Hawk (Vlad) Read Online Free PDF

doesn’t make sense. When I carried Spellbreaker—”
    “Were you wearing that amulet then?”
    “Um.”
    “If she can draw energy from the Orb, she doesn’t need to feed.”
    “So, if I can find a safe place to take the amulet off, she’ll be all right again?”
    “Maybe. It depends on how awake she is, how much awareness she has to pull in energy to use later. That isn’t something I’d know.”
    “You know a lot about this sort of thing for an Easterner.”
    “I try to be useful to Her Majesty.”
    I bit back an observation that would have been vulgar and said, “I suppose. So, how did the Jhereg find me?”
    “Sorry, no idea.”
    “Just when I was sure you knew everything.”
    “Not everything. Not even most things. Just a lot of things.”
    “I was thinking they put some sort of spell on my familiars.”
    He looked at Loiosh. Rocza flapped her wings and hissed; Loiosh hissed at her and she settled down.
    After a moment, he said, “No.”
    I very much wanted to say, “Are you sure?” But I resisted; it would just have annoyed him. I muttered.
    “What?” he said.
    “It would be very, very convenient to figure out how the Jhereg found me. That way, I could maybe, you know, keep them from doing it again. I’d prefer to avoid another attack, even if I manage to recover from this last one.”
    He shrugged. “My guess is they followed you.”
    “Yeah, not likely.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because we’ve been watching for it.”
    “This is outside my area of expertise, but, you can’t follow someone who’s watching for it?”
    “It’s pretty damned hard without a whole lot of people.”
    “And does the Jhereg have a whole lot of people?”
    “I…”
    “Yes?”
    “You really think it’s that simple?”
    “I don’t know. Have you been somewhere they could have expected you to be? Somewhere they could pick you up?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Hmmm?”
    “Gods of the Paths! They’d have needed five, six different people with the way we were watching for it, all of them with illusions so they looked human. And they’d have to pay each of them for several days to make sure they caught me when I finally showed up, plus paying the sorcerer. Do you have any idea how much that would cost?”
    “Well, no,” he said.
    “A lot.”
    “And do they want you badly enough to spend a lot?”
    I didn’t answer. They did, of course. Was it really that simple? They’d picked me up at Cawti’s, followed me, set up an attack at the flophouse, and, when that didn’t work, followed me until they could set up another?
    Someone was spending a lot of gold. I mean, a lot.
    “Loiosh? What do you think?”
    “I can believe it, Boss. You did really annoy them. But you know them better than I do.”
    Yeah, I really did annoy them.
    “You’ll thank Her Majesty for me?”
    “She said to tell you no thanks are necessary. You hold an Imperial title. That makes it her duty to render aid when needed, and if she notices.”
    “Uh-huh. You’ll thank her for me?”
    “I will.”
    “And, ah, thank you as well.”
    “I serve Her Majesty.”
    “Yeah. About that. Think Her Majesty might manage to forbid the Jhereg from trying to, you know, kill me and stuff?”
    He shook his head. “She’d like to. She is not, of course, unaware of your situation. But that’s an internal House matter, and she can’t interfere.”
    “But she can send a rescue party?”
    “That’s different. They tried to kill you. That’s illegal.”
    “But—”
    “If they’d just be kind enough to admit they were trying to kill you, she could tell them not to.”
    I shook my head, which I ought not to have done. “Yeah, I get it.”
    His cat and his dog—just a cat and a dog now—came back. The dog curled up by his feet, the cat rubbed his leg then sat down and started licking itself. Loiosh hissed at the cat, I guess just on general principle; the cat pretended Loiosh didn’t exist.
    “You should get somewhere safe,” he said.
    I