Jhereg (30 page)

Nevertheless, the contact was as sharp and distinct as it had ever been, sneaking under the gate even as it closed.

"
Look, boss. I've worked for you nonstop for more than five years now. You'd think I
could have a few days off for my honeymoon!
"

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"Failure leads to maturity; maturity leads to success."
On my terms, this time.

The Blue Flame was quiet at this hour, with three waiters, a busboy, a dishwasher, and three customers.

All of them were enforcers who worked for me. All of them, at one time or another, had done 'work.'

This time I faced the door, and my back was against the wall. I had a dagger out, lying openly on the table next to my right hand.

I wished Loiosh was back, but he wasn't necessary this time. I was making the rules, and we were playing with my stones. Somewhere, Cawti and Kragar were watching. Let him try ... anything. Anything at all. Sorcery? Ha! No spell would go in this place that didn't have Aliera's approval. Try to bring in an assassin? Maybe, if he wanted to pay for Mario, he could come up with something I'd worry about. Other than that, however, I wasn't about to get upset.

A face appeared in the doorway, followed by another.

The Demon had brought two bodyguards with him. They stopped in the doorway and looked around. Being competent, they saw how things were and spoke to the Demon quietly for a while. I saw him shake his head. Good. He was smart, and he was gutsy. He was going to do it my way because he knew, at this point, that it was the only way it would get done--he was too good a businessman not to realize that it had to get done. I saw him signal his men to wait by the door, and he came forward alone. I rose as he reached me, and we sat down at the same moment.

"Lord Taltos," he said.

"Demon," I said.

He looked at the dagger, seemed about to speak, and changed his mind. At this point, he could hardly blame me, after all.

Since I had requested the meeting, I ordered the wine. I chose a rare dessert wine, made by the Serioli. He spoke first while we waited for the wine to arrive.

"I note that your familiar is missing," he said. "I hope he isn't ill."

"He isn't ill," I said. "But thank you for asking." The wine came. I allowed the Demon to approve it. It's the little touches that make the fine host. I sipped mine and let it flow down my throat. Cool, and sweet, but neither icy nor cloying. That was why I'd chosen it. It had seemed appropriate.

"I was afraid," the Demon continued, "that he'd eaten something that had disagreed with him."

I chuckled. I decided that I'd come to like this guy, if we didn't kill each other first.

"I take it the body has been found," I said.

He nodded. "It's been found. A bit jhereg-eaten, but there isn't any harm in that, certainly."

I agreed with his sentiments.

"And," he went on, "I received your message."

I nodded. "So I see. I have what I claimed to."

"All of it?"

"All of it."

He waited for me to go on. I was enjoying it enough so that I didn't even mind the pain I felt from the events of the day before. One reason that I'd arranged to have the place full of my people was that I didn't want it to get out how much trouble I had walking in. Standing for the Demon had cost me; hiding that fact had cost me even more. Aliera is good, but it still takes time.

"How did you get it?" he asked.

"From his mind."

The Demon arched his eyebrows. "I'm rather surprised," he admitted. "I wouldn't have expected him to be subject to mind-probes."

"I have some good people working for me," I told him. "And, of course, we caught him at a good time."

He nodded and sipped his wine. "I should tell you," he said, "that, as far as I'm concerned, it's all over."

I waited for him to continue. This was what I'd arranged the meeting for, after all. He took another sip of his wine. "To the best of my knowledge and belief," he said, choosing his words carefully, "no one in the organization has anything against you, means you any ill will, or will profit from any harm that comes to you." That last wasn't true in a literal sense, but we both knew what he meant--and he had his reputation to hold on to. I didn't think he would lie to me about it. I was satisfied.

"Good," I said. "And allow me to say I hold no ill will over anything that happened--or almost happened--before. I believe that I understand what was going on, and there is no cause there for complaint on my part."

He nodded.

"As for the other," I went on, "if you send an escort over to my office, say at the fourth hour past noon, I'll be able to supply them with your goods to return to you." He nodded his satisfaction at the arrangements. "There are a few other things," he said.

"Such as...?"

He stared off into space for a moment, then turned back to me. "Certain of my friends are exceptionally pleased with the work you did yesterday."

"I beg your pardon?"

He smiled. "I mean, the work your 'friend' did yesterday."

"Yes. Go on."

He shrugged. "Certain of them felt that perhaps a bonus is in order."

"I see. Well, that I'll gladly accept, on my friend's behalf, of course. But, before we go into that, perhaps you will allow me to buy you dinner?"

He smiled. "Why yes, that would be very kind of you."

I called a waiter over. He was, actually, a lousy waiter, but that was all right; I think the Demon understood.

* * *

More than our apartment, more than my office, the library at Castle Black has seemed like home base to me.

How many times in the past had Morrolan and I, or Morrolan, myself, and Aliera, or a host of others, sat in this room and said some form of "Thank Verra, it's over."

"Thank Verra, it's over," said Aliera.

I lay on my back on the lounge chair. As I said, Aliera was good, but it takes time to heal completely. My sides still ached, and my head gave me no end of trouble. Still, in the three days since Mellar had passed from among the living, and the two days since I'd met with the Demon to arrange for nine million gold to be returned (and to insure that no more attempts were going to be made on my life), I had pretty well made the transition back to humanity.

Cawti sat next to me, gently brushing my forehead from time to time. Loiosh had returned and sat perched on my chest, as near to the shoulder as my position allowed. His mate took the other side. I felt quite contented with life, all in all. Morrolan sat opposite me, staring into his wineglass. His long legs were stretched out in front of him. He looked up. "What are you calling her?" he asked.

"Her name is Rocza," I said. On hearing her name, she leaned down and licked my ear. Cawti scratched her head. Loiosh hissed a jealous warning, whereupon Rocza looked up, hissed back, licked Loiosh under his snakelike chin. He sat back, mollified.

"My, aren't we domestic?" said Morrolan.

I shrugged.

He continued to look at the female jhereg curiously. "Vlad, I know as much about witchcraft as any Easterner, you must admit--"

"Yes, that's true."

"--and I don't see how you can have a second familiar. I had always understood that the relationship between witch and familiar is such that it is impossible for it to occur with more than one animal."

"For that matter," he continued, "I've never heard of making a familiar from any adult animal. Don't you have to acquire the thing as an egg, in order to achieve the proper link?"

Loiosh hissed at Morrolan, who smiled a little and cocked his head.

"I'm calling
you
a 'thing', that's who," Morrolan said. Loiosh hissed again and went back to licking Rocza's chin.

"Well, Morrolan," I said, "why don't you find out for yourself? You're a witch, why don't you get a familiar?"

"I already have one," he answered, dryly. He gently stroked the hilt of Blackwand, and I shuddered involuntarily.

"Rocza isn't really my familiar, in any case," I explained. "She's Loiosh's mate."

"But still, she came to you. ..."

"I called for help and she heard. We were able to strike a bargain similar to the one a witch makes with the mother of his familiar for the egg, but it wasn't exactly the same. I did use the same spell, or a close variant, to achieve initial contact," I admitted. "But that's where the similarity ends. After I got contact, we more or less just spoke. I guess she liked me."

Rocza looked up at me and hissed. I got the feeling that it was intended to be laughter, but I'm not sure. Loiosh broke in at that point. "
Look, boss, no one likes to be spoken of
as if he isn't there, okay?
"

"
Sorry, chum.
"

I stretched myself out, enjoying the feeling that there was blood circulating, and all those other good things.

"I can't tell you how happy I was when those two let me know that they weren't going to kill each other, though," I summed up.

"Hmmmmph!" said Aliera. "You sure couldn't tell us then. You were too busy going down for the third time."

"Was it that close?" I asked.

"It was that close."

I shuddered. Cawti stroked my forehead, gently.

"It works both ways, I guess. I was also mightily pleased to see that you made it after all. I didn't tell you before, but I was plenty worried about that whole business," I said.

"
You
were worried!" said Aliera.

"I still don't understand that, Aliera," said Kragar, who, I discovered, had been sitting next to her the entire time. "How is it that you survived the Morganti dagger?"

"Just barely," said Aliera.

He shook his head. "When you first went over it, you said it would work out, but you never said how."

"Why? Do you want to try it? I don't really recommend having your soul eaten as a form of entertainment."

"Just curious ..."

"Well, basically, it has to do with the nature of Great Weapons. Pathfinder is linked to me, which really means it's linked to my soul. When the dagger threatened to destroy me, Pathfinder acted to preserve me by drawing my soul into itself. When the threat was gone, I was able to return to my body. And, of course, we had the Necromancer standing by, just in case there were problems."

She looked thoughtful for a moment. "It is an interesting perspective from in there," she remarked.

"It is a rather frightening one from out here," put in Morrolan. "I thought we'd lost you." Aliera smiled at him. "I'm not that easy to get rid of, cousin."

"In any case," I said. "It all worked out."

"Yes," said Morrolan. "I would imagine that you did rather well for yourself out of the affair."

"In more ways than one," I said.

"I suppose," said Morrolan.

I shook my head. "It isn't just the obvious. It seems that certain parties were quite pleased with the return of the gold, in addition to everything else. I've been given responsibility for a somewhat larger area."

"Yeah," said Kragar, "and you didn't even have to ask your friend to kill anyone for it." I let that pass.

"I should point out, though," said Kragar, "that, in actual fact, you don't have any more responsibility than you did before."

"I don't?"

"Nope. You just make more money.
I'm
the one with more responsibility. Who do you think does all the work, anyway?"

"Loiosh," I answered.

Kragar snorted. Loiosh hissed a laugh.

"
You are hereby forgiven, boss.
"

"
Lucky me.
"

Morrolan was looking puzzled. "Speaking of the gold reminds me of something. How
did
you discover where it was?"

"Daymar took care of it," I told him. "Just before Mellar teleported me out, Daymar did a mind-probe on him. It was the only time he could have had a chance of succeeding, with Mellar completely disoriented. He caught him with his psychic pants down, you might say. Daymar found out where he had hidden the gold and found out about the arrangements he'd made for the information about the Dzur to get out. And, of course, it was the mind-probe itself that finally broke down Mellar and sent him into a panic."

"Oh," said Morrolan, "so you
did
find out about the information he had on the Dzur."

"Yep," I said. "And we suppressed it."

"How did you do that?" asked Morrolan.

I looked over at Kragar, who had actually handled the matter. He smiled a little.

"It wasn't difficult," he said. "Mellar had given it to a friend of his in a sealed envelope. We picked up this friend, brought him to the dock where we'd dumped Mellar's body, and pointed out to him that there was no reason for him to keep the thing anymore. We talked a little, and he ended up agreeing."

Best not to know any more, I decided.

"What I don't understand," Kragar continued, "is
why
you didn't want the information to come out, Vlad. What difference does it make to us?"

"There were a couple of reasons for it," I told him. "For one thing, I made it clear to a few Dzurlords I know that I was doing it. It never hurts to have Dzur heroes owe you favors. And the other reason was that Aliera would have killed me if I hadn't." Aliera smiled a little, but didn't deny it.

"So, Vlad," said Morrolan, "are you going to retire, now that you are wealthy? You could certainly buy a castle out of town and turn properly decadent if you chose to. I'd be curious. I've never had the pleasure of seeing a decadent Easterner." I shrugged. "I may buy a castle somewhere, since Cawti's been wanting one, and now we can afford a few luxuries like a higher title in the Jhereg, but I doubt I'll retire."

"Why not?"

"You're rich. Are you retiring?" I asked him.

He snorted. "From what should I retire? I've been professionally decadent for as long as I can remember."

"Well, there is that... Say!"

"Yes?"

"How about if we both retire! What do you think about selling Castle Black? I can give you a good price on it."

"Depend on it," he said.

"Oh, well. Just asking."

"Seriously, though, Vlad; have you ever thought about quitting the Jhereg? I mean, you don't really need them anymore, do you?"