by Steven Brust
Fairness matters to me. I’ve heard Eastern rebels speak of equality; I’ve heard Iorich advocates speak of justice. I’m not sure if I understand either of those concepts; they seem, I don’t know, too far from my experience to grasp, or else I just don’t have the sort of mind that can work with them. But I’ve always been concerned with fair. In a sense, that’s why I could do what I did for so long—it might not be justice to kill some poor son-of-a-bitch who was skimming from his boss; and it certainly made him and the boss unequal. But it always seemed fair to me. He knew the rules, he knew the risks.
And, yeah, I’d broken the rules: I’d threatened the Imperial representative of the Jhereg and I’d testified to the Empire. But the fact is, I’d had no choice. Cawti was threatened. And I was scared and I was furious. I don’t know, it looks different from the perspective of years, but I still don’t see what else I could have done.
So, yeah, there was that voice inside loudly howling that it wasn’t fair. Usually, I was too busy—or maybe I tried to keep myself too busy—to pay attention to it. But there, in that basement, staring at walls, it rolled over me from time to time.
Oh, skip it; you don’t need to hear about it. I do apologize; my intention isn’t to make you listen to me complain. I know how wearying that is. But I’m also trying to tell you what happened, the whole thing, the why as well as the how; and that’s a piece of it, all right?
I also considered the information I’d gotten about Lady Teldra. I mean, was I starving her by not letting her destroy souls? Should I, I don’t know, just go out and do that? I didn’t think I could. I didn’t think she’d want me to. It certainly explained why I wasn’t feeling better, though; I mean, why she’d only partly healed me. I’d drained her. I got the image in my head of one of those water-pulleys you see in the North: once the water has emptied out of them, they can’t lift any more until you fill them. I had never imagined Lady Teldra like that, but maybe she was.
Which meant that I might need her to do something sometime, and she’d be unable to do it. That was not a comforting thought.
I fell asleep and dreamed I was operating a water-pulley, then that I was in one. Dreams are stupid.
My hostess brought bread and cheese from time to time, and once some tough peppery sausages, and more red mushrooms, which made me very happy (although my mouth raised some objections). Most of the time I did nothing, and tried very hard not to think. Loiosh spent a lot of the time just flying around the city; he was happier than he wanted to admit to know that, at least for a little while, I was pretty safe. I know I liked that part of it. No friends, no enemies, no gods; just four blank walls and the sound of my own breathing.
Did it help? Yeah, I guess some. It seems like sometimes, if your body is wasted, ruined, falling apart, your mind is a bit more willing to accept doing nothing without going crazy. At least, sometimes. I think that’s what made it tolerable.
What I wanted to do was take Lady Teldra, find as many high-up Jhereg as I could, and kill as many of them as possible before they got me. I wanted to do that very, very much. And there were certainly advantages to the idea: it was unlikely, if I made things that bloody, that they’d actually be able to nail me with a Morganti weapon; and just dying might be considered a win.
Is it sad when dying is a win?
The problem was Cawti and the boy; if I did that, then I had no doubt the Jhereg would go after them—before they got me, as a threat, or afterward, as revenge.
I couldn’t do it.
I sat in the room, relaxed, tense, angry, calm.
So, what is it that sparked the idea? Was it frustration? Boredom? Anger? Dreams of water-pulleys? Half-conscious musing on fairness?
I don’t know. Doesn’t much matter, I suppose. I’d like to say I dreamed it because there would be a certain charm in that, but I didn’t. I was doing a lot of sleeping, a lot of resting, a lot of nothing. I wasn’t even thinking that much about my predicament; or, rather, it would be more accurate to say I was doing everything I could not to think about it, just for a while. I’d been there two days, and it was getting close to time to be on my way, which meant making a decision I wasn’t any closer to making. The knowledge that I was going to leave the place was stirring up a combination of anticipation and fear. Yeah, it would be good to be out, but. You know.
In any case, that’s when it hit me. That’s when everything changed. Because if you are at the point where things are intolerable, and then suddenly you see a way to fix them, there isn’t a lot of question about trying it, no matter how crazy it seems.
I was lying on my back, fingers clasped behind my head, staring at the rough texture of the ceiling, and then I drifted off, and then I remembered what Daymar had said on that long-ago evening. It wasn’t like I dreamed it, it was more like the memory woke me up. Does that make sense?
Suddenly it was there, and then I paced the halls and pieces of a plan started falling into place. When enough of them were in place, I told Loiosh to find Daymar.
* * *
This was going to be difficult, tricky, probably futile, and certainly unpleasant. But all in all, not bad if you use cutting your own throat as the standard of comparison.
I was pretty sure I could do the part that ought to be impossible.
I was pretty sure I could sell the part I had to sell.
But the issue, as it always seemed to be, was: repercussions. How could I protect myself and expose myself at the same time, when I didn’t know who exactly I’d be protecting myself from? And, if that turned out to be impossible, how could I find out who I needed to protect myself from?
My grandfather, in teaching me the human style of swordsmanship, had said over and over that there was no way to control what your opponent did—that you had to be prepared for the guy to make any decision available to him, and be ready to respond. He was trying to make me understand the importance of being adaptable to changing circumstances. But the point is, he would repeat that there is no way to control your opponent’s actions. And then one time he added, “Except one.”
“What’s that?”
“Give him a perfect shot at your heart.”
“But then I’ll be dead, Noish-pa.”
“Yes, Vladimir. That’s why we don’t do it.”
Well, okay, then. If you can’t control where the attack comes from, limit where the attack goes, right? Create your own opening, so that you’ve made your preparations for whoever charges into it. That might be feasible, if I were careful.
It would take bringing some high-powered Jhereg together, and then running a game on them. There would certainly be sorcery. How to work around it? The amulet? No. Lady Teldra? Not the greatest sorcerer of all the weapons I’ve heard of, but still able to hold her own when needed.
Only, yeah. I had to assume she wouldn’t be available. Was there any way to—yeah. It is much more difficult to enchant a living thing than a dead object—that’s why objects were teleported before they figured out how to do people, right? So that meant I could maybe find a way to do that.
Or, wait. Hold it. Whole different idea. Castle Black? There would be a certain elegance in, just at the right moment, getting to Castle Black where the Jhereg wouldn’t dare touch me, or else put someone else in exactly the position I’d been in so many years before. Elegant and amusing, but no; there was another piece to it: Morrolan. I couldn’t put him in that position. At least, not if there was another way that had a reasonable chance of working.
And there was a way. And it did have a chance of working. Maybe even a reasonable chance. If I could just figure out …
Resources. I was going to need a lot of resources. Both the kind you hold in your hand, and the kind that walk and talk. The latter are always trickier. Who to call on? Cawti? No, I couldn’t drag her into this without also dragging in the boy, and that wasn’t going to happen.
Kiera or Kragar, or both. Two old friends; two people still willing to help me in spite of the Jhereg, and with contacts deep
enough that maybe—maybe one or the other of them could get what I needed.
The idea, you see, fell into two distinct pieces: Part one, convince the Jhereg they didn’t want to kill me. Part two, stay alive while completing part one. Tricky, because, even if this worked, word would get out—word had to get out—what I was doing. And a lot of Jhereg were very, very unhappy with me. All of which meant that there was bound to be someone—someone or someones—who was just flat-out not going to let me get away with it, no matter what. I’d made too many Jhereg too mad.
So, while I was pretty sure I had the first part figured out, the second part was going to be harder. After pacing for a while, I became convinced that I just couldn’t figure out the second until I’d spoken with Kragar or Kiera.
So, then.
I went back to the room I’d been sleeping in to make sure I hadn’t left anything there; I wouldn’t be coming back. I checked the dagger in my boot and the throwing knife up my sleeve, and the things on the harness. I strapped the rapier to my side with Lady Teldra just in front of it, and the various things in and under my cloak. I looked around the room again, and gave it a silent thank-you. Then, Rocza riding discontentedly on my right shoulder, I went down the hall and out, leaving the clammy mildewy stench of the basement for the stink of South Adrilankha.
I stopped to thank Auntie and tell her good-bye. She sniffed, nodded, and asked if there was anything else I needed.
“Do you know any place nearby I can get cleaned up a bit?”
“Nine doors down that way and across the street. It doesn’t look like it, but they let rooms, and they’ll have a pump and a basin. Give them a coin, and if they give you any trouble tell them I sent you.”
“All right. Good. Thanks. Also, do you have some koelsch leaves? I’m out.”
“They aren’t good for you.”
“I know. But neither is dying.”
She grunted, went into her house, and emerged with a small leather pouch. “Six coppers,” she said.
I handed her a silver coin. “Keep it,” I said.
She nodded. “Good luck,” she told me.
“Thanks.”
I followed her directions and found myself in the sort of flophouse I’d been staying in lately. I entered, flipped the landlady a coin without saying a word, and went up the stairs to use the pump room and get myself a little more prepared to face the world. Or Daymar, at least. The water was cold. They had a small mirror there, and I took some time to study myself; yeah, I still looked like me, except I now had a small white scar on my throat.
When I’d told Loiosh to have Daymar meet me “across the street,” I meant a place I’d discovered some weeks earlier, while wandering about South Adrilankha. They were called Len and Nieces, and they made klava and sold pastries. The pastries weren’t all that good, but the klava was excellent, and the baking and the roasting coffee overpowered the smells from outside. I walked down three steps and into the place with its seven identical round tables, and paused to take a deep breath before seating myself. There were two other tables occupied, both of them by old men and women—human, of course. That is, what the Dragaerans called Easterners, like me. Dragaerans refer to themselves as human, and I’m usually too polite to correct them.
The people at the tables were either the same ones I’d seen before, or the same type. One look at them, and you knew they spent all of their time here. I had mixed feelings about that: maybe it’s a useless waste to spend every minute of your life doing nothing more than sitting around gabbing; but maybe it’s not a bad thing at all. I don’t know.
Claudia—one of the nieces—brought me klava and a cream-filled sweet roll, as always without a word. She wasn’t used to people openly carrying weapons, and didn’t know what to make of me. The first time I’d come in, Len had asked me to remove my sword while I was there; I’d looked at him until he went back to his counter. Since then, it had become obvious that I made them uncomfortable, but it wasn’t like there was anything they could do about it. And I didn’t care that much. Does that make me a bad person? I don’t care that much about that, either.
The klava was even better than usual that day; the sweet roll was all right, but my brain was working too fast to give either of them the concentration they deserved. I kept checking the door for Daymar, which was pointless: it would be hours at best before Loiosh would be able to find him, assuming he was in the City.
I had to hide from the Orb while I did it, Daymar had said.
Every citizen of the Empire is linked to the Orb. It permits sorcery and is how you can tell time, and, if you have information vital to the Empire or are really stupid, you can reach the Empress instantly and directly. The amulet I wore was powerful enough so that I couldn’t even detect the Orb if I was too far from it, but the Orb could still find me.
I knew two ways to hide from the Orb. You could give up your citizenship, and then the Orb couldn’t find you, but you wouldn’t be able to use sorcery. The other is a short-term solution: You concentrate on blanking out your mind, thinking of nothing, imagining a big, black, empty well. I’d done that once for a little while, just to see if I could, but I didn’t think I’d be able to pull it off if I were in danger. In any case, neither of those methods would help in this case. But neither of them would have done Daymar any good either, so there might be a third way. If there was, it might have something to do with what Auntie had just told me about attuning one’s mind, which seemed reasonable, based on my experience with sorcery and my knowledge of witchcraft. And, if so, it might be just what I needed to set things in motion.
That’s a lot of maybes. And if it went wrong, I’d be dead. But if I did nothing, I’d be dead anyway—the last few days had convinced me of that, if nothing else.
I gestured to Claudia. She brought me more klava, still not looking at me. I guess something strange happens in the heads of Easterners when they’re around someone like me—they feel like I’m one of them, but not. Come to think of it, I feel the same way. The last time I went back East, I found out—no, skip it. I did a lot of reminiscing while I was waiting for Daymar, and I told myself the story of how I’d gotten into this mess, but you don’t need to hear about it.
I had just finished my second sweet roll—this one tartberry—and was drinking my fourth cup of klava when there was a pop of displaced air, and Daymar was sitting in front of me, floating cross-legged a few feet off the ground. Loiosh flapped over to me.
Daymar looked around. “Why are you holding a weapon?”
I got up off the floor and made the dagger vanish. “It would take too long to explain,” I explained.
I picked my chair up while Daymar seated himself in a more traditional way. By this time, there was only one table of old men—they were studiously not looking at the commotion. Len and Claudia were, in fact, staring at Daymar, but when I looked at them they got busy doing other things.
I turned to Daymar and smiled.
Part Two
WINGS OF THE HAWK
4
MAKING PLANS OR MAKING CONVERSATION
“Aren’t they used to having humans in here?” he asked.
I didn’t take the trouble to correct him about who the humans were because, like I said, I’m too polite. I said, “Not humans who suddenly appear in the middle of their place, no.”
“Oh,” he said. “Why not?”
“It’s not done,” I said. “In the East.”
“Oh.”
Loiosh settled on my left shoulder, Rocza on my right. I called over for a klava for Daymar; when it was delivered, he said, “It’s good to see you, Vlad.”
“You too,” I lied.
“When I saw Loiosh, I concluded that you wanted to see me.”
“Good thinking.”
“He let me get the location from his mind, so I teleported.”
“Yes,” I said.
“So I was right?”
I nodded.
He sat back, tilted his head, and waited.
/> “I wanted to ask you about something,” I said.
He nodded. “All right, I’m listening.”
“You wish me to ask you, then?” I said, keeping my face straight.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s up to you. I wasn’t doing anything important. And I’m not in a hurry. So, take as much time as you want.”
Explaining the joke to Daymar seemed like a poor use of my time, so I said, “It goes back to a remark you made some years ago. We were sitting around Castle Black, and you mentioned a Hawk rite of passage you’d undergone.”
“I don’t remember that,” he said. “I mean, I remember the rite, but I don’t remember talking about it.”
“We were all a little drunk.”
He nodded, waiting, his big eyes fixed on me. He has a way of looking at you that simultaneously indicates total concentration, and a distant abstraction. I’m not sure how he does it. But then, I’m not sure how he does most of what he does.
“You said something about a time you’d hidden from the Orb. Could you expand on that?”
I hadn’t thought about predicting what he’d say, but if I had, I would have been right. “Why would you want to know about that?” he said.
“Just curious,” I told him.
I don’t believe there is anyone else in the world who would have accepted that as a reasonable answer under the circumstances, but Daymar just nodded and said, “All right. What exactly do you want to know?”
“How did you do it?”
He tilted his head as if I’d asked him the sum of two and two.
“The link to the Orb comes in on a particular set of psychic channels. You just route those around you for as long as you need to hide.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“I hadn’t realized it was that simple.”
He nodded. “That’s all it is.”
“Well, good then.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Yes. How do you reroute a psychic channel?”
He blinked a couple of times, tilted his head again, and frowned. “Vlad,” he said, “are you jesting?”