Jhereg (5 page)

"I think," I told him at last, "that my friend would not be interested in taking out a member of the council."

He nodded in appreciation of the way my mind worked, but said, "You're close. An ex-member of the council."

What? More and more riddles.

"I hadn't realized," I said slowly, "that there was more than one way to leave the council." And, if the guy had taken that way, they certainly didn't need my services.

"Neither had we," he said. "But Mellar found a way." At last! A name! Mellar, Mellar, let me see... right. He was awfully tough. He had a good, solid organization, brains, and, well, enough muscle and resources to get and hold a position on the council. But why had the Demon told me? Was he planning to kill me after all if I turned him down? Or was he taking a chance on being able to convince me?

"What way is that?" I asked, sipping my wine.

"To take nine million gold in council operating funds and disappear." I almost choked.

By the sacred balls of the Imperial Phoenix! Absconding with Jhereg funds? With
council
funds? My head started hurting.

"When--when did this happen?" I managed.

"Yesterday." He was watching the expression on my face. He nodded grimly. "Nervy bastard, isn't he?"

I nodded back. "You know," I said, "you're going to have one bitch of a time keeping this quiet."

"That's right," he said. "We just aren't going to be able to for very long." For a moment his eyes went cold, and I began to understand how the Demon had gotten his name.

"He took everything we had," he said tightly. "We all have our own funds, of course, and we've been using them in the investigation. But on the kind of scale we're working on, we can't keep it up long."

I shook my head. "Once this gets out--"

"He'd better be dead," the Demon finished for me. "Or every two-silverpiece thief in the Empire is going to think he can take us. And one of them will do it, too." Something else hit me at that point. I realized that, for one thing, I could accept this job quite safely. Once Mellar was dead, it wouldn't matter if word got out what he'd tried. However, if I turned it down, I was suddenly a big risk and, shortly thereafter, I suspected, a small corpse.

Once again, the Demon seemed to guess what I was thinking.

"No," he said flatly. He leaned forward, earnestly. "I assure you that if you turn me down, nothing will happen to you. I know that we can trust you--that's one reason we came to you."

I wondered briefly if he were reading my mind. I decided that he wasn't. An Easterner is not an easy person to mind-probe, and I doubted that he could do it without my being aware of it. And I was
sure
he couldn't do it without Loiosh noticing.

"Of course, if you turn us down and then let something slip ..." His voice trailed off. I suppressed a shudder.

I did some more hard thinking. "It would seem to me," I said, "that this has to be done soon."

He nodded. "And that's why we can't get Mario. There's no way we can rush him."

"And you think you can rush my friend?"

He shrugged. "I think we're paying for it."

I had to agree with that. There was, at least, no time limit. But I had never before accepted "work" without the understanding that I had as much time as I needed. How much, I wondered, would it throw me off to have to hurry?

"Do you have
any
idea where he went?"

"We strongly suspect that he headed out East. At least, if I were pulling something like this, that's where I'd go."

I shook my head. "That doesn't make sense. Dragaerans out East are treated about the same as Easterners are treated here--worse, if anything. He'd be considered, if you'll pardon the expression, a demon. He'd stand out like a Morganti weapon in the Imperial Palace."

He smiled. "True enough, but we have the fewest resources there, so it would take a while for word to get back to us. Also, we've had the best sorceresses from the Left Hand looking for him since we found out what happened, and we can't find him." I shrugged. "He could have put up a block against tracing."

"He definitely has done that."

"Well, then--"

He shook his head. "You have no idea of the kind of power we're pouring into this. We could break down any block he could put up, no matter how long he's been planning it, or who the sorcerer is who put the block up. If he was anywhere within a hundred miles of Adrilankha we'd have broken it by now, or at least found a general area that we couldn't penetrate."

"So, you can guarantee that he isn't within a hundred miles of the city?"

"Right. Now, it's possible that he's in the jungle to the west, in which case we'll probably find him within the next day or two. But I'd guess he'd bolted for the East." I nodded slowly. "So you came to me, figuring that I can operate out there easier than a Dragaeran."

"That's right. And, of course, we know that you have an extremely formidable information network."

"My information network," I said, "doesn't extend to the East." That was almost true. My sources back in my ancestral homeland were few and far between. Still, there wasn't any reason to let the Demon in on everything I had.

"Well, then," he said, "there's an additional bonus for you. By the time this is over, you'll probably have something where you didn't before."

I smiled at his riposte, and nodded a little.

"And so," I said, "you want my friend to go out to wherever Mellar is hiding and get your gold back?"

"That would be nice," he admitted. "But it's secondary. The main thing is to make sure that no one gets the idea that it's safe to steal from us. Even Kiera, bless her sweet little fingers, hasn't tried
that.
I'll add that I take this whole thing very personally. And I will feel very warmly toward whomever does this particular little job for me." I sat back, and thought for a long time, then. The Demon was politely silent. Sixty-five thousand gold! And, of course, having the Demon owe me a favor was better than a poke in the eye with a Morganti dagger by all means.

"Morganti?" I asked.

He shrugged. "It has to be permanent, however you want to do it. If you happen to destroy his soul in the process, I won't be upset. But it isn't necessary. Just so that he ends up dead, with no chance of anyone revivifying him."

"Yeah. You say that the Left Hand is working on locating him?"

"Right. The best they've got."

"That can't be helping your security any."

He shrugged. "They know who; they don't know why. As far as they're concerned, it's a personal matter between Mellar and me. You may not realize it, but the Left Hand tends to take less of an interest in what the council is doing than the lowest pimp on the streets. I'm not worried about security from that end. But if this goes on too long, word will get out that I'm looking for Mellar, and someone who notices that the council is having financial trouble will start counting the eggs."

"I suppose. Okay, I suspect that my friend will be willing to take this on. He's going to need whatever information you have about Mellar as a starting point." The Demon held his hand out to the side. The bodyguard, who had been standing politely (and safely) out of earshot, placed a rather formidable-looking sheaf of papers in it. The Demon handed these over to me. "It's all there," he said.

"All?"

"As much as we know. I'm afraid it may not be as much as you'd like."

"Okay." I briefly ruffled through the papers. "You've been busy," I remarked. He smiled.

"If there's anything else I need," I said, "I'll get back to you."

"Fine. It should be obvious, but your friend is going to have all the help he needs on this one."

"In that case, I presume you're going to continue with your searching? You have access to better sorcerers than my friend has; you could keep going on that front."

"I intend to," he said drily. "And I should also mention something else. If we happen to run into him before you do and see an opportunity, we're going to take him ourselves. I mean no disrespect by that, but I think you can understand that this is a rather special situation."

"I can't say I like it," I said, "but I understand." I wasn't at all happy about it, in fact. Sure, my fee would be safe, but things like that can cause complications--and complications scare me.

I shrugged. "I think you can understand, too--and I mean no disrespect by
this--
that if some Teckla gets in the way, and my friend thinks the guy's going to bungle it, my friend will have to put him down."

The Demon nodded.

I sighed. Communication was such a fine thing.

I raised my glass. "To friends," I said.

He smiled and raised his. "To friends."

TOC0004TOC0004

Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.

"Everyone is a predator."

"Work" comes in three variations, each with its own effect, purpose, price--and penalty. The simplest is not used often, but happens enough to have acquired the term

"standard." The idea is that you want to warn an individual away from a certain course of action, or toward another. In this case, for a fee that starts at fifteen hundred gold and goes up from there depending on how hard the target is, an assassin will arrange for the selected individual to become dead. What happens after that doesn't much matter to the killer, but as often as not the body will eventually be found by a friend or relative, who may or may not be willing and able to have the person revivified. Revivification costs heavily--up to four thousand gold for difficult cases. Even the easiest takes an expert sorcerer to perform, and it is never a sure thing. In other words, the victim will wake up, if he does, with the knowledge that there is someone out there--and he usually knows who--who doesn't really care if he lives or dies and is willing to expend at least fifteen hundred gold Imperials to prove this. This is rather chilling knowledge. It happened to me once, when I started pushing into the territory of a fellow who was just the least bit tougher than I was. I got the message, all right. I knew just what he was telling me, without any room for mistakes. "I can take you any time I want, punk, and I'd do it, too, only you aren't worth more than fifteen hundred gold to dispose of."

And it worked. I was returned to life by Sethra Lavode, after Kiera found my body lying in a gutter. I backed off. I've never bothered the guy since, either. Of course, someday....

Now you should understand, to begin with, that there are some rather strict laws concerning the circumstances under which one person may legally kill another, and they involve things like "authorized dueling area", "Imperial witnesses," and the like. Assassination just never seems to qualify as a legal taking of a life. This brings us to the biggest single problem with the kind of job I've just mentioned--you have to be sure that the victim doesn't get a look at your face. If he were to be returned to life and he went to the Empire (strictly against Jhereg custom, but...), the assassin could find himself arrested for murder. There would follow an inquisition and the possibility of conviction. A conviction of murder will bring a permanent end to an assassin's career. When the Empire holds an execution, they burn the body to make sure no one gets hold of it to revivify it.

At the other extreme from simply killing someone and leaving his body to be found and, possibly, revivified, is a special kind of murder which is almost never done. To take an example, let us say that an assassin whom you have hired is caught by the Empire and tells them who hired him, in exchange for his worthless soul.

What do you do? You've already marked him as dead--no way the Empire can protect him enough to keep a top-notch assassin out. But that isn't enough; not for someone low enough to talk to the Empire about you. So what do you do? You scrape together, oh, at least six thousand gold, and you arrange to meet with the best assassin you can find--an absolute top-notch professional--and give him the name of the target, and you say, "Morganti."

Unlike any other kind of situation, you will probably have to explain your reasons. Even the coldest, most vicious assassin will find it distasteful to use a weapon that will destroy a person's soul. Chances are he won't do it unless you have a damn good reason why it has to be done that way and no other. There are times, though, when nothing else will do. I've worked that way twice. It was fully justified both times--believe me, it was.

However, just as the Jhereg makes exceptions in the cases where a Morganti weapon is to be used, so does the Empire. They suddenly forget all about their rules against the torture of suspects and forced mind-probes. So there are very real risks here. When they've finished with you, whatever is left is given to a Morganti blade, as a form of poetic justice, I suppose.

There is, however, a happy middle ground between Morganti killings and fatal warnings: the bread and butter of the assassin.

If you want someone to go and you don't want him coming back, and you're connected to the organization (I don't know any assassin stupid enough to "work" for anyone outside the House), you should figure that it will cost you at least three thousand gold. Naturally, it will be higher if the person is especially tough, or hard to get to, or important. The highest I've ever heard of anyone being paid is, well, excuse me, sixty-five thousand gold. Ahem. I expect that Mario Greymist was paid a substantially higher fee for killing the old Phoenix Emperor just before the Interregnum, but I've never heard a figure quoted.

And so, my fledgling assassins, you are asking me how you make sure that a corpse remains properly a corpse, eh? Without using a Morganti weapon, whose problems we've just discussed? I know of three methods and have used all of them, and combinations, during my career.

First, you can make sure that the body isn't found for three full days, after which time the soul will have departed. The most common method for doing this is to pay a moderate fee, usually around three to five hundred gold, to a sorceress from the Left Hand of the Jhereg, who will guarantee that the body is undisturbed for the requisite period. Or, of course, you can arrange to secrete the body yourself--risky, and not at all pleasant to be seen carrying a body around. It causes talk.