“But not my House?”
He looked startled and glanced at Aliera.
She said, “A Jhereg could join if he wanted to. There have been some, I think—none who are actually a part of the business end, I suppose, but some who’ve bought Jhereg titles instead of being Houseless.”
I nodded. “So it isn’t all Dragons, eh? That’s what I was wondering about.”
“Oh, no,” said Aliera. “It’s mostly Dragons, because all Dragons must serve periodically, but there are others from every House in the guards—except Athyra, who are never interested, and Phoenix, because there aren’t enough of them.”
“Suppose some colonel of some army of Dragonlords is serving. Would he be a colonel in the guards?”
“No,” said Sethra. “Rank among the guards has nothing to do with any other rank. Officers in private armies often serve under their own blademen.”
“I see. Does this ever cause problems?”
“No,” said Aliera.
“Why the interest?” asked Sethra.
“I’m bothered by the fact that the guards who were enforcing the Imperial Edict left just at the right time for our friends to nail me. I can’t believe it was coincidence.”
They looked at each other. “I can’t think of any way,” said Sethra.
“Whose decision would it have been? The Empress’s? Or whoever leads the guards?”
“The Empress sent them; she would have had to order their withdrawal,” said Aliera. Morrolan nodded.
“All right,” I said, “I don’t think she would have been involved in this on purpose, would she?” Three heads shook. “Then is there anyone who could have made the suggestion to her that ‘now would be a good time,’ and be confident that she’d act on it at once?”
Sethra and Aliera looked at Morrolan, who was at court more often than they. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Her lover,” he said, “is said to be an Easterner. I’ve never met him, but he might have such influence. Then there are her advisors, but, to be candid, she hardly listens to most of them. I believe that she listens seriously to me, but I could be deluding myself. And, in any case, I made no such request of her. She pays attention to Sethra the Younger, but Sethra has no interest in anything save invasion plans for the East.”
Sethra Lavode nodded. “It’s good to have an ambition,” she said. “Sethra the Younger is the only apprentice I’ve ever had who’s never tried to kill me.”
I turned back to Morrolan. “You can’t think of anyone else?”
“Not at present.”
“All right then, what else? A faked message, maybe? Do this right now, signed so-and-so?”
“Who,” said Morrolan, “would write a message rather than reach her psionically?”
“Well, someone she doesn’t speak with often. It must be hard to reach her directly, so—”
“No it isn’t,” said Aliera, looking at me as if puzzled.
“It isn’t?”
“Of course not. Any citizen can reach Zerika through his link. Didn’t you know that?”
“No . . . but she must get thousands of people—”
“Not really,” she said. “If she doesn’t consider it worth her time, she destroys the person. This keeps the amount of contact down quite a bit.”
“Oh . . . My father never saw fit to mention that. I guess he was afraid I might do it. In any case, I still don’t see who could and would have convinced her to withdraw the troops. Morrolan, you’re well respected around court. Will you try to find out for me?”
“No,” said Morrolan. “As I have explained to you, I will have nothing to do with any Jhereg war, directly or indirectly.”
“Yeah, okay.” I was pleased to see Aliera shoot him a brief look of disgust. It occurred to me then that the easiest thing to do would be to create something real that would make the Empress want to pull the troops out. What could it be? Civil disturbance? Threat of an invasion of some sort?
“Kragar.”
“Yes, Vlad?”
“See if there was anything going on in the city that would have called for Phoenix Guards to handle.”
“Good idea, boss.”
“That’s what I pay myself for.”
Then I reached Fentor and had him check into any possible external threats. With any luck, I’d know within a day or two. I turned my attention back to the others. Aliera and Sethra were deep into another discussion.
“Certainly,” Sethra was saying. “And as far as I’m concerned, let her.”
Aliera frowned. “We’re just getting on our feet, Sethra. We can’t afford to go off East with tens of thousands of troops until we’re sure the Empire is stable.”
“What’s this about?” I asked.
“You set off another argument, Vlad,” Morrolan explained. “Aliera is opposed to Sethra the Younger’s conquering the East until the Empire is stable. Sethra the Younger thinks that will make it stable, and our own Sethra,” he indicated her with his head, “feels, as I do, that since Sethra—the other one—wants to do it, why not? What harm is there? They’ll throw us out again in a few hundred or a thousand years. That was why Kieron the Conqueror left them there in the first place—so we’d have someone to fight and wouldn’t tear ourselves apart.”
I could have said many things about this, but I let it go.
“That isn’t the point,” said Aliera. “If we drain off enough resources, what happens if a real enemy shows up? The Easterners are no threat to us now—”
“What real enemy?” said Sethra. “There isn’t—”
I stood and left them to their argument. It couldn’t have anything to do with me, in any case.
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Nine
“I guess they wanted to see you.”
I returned to my room and decided that I wanted to see Cawti again; also, that I was looking forward to dinner that evening with Sethra, Morrolan, and Aliera. I realized that I could become very comfortable at Dzur Mountain, while Kragar kept things going at the office. In other words, while everything I’d built up went over Deathsgate Falls. Not that Kragar was incompetent, but there are certain things one must do oneself, and I’d been gone four days already.
“Aliera?”
After a pause, a response came. “Yes, Vlad?”
“Something has come up. I’m going to have to return to the office right away. Please convey my apologies to Sethra and Morrolan.”
“As you wish. But don’t exert yourself.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Would you like help with the teleport?”
“Yes, please. That would be very nice.”
“All right, I’ll be right down,” she concluded vocally, standing in front of me. Damn show-off. I gave her an image of the alley behind a row of buildings facing Malak Circle, and pulled back to show where it was relative to parts of Adrilankha that she knew. She nodded.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Ready.”
There was a twist, and a burbling in my stomach, and I was there. I could have teleported to just outside the office building, but I wanted to look around and get a feel for the area, as well as give my stomach a chance to recover.
Walking through the streets wasn’t as risky as it may sound. Though I didn’t have any bodyguards, no one even knew that I was around. The only way Laris could really get me was to have an assassin standing around next to my office, hoping I’d walk back in. I’d never taken “work” like that, but I have an idea of the risks associated with it. The longer you stand around a place, the more chance there is that someone will be able to identify you as the one doing the job. Paying someone to do that would cost more than paying the Sword and the Dagger to just finalize the individual. So I wasn’t very worried.