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 the 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 candles. 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 greying 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 I eat 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 farther on the way back to our flat.
2
. . . black tallow from lft . . .
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.”
* * *
Cawti went home, and I spent part of the day getting in the way of people who worked for me and trying to act as if I ran my business. The third time Melestav, my secretary, mentioned what a nice day it was I took the hint as well as the rest of the day off.
I wandered through the streets, feeling powerful, as a force behind so much of what happened in the area, and insignificant, because it mattered so little. But I did get my thoughts in order, and made some decisions about what I would do. Loiosh asked me if I knew why I was doing it and I admitted that I didn’t.
The breeze came from the north for a change, instead of in from the sea. Sometimes the north wind can be brisk and refreshing. I don’t know, maybe it was my state of mind, but then it just felt chilly.
It was a lousy day. I resolved not to listen to Melestav’s opinion on the weather anymore.
* * *
By the next morning Kragar had confirmed that, yes, Yerekim worked only for Herth. Okay. So Herth wanted this Easterner dead. That meant that it was either something personal about this Easterner—and I couldn’t conceive of a Jhereg having a personal grudge against an Easterner—or this group was, in some way, a threat or an annoyance.
That was most likely, and certainly a puzzle.
“Ideas, Loiosh?”
“Just questions, boss. Like, who would you say is leader of that group?”
“Kelly. Why?”
“The Easterner they shined—Franz—why him instead of Kelly?”
In the next room, Melestav was riffling through a stack of papers. Above me, someone was tapping his foot. Sounds of a muted conversation came through the fireplace from somewhere unknown. The building was still, yet seemed to breathe.
“Right,” I said.
* * *
It was around the middle of the afternoon when Loiosh and I found ourselves back in the Easterners’ quarter. I couldn’t have found the place no matter how hard I looked, but Loiosh was able to pick it out at once. In the daylight, it was another low, squat, brown building, with a pair of tiny windows flanking the door. Both windows were covered by boards, which went a long way toward explaining how stuffy it had been.
I stood outside the curtained doorway, started to clap, stopped, and banged on the wall. After a moment the Teckla, Paresh, appeared. He positioned himself in the middle of the doorway, as if to block it, and said, “Yes?”
“I’d like to see Kelly.”
“He is not here.” His voice was low, and he spoke slowly, pausing before each sentence as if he were organizing it in his head before committing it to the air. He had the rustic accent of the duchies to the immediate north of Adrilankha, but his phrasings were more those of a Chreotha or Vallista craftsman, or perhaps a Jhegaala merchant. Odd.
“Do you believe him, Loiosh?”
“I’m not sure.”
So I said, “Are you quite certain?”
Something flickered then—a twitching at the corners of his eyes—but he only said, “Yes.”
“There’s something weird about this guy, boss.”
“I noticed.”
“There’s something weird about you,” I told him.
“Why? Because I’m not trembling in fear at the mere sight of your colors?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, I’m not disappointed,” I said. “Intrigued, maybe.”
He studied me for a moment, then stepped back from the doorway. “Come in, if you want,” he said.
I didn’t have anything better to do just then, so I followed him in. The room didn’t smell much better during the day, with its windows boarded shut. It was lit by two small oil lamps. He indicated a cushion on the floor. I sat down. He brought in an Eastern wine that was mostly water and slopped some into chipped porcelain cups, then sat facing me. He said, “I intrigue you, you say. Because I don’t seem to fear you.”
“You have an unusual disposition.”
“For a Teckla.”
I nodded.
We sipped our wine for a while, the Teckla looking off into space while I studied him. Then he started talking. I listened to what he said, becoming more and more intrigued as he spoke. I don’t know that I understand all of it, but I’ll give it to you as I remember it and you can decide for yourself.
* * *
You’re titled, aren’t you? Baron, isn’t it? Baronet, then. All right. It doesn’t really matter to you, I know. We both know what Jhereg titles are worth; I daresay you know to the nearest copper penny. The Orca do care; they make certain that orders of nobility are given or withdrawn whenever it’s proper, so the quartermaster is of a higher rank than the bosun, yet lower than the mate. You didn’t know that, did you? But I’ve heard of a case where an Orca was stripped of her county, granted a barony, stripped of that, given a duchy, then another county, then stripped of both and given her original county back, all within the same forenoon. A bookkeeping error, I was told.
But, do you know, none of those counties or duchies really existed. There are other Houses like that, too.
In the House of the Chreotha, titles are strictly hereditary, and lifelong unless something unusual happens, but there, too, they are not associated with any land. But you have a baronetcy, and it is real. Have you ever been there? I can see by the look on your face that it never occurred to you to visit it. How many families live in your dominion, Baronet Taltos? That’s all? Four? Yet it has never occurred to you to visit them.
I’m not surprised. Jhereg think that way. Your domain is within some nameless barony, possibly empty, and that within a county, maybe also empty, and that within a duchy. Of what House is your Duke, Baronet? Is he a Jhereg, also? You don’t know? That doesn’t surprise me, either.
What am I getting at? Just this: Of all the “Noble Houses”—which means every House except my own—there are only a few which contain any of the aristocracy, and then only a few of that House. Most of those in the House of the Lyorn are Knights, because only the Lyorns continue to treat titles as they were when first created, and Knight is a title that has no land associated with it. Have you thought of that, most noble Jhereg? These titles were associated with holdings. Military holdings, at first, which is why most of the domains around here are those of Dragonlords; this was once the Easter
n edge of the Empire, and Dragons have always been the best military leaders.
My master was a Dzurlord. Her great-grandfather had earned the title of Baron during the Elde Island wars. My master had distinguished herself before the Interregnum during some war with the East. She was old, but still healthy enough to go charging off to do one thing or another. She was rarely at home, yet she was not unkind. She did not forbid her Teckla to read, as many do, and I was fortunate enough to be taught at an early age, though there was little enough reading matter to be found.
I had an older sister and two younger brothers. Our fee, for our thirty acres, was one hundred bushels of wheat or sixty bushels of corn, our choice. It was steep, but rarely above our means, and our master was understanding during lean years. Our closet neighbor to the west paid one hundred and fifty bushels of wheat for twenty-eight acres, so we counted ourselves lucky and helped him when he needed it. Our neighbor to the north had thirty-five acres, and he owed two gold Imperials, but we saw little of him so I don’t know how hard or easy his lot was.
When I reached my sixtieth year I was granted twenty acres a few miles south of where my family lived. All of the neighbors came and helped me clear the land and put up my home, which I made large enough for the family I hoped to have someday. In exchange, I had to send to my master four young kethna every year, so by necessity I raised corn to feed them.
After twenty years I had paid back, in kind, the loans of kethna and seedlings that had gotten me started, and I thought myself well off—especially as I’d gotten used to the stench of a kethna farm. More, there was a woman I’d met in Blackwater who still lived at home, and there was, I think, something between us.
It was on an evening late in the spring of my twenty-first year on my own that I heard sounds far to the south. Cracking sounds, as a tree will make when it begins to topple, but far, far louder. That night, I saw red flames to the south. I stood outside of my house to watch, and I wondered.
After an hour, the flames filled the sky, and the sounds were louder. Then came the greatest yet. I was, for a moment, blinded by a sudden glare. When the spots cleared from my eyes I saw what seemed to be a sheet of red and yellow fire hanging over my head, as if it were about to descend on me. I think I screamed in terror and ran for my house. By the time I was inside the sheet had descended, and all of my lands were burning, and my house as well, and that was when I looked fully upon death. It seemed to me then, Lord Taltos, that I had not had enough of a life for it to end that way. I called upon Barlan, he of the Green Scales, but he had, I guess, other calls to make. I called upon Trout, but he brought me no water to dampen the flames. I even asked Kelchor, Goddess of the cat-centaurs, to carry me from that place, and my answer was smoke that choked me and sparks that singed my hair and eyebrows and a creaking, splintering groan as part of the house fell in.