Teckla

I drained my klava, signaled the waiter for more and doctored it appropriately when it came. "All right," I said.

"Until just recently," she began, "you thought that you had found your line of work because you hated Dragaerans. Killing them was your way of getting back at them for what they'd put you through while you were growing up. Right?"

I nodded.

"Okay," she continued. "A few weeks ago, you had a talk with Aliera."

I winced. "Yeah," I said.

"She told you about a previous life in which—"

"Yeah, I know. I was a Dragaeran."

"And you said you felt as if your whole life had been a lie."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Hm?"

"Why did it shake you so much?"

"I don't—"

"Could it be because you've felt all along as if you had to justify yourself? Could it be that somewhere, deep down, you think it is evil to kill people for money?"

"Not people," I said by reflex. "Dragaerans."

"People," she said. "And I think you've just proved my point. You were forced into this line of work, just the way I was. You had to justify it to yourself. You've justified it so thoroughly that you kept on doing 'work' even after you no longer had to, when you were making enough money from running your area that the 'work' was pointless. And then your justification fell apart. So now you don't know where you stand, and you have to wonder whether you are, really, deep down, a bad person."

"I don't—"

"Let me finish. What I'm getting at is this: No, you aren't a bad person. You have done what you had to do to live and to help provide us both with a home and a comfortable life. But tell me this, now that you can't hide behind hating Dragaerans any more: What kind of Empire do we have that forces someone like you to do what you do, just to live, and to be able to walk down the streets without flinching? What kind of Empire not only produces the Jhereg, but allows it to thrive? Can you justify that!"

I let her comments percolate through me for a while. I got more klava. Then I said, "That's the way things are. Even if these people you're running around with aren't just nut cases, nothing they do is going to change that. Put in a different Emperor and things will just go back to being the way they are in a few years. Sooner than that, if it's an Easterner."

"That," she said, "is a whole 'nother subject. The point I'm making is that you're going to have to come to terms with what you do, at whose expense you live, and why. I'll help as much as I can, but it is your own life you have to deal with."

I stared into my klava cup. Nothing in it made anything any clearer.

After another cup or two I said, "All right, but you still haven't told me where you were."

She said, "I was conducting a class."

"A class? On what?"

"Reading. For a group of Easterners and Teckla."

I stared at her. "My wife, the teacher."

"Don't."

"Sorry."

Then I said, "How long have you been doing this?"

"I just started."

"Oh. Well." I cleared my throat. "How did it go?"

"Fine."

"Oh." Then another, nastier thought occurred to me. "Why is it only now that you've started doing this?"

"Someone had to take over for Franz," she said, confirming exactly what I was afraid of.

"I see. Has it occurred to you that this may be what he'd been doing that someone didn't like? That this was why he was killed?"

She looked straight at me. "Yes."

A chill spread along my backbone. "So you're asking—"

"I'm not Franz."

"Anyone can be killed, Cawti. As long as someone is willing to pay a professional—and it's clear that someone is—anyone can be killed. You know that."

"Yes," she said.

"No," I said.

"No what?"

"Don't. Don't make me choose—"

"I am choosing."

"I can't let you walk into a situation where you're a helpless target."

"You can't stop me."

"I can. I don't know how yet, but I can."

"If you do, I'll leave you."

"You won't have that choice if you're dead."

She paused to wipe up the klava that had spilled from my cup. "We are not helpless, you know. We have support."

"Of Easterners. Of Teckla."

"It is the Teckla who feed everyone else."

"I know. And I know what happens to them when they try to do anything about it. There have been revolts, you know. There has never been a successful one except during the reign of the Orca, right before the Teckla. As I said, we aren't there now."

"We're not discussing a Teckla revolt. We're not talking about a Teckla reign; we're talking about breaking the Cycle itself."

"Adron tried that once; remember? He destroyed a city and caused an interregnum that lasted more than two hundred years, and it still didn't work."

"We aren't doing it with pre-Empire sorcery, or magic of any kind. We're doing it with the strength of the masses—the ones who have the real power."

I withheld my opinion of what real power is and who has it. I said, "I can't allow you to be killed, Cawti. I just can't."

"The best way to protect me would be to join us. We could use—"

"Words," I said. "Nothing but words."

"Yes," said Cawti. "Words from the minds and hearts of thinking human beings. There is no more powerful force in the world, nor a better weapon, once they are applied."

"Pretty," I said. "But I can't accept it."

"You'll have to. Or, at least, you'll have to confront it."

I didn't answer. I was thinking. We didn't say any more, but before we left the klava hole I knew what I was going to have to do. Cawti wasn't going to like it.

But then, neither was I.

pr gray trousers:

remove bloodstain from upper right leg.

Just in case I haven't made it clear yet, the walk over to the Easterners' section takes a good two hours. I was getting sick of it. Or maybe not. Now that I think back on it, I could have teleported in three seconds, then spent fifteen or twenty minutes throwing up or wishing I could. So I guess maybe I wanted the time to walk and think. But I remember thinking that I was spending altogether too much time just walking back and forth between the Malak Circle district and South Adrilankha.

But I made it there. I entered the building and stood outside the doorway, which now had a curtain. I remembered not to clap, and I didn't feel like pounding on the wall, so I called out, "Is anyone in there?"

There was a sound of footsteps, the curtain moved and I was looking at my friend Gregory. Sheryl was behind him, watching me. I couldn't tell if anyone else was in the room. Since it was Gregory who was standing there, I brushed past him and said, "Is Kelly around?"

"Come right in," said Sheryl. I felt a little embarrassed. No one else was in the room. In one corner was a tall stack of tabloids, the same one Cawti had been reading.

Gregory said, "Why do you want to see him?"

"I plan to leave all my worldly wealth to the biggest idiot I can find and I wanted to interview him to see if he qualified. But now that I've met you, I can see there's no point in looking any further."

He glared at me. Sheryl laughed a little and Gregory flushed.

Kelly appeared through the curtain then. I looked at him more closely than I had before. He really was quite overweight, as well as short, but I somehow wanted to call him extremely chubby instead of fat. Cute, sort of. His forehead was flat, giving the impression that his head was large. His hair was cut very short, like half an inch, and he had no sideburns at all. His eyes had two positions, narrowed and squinting, and he had a very expressive mouth, probably because of the amount of fat surrounding it. He struck me as one of those people who can turn from cheerful to vicious in an instant; like Glowbug, say.

He said, "Right. Come on." Then he turned and walked toward the rear of the flat, leaving me to follow him. I wondered if that was a deliberate ploy.