The Book of Jhereg

by Steven Brust

  “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.

  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. Every 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 anymore 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.”

  7

  “Always speak politely to an enraged Dragon.”

  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.