Jhegaala (Vlad Taltos)

by Steven Brust

  Meanwhile, Dahni had been saying things I’d missed while talking with Loiosh. I shook my head. “The manor,” I told him. “I must insist.”

  Loiosh and Rocza hissed. Dahni looked at those who were carrying me, and I could see his thought process. The soldiers, or, if you will, Vlad-bearers, were giving the jhereg nervous looks. Thinking back, I have to admire them. Those fangs were inches from the hands of a couple of the guys; if it had been me, I’d have dropped me and bolted. But I was concentrating on Dahni. This was the crucial moment of the whole thing. I wondered if I was going to have to tell Loiosh and Rocza to attack. I hoped not. For one thing, there really is no way to predict how jhereg venom will affect any given individual; it could be anything from dropping helpless in seconds and dying within minutes to only becoming mildly ill, and I didn’t like to chance it. For another, however it ended it was liable to leave me flat on my back, unable to move, at the mercy of someone who made a career of being merciless.

  I told Dahni, “You can’t make it.”

  After a moment, he said, “And what happens to me?”

  “Once I’m at the Count’s, you can go. The jhereg won’t hurt you.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “I trusted you to rescue me, didn’t I?”

  He gave a short, bitter laugh.

  “Think it over,” I said. “You were my best shot so I took it. Right now, doing what I want is your best shot.”

  He hesitated another second or two, then nodded to the men holding my blanket. “Get him to the wagon, then take him back home. On my authority.”

  One of them said, “Yes, lord,” and they started moving with me again. I think I might have passed out somewhere in there, because I don’t remember the boat trip across the river.

  I remember the wagon ride, however. It wasn’t as much fun as you might imagine. I’m sure I can’t have been awake and aware for the entire journey, but it sure seems like it. Days. It took days. And it’s funny how a wagon catches even the tiniest rut or pothole in the road. The worst part was when we stopped, and I thought we’d finally arrived; but it turned out the Count’s guards were having words with a patrol. When the jolting and bouncing started up again I bit my lip because I didn’t want them to hear me cry out.

  At last it really stopped. They came around, and opened the back, and then I was slipping in and out of consciousness again for a while. It wasn’t pain, it was just exhaustion. I remember the butler, looking down at me, and saying, “The east room,” and thinking how appropriate it was, what with me being an Easterner. I tried to say something about that but it didn’t get far. As I stared into his face, I wondered what he was thinking: How much of that bland indifference was hiding his emotions, and how much was training himself not to have any? He wasn’t like an Issola; it wasn’t a desire to make someone feel comfortable. It was something else. A natural or cultivated distancing of himself from anything beyond what he ought to display.

  The more I thought about him, the less I thought about anything else, which was the point of the exercise, in case I need to spell it out for you.

  The butler’s face turned into that of the Count himself, and I couldn’t read his expression, but he didn’t give the appearance of someone about to kill me. I saw him walk away with Dahni, the two of them speaking in low tones. I don’t think it was paranoia to conclude that my name might have come up in that conversation. I asked Loiosh if he could listen in, but they were being careful. Still, I was pretty sure he wasn’t planning to kill me.

  Not that I could have done anything about it at that point anyway. I’d pitched all my flat stones and now I was going to see where the round stones stopped rolling.

  They carried me up a flight of stairs, which wasn’t as bad as the wagon, and put me on a soft bed. Loiosh curled up by my ear with Rocza next to him. I could feel his head moving back and forth, watching everything. I could almost hear him thinking, Try something; let anyone just try something. That’s my last memory for a while.

  Later—I have no idea how much later—there was a bearded, gray-eyed older man bending over me, looking at me with great concern and speaking—I couldn’t see to whom—to a low voice in an uncouth language I’d never heard before.

  I tried to take an inventory of how I felt, but all I felt was numb—not that I was complaining about that. I also felt too weak to move, but I didn’t mind so much. Then I became aware that my left arm wouldn’t move at all and I started to panic. The old man said, “Shhhh,” and held his palm out. “It’s all right,” he said in a strange accent, with a sort of singsong quality to the end of his phrases. “It was me. I have tied down your hand so you can’t injure it more.”

  I tried to ask if something was wrong with my hand, but talking seemed like a lot of work.

  Confused flashes of faces and lights in my face and concerned looks, soothing voices, worried voices, one fading into the other and the smell of herbs steaming reminding me of Noish-pa while I floated there, still, things happening to me as if they were happening around me and all the time my familiar’s voice in mind, saying I know not what, but soothing and warming. I slept and dreamt and I woke and, I don’t know how to say it, at some point the world stopped slipping in and out of the dreamland and I started to know what was real. I think it was getting toward morning when I finally fell into a real sleep that lasted more than an hour.

  I remember Loiosh asking me if I was able to carry on a coherent conversation yet. I told him I was, but I preferred not to. He didn’t seem happy about it, but let me alone for another timeless time.

  I won’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure everything I’ve mentioned was the same night, that first night I was there, all before dawn. It was an event-filled time when nothing happened, and I wouldn’t care to repeat it.

  Sometime later, I think it was the next day, Loiosh said, “Is it time for you to tell me how you figured out Dahni would rescue you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s because when I hear, I’m going to panic, aren’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  A servant I didn’t recognize poked his head in while I was awake. Loiosh and Rocza instantly became fully alert, but I decided he really was just a servant. He asked if I needed anything and I couldn’t speak to answer. He went out, but returned later with another. They gave me thin soup and brandy—good brandy. I refrained from asking if it had been drugged.

  The next several hours went that way. They seemed to think I needed to eat every five minutes or so, but that I couldn’t be permitted much when I did. I was most often served by the butler, who never let a human remark pass his lips. If I’d had more energy, I’d have worked on him. After the first time, they didn’t give me any more brandy, which was a shame. If the soup had any effect I didn’t notice it.

  “How much time do you think we have, Boss?”

  “Before what?”

  “Before whatever you haven’t told me about happens.”

  “Oh. Maybe a day, maybe two. Hard to say.”

  Later, the old man made me sniff something pungent and peppery to knock me out, and the amulet was removed from my chest. I know this because he told me about it when I was awake again; I have no memory of any of it. He also put some sort of powder where it had been so that the wound wouldn’t mortify.

  When I woke up, it was lying by my pillow, and there were fresh bandages around my chest to add to the collection. He hadn’t told me what he was going to do; if he had, I might have wanted to keep it there. Think how much trouble it would save. Then again, maybe not.

  I spent a day there doing nothing except being fed and looked at by the old man, and nothing bad happened that day or that night, except that I didn’t sleep particularly well. The next day, two men and one woman came, introduced themselves as witches, and tried to do what they could.

  They worked, and had whispered conversations, and worked some more, and, at last, tried the measure of desperation: they talked to me.

  “Our spells
seem unable to aid you.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The Art has no direct effect on me. I don’t know why, it’s been like that all my life. My maternal grandfather was the same way.”

  This seemed to throw them, but they didn’t question it. One said, “You say, ‘direct’ effect?”

  “Herbs, infusions, and things of that nature, prepared with the Art, appear to work normally, it is just that they cannot be prepared by me or close to me, and a glamour cast upon me will have no effect, and my aura is invisible. I have no idea why this might be.”

  I lay on my pillow next to the amulet of black Phoenix Stone and looked sincerely puzzled at them.

  They ended by making poultices and infusions and such. They concealed what they were doing, or I might have been able to offer suggestions, but they did seem to know what they were about except for making infusions that looked and smelled like poultices.

  I drank soup and infusions, and tried to decide if the poultices smelled worse than the paper mill, and let them tend me. The Count owed me that much, by Verra’s tits! I dozed off, woke up, dodged Loiosh’s questions, stared at the ceiling. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out a way to keep all of their work from being wasted.

  I didn’t come up with anything.

  Loiosh was getting jumpier by the moment. He finally said, “Boss, if I know what I’m scared of, it can’t be worse than this.”

  “Yes it can.”

  “And I have been known to come up with an idea once in a while.”

  “Okay, that much I’ll agree with.”

  “Well?”

  I sighed. “All right. Dahni said that talking to me in the dark like that would give him an edge.”

  “And?”

  “And why would it give him an edge?”

  “Because you have—oh.”

  “Right. How could he know that?”

  “Uh, how could he know that?”

  “Only one way I can think of. He’d been in touch with the Jhereg. You know how we work. You know how I work. When I’m planning to take someone down, I find out everything about him. Everything. I learn what color hose he prefers, and how hot he likes his bathwater, and—”

  “The Jhereg would have learned that you have bad night vision.”

  “Yes.”

  “And told Dahni, because it might give him an edge in—”

  “In taking me and hauling me out to them, so they don’t have to make a stir by coming into town as Dragaerans, excuse me, ‘elfs’. Much less as elfs with a Morganti weapon.”

  “You say ‘them.’”

  “Probably just one.”

  “You’re telling me that there is a Jhereg assassin here?”

  “Not here, exactly. But nearby, probably within an hour or so of town.”

  “Boss! We—wait, I still don’t see—Dahni is working for the Jhereg?”

  “Not working, exactly. I’m guessing they just found a local willing to do some things for them. You know, ‘Deliver this guy to me, and I will make you a wealthy man indeed’. That sort of thing.”

  “But then, you must have—oh. He’d be willing to rescue you because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t get paid.”

  “Right.”

  “So, he was going to bring you—”

  “Right to the assassin, yes. I had to count on you, chum.”

  “When did you put this together, Boss?”

  “When Dahni made the remark about talking to me in the dark giving him an edge.”

  “Pretty clever.”

  “That’s why you work for me, instead of the other way around.”

  “It thought it was the opposable thumbs.”

  “That too.”

  “You might have told me.”

  “It wasn’t the time for long explanations and recriminations. And hearing about how I should have gotten out of town when you said, and about how—”

  “—you shouldn’t have taken the amulet off just because your muscles were tired?”

  “That, too.”

  “So you think that’s how they found you?”

  “Probably. If they’d trailed me they’d have taken me before I got to a town. A day to teleport into the mountains to somewhere someone has memorized, and, with a good horse, maybe another day or two to get here. Yeah, it’s about right.”

  “So here you are, flat on your back, can hardly stand up, with your left hand …”

  He trailed off. “What’s wrong with my left hand?”

  “We’ll know when the physicker is done. Maybe nothing.”

  A chill went through me.

  “Two words, Boss: Castle Black.”

  “You know I won’t do that to Morrolan. Besides, we’ll never make it there.”

  After a moment’s thought, he agreed with the second.

  “What will they do now, Boss? Sneak in here and put a shine on you?”

  “They know about you and Rocza. They’ll need to come up with a way to disable you.”

  “Which is why they tried to—no, that doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, that was the Count.”

  “But then, I still don’t understand why the Count is protecting you, if he’s the one who first took you.”

  I sighed. “Let me rest for a bit, Loiosh. That’s going to take more explanation than I can deal with right now.”

  “Okay, Boss. Get some rest. I’ll try to get us out of this mess, since it’s obvious that you can’t.”

  “You just always pick the right thing to say to cheer me up.”

  I did get some rest, though the dreams were ugly and woke me up repeatedly, as did the witches and the physicker. Why is it that when you most need rest and healing, those in charge of healing you never let you rest?

  Later that day, the Count stopped by to see me. “My lord Merss,” he said. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do—”

  “You’re doing it,” I said, trying to speak loud enough for him to hear me. “And it isn’t done.”

  His pure white brows came together. “How—?”

  “I imagine someone will be sneaking in here to kill me. Probably tonight or tomorrow. No, I shouldn’t say that. He’ll be trying to kill me, I have no way of knowing if it will involve sneaking in here or some other approach entirely.”

  He shook his head. “No. I’ve, ah, spoken to those responsible. They’ll make no effort—”

  “They aren’t the ones who will be coming.”

  “Then who?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t tell me?”

  “That is, I don’t choose to.”

  He opened his mouth and closed it. “Very well,” he said. “Can you tell me how best to guard you?”

  Now he was asking the hard questions.

  Well, if it were me, how would I do it? I wouldn’t bribe a guard; too risky if he said no. Pure stealth would be an option, but how to deal with guards in the actual room, which is an obvious step, not to mention Loiosh and Rocza? If it were me, I’d never have a plan that involved fighting. Fighting is dangerous, even if you have an edge because, say, you’re invis—

  “Sorcery,” I said. “The attack will come using sorcery.”

  “Witchcraft?”

  “No, the, ah, the Art of the elfs. It’s different.”

  He rubbed the back of his hand over his lips. “I’ve heard of such things. I know nothing about how it works, or how to defend against it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know something about it, but defending against it, when you don’t know what form the attack will take, well, that’s rough. He can’t come at me directly because, ah, he can’t. But he could blow up your manor, or make a chunk of roof fall on my head, or, well, I don’t know. There are many possibilities.”

  “Perhaps I should I hide you.”

  I thought about another ride on a wagon and moaned to myself. “Perhaps you should,” I said.

  “Aybrahmis says you shouldn’t be moved, but—”

  “Who?”

  �
�The physicker.”

  “Oh.”

  “But if it’s between that, and permitting you to be, to be taken from under my roof—”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? Once I have you safe, I shall retire to the City. I shall be having the servants pack what I need directly we finish our talk.”

  “What a coward, Boss!”

  “I knew there was something I admired about him.”

  “I’ll never get tired of handing you setups.”

  “Someday I may ignore one, just to watch you twitch.”

  He sort of hissed a disbelieving laugh into my head.

  “I don’t suppose you know of a convenient cave?”

  “Cave? No, I know of no caves. Why?”

  “I don’t know, hiding in caves is supposed to be traditional.”

  He looked dubious. I hadn’t been serious anyway.

  The trouble was, the assassin could do anything, especially if he were a sorcerer. Well, okay, he couldn’t do anything to me directly; the gold Phoenix Stone prevented that. But he didn’t need to, either. He could blow up the entire manor. Sure, assassins don’t like to do things that will call attention to ourselves—that is, themselves—but out here in the East, who cared? And I had no idea how skilled he was. When you’re after someone, you know who he is—as I told Loiosh, you know everything there is to know about him before you make a move. When someone is coming after you, you don’t know anything.

  Well, no, there was one thing we knew: that there was an assassin after me. And there was another thing that we could find out, if we went about it right.

  “What do you think, Loiosh?”

  “He might have bolted.”

  “Yeah, I know. But if he hasn’t?”

  “I can’t think of anything better, Boss. But we’d best do it fast. It would be embarrassing if the Jhereg put a shine on you right before we were about to go into action.”

  “You’re sounding like me.”

  “Easterners are short. Jhereg are reptiles. Water is wet. I sound like you.”

  I let him have that one and turned my attention—what there was of it—back to His Lordship. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”

  “Eh?” He put his ear next to my mouth so I wouldn’t have to shout.