Hawk (Vlad) (2 page)

For now, I kept myself hidden, I studied, and considered. I discovered that my right hand had gone to the hilt of Lady Teldra, about whom more later. I relaxed and let the hand fall to my side while I thought.

Yeah, sometimes I think. It isn’t what I do best, but occasionally I just give it a shot anyway.

If I were the assassins, and there was an Imperial Guardsman right in front of where I thought the target would be, what would I do? That was easy—find a different place to “take my shot,” in the idiom of my homeland. Where? Well, ideally, a place where there weren’t any Imperial Guardsmen? But okay, if I wanted the guy really, really bad, and I couldn’t find anywhere else? Maybe—
maybe
—I’d try to arrange for the guard to be distracted long enough for me to make the attempt anyway. It would be complicated, tricky, expensive, and risky; but maybe.

Well, no, to be more precise,
I
wouldn’t do that, but it was possible these guys would. After all, there were two of them doing a job that usually only one did—assassins usually work alone. Having two of them waiting for me was, to be sure, an honor of sorts. But like the guy on the Executioner’s Star said: Except for the honor, I’d have preferred to skip the ceremony.

“What do you think, Loiosh?”

“You know what I think, Boss. You should walk away right now.”

“Yeah. Talk me into it.”

“If I had to talk you into it, you wouldn’t be asking me to. Let’s go already.”

There was nothing to say to that. Loiosh landed on my right shoulder, Rocza on my left, and I turned and walked back the way I’d come. After a few hundred feet, I stepped off into an alley, and took back streets all the way to the Stone Bridge, which leads back to the City. Instead of taking the bridge, however, I cut north on a street whose name I never learned. In a few minutes, I saw a dilapidated building off to my right that had the vertical parallel lines—drawn or painted above the door—that indicate, in the Easterners’ district, a place that lets out rooms for the night.

“The street would have fewer vermin than that place,”
said Loiosh.
“And probably be safer.”

I didn’t answer him.

I paid for a room from the fat, grizzled woman in the chair next to the door. She grunted a number at me.

“Are there actually numbers on the rooms?” I asked her.

She squinted at me, and opened her mouth. She didn’t have many teeth.

“Up the stairs, second door on the right. If you have a bag, carry it yourself,” she added, which wasn’t necessary because she could see I didn’t have one, and because I wouldn’t have trusted her with it if I had. It was the kind of place the lower order of prostitutes avoid as too disgusting.

She glowered at me, I think just on principle; but when I started moving, my cloak shifted, and she could see the hilt of my rapier, and she stopped glowering, and I knew if we had any more conversation she would be very polite.

The room was about what you’d expect. I tested the bed. I’d slept in worse. Of course, that was on the ground, but still. There was an empty water pitcher, which indicated a pump room nearby, so it could have been much worse. There was a window big enough for Loiosh and Rocza to fit through, but no way to close it, or even to block any light that came through unless I drove a nail into the wall above it and hung my cloak there. I considered going out to find a blacksmith. There was a chair and a small table with a washbasin on it. The chair looked safe, so I sat in it, and relaxed for half an hour or so while I considered nails and other matters.

“Boss, there really is a lot of insect life in here.”

I grunted and stood up.

You could say that I was unable to perform any witchcraft because of the amulet I wore that made me invisible to magical detection, but it wouldn’t be strictly true. I took a selection of herbs from my pouch, put them in the tin water basin, and lit them. Just because I couldn’t invoke any power didn’t mean I couldn’t use what I knew, and what I knew was how to drive at least most of the insect life out of the room. After that, it was just a matter of leaving the room for a couple of hours while the herbs did—

“Boss! There’s someone in the hall.”

I froze, my hand on the doorknob.

There’d been occasional people walking up and down the hallway all along, but Loiosh wouldn’t have mentioned this one without reason.

“Check the window.”

He flapped over there, stuck his head out.
“No good, Boss; two of them out there.”

“Two? Two outside, and one inside? Three of them? What is this organization coming to?”

“There might be more than one outside the door, Boss. I can’t tell for sure.”

I looked around for a place to hide. I mean, there wasn’t one, and I knew there wasn’t one, but I looked anyway, because you do. I could jump out the window where I knew there were two of them, and, with any luck, Loiosh and Rocza could distract them while I recovered from the jump enough to, you know, not die. But aside from any other problems, I wasn’t sure I could fit through the window. I could wait and deal with the unknown or unknowns who, I presumed, were getting ready to smash my door down, and—well, same problem. If it were me on the other side of the door, I’d blow the damned thing up and rush in before the dust settled. Crap. If I were in a farce, I’d hide under the bed. In a play full of exciting fake violence I’d …

Hmmmm.

The room didn’t have a real ceiling, just bare rafters with the roof a few feet above them.

“Boss, seriously? That’s what you’re going with?”

“Got a better idea?”

I stood on the bed frame and jumped, catching hold of one of the rafters. I pulled myself up, which wasn’t as easy as it should have been. Either I’d gained weight since coming back to Adrilankha, or else the extra hardware I’d picked up recently was weighing me down. But I got there, stood on the beam, and put my other hand on the slanting roof for balance.

Loiosh and Rocza flew up next to me and door blew in, almost knocking me off the beam in spite of my grip.

From above, all I could tell was that there were two of them, one of them holding a dagger and the other a Morganti broadsword. I mean, you don’t exactly
see
that it’s Morganti, unless you’re in light bright enough to notice that there’s no reflection from the metal, but it doesn’t matter. You know it’s a Morganti weapon. Even wearing a Phoenix Stone amulet, which pretty much makes you deaf to both sorcery and psychic phenomena, if you’re that close to a Morganti weapon, you know.

They charged into the room ready to kill, stopped, looked around. I took a deep breath and a grip on the rafter. After a moment, they went over to the window and looked out on the street. The one with the dagger shrugged his shoulders. The other one turned around, looked up, saw me, opened his mouth, and got both of my boots in his teeth. He didn’t go out the window, which is what I’d been hoping for, but I could hear the crack when his head hit the sill; I didn’t think I’d have to worry about him for a bit.

The other one turned to me. I’d fallen to the ground after my heroic leap, so I rolled back out of range while Loiosh and Rocza got in the assassin’s face in a very literal, biting, fill-him-with-jhereg-venom kind of way. I got to my feet and recovered my balance, then I threw the basin of burning herbs in his face, then drew a dagger and stabbed him in the throat, angled up to get the base of his brain. In a move that had become almost automatic, I stepped to the side to avoid the stuff that would require laundry services if it got on my clothes. The other guy seemed to be unconscious. I stabbed him in the throat too, just to be sure. I left the knife there.

Then I stood in front of the window and looked down at the other two, spreading my hands in a “now what?” gesture.

They turned and walked away.

What I really wanted to do next, just for effect, was to go back downstairs and demand a new room of the landlady on the basis that mine was full of vermin, the washbasin was dented, and the door was broken. But I didn’t. I went back down the stairs and, ignoring her, walked out the door. If she had any presence of mind and a few connections, she’d sell that Morganti broadsword on the gray market for enough to retire on.

I took a sharp left, taking me off in a different direction than the two button-men had gone.

I wondered how they’d found me.

After a couple of blocks I stopped, rested against a building, and let myself shake for a while. I don’t know, maybe two minutes, maybe five.

Evening was coming on.

I’d been in Adrilankha for several months; too long to be in one place with assassins after you. Loiosh was no longer bothering to tell me how stupid it was for me to hang around. I couldn’t argue with him, even before the Jhereg stationed outside Cawti’s place confirmed it. The price on my head was high enough to be tempting to anyone.

I had to get out of the city, but I didn’t want to. My son was here, and I’d only managed to see him a few times. My friends were here, and I’d hardly seen them at all. My life—no, my life was no longer here; my death was here. Sorry if that sounds a bit over-the-top, but as far as I could tell, it was simply true.

“Quit whining, Boss.”

“I’m not whining, I’m reflecting.”

“Then quit reflecting with that tone of mind.”

“Maybe we should go to Szurke and see my grandfather.”

“Good idea.”

“Or I could spend some more time back East.”

“That’d be good.”

“Or maybe the Kanefthali Mountains.”

“I’ve always wanted to see those.”

“Or—”

“Oh, stop it, Boss. If we’re just going to wait here until you’re killed, at least don’t pretend—”

“Damn, Loiosh. Getting a little bitchy in our old age, are we? Ouch. Cut it out. I’m not saying we’re going to stay here—”

“No, you just don’t plan to leave.”

I didn’t answer him, a policy I should have adopted several minutes before. Or maybe years.

“Ha,”
he said.

Rocza, who’d been flying around for the last minute or so, landed on my shoulder again, shifting from foot to foot, which was her way of saying she was hungry. We found a bakery, where I paid too much for a couple of buns stuffed with too little kethna that was too sweet. The baker’s assistant tried very hard to keep his eyes off the weapon at my side. I didn’t speak to him. I picked up a can of weak beer from a street vendor nearby and walked, looking around.

Eventually I found what passes for a park in South Adrilankha—a place where some grass and weeds had grown up in a large vacant lot with a few low bushes and couple of scrawny trees. I sat down and leaned against one, and ate the buns and fed some to Loiosh and Rocza. It was a good place, because no one could sneak up on me without my familiar seeing him. Although here, in the middle of the Easterners’ district, I should be safe enough.

When we were done eating I relaxed for a while. There was a nice breeze coming in from the City, so for once South Adrilankha didn’t smell like the slaughterhouses to the southeast. My mind kept coming back to the conversation with Loiosh, and I kept shoving it aside. What I needed to be thinking about was how I’d been found in that flophouse. There were very few possibilities, and all of them were bad. Or it was something I hadn’t even considered possible, and that was worse.

Okay, relax. Let’s look at all the possibilities, one at a time, and figure out—

“Boss,”
said Loiosh.
“You’re being watched.”

“Yeah?”
I said, looking around.
“Where? Who?”

“Other end of the park. Sight-spell. Dragaeran. Jhereg colors.”

I felt my breath catch, and my heart gave a couple of test thuds to make sure it was ready. I was in South Adrilankha. I was in the Easterners’ quarter. I had walked away from the flophouse and gotten lost among back streets and unmarked alleys. There’s no way the Jhereg could have found me here. No way.

Except that they had.

I didn’t reach for a weapon; I didn’t even move. Not yet.

“I need to see,”
I said.
“And send Rocza on a sweep of the area in case there’s more than one.”

“Already doing it, Boss.”

“Good. Here I come.”

Colors swam; some of them disappeared, new ones occurred. My vision wavered, steadied, and I could see the man he’d spoken of. We moved closer. He was staring into something in his palm, then glancing in the direction where my body waited.

And, for just a second, his eyes flicked up toward me. It wasn’t much, he didn’t hold it for long, but it was enough. I returned to my body.

“Loiosh! You and Rocza, out of there
now!
”

“Boss, what—?”

“Get height and distance. Move!”

And I could feel Loiosh’s response—the jolt of fear—and could only assume Rocza had been given the message as well.

I had, it seemed, gotten to my feet, and drawn Lady Teldra. I was walking toward the Jhereg. I was aware that there was probably another assassin around, maybe more. I hoped so. I was suddenly in a mood to kill as many of them as presented themselves. I had just enough presence of mind to have Lady Teldra stay alert for the minuscule wavering around objects that tells you that someone is using an invisibility spell. It’s always the little things that bite you in the ass.

The Jhereg turned and ran. It was very undignified. I was never going to catch him, and I had no intention of throwing Lady Teldra. I looked around for someone else to kill, but I saw no other Jhereg in the area. In fact, I saw no one at all.

Yeah, well, pull a weapon like Lady Teldra out, and that’s what’s going to happen. The least sensitive lout will get the feeling that there’s something bad out there. Anyone with any psychic ability will feel like all the denizens of the Nightmare Abyss have come climbing out singing “Dirge of the Red House.” So, no, there was no one around.