Teckla (22 page)

"Well, boss?"

"I'm glad you're around, chum."

"Know what you're going to do?"

"You mean about Cawti?"

"Yeah."

"Not really. I didn't know she'd leave. Or I didn't believe it. Or I didn't know How hard it would hit me. I feel like I'm dead inside, you know what I mean?"

"I can feel it, boss. That's why I asked."

"I don't know if I'm up to handling what's going to happen now."

"You need to have things settled with Cawti."

"I know. Maybe I should try to find her."

"You'll have to be careful. Herth—"

"Yeah."

I made myself ready, checked my hardware and teleported to South Adrilankha. I rested a while in a small park, with a good view all around me—a very bad place for Quaysh—then I headed for an eating place. On the way I spotted and avoided two groups of Phoenix Guards. I found a table and ordered klava. As the waiter was leaving I said, "Excuse me."

"Yes, my lord?"

"Would you please bring that in a cup?"

He didn't even look startled. "Yes, my lord," he said. Just like that. And he did it. All this time, and the solution was as easy as asking for it. Wasn't that profound?

"I doubt it, boss."

"Me, too, Loiosh. But it starts the day right. And speaking of starting the day, can you find Rocza?"

A moment later Loiosh said in a hurt tone, "No. She's blocking me."

"I didn't know she could do that."

"Neither did I. Why would she?"

"Because Cawti figured out that I could trace her that way. Damn. Well, okay, so we go to Kelly's place and either wait for her or make them tell us where she is. Any other ideas?"

"Sounds good to me, boss. And when I get hold of that slimy reptile—" I was pleased by the klava, which I had with honey and warmed cream. I forced myself not to think about anything that mattered. I left a few extra coins on the table to show them how much I appreciated their cup. Loiosh preceded me out the door. He said everything looked all right and I left the place, heading toward Kelly's new headquarters. I avoided another contingent of Phoenix Guards on the way. They really were all over the place. None of the citizens seemed too happy with them, and it seemed mutual.

The first thing I decided upon seeing Kelly's new place was that it looked like Kelly's old place. The brown was a different shade, and his flat was on the right side instead of the left, and it was set a little farther back from the road, and there was just a tittle more space between buildings, but it had obviously been cast in the same mold. I walked through the doorway. The flat itself had a real door. A heavy door, with a lock on it. I looked closer, just from curiosity. A good lock, and a very heavy door. It would take a great deal of work to break into this place, and it would be almost impossible to do silently. I wondered about windows and other doors. In any case, I decided I was impressed. Cawti had probably advised them. I started to clap, remembered, and, after a moment's hesitation, pounded on the door with my fist.

It was opened by my dear friend Gregory. His eyes widened as he saw me, but I didn't let him start in on me. I just pushed past him. It was rude, I know, and that still bothers me to this day, but I'll just have to learn to live with it.

One look told me that this flat was laid out the same as the other; I was almost certain I could walk into the next room and be in a library, through that to Kelly's office, and through that to a kitchen. But this room was cleaner; the cots were collapsed and pushed against the wall. The windows, I noticed, were heavily boarded.

Kelly was sitting in the room, talking to Natalia and a Teckla I didn't recognize. Cawti wasn't there. The talking stopped when I walked in, and they all stared at me. I smiled a big smile and said, "Is Cawti around?" Then they all looked at Kelly, except for Natalia, who kept looking at me. She said, "Not at the moment."

I said, "I'll wait, then," and watched them. Natalia kept watching me, the others watched Kelly, who squinted at me, his lips in a bit of a pout. Then, quite suddenly, he stood up and said, "Right. Come on back and I'll talk to you." He turned and headed toward the rear of the flat, assuming I would follow obediently. I cursed under my breath, smiling, and did so.

This office was as neat and well-organized as the other had been. I sat down on the other side of the desk.

Kelly folded his hands over his stomach and looked at me, his eyes performing their usual squint.

"So," he said. "You've decided to call in the Empire and force us to respond."

"Actually," I said, "I just came to see Cawti. Where is she?" His expression didn't change, he just continued watching me. "You have a Plan," he said at last, pronouncing the capital letter, "and the rest of the world is filled with details that may or may not have something to do with it. You weren't out to get us, we're just a convenient tool." He didn't put it as a question, which is partly why I felt stung; he was accusing me of something like what I had been thinking was wrong with him. I said, "My primary interest is actually saving Cawti's life."

"Not your own?" he shot back, his eyes squinting just a bit more.

"It's too late for that," I said. That startled him a little; he actually seemed surprised. I felt inordinately pleased about this, "So, as I said, I'd like to see Cawti. Will she be around later?" He didn't answer. He just kept looking at me, his head back and his chin down, hands wrapped over his belly. I started to get mad. "Look," I told him, "you can play all the games you want to, just don't include me in them. I don't know what you're really after and I don't much care, all right? But, now or later, you're going to be carved up between the Empire and the Jhereg, and if I have any say in it my wife isn't going to be carved up with you. So you can drop the superior act; it doesn't impress me."

I was ready for him to blow up, but he didn't. His eyes hadn't even narrowed any more. He just kept watching me, as if he were studying me. He said, "You don't know what we're after? After all you've been through, you really don't know what we're after?"

I said, "I've heard the rhetoric."

"Have you listened to it?"

I snorted. "If what everybody around here parrots originates with you, then I've heard what you have to say. That isn't what I came here for." He leaned back a little more in his chair. "That's all you've heard, eh?

The parroting of phrases?"

"Yeah. But as I said, that isn't—"

"Did you listen to the phrases being parroted?"

"I told you—"

"Have you never understood more than you could put into words? Many people only respond to the slogans—but they respond because the slogans are true and touch a spark in their hearts and their lives. And as for the ones who don't want to think for themselves, we teach them to anyway." Teach? I suddenly thought of what I'd overheard of them berating Cawti and wondered if that was what they called teaching. But Kelly continued, "Did you talk to Paresh? Or Natalia? Did you ever, once, listen to what they said?"

"Look—"

He shifted forward in his chair, just a bit. "But none of that matters. We aren't here to justify ourselves to you. We're Teckla and Easterners. In particular, we are that portion of that group that understands what it's doing."

"Yeah? What are you doing?"

"We are defending ourselves the only way we can, the only way there is—by uniting and using the power that we have due to our own role in society. With this, we can defend ourselves against the Empire, we can defend ourselves against the Jhereg, and we can defend ourselves against you." La dee da. I said, "Can you?"

He said, "Yes."

"What's to stop me from killing you, say, now?" He didn't bat an eyelash, which I call bravado, which a Dzur would consider brave and a Jhereg would consider stupid. He said, "Right. Go ahead, then."

"I could, you know."

"Then do it."

I cursed. I didn't kill him, of course. That was something I knew Cawti would never forgive me for, and it wouldn't accomplish anything anyway. I needed Kelly there to push his organization into the path of Herth and the Phoenix Guards so they could be neatly cleaned up. But I needed Cawti out of the way first.

I noticed that Kelly was still watching me. I said, "So, you exist only to defend yourselves, and the Easterners?"

"And the Teckla, yes. And the only defense is—but I forget; you aren't interested. You're so busy chasing fortune up over a mountain of corpses that you have no time to listen to anyone else, have you then?"

"Poetic, aren't you?" I said. "Have you ever read Torturi?"

"Yes," said Kelly. "I prefer Wint. Torturi is clever, but shallow."

"Um, yeah."

"Similar to Lartol."

"Yeah."

"They came out of the same school of poetry, and the same epoch, historically. It was after the reconstruction at the end of the ninth Vallista reign, and the aristocracy was feeling bitter toward—"

"All right, all right. You're quite well-read for a… whatever it is you are."

"I am a revolutionist."

"Yeah. Maybe you're a Vallista yourself. Creation and destruction, all wrapped up in one. Only you don't seem too effective at either."

"No," he said. "If I were of one of the Dragaeran Houses, it would be the Teckla."

I snorted. "You said it; I didn't."

"Yes. And it is another thing you don't understand."

"No doubt."

"But what I said is true for you as well—"

"Careful."

"And all human beings. The Teckla are known as a House of cowards. Is Paresh a coward?"

Licked my lips. "No."

"No. He has something worth fighting for. They are known as stupid and lazy as well. Does this match your experience?"

I started to say, "Yes," but then decided that, no, I couldn't say they were lazy. Stupid? Well, the Jhereg had been hoodwinking Teckla for years now, but that only meant we were clever. And, furthermore, there were so many of them it could be that I only ran across the stupid ones. It was hard to conceive of the total number of Teckla even within Adrilankha. Most of them were not customers of the Jhereg. "No," I said, "I guess not completely."

"The House of the Teckla," he said, "embodies all the traits of all the Dragaeran Houses. As does the Jhereg, by the way, and for much the same reason: Those Houses will allow others into their ranks with no questions asked. The aristocracy—the Dzur, the Dragons, the Lyorn, occasionally others—see this as a weak-ness. The Lyorn allow no one in; some of the others require the passing of a test. They think this strengthens their House, because it reinforces those things they desire—usually strength, quickness and cunning. These are thought to be the greatest virtues by the dominant culture—the culture of the aristocracy. If so, the mixing of blood without these traits must be a weakness. Because they think it's a weakness, you see it as a weakness, too. It is not; it is a strength."

"By requiring those traits, or whichever ones they do require, what are they leaving out that might occur on its own? All of these traits exist in some measure in the Teckla, the Jhereg and some Easterners—along with other things that we aren't even aware of, but that make us human. Think about what it means to be human. It's far more important than species or House." He stopped and studied me again.

I said, "I see. Well, now I've learned something about biology, history, and Teckla politics all in one sitting. That, and what is required to be a revolutionist. Thank you, it's been very instructive. Except I'm not interested in biology, I don't believe your history and I already knew what it takes to be a revolutionist. Right now I want to know what it takes to find Cawti."

He said, "Just what is it that you've found it takes to be a revolutionist?"

I knew he was trying to change the subject, but I couldn't resist. I said, "The worship of ideas to such an extent that you become totally ruthless toward people—friends, enemies and neutrals alike."

"The worship of ideas?" he said. "That's how you see it?"

"Yeah."

"And where do you suppose these ideas came from?"

"I can't see that it matters a whole lot."

"They come from people."

"Mostly dead people, I imagine."

He shook his head, slowly, but it seemed his eyes were twinkling, just a bit. "So," he said, "you have no ethics at all?"

"Don't bait me."

"Then you do?"

"Yeah."

"But you'll abandon them for anyone who matters to you?"

"I told you not to bait me. I won't tell you again."

"But what are professional ethics other than ideas that are more important than people?"

"Professional ethics guarantee that I always treat people as they ought to be treated."

"They guarantee that you do what's right, even if it isn't convenient at the moment?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

I said, "You're a smug bastard, aren't you?"

"No, but I can tell that you're speaking nonsense. You talk about our ideas as if they fell from the sky. They didn't. They grew out of our needs, out of our thoughts and out of our fight. Ideas aren't just thought up one day, and then people come along and decide to adopt them. Ideas are as much a product of their times as a particular summoning spell is the result of a particular Athyra reign. Ideas always express something real, even when they're wrong. People have been dying for ideas—sometimes incorrect ideas—since before history. Would that happen if those ideas weren't based on, and a product of, their lives and the world around them?"

"As for us, no, we're not smug. Our strength is that we see ourselves as part of history, as part of society, instead of just individuals who happen to have the same problem. This means we can at least look for the right answers, even if we aren't completely right all the time. It certainly puts us a step ahead of the individualists. It's all well and good to recognize that you have a problem and try to solve it, but for the Easterners and Teckla in this world, these aren't problems that an individual can solve."

I guess when you get in the habit of making speeches it's hard to stop. When he'd run down, I said, "I'm an individual. I solved them. I got out of there and made something of myself."