Teckla

Cawti appeared from within and began speaking to the Dragonlord. She still wore Jhereg colors and Rocza was riding on her left shoulder. I couldn't tell what effect she was having on him, but I assumed he wasn't going to be overflowing with good will.

They spoke for a while and his hand strayed to his sword hilt. I caught my breath. Another unbreakable Jhereg rule is, you don't kill Imperial Guards. On the other hand, it wasn't at all clear to me that I was going to have a choice. I am not so completely in control of myself as I would sometimes like to believe. Perhaps that is what I've learned from all of this.

The Guard didn't draw, however, he merely gripped his weapon. And Cawti could take care of herself, and the Guards were outnumbered ten to one. I reminded myself to stay alert for the presumed assassin.

Eight more Phoenix Guards showed up. Then another four. The ratio continued to be three Teckla for each Dragon. One from this last group had a brief conference with the fellow who'd been speaking to Cawti, then she—the new Guard—resumed negotiations. I guess she out-ranked the other one or something. About thirty more of Kelly's people appeared then, and you could almost feel the temperature in the area rise. I saw Cawti shake her head. They talked some more and Cawti shook her head again. I wanted to make contact with her—to say, hey, I'm here; is there something I can do? But I knew the answer already, and asking would only distract her.

Stay alert, Vlad, I told myself.

The Guard abruptly turned away from Cawti and I heard her issue her orders in a clear, crisp voice: "Back off thirty feet. Weapons sheathed, stay alert." The Guards followed her orders at once, the Dragons looking efficient and smart in their black uniforms, trimmed with silver, with the Phoenix breast insignia and gold half-cloak of the Phoenix. The Teckla who were Guards looked just a bit silly in their peasant outfits with Phoenix insignia and gold half-cloaks. They seemed to be trying to look calm. Cawti went back inside. Natalia and Paresh emerged and circulated among the Easterners, speaking to small groups of them. Pep talks, probably.

Twenty minutes later about forty or fifty more citizens arrived. All of these had knives that were long enough to be almost swords. They were well-muscled men and carried their knives like they knew how to use them. It occurred to me that they probably came from one of the slaughterhouses. Ten minutes after that, about twenty more Phoenix Guards showed up. This continued for most of another hour, with the street gradually filling up until I could no longer see the door to Kelly's flat. I could, however, see the Captain (or whatever; I didn't know what rank she was) of the Phoenix Guards. I had her face in half profile, about thirty feet away to my right. She reminded me just a bit of Morrolan—Dragon features—but she wasn't nearly as tall. I got the impression that she wasn't at all happy about this situation—there were only Teckla and Easterners to be fought, but there were a lot of them, on their home territory, and three-fourths of her forces were Teckla. I wondered what Kelly was up to. My guess (I

Okay, but was he going to let a couple of hundred of his "people" die to prevent it? Sure, that made sense. He was following a principle; what did he care if people were killed? What puzzled me was that this wouldn't save him unless he won. Teckla or not, there were also Dragons among those Guards (and one Dzur, I noticed). Some of them were probably sorcerers. This could be a real bloodbath. Of course, Paresh was a sorcerer, and so was Cawti, but I didn't like the odds.

I was trying to puzzle this out when another group arrived. There were six of them surrounding a seventh and they were Dragaerans. They did not, however, represent the Empire. The six were obviously Jhereg bodyguard or muscle types. The seventh was Herth.

My palms became simultaneously itchy and sweaty. I knew I couldn't make a move right then and hope to live through it, but Verra! how I wanted to! I hadn't known that I had that much capacity for hate left in me until I saw this man who had had me tortured to the point where I had broken, and given them information to destroy a group my wife was willing to give her life for. It was as if he epitomized all of the bile I'd swallowed in my lifetime, and I stood there shaking and staring and hating.

Loiosh squeezed my shoulder. I tried to relax and stay alert for the assassin.

Herth spotted the captain and walked right up to her. A couple of Guards got in between them and Herth's bodyguards stepped in to face them and I wondered if I was going to see a different fight than the one I'd expected. But the captain pushed the other Guards aside and faced Herth. Herth stopped about twenty feet away from her and his bodyguards moved back. I had a perfect view of them both. I had a perfect shot at Herth.

I could have dropped two of those bodyguards with a pair of throwing knives, scattered the others with a handful of shuriken, and shined Herth before the Dragons could stop me. I couldn't have made it out alive, but I could have had him. Instead I squeezed into the corner of the building and watched and listened and cursed under my breath.

"Good afternoon, Lieutenant," said Herth. So I was wrong about her rank. So big deal.

"What do you want, Jhereg?" The Dragonlord's voice was clipped and harsh. I would almost guess she didn't like Jhereg.

"You seem to have a problem."

She spat. "In five minutes I won't anymore. Now clear out of here."

"I think I can arrange to have this problem solved peaceably, Lieutenant."

"I can arrange for you to be—"

"Unless you enjoy killing civilians. Maybe you do. I wouldn't know."

She stared at him for a while. Then she walked up and stood nose to nose with him. One of his bodyguards started forward. Herth gestured to him and he stopped. The lieutenant slowly and carefully drew a long fighting knife from a hip sheath next to her sword. Without removing her eyes from Herth's she tested it with her thumb. Then she showed it to him. Then she drew it along his cheek. First across one side, then the other. I could see lines of red where she'd cut him. He didn't flinch. When she was done, she wiped the blade on his cloak, put it away, and walked slowly away from him.

He said, "Lieutenant."

She turned. "Yes?"

"My offer still stands."

She considered him for a moment. "What's the offer?"

"Let me speak to this person, the one inside, and allow me to convince him to end this silly inland blockade."

She nodded slowly. "Very well, Jhereg. Their time is about up. I'll give you an additional ten minutes. Starting now."

Herth turned toward the door to Kelly's flat, but even as he did so I heard it swing open. (It was only then that I realized how quiet the street had become.) At first I couldn't see the door, but then the Easterners in front of it moved aside and I saw fat, little Kelly, with Paresh on one side of him and Cawti on the other. Paresh's attention was fixed on Herth, and his eyes were like daggers. Cawti was looking over the situation like a pro, and her black headband suddenly seemed incongruous. What really caught my attention, though, was that Herth's back was to me and there was only one bodyguard between us. It hurt to do nothing.

Kelly spoke first. "So," he said, "You are Herth." He was squinting so hard I couldn't see his eyes. His voice was clear and strong.

Herth nodded. "You must be Kelly. Shall we go inside and talk?"

"No," said Kelly flatly. "Anything you have to say to me, the whole world can hear, and the whole world can hear my answer, as well."

Herth shrugged. "All right. You can see the kind of situation you're in, I think."

"I can see it more clearly than either you or that friend of yours who cuts your face before granting your wishes."

That stopped him for a moment, then he said, "Well, I'm giving you a chance to live. If you remove—"

"The Phoenix Guard will not attack us."

Herth paused, then chuckled. The lieutenant, hearing this, looked amused.

Then I noticed Natalia, Paresh and two Easterners I didn't know. They were walking along the line of Phoenix Guards, handing each of them, even the Dragons, a piece of paper. The Dragons glanced at it and threw it away, the Teckla started talking to each other, and reading it aloud for those who couldn't read.

Herth paused to watch this drama, looking vaguely troubled. The lieutenant matched his expression, except she seemed a bit angry. Then she said, "All right, that will be enough—"

"What's the problem, then?" asked Kelly in a loud voice. "What are you afraid they'll do if they read that?"

The lieutenant swung and stared at him, and they held that way for a moment. I caught a glimpse of the paper that someone had dropped and the breeze brought near me. It began, "BROTHERS-CONSCRIPTS" in large print. Underneath, before the breeze carried it away again, I read, "You, conscripted Teckla, are being incited against us, Easterners and Teckla. This plan is being put into operation by our common enemies, the oppressors, the privileged few—generals, bankers, landlords—"

The lieutenant turned away from Herth and grabbed one of the leaflets and read it. It was fairly long, so it took her awhile. As she read, she turned pale and I saw her jaw clench. She glanced over at her command, many of whom had broken formation and were clearly discussing the leaflet, some waving it about as if agitated.

At this .moment Kelly began speaking, over Herth's head, as it were. He said, "Brothers! Conscripted Teckla! Your masters—the generals, the captains, the aristocrats—are preparing to throw you against us, who are organizing to fight them, to defend our right to a decent life—to walk the streets without fear. We say join us, for our cause is just. But if you don't, we warn you, don't let them send you against us, for the steel of our weapons is as cold as the steel of yours."

As he began to speak, Herth frowned and backed away. The whole time he was speaking, the lieutenant kept making motions toward him, as if she'd shut up him, then back toward her troops, as if to order them forward. When he stopped speaking at last, there was silence in the street.

I nodded. Whatever else I thought about Kelly, he'd handled this situation in a way I hadn't expected him to, and it seemed to be working. At least, the lieutenant didn't seem to quite know what to do.

Herth finally spoke. "Do you expect that to accomplish anything?" he asked. It seemed rather weak to me. To Kelly too, I guess, because he didn't answer, Herth said, "If you're done with your public speaking, and hope to avoid arrest or slaughter, I suggest that you and I try to make arrangements for—"

"You and I have nothing whatever to arrange. We want you and yours out of our neighborhoods entirely, and we won't rest until that is done. There is no basis for discussion between us."

Herth looked down at Kelly and I could imagine, although I couldn't see it, the cold smile on Herth's face. "Have it as you will then, Whiskers," he said. "No one can say I didn't try."

He turned and walked back toward the lieutenant.

Then I was distracted because someone else showed up. I didn't notice him at first because I was watching Kelly and Herth, but he must have been making his way along the street the entire time, past the Phoenix Guards and the Easterners, and right up to the door to Kelly's fiat.

"Cawti!" came the voice as from nowhere. It was a voice I knew, though I can hardly think of one I less expected to hear at that moment.

I looked at Cawti. She, as amazed as I, was staring at the old, bald, frail Easterner who stood next to her. "We must speak," said my grandfather. I couldn't believe it. His voice, in the continuing silence that followed the confrontation between Herth and Kelly, carried all the way over to my side of the street. But was he going to start throwing our family business around? Now? In public? What was he up to?

"Noish-pa," she said. "Not now. Can't you see—?"

"I see much," he said. "Yes, now." He was leaning on a cane. I knew that cane. The top could be unscrewed to reveal—a sword? Heavens, no. He carried a rapier at his hip. The cane held four vials of Fenarian peach brandy. Ambrus was curled up on his shoulder and seemed no more upset by any of this than he was. Herth didn't know what to make of him, and a quick glance told me that the lieutenant was as puzzled as I was. She was biting her lip.

"We must go off the street so we can talk," said my grandfather.

Cawti didn't know what to say.

I began cursing anew under my breath. Now there was no question: I was going to have to do something. I couldn't let my grandfather be caught in the middle of this.

Then my attention was drawn back to the lieutenant, who shook herself and stood up straighter. Her troops seemed to still be in a state of some confusion, talking in animated tones about the flyer and Kelly's speech. The lieutenant turned toward the mob of Easterners and said in a loud voice, "Clear away, all of you." No one moved. She drew her blade, a strange one that curved the wrong way, like a scythe. Kelly locked eyes with Herth. Cawti's gaze shifted among the lieutenant, my grandfather, Kelly and Herth. I let a dagger fall into my hand, wondering what I could do with it.

The lieutenant hesitated, studied her troops, then called out, "Weapons at ready." There was some sound of steel being drawn as the Dragons did so, and a few of the Teckla. The Easterners gripped their weapons and moved forward, forming a solid wall. A few more of the Guard drew weapons. I spared Kelly a glance and he was looking at my grandfather, who was looking at him. They exchanged nods, as of old acquaintances. Interesting.

My grandfather drew his rapier. He said to Cawti, "This is no place for you."

"Padraic Kelly," called the lieutenant in a piercing voice, "I arrest you in the name of the Empress. Come with me at once."

"No," said Kelly. "Tell the Empress that unless she agrees to a full investigation into the murders of our comrades, by tomorrow there will be no clear road into or out of the city, and by the following day the docks will be closed. And if she attacks us now, the Empire will fall by morning."

The lieutenant called, "Forward!" and the Phoenix Guard took a step toward the Easterners and I knew what I could use the dagger for. This was because in a single instant Kelly, my grandfather, and even Cawti were swept out of my mind. Everyone's attention was focused on the advancing Guards and the Easterners. Everyone's, that is, except mine. My attention was focused on Herth's back, about forty feet away from me.

Now he was mine. Even his bodyguards were all but ignoring him. Now I could take him and be away, cleanly. It was as if my entire life were about to be fulfilled in one thrust of an eight-inch stiletto.

Out of habit from the last four days, I gave myself a last caution before I moved away from the wall. Then I took a step toward Herth, holding the knife low against my body.

Then Loiosh screamed in my mind and there was suddenly a knife coming at my throat. It was attached to a Dragaeran who wore the colors of House Jhereg.

The assassin had finally made his move.

gray silk cravat: repair cut.

The fact that I was ready for him did nothing to prevent the cold sweat that broke out all over me when I saw him. For one thing, he was ready for me, too, and he had the jump. All thought of Herth was instantly gone, replaced by thoughts of survival.

Sometimes, in this kind of situation, time slows down. Other times it speeds up, and I'm only aware of what I'm doing after I've done it. This was one of the former. I had time to see the knife come toward my throat, and to decide on a countering move, make it, and sit back wondering if it would work. While disarming myself is never my favorite thing to do in a fight, it was my only option. I flipped my knife at him, jumped the other way, and hit the ground rolling. I kept moving as I came up in case he decided to throw some pointy things at me, too. As it happened, he did, and one of them—a knife, I think—came close enough to make the hair on my neck stand up. But I avoided everything else long enough to draw my rapier. As I did so, I told Loiosh, "I can handle this; take care of Cawti."

"Right, boss." And I heard him flap-flap away.

That was actually one of the biggest lies I've ever told, but I was very much aware that mayhem was going to be breaking out around me when the Easterners clashed with the Phoenix Guards, and I didn't want to be distracted by worrying about Cawti.

Around then, as I came to a guard position, I realized that Herth's bodyguards had shots at my back, and that there were more than seventy Phoenix Guards there, any of whom might look over this way in between cutting down Easterners. I licked my lips, felt scared, and concentrated on the man before me—a professional killer who had accepted money to kill me.

I took my first good look at the assassin. A nondescript sort of guy with maybe a trace of the Dzur in the slant of his eyes and the point of chin. He had long straight hair with a neat widow's peak. Points all over the bastard, I thought. His eyes were clear and light brown and his glance strayed over me, studying. If things weren't going as he planned (which, I guarantee, they weren't) it didn't show in his expression.

He'd drawn a sword by this time. He was standing full forward with a heavy rapier in his right hand and a long fighting knife in his left. I presented only my side, as my grandfather had taught me. I closed with him before he could throw anything else at me, stopping when we were point-to-point—that is, just at the distance from each other where the points of our blades could barely touch. From here, the concentration he'd need for a good windup with that knife would give me time to get in at least one good cut or thrust, which would settle the issue if I was lucky.

I wondered if he were a sorcerer. I glanced at his knife but didn't see anything to indicate that it was a magical weapon. Not that there had to be anything to see. My hands were sweaty. I remembered that my grandfather had recommended light gloves for fencing, for just that reason. I resolved to get some if I lived through this.

He made a tentative pass, either recognizing or knowing that I fought strangely and trying to get a feel for my style. He wasn't as fast as I'd feared, so I placed a light cut on his right hand to teach him to keep his distance.

It was frightening to be having this kind of fight with Phoenix Guards in the area, but they were all involved in the slaughter of Easterners and were thus too busy to notice us—

No, they weren't.

I realized quite suddenly that five or six seconds had passed and there were no sounds of battle.

He didn't realize it yet and tried rushing me then. He did a fine job of it, too. There was no warning that he was about to go, and the timing of his slash, at an angle from my right to left, was very good. I avoided the attack, letting his blade slide up mine, screeching, until I could deflect it. I noted his speed. He had a certain grace, too; the kind that came with long training. And he was utterly passionless. From looking at his face, I couldn't tell if he was confident, worried, gleeful, or what.

I made a halfhearted riposte, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation. I mean, I would have loved to finalize him, but not with the Phoenix Guard looking on, and it wasn't at all clear that I could manage to in any case. He blocked my riposte with his dagger. I decided that he probably wasn't a sorcerer, since sorcerers like to use enchanted daggers for spell-casting, and no one likes to parry with enchanted cutlery.

He kept coming up on the ball of his right foot and tensing his left leg. I resolved not to let it distract me. I kept my attention on his eyes. No matter how you're fighting, sword, spell, or empty- handed, your opponent's eyes are your first indication of when he'll move.

There was a second or two of inaction, during which I would have loved to have launched an attack but didn't dare. Then, I guess, he realized that there were no sounds of battle from around us. Without warning he bounded back a couple of steps, a couple more, then turned and walked briskly away, disappearing around the corner of a building.

I stood there breathing heavily for just a moment, then I suddenly thought of Herth again. If he'd been in sight I probably would have shined him, Phoenix Guard or no. But when I turned around I didn't see him.

Loiosh landed on my shoulder.

The two lines, Kelly's group and the Phoenix Guards, faced each other about ten feet apart. Most of the Guards seemed very unhappy about the situation. Kelly's people seemed solid and determined; a human wall with knives and sticks bristling from it like thorns from a vine.

I was alone in the middle of the street, about sixty feet to the side of the Phoenix Guards, some of whom were looking at me. Most of them, however, watched their lieutenant. She was holding her peculiar blade over her head, parallel to the ground in a gesture that suggested "hold," or perhaps, "sit", "stay", or "heel."

Cawti stood next to my grandfather and they were staring at me. I sheathed my sword so I wouldn't be as interesting. The Easterners were still watching the Guards, most of whom were watching their lieutenant. She, at least, hadn't seen me. I moved to a slightly more open part of the street so the assassin couldn't come back at me without giving me time to react. Then the lieutenant spoke in a voice that carried quite well, although it seemed that she wasn't shouting. She said, "I have received communication from the Empress. All troops back off to the other side of the street and stand ready."

The Phoenix Guard did so, the Teckla happily, the Dragons less so. I'll say this for Kelly: He didn't gloat. He just stood watching everything with his jowl set. I mean, it didn't surprise me that much that he didn't look relieved; I might have been able to manage that. But keeping the gloat off my face when the troops pulled back would have been beyond me.

I made my way over to where my family stood. I couldn't read Cawti's expression. My grandfather said, "He was pressing you, Vladimir. If he had continued, he would have had the initiative and your balance would have been not right."

"Pressing me?"

"Each time he shifted his feet, he would end with his weight more forward. It is a trick some of these elves use. I think they don't know they are doing it."

I said, "I'll remember, Noish-pa."

"But you were careful, which is good, and your wrist was supple but firm, as it should be, and you didn't linger after the stop-cut, as you used once to do."

"Noish-pa," said Cawti.

"Thank you," I said.

"You shouldn't be here," said Cawti.

"And why should I not?" he said. "What is there to this life that is so worth saving?"

Cawti glanced around as if to see who was listening to us. I did, too. No one seemed to be.

"But why?"

"Why am I here? Cawti, I don't know. I know that I cannot change how you are, or what you will do. I know that girls aren't the same in Faerie as back home, and do what they want to, and that is not always a bad thing. But I came to tell you that you can come to see me if you want, and if you want to talk about things, yes? Vladimir, he comes now and then when he is troubled, but you don't. That is all I have to say. Yes?"

She looked at him for a moment, and I saw there were tears in her eyes. She leaned forward and kissed him. "Yes, Noish-pa," she said. Ambrus meowed. My grandfather smiled with what was left of his teeth, turned, walked away, leaning on his cane. I stood next to Cawti watching him. I tried to think of something to say but couldn't.

Cawti said, "Now we know why he was here; why were you here?"

"I was trying to convince that assassin to do just what he did. The idea was for me to shine him."

She nodded. "You've marked him?"

"Yeah. I'll set Kragar to work on it."

"So you know he has your name, and you'll have his, and you'll be trying to kill each other. What do you think he'll do now?"

I shrugged.

Cawti said, "What would you do?"

I shrugged again. "Dunno. Either return the money and run as far and as fast as I can, or move right away. Within the day, maybe within the hour. Try to catch the guy before he could set things up."

She nodded. "Me, too. Do you want to drop out of sight?"

"Not especially. There are—"

The lieutenant began speaking again. "All citizens harken. The following words are from the Empress: You are hereby informed that a full investigation, as you… requested, is and has been taking place in accordance with Imperial procedure. You are ordered to disband at once and remove all obstructions from the street. No arrests will take place if these things are done."

Then she turned and faced her troops. "Return to duty. That is all." The Guards resheathed their weapons. The reactions from, the Guards were interestingly diverse. Some of the Dragons gave us looks that read, "You're lucky this time, scum," and others were mildly regretful, as if they had been looking forward to the exercise. The Teckla seemed relieved. The lieutenant didn't spare us another look or gesture, she simply rejoined her unit and walked away.

I turned back to Cawti, but as I did Paresh touched her on the shoulder and gestured to the headquarters. Cawti reached out and squeezed my arm once before following him. As she was disappearing, Rocza left her shoulder and landed on mine.

"Someone thinks I need help, boss."

"Yeah. Or I do. Do you mind?"

"Now. I can use the company. You've been too quiet lately. I've been getting lonely."

I didn't have an answer for that.

I didn't take any chances going back to the office; I teleported, then went inside to be sick rather than waiting in the street.

"Any luck with Herth, Kragar?"

"I'm working on it, boss."

"Okay. I've got another face. Ready?"

"What do you mean—Oh. Okay. Go ahead."

I gave him the image of the assassin. I said, "Know him?"

"No. Do you have a name?"

"No. I want one."

"Okay. I'll have a picture made and see what I can find."

"And when you find him, don't waste time asking me. Have him sent for a walk." Kragar raised an eyebrow at me. I said, "He's the one who's got my name. He almost had my head today, too."

Kragar whistled. "How'd you get out of it?"

"I was ready for it. I guessed someone was after me, so I gave him a pattern to my movements to sucker him out."

"And then you didn't manage to shine him?"

"A little matter of seventy or eighty Phoenix Guards in the area. Also, he wasn't as surprised as I'd hoped, and he was pretty good with a blade."

Kragar said, "Oh."

"So now I know what he looks like, but not his name."

"And so you give me the fun part, huh? All right. Do you have anyone in mind?"

"Yeah. Mario. If you can't find him, use someone else."

Kragar rolled his eyes. "Nothing like specific instructions. All right."

"And bring me a new set of weapons. Might as well do something with my hands while I wait for you to solve all my problems for me."

"Not all of them, Vlad. I can't do anything about your height."

"Go."

He went out and left me with Loiosh, Rocza, and my thoughts. I realized I was hungry and thought about having someone bring me some food. Then it occurred to me that I was going to be teleporting everywhere for a while now, so maybe that wasn't a good idea. Loiosh and Rocza hissed back and forth, then started chasing each other around the room until I opened the window and told them to do it outside. I was very careful to stand to the side when I opened it. I don't know of an assassin who would choose to try to get someone from across a street, but the guy was probably pretty desperate by now. At least, I would have been. I shut the window and drew the drapes.

I could at least accomplish a few things that I'd been too busy for.

"Melestav!"

"Yeah?"

"Is Sticks in the office today?"

"Yes."

"Send him up here."

"Right."

A few minutes later Sticks sauntered in and I handed him a purse with fifty Imperials in it. He weighed it without counting it and looked at me. "What's this for?"

I said, "Shut up."

He said, "Oh. That. Well, thanks." He sauntered out again.

Kragar came back in with a new set of toys for me. I shut the door after him and set up about changing weapons. I took off my cloak and began removing things from it and replacing them as I went. When the cloak was done I starting digging things out of the ribbing of my jerkin and other places. While I was removing the dagger from my left sleeve, I noticed Spellbreaker. I guess I'd been avoiding thinking about it since that night, but now I let it fall into my hand.

It hung there, just like an ordinary chain. I studied it. It was about eighteen inches long, golden, made of thin links. The gold didn't seem to be plating; it had never scratched or anything. But the chain didn't seem heavy enough for solid gold, and it certainly wasn't soft. I tried digging a fingernail into one of the links and it felt like a fine steel.

I decided that I really ought to try to find out what I could about the thing, if I lived through this. I continued changing weapons while I thought about that. What would it take to live through this?

Well, I'd have to kill the assassin, that was certain. And Herth. No, correct that: I was going to have to kill Herth before I killed the assassin, or Herth would just hire another one. I thought about hiring someone to kill Herth. That would be the intelligent thing to do. For one thing, then I'd know that he'd go down even if I did. And I still had all of that cash lying around; more than I'd ever dreamed of having. If Mario decided to show up and walk into my office, I could even meet his figure.

The trouble was, not many assassins besides Mario would agree to take on the job. Herth was a boss—a much bigger one than I. He was the kind who doesn't take a pee without four or five bodyguards there in case his pecker decides to attack him. Shining someone like that requires getting to at least one or two of his bodyguards, or Mario, or finding someone who doesn't mind dying, or a great deal of luck.

I could forget Mario; no one even knew where he was. Maybe Kelly knew someone who wanted to make a suicide attack on a Jhereg boss, but I don't hang around with that sort of individual. Getting to his bodyguards might be possible, but it takes time. You have to find the ones who will take, check them out afterwards to make sure they've taken, and set up a time when both you and they can do it with a minimum of risk. I didn't have that kind of time before the assassin made another attack.

That left luck. Did I feel lucky? No, I didn't.

So where did that leave me?

Dead.

I finished changing weapons while I thought about it. I looked at it from a few other angles. Could I somehow convince Herth to cease hostilities? Laughable. Especially since I still had to make sure he wouldn't kill Cawti. I mean, that's what had gotten me into this mess, I might as well—Was it? Is that why I'd gotten involved in all of this nonsense? Well, no, not at first; at first I had wanted to find the murderer of this Franz fellow whom I'd never met. I'd wanted to do that to help patch things up with Cawti. Shit. Why was I trying to patch things up with her She was the one who'd gotten involved in alt this without mentioning it to me. Why did I have to go sticking my nose into a place where I wasn't wanted and I didn't want to be? Duty? A pretty word, that. Duty. Doo-tee. Easterners—some of them—made it sound like doo-dee; the kind of thing you hum to yourself while changing weapons. Doo-dee-da-dee-dee-do. What did it mean?

Maybe "duty" can't just hang there in a void; maybe it has to be attached to something. A lot of Easterners attached it to Barlan, or Verra, or Crow, or one of the other gods. I couldn't do that; I'd been around Dragaerans too long and I'd picked up their attitudes toward gods. What else was there? The Jhereg? Don't make me laugh. My duty toward the Jhereg is to follow its rules so I don't get shined. The Empire? My duty toward the Empire is to make sure it doesn't notice me.

That left it pretty small. Family, I guess. Cawti, my grandfather, Loiosh, and Rocza. Sure. That was a duty, and one I could be proud to do. I thought about how empty I'd felt before Cawti came into my life, and even the memory was painful. Why wasn't that enough?

I wondered if Cawti had felt this way. She didn't have the organization; she just had me. She used to have a partner and they'd needed each other, but her partner had become a Dragonlord and heir to the Orb. Now what did she have? Was that why she'd gotten involved with Kelly's people? To give her something to do, so she'd feel useful? Wasn't I enough?

No. Of course not. No one can live his life through someone else, I knew that. So what did Cawti have to live for? She had her "people." This group of Easterners and an occasional Teckla who got together to talk about overthrowing the Empire. Cawti hung around with them, helped build barricades in the streets, stood up to Phoenix Guards, and came home convinced that she'd done her "duty." Maybe that's what duty was—something you do to make yourself feel useful.

Fine. That was Cawti. Where was my duty? Doo-deedle-deedle-dee. My duty was to die, because I was going to anyway, so I might as well call it a duty. You're getting cynical, Vlad, stop it.

I had about finished changing my weapons so I just sat there, holding a dagger that was destined for my right boot. I leaned back and closed my eyes. All of this was really beside the point if I was going to be killed soon. Or was it? Was there something I ought to be doing, even if I were dying? Now that would be a good test of duty , whatever I meant by it.

And I realized there was. I had gotten myself involved in this thing up to my neck mostly with the idea of keeping Cawti alive. If it was really as clear as all that that I was going to die, I'd have to make sure that Cawti was safe before I let anyone kill me.

Now there was a pretty little problem.

Doo-dee-deedee-dee-dum. I started flipping the dagger.

…and remove sweat stains

A little later, with the seeds of an idea taking shape in my head, I called for Kragar, but Melestav said he was out. I gnashed mental teeth and kept thinking. What, I wondered, would happen if I was killed and Cawti wasn't? My cynical half said it wouldn't be my problem. But beyond that, I guessed that my grandfather and Cawti would be able to look out for each other. There had been some sort of communication going on between them on the street there, something that had left me out. Were they going to get together and talk about how terrible I was? Was I going to die of paranoia?

Ignoring all of that, however, Cawti would be faced with an interesting problem if Herth killed me: She'd want to kill Herth herself, but she didn't want to be an assassin any more. Or at least, after the way she'd spoken to me I assumed she didn't want to be an assassin any more. On the other hand, it couldn't hurt Kelly any to have his biggest enemy taken off the stage. Too bad I'd have to die to pull it off. Hmmm.

I idly wondered whether there would be a way to convince Cawti I was dead long enough for her to kill Herth. My reappearance afterward would certainly be fun. On the other hand, it could get very embarrassing if she chose not to go after him, and even more embarrassing if Herth found out I was alive.

Still, no need to dismiss it out of hand. It was better—

"You're looking morbid again, Vlad."

I didn't jump. "How kind of you to say so, Kragar. Anything on Herth?" He shook his head. I continued, "All right, a couple of thoughts have been buzzing around my head. I want to let one of them keep buzzing. The other one is to set things up to do it the long way."

"Buy off his protection?"

I nodded.

"Okay," he said. "I'll get started on it."

"Good. What about the assassin?"

"The artist should be just about finished. He said I have and very good mind for detail. Since I got the image from you, I think you ought to be flattered."

"Okay, I'm flattered. You know what to do with the picture."

He nodded and left and I went back to planning my death—or at least thinking about it. It seemed completely impractical, but tempting anyway. The triumphant return was what sounded best, I suppose. Of course, that wouldn't work too well if by the time I returned Cawti was shacking up with Gregory or someone.

I held that thought, just to see how much it bothered me. It more or less didn't, which somehow bothered me.

Loiosh and Rocza scratched on the window. I put the dagger I'd been flipping in its sheath and let them in. I stayed to the side, just in case. They seemed a bit exhausted.

"Sightseeing?"

"Yeah."

"Who won the race?"

"What makes you think we were racing, boss?"

"I didn't say you were; I just asked who won."

"Oh. She did. Wingspan."

"Yeah, that'll do it. I don't suppose you went anywhere near South Adrilankha, did you?"

"As a matter of fact we did."

"Ah. And the barricades?"

"Gone."

Loiosh settled on my shoulder. I sat down and said, "A while ago you asked me what I'd think of Kelly's group if Cawti weren't involved."

"Yeah."

"I've been thinking about it. I decided it doesn't matter. She is involved, and I have to work with things on that basis."

"Okay."

"And I think I know what I have to do about it."

He didn't say anything. I could feel him picking moods and random thoughts out of my brain. After a moment he said, "Do you really think you're going to die?"

"Yes and no. I guess I don't really believe it. I mean, we've been in situations before that have seemed this bad or worse. Mellar was tougher and smarter than Herth and the situation was worse. But I don't see how to get out of this one. I haven't been operating very well lately; maybe that's part of it."

"I know. So, what is it you're going to do?"

"Save Cawti. I don V know about the rest, but I have to do that much."

"Okay. How?"

"I can only think of two ways: One is to wipe out Herth, and probably his whole organization, so no one else can pick up the pieces and carry on."

"That doesn't seem too likely."

"No. The other way is arrange things so that Herth has no reason to go after Cawti."

"That sounds better. How do you plan to do it?"

"By wiping out Kelly and his little band myself."

Loiosh didn't say anything. From what I could pick up of his thoughts, he was too amazed to speak. I thought it a rather clever idea myself. After a while Loiosh said, "But Cawti—"

"I know. If you can think of a way for me to convince both Cawti and Herth that I've died, that might work too."

"Nothing comes to mind, boss. But—"

"Then let's get to work."

"I don't like this."

"Protest noted. Let's get busy. I want to have it over with tonight."

"Tonight."

"Yeah."

"Okay, boss. Whatever you say."

I took out a piece of paper and started making a diagram of everything I remembered in Kelly's place, making notes where I wasn't sure of something, and trying to make guesses about back windows and so on. Then I stared at it and tried to decide how to handle things.

This could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be called an assassination. It would be more like a slaughter. I was going to have to kill Kelly for certain, because if he survived I wouldn't have accomplished anything. Then Paresh, because he was a sorcerer; then as many of the others as possible. There was no point in even trying to plan this out in the kind of detail I usually use; not when trying to shine five or more at once.

The thought of a fire or explosion crossed my mind, but I rejected the idea; buildings were too closely packed there. I didn't want to burn down all of South Adrilankha.

I picked up the diagram and studied it. There was certainly going to be a back entrance to the building, and probably a back entrance to the flat. I'd been quite a ways into it and hadn't seen a kitchen, and Kelly's private office had two doorways, so I could probably start in back and work my way forward, to make sure no one was awake in that part of the house. Since everyone seemed to sleep in that front area, I would end there, cut Kelly's throat, then Paresh's. If everyone else was still sleeping by then, I would take them one at a time. I wouldn't have to worry about revivifications, since these were Easterners with no money, but if I could I'd go back and make sure anyway. Then I'd leave.

South Adrilankha would wake up tomorrow and these people would be gone. Cawti would be very upset, but she couldn't put the organization back together just by herself. At least, I hoped she couldn't. There were several other Easterners and Teckla involved in this, but the core would be gone and I didn't think those who remained would be able to do anything that could threaten Herth.

I studied the diagram then destroyed it. I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, went over the details, making sure I hadn't left anything out.

I got to Kelly's building halfway between midnight and dawn. The front door was only a curtain. I went around to the back. There was something of a door there, but it had no lock. I carefully and thoroughly oiled the hinges, and entered. This put me at the back of the building in a narrow hallway outside of Kelly's flat. Rocza was nervous on my right shoulder. I asked Loiosh to keep her quiet and soon she settled down.

I looked down the hall but couldn't see the front door—or anything else, for that matter. I have pretty fair night vision, but there are those who see better than I do. "Is there anyone in the hall, Loiosh?"

"No one, boss."

"Okay. Where's the back entrance to the flat?"

"Right here. If you put your hand out to the right you'll touch it."

"Oh."

I slipped past the curtain and was inside. I smelled food, some of it probably edible. There was certainly the stink of rotting vegetables.

After waiting a moment to check for the sounds of breathing, I risked a small sorcerous light from the tip of my forefinger. Yes, I was in a kitchen, and a bigger one than I'd expected. There were a few cupboards, an ice-chest, a pump. I lowered the light just a bit, held my forefinger in front of me and headed toward the front room.

I passed through the room where I'd spoken with Kelly. It was pretty much as I remembered it, except for a few more boxes. On one of them I caught the glitter of steel. I looked closer and saw a long dagger, which I recognized as the murder weapon—or else one very much like it. I checked it closer. Yeah, that was it.

I was starting to go past it into the next room, the library, when I sensed someone behind me. Trying to remember this now, it seems to me that Rocza tightened her grip on my shoulder just at that moment, but Loiosh didn't notice anything. In any case, my reaction to such things is foreordained: I spun, twisting a bit to the side, and drew a dagger from inside my cloak.

At first I didn't see anything, yet I continued to feel that there was someone in the room with me. I let the light from my forefinger fail and moved to the side, thinking that if I couldn't see him, there was no reason to let him see me. Then I became aware of a faint outline, as if there were a transparent figure in front of me. I didn't know what this meant, but I knew it wasn't normal. I let Spellbreaker fall into my left hand.

The figure didn't move, but it gradually grew more substantial, and it occurred to me that the room was dark as Verra's hair and I shouldn't be able to see anything.

"Loiosh, what do you see?"

"I'm not sure, boss."

"But you do see something."

"I think so."

"Yeah. Me, too." Rocza stirred uneasily. Well, I didn't blame her. Then I realized what I must be seeing and I blamed her even less.

It had been made pretty clear to me that I wasn't welcome, the time I walked the Paths of the Dead with Aliera and visited the Halls of Judgment. It was a place for the souls of Dragaerans, not the living bodies of Easterners. In order to arrive there, a body had to be sent over Deathgate Falls (which would certainly insure it was a corpse even it hadn't been before). Then it floated down the river, fetching up somewhere along a stretch of bank, from which the soul could travel—but never mind that now. If the soul handled things right, it would reach the Halls of Judgment, and unless some god especially liked or disliked the guy, he'd take his place as part of a thriving community of dead persons.

All right, fine.

What might happen to him if he isn't brought to Deathgate Falls? Well, if he was killed with a Morganti dagger, the issue was settled. Or, if he'd worked out some arrangement with his favorite god, then the god had the pleasure of doing anything he wanted with the soul. Other than that, he'd be reincarnated. You don't have to believe me, of course, but some recent experiences have convinced me that this is fact.

Now, most of what I know about reincarnation I learned from Aliera before I believed in it, so I've forgotten a great deal of what she said. But I remember that an unborn child exerts a kind of mystical pull and will draw in the soul most suited to it. If no soul is appropriate, there will be no birth. If there is no child appropriate to a soul, the soul waits in a place that the necromancers call "The Plane of Waiting Souls" because they aren't very imaginative. Why does it wait there? Because it can't help it. There is something about the place that pulls at the Dragaeran soul.

But what about Easterners? Well, it's pretty much the same, as far as I can tell. When it comes down to a soul, there just isn't that much difference between a Dragaeran and an Easterner. We aren't allowed into the Paths of the Dead, but Morganti weapons have the same effect on us, and we can make deals with any god who feels like it, and we're probably reincarnated if there's nothing else going on, or at least that's what the Eastern poet-seer, Yain Cho Lin, is reported to have said. In fact, according to the Book of the Seven Wizards, the Plane of Waiting Souls pulls at us while we're waiting, just like it does Dragaerans.

The book says, however, that it doesn't pull quite as hard. Why? Population. There are more Easterners in the world, so there are fewer souls waiting for places to go, so there are fewer souls to help call the others. Does this make sense? Not to me, either, but there it is.

One result of this weaker pull is that, sometimes, the soul of an Easterner will be neither reincarnated nor will it go to the Plane of Waiting Souls. Instead it will, well, just sort of hang around.

At least, that's the story. Believe it or not, as you choose.

I believe it, myself.

I was seeing a ghost.

I stared at it. Staring seems to be the first thing one does when seeing a ghost. I wasn't quite sure what the second thing ought to be. According to the stories my grandfather had told me when I was young, screaming was highly thought of. But if I screamed I'd wake up everyone in the place, and I needed them to be sleeping if I was going to kill them. Also, I didn't feel the urge. I knew I was supposed to be frightened, but when it came down to it, I was much more fascinated than scared.

The ghost continued to solidify. It was a bit luminescent, which was how I could see it. It was emitting a very faint blue glow. As I watched, I began to see the lines of its face. Soon I could tell that it was an Easterner, then that it was male. It seemed to be looking at me—that is, actually seeing me. Since I didn't want to wake everyone up, I moved out of the room, back into Kelly's study. I made a light again and navigated the floor to his desk and sat down. I don't know how I knew the ghost would follow me, but I did and he did.

I cleared my throat. "Well," I said. "You must be Franz."

"Yes," said the ghost. Can I say his voice was sepulchral? I don't care. It was.

"I'm Vladimir Taltos—Cawti's husband."

The ghost—no, let me just call him Franz. Franz nodded. "What are you doing here?" As he spoke he continued to solidify, and his voice became more normal.

"Well," I said. "That's a bit hard to explain. What are you doing here?"

His brow (which I could now see) came together. "I'm not sure," he said. I studied him. His hair was light, straight, and neatly combed. How does a ghost comb his hair? His face was pleasant but undistinctive, his demeanor had that honest and sincere look that I associate with spice salesmen and dead lyorn. He had a peculiar way of standing, as if he were leaning ever so slightly forward, and when I spoke he turned his head just a bit to the side. I wondered if he was hard of hearing, or just very intent on catching everything that was said. He seemed to be a very intense listener. In fact, he seemed intense just in general. He said, "I was standing outside the meeting hall—"

"Yes. You were assassinated."

"Assassinated!"

I nodded.

He stared at me, then looked at himself, then closed his eyes for a moment. Finally he said, "I'm dead now? A ghost?"

"Something like that. You should be waiting for reincarnation, if I understand how these things work. I guess there aren't any pregnant Easterners around here who quite fit the bill. Be patient."

He studied me, sizing me up.

"You're Cawti's husband."

"Yes."

"You say I was assassinated. We know what you do. Could it have been—"

"No. Or rather, it could have but it wasn't. A fellow named Yerekim did it. You people were getting in the way of a guy named Herth."

"And he had me killed?" Franz suddenly smiled. "To try to scare us off?"

"Yeah."

He laughed. "I can guess how well it worked for him. We organized the whole district, didn't we? Using my murder as a rallying point?"

I stared. "Good guess. It doesn't bother you?"

"Bother me? We've been trying to unite Easterners and Teckla against the Empire all along. Why would it bother me?"

I said, "Oh. Well, it seems to be working."

"Good." His expression changed. "I wonder why I'm back."

I said, "What do you remember?"

"Not much. I was just standing there and my throat started itching. Then I felt someone touch my shoulder from behind. I turned around and my knees felt weak and then… I don't know. I remember waking up, sort of, and feeling… worried, I guess. How long ago did it happen?"

I told him. His eyes widened. "I wonder what brought me back?"

"You say you felt worried?"

I nodded.

I sighed inaudibly. I had a good guess what had brought him back, but I chose not to share it with him.

"Hey, boss."

"Yeah."

"This is really weird."

"No it isn't. It's normal. Everything is normal. It's just that some normal things are weirder than other normal things."

"Oh. That explains it then."

Franz said, "Tell me what's happened since I died."

I complied, being as honest as I could. When I told him about Sheryl his face grew hard and cold and I remembered that I was dealing with a fanatic. I tightened my grip on Spellbreaker but continued the recitation. When I told him about the barricades a gleam came into his eye, and I wondered just how effective Spellbreaker would be.

"Good," he said when I'd finished. "We have them running now."

"Um, yeah," I said.

"Then it was worth it."

"Dying?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"I should talk to Pat if I can. Where is everyone else?"

I almost told him they were asleep, but I caught myself. "I'm not sure," I said.

His eyes narrowed. "You're here alone?"

"Not at all," I said. Loiosh hissed to emphasize the point. He glanced at the two jhereg, but didn't smile. He seemed to have as big a sense of humor as the others. I added, "I'm sort of watching the place."

His eyes widened. "You've joined us?"

"Yes."

He smiled at me, and there was so much warmth in his expression that I would have kicked him, only he was incorporeal. "Cawti didn't think you would."

"Yeah, well."

"Exciting, isn't it?"

"Exciting. Yes, it certainly is that."

"Where's the latest issue?"

"Issue?"

"Of the paper."

"Oh. Urn… it's around here somewhere."

He looked around the office, which I was still lighting up with my finger, and finally found one. He tried to pick it up, couldn't, kept trying, and finally managed. Then he set it down. "It's hard to hold things," he said. "Do you suppose you could turn the pages for me?"

"Uh, sure."

So I turned pages for him, and grunted agreement when he said things like, "No, he's missing the point," and, "Those bastards! How can they do that?" After a while he stopped and looked at me. "It was worth dying, but I wish I could be back in it again. There's so much to be done."

He went back to reading. I noticed that he seemed to be fading. I watched for a while, and the effect continued slowly but detectably. I said, "Look, I want to find people and let them know you're around, all right? Can you sort of keep an eye on things? I'm sure if anyone comes in you can scare him to death."

He smiled. "All right. Go ahead."

I nodded and went back out the way I'd come, through the kitchen and out the door.

"I thought we were going to kill them all, boss."

"So did I."

"Couldn't you have gotten rid of the ghost with Spellbreaker?"

"Probably."

"Well then, why—"

"He's already been killed once too often."

"But what about the rest of them?"

"I changed my mind."

"Oh. Well, I didn't like the idea any way."

"Good."

I teleported to a point a block from my house. There were lamps in the street that provided enough light to tell me I was alone. I made my way home very carefully, checking for the assassin.

"Why did you change your mind, boss?"

"I don't know. I have to think about it some more. Something about Franz, I guess."

I made my way up the stairs and into the house. The sounds of Cawti's gentle breathing came from the bedroom. I removed my boots and cloak, then went in, undressed, and climbed into bed carefully so I wouldn't wake her.

As I closed my eyes I saw Franz's face before me. It took longer than it should have to fall asleep.

plain gray cloak: clean and press

I slept late and woke up slowly. I sat up in bed and tried to organize my thoughts and decide how to spend the day. My latest great scheme hadn't worked at all, so I went back to an earlier one. Was there any way, really, to convince both Cawti and Herth that I'd been killed? Herth so he'd leave me alone, Cawti so she'd kill Herth for me. I couldn't think of anything.

"You know what your problem is, boss?"

"Huh? Yeah. Everyone wants to tell me what my problem is."

"Sorry I brought it up."

"Oh, go ahead."

"You're trying to find a good trick to use, and you can't solve this with tricks."

That stopped me. I said, "What you do mean?"

"Well, look, boss: What's been bothering you is that you're running into all these people who think you shouldn't be what you are, and you have to decide whether to change or not."

"Loiosh, what's bothering me is that there's an assassin out there who has my name and—"

"Didn't you say yesterday that we'd been in worse places before?"

"Yeah. And I've come up with some trick to get out of them."

"So why haven't you this time?"

"I'm too busy answering questions from jhereg who think that the only problem is great sorrow with my lot in life."

Loiosh giggled psionically and didn't say anything else. That's one trait Loiosh has that I've never found in anyone else: He knows when to stop pushing and let me just think about things. I suppose it comes from sharing my thoughts. I can't think of any other way to get it.

I teleported to the office. I wondered if my stomach would ever get used to the abuse. Cawti once told me that when she was working with Norathar they teleported almost everywhere, and her stomach never adjusted. They almost blew a job once, she said, because she threw up on the victim. I won't give you the details; she tells it better than I do.

I called Kragar into my office. "Well?"

"We've identified the assassin. His name is Quaysh."

"Quaysh? Unusual."

"It's Serioli. Means, 'He Who Designs Interesting Clasps For Ladies' Jewelry.'"

"I see. Do we have someone on him?"

"Yeah. A guy named Ishtvan. We used him once before."

"I remember. He was quick."

"That's the guy."

"Good. Who recognized Quaysh?"

"Sticks. They used to hang around together."

"Hmmm. Problem?"

"Not as far as I know. Business."

"Yeah. Okay, but tell Sticks to stay alert; if he knows that he knows who he is, and he doesn't know he knows—"

"What?"

"Just tell Sticks to be careful. Anything else important?"

"No. I'm putting together information on Herth's bodyguards, but it's going to be a while before we know enough to approach one."

I nodded and sent him about his business. I scratched under Loiosh's chin. I teleported—again—to South Adrilankha. I made my way to Kelly's place to see what was happening there. I stayed away from the corner I'd occupied before and took up a looser position down the street. Now the object was not to be noticed.

People who don't know this business seem to overrate the importance of looks in general and clothing in particular. This is because that's what one notices. You don't usually notice the way someone is walking, or the direction he's looking, or his movement through the crowd; you notice his appearance and his clothing. Nevertheless, that isn't what attracted your attention. You see people every day who look funny but don't attract attention. I mean, you certainly can't expect someone to say, "I didn't see this guy who looked funny," or, "There was someone wearing really weird clothes but I didn't notice him." An oddly shaped nose or unusual hair or a strange way of dressing are what you remember about someone you notice, but they aren't usually what calls him to your attention.

I was dressed oddly, for that area, but I was just being me, in the middle of the street where everyone else was, doing what everyone else was doing. No one noticed me, and I kept an eye on Kelly's flat to see if there was anything unusual going on. That is, I wanted to know if they'd discovered Franz.

After an hour or so I couldn't tell, so I made my way a little closer to the building, then a little closer, then I slipped around to the side, up against another one just like it. I pressed my ear against the wall. It was even thinner than I'd thought, so I had no trouble hearing what was going on inside.

They weren't talking about Franz at all.

Kelly was speaking, something about, "It's as if you're saying, 'I know you aren't interested, but-' under your breath." His voice was biting, sarcastic.

Cawti said something, but it was too low for me to hear. Too low for Kelly, too, because he said, "Speak up," in a tone that made me wince. Cawti spoke again, and I still couldn't hear her, and then Paresh said, "That's absurd. It's twice as important now. You may not have noticed, but we're in the middle of an uprising. Every mistake we make now is twice as deadly. We can't afford any errors."

Then Cawti muttered something else and I heard several exclamations, and Gregory said, "If you feel that way, why did you join us in the first place?" Natalia said, "You're looking at it from their view. You've been trying to be an aristocrat all your life, and even now you're trying. But we aren't here to change places with them, and we aren't going to destroy them by accepting their lies as facts." And then Kelly said something, and others did as well, but I'm not going to relate any more of it. It isn't any of your business, and it isn't any of mine even though I heard it.

I listened, though, to quite a bit of it, getting redder and redder. Loiosh kept squeezing his talons on my shoulder and at one point said, "Rocza's pretty upset." I didn't answer because I didn't trust myself to speak, even to Loiosh. There was a door right around the corner from me, and I could have gone in there and Kelly would have died before he knew what hit him.

It was hard not to do it.

The only thing that distracted me was that I kept thinking things like, "How can she put up with that?" And, "Why does she want to put up with that?" It also occurred to me that all! of the others were either very brave or very trusting. They knew as well as I did that Cawti could have killed the lot of them in seconds.

The woman I married would have done so, too.

I finally stole away from the building and had some klava.

She'd changed sometime in the last year, and I hadn't noticed. Maybe that was what bothered me the most. I mean, if I really loved her, wouldn't I have seen that she was turning from a walking death-machine into a… a whatever she was? But then, turn it around. I did love her; I could tell because it hurt so much, and I hadn't noticed, so there I was.

There was no point in wondering why she'd changed. No future in it, as Sticks would say. The question was, were we going to change together? No, let's be honest. The question was, was I going to pretend to be something I wasn't, or even try to become something I wasn't, in order to keep her? And when I put it that way I knew that I couldn't. I wasn't going to become another person on the chance that she'd come to love me again. She had married me, just as I was, and I had married her the same way. If she was going to turn away from me, I'd just have to live with it as best I could.

Or not. There was still Quaysh, who'd agreed to kill me, and Berth, who would try again if Quaysh failed. So maybe I wouldn't have to live with it at all. That would be convenient, but not really ideal. I ordered more klava, which came in a glass, which reminded me of Sheryl, which didn't cheer me up.

I was still in this gloomy frame of mind an hour later when Natalia came in accompanied by an Easterner I didn't know and a Teckla who wasn't Paresh. She saw me and nodded, then thought about it and joined me, after saying something to her companions. I invited her to sit and she did. I bought her a cup of tea because I was feeling expansive and because she didn't like klava. We just looked at each other until the tea arrived. It smelled better than the klava, and it came in a mug. I resolved to remember that.

Natalia's life was crudely sketched on her face. I mean, I couldn't see the details, but the outline was there. Her hair was dark but graying; the thin gray streaks that don't seem dignified but merely old. Her brow was wide and the furrows in it seemed permanent. There were deep lines next to her nose, which I'm sure had been a cute button when she was younger. Her face was thin and marked with tension, as if she went around with her jaw clenched. And yet, deep down behind it all, there was a sparkle in her eyes. She seemed to be in her early forties.

As she sipped on her tea and formed opinions of me that were as valid as mine of her, I said, "So, how did you get involved in all of this?"

She started to answer and I sensed that I was about to get a tract, so I said, "No, never mind. I'm not sure I want to hear."

She favored me with a sort of half-smile, which was the most cheerful thing I'd run into from her yet. She said, "You don't want to hear about my life as a harem girl for an Eastern king?"

I said, "Why yes, I would. I don't suppose you really were one though, were you?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Just as well," I said.

"I was a thief for a while, though."

"Yeah? Not a bad occupation. The hours are good, anyway."

"It's like anything else," she said. "It depends on your stature in the field."

I thought about Orcas who will knife anyone for twenty Imperials, and said, "I suppose. I take it you weren't at the top."

She nodded. "We lived on the other side of town." She meant the other side of South Adrilankha. To most Easterners, South Adrilankha was all of town there was. "That was," she continued, "after my mother died. My father would bring me into an inn and I would steal the coins the drinkers left on the bar, or sometimes cut their purses."

I said, "No, that isn't really the top of the profession, is it? But I suppose it's a living."

"After a fashion."

"Did you get caught?"

"Yes. Once. We'd agreed that if I was caught he'd go through the motions of beating me, as if it were my own idea. Then when I was finally caught, he did more than go through the motions."

"I see. Did you tell what really happened?"

"No. I was only about ten, and I was too busy crying and screaming that I'd never steal again, and I'm sorry, and anything else I could think of to say."

The waiter returned with more klava. I didn't touch it, having learned from experience.

I said, "Then what happened?"

She shrugged. "I never did steal again. We went into another inn, and I wouldn't steal anything, so my father took me out and beat me again. I ran away and I've never seen him since."

"You were how old, did you say?"

"Ten."

"Hmmm. How did you live, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Since all I knew about were inns, I went into one and asked to sweep the floor in exchange for a meal. The owner said yes, so that's what I did for a while. At first I was too scrawny to have any trouble with the customers, but later I had to hide during the evenings. I was charged for oil, so I'd sit in my room in the dark, covered with blankets. I didn't really mind, though. Having a room all to myself was so nice that I didn't miss the light or the heat."

"When the owner died I was twelve, and his widow sort of latched on to me. She stopped charging me for the oil, which was nice. But I guess the biggest thing she did for me was to teach me to read. From then on I spent all my time reading, mostly the same eight or nine books over and over again. I remember there was one that I couldn't understand no matter how many times I read it, and another one of fairy stories, and one was a play, something about a shipwreck. And one was all about where to grow what field crops for best results, or something. I even read that, which shows how desperate I was. I still didn't go down to the common room in the evening, and there wasn't anything else to do."

I said, "So there you were when Kelly came along, and he changed your life, and made you see this and that and the other, right?"

She smiled. "Something like that. I used to see him selling papers on the corner every day when I ran my errands. But one day, just out of nowhere, I realized that I could buy one and it would be something new to read. I had never heard of bookstores. I think Kelly was around twenty then."

"For the next year I'd buy a paper every week, then run off before he could talk to me. I had no idea what the paper was about, but I liked it. After a year or so, it finally began to sink in and I started thinking about what it was saying, and what it had to do with me. I remember it coming as a shock to me when I realized that there was something, somehow, wrong when a ten- year-old child had to go into inns to steal."

"That's true," I said. "A ten-year-old child should be able to steal in the streets."

"Stop it," she snapped, and I decided she probably had a point so I mumbled an apology and said, "So, anyway, that's when you decided to save the world."

I guess her years had taught her a certain kind of patience, because she didn't glare at me cynically as Paresh would have, or close up as Cawti would have. She shook her head and said, "It's never that simple. I started talking to Kelly, of course, and we started arguing. I didn't realize until later that the only reason I kept returning to him was that he was the only person I knew who listened to me and seemed to take me seriously. I don't think I ever would have done anything about it, but that was the year the tavern tax came down."

I nodded. That had been before my time, but I could still remember my father talking about it in that peculiar, hushed tone he always used when talking about something the Empire did that he didn't like. I said, "What happened then?"

She laughed. "A lot of things. The first thing was that the inn closed, almost right away. The owner sold it, probably for just enough to live on. The new owner closed it until the tax fuss settled, so I was out on the street without a job. That same day I saw Kelly, and his paper had a big article about it. I said something to him about his silly old paper, and this was real, and he tore into me like a dzur after lyorn. He said that was what the paper was about, and the only way to save the jobs was this and that and the other. I don't remember most of it, but I was pretty mad myself and not thinking too clearly. I told him the problem was the Empress was greedy, and he said that no, the Empress was desperate, because of this and that, and the next thing I knew he was sounding like he was on her side. I stormed off and didn't see him again for years."

"What did you do?"

"I found another inn, this one on the Dragaeran side of town. Since Dragaerans can't tell how old we are anyway, and the owner thought I was 'cute,' they let me serve customers. It turned out that the last waiter had been killed in a knife fight the week before. I guess that should have told me what kind of place it was, and it was that kind of place, but I did all right. I found a flat just on this side of Twovine, and walked the two miles to work every day. The nice thing was that the walk took me past a little bookstore. I spent a lot of money there, but it was worth it. I especially loved history—Dragaeran, not human. And the stories, too. I guess I couldn't tell them apart very well. I used to pretend I was a Dzurlord, and I'd fight the battle of the Seven Pines then go charging up Dzur Mountain to fight the Enchantress all in one breath. What is it?"

I suppose I must have jumped a bit when she mentioned Dzur Mountain. I said, "Nothing. When did you meet Kelly again?"

My klava was cool enough to pick up and just barely warm enough to be worth drinking. I drank some. Natalia said, "It was after the head tax was instituted in the Eastern section. A couple who lived downstairs from me also knew how to read, and they ran into a group of people who were trying to get up a petition to the Empress against the tax."

I nodded. Someone had come to my father's restaurant with a similar petition years later, even though we lived in the Dragaeran part of the city. My father had thrown him out. I said, "I've never understood why the head tax was even instituted. Was the Empire trying to keep Easterners out of the city?"

"It had to do largely with the uprisings in the eastern and northern duchies that ended forced labor. I've written a book on it. Would you like to buy a copy?"

"Nevermind."

"Anyway," she continued, "my neighbors and I got involved with these people. We worked with them for a while, but I didn't like the idea of going to the Empire on our hands and knees. It seemed wrong. I guess my head was just filled with those histories and stories I'd read, and I was only fourteen, but it seemed to me that the only ones who ever got anything from the Empress had to ask boldly and prove themselves worthy." She said "boldly" and "worthy" with a bit of emphasis. "I thought we ought to do something wonderful for the Empire, then ask that the tax be lifted as our reward—"

I smiled. "What did they say to that?"

"Oh, I never actually proposed it. I wanted to, but I was afraid they'd laugh at me." Her lips turned up briefly. "And of course they would have. But we had a few public meetings to talk about it, and Kelly started showing up at them, with, I think, four or five others. I don't remember what they said, but they made a big impression on me. They were younger than a lot of those there, but they seemed to know exactly what they were talking about, and they came in and left together, like a unit. They reminded me of the Dragon armies, I guess. So after one of the meetings I went up to Kelly and said, 'Remember me?' And he did, and we started talking, and we were arguing again inside of a minute, only this time I didn't walk away. I gave him my address and we agreed to stay in touch."

"I didn't join him for another year or so, after the riots, and the killings. It was just about the time the Empress finally lifted the head tax."

I nodded as if I knew the history she was speaking of. I said, "Was Kelly involved in that?"

"We were all involved. He wasn't behind the riots or anything, but he was there all the time. He was incarcerated for a while, at one of the camps they set up when they broke us up. I managed to avoid the Guards that time, though, even though I'd been around, too, when the Lumber Exchange was torched. That was what finally brought the troops in, you know. The Lumber Exchange was owned by a Dragaeran; an lorich, I think."

"I hadn't known that," I said truthfully. "You've been with Kelly ever since?"

She nodded.

I thought about Cawti. "It must be difficult," I said. "I mean, he must be a hard man to work with."

"It's exciting. We're building the future."

I said, "Everyone builds the future. Everything we do every day builds the future."

"All right, I mean we're building it consciously. We know what we're doing."

"Yeah. Okay. You're building the future. To get it, you're sacrificing the present."

"What do you mean?" Her tone was genuinely inquisitive rather than snappy, which gave me some hope for her.

"I mean that you're so wrapped up in what you're doing that you're blind to the people around you. You're so involved in creating this vision of yours that you don't care how many innocent people are hurt." She started to speak but I kept going. "Look," I said, "we both know who I am and what I do, so there's no point pretending otherwise, and if you think it's inherently evil, then there isn't anything more to say. But I can tell you that I have never, never intentionally hurt an innocent person. And I'm including Dragaerans as people, so don't think I'm pulling one on you that way because I'm not."

She caught my eye and held it. "I didn't think you were. And I won't even discuss what you mean by innocent. All I can say is that if you really believe what you've just said, nothing I can say will change your mind, so there isn't any point in discussing it."

I relaxed, not realizing that I'd been tense. I guess I'd expected her to lambaste me or something. I suddenly wondered why I cared, and decided that Natalia seemed to be the most reasonable of these people that I'd yet met, and I somehow wanted to like, and be liked by, at least one of them. That was stupid. I'd given up trying to make people "like" me when I was twelve years old, and had the results of that attitude beaten into me in ways I'll never forget.

And with that thought a certain anger came, and with the anger a certain strength. I kept it off my face, but it came back to me then, as a chilly, refreshing wave. I had started down the path that led me to this point many, many years before, and I had taken those first steps because I hated Dragaerans. That was my reason then, it was my reason now, it was enough.

Kelly's people did everything for ideals I could never understand. To them, people were "the masses," individuals only mattered by what they did for the movement. Such people could never love. Not purely, unselfishly, with no thought for why and how and what it would do. And, similarly, they could never hate; they were too wrapped up in why someone did something to be able to hate him for doing it.

But I hated. I could feel my hatred inside of me, spinning like a ball of ice. Most of all, right now, I hated Herth. No, I didn't really want to hire someone to send him for a walk, I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to feel that tug of a body as it jerks and kicks while I hold the handle and the life erupts from it like water from the cold springs of the Eastern Mountains. That's what I wanted, and what you want makes you who you are.

I put .down a few coins to pay for the klava and the tea. I don't know how much Natalia knew of what was going on in my head, but she knew I was done talking. She thanked me and we stood up at the same time. I bowed and thanked her for her company.

As I walked out, she picked up her two companions by sight and they left the place just ahead of me, turned, and waited for her by the door. As I left, the Easterner looked at my gray cloak with the stylized jhereg on it and sneered. If the Teckla had done it I'd have killed him, but it was the Easterner so I just kept walking.

…remove cat hairs…

The chimes sounded, light and tinkling, as I stepped into the shop. My grandfather was writing in a bound tablet with an old-fashioned pencil. As I came in he looked up and smiled.

"Vladimir!"

"Hello, Noish-pa." I hugged him. We sat down and he said hello to Loiosh. Ambrus jumped into my lap and I greeted him properly. Ambrus never purred when stroked, but he somehow let you know when he liked what you were doing anyway. My grandfather told me once that Ambrus only purred when they were working magic together; the purr was a sign that everything was all right.

I studied my grandfather. Was he looking a bit older, a little more worn than he used to? I wasn't sure. It's hard to look at a familiar face as if it were that of a stranger. For some reason my eyes were drawn to his ankles, and I noticed how thin and frail they looked, even for his size. Yet, again for his size, his chest seemed large and well-muscled beneath a faded tunic of red and green. His head, bald save for the thinnest fringe of white hair, gleamed in the candlelight.

"So," he said after a while.

"How are you feeling?"

"I am fine, Vladimir. And you?"

"About the same, Noish-pa."

"Yes. There is something on your mind?"

I sighed. "Were you around in two twenty-one?"

He raised his eyebrows. "The riots? Yes. That was a bad time." He shook his head as he spoke and the corners of his mouth fell. But it was funny; it seemed, at the same time, that his eyes lit up just a bit, way down deep.

I said, "You were involved?"

"Involved? How could I not be involved? It was everyone; we were part of it or we hid from it, but we were all involved."

"Was my father involved?"

He gave me a look that I couldn't read- Then he said, "Yes, your father, he was there. He and I, and your grandmother too, and my brother Jani. We were at Twovine and Hilltop when the Empire tried to break us." His voice hardened a bit as he said that. "Your father killed a Guard, too. With a butcher knife."

"He did?"

He nodded.

I didn't say anything for a while, trying to see how I felt about this. It seemed odd, and I wished I'd known it while my father was still alive. There was a brief pang from knowing that I'd never see him again. I finally said, "And you?"

"Oh, they gave me a post after the fight, so I guess I was there too."

"A post?"

"I was a block delegate, for M'Gary Street north of Elm. So when we met, I had to go there for everyone from our neighborhood and say what we wanted."

"I hadn't known about that. Dad never talked about it."

"Well, he was unhappy. That was when I lost your grandmother—when they came back in."

"The Empire?"

"Yes. They came back with more troops—Dragons who had fought in the East."

"Would you like to tell me about it?"

He sighed and looked away for a moment. I guess he was thinking about my grandmother. I wished I'd met her. "Perhaps another time, Vladimir."

"Sure. All right. I noticed that Kelly looked at you as if he recognized you. Was it from then?"

"Yes. I knew him. He was young then. When we spoke of him before I didn't know it was the same Kelly."

"Is he a good man, Noish-pa?"

He glanced at me quickly. "Why this question?"

"Because of Cawti, I suppose."

"Hmmph. Well, yes, he is good, perhaps, if what he does you call good."

I tried to decipher that, then came at it from another angle. "You didn't seem to think much of Cawti being involved with these people. Why is that, if you were involved in it yourself?"

He spread his hands. "Vladimir, if there is an uprising against the landlords, then of course you want to help. What else can you do? But this is different. She is looking to make trouble where there is none. And it was never something that came between Ibronka—your grandmother—and me."

"It didn't?"

"Of course not. That happened, and we were all a part of it. We had to be part of it or we would be with the counts and the landlords and the bankers. It was one or the other then, it was not a thing for which I abandoned my family."

"I see. Is that what you want to tell Cawti, if she comes to see you?"

"If she asks I will tell her."

I nodded. I wondered how Cawti would react, and decided that I no longer knew her well enough to guess. I changed the topic then, but I kept noticing that he gave me funny looks from time to time. Well, I could hardly blame him.

I let things churn around in my head. Franz's ghost or no Franz's ghost, it would be most convenient for me if Kelly and his whole band were to fall off the edge of the world, but there was no good way to arrange that.

It also seemed that the biggest problem with getting to Berth was that he could take as much time as he wanted in getting me, and it wasn't hurting him at all. The Easterners had cut back on his business in some neighborhoods, but not all, and he still had his contacts and hired muscle and legmen all set to go back to business as usual as soon as the time was right. And he was a Dragaeran; he would live another thousand years or so, so what was his hurry?

If I could make him move at all, I might be able to force him out into the open, where I could get another shot at him. Furthermore… hmrnm. My grandfather was silent, watching me as if he knew how fast my brain was working. I started putting together a new plan. Loiosh had no comment on it. I looked at it from a couple of different directions as I sipped herb tea. I held the plan in my head and bounced it off several different possible problems, and it rebounded just fine. I decided to go ahead with it.

"You have an idea, Vladimir?"

"Yes, Noish-pa."

"Well, you should be about it then."

I stood up. "You're right."

He nodded and said nothing more. I bade him goodbye while Loiosh flew out of the door in front of me. Loiosh said everything was all right. I was still feeling worried about Quaysh. It would be much harder to implement my plan if I were dead.

I had only walked a couple of blocks when I was approached. I was passing an outdoor market, and she was leaning against a building, her hands behind her back. She seemed to be about fifteen years old and wore a peasant skirt of yellow and blue. The skirt was slit, which meant nothing, but her legs were shaved, which meant a great deal.

She moved away from the wall as I walked by and she said hello. I stopped and wished her a pleasant day. It suddenly occurred to me that this could be a set-up; I ran a hand through ray hair and adjusted my cloak. She seemed to think I was trying to impress her and showed me a pair of dimples. I wondered how much extra the dimples were worth.

"Anything, Loiosh?"

"Too crowded to tell for sure, boss, but I don't see Quaysh."

I decided it was probably just what it seemed to be.

She asked if I cared to take her somewhere for a drink. I said maybe. She asked if I cared to take her somewhere for a screw. I asked her how much, she said ten and seven, which worked out to an Imperial, which was a third of what my tags were charging.

I said, "Sure." She nodded without bothering with the dimples and led me around the corner. I let a knife fall into my hand, just in case. We entered an inn that displayed a sign with several bees buzzing about a hive. She spoke to the innkeeper and I put my knife away. I handed him seven silver coins. He gestured with his head toward the stairs and said, "Room three." The inn was pretty full for the afternoon, and there was a haze of blue smoke. It smelled old and foul and stale. I would have guessed that everyone in the place was a drunk.

She led me up to room three. I insisted she go in first and watched her for signs that someone else was in there. I didn't see any. When she turned back to me, Loiosh flew in.

"Okay, boss. It's safe."

She said, "Do you want that in here, too?"

I said, "Yeah."

She shrugged and said, "Okay."

I entered the room. The curtain fell shut behind me. There was a mattress on the floor and a table next to it. I gave her an Imperial. "Keep it," I said.

"Thanks."

She took off her blouse. Her body was young. I didn't move. She looked at me and said, "Well?"

As I came toward her, she put on a fake dreamy smile, turned her face up to me, and held her arms out.

I slapped her. She stepped back and said, "Hey!" I moved in and slapped her again. She said, "None of that!" I drew a knife from my cloak and held it up. She screamed.

As the sound echoed and bounced around the room, I grabbed her arm and dragged her into a corner next to the doorway and held her there. There was fear in her eyes now. I said, "That's enough. Open your mouth again and I'll kill you." She nodded, watching my face. I heard footsteps outside and I let go of her. The curtain swung aside and a big bludgeon entered, followed by a large Easterner with a black beard.

He charged in, stopped when he saw the empty room, and started to look around. Before he had a chance to do so I had grabbed hold of his hair and was pulling his head into my knife, which was pressed against the back of his neck. I said, "Drop the club." He tensed as if he were about to spring and I pressed harder. He relaxed and the club fell to the floor. I turned to the whore. The look on her face told me that this was her pimp, rather than just a bouncer for the inn or some interested citizen. "Okay," I told her. "Get out of here."

She ran around us to pick up her blouse and left without looking at either of us, or stopping to dress. The pimp said, "You a bird?"

I blinked. "Bird? Phoenix. Phoenix Guard. I like that. Lord Khaavren will like that. No, I'm not. Don't be stupid. Who do you work for?"

He said, "Huh?"

I kicked the back of his knee and he sat down. I knelt on his chest and put the point of my knife in front of his left eye. I repeated my question. He said, "I don't work for anyone. I'm on my own."

I said, "So I can do whatever I want to you, and no one will protect you, is that right?"

This put a different light on things. He said, "No, I got protection."

I said, "Good. Who?"

Then his eyes fell on the jhereg emblazoned on my cloak. He licked his lips and said, "I don't want to get involved."

I couldn't help smiling at that. "How much more involved can you get?"

"Yeah, but—"

I created some pain for him. He yelped. I said, "Who protects you?"

He gave me an Eastern name that I didn't recognize. I moved the knife a bit away from his face, relaxed my hold on him a little and said, "Okay. I'm working for Kelly. Know who I mean?" He nodded. I said, "Good. I want you off the streets. For good. You're out of business as of now, okay?" He nodded again. I grabbed a Jock of his hair then, sliced it off with my knife, held it in front of him and put it away inside my cloak. His eyes widened. I said, "I can find you now any time I want to. Understand?" He understood. "All right. I'm going to be back here in a few days. I'll want to see that fine young lady I just spoke to. And I want to see that she hasn't been hurt. If she has been I'll take pieces of you home with me. If I can't find her, I won't bother with the pieces. Can you understand that?" Apparently we were still communicating; he nodded. I said, "Good," and left him there. I saw no sign of the tag.

I left the inn and walked west about half a mile and went into a little cellar place. I asked the host, an ugly, squinty guy, if he knew where I could find some action.

"Action?"

"Action. You know, shereba, s'yang—stones, whatever."

He looked at me blankly until I passed an Imperial across the counter. Then he gave me an address a few doors down. I followed his directions and, sure enough, there were three shereba tables in use. I spotted the guy who was running it, sitting with the back of his chair against a wall, dozing. I said, "Hi. Sorry to bother you."

He opened one eye. "Yeah?"

I said, "Know who Kelly is?"

"Huh?"

"Kelly. You know, the guy who shut down the whole—"

"Yeah, yeah. What about him?"

"I work for him."

"Huh?"

"You're out of business. Game over. Closed. Get everyone out of here."

The room was small, and I'd been making no effort to keep my voice down. The card playing had stopped and everyone was watching me. Just as the pimp had, this guy noticed the stylized jhereg on my cloak. He seemed puzzled. "Look," he said. "I don't know who you are, or what kind of game you're playing—"

I stole a trick from the Phoenix Guards: I smacked him across the side of his head with the hilt of a dagger, then brandished the dagger. I said, "Does this straighten things out for you?" I heard movement behind me.

"Trouble, Loiosh?"

"No, boss. They're leaving."

"Good."

When the room was empty, I let the guy up. I said, "I'll be checking on you. If this place does any more business, I'll have your ass. Now get out."

He left in a hurry. I left more slowly. I allowed myself one evil chuckle, just because I felt like it. By the time I was done it was early evening and I'd terrorized three whores, as many pimps, two game operators, a bookie and a cleaner.

A good day's work, I decided. I headed back to the office to talk to Kragar, to put the second part of the plan into operation.

Kragar thought I was crazy.

"You're crazy, Vlad."

"Probably."

"They'll all just desert you."

"I'm going to keep paying them."

"How?"

"I'm rich, remember?"

"How long can that last?"

"A few weeks, of which I'll only need one."

"One?"

"Yeah. I spent today stirring up Herth and Kelly and pointing them at each other." I gave him a quick summary of the day's activities. "It'll take them maybe a day, each, to figure out who really did it. Herth will come after me with everything he has, and Kelly…"

"Yeah?"

"Wait and see."

He sighed. "All right. You want every business you own shut down by tomorrow morning. Fine. Everyone in hiding for a week. Fine. You say you can afford it, okay. But this other business, in South Adrilankha, I just can't see it."

"What's to see? We're just continuing what I started today."

"But fires? Explosions? That's no way to—"

"We have people who can do that sort of thing properly, Kragar. We were trained by Laris, remember?"

"Sure, but the Empire—"

"Exactly."

"I don't get it."

"You don't have to. Just handle the details."

"Okay, Vlad. It's your show. What about our own places? Like this one, for instance."

"Yeah. Get hold of the Bitch Patrol and protect them. Full sorcerous protection, including teleport blocks, and increase what we have here. I can—"

"—Afford it. Yeah, I know. I still think you're crazy."

"So will Herth. But he's going to have to deal with it anyway."

"He'll come after you, if that's what you want."

"Yep."

He sighed, shook his head and left. I leaned back in my chair, feet up on my desk, and made sure I hadn't missed anything.

Cawti was home when I got there. We said hello and how was your day and like that. We settled down in the living room, next to each other on the couch so we could feel nothing had changed, but a foot or so apart so we didn't have to take chances. I got up first, stretching, and announcing that I was going to go to sleep. She hoped I'd sleep well. I suggested that she probably needed some sleep herself, and she allowed that she did and would be in soon. I retired. Loiosh and Rocza were a bit subdued. I can't imagine why. I fell asleep quickly, as I always do when I have a plan working. It's one of the things that keeps me sane.

I teleported to the office early the next morning and waited for reports. Herth was about as quick on the uptake as I'd thought he'd be. I heard that attempts had been made to penetrate the spells around my office building and one or two other places.

"Glad you suggested we protect them, Kragar," I said.

He mumbled.

"Something bothering you, Kragar?"

He said, "Hen. I hope you know what you're doing."

I started to say, "I always know what I'm doing," but that would have rung a bit hollow, so I said, "I think so." That seemed to satisfy him.

"Okay, then, what's next?"

I mentioned someone important in the organization, and what my next step was. Kragar looked startled, then nodded. "Sure," he said, "He owes you one, doesn't he?"

"Or two or three. Set it up for today if possible."

"Right."

-He was back in an hour. "The Blue Flame," he said. We shared a smile of common memories. "The eighth hour. He said he'd take care of all protection, which means he knows something of what's going on."

I nodded. "He would."

"Do you trust him?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'll have to trust him eventually, so I might as well trust him for this."

Kragar nodded.

Later in the day I received word that we'd torched a couple of buildings in South Adrilankha. By now Herth must be biting his nails, wishing he could get his hands on me. I chuckled. Soon, I told him, soon.

I felt a funny sort of mental itch, and knew what it meant.

"Who is it?"

"Chimov. I'm near Kelly's headquarters."

"What's up?"

"They're moving out of the place."

"Ah ha. Find out where they're going."

"Will do. They have a whole crowd. It looks like they expect trouble. They're also posting handbills, and passing out leaflets all over the place."

"Have you read one?"

"Yeah. It's about a mass meeting for tomorrow afternoon in Naymat Park. The big print at the top says 'A Call To Arms.'"

"Well," I said. "Excellent. Stay with it, and keep out of trouble."

"Right, boss."

"Kragar!"

"Yeah?"

"Oh. Get someone over to Kelly's headquarters. Make it four or five. As soon as it's empty, go in and trash the place. Break up any furniture that's left, smash up walls, wreck the kitchen, that kind of thing."

"Okay."

I spent the rest of the day like that. Messages would come in, about this or that work of destruction completed, or some attack by Herth foiled, and I'd sit there and snap out the response to it. I was operating efficiently again, and it felt so good I kept going far into the evening, tightening this or that piece of surveillance, adding this or that nudge to Kelly or Herth. Of course, the office was just about the safest place for me to be just then, which was another good reason for working late.

As evening wore on, I exchanged messages with an Organization contact inside the Imperial Palace, and learned that, yes, the powers-that-be had noted what was going on in South Adrilankha. Herth's name had come up, but so far mine had not. Perfect.

When it got near to the eighth hour after noon I collected Sticks, Glowbug, Smiley and Chimov and we made our way to the Blue Flame. I left them near the door, because my guest had already arrived and he had promised to handle protection. And, in fact, I noticed a pair of customers and three waiters who looked like enforcers. I bowed as I approached the table.

He said, "Good evening, Vlad."

I said, "Good evening, Demon. Thanks for coming." He nodded and I sat. The Demon, for those of you who don't know, was a big man on the Jhereg council—the group that makes decisions affecting the whole business end of House Jhereg. He was generally considered the number—two man in the Organization; not someone to mess around with. However, as Kragar had mentioned, he owed me a favor for some "work" I'd done for him recently.

We exchanged amenities for a while, then, as the food showed up, he said, "So, you've gotten yourself into trouble, I hear."

"A bit," I said. "Nothing I can't handle, though."

"Indeed? Well, that's nice to hear." He gave me a kind of puzzled look. "Then why did you want to meet with me?"

"I'd like to arrange for nothing to happen."

He blinked. "Goon," he said.

"The Empire may start to take notice of the game that Herth and I are playing, and when the Empire notices, the Council notices."

"I see. And you want us not to interfere."

"Right. Can you give me a week to settle things?"

"Can you keep the trouble confined to South Adrilankha?"

"Pretty much," I said. "I won't be touching him anywhere else, and I've shut down and protected everything I own, so it will be hard for him to hit me. There may be one or two bodies turning up, but nothing to cause great excitement."

"The Empire isn't too keen on bodies turning up, Vlad."

"There shouldn't be too many. None, in fact, if my people are careful. And, as I say, ft ought to be settled in a week."

He studied me. "You have something going, don't you?"

I said, "Yeah."

He smiled and shook his head. "No one can say you aren't resourceful, Vlad. All right, you have a week. I'll take care of it."

I said, "Thanks."

He offered to pay for the meal, but I insisted. It was my pleasure.

…brush, removing white particles.

I got the full escort home from my bodyguards. They left me just outside the door, and as I stepped past the threshold I felt the draining of a tension that I hadn't known had been building up. You see, while my office is very well protected, one's home is strictly inviolate by Jhereg custom. Why? I don't know. Perhaps for the same reason temples are; just a matter of you ought to be safe somewhere no matter what, and everyone is too open to attacks this way. Maybe there's another reason for it. I'm not sure. But I've never heard of this custom being violated.

Of course, I'd never heard of anyone stealing from the Jhereg before it happened, either, but you have to depend on something.

Don't you?

Anyway, I was home and safe and Cawti was in the living room, reading her tabloid. My heart skipped, but I recovered and smiled. "Home early," I remarked.

She didn't smile when she looked up at me. "You bastard," she said, and there was real feeling behind the words. I felt my face flushing, and a sick feeling started in the pit of my stomach and spread out to all salient points. It wasn't as if I hadn't known she'd find out what I was doing, or hadn't known what her reaction was going to be, so why should it come as such a shock when she did just what I'd expected her to?

I swallowed and said, "Cawti—"

"Didn't you think I'd find out what you were up to, beating up Herth's people and blaming it on us?"

"No, I knew you would."

"Well?"

"I'm working a plan."

"A plan," she said, her voice dripping contempt.

"I'm doing what I have to."

She managed an expression that was half-sneer and half-scowl. "What you have to," she said, as if she were discussing the mating habits of Teckla.

"Yeah," I said.

"You have to do everything you can to destroy the only people who—"

"The only people who are going to cost you your life? Yes. And for what?" , "A better life for—"

"Oh, stop it. Those people are so full of great ideals that they can't manage to understand that there are people in the world, people who shouldn't get tromped over without reason. Individuals. Starting with you and me. Here we are, on the verge of—I don't know what—on account of these great saviors of humanity, and all you can see is what's happening to them. You're blind to what's happening to us. Or else you don't care anymore. And this doesn't tell you that there's something wrong with them?"

She laughed, and it was a hateful laugh. "Something wrong with them! That's your conclusion? Something wrong with the movement?"

"Yeah," I said. "That's my conclusion."

Her mouth twisted, she said, "Do you expect me to buy that?"

I said, "What do you mean, buy?"

"I mean, you can't sell that product."

"What am J supposed to be selling?"

"You can sell anything you want, as far as I'm concerned."

"Cawti, you aren't making sense. What—"

"Just shut up," she said. "Bastard."

She'd never called me names before. It's still funny, how that stung.

For the first time in quite a while I felt anger toward her. I stood there looking at her, feeling my feet seem to attach to the floor and my face harden, and I welcomed the cold rush of it, at first. She stood there, glaring at me (I hadn't even noticed her standing up) and that just fed into it. There was a ringing in my ears, and it came to me, as from a distance, that I was out of control again.

I took a step toward her, and her eyes grew wide and she backed up half a step. I don't know what would have happened if she hadn't, but that was sufficient to give me enough control to turn and leave the house.

"Boss, no! Not outside!"

I didn't answer him. In fact, his words didn't even penetrate until the cool evening breeze hit my face. Then I understood that I was in some sort of danger. I thought of teleporting to Castle Black, but I also knew that I was in no state of mind to teleport. On the other hand, if I were attacked, that would suit my mood perfectly.

I started walking, keeping as tight a control on myself as I could, which wasn't very. Then I remembered the last time I'd gone charging around the city with no regard for who saw me, and that sent chills through me, which cooled me down a bit and I became more careful.

A little more careful.

But I have to think that Verra, my Demon-Goddess, watched over me that night. Herth had to have had Quaysh and everyone else looking for me, yet I wasn't attacked. I stormed through my area, looking at all the closed shops, at my office with yet a few lights burning, at the dead fountain in Malak Circle, and I wasn't even threatened. While I was in Malak Circle I stopped for a while, sitting at the edge of the crumbling fountain. Loiosh looked around anxiously, anticipating an attack, yet it felt as if what he was doing had nothing to do with me.

As I sat there, faces began to appear before me. Cawti looked at me with pity on her face, as if I had caught the plague and wouldn't recover. My grandfather looked stern but loving. An old friend named Nielar stared at me, calmly. And Franz appeared, oddly enough. He gave me a look of accusation. That was funny. Why should I care about him of all people? I mean, I hadn't known him at all while he was alive, and the little bit I'd known of him after his death told me that we had nothing in common. Except for the unique circumstances of our meeting, he would have had nothing whatever to do with me.

Why did my subconscious decide to bring him up?

I knew plenty of Dragaerans who seemed to feel that the Teckla were Teckla because that was how things were, and whatever happened to them was fine, and if they wanted to better themselves, let them. These were the lords of the land, and they enjoyed being what they were, and they deserved it and no one else did, and that was that. Okay. I could understand that attitude. It had nothing to do with the way things really were for the Teckla, but it made a lot of sense for the way things were for the Dragons.

I knew a few Dragaerans who cried aloud over the plight of the Teckla, and the Easterners for that matter, and gave money to charities for the poor and the homeless. Most of them were fairly well-off, and sometimes I wondered at my own contempt for them. But I always had the feeling that they secretly despised those they helped, and were so guilt-ridden that they blinded themselves to the way things were in order to convince themselves that they were doing some good, that they actually made a difference.

And then there were Kelly and his people; so wrapped up in how they would save a world that they didn't care about anyone or anything except the little ideas they had floating around their little heads. Completely, utterly ruthless, all in the name of humanity.

Those were the three groups I saw around me, and it came to me then, as I imagined Franz looking at me with an expression that oozed sincerity as a festering wound oozes pus, that I had to decide where I fit.

Well, I certainly wasn't with the third group. I could only kill individuals, not whole societies. I have a high opinion of my own abilities, but it isn't so high that I'm willing to destroy an entire society on the strength of an opinion, nor would I be willing to set up thousands of people to be slaughtered if I was wrong. When someone messed up my life—as had happened before and would happen again—I took it personally. I wasn't ready to blame it on something as nebulous as a society and try to arouse the population to destroy it for me. J took it as it was; someone messing up my life, to be dealt with using a clean, simple dagger. No, I wasn't about to find myself with Kelly's people.

The second group? No; I had earned what I had, and no one was going to make me feel guilty about having it, not even the Franz that my subconscious dredged up in a futile effort to torment me. Those who wallowed in guilt they hadn't earned deserve no better than they gave themselves.

I had once been part of the first group, and perhaps I still was, but now I didn't like the idea. They were the people I had hated so long. Not Dragaerans, but those who lorded it over the rest of us, and displayed their wealth, culture and education like a club they could beat us with. They were my enemies, even if I'd spent most of my life unaware of it. They were the ones I wanted to show that I could come up out of nowhere and make something of myself. And how surprised they had been when I did so!

Yet I couldn't, even now, consider myself one of them. Maybe I was, but I couldn't make myself believe it. Only once in my life have I truly hated myself, and that was when Herth broke me and made me face the fact that there was more to life than the will to succeed; that sometimes, no matter how hard he tries, there are things a man can't succeed at, because the forces around him are stronger than he is. That was the only time I'd hated myself. To put myself into the first group would be to hate myself again, and I couldn't do that.

So, where did that leave me? Everywhere and nowhere. On the outside, looking in. Unable to help, unable to hinder; a commentator on the theatrics of life.

Did I believe that? I wondered, but no answer came forth. On the other hand, I was certainly having an effect on Kelly. Herth, too, for that matter. That might have to be enough for me. I noticed that the air had become chilly, and I realized that I was calmer now and that I should go somewhere safe.

Since I was already at Malak Circle, I stopped in at the office and said hello to a few people who were still working. Melestav was in. I said, "Don't you ever go home?"

"Yeah, well, things are popping right now, and if I don't keep things organized these bozos will screw everything up."

"Herth is still trying to get us?"

"Here and there. The big news is that the Empire has moved into South Adrilankha."

"What?"

"About an hour ago, a whole Company of Phoenix Guards came in and just occupied the place as if it were an Eastern city."

I stared at him. "Was anyone hurt?"

"A few score of Easterners were killed or injured, I guess."

"Kelly?"

"No, none of his people were hurt. They moved, remember."

"That's right. What reason did the Empire give?"

"Disturbances, that kind of thing. Isn't this what you were expecting?"

"Not this quickly, or in that much force, or with anyone killed."

"Yeah, well you know Phoenix Guards. They hate dealing with Easterners anyway."

"Yeah. Do you have Kelly's new address?"

He nodded and scribbled it out on a piece of paper. I glanced at it and saw that I could find the place; it was only a few blocks from the old one.

"Oh, by the way," said Melestav, "Sticks wants to see you. He was thinking tomorrow, but he's still hanging around in case you came in this evening. Should I get him?"

"Oh, all right. Send him in."

I wandered into my office and sat down. A few minutes later Sticks showed up. He said, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

I said, "Sure."

He said, "You know Bajinok?"

I said, "Yeah."

"He wanted me to help set you up. You said you like to know about these things."

I nodded. "I do. Okay, you got a bonus coming."

"Thanks."

"When did he talk to you?"

"About an hour ago."

"Where?"

"The Flame."

"Who was with you?"

"No one."

"Okay. Be careful."

Sticks mumbled something and walked out. I blinked. Was I beyond being shocked or frightened? Or was I too far gone to care? No, I cared. I hoped nothing would happen to him. He'd also been the one to identify Quaysh, and between the two things that could make him a real juicy target.

In fact, an irresistible target.

And why would they wait? An hour ago, he said? This wasn't an especially difficult piece of work, and Herth had people on his payroll who did the simple cutthroat things because it was part of their jobs.

I stood up. "Melestav!"

"Yeah, boss?"

"Has Sticks left?"

"I think so."

I cursed and sprinted through the building after him. A little voice in my head said, "Set-up," and I wondered. I opened the door and Loiosh flew out ahead of me. I stepped out onto the street, and looked around.

Well, yes and no.

I mean, it was a set-up, but I wasn't the one being set up. I saw Sticks, and I saw the form coming quickly up behind him. I yelled, "Sticks!" and he turned and stepped to the side as a shadowy figure lurched toward him and stumbled. There was a dull thud as Sticks nailed the assassin with a club, and the latter fell to the ground. It was only then that I realized I'd thrown a knife. I came up to them.

Sticks retrieved my knife from the back of the individual on the ground before us, wiped it on the fellow's cloak, and handed it to me. I caused it to vanish. "Did you shine him?"

Sticks shook his head. "He'll be all right, I think, if he wakes up before he bleeds to death. Should we get him off the street?"

"No. Leave him here. I'll have Melestav let Bajinok know he's here, and they can do their own clean-up."

"Okay. Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Be careful, all right?"

"All right." He shook his head. "I sometimes wonder why I'm in this business."

"Yeah," I said. "Me, too."

I went back inside and gave Melestav the necessary orders. He didn't seem surprised, but then I haven't surprised him since the time I brought Kiera the Thief into the office.

I sat down at my desk again and pushed aside all thoughts of what the Phoenix Guards were doing in South Adrilankha, and my responsibility for it. It wasn't that I didn't care, but I was involved in a war right now, and if I kept letting myself be distracted I was going to make a mistake, and after that I wouldn't be able to save Cawti, Sticks, myself or anyone else.

I had a war to win.

Sometime before, I'd been involved in a war where I was one of the contestants, as opposed to a mere participant. I learned the importance of information, of striking first, of keeping your enemy off balance and of thoroughly protecting your own area and people.

Herth had a bigger organization than I, but since I was the one who made it a full-scale war, I'd gotten in some good strikes at him. Furthermore, I had pretty much made sure that he couldn't hurt my organization. Of course, doing this resulted in a drastic loss of income, but I was quite well off at the moment, and I didn't think this would take long. I didn't really intend or expect to win this war in the usual way, I just wanted to force Herth out into the open so I could kill him. I thought to do it by making such a mess in his area that he'd have to take a hand in keeping it together.

That was half the plan, at any rate. The half involving Kelly was harder, but I had hopes for it. Damn Phoenix Guards, I thought. Damn the Empress. Damn Lord Khaavren. But Kelly was still in the same mess. I mean, what other choice did he have, if everyone else behaved as expected? And he probably realized that, judging from Cawti's reaction—

I thought about Cawti, and my plans and schemes fell away from my fingertips, where they'd been dancing for me. I saw only her for a moment and I cursed under my breath.

"So talk to her, boss."

"I just tried that, remember?"

"No, you argued with her. What if you tell her your whole plan?"

"She won't like it."

"But she might not be as upset with you as she is now."

"I doubt it will matter."

"Boss, you remember that what first got you upset was that she hadn't told you that she was involved with Kelly and those people?"

"Yeah… okay."

I sat for a bit longer, then went over to the front door, waving away bodyguards. I took a deep breath, made sure my mind was clear, drew on the Orb, shaped the threads of power, twisted them around myself and pulled them tight. There was the awful lurch, and I stood in the entry way outside the door to my flat. I leaned against the wall until the nausea was under control.

The instant I walked into the flat I knew something was wrong. So did Loiosh. I stood just inside the door, not closing it, and let a knife fall into my right hand. I looked carefully around the living room, trying to determine what was funny. And you know, we didn't get it? After fully ten minutes, we just gave up and went inside, still being careful, Loiosh going in ahead of me.

No, no one was waiting to kill me.

No one was waiting for me at all. I went into the bedroom, and saw that Cawti's clothing had been cleared out of the closet. I went back into the living room and saw that, of all things, the lam was missing, which is what Loiosh and I had noticed when we first came in. Funny how things like that work.

I tried to reach Cawti psionically but I couldn't. She wasn't interested in receiving my communication, or else I wasn't concentrating well enough to reach her. Yes, I decided, that must be it, I just couldn't think clearly enough right now to communicate psionically.

"Kragar?"

"Yes, Vlad?"

"Any word from Ishtvan?"

"Not yet."

"Okay. That's all."

Yeah, that must be the problem.

I went into the bedroom and shut the door before Loiosh could enter. I lay down on the bed—on Cawti's side—and tried to bring tears. I couldn't. At last, fully dressed, I slept.

…remove honing-oil stains.

I woke up very early in the morning feeling tired and still dirty. I undressed, bathed, and climbed back into bed and slept a bit longer.

It was only when I woke up the second time, just before noon, that I remembered that Cawti had left. I allowed myself to stare at the ceiling for two minutes, then forced myself to get up. I kept stopping as I shaved, looking to see if there was any outward change in the face that stared back at me. I didn't see anything.

"Well, boss?"

"I'm glad you're around, chum."

"Know what you're going to do?"

"You mean about Cawti?"

"Yeah."

"Not really. I didn't know she'd leave. Or I didn't believe it. Or I didn't know How hard it would hit me. I feel like I'm dead inside, you know what I mean?"

"I can feel it, boss. That's why I asked."

"I don't know if I'm up to handling what's going to happen now."

"You need to have things settled with Cawti."

"I know. Maybe I should try to find her."

"You'll have to be careful. Herth—"

"Yeah."

I made myself ready, checked my hardware and teleported to South Adrilankha. I rested a while in a small park, with a good view all around me—a very bad place for Quaysh—then I headed for an eating place. On the way I spotted and avoided two groups of Phoenix Guards. I found a table and ordered klava. As the waiter was leaving I said, "Excuse me."

"Yes, my lord?"

"Would you please bring that in a cup?"

He didn't even look startled. "Yes, my lord," he said. Just like that. And he did it. All this time, and the solution was as easy as asking for it. Wasn't that profound?

"I doubt it, boss."

"Me, too, Loiosh. But it starts the day right. And speaking of starting the day, can you find Rocza?"

A moment later Loiosh said in a hurt tone, "No. She's blocking me."

"I didn't know she could do that."

"Neither did I. Why would she?"

"Because Cawti figured out that I could trace her that way. Damn. Well, okay, so we go to Kelly's place and either wait for her or make them tell us where she is. Any other ideas?"

"Sounds good to me, boss. And when I get hold of that slimy reptile—"

I was pleased by the klava, which I had with honey and warmed cream. I forced myself not to think about anything that mattered. I left a few extra coins on the table to show them how much I appreciated their cup. Loiosh preceded me out the door. He said everything looked all right and I left the place, heading toward Kelly's new headquarters. I avoided another contingent of Phoenix Guards on the way. They really were all over the place. None of the citizens seemed too happy with them, and it seemed mutual.

The first thing I decided upon seeing Kelly's new place was that it looked like Kelly's old place. The brown was a different shade, and his flat was on the right side instead of the left, and it was set a little farther back from the road, and there was just a tittle more space between buildings, but it had obviously been cast in the same mold.

I walked through the doorway. The flat itself had a real door. A heavy door, with a lock on it. I looked closer, just from curiosity. A good lock, and a very heavy door. It would take a great deal of work to break into this place, and it would be almost impossible to do silently. I wondered about windows and other doors. In any case, I decided I was impressed. Cawti had probably advised them. I started to clap, remembered, and, after a moment's hesitation, pounded on the door with my fist.

It was opened by my dear friend Gregory. His eyes widened as he saw me, but I didn't let him start in on me. I just pushed past him. It was rude, I know, and that still bothers me to this day, but I'll just have to learn to live with it.

One look told me that this flat was laid out the same as the other; I was almost certain I could walk into the next room and be in a library, through that to Kelly's office, and through that to a kitchen. But this room was cleaner; the cots were collapsed and pushed against the wall. The windows, I noticed, were heavily boarded.

Kelly was sitting in the room, talking to Natalia and a Teckla I didn't recognize. Cawti wasn't there. The talking stopped when I walked in, and they all stared at me. I smiled a big smile and said, "Is Cawti around?" Then they all looked at Kelly, except for Natalia, who kept looking at me. She said, "Not at the moment."

I said, "I'll wait, then," and watched them. Natalia kept watching me, the others watched Kelly, who squinted at me, his lips in a bit of a pout. Then, quite suddenly, he stood up and said, "Right. Come on back and I'll talk to you." He turned and headed toward the rear of the flat, assuming I would follow obediently. I cursed under my breath, smiling, and did so.

This office was as neat and well-organized as the other had been. I sat down on the other side of the desk.

Kelly folded his hands over his stomach and looked at me, his eyes performing their usual squint.

"So," he said. "You've decided to call in the Empire and force us to respond."

"Actually," I said, "I just came to see Cawti. Where is she?"

His expression didn't change, he just continued watching me. "You have a Plan," he said at last, pronouncing the capital letter, "and the rest of the world is filled with details that may or may not have something to do with it. You weren't out to get us, we're just a convenient tool."

He didn't put it as a question, which is partly why I felt stung; he was accusing me of something like what I had been thinking was wrong with him. I said, "My primary interest is actually saving Cawti's life."

"Not your own?" he shot back, his eyes squinting just a bit more.

"It's too late for that," I said. That startled him a little; he actually seemed surprised. I felt inordinately pleased about this, "So, as I said, I'd like to see Cawti. Will she be around later?"

He didn't answer. He just kept looking at me, his head back and his chin down, hands wrapped over his belly. I started to get mad. "Look," I told him, "you can play all the games you want to, just don't include me in them. I don't know what you're really after and I don't much care, all right? But, now or later, you're going to be carved up between the Empire and the Jhereg, and if I have any say in it my wife isn't going to be carved up with you. So you can drop the superior act; it doesn't impress me."

I was ready for him to blow up, but he didn't. His eyes hadn't even narrowed any more. He just kept watching me, as if he were studying me. He said, "You don't know what we're after? After all you've been through, you really don't know what we're after?"

I said, "I've heard the rhetoric."

"Have you listened to it?"

I snorted. "If what everybody around here parrots originates with you, then I've heard what you have to say. That isn't what I came here for."

He leaned back a little more in his chair. "That's all you've heard, eh? The parroting of phrases?"

"Yeah. But as I said, that isn't—"

"Did you listen to the phrases being parroted?"

"I told you—"

"Have you never understood more than you could put into words? Many people only respond to the slogans—but they respond because the slogans are true and touch a spark in their hearts and their lives. And as for the ones who don't want to think for themselves, we teach them to anyway." Teach? I suddenly thought of what I'd overheard of them berating Cawti and wondered if that was what they called teaching. But Kelly continued, "Did you talk to Paresh? Or Natalia? Did you ever, once, listen to what they said?"

"Look—"

He shifted forward in his chair, just a bit. "But none of that matters. We aren't here to justify ourselves to you. We're Teckla and Easterners. In particular, we are that portion of that group that understands what it's doing."

"Yeah? What are you doing?"

"We are defending ourselves the only way we can, the only way there is—by uniting and using the power that we have due to our own role in society. With this, we can defend ourselves against the Empire, we can defend ourselves against the Jhereg, and we can defend ourselves against you."

La dee da. I said, "Can you?"

He said, "Yes."

"What's to stop me from killing you, say, now?"

He didn't bat an eyelash, which I call bravado, which a Dzur would consider brave and a Jhereg would consider stupid. He said, "Right. Go ahead, then."

"I could, you know."

"Then do it."

I cursed. I didn't kill him, of course. That was something I knew Cawti would never forgive me for, and it wouldn't accomplish anything anyway. I needed Kelly there to push his organization into the path of Herth and the Phoenix Guards so they could be neatly cleaned up. But I needed Cawti out of the way first.

I noticed that Kelly was still watching me. I said, "So, you exist only to defend yourselves, and the Easterners?"

"And the Teckla, yes. And the only defense is—but I forget; you aren't interested. You're so busy chasing fortune up over a mountain of corpses that you have no time to listen to anyone else, have you then?"

"Poetic, aren't you?" I said. "Have you ever read Torturi?"

"Yes," said Kelly. "I prefer Wint. Torturi is clever, but shallow."

"Um, yeah."

"Similar to Lartol."

"Yeah."

"They came out of the same school of poetry, and the same epoch, historically. It was after the reconstruction at the end of the ninth Vallista reign, and the aristocracy was feeling bitter toward—"

"All right, all right. You're quite well-read for a… whatever it is you are."

"I am a revolutionist."

"Yeah. Maybe you're a Vallista yourself. Creation and destruction, all wrapped up in one. Only you don't seem too effective at either."

"No," he said. "If I were of one of the Dragaeran Houses, it would be the Teckla."

I snorted. "You said it; I didn't."

"Yes. And it is another thing you don't understand."

"No doubt."

"But what I said is true for you as well—"

"Careful."

"And all human beings. The Teckla are known as a House of cowards. Is Paresh a coward?"

Licked my lips. "No."

"No. He has something worth fighting for. They are known as stupid and lazy as well. Does this match your experience?"

I started to say, "Yes," but then decided that, no, I couldn't say they were lazy. Stupid? Well, the Jhereg had been hoodwinking Teckla for years now, but that only meant we were clever. And, furthermore, there were so many of them it could be that I only ran across the stupid ones. It was hard to conceive of the total number of Teckla even within Adrilankha. Most of them were not customers of the Jhereg. "No," I said, "I guess not completely."

"The House of the Teckla," he said, "embodies all the traits of all the Dragaeran Houses. As does the Jhereg, by the way, and for much the same reason: Those Houses will allow others into their ranks with no questions asked. The aristocracy—the Dzur, the Dragons, the Lyorn, occasionally others—see this as a weak- ness. The Lyorn allow no one in; some of the others require the passing of a test. They think this strengthens their House, because it reinforces those things they desire—usually strength, quickness and cunning. These are thought to be the greatest virtues by the dominant culture—the culture of the aristocracy. If so, the mixing of blood without these traits must be a weakness. Because they think it's a weakness, you see it as a weakness, too. It is not; it is a strength."

"By requiring those traits, or whichever ones they do require, what are they leaving out that might occur on its own? All of these traits exist in some measure in the Teckla, the Jhereg and some Easterners—along with other things that we aren't even aware of, but that make us human. Think about what it means to be human. It's far more important than species or House." He stopped and studied me again.

I said, "I see. Well, now I've learned something about biology, history, and Teckla politics all in one sitting. That, and what is required to be a revolutionist. Thank you, it's been very instructive. Except I'm not interested in biology, I don't believe your history and I already knew what it takes to be a revolutionist. Right now I want to know what it takes to find Cawti."

He said, "Just what is it that you've found it takes to be a revolutionist?"

I knew he was trying to change the subject, but I couldn't resist. I said, "The worship of ideas to such an extent that you become totally ruthless toward people—friends, enemies and neutrals alike."

"The worship of ideas?" he said. "That's how you see it?"

"Yeah."

"And where do you suppose these ideas came from?"

"I can't see that it matters a whole lot."

"They come from people."

"Mostly dead people, I imagine."

He shook his head, slowly, but it seemed his eyes were twinkling, just a bit. "So," he said, "you have no ethics at all?"

"Don't bait me."

"Then you do?"

"Yeah."

"But you'll abandon them for anyone who matters to you?"

"I told you not to bait me. I won't tell you again."

"But what are professional ethics other than ideas that are more important than people?"

"Professional ethics guarantee that I always treat people as they ought to be treated."

"They guarantee that you do what's right, even if it isn't convenient at the moment?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

I said, "You're a smug bastard, aren't you?"

"No, but I can tell that you're speaking nonsense. You talk about our ideas as if they fell from the sky. They didn't. They grew out of our needs, out of our thoughts and out of our fight. Ideas aren't just thought up one day, and then people come along and decide to adopt them. Ideas are as much a product of their times as a particular summoning spell is the result of a particular Athyra reign. Ideas always express something real, even when they're wrong. People have been dying for ideas—sometimes incorrect ideas—since before history. Would that happen if those ideas weren't based on, and a product of, their lives and the world around them?"

"As for us, no, we're not smug. Our strength is that we see ourselves as part of history, as part of society, instead of just individuals who happen to have the same problem. This means we can at least look for the right answers, even if we aren't completely right all the time. It certainly puts us a step ahead of the individualists. It's all well and good to recognize that you have a problem and try to solve it, but for the Easterners and Teckla in this world, these aren't problems that an individual can solve."

I guess when you get in the habit of making speeches it's hard to stop. When he'd run down, I said, "I'm an individual. I solved them. I got out of there and made something of myself."

"How many bodies did you climb over to do it?"

"Forty-three."

"Well?"

"What of it?"

"What of it yourself?"

I stared at him. He was squinting hard again. Some of the things he was saying were uncomfortably close to things I'd been thinking about myself; but I didn't go around building elaborate political positions around my insecurities, nor inciting rebellion as if I knew better than the rest of the world how everything ought to be.

I said, "If I'm so worthless, why are you wasting your time talking to me?"

"Because Cawti is valuable to us. She's still new, but she could turn into an excellent revolutionist. She's having trouble with you, and it's hurting her work. I want it settled."

I controlled myself with an effort. "That fits," I said. "Okay, then, I'll even let you manipulate me into helping you manipulate Cawti so she can help you manipulate the entire population of South Adrilankha. That's how it works, isn't it? All right, I'll go along. Tell me where she is."

"No, that isn't how it works. I'm not making any deals with you. You called in the Phoenix Guards to manipulate us into an adventure that would destroy us. Whatever reasons you had for this, it didn't work. We aren't getting involved in any adventures now. We held a mass meeting yesterday at which we urged everyone to stay calm and not to allow the Guards to provoke an incident. We're ready to defend ourselves against any attacks, but we won't allow ourselves to be endangered by—"

"Oh, stop it. You're doomed anyway. Do you really think you can stand up to Herth? He has more hired killers working for him than Verra has hairs on her… head. If I hadn't forced him into action, he would have destroyed you as soon as he realized you weren't going to back down."

Kelly asked, "Does he have more hired killers than there are Easterners and Teckla in Adrilankha?"

"Hen. I don't know of any professionals who are Teckla, and I'm just about the only Easterner I know."

"Professional killers? No. But professional revolutionists, yes. This Jhereg killed Franz, and we mobilized half of South Adrilankha. He killed Sheryl and we mobilized the other half. You've brought the Phoenix Guards in, probably thinking you were working on some big plan to solve all your problems, when in fact you did exactly what the Empire required of you—you gave them a pretext to move in. All right, here they are, and they can't do anything. The instant they overstep themselves, we'll take the whole city."

"If you're that close, why don't you do it?"

"We don't want it yet. The time isn't right for it. Oh, we could hold the city for a while, but the rest of the country isn't ready, and we can't stand against the rest of the country. But if we have to, we will, because it will serve as an example and we'll' grow because of it. The Empire can't crush us because the rest of the country would rise; they see us as representing them."

"So they're just going to give you what you want?"

He shook his head. "They can't fully investigate the murders because it would expose how closely the Jhereg is tied to the Empire, and the Jhereg itself would have to fight back and total chaos would ensue. They know what we can do, but they don't know what we're going to do, so all they can do is move their troops in, and hope that we make a mistake and lose the confidence of the masses so they can crush us—our movement and the citizens alike."

I stared at him. "Do you really believe all that? You still haven't told me what's going to stop Herth from bringing six or seven assassins in here and just cleaning you out."

"Weren't you, yourself, trying to play Herth off against the Empire?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you didn't have to. We almost took the city the last time the Jhereg killed one of our people, and the Jhereg know very well that if it happens again the Empire will have to move against them. How is that going to affect this Herth fellow?"

"Hard to say. He's getting desperate."

Kelly shook his head again and leaned back in his chair. I studied him. Who did he remind me of? Aliera, perhaps, with that cocksure attitude. Maybe Morrolan, with his feeling that, well, of course he could destroy anyone who got in his way, because that's just how things are. I don't know. There was no question that the man was brilliant, but—I didn't know then, and I still don't.

I was trying to figure out my next riposte when Kelly's head shot up, and at the same time Loiosh spun around. Kelly said, "Hello, Cawti."

I didn't turn. Loiosh started hissing and I heard Rocza hiss back. Loiosh flew off and I heard wings flapping and much hissing. Cawti said, "Hello, Vlad. Do those two remind you of anything?"

I did turn around then, and there were circles under her eyes. She looked haggard and worn. I wanted to hold her and tell her it was all right, except I didn't dare, and it wasn't. Kelly stood up and left. I suppose he expected me to be grateful.

When he was gone, I said, "Cawti, I want you out of this. This little group is going to be crushed and I want you somewhere safe."

She said, "Yeah, I figured that out last night, after I left."

Her voice was quiet as she spoke, and I heard no harshness or hate in it. I said, "Does it change anything?"

"I'm not sure. You're asking me to choose between my beliefs and my love."

I swallowed. "Yeah, I guess that's what I'm doing."

"Are you sure you have to?"

"I have to make sure you're safe."

"What about you?"

"That's another question. It doesn't apply to this."

"The only reason you did all that was—"

"To save your life, dammit!"

"Stop it, Vlad. Please."

"Sorry."

"You did it because you're so full of how powerful Herth is that you can't see how weak he is compared to the armed might of the masses."

I started to tell her to stop that noise about the "armed might of the masses," but I didn't. I thought about it for a minute. Well, yeah, if the masses were armed, and had leaders they trusted and all that, yeah, they could be powerful. If, if, if. I said, "What if you're wrong?"

She actually stopped and thought about that for a moment, which surprised me. Then she said, "Remember outside the old place, when the Phoenix Guards showed up? Herth just stood there while that Dragon-lord cut his face. Herth hated her and wanted to kill her, but he just stood there and took it. Who was more powerful?"

"Okay, the Dragonlord. Go on."

"The Dragonlord just stood there, troops and all, while Kelly laid down our demands. Can you really think that Kelly is more powerful than a Dragon warrior?"

"No."

"Neither can I. The power was the armed might of the masses. You saw it. You think you, by yourself, are stronger than it is?'"

"I don't know."

"You admit you might be wrong?"

I sighed. "Yeah."

"Then why don't you stop trying to protect me? It's insulting, in addition to everything else."

I said, "I can't, Cawti. Don't you see that? I just can't. You don't have the right to throw your life away. No one does."

"Are you sure I'm throwing my life away?"

I closed my eyes, and felt the start of tears that I hadn't been able to shed the night before. I stopped them. I said, "Let me think about it, all right?"

"All right."

"Are you coming back home?"

"Let's wait until this is over, then we'll see where we are."

"Over? When will it be over?"

"When the Empress withdraws her troops."

"Oh."

Loiosh came back in and landed on my shoulder. I said, "Everything settled, chum?"

"Pretty much, boss. I'm not going to be flying too well for a few days. She got in a good one on my right wing."

"I see."

"Nothing to worry about."

"Yeah."

I stood up and walked past Cawti without touching her. Kelly was in the other room, deep in conversation with Gregory and a few others. None of them looked up as I left. I stepped outside, carefully, but saw no one suspicious. I teleported back home, deciding that Kragar could handle things at the office better than I could right now.

The stairs up to my flat seemed long and steep, and my legs felt leaden. Once inside, I collapsed on the couch again and stared off into space for a while. I thought about cleaning the place up, but it didn't really need it and I didn't have the energy.

Loiosh asked if I'd like to see a show and I didn't.

I spent a couple of hours sharpening my rapier because it seemed likely I'd be needing it soon. Then I stared off into space for a while, but no ideas fell from the sky and landed on me.

After a while I got up and selected a book of poems by Wint. I opened the book at random, and was at a poem called "Smothered."

"… Was it for naught I bled for thee,

Defying omnipotent powers?

The blood was mine; the battle, thine,

To smother in bright-blooming flowers—"

I read it to the end, and wondered. Maybe I was wrong. It didn't seem obscure at all, just then.

…and repair cut in left side.

I woke up in the chair, the book on my lap. I felt stiff and uncomfortable, which is natural after sleeping in a chair. I stretched out to loosen my muscles, then bathed. It was pretty early. I put some wood in the stove and kicked it up with sorcery, then cooked a few eggs and warmed up some herb bread that Cawti had made before she left. It was especially good with garlic butter. The klava helped, and it helped to do the dishes and clean up the place. By the time that was done I felt almost ready for the day.

I wrote a few letters of instruction to various people, in case of my demise. I kept them terse. I sat down and thought for a while. I hate, I mean hate, changing a plan at the last minute, but there was no way around it. Cawti wasn't going to be safe. Furthermore, there was the chance that Kelly was right. No, there just wasn't any way to arrange for all of my enemies to neatly destroy each other; I had to do something else. I ran down the events of the past few days and my options for dealing with the situation I had created, and eventually hit on the idea of bringing my grandfather into things.

Yeah, that might work, as long as he didn't show up while there was still fighting going on. I put what passed for the finishing touches on the idea.

I concentrated on Kragar, and soon he said, "Who is it?"

"It's me."

"What is it?"

"Can you reach Ishtvan?"

"Yeah."

"Give him Kelly's new address in South Adritankha, and have him wait there, out of sight, this afternoon."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Yeah." I gave him the rest of his instructions.

"Do you really think he'll go for it, Vlad?"

"I don't know. Right now it's our best shot, though."

"Okay."

Then I drew my rapier and made a few passes in the air, loosening up my wrist. Supple but firm, my grandfather always said.

I checked all of my weapons as carefully as I ever have, then I organized my thoughts and teleported. Unless I was very much mistaken, today would be it.

There was a nasty wind whipping through the streets of South Adrilankha. It wasn't terribly chilly, but it had something of a sting from the dust it kicked up. It played havoc with my cloak as I leaned against a wall near Kelly's headquarters. I moved to a place out of the wind that also provided better concealment, although not quite as good a view. I watched the Phoenix Guards march by in neat groups of four. They were trying to maintain order where there was no disorder, and some of them, mostly the Dragons, were either bored or grumbling. The Teckla seemed to be enjoying it; they could strut around the street and be important. They were the ones who were constantly gripping the hilts of their weapons.

The interesting thing was how easy it was to tell the political affiliations of the passers-by. There were no headbands, but they weren't necessary. Some people would walk the streets furtively, or go quickly to their destinations as if they were afraid of being out on the streets. Others seemed to savor the tension in the air; they would walk with their heads up, glancing about themselves as if something might happen at any moment, and they didn't want to miss it.

By early afternoon Ishtvan was probably around somewhere, though I didn't see him. Quaysh was, too, I assumed. Quaysh knew that I knew he was there, but I felt hopeful that Quaysh didn't know Ishtvan was there.

I reached Kragar again. "Anything exciting happen?"

"No. Ishtvan is there."

"Good. So am I. All right, send the message."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah. Now or never. I won't have the nerve again."

"Okay. And the sorceress?"

"Yes. Send her to the apothecary across from Kelly's. And have her wait. Does she know me by sight?"

"I doubt it. But you're pretty easy to describe. I'll make sure she recognizes you."

"Okay. Have at it."

"Right, Vlad."

And we were committed.

The note that Herth would be receiving was quite simple. It said: "I'm prepared to compromise, if you'll arrange for the removal of the Phoenix Guards. Because of the Guards, I can't leave my flat. You may arrive at your convenience.-Kelly."

Its strength was its weakness: It was too obvious to be the fake that it was. But Kelly and Herth couldn't know each other well enough to communicate psionically, so messages were required. Herth was bound to have a very low opinion of Kelly, which was also important. In order for this to work, Herth had to believe that Kelly was scared of the Phoenix Guards, and Herth had to think that Kelly was ignorant of how much of a threat these guards were to a Jhereg. I knew that Kelly was really aware of all that, but presumably Herth didn't.

So, the questions were: Would Herth show up in person? How many bodyguards would he bring? And, what other precautions would he take?

The sorceress arrived before anything else happened. I didn't recognize her. She was a tall Jhereg with black hair in tight curls. Her mouth was harsh and she showed some signs of Athyra in her ancestry. She wore the Jhereg gray. She entered the shop. I followed carefully. She saw me as I entered and said, "Lord Taltos?" I nodded. She gestured at Kelly's building. "You want a block to prevent anyone from teleporting out. Is that all?"

"Yes."

"When?"

I pulled out a coin, studied it with eye and fingers for a moment, and handed it to her. "When this heats up."

"All right," she said.

I left the shop, still being very careful. I didn't want to be attacked just yet. I resumed my old position and waited. A few minutes later a Dragaeran in the colors of House Jhereg showed up.

I said, "All right, Loiosh. Takeoff."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, boss. Good luck."

He flew away. That put a time limit on things. The bloody part of the day had to be over within, I guessed, about thirty minutes. I drew a dagger and held it low, and pushed myself deeper into the shadows cast by the tall old house I was standing against. Then I put the dagger away and fingered my rapier, but didn't draw it. I touched Spellbreaker, but left it wrapped around my wrist. I squeezed my hands into and out of fists.

What was going on inside Kelly's flat, I could only guess at. But I had no doubt that the Jhereg had been a messenger from Herth. He would have walked in and said, "Herth is on his way." Neither Kelly nor the messenger would know why, so—

Natalia and Paresh left the building, walking in opposite directions.

Kelly would send for help. From whom? From the "people," of course. My earlier plan had required this, and I could have then informed the Phoenix Guards of it and incited mutual destruction. I wasn't going to do that now, however, because Cawti was still part of it.

Four Jhereg showed up. Enforcers, hired muscle, legmen. Two of them went inside to check the place over, while the others studied the area, looking for people like me. I stayed hidden. If Ishtvan was there, he did too. Likewise Quaysh. I was getting a lesson in how easy it is to hide on a city street, and how hard it is to find someone who is hiding.

About seven minutes later Herth showed up, along with Bajinok and another three bodyguards. They entered the flat. I concentrated for a moment and performed a very simple spell. A coin heated up. A teleport block occurred around Kelly's flat.

Just about that time, Easterners and an occasional Teckla began to congregate on the street. One of the legmen outside went in, presumably to report on this development. He came out again. Then Phoenix Guards began to collect on the opposite side of the street. In a surprisingly short time—like five minutes, maybe—there was a repeat of the scene before: about two hundred armed Easterners on one side, eighty or so Phoenix Guards on the other. That to you, Kelly. Instant confrontation, courtesy of Baronet Taltos.

Trouble was, I no longer wanted a confrontation. That plan had involved having Cawti out of the way, so I could kill Herth while Ishtvan killed Quaysh and the Guards killed Kelly and his band. But I hadn't sent the messages informing the Phoenix Guards of this occurrence; they had found out on their own. Damn them anyway.

Well, there was no way of pulling out at this stage. By now Herth would be inside, he would have realized that the message didn't come from Kelly, and he would have realized that there was a teleport block around the building. He would deduce that I was out here somewhere, waiting to kill him. What would he do? Well, he might just try to come out, hoping that I wouldn't try anything with the Phoenix Guards all around. Or he might call for more bodyguards, surround himself completely and walk out of the place; far enough away to be able to teleport. He was probably pretty unhappy now.

The lieutenant who'd been there last time was not in sight. Instead, the commander of the Phoenix Guard was an old Dragaeran who wore the blue and white of the House of the Tiassa beneath the gold cloak of the Phoenix. He had that peculiar, stiff-yet-relaxed pose of the longtime soldier. Had he been an Easterner, he would have had a long mustache to pull. As it was, he scratched the side of his nose from time to time. Other than that, he hardly moved. I noticed that his blade was very long but lightweight, and I decided that I didn't want to fight him. Then it occurred to me that this was an old Tiassa in command of Phoenix Guards, and I realized that it was probably the Lord Khaavren himself, the Brigadier of the Guards. I was impressed.

Easterners and Guards continued to gather, and now Kelly stepped outside and looked around, along with Natalia and a couple of others. Soon they went back in. I was able to tell nothing from watching Kelly. A bit later Gregory and Paresh went out and began speaking to the Easterners, quietly. I assumed they were telling them to remain calm.

I flexed my fingers. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the building across the street. I remembered the hallway. I saw the broken porcelain below next to my right foot, but ignored it; it could have been cleaned up. I called up a picture of the reddish stain that was probably liquor on the floor and against the wall. Then I remembered the stairs in the middle of the hall, probably leading down to a cellar, with a curtain at the top. The ceiling above it was pitted with broken paint and chipped woodwork. A frayed rope dangled from it. The rope had probably once held a candelabrum. I remembered the thickness of the rope and the way the frayed end had hung and the shape of the frays. I recalled the layer of dust just inside the curtain. And the curtain itself, woven in zigzags of dark brown and an ugly, dirty blue, both against a background that might once have been green. The smell of the hallway, compressed, dust-choked and stuffy, so thick I could almost taste it; I could taste the dust in my mouth

I decided I had it. I held it there, fixed, and called upon my link to the Orb, and the power rushed through me to the forms I created and shaped and spun, until they matched, in a deep yet inexplicable way, the picture and scent and taste I held in my mind.

I drew them in, my eyes tightly closed, and I knew I had caught somewhere, because the sickening movement began in my bowels. I gave the last twist and opened my eyes, and, yes, I was there. It didn't look or smell quite the way I remembered it, but close enough. In any case, it hid me quite effectively.

I was assuming that there were bodyguards in the hallway, so I tried to keep silent. Have you ever felt you were about to throw up, and yet had to keep silent? But let's not dwell on that; I managed. After a while I risked a look past the curtain. I saw a bodyguard standing in the hall. He was about as alert as it is possible to be when nothing is immediately happening, which isn't all that alert. I ducked my head back without being seen. I looked the other way, toward the back door, but didn't see anyone. There may have been one or two outside the back door, or just inside the back entrance to the flat itself, but I could ignore them for now either way.

I listened closely and I could make out Herth's voice, speaking peremptorily. So he was inside. He was well-protected, of course. My options seemed rather limited. I could try to pick off his protection one by one. That is, find a way to quiet these two without alerting those inside, remove the bodies and wait until someone investigated, repeating as needed. It was attractive in a way, but I had real doubts about my ability to handle that many without a noise; and, in any case, Herth might duck out at any moment if he decided that was his best chance.

On the other hand, there was only one other option, and that was stupid. I mean, really stupid. The only time for doing something that stupid is when you're so mad you can't think clearly, you expect to die anyway, you have weeks of frustration built up to the point where you want to explode and you figure maybe you can take a few of them with you, and, generally, you just don't care any more.

I decided this was the perfect time.

I checked all my weapons, then drew two thin and extremely sharp throwing knives. I kept my arms at my sides so the knives, if not hidden, at least wouldn't be obvious. I stepped out into the hall.

He saw me at once, and stared. I was walking toward him, and I seem to recall that I had a smile on my lips. Yes, in fact I'm sure of it. Maybe that's what stopped him, but he just stared at me. My pulse was racing by then. I kept walking, waiting until either I was close enough or he moved. My guess, looking back on those ten steps down the hall, was that I would have been cut down at once if I'd tried to rush him, but by walking toward him, smiling, I threw him out of his reckoning. He stared at me as if hypnotized, making no motion until I was right up to him.

Then I nailed him, one knife in his stomach, which is one of the most disabling of non-fatal wounds. He crumbled to the floor right at my feet.

I took a knife from my boot; one I could throw as well as cut or stab with. I entered the room.

Two bodyguards were just looking up toward the doorway and tentatively reaching for weapons. The messenger was sitting on a couch with his eyes closed, looking bored. Bajinok stood next to Herth, who was talking to Kelly. I could see Kelly's face, but not Herth's. Kelly wasn't pleased. Cawti stood next to Kelly and she spotted me at once. Paresh and Gregory were in the room, along with three Easterners and a Teckla who I didn't recognize.

Also next to Herth was a bodyguard who was staring right at me. Whose eyes were widening. Who had a knife in his hand. Who was ready to throw it at me. Who fell with my knife high on the right side of his chest.

As he fell, he managed to release his weapon, but I slipped to the side and it only grazed my waist. As I avoided it, I turned to kill Herth, but Bajinok had stepped in front of him. I cursed to myself and moved farther into the room, looking for my next set of enemies.

The other two bodyguards drew weapons, but I was faster than I thought I'd be. I sent each of them a small dart coated with a poison that would make their muscles constrict, and I put a couple of other things into their bodies as well. They went down, got up, and went down again.

Meanwhile, my rapier was out and I had a dagger in my left hand. Bajinok pulled a lepip from somewhere, which was nasty because it could break my blade if it hit. Herth was staring at me over Bajinok's shoulder; he hadn't yet drawn a weapon. I don't know, maybe he didn't have one. I avoided a strike from Bajinok and riposted—taking him cleanly through the chest. He gave one spasm and fell. I looked over at the guy who'd acted as a messenger. He had a dagger in his hand and was half standing up. He dropped the dagger and sat down again, his hands well clear of his body.

It had been less than ten seconds since I'd stepped into the room. Now three bodyguards were down in various stages of discomfort and uselessness (not to mention two more in the hall), Bajinok was probably dying, and the remaining Jhereg on Herth's side had declared himself out of the action.

I couldn't believe it had worked.

Neither could Herth.

He said, "What are you, anyway?"

I sheathed my rapier and drew my belt dagger. I didn't answer him because I don't talk to my targets; it puts the relationship on entirely the wrong basis. I heard something behind me and saw Cawti's eyes widen. I threw myself to the side of the room, rolled, and came to a kneeling position.

A body—one that I hadn't put there—was lying on the floor. I noticed that Cawti had a dagger out, held down to her side. Herth still hadn't moved. I checked the body to make sure it wasn't anything more than that. It wasn't. It was Quaysh. There was a short iron spike protruding from his back. Thank you, Ishtvan, wherever you are.

I stood up again and turned to the messenger. "Get out," I said. "If those two bodyguards outside start to come in here, my people outside will kill you." He might well have wondered why, if I had people outside, they hadn't killed the bodyguards. But he didn't say anything; he just left.

I took a step toward Herth and raised my dagger. At this point I didn't care who saw me, or if I was going to be turned over to the Empire. I wanted this finished.

Kelly said, "Wait."

I stopped, mostly from sheer disbelief. I said, "What?"

"Don't kill him."

"Are you nuts?" I took another step. Herth had absolutely no expression on his face.

"I mean it," said Kelly.

"I'm glad."

"Don't kill him."

I stopped and stepped back a pace. "Okay," I said. "Why?"

"He's our enemy. We've been fighting him for years. We don't need you to step in and settle it for us, and we don't need an Imperial, or even a Jhereg, investigation into his death."

I said, "This may be hard for you to believe, but I don't really give a Teckla's squeal what you want. If I don't kill him now, I'm dead. I thought I was anyway, but things seem to have worked out so that I might live. I'm not going to—"

"I think you can arrange for him not to come after you, without killing him yourself."

I blinked. Finally I said, "All right, how?"

"I don't know," said Kelly. "But look at his situation: You've battered his organization almost out of existence. It's going to take everything he has just to put it together. He is in a position of weakness. You can manage something."

I looked at Herth. He still showed no expression. I said, "At best, that just means he's going to wait."

Kelly said, "Maybe."

I turned back to Kelly. "How do you know so much about how we operate and what kind of situation he's in?"

"It's our business to know everything that affects us and those we represent. We've been fighting him for years, one way or another. We have to know him and how he operates."

"Okay. Maybe. But you still haven't told me why I should let him live."

Kelly squinted at me. "Do you knew," he said, "that you are a walking contradiction? Your background is from South Adrilankha, you are an Easterner, yet you have been working all your life to deny this, to adopt the attitudes of the Dragaerans, to almost be a Dragaeran, and more, an aristocrat—"

"That's a lot of—"

"At times, you affect the speech patterns of the aristocracy. You are working to become, not rich, but powerful, because that is what the aristocracy values above all things. And yet, at the same time, you wear a mustache to assert your Eastern origins, and you identify with Easterners so much that, I'm told, you have never plied your trade on one, and, in fact, turned down an offer to murder Franz."

"So, what does this—?"

"Now you have to choose. I'm not asking you to give up your profession, despicable as it is. I'm not asking you for anything, in fact. I'm telling you that it is in the interest of our people that you not murder this person. Do what you want." He turned away.

I chewed on my lip. amazed at first that I was even thinking about it. I shook my head. I thought about Franz, who was actually pleased to have his name used for propaganda after he died, and Sheryl, who would probably have felt the same, and I thought about all that Kelly had said to me over the last few times we spoke, and about Natalia, and I remembered the talk with Paresh, so long ago it seemed, and the look he'd given me at the end. Now I understood it.

Most people never have the chance to choose what side they're on, but I did. That's what Paresh was telling me, and Sheryl and Natalia. Franz had thought I had chosen. Cawti had I had reached a point where we could choose our sides. Cawti had chosen, and now I had to. I wondered if I could choose to stay in the middle.

It suddenly didn't matter that I was standing in a crowd of strangers. I turned to Cawti and said, "I should join you. I know that. But I can't. Or I won't. I guess that's what it comes down to." She didn't say anything. Neither did anyone else. In the awful silence of that ugly little room, I just kept talking.

"Whatever this thing is that I've become is incapable of looking beyond itself. Yes, I'd like to do something for the greater good of humanity, if you want to call it that. But I can't, and we're both stuck with that. I can cry and wail as much as I want and it doesn't change what I am or what you are or anything else."

Still, no one said anything. I turned to Kelly and said, "You will probably never know how much I hate you. I respect you, and I respect what you're doing, but you've diminished me in my own eyes, and in Cawti's. I can't forgive you for that."

For just an instant then he was human. "Have I done that? We're doing what we have to do. Every decision we make is based on what is necessary. Is it really I who has done this to you?"

I shrugged and turned toward Herth. Might as well make it complete. "I hate you most of all," I said. "Much more than I hate him. I mean, this goes beyond business. I want to kill you, Herth. And I'd love to do it slow; torture you the way you tortured me. That's what I want."

He was still showing no expression, damn his eyes. I wanted to see him cringe, at least, but he wouldn't. Maybe it would have been better for him if he had. Maybe not, too. But staring at him, I almost lost it again. I was holding a stiletto, my favorite kind of weapon for a simple assassination; I longed to make him feel it, and having him just stare at me like that was too much. I just couldn't take it. I grabbed him by the throat and flung him against a wall, held the point of my blade against his left eye. I said some things to him that I don't remember but were never above the level of curses. Then I said, "They want me to let you live. Okay, bastard, you can live. For a while. But I'm watching you, all right? You send anyone after me and you've had it. Got that?"

He said, "I won't send anyone after you."

I shook my head. I didn't believe him, but I figured I'd at least bought some time. I said to Cawti, "I'm going home. Coming with me?"

She looked at me, her forehead creased and sorrow in her eyes. I turned away.

As Herth started to move toward the door, I heard the sound of steel on steel from behind me, and a heavy sword came flying into the room. Then a Jhereg came in, backing up. At his throat was a rapier, and attached to the rapier was my grandfather. Ambrus was on his shoulder. Loiosh flew into the room.

"Noish-pa!"

"Yes, Vladimir. You wished to see me?"

"Sort of," I said. I had some mad in me that hadn't washed away yet, but it was going. I decided I had to get outside of there before I exploded.

Kelly said, "Hello, Taltos," to my grandfather.

They exchanged nods.

"Wait here," I said to no one in particular. I walked out into the hall, and the bodyguard I had wounded was still moaning and holding his stomach, although he had removed the knife. There was another one next to him who was holding his right leg. I could see wounds on both legs and both arms and a shoulder. They were small wounds, but probably deep. I was pleased that my grandfather was still as good as I remembered. I walked past them carefully and out into the street. There was now a solid line of armed Easterners and an equally solid line of Phoenix Guards. There were no Jhereg bodyguards there anymore, however.

I walked through the Guards until I found their commander. "Lord Khaavren?" I said.

He looked at me and his face tightened. He nodded once.

I said, "There will be no trouble. It was a mistake. These Easterners are going to leave now. I just want to tell you that."

He stared at me for a moment, then looked away as if I were so much carrion. I turned and went into the apothecary. I found the sorceress and said, "Okay, you can lift it. And if you want to earn some more, Herth will be coming out onto the street soon, and I think he'd appreciate a teleport back home."

"Thanks," she said. "It's been a pleasure."

I nodded and walked back toward Kelly's flat. As I did so, Herth emerged with several wounded bodyguards, including one who had to be helped along. Herth didn't even look at me. I went past him, and I saw the sorceress approach and speak to him.

When I went back inside, my grandfather was nowhere to be seen and neither was Cawti. Loiosh said, "They've gone back into Kelly's study."

"Good."

"Why did you send me instead of reaching him psionically?"

"My grandfather doesn't approve of it, except for emergencies."

"Wasn't this an emergency?"

"Yeah. Well, I also wanted you out of the way so I could go ahead and do something stupid."

"I see. Well, did you?"

"Yeah. I even got away with it."

"Oh. Does that mean everything's all right now?"

I looked back toward the study where my grandfather was talking with Cawti. "Probably not," I said. "But it's out of my hands. I thought I'd probably be dead after this, and I wanted someone here who could take care of Cawti."

"But what about Herth?"

"He promised to leave me alone in front of witnesses. That will keep him honest for a few weeks, anyway."

"And after that?"

"We'll just have to see."

Pocket Handkerchief: clean and press

The next day I received word that the troops had been withdrawn from South Adrilankha. Cawti didn't show up. But I hadn't really expected her to.

To take my mind off things, I took a walk around my neighborhood. I was beginning to enjoy the feeling that I was in no more danger than I'd been before this nonsense started. It might not last, but I'd enjoy it while I could. I even walked a bit outside of my area, just because walking felt so good. I hit a couple of inns that I don't usually visit and that was fine. I was careful not to get drunk, even though it probably wouldn't have mattered.

I passed by the oracle I'd been to so long before and thought about going in, but I didn't. It did make me wonder, though, what I ought to do with all of that money. It was clear that I wasn't going to be building Cawti a castle. Even if she came back to me, I doubted she'd want one. And the idea of buying a higher title in the Jhereg seemed ludicrous. That left—

Which is when the solution hit me.

My first reaction was to laugh, but I couldn't afford to laugh at any idea just then, and besides, I'd look foolish standing in the middle of the street laughing.

The more I thought about it, though, the more sense it made. From Herth's perspective, that is. I mean, as Kelly had said, the man was almost washed up; this let him get out alive and removed any need on his part to kill me.

From my end it was even easier than that. It would entail many administrative problems, of course, but I could use a few administrative problems. Hmmm. I finished the walk without incident.

Two days later I was sitting in my office, taking care of the details of getting things operating again and a few other matters. Melestav came in.

"Yeah?"

"A messenger just arrived from Herth, boss."

"Oh, yeah? What did he have to say?"

"He said, 'Yes.' He said you'd know what it was about. He's waiting for a reply."

"Well I'll be damned," I said. "Yeah. I know what it's about."

"Any instructions?"

"Yeah. Go into the treasury and pull out fifty thousand Imperials."

"Fifty thousand!"

"That's right."

"But—all right. Then what?"

"Give it to the messenger. Arrange for an escort. Make sure it gets to Herth."

"All right, boss. Whatever you say."

"Then come back in here; we have a lot of work to do. And send Kragar in."

"Okay."

"I'm already here."

"Huh? Oh."

"What just happened?"

"What we wanted to. We have the prostitution, which we'll have to close down or clean up, the strong-arm stuff, which we'll kill, and the gambling, cleaners, and small stuff, which we can leave alone."

"You mean it worked?"

"Yeah. We just bought South Adrilankha."

I got home late that night and found Cawti asleep on the couch. I looked down at her. Her dark, dark hair was in disarray over her thin, proud face. Her cheekbones stood out in the light of the single lamp, and her fine brows were drawn together as she slept, as if she was puzzled by something a dream was telling her.

She was still beautiful, inside and out. It hurt to look at her. I shook her gently. She opened her eyes, smiled wanly and sat up.

"Hello, Vlad."

I sat down next to her, but not too close. "Hello," I said.

She blinked sleep out of her eyes. After a moment she said, "I had a long talk with Noish-pa. I guess that was what you wanted, wasn't it?"

"I knew I couldn't talk to you. I hoped he could find the way to say things I couldn't."

She nodded.

I said, "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"I'm not sure. What I said to you, a long time ago now, about how unhappy you are and why, that's all true, I think."

"Yeah."

"And I think what I'm doing, working with Kelly, is right, and I'm going to keep doing it."

"Yeah."

"But it isn't the whole answer to every question, either. Once I decided that I'd do this, I thought it would solve everything, and I treated you unfairly. I'm sorry. The rest of life doesn't stop because of my activities. I'm working with Kelly because that's my duty, but it doesn't end there. I also have a duty toward you."

I looked down. When she didn't go on, I said, "I don't want you coming back to me because you feel it's your duty."

She sighed. "I see what you mean. No, that isn't how I meant it. The problem is that you were right, I should have spoken to you about it. But I couldn't bring myself to risk—to risk what we have. Do you see what I mean?"

I stared at her. Do you know, that had never occurred to me? I mean, I knew I felt frightened and insecure; but I never thought that she could feel that way, too. I said, "I love you."

She made a gesture with her arm and I moved over to her and put my arm around and held her. After a while I said, "Are you moving back in?"

She said, "Should I? We still have a lot to work out."

I thought about my latest purchase and chuckled. "You don't know the half of it."

She said, "Hmm?"

I said, "I've just bought South Adrilankha."

She stared. "You bought South Adrilankha? From Herth?"

"Yeah."

She shook her head. "Yes, I guess we do have things to talk about."

"Cawti, it saved my life. Doesn't that—?"

"Not now."

I didn't say anything. A moment later she said, "I'm committed now; to Kelly, to the Easterners, to the Teckla. I still don't know how you feel about that."

"Neither do I," I said. "I don't know if it would be easier or harder to work it out with you living here again. All I know is that I miss you, that it hurts to go to sleep without you."

She nodded. Then she said, "I'll come back then, if you want me to, and we'll try to work it out."

I said, "I want you to."

We didn't celebrate then, or anything, but we held each other, and for me that was a celebration, and the tears I shed onto her shoulder felt as clean and good as the laugh of a condemned man, unexpectedly freed.

Which, in a way, described me quite well, just then.