Vlad Taltos - Phoenix Part 21

Where are your thoughts, Vladimir?"

"Noish-pa, what are they doing around here? I mean, the Empire, and these rebels."

"What are they doing? You come to an old man like me for this?" But he smiled with his few remaining yellowed teeth and settled back a little. "All right. The elfs want to go to war, for what reason they do not tell me. They want sailors for their s.h.i.+ps, so they pull in young men and women for it. They send in gangs who grab people and take them, without even saying farewell to the family, and bring them to the s.h.i.+ps, which sail away. Everyone is upset, some throw things at the elfs who want to take them. Now, these forradalomartok, they say that the war is a, what is the word? Urugy."

"Pretext?"

"Yes, a pretext, to bring in soldiers. The forradalomartok organize against this, and everyone says, 'Yes, yes, we fight,' and then they arrest this Kelly and now everyone says, 'Let him go or we will wreck your city.' "

"But it all happened so fast."

"That is how these things happen, Vladimir. You see all your peasants smile and look sleepy and they say, 'Oh, this is our lot in life,' and then something happens and they all say, 'We will die to keep them from doing this to our chijdren.' All in a night it can happen, Vladimir."

"I guess so. But I'm frightened, Noish-pa. For them, and for Cawti."

"Yes, she still walks with these people. You are right to fear."

"Can they win?"

"Vladimir, why do you ask me? If soldiers come into my shop, I will show them how old I am. But I will not go looking for them, and so I know nothing of such things. Perhaps, yes, they can win. Perhaps the soldiers will crush them. Perhaps both at once. I don't know." "I have to decide what to do, Noish-pa." "Yes, Vladimir. But there is little help I can give you." We sipped tea for a while. I said, "I don't know, maybe it's good to have this problem. It means I don't have to worry about what's going to happen afterward." He didn't smile. "It is right not to worry now. But is it possible for you?"

"No " I said. I stared at my hands. "I know you don't approve of what I do. The trouble is, I'm not sure I approve of it anymore."

"As I told you once before, Vladimir, killing people for money is no way for a man to earn a living."

"But Noish-pa, I hate them so much. I learned that I used to be one, and I thought that had changed things, but it hasn't. I still hate them.

Every time I come to see you, and smell the garbage in the streets, and see people who have lost their sight, or who have diseases that could be cured by the simplest sorcery, or don't know how to write their own names, I just hate them. It doesn't make me want to fix everything, like Cawti; it just makes me want to kill them."

"Have you no friends, Vladimir?"

"Hmm? Well, yes, certainly. What has that to do with it?"

"Who are your friends?"

"Well, there's-oh. I see. Yes, they're all Dragaerans. But they're different."

"Are they?"

"I don't know, Noish-pa. I really don't. I know what you're saying, but why do I still feel this hate?"

"Hate is part of life, Vladimir. If you cannot hate, you cannot love.

And if you hate these elfs, then that is what you feel and you cannot deny it. But more foolish than this hate of elfs you have never met is to let it rule you. That is no way to live."

"I know that, but I-" I broke off as Amrus jumped into Noish-pa's lap, mewing furiously. Noish-pa frowned and listened.

^What's wrong?" I said.

'Be still, Vladimir. I don't know."

Loiosh returned to my shoulder. Noish-pa got up ano walked into the front of the shop. I was about to follow him when he returned, holding a sheet of white parchment. He took a quill pen from an inkwell, and with a few quick slashes drew a sideways rectangle. He dipped the pen again, not blotting it at all, and made sloppy signs in the corners. I didn't recognize the symbols.

"What is this?"

"Not now, Vladimir. Take this." He handed me a small silver dagger.

"Cut your left palm." I did so, making a cut right next to the tiny white scar I'd made only two days before. It bled nicely. "Collect some blood in your right hand." I did that, too. "Scatter it onto the paper." He held the paper about three feet in front of me. I tossed the blood onto it, making an interesting pattern of red dots. Then he threw me a clean cloth to bind my hand up. I did, concentrating a little to stop the blood and begin the healing. I wished, not for the first time, that I'd troubled to learn basic sorcerous healing.

Noish-pa studied the red dots on the parchment and said, "There is a man outside, near the door. He is waiting for you to come out so he can kill you."

"Oh. Is that all? All right."

"You know how to find the back door."

"Yes, but Loiosh will be taking it. We'll handle this our way."

He looked at me through filmy eyes. "All right, Vladimir. But don't be distracted by shadows. Concentrate always on the target."

"I will," I said. I stood and drew my rapier. "I know how to make the shadows vanish."

Lesson Thirteen.

ADVANCED SURVIVAL SKILLS.

"Okay, Loiosh. You know what to do. "

"What about Rocza ?"

"She can wait with me, just in case. "

We went into the back room, past the kitchen, and I let Loiosh out, then returned and stood waiting near the doorway, blade in hand.

Rocza landed on my shoulder. She was heavier than Loiosh, but I was getting used to her.

"I don't see him yet, boss. "

"No hurry, chum. Lots of places to hide out there the way things are packed togeth-"

"Got him!"

"Let me see. Hmmm. Don't recognize him. "

"How should we play it?"

"Has he seen you ?"

"No. "

"Okay. Out the door, three steps, I'll take a left so we can get him away from the shop. I'll let him catch up a bit, you hit him when he starts to move, and I'll join you"

"Got it."

I put my sword away since I wouldn't be using it at once and kissed my grandfather good-bye. He suggested once more that I be careful, and I allowed as to how I would. I walked through the doorway, made a show of looking around, then headed to my left. "He's following."

"Okay."

I scouted the area, looking for a place with enough people, but not too many. After about two hundred yards I found it. I slowed down, checked for an escape route or two, and finally stopped in front of a fruit stand and picked up an orange. I dug around in my purse for a coin. "Here he comes, boss."

I paid for the orange, took my dagger from my belt, cut the orange in half, and palmed the blade while looking like I'd put it away. I started sucking on a half.

"He's behind you, walking between a pair of humans. They aren't with him, so don't worry. He's getting close. He's got a weapon out . . .

now!"

I turned and threw the orange at him. At the same time, Loiosh struck at his knife hand and Rocza left my shoulder to attack his face with her talons. His knife hit the dirt of the street as he backed away.

Loiosh got him turned around and I put my dagger in the middle of his back all the way to the hilt. He screamed and fell to his knees. I took another dagger out, grabbed his chin, slit his throat, and dropped the knife. Since he was now unable to scream, some local did it for him, and quite well, too.

I walked around the side of the fruit stall, careful not to make eye contact with anyone, and slipped between two buildings, where Loiosh and Rocza joined me. We zigzagged our way past a couple more streets, then went into a tavern, where I found water to clean orange and blood from my hands. I hate it when my hands are sticky.

We emerged into South Adrilankha midday, with gaggles of young men leaning against buildings surveying pa.s.sersby, and tradesmen out in front of their shops eating. The standard meal seemed to be long loaves of bread which they dipped into something in a wooden bowl, while holding a bottle between their knees. As I relaxed a bit, since there seemed no sign of pursuit, I began to get the feeling that all was not normal here, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how.

"Can you figure out what it is, Loiosh?" "I'm not sure, boss. It's subtle.

" I continued walking, heading generally toward the area where Kelly's people had their headquarters. I noticed a group of a dozen or so Easterners, men and women, trotting past me. On their faces was a strange mixture of determination, confidence, and fear. No, not fear, maybe nervousness. Two of them had homemade pikes, one had a large kitchen knife, the others were unarmed. I wondered where they were going. For some reason, my heart beat faster. It seemed to fit in with whatever else I was unconsciously noticing.

"They're waiting for something, boss. It's like everyone smells that something is going to happen." "I think you're right, Loiosh. I wonder." Not far from the new headquarters was a small park, shaped like a diamond with an arc cut out of one side. It was called the Exodus, which had something to do with the arrival of ma.s.ses of Easterners to Adrilankha during the Interregnum. There were a few clumps of half-starved trees, a pond full of water and algae, and unkept gra.s.s and weeds with several paths cutting across them. I crossed the Exodus on a path that took me near the small rise by the arc. I stopped there for a while and watched.

There was a pack of about two dozen boys and girls, most of them nine to eleven years old, who were industriously turning trees into spears. They had a pile of perhaps fifty already, and the work was neatly divided up: Some cut down the saplings, others trimmed and shortened them, another group removed the bark, while others smoothed polished them, and yet another group put points on them.

They were all filthy, but most of them seemed to be enjoying themselves.

There were a few who seemed grimly intent on their jobs, as if they considered themselves to be involved in matters of high importance, and some, especially the ones cutting up the logs, just seemed tired.

I watched them for a while as the significance washed over me. It wasn't so much that they were making weapons, it was the systematic way in which they were going about it. Someone had put them up to this and explained exactly what to do. Yes. Someone.

I started walking again, faster now, but I didn't make it to the headquarters. I was still half a mile away when I came upon a guard station. There was no one there wearing the gold cloak, however; instead there were a score of men and women, mostly Easterners, but I picked out a few Teckla as well, all armed, and all wearing yellow headbands. They stood outside the guardhouse, smiling and saluting everyone who came by.

They scowled at my Jhereg colors, but were willing to talk to me. I said, "What does the headband mean?"

"It means," said a willowy human woman of middle years, "that we are protectors. We have taken control."

"Of what?" I said.

"Of this part of the city."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"Press gangs," she said, as if that explained everything.

"I don't understand."

"You will, Jhereg. You'd best move along now."

It was either that or start killing Easterners. I moved along.

"/ don't like this, boss. We should get out of here. "

"Not yet, Loiosh."

A breeze came up, and brought with it a smell that I couldn't place. I'd smelled it before; the a.s.sociations were not pleasant. But what was it?

"Horses, boss." "That's it. Where?" "Left here. Not far."

It wasn't far. Just around a curve in the street, and there ere more of the brutes than I'd ever seen at one place since ,the Eastern horse- army at the Wall of Baritt's Tomb. But this tjme, instead of being ridden, they were attached to large carts-six or seven carts, I think- and the carts were being loaded with boxes. I recognized them as the sort of farmers transports that regularly came into South Adrilankha with deliveries, and left while it was still morning. What was most unusual was how many of them there were.

I approached, and asked one of the workmen what was going on. He, too, sneered at my colors, but said, "We have control of South Adrilankha; now we are issuing proclamations for the rest of the city." "Proclamations? Let me see one." He shrugged and pulled a piece of paper out of the box. It was neatly set in printer's type, and said, in distinctly unimaginative language, that the Easterners and Teckla of South Adrilankha were refusing to admit press gangs into the city, and were demanding the release of their imprisoned leaders, and were rising as one to take the government from the hands of tyrants, and so on and so on.

It was there, as these wagons began to drive off, that I began to get a sense of unreality-a sense that became stronger as I wandered off and saw, lying unattended and ignored in the street, the body of a Dragaeran, dead from many wounds, wearing the gold cloak of the Phoenix Guards.

A long time later, in the cottage of an Eastern family where I spent a night, I found Maria Parachezk's little pamphlet "Grey Hole in the City," a description of those few days in Adrilankha. As I read it, I lived it again; but more than that, I found myself nodding and saying, "Yes, that's true," and, "I remember that," as she described the pikemen's stand at Smallmarket, the Guardsmen walk ing twenty abreast down the Avenue of the Moneylenders, the burning of the grain exchange, and other events that I actually witnessed. If you find the pamphlet, read it, and, if you like, insert here descriptions of any event that catches your imagination. Because until I read it, I didn't really remember any of those things.

I remember laughs and screams, fading into each other as if they were part of a single musical composition, although they were long hours apart. I remember the smell of the burning grain, and looking down at my hands to see the ashes there. I remember standing in an alley, out of the way of a marching battalion of Phoenix Guards, tapping a broken axe handle against the wall of a boardinghouse. There was blood on the axe handle, but I don't know how I acquired the thing, much less if I was the one to blood it.

Maria Parachezk, whoever she is, was able to make sense out of the whole thing, put events in order and connect them logically. I wasn't then, so I'm not going to pretend to now. Apparently the insurgents, Easterners and Teckla, were actually winning until late in the second day of the rebellion, the third of the new year, when the sailors on the Whitecrest withdrew their support of the rebels and allowed the landing of the Fourth Seaguard, who broke the siege at the Imperial Palace. But, from where I was, I never saw any difference between winning and losing, right up until the end, when the Orca came through the streets, mowing down everyone they saw. I didn't even find out until afterward that the Imperial Palace had been attacked twice and was under siege for nine hours.

I remember that, at one point, I became aware that I'd been in South Adrilankha for an entire day, and I remember the early evening of that day, when it seemed that the whole city was screaming, but, as I go through my memories like a cedar chest I've lost something in, I don't think that I saw anything more than sporadic fighting even at the worst. There'd be silence, a few people running, then the sound of metal on metal or metal on wood, screams,the horrible smell of burnt human flesh, so like and so unlike the smell of cooking meat. Did I actually strike a blow for "my people"? I don't remember. I've asked Loiosh, but he remembers even less; onjy that he kept asking me to go home and I kept saying not yet. I know that I tried to make contact with Cawti several times, but she wasn't receiving. For some reason, it was only when the ma.s.sacre started-and even then I wasn't conscious of it as a ma.s.sacre-that I remembered my grandfather. I walked quickly through the streets, only dimly aware that I was hurrying past the bodies of Easterners, men, women, and children. I am grateful that I can bring to mind so little of what I must have seen. I know that I skidded on something and almost fell, and only later did I realize that it was blood, flowing from the lacerated body of an old woman who was still moving.

I came across some fighting, but mostly I skirted it. At one point I ran into a patrol of four Dragaerans wearing the gold cloaks. I stopped, they stopped. They saw I was an Easterner, and they saw I was a Jhereg, and I guess that puzzled them. They didn't know what to do with me. I was not then holding a weapon, but they looked at the two jhereg on my shoulders and the rapier at my side. I said, "Well?" and they shrugged and moved on.

I saw the fires while I was still a mile or more from my grandfather's shop. I began to run. The first thing I noticed when I got there was that the house across the street from his shop was burning, as was the little grocer's next to it. As I got close enough to smell burning vegetables, I saw that Noish-pa's shop was still standing, and I began to feel relief. Then I saw that the entire front was missing, and my heart sank.

I came up to it, and the first thing I saw was the bodies of three Phoenix Guards. There was no doubt who had killed them eacn bore a single small wound right over the place where a Dragaeran or a human keeps his heart. I dashed into the shop, and when I saw him, calmly cleaning his blade, I almost cried with relief.

He looked up and said, "You should leave, Vladimir"

"Eh?"

"You should leave here. At once."

"Why?"

"Quickly, Vladimir. Please."