I Read What?!

So last time, we met our main character through two major formative events in his early life, the latter of which involving undertaking a risky and complicated ritual to obtain a small animal without actually realizing that he needed to be able to feed it later.



So each chapter of this book starts with a quote. This chapter's says: “Success leads to stagnation; Stagnation leads to failure.”

If I remember correctly, Brust likes to use themes in the titles of his chapters. I'm pretty sure I remember a later book having chapter titles made up of items off of a restaurant menu, while another is a literal laundry list.

I THINK Jhereg's quote theme might have something to do with the Dragaeran Houses? But don't quote me on that.

Anyway, we rejoin Vlad as he's arming himself up.

I slipped the poison dart into its slot under the right collar of my cloak, next to the lockpick. It couldn’t go in too straight, or it would be hard to get to quickly. It couldn’t go in at too much of an angle, or I wouldn’t have room left for the garrotee. Just so . . . there.

Every two or three days I change weapons. Just in case I have to leave something sticking in, on, or around a body. I don’t want the item to have been on my person long enough for a witch to trace it back to me.

It's interesting how many of Vlad's actions seem to have a procedure or ritual element involved. This is a man who really likes his processes, even when he's varying them up.

Vlad admits to us that he's possibly being paranoid, and in a rare bit of direct exposition tells us that there are very few witches in the Dragaeran Empire. Witchcraft is an Eastern art, after all, and is not very well respected. It's therefore VERY unlikely that anyone would call on a witch to investigate a murder - as far as Vlad knows, it's never been done. But paranoia serves Vlad well in his line of work.

We meet another character in this scene: Kragar. Kragar had been mentioned in the Prologue. When Vlad was hired, he was told that he'd be working with someone else. Apparently it went well, because they're working together still.

Kragar's a fun character because he's the living embodiment of what happens if you make a World of Darkness character with arcane 5. Both negative and positive. It's a running gag that no one knows that Kragar is in a room until he says something and is inevitably startled when he speaks up.

Here, Kragar is pointing out that it's been a year since someone's last tried to kill Vlad. He can't figure out if this is a good or bad sign. We get a description of him:

I studied his 7-foot frame sitting comfortably facing me against the back wall of my office. Kragar was something of an enigma. He had been with me since I had joined the business side of House Jhereg and had never shown the least sign of being unhappy taking orders from an “Easterner.” We’d been working together for several years now and had saved each other’s lives often enough for a certain amount of trust to develop.

Vlad doesn't see how it could be bad and reminds Kragar (and informs us) that he's proven himself now. He's got a territory that he's been running, with no trouble, has been paying off the right people. He's accepted now. ("Human or not,” I added, enjoying the ambiguity of the phrase." - if you recall, I mentioned that, as far as Dragaerans are concerned, THEY are the humans.) Vlad reminds Kragar also that he's still known as an assassin more than anything else, so folks aren't likely to make trouble.

Basically, it's an "as you know, Bob" sort of paragraph. It mostly works, though it's a little clumsy. Kragar notes that this must be why Vlad keeps "doing work" even though he makes as much, if not more, with the whole organized crime thing.

There's a nice bit where Kragar realizes this direct line of questioning is making Vlad uneasy, so he shifts conversation around. He's wondering if Vlad should be moving faster, and we get a bit of a list of what Vlad currently has in his corner: namely a VERY good spy ring (Vlad denies it's a spy ring, insisting that it's just a lot of people willing to give him information from time to time), and he also has access to the network of someone called Morrolan.

This bit still reads a bit awkwardly, which is surprising given the elegant setting set up in the prologue.

The flying lizard is still around by the way:

I shook my head. “Loiosh, can you believe this guy? He’s getting bored, so he wants to get me killed.”

My familiar flew over from his windowsill and landed on my shoulder. He started licking my ear.

“Big help you are,” I told him.

Aw. Cute!

Anyway, Vlad realizes all of a sudden that what had looked like Kragar trying to urge him into action was something else entirely:

I stopped. At long last, my brain started functioning. Kragar walks into my office, with nothing on his mind except the sudden realization that we should go out and stir up trouble? No, no. Wrong. I know him better than that.

“Okay,” I said. “Out with it. What’s happened now?”

“Happened?” he asked innocently. “Why should something have happened?”

“I’m an Easterner, remember?” I said sarcastically. “We get feelings about these things.”

INTERESTING. Okay, so it was actually SUPPOSED to read awkward. Kragar's been stoking Vlad up to give him some big news, and indeed, he does. Someone called "The Demon" has sent Vlad a message.

We get some exposition on the Demon, House Jhereg and a history lesson. The nice thing about first person narrative is that Vlad can explain things directly to us.

Basically, the House Jhereg is an organized crime house and is loosely governed by an organization called "the council" which serves generally to settle disputes and make sure the Empire doesn't butt into their activities. They used to be more hidden, but they've grown in prominence since something called the "Interregnum". Considering that Vlad uses the phrase "when the Empire began to function again", we can assume that whatever the Interregnum was, it was not good.

So anyway, "the Demon' is apparently the number two guy in the organization. Vlad's only former experience with someone really high ranking wasn't great (he was in the middle of a turf war and told to end it, or it would be ended for him.)

The Demon wants a meeting. He's given Vlad a meeting place that's in Vlad's own territory. It's a place called the Blue Flame restaurant. Vlad's "worked" there before. It's got a good ambiance for killing people. The meeting's for this afternoon.

This makes Vlad suspicious and confused:

Kragar looked puzzled. “That’s right. After noon. That means when most people have eaten lunch, but haven’t eaten supper yet. You must have come across the concept before.”

I ignored his sarcasm. “You’re missing the point,” I said, flipping a shuriken into the wall next to his ear.

“Funny, Vlad—”

“Quiet. Now, how do you go about killing an assassin? Especially someone who’s careful not to let his movements fall into any pattern?”

“Eh? You set up a meeting with him, just like the Demon is doing.”

“Right. And, of course, you do everything you can to make him suspicious, don’t you?”

“Uh, maybe you do. I don’t.”

“Damn right you don’t! You make it sound like a simple business meeting. And that means you arrange to buy the guy a meal. And that means you don’t arrange it for some time like two hours past noon.”

So Vlad starts to order Kragar to dig up all the information he can on the Demon, but Kragar is one of those hyper competent underlings who is ahead of the game.

Kragar smiled and pulled a small notebook from inside his cloak. He began reading. “The Demon,” he said. “True name unknown. Young, probably under eight hundred. No one heard of him before the Interregnum. He emerged just after it by personally killing two of the three members of the old council who survived the destruction of the city of Dragaera and the plagues and invasions. He built an organization from what was left, and helped make the House profitable again. As a matter of fact, Vlad,” he said, looking up, “it seems that it was his idea to allow Easterners to buy titles in the Jhereg.”

“Now that’s interesting,” I said. “So I have him to thank for my father being able to squander the profits from forty years of work in order to be spat upon as a Jhereg, in addition to being spat upon as an Easterner. I’ll have to find some way to thank him for that.”

So more setting establishment here. Jhereg is the only House that accepts Easterners, and this is how Vlad was able to rise in Dragaeran society. Unfortunately, being a Jhereg is, in and of itself, not the most respectable position.

Kragar finishes up his summation by saying that the Demon "didn’t exactly make it to the top; it would be more accurate to say that he made it somewhere, and then declared the top to be where he was."

And that is a spectacular description right there, kudos, Kragar.

So Vlad's back to thinking. The Demon's the sort to likely get rid of problems early, but would he consider Vlad as a potential problem? Kragar doubts it: Vlad's only really had one bout of trouble, with someone named Laris, and it's common knowledge that Laris forced the issue.

And if the Demon meant to assassinate him, why arrange a meeting that would deliberately make him suspicious. Then Vlad gets it.

“Kragar, arrange for three bodyguards for me, okay?”

“Bodyguards? But—”

“Make them busboys or something. You won’t have any trouble; I own half interest in the place. Which, I might add, I’m sure the Demon is aware of.”

“Don’t you think he’ll catch on?”

“Of course he’ll catch on. That’s the point. He knows that I’m going to be nervous about meeting him, so he deliberately set up the meeting with an irregularity to make me suspicious, so I’ll have an excuse to have protection there. He’s going out of his way to say, ‘Go ahead and do what you have to, to feel safe, I won’t be offended.’ ”

I shook my head again. I was starting to get dizzy. “I hope I don’t ever have to go up against the son-of-a-bitch. He’s devious.”

Kragar follows Vlad's logic better than I do, and suggests Vlad might understand Dragaerans better than actual Dragaerans do. Vlad says he does, because he isn't one.

So if, like me initially, you're still a little lost as to what Vlad means here. I'll offer what I THINK is going on:

House Jhereg is basically the organized crime house. Dragaeran society, at least the part that Vlad's grown up around, is pretty fucking violent. It's also hierarchal, and Vlad is toward the bottom of that hierarchy.

The Demon, of course, is an incredibly powerful figure. Powerful enough that if he wanted to summon a subordinate just to murder him, he absolutely could. And the subordinate would probably not bring protection because if the meeting is NOT meant to be an execution, they might just offend the Demon, and the Demon might decide to kill them for the insult.

For the same reason, you can't just ask if this is a friendly meeting or not. For one, what's to stop them from lying. For another, you might offend them, and we're back to square murder. So to survive, you have to be able to read the subtext of a situation very quickly.

Vlad's right when he tells Kragar that he understands Dragaerans better because he isn't one. Because Vlad, as an Easterner, will probably not even have whatever recourse or protection that a Dragaeran might receive in similar circumstance. So he's got to be ready to act fast.

Of course, this STILL could be a setup. If the Demon knows Vlad well enough, he could be attempting a false reassurance. Kragar notes that Vlad could cancel the meeting, and Vlad's response seems to support my read on the subtext:

Well, you could always tell him that you can’t make it?”

“Sure. Then, if he isn’t planning to kill me now, he’d be sure to after that.”

“Probably,” admitted Kragar. “But what else can you do?”

Vlad intends to bitch a lot and go meet him anyway. Fair enough. I also subscribe to the "bitch and moan while I do something I really don't want to do, but have no choice" school of thought.

So now with Vlad's next day lunch plans out of the way, they discuss other business. And this is a pretty interesting look at what running a territory entails. Basically a "Teckla" (a member of a different Dragaeran House, one implicitly lower than the Jhereg, from the dismissive tone) was mugged a few blocks away.

Vlad takes that kind of thing seriously because street violence would scare away their customers. He orders Kragar to see that the guy is found and made an example of. ("No," I said, "not that much of an example. . .")

Vlad also orders that the guy get taken to a Healer, with the cost on them, and reimbursed for what was stolen: two Imperials. ("Which could have been the Dragon Treasury, to hear him tell it.")

So Vlad makes a plan: he wants Kragar to have the victim see Vlad directly. Vlad will reimburse him and give him a nice, sympathetic, platitude-filled speech that will hopefully inspire the Teckla to go home and tell his friends about what a nice guy "Uncle Vlad the Easterner" is and thus drum up even more business.

Kragar's on it, and as he goes, Vlad brings out the one weapon that he always uses: a gold chain called Spellbreaker that serves to disrupt magical attacks. Just in case.

The chapter ends with some banter with a tiny not-fire lizard, which I will share because it is cute

I turned to Loiosh, who was still resting comfortably on my right shoulder. He’d been strangely silent during the conversation.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him psionically. “Bad feelings about the meeting tomorrow?”

“No, bad feelings about having a Teckla in the office. Can I eat him, boss? Can I? Huh? Huh?”

I laughed and went back to changing weapons with an all-new enthusiasm.

So we've now met adult Vlad: an assassin who is also involved with Organized Crime. He seems to be fairly conscientious, but also perpetually on edge. It at least sounds like this is the kind of society where that's warranted. We'll have to see if that's true.