The Book of Jhereg Read online

  Then I thought of my springhouse. I made it out the door and somehow lived through the flames that, my memory tells me, reached taller than I, and made it there. It was built of stone, of course, for the dampness would have rotted timber, so it still stood. I was badly burned, but I made it into the stream.

  I lay there trembling for what must have been the whole night and into the day. The water was warm, even hot, but still cooler than the air around it. I fell asleep in that stream, and when I awoke—well, I will not try to describe the desolation around me. It was only then, I am ashamed to say, that I thought of my livestock, who had died during the night as I nearly had. But there was nothing to be done for them now.

  And what did I do then, Baronet? Laugh if you will, but my first thought was that I could not pay my master for the year, and must go throw myself on her mercy. Surely, I thought, she would understand. So I began to walk toward her keep—southward.

  Ah! I see that you have thought it out. So did I, as I began to take my first steps. Southward was where her castle stood, and southward was the origin of the flames. I stopped and considered for some time, but eventually I continued, for I had nowhere else to go.

  It was many miles, and all I saw around me as I walked were burnt-out homes and charred ground, and blackened woods that had never been cleared, until now. Not another soul did I see during the entire journey. I came to the place where I had been born and had lived most of my life, and I saw what was left.

  I performed the rites as best I could for them, and I think I was too numb to realize what it meant. When I had finished I continued my journey, sleeping in an empty field, warmed by the ground itself, which still felt the heat from the scorching it had endured.

  I came to the keep and, to my surprise, it seemed unharmed. Yet the gate was closed, and no one answered my calls. I waited outside for minutes, hours, finally the whole day and that night. I was ravenously hungry and called out from time to time, but no one answered.

  At last it was, I think, hunger more than anything else that led me to climb over the walls. It wasn’t difficult, since none opposed me. I found a burnt log that was long enough, dragged it to the wall, and used it as a ladder.

  There was no living being in the courtyard. I saw half a dozen bodies dressed in Dzur livery. I stood there and trembled, cursing my stupidity for not having brought food from the springhouse.

  I think I stood there for an hour before I dared to enter, but eventually I did. I found the larder and ate. Slowly, over the course of weeks, I gathered the courage to search the keep. During this time I slept in the stables, not daring to make use of even the servant’s quarters. I found a few more bodies in my search, and burned them as best I could, though, as I said, I knew few of the rites. Most of them were Teckla—some I recognized, a few I had once called friends—gone to serve the master, and now gone forever. What became of my master I never found out, for I think none of the bodies was hers.

  I ruled that castle then, Baronet. I fed the livestock with the grain that had been hoarded there, and butchered them as I needed. I slept in the lord’s bedchamber, ate her food, and most of all, I read her books. She had tomes on sorcery, Baronet. A library full of them. And history, and geography, and stories. I learned much. I practiced sorcery, which opened before me a whole world, and the spells I’d known before seemed only games.

  Most of a year passed in this way. It was late in the winter when I heard the sounds of someone pulling on the bell rope. The old fear that is my heritage as a Teckla, and at which you, my Lord Jhereg, must take such delight in sneering, came back then. I trembled and looked for a place to hide.

  But then something came over me. Perhaps it was the magic I had learned; perhaps it was that all I had read had made me feel insignificant, and fear therefore seemed foolish; perhaps it was simply that, having survived the fire, I had learned the full measure of terror. But I didn’t hide. Instead I went down the great winding stairway of what I now thought of as my home and threw open the doors.

  Before me stood a noble of the House of the Lyorn. He was very tall and about my age, and wore a golden-brown, ankle-length skirt, a bright red shirt and a short fur cape. He wore a sword at his belt and a pair of vambraces. He didn’t wait for me to speak, simply saying, “Inform your master that the Duke of Arylle will see him.”

  What I felt then is, I suppose, something you have felt often, but I never had before. That amazing, delicious rush of anger that a boar must feel when it charges the hunter, not really aware that it is overmatched in every way except ferocity, and is why the boar sometimes wins, and the hunter is always afraid. But there he stood, in my castle, and asked to see my master.

  I stepped back a pace, drew myself up, and said, “I am master here.”

  He barely glanced at me. “Don’t be absurd,” he said. “Fetch your master at once or I’ll have you beaten.”

  I had read quite a bit by then, and what I had read put the words into mouth that my heart wanted to speak. “My lord,” I said, “I have told you that I am master here. You are in my home, and you are lacking in courtesy. I must ask you to leave.”

  Then he did look at me, with such contempt that, had I been in any other frame of mind, it alone would have crushed me. He reached for his sword, I think now only to beat me with the flat, but he never drew it. I called upon my new skills and threw a blast at him that, I thought, would have burnt him down on the spot.

  He gestured with his hands, and looked startled, but he seemed to take me seriously for the first time. That, my good Baronet, was a victory that I shall always treasure. The look of respect that came over him was as delicious to me as a cool drink to a man dying of thirst.

  He hurled a spell at me. I knew I could not stop it, but I ducked out of the way. It exploded against the far wall behind me in a mass of flame and smoke. I threw something at him, then ran back up the stairs.

  For the next hour I led him on a merry chase throughout the keep, stinging him with my spells and hiding before he could destroy me with his. I think that I laughed and mocked him, too, although I cannot say for certain.

  At length, though, as I stopped to rest, I realized that he would surely kill me eventually. I managed to teleport myself back to the springhouse I knew so well.

  I never saw him again. Perhaps he had come to ask about tribute he was due, I don’t know. But I was changed. I made my way to Adrilankha using my new sorcerous skills for money among the Teckla households I passed. A skilled sorcerer willing to work for the pittance a Teckla can pay is rare, so, with time, I accumulated a goodly sum. When I came to the city, I found a poor, drunken Issola who was willing to teach Court manners and speech for what I could afford to pay. No doubt he taught me poorly by Court standards, yet I learned enough so that I could work with my equals in the city and compete fairly, I thought, as a sorcerer.

  I was wrong, of course. I was still a Teckla. A Teckla who fancied himself a sorcerer was, perhaps, amusing, but those who need spells to prevent burglary, or to cure addictions, or secure the foundations of buildings, will not take a Teckla seriously.

  I was destitute when I found my way to the Easterners’ quarter. I will not pretend that life has been easy here, for Easterners have no more love for humans than most humans do for Easterners, yet my skills were, at least sometimes, useful.

  As for the rest, Lord Taltos, suffice it to say that I chanced to meet Franz, and I spoke of life as a Teckla, and he spoke of the common thread that connects the Teckla and the Easterner, and of bare survival for our peoples, and of hope that it needn’t always be this way. He introduced me to Kelly, who taught me to see the world around me as something I could change—something I had to change.

  Then I began to work with Franz. Together we found more Teckla, both here and those who slaved under masters far more vicious than my own. And when I would speak of the terror of the Empire under which we all suffered, Franz would speak of hope that, together, we could make a world free from terror. Hope was always
half of his message, Baronet Taltos. And action was the other half—building hope through our own actions. And if, from time to time, we didn’t know how, Kelly would lead us to discover it ourselves.

  They were a team, my good Jhereg. Kelly and Franz. When someone fails at a task, Kelly can verbally tear him to pieces; but Franz was always there to help him try again, in the streets. Nothing frightened him. Threats pleased him, because they showed he was scaring someone, and proved we were on a good path. That was Franz, Lord Taltos. That was why they killed him.

  * * *

  I hadn’t asked why they had killed him.

  But all right. I chewed over his story for a few minutes. “Paresh,” I said, “what was that about threats?”

  He stared at me for a moment, as if I’d just seen a mountain collapse and asked of what kind of stone it was made. Then he turned his face away. I sighed. “All right,” I said. “When will Kelly be back?”

  He faced me again, and his expression was like a closed door. “Why do you want to know?”

  Loiosh squeezed my shoulder with his talons. “Take it easy,” I told him. To Paresh I said, “I want to speak with him.”

  “Try tomorrow.”

  I thought about trying to explain myself to him so he would, perhaps, answer me. But he was a Teckla. Whatever else he was, he was still a Teckla.

  I stood up and let myself out and walked back to my side of town.

  3

  . . . & repair cut in rt cuff.

  WHEN I ARRIVED ON familiar ground again it was early evening. I saw no reason to return to the office so I made my way toward home.

  One was lounging against a wall on Garshos, near Copper Lane. Loiosh started to warn me just about the time I noticed the guy, which was just as he noticed me. Then Loiosh said, “There’s another one behind you.”

  I said, “Okay.” I wasn’t too worried, because if they’d wanted to kill me I would never have seen them. When I reached the one in front of me he was blocking my path, and I recognized him as Bajinok, which meant Herth—the guy who ran South Adrilankha. My shoulders went limp and my hands twitched. I stopped a few paces away from him. Loiosh watched the one behind me. Bajinok looked down at me and said, “I’ve got a message.”

  I nodded, guessing at what it was.

  He continued, “Stay away. Keep out of it.”

  I nodded again.

  He said, “Do you agree?”

  I said, “Can’t do it, I’m afraid.”

  His hand went to his sword hilt, just as an idle, threatening gesture. He said, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I could make the message more explicit,” he said.

  Since I didn’t feel like having my leg broken just then I threw a knife at him, underhanded. This was something I’d spent a lot of time practicing, because it is so fast. I don’t know of anyone who has ever been seriously injured by a knife thrown that way except by me, and even with me it takes a lot of luck. On the other hand, anyone will flinch.

  While he was busy flinching, and the knife was hitting him hilt first in the stomach, Loiosh was flying into the face of the other one. I had my rapier out before Bajinok had recovered, and I used the time to step out into the street to make sure neither of them could get behind me.

  Bajinok’s sword was in his hand by then and he had a dagger in the other. He was just coming into a guard position when my point took him in the right leg, above the knee. He cursed and stepped back. I followed and put a cut across the left side of his face, and, with the same motion, a good, deep one on his right wrist. He took another step back and I skewered him in the left shoulder. He went over backward.

  I looked at the other one, who was big and strong-looking. He showed signs of having been bit in the face by Loiosh. He was swinging his sword wildly over his head while my familiar stayed out of his reach and laughed at him. I spared a quick glance for Bajinok, then, with my left hand, found a knife, aimed, and carefully threw it into the middle of the other guy’s stomach. He grunted and cried out and swung in my direction, coming close enough to my wrist to take some hair off my arm. But that was all he had in him. He dropped his sword and knelt on the street, bent over, holding his stomach.

  I said, “Okay, get going.” I did my best to sound as if I weren’t breathing hard.

  They looked at each other, then the one with my knife in his stomach teleported out. When he was completely gone, Bajinok stood up and began limping away, holding his injured shoulder. I changed my mind about going straight home. Loiosh continued watching Bajinok as I turned up the street.

  * * *

  “I’d just take it as a warning,” said Kragar.

  “I don’t need you for the obvious stuff.”

  “I could argue that,” he said. “But never mind. The question is, how hard is he going to push it?”

  “That,” I said, “is the kind of stuff I need you for.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but I assume we’re going to get ready for the worst.”

  I nodded.

  “Hey, boss.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you going to tell Cawti about this?”

  “Huh? Of course I’m going to . . . oh. I see what you mean. When things start to get complicated, they don’t go halfway, do they?”

  Kragar seemed to have left the room by then, so I took out a dagger and threw it as hard as I could into the wall—the one without a target on it. The gash it left there wasn’t the first, but it may have been the deepest.

  * * *

  When I went home a few hours later I still hadn’t decided, but Cawti wasn’t there. I sat down to wait for her. I was careful not to drink too much. I relaxed in my favorite chair, a big, overstuffed grey thing with a prickly surface that makes me avoid it when I’m unclothed. I spent quite a while relaxing before I began to wonder where Cawti was.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi. Where are you?”

  She paused, and I was suddenly alert. “Why?” she said finally.

  “Why? Because I want to know. What do you mean, why?”

  “I’m in South Adrilankha.”

  “Are you in any danger?”

  “No more than an Easterner is always in danger living in this society.”

  I bit back a response of spare me and said, “All right. When will you be home?”

  “Why?” she asked and all sorts of prickly things started buzzing around inside of me. I almost said, “I was almost killed today,” but it would have been neither true nor fair. So I said “Never mind” and severed the link.

  I stood up and went into the kitchen. I drew a pot of water and set it on the stove, threw a couple of logs into the stove itself. I stacked up the dishes, which Loiosh and Rocza had already licked clean, and wiped off the table, throwing the crumbs into the stove. I got the broom out and swept the kitchen, threw the refuse from the floor after the crumbs from the table. Then I took the water off the stove and washed the dishes. I used sorcery to dry them because I’ve always hated drying. When I opened the cupboard to put them away I noticed that it was getting a bit dusty so I took everything out and went over all the shelves with a cloth. I felt the faint stirrings of psionic contact then, but it wasn’t Cawti so I ignored it and presently it went away.

  I cleaned up the floor below the sink, then mopped the whole floor. I went into the living room, decided I didn’t feel like dusting and sat down on the couch. After a couple of minutes I got up, found the brush, and dusted off the shelves next to the door, under the polished wooden dog and the stand with the miniature portrait of Cawti on it, and the carved lyorn that looked like jade but wasn’t, and the slightly larger stand with the portrait of my grandfather. I didn’t stop and talk to Cawti’s portrait.

  Then I got a rag from the kitchen and wiped down the tea table that she’d given me last year. I sat down on the couch again.

  I noticed that the lyorn’s horn was pointing towa
rd Cawti. When she’s upset, she can pick the strangest things to think are deliberate, so I got up and turned it, then sat down again. Then I got up and dusted off the lant I’d given her last year that she hadn’t even turned in twelve weeks. I walked over to the bookshelf and picked out a book of poems by Wint. I looked at it for a while, then put it back because I didn’t feel like fighting with obscurity. I picked up one of Bingia, then decided that she was too depressing. I didn’t bother with Torturi or Lartol. I can be shallow and clever on my own; I don’t need them for it. I consulted the Orb, then my internal clock, and both told me that I wouldn’t be able to sleep yet.

  “Hey, Loiosh.”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Want to see a show?”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Sure.”

  I walked over to Kieron Circle instead of teleporting because I didn’t care to arrive with my stomach upset. It was a bit of a hike, but walking felt good. I picked a theater without looking at the title, as soon as I found a show that was starting right away. I think it was an historical, taking place during the reign of a decadent Phoenix so they could use all the costumes they had lying around from the last fifty years of productions. After about fifteen minutes I started hoping someone would try to cut my purse. I took a quick glance behind me, and saw an elderly Teckla couple, probably blowing a year’s savings. I gave up on that idea.