“How will you find out?”
“With your permission, I’ll attend today’s meeting here, and try to identify the assassin.”
“What makes you think you can do that?”
“I can sometimes spot them,” I said.
“What is it you do?”
“Run from them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Jhereg wants me dead for personal reasons. So, most of my life is avoiding them. But that’s okay, I’ve been running for so long it feels like walking to me.”
She was quiet again for a bit, then she said, “What will you do if you identify the assassin?”
“Tell you who he is, so you can do whatever seems appropriate.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“I won’t be. I might not be able to spot him, but if I do spot him, I won’t be wrong.”
We turned a corner and she started leading us back toward the house. No one had yet tried to kill me. Eventually she said, “All right. I’ll trust you on that part. You may as well relax; they’ll be here soon.”
We made it back to the house and closed the door and I felt relieved. I found a chair from which I could be watching the door without appearing to, and I waited.
It was, indeed, only a few minutes later that they began to arrive. The first to arrive appeared to be a Teckla, and suspiciously like one straight out of someone’s imagination of what a peasant ought to look like: brown hair, roundish face, leathery-looking skin, sturdy. He greeted Brinea, who introduced me. He gave his name as Nicha, and sat down next to me and began a conversation about needing to watch for trickery at the meeting with the Empire. I grunted agreeing noises and kept watching the door.
Shortly after, a pair of Easterners came in: Katherine was tall for an Easterner, dark, and wore glasses; Liam had the round face of a Teckla, an odd hair color that wasn’t quite blond and wasn’t quite brown, and a nose that looked to have been broken at least once. They carried flyers in their hands. I didn’t ask to see one because I was afraid it was something I was supposed to know about. They were both reserved with me; maybe they thought they should be the only humans there.
In fact, except for the three of us, everyone else was a Teckla. I won’t give you all the names; there were twenty-three of them, not including me or Brinea. Eliminating the two Easterners, that meant twenty-one who might be assassins. Nine of them were women, and I almost dismissed them, but for one thing, there is the occasional woman working for the Jhereg (as I happen to know better than most), and for another, a Jhereg willing to disguise himself as a Teckla could just as easily disguise his sex, right?
So, there were twenty-one who might be my target; and none of them instantly jumped out at me. I had been thinking I might take a look at their calluses, if I could see them; but it seems I’d stumbled into the largest collection of non-laboring Teckla ever assembled in one place. Some were messengers, some were house-servants, some did menial jobs for merchants, but none looked like he actually did any work. It was terribly disillusioning; I wondered what it meant.
It seemed there were several there who didn’t know each other, so my being a stranger turned out not to be that bad. Brinea made introductions as people came in, and I watched a lot, spoke little, learned nothing.
“I wish I could see, Boss.”
“You think you can spot an assassin when I can’t?”
“Yes.”
“Ha.”
The chairs were arranged in most of a circle, three rows deep, only an arc in front of the doorway and into the kitchen area left free. One chair, on the other end of the arc, was unoccupied, as if by unspoken consent. Brinea sat in it and said, “Let’s get started.”
It started, and it went on for a long time. They spoke of pressuring the Empire, which struck me as an exercise in futility, but what do I know? They spoke about guarding the interests of “the people,” but weren’t exactly clear on what that involved. Mostly, it went on for a long time. I took out the clasp knife I’d just bought. No one reacted. Damn. I cleaned my nails with it, and no one seemed to notice. Nothing. Oh, well. I closed it and set down next to my chair.
Meanwhile, they droned on, talking about what Lord Caltho—they were careful to call him Lord Caltho—had to be told about and what standards he had to be held to, and about insisting that all details of the investigation be made public. Let me know how that works out for you, I thought but didn’t say.
I was caught between boredom and frustration. I kept wanting to flourish a dagger just to see who reacted; and it might even have worked. But the thing is, it might not have, and then I’d have lost my chance.
It took a while—it took a very very long while—but at last Brinea said, “I think that covers everything. I propose we go there in a body. If we leave now, we’ll be a few minutes early, and we can talk to anyone walking by and explain what we’re doing, then go in together. Does anyone object?”
No one did, so we all stood up. I watched as closely as I could to see if anyone seemed unusually athletic or, well, slinky when standing, if that makes any sense. And I half thought I noticed someone, too. I studied him as I stood: a guy with long, loopy arms wearing loose clothing; and his hair was shaggy enough to have maybe concealed a noble’s point. Maybe. The trick was to keep an eye on him, but not be so distracted that I missed someone else. It was hard, but not impossible. You have to trust your peripheral vision.
I contrived to be the last one out the door except for Brinea and a fellow I took to be her husband. No one else seemed interested in who was the last one out the door. But I guess if you’d been watching me, I wouldn’t have seemed interested either.
We all trooped out toward the street to head toward the South Adrilankha Speaker’s Hall, which is what someone had once built instead of the Speaker’s House villages have. It wasn’t far away, but at least one of us wasn’t going to make it. They waited for Brinea to take the lead, and, as she shut the door, I said, “I don’t have my pocketknife.”
“You set it by your chair,” said a short, elderly Teckla who was about four paces from me.
We assassins notice things like that.
I nodded and opened my cloak as I covered the distance. Loiosh and Rocza flew out very quickly and several people cried out, but by that time I had the stiletto in my hand. I got him up under the chin. I hit him hard, too—I remember feeling the hilt connect with his chin bone, though I mostly remember how much my ribs hurt when I struck. I left the knife there, and started to step back, about to curl myself up into a ball of pain and try to breathe when—
“Down!”
I hit the ground and rolled and felt something go “whoosh” over my head. Someone was reacting awfully fast for a Teckla, and my muscles cried out to stop it and
“He has backup, Boss! Three of them!”
Sheesh. Was the whole room full of assassins? What was he doing bringing backup along? I never did that. What sort of crappy assassin wants witnesses and needs protection? I’d have given him a piece of my mind if I hadn’t left eight inches of steel in his.
I hoped one of them was the guy I’d picked out; that would make me feel better. There was a lot of screaming going on as I continued my roll; some of the screaming was from my rib. My hand found the hilt of Lady Teldra, and I drew her and came to my feet, knowing somehow I needed to duck to my left, and someone yelled “Morganti,” which was useless, because once I drew that blade, everyone within a mile who had any psychic sensitivity at all must have been aware of it.