Jhereg (24 page)

"But it didn't look like he was doing anything at all, did it?" I shook my head. "No, I have to admit it didn't. But maybe he was figuring to beat the guy only if he had to, and was counting on Morrolan's guards to stop him. Which, after all, they did. With help," I amended, quickly.

Kragar shook his head. "Would you count on someone else to be quick enough?"

"Well, no. But then, I'm not the fighter that Mellar is; we already know that." Kragar looked highly unconvinced. Well, so was I.

"The only thing that really makes sense," he said, "is if you were right originally: he had some mission for them and they happened to be off doing it when the assassin came in for his move."

"Maybe," I said. Then, "Wait a minute, I must be slipping or something. Why don't I check it?"

"What?"

"Just a minute."

I reached out for contact, thinking of that guard who I had talked to in the banquet hall. I'd made a mental note of him, now, what was his name?

"
Who is it?
"

"
This is Lord Taltos,
" I said. (Let us be pretentious.)

"
Yes, my lord. What is it?
"

"
Have you been keeping an eye on those two bodyguards of Mellar's?
"

"
I've been trying, my lord. They're pretty slippery.
"

"
Okay, good. Were you on duty during the assassination attempt last night?
"

"
Yes, my lord.
"

"
Were the bodyguards there?
"

"
No, my lord--wait! I'm not sure.... Yes. Yes, they were.
"

"
No possible doubt?
"

"
No, my lord. I had them marked just before it happened, and they were still there when
I found them again just a few seconds afterwards.
"

"
Okay, that's all. Good work.
"

I broke the link and told Kragar what I'd found out. He shook his head, sadly.

"And another nice theory blown through Deathsgate."

"Yeah."

I just couldn't figure it. Nothing about this business made sense. I couldn't see why he did it, or why his bodyguards seemed so cavalier about the whole thing, or any of it. But nothing happens for no reason. There had to be an explanation somewhere. I took out a dagger and started flipping it.

Kragar grunted. "You know the funny thing, Vlad?"

"What? I'd love to hear something funny just around now."

"Poor Mellar, that's what's funny."

I snorted. " 'Poor Mellar!' What about poor us? He's the one who started this whole thing, and we're going to get ourselves wiped out because of it."

"Sure," said Kragar. "But he's dead anyway, one way or another. He started this thing, and there isn't any way that he's going to survive it. The poor fool came up with this truly gorgeous scheme to steal Jhereg gold and live through it, and he worked on it, as far as we can tell, for a good three hundred years. And, instead of having it work, he's going to die anyway, and take two houses with him."

"Well," I said, "I'm sure he wouldn't cry about taking the two Houses with him--" I stopped. "The poor fool," Kragar had said. But we knew Mellar was no fool. How can you come up with something like this, spend hundreds of years, thousands of Imperials, and then trip up because you didn't realize that the Jhereg would take an action which, even to me, seemed logical and reasonable? That wasn't just foolishness, that was downright stupidity. And there was just no way I was going to start thinking that Mellar was stupid. No, either he knew some way of coming out of this alive, or ... or ... Click, click, click. One by one, things started to fall into place. Click, click, wham! The look on Mellar's face, the actions of the bodyguards, the fighting his way into the House of the Dzur, all of it fit. I found myself filled with awe at the magnificence of Mellar's plan. It was tremendous! I found myself, against my will, filled with admiration.

"What is it, Vlad?"

"
What is it, boss?
"

I just shook my head. My dagger had stopped in mid-toss, and I was so stunned I didn't even catch it. It hit my foot, and it was only blind luck that the hilt was down. But I expect that even if it had landed point first in my foot, I wouldn't have noticed. It was so damn beautiful! For a while, I almost wondered whether I had the heart to stop it, even if I could think of a way. It was
so perfect.
As far as I could tell, in the hundreds of years of planning and execution, he hadn't made
one
mistake! It was incredible. I was running out of adjectives.

"Damn it, Vlad! Talk! What's going on?"

"You should know," I told him.

"What?"

"You pointed to it first, a couple of times, the other day. Verra! Was it only a day or two ago? It feels like years...."

"What did I point to? Come on, damn you!" Kragar said.

"You're the one who started telling me what it would be like to grow up a cross-breed."

"So?"

"So we still couldn't help thinking of him as a Jhereg."

"Well, he is a Jhereg."

I shook my head. "Not genetically, he isn't."

"What does genetics have to do with it?"

"Everything. That's when I should have realized it; when Aliera told me what it really meant to be of a certain House. Don't you see, Kragar? But no, you wouldn't. You're a Jhereg, and you--we--don't look at things that way. But it's true. You
can't
deny your House, if you're a Dragaeran. Look at yourself, Kragar. To save my life, you had to disobey my orders. That isn't a Jhereg thing to do at all--the only time a Jhereg will disobey orders is when he's planning to kill his boss. But a Dragon, Kragar, a Dragon will sometimes find that the only way to fulfill his commander's wishes is to violate his commands, and do what has to be done, and risk a court-martial if he has to."

"That was the Dragon in you that did it, despite your opinion of the Dragons. To a Dragaeran, his House controls everything. The way he lives, his goals, his skills, his strengths, his weaknesses. There is nothing, but
nothing
that has more influence on a Dragaeran than his House. Than the House he was
born
into, no matter how he was raised."

"It's different with humans, perhaps, but ... I should have seen it. Damn! I should have seen it. A hundred things pointed to it."

"For the love of the Empire, Vlad! What?"

"Kragar," I said, settling down a bit, "think for a minute. This guy isn't just a Jhereg, he's also got the bloodlust of a Dragon, and the heroism of a Dzur."

"So?"

"So check your records, old friend. Remember his father? Why don't you find out more about him? Go ahead, do the research. But I'll tell you right now what you're going to find."

"His father killed someone, another Jhereg, just before the Interregnum. The Jhereg he killed was protected by a Dragonlord; to be exact, by Lord Adron. Mellar's plan
wasn't
concocted to get Jhereg gold and get out alive--the whole point of it was to get himself killed. For more than three hundred years he's been planning things so that he'd be killed, perhaps with a Morganti weapon; he didn't care. And he'd be killed, and the information he'd planted would come out about the Dzur, and he'd wash their faces with mud. And, at the same time, the two Houses that he hates the most, the Dragons and the Jhereg, would destroy each other. The whole thing was done for revenge, Kragar--revenge for the way a cross-breed is treated and revenge for the death of his father."

"Revenge as courageous as a Dzur, as vicious as a Dragon, and as cunning as a Jhereg. That's what this is all about, Kragar."

Kragar looked like a chreotha who's just found that a dragon has wandered into its net. He went through the same process I had, of every little detail falling into place, and like me, he began to shake his head in wonderment, his face a mask of stony shock. "Oh, shit, boss," was all he said.

I nodded in agreement.

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"Staring into the dragon's jaw, one quickly learns wisdom."
The banquet hall of Castle Black appeared the same as it had the last time. A few different faces, a few of the same faces, many faceless faces. I stood in the doorway for a moment, then stepped inside. I wanted to gather my thoughts a little, and let my stomach finish its recovering act before I began any serious work.

"
Can you believe, boss, that Morrolan actually likes it this way?
"

"
You know Dragons, Loiosh.
"

Kragar had taken an hour and had verified each of my guesses as regarded Mellar's parentage. It seemed that his father had indeed been the one whose work had set off the second Dragon-Jhereg war, which Kragar had never heard of either. The references to it among the Lyorn records had been scattered, but clear. The thing had happened, and more or less as I'd been told.

Everything fit together very nicely. And I wasn't a bit closer to figuring out what to do about it than I'd been the day before. That was the really annoying thing. All of this information really ought to be food for something besides the satisfaction of solving a puzzle. Oh, sure, it meant that I knew now that certain things wouldn't work, since Mellar had no intention of leaving Castle Black alive, but I hadn't had any idea of what to do before, so that didn't really affect anything. It occurred to me that the more I found out, the more difficult, instead of easier, the thing became.

Maybe I should arrange to forget most of this.

There was, I realized then, still one more mystery to solve. It wasn't a big one, or, I expected, a difficult one, but I was somewhat curious about why Mellar had brought bodyguards with him at all, if he didn't intend to try to save his life. Not very important, perhaps, but by now I couldn't afford to overlook anything. This was what had brought me back to the banquet hall: to take a look at them and see if there was anything I could learn, guess, or at least eliminate.

I wandered through the crowd, smiling, nodding, drinking. After about fifteen minutes, I spotted Mellar. I brought up the memory of the two faces that Loiosh had given me and found the two bodyguards, a few feet away.

I moved as close to them as I figured was safe and looked at them. Yes, they were both fighters. They had that way of moving, of standing, that indicated physical power. Both were large men, with big, capable hands, and they were both skilled in observing a crowd without seeming to.

Why were they doing it, though? I was convinced, by now, that they had no intention of stopping an assassin, so they must have some other purpose. A small part of me wanted to just take them both out, here and now, but I had no intention of doing so until I knew what their business was. And, of course, there was no guarantee that I'd succeed.

I was very careful to avoid having them notice my scrutiny, but you can never be sure, of course. I checked them as carefully as I could for concealed weapons, but oddly, I didn't spot any. They both had swords, standard Dragaeran longswords, and they each had a dagger. But I couldn't see anything concealed on any of them. After five minutes, I turned and started to leave the banquet hall, making my way carefully through the mass of humanity. I had almost reached the door, when Loiosh interrupted my contemplation.

"
Boss,
" he said, "
tough-guy warning, behind you.
" I turned in time to see one of them coming up to me. I waited for him. He stopped about one foot in front of me, which is what I call "intimidation range." I wasn't intimidated. Well, maybe just a little. He didn't waste any time with preliminaries.

"One warning, whiskers," he said. "Don't try it."

"Try what?" I asked innocently, although I felt my heart drop a few inches. I ignored the insult; the last tune I'd let the term bother me, I hadn't had any. But the implications of the statement were, let us say, not pleasing.

"Anything," was his answer. He looked at me for a few seconds more, then he turned and walked away.

Damn! So Mellar
did
know I was after him. But why would he want to stop me? Oh, of course, he didn't. He was working under the assumption that I was out for him, and that I had no idea of why he was doing this. That made sense; if I had somehow given myself away, which was certainly possible, then it would be out of character for him to ignore it. He was playing the game to the hilt. (Interesting choice of words there, I noticed.)

This made me feel somewhat better, but not a whole lot. It was a Bad Thing that Mellar knew where the threat was coming from. While the bodyguards wouldn't actually stop a direct attack on Mellar, the fact that they were aware of me seriously cut my chances of getting away with anything tricky--and whatever I came up with now, it was going to have to be something tricky. I felt the first glimmerings of the younger brother to despair stir within me as I left the hall. I forced the feeling down.

Just outside the door, I stopped and got in touch with Aliera. Who knows, I thought, maybe she and Sethra have come up with something. In any case, I felt that I ought to let them know what we'd learned.

"
What is it, Vlad?
"

"
Mind if I come up and see you? I have some information that you probably don't want
to hear.
"

"
I can hardly wait,
" she said. "
I'll be expecting you in my chambers.
" I walked down the hall to the stairs and met Morrolan, descending. I nodded to him and started to pass by. He motioned to me. I stopped, and he walked up the hall toward the library. I followed dutifully and sat down after he had closed the door behind me. The situation reminded me unpleasantly of a servant being called in for a dressing down for not scrubbing the chamberpots sufficiently.

"Vlad," he said, "perhaps you would care to enlighten me on just exactly what is occurring around here?"

"Eh?"

"Something has happened somewhere that I don't know about. I can feel it. You are preparing to move on Mellar, aren't you?"

By Verra's fingers! Did the whole Empire know?

He began ticking off points. "Aliera is rather upset about this whole matter and doesn't know quite what to do. You were acting the same way, as of yesterday. Today, I am informed that you have been, if I may put it so, snooping around Mellar. I see Aliera and she is just as pleased with life as you can imagine. Then I see you walking up the stairs, I assume to see my cousin, and you appear to know what you're doing all of a sudden. Now, would you mind telling me exactly what it is you two are planning?" I was silent for a while; then I said, slowly and carefully, "If I'm acting any different today than yesterday, it's because we just solved the mystery--not the problem. I still don't have any idea of what I'm going to do about it. I will say, however, that I have no intention of doing anything that will, in any way, compromise you, your oath, or your House. I believe I stated that yesterday, and I have no reason to change my mind. Is that sufficient?"