“Laris,” he corrected.
“Laris. Perhaps a Kaavren?”
“Excellent.”
I nodded to the enforcer—excuse me, the “waiter”—who bowed and left. I gave Laris as warm a smile as I could. “This would be a nice kind of place to run,” I told him.
“You think so?” he said.
I nodded. “It’s quiet, a good, steady clientele—that’s the important thing, you know. To have regular customers. This place has been here a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Since before the Interregnum, I’m told.”
I nodded as if I’d known it all along. “Now some people,” I said, “would want to expand this place—you know, add an extension, or another floor—but why? As it is, it brings in a good living. People like it. I’ll bet you that if they expanded it, it would be out of business in five years. But some people don’t understand that. That’s why I admire the owners of this place.”
Laris sat and listened to my monologue with a small smile playing at his lips, nodding occasionally. He understood what I was saying. Around the time I finished, the waiter showed up with the wine. He gave it to me to open; I poured some for Laris to approve. He nodded solemnly. I filled his glass, then mine.
He held the glass up to eye level and looked into it, rotating it by the stem. Khaav’n reds are full wines, so I imagine none of the light penetrated. He lowered the glass and looked at me, leaning forward.
“What can I say, Vlad? Some guy’s been working for me for a long time. One of the people who helped me organize the area. A good guy. He comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, boss, can I start up a game?’
“What am I supposed to tell him, Vlad? I can’t say no to a guy like that, can I? But if I put him anywhere in my area, I’ll be cutting into the business of other people who’ve been with me a long time. That’s not fair to them. So I looked around a bit. You’ve only got a couple of games going, and there’s plenty of business, so I figure, ‘Hey, he’ll never even notice.’
“I should have checked with you first, I know. I do apologize.”
I nodded. I’m not sure what I expected, but this wasn’t it. When I told him that expanding into my area would be a mistake, he came back by claiming that he wasn’t doing any such thing—that it was just a one-time favor for someone. Should I believe this? And, if so, should I let him get away with it?
“I understand, Laris. But, if you don’t mind my asking, what if it happens again?”
He nodded as if he’d been expecting the question. “When my friend explained to me that you had visited the place and seemed very unhappy about it, I realized what I’d done. I was just trying to word an apology to you when I got your invitation. As for the future—well, Vlad, if it comes up, I promise to speak to you about it before I do anything. I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“Goatshit, boss.”
“Eh? What do you mean?”
“This Laris teckla is no teckla, boss. He knew what he was doing by moving someone into your area.”
“Yeah . . .”
At that point our pepper sausages showed up. Laris—and Loiosh—were right; it was very good. They served it with green rice covered with cheese sauce. They had a sprig of parsley on the side, like an Eastern restaurant does, but they had fried it in butter, lemon juice, and some kind of rednut liqueur—a nice effect. The pepper sausage had the meat of lamb, cow, kethna, and, I think, two different kinds of game birds. It also had black pepper, red pepper, white pepper, and Eastern red pepper (which I thought showed extraordinarily good taste). The thing was hot as Verra’s tongue and quite good. The cheese sauce over the rice was too subtle to match the sausage, but it killed the flames nicely. The wine should probably have been stronger, too.
We didn’t talk while we ate, so I had more time to consider everything. If I let him have this, what if he wanted more? Go after him then? If I didn’t let him have the game, could I stand a war? Maybe I should tell him that I’d go for his idea, just to gain time to prepare, and then come after him when he tried to make another move. But wouldn’t that give him time to prepare, too? No, he was probably already prepared.
This last was not a comforting thought.
Laris and I pushed our plates away at the same moment. We studied each other. I saw everything that epitomized a Jhereg boss—smart, gutsy, and completely ruthless. He saw an Easterner—short, short-lived, frail, but also an assassin, and everything that implied. If he wasn’t at least a little worried about me, he was a fool.
But still . . .
I suddenly realized that, no matter what I decided, Laris had committed himself to taking over my business. My choices were to fight or concede. I had no interest in conceding. That settled part of it.
But it still didn’t tell me what to do. If I allowed that one game to operate, it might give me time to prepare. If I shut it down, I would be showing my own people that I couldn’t be played with—that I intended to hold what was mine. Which of those was more important?
“I would think,” I said slowly, “that I can stand—more wine? Allow me. That I can stand to have your friend in my area. Say ten percent? Of the total income?”
His eyes widened a bit; then he smiled. “Ten percent, eh? I hadn’t thought of that solution.” His smile broadened and he slapped the table with his free hand. “All right, Vlad. Done!”
I nodded and raised my glass in salute, then sipped from it. “Excellent. If this works out well, there isn’t any reason that we couldn’t broaden the experiment, eh?”
“Absolutely!”
“Good. I’ll expect the money at my office every Endweek in the first two hours after noon. You do know where my office is, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Good. Naturally, I’ll trust your bookkeeping.”
“Thank you,” he said.
I raised my glass. “To a long and mutually profitable partnership.”
He raised his. The edges touched, and there was the ringing sound which denotes fine crystal. I wondered which one of us would be dead in a year. I sipped the dry, full wine, savoring it.
* * *
I got behind my desk and collapsed into the chair.
“Kragar, get your ass in here.”
“Coming, boss.”
“Temek.”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Find Narvane, Glowbug, and Wyrn and Miraf’n. Get them here five minutes ago.”
“I’m gone.” He teleported out, just to be flashy.
“Varg, I want two of them as bodyguards. Which?”
“Wyrn and Miraf’n.”
“Good. Now where is—oh. Kragar, go talk to the Bitch Patrol. I want a teleport block around this whole building. A good one.”
“Both ways?”
“No. Just to keep people out.”
“Okay. What’s going on?”
“What the hell do you think is going on?”
“Oh. When?”
“We might have until Endweek.”
“Two days?”
“Maybe.”
“Vlad, what do you do these things for?”
“Go.”
He shuffled out.
It wasn’t long before Temek returned with Glowbug. I don’t know what Glowbug’s real name was, but he had bright, shining blue eyes and a love of the long-handled mace. He was really a pleasant, almost jovial guy, but when he started to come at a customer with that mace, his eyes would light up like some Iorich fanatic’s and the customer would decide that, yeah, he could probably find the money somewhere.
It occurs to me that I may be giving you the idea that if you borrow money from me and are thirty seconds late in making a payment, you’ll have sixty-five toughs climbing into your windows. No. If we worked like that, it would cost more in free-lance or staff muscle than we’d make, especially with all the potential customers who’d be driven away.
Let me give you an example. About a month and a half before t
his—eight weeks, I think it was—one of my lenders came in and explained that a guy was into him for fifty gold and wouldn’t be able to make his payment. The lender wanted to let it slide, but was that okay with me?
“What’s he paying?”
“Five and one,” he said, meaning five gold a week principal, plus one gold a week until it was paid off.
“First payment?”
“No. He’s made four full, and just the interest for three weeks.”
“What happened to him?”
“He runs a tailor shop and hab on Solom. He wanted to try a new line, and it took a quick fifty to get an exclusive. The line—”
“I know, hasn’t taken off yet. What’s his business worth?”
“Maybe three or four big.”
“Okay,” I told the guy. “Give him six weeks free. Tell him if he can’t start doing at least the interest after that, he’s got a new partner until we’re paid off.”
So you see, we aren’t all that bad. If somebody is really having trouble and trying to pay, we’ll work with him. We want his business again, and we don’t make a copper by hurting people. But there are always jokers who think it can’t happen to them, or bigmouths who want to show how tough they are, or back-alley lawsmiths who talk about going to the Empire. These people kept me in eating money—and then some—for more than three years.
Narvane, who arrived just a few minutes after Temek and Glowbug, was a specialist. He was one of very few sorcerers who worked for our end of the Jhereg, most Jhereg sorcerers being women and staying with the Left Hand. He was quiet, indrawn, and had vaguely Dragon facial features: thin face and high cheekbones, a long, straight nose and very dark eyes and hair. He was called in when a job required dismantling personal protection spells on someone, or clairvoyance, at which I’d match him up against any Dzur wizard I’d met, and even most Athyras.
Three of them leaned against the wall. Temek had his arms folded while he whistled “Hearing About You” off key and stared at the ceiling; Narvane was staring at the floor with his hands clasped in front of him; Glowbug was looking around, as if checking out how defensible the place was. Varg stood away from the wall, not moving, looking like something midway between a statue and a set bomb.
Kragar showed up as the silence was becoming uncomfortable. He said, “The first hour after noon, tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
Wyrn and Miraf’n came in together. They were already a team when Welok hired them and had remained a team when they started for me. As far as I knew, neither of them had ever done “work,” but they had a very good reputation. Wyrn resembled an Athyra—he had pale blue-gray eyes and always looked like he was on something mind-altering. When he stood, he swayed a bit from side to side like an old tree, his arms hanging limp like drooping branches. His hair was light and shaggy, and he had a way of looking at you, with his head cocked to the side and a dreamy half-smile at the corners of his mouth, that would send chills up and down your spine.
Miraf’n was huge. He was more than eight feet tall, making even Morrolan look short. Unlike most Dragaerans, he had muscles one could actually see. On occasion, he would play stupid and get a big, silly grin on his face, pick up someone he wanted to intimidate, and tell Wyrn, “Betcha I can throw this one farther than I threw the last one. Wanna bet?”
And Wyrn would go, “Put him down, big fella. He was only kidding about testifying against our friend. Weren’t you?”
And the guy would agree that yes, it was only a joke, and in poor taste at that, and he was very sorry that he’d bothered the two gentlemen . . .
“Melestav! Come in here a minute, and close the door behind you.”
He did, and did. I put my feet up on the desk and scanned the bunch of them.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “we’re about to get hit. If we’re lucky, we have two days to prepare. Starting right now, none of you goes out alone. You’re all targets, so get used to it. You’ll each be getting orders from me about exactly what you’ll be doing, but for now, I just want to let you know that things are starting. You know how it goes—travel in pairs, stay at home as much as you can: the whole deal. And if any of you gets any offers from the other side, I want to hear about it. That isn’t just for me, but if you turn them down, you become even more of a target, and I’ll want to take that into account. And, by the way, if you don’t turn them down, you become much, much more of a target. Remember that—you do not want to fuck with me, gentlemen; I’ll destroy you.
“Any questions?”
There was silence for the moment; then Temek said, “What does he have?”
“That’s a good question,” I said. “Why don’t you and Narvane go find out for me?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have opened my mouth,” he said sadly.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Another thing—your salaries just doubled. But to pay you, we need to have income. And to have income, we need to keep places open. Laris might go for you, he might go for me, and he might go for my businesses. I’m betting on all three. Any other questions?”
There were none.
“Okay,” I said. “One last thing: as of this moment, I am offering five thousand gold for Laris’s head. I think you could all use that. I don’t expect it’ll be easy to collect, and I don’t want anybody doing anything stupid and getting himself killed trying for it, but if you see a chance, there’s no need to hesitate.
“Wyrn and Miraf’n, stick around the office. The rest of you, that’s all. Beat it.”
They shuffled out, leaving me alone with Kragar.
“Say, boss—”
“What is it, Kragar?”
“Does that business about doubling salaries apply—”
“No.”
He sighed. “I didn’t think so. Anyway, what’s the plan?”
“First, find four more enforcers. You have until this time tomorrow. Second, we’ll see what we learn about what kind of income Laris has and figure out how we can hurt him.”
“Okay. Can we afford the extra enforcers?”
“We can afford it—for a while. If things go on too long, we’ll have to figure out something else.”
“Do you think he’ll give us the two days?”
“I don’t know. He might—”
Melestav was standing at the door. “I just got a report, boss. Trouble. Nielar’s place.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know exactly. I got part of a message, asking for help, and then the guy got hit.”
I stood up and headed out of the office, picking up Wyrn and Miraf’n on the way.
“Boss,” said Kragar, “are you sure you ought to go out? That sounds like a—”
“I know. Come along behind me and keep your eyes open.”
“Okay.”
“Loiosh, stay alert.”
“I’m always alert, boss.”
4
“You expect to be unavailable?”
THE CITY OF ADRILANKHA lies along the southern coast of the Dragaeran Empire. It spent most of its existence as a middle-sized port city and became the Imperial capital when Dragaera City became a bubbling sea of chaos, on that day four hundred some years ago when Adron almost usurped the throne.
Adrilankha is as old as the Empire. It had its real beginnings in a spot that recently (in Dragaeran terms) became a cornerstone of the new Imperial Palace. It was there that, thousands of generations ago, Kieron the Conqueror met with the Shamans and told them that they could run wherever they wanted to, but that he and his Army of All Tribes would stand and wait for the “Eastern Devils.” From there, he walked alone down a long trail that ended in a high cliff overlooking the sea. It is said by those who make it their business to say things that he stood there, unmoving, for five days (hence the five-day Dragaeran week) awaiting the arrival of the Tribe of the Orca, who had promised reinforcements, as the Eastern army closed in.
The spot was known as “Kieron’s Watch” until the Interregnum, when the spells that had
kept that part of the cliff from falling into the sea collapsed. I’ve always thought that amusing.
By the way, for those of you with an interest in history, the Orcas finally arrived, in time. They proved utterly useless as fighters on land, but Kieron won the battle anyway, thus securing the foundations of an Empire of Dragaerans.
Shame about that.
The path he walked is still known as Kieron Road, and leads from the new Imperial Palace down through the heart of the city, past the docks, and finally peters out with no ceremony somewhere in the foothills west of town. At some unspecified point, Kieron Road becomes Lower Kieron Road, and passes through a few not-very-nice neighborhoods. Along one of these stretches is the restaurant my father used to own, where he’d built up the small fortune that he later squandered buying a title in the Jhereg. The result of this is that I’m a citizen of the Empire, so now I can find out what time it is.
When I reached the age of deciding to get paid for what I was doing anyway (beating up Dragaerans), my first boss, Nielar, worked out of a small store on Lower Kieron Road. Supposedly, the store sold narcotics, hallucinogens, and other sorcery supplies. His real business was an almost continuous game of shareba, which he somehow kept forgetting to notify the Empire’s tax collectors of. Nielar taught me the system of payoffs to the Phoenix Guards (since most of them are actually Dragons, you can’t bribe one about anything important, but they like to gamble as much as anyone, and don’t like taxes anymore than most), how to make arrangements with the organization, how to hide your income from the Imperial tax collectors, and a hundred other little details.
When I took this area over from Tagichatn, Nielar was suddenly working for me. He was the only one who showed up to pay me the first week I was running the area. Later, he tore out the narcotics business and expanded to running s’yang stones. Then he put in a brothel upstairs. All in all, the place was my biggest single earner. So far as I know, the idea of holding out part of my cut never even occurred to him.
* * *
I stood next to Kragar in the burnt-out ruins of the building. Nielar’s body lay before me. The fire hadn’t killed him; his skull was caved in. Loiosh nuzzled my left ear.