Free Hawk (Vlad) by Steven Brust Page A

of gold jade.”
    “I did?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Was I drunk?”
    “A little.”
    “All right. What about it?”
    “You were talking about the lock on the display case.”
    “I remember that lock.”
    “And you mentioned using an enchanted lockpick.”
    “I must have been really drunk,” said Kiera.
    *   *   *
    I was going to need Kiera’s enchanted lockpick.
    I need to explain.
    I got this story from Kiera, and most of the names are probably wrong because she was drunk and most likely lying about them. But that’s fine because you don’t need to know the names anyway; I just want you to understand a bit of the background, all right? If all the names and stuff confuse you, forget it; that isn’t the point.
    It was never about stealing the jade. Not that gold jade isn’t beautiful, and three-quarters of a pound of it was worth a fortune even before Nescaffi had put his genius to it. But stealing the jade was only a means to an end. There was a man named Scaanil who coveted anything and everything by Nescaffi. It was all about Scaanil, and that made it about the jade.
    Which made it about the lock on the display case.
    Nedev, who owned the jade phoenix, had good taste in art, and a lot of money; the case had been designed by Tudin of Threehills, which meant Kiera was far and away the best choice to steal it, if she could be persuaded to take the job. She could.
    The enchantment that secured the lock was by Heffesca of Longlake, which sent Kiera to Litra.
    Litra wasn’t the name she was born with; she took it five hundred years ago when she moved to Adrilankha. No one knew where she came from or who she was before. She had the dark complexion and sharp features of the House of the Hawk, though of course she was now a Jhereg. She took the name Litra, which was the Dragaeran form of a Serioli word that means “to scrounge.”
    Litra lived in the Captain’s Corner district, surrounded by the ramshackle dwellings of petty merchants. Her own home blended in, but in fact it continued down more than fifty feet below street level, and it was in the subbasements that Litra did her work. Since the Interregnum, she was known as one of the best at what she did.
    So, Kiera gave her details of the position and composition of the pins, the position of the stepper, the weight of the hammer, and the complex interleaving of spells that would preserve the integrity of the lock, verifying the identity of anyone attempting to open it, and sounding an alert if it was opened.
    Litra listened carefully, then said, “I’ve always wanted to go against Heffesca.”
    “I’ve always wanted to go against Tudin,” said Kiera.
    “Three days,” said Litra.
    “I’ll be back then.”
    And she was, and she got the jade, and she put it into the hand of the man who’d hired her, and a week later Scaanil’s severed head turned up on the street outside the Undauntra’s Arms, where the sorceress who’d hired Mario for the job ran her business.
    And that’s what a very drunk Kiera had told me that evening. Some conversations you remember.
    *   *   *
    “Well, yeah, you were kind of drunk.”
    “All right. What about my lockpick?”
    “Mind if I borrow it?”
    She looked at me. “I’m not sure what to ask first.”
    “You want to ask why.”
    “Yes. You’re right. Why?”
    “I don’t want to tell you.”
    “Why didn’t I see that coming?”
    I smiled.
    “All right. How long will you need it?”
    “Not long. A week at the most.”
    “What are the chances that I’ll get it back?”
    “Fair. If you’re willing to find my dead, soulless corpse and loot it, they go up to excellent.”
    “It’s like that, is it?”
    “Isn’t it always?”
    “Pretty much.”
    She studied me through slitted eyes. “Give me a hint.”
    “I might be able to get myself out of trouble with the Jhereg,” I told her, because she deserved to know, and because I knew I’d enjoy watching her face when I said it.
    “Really!”
    The