She had taken the form of a rapier, which was awfully nice, since that’s what I’m used to fighting with. She fit into my hand like my palm, hilt smooth, and it was like she was weightless. I knew—somehow—that it was safe to take a step backward, and I did, taking my first good look around.
There were several horrified faces, backing away. Brinea, to her credit, was seeing to her people and trying to pull them away and speaking rapidly. Three of what appeared to be Teckla were facing me: each with a fighting knife, one with two of them. They were crouched, alert, and they were staring at Lady Teldra. I didn’t blame them.
We stood there, watching each other for half a heartbeat, when a couple of things happened. First, I realized I didn’t hurt anymore. I almost looked at Lady Teldra myself. You’d think someone would have told me she could do things like that.
The second thing that happened was someone called out, “You will put up your weapons in the name of the Empire.”
I froze.
“What the—?”
“Two of them, Boss; they’ve pulled gold cloaks out of somewhere and are tossing off wigs and such.”
“Great. Half the gathering were assassins, the other half were Phoenix Guards. Perfect.”
For a moment, no one moved, then I heard another voice, this one I recognized. “Vlad, put it away.”
I looked over. “Norathar? Where did you come from?”
“Behind that tree over there.”
I wanted to say that hadn’t been the plan, but she probably wouldn’t have appreciated it. I sheathed Lady Teldra with a flourish.
“Now,” she said, “if you gentlemen will put yours up as well, let us all go to the Palace and talk this over. The wagon will be here shortly.”
There was a pause, but I had no doubts about what would happen. These were Jhereg; they knew that, whatever else, you do not fight with the Phoenix Guards. You can’t win. After a breath or two, there was a collective sigh and cutlery vanished all over the place. Norathar said, “Who is the leader here?”
I glanced at the corpse and said, “Uh, I’m afraid—”
“No, not him.”
“I am,” said Brinea, in an impressively steady voice. She looked at me but didn’t say anything. Yeah, I know: I’d told her I was going to just identify him. I’d been lying. I do that sometimes.
I studied the Jhereg who were still alive, standing there like idiots the same way I was. One of them looked familiar. I looked at him more closely, realized where I knew him from, and shook my head. He avoided looking at me. I’m guessing he was disgusted with himself because my disguise had fooled him. I tried to feel smug about that but it wasn’t in me. I hate it when my plan goes blooey, even if the results come out okay.
Oh, and to complete my humiliation, the fellow I’d noticed earlier, and thought might be an assassin, was one of the Phoenix Guards.
Sheesh.
Norathar said, “I’d like everyone’s name as witnesses. After that, you are free to go on about your business. I think the excitement is over, and Lord Caltho will be arriving shortly.”
Briana agreed, and about then a couple of coaches pulled up. The three Jhereg were put into one, still with their weapons and unbound; I got the other. Loiosh and Rocza remained outside, overhead, providing a winged escort.
Norathar climbed in with me, and we started off. I said, “Is there any law against impersonating a Phoenix Guard?”
“Why?”
“One of those Jhereg—the one with the floppy hat—was one of the ones who beat me up.”
“Oh. He can be fined for that, and maybe dunked.”
“All right.” I sighed. “Got through it, anyway.”
“I suppose. But, Vlad, that was pretty sloppy. Now what? You’ve been seen killing someone. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have slipped so far so fast.”
That was unfair. For one thing, it wasn’t fast by my standards; it had been years. For another—
“I’ll point out that I was in disguise, and if you’d done what I said—”
“You’d either be dead, or have three Morganti killings to account for. I don’t know how we’ll keep you away from the Star as it is, but with that—”
“It shouldn’t be a problem. He was a Jhereg assassin.”
Norathar nodded. “Yes, so he was. He turned out to be not only armed, but carrying a seal of the House with him.”
I nodded.
“The only thing is,” said Norathar, “that assassins don’t carry the House seal when they’re working. I happen to know.”
“This one did.”
“You say that like you knew.”
“I had a pretty good idea he would be.”
“How?”
“Because I trust Kiera.”
“She planted—?” She cut herself off before asking the question. Dragon Heir, acting Warlord, and ex-assassin; had to be tough to be her.
I leaned my head against the hard wall of the coach.
She said, “He had three toughs with him for backup.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I hadn’t expected that.”
“I had.”
I opened my eyes. “Why?”
“Because they were going to assassinate a public figure in a crowded room. You’re used to—that is, you were used to a different sort of thing.”
“I did jobs in public.”
“Different sort of thing than taking out a guy in the middle of a restaurant. With a public figure like that, if you’re going to get out of it alive and unidentified, you need people to create enough confusion to get away.”
Great. Now I was getting lessons in assassination from the Warlord of the Empire. “You could have told me,” I said.
She shrugged. “How did you identify him?”
I explained about the knife.
“How do you know the guy you got was the one going to do the work, not one of the backups?”
“Why do I care?”
She inhaled deeply, then let her breath out slowly and nodded.
“Give me a moment,” she said. “I’ll find out what happened with the rest.”
A bit later she said, “Morrolan brought the advocate in to see the Empress, presented the petition. The Empress is now meeting with the Justicer and Imperial Advocate. Morrolan is confident the charges will be dismissed.”
I nodded. “And the investigation?”
“Aliera did nothing wrong as Warlord; she has nothing to fear from an investigation.”
“All right.”
“As opposed to you.”
“Me? I killed an assassin.”
“You also publicly brandished a Morganti weapon. Which I ought to take from you, only I know better.” She looked disgusted.
“Oh, right; carrying a Morganti weapon is illegal, isn’t it?”
“Very much illegal.”
“In spite of Aliera, Morrolan, Sethra—”
“Yes, in spite of that.”
“Just like use of Elder Sorcery is illegal, but no one cares unless—say, I just thought of something. The law against carrying a Morganti weapon, do you happen to know if it is a Codified Tradition, a Statute, or an Edict?”
She frowned. “I believe it’s an Edict. Why?”
“I have a good advocate,” I said.