Jhegaala (Vlad Taltos)

by Steven Brust

And you off your—chairs.

  —Miersen, Six Parts Water

  Curtain Call

  I like to think the Jhereg assassin—whoever he was—had something all set up, and if I’d remained in town an hour longer he’d have had me. I like to think that. It appeals to my sense of the dramatic. In fact, I have no idea; all I know is that I got out of town still breathing.

  That was three years ago, and they haven’t gotten me yet.

  Meehayi helped me find a hiding place—not that hard in a big city—and stayed with me until I could walk well enough to find one he didn’t know about; then I gave him some gold and sent him traveling. I suggested he wait at least a couple of years before returning to Burz.

  Apparently one of the things the witches had been giving me was for pain, and when they stopped giving it to me things got unpleasant. There are a few months in there that don’t bear thinking about or talking about, but I got past it.

  It was, in the end, just about a year that I was in hiding in Fenario, before I felt like myself again. Then I returned to Count Saekeresh’s manor, and snuck in one night, found the vault in the basement, opened it, took what I wanted, and left. I honestly have no idea if Her Imperial Majesty Zerika the Fourth has the least interest in a process for mass-producing high-quality paper, but it is now in her hands, courtesy of the Imperial Post, and the idea tickles me. I think even Meehayi would approve; not that I care.

  In all, it was a year and a couple of weeks from when I had stood on Mount Saestara and failed to see the future that I stood there again, and, I imagine, did no better. But I was well and whole; well, almost whole. For as stupid as I was, I guess I got off lucky.

  “Loiosh, do you remember that peasant who helped us bury the Merss family?”

  “Sure, Boss.”

  “He started to say something about them. About how one winter they did something or other.”

  “I remember.”

  The wind was very cold.

  “I wish I’d let him finish the story,” I said.

  I stood on the mountain and didn’t look back. Looking ahead, I couldn’t see my future at all, which I figured was probably just as well.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Dr. Flash Gordon for medical consultations, and to Anne K. G. Murphy for a very useful emacs macro. Thanks to my first readers, Kit O’Connell and Reesa Brown, for much useful feedback. And a very warm thank-you is due, as always, to Robert Sloan, who created so very much of the background of Dragaera.