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Authors: Steven Brust

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A
S IT TURNED OUT, SEODRA retained too much influence at court for her execution to be practical, but she remained in prison until she died some four hundred years later. Lytra was able to hold her position as Warlord until, some ninety years after the events we have had the honor to relate, she was caught up in the matter of the White Goblets, which cost her both her position and her head.
Illista and her brother were exiled, and they were believed to have lived out the remainder of their lives on an island kingdom to the west.
Lanmarea was dismissed from the service, and G’aereth was promoted to Brigadier of the Phoenix Guards, and took command of both troops. He turned the White Sash Battalion into what was effectively a police force, which allowed him to keep the Red Boots, with Khaavren as ensign, as the elite palace guard and fighting corps which Khaavren had thought he had joined. While this did not diminish the rivalry between the two brigades, it did take them out of contact with each other, and a potentially problematical situation was thus resolved before it could become serious. Whether this was good or bad is left to the judgement of the reader; the historian makes no choice, seeing his task, as Master Hunter has so aptly put it, as merely the shedding of light into the dark spaces of the past.
Aerich, true to his word, left the Phoenix Guards before the end of the year, taking Tazendra with him, who, in turn, took Mica. Pel remained a little longer, but, eventually his petition was granted and he began his apprenticeship in the art of Discretion, whereupon he took quarters within the Athyra Wing of the Palace. Despite his words to Khaavren, they rarely saw each other after that, and, when they did, it was only to exchange greetings and a few words as Pel would pass by where Khaavren was on duty in the Palace.
In the fourth year of Tortaalik’s reign, in the month of the Orca, the entire court traveled to the Pepperfields to conclude the treaty with Crionofenarr; the matter having been arranged with extreme haste out of consideration to the short-lived Easterners. Khaavren was present in his role as ensign of the Red Boot Battalion.
Kathana e’Marish’Chala, to Khaavren’s delight, remained in his brigade for thirty-eight years of the fifty-seven she had agreed to, after which, upon
presenting her painting, “The Consort by the Fireside” to his Majesty, he granted her permission to return to her vocation.
Khaavren, true to his word, continued in the house he had rented upon the Street of the Glass Cutters and retained the worthy Srahi to keep the house in order, and, as he had promised, he maintained all of the rooms his friends had once occupied, hoping that, someday, they would be of use once more.
In this, we should add as a last note, he was not deceived, but as the details would be beyond the scope of this history, with which we hope our readers are not too dissatisfied, we shall, with regret mingled with some sense of satisfaction in the completion of a task, leave it to another time.
The Court
His Majesty Tortaalik I—
The Emperor
Her Majesty, Noima—
The Imperial Consort, Tortaalik’s wife
Her Excellency Lytra e’Tenith—
The Warlord
G’aereth—
Captain of the Red Boot Battalion
Lanmarea—
Captain of the White Sash Battalion
Gyorg Lavode—
Captain of the Lavodes
Duke Wellborn—
The Imperial Discreet
Count Shaltre—
An advisor to His Majesty
Her Ladyship Seodra—
An advisor to His Majesty
Lord Garland—
The favorite
 
House of the Phoenix
Illista—
Khaavren’s lover
Allistar—
Brother of Illista
 
House of the Dragon
Marquis of Pepperfield—
Deceased
Uttrik e’Lanya—
Son of Pepperfield
Kathana e’Marish’Chala, Baroness Kaluma—
An artist
Jenicor e’Terics—
Fifth in line as Dragon Heir
Diesep e’Lanya—
A friend of Jenicor
Adron e’Kieron, Duke of Eastmanswatch—
Dragon Heir to the Throne
 
Guardsmen in G’aereth’s Company
Aerich
Fanuial
Frai
Khaavren
Pel
Tazendra
Tuci
 
Guardsmen in Lanmarea’s Company
Dekkaan e’Tenith
Kurich
Sergeant Lebouru
Rekov
Thack
Uilliv
 
House of the Iorich
Guinn—
A jailer
 
House of the Jhereg
Corris—
A gaming room operator
Fayaavik—
Friend of Seodra
Tukko—
Runs the Hammerhead Inn
 
House of the Teckla
Srahi—
A servant woman
Yini—
Maid of Jenicor e’Terics
Mica—
A peasant
 
Easterners
Crionofenarr—
Leader of an Eastern army
Ricardo—
Librarian at the Zerika Library
Touching Upon Certain Events Which Occurred
in the Year of the Phoenix,
In the Phase of the Phoenix,
In the Reign of the Phoenix,
Of the Cycle of the Athyra
 
Submitted To the Imperial Library
By the Sliptower Estates
House of the Hawk
On This Eighth Day of the
Month of the jbegaala
In the Year of the Lyorn
In the Phase of the Dragon
In the Cycle of the Phoenix
In the Great Cycle of the Dragon,
Or, the Three Hundred and Ninth year
Of the Glorious Reign of
The Empress Zerika the Fourth
 
By Sir Paarfi of Roundwood
House of the Hawk
(His arms, seal, lineage block)
 
Presented, as Always, With Humble Respects
To Lady Parachai of Redstaff
In Hopes that it will Meet with her Approval
THE DRAGAERAN NOVELS
 
Brokedown Palace
 
THE KHAAVREN ROMANCES
The Phoenix Guards
Five Hundred Years After
The Viscount of Adrilankha,
which comprises
The Paths of the Dead, The Lord of Castle Black, and Sethra Lavode
 
THE VLAD TALTOS NOVELS
Jhereg
Yendi
Teckla
Taltos
Phoenix
Athyra
Orca
Dragon
Issola
Dzur
Jhegaala
OTHER NOVELS
To Reign in Hell
The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
Agyar
Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille
The Gypsy
(with Megan Lindholm)
Freedom and Necessity
(with Emma Bull)
Mr. Steven Brust (while we are not familiar with the title, “Mister,” it is thus we find him called, and we will not take it upon ourselves to change it) lives in a place called Minneapolis, which name, we are given to understand, means either, “Place of Blowing and Drifting Snow,” or, “Land of Almost Constant Road Repair.” He was born one thousand, nine hundred, and fifty-five years after the founding of the temple of one of the more popular local dieties, on the twenty-third day of a month called “November,” which name, we are given to understand, means either, “Time of the Start of Blowing and Drifting Snow,” or, “Time of Short-Lived Hiatus in Road Repair.”
He has supplied us with a rather lengthy list of activities in which he has engaged in order to support himself, but as we are unable to make any sort of sense out of any of them, we will omit the list entirely, confident that the reader is missing nothing of any importance by the omission.
While his personal life is, in some measure, beyond the scope of our studies, we may say that he is the author of four children and ten novels; the book which you have the honor of holding in your hands being the tenth. We consider our task to be one of recording what has been, rather than predicting what will be, yet we feel confident in asserting that the number of children is not likely to increase, whereas the number of novels might well have grown even before this present volume goes forth into the public, where it is destined, according to Mr. Brust, to perform some arcane service called, “Leveling Washing Machines.”
When Mr. Brust is not writing, he is likely to be found striking, either with his hands or with sticks, imitation hides stretched across shells of various sizes, which act he engages in in hopes of bringing forth musically pleasing sounds. While we are at a loss to understand how such actions could produce these results—any more than we understand how one might imitate hide or why one would wish to—we are unwilling to judge without having witnessed the attempt, which, considering the circumstances, seems unlikely.
It should be noted, however, that he does this in conjunction with several other persons, most notably including a certain Lady Emma of the House of the Bull, and that this coincidence of musical personalities refers
to itself as “Cats Laughing,” for reasons upon which we will not speculate. Should the reader wish to continue his researches into this federation of performers, he ought to write his address on an envelope, along with whatever seals are required for delivery by the post, place this envelope into a second, or rather, a first envelope, also with appropriate postal seals, and send this package to:
Cats Laughing ,
P.O. Box 7253
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55407
2
Let us add, on our own behalf, that we have been accused of having had more of a creative than an historical role with regard to the persons of whom we have had the honor to write; there are even those have suggested that these individuals have never existed except in our imaginings. While we do not, in general, consider such charges worth responding to, we may assure the reader that, if he were to follow the above instructions, he will receive proof that Mr. Brust, at least, has nothing fictitious about him; and, if we may be permitted a last opinion, it seems that, of all the characters who have done us the honor of appearing before us in this work, Mr. Brust is by far the most improbable.
Paarfi of Roundwood
2/1/2/3
Adrilankha, Whitecrest
Paarfi of Roundwood is the creation of a writer who, at first, wished the style of the French Romantics (Dumas, Sabatini, etc.) was still popular, then decided he didn’t care, and he’d bloody well write like that anyway. Paarfi is not really intended to look like one of those individuals; merely to sound something like them. For those with an interest in Dragaeran “history,” or rather, continuity, he can be placed at roughly the same period as the books of the Vlad Taltos series, or about a thousand years after the events he is supposed to be writing about.
If I’ve set him up as a bit pompous, that shouldn’t be construed as a slam at the writers I’m imitating. It’s just that, as I spent a whole novel with his voice running through my fingers, he developed his own personality, for which I can take no more or less responsibility than I can for any of my other characters. Take that how you will.
He keeps trying to refer to himself as an historian, which is okay, but it seems to me that he is making up more than he is willing to let on, his protests in the Preface notwithstanding. His true love is, I think, history, and he isn’t really bad at it, but the era in which he is writing, only a few hundred years after the Interregnum, is not one where there is much call for historians; everyone is too preoccupied with rebuilding the Empire to have the leisure to look backward. In other words, everyone is too busy repeating past mistakes to take the time to look at those mistakes, much to Paarfi’s frustration. Therefore, to support himself, he had to find a patron, the Lady Parachai, who enjoyed reading the sort of books that passed on Dragaera for historical romances.
Think of Paarfi, then, as a bit like Arthur Conan Doyle; he isn’t making his living doing what he really wants to do, but rather doing what he is good at: telling stories. In Paarfi’s case, his manner of telling stories may be a bit overblown and pretentious—and it is certainly wordy—but it’s his own. If Dumas developed his style, at least in part, because he was paid by the word (rather like Dickens, only Dumas had more fun), then Paarfi’s style is just as understandable: on Dragaera, all the scholars write like that.
As for my own reasons, well, the fact is, I was having too much fun to stop. I enjoyed working with him a great deal, both for his own sake, and
as homage to some great writers of the past. I hope you like him, as well.
Steven Brust, P.J.F.
April, 1990
Minneapolis, Minnesota
BOOK: The Phoenix Guards
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