“Uh, how, Boss?”
“How what? How do we get there? I have a clever and devious plan.”
“Oh, great.”
I worked my way around to the Athyra Wing and, eventually, out into the world. It was bright out there, making me think of the East where there’s no overcast to protect you from the Furnace. I blinked and waited for my eyes to adjust.
The Athyra Wing is usually pretty quiet and today was no exception; that meant that just in case there were any assassins who’d been following me waiting for an opportunity, I’d see them—pardon me, Loiosh would see them in plenty of time. I set out on the Street of the Athyra, turning to pass the obsidian monolith (oh, yes, we’re so impressive) of the House of the Athyra on my right, continuing just a few score of yards beyond it to Mawg Way. “Mawg,” I was once told, means “merchant” in some disused language that goes back to before there were any such things as merchants. That makes you wonder, you know? I mean, “mawg.” An ugly word. Where did they get “merchant” out of that? Maybe there are people who study things like that. If so, they’re probably Athyra.
A few doors down, on the left side, was a windowless cottage built of round stones. It had a thick door bound in iron strips; the door was standing open. Above the doorway was a particularly detailed sign in which an Athyra was flying over a map of the Empire.
“Boss, you aren’t serious.”
“Why not?”
“Ever heard of the Left Hand of the Jhereg, Boss? You know, the sorceresses?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Boss, the Left Hand doesn’t like you. And even if they did, the Jhereg could hire one of them to watch places like this. As soon as you teleport, a sorcerer can. . . what are you laughing about?”
“Just watch me, Loiosh.”
I went in. The entry room was just big enough, and held a door opposite. A young lady of the House of the Athyra sat in a wooden chair facing the door, looking serious and mystical and very business-like: she may as well have had “apprentice” stenciled on her forehead.
She looked me over, decided on just how noble I was (I was an Easterner, but I dared to wear a sword openly), and inclined her head slightly. “Yes, sir?”
“How much is a teleport?”
“One imperial, to a known location.”
“How much to have the sorcerer come to me?”
“My lord? Oh, you mean to teleport from somewhere else? Two imperials, if it’s within the city.”
“And how much to have it done surreptitiously, and untraceably? And add in a short-term spell to make me sorcerously invisible.”
“How short-term?”
“A minute. Half a minute.”
“Ten.”
“That’s fine. My name is Vladimir Taltos, I’ll be going to Dzur Mountain, and I wish to have a sorcerer meet me in the Temple of Verra on Waterhill in South Adrilankha.”
Her nose wrinkled and she hesitated, looking for an excuse to say no. Eventually she said, “I’ll have to ask.”
“I’ll wait here,” I said.
She gave me a suspicious look before going through the door. It isn’t like there was anything in the room to steal. She returned a moment later, asked for my name again. This time she wrote it on a small slab of some sort, and nodded. “She will meet you.”
“Want the money now?”
“If you please.”
I put two five-imperial coins into her hand and sketched a bow. I opened the door, standing far enough to the side not to be open to anything unpleasant that might shoot through it, but not so far as to make it obvious what I was doing. Loiosh flew out; I’d have loved to see the look on the apprentice’s face, but my back was to her. Loiosh said it was safe, so I stepped out onto the street.
Crowded streets make it harder to set something up reliably, but easier to get the drop on your target, and easier to get away safely afterward. Empty streets, of course, have the opposite problems. I compromised and took a mix of both, making my way to the Chain Bridge and so across to South Adrilankha.
“So, Loiosh, you get it?”
“I know what you’re thinking—the Jhereg won’t go after you in a temple.”
“Right.”
“But you still have to get to the temple.”
“I have complete confidence in you.”
One thing that cannot be done psychically is mutter, but Loiosh took a pretty good run at it.
There are scores of shrines to Verra in the city, and several temples to her in South Adrilankha. The one I’d chosen was a low stonework affair, set back from the road, with a flagstone walk flanked by scrawny trees. Moreover, it was in a neighborhood with a lot of space between the houses. Put it all together, and there were no good places for assassins to hide. Even Loiosh grudgingly agreed, after a few minutes flying around, that I could go ahead and venture up to the doors—after that, he made no guarantees.
Opening the door was scary. I didn’t care how stupid I looked; I listened, stood to the side, and was moving when I flung it open.
No one was there. Yeah, I looked stupid. I might have gotten some funny glances from people passing on the street, but I didn’t wait around to see, I just stepped inside.
It was a single room, with a black altar opposite the door, about ten paces from me. I knew from memory that there were small holes cut into the altar for candles, though I couldn’t see them from here. Beyond that, the place was utterly bare. The priest here believed that one should bring nothing to the Goddess but the desire to serve, or something like that. I don’t remember exactly how he’d put it; it was years ago. Services here were held two or three times a week, I forget the times and dates, and on the obvious feast days.
I positioned myself behind the altar and waited for the sorcerer—or an assassin, if I’d misjudged the Jhereg. Sorry, don’t mean to be mysterious. There are rules to how we operate: you don’t kill someone in front of his family, you don’t mess with him in his home, you don’t touch him in a temple or at a shrine.
The thing is, all of these rules have, at one time or another, been violated; one reason I was in trouble with the Jhereg was for violating one of them. I’d had a bad day that day. The point is, I was calculating on them following the rules, at least this time, and for a while. If I was wrong, things were liable to get exciting.
I got to be nervous for about twenty minutes before the sorceress showed up. No assassins came with her. Score one for me. She had the dark complexion of the Athyra but her hair was such a light brown it was almost blond, producing a slightly startling effect. There was a vague look in her eyes that was common if not universal among Athyra.
She gave the place a half-interested and disdainful look, then nodded at me. “Lord Taltos?” she said.
I nodded.
“Dzur Mountain,” she said. “Untraceable, with a brief lingering cloud.”
I nodded again.
She looked like she might be considering offering me advice on going there, but she must have decided not to, and just said, “Are you ready?”
I pulled the amulet from around my neck and put it away, thus, no doubt, alerting a dozen or so Jhereg sorcerers. “Ready,” I said.
She didn’t even gesture, as far as I could see; for an instant the room seemed about to spin, but then it went through a familiar slow fade, going through all the colors from white to almost-white; interminable seconds went by when I was in two places at once, and I could feel myself pushing air out of the way. In that time, it suddenly hit me that she might have been bribed, and be delivering me to an assassin. In that empty, lingering time-space, I became so convinced of it that I was already reaching for a dagger when the world settled down to a familiar place on the lower slopes of Dzur Mountain.