Jhereg by Steven Brust Read Free Book Online Page B

him that way, in any case."
    "Hmmm. Are we working under the assumption that the Demon is right, that he's out East somewhere?"
    "Good point." I thought about it. "No. Let's not start out making any assumptions at all. What we know, because the Demon guaranteed it, is that Mellar's nowhere within a hundred-mile radius of Adrilankha. For the moment, let's assume that he could be anywhere outside of that."
    "Which includes a few thousand square miles of jungle."
    "True."
    "You aren't going out of your way to make my life easy, are you?" I shrugged. Kragar was thoughtfully silent for a while.
    "What about witchcraft, Vlad? Do you think you can trace him with that? I would doubt that he thought to protect himself against it, even if he could."
    "Witchcraft? Let me think--I don't know. Witchcraft really isn't very good for that sort of thing. I mean, I could probably find him, to the extent of getting an image and a psionic fix, but there isn't any way of going from there to a hard location, or teleport coordinates, or anything really useful. I guess we could use it to make sure he's alive, but I suspect we can safely assume that, anyway."
    Kragar nodded, and looked thoughtful. "Well," he said after a time, "if you have any kind of psionic fix at all, maybe you can come up with something Daymar could use to find out where he is. He's good at that kind of thing."
    Now there was an idea. Daymar was strange, but psionics were his specialty. If anyone could do it, he could.
    "I'm not sure we want to get that many people involved in this," I said. "The Demon wouldn't be real happy about the number of potential leaks we'd have to generate. And Daymar isn't even a Jhereg."
    "So don't mention it to the Demon," said Kragar. "The thing is, we have to find him, right? And we know we can trust Daymar, right?"
    "Well--"
    "Oh, come on, Vlad. If you ask him not to talk about it, he won't. Besides, where else can you get expert help, on that level, without paying a thing for it? Daymar enjoys showing off; he'd do it for free. What can we lose?"
    I raised my eyebrow and looked at him.
    "There is that," he admitted. "But I think the risk involved in telling Daymar as much as we have to tell him is pretty damn small. Especially when you consider what we're getting for it."
    "If he can do it."
    "I think he can," said Kragar.
    "All right," I said, "I'm sold. Quiet a minute while I figure out what I'm going to need." I ran through, in my mind, what I was going to have to do to locate Mellar, and what I'd have to do so that Daymar could trace him afterwards. I wished I knew more about how Daymar did things like that, but I could make a reasonable guess. It seemed that it would be a pretty straightforward spell, which really should work if Mellar had no blocks against witchcraft.
    I built up a mental list of what I'd need. Nothing out of the ordinary; I already had everything except for one small matter.
    "Kragar, put word out on the street that I'd like to arrange to see Kiera. At her convenience, of course."
    "Okay. Any preference on where you meet?"
    "No, just some--wait!" I interrupted myself, and thought for a minute. In my office, I had witchcraft protections and alarms. I knew these were hard to beat, and I wasn't happy about taking any chances at all of this information leaking out. The Demon would be upset, anyway, if he knew that I was dealing with Kiera. I didn't really like the idea of having one of his people see me talking with her in some public place. On the other hand, Kiera was... well, Kiera. Hmmm. Tough question.
    Hell with it, I decided. I'd just shock the staff a little. It'd be good for them. "I'd like to meet her here, in my office, if that's all right with her."
    Kragar looked startled and seemed about to say something, but changed his mind, I guess, when he realized that I'd just gone over all of the objections myself. "All right," he said. "Now about Daymar. You know what kind of problems we have reaching him; do you want me to