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 heavy-looking 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 cave-mouth 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.
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!