I was relaxed, as is generally required for such things, and disposing of some used klava in the men's restroom of Valabar's when a hand touched my right shoulder next to Loiosh's claws, and gripped, lightly. "Hello, Vlad."

The last time someone put their hand on my shoulder while I was engaged in that particular activity had been when I was fourteen. I had broken that Orca's nose and three of his ribs. Partly for scaring me so badly, and partly because he was an Orca.

I'm sorry, I've drifted off topic. My history with the Orca is a story for another time.

In any case, after several years on the run from the Jhereg, my reflexes were still on automatic, and very reactive. As the hand touched my shoulder, my right hand shifted from the usual placement for klava disposal efforts to the closest dagger that would allow a clean, rapid draw.

The attacker was behind me, the restroom wall was in front of me, and there were heavy marble privacy dividers to my right and left. There was nothing above me I could jump to or grab. There was only one direction for me to move, and my attacker had to know it.

As I started to desperately spin towards the attacker, dropping my shoulder into the attack, Loiosh screamed into my head. Behind you, Boss!

I was a little preoccupied, and didn't reply. Loiosh was acting on instinct anyway, having clearly been surprised himself.

While my right hand was reaching for a steel dagger, my left hand left my left hip where it had been holding my trousers, and raised towards the right armpit sheath where Lady Teldra was located that day. I knew my reaction was too little, too late to avoid the hit, but Lady Teldra might allow me to survive what would otherwise kill me. I was expecting to feel the horrible echo of mental hunger of an unsheathed morganti blade before it was buried in my back.

This isn't where I wanted to die, Loiosh. I complained at Loiosh as I continued spinning. He was in a bit of a panic, and didn't respond. I got a sensation of terror and rage from him, directed at my attacker.

Loiosh and Rozca were still in the process of throwing themselves backwards and off my shoulders when my attacker's right hand slipped off my right shoulder. Surprisingly, there wasn't a morganti blade in me yet.

That mistake will cost you. Sloppy gets you killed.

I had already made the connection that the attacker had to have been using a concealment spell which was extraordinarily good if Loiosh hadn't spotted anything odd. He's far better than any human (no matter how you define 'human') at spotting anything less than a perfect illusion.

Somewhere deep in my mind where the automatic reactions weren't in control, a little voice of reason tried to make itself heard. Something was wrong. Anyone with that good of a concealment spell, with me as a target, wouldn't be so sloppy for the hit itself. They would have gripped my shirt or shoulder tightly, depending on the size and strength of their hands, to at least partly control my motion as the killing blow was dealt. Not only that, but I should have been feeling the presence of the morganti blade almost from the same instant the hand touched me, and I still hadn't felt it. I ignored the little voice.

What? Don't look at me like that. All those stories about brilliant people who think through everything and always come to the right decision after considering all the possibilities are absurd. You don't live long as an assassin if you take time to think about everything that happens, as it happens. You plan the hit in advance, and you plan in detail. If anything goes wrong, you bail, and try later. On the other side of the coin, you certainly won't live long when being chased by assassins if you try to analyze everything before acting to save yourself. You act automatically, on your instincts. Good instincts and you live. Bad instincts and you die. I've been an assassin, and been hunted by assassins. I am still alive. I trust my instincts first, and consider my second thoughts and little internal voices later.

A moment later, my turn to face my assailant was complete. My right hand was holding a dagger at mid-height, defensively, pointed at the chest of a very tall woman, standing two steps from me, a slight smile on her face under glittering eyes and dark hair. Recognition of her facial features and a quick glance at her fingers verified who she was supposed to be, which might also explain why the concealment spell had been able to fool Loiosh.

The woman spoke in a strange, doubled voice, sounding like two voices speaking only a tiny bit out of synch with one another. "Sorry to have interrupted you, Vlad. I needed to talk to you privately."

That voice ended any doubt in me that it really was the goddess Verra standing there. Everyone hears the voices of the gods differently, and I'd never told anyone who was not completely trustworthy what Verra sounded like to me. Even then, I'd never psionically allowed anyone else to hear her voice as I heard it. I gripped Lady Teldra harder and said nothing. Verra and I were not on the best of terms, and I had no particular love of gods.

Verra narrowed her eyes at me, slightly.

I did not look away, locking eyes with Verra as my trousers suddenly slipped off my hips and fell to the ground around my boots.

My familiar, Loiosh, settled on one of the two marble dividers, slightly behind me and to my right, Rozca, my other familiar, on the other divider, to my left. Loiosh hissed very loudly at Verra, and then bared his fangs and snapped his jaws in her direction. I rarely saw such extreme physical expressions of anger from him when he wasn't actually fighting.

Loiosh? I projected at him, and felt... nothing.

My left hand tightened into a death grip on Lady Teldra's hilt as I spoke in my coldest voice, clipping each word. "I. can't. hear. Loiosh. Verra. Explain. Now." Loiosh didn't seem to be injured or in physical distress, so I didn't immediately attack.

One finger with an extra knuckle pointed at my trousers, pooled around my feet. With a sly smile, Verra said "Pull up your trousers, Vlad, you're distracting me."

I ignored the taunt. "They stay right where they are until I'm convinced that there isn't going to be a fight here."

Stop laughing. Yes, I got caught with my trousers around my ankles. By a goddess.

Holding Verra's eyes suddenly got much harder. The whites of both of her eyes disappeared, turning pitch black with pinpricks like stars. My mind twitched and I felt a little nauseous, but I maintained the stare while holding tightly to Lady Teldra's hilt. I felt a sense of irritation and some anger from Lady Teldra as I felt her connect to me after burrowing through whatever psychic blocking spell Verra was using.

"Lady Teldra is not pleased right now, and I'm less happy than she is with your treatment of me and my familiars, Verra. Answers, or we won't speak again." I punctuated the statement by lowering my right hand slightly, and turned the palm a little up, to position the dagger better for a rapid strike instead of the more defensive position it had been in. I doubted that plain steel would seriously hurt a god, but at that point I was nearly angry enough to try an experiment, even if Verra was the god I typically associated myself with most closely.

Lady Teldra has another name, Godkiller. Great Weapons have all sorts of prophesies and legends associated with them. Lady Teldra hadn't earned her second name yet. I wasn't eager to help her earn it, but I was beginning to get angry enough to think about it, and I know it was showing in my face.

After several seconds of staring at me with her black-starred eyes, Verra turned away from me. "I mean you no harm, Vlad. I need your help. Pull up your trousers, you look ridiculous; I'm sure you are feeling a bit... exposed. I give you my word that I will take absolutely no action towards you, or anyone you know, while you make yourself presentable."

"You've got a funny way of asking for help, Verra." I growled before I lifted the steel dagger in my right hand to my mouth and lightly, carefully, gripped it between my teeth. I then released Lady Teldra's hilt, and quickly lifted my trousers into place, making adjustments here and there to make room for various sharp pointed objects in sheathes, my shirt tails, and some other important equipment. Finally, I finished buttoning my trousers and buckled my belt.

Verra spoke immediately after I finished buckling my belt. "You're only now realizing that we gods are rarely going to give you clear answers?" Again, a little smile.

I carefully took the blade out of my mouth, wiped it on my cloak, and sheathed it as I responded sharply. "I don't see where that would be so difficult. I can see it now. A letter mysteriously pops onto my desk. I open it, and see written there: 'Vlad, if it would be convenient to you, I would like to meet in the men's restroom at Valabar's while you are taking your wife out to eat for the first time in five years and three months.'" I stared hard at her. "See, that wouldn't have been so hard after all, would it?"

Verra smiled. It looked like actual humor. "Reasons, Vlad. You can't understand."

"Try me. I'm smart. I'm also getting more annoyed. Not only can I not speak psionically with Loiosh. I just tried to send to Cawti, and failed. I also can't get the time from the Imperial Orb, which you really shouldn't be able to block. I've been in here long enough that Cawti is going to start being concerned." I met Verra's eyes and glared. "I'm starting to feel trapped. Talk. Now. What do you want?"

Suddenly, I felt hands on my lower forearms, gripping like vices, and the image of Verra by the door melted away as a much more real, physical Verra appeared in front of me. She restrained me despite my struggles, as if I had the strength of a child.

Loiosh and Rozca both started throwing themselves off their perches at Verra, but they were moving incredibly slowly, even as Verra and I seemed to be moving at normal speeds.

I struggled, in vain, yelling loudly to try to draw attention, but there was no audible reaction. "Verra," I hissed furiously, "Let me go. I'm-"

"I'm very sorry, Vlad. I know how important your return was to you, Cawti, and your son. I promise that I will give both Cawti and your son memories that will explain your absence and not distress them greatly. I am a mother, as strange as that might seem to you. I understand the bonds of family." Verra looked a little sorry as she locked eyes with me from her much-greater height. I couldn't move as she leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss on my forehead.

"Just be yourself, Vlad, and don't get killed. I'll bring you back when you're done."

Verra shrugged forward with inhuman strength, throwing me backwards towards the wall. The instant her hands were off of me, my left hand snapped towards Lady Teldra and my right hand towards a long dagger.

I never hit the wall. My guts started twisting, hurting even worse than normal teleportation sickness as I passed the point where I should have slammed into the wall above the little trench in the floor. As I continued flying backwards, I saw the edges of a portal that looked a lot like one of Morrolan's travel windows.

My hands never made it to my weapons, instead, I wrapped them around my stomach as I felt the pain in my guts growing even worse, like I was being ripped apart from the inside.

What was that? Oh, yes, Loiosh and Rozca. I learned from Loiosh that the two of them had a brief staring match with Verra before she asked them if they were going to attack her, or go help me. Loiosh doesn't have a Great Weapon. Attacking a goddess by himself or even with Rozca wasn't a smart option. The two of them came through the portal after me. If Verra had harmed them... Why are you looking at me like that? Sit back down. I'm not going to hurt you with this dagger. Sorry. Dark thoughts. Where were we?

Anyway, I spent I have no idea how long in unbelievable pain, but eventually there was an immense reduction in the agony, followed by a very brief sensation of falling. Before I could even try to prepare for impact, my back smashed onto a flat surface, which, in turn, collapsed under me. Then whatever I'd fallen on smashed into something else that didn't collapse. I bounced back into the air, and fell to the ground again. The pain in my back, neck, and spine after the impact felt good compared to the rapidly fading torture in my guts. I distinctly remember being happy to experience something different.

After I collapsed what I guessed was some sort of flimsy table onto the floor and bounced, there was a brief moment of silence. Then there was a great deal of yelling, some voices sounding scared and other voices sounding angry. All of the voices seemed to be saying something about a cape.

Even though they were feeling better already, my guts still felt like they had been ripped out, tied in knots, and then stuffed back into me with a few handfuls of nails. I had absolutely no idea who or what Verra had landed me in the middle of, so I took a shallow breath and fell back on my wits and charm. "I fall out of the air, break your furniture, and you complain about what I'm wearing?"

I groaned out loud and mentally inventoried my body. Everything hurt, which meant everything was at least present. "Fashion tip. Capes are rarely long enough to touch the thighs, cloaks are almost always at least long enough to touch the back of the knee." Still rapidly recovering from the teleportation sickness, I painfully raised my head and chest with one arm behind me and looked around. "I am wearing a cloak, not a cape."

I was in a very large room that was lit only in the center by several light sources, all of which were too bright to look at directly. The floor looked like stone, but was oddly uniform, smooth, and shiny. The walls were too far away to see clearly in the shadows, but looked like nothing I'd ever seen before. The air smelled of sweat, salt water, tobacco, dreamgrass, and something that smelled a lot like burning lamp oil. There was also an odd meat and cheese smell coming from what looked like very thin pie pieces with a red sauce under cheese and red, coin-shaped objects cooked into the cheese. I had apparently landed on a table covered with containers full of the odd pie pieces. Wherever I was, they had strange food.

I was almost overwhelmed with all the strangeness of everything around me, but I fully understood the men approaching me with knives, and the ones behind them rapidly gathering weapons. Unfortunately, my fashion knowledge had failed to impress them.