The Book Of Jhereg
Lane Frisch
The novel opens with a brief history of Vlad Taltos and a description of how he acquired his jhereg familiar, Loiosh. Despite being an Easterner in the Dragaeran city of Adrilankha, Vlad is a minor boss in the criminal activities of the Jhereg Organization. One day he is approached by the Demon, an extremely powerful member of the Organization's ruling Council, and offered an assassination job with a staggeringly large reward. The contract is to kill another Jhereg crime lord, Mellar, who has absconded with a fortune from the Jhereg treasury. Vlad accepts, despite the very short time limit.
Mellar has become the houseguest of the Dragonlord Morrolan e'Drien in his floating fortress, Castle Black. Vlad is a personal friend of Morrolan and has a standing invitation to Castle Black, which would make the assassination quite easy. However Morrolan holds fast to the Dragonlord traditions of hospitality, and will permit no harm to come to his guests for any reason. The last time a Jhereg assassinated a Dragonlord's houseguest, it resulted in a war between the two Houses that decimated both. Morrolan has invited Mellar to stay for seventeen days, but the Jhereg need the hit performed before that time. Vlad is forced to find a compromise between the interests of his House and his friend.
Vlad's other friends, Aliera e'Kieron and Sethra Lavode, are more lax on the rules of hospitality and offer their help. Aliera wants to kill Mellar herself, as it is obvious to everyone, even Morrolan himself, that Mellar manipulated Morrolan and used the Dragonlord's honor as a shield against the Jhereg. This is a grave insult to the House of the Dragon. Sethra, the oldest and wisest of the group, agrees with Aliera's position, but feels that they must still respect Morrolan's wishes and find a way that will not violate his honor.
While Vlad looks for a solution, the Jhereg come up with their own plan. The Demon first interviews Vlad to see if he would go along with it, and when it is clear to him that Vlad would not, he tries to have Vlad assassinated. Vlad manages to escape and guesses the Demon's intentions, but he is too late. He arrives at Castle Black to find Morrolan already assassinated. With Morrolan dead, Mellar would no longer be under his protection, and thus his death would not start a second Dragon-Jhereg war.
Vlad foils this solution by breaking the enchantment preventing Morrolan's resurrection and has his friend brought back to life. The Jhereg, however, are undeterred. They would rather risk another Dragon-Jhereg War than allow Mellar's humiliating theft to become publicly known. An assassin descends on Mellar, but Vlad and his friends thwart him as well.
With the help of nearly all of his friends, Vlad tricks Mellar into thinking he has killed Aliera, which would nullify his guest-rights with Morrolan. Mellar, believing his plan is ruined, flees Castle Black to avoid a purposeless death at the hands of the Jhereg. This actually takes him out of Morrolan's protection. Vlad follows him and engages the master swordsman in a duel. While near defeat, Vlad uses witchcraft to contact a nearby wild jhereg. With this second jhereg's help, Vlad kills Mellar, earning a vast bounty and saving two Houses in the same stroke. Rocza, the name given by Vlad to his second familiar, mates Loiosh.
This Great House maintains an Empire spanning criminal organization, which supports itself by both supporting and taking advantage of Easterners and those under House Teckla, and is secretly sanctioned by the Empire because this helps maintain efficiency and order. This House is unique in that they do not have a specific genetic identity; they are a collection of those from all the other Houses who were either rejected by their House, or failed to identify with their House of origin. They are also the only House that accepts Easterners, considered non-human by Dragaerans, into their ranks through purchasing a Jhereg title.
The House is named after the jhereg, small, flying dragon-like reptiles which possess a poisonous bite and are scavengers that primarily feed on teckla, and symbolizes greed and opportunism. The Cycle Poem, which summarizes the nature of the Houses through their animals' actions, observes, "Jhereg feeds on others' kills".
The Jhereg Organization, recently also known as the Right Hand of the Jhereg, is the authority of the House. It is lead by the Jhereg Council, of which there are usually around five members who are the most powerful Jhereg in the Empire. The Organization engages in criminal activities of various kinds, reflecting the greed and opportunism of the House; it's the main criminal organization around. The only other known organization in the House is the Left Hand of the Jhereg. A member of House Jhereg doesn't need to be part of an organization.
House Jhereg regulates almost all criminal activity in the Empire. Each area where Organization businesses operate falls under the authority of a certain "boss" who owes part of his profit to his superior boss, which eventually ends up in the pockets of the Jhereg Council. Organization businesses are usually one of the following: untaxed gambling, unlicensed brothels, dealing in stolen merchandise and offering loans at illegal rates. 90% of Jhereg activity is in the capital city of Adrilankha. The best thieves and assassins in the Empire reside in the Right Hand of the Jhereg.
The two most reliable forces in the Jhereg are money and skill. An individual who possesses such qualities and enough nerve to secure a territory is usually able to rise in the Organization. Occasionally, different bosses within the Jhereg may discover a conflict of interest and fight each other about it. Jhereg wars are normally very violent in various ways, muffled, include several assassinations and could last many months. The idea is to take over the opponent's territory and increase profit and reputation.
In the Organization, people commonly speak "Jhereg slang" which contains unique terminology (e.g. "neighborhood" means area; "work" means assassination; "wizard" means someone especially good at a particular job) and is often metaphorical and indirect. This is frequently practiced in meetings between Jhereg bosses.
House Jhereg is the only House to come from a "tribe" or "group" originally independent of the collection of Dragaeran tribes which later formed the Empire. Kieron the Conqueror had gathered together a "Tribe of All Tribes" by uniting fifteen of the most powerful tribes (from an estimated thirty-one) to unite Dragaerans, then fight against the Easterners. The Jhereg started when Kieron's brother, Dolivar, betrayed the Tribe of the Dragon then was tortured and expelled from it.
Dolivar visited the leaders of several tribes excluded from Kieron's group and founded a successful tribe of his own, primarily by killing the leaders who refused. The group jokingly called themselves the "Tribe of the Jhereg"; they survived by ravaging other tribes, not unlike the jhereg itself.
At some point before the war Kieron and Dolivar negotiated an agreement which gave Dolivar's group the right to a permanent place in the future Empire if the Easterners were defeated. In return the "Tribe of the Jhereg" acted effectively as spies and saboteurs against the enemy. After victory against the Easterners, the strain of keeping the agreement later caused Kieron's death at the hands of Lyorn warriors who were unsympathetic to the idea of a House of Jhereg. Their actions appear to have fallen short of actually preventing the Jhereg from attaining Imperial status, though it is likely they tried.
As a result of their mixed biological background, Jhereg do not have a unique phenome, strictly speaking. However, their genetic characteristics have developed through time to be identified as specific to the House.
It is revealed in several places, most notably Orca, that the Empire and House Jhereg are mutually dependent in several ways. Loansharking, gambling, and brothel-running by Jhereg are all essential parts of the Empire's economy, and secret payoffs between Organization figures and Imperial law-enforcement are not only present at high and low ranks, but essential for trade and smooth functioning of the Empire.
A winged reptile, capable of hunting but preferring to scavenge ("Jhereg feeds on others' kills"). From the side their wings look like triangles, and from the front they look like walls placed too close together around a snake-like head. Unlike most depictions on the books, they have a pair of wings and one pair of clawed feet (not two pair). Their scaled bodies range in color from brown to green, and these colors become lighter in spring or summer. They are small enough to ride comfortably on a person's shoulder or to be concealed under their cloak, but large enough to carry a dagger by the hilt.
Jhereg are highly maneuverable flyers and prefer to remain airborne, but can run on their two legs if weighed down by a large meal, or even slither if concealment at ground level is necessary. On the wing, jhereg are agile enough to steal kills from falcons and other birds of prey, acting as kleptoparasites.
Jhereg have a poisonous bite that, while not always lethal, is enough to slow down a human significantly. On at least one occasion the jhereg poison was powerful enough to kill a Dragarean. (In Phoenix, Loiosh helps to defend and save Vlad by biting a female attacker who dies from his poison.)
As colorfully described in Rocza's point-of-view segments of Athyra, jhereg have a highly-attuned sensitivity to air currents, allowing them to discern nearby solid objects, whether still or in motion, as well as to take advantage of breezes and thermals while in flight. This allows her and Loiosh to direct and assist Vlad in fending off Ishtvan and Loraan in a pitch-black cave, and lets Rocza snatch a falling dagger safely by the handle without the benefit of vision.
Jhereg hatch from eggs small enough to fit easily in an Easterner's palm. Female jhereg are larger than males, and are usually the dominant member of a pairing. They typically mate for life and will fight to protect one another, although a wild male jhereg may abandon a grievously-injured female.
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