I took hold of the knife I’d carried for so long and used so seldom. The one with the ebony hilt and embedded rubies, and the thin, dull blade of pure silver. It wasn’t as expensive as it looked, but then, it looked very expensive.
I held it near the point, holding it firmly between my thumb and forefinger, then I knelt down, so slowly I felt tremors in my legs. Just as slowly, I touched the point of the dagger to the ground. I stopped for a moment, studying the dirt. It was black and dry and fine, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. I touched it with my left hand. I rubbed it between my fingers. It was powdered and very cold.
Enough. I concentrated on the knife again, and very slowly drew the rune for the verb “to receive.” The rune, of course, was in the language of sorcery, which was meaningless at this time and in this place. But it gave me a spot to concentrate my attention on, and that was what I wanted. I drew a circle around the rune then, and set the knife aside. I knelt and studied the drawing, waiting for the moment to begin again.
I was very much aware of Loiosh, claws hard on my right shoulder, a pressure more than a weight. It was as if none of the events of the last few days had affected him, which I knew wasn’t the case; he was the wall of calm, the pillar of ice, the ground that would hold me steady. If you think that isn’t important, you’re a bigger fool than I am.
Moments went by in contemplation, and I began the next step.
THERE WERE NO WINDOWS in the room, yet we must have been near the outside, because I could hear distant cries of ravens, and the occasional roar of a hunting dzur. I wondered if there were dragons on the mountain, present company excepted, of course. Why have a room with a wall to the outside and not put a window in it? Who knows? I like windows, but maybe Sethra Lavode doesn’t. It is true that windows enable others to see in as well as allow you to see out.
A candle flickered and shadows danced.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s back up a little. If you want this staff so badly, why don’t you and the Lord Morrolan here just blast into his keep and take it?”
“We’d like to,” said Morrolan.
Sethra Lavode nodded. “One doesn’t just ‘blast into’ the keep of an Athyra wizard. Perhaps if I were able to leave—but never mind.”
I said, “Okay, fine. But look: I don’t know what you know about me or what you think you know about me, but I’m not a thief. I don’t know anything about breaking into places and stealing things. I don’t know what made you think I could do it in the first place—”
“We know a great deal about you,” said the Enchantress.
I licked my lips. “All right, then you know I’m not—”
“Close enough,” said Morrolan.
“The point is,” said Sethra Lavode before I could respond, “the particular nature of Loraan’s alarm system.”
“Ummmm, all right,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
“He has spells over the entire keep that keep track of every human being in the place, so any intruder, no matter how good, will be instantly detected. Neither Morrolan nor I have the skill to disable these alarms.”
I laughed shortly. “And you think I do?”
“You weren’t listening,” said Morrolan. “His spells detect human beings—not Easterners.”
“Oh,” I said. Then, “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Sethra. “And we also know that he has sufficient confidence in these alarms that he has little else that could detect you.”
I said, “Do you know what the place looks like on the inside?”
“No. But I’m sure you have the resources—”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Sethra continued. “Morrolan will be ready to aid you once you are inside.”
A voice inside my head pointed out that Sethra appeared to be assuming I was going to do this crazy thing, and that she might be irritated when she learned I wanted no part of it. But I was curious; perhaps fascinated would be a better word.
Morrolan said, “Well?”
I said, “Well what?”
“Will you do it?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. I’m not a thief. As I said, I’d just bungle it.”
“You could manage,” said Morrolan.
“Sure.”
“You are an Easterner.”
I paused to look over my body, feet, and hands. “No. Really? Gosh.”
Sethra Lavode said, “The individual whose soul lives in that staff is a friend of ours.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “But it doesn’t—”
“Seven thousand gold imperials,” she said.
“Oh,” I said after a moment. “A good friend of yours, eh?”
Her smile met my own.
“In advance,” I said.
MY GRANDFATHER IS RELIGIOUS, though he never pressed the issue. My father rejected the Eastern gods as he rejected everything else Eastern. Naturally, then, I spent a great deal of time asking my grandfather about the Eastern gods.
“But Noish-pa, some Dragaerans also worship Verra.”
“Don’t call her that, Vladimir. She should be called the Demon Goddess.”
“Why?”
“If you speak her name, she may become offended.”
“She doesn’t get angry at the Dragaerans.”
“We aren’t elfs. They don’t worship as we do. Many of them know of her, but think she is only a person with skills and power. They do not understand the concept of a goddess the way we do.”
“What if they’re right and we’re wrong?”
“Vladimir, it isn’t a right and a wrong. It is a difference between those of our blood and those of the blood of Faerie—and those of the blood of gods.”
I thought about that, but couldn’t make it make sense. I said, “But what is she like?”
“She is changeable in her moods, but responds to loyalty. She may protect you when you are in danger.”
“Is she like Barlan?”
“No, Barlan is her opposite in all ways.”
“But they are lovers.”
“Who told you that?”
“Some Dragaerans.”
“Well, perhaps it is true, but it is not my concern or yours.”
“Why do you worship Ver—the Demon Goddess and not Barlan?”
“Because she is the patron of our land.”
“Is it true that she likes blood sacrifice? The Dragaerans told me that.”
He didn’t answer for a moment, then he said, “There are other ways to worship her and to attract her attention. In our family, we do not commit blood sacrifice. Do you understand this?”
“Yes, Noish-pa.”
“You will never sacrifice a soul to her, or to any other god.”
“All right, Noish-pa. I promise.”
“You swear on this, on your powers as a witch and on your blood as my grandson?”
“Yes, Noish-pa. I swear.”
“Good, Vladimir.”
“But why?”
He shook his head. “Someday you will understand.”
That was one of the few things about which my grandfather was wrong; I never have understood.
THE TELEPORT BACK TO my office was no more fun than any of the others. It was early evening, and the shereba game in the room between the fake storefront and real office was in full swing. Melestav had left, so I thought the office was empty until I noticed Kragar sitting behind Melestav’s desk. Loiosh flew onto my shoulder and rubbed his head against my ear.
“You okay, boss?”
“Well . . .”
“What is it?”
“It’s hard to explain, Loiosh. Want to become a thief?”
“How’d it go, Vlad?”
“The good news is that no one hurt me.”
“And?”
“And Sethra Lavode is certainly real.”
He stared at me but said nothing.
“Well, what happened, boss?”
“I’ll get to it, Loiosh.”
“Kragar,” I said, “this is going to get complicated.” I paused and considered. “All right, sit back and relax; I’ll tell you about it.”
IT WOULD BE NICE if I could identify the point when I stopped fearing Dragaerans and started fighting back, but I can’t. It certainly was before my father died, and that happened when I was fourteen. He’d been wasting away for quite a while, so it was no surprise, and, in fact, it didn’t really bother me. He’d picked up some sort of disease and wouldn’t let my grandfather perform the cures, because that was witchcraft and he wanted to be Dragaeran. He’d bought a title in the Jhereg, hadn’t he?
Crap.
Anyway, I can’t really pinpoint when I started hating Dragaerans more than I feared them, but I do remember one time—I think I was twelve or thirteen—when I was walking around with a lepip concealed in my pants. Lepip? It’s a hard stick or piece of metal covered with leather. The leather keeps it from cutting; it’s for those occasions when you don’t want to leave scars, you just want to hurt someone. I could have used a rapier effectively, but my grandfather insisted that I not carry it. He said it was asking for trouble, and that drawing it would signal a fight to the death when otherwise someone would only be hurt. He seemed to feel that life should never be taken unless necessary, not even that of an animal.
In any case, I remember that on this occasion I deliberately walked through some areas where toughs of the House of Orca liked to hang out, and yeah, they started harassing me, and, yeah, I creamed them. I think they just didn’t expect an Easterner to fight back, and a heavy stick can make a big difference in a fight.
But that wasn’t the first time, so I don’t know. What’s the difference, anyway?
I LEANED BACK IN my chair and said, “Kragar, I have another research project for you.”
He rolled his eyes skyward. “Great. Now what?”
“There is a wizard named Loraan, of the House of the Athyra.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Get busy then. I need a complete drawing of his keep, including a floor plan, and a guess as to where he’d do his work.”
“Floor plan? Of an Athyra wizard’s keep? How am I supposed to get that?”
“You never let me in on your methods, Kragar; how should I know?”
“Vlad, why is it that whenever you get greedy, I have to risk my hide?”
“Because, in this case, you get ten percent.”
“Of what?”
“Lots and lots.”
“Say, that’s even more than ‘quite a bit,’ isn’t it?”
“Don’t be flippant.”
“Who, me? Okay, when do you want it? And if you say ‘yesterday,’ I’ll—”
“Yesterday.”
“—have to hurry. Spending limit?”
“None.”
“I thought it might be one of those. I’ll get back to you.”
I DON’TREALLY KNOW when I killed a Dragaeran for the first time. When I’d fight them I was pretty casual about where and how hard I’d hit them, and I know that, more than once, there would be one or two of them stretched out on the ground when we were done. Thinking back on times I’d crack them on the top of the head with my lepip, I’d be surprised if none of them died. But I never found out for sure.
Every once in a while that bothers me. I mean, there’s something frightening, in retrospect, in not knowing whether you killed someone. I think of some of those fights, and I remember most of them quite clearly, and I wonder where those people are today, if anywhere. I don’t spend a lot of time wondering, though. What the hell.
The first time I knew that I had killed someone was when I was thirteen years old.
THERE IS AN INTERESTING story in how Kragar managed to get the information I wanted, but I’ll leave it to him to tell. He has peculiar friends. In the two days it took, I finished closing a deal on a gambling operation I’d been hungry for, convinced someone who owed money to a friend of mine that paying it was the gentlemanly thing to do, and turned down a lucrative proposal that would have taken three weeks and a Morganti dagger.
I hate Morganti weapons.
When Kragar returned with the drawings we spent a whole day going over them and coming up with stupid ideas. We were flatly unable to think up an intelligent one. We put the whole thing off for a day and tried again with the same results. Finally Kragar said, “Look, boss, the idea of breaking into an Athyra’s keep is stupid. Naturally, any idea for how to do it is also going to be stupid.”
I said, “Ummm, yeah.”
“So just close your eyes and pick one.”
“Right,” I said.
And that’s pretty much what I did.
We spent a few hours polishing it down to the point of least possible idiocy. When Kragar went off to make some of the arrangements, I closed my eyes and thought about Sethra Lavode. I called up a picture of her face, tried to “hear” her voice, and sent my mind out, questing. Sethra Lavode? Where are you, Sethra? Hello? Vlad, here . . .
Contact came remarkably easily.
She said, “Who is it?”
“Vlad Taltos.”
“Ah. What do you want?”
“I have a plan for getting in. I need to make arrangements with you and Morrolan for timing and backup and stuff like that.”
“Very well,” she said.
It took about an hour, at the end of which I was no more confident than I’d been before speaking with her. But there you are. Orders went out, arrangements were made, and I reviewed my will. The stuff of life.