by Steven Brust
At least, that's the story. Believe it or not, as you choose.
I believe it, myself.
I was seeing a ghost.
I stared at it. Staring seems to be the first thing one does when seeing a ghost. I wasn't quite sure what the second thing ought to be. According to the stories my grandfather had told me when I was young, screaming was highly thought of. But if I screamed I'd wake up everyone in the place, and I needed them to be sleeping if I was going to kill them. Also, I didn't feel the urge. I knew I was supposed to be frightened, but when it came down to it, I was much more fascinated than scared.
The ghost continued to solidify. It was a bit luminescent, which was how I could see it. It was emitting a very faint blue glow. As I watched, I began to see the lines of its face. Soon I could tell that it was an Easterner, then that it was male. It seemed to be looking at me—that is, actually seeing me. Since I didn't want to wake everyone up, I moved out of the room, back into Kelly's study. I made a light again and navigated the floor to his desk and sat down. I don't know how I knew the ghost would follow me, but I did and he did.
I cleared my throat. "Well," I said. "You must be Franz."
"Yes," said the ghost. Can I say his voice was sepulchral? I don't care. It was.
"I'm Vladimir Taltos—Cawti's husband."
The ghost—no, let me just call him Franz. Franz nodded. "What are you doing here?" As he spoke he continued to solidify, and his voice became more normal.
"Well," I said. "That's a bit hard to explain. What are you doing here?"
His brow (which I could now see) came together. "I'm not sure," he said. I studied him. His hair was light, straight, and neatly combed. How does a ghost comb his hair? His face was pleasant but undistinctive, his demeanor had that honest and sincere look that I associate with spice salesmen and dead lyorn. He had a peculiar way of standing, as if he were leaning ever so slightly forward, and when I spoke he turned his head just a bit to the side. I wondered if he was hard of hearing, or just very intent on catching everything that was said. He seemed to be a very intense listener. In fact, he seemed intense just in general. He said, "I was standing outside the meeting hall—"
"Yes. You were assassinated."
"Assassinated!"
I nodded.
He stared at me, then looked at himself, then closed his eyes for a moment. Finally he said, "I'm dead now? A ghost?"
"Something like that. You should be waiting for reincarnation, if I understand how these things work. I guess there aren't any pregnant Easterners around here who quite fit the bill. Be patient."
He studied me, sizing me up.
"You're Cawti's husband."
"Yes."
"You say I was assassinated. We know what you do. Could it have been—"
"No. Or rather, it could have but it wasn't. A fellow named Yerekim did it. You people were getting in the way of a guy named Herth."
"And he had me killed?" Franz suddenly smiled. "To try to scare us off?"
"Yeah."
He laughed. "I can guess how well it worked for him. We organized the whole district, didn't we? Using my murder as a rallying point?"
I stared. "Good guess. It doesn't bother you?"
"Bother me? We've been trying to unite Easterners and Teckla against the Empire all along. Why would it bother me?"
I said, "Oh. Well, it seems to be working."
"Good." His expression changed. "I wonder why I'm back."
I said, "What do you remember?"
"Not much. I was just standing there and my throat started itching. Then I felt someone touch my shoulder from behind. I turned around and my knees felt weak and then… I don't know. I remember waking up, sort of, and feeling… worried, I guess. How long ago did it happen?"
I told him. His eyes widened. "I wonder what brought me back?"
"You say you felt worried?"
I nodded.
I sighed inaudibly. I had a good guess what had brought him back, but I chose not to share it with him.
"Hey, boss."
"Yeah."
"This is really weird."
"No it isn't. It's normal. Everything is normal. It's just that some normal things are weirder than other normal things."
"Oh. That explains it then."
Franz said, "Tell me what's happened since I died."
I complied, being as honest as I could. When I told him about Sheryl his face grew hard and cold and I remembered that I was dealing with a fanatic. I tightened my grip on Spellbreaker but continued the recitation. When I told him about the barricades a gleam came into his eye, and I wondered just how effective Spellbreaker would be.
"Good," he said when I'd finished. "We have them running now."
"Um, yeah," I said.
"Then it was worth it."
"Dying?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
"I should talk to Pat if I can. Where is everyone else?"
I almost told him they were asleep, but I caught myself. "I'm not sure," I said.
His eyes narrowed. "You're here alone?"
"Not at all," I said. Loiosh hissed to emphasize the point. He glanced at the two jhereg, but didn't smile. He seemed to have as big a sense of humor as the others. I added, "I'm sort of watching the place."
His eyes widened. "You've joined us?"
"Yes."
He smiled at me, and there was so much warmth in his expression that I would have kicked him, only he was incorporeal. "Cawti didn't think you would."
"Yeah, well."
"Exciting, isn't it?"
"Exciting. Yes, it certainly is that."
"Where's the latest issue?"
"Issue?"
"Of the paper."
"Oh. Urn… it's around here somewhere."
He looked around the office, which I was still lighting up with my finger, and finally found one. He tried to pick it up, couldn't, kept trying, and finally managed. Then he set it down. "It's hard to hold things," he said. "Do you suppose you could turn the pages for me?"
"Uh, sure."
So I turned pages for him, and grunted agreement when he said things like, "No, he's missing the point," and, "Those bastards! How can they do that?" After a while he stopped and looked at me. "It was worth dying, but I wish I could be back in it again. There's so much to be done."
He went back to reading. I noticed that he seemed to be fading. I watched for a while, and the effect continued slowly but detectably. I said, "Look, I want to find people and let them know you're around, all right? Can you sort of keep an eye on things? I'm sure if anyone comes in you can scare him to death."
He smiled. "All right. Go ahead."
I nodded and went back out the way I'd come, through the kitchen and out the door.
"I thought we were going to kill them all, boss."
"So did I."
"Couldn't you have gotten rid of the ghost with Spellbreaker?"
"Probably."
"Well then, why—"
"He's already been killed once too often."
"But what about the rest of them?"
"I changed my mind."
"Oh. Well, I didn't like the idea any way."
"Good."
I teleported to a point a block from my house. There were lamps in the street that provided enough light to tell me I was alone. I made my way home very carefully, checking for the assassin.
"Why did you change your mind, boss?"
"I don't know. I have to think about it some more. Something about Franz, I guess."
I made my way up the stairs and into the house. The sounds of Cawti's gentle breathing came from the bedroom. I removed my boots and cloak, then went in, undressed, and climbed into bed carefully so I wouldn't wake her.
As I closed my eyes I saw Franz's face before me. It took longer than it should have to fall asleep.
Chapter 12
plain gray cloak: clean and press
I slept late and woke up slowly. I sat up in bed and tried to
organize my thoughts and decide how to spend the day. My latest great scheme hadn't worked at all, so I went back to an earlier one. Was there any way, really, to convince both Cawti and Herth that I'd been killed? Herth so he'd leave me alone, Cawti so she'd kill Herth for me. I couldn't think of anything.
"You know what your problem is, boss?"
"Huh? Yeah. Everyone wants to tell me what my problem is."
"Sorry I brought it up."
"Oh, go ahead."
"You're trying to find a good trick to use, and you can't solve this with tricks."
That stopped me. I said, "What you do mean?"
"Well, look, boss: What's been bothering you is that you're running into all these people who think you shouldn't be what you are, and you have to decide whether to change or not."
"Loiosh, what's bothering me is that there's an assassin out there who has my name and—"
"Didn't you say yesterday that we'd been in worse places before?"
"Yeah. And I've come up with some trick to get out of them."
"So why haven't you this time?"
"I'm too busy answering questions from jhereg who think that the only problem is great sorrow with my lot in life."
Loiosh giggled psionically and didn't say anything else. That's one trait Loiosh has that I've never found in anyone else: He knows when to stop pushing and let me just think about things. I suppose it comes from sharing my thoughts. I can't think of any other way to get it.
I teleported to the office. I wondered if my stomach would ever get used to the abuse. Cawti once told me that when she was working with Norathar they teleported almost everywhere, and her stomach never adjusted. They almost blew a job once, she said, because she threw up on the victim. I won't give you the details; she tells it better than I do.
I called Kragar into my office. "Well?"
"We've identified the assassin. His name is Quaysh."
"Quaysh? Unusual."
"It's Serioli. Means, 'He Who Designs Interesting Clasps For Ladies' Jewelry.'"
"I see. Do we have someone on him?"
"Yeah. A guy named Ishtvan. We used him once before."
"I remember. He was quick."
"That's the guy."
"Good. Who recognized Quaysh?"
"Sticks. They used to hang around together."
"Hmmm. Problem?"
"Not as far as I know. Business."
"Yeah. Okay, but tell Sticks to stay alert; if he knows that he knows who he is, and he doesn't know he knows—"
"What?"
"Just tell Sticks to be careful. Anything else important?"
"No. I'm putting together information on Herth's bodyguards, but it's going to be a while before we know enough to approach one."
I nodded and sent him about his business. I scratched under Loiosh's chin. I teleported—again—to South Adrilankha. I made my way to Kelly's place to see what was happening there. I stayed away from the corner I'd occupied before and took up a looser position down the street. Now the object was not to be noticed.
People who don't know this business seem to overrate the importance of looks in general and clothing in particular. This is because that's what one notices. You don't usually notice the way someone is walking, or the direction he's looking, or his movement through the crowd; you notice his appearance and his clothing. Nevertheless, that isn't what attracted your attention. You see people every day who look funny but don't attract attention. I mean, you certainly can't expect someone to say, "I didn't see this guy who looked funny," or, "There was someone wearing really weird clothes but I didn't notice him." An oddly shaped nose or unusual hair or a strange way of dressing are what you remember about someone you notice, but they aren't usually what calls him to your attention.
I was dressed oddly, for that area, but I was just being me, in the middle of the street where everyone else was, doing what everyone else was doing. No one noticed me, and I kept an eye on Kelly's flat to see if there was anything unusual going on. That is, I wanted to know if they'd discovered Franz.
After an hour or so I couldn't tell, so I made my way a little closer to the building, then a little closer, then I slipped around to the side, up against another one just like it. I pressed my ear against the wall. It was even thinner than I'd thought, so I had no trouble hearing what was going on inside.
They weren't talking about Franz at all.
Kelly was speaking, something about, "It's as if you're saying, 'I know you aren't interested, but-' under your breath." His voice was biting, sarcastic.
Cawti said something, but it was too low for me to hear. Too low for Kelly, too, because he said, "Speak up," in a tone that made me wince. Cawti spoke again, and I still couldn't hear her, and then Paresh said, "That's absurd. It's twice as important now. You may not have noticed, but we're in the middle of an uprising. Every mistake we make now is twice as deadly. We can't afford any errors."
Then Cawti muttered something else and I heard several exclamations, and Gregory said, "If you feel that way, why did you join us in the first place?" Natalia said, "You're looking at it from their view. You've been trying to be an aristocrat all your life, and even now you're trying. But we aren't here to change places with them, and we aren't going to destroy them by accepting their lies as facts." And then Kelly said something, and others did as well, but I'm not going to relate any more of it. It isn't any of your business, and it isn't any of mine even though I heard it.
I listened, though, to quite a bit of it, getting redder and redder. Loiosh kept squeezing his talons on my shoulder and at one point said, "Rocza's pretty upset." I didn't answer because I didn't trust myself to speak, even to Loiosh. There was a door right around the corner from me, and I could have gone in there and Kelly would have died before he knew what hit him.
It was hard not to do it.
The only thing that distracted me was that I kept thinking things like, "How can she put up with that?" And, "Why does she want to put up with that?" It also occurred to me that all! of the others were either very brave or very trusting. They knew as well as I did that Cawti could have killed the lot of them in seconds.
The woman I married would have done so, too.
I finally stole away from the building and had some klava.
She'd changed sometime in the last year, and I hadn't noticed. Maybe that was what bothered me the most. I mean, if I really loved her, wouldn't I have seen that she was turning from a walking death-machine into a… a whatever she was? But then, turn it around. I did love her; I could tell because it hurt so much, and I hadn't noticed, so there I was.
There was no point in wondering why she'd changed. No future in it, as Sticks would say. The question was, were we going to change together? No, let's be honest. The question was, was I going to pretend to be something I wasn't, or even try to become something I wasn't, in order to keep her? And when I put it that way I knew that I couldn't. I wasn't going to become another person on the chance that she'd come to love me again. She had married me, just as I was, and I had married her the same way. If she was going to turn away from me, I'd just have to live with it as best I could.
Or not. There was still Quaysh, who'd agreed to kill me, and Berth, who would try again if Quaysh failed. So maybe I wouldn't have to live with it at all. That would be convenient, but not really ideal. I ordered more klava, which came in a glass, which reminded me of Sheryl, which didn't cheer me up.
I was still in this gloomy frame of mind an hour later when Natalia came in accompanied by an Easterner I didn't know and a Teckla who wasn't Paresh. She saw me and nodded, then thought about it and joined me, after saying something to her companions. I invited her to sit and she did. I bought her a cup of tea because I was feeling expansive and because she didn't like klava. We just looked at each other until the tea arrived. It smelled better than the klava, and it came in a mug. I resolved to remember that.
Natalia's life was crudely sketched on her face. I mean, I couldn't see the details, but the
outline was there. Her hair was dark but graying; the thin gray streaks that don't seem dignified but merely old. Her brow was wide and the furrows in it seemed permanent. There were deep lines next to her nose, which I'm sure had been a cute button when she was younger. Her face was thin and marked with tension, as if she went around with her jaw clenched. And yet, deep down behind it all, there was a sparkle in her eyes. She seemed to be in her early forties.
As she sipped on her tea and formed opinions of me that were as valid as mine of her, I said, "So, how did you get involved in all of this?"
She started to answer and I sensed that I was about to get a tract, so I said, "No, never mind. I'm not sure I want to hear."
She favored me with a sort of half-smile, which was the most cheerful thing I'd run into from her yet. She said, "You don't want to hear about my life as a harem girl for an Eastern king?"
I said, "Why yes, I would. I don't suppose you really were one though, were you?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Just as well," I said.
"I was a thief for a while, though."
"Yeah? Not a bad occupation. The hours are good, anyway."
"It's like anything else," she said. "It depends on your stature in the field."
I thought about Orcas who will knife anyone for twenty Imperials, and said, "I suppose. I take it you weren't at the top."
She nodded. "We lived on the other side of town." She meant the other side of South Adrilankha. To most Easterners, South Adrilankha was all of town there was. "That was," she continued, "after my mother died. My father would bring me into an inn and I would steal the coins the drinkers left on the bar, or sometimes cut their purses."
I said, "No, that isn't really the top of the profession, is it? But I suppose it's a living."
"After a fashion."
"Did you get caught?"
"Yes. Once. We'd agreed that if I was caught he'd go through the motions of beating me, as if it were my own idea. Then when I was finally caught, he did more than go through the motions."
"I see. Did you tell what really happened?"
"No. I was only about ten, and I was too busy crying and screaming that I'd never steal again, and I'm sorry, and anything else I could think of to say."