Steven Brust - Vlad Taltos 07 - Orca

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侵权投诉
Orca
Vlad Taltos, Book 7
Steven Brust
In memory of my brother, Leo Brust, 1954-1994
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the Scribblies: Emma Bull, Pamela Dean, and Will Shetterly fortheir
help with this one, and also to Terri Windling, Susan Allison, and Fred A. Levy
Haskell. Thanks as well to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who recommended a book that
turned out to be vital; to David Green, for sharing some theories; and, as always, to
Adrian Charles Morgan.
And to the fan who actually suggested the whole thing in the first place: Thanks,
Mom.
Prologue
My Dear Cawti:
I’m sorry it has taken me so long to answer your letter, but the gods of
Coincidence make bad correspondents of us all; I am not unaware that the passing of
a few weeks to you is a long time—as long as the passing of years is to me, and this is
long indeed when one is uncertain—so I will plead the excuse that I found your note
when I returned from traveling, and will answer your question at once: Yes, I have
seen your husband, or the man who used to be your husband, or however you would
describe him. Yes, I have seen Vlad—and that is why it has taken me so long to write
back to you; I was just visiting him in response to his request for assistance in a small
matter.
I can understand your concern for him, Cawti; indeed, I will not try to pretend that
he isn’t still in danger from the Organization with which we are both, one way or
another, still associated. They want him, and I fear someday they will get him, but as
of now he is alive and, I can even say, well.
I don’t pretend that I think this knowledge will satisfy you. You will want the
details, or at least those details I can divulge. Very well, I consent, both for the sake
of our friendship and because we share a concern for the mustached fellow with
reptiles on his shoulders. We will arrange a time and a place; I will be there and tell
you what I can—in person, because some things are better heard face-to-face than
page-to-eye. And, no, I will not tell you everything, because, just as there are things
that you wouldn’t want me to tell him, there are things he wouldn’t want me to tell
you—and, come to that, there are things I don’t want to tell you, either. It is a mark of
my love for you both that I keep these secrets, and trust you with those I can, so don’t
be angry!
Come, dear Cawti, write back at once (you remember that I prefer not to
communicate psychically), and we will arrange to be alone and I will tell you
enough—I hope—for your peace of mind. I look forward to seeing you and yours
again, and, until that time, I remain,
Faithfully, Kiera
Chapter One
Vlad knew almost at once that I was in disguise, because I told him so. When he
called out my name, I said, “Dammit, Vlad, I’m in disguise.”
He looked me over in that way of his—eyes flicking here and there apparently at
random—then said, “Me, too.”
He was wearing brown leather, rather than the grey and black of the House of the
Jhereg he’d been wearing when I last saw him; but he was still an Easterner, still had
his mustache, and still had a pair of jhereg on his shoulders. He was, I assumed,
letting me know that my disguise wasn’t terribly effective. I didn’t press the issue, but
said, “Who’s the boy?”
“My catamite,” he said, deadpan. He faced him then and said, “Savn, meet Kiera
the Thief.”
The boy made no response at all—didn’t even seem to hear—which was a bit
creepy.
I said, “You’re joking, right?”
He smiled sadly and said, “Yes, Kiera, I’m joking.”
Loiosh, the male jhereg, shifted its weight and was probably laughing at me. I
held out my arm to it; it flew across the four feet that separated us and allowed me to
scratch its snakelike chin. The female, Rocza, watched us closely but made no move;
perhaps she didn’t remember me.
“Why the disguise?” he said.
“Why do you think?”
“You don’t want to be seen with me?”
I shrugged.
He said, “Well, in any case, our disguises match.”
He was referring to the fact that I was wearing a green blouse and white pants,
rather than the same black and grey he’d once worn. My hair was also different—I’d
brushed it forward to conceal my noble’s point so I’d look more like a peasant. But
perhaps he didn’t notice that; for an assassin, he can be amazingly unobservant
sometimes. Still, you wear a disguise, first, from the inside, and perhaps that can in
part explain the fact that my disguise didn’t fool Vlad; I’ve always trusted him, even
before I had reason to.
“It’s been a long time, Vlad,” I said, because I knew that to him, who could only
expect to live sixty or seventy years, it would have seemed like a long time.
“Yes, it has,” he agreed. “How odd that we should just happen to run into each
other.”
“You haven’t changed.”
“There’s less of me,” he said, holding up his left hand and showing me that the
last finger was missing.
“What happened?”
“A very heavy weight.”
I winced in sympathy. “Is there someplace we can talk?” I said.
He looked around. We were in Northport, quite a distance from Adrilankha, but it
was the same ocean, and the docks, if older, were pretty much the same. There was a
small, two-masted cargo ship unloading about fifty yards away, and there was a
fishermen’s market nearby; between them, on the very edge of the ocean, we were in
plain view of hundreds of people, but no one was near us. “What’s wrong with here?”
“You don’t trust me,” I said, feeling a bit hurt.
I could see a snappy answer get as far as his teeth and stop there. Vlad and I had a
great deal of history; none of it should have given him any reason to be suspicious of
me.
“Last I heard,” he said, “the Organization wanted very badly to kill me; you still
work for the Organization. Excuse me if I’m a bit jumpy.”
“Oh, yes,” I agreed. “They want you very badly indeed.”
The water lapped and gurgled against the dock that had stood since the end of the
Interregnum; I could feel the spells that kept the wood from rotting. The air was thick
with the smell of ocean: salt water and dead fish; I’ve never really liked either.
“Who is the boy?” I asked him, as much to give him time to think as because I
wanted to know. Savn, as Vlad had called him, seemed to be a handsome Teckla
youth, probably not more than ninety years old. He still had that look of strength and
energy that begins to diminish during one’s second century, and his hair was the same
dusky brown as his eyes. It annoyed me that I could conceive of him as a catamite. He
still hadn’t responded to me or to anything else.
“A debt of honor,” said Vlad, in the tone he uses when he is trying to be ironic. I
realized that I’d missed him. I waited for him to continue. He said, “Savn was
damaged, I guess you’d say, saving my life.”
“Damaged?”
“Oh, the usual—he used a Morganti weapon to kill an undead wizard.”
“When was this?”
“Last year. Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.”
“I’m glad you got my message, and I’m glad you came.”
“You’re still psychically invisible, you know.”
“I know. Phoenix Stone.”
“Yes.”
“How is Aibynn?”
Aibynn was one of the last people Vlad wanted to ask about; he knew it and I
knew it. “Fine as far as I know. I don’t see him much.”
He nodded. We watched the bay for a while, but it didn’t do much. I turned back
to Vlad and said, “Well? I’m here. What is it?”
He smiled. “Maybe I’ve come up with a way to get the Organization to forgive
and forget.”
I laughed. “My dear Vlad, if you managed to loot the Dragon Treasury to the last
orb and deposited it all at the feet of the Council they wouldn’t forgive you.”
His smile disappeared. “There’s that.”
“Well then?”
He shrugged. He wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. That was all right, I can be a
very patient woman.
“You know,” I said, “there aren’t all that many Easterners who walk around with
a pair of jhereg on their shoulders; are you quite certain you aren’t too conspicuous?”
“Yeah. No professional would try anything in a place like this, and any amateur
who wants to is welcome to take a shot. And by the time word gets around so
someone who knows his business can set up something, I’ll be gone.”
“But they’ll know where you are.”
“I don’t plan on being here for more than a few days.”
I nodded.
He said hesitantly, “Any news from home?”
“None I can tell you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re asking about Cawti.”
“Well—”
“I’ve promised not to say anything except that she’s fine.”
“Oh.” I watched his mind work, but he didn’t say anything else. I very badly
wanted to tell him what was going on, but a promise is a promise, even to a thief.
Especially to a thief.
I said, “How have you been getting by?”
“It’s been harder since I acquired the boy, but I’ve managed.”
“How?”
“I mostly stay away from towns, and you know the forests are filled with bandits
of one sort or another.”
“You’ve become one?”
“No, I rob them.”
I laughed. “That sounds like you.”
“It’s a living.”
“That sounds like you, too.”
He shifted his weight as if his feet were causing him pain; it made me think about
the amount of walking he must have been doing in these past three years and more. I
said, “Do you want to sit down?”
“You don’t miss much,” he said. “No, I’m fine. Ever heard of a man named
Fyres?”
“Yes. He died a couple of weeks ago.”
“Other than that, what do you know about him?”
“He had a great deal of money.”
“Yes. What else?”
“He was, what, a baron? House of the, uh, Chreotha?”
“Orca.”
“All right. Then that tells you what I know about him.”
Vlad didn’t answer, which meant that I was supposed to ask him a question. I
thought over a number of things I’d have liked to know, then settled on, “How did he
die?”
“They’ve found no evidence of murder.”
“That’s not—Wait. You?”
He shook his head. “I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”
“All right,” I said. Vlad has always had the ability to make me believe him, even
though I know what a liar he is. “Then what do you think happened?”
His eyes were in constant motion, and the jhereg, too, never stopped looking
around. “I don’t know,” he said, “and I have to find out.”
“Why?”
For just an instant he looked embarrassed, and “Oh ho!” passed through my head,
but I sent it on its way—Vlad could be embarrassed by the oddest things.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Let me tell you what I’d like you to do.”
“I’m listening.”
One thing I like about Vlad is that he understands details. He not only gave me
every detail of every alarm I was likely to encounter but also told me how he found
out, so I could do my own checking. He told me where the stuff was likely to be and
why he thought so, and the other places it might be located if he was wrong. He gave
me the schedules of the patrols in the area and explained exactly what he hadn’t been
able to discover. It took about an hour, at the end of which time I knew the job would
be well within my capabilities—not that there are many jobs that aren’t, if they
involve stealing.
I said, “There will be a price.”
“Of course,” he said, trying to hide that I’d hurt his feelings.
“You have to tell me why you want it.”
He bit his lip and looked at me carefully; I kept my face expressionless, because I
didn’t want him learning too much. He nodded abruptly, and the deal was made.
It took me two days to check everything Vlad had told me—two days that I spent
working out of a reasonably comfortable room in a hotel in the middle of Northport;
摘要：

OrcaVladTaltos,Book7StevenBrustInmemoryofmybrother,LeoBrust,1954-1994AcknowledgmentsMythankstotheScribblies:EmmaBull,PamelaDean,andWillShetterlyfortheirhelpwiththisone,andalsotoTerriWindling,SusanAllison,andFredA.LevyHaskell.ThanksaswelltoTeresaNielsenHayden,whorecommendedabookthatturnedouttobevital...

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