The Book of Jhereg (43 page)

“
Great. Well, I’m pleased they aren’t around, but I wonder what it means. Any ideas?
”

“
No
.”

“
Okay. I want you to try to find out something for me
.”

“
Sure. What?
”

“
Everything you can on the Sword of Jhereg
.”

“
Is this a joke?
”

“
Do you think it’s likely to be?
”

“
Fine. I’ll get back to you in a hundred years or so. Vlad, how am I
—”

“
She was once a Dragonlord; that should help. She was probably expelled
.”

“
Wonderful. Should I try to bribe a Lyorn or a Dragon?
”

“
The Lyorn would be safer, but the Dragon is more likely to help
.”

“
I was being sarcastic
.”

“
I know. I wasn’t
.”

He sighed telepathically. “
I’ll see what I can do. Would you mind telling me what we’re doing this for?
”

That was a tricky one. I didn’t feel like telling him that his boss had become infatuated with his own executioner.

“
Oh
,” I told him. “
I’m sure you can figure it out if you really work at it
.”

Silence, then: “
You want to find out if there was anything shady in her expulsion, so you can clear her and have her owe you a favor, and then turn her back on Laris. Right? Not bad
.”

Hmmmm. Not bad at all. “
Clever
,” I told him. It
was
clever. I’d have to give him a bonus, if it worked out. “
Now, get on it
.” I broke the contact. I stretched
out on the bed. After all of this, I really
did
need to sleep. I also needed to get my emotions under control.

* * *

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that my side and back didn’t hurt so much. Also, I actually felt refreshed. I lay there for a few minutes, just breathing and enjoying it, then forced myself to get up. In addition to feeling refreshed, I also felt filthy from sleeping in my clothes. I stripped and found a tub of water in the corner, did a quick spell to heat it, and washed. As I did this, I managed to put Cawti out of my mind, at least for a little while, and concentrate on my real problem—Laris.

The idea Kragar had had wasn’t bad at all, but it depended on too many things that were outside of my control. Still, it was worth checking into. Also worth checking into was the question of why the Phoenix Guards had chosen that moment to leave. How could he have arranged that? Where had the orders come from?

I snapped my fingers, getting soapy water in my eye.
That
question, at least, I could get answered. I concentrated on a certain Tsalmoth, who worked for Morrolan and reported directly to me. . . .

“
Who is it?
” said Fentor.

“
Vlad
.”

“
Oh! Yes, milord?
”

“
We need some information
. . . .” I explained what I was after, and he agreed to check into it. I broke the contact and chatted with Loiosh while I finished up my bath. I looked disgustedly at my filthy clothes, shrugged, and started to put them on again.

“
Check the dressing table, boss
.”

“
Eh?
”

But I did, then smiled. Aliera had been thorough. I donned the change of clothes happily, then stepped out into the hall with Loiosh riding on my right shoulder. It seemed as if I were beginning to get things done. Good. I wandered down to the library, found it empty, and took the stairs up to where the dining room and various sitting rooms were.

The next thing, I decided, was to see if I could get more information from whoever it was that had tipped Kragar off about the assassination. The fact that we’d actually learned something from him was a very good sign. My biggest problem was still lack of information, and this could mean we were starting to solve it. I thought about getting in touch with Kragar again to ask him to work on that more, but decided against it. As they say: if you have someone stand for you, don’t jog his sword-arm while he does.

I found Morrolan and Aliera in the first sitting room I came to, along with Sethra. Sethra Lavode: tall, pale, undead, and faintly vampiric. I’d heard her age placed at anything from ten to twenty thousand years, which is a significant portion of the age of the Empire itself. She dressed in and surrounded herself with black, the color of sorcery. She lived in Dzur Mountain; maybe she
was
Dzur Mountain, for there are no records of a time when she, or someone of
her family, didn’t live there. Dzur Mountain was its own mystery, and not subject to being understood by one such as me. The same may be said of Sethra.

Physically, though, she had the high, thin features of the House of the Dragon. The upward slant of her eyes and the unusually extreme point to her ears made one think of Dzurlords. There had been rumors that she was half Dzur herself, but I doubted them.

To Sethra, even more than to most Dragaerans, an Easterner’s lifetime was a blink of an eye. Maybe that’s why she was so tolerant of me. (Morrolan’s tolerance was due to having lived among Easterners for many years of his youth, during the Interregnum. Aliera’s tolerance I’ve never understood; I suspect she was just being polite to Morrolan.) Most Dragaerans had heard of Sethra Lavode, but few had met her. She was periodically considered a hero, and had been Warlord of the Empire (while she was still living) and Captain of the Lavodes (when there were still Lavodes). At other times, such as the present, she was considered an evil enchantress and Dzurlord bait. Periodically, some fledging hero would go up the Mountain to destroy her. She turned them into jhegaala or yendi and sent them back. I’d told her that this wasn’t going to help, but she just smiled.

At her side was the dagger called Iceflame, which was sort of Dzur Mountain in hand, or something. I don’t know enough about it to say more, and thinking about it makes me nervous.

I bowed to each of them, and said, “Thank you for the sanctuary, Sethra.”

“It’s no trouble, Vlad,” she responded. “I enjoy your company. I’m pleased to see that you’re recovering.”

“So am I.” I sat down, then asked, “What can you fine specimens of Dragonhood tell me about the Phoenix Guard?”

Morrolan arched an eyebrow. “What did you wish to know? Is it your desire to join?”

“Could I?”

“I’m afraid,” he said, “that your species is against you there.”

“But not my House?”

He looked startled and glanced at Aliera.

She said, “A Jhereg could join if he wanted to. There have been some, I think—none who are actually a part of the business end, I suppose, but some who’ve bought Jherge titles instead of being Houseless.”

I nodded. “So it isn’t all Dragons, eh? That’s what I was wondering about.”

“Oh, no,” said Aliera. “It’s mostly Dragons, because all Dragons must serve periodically, but there are others from every House in the guards—except Athyra, who are never interested, and Phoenix, because there aren’t enough of them.”

“Suppose some colonel of some army of Dragonlords is serving. Would he be a colonel in the guards?”

“No,” said Sethra. “Rank among the guards has nothing to do with any other rank. Officers in private armies often serve under their own blademen.”

“I see. Does this ever cause problems?”

“No,” said Aliera.

“Why the interest?” asked Sethra.

“I’m bothered by the fact that the guards who were enforcing the Imperial Edict left just at the right time for our friends to nail me. I can’t believe it was coincidence.”

They looked at each other. “I can’t think of any way,” said Sethra.

“Whose decision would it have been? The Empress’s? Or whoever leads the guards?”

“The Empress sent them; she would have had to order their withdrawal,” said Aliera. Morrolan nodded.

“All right,” I said, “I don’t think she would have been involved in this on purpose, would she?” Three heads shook. “Then is there anyone who could have made the suggestion to her that ‘now would be a good time,’ and be confident that she’d act on it at once?”

Sethra and Aliera looked at Morrolan, who was at court more often than they. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Her lover,” he said, “is said to be an Easterner. I’ve never met him, but he might have such influence. Then there are her advisors, but, to be candid, she hardly listens to most of them. I believe that she listens seriously to me, but I could be deluding myself. And, in any case, I made no such request of her. She pays attention to Sethra the Younger, but Sethra has no interest in anything save invasion plans for the East.”

Sethra Lavode nodded. “It’s good to have an ambition,” she said. “Sethra the Younger is the only apprentice I’ve ever had who’s never tried to kill me.”

I turned back to Morrolan. “You can’t think of anyone else?”

“Not at present.”

“All right then, what else? A faked message, maybe? Do this right now, signed so-and-so?”

“Who,” said Morrolan, “would write a message rather than reach her psionically?”

“Well, someone she doesn’t speak with often. It must be hard to reach her directly, so—”

“No, it isn’t,” said Aliera, looking at me as if puzzled.

“It isn’t?”

“Of course not. Any citizen can reach Zerika through his link. Didn’t you know that?”

“No . . . but she must get thousands of people—”

“Not really,” she said. “If she doesn’t consider it worth her time, she destroys the person. This keeps the amount of contact down quite a bit.”

“Oh . . . My father never saw fit to mention that. I guess he was afraid I might do it. In any case, I still don’t see who could and would have convinced her to withdraw the troops. Morrolan, you’re well respected around court. Will you try to find out for me?”

“No,” said Morrolan. “As I have explained to you, I will have nothing to do with any Jhereg war, directly or indirectly.”

“Yeah, okay.” I was pleased to see Aliera shoot him a brief look of disgust. It occurred to me then that the easiest thing to do would be to create something real that would make the Empress want to pull the troops out. What could it be? Civil disturbance? Threat of an invasion of some sort?

“
Kragar
.”

“
Yes, Vlad?
”

“
See if there was anything going on in the city that would have called for Phoenix Guards to handle
.”

“
Good idea, boss
”

“
That’s what I pay myself for
.”

Then I reached Fentor and had him check into any possible external threats. With any luck, I’d know within a day or two. I turned my attention back to the others. Aliera and Sethra were deep into another discussion.

“Certainly,” Sethra was saying. “And as far as I’m concerned, let her.”

Aliera frowned. “We’re just getting on our feet, Sethra. We can’t afford to go off East with tens of thousands of troops until we’re sure the Empire is stable.”

“What’s this about?” I asked.

“You set off another argument, Vlad,” Morrolan explained. “Aliera is opposed to Sethra the Younger’s conquering the East until the Empire is stable. Sethra the Younger thinks that will make it stable, and our own Sethra,” he indicated her with his head, “feels, as I do, that since Sethra—the other one—wants to do it, why not? What harm is there? They’ll throw us out again in a few hundred or a thousand years. That was why Kieron the Conqueror left them there in the first place—so we’d have someone to fight and wouldn’t tear ourselves apart.”

I could have said many things about this, but I let it go.

“That isn’t the point,” said Aliera. “If we drain off enough resources, what happens if a
real
enemy shows up? The Easterners are no threat to us now—”

“
What
real enemy?” said Sethra. “There isn’t—”

I stood and left them to their argument. It couldn’t have anything to do with me, in any case.

I
RETURNED TO MY
room and decided that I wanted to see Cawti again; also, that I was looking forward to dinner that evening with Sethra, Morrolan, and Aliera. I realized that I could become very comfortable at Dzur mountain, while Kragar kept things going at the office. In other words, while everything I’d built up went over Deathsgate Falls. Not that Kragar was incompetent, but there are certain things one must do oneself, and I’d been gone four days already.

“
Aliera?
”

After a pause, a response came. “
Yes, Vlad?
”

“
Something has come up. I’m going to have to return to the office right away. Please convey my apologies to Sethra and Morrolan
.”

“
As you wish. But don’t exert yourself
.”

“
I wouldn’t think of it
.”

“
Would you like help with the teleport?
”

“
Yes, please. That would be very nice
.”

“
All right, I’ll be
right down,” she concluded vocally, standing in front of me. Damn show-off. I gave her an image of the alley behind a row of buildings facing Malak Circle, and pulled back to show where it was relative to parts of Adrilankha that she knew. She nodded.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready.”

There was a twist, and a burbling in my stomach, and I was there. I could have teleported to just outside the office building, but I wanted to look around and get a feel for the area, as well as give my stomach a chance to recover.

Walking through the streets wasn’t as risky as it may sound. Though I didn’t have any bodyguards, no one even knew that I was around. The only way Laris could really get me was to have an assassin standing around next to my office, hoping I’d walk back in. I’d never taken “work” like that, but I have an idea of the risks associated with it. The longer you stand around a place, the more chance there is that someone will be able to identify you as the one doing the job. Paying someone to do that would cost more than paying the Sword and the Dagger to just finalize the individual. So I wasn’t very worried.