Dragon (Vlad Taltos) Read Online Free Page B

walls were painted some color that managed to squeak in between white and yellow where no color ought to live, making everything seem bright and cheery and entirely at odds with any Dragonlord I’d ever met or heard of—and certainly with the Baritt I’d met in the Paths of the Dead.
    My reverie was interrupted by Kragar saying, “Uh … Boss? Where are we going?”
    “Good question.” Most sorcerers would work either in a basement, where it’s most reasonable to put any heavy objects they
might need, or up in a tower, where there is less risk of wiping out the whole house if something goes wrong. In Baritt’s case, probably some random room in a random place because it was convenient.
    Loiosh moved nervously on my shoulder. We left the foyer and entered a sitting room of some sort, with more blown glass and decanters just like the others except full. On the wall to my left was a large oil of Baritt, looking imposing and dignified. There was a small door at the far end that should have led to the kitchen, and hallways heading off to the right and the left; one would presumably lead up a set of stairs to the bedchambers, the other to the rest of this floor. We took the one to the right and found a wide, straight stairway of polished white stone. We went back and tried the other hall, which looked more promising.
    “Hey, Boss.”
    “Yeah, Loiosh?”
    “There’s something funny. I’m getting a feeling. It’s like—”
    “We’re being watched, Vlad,” said Kragar.
    “Not really surprising,” I said.
    “I noticed first.”
    “Shut up.”
    “Ignore it, I think,” I told Kragar. “It would be odd if no one had any surveillance spells. Should we try that door?”
    “The big ironbound one with the rune carved on it, barred by a pair of Dragonlords with spears crossed in front of it? Why should it be that one?”
    “You’re funny, Kragar. Shut up, Kragar.”
    “Who are you, and what is your business?” said one of the guards, standing like a statue, her spear not moving from its position in front of the door.
    “You know both answers,” I told her.
    She twitched a smile, which made me like her. “Yeah, but I have to ask. And you have to answer. Or you could leave. Or I could kill you.”
    “Baronet Taltos, House Jhereg, on an errand from Lord Morrolan, and for a minute there I liked you.”
    “I’m crushed,” she said. Her spear snapped to her side; her companion’s also moved, and the way was clear. She said, “Be informed that there is a teleport block in place around the house in general, and that it has been strengthened for that room.”
    “Is that a polite way of telling me not to try to steal anything?”
    “I hadn’t intended to be polite,” she said.
    I said, “Let’s go.”
    “After you,” said Kragar. Both guards twitched and then looked at him, as if they hadn’t noticed him before, which they probably hadn’t. Then they pretended they’d seen him all along, because to do anything else would have been undignified.
    There didn’t seem to be any way out of it, so I pulled back the bolt and opened the door.
    There’s a story, probably apocryphal but who cares, about Lishni, the inventor of the fire-ram. It seems he invented it out of desperation, having no other way for his flotilla of six cutters to escape a fleet of eight brigs and two ships of the line that had cut him off during what started as a minor action in one of the wars with Elde. As the story goes, after arming his cutters with his new invention, he went out, sank seven of the ten ships and damaged the other three, then, in another moment of inspiration, took his crews ashore, captured the Palace, and forced an unconditional surrender that ended the war right there. As he walked out of the Palace with the signed surrender in his hand, one of his subordinates supposedly asked him how he felt. “Fine,” he said.
    As I say, I very much doubt it happened like that, but it’s a good story. I bring it up because, if