Steven Brust - Iorich

“When did it stop?”

“When the Em­pire was formed. It was made il­le­gal. That was the first Im­pe­ri­al Edict.”

“An act of kind­ness from your an­ces­tor. Good way to start.”

“Not kind­ness, so much. She’d spo­ken to the gods, and knew the gods were ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent or hos­tile to the prac­tice. So call it prac­ti­cal­ity. I bring it up be­cause—” She stopped, and looked blank for a mo­ment, the Orb puls­ing blue over her head. “I’m sor­ry, it seems I must go run an Em­pire.”

I stood. “Thank you for see­ing me.” I made as good an obei­sance as I could; which isn’t too bad, I’m told.

“It is al­ways a plea­sure, Count Szurke.”

I backed away a few steps (there is a cor­rect num­ber of steps, but I didn’t know it), and turned away. She said, “Oh, and thank you, Vlad.”

“For—?”

“The doc­uments on mak­ing pa­per. I’m told they’re valu­able.”

“Oh, right. I’d for­got­ten about—how did you know they came from me?”

She smiled. “Un­til now, I didn’t.”

The men­tion of mak­ing pa­per brought back a com­plex set of mem­ories and par­tial mem­ories that I didn’t es­pe­cial­ly feel like dwelling on just then; but it was good of her to men­tion it. I gave her what I hoped was a friend­ly smile over my shoul­der and took my­self out of the room.

Iorich

3

Q: Please state your name, your House, and your city of res­idence.

A: Dornin e’Lanya, House of the Drag­on, Brick­er­stown.

Q: Rank and po­si­tion?

A: Sergeant, Im­pe­ri­al Army, Sec­ond Army, Fourth Le­gion, Com­pa­ny D.

Q: What were your or­ders on the sec­ond day of the month of the Ly­orn of this year?

A: We were to es­cort a sup­ply train from Nor­est to Swor­drock. On that day, we were pass­ing through Tir­ma, in the duchy of Carv­er.

Q: And what had you heard about Tir­ma?

A: We knew the en­tire duchy was in re­bel­lion.

Em­press: Did you know this of­fi­cial­ly, or through ru­mor?

A: It was com­mon knowl­edge, Your Majesty.

Q: An­swer Her Majesty’s ques­tion, Sergeant.

A: We were nev­er in­formed of­fi­cial­ly.

Orb shows false­hood

Q: Would you care to re­con­sid­er that an­swer, Sergeant Dornin?

A: No, my lord. That is my an­swer.

Q: Had any­thing un­usu­al hap­pened that day be­fore you reached Tir­ma?

A: There were the usu­al prob­lems with the wag­on train, but no at­tacks or in­ci­dents.

Q: De­scribe what hap­pened when you en­tered Tir­ma.

A: We were set on by a mob that was try­ing to take away the wag­ons, and we de­fend­ed our­selves.

Q: While you were in Tir­ma, were you or your com­mand in­volved in any fight­ing or vi­olence that did not in­volve de­fend­ing your­selves against an at­tack?

A: We were not.

Orb shows false­hood

Q: Would you care to re­con­sid­er your an­swer?

A: I would not.

Q: Are you aware of the penal­ties for ly­ing be­neath the Orb?

A: I am.

I went back down the half-​flight of stairs, down the hall, and stopped, try­ing to re­mem­ber the name I’d been giv­en.

“Del­wick.”

“I knew that.”

“Right.”

“Okay, I was about to re­mem­ber.”

“Right.”

“Shut up.”

I found my way back to where Harn­wood still wait­ed. He smiled as if he were glad to see me. I bowed as pre­cise­ly as I could man­age—not that he’d let me know if I missed my mark—and said, “Par­don me, do you know a Lord Del­wick?”

“Of course, my lord. Shall I take you to where he is?”

“If you’d be so kind.”

He would, in fact, be so kind. He ex­changed a few words with the guard sta­tioned by the door, and ges­tured with his hand that I was to fall in­to step with him. I did so. Hav­ing known La­dy Tel­dra so long—in the flesh, I mean—I wasn’t sur­prised that he made it seem ef­fort­less to short­en his strides to match my puny hu­man ones.

I won’t try to de­scribe the turn­ings we took, nor the stairs we went up on­ly to go down an­oth­er. I will men­tion one ex­treme­ly wide hall­way with what looked like gold trim­ming over ivory, and hung with the psiprints of some of the odd­est-​look­ing peo­ple I’ve ev­er seen, all of them look­ing enough like Day­mar to con­vince me they were Hawk­lords, and all of them star­ing out with the same ex­pres­sion: as if they were say­ing, “Just what man­ner of beast are you, any­way, and do you mind of if I study you for a while?”

We walked in­to a per­fect­ly square room around the size of my old flat off Low­er Kieron Road—it was a pret­ty big flat. The room was emp­ty. Harn­wood said, “This is where the var­ious rep­re­sen­ta­tives some­times gath­er to speak in­for­mal­ly.”

“Should I wait here?”

“No, we can find Lord Del­wick’s of­fices.”

I was glad the room was emp­ty. Meet­ing the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive would have been awk­ward. We passed through it to a door at the oth­er end, and stepped in­to a hall­way. He nod­ded to the right. “That way, fol­low­ing it around to the right, you’ll come back to the Im­pe­ri­al Au­di­ence Cham­ber, on the oth­er side. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this is the fastest way with­out go­ing through the Cham­ber, which is in­ap­pro­pri­ate.”

“I un­der­stand,” I lied.

He pre­tend­ed to be­lieve me and we turned left. There were a few doors on the right, and far­ther up the hall­way split, but be­fore that point he stopped out­side one of the doors and clapped. There was the sym­bol of the Iorich above it. By then I hadn’t eat­en any­thing ex­cept a lit­tle dried fruit in about three years, and I was in a wretched mood. I re­solved not to take it out on Lord Del­wick.

“I can’t wait—”

“Don’t.”

Rocza gave a lit­tle shiv­er that I’m pret­ty sure was laugh­ter.

The door opened, and an el­der­ly Dra­gaer­an with se­vere eye­brows and thin lips was look­ing at us, with the smile of the diplo­ma­tist—that is, a smile that means noth­ing.

“Well met, Del­wick.”

“And you, Harn­wood.” He looked an in­quiry at me.

“This is Lord Tal­tos, of House Jhereg, and he wish­es a few words with you.”

“Of course,” he said. “Please come in and sit down.” If he’d ev­er heard of me, he con­cealed it well.

Harn­wood took his leave amid the usu­al po­lite nois­es and ges­tures all around, af­ter which I ac­com­pa­nied Del­wick in­to his room—or ac­tu­al­ly suite, be­cause there were a cou­ple of doors that pre­sum­ably went to his pri­vate quar­ters or some­thing. It was nice enough: a thick pur­ple car­pet of the sort that comes from Keresh or there­abouts, with com­plex in­ter­lock­ing pat­terns that took longer to make than a hu­man usu­al­ly lives. There was no desk, which some­how struck me as sig­nif­icant; there were just sev­er­al stuffed chairs with ta­bles next to them, as if to say, “We’re on­ly hav­ing a lit­tle chat here, noth­ing to wor­ry about.”

Heh.

He point­ed to a chair, ex­cused him­self, and went through one of the doors, re­turn­ing in a mo­ment with a plate of bis­cuits and cheese. I could have kissed him.

I said, “I hope you don’t mind if I feed a bit to my friends here.”

“Of course not, my lord.”

I fed them, and my­self, try­ing not to ap­pear greedy, but al­so not wor­ry­ing about it too much; there are times when the Dra­gaer­an prej­udices about hu­mans can work for us. I didn’t eat enough to be sat­is­fied, but a few bis­cuits with even an ex­ces­sive­ly sub­tle (read: bland) cheese helped. He ate a few as well to keep com­pa­ny with me, as it were, while he wait­ed for me to state my busi­ness.