During a pause in the yelling, I made my way up to Yinta and followed her gaze. “It doesn’t look much like the stem of a banana,” I remarked.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
The captain yelled, “Get a sound,” which command Yinta relayed to a dark, stooped sailor, who scurried off to do something or other. Greenaere, whose tip I could see quite well now, seemed to be made of dark grey rock.
I said, “It looks like we’re going to miss her.” Yinta didn’t deign to answer. She relayed some numbers from the sailor to the captain. More commands were given, and, with a creaking of booms as the foresail shifted, we swung directly toward the island, only to continue past until it looked like we’d miss it the other way. It seemed a hell of an inefficient way to travel, but I kept my mouth shut.
“You know, boss, this could get to be fun.”
“I was thinking the same thing. But I’d get tired of it, I think, sooner or later.”
“Probably. Not enough death.”
That rankled a bit. I wondered if there was some truth in it. I could see features of the island now, a few trees and a swath of green behind them that might have been farmland. A place that small, I supposed land would be at a premium.
“A whole island of Teckla,” said Loiosh.
“If you want to look at it that way.”
“They have no Houses.”
“So maybe they’re all Jhereg.”
That earned a psionic chuckle.
An odd sense of peace began to settle over me that I couldn’t figure out. No, not peace, more like quiet—as if a noise that I’d been hearing so constantly I’d come to ignore it had suddenly stopped. I wondered about it, but I had no time to figure it out just then—I had to stay alert to what was going on around me.
There was an abrupt lessening of the wave action on the ship, and we were enclosed in a very large cove. I had seen the masts of larger ships; now I saw the ships themselves—ships too large to pull up to the piers that stuck out from the strip we approached. Closer in, there were many smaller boats, and I thought to myself, escape route. In another minute I was able to make out flashes of color from one pier, flashes that came in a peculiar order, as if signals were being given. I looked behind me and saw Yinta now next to the captain on the fly bridge, waving yellow and red flags toward the pier.
The wind was still strong, and the sailors were quite busy taking in sails and loosening large coils of rope. I moved toward the back and wedged myself between the cartons where I’d started the journey.
“All right, Loiosh. Take off, and stay out of trouble until I get there.”
“You stay out of trouble, boss; no one’s going to notice me.” He flew off, and I waited. I saw little of the happenings on the ship, and only heard the sounds of increased activity, until at last the sails seemed to collapse into themselves. This was followed almost at once by a hard thump, and I knew we had arrived.
Everyone was still busy. Ropes were secured, sails were brought in, and crates and boxes were manhandled onto the dock. At one point, there were several workmen on board at the same time, their backs to me. I went below with Yinta, who pointed to an empty crate.
“I’m going to hate this,” I said.
“And you’re paying for the privilege,” she said.
I fitted myself in as best I could. I’d done something like this once before, sneaking into an Athyra’s castle in a barrel of wine, but I expected this to be of shorter duration. It was uncomfortable, but not too bad except for the angle at which my neck was bent.
Yinta nailed in the top, then left me alone for what seemed to be much longer than it should have been; long enough for me to consider panicking, but then the crate and I were picked up. As they carried me, I was tempted to shout at them to try to take it easy, since each step made a bruise in a new portion of my anatomy.
“I see you, boss. They’re carrying you down the dock now, to a wagon. You’ve got about three hundred yards of pier . . . okay, here’s the wagon.”
They weren’t gentle. I kept the curses to myself.
“Okay, boss. Everything looks good. Wait until they finish loading it.”
I’ll skip most of this, okay? I waited, and they hauled me away and unloaded me in what Loiosh said was one of a row of sheds a few hundred feet from the dock. I sat in there for a couple of hours, until Loiosh told me that everyone seemed to have left, then I smashed my way out; which is easier to say than it was to do. The door to the shed was not locked, however, so once my legs worked, it was no problem to leave the shed.
It was still daylight, but not by much. Loiosh landed on my shoulder. “This way, boss. I’ve found a place to hide until nightfall.”
“Lead on,” I said, and he did, and soon I was settled in a ditch in a maize field, surrounded by a copse of trees. No one had noticed me coming in. Getting out, I suspected, was going to be more difficult.
THIS PARTICULAR BIT OF island was heavily farmed; very heavily compared to Dragaera. I wasn’t used to a road that cut through farmland as if there were no other place for it to run. I wanted to be off the main road, too, so I wouldn’t be so conspicuous, which left me walking parallel to the road about half a mile from it, through fields of brown dirt with little shoots of something or other poking out of them and feeding various sorts of birdlife. Loiosh chased a few of the birds just for fun. The houses were small huts built with dark green clapboard. The roofs seemed to be made of long shoots that went from the ground on one side to the ground on the other. They didn’t look as if they would keep the rain out, but I didn’t examine them closely. The land itself consisted of gentle slopes; I was always going either uphill or down, but never very much. The terrain made travel slow, and it was more tiring than I’d have thought, but I was in no hurry so I rested fairly often. The breeze from the ocean was at my back, a bit cold, a bit tangy; not unpleasant.
A few trees began to appear on both sides of the road; trees with odd off-white bark, high branches, and almost round leaves. They grew more frequent and were joined by occasional samples of more familiar oak and rednut, until I was walking in woods rather than farmlands. I wondered if this area would be cleared someday, when the islanders needed more land. Would they ever? How much farming did they do, compared to fishing? Who cared? I kept walking, checking my map every now and then just to make sure.
We stayed to the side as we walked. We caught glimpses of travelers on the road, mostly on foot, a few riding on ox-drawn wagons with wheels with square bracing. Birds sang tunes I’d never heard before. The sky above was the same continuous overcast of the Empire, but it seemed higher, as it were, and it looked like there could be times here when the sky was clear, as it was in the East.
It was late afternoon when another road joined the one we paralleled. I found the road on the map, which told me the city was near, and the map was right. It wasn’t much of a city by Dragaeran standards, and was quite strange by Eastern standards. There were patches of cottage here and there: structures made of canvas on wooden frames, or even stone frames, which seemed very odd; and a couple of structures, open on two sides with tables in front of them, that could be places of worship or something else entirely. I never did find out. It looked like the sort of town that would be empty at night. Maybe it was; now was not the time to check. There weren’t many people near us, in any case.
I hid in a garbage pit while Loiosh flew around and found me a better hiding place, and a safe path to it. Loiosh did some more exploring, and found one grey stone building, three stories high, set back from the road and surrounded by a small garden. There were no walls around the garden, and a path of stones and shells of various bright colors led to the unimposing doorway. It matched the location of the Palace, and the description we’d been given for it. There you have it.
Lesson 3
The Perfect Assassination
THERE ARE MILLIONS OF ways for people to die, if you number each vital organ, each way it can fail, all of the poisons
from the earth and the sea which can cause these failures, all the diseases to which a man, Dragaeran or human, is subject, all the animals, all the tricks of nature, all the mischances from daily life, and all the ways of killing on purpose. In fact, looked at this way, it is odd that an assassin is ever called upon, or that anyone lives long enough to accomplish anything. Yet the Dragaerans, who expect to live two thousand years or more, generally do not die until their bodies fail, weak with age, just as we do, though not quite so soon.
But never mind that. I had taken the task of seeing to it that a particular person died, and that meant that I couldn’t just take the chance of him choking on a fish bone, I had to make sure he died. All right. There are thousands of ways to kill a man deliberately, if you number each sorcery spell, each means of dispensing every poison, each curse a witch can throw, each means of arranging an accidental death, each blow from every sort of weapon.
I’ve never made a serious study of poisons, accidents are complicated and tricky to arrange, sorcery is too easy to defend against, and the arts of the witch are unpredictable at best, so let us limit discussion to means of killing by the blade. There are still hundreds of possibilities, some easier but less reliable, some certain but difficult to arrange. For example, cutting someone’s throat is relatively easy, and certainly fatal, but it will be some seconds before the individual goes into shock. Are you certain he isn’t a sorcerer skilled enough to heal himself? Getting the heart will actually produce shock more quickly, but it is harder to hit, with all those ribs in the way.
There are other complications, too: such as, does he have friends who could revivify him? If so, do you want to allow this, or do you have to make sure the wound is not only fatal but impossible to repair after death? If so, you probably want to destroy his brain, or at least his spine. Of course, you can do this after your victim is dead or helpless, but those few seconds can make the difference between getting away and being spotted. As long as the Empire is so fussy about under what circumstances one is allowed to do away with another, not being spotted will remain an important consideration. You do the job, then you get away from there, ideally without teleporting, because you’re helpless during the two or three seconds while the teleport is taking place, and you can be not only identified but even traced if you get really unlucky.
So the key is to make sure all the factors are on your side: You know your victim’s routine, you have the weapon ready, and you know exactly where you’re going to do it and where you’re going to go and how you’re going to dispose of the murder weapon after you’re done.
You’ll notice that these methods have little in common with wandering into a strange kingdom, with no knowledge of the culture or the physical layout, and trying to kill someone whose features you don’t even know, much less what sort of physical, magical, or divine protection he might have.
It was still fully night, and the darkness here was considerably darker than in Adrilankha, where there were always a few lights spilling out onto the street from inn doors or the higher windows of flats, or the lanterns of the Phoenix Guards as they made their rounds. In the East there might be a few stars—twinkling points of light that can’t be seen in the Empire because they are higher than the orange-red overcast. But here, nothing, save for the tiniest sparkles that came from curtained windows high in the Palace, and a thin line from the doorway in the front. We waited there, at the edge of the city, for several long, dull hours. Four Dragaerans left the building, all holding lanterns, and one arrived. The light on the third story of the Palace went out, and we waited another hour. I wondered what time it was, but dared not do anything even as simple as reaching out to the Orb.
We returned to our hiding place before dawn. I spent most of the day sleeping, while Loiosh made sure I wasn’t disturbed, scrounged for food to supplement the salted kethna, and observed the Palace and the city for me. Yes, the town was pretty much deserted at night.
After dark had fallen, I went in to town and got a better picture of the Palace and looked for guards. There weren’t any that I could see. I checked the place over for windows, found a few, and then looked for various possible escape routes. This was starting to look like it might be easier than I had thought, but I know better than to get cocky.
The next night I moved into town once more, this time to sneak into the Palace so I could get the layout of the place. I sent Loiosh to look around the building once, just in case there was something interesting that he could hear or see. He returned and reported no open windows with rope ladders descending, no large doors with signs saying, “Assassins enter here,” and no guards. He took his place on my shoulder and I stepped up to the door. I’m used to casting a small and easy spell at such times, to see if there is any protection on the door, but Verra had said it wouldn’t work, and for all I knew it might even alert someone.
This was the first time I’d ever gone into someone’s house in order to kill him. In the Organization you don’t do that. But this guy wasn’t in the Organization. Come to think of it, this was also the first time I’d shined someone who wasn’t one of us. It felt, all in all, distinctly odd. I gently pulled on the doors. They weren’t locked. They groaned quietly, but didn’t squeak. It was completely dark inside, too. I risked half a step forward, didn’t stumble across anything, and carefully shut the door behind me. It felt like a large room, though by what sense I knew that I couldn’t say.
“Loiosh, this whole job stinks.”
“Right, boss.”
“Is there anyone in the room?”
“No.”
“I’m going to risk some light.”
“Good.”
I took a six-inch length of lightrope from my cloak and set it twirling slowly. Even that dim light was painful for a moment, as it lit up about a seven-foot area. I set it going a little faster and saw that the room wasn’t as big as I’d thought at first. It looked more like the entry room of a well-to-do merchant than a royal household. There were hooks on the wall for hanging coats, and even a place by the door with a couple of pairs of boots, for the love of demons. I kept looking, and saw a single exit, straight ahead of me. I slowed the lightrope and went through the doorway.
I had the feeling that, in normal daylight, this place wouldn’t have been at all frightening, but it wasn’t daylight, and I wasn’t familiar with it, and half-forgotten fragments of the Paths of the Dead came back to haunt me as I gradually increased the speed of the lightrope.
“Can this place really be as undefended as it seems, boss?”
“Maybe.” But I wondered, if these people were so unwarlike, why their King had to die. None of my business. I moved slowly and kept the light as dim as possible. Loiosh strained to catch the psychic trace of anyone who might be awake as we explored room after room. There was one room that seemed quite large, and in the Empire would have been a sitting room of some sort, but there was a large carved orca on one of the walls, with a motto in a language I couldn’t read, and in front of the carving, which seemed to be of gold and coral, was a chair that was maybe a little more plush than the rest. The ceiling was about fifteen feet over my head. Assuming the other two stories to be slightly smaller, that agreed with my estimate of the total height of the building. There was some sort of thin paneling against the stone, and parts of it had been painted on, mostly in blues, with thin strokes. I couldn’t make out the designs, but they seemed to be more patterns and shapes than pictures. Possibly they were magical patterns of some sort, though I didn’t feel anything in them.
I made more light and studied the room fairly carefully, noting the line from that chair to the doorway, the single large window with carvings in the frame that I couldn’t make out, the position of the three service trays, which appeared to be of gold. There was a vase on a stand in a corner, and flowers in it that seemed to be red and yellow, but I couldn’t be certain. And so on. I passed on to the next room, still being totally silent. I can do that, you know.
The kitchen was large bu
t undistinguished. Plenty of work space, a little low on storage space. I would have enjoyed cooking there, I think. The knives had been well cared for and most of them seemed to be of good workmanship. The cooking pots were either very large or very small, and there was plenty of wood next to the stove. The chimney ran from it out of the wall behind it to the outside. The opposite wall held a sink with a hand pump that gleamed in the dim light I was making. Whose job was it to polish it?
And so on. I went through every room, convinced myself there wasn’t a basement, and decided against trying the upstairs. Then I went back out into a chilly breeze full of the salt water and dead fish, and circled the place again, this time without a light. I didn’t learn much except that it is difficult to remain silent while stumbling over garden tools. By the time I returned to my hiding place, dawn was only an hour or so away. There was now enough light in the east so that I could almost see, so Loiosh and I used the time to look for a place near the Palace where we could hide. To turn an hour-long search into a sentence, we didn’t find one. We left the town and walked off the main roads until we were well into a thicket that seemed safe enough. It was still chilly, but would warm up soon. I pulled my cloak tightly around me and eventually drifted off into something that passed for sleep.
I awoke late in the afternoon.
“We going to do it today, boss?”
“No. But if all goes well today, we’ll do it tomorrow.”
“We’re almost out of salted kethna.”
“Good. I’m beginning to think I’d rather starve.”