by Steven Brust
"Stop it, Loiosh!"
"You asked."
I sighed. "I suppose I did. But why did she have to get involved in something like that? Why—?"
"Why don't you ask her?"
"I did. She didn't answer."
"She would have if you hadn't been so—"
"I don't need advice on my marriage from a Verra-be-damned… no, I suppose I do, don't I? All right. What would you do?"
"Ummm… I'd tell her that if I had two dead Teckla I'd give her one."
"You're a lot of help."
"Melestav!" I yelled. "Send Kragar in here."
"Right away, boss."
Kragar is one of those people who are just naturally unnoticeable. You could be sitting in a chair looking for him and not realize that you were sitting in his lap. So I concentrated hard on the door, and managed to see him come in.
"What is it, Vlad?"
"Open your mind, my man. I have a face to give to you."
"Okay."
He did, and I concentrated on Bajinok—the fellow I'd spoken with a few days before, who had offered me "work" that would be "just my style." Could he have meant an Easterner? Yeah, maybe. He had no way of knowing that to finalize an Easterner would defeat the whole purpose of my having become an assassin in the first place.
Or would it? Something nasty in my mind made me remember a certain conversation I'd recently had with Aliera, but I chose not to think about it.
"Do you know him?" I asked Kragar. "Who does he work for?"
"Yeah. He works for Herth."
"Ah ha."
"Ah ha?"
"Herth," I said, "runs the whole South Side."
"Where the Easterners live."
"Right. An Easterner was just killed. By one of us."
"Us?"said Loiosh. "Who is us?"
"A point. I'll think about it."
"What does that have to do with us?" asked Kragar, introducing another meaning of us, just to confuse us. Excuse me.
I said, "I don't know yet, but—Deathgate, I do know. I'm not ready to talk about it yet. Could you set me up a meeting with Herth?"
He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair and looked at me quizzically. It wasn't usual for me to leave him in the dark about things like that, but he finally said, "Okay," and left.
I took out a dagger and started flipping it. After a moment I said to Loiosh, "She still could have told me about it."
"She tried. You weren't interested in discussing it."
"She could have tried harder."
"It wouldn't have come up if this hadn't happened. And it is her own life. If she wants to spend half of it in the Easterners' ghetto, rabble-rousing, that's her—"
"It hardly sounds like rabble-rousing to me."
"Ah," said Loiosh.
Which shows how much good it is to try to get the better of your familiar.
I'd rather skip over the next couple of days, but as I had to live them, you can at least put up with a sketch. For two solid days Cawti and I hardly exchanged a word. I was mad that she hadn't told me about this group of Easterners, and she was mad because I was mad. Once or twice I'd say something like, "If you'd—", then bite it back. I'd notice that she was looking at me hopefully, but I'd only notice too late, and then I'd stalk out of the room. Once or twice she'd say something like, "Don't you even care—", and then stop. Loiosh, bless his heart, didn't say anything. There are some things that even a familiar can't help you work out.
But it's a hell of a thing to go through days like that. It leaves scars.
Herth agreed to meet me at a place I own called The Terrace. He was a quiet little Dragaeran, only half a head taller than I, with an almost bashful way of dropping his eyes. He came in with two enforcers. I also had two, a fellow who was called Sticks because he liked to beat people with them, and one named Glowbug, whose eyes would light up at the oddest times. The enforcers found good positions for doing what they were paid for.
Herth took my suggestion and ordered the pepper-sausage, which is better tasted than described.
As we were finishing up our Eastern-style desert pancakes (which, really, no one should make except Valabar's, but these were all right), Herth said, "So what can I do for you?"
I said, "I have a problem."
He nodded, dropping his eyes again as if to say, "Oh, how could little me help someone like you?"
I went on, "There was an Easterner finalized a few days ago, by a professional. It happened in your area, so I was wondering if, maybe, you could tell me a bit about what happened, and why."
Now, there were several possible answers he could have given me. He could have explained as much as he knew about it, he could have smiled and claimed ignorance, he could have asked me what my interest was. Instead, he looked at me, stood up, and said, "Thanks for the dinner; I'll see you again, maybe." Then he left.
I sat there for a while, finishing my klava. "What do you make of that, Loiosh?"
"I don't know, boss. It's funny that he didn't ask why you wanted to find out. And if he knows, why did he agree to the meeting in the first place?"
"Right," I said.
I signed the bill and left, Sticks and Glowbug preceding me out of the place. When we reached the office I told them to take off. It was evening, and I was usually done by that time, but I didn't feel like going back home just then. I changed weapons, just to kill time. Changing weapons is something I do every two or three days so that no weapon is around my person enough to pick up my aura. Dragaeran sorcery can't identify auras, but Eastern witchcraft can, and should the Empire ever decide to employ a witch—
"I'm an idiot, Loiosh."
"Yeah, boss. Me, too."
I finished changing weapons and made it home quickly.
"Cawti!" I yelled.
She was in the dining room, scratching Rocza's chin. Rocza leapt up and began flying around the room with Loiosh, probably telling him about her day. Cawti stood up, looking at me quizzically. She was wearing trousers of Jhereg gray that fit low on her hips, and a gray jerkin with black embroidery. She glanced at me with an expression of remote inquiry, her head tilted to the side, her brows raised in that perfect face, surrounded by sorcery-black hair. I felt my pulse quicken in a way that I had been afraid it wouldn't any more.
"Yes?" she said.
"I love you."
She closed her eyes then opened them again, not saying anything. I said, "Do you have the weapon?"
"Weapon?"
"The Easterner who was killed. Was the weapon left there?"
"Why, yes, I suppose someone has it."
"Get it."
"Why?"
"I doubt whoever it was knows about witchcraft. I'll bet I can pick up an aura."
Her eyes grew wide, then she nodded. "I'll get it," she said, and reached for her cloak.
"Shall I go with you?"
"No, I don't…" Then, "Sure, why not?"
Loiosh landed on my shoulder and Rocza landed on Cawti's and we went down the stairs into the Adrilankha night. In some ways things were better, but she didn't take my arm.
Is this starting to depress you? Heh. Good. It depressed me. It's much easier to deal with someone you only have to kill. As we left my area and began to cross over into some of the rougher neighborhoods, I hoped someone would jump me so I could work out some of what I was feeling.
Our feet went clack clack to slightly differing rhythms, occasionally synchronizing, then falling apart. Sometimes I'd try to change my step to keep them together, but it didn't do much. Our paces were our usual compromise, worked out long ago, between the shorter steps she was most comfortable with and my longer ones. We didn't speak.
You identify the Eastern section first by its smell. During the day the whole neighborhood is lousy with open-air cafes, and the cooking smells are different from anything the Dragaerans have. In the very early morning the bakeries begin to work; the aroma of fresh Eastern bread reaches out like tendrils to gradually take over the night smells. But the
night smells, when the cafes are closed and the bakeries haven't started, are the smells of rotting food and human and animal waste. At night the wind blows across the area, toward the sea, and the prevailing winds are from the slaughterhouses northwest of town. It's as if only at night can the area's true colors, to mix a metaphor, come to the surface.
The buildings are almost invisible at night. Lamps or candles glowing in a few windows provide the only light, so the nature of the structures around you is hidden, yet the streets are so narrow that sometimes there is hardly room to walk between the buildings. There are places where doors in buildings opposite each other cannot be opened at the same time. At times you feel as if you were walking through a cave or in a jungle, and your boots tramp through garbage more often than on the hard-packed rutted dirt of the street.
It's funny to go back there. On the one hand, I hate it. It is everything that I've worked to get away from. But on the other, surrounded by Easterners, I feel a tension drain out of me that I don't notice except when it is gone; and it hits me again that, to a Dragaeran, I am an other.
We reached the Eastern section of town past midnight. The only people awake at that hour were derelicts and those who preyed on derelicts. Both groups avoided us, according us the respect given to anyone who walks as if he was above any dangers in a dangerous area. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't pleased to notice this.
We reached a place where Cawti knew to enter. The "door" was a doorway covered by a curtain. I couldn't see a thing inside, but I had the feeling I was in a narrow hallway. The place stank. Cawti called out, "Hello."
There were faint rustling sounds, then, "Is someone there?"
"It's Cawti."
Heavy breathing, rustling, a few other voices mumbling, then flint was struck, there was a flash of light, and a candle was lit. It hurt my eyes for a moment. We were standing in front of a doorway without even a curtain. The inside of the room held a few bodies that were stirring. To my surprise, the room was, as far as I could tell in the light of single candle, clean and uncluttered except for the blanketed forms. There was a table and a few chairs. A pair of beady eyes was staring at us from a round face behind the candle. The face belonged to a short, very fat male Easterner in a pale dressing gown. The eyes rested on me, flicked to Loiosh, Cawti, Rocza, and came back to me.
"Come in," he said. "Sit down." We did, as he went around the room to light a few more candies. As I sat in a soft, cushioned chair, I counted a total of four persons on the floor. As they sat up, I saw that one was a slightly plump woman with graying hair, another was a younger woman, the third was my old friend Gregory, and the fourth was a male Dragaeran, which startled me. I studied his features until I could place his House, and when I identified him as a Teckla I didn't know whether to be less surprised or more.
Cawti seated herself next to me. She nodded to all present and said, "This is my husband, Vladimir." Then she indicated the fat man who had been up first and said, "This is Kelly." We exchanged nods. The older woman was called Natalia, the younger one was Sheryl, and the Teckla was Paresh. She didn't supply patronymics for the humans and I didn't push it. We all mumbled hellos.
Cawti said, "Kelly, do you have the knife that was found by Franz?"
Kelly nodded. Gregory said, "Wait a minute. I never mentioned a knife being left by his body."
I said, "You didn't have to. You said it was a Jhereg who did it."
He grimaced at me, screwing his face up.
"Can leaf him, boss?"
"Shut up, Loiosh, Maybe later."
Kelly looked at me, which means he fixed me with his squinty eyes and tried to see through me. That's what it felt like, anyway. He turned to Cawti and said, "Why do you want it?"
"Vladimir thinks we might be able to find the assassin from the blade."
"And then?" said Kelly, turning to me.
I shrugged. "Then we find out who he worked for."
Natalia, from the other side of the room, said, "Does it matter for whom he worked?"
I just shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me. I thought it might to you."
Kelly went back to staring at me through his little pig eyes; I was amazed to discover that he was actually making me uncomfortable. He nodded a little, as if to himself, then left the room for a moment, returning with a knife wrapped in a piece of cloth that had probably once been part of a sheet. He handed cloth and weapon to Cawti. I nodded and said, "We'll be in touch."
We walked out the door. The Teckla, Paresh, had been standing in front of it. He moved aside as we headed toward the door, but not as quickly as I would have expected. Somehow that struck me as significant.
It was still several hours until sunrise as we made our way back toward our part of town. I said, "So, these are the people who are going to take over the Empire, huh?"
Cawti gestured with the bundle she held in her left hand. "Someone thinks so," she said.
I blinked. "Yeah. I guess someone does."
The stench of the Eastern area seemed to linger much further on the way back to our flat.
Chapter 2
…black tallow from left…
Down in the basement under my office is a little room that I call "the lab," an Eastern term that I picked up from my grandfather. The floor is hard-packed dirt, the walls are bare, mortared rock. There is a small table in the center and a chest in the corner. The table holds a brazier and a couple of candles. The chest holds all sorts of things.
Early in the afternoon of the day after we procured the knife, the four of us—Cawti, Loiosh, Rocza and me—trooped down to this room. I unlocked it and led the way in. The air was stale and smelled faintly of some of the things in the chest.
Loiosh sat on my left shoulder. He said, "Are you sure you want to do this, boss?"
I said, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Are you sure you're in the right frame of mind to cast spells?"
I thought about that. A caution from one's familiar is something that no witch in his right mind dismisses without consideration. I glanced at Cawti, who was waiting patiently, and maybe guessing some of what I was thinking about. There was a lot of emotional mayhem hammering around my insides. This can be good, as long as it can be put into the spell. But I was also in something of a funk, and when I get that way I mostly feel like sleeping. If I didn't have energy to direct the spell, it could get out of control.
"It'll be all right," I told him.
"Okay, boss."
I dumped the old ashes out of the brazier into a corner of the room and made a mental note to myself to clean that corner one of these days. I opened the chest and Cawti helped me put new coals into the brazier. I tossed away the old black candles and replaced them. Cawti positioned herself to my left, holding the knife. I called upon my link to the Orb and caused the wick of one of the candles to become hot enough to ignite. I used it to light the other candle, and, with some work, the coals in the brazier. I put this and that into the fire and set the dagger in question before it.
It's all symbolic, you know.
I mean, I sometimes wonder if it would work with water that I only thought had been purified (whatever "purified" means). And what if I used incense that smelled right, but was just ordinary incense? What if I used thyme that someone just picked up at the market on the corner, and told me was off a ship from the East? I don't know, and I don't think I'll ever find out, but I suspect it wouldn't matter. Every once in a while, you find something that really is all in the mind.
But these thoughts form the before and after of the spell. The during is all sensation. Rhythms pulse through you in time to the flickering of candles. You take yourself and plunge or are plunged into the heart of the flames until you are elsewhere, and you blend with the coals and Cawti is there beside you and inside you weaving in and out of the bonds of shadow you build that ensnare you like a small insect in a blue earth derivative and you find you have touched the knife and now you know it for a murder weapon, and you begin to feel the
person who held it, and your hand goes through the delicate slicing motion he used and you drop it, as he did, his work done, as is yours.
I pushed it a little, trying to glean all I could from the moment of the casting. His name occurred to me, as something I'd known all along which chose to creep into my consciousness just at this moment, and about then that part of me that was really Loiosh became aware that we were on the down side of the enchantment and began to relax the threads that guarded the part of Loiosh that was me.
It was about there that I realized something was wrong. There is a thing that happens when witches work together. You don't know the other witch's thought; it is more that you are thinking his thoughts for him. And so, for a moment, I was thinking about me, and I became aware that there was a core of bitterness in me, directed at me, and it shook me.
There was never the danger Loiosh had feared, largely because he was there. The spell was drifting apart by then anyway, and we were all carefully letting go and drifting with it, but a big lump formed itself in my throat, and I twitched, knocking over a candle. Cawti reached forward to steady me and we locked eyes for a moment as the last of the spell flickered and collapsed and our minds became our own again.
She dropped her eyes, knowing that we had felt what we had felt.
I opened the door to let the smoke out into the rest of the building. I was a bit tired, but it hadn't been all that difficult a spell. Cawti and I went back up the stairway next to each other but not touching. We were going to have to talk, but I didn't know what to say. No, that wasn't it; I just couldn't make myself.
We went into my office and I yelled for Kragar. Cawti sat in his chair. Then she yelped and stood up upon discovering that he was in it. I smiled a bit at Kragar's innocent look. It was probably funnier than that, but we were feeling the tension.
I said, "His name is Yerekim. I've never heard of him. Have you?"
Kragar nodded. "He's an enforcer for Herth."
"Exclusively?"
"I think so. I'm pretty certain. Should I check?"
"Yes."
He simply nodded, rather than making a comment about being overworked. I think Kragar picks up on more than he admits. After he had slithered out of the room, Cawti and I sat in silence for a moment. Then she said, "I love you, too."