Five Hundred Years After (Phoenix Guards)

by Steven Brust

  “My Lords,” he therefore began, “I have determined to punish the insolence of His Highness Adron e’Kieron, Duke of Eastmanswatch and Dragon Heir to the Throne. You should know that his Breath of Fire Battalion is within striking distance of the Palace, and we cannot be certain he will not carry his rebellion so far as to attack the Palace itself, in hopes of bringing about the turn of the cycle—which, as you are no doubt aware, would turn his action from rebellion to merely the working-out of destiny. It is not my intention to allow destiny to work out in this way at this time. We must, therefore, protect the city, and in particular the Palace, while attending to the capture of the Duke.

  “Excellency, what is your opinion?”

  “Sire,” said the Dragonlord, “the Breath of Fire Battalion is known for speed as well as skill and ferocity in open battle.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, they have neither the forces nor the skill to beat down walls.”

  “And therefore?”

  “If all of the city gates are shut, and detachments of guardsmen are posted to watch for treachery, that should secure the city, and allow the Imperial Troops to concentrate on bringing in the rebel.”

  “Very well. Jurabin?”

  “Sire?”

  “Have you anything to say?”

  “I have, Sire.”

  “Then I am listening.”

  “There are clear signs of a plot of some sort, against your Majesty, or the Empire itself. I refer to the assassinations of recent days, and to disruptions in finance, and—”

  “Well, of these things I am aware.”

  “Sire, I wonder if it could not be the case that, as we earlier suspected, Lord Adron is behind it.”

  Rollondar drew in his breath sharply, seemed about to speak, but said nothing.

  “It is possible,” said His Majesty. “What then?”

  “Sire, steps must be taken to guard us against attacks from within, as well as from without. Lord Adron has, by all accounts, a powerful and subtle mind, and I am not ashamed to confess to Your Majesty that I fear him.”

  The Emperor frowned. “What is your opinion of this, Rollondar?”

  The Warlord shrugged, as if to say that this was an area outside of his knowledge and interest. Then he said, “I do not believe Adron is involved in any conspiracy. Sire. But, if Your Majesty is at all worried about it, the solution is simple and easily had, at little cost.”

  “These are the sorts of solutions I like best, Warlord. Please explain.”

  “I will do so, Sire.”

  “I am listening.”

  “In the first place, do not let it be generally known that His Highness has taken arms against the Empire; this will delay the execution of any plot intended to coincide with the actual rebellion. Second, call out the reserve Guard; double or treble them in all vital areas. If the Lord Khaavren is healthy, so much the better; he has shown his skill in such matters. If not, his second-in-command will act as best he can.”

  The Emperor nodded and said, “Jurabin?”

  “I agree with the second, Sire. We can and should mount additional guards to secure the city and the Palace, and such other strategic points as the Warlord and the Captain might conceive of. As to the first, I doubt it is possible. The city is too large, and rumors fly too freely. It will be general knowledge within the day, if it is not already, that Lord Adron rebels against the throne. We must keep a sharp eye all around us, Sire, for I confess that, until we know who was behind the assassinations, and why, I will not sleep easily.”

  Rollondar bowed his head. The Emperor nodded slowly. “You are right, Jurabin, and we thank you for calling it to our attention.

  Jurabin bowed.

  The Emperor said, “Excellency.”

  “Sire?” said the Warlord.

  “How long until you can field an army sufficient to destroy Lord Adron?”

  “Sire, the Breath of Fire Battalion numbers about two thousand soldiers, all of whom are mounted, and all of whom are highly trained Dragonlords.”

  “I trust your intelligence,” said His Majesty. Rollondar bowed his head. “What then?”

  “Then,” continued the Warlord, “To be certain of victory, I should require some eight thousand foot soldiers, most of whom can be Teckla, and another three thousand mounted, who must all be skilled warriors.”

  “Well?”

  “Sire, Your Majesty need but give the word, and they can be gathered by to-morrow, and be ready to march against His Highness before dawn the day after.”

  “They can set off in two days, then?”

  “If that is Your Majesty’s wish.”

  “Well then, Rollondar, tell me frankly what you think of this plan.”

  The Warlord considered. “Sire, the more time Lord Adron is given, the more time he will have to bring the horses that provide the basis of his tactics into better positions, wherefore I believe that not a day—not an hour—should be lost in setting out after him. And, moreover—”

  “Yes?”

  “I intend to be careful in constructing a snare through which he cannot slip, and this must needs mean I will move slower than I should otherwise wish; thus, even more, we ought to hurry in setting out, to make up for the necessary delays in the forming of the attack. This is a case where, above all, speed is our ally, and we must treat with her with all the diplomacy we can muster.”

  “Then you favor gathering our forces this very night?”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “Let it be so,” said the Emperor.

  Rollondar bowed his head.

  His Majesty continued, “We will see how fares the Lord Khaavren. If possible, he ought to give his orders for the protection of the city, but set out with you, Warlord, for it is his mission to arrest Lord Adron, and none but he should carry it out.”

  “Very well, Sire,” said the Warlord.

  “Have you anything to add, Jurabin?”

  “Nothing, Sire.”

  “Then that is all.”

  Warlord and Minister took respectful leave of His Majesty, who sat alone in the Seven Room, reflecting. There was no doubt in his mind that he was doing what was necessary, and moreover, what was right—yet he regretted extremely the words of Khaavren, his wise Captain, and, moreover, His Majesty wondered if he had failed to account for something to which he ought to have paid attention.

  After some few moments, he rose and, attended by the guardsman called Sergeant, went to look in on his Captain of the Guards, who was being attended in one of the spare bedchambers of the Imperial Wing. Attending him, we should add, was Navier, of the House of the Hawk, who was His Majesty’s personal physicker.

  His Majesty was announced, and then entered the chamber where Khaavren appeared to sleep peacefully, while Lady Navier stood above him, holding out her fingers for him to breathe on and then rubbing her fingers together with a thoughtful expression on her face. She was a woman of nine hundred or a thousand years, whose hair was the color of the Redbrick Inn (by which, lest the reader never have seen this structure, we mean dark brown); she had an unusually dark complexion for Hawklords, so that her face, blending in with her hair, was often concealed when her hair fell forward as she worked, and she had, moreover, the sharp angular face that Hawklords share with Dragonlords. She had studied blood-work directly under Burdeen, who wrote the famous monograph published by Pamlar University during the last Teckla Republic, had studied sorcery with the Athyra Lady Waxen, and had, in addition, worked with Lord Clir on his monumental and definitive work on anatomy, all of which, taken together, made her qualified as none other could be to be His Majesty’s physicker.

  Now she looked up and said in a whisper, “I beg Your Majesty to speak softly; above all else, he requires rest, and I fear to wake him.”

  “Very well,” His Majesty whispered back. “What is his condition?”

  “Sire, he has lost a great deal of blood, and, moreover, has received a sharp knock on the head. He is strong, however, and I have made him dr
ink fortified wine to encourage his blood to replace itself as well as to help him sleep. Moreover, there are certain spells which I have made use of to ensure that the new blood is clean and in harmony with the old, so there need be no fear on that score. Of course, the wound in his side is nothing, for no organs were touched, nor even any ribs, and I have sewn it up and placed an enchantment to cause the skin to grow—it will itch like seven demons when he wakes, but it will knit with scarcely a scar.”

  “Well, but what of his head?”

  “Sire, I have studied this wound, and I believe that there is no danger. His pupils do not seem to have changed size, and, in the few words we had while he was conscious, he did not complain of nausea.”

  The Emperor gave forth a sigh of relief and said, “Navier, you relieve my mind. When can I speak with him? For there are matters of state that make consultation with him urgent, though I would not willingly risk his health.”

  “Sire, I think Your Majesty ought to send him home in a coach—and a good one, mind—and allow him a night’s sleep in familiar surroundings. Then, if he feels himself able to report for duty to-morrow, there is no reason why he should not be able to assume it, provided he regularly doses himself with the draught I am preparing for him.”

  “All will be as you say, Navier.”

  The physicker bowed.

  Tortaalik made his way out of the room, and resumed his interrupted walk to the Imperial Baths. As he walked, he reflected once again on his discussion with his councilors, and how he wished Lord Khaavren could have been there. He resolved to speak with him as soon as could be on the morrow.

  Khaavren, for his part, was aware of little of this. He was in a sort of daze, and through this confusion he was dimly aware that he was being sent home, but not why, nor yet that he had succumbed to his wounds—in fact, he did not remember being wounded. He did remember that there was something he had attempted to do at which he had failed, and even in his semiconscious state this grieved him; yet he was also aware that he would soon be seeing Daro, which cheered him.

  And beneath it all there was the notion that there was something he ought to have done, or be doing, or have someone do, but he could neither concentrate his attention sufficiently to think of what it was, nor, had he been able to, had he the ability to wake enough for coherent speech.

  He felt himself being placed in the coach that had been ordered for him, and by chance it was a good one, so that the rocking motion soon pitched him fully into a deep, restful sleep. At this same time, the Warlord of the Empire stood in his offices contemplating the maps of the terrain around the city, but thinking, instead, about Adron e’Kieron, about His Majesty, and about a thousand other matters that came to his mind. After some few minutes of this, he sat down, took out a good, sharp pen, and wrote a hasty note to his wife, which he lost no time in putting into the hand of a messenger, with instructions to use the fastest posts His Majesty had.

  The messenger accepted the note and the instructions, bowed, and said, “Am I to await a reply before I return?”

  Rollondar shook his head. “You will not be returning,” he said. “Instead, you will bless me each day of your life, thanking me that you, and not another, had this errand of me. Now lose not a moment—you are to be there before dawn to-morrow day.”

  Chapter the Twenty-third

  Which Treats of the Uses of Repetition

  And of the Nature of Heroics;

  With Implied Comments on the Heroism

  To Be Found in the Lower Classes,

  As Compared to Those of the Very Highest.

  THE POWER OF REPETITION IS well known and highly respected among jongleurs, sorcerers, playwrights, and physickers, to name but a few; that is, it has long been known that frequent repetition of words or actions can elicit laughter, focus concentration, illuminate themes, or induce the painful and disabling Malady of the Tingling Hand.

  The author of these words is not unaware that repetition occurs in literature as well, yet he would be saddened if readers believed that he was using the repetition of words, or, indeed, events, as a device to either entertain or enlighten—in fact, recurrences are so much a part of history in general, and Khaavren’s history in particular, that it would be the most vulgar sort of dishonesty to leave out a vital exchange or interaction simply because something similar, or something reflective, had been earlier presented in the narrative. Should the reader choose to look for meaning, or, indeed, amusement in this repetition, we are powerless to prevent it (nor, indeed, would we wish to), but he is cautioned that such is in no wise our intention.

  This being said, we may go on to explain that, as full darkness came upon the city, and as the carriage containing our brave but senseless Captain pulled up to the house on the Street of the Glass Cutters and, with the help of the coachman and a Palace servant, disgorged our ailing Tiassa, there was yet another attempt on his life.

  It came about in this way: the carriage arrived, as we have already said, just as full dusk had fallen. The coachman, who had felt a great sense of urgency because of the money he had been given and because of the tones in which his orders had been expressed, did not even pause to light his lamps, but rather leapt down from his seat and opened the door to assist the servant in carrying our Tiassa to the door of his house, whose location the coachman had been given in explicit detail by the selfsame subaltern of the Guard who had transmitted His Majesty’s orders in terms so clear and precise.

  The coachman took one of Khaavren’s arms, the servant took the other, and, with only that help Khaavren was able to render in his condition—which was, as we have said, on the edge of consciousness (or, if the reader prefer, the edge of unconsciousness)—they led the Captain two steps closer to the door, at which point the coachman let go of the arm he had been holding. Upon noticing this, the Teckla said, “My dear sir, I assure you that I cannot carry this gentlemen unassisted, wherefore I urge you to take the arm again before he falls to the ground and my back is called to answer for the failure of his legs.”

  The coachman did not answer, and the servant, upon attempting to discover why, saw that his companion was stretched out full length upon the ground and that, moreover, there appeared, in the uneven light cast by the nearest glowbulb, still some distance away, a stream of blood flowing from a not inconsiderable gash in his forehead.

  Now this Teckla (whose name, we should add for the sake of completeness, if not euphony, was Klorynderata), had worked in the Imperial Palace for nearly all of his nine hundred years, and had often been assigned duties in the Dragon Wing of cleaning or carrying or fetching, and, hence, had heard no few stories featuring war, battle, blood, and death as either central themes or recurring motifs—yet he had never before encountered violence in such a close, and, we might add, intimate way. He responded, then, in a manner that ought to surprise no one: he loosed his hold on Khaavren’s shoulder and bolted down the street as fast as he could, leaving Khaavren to fall helpless next to the prostrate coachman, who, being either dead or rapidly dying, could be of no assistance to him whatsoever. The horses stamped and shifted as if aware that something was wrong, and this sound, along with the jingling of their harnesses, was all that could be heard in the street.

  Then it seemed as if a formless shadow grew from the larger shadow of the house and approached Khaavren’s senseless body. A closer look would have revealed, in the figure’s hand, a dull black rod, about a meter in length, of the type often used by sorcerers to concentrate, or even contain, particularly potent spells. A still closer look would have shown that the figure was, in fact, Laral, who quickly walked up to Khaavren, holding the rod aloft. There can be no question that all would have been up for Khaavren at that moment, except that, just then, the stillness was broken by Srahi, who cried out in her shrill, piercing, and abrasive voice, “What is this, a robbery in front of my master’s door? Hey, you, what is it you are doing? Get away from there!”

  Srahi had come around the corner, in the company of Mica, and se
en just enough to know that there was a crime taking place on the street outside of her house. Now Srahi was no stranger to crimes of one sort or another—in fact, if truth be told, she had, before being hired by Khaavren, herself engaged in activities of dubious legality; she had no thought whatsoever of passing judgment in any moral sense. But she also understood that the space in front of her master’s house was no place for criminal action, or violent crime in any case, and he Captain of His Majesty’s Guard!

  A sense of outrage not only filled her, but it positively carried her straight up to the amazed Laral, who could not believe that a Teckla would be so foolish, not to mention insolent, as to interfere with Jhereg business. We should add that, for her part, Srahi had no notion that this was a Jhereg before her, and whether she would have behaved differently if she had known we cannot say.

  Locked up in the rod in Laral’s hand was the embodiment of that spell called The Quick Road by those in the Jhereg who practiced assassination through sorcery—the spell was so named because it was reputed to be one of the quickest known paths to the afterlife: it acted by instantly freezing all of the liquids within the fairly small radius of the spell’s effect, wherefore it was only necessary to direct it at the victim’s heart for death to follow almost before the victim could be aware. For just the briefest of moments, it was directed at Srahi’s heart, but Laral realized that it would be ludicrous to use the spell she had carefully prepared for Khaavren on a mere Teckla, who could hardly threaten her in any case. At the same time, however, she realized that this Teckla may have glimpsed her face, and thus had to die, and that without any delay. Her solution to this problem was to bring forth a simple flashstone which she had concealed in a convenient pocket, raise it, and discharge it fully into Srahi’s face—a solution which she put into practice at once.

  It happened, however, that instead of discharging it into Srahi’s face, she rather discharged it into the space Srahi’s face had occupied a moment before, for, just at that moment, Mica, who had seen such devices in action often enough to recognize one at once, pushed his own body into Srahi’s in such a way that she was thrown to the side and the flashstone went off into the air above Mica’s head—Mica having, fortunately, the presence of mind to duck at the same time that he pushed. The horses, already made nervous by the commotion and the smell of blood, took this moment to bolt, and, with no coachman to direct them, hurtled down the street (for the sake of completeness, we ought to explain what became of the coach, but, in point of fact, we have not been able to learn of it).