Authors: Steven Brust
“Wait here,” said the servant.
“Yes, sir,” said Savn as Turi went through the inner door, closing it behind him. He stared awestruck at the fine, dark, polished wood, realizing that this one, unfurnished room must have cost His Lordship more than Savn’s entire house was worth. He was studying the elaborate carved brass handle on the inner door, trying to decide if there was a recognizable shape to it, when it turned and the door opened. He braced himself to face His Lordship, then relaxed when he saw it was Turi again.
“This way, boy,” said the servant.
“Yes, sir,” said Savn, and, though his knees felt weak, he followed Turi into a place of splendor greater than his mind could grasp. The walls seemed to shimmer, and were adorned with richly colored paintings. The furniture was huge and came in amazing variations, and Savn couldn’t imagine sitting on any of it. Bright light filled every corner of the room, glittering against objects of incomprehensible purpose, made of crystal, shiny metal, and ceramics that had been glazed with some unfathomable technique that made the blues and reds as deep and rich as the soil.
“Watch your step,” said Turi sharply.
Savn caught himself just before walking into a low table that seemed made entirely of glass. He continued more carefully, while still looking around, and it suddenly came to him that some of the crystal and metal objects were drinking vessels. He didn’t think he’d be able to drink from such objects—his hand would be shaking too much.
The shape and color of his surroundings changed. He had somehow entered another room, which might as well have been another world for all the sense he could make of anything around him, until he realized that every one of the objects that filled the room were books—different books—more books than a man could read in his entire lifetime—more books than Savn had thought had ever been written. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. These were cases that had obviously been made just to hold them. There were tables on which they lay, carelessly flung open to—
His gaze suddenly fell on a figure standing before him, dressed in a gleaming white shirt, which set off a bright red jewel suspended from a chain around his neck. The pants were also perfectly white, and baggy, falling all the way to the floor so that the figure’s feet were invisible. Savn looked at his face, then looked away, terrified. On the one hand, though he was big, it seemed odd to Savn how human he looked; the thought, He’s just a man, after all, came unbidden to his mind. But even as Savn was thinking this, he discovered that he had fallen to his knees and was touching his head to the floor, as if in response to something so deeply buried within him that it went beyond awareness or decision. As Savn knelt there, confounded and humbled, with the image of the Athyra nobleman burned into his mind, it struck him that His Lordship had seemed very pale. Unnaturally pale.
Savn tried not to think about what this might mean. When His Lordship spoke, it was with an assurance that made Savn realize that Speaker, with all his shouting, raving, and fits of temper, had only pretended to have authority—that real audiority was something stamped into someone from birth or not at all. He wondered what Vlad would say about that.
“What is it, lad?” said His Lordship. “My man tells me you have something to say about the Easterner. If you want to tell me where he is, don’t bother. I know already. If you are here asking about your Master, I’m not finished with him yet. If you want to tell me what sort of condition the Easterner is in, and what his defenses are like, that is another matter; I will listen and reward you well.”
Savn’s head spun as he tried to make sense out of this strange collection of ideas. Your Master. Master Wag? Not finished with him yet.
Savn managed to find his voice, and croaked out, “I don’t understand, Your Lordship.”
“Well, what are you here for? Speak up?”
“Your Lordship, I—” Savn searched for the words, hindered in part by no longer being certain what he wanted to find out, or if he dared ask any of it. He looked up, and his eye fell on someone who had apparently been there all along, though Savn hadn’t noticed him. The man, who Savn was certain he’d never seen before, stood behind His Lordship, absolutely motionless, his face devoid of the least hint of expression or of feeling, dressed in grey from head to foot, save for a bit of black lace on the ruffles of his shirt, and his high black boots. In some indefinable yet definite way, he reminded Savn of Vlad.
Below the collar of his cloak was the insignia of the House of the Jhereg, as if Savn needed that, or even his colors, to know that this was the assassin Vlad had spoken of.
Savn couldn’t take his eyes off him, and, for his part, the stranger stared back with the curiosity of one looking at an interesting weed that, though it didn’t belong in one’s garden, had some unusual features that made it worth a moment’s study before being pulled and discarded.
“Speak up, boy,” snapped His Lordship, but Savn could only stare. Speech was so far from him that he couldn’t imagine ever being able to talk again—the command of His Lordship, compelling though it was, belonged to another world entirely; surely His Lordship couldn’t imagine that he, Savn, would be able to form words, much less sentences.
“What do you have to tell me?” said His Lordship. “I won’t ask again.”
Savn heard this last with relief; at this moment, all he wanted from life was for His Lordship not to ask him to speak anymore. He thought about getting up and bowing his way out of the room, but he wasn’t certain his legs would support him, and if it wasn’t the proper thing to do, he might never get out of the house alive. The complete folly of coming here hit him fully, rendering action or speech even more impossible.
His Lordship made a sound of derision or impatience and said, “Get him out of here. Put him with the other one. We don’t have time now, anyway.”
Another voice spoke, very softly, with a bite to the consonants that made Savn sure it was from the Jhereg: “You’re an idiot, Loraan. We could find out—”
“Shut up,” said His Lordship. “I need your advice now less than—”
“Indeed,” interrupted the other. “Less than when? Less than the last time you ignored me and—”
“I said, shut up,” repeated His Lordship. “We don’t have time for this; we’ve got an Easterner to kill, and the troops should be in position by now.”
“And if they find him before morning I’ll eat my fee.”
“I’ll bring you salt,” said His Lordship. “We know where to begin looking, and we have enough manpower that it won’t take more than two or three hours.”
At that moment, rough hands grabbed Savn’s shoulders. The Jhereg and the Athyra did not seem to notice.
“He’ll be gone before you find him,” the Jhereg said.
Savn was pulled to his feet, but his knees wouldn’t support him and he fell back down.
“Unlikely, I’ve put a block up.”
“Around three square miles of caves?”
“Yes.”
Savn was grabbed once more, held under his armpits by very strong hands.
“Then he’s already alerted,” said the Jhereg.
Savn was dragged away. He got a last glimpse of His Lordship, hands balled up in fists, staring at the Jhereg, who wore a mocking smile that seemed the twin of the one Vlad had put on from time to time. His Lordship said, “Let him be alerted. I have confidence in your ...” and His Lordship’s voice was drowned out by a sound that Savn realized was his own boots scraping along the floor as he was taken off. He was completely unaware of the places he passed through, and wasn’t even aware of who was dragging him, despite the fact that he heard a man’s voice and a woman’s, as if from a distance, telling him to walk on his own if he didn’t want to be beaten flat. The voices seemed disconnected from the hands pulling him along, which felt like forces of nature rather than the work of human beings. They came to the top of a stairway, and the woman, laughing, suggested they throw him down. He thought, I hope they don’t, but knew he couldn’t do anything about it in any case.
However, they continued to drag him down the stairs, and then through a dimly lit corridor, until at last they arrived at a large wooden door, bound with iron strips, with a thick bar across it as well as a locking mechanism. They leaned Savn against a wall, where he promptly sagged to the floor. He heard sobbing and realized it was his own. He looked up for the first time, and saw who had been dragging him—two people in the livery of the Athyra, both armed with large swords. The woman had a heavylooking iron key. She unlocked the door and removed the bar. They opened the door, picked up Savn, and pushed him inside, where he lay face down. The door was closed behind him, and he could hear the lock turning and the bar falling. At first it seemed dark inside, since there were no lanterns such as there had been along the corridor, but then he realized there was some light, which came from a faintly glowing lightstone—a device Savn had heard about but never seen. It was high up in the middle of the ceiling, which was a good twelve feet overhead. In other circumstances Savn would have been delighted to have seen it, and studied it as best he could, but for now he was too stunned.
He saw now that what he’d at first taken to be a bundle of rags was actually a person, and he remembered His Lordship saying something like Put him with the other. He looked closer, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, he recognized Master Wag. He approached, and realized there was something wrong with the way the Master’s arm was lying above his head. He stared, hesitating to touch him, and was gradually able to see some of what had been done to him. The room spun, the light faded in and out. Savn could never remember the next few minutes clearly; he spoke to the Master, and he shouted something at the closed door, and looked around the room for he knew not what, and, after a while, he sat down on the floor and shook.
She flew low, well below the overcast, starting out near to her lover, then gradually getting further away as their search took them apart. The Provider had told them to be careful, to be certain to miss nothing, so they covered every inch of ground below them, starting in a small circle above the cavemouth and only widening it a bit at a time. She was in no hurry. Her lover had relaxed, now that the Provider seemed to be out of danger, and it was a fine, cool day. She never forgot what she was doing—she kept her eyes and her attention on the ground below—but this didn’t prevent her from enjoying the pleasures of flight. Besides, her feet had started hurting. She recognized the large rock, the nearby house, and the winding, twisting road as things she’d seen before, but they didn’t mean a great deal to her. For one thing, there was no meat there, living or dead. At the same time she could feel, in her wings and her breath, the difference in the feel of the air when she flew over fields or over forests, over water or over bare ground where only a stubble of growth was now left. All of these added to the pleasure of flying.
She could always feel where her mate was, and they spoke, mind to mind, as they flew, until at last she looked down and saw one of the soft ones below her. This seemed strange, and after thinking about it for a moment, she realized it was because he could not have been there a moment before, and she ought to have seen him approach. She swept back around, and there was another, and no more explanation of how this one had appeared. She recalled that the Provider could do something like this, and decided that she ought to mention it. She came back around again, and by now an entire herd of the soft ones had appeared, and they were walking along the road that cut through a thin, grassy forest.
She called to her mate, who came at once. He studied them, knowing more about their habits than she; then he told the Provider what they had discovered. They watched a little longer, until the herd left the road and began to walk down the narrow, curving path that led toward the caves.
Then they returned to the Provider, to see what he wanted them to do.
Chapter Sixteen
I will not marry an aristocrat,
I will not marry an aristocrat,
treat me like a dog or cat.
Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!
Step on out ...
Coherent thought gradually returned, bringing sensations with it like trailing roots behind a plow. Savn lay very still and let the mists of his confused dreams gradually fade away, to be replaced by the vapors of true memory. He looked to see if Master Wag was really there; when he saw him, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, as if he could shut out the sympathetic pain. Then he looked around, staring at anything and everything that wasn’t his Master and wasn’t so terribly hurt. The room was about ten feet on a side, and smelled slightly dank, but not horribly so. He listened for the sounds of scurrying rodents and was relieved not to hear any. There was a chamber pot in a far corner; judging from the lack of odor, it had not been used. Things could, Savn decided, be much worse.
The light hadn’t changed; he could still see Master Wag huddled against a wall; the Master was breathing, and his eyes were open. Both of his arms seemed to be broken or dislocated, and probably his left leg, too. There were red marks on his face, as from slaps, but no bruises; he hadn’t been in a fight, he had been tortured. On seeing that Savn was looking at him, the Master spoke, his voice only the barest whisper, as Vlad’s had been after the first fever had broken, but he spoke very clearly, as if he was taking great care with each word. “Have you any dreamgrass?”
Savn had to think for a moment before replying. “Yes, Master. It’s in my pouch.”
“Fetch some out. We have no food, but they’ve left us water and a mug, over in the corner. I haven’t been able to move to get it.”
Savn got the mug of water and brought it back to the Master. He gave him a drink of plain water first, then mixed the dreamgrass into it as best he could without a mortar and pestle. “That’s good enough,” whispered the Master. “I’ll swallow it whole. You’ll have to help me, though. My arms—”
“Yes, Master.” Savn helped him to drink again and to swallow the dreamgrass. The Master nodded, took a deep breath, and shuddered with his whole body. He said, “You’re going to have to straighten out my legs and arms. Can you do it?”
“What’s broken, Master?”
“Both legs, both arms. My left arm both above and below the elbow. Can you straighten them?”
“I remember the Nine Bracings, Master, but what can we splint them with?”
“Never mind that, just get them straightened. One thing at a time. I don’t wish to go through life a cripple. Am I feverish?”
Savn felt his forehead. “No.”
“Good. When the pain dulls a bit, you can begin.”
“I ... very well, Master. I can do it, I think.”
“You think?”
“Have some more water, Master. How does the room look? Does your face feel heavy?”
The Master snorted and whispered, “I know how to tell when the dreamgrass takes effect. For one thing, there will be less pain. Oh, and have you any eddiberries?”
Savn looked in his pouch, but had none and said so.
“Very well, I’ll get by without them. Now ... hmmm. I’m starting to feel distant. Good. The pain is receding. Are you certain you know what to do?”
“Yes, Master,” said Savn. “Who did this to you?” His eyes flickered, and he spoke even more softly. “His Lordship had it done by a couple of his warriors, with help from ... There is a Jhereg here—”
“I saw him.”
“Yes. They tied me into a chair and ... they wanted me to tell them where the Easterner was.”
“Oh. Did you tell them?”
The Master’s eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Eventually,” he said.
“Oh,” said Savn. The importance of this sank in gradually. He imagined Vlad, lying quietly in the cave with no way of knowing he’d been betrayed. “I wish there was some way to warn him.”
“There isn’t.”
“I know.” But the Easterner had means of receiving a warning. Maybe he’d escape after all. But he’d think that Savn, who had vanished, had been the betrayer. Savn shook his head. It was petty of him to worry about that when Vlad’s life was in danger, and pointless to worry about Vlad’s life when Master Wag was in pain that Savn could do something about. “Can we get more light in here?”
“No.”
“All right.” Savn took a deep breath. “I’m going to undress you now.”
“Of course. Be careful.”
“Then I will—”
“I know what you’re going to do.”
“Do you need more dreamgrass?”
“No.” The Master’s voice was almost inaudible now. He said, “Carry on, Savn.”
“Yes. It is true and it is not true that once there was a village that grew up at a place where two rivers came together. Now, one river was wide, so that one—”
“Shallow and wide.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry. Shallow and wide, so that one could walk across the entire length and still be dry from the knees up. The—”
Master Wag winced.
“—other was very fast, and full—I mean, fast and deep, and full of foamy rapids, whirlpools, rocks, and twisting currents, so that it wasn’t safe even to boat on. After the rivers came togeth—”
The Master gasped.
“—er, the river, which they called Bigriver, became large, deep, fast, but tame, which allowed them to travel down it to their neighbors, then back up, by means of—”
The Master began moaning steadily.
“—clever poles devised for this purpose. And they could also travel up and down the wide, slow river. But no one could travel on the fast, dangerous river. So, as time went on—”
The moans abruptly turned to screams.
“—the people of the village began to wonder what lay along that length, and talk about—”
The screams grew louder.
“—how they might find a way to travel up the river in spite of the dangerous rapids and the swiftness of the current. Some spoke of using the wind, but ...”
Soon Savn no longer heard either his own voice or the Master’s cries, except as a distant drone. His attention was concentrated on straightening the bones, and remembering everything his Master had taught him about using firm, consistent pressure and an even grip with his hands, being certain that no finger pressed against the bone harder or softer than it should, which would cause the patient unnecessary pain. His fingers felt the bones grinding against one another, and he could hear the sounds they made, even through the drone of his own voice, and his eyes showed him the Master turn grey with the pain, in spite of the dreamgrass, but he neither stopped nor slowed in his work. He thought the Master—the real Master, not this wrecked and broken old man he was physicking—would be proud of him.
The story told itself, and he worked against its rhythm, so that the rise in his voice and the most exciting parts of the story came when his hands were busiest, and the patient most needed to be distracted. Master Wag turned out to be a good patient, which was fortunate, because there was no way to render him immobile. But it seemed to take a very long time.
Savn looked at his Master, who lay back moaning, his ankles cross-bound with strips of his own clothing and his face covered with sweat. Savn’s own face felt as damp as the Master’s looked. Savn started to take a drink of water, saw how much was left, and offered it to the Master along with more dreamgrass. Master Wag accepted wordlessly.
As Savn helped the Master eat and drink, he noticed that his own hands were shaking. Well, better now than while he’d been working. He hoped he’d done an adequate job. The Master opened his eyes and said, “They were about to start on my fingers. I couldn’t let them—”
“I understand, Master. I think I would have told them right away.”
“I doubt that very much,” said the Master, and closed his eyes. Savn moved back against the wall to relax, and, when he tried to lean against it, found that there was something digging into his back. He felt around behind himself, and discovered a bundle jammed into the back of his pants. It took him a moment to recognize it as the good kitchen knife, all wrapped up in a towel.
He unwrapped it, took it into his hand, and stared at it. He had cleaned it carefully after cutting the norska to make the stew for Vlad, so it gleamed even in the feeble light of the cell. The blade was ten inches long, wide near the handle, narrowing down toward the point, with an edge that was fine enough to slice the tenderest bluefish, but a point that was no better than it had to be to pry kethna muscle from the bone. As he looked, he wondered, and his hands started shaking harder than ever. He imagined himself holding the knife and fighting his way past all of His Lordship’s guards, then rescuing Vlad at the last minute. He knew this was impossible, but the thought wouldn’t go away. How would he feel, he wondered, if he allowed the Easterner to be killed, and maybe Master Wag as well, when he had a knife with him and he never tried to use it? What would he say to himself when he was an old man, who claimed to be a physicker, yet he had let two people in his care die without making any effort to stop it? Or, if he left home, he would spend his life thinking he was running away from his own cowardice. It wasn’t fair that this decision, which had become so important, should be taken away by something that wasn’t his fault.
He turned the knife this way and that in his hand, knowing how futile it would be to challenge a warrior with a sword when he had nothing but a cooking knife, and had, furthermore, never been in a knife fight in his life. He had seen Vlad fighting some of His Lordship’s soldiers, and couldn’t imagine himself doing that to someone, no matter how much he wanted to.
He shook his head and stared at the knife, as if it could give him answers. He was still staring at it some half an hour later, when there came a rattling at the door, which he recognized as the opening of the lock and removal of the bar. He stood up and leaned against the wall, the knife down by his side. A guard came into the room and, without a glance at Savn or Master Wag, slopped some water into the mug. He seemed very big, very strong, very graceful, and very dangerous. Don’t be an idiot, Savn told himself. He is a warrior. He spends all of his life around weapons. The sword at his belt could slice you into pieces before you took two steps. It is insanity. It is the same as killing yourself. He had been telling himself these things already, but, now that it came to it, with the guard before him, the mad ideas in his head would neither listen to reason nor bring themselves forward as a definite intention. He hesitated, and watched the guard, and then, while the man’s back was turned, Savn inched his way closer to the door, the knife still held down by his side.
It’s crazy, he told himself. If your knife had a good point, you could strike for his kidneys, but it doesn’t. And you aren’t tall enough to slit his throat. The guard finished and straightened up.
The knife is heavy, and there is some point on it. And I’m strong. Still not deigning to look at Savn or Master Wag, the guard walked to the door. If I strike so that I can use all of my strength, and I find just the right place, then maybe ...
Savn was never aware of making a conscious decision, but, for just a moment, he saw an image of His Lordship standing next to the Jhereg as they broke the Master’s bones. He took a deep breath and held it.
As the soldier reached the door, Savn stepped up behind him, picked his spot, and struck as hard as he could for a point midway down the guard’s back, next to his backbone, driving the knife in, turning it, and pulling toward the spinal cord, all with one motion. The jar of the knife against the warrior’s back was hard—shock traveled all the way up Savn’s arm, and he would have been unable to complete the stroke if he had attempted anything more complicated. But it was one motion, just as Master Wag had done once in removing a Bur-worm from Lakee’s thigh. One motion, curving in and around and out. Removing a Bur-worm, or cutting the spine, what was the difference?
He knew where he was aiming, and exactly what it would do. The guard fell as if his legs were made of water, making only a quiet gasp as he slithered to the floor jerking the knife, which was stuck against the inside of his backbone, out of Savn’s hand. The man fell onto his left side, pinning his sword beneath him, yet, with the reflexes of a trained warrior, he reached for it anyway.
Savn started to jump over him, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. The guard seemed unable to use his legs, but he pushed himself over to the other side and again reached for his sword. Savn backed into the cell, as far away from the guard as he could get, and watched in horrified fascination as the warrior managed to draw his sword and began to pull himself toward Savn with his free hand. He had eyes only for Savn as he came, and his face was drawn into a grimace that could have been hate or pain or both. Savn tried to squeeze himself as far into the corner as he could. The distance between them closed terribly slowly, and Savn suddenly had the thought that he would live and grow old in a tiny corner of the cell while the guard crept toward him—an entire lifetime of anticipation, waiting for the inevitable sword thrust—all compacted into seven feet, an inch at a time.
In fact, the warrior was a good four feet away when he gasped and lay still, breathing but unable to pull himself any further, but it seemed much closer. Savn, for his part, didn’t move either, but stared at the man whose blood was soaking through his shirt and beginning to stain the floor around him, drip by fascinating drip. After what was probably only a few minutes, however long it felt, he stopped breathing, but even then Savn was unable to move until his sense of cleanliness around a patient overcame his shock and led his feet across the cell to the chamber pot before his stomach emptied itself.