“Your brother!” This was too much.
“My brother,” she repeated. “We started out as one family. Kieron, Dolivar, and I.”
She turned fully toward me, and I felt a rushing in my ears as I listened to her spin tales that I couldn’t quite dismiss as mad ravings or myths.
“I,” she said, “was a Shaman in that life, and I think I was a good one, too. I was a Shaman, and Kieron was a warrior. He is still there, Vlad, in the Paths of the Dead. I’ve spoken to him. He recognized me.
“Three of us. The Shaman, the warrior—and the traitor. By the time Dolivar betrayed us, we no longer considered him a brother. He was a Jhereg, down to his soul.
“His soul . . . ” she repeated, trailing off.
“Yes,” she continued, “ ‘Odd’ is the right way to describe the way heredity of the body interacts with reincarnation of the soul. Kieron was never reincarnated. I have been born into a body descended from the brother of my soul. And you—” she gave me a look that I couldn’t interpret, but I suddenly knew what was coming. I wanted to scream at her not to say it, but, throughout the millennia, Aliera has always been just a little faster than me. “—You became an Easterner, brother.”
previous | Table of Contents | next
previous | Table of Contents | next
10
“One man’s mistake is another man’s opportunity.”
One damn thing after another.
I returned to my office and looked at nothing in particular for a while. I needed time, probably days, to get adjusted to this information. Instead, I had about ten minutes.
“Vlad?” said Kragar. “Hey, Vlad!”
I looked up. After a moment, I focused in on Kragar, who was sitting opposite me and looking worried.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“That’s what I was wondering.”
“Huh?”
“Is something wrong?”
“Yes. No. Hell, Kragar, I don’t know.”
“It sounds serious,” he said.
“It is. My whole world has just been flipped around, and I haven’t sorted it out yet.”
I leaned toward him, then, and grabbed his jerkin. “Just one thing, old friend: If you value your sanity, never, but never have a deep, heart-to-heart talk with Aliera.”
“Sounds really serious.”
“Yeah.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Then I said, “Kragar?”
“Yeah, boss?”
I bit my lip. I’d never broached this subject before, but . . .
“How did you feel when you were kicked out of the House of the Dragon?”
“Relieved,” he said, with no hesitation. “Why?”
I sighed. “Never mind.”
I tried to force the mood and the contemplation from me and almost succeeded. “What’s on your mind, Kragar?”
“I was wondering if you found out anything,” he said, in all innocence.
Did I find out anything? I asked myself. The question began to reverberate in my head, and I heard myself laughing. I saw Kragar giving me a funny look; worried. I kept laughing. I tried to stop, but couldn’t. Ha! Did I learn anything?
Kragar leaned across the desk and slapped me once—hard.
“Hey boss,” said Loiosh, “cut it out.”
I sobered up. “Easy for you to say,” I told him. “You haven’t just learned that you once were everything you hate—the very kind of person you despise.”
“So? You haven’t just learned that you were supposed to be a blithering idiot, except that some pseudo-god decided to have a little fun with your ancestors,” Loiosh barked back.
I realized that he had a point. I turned to Kragar. “I’m all right now. Thanks.”
He still looked worried. “Are you sure?”
“No.”
He rolled his eyes. “Great. So, if you can avoid having hysterics again, what did you learn?”
I almost did have hysterics again, but controlled myself before Kragar could slap me again. What had I learned? Well, I wasn’t going to tell him that, or that, uh, or that either. What did that leave? Oh, of course.
“I learned that Mellar is the product of three Houses,” I said. I gave him a report on that part of the discussion.
He pondered the information.
“Now that,” he said, “is interesting. A Dzur, eh? And a Dragon. Hmmm. Okay, why don’t you see what you can dig up about the Dzur side, and I’ll work on the Dragons.”
“I think it would make more sense to do it the other way around, since I have some connections in the Dragons.”
He looked at me closely. “Are you quite sure,” he said, “that you want to use those connections just at the moment?”
Oh. I thought about that, and nodded. “Okay, I’ll check the Dzur records. What do you think we should look for?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. Then he cocked his head for a minute and seemed to be thinking about something, or else he was in psionic contact. I waited.
“Vlad,” he said, “do you have any idea what it’s like to be a cross-breed?”
“I know it isn’t as bad as being an Easterner!”
“Isn’t it?”
“What are you getting at? You know damn well what I’ve had to put up with.”
“Oh, sure, Mellar isn’t going to have all the problems you have, or had. But suppose he inherited the true spirit of each House. Do you have any idea how frustrating it would be for a Dzur to be denied his place in the lists of heroes of the House, if he was good enough to earn it? Or a Dragon, denied the right to command all the troops he was competent to lead? The only House that would take him is us, and Hell, Vlad, there are even some Jhereg that would make him eat Dragon-dung. Sure, Vlad; you have it worse in fact, but he can’t help but feel that he’s entitled to better.”
“And I’m not?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I suppose,” I conceded. “I see your point. Where are you going with it?”
Kragar got a puzzled look on his face. “I don’t know, exactly, but it’s bound to have an effect on his character.”
I nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Okay, I’ll get started right away.”
“Fine. Oh, could you try to get that crystal with Mellar’s face in it back from Daymar? I may want to use it.”
“Sure. When do you need it?”
“Tomorrow morning will be fine. I’m taking the evening off. I’ll start on it tomorrow.”
Kragar’s eyes were sympathetic, which was rare. “Sure, boss. I’ll cover for you here. See you tomorrow.”
I ate mechanically and thanked the Lords of Judgment that it was Cawti’s night to cook and clean. I didn’t think I’d be up to it.
After eating, I rose and went into the living room. I sat down and started trying to sort out some things. I didn’t get anywhere. Presently, Cawti came in and sat down next to me. We sat in silence for a while.
I tried to deny what Aliera had told me, or pass it off as a combination of myth, misplaced superstition, and delusion. Unfortunately, it made too much sense for that to work. Why, after all, had Sethra Lavode been so friendly to me, a Jhereg and an Easterner? And Aliera obviously believed all of this, or why had she treated me as almost an equal on occasion?
But, more than that was the undeniable fact that it felt true. That was the really frightening thing—somewhere, deep within me, doubtless in my “soul,” I knew that what Aliera had said was true.