The Book of Jhereg (10 page)

We ate the meal in silence, enjoying each other’s company, feeling no need to talk. As we were finishing, Cawti said, “So, you get work, while I stay home and wither away from boredom.”

“You don’t look withered to me,” I said, checking. “And I don’t remember your asking me for help with that little matter last month.”

“Hmmmmph,” she said. “I didn’t need any help with that, but this looks like something big. I recognized the target. I hope you’re getting a reasonable price for him.”

I told her what I was getting for him.

She raised her eyebrows. “Nice! Who wants him?”

I looked around the restaurant, which was almost deserted. I didn’t like taking chances, but Cawti deserved an answer. “The whole bloody Jhereg wants him, or will if and when they find out.”

“What did he do?” she asked. “He didn’t start talking, did he?”

I shuddered. “No, not that, thank Verra. He ran off with nine million gold in council operating funds.”

She looked stunned and was silent for a moment, as she realized that I wasn’t kidding. “When did this happen?”

“Three days ago, now.” I thought for a second, then, “I was approached by the Demon, personally.”

“Whew! Battle of the giant jhereg,” she said. “Are you sure you aren’t getting involved in more than you can handle?”

“No,” I answered, cheerfully.

“My husband, the optimist,” she remarked. “I suppose you’ve already accepted.”

“That’s right. Would I have gone to all of that trouble to locate him if I hadn’t?”

“I suppose not. I was just hoping.”

Loiosh woke up with a start, looked around, and jumped down from my shoulder. He began working on the remains of my tsalmoth ribs.

“Do you have any idea why you got the job?” she asked, suddenly worried. I could see her mind making the same jumps as mine had.

“Yes, and it makes sense.” I explained the Demon’s reasoning to her and she seemed satisfied.

“What do you think about subcontracting this one?”

“Nope,” I said, “I’m too greedy. If I subcontract it, I won’t be able to build you that castle.”

She chuckled a little.

“Why?” I continued. “Do you and Norathar want to do it?”

“Not likely,” she answered drily. “It sounds too dangerous. And she’s retired in any case. Besides,” she added, rather nastily, “you couldn’t afford us.”

I laughed and lifted my glass to her. Loiosh moved over to her plate and began working on it. “I guess you’re right,” I admitted, “I’ll just have to stumble along on my own.”

She grinned for a moment, then turned serious. “Actually, Vlad, it is something of an honor to be given a job like this.”

I nodded. “I guess it is, to a degree. But the Demon is convinced that Mellar is out East somewhere; he figures that I can operate better than a Dragaeran out there. Since you went into pseudo-retirement, there aren’t many humans who do ‘work.’”

Cawti looked thoughtful for a moment. “What makes him think that Mellar is in the East?”

I explained his thinking on the matter, and Cawti nodded. “That makes sense, in a way. But, as you yourself said, he’d stand out in the East like a lightning bolt. I can’t believe that Mellar is so naive that he’d think the House wouldn’t go after him.”

I thought this over. “You may be right. I do have a few friends in the East I can check with. In fact, I was planning on trying to get hold of them if Daymar can’t find out where he is. I don’t really see what else we can do but check out the Demon’s theory, at this point.”

“There isn’t anything, I suppose,” she said. “But it makes me a little nervous. Do you have any idea how long Mellar’s been planning this move? If there was some way to figure that, it would give us an idea of how hard he’s going to be to track down.”

“I’m not sure. It seems to me that it doesn’t make sense unless it was a sudden, spur of the moment kind of thing, but Kragar has an idea that he’s been planning it all along, from the minute he joined the Jhereg, in fact.”

“If Kragar is right, he must have something planned for this,” she said. “In fact, if it was that long, he should have realized that someone would, or at
least,
could
try to trace him using witchcraft. If that were the case, he would have some way to set up a block against it.”

“On the other hand,” she continued, “if he
did
plan it for that long and somehow couldn’t block witchcraft, or didn’t think of it, it may mean the Demon underestimated his defenses.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, don’t you think that, in years, you could come up with a sorcery block that even the Left Hand couldn’t break down in the time they’ve had?”

I thought that over for a long time. “He couldn’t do it, Cawti. It’s always easier to break down a block than it is to set one up. There is no way he could get the resources to put up a strong enough trace-block to keep out the Left Hand. The impression I got was that the Demon had the best there is working on it. I’d defy Sethra Lavode to put up a block that would hold them out for more than a day.”

“Then why haven’t they found him?” she asked, pointedly.

“Distance. Before they can break down the block, they have to find the right general area. That takes time. Even a standard teleport trace spell can be difficult if the person teleports far enough away. That’s why the Demon is figuring the East. Using just standard tracing spells, it could take years to find him, if that’s where he went.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she conceded. “But I’m nervous about the thing.”

“Me too,” I said. “And that isn’t all I’m nervous about.”

“What else?”

“Time. The Demon wants this done a lot faster than I like to work. What it boils down to is that I have to make sure Mellar is taken out before everyone in the Jhereg finds out what he did. And that could happen any day.”

Cawti shook her head. “That’s bad, Vlad. Why, by the Demon Goddess, did you accept the job with a time limit? I’ve never heard of one even being offered that way.”

“Neither have I. I took it that way because those were the terms. And it isn’t really a time limit, as such, although he implied it could come to that later. It’s just that I have to move as fast as I can.”

“That’s bad enough,” she said. “You work fast, you make mistakes. And you can’t afford to make a mistake.”

I had to agree. “But you understand his position, don’t you? If we don’t get him, we’ve just shot the reputation of the Jhereg council. There won’t be any way to keep House funds secure, once people get the idea that it can be done. Hell, I just put sixty-five thousand gold into a room in the office and forgot about it. I know it’s safe, because there isn’t anyone who would dare touch it. But, once this gets started . . .” I shrugged.

“And the other thing,” I went on, “is that he told me straight out that if one of his people finds Mellar before I do, they aren’t going to wait for me.”

“Why should that bother you?” she asked. “You’ll still have the payment.”

“Sure. That isn’t the problem. But think about it: some clod goes up to Mellar to take him out. Who is it going to be? It’s not going to be a professional,
because the Demon is going to want to say, ‘Hey, you, go nail this guy here and now,’ and no professional will agree to work that way. So it’s going to be some two-silverpiece muscle, or maybe a button-man who thinks he can handle it himself. Then what? Then the guy bungles it, that’s what. And I’m left trying to take Mellar out after he’s been alerted. Oh, sure, the guy might succeed, but he might not. I don’t trust amateurs.”

Cawti nodded. “I see the problem. And I’m beginning to understand the reason for the price he’s paying.”

I stood up, after making sure that Loiosh had finished his meal. “Let’s get going. I may as well try to get something done with the rest of the day.”

Loiosh found a napkin, carefully rubbed his face in it, and joined us. I didn’t pay, of course, since I was a part owner, but I did leave a rather healthy tip.

Out of habit, Cawti stepped out of the door an instant before me and scanned the street. She nodded, and I came out. There had been a time, not too long before, when that had saved my life. Loiosh, after all, can’t be
everywhere
. We walked back to the office.

I kissed her goodbye at the door and went up, while she headed back to our apartment. Then I sat down and began going over the day’s business. I noted with some satisfaction that Kragar had found the punk who’d mugged the Teckla the other day, at a cost of only four hundred gold or so, and had carried out my instructions. I destroyed the note and picked up a proposal that a new gambling establishment be opened by one of my button-men who wanted to better himself. I felt somewhat sympathetic. I’d gotten started that way, too.

“Don’t do it, Vlad.”

“Wha—? Kragar, would you cut it out?”

“Give the guy at least another year to prove himself. He’s too new for that kind of trust.”

“I swear, Kragar, one of these days I’m going to—”

“Daymar reported in.”

“What?” I switched modes. “Good!”

Kragar shook his head.

“Not good?” I asked. “He shouldn’t have been able to tell this quickly that he couldn’t find the guy. Did he change his mind about helping us?”

“No. He found Mellar, all right.”

“Excellent. Then what’s the problem?”

“You aren’t going to like this, Vlad. . . .”

“Come on, Kragar, out with it.”

“The Demon was wrong; he didn’t go out East after all.”

“Really? Then where?”

Kragar slumped in his chair a little bit. He put his head on his hand and shook his head.

“He’s at Castle Black,” he said.

Slowly, a piece at a time, it sunk in.

“That bastard,” I said softly. “That clever, clever bastard.”

* * *

The Dragaeran memory is long.

The Empire has existed—I don’t know—somewhere between two and two-and-a-half
hundred thousand
years. Since the creation of the Imperial Orb, back at the very beginning, each of the Seventeen Houses has kept its records, and the House of the Lyorn has kept records of them all.

At my father’s insistence, I knew at least as much about the history of House Jhereg as any Dragaeran born into the House. Jhereg records do, I will admit, tend to be somewhat more scanty than those of other Houses, since anyone with enough pull, or even enough gold, can arrange to have what he wants deleted, or even inserted. Nevertheless, they are worth studying.

About ten thousand years ago, nearly a full turn of the cycle before the Interregnum, the House of the Athyra held the throne and the Orb. At this time, for a reason which is lost to us, a certain Jhereg decided that another Jhereg had to be removed. He hired an assassin, who traced the fellow to the keep of a noble of the House of the Dragon. Now, by Jhereg tradition (with good, solid reasons behind it that I may go into later), the target would have been quite safe if he’d stayed in his own home. No assassin will kill anyone in his house. Of course, no one can stay in his house forever, and if this Jhereg tried to hide that way, he would have found it impossible to leave, either by teleporting or by walking, without being followed. It could be, of course, that he didn’t know he’d been marked for extinction—usually one doesn’t know until it’s too late.

But, for whatever reason, he was in the home of a Dragonlord. The assassin knew that he couldn’t put up a trace spell around the home of a neutral party. The person would find out and almost certainly take offense, which wouldn’t be good for anyone.

There is, however, no Jhereg custom that says that you have to leave someone alone just because he’s over at a friend’s house. The assassin waited long enough to be sure that the fellow wasn’t planning to leave right away; then he got in past the Dragonlord’s defenses and took care of his target.

And then the jaws of Deathsgate swung open.

The Dragons, it seemed, didn’t approve of assassins plying their trade on guests. They demanded an apology from House Jhereg and got one. Then they demanded the assassin’s head, and instead got the head of their messenger returned to them in a basket.

They were just sending the Dragons a message.

The Dragons got the message and sent back one of their own. Somehow, they found out who had issued the contract. The day after the messenger was returned to them, they raided the home of this fellow. They killed him and his family, and burned down his house. Two days later, the Dragon heir to the throne was found just outside the Imperial Palace with a six-inch spike driven through his head.

Four bars along Lower Kieron Road, all owned by the Jhereg, and all housing some illegal activity upstairs or in back, were raided and burned, and many of
the patrons were killed. Every Jhereg in all of them were killed. Morganti weapons were used on several.

The next day, the Warlord of the Empire disappeared. Pieces of her were found over the next few days at the homes of various Dragon nobles.

The House of the Dragon declared that it intended to wipe House Jhereg out of the Cycle. The Dragons said that they fully intended to kill each and every Jhereg in existence.

House Jhereg responded by sending assassins after each Dragon general who commanded more than a thousand troops and then began working its way down.

The e’Kieron line of the Dragons was almost wiped out, and for a while it seemed that the e’Baritt line had been.

Have you heard enough?

All in all, it was a disaster. The “Dragon-Jhereg War” lasted about six months. At the end, when the Athyra Emperor forced a meeting between the surviving Dragon leaders and the Jhereg council and forced a peace treaty down both of their throats, there had been some changes. The best brains, the best generals, and the best warriors in the House of the Dragon were dead, and House Jhereg was damn near out of business.

It is admitted by the Jhereg that they came out pretty much the losers. This should be expected, since they were at the bottom of the cycle, and the Dragons were near the top. But still, the Dragons don’t boast of the outcome.

It was fortunate that the Athyra reign was long, and the Phoenix reign even longer after that, or there would have been real trouble having a House of the Dragon strong enough to take the throne and the Orb when their turn came, following the Phoenix. It took the Jhereg the entire time until their turn at the throne, nearly half the cycle away, which worked out to several thousand years, to achieve a stable business.