The Book of Jhereg (67 page)

“
About these Easterners—Kelly’s group
. . .”

“
Yeah?
”

“
What if you didn’t have to worry about Cawti’s life, or about Herth, or any of it. How would you feel about them?
”

“
How can I know that?
”

“
How would you feel about Cawti being one of them?
”

Now that was a good question. I chewed it over. “
I guess I just don’t think much of a group that’s so wrapped up in its ideals that it doesn’t care about people
.”

“
But about Cawti
—”

“
Yeah. I don’t know, Loiosh. There was never really the chance to find out what’s involved. How much time will it take? Am I going to see her at all? Is she going to want to give them money? How much? There are too many things I don’t know. She ought to have told me about it
.”

I drank some more klava and thought about things. I was very careful walking out of the place.

* * *

When I got into the office I didn’t stop long enough to say hello to Kragar and Melestav; I went straight into the basement. Next to the lab is a large, empty room with many lanterns. I lit them. I drew my rapier, saluted my shadow, and attacked it.

Parry head. What had happened to me last night?

Step in, step out. It was worse than being told I was a reincarnated Dragaeran. Or different, at least.

Step in, cut flank, step out. Maybe I should just forget that I’d tried to kill myself. Except that I might try again, and maybe I’d succeed. But then, maybe it would have been best if I had.

Step in, cut cheek, cut neck, step out. That was nonsense. On the other hand,
there was no denying that I had actually wanted to kill myself last night; had tried to do so. It was hard to believe.

Parry flank, parry head, step in, cut leg, thrust chest. The pain, though—that incredible pain. But it was over. I was going to have to get to Herth before he got to me, and it might not change how Cawti felt toward me anyway, and I wouldn’t even get paid for it. But no matter; I would have to make sure he couldn’t do that to me again. Ever.

Step back, parry a thrust, disengage, stop-cut, step in, cut neck. I’m not the suicidal type. There are many assassins who don’t care if they live or die, but I’ve never been one. Or I never was one before. Forget it. I could spend the rest of my life trying to decide what it meant that I’d wanted to end it. There were things that I had to do and this was getting nowhere. I was going to have to kill Herth, and that was that.

Salute. I just wished I didn’t have to.

I also wished I’d installed a bath down here.

* * *

“Kragar.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m done mucking about.”

“Good. It’s about time.”

“Shut up. I want full details on Herth. I mean, everything. I want to know his mistress’s favorite color and how often she washes her hair. I want to know how much pepper he puts in his soup. I want to know how often he takes a—”

“Right, boss. I’ll get on it.”

“
Can you get him before anything happens to Cawti?
”

“
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure that anything will happen to Cawti. But we can’t take chances. I’ll have to
—” I paused as a thought hit me. I threw it away and it came back. There was one thing I could do that might help.

“
She isn’t going to like it if she finds out, boss
.”

“
By Verra’s fingers, Loiosh! She hasn’t liked
anything
I’ve done since this mess started. So what? Do you have any other ideas?
”

“
I guess not
.”

“
Neither do I. I should have done this days ago. I haven’t been thinking. Is Rocza with her now?
”

He paused. “
Yes
.”

“
Then let’s go
.”

“
What about protection for you?
”

I felt suddenly queasy as I remembered the day before. “
I’m not going to be charging around like a blind man this time
.”

“
Aren’t you?
”

That sounded rhetorical so I didn’t answer.

I teleported directly from my office, just in case someone was waiting outside. The Easterners’ section was starting to look more and more familiar as I spent more and more time there. I had mixed feelings about this.

I asked, “
Is she moving?
”

“
She was, boss. She stopped a while ago
.”

“
How far are we?
”

“
I could fly there in five minutes
.”

“
Great. How far are we?
”

“
Half an hour
.”

Streets curved and twisted like Verra’s sense of humor, and it was, in fact, a good half-hour before we found ourselves near a large park. A crowded park. There were thousands there, mostly human. I gawked. The last time I had seen that many people gathered in one place there was a battle being fought. I hadn’t liked it.

I took a deep breath and began to make my way into and through the crowd, Loiosh steering. (“
This way. Okay, now back to the right. Over there, somewhere
.”) Loiosh was being careful not to let Rocza know he was in the area. He could have been unhappy about it, but I guess he chose to look at it as a game. I was being careful not to let Cawti know I was in the area, and there was nothing gamelike about it.

I spotted her, standing on a platform that seemed to be the center of the crowd’s attention. She was scanning the crowd, although most people looking at her wouldn’t have known it. At first I thought she was looking for me, but then I understood and chuckled. Kelly was standing at the front of the platform, declaiming in a thundering voice about “their” fear of “us,” and Cawti was acting as his bodyguard. Great. I moved up toward the platform, shaking my head. I wanted to act as
her
bodyguard, without her seeing me. She was looking for someone trying to sneak up to the platform—in other words, she was looking for someone doing just what I was trying to do.

When I realized that, I stopped where I was—about forty feet away—and watched. I really can’t tell you what the speech was about; I wasn’t listening. He didn’t turn the crowd into a raging mob, but they seemed interested, and there were occasional cheers. I felt lost. I’d never before been in a large group of people while trying to decide if one member of the group was going to kill another member. I assume there are ways of doing it, but I don’t know them. I checked back on the platform from time to time, but nothing was happening. I occasionally caught phrases from Kelly’s speech, things like, “historical necessity,” and “we aren’t going to them on our knees.” In addition to Kelly, Gregory was up there, and Natalia, and several Easterners and a few Teckla I didn’t recognize. They also seemed to be interested in whatever Kelly was talking about.

Eventually the gathering broke up with much cheering. I tried to stay as close behind Cawti as I could without being spotted. It wasn’t very close. Groups formed, one around each of those who had been on the platform, except for Cawti. She was hanging around Kelly. As things thinned out I kept expecting to see someone else who, like me, was just sort of lagging behind, but I didn’t.

After half an hour, Kelly, Gregory and Natalia left the area. Things were pretty quiet by then. I followed them. They returned to Kelly’s house and disappeared
inside. I waited. The weather was good, for which I was grateful; I hate standing around waiting in the cold and rain.

The trouble was, it left me with too much time to think, and I had too much to think about.

I had actually tried to kill myself. Why? That had been the first time I’d been tortured, certainly, but I’d had information beaten out of me before; was it really all that different? I thought of the pain and heard myself screaming and a shudder ran through my body.

Other times, when I’d been forced to give up information, I had been in control. I had been able to play with them—giving them this or that tidbit and holding back what I could. This time I had just spilled my guts. Okay, but that still didn’t account for it. I’m just not the suicidal type. Am I? Verra, what’s wrong with me?

After a while I said, “
Loiosh, keep watching the house. I’m going to visit Noish-pa
.”

“
No, boss. Not without me
.”

“
What? Why not?
”

“
Herth is still looking for you
.”

“
Oh. Yeah
.”

Cawti came out of the house after a few hours. It was getting on toward evening. She headed toward home. I followed. A few times Rocza, on her shoulder, began looking around nervously and Loiosh suggested we drop back for a while, so we did. That was pretty much the excitement. I wandered around for an hour or so then went home myself. Cawti and I didn’t say a lot, but I caught her looking at me a few times with a worried expression on her face.

You can repeat a lot of that for the next day. She left the house and I followed her while she stood around selling tabloids (a new one, I saw; the banner said something about landlords) and talking to strangers. I watched the strangers closely, especially the occasional Dragaeran. I checked with Kragar to see how he was doing, and he said he was working on it. I left him alone after that. I had only bothered him at all because of a growing sense of frustration.

Frustration? Sure. I was following Cawti around desperately trying to keep her alive and knowing that it was pointless. I couldn’t be sure they were about to kill one of the Easterners, and there was no reason to think it would be Cawti and, frankly, there wasn’t much I could do anyway. Assassins work by surprise. But if the assassin can surprise the target, chances are he can also surprise one bodyguard who is twenty or thirty feet away. Trying to protect Cawti was almost an exercise in futility. But then, there wasn’t anything else I could do except think, and I was tired of thinking.

“
Boss
.”

I glanced in the direction that had Loiosh’s attention. It was the corner of a large, brown building—the kind that has flats for several families. “
What is it?
”

“
I saw someone there, tall enough to be a Dragaeran
.”

I watched for a while but there was no further movement. Cawti still stood
next to a vegetable stall, along with Sheryl, exchanging comments with the vendor from time to time. For half an hour I alternated between watching Cawti and watching the corner, then I gave up and went back to watching my wife while Loiosh kept an eye on the spot where he’d seen someone. Eventually Cawti and Sheryl left and walked back to the building I thought of as their headquarters, though Cawti referred to it only as Kelly’s place. I tried to see if they were being followed, but I couldn’t be certain.

Cawti went inside and Sheryl kept going. I stationed myself out of sight down the street where I could watch the door. I was getting to know that door better than I’d ever wanted to know a door. I was glad, at least, that Cawti couldn’t teleport.

It was getting on toward evening when a Dragaeran in Jhereg colors walked boldly up to the door and inside. I checked my weapons and started after him quickly, but he was out again before I was halfway across the street. I turned the other way and seemed uninterested and he didn’t notice me. When I looked back he was walking hurriedly away. I thought about following him, but the most I could do was confirm that Herth had sent him. So what?

He was, I decided, probably a messenger. Or he could have been a sorcerer and he’d just killed everyone in the house. Or—at that moment Cawti, Paresh and Natalia left as if they were in a hurry. I followed. They headed northeast, which is toward the center of the city. (The Easterners’ section is South Adrilankha, which is mostly west of central Adrilankha. Make sense of that if you care to.)

Before crossing the unmarked border into Dragaeran terrain (a street called Carpenter), they turned and followed a couple of side streets. Eventually they stopped and gathered around something on the ground. Cawti knelt down while the others stood over. Paresh began looking around. I walked toward them and he saw me. He straightened quickly and his hand went up as if he were about to do something sorcerous and Spellbreaker came into my hand. But he did nothing, and presently I was close enough to be recognized in the fading orange-red light, as well as to see that Cawti was kneeling next to a body. She looked up.

Paresh was tense, the muscles on his neck standing out. Natalia seemed only mildly interested and a bit fatalistic. Cawti stared at me hard.

Paresh said, “What have you to do with this?”

“Nothing,” I said, figuring I’d allow him exactly one such question. He nodded rather than pushing it, which half disappointed me.

Cawti said, “What are you doing here, Vlad?”

Instead of answering, I approached the body. I looked, then looked away, then looked again, longer. It had once been Sheryl. She had been beaten to death. She was not revivifiable. Each leg was broken at the knee, above it, and below. Each arm was broken at the elbow. The bruises on each side of her face—what was left of it—matched. The top of her head had been staved in. And so on. It was my professional judgment that it had been done over the
course of several hours. And if you can’t make professional judgments, what’s the point of being a professional? I looked away again.

“What are you doing here, Vlad?” asked Cawti.

“I was following you.”

She looked at me, then nodded, as if to herself. “Did you see anything?”

“Loiosh maybe caught a glimpse of someone watching while you were at the market, but then you went into Kelly’s place and I just watched the door.”

“You didn’t see fit to tell anyone?”

I blinked. Tell someone? One of them? Well, I suppose that made sense. “It didn’t occur to me.”

She stared, then turned her back. Paresh was almost glaring at me. Natalia was looking away, but when I looked closer, I could see that she was almost trembling with anger. Cawti’s hands were closed into fists, and she was tightening and loosening them rhythmically. I felt myself start to get angry, too. They didn’t want me around at all; they certainly hadn’t asked me to watch Sheryl. Now they were all at the boiling point because I hadn’t. It was enough to—