Steven Brust - Yendi

We didn’t have time to do so, however. Terion had been right, but he had acted too late. The Empress had already had enough.

Six

“I’m going to take a walk.”

When I say “Empress” you probably get an image of this old, stern-looking matron, with iron-gray hair, dressed in gold robes, with the Orb circling her head as she issues edicts and orders affecting the lives of millions of subjects with a casual wave of the sceptre.

Well, the orb did circle her head; that part is right. She wore gold, too—but nothing as simple as robes. She would often wear . . . but, never mind.

Zerika was a young three or four hundred, which is like mid-twenties to a human. Her hair was golden—and if I’d meant “blond” I would have said “blond.” Her eyes were the same color, rather like a lyorn’s, and deeply set. Her forehead was high, her brows light and almost invisible against very pale skin. (Notwithstanding the rumors, however, she was not undead.)

The House of the Phoenix is always the smallest, because they won’t consider you a Phoenix unless an actual phoenix is seen to pass overhead at the time of your birth. The Interregnum had eliminated every Phoenix except Zerika’s mother—who died in childbirth.

Zerika was born during the Interregnum. The last Emperor had been a decadent Phoenix, and since this was the seventeenth Cycle, the next Emperor had to be a Phoenix too, since a reborn Phoenix is supposed to follow a decadent Phoenix every seventeen Cycles. So far as I can tell, by the way, a reborn Phoenix is an Emperor of the House of the Phoenix who doesn’t become decadent by the end of his reign. Anyway, since Zerika was the only Phoenix living at the time, this meant it had to be Zerika. (All of this business about “what makes a Phoenix” is very strange when combined with aspects of the relationships among Houses—such as genetics. I mean, it seems absurd to have the opinion that most Dragaerans seem to have about cross-breeds, when there is, at the moment, no other way to produce a Phoenix heir except through cross-breeding. I may go into this at some point.)

In any case, at the tender age of one hundred or thereabouts she came to Deathsgate Falls and passed, living, through the Paths of the Dead and so came to the Halls of Judgment. There she took the Orb from the shade of the last Emperor and returned to declare the Interregnum at an end. This was about the time my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was being born.

That business about descending Deathsgate Falls, by the way, is quite impressive. I know, because I’ve done it myself.

But the point is that this background gave Zerika a certain understanding of the human condition—or at least the Dragaeran condition. She was wise and she was intelligent. She knew that there was nothing to be gained by interfering in a duel between Jhereg. On the other hand, I guess what Laris and I had been doing to each other was too much to ignore.

We woke up the morning after the meeting with Terion to find the streets patrolled by guards in Phoenix livery. Notices were posted explaining that no one was allowed in the streets after nightfall, that no groups of more than four could assemble, that all use of sorcery would be carefully observed and regulated, that all taverns and inns were shut down until further notice. There was also the unspoken statement that no illegal activity of any kind would be tolerated.

It was enough to make me want to move to a better neighborhood.

“Where do we stand, Kragar?”

“We can keep up like this—supporting everything and not earning—for about seven weeks.”

“Do you think this will last seven weeks?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

“Yeah. We can’t reduce our forces unless Laris does, and we don’t have any way of knowing if Laris will. That’s the worst part of it—this would be the perfect time to start infiltrating his organization, but we can’t because he doesn’t have anything running, either.”

Kragar shrugged. “We’ll just have to sit tight.”

“Hmmmm. Maybe. Tell you what: why don’t we find a few places he’s connected to that are legitimate—you know, like restaurants—and make friends with some of the management types.”

“Make friends?”

“Sure. Give them presents.”

“Presents?”

“Gold.”

“Just give it to them?”

“Yeah. Not ask for anything. Have people hand them money, and say it comes from me.”

He looked more puzzled than ever. “What will that do?”

“Well, it works with court advisors, doesn’t it? I mean, isn’t that the kind of thing the connections do? Just maintain good relationships so that if they need something, people will be well-disposed toward them? Why not try it here? It can’t do any harm.”

“It costs.”

“Screw that. It might work. If they like us, that makes it more likely they’ll tell us something. And maybe they can tell us something useful. If not right away, then someday.”

“It’s worth a try,” he admitted.

“Start out with five hundred, and spread it around a bit.”

“You’re the boss.”

“Next: we really should get some idea of when we can open something up. Do you have any guesses at all? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?”

“At least days, maybe weeks. Remember—those guards don’t like this any more than we do. They’ll be fighting it from their end, and all the merchants who aren’t involved are going to be fighting it from their end. Also, it goes without saying that all the organization contacts in the Palace will be working on it. I don’t think it can last more than a month.”

“Will it stop all at once, or gradually disappear?”

“Could be either way, Vlad.”

“Hmmph. Well, could we open, say, one game, in a week?”

“They might let us get away with it. But once you open up a game, what happens the first time a customer runs short of cash? We need to have someone to lend him money. And then maybe he gets behind on his payments, so he starts stealing. We need a cleaner. Or—”

“We don’t have a cleaner in any case.”

“I’m working on that.”

“Oh. All right. But yes, I see your point. It’s all tied in.”

“And there’s another thing: whoever opens up is going to be pretty nervous. That means that you should really make personal visits—and that’s dangerous.”

“Yeah.”

“One thing we could do is find a new office. I can still smell the smoke in here.”

“We could, but . . . do you know where Laris’s office is?”

“I know, but he doesn’t go there anymore. We don’t know where he is.”

“But we know where his office is. Fine. That’s where my next office will be.”

He looked startled, then shook his head. “Nothing like confidence,” he said.

Narvane was in touch with me pretty constantly that week, and was slowly getting a feel for the work. After what had happened to Temek, he was being careful, but we were accumulating a list of places and a few names.

I tried doing a small witchcraft spell on Laris, just to see if there was any point in attacking him that way, but I got nothing. That meant that he was protected against witchcraft—and indicated that he really did know me, since most Dragaerans don’t think of the art as anything to bother with.

I had enforcers following those people we knew, trying to get their movements down so we could use this information later. We approached a couple of them with large sums, hoping to find out where Laris was hiding, but we didn’t get any takers.

The project to make friends with Laris’s people went better, although just as slowly. We got nothing useful, but there were indications that we might in the future. I had some people speak to the Phoenix Guards. We learned from them that they weren’t happy about the duty, didn’t expect it to last long, and that they were as impatient to start earning their gambling money again as we were to start needing to pay them. I considered the matter.