I studied her face at that moment, I suppose feeling something momentous about to occur, and I couldn’t get anything from her expression.
“They will release you, Morrolan and Aliera, if Vlad agrees to perform a task for them.”
“I can hardly wait,” I muttered, but either no one heard me or they all ignored me.
“They want Vlad to perform a killing, a murder.”
“Did you explain that I’m no longer in that line of work:”‘
“I made no agreement of any kind,” she said. “I merely spoke to them, and they stated the conditions.”
“And otherwise we’ll be killed, I assume,” said Aliera, as if she were being threatened with not being allowed to dinner.
“That wasn’t specified.”
“That’s why we were taken,” said Aliera, giving me a look. “In order to coerce Vlad into doing what they want.”
“You’d think,” said Morrolan, “that if that was true, they’d have taken Cawti, or better yet—” He broke off abruptly and scowled.
“They’re separated,” said Aliera.
“So?” said Morrolan. “Who knows how the Jenoine think, and what they know? They may not know much more of our customs, not to mention emotions, than we know of theirs.”
“They know enough to have us here, bait for Vlad. You’ll notice he’s here.”
“Makes me wonder what they would have done if you hadn’t been along, Lady Teldra.”
“Some of them speak our language,” she said.
I cleared my throat. “I notice none of you are asking the obvious question.”
“You mean,” said Morrolan, “who is it she wants killed? It’s obviously either Sethra, or a god, and you certainly aren’t going to do it, so what difference does it make?”
“I should think a god,” said Aliera judiciously. “Probably Verra.”
Teldra bowed to her.
“Verra?” I said. “They want me to kill Verra?”
“Yes,” said Teldra.
“Well, I have been annoyed with her now and then. I mean, can’t say I haven’t thought about it.”
“It isn’t a joking matter, Vlad,” said Morrolan.
“I think it is, Boss.”
“That’s two of us, if it comes to a vote.”
“Did they have any suggestions as to how I was to accomplish this task?”
She held out the object in her palm. It was a small, black cube, perhaps an inch on a side. It didn’t seem to reflect any light. “I am told,” she said, “that this will bring you to the presence of the Goddess.” With her other hand, she took from her belt a sheathed knife I hadn’t noticed before. “This is a very powerful Morganti dagger; it will be sufficient to, as they put it, prevent the Goddess from manifesting on our world.”
“That means kill her,” said Morrolan.
“Not exactly,” said Aliera.
“Close enough.”
I made some sort of grunting sound; I’m not sure what it meant, because I’m not sure what I was thinking. Teldra set the two objects down at my feet, then stepped back. There was something of ritual about how she did it; as if she were saying, “Here, now my work is done, and I say nothing about your work, what it is, or if you ought to do it.”
I stared at the black cube and at the Morganti dagger I could feel its emanations even from its sheath.
I said, “Teldra, do you trust them?”
“Vlad!” said Aliera. “You aren’t considering doing it!”
“Yes,” said Teldra. “I think they were telling the truth.”
I grunted again.
“Look on the bright side, Boss: you’ve done a king, now you’ll be able to say you’ve—”
“That’s not the bright side. The bright side is the pleasure of rescuing Morrolan and Aliera. They’ll never live it down.”
Morrolan was staring at me. “Vlad, you can’t be thinking, about it. Think! Verra, the Demon Goddess. Your ancestors have worshiped her—”
“Leave it alone, Morrolan.”
“Leave it alone? She is my goddess, too. How can I let you destroy her to save me?”
I laughed. “How can you stop me?”
“Vlad—”
“Oh, be still, dammit. I don’t want to hear anything from anyone for a while, okay? Except you, Teldra, I want you to answer a question or two: Did they say anything about how long I had to make up my mind?”
“It wasn’t mentioned,” she said.
“Did they say anything about feeding us?”
“No.”
Aliera opened her mouth to make another passionate and irritating plea, so I turned and walked away to the far side of the room. What I needed was time to think; usually needing time to think only happens when you haven’t got any, but this time I at least had the chance to work a few things through in my head: Aliera and Morrolan wouldn’t subject themselves to the indignity of yelling across the room, Teldra was too polite to say anything, and, for a miracle, even Loiosh gave me some peace.
So I ran a lot of stuff around my brain, for whatever that would do. The fact is, I don’t think all that well when I’m just standing and thinking; I need to be talking, or doing something active, then the thoughts flow. But I did my best, and eventually sorted the matter out into several categories of things that I didn’t understand. This was progress.
Categories, if you’ll excuse a brief digression, are a useful way to get a handle on things you don’t understand, as long as you don’t get too attached to them and forget that things like to pop out of one category and into another, and that sometimes the whole category turns itself inside out and becomes something different. It’s useful, for example, to categorize your target as a sorcerer, if he is one; but if you get too attached to your category it’ll leave you embarrassed when he suddenly pulls a knife on you.
Just thought I’d share my reflections on categories.
In this case, I broke the unknowns down into: the abilities of the Jenoine, the plans of the Jenoine, and the nature of this world we were in.
I decided to start with the latter. I walked back.
“You have no link to the Orb, correct?”
Morrolan and Aliera nodded.
“Your Great Weapons seem to be behaving normally?”
They nodded again.
“What about time?”
“Excuse me?” said Aliera.
“I know time works differently in different places. I’ve been to the Paths of the Dead. Exactly how differently does it work here?”
“As far as I know,” said Morrolan, “an hour here is an hour at home.”
I shook my head. “No, I know that isn’t true. How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know,” said Aliera. “Several hours.”
“Several days,” I told her. “Five, to be exact.”
They look properly startled. Before they could respond, I said, “What about Verra’s Halls? How does time work there?”
“What difference does that make?” asked Aliera.
“I’m just curious.”
Morrolan looked suspicious, and like he didn’t want to answer. I glanced at Teldra, who said, “I don’t know. I assume time flows the same there as it does at home, but I don’t actually know.”
“Okay,” I said.
The reason that assassins make so much money is that, first of all, there aren’t many who have what it takes to dispassionately murder someone; and, of those, there aren’t many who can get away with it. I used to be one of them. Whatever there is in me that made me able to shove the knife, I still had. What made me able to get away with it so many times—sixty-three to be exact—was that I understood the key ingredient: knowledge. You have to know things. You have to know everything there is to know about your target, about the environment, about your weapons, about your own abilities. Then you can make a plan. A plan built on ignorance can be worse than charging in with no plan at all; if you have no plan, you might get lucky.