Free Hawk (Vlad) by Steven Brust

pretty sure she’d take the hint.
    Good news: She had. Bad news: She’d gotten the message sooner than I’d calculated on, so I didn’t have time for the kethna.
    She smiled and kissed my cheek. Somehow, she never made it seem like she had to bend over to kiss me, even though she did. “Hello, Vlad.”
    “Kiera. You look wonderful. You haven’t changed at all.”
    That was a sort of joke, by the way; Dragaerans live for a couple of thousand years if someone like me doesn’t kill them first. Kiera either missed the joke or ignored it. She said, “Are you safe here?”
    “Not terribly. But I needed to see you.”
    She looked around. “Maybe another place?”
    “Loiosh and Rocza are watching; this is about as safe as it gets. The Jhereg would have real problems setting something up here, even if I were spotted. Although—eh, never mind.”
    “Although what, Vlad?”
    “They’ve taken a couple of tries without any set-up. Just random attacks, hoping for the best. As you can see, I lived.”
    “You look pale. Were you wounded?”
    “A bit.”
    “Vlad, you need to be careful.”
    “Yeah, well.”
    “All right. You know best.”
    “You haven’t been speaking to Loiosh.”
    She chuckled politely. “What’s been going on?”
    “Someone’s been trying to kill me.”
    “Yes. The whole organization.”
    “That isn’t what I mean. I know they want me, but someone wants me even more.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “They took some random shots at me.”
    “So you said.”
    “Sloppy stuff—just finding me and taking a whack. That isn’t how it’s done.”
    She nodded; even though she wasn’t an assassin herself, she knew how this sort of thing was generally handled. “Go on.”
    “Unless I’m completely missing what’s going on—which is possible, but not likely—they used at least eight guys. And they were Jhereg, not hired Orca. I mean, they were getting paid.”
    “Eight?”
    “Eight. Following me, taking shots two at a time, following me to the next place. Yeah.”
    “Eight?”
    “At least.”
    “That’s…”
    “I know.”
    “Think it’s something personal?”
    “Could be. Someone is behind it, and it’s costing that guy a lot. A whole lot. It’s a bad investment. A bad gamble.”
    She nodded. “Who do you think it is?”
    “No idea, no good way to find out.”
    “I could ask around.”
    “And?”
    “Yeah, you’re right. Probably nothing.”
    I said, “Anyway, that brings us to this meeting.”
    “What do you need? If I can do it, Vlad, you know I will. What is it?”
    “A couple of things. First, I need the Jhereg shaken up.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I need them talking about something that isn’t me. There’ll be rumors flying around about me—I know, because I’m going to start them—and at the same time, there has to be something else going on that takes their attention. Something big. I need them wondering about me, and looking away at the same time.”
    “Well, you could always kill someone high up in the Organization. That generally does it.”
    I winced. “Maybe,” I said. “I’m not terribly partial to, you know, just killing someone for effect.”
    “I could steal the Jhereg treasury.”
    I chuckled. “That didn’t work out so well the last time someone did it.”
    She spread her hands.
    “Yeah, okay,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
    “What else do you need?” she said.
    I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “A long time ago—by my standards—”
    “So, a few years?”
    “Yeah. About eight years, nine years. And the incident in question must have been a hundred or so before that.”
    “Wait. What?”
    “Sorry. Eight or so years ago you made a reference to an incident that had happened a hundred years or so before that.”
    “I keep forgetting what a good memory you have.”
    “I have a terrible memory, Kiera.”
    “You have a good memory for the oddest things. All right. What incident?”
    “You mentioned a phoenix made