lightly; baiting me. She knew her reputation.

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll just let it slip that we’ve been lovers for years.”

She laughed. “Now there’s an idea, Vlad! We should have thought of that cycles ago!”

This time I laughed. “Then what would your friends say? Kiera the Thief, consorting with an Easterner? Tut, tut.”

“They won’t say anything,” she said flatly. “I have a friend who does ‘work.’ ”

“Speaking of which—”

“Right. To business. I take it you want something stolen.”

I nodded. “Do you know of a certain Lord Mellar, House Jhereg? I think he’s officially a count, or a duke, or some such.”

Her eyes widened, slightly. “Going after big game, aren’t you, Vlad? You certainly are in over your head. I know him, all right. I’ve helped him out a couple of times.”

“Not recently!” I said, with a sudden sinking feeling.

She looked at me quizzically, but didn’t ask what I meant. “No, not in the last few months. It wasn’t anything big, any of the times. Just sort of an exchange of favors; you know how it goes.”

I nodded, quite relieved. “He isn’t a friend, or anything, is he?”

She shook her head. “No. We just did a few things for each other. I don’t owe him.”

“Good. And speaking of owing, by the way . . . ” I placed a purse on my desk in front of her. It held five hundred gold Imperials. She didn’t touch it yet, of course. “How would you like to have me owe you still another favor?”

“I’m always happy to have you in my debt,” she said lightly. “What does he have that you want?”

“Any of a number of things. A piece of clothing would be good. Hair would be excellent. Anything that has a long association with him.”

She shook her head once more, in mock sadness. “More of your Eastern witchcraft, Vlad?”

“I’m afraid so,” I admitted. “You know how we are, always like to keep our hand in, and all.”

“I’ll bet.” She took the purse and stood up. “Okay, you’re on. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”

“No hurry,” I lied politely. I stood as she left, and bowed her out.

“How long do you think it will actually take her?” asked Kragar.

“How long have you been sitting there?”

“Not too long.”

I shook my head in disgust. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we had it tomorrow.”

“Not bad,” he said. “Did you talk to Daymar?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

I explained the outcome of our conversation. He shrugged over the technical details of the witchcraft, but caught the gist of it. He laughed a bit when I explained that Daymar had managed to include himself in the spell.

“Well, do you think it will work?” he asked.

“Daymar thinks it will work; I think it will work.”

He seemed satisfied with this answer. “So nothing happens until we hear from Kiera, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. I think I’ll go catch up on my sleep.”

“Wrong.”

“What now, Oh Master?”

“You’re getting as bad as Loiosh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, boss?”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

“Right, boss.”

I picked up the notes on Mellar that I’d been reading and handed them to Kragar. “Read,” I said. “Let me know what you think.”

He ruffled through them briefly. “There’s a lot here.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, Vlad, my eyes are sore. How about tomorrow?”

“Read.”

He sighed and started reading.

“You know what strikes me, Vlad?” he asked a bit later.

“What?”

“There’s been something funny about this guy since he first showed up in the organization.”

“What do you mean?”

He paged through the notes quickly and continued. “He moved too fast. He made it from nowhere to the top in just over ten years. That’s damned quick. I’ve never heard of anyone except you moving that quickly, and you have the excuse of being an Easterner.

“I mean, look,” he went on. “He starts out protecting a little brothel, right? A muscle. A year later he’s running the place; a year after that he has ten more. In eight years he’s got a territory bigger than you have now. A year after that, he wipes out Terion and takes his place on the council. And a year after that, he grabs up the council funds and vanishes. It’s almost as if he had the whole thing figured out when he started.”

“Hmmm. I see what you’re saying, but isn’t ten years a long time to set up one job?”

“You’re thinking like an Easterner again, Vlad. It isn’t a long time if you expect to have a two-thousand- or three-thousand-year lifetime.”

I nodded and thought over what he’d suggested.

“I can’t see it, Kragar,” I said finally. “How much gold was it that he got?”

“Nine million,” he said, almost reverently.

“Right. Now, that’s a lot. That’s one hell of a lot. If I ever have a tenth of that in one place at one time I’ll retire. But would you throw away a position on the council for it?”

Kragar started to speak, stopped.

I continued, “And that isn’t the only way to get nine million gold either. It isn’t the best, the fastest, or the easiest. He could have gone freelance and done a lot better than that over those same ten years. He could have held up the Dragon Treasury, and doubled it at least, and not be taking any more risk than he is with this thing.”

Kragar nodded. “That’s true. Are you saying that he wasn’t after the gold?”

“Not at all. I’m suggesting that he may have developed a sudden need to have a few million and this was the only way to get it in a hurry.”

“I don’t know, Vlad. Just looking at his whole history, it sure seems like he had this planned out from the start.”

“But why, Kragar? No one works his way up to a seat on the council for money. You have to be after power to do something like that—”

“You should know,” said Kragar, smirking.

“—and you don’t throw away that kind of power unless you have to.”

“Maybe he lost interest in it,” he said. “Maybe he was just after the thrill of getting to the top, and after he made it, he went after a new thrill.”

“If that’s true,” I remarked, “he’s going to get his thrills, and then some. But doesn’t that go against your He-Planned-It-All-From-the-Start theory?”

“I suppose it does. I’m beginning to get the feeling that we don’t have enough information; all we’re doing is guessing.”

“True enough. So how about if you start collecting the information, eh?”

“Me? Look, Vlad, my boots are in the shop this week getting new soles. Why don’t we hire a flunky and get him to do the legwork for us, okay?”

I told him where he could hire the flunky and what he could have him do.

He sighed. “All right, I’m going. What are you going to be working on?”

I thought for a minute. “A couple of things,” I said. “For one, I’m going to try to think up a good reason for someone to suddenly decide to leave the council in such a way as to get the whole Jhereg down on his ass. Also I’m going to check in with Morrolan’s spy ring and contact some of our own people. I want to dig up as much information as I can, and it wouldn’t hurt to have both of us working on it. After that—I think I’ll visit the Lady Aliera.”

Kragar was about halfway out the door, but as I finished speaking, he stopped and turned around. “Who?” he asked, incredulous.

“Aliera e’Kieron, House of the Dragon, Morrolan’s cous—”

“I know who she is, I just couldn’t believe I heard you straight. Why not ask the Empress, while you’re at it?”

“I have a few questions about this guy that I want to check out, and they’re just the kind of thing she’s good at. Why not? We’ve been friends for quite a while.”

“Boss, she’s a Dragon. They don’t believe in assassination. They consider it a crime. If you go up to her and—”

“Kragar,” I interrupted, “I never said that I was going to go up to her and say, ‘Aliera, I’m trying to assassinate this guy, how would you like to help set him up?’ Give me credit for a little finesse, all right? All we have to do is find some reasonable excuse for her to be interested in Mellar, and she’ll be happy to help out.”

“Just a ‘reasonable excuse,’ eh? Just out of curiosity, do you have any idea how to find an excuse like that?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said nastily, “I do. Easiest thing in the world. I just give you the assignment.”

“Me? Dammit, Vlad, you’ve already got me working on background, as well as trying to figure out a nonexistent event to provide an insufficient reason for a vanished Jhereg to do the impossible. I can’t—”

“Sure you can. I have confidence in you.”

“Go suck yendi eggs. How?”

“You’ll think of something.”

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The only significant thing that happened the rest of the day was the arrival of a courier from the Demon, along with a rather impressive escort and several large purses. The full sixty-five thousand Imperials. It was official now; I was committed.

I gave Kragar the purses to put into safekeeping, and went home for the day. My wife, I’m sure, knew that something was up, but didn’t ask about it. I had no good reason for not mentioning anything to her, but I didn’t.

The next morning I found a small envelope on my desk. I slit it open and several human, or Dragaeran, hairs fell out. There was also a note which read, “From his pillow.—K.” I destroyed the note and reached out for psionic contact with my wife.

“Yes, Vlad?”

“Are you busy, sweetheart?”

“Not really. Just practicing a little knife-throwing.”

“Hey! I wish you wouldn’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“Because you can already beat me seven out of ten times.”

“I’m going for eight out of ten. You’ve been getting uppity lately. What’s up? Do you have some ‘work’ for me?”

“No such luck. Drop on by and I’ll tell you about it.”

“Right away?”

“As soon as it’s convenient.”

“Okay. I’ll be over shortly.”

“Fine. Meet me in the lab.”

“Oh,” she said, understanding, and the link was broken.

I left word with my receptionist that I wasn’t going to be taking any messages for the next two hours and walked down a few flights of stairs. Loiosh rode complacently on my left shoulder, looking around as if he were conducting an inspection. I came to a small room in the basement and unlocked the door.

In this building, locks are next to useless as a means of actually keeping people out of places, but they are effective as a way of saying “Private.”

It was a smallish room, with a low table in the exact center and several mounted lamps along the wall. I kindled these. In a corner of the room was a small chest. The middle of the table held a brazier, with a few unburned coals in it. I dumped these out and got more from the chest.

I focused, briefly, on one of the candles and was rewarded by a flame. I used it to light the others, then put out the lamps.

I checked the time and found that I still had a little while before I could contact Daymar. I checked the placement of the candles and watched the flickering shadows for a moment.

Removing a few more items from the chest, including a piece of incense, I set them on the table next to the brazier, placing the incense among the coals. Next, I took a candle and held the flame next to a coal. A moment of concentration, and the fire spread evenly and quickly. The smell of incense began to introduce itself to the various nooks and corners of the room.

Soon Cawti arrived and greeted me with a sunshine smile. She was an Easterner, a small, pretty woman with dzur-black hair and fluid, graceful movements. If she’d been a Dragaeran, she might have been born into the House of the Issola, and taught them all something about “courtliness.” And something about “surprise,” as well.

Her hands were small, but strong, and could produce knives out of nowhere. Her eyes burned—sometimes with the impish delight of a mischievous child, sometimes with the cold passion of a professional killer, sometimes with the rage of a Dragonlord going into battle.

Cawti was one of the deadliest assassins I had ever met. She and her partner, then a defrocked Dragonlord, had made one of the most sought-after teams of killers in the Jhereg, going under the somewhat melodramatic names of “The Sword and the Dagger.” I had deemed it a high honor when an enemy of mine had considered me worth the expense of hiring the team to take me out. I’d been quite surprised when I woke up afterwards and found that they hadn’t managed to make it permanent. For that, thank Kragar’s alertness, Morrolan’s speed and fighting ability, and Aliera’s rather exceptional skill in healing and revivification.

Some couples fall in love and end up trying to kill each other. We’d done it the other way around.

Cawti was also a competent witch, though not quite as skilled as I. I explained to her what was going to be needed, then we made small talk.

“Boss!”

“Yes, Loiosh?”

“I hate to interrupt—”

“Like hell you do.”

“But it’s time to contact Daymar.”

“Already? Okay, thanks.”

“Well, I suppose you’re welcome.”

I reached out, thinking of Daymar, concentrating, remembering the “feel” of his mind.

“Yes?” he said. He was one of few people whose voice I could actually hear when we were in contact. In the other cases it was because I knew them well enough for my imagination to supply the voice. With Daymar it was simply the strength of the contact.

“Would you mind showing up?” I asked him. “We’d like to get started on this spell.”

“Fine. Just let me . . . Okay, I’ve got a fix on you. I’ll be right there.”

“Give me a minute first, so I can turn off some protections and alarms. I don’t want to have forty-eleven things go off when you teleport in.”

I ordered our teleport protections taken down for a few seconds. Daymar appeared in front of me—floating, cross-legged, about three feet off the floor. I rolled my eyes; Cawti shook her head sadly. Loiosh hissed. Daymar shrugged, and stretched his legs down; stood up.

“You left off the thunderclap and the lightning flash,” I told him.

“Should I try again?”

“Never mind.”

Daymar stood roughly 7 feet, 3 inches tall. He had the sharp, well-chiseled features of the House of the Hawk, although they were somewhat gentler, softer, than those of most Hawklords I’ve met. He was incredibly thin, looking almost transparent. It seemed that his eyes rarely focused, giving him the appearance of looking past whatever he was observing, or at something deep inside it. We had been friends since the time I had almost killed him for mind-probing one of my people. He’d done it out of curiosity, and I think he never understood why I objected.

“So,” Daymar asked, “who is this you want located?”

“A Jhereg. With luck, I should have what you wanted for the trace. Will this do?”

I handed him a small crystal I’d taken from the chest. He inspected it carefully, although I’m damned if I know what he was looking for. He nodded and gave it back to me.

“I’ve seen better,” he remarked, “but it will do.”

I set it carefully down on the right side of the brazier. I opened the envelope I’d gotten from Kiera and removed about half of the dozen or so strands of hair. These I set on top of the envelope on the left side of the brazier; the others I would save in case I had to try the spell again.

It was interesting, I reflected, how much a witchcraft spell resembles an assassination, as opposed to either of them being similar to sorcery. To use sorcery, all you do is reach out through your link to the Imperial Orb, grab some power, shape it, and throw it. With witchcraft, however, you have to plan carefully and precisely so that you don’t end up searching around for some implement you need, right at the moment of using it.

The room began to get smoky with the lingering scent of incense. I took my position in front of the brazier; Cawti automatically stood to my right, and I motioned Daymar to stand at my left, and back. I let my mind drift and linked up mentally with Cawti. It was not necessary for there to be physical contact between us for this to happen, which is one reason why I like to work with her. One of the clear advantages witchcraft enjoys over sorcery is that more than one witch can participate in a single spell. I felt my power diminish and increase at the same time; which is strange to say and even stranger to experience.

I laid a few leaves on the coals, which obliged by making the proper hissing sounds. They were large, broad leaves from the Heaken tree, which only grows out East. They had been prepared by being soaked in purified water for a number of hours, and by diverse enchantments. A large gout of steam-smoke rose up, and Cawti began chanting, low and almost inaudible. As the leaves began to blacken and burn, my left hand found the envelope and the hairs. I rolled them around on my fingertips for a moment. I felt things start to happen—the very first sign of a witchcraft spell starting to have any kind of effect is when certain senses begin to feel sharper. In this case, each hair felt distinct and unique to my fingertips, and I could almost make out tiny details on each one. I dropped them onto the burning leaves, as Cawti’s chanting became more intense, and I could almost pick out the words.

At that moment, a sudden rush of power flooded my mind. I felt giddy, and I would certainly have lost my end of the spell if I had actually begun it. A thought came into being, and I heard Daymar’s pseudo-voice say, “Mind if I help?”

I didn’t answer, trying to cope with more psychic energy than I’d ever had at my disposal before. I had a brief urge to answer, “No!” and hurl the energy back at him as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t have done more than hurt his feelings. I observed my own anger at this unasked-for interference as if it were in a stranger.

Any spell, no matter how trivial it really is, involves some degree of danger. After all, what you’re really doing is building up a force of energy from your own mind and manipulating it as if it were something external. There have been witches whose minds have been destroyed by mishandling this power. Daymar, of course, couldn’t know this. He was just being his usual helpful, meddlesome self.

I gritted my teeth and tried to use my anger to control the forces we had generated, to direct them into the spell. Somewhere, I felt Loiosh fighting to hold onto his control and take up what I couldn’t handle. Loiosh and I were so deeply linked that anything that happened to me would happen to him. The link broadened, more and more power flooded through it, and I knew that, between the two of us, we’d either be able to handle it, or our minds would be burned out. I would have been as scared as a teckla if my anger hadn’t blocked it—and the rage I felt was sustained, perhaps, by my knowledge of the fear underlying it.

It hung in the balance, and time stretched to both horizons. I heard Cawti, as if from a great distance, chanting steadily, strongly, although she must have felt the backwash of forces as much as I. She was helping, too. I had to direct the energy into the spell, or it would find release some other way. I remember thinking, at that moment, “Daymar, if you’ve hurt my familiar’s mind, you are one dead Dragaeran.”

Loiosh was straining. I could feel him, right at his limit, trying to absorb power, control it, channel it. This is why witches have familiars. I think he saved me.

I felt control had come, and fought to hang onto it long enough to throw it into the spell. I wanted to rush through the next part, but resisted the temptation. You do not rush through any phase of a witchcraft spell.

The hairs were burning; they merged and combined into a part of the steam and smoke and they should still be tied to their owner. I fought to identify exactly which isolated puff of smoke held the essence of those burning hairs and therefore was an unbreakable bond to my target.

I lifted my arms until my hands were at the outermost perimeter of the grayish-white cloud. I felt the fourway pull of energy—me to Daymar to Loiosh to Cawti and back. I let it flow out through my hands, until the smoke stopped rising—the first visible sign that the spell was having an effect. I held it there for an instant and slowly brought my hands closer together. The smoke became more dense in front of me, and I flung the energy I held at and through it . . .

There is a cry of “charge” and five thousand Dragons come storming at the place the Eastern army is entrenched . . . Making love to Cawti that first time—the moment of entry, even more than the moment of release; I wonder if she plans to kill me before we’re finished, and I don’t really care . . . The Dzur hero, coming alone to Dzur mountain, sees Sethra Lavode stand up before him, Iceflame alive in her hand . . . A small girl-child with big brown eyes looks at me and smiles . . . The energy bolt, visible as a black wave, streaks toward me, and I swing Spellbreaker at it, wondering whether it will work . . . Aliera stands up before the shadow of Kieron the Conqueror, there in the midst of the Halls of Judgment, in the Paths of the Dead, beyond Deathsgate Falls . . .

And with it all, at that moment, I held in my mind everything I knew about Mellar, and all of my anger at Daymar, and above it all, on top of everything, my desire, my will, my hope. I flung it at the small cloud of steam-smoke rising from the brazier; I reached through it, beyond it, within it, toward the one who was tied to it.

Cawti chanted strongly, with no break in her voice, in words I still couldn’t quite make out. Loiosh, within me, part of my being, was searching and hunting. And Daymar, away from us, and yet a part of us too, stood out as a beacon of light, which I grabbed, and shaped, and pushed through.

I felt a response. Slowly, very slowly, an image formed in the smoke. I forced energy into it as it began to grow distinct. I forced myself to ignore the face itself, which was only a distraction at this point. And, with agonizing slowness, I . . . lowered . . . my . . . right . . . hand . . . and . . . began . . . dropping . . . control . . . of . . . the . . . spell . . .

Piece by minute, fractional piece, Loiosh picked up the threads of control, accepted them, handled them. Exhaustion was my enemy then, and I fought it back. The jhereg had taken the power, and was handling it all, by the green scales of Barlen!

I allowed myself to look at the image for the first time, as my right hand found the small crystal. The face was middle-aged and showed features reminiscent of the House of the Dzur. I carefully raised the crystal to eye level, dropped the last threads of control over the spell, and held my breath.

The image was steady; I had trained Loiosh well. Cawti was no longer chanting. She had done her part and was now just supplying power for the last stage of the spell. I studied the image through the crystal, closing my left eye. It was, of course, distorted, but that didn’t matter; the image appeared through it enough to be identified.

A moment of intense concentration; I reached for the energy Cawti and Daymar were offering and burned the face into the container before my eye. My right eye was blinded for a moment, and I felt slightly dizzy as I bore down on it, trying to use up all of the excess power we had built up.

I heard Cawti sigh and relax. I sagged against the back wall, and Loiosh sagged against my neck. I heard Daymar sigh. There was now a milky haze within the crystal. I knew, without trying it, that by an act of will the haze could be cleared and Mellar’s face would appear in it. More important, there was now a connection between Mellar, wherever he might be, and the crystal. The chances of his ever detecting this link were so small as to approach nonexistent. I nodded my satisfaction to Cawti, as we stood there for a few minutes catching our collective breath.

After a time, I blew out the candles, and Cawti lit the lamps along the wall. I opened the vent to let the smoke out, along with the smell of the incense, which now seemed cloying and sweet. The room brightened, and I looked around. Daymar had a distant look on his face, and Cawti seemed flushed and tired. I wanted to order wine from someone upstairs, but even the energy required for psionic contact seemed too much.

“Well,” I announced to the room in general, “I guess he didn’t have any protections against witchcraft.”

Daymar said, “That was very interesting, Vlad. Thanks for letting me come along.”

I suddenly realized that he had no idea that he’d almost destroyed me with his “help.” I tried to think of some way to tell him, but gave up. I’d just remember it in the future, if he was ever around when I did more witchcraft. I held out the crystal to him; he accepted it. He studied it carefully for a few seconds, then nodded slowly.

“Well,” I asked, “can you pin down where he is from that?”

“I think so. I’ll try, anyway. How soon do you need it?”

“As soon as you can get it to me.”

“Okay,” he said. Then, casually, “By the way, why are you looking for him, anyway?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Oh, just curious.”

That figured. “I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind,” I told him.

“Have it your way,” he said, miffed. “Going to kill him, eh?”

“Daymar—”

“Sorry. I’ll let you know when I’ve found him. It shouldn’t take more than a day or so.”

“Good. I’ll see you then. Or,” I added as an afterthought, “you can just give it to Kragar.”

“Fine,” he said, nodding, and vanished.

I forced my legs to work and pushed away from the wall. I killed the lamps and helped Cawti out the door; locked it.

“We’d better get some food,” I said.

“Sounds good. Then a bath, then about twenty years of sleep.”

“I wish I could take the time for the last two, but I’m going to have to get back to work.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully, “I’ll sleep for you, too.”

“Damned helpful of you.”

Leaning on each other, we took the stairs, one at a time. I felt Loiosh, still lying against the side of my neck, sleeping.

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Cawti and I shared a lunch at one of the restaurants that I had an interest in. We ate slowly and allowed our strength to return. The sense of physical exhaustion that accompanies witchcraft is usually very short-lived; the psionic drain is longer. By halfway through the meal I felt comfortable again and well rested. On the other hand, I still felt that it would be something of an effort even to achieve psionic contact. I hoped no one would need to reach me during lunch.

We ate the meal in silence, enjoying each other’s company, feeling no need to talk. As we were finishing, Cawti said, “So, you get work, while I stay home and wither away from boredom.”

“You don’t look withered to me,” I said, checking. “And I don’t remember your asking me for help with that little matter last month.”

“Hmmmmph,” she said. “I didn’t need any help with that, but this looks like something big. I recognized the target. I hope you’re getting a reasonable price for him.”

I told her what I was getting for him.

She raised her eyebrows. “Nice! Who wants him?”

I looked around the restaurant, which was almost deserted. I didn’t like taking chances, but Cawti deserved an answer. “The whole bloody Jhereg wants him, or will if and when they find out.”

“What did he do?” she asked. “He didn’t start talking, did he?”

I shuddered. “No, not that, thank Verra. He ran off with nine million gold in council operating funds.”

She looked stunned and was silent for a moment, as she realized that I wasn’t kidding. “When did this happen?”

“Three days ago, now.” I thought for a second, then, “I was approached by the Demon, personally.”

“Whew! Battle of the giant jhereg,” she said. “Are you sure you aren’t getting involved in more than you can handle?”

“No,” I answered, cheerfully.

“My husband, the optimist,” she remarked. “I suppose you’ve already accepted.”

“That’s right. Would I have gone to all of that trouble to locate him if I hadn’t?”

“I suppose not. I was just hoping.”

Loiosh woke up with a start, looked around, and jumped down from my shoulder. He began working on the remains of my tsalmoth ribs.

“Do you have any idea why you got the job?” she asked, suddenly worried. I could see her mind making the same jumps as mine had.

“Yes, and it makes sense.” I explained the Demon’s reasoning to her and she seemed satisfied.

“What do you think about subcontracting this one?”

“Nope,” I said, “I’m too greedy. If I subcontract it, I won’t be able to build you that castle.”

She chuckled a little.

“Why?” I continued. “Do you and Norathar want to do it?”

“Not likely,” she answered drily. “It sounds too dangerous. And she’s retired in any case. Besides,” she added, rather nastily, “you couldn’t afford us.”

I laughed and lifted my glass to her. Loiosh moved over to her plate and began working on it. “I guess you’re right,” I admitted, “I’ll just have to stumble along on my own.”

She grinned for a moment, then turned serious. “Actually, Vlad, it is something of an honor to be given a job like this.”

I nodded. “I guess it is, to a degree. But the Demon is convinced that Mellar is out East somewhere; he figures that I can operate better than a Dragaeran out there. Since you went into pseudo-retirement, there aren’t many humans who do ‘work.’ ”

Cawti looked thoughtful for a moment. “What makes him think that Mellar is in the East?”

I explained his thinking on the matter, and Cawti nodded. “That makes sense, in a way. But, as you yourself said, he’d stand out in the East like a lightning bolt. I can’t believe that Mellar is so naive that he’d think the House wouldn’t go after him.”

I thought this over. “You may be right. I do have a few friends in the East I can check with. In fact, I was planning on trying to get hold of them if Daymar can’t find out where he is. I don’t really see what else we can do but check out the Demon’s theory, at this point.”

“There isn’t anything, I suppose,” she said. “But it makes me a little nervous. Do you have any idea how long Mellar’s been planning this move? If there was some way to figure that, it would give us an idea of how hard he’s going to be to track down.”

“I’m not sure. It seems to me that it doesn’t make sense unless it was a sudden, spur of the moment kind of thing, but Kragar has an idea that he’s been planning it all along, from the minute he joined the Jhereg, in fact.”

“If Kragar is right, he must have something planned for this,” she said. “In fact, if it was that long, he should have realized that someone would, or at least, could try to trace him using witchcraft. If that were the case, he would have some way to set up a block against it.

“On the other hand,” she continued, “if he did plan it for that long and somehow couldn’t block witchcraft, or didn’t think of it, it may mean the Demon underestimated his defenses.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, don’t you think that, in years, you could come up with a sorcery block that even the Left Hand couldn’t break down in the time they’ve had?”

I thought that over for a long time. “He couldn’t do it, Cawti. It’s always easier to break down a block than it is to set one up. There is no way he could get the resources to put up a strong enough trace-block to keep out the Left Hand. The impression I got was that the Demon had the best there is working on it. I’d defy Sethra Lavode to put up a block that would hold them out for more than a day.”

“Then why haven’t they found him?” she asked, pointedly.

“Distance. Before they can break down the block, they have to find the right general area. That takes time. Even a standard teleport trace spell can be difficult if the person teleports far enough away. That’s why the Demon is figuring the East. Using just standard tracing spells, it could take years to find him, if that’s where he went.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she conceded. “But I’m nervous about the thing.”

“Me too,” I said. “And that isn’t all I’m nervous about.”

“What else?”

“Time. The Demon wants this done a lot faster than I like to work. What it boils down to is that I have to make sure Mellar is taken out before everyone in the Jhereg finds out what he did. And that could happen any day.”

Cawti shook her head. “That’s bad, Vlad. Why, by the Demon Goddess, did you accept the job with a time limit? I’ve never heard of one even being offered that way.”

“Neither have I. I took it that way because those were the terms. And it isn’t really a time limit, as such, although he implied it could come to that later. It’s just that I have to move as fast as I can.”

“That’s bad enough,” she said. “You work fast, you make mistakes. And you can’t afford to make a mistake.”

I had to agree. “But you understand his position, don’t you? If we don’t get him, we’ve just shot the reputation of the Jhereg council. There won’t be any way to keep House funds secure, once people get the idea that it can be done. Hell, I just put sixty-five thousand gold into a room in the office and forgot about it. I know it’s safe, because there isn’t anyone who would dare touch it. But, once this gets started . . . ” I shrugged.

“And the other thing,” I went on, “is that he told me straight out that if one of his people finds Mellar before I do, they aren’t going to wait for me.”

“Why should that bother you?” she asked. “You’ll still have the payment.”

“Sure. That isn’t the problem. But think about it: some clod goes up to Mellar to take him out. Who is it going to be? It’s not going to be a professional, because the Demon is going to want to say, ‘Hey, you, go nail this guy here and now,’ and no professional will agree to work that way. So it’s going to be some two-silverpiece muscle, or maybe a button-man who thinks he can handle it himself. Then what? Then the guy bungles it, that’s what. And I’m left trying to take Mellar out after he’s been alerted. Oh, sure, the guy might succeed, but he might not. I don’t trust amateurs.”

Cawti nodded. “I see the problem. And I’m beginning to understand the reason for the price he’s paying.”

I stood up, after making sure that Loiosh had finished his meal. “Let’s get going. I may as well try to get something done with the rest of the day.”

Loiosh found a napkin, carefully rubbed his face in it, and joined us. I didn’t pay, of course, since I was a part owner, but I did leave a rather healthy tip.

Out of habit, Cawti stepped out of the door an instant before me and scanned the street. She nodded, and I came out. There had been a time, not too long before, when that had saved my life. Loiosh, after all, can’t be everywhere. We walked back to the office.

I kissed her goodbye at the door and went up, while she headed back to our apartment. Then I sat down and began going over the day’s business. I noted with some satisfaction that Kragar had found the punk who’d mugged the Teckla the other day, at a cost of only four hundred gold or so, and had carried out my instructions. I destroyed the note and picked up a proposal that a new gambling establishment be opened by one of my button-men who wanted to better himself. I felt somewhat sympathetic. I’d gotten started that way, too.

“Don’t do it, Vlad.”

“Wha—? Kragar, would you cut it out?”

“Give the guy at least another year to prove himself. He’s too new for that kind of trust.”

“I swear, Kragar, one of these days I’m going to—”

“Daymar reported in.”

“What?” I switched modes. “Good!”

Kragar shook his head.

“Not good?” I asked. “He shouldn’t have been able to tell this quickly that he couldn’t find the guy. Did he change his mind about helping us?”

“No. He found Mellar, all right.”

“Excellent. Then what’s the problem?”

“You aren’t going to like this, Vlad . . . ”

“Come on, Kragar, out with it.”

“The Demon was wrong; he didn’t go out East after all.”

“Really? Then where?”

Kragar slumped in his chair a little bit. He put his head on his hand and shook his head.

“He’s at Castle Black,” he said.

Slowly, a piece at a time, it sunk in.

“That bastard,” I said softly. “That clever, clever bastard.”

The Dragaeran memory is long.

The Empire has existed—I don’t know—somewhere between two and two-and-a-half hundred thousand years. Since the creation of the Imperial Orb, back at the very beginning, each of the Seventeen Houses has kept its records, and the House of the Lyorn has kept records of them all.

At my father’s insistence, I knew at least as much about the history of House Jhereg as any Dragaeran born into the House. Jhereg records do, I will admit, tend to be somewhat more scanty than those of other Houses, since anyone with enough pull, or even enough gold, can arrange to have what he wants deleted, or even inserted. Nevertheless, they are worth studying.

About ten thousand years ago, nearly a full turn of the cycle before the Interregnum, the House of the Athyra held the throne and the Orb. At this time, for a reason which is lost to us, a certain Jhereg decided that another Jhereg had to be removed. He hired an assassin, who traced the fellow to the keep of a noble of the House of the Dragon. Now, by Jhereg tradition (with good, solid reasons behind it that I may go into later), the target would have been quite safe if he’d stayed in his own home. No assassin will kill anyone in his house. Of course, no one can stay in his house forever, and if this Jhereg tried to hide that way, he would have found it impossible to leave, either by teleporting or by walking, without being followed. It could be, of course, that he didn’t know he’d been marked for extinction—usually one doesn’t know until it’s too late.

But, for whatever reason, he was in the home of a Dragonlord. The assassin knew that he couldn’t put up a trace spell around the home of a neutral party. The person would find out and almost certainly take offense, which wouldn’t be good for anyone.

There is, however, no Jhereg custom that says that you have to leave someone alone just because he’s over at a friend’s house. The assassin waited long enough to be sure that the fellow wasn’t planning to leave right away; then he got in past the Dragonlord’s defenses and took care of his target.

And then the jaws of Deathsgate swung open.

The Dragons, it seemed, didn’t approve of assassins plying their trade on guests. They demanded an apology from House Jhereg and got one. Then they demanded the assassin’s head, and instead got the head of their messenger returned to them in a basket.

The insult, reasoned the Jhereg, wasn’t that great. After all, they hadn’t destroyed the poor fellow’s brain, or done anything else to make him unrevivifiable. They were just sending the Dragons a message.

The Dragons got the message and sent back one of their own. Somehow, they found out who had issued the contract. The day after the messenger was returned to them, they raided the home of this fellow. They killed him and his family, and burned down his house. Two days later, the Dragon heir to the throne was found just outside the Imperial Palace with a six-inch spike driven through his head.

Four bars along Lower Kieron Road, all owned by the Jhereg, and all housing some illegal activity upstairs or in back, were raided and burned, and many of the patrons were killed. All Jhereg in all of them were killed. Morganti weapons were used on several.

The next day, the Warlord of the Empire disappeared. Pieces of her were found over the next few days at the homes of various Dragon nobles.

The House of the Dragon declared that it intended to wipe House Jhereg out of the cycle. The Dragons said that they fully intended to kill each and every Jhereg in existence.

House Jhereg responded by sending assassins after each Dragon general who commanded more than a thousand troops and then began working its way down.

The e’Kieron line of the Dragons was almost wiped out, and for a while it seemed that the e’Baritt line had been.

Have you heard enough?

All in all, it was a disaster. The “Dragon-Jhereg War” lasted about six months. At the end, when the Athyra Emperor forced a meeting between the surviving Dragon leaders and the Jhereg council and forced a peace treaty down both of their throats, there had been some changes. The best brains, the best generals, and the best warriors in the House of the Dragon were dead, and House Jhereg was damn near out of business.

It is admitted by the Jhereg that they came out pretty much the losers. This should be expected, since they were at the bottom of the cycle, and the Dragons were near the top. But still, the Dragons don’t boast of the outcome.

It was fortunate that the Athyra reign was long, and the Phoenix reign even longer after that, or there would have been real trouble having a House of the Dragon strong enough to take the throne and the Orb when their turn came, following the Phoenix. It took the Jhereg the entire time until their turn at the throne, nearly half the cycle away, which worked out to several thousand years, to achieve a stable business.

I summed it up, as I went over the whole affair in my mind. Since that time, no Dragon has given sanctuary to a Jhereg, and no Jhereg has attempted to assassinate anyone in the home of a Dragonlord.

Castle Black was the home of Lord Morrolan e’Drien, of the House of the Dragon.

“How do you think he did it?” asked Kragar.

“How the hell should I know?” I said. “He found some way of tricking Morrolan into it, that’s for sure. Morrolan would be the last person on Dragaera to deliberately let his home be used by a Jhereg on the run.”

“Do you think Morrolan will kick him out, once he finds out that he’s been used?”

“That depends on exactly how Mellar tricked him. But if Morrolan actually invited him there, he’ll never agree to allowing him to be harmed, and he won’t deny him sanctuary, not unless Mellar sneaked in without an invitation.”

Kragar nodded and sat quietly for a while, thinking.

“Well, Vlad,” he said at last, “he can’t stay there forever.”

“No. He can stay there long enough, though. All he has to do is to set up a new identity and figure out a good place to run. We can’t keep up a vigilance on him for hundreds of years, and he can afford to wait that long if he has to.

“And what’s more,” I continued, “we can’t even wait more than a few days. Once the information gets out, we’ve blown it.”

“Do you think we can put up a tracer net around Castle Black, so we can at least find him if he leaves?”

I shrugged. “I suspect Morrolan wouldn’t mind that. He might even do it himself, if he’s as upset about being used this way as I expect him to be. But we still have the time problem.”

“I don’t suppose,” said Kragar slowly, “that, since Morrolan is a friend of yours, he might, just this once . . . ”

“I don’t even want to ask him. Oh, I will, if we get desperate enough, but I don’t think we have much of a chance of his agreeing. He was a Dragonlord long before he was a friend of mine.”

“Do you think we might be able to make it look like an accident?”

I thought about that for a long time. “No. For one thing, the Demon wants it known that the Jhereg killed him—that’s sort of the point of doing it in the first place. For another, I’m not sure it’s possible. Remember: this has to be permanent. By Morrolan’s rules, we can kill him as many times as we want, as long as we make sure he can be, and is, revivified after. People are killed every day at Castle Black, but he hasn’t had one permanent death there since he had the place built. There’s no point in having an accident that isn’t permanent; and do you have any idea how hard it would be to set up an ‘accident’ so he’s killed unrevivifiably? What am I supposed to do, have him trip and fall on a Morganti dagger?

“And another thing,” I went on, “if we were to kill him that way, you can be damn sure that Morrolan would throw everything he had into an investigation. He takes a lot of pride in his record and would probably feel ‘dishonored’ if someone were to die, even accidentally, at Castle Black.

I shook my head. “It’s really a strange place. You know how many duels are fought there every day? And not one of them on any terms other than no cuts to the head, and revivification afterwards. He’d check everything himself, twenty times, if Mellar had an ‘accident,’ and chances are good that he’d find out what happened.”

“All right,” said Kragar. “I’m convinced,”

“There’s one more thing. Just to put this away, or anything like it, I’d better make it clear that I consider Morrolan a friend, and I’m not going to let him get hurt like that if there’s any way I can prevent it. I owe him too much.”

“You’re rambling, boss.”

“Shut up, Loiosh. I was done anyway.”

Kragar shrugged. “Okay, you’ve convinced me. So what can we do?”

“I don’t know yet. Let me think about it. And if you get any more ideas, let me know.”

“Oh, I will. Someone has to do your thinking for you. Which reminds me—”

“Yes?”

“One piece of good news out of this whole thing.”

“Oh, really? What is it?”

“Well, now we have an excuse to talk to the Lady Aliera. After all, she is Morrolan’s cousin, and she is staying with him, last I heard. From what I know about her, by the way, she isn’t going to be at all pleased that her cousin is being used by a Jhereg. In fact, she’ll probably end up an ally, if we work it right.”

I took out a dagger and absently started flipping it as I thought that over. “Not bad,” I agreed. “Okay, then I’ll make seeing her and Morrolan my first priority.”

Kragar shook his head, in mock sorrow. “I don’t know, boss. First the witchcraft thing, and now this business with Aliera. I’ve been coming up with all the ideas around here. I think you’re slipping. What the hell would you do without me, anyway?”

“I’d have been dead a long time ago,” I said. “Want to make something of it?”

He laughed and got up. “Nope, not a thing. What now?”

“Tell Morrolan that I’m coming to see him.”

“When?”

“Right away. And get a sorcerer up here to do a teleport. The way I’m feeling right now, I don’t trust my own spells.”

Kragar walked out the door, shaking his head sadly. I put my dagger away and held out an arm to Loiosh. He flew over and landed on my shoulder. I stood by the window and looked out over the streets below. It was quiet and only moderately busy. There were few street vendors in this part of town and not really a lot of traffic until nightfall. By then I’d be at Castle Black, some two hundred miles to the Northeast.

Morrolan, I knew, was going to be mighty angry at someone. Unlike a Dzur, however, an angry Dragon is unpredictable.

“This could get really ugly, boss,” said Loiosh.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I know.”

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My first reaction, years before, upon hearing about the Castle Black, had been contempt. For one thing, black has been considered the color of sorcery for hundreds of thousands of years on Dragaera, and it takes a bit of gall to name one’s home that. Also, of course, is the fact that the Castle floats. It hangs there, about a mile off the ground, looking real impressive from a distance. It was the only floating castle then in existence.

I should mention that there had been many floating castles before the Interregnum. I guess the spell isn’t all that difficult, if you care to put enough work into it in the first place. The reason that they are currently out of vogue is the Interregnum itself. One day, over four hundred years ago now, sorcery stopped working . . . just like that. If you look around in the right places in the countryside you will still find broken husks and shattered remnants of what were once floating castles.

Lord Morrolan e’Drien was born during the Interregnum, which he spent mostly in the East, studying witchcraft. This is very rare for a Dragaeran. While the Easterners were using the failure of Dragaeran sorcery to turn the tables and invade them for a change, Morrolan was quietly building up skill and power.

Then, when Zerika, of the House of the Phoenix, came strolling out of the Paths of the Dead with the Orb clutched in her greedy little hands, Morrolan was right there, helping her stomp her way to the throne. After that, he was instrumental in driving back the Easterners, and he helped cure the plagues they left behind them as remembrances of their visit.

All this conspired to make him more tolerant of Easterners than is normal for a Dragaeran, particularly a Dragonlord. That is partly how I ended up working for him on a permanent basis, after we almost killed each other the first time we met. Little misunderstandings, and all.

I slowly came to realize that the Lord Morrolan was actually worthy of having a home called Castle Black—not that he would have cared a teckla’s squeal what I thought of it in any case. I also came to understand part of the reason behind the name.

You must understand that Dragonlords, particularly when they are young (if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that Morrolan was under five hundred), tend to be—how shall I put this—excitable. Morrolan knew quite well that naming his keep what he did was somewhat pretentious, and he also knew that, from time to time, people would mock him for it. When that happened, he would challenge them to duel and then take great delight in killing them.

Lord Morrolan, of the House of the Dragon, was one of damn few nobles who deserved the title. I have seen him show most of the attributes one expects of a noble: courtesy, kindness, honor. I would also say that he is one of the most bloodthirsty bastards I have ever met.

I was welcomed to Castle Black, as always, by Lady Teldra, of the House of the Issola. I don’t know what Morrolan paid her for her services as reception committee and welcoming service. Lady Teldra was tall, beautiful, and graceful as a dzur. Her eyes were as soft as an iorich’s wing, and her walk was smooth, flowing, and delicate as a court dancer’s. She held herself with the relaxed, confident poise of, well, of an issola.

I bowed low to her, and she returned my bow along with a stream of meaningless pleasantries that made me very glad I had come and almost made me forget my mission.

She showed me to the library, where Morrolan was seated, going over some kind of large tome or ledger, making notes as he went.

“Enter,” said Morrolan.

I did, and bowed deeply to him; he acknowledged.

“What is it, Vlad?”

“Problems,” I told him, as Lady Teldra swished back to her position near the castle entrance. “What else do you think I’d be doing here? You don’t think I’d deign to visit you socially, do you?”

He permitted himself a smile and held out his right arm to Loiosh, who flew over to it and accepted some head-scratching. “Of course not,” he responded. “That was only an illusion of you at the party the other day.”

“Exactly. How clever of you to notice. Is Aliera around?”

“Somewhere. Why?”

“The problem also involves her. And, for that matter, Sethra should be in on it too, if she’s available. It would be easier if I could explain to all of you at once.”

Morrolan’s brows came together for a moment; then he nodded to me. “Okay, Aliera is on her way, and she’ll mention it to Sethra.”

Aliera arrived almost immediately, and Morrolan and I stood for her. She gave us each a small bow. Morrolan was a bit tall for a Dragaeran. His cousin Aliera, however, was the shortest Dragaeran I have ever known; she could have been mistaken for a tall human. Bothered by this, it was her habit to wear gowns that were too long, and then make up the difference by levitating rather than walking. There have been those who made disparaging remarks about this. Aliera, however, was never one to hold a grudge. She almost always revivified them afterwards.

Both Morrolan and Aliera had something of the typical Dragon facial features—the high cheekbones, rather thin faces and sharp brows of the House; but there was little else in common. Morrolan’s hair was as black as mine, whereas Aliera had golden hair—rare in a Dragaeran and almost unheard of in a Dragonlord. Her eyes were normally green, another oddity, but I’ve seen them change from green to gray, and occasionally to ice blue. When Aliera’s eyes turn blue, I’m very, very careful around her.

Sethra arrived just after her. What can I tell you about Sethra Lavode? Those who believe in her say she has lived ten thousand years (some say twenty). Others say she is a myth. Call her life unnatural, feel her undead breath. Color her black for sorcery, color her gray for death.

She smiled at me. We were all friends here. Morrolan carried Blackwand, which slew a thousand at the Wall of Baritt’s Tomb. Aliera carried Pathfinder, which they say served a power higher than the Empire. Sethra carried Iceflame, which embodied within it the power of Dzur Mountain. I carried myself rather well, thank you.

We all sat down, making us equals.

“And so, Vlad,” said Morrolan, “what’s up?”

“My ire,” I told him.

His eyebrows arched. “Not at anyone I know, I hope.”

“As a matter of fact, at one of your guests.”

“Indeed? How dreadfully unfortunate for you both. Which one, if I may ask?”

“Do you know a certain Lord Mellar? Jhereg?”

“Why, yes. It happens that I do.”

“Might I inquire as to the circumstances?”

(Giggle.) “You’re starting to sound like him, boss.”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

Morrolan shrugged. “He sent word to me a few weeks ago that he’d acquired a certain book I’ve been interested in, and made an appointment to bring it by. He arrived with it . . . let me see . . . three days ago now. He has remained as my guest since that time.”

“I presume he actually had the book?”

“You presume correctly.” Morrolan indicated the tome he’d been reading as I entered. I looked at the cover, which bore a symbol I didn’t recognize.

“What is it?” I asked him.

He looked at me for a moment, as if wondering whether I was trustworthy, or perhaps whether he should allow himself to be questioned; then he shrugged.

“Pre-Empire sorcery,” he said.

I whistled in appreciation, as well as surprise. I glanced around the room quickly, but none of the others seemed astonished by this revelation. They had probably known all along. I keep finding things out about people, just when I think I know them. “Does the Empress know about this little hobby of yours?” I asked him.

He smiled a little. “Somehow I keep forgetting to mention it to her.”

“How unlike you,” I remarked.

When he didn’t say anything, I asked, “How long have you been studying it?”

“Pre-Empire sorcery? It’s been rather an interest of mine for a hundred years or so. In fact, the Empress undoubtedly knows; it isn’t all that much of a secret. Naturally, I’ve never acknowledged it officially, but it’s a bit like owning a Morganti blade: if they need an excuse to harass a fellow, they have one. Other than that they won’t bother one about it. Unless, of course, one starts using it.”

“Or unless one happens to be a Jhereg,” I muttered.

“There is that, isn’t there?”

I turned back to the main subject. “How did Mellar end up staying here, after he delivered the book?”

Morrolan looked thoughtful. “Would you mind terribly if I asked what this is all about?”

I glanced around the room again and saw that Sethra and Aliera also seemed interested. Aliera was sitting on the couch, an arm thrown casually across it, a wineglass in her other hand (Where had she gotten it?) held so that the light from the large ceiling lamp reflected off it and made pretty patterns on her cheek. She surveyed me coolly from under her eyelids, her head tilted slightly.

Sethra was looking at me steadily, intently. She had chosen a black upholstered chair which blended with her gown, and her pale white, undead skin shone out. I felt a tension in her, as if she had a feeling that something unpleasant was going on. Knowing Sethra, she probably did.

Morrolan sat at the other end of the couch from Aliera—relaxed, and yet looking as if he were posing for a painting. I shook my head.

“I’ll tell you if you insist,” I said, “but I’d rather find out a little more first, so I have a better idea of what I’m talking about.”

“Or how much you feel like telling us?” asked Aliera, sweetly.

I couldn’t repress a smile.

“I might point out,” said Morrolan, “that if you want our help with anything, you’re going to have to give us essentially the whole story.”

“I’m aware of that,” I said.

Morrolan gathered in the others’ opinions with a glance. Aliera shrugged with her wineglass, as if it made no difference in the world to her. Sethra nodded, once.

Morrolan turned back to me. “Very well, then, Vlad. What exactly did you wish to know?”

“How was it that Mellar happened to stay here after delivering the book? You aren’t in the habit of inviting Jhereg into your home.”

Morrolan permitted himself another smile. “With a few exceptions,” he said.

“Some of us are special.”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

“Count Mellar,” said Morrolan, “contacted me some four days ago. He informed me that he had a volume that he thought I’d want and politely suggested that he drop by and deliver it.”

I interrupted. “Didn’t it seem a bit odd that he’d hand it over himself, rather than have a flunky deliver it?”

“Yes, it did occur to me as odd. But after all, such a book is illegal and I made the assumption that he didn’t want anyone to know that he had it. His employees, after all, were Jhereg. How could he trust them?” He paused for a moment, to see if I’d respond to the cut, but I let it go by. “In any case,” he continued, “the Count appeared to be a very polite fellow. I did a bit of checking around on him, and found him to be a trustworthy sort, for a Jhereg. After deciding that he probably wouldn’t make any trouble, I invited him to dine with me and a few other guests, and he accepted.”

I glanced quickly at Aliera and Sethra. Sethra shook her head, indicating that she hadn’t been there. Aliera was looking moderately interested. She nodded.

“I remember him,” she said. “He was dull.”

With that ultimate condemnation, I turned back to Morrolan, who continued. “The dinner went well enough that I felt no compunctions about inviting him to the general party. I will admit that a few of my coarser guests, who don’t think well of Jhereg, tried to give him trouble in one fashion or another, but he was quite friendly and went out of his way to avoid problems. So I gave him an invitation to stay here for seventeen days, if he cared to. I will admit to being somewhat startled when he accepted, but I assumed he wanted a short vacation or something. What else did you wish to know?”

I held up my hand, asking for a moment’s grace while I sorted out this new information. Could he . . . ? What were the chances? How sure could Mellar be?

“Do you have any idea,” I asked, “how he might have gotten his hands on the book in the first place?”

Morrolan shook his head. “The one stipulation that he had for returning it was that I make no effort to find out how he got it. You see, at one time it held a place in my library. It was, as you would say, ‘lifted.’ I might add this occurred before I started making improvements in my security system.”

I nodded. Unfortunately, it was all fitting in rather well.

“Didn’t that make you suspicious?” I asked.

“I assumed that it was a Jhereg who stole it, of course. But, as you should be aware of more than I, there are endless possibilities as to how this fellow could have received it, ‘legitimately,’ if you will. For example, the fellow who had taken it could have found that he couldn’t sell it safely, and Count Mellar might have done him a favor by making sure that I never found out the details of the crime. Jhereg do tend to operate that way, you know.”

I knew. “How long ago was this book stolen?”

“How long? Let me think . . . it would be . . . about ten years ago now, I believe.”

“Damn,” I muttered to myself, “so Kragar was right.”

“What is it, Vlad?” asked Aliera. She was genuinely interested, now.

I looked at the three of them. How should I go about this? I had a sudden urge to answer, “Oh, nothing,” get up, and see how close I could get to the door before they stopped me. I didn’t really like the idea of having the three of them fly into a sudden rage—with me being the bearer of bad tidings and all. Of course, I didn’t really think any of them would hurt me, but . . .

I tried to think of an indirect approach and got nowhere.

“Suggestions, Loiosh?”

“Tell ’em straight out, boss. Then teleport.”

“I can’t teleport fast enough. Serious suggestions, Loiosh?”

Nothing. I had found a way to shut him up. Somehow my joy at this discovery was somewhat dimmed, under the circumstances.

“He’s using you, Morrolan,” I said, flatly.

“ ‘Using’ me? How, pray?”

“Mellar is on the run from the Jhereg. He’s staying here for one reason only: he knows that no Jhereg can touch him while he’s a guest in a Dragonlord’s home.”

Morrolan’s brows came together. I felt a storm brewing over the horizon. “Are you quite certain of this?” he asked, mildly.

I nodded. “I think,” I said slowly, “that if you were to do some checking, you’d find that it was Mellar himself who took the book, or else hired someone to take it. It all fits in. Yes, I’m sure.”

I glanced over at Aliera. She was staring at Morrolan, with a look of shock on her face. The cute dilettante who’d been sitting there seconds ago was gone.

“Of all the nerve!” she burst out.

“Oh, he’s nervy all right,” I told her.

Sethra cut in. “Vlad, how could Mellar have known that he’d be invited to stay at Castle Black?”

I sighed inwardly. I had hoped that no one would ask me that. “That’s no trick. He must have done a study on Morrolan and found out what he’d have to do to receive an invitation. I hate to say this, Morrolan, but you are rather predictable in certain matters.”

Morrolan shot me a look of disgust, but, fortunately, was not otherwise affected. I noticed that Sethra was gently stroking the hilt of Iceflame. I shuddered. Aliera’s eyes had turned gray. Morrolan was looking grim. He stood up and began pacing in front of us. Aliera, Sethra, and I held our peace. After a couple of trips, he said. “Are you certain he knows that the Jhereg is after him?”

“He knows.”

“And,” Morrolan continued, “you are convinced that he would have been aware of this when he first contacted me?”

“Morrolan, he planned it that way. I’ll go even further; according to all the evidence we have, he’s been planning this whole thing for at least ten years.”

“I see.” He shook his head, slowly. His hand came to rest on the hilt of Blackwand, and I shuddered again. After a time, he said, “You know how I feel concerning treatment and safety of my guests, do you not?”

I nodded.

“Then you are no doubt aware that we cannot harm him in any way—at least, not until his seventeen days are up.”

I nodded again. “Unless he leaves of his own free will,” I put in.

He looked at me, suspiciously.

Aliera spoke, then. “You aren’t going to just let him get away with this, are you?” she asked. There was just the hint of an edge to her voice. I suddenly wished that I had Kragar’s ability to be unnoticeable.

“For today, my dear cousin, and thirteen more days after, he is perfectly safe here. After that,” his voice suddenly turned cold and hard, “he’s dead.”

“I can’t give you the details,” I said, “but in thirteen days he will have irreparably damaged the Jhereg.”

Morrolan shrugged, and Aliera gave me a brushing-off motion. So what? Who cared about the Jhereg, anyway? But I noticed Sethra nodding, as if she understood.

“And in thirteen days,” she put in, “he’ll be long gone.”

Aliera gave a toss of her head and stood, flinging her cloak to the side and bringing her hand down to Pathfinder’s hilt. “Let him try to hide,” she said.

“You are missing the point,” said Sethra. “I’m not doubting that you and Pathfinder will be able to track him down. What I’m saying is that with all the time he’s had, he’ll be able to, at least, make it difficult for you. It could take you days to find him if, for example, he goes out East. And in the meantime,” her voice took on a cutting edge, “he’ll have succeeded in using a Dragon to hide from the Jhereg.”

This hit the two of them, and they didn’t like it. But there was something else that was bothering me.

“Aliera,” I said, “are you sure that there isn’t anything he could do to prevent you from finding him with Pathfinder? It doesn’t make sense that he’d work for this long on such an intricate scheme, only to let you and Morrolan track him down and kill him.”

“As you may recall,” she said, “I’ve only had Pathfinder for a few months, and it’s hardly common knowledge that I have a Great Weapon at all. It’s something that he couldn’t have counted on. If I didn’t have it, he could have figured on escaping us.”

I accepted that. Yes, it was possible. No matter how carefully you plan things, there is always the chance that you could miss something important. This is a risky business we’re in.

Aliera turned to Morrolan. “I don’t think,” she said, “that we should wait the rest of those seventeen days.”

Morrolan turned away.

“Here it comes, boss.”

“I know, Loiosh. Let’s hope Sethra can handle it—and wants to.”

“Don’t you see,” continued Aliera, “that this, this Jhereg is trying to make you nothing more than a bodyguard from his own House?”

“I’m quite aware of this, I assure you, Aliera,” he answered softly.

“And that doesn’t bother you? He’s dishonoring the entire House of the Dragon! How dare he use a Dragonlord?”

“Ha!” said Morrolan. “How dare he use me! But it’s rather obvious that he does dare, and equally obvious that he’s gotten away with it.” Morrolan’s gaze was fixed on her. He was either challenging her or waiting to see if she would challenge him. Either way, I decided, it didn’t much matter.

“He hasn’t gotten away with it yet,” said Aliera, grimly.

“And what exactly does that mean?” asked Morrolan.

“Just what it sounds like. He hasn’t gotten away with anything. He’s assuming that, just because he’s a guest, he can insult you as much as he wants, and no one will touch him.”

“And he is correct,” said Morrolan.

“Is he?” asked Aliera. “Is he really? Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” said Morrolan.

Aliera matched stares with him for a while, then she said, “If you choose to ignore the insult to your honor, that’s your business. But when an insult is given to the entire House of the Dragon, it’s my business, too.”

“Nevertheless,” said Morrolan, “since the insult was delivered through me, it is my right, and my duty, to avenge it, don’t you think?”

Aliera smiled. She sat back, relaxed, the very picture of one who’s just had her worries removed. “Oh, good!” she said. “So you’ll kill him after all!”

“Why certainly I shall,” said Morrolan, showing his teeth, “thirteen days from now.”

I glanced at Sethra to see how this was affecting her. She hadn’t yet said anything, but the look on her face was far from pleasant. I was hoping that she’d be willing and able to mediate between the two of them if things started to get pushed too far. Looking at her, however, made me wonder if she had any such inclination.

Aliera wasn’t smiling any more. Her hand gripped the hilt of Pathfinder, and her knuckles were white. “That,” she explained, “is doing nothing. I will not permit a Jhereg to—”

“You will not touch him, Aliera,” said Morrolan. “So long as I live, no guest in my house need fear for his life. I don’t care who he is, why he’s here; so long as I have extended him my welcome, he may consider himself safe.

“I have entertained my own blood enemies at my table, and arranged Morganti duels with them. I have seen the Necromancer speaking quietly to one who had been an enemy of hers for six incarnations. I have seen Sethra,” he gestured toward her, “sitting across from a Dzurlord who had sworn to destroy her. I will not allow you, my own cousin, to cast my name in the mud; to make me an oathbreaker. Is that how you would preserve the honor of the House of the Dragon?”

“Oh, speak on, great protector of honor,” she said. “Why not go all the way? Put up a poster outside the Jhereg barracks, saying that you are always willing to protect anyone who wants to run from their hired killers?”

He ignored the sarcasm. “And can you explain to me,” he said, “how it is that we can defend our honor as a House if each member does not honor even his own words?”

Aliera shook her head and continued in a softer voice. “Don’t you see, Morrolan, that there is a difference between the codes of honor, and of practice, that have come down from the traditions of the House of the Dragon, and your own custom? I’m not objecting to your having your little customs; I think it’s a fine thing. But it isn’t on the same level as the traditions of the House.”

He nodded. “I understand that, Aliera,” he said. “But it isn’t just a ‘custom’ I’m talking about; it’s an oath that I’ve sworn to make Castle Black a place of refuge. It would be different if we were at, say, Dzur Mountain.”

She shook her head. “I just don’t understand you. Of course you want to live by your oath, but does that mean that you have to allow yourself, and the House, to be used by it? He isn’t just living under your oath, he’s abusing it.”

“That’s true,” agreed Morrolan. “But I’m afraid he’s correct. There simply isn’t any chance of my breaking it, and he realizes that. I’m rather surprised that you can’t understand that.”

I decided the time was right to intervene. “It seems to me that—”

“Silence, Jhereg,” snapped Aliera. “This doesn’t concern you.”

I reconsidered.

“It isn’t that I can’t understand it,” she went on to Morrolan, “it’s just that I think your priorities are wrong.”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Aliera rose, and her eyes, I saw, had turned ice blue. “As it happens,” she said, “it wasn’t my oath, it was yours. If you were no longer master of Castle Black, we wouldn’t have this problem, would we? And I don’t recall anything in your oath that prevents a guest from attacking you!”

Morrolan’s hand was white where he gripped the hilt of Blackwand. Loiosh dived under my cloak. I would have liked to do the same.

“That’s true,” said Morrolan, evenly. “Attack away.”

Sethra spoke for the first time, gently. “Need I point out the guest laws, Aliera?”

She didn’t answer. She stood, gripping her blade, and staring hard at Morrolan. It occurred to me then that she didn’t want to attack Morrolan at all; she wanted him to attack her. I wasn’t surprised at her next statement.

“And guest laws,” Aliera said, “apply to all hosts. Even if they claim to be Dragons, but don’t have the courage to avenge an insult done to all of us.”

It almost worked, but Morrolan stopped himself. His tone matched the color of her eyes. “You may consider it fortunate that I have the rule I do, and that you are as much a guest as this Jhereg, although it is clear that he knows far more than you about the courtesy a guest owes a host.”

“Ha!” cried Aliera, drawing Pathfinder.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“All right, Morrolan, then I release you from your oath, as regards me. It doesn’t matter anyway, since I’d much rather be a dead dragon than a live teckla!” Pathfinder stood out like a short green rod of light, pulsating gently.

“You don’t seem to realize, cousin,” he said, “that you don’t have power over my oath.”

Now Sethra stood up. Thank the Lords of Judgment, she hadn’t drawn Iceflame. She calmly stepped between them. “You both lose,” she said. “Neither of you has any intention of attacking the other, and you both know it. Aliera wants Morrolan to kill her, which preserves her honor and breaks his oath, so that he may as well go ahead and kill Mellar. Morrolan wants Aliera to kill him, being the one to break guest-laws, so she can then go ahead and kill Mellar herself. I, however, have no intention of allowing either of you to be killed or dishonored, so you may as well forget the provocations.”

They stood that way for a moment, then Morrolan allowed the ghost of a smile to pass over his lips. Aliera did the same. Loiosh peeked out from under my cloak, then resumed his position on my right shoulder.

Sethra turned to me. “Vlad,” she said, “isn’t it true that you are—” she stopped, reconsidered, and tried again, “—that you know the person who is supposed to kill Mellar?”

I rubbed my neck, which I discovered had become rather tense, and said drily, “I expect I could put a hand on him.”

“Good. Maybe we should all start trying to think of ways to help out this fellow, instead of ways to goad ourselves into murdering each other.”

Morrolan and Aliera both scowled at the idea of helping a Jhereg, then shrugged.

I gave a short prayer of thanks to Verra that I’d thought of asking Sethra to show up.

“How much time is there that the assassin can wait?” asked Sethra.

How the hell did she find out so much? I asked myself, for the millionth time since I’d known her. “Maybe a few days,” I said.

“All right, what can we do to help?”

I shrugged. “The only thing I can think of is just what Aliera thought of earlier—tracing him with Pathfinder. The problem is that we need some way of getting him to leave soon enough, without, of course, forcing him to.”

Aliera took her seat again, but Morrolan turned and headed for the door. “All things considered,” he said, “I don’t think it quite proper that I include myself in this. I trust you all,” he looked significantly at Aliera, “not to violate my oath, but I don’t think it would be right for me to conspire against my own guest. Excuse me.” Bowing, he left.

Aliera picked up the threads of the conversation. “You mean, trick him into leaving?”

“Something like that. I don’t know, maybe put a spell on him, so he thinks he’s safe. Can that be done?”

Sethra looked thoughtful, but Aliera cut in before she could speak. “No, that won’t do,” she said. “I expect it could be done, but, in the first place, Morrolan would detect it. And, in the second place, we can’t use any form of magic against him without violating Morrolan’s oath.”

“By Adron’s Disaster!” I said, “you mean we can’t trick him, either?”

“No, no,” said Aliera. “We’re free to convince him to leave on his own, even if we have to lie to do it. But we can’t use magic against him. Morrolan doesn’t see any difference between, for instance, using an energy bolt to blast him, or using a mind implant to make him leave.”

“Oh, that’s just charming,” I said. “I don’t suppose either of you has any idea of how we’re going to accomplish this?”

They both shook their heads.

I stood up. “All right, I’ll be heading back to my office. Please keep thinking about it, and let me knowif you get anywhere.”

They nodded and settled back, deep in discussion. I didn’t think much of the chances of their actually coming up with something. I mean, they were both damn good at what they did, but what they did wasn’t assassination. On the other hand, I could be surprised. In any case, it was certainly better having them work with me than against me.

I bowed, and left.

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I returned to my office and allowed my stomach to recover from the aftereffects of the teleport. After about ten minutes, I contacted my secretary. “Please ask Kragar to step in here,” I communicated.

“But, boss—he went in five minutes ago.”

I looked up and found him seated in his usual place and looking innocent.

“Never mind.”

I shook my head. “I really wish you’d stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

I sighed. “Kragar, Aliera is willing to help us.”

“Good. Do you have a plan yet?”

“No, only the start of one. But Aliera, and, by the way, Sethra Lavode, are trying to come up with the rest of it.”

He looked impressed. “Sethra? Not bad. What happened?”

“Nothing—but just barely.”

“Eh?”

I gave him a report on what had occurred. “So,” I concluded, “now we need to figure out how we’re going to get Mellar to leave early.”

“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “you could ask the Demon.”

“Oh, sure. And if he doesn’t have any ideas, I’ll ask the Empress. And—”

“What’s wrong with asking the Demon? Since you’re going to be talking to him anyway, why not take the op—”

“I’m going to what?”

“The Demon wants to meet with you, right away. A message came in just before you did.”

“What does he want to meet with me about?”

“He didn’t say. Maybe he’s come across some information.”

“Information he could just send over. Dammit, he’d better not be jogging my sword-arm. He knows better than that.”

“Sure he does,” snorted Kragar. “But what the hell are you going to do about it if he decides to do it anyway?”

“There is that, isn’t there?”

He nodded.

“When, and where? No, let me guess, same time and place, right?”

“Half-right. Same place, but noon.”

“Noon? But isn’t it already—” I stopped, concentrated a moment, and got the time. By the Great Sea of Chaos, it was barely half an hour before noon! That whole conversation had taken less than an hour. Verra!

“That means he’s buying me lunch, doesn’t it?”

“Right.”

“And it also means that we don’t really have time to set up something, in case he’s set up something.”

“Right again. You know, Vlad, we’d be within our rights to just refuse to meet with him. You aren’t bound by something like this.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

He thought for a minute, then shook his head.

“Neither do I,” I said.

“Well, would you like me to put someone in there as a guest? We could arrange for one or two people—”

“No. He’d pick up on it, and we can’t let that happen at this point. It would indicate that we don’t trust him. Which we don’t, of course, but . . . ”

“Yeah, I know.”

He shrugged and changed the subject. “About this business with Aliera and Sethra, do you have any ideas on how we’re going to convince Mellar to leave Castle Black?”

“Well,” I said, “we could invite him to a business meeting.”

Kragar chuckled. “Next idea,” he said.

“I don’t know. That’s been the problem from the beginning, hasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

I shrugged. “Maybe something will come up. By the way, if there’s anything more we can do in terms of digging into Mellar’s background, let’s do it. I’d dearly love to find a weak spot in him just about now.”

He nodded. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“Dammit, he came from somewhere. The information we got from the Demon doesn’t start until he joined the Jhereg. We don’t know a damn thing before then.”

“I know, but how are we supposed to dig up more than the Demon could?”

“I don’t know . . . Yes! I do! Aliera! That was what I’d wanted her help with in the first place, and then when things got hot over there I never thought about asking her.”

“Asking her what?”

“Well, among other things, she specializes in genetic research.”

“So?”

“So tell me—what House was Mellar born into?”

“I assume Jhereg. What makes you think differently?”

“I don’t, but we have no reason to be sure. If it is Jhereg, there’s a chance that Aliera could lead us to his parents, and we could start digging there. If not, that would tell us something worthwhile in itself and might lead us in other directions.”

“Okay. I guess that isn’t something the Demon would have been able to check out. Are you going to contact her yourself, or do you want me to set up another appointment?”

I thought it over before answering. “You set it up,” I decided. “As long as this mess continues, we do everything formally. Make it for this evening, early, if possible. If I’m still alive. Ask her to check him over.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it. If you’re dead, I’ll apologize to her for you.”

“Oh, good. That’s a great load off my mind.”

Once again, I had my back to the door. My right arm was next to my wineglass; I could get a dagger from my left arm-sheath and throw it well enough to hit a moving wine cork from fifteen feet away in less than half a second. Loiosh kept his eyes fixed on the door. I was keenly aware that if I were, indeed, about to be removed, none of these things would really give me enough of an edge.

My palms, however, were dry. There were three reasons for this: first, I had been in many situations before where I might suddenly have to move at top speed to save my life. Second, I really didn’t think it very likely that the Demon was going to take me out. There are simpler ways to do it, and I was pretty sure by this time that everything was legitimate. And third, I continually wiped my hands on the legs of my breeches.

“Here he comes, boss.”

“Alone?”

“Two bodyguards, but they’re waiting by the door.”

The Demon slid smoothly into the seat across from me. “Good afternoon,” he said. “How are things coming?”

“They’re coming. I recommend the tsalmoth in garlic butter.”

“As you say.” He signaled over a waiter, who took our orders with enough respect to show that he knew who I, at least, was. The Demon picked out a light Nyroth wine to go along with it, showing that he also knew something about eating.

“Things are looking a little more urgent now, Vlad. May I call you Vlad?” he added.

“Tell him, ‘no,’ boss.”

“Of course.” I chuckled. “I’ll call you ‘Demon.’ ”

He smiled, without showing how bored he must have been at the remark. “As I was saying—things are starting to look serious. It seems that a few too many people know already. The best sorceresses in the Left Hand have figured out that someone big is interested in finding Mellar, but there wasn’t any way to avoid that. On the other hand, there are a few others who are wondering about some cutbacks we’ve had to make in our operations. All it’s going to take is for someone to start putting the two things together, and then things get unpleasant real fast.”

“So, are you—” I stopped, as the soup came. Out of reflex, I passed my left hand over it briefly, but there wasn’t any poison, of course. Poison is clumsy and unpredictable, and few Dragaerans knew enough about the metabolism of an Easterner to leave me seriously worried about it.

I continued when the waiter left. “Are you saying you want me to push it a bit?” I held down my annoyance; the last thing this side of Deathsgate I wanted just then was for the Demon to get the idea that I was upset.

“As much as you can without risking mistakes. But that wasn’t really what I wanted—I know you’re moving as fast as you can.”

Sure, he did. The soup was flat, I decided.

“We’ve learned something that may interest you,” he continued.

I waited.

“Mellar is holed up in Castle Black.”

He looked for a reaction from me, and, when he didn’t get one, continued.

“Our sorcerers broke through about two hours ago, and I got in touch with your people right away. So, you can forget checking out East. The reason we couldn’t find him for so long was because Castle Black is close to two hundred miles from Adrilankha—but, of course, you know that. You work for Morrolan, right?”

“Work for him? No. I’m on his payroll as a security consultant, nothing more.”

He nodded. He worked on his soup for a while, then, “You didn’t seem surprised when I told you where he was.”

“Thank you very much,” I said.

The Demon let me know that he had teeth and raised his glass in salute. Smiling, say the sages, comes from an early form of baring the teeth. While jhereg don’t bare their teeth, Jhereg do.

“Did you know?” asked the Demon, bluntly.

I nodded.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “You move quickly.”

I continued to wait, while finishing up my soup. I still didn’t know why he was here, but I was quite sure that it wasn’t in order to compliment me on my information sources, or to give me information he could have had sent over by a courier.

He picked up his wineglass and looked into it, swirled it around a little, and sipped it. Crazily, he suddenly reminded me of the Necromancer. “Vlad,” he said, “I think we may have a possible conflict of interest developing here.”

“Indeed?”

“Well, it is known that you are a friend of Morrolan. Now, Morrolan is harboring Mellar. It would seem that our goals, and his goals, might not run along the same paths.”

I still didn’t say anything. The waiter showed up with the main course, and I checked it, and started in. The Demon pretended not to notice my gesture. I pretended not to notice when he did the same thing.

He continued, after swallowing and making the obligatory murmur of satisfaction. “Things could get very unpleasant for Morrolan.”

“I can’t imagine how,” I said, “unless you plan to start another Dragon-Jhereg war. And Mellar, no matter what he did, can’t be worth that much.”

Now it was the Demon who said nothing. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I said slowly, “He can’t be worth another Dragon-Jhereg war.”

He still said nothing.

I shook my head. Would he really go ahead and try to nail Mellar right in Morrolan’s castle? Gods! He was saying that he would! He’d bring every Dragon on Dragaera down on our heads. This could be worse than the last one. It was the reign of the Phoenix, which made the Dragons correspondingly higher on the Cycle. The higher a House is, the more fate tends to favor it. I don’t know the why or how of that, but it works that way. The Demon knew it, too.

“Why?” I asked him.

“At this point,” he said slowly, “I don’t think that there is any need to start such a war. I think that it can be worked around, which is why I’m talking to you. But, I will say this: if I’m wrong, and the only options I can see are letting Mellar get away with this or starting another war, I’ll start the war. Why? Because if we have a war, things will get bad, yes, very bad, but then it will be over. We know what to expect this time, and we’ll be ready for it. Oh, sure, they’ll hurt us. Perhaps badly. But we will recover, eventually—in a few thousand years.

“On the other hand, if Mellar gets away with this, there won’t be an end to it. Ever. As long as House Jhereg lasts, we’ll have to contend with thieves plotting after our funds. We’ll be crippled forever.”

His eyes became thin lines, and I saw his teeth clench for a moment. “I built us up after Adron’s Disaster. I made a dispirited, broken House into a viable business again. I’m willing to see my work set back a thousand years, or ten thousand years if I have to, but I’m not willing to see us weakened forever.”

He sat back. I let his remarks sink in. The worst thing was, he was right. If I were in his position, I would probably find myself making the same decision. I shook my head.

“You’re right,” I told him. “We have a conflict of interest. If you give me enough time, I’ll finish my work. But I’m not going to let you nail someone in Castle Black. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”

He nodded, thoughtfully. “How much time do you need?”

“I don’t know. As soon as he leaves Castle Black, I can get him. But I haven’t come up with a way to get him to leave yet.”

“Will two days do it?”

I thought that over. “Maybe,” I said finally. “Probably not.”

He nodded and was silent.

I used a piece of only slightly stale bread to get the rest of the garlic butter (I never said it was a good restaurant for eating in), and asked him, “What is your idea for avoiding the Dragon-Jhereg war?”

He shook his head, slowly. He wasn’t going to give me any more information about that. Instead, he signaled the waiter over and paid him. “I’m sorry,” he told me as the waiter walked away. “We’ll have to do it without your cooperation. You could have been very helpful.” He left the table and walked toward the door.

The waiter, I noticed, was returning with the change. I absently waved him away. That’s when it hit me. The Demon would have realized that this outcome was possible, but wanted to give me a chance to save myself. Oh, shit. I felt the waves of panic start up, but forced them down. I wouldn’t leave this place, I decided, until help arrived. I started to reach out for contact with Kragar.

The waiter hadn’t caught my signal and was still approaching. I started to gesture him away again when Loiosh screamed a warning into my mind. I caught the flicker of motion almost at the same time. I pushed the table away from me and reached for a dagger at the same moment that Loiosh left my shoulder to attack. But I also knew, in that instant, that both of us would be too late. The timing had been perfect, the setup professional. I turned, hoping to at least get the assassin.

There was a gurgling sound as I turned and stood up. Instead of lunging at me, the “waiter” fell against me, then continued on to the floor. There was a large kitchen cleaver in his hand, and the point of a dagger sticking out of his throat.

I looked around the room as the screams started. It took me a while, but I finally located Kragar, seated at a table a few feet from mine. He stood up and walked over to me. I felt myself start trembling, but I didn’t allow myself to fall back into my chair until I was sure the Demon had left.

He had. His bodyguards were gone, probably having been out the door before the assassin’s body had fallen. Wise, of course. Any of his people left here were dead. Loiosh returned to my shoulder, and I felt him glancing around the room, as if to make any guilty party cower in shame. There would be none of them left now. He’d taken his best shot, and it had almost worked.

I sat down and trembled for a while.

“Thanks, Kragar. Were you there the whole time?”

“Yeah. As a matter of fact, you looked right through me a couple of times. So did the Demon. So did the waiters,” he added sourly.

“Kragar, the next time you feel like ignoring my orders, do it.”

He gave me his Kragar smile. “Vlad,” he said, “never trust anyone who calls himself a demon.”

“I’ll remember that.”

The Imperial guards would be showing up in a few minutes, and there were a few things I had to get done before they arrived. I was still trembling with unused adrenalin as I walked over to the kitchen, through it, and into the back office. The owner, a Dragaeran named Nethrond, was sitting behind his desk. He had been my partner in this place since I’d taken half-ownership of it in exchange for canceling out a rather impressive sum he owed me. I suppose he had no real reason to love me, but still . . .

I walked in, and he looked at me as if he were seeing Death personified. Which, of course, he was. Kragar was behind me and stopped at the door to make sure no one came in to ask Nethrond to sign for an order of parsley or something.