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 but 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.”
Loiosh was right, however. I ate some of what was left and sneaked up to the edge of town. Yes, the Palace did seem to be completely unprotected. I could probably have gone in right then and done it if I’d known for certain where the King was. I crept a little closer, staying hidden behind a rotting, collapsed fruit stall that had been tossed aside some years before.
The sky had just begun to darken, and I decided this would be about the right time of day to do it; when there was enough light so I could still see, but when the approaching night would shield my escape. I consulted the notes I’d made about entry points and the layout of the Palace, and figured that today I’d make a test run: doing everything I could to try things out.
Getting inside was easy, since the kitchen staff didn’t lock the service door, and there was no one in the kitchen after the evening meal. I listened for a long time before proceeding down the hall and into the narrow aperture below the stairs. It was nerve-racking waiting there, hearing footsteps and bits of the servants’ conversation.
After half an hour I found the right time: when the king left his dining hall to go upstairs. I saw him walk by: a slinky-looking fellow, moderately old, with plastered-down hair and bright green eyes. He was dressed fairly simply, in red and yellow robes, and bore no marks of office except a heavy chain around his neck engraved with one of the symbols I’d seen in his throne room, or audience chamber, or whatever it was. He was walking with a young fellow who carried a short spear over his shoulder. I could have taken them both, but one reason I’m still alive is that I’m always very careful when my own life is on the line.
They walked by, as I said, right in front of me, not able to see me in the dark stairwell. As they were walking up the stairs over my head, I tested my escape route back through the kitchen and out, around the Palace, and back to my hiding place.
“Well, how does it look, boss?”
“Everything seems fine, Loiosh. Tomorrow we do it.”
I spent the rest of the night memorizing landmarks in the dark so I could get as far away as possible, and, as the sky was just beginning to get light, I pulled my cloak around me and slept.
ONCE UPON A DRAGAEREN time, they say, there was a Serioli smith who, at the request of the gods, built a chain of diamonds that was so long it went up past the top of the sky, and so strong the gods used it to hold the sky up when they got tired of the job. One day one of the gods took a diamond as the wedding price for a mortal she had a hankering for, and all the other diamonds went flying about the heavens, and the gods have been holding the sky up ever since. They couldn’t punish the goddess who did the deed, because if they did, the sky would fall, so instead they took it out on the smith, turning him into a chreotha to walk the woods and, well, you get the idea.
I mention this because it came to mind as I sat in the woods, trying to stay alert for anyone coming near me and considering that the only reason I was on that island was that my personal goddess had sent me there. It also occurred to me again that this would be the first time I’d ever killed someone outside the Organization. Coming as it did just while I was going through the sort of moral crisis an assassin has no business having, I didn’t like it much. It began to start bothering me that I was taking life for money. Why, I’m not sure.
Or maybe I am, now that I think about it, from the perspective of the other side of the ocean (metaphorically). I think everyone knows someone whose opinions especially matter to him. That is, there’s this person whose image lives in the back of your head, and you sometimes find yourself saying, “Would he approve of this?” And if the answer is no, you get a kind of queasy feeling when you do it. In my case, it wasn’t my wife, actually, although it hurt badly when she, in the course of two years, went from a skilled assassin to a politico with a save-the-downtrodden complex as big as my ego. No, it was my paternal grandfather. I’d suspected for a long time that he didn’t approve of assassination, but in a moment of weakness I’d made the mistake of asking him directly, and he’d told me, just as all the rest of this nonsense was going on, and all of a sudden I was unsure about things that had been basic up until then.
Where did this leave me? Hiding in a thicket on a strange island and figuring how to take the life of someone I didn’t know, someone who wasn’t in the Organization and subject to its laws, all because my goddess told me to. We humans believe that what a god tells you to do is, by definition, the right thing. Dragaerans have no such ideas. I was a human who’d been brought up in Dragaeran society, and it made for much discomfort.
I pulled a blade of grass and chewed it. The trees in front of me bent uniformly to the right, as if from years of wind. Their bark was smooth, an unusual effect, and there were no branches on the lower fifteen or twenty feet, after which they erupted like mushrooms, full of thick green leaves that whispered as the wind stirred them. Behind me were typical cloin-burrs, about my height, bunched up like they were having a conversation, their reedy bodies standing on those silly exposed roots as if they were about to turn and walk away. Cawti had a gown made of cloin-burr thread. She’d pulled the thread herself, finding a whole grove in late summer, just when they were turning from pale green to crimson, so the gown, a sweeping, flowing thing, with white lace about the shoulder, starts as a mild green at the bottom and burns like fire where it meets at her throat. The first time I took her to Valabar’s, she wore that gown with a white gem as the clasp.
I spat out the blade of grass and found another as I waited for sunset, when I could walk down the streets unnoticed. When that time came, I still hesitated, undecided, until Loiosh, my companion and familiar, spoke into my mind from his perch on my right shoulder.
“Look, boss, are you really going to explain to Verra that you had a sudden attack of conscience, so she’s going to have to find someone else to shine the bum?”
I started a small fire with the bark of the trees, which turned out to burn very well, and in it I destroyed the notes I’d made. I put the fire out and scattered the ashes, then I removed a dagger from under my left arm, tested the point and edge, and made my way into town.
THERE WAS THE BLOOD of a king on the back of my right hand as I stepped out of the Palace and ducked around behind it. The few moments after the assassination are the most dangerous time, and this whole job was flaky enough already that I very badly didn’t want to make any mistakes. It was early evening and would be full dark in less than an hour. Even as it was, I didn’t think I’d stand out very much. I ducked behind a large wooden frame that I’d picked out earlier, and I still didn’t allow myself to break into a run. I walked steadily toward the edge of town. I wrapped the knife, red with the King’s blood, in a piece of cloth and stuck it in my cloak.
Loiosh had stayed outside, above the Palace, and was still flying around nearby.
“Any pursuit?”
“None, boss. Quite a bit of excitement. They’re looking around for you, but they don’t seem very efficient.”
“Good. Anyone looking at the ground? Any signs of spells or rituals?”
“No, and no. Nothing but a lot of running around and—wait. Someone’s just come out and—yeah, he’s sending people off in various directions. No one going the right way.”
“How many toward the dock?”
“All right. Come back.”
A minute or two later he landed on my right shoulder.
“You hanging on to the knife, boss?”
“If they catch me, the knife won’t matter. I don’t want to leave it lying around, because they might have witches.”
“The sea?”
“Right.”
Once I was well away from the city, I began to jog. This was a part of the escape plan I wasn’t too happy with, but I hadn’t been able to come up with anything better. I try to stay in shape, but I carry several pounds of hardware around with me, not to mention a rapier in a sheath that reaches almost to the ground and is not designed to be run with. I jogged for a while, then walked quickly, then jogged some more. A small stream met up with me, and I splashed through it for a while, and when we said our good-byes my feet were still dry; miracle provided by darrskin boots and chreotha oil.
All I had to do was get to the dock area before morning, grab one of the small boats, and sail it far enough out to sea that I could teleport. One of the interesting things was that I didn’t know how far out that was, so if I was seen and pursued it could get tricky. As I figured it, though, I’d be there at least two hours before dawn. The trick was to get there well ahead of those who’d set out after me, and they were on the road. If they beat me there, and I found the dock was guarded, I’d have to hide and wait for a chance.
“There’s someone around, boss. Wait. More than one. Close. We’d better—”
Something knocked into me and I suddenly realized I was lying down on my back, and then I realized I couldn’t move my left shoulder, and I started to hurt. There was a roundish rock next to me, which I deduced someone had thrown at me. I lay there, hurting, until Loiosh said, “Boss. Here they come!”
I usually have a pretty good memory for fights, because my grandfather trained me to remember all of our practice sessions so we could go over them later to discuss my mistakes, but this one is largely a blur. I remember feeling a certain cold precision as Loiosh flew into the face of a woman dressed in light clothing of a tan color, and I noted that I could forget her for a while. I think I was already standing by then. I don’t remember getting to my feet, but I know I rolled around on the ground for a while first to avoid giving them a target.
Somewhere, way back, I noticed that drawing my sword hurt quite a bit, and I remember nicking a very tall thin woman on the wrist, and poking a man in the kneecap, and spinning, and feeling dizzy. The short spear seemed to be the standard weapon, and one bald guy with amazing blue eyes, a potbelly, and great strong arms got lined up for a good thrust at my chest, which I parried easily. My automatic reaction was to nail him with a dagger, but when I tried to draw it with my left hand, nothing happened, so I slashed at his face, connected, and kept spinning.
There were three or four times when Loiosh told me to duck and I did. Loiosh and I had gotten good at this sort of thing. None of my attackers said much, except one called out, “Get the jhereg, he’s warning him,” and I remember being impressed that she’d figured it out. The whole fight, four of them against Loiosh and me, couldn’t have lasted as long as it seemed to. Or maybe it did. I tried to keep moving so they’d get in each other’s way, and that worked, and I finally got the potbellied guy a good one, straight through the heart, and he went down.
I don’t know if he took my sword with him, or if I let go, but I think it was right after that I drew a dagger and dived at one of the spears. That time the man, wearing a broad leather belt from which a long horn was suspended, was too startled to keep his spear up. He backed up and fell, and I don’t remember what happened next but I think I took him then and there, because later I found the dagger still in his neck.
I suspect I picked up his spear, because I remember throwing it and missing just as Loiosh told me to duck, and then there was a burning pain low in my back, to the right, and I thought, “I’ve had it.” There was a scream behind me at almost the same moment and I mentally marked one up for Loiosh. I realized I was on my knees, and thought, “This won’t do at all,” as the tall woman charged straight at me.
I don’t know what happened to her, because the next clear memory I have is of lying on my back as the other woman, the one in tan, stood over me holding her spear, with Loiosh attached to the side of her face. She had a dazed look in her eyes. Jhereg poison isn’t the most deadly I know of, but it will get the job done, and he was giving her a lot. She tried to nail me with her spear, but I rolled away, although I’m not certain how. She took a step to follow me, but then she just sort of sighed and collapsed.
I lay there, breathing very hard, and raised my head. The tall woman was crumbled against a tree, still breathing, but with her own spear sticking out of her abdomen. I have no idea how I managed that. Her eyes were open, and she was staring at me. She tried to speak, but blood came from her mouth. Presently her breathing stopped and a shudder ran through her body.
“We took ’em, Loiosh. All four of ’em. We took ’em.”
“Yeah, boss. I know.”
I crawled over to the remains of the nearest one, the woman Loiosh had killed, and ripped at her clothing until I had enough cloth to cover the wound on my back. Getting at it hurt like—well, it hurt. I turned over and lay on it, hoping the pressure would stop the bleeding.
I got dizzy, but I didn’t pass out, and after what must have been an hour I began the process of finding out if I could sit up. There were jhereg circling overhead, which might or might not lead someone to this place. Loiosh offered to get rid of them for me, but I didn’t want him to leave. In any case, I needed to be away from there.
I managed to stand, which was hard, and I didn’t scream, which was harder. I took a few items from my pouch of witchcraft supplies, such as kelsch leaves for energy, and a foul-tasting concoction made from moldy bread, and a powder made from kineera, oil of cloves, and comfrey. I wrapped this in more of my enemy’s clothing, got it wet from my canteen, and managed to replace the cloth on my back with it. The bleeding had somehow stopped, but taking the cloth away started it again, and it hurt a lot. I took some more kineera, my last, and mixed it with oil of wormwood, more clove oil, corfina, and ground-up pine needles, got it all wet in more cloth from Loiosh’s victim, and put this against my shoulder.
I spat out the kelsch leaf, decided chewing another one would probably kill me, and struggled to my feet. The cloth on my back slipped, so I had to place it again and fasten it with blue eyes’ belt. I held the other one in place, gritted my teeth, and quickly, heh, plodded through the forest.
I must have made it a hundred yards before I got dizzy and had to sit down. After a few minutes I tried again and got maybe a little further. I sat there and caught up on my cursing, decided on another kelsch leaf, after all. It worked, I guess, because I think I made it most of a mile before I had to stop again.
“Loiosh, what direction are we going?”
“Still toward the docks, boss. I’d have told you if you were going wrong.”
“Oh. Good.”
I didn’t say anything else, because even that seemed to drain me. I stumbled to my feet and resumed my brisk trudge. Every step was—but no, I don’t want to think about it and you don’t want to hear about it. We were less than three miles from the scene of the fight, perhaps five miles from the dock, when Loiosh said, “There’s someone up ahead, boss.”
“Oh,” I said. “Can I die now?”
“No.”
I sighed. “How far?”
“About a hundred feet.”
I stopped where I was and pulled myself behind a large tree. “Is there some reason why you just noticed him, Loiosh?”
“I don’t know. These people don’t have much psychic energy. Maybe—he’s gone.”
“I don’t feel a teleport.”
“Got me, boss. He just—what’s that?”
“That” was a sound, like a low droning, gradually building in pitch. We stood listening. Were there waves, pulses within it? I wasn’t sure. The tree had odd, pale green bark, and it was smooth against my cheek. Yes, there were pulses within the droning, a delicate suggestion of rhythm.
“It’s sort of hypnotic, boss.”
“Yes. Let’s take a look.”
“Eh? Why? We don’t want to be seen around here, do we?”
“If he’s looking for me, we can’t avoid him. If not—do you really think I’m going to be able to make it all the way to the shore? Not to mention operating a Verra-be-damned boat when I get there?”
“Oh. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe kill him and steal whatever he has that’s useful.”
“Do you think you’re up to killing him?”
He sat in a small dip in the fields, his legs drawn up under him, his back perfectly straight, yet he seemed relaxed. His eyes were open and looking more or less in our direction, but he didn’t appear to see us as we approached. I couldn’t guess his House; he seemed as pale as a Tiassa, as thin and gangly as an Athyra, with the slanted eyes and pointed ears of a Dzur. His facial structure, high cheekbones and pointed chin, could have been Dragon, or perhaps Phoenix. His hair was light brown, appearing darker in contrast to his skin. He wore baggy pants of dark brown, sandals, and a sort of blue vest with fringes. A large black jewel hung on a chain around his neck. I didn’t think he’d be allowed into the Battles Club unless he found some other footgear.
He held a strange, round device, perhaps two feet in diameter, under his left arm. “It’s a drum, boss. Notice the skin across it?”
“Yes. Made out of shell, I think. I suspect he’s harmless. We can ask for help, or we can kill him. Any other ideas?”
“Boss, I don’t think you can take him in your condition.”
“If I can catch him when he’s not expecting it—”
The stranger stopped what he was doing, quite abruptly, and his eyes focused on us. He looked down at the drum and adjusted one of the leather cords that were sewn onto the head and appeared stretched all the way around the drum. He tapped the head with a beater of some sort, creating a rich and surprisingly musical tone. He frowned and adjusted another strap, struck the head again, and seemed satisfied. I hadn’t heard any difference between the two tones.
“Good afternoon,” I managed.
He nodded and gave me a vague smile. He looked at Loiosh, then back at his drum. He struck it again, very lightly, then louder.
“It sounds good,” I ventured, my breath coming in gasps.
His eyes widened, but the expression seemed to mean something other than surprise, I don’t know what. He spoke for the first time, his voice quiet and pitched rather high. “Are you from the mainland?”
“Yes. We’re visiting.” He nodded. I looked around for something else to talk about while I figured out what to do. I said, “What do you call that thing?”
“On the island,” he said, “we call this a drum.”
“Good name for it,” I told him. Then I stumbled forward a few steps and collapsed.
I SAW THE TOPS of trees, swaying in a light wind. It smelled like morning, and I hurt everywhere.
“Boss?”
“Hey, chum. Where are we?”
“Still here. With that drummer guy. Can you eat again?”
“Drummer guy? Oh, right. I remember. What do you mean ‘again’?”
“He’s fed you three times since you collapsed. You don’t remember?”
I thought about it, decided I didn’t. “How long have we been here?”
“A little more than a day.”
“Oh. They haven’t found us?”
“No one’s come close.”
“Odd. I’d have thought I left a trail a nymph jhegaala could follow.”
“Maybe they haven’t found the bodies.”
“That can’t last long. We should move.”
I sat up slowly. The drummer looked at me, nodded, and went back to whatever it was he’d been doing when we got there. He said, “I changed your dressing again.”
“Thanks. I’m in your debt.”
He went back to concentrating on his drum.
I tried to stand up, decided early on in the process that it was a mistake, and relaxed. I took a couple of deep breaths, letting tension out of my body. I wondered how long it would be until I could walk. Hours? Days? If it was days, I might as well roll over and die right now.
I discovered I was very thirsty and said so. He handed me a flask which turned out to contain odd-tasting water. He tapped his drum again. I lay back against the tree and rested, my ears straining for sounds of pursuit. After a while he put a kettle on the fire, and a bit after that we had a rather bland soup that was probably good for me. As we drank it, I said, “My name is Vlad.”
“Aibynn,” he said. “How did you come to be injured?”
“Some of your compatriots don’t take to strangers. Provincialism. There’s no help for it.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret, then he grinned. “We don’t often see anyone from the mainland here, especially dwarfs.”
Dwarfs? “Special circumstances,” I said. “Couldn’t be prevented. Why did you help me?”
“I’ve never seen anyone with a tame jhereg before.”
“Tame?”
“Shut up, Loiosh.”
To Aibynn I said, “I’m glad you were here, anyway.”
He nodded. “It’s a good place to work. You aren’t bothered much—what’s that?”
I sighed. “Sounds like someone’s coming,” I said.
He looked at me, his face blank. Then he said, “Do you think you can climb a tree?”
I licked my lips. “Maybe.”
“You won’t leave a trail that way.”
“If they see a trail leading here, and not away, won’t they ask questions?”
“Probably.”
“Well?”
“I’ll answer them.”
I studied him. “What do you think, Loiosh?”
“Sounds like the best chance we’re going to get.”
“Yeah.”
I could, indeed, climb a tree. It hurt a lot, but other than that it wasn’t difficult. I stopped when I heard sounds from below, and Loiosh gave me a warning simultaneously. I couldn’t see the ground, which gave me good reason to hope they couldn’t see me. There was no breeze, and the smoke from the fire was coming up into my face. As long as it didn’t get strong enough to make me cough, that would also help keep me hidden.
“Good day be with you,” said someone male, with a voice like a grayswan in heat.
“And you,” said Aibynn. I could hear them very well. Then I could hear drumming.
“What have you done?” asked Aibynn.
“I mean, for disturbing you.”
“Ah. You haven’t disturbed me.”
More drumming. I wanted to laugh but held it in.
“We are looking for a stranger. A dwarf.”
The drumming stopped. “Try the mainland.”
Grayswan made a sound I couldn’t interpret, and there were mutterings I couldn’t make out from his companions. Then someone else, a woman whose voice was as low as a musk owl’s call, said, “We are tracking him. How long have you been here?”
“All my life,” said Aibynn with a touch of sadness.
“Today, you idiot!” said grayswan.
“At least,” agreed my friend.
Someone else, a man with a voice that sounded like a man’s voice, said, “His tracks lead to this spot. Have you seen him?”
“I might have missed him,” said Aibynn. “I’m tuning my drum, you see, and it requires concentration.”
Grayswan demanded, “You mean he could have walked right by you? Cril and Sandy, look around. See if you can find any tracks leaving.” There came the sound of feet moving near the base of the tree. I remained very still, not even waving the smoke away from my face; it wasn’t very thick, anyway.
Aibynn said, “This part of preparing the drum is very difficult. I must—”
Musk owl said, “You’re Aibynn of Lowporch, aren’t you?”
“Why, yes.”
“I heard you drum at the Winter Festival. You’re very good.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s a new drum you’re making?”
Grayswan: “We don’t have time to—”
Aibynn: “Why, yes. This is the shell of the sweetclam. The head is made from the skin of a nyth, as big a one as you can find. The beater is made from the jawbone, wrapped in nythskin and cloth. To prepare the head, you make a fire of langwood, and season the fire with rednut shells, drownweeds, clove, dreamgrass, silkbuds, the roots of the trapvine—”
Another voice, a man’s I hadn’t heard before, said, “Nothing. He must be around here somewhere.”
Aibynn said, “This one is almost done. I’m just tuning it. You can also change the pitch when you play it. This knob, you see, I hold in my left hand, and when I turn it this way the head becomes tighter and the tone rises. This way lowers the pitch.” He demonstrated.
“I see,” said musk owl.
Grayswan said, “Look, this dwarf has killed four of the King’s guards, and we have every reason to think he—”
Aibynn continued demonstrating. The sound produced by the drum was a single smooth pulse, out of which rhythms began to emerge. I noticed an odd, sweet smell drifting up to me, probably from the treatment he had given the drumhead. The pulsing became more and more complex, and I began to hear beats within it, and I became more aware of the variations in tone. The sweet smell grew stronger. As he played, he said, “You have to play the drum for a few hours after it’s seasoned, to allow the head to work into the shell.” His voice wove in and out of the pulses, the rhythms, sometimes riding high above them, sometimes supporting them from beneath, and I wondered idly if it was changing pitch and tone or if the drum was, and were those voices mixed in with it? “Then the straps must be moistened with an emulsion made from the sap of a teardrop elm . . . they will respond to long pulses and slow pulses . . . so the rhythm emerges from the drum itself . . . the Lecuda calls the dance, or the spell, which is really the same . . . some of the oldest drums sound the best because the shell itself begins to absorb the sound, so after many years . . . the last time I tried one of those, I had borrowed a drum . . . .”
Loiosh said, “Boss, did he say dreamgrass? Boss?”
Then I felt like lying down, then I was falling, and felt like I was passing right through the branches without touching them. I heard someone say, “Look!” but I don’t remember hitting the ground.