Steven Brust - Iorich

I found the coin Perisil had giv­en me, and showed it.

“Hm­mm,” he said. “All right.” He looked up at me and nod­ded. “Very well.” He sat back. “Tell me about it.”

“Why is the pros­ecu­tion of Aliera e’Kieron hap­pen­ing so quick­ly?”

He nod­ded a lit­tle. “I’ve won­dered my­self. So then, you have an ad­vo­cate for her?”

“Perisil,” I said.

“Hm­mm. I’m afraid I don’t rec­og­nize the name.”

“He has a base­ment of­fice.”

“Where?”

“In the House.”

“Ah, I see.”

It seemed that the best ad­vo­cates had quar­ters out­side of the House. Maybe that should have shak­en my con­fi­dence in Perisil, but I trust­ed his ad­vice, and I’d liked him, and Loiosh hadn’t made any es­pe­cial­ly nasty com­ments on him.

“I asked Her Majesty, and—”

“Par­don?”

“I asked Her Majesty about it, and she wouldn’t an­swer.”

Del­wick caught him­self and stopped star­ing. “I see.”

“I hope my ef­fort doesn’t make your task more dif­fi­cult.”

He smiled po­lite­ly. “We shall see,” he said.

“So, you’ll look in­to it?”

“Of course.” He seemed gen­uine­ly star­tled that I’d even ask. Those lit­tle coins must have some se­ri­ous au­thor­ity. In which case, why did an ad­vo­cate with of­fices in the base­ment of the House have one to throw around, or choose to use it on me?

Lat­er. Note it, and set it aside.

“How shall I reach you?”

“Ei­ther through Perisil, or at Cas­tle Black.”

“Cas­tle Black? Lord Mor­dran?”

“Mor­rolan.”

“Of course. All right. You’ll be hear­ing from me.”

“Thank you,” I said, stand­ing. “Ah . . .”

“Yes?”

“Is there any­where to eat here, in the Palace? I mean, for those of us who don’t work here?”

He smiled. “Scores. The near­est is just out my door to the right, fol­low the jog to the right, down the stairs, first left.”

“Thank you,” I said, mean­ing it.

He nod­ded as if he couldn’t tell the dif­fer­ence. I sup­pose if you hang around the Court long enough, you lose your abil­ity to de­tect sin­cer­ity.

There was, in­deed, food af­ter a fash­ion; a room with space enough for a bat­tal­ion held about four peo­ple, like a lone­ly jisweed on a rocky hill, and they were eat­ing some­thing dis­pensed by a tiny old Chreotha who seemed to be half asleep. I had uniden­ti­fi­able soup that was too salty, yes­ter­day’s bread, and some­thing that had once been roast beef. I had wa­ter be­cause I didn’t trust her wine. She charged too much. I couldn’t fig­ure why the place seemed so emp­ty.

Loiosh didn’t much like the stuff ei­ther, but he and Rocza ate it hap­pi­ly enough. Well, so did I, come to think of it. To be fair, it was, by this time, mid-​af­ter­noon; I imag­ined around lunchtime the place would be bus­ier, and maybe the food fresh­er.

I fin­ished up and left with a glare at the mer­chant—I won’t call her a cook—that she missed en­tire­ly, and head­ed back to see my ad­vo­cate. Aliera’s ad­vo­cate. The ad­vo­cate.

At this point, I wish to make the ob­ser­va­tion that I had been spend­ing the last sev­er­al years wear­ing my feet out walk­ing about the coun­try­side, and I’ve known vil­lages sep­arat­ed by moun­tain, riv­er, and for­est that weren’t as far apart as a place with­in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace and an­oth­er with­in the House of the Iorich lo­cat­ed next to it. Loiosh says I’m speak­ing fig­ura­tive­ly, and he may be right, but I wouldn’t bet against the house on it.

I did get there even­tu­al­ly, and, won­der of won­ders, he was still there, the door open, look­ing like he nev­er moved. Maybe he didn’t; maybe he had flunkies to do all his run­ning around. I used to have flunkies to do all my run­ning around. I liked it.

I walked in and be­fore I could ask him any­thing he said, “It’s all set up. Would you like to vis­it Aliera?”

Now that, as it hap­pened, wasn’t as easy a ques­tion as it might have sound­ed. But af­ter hes­itat­ing on­ly a mo­ment I said, “Sure. The worst she can do is kill me.”

That earned me an in­quir­ing look which I ig­nored. “Are you com­ing along?” I asked him.

“No, you have to con­vince her to see me.”

“Okay. How did you work it?”

“Her al­leged re­fusal to see ei­ther a friend or an ad­vo­cate could have in­di­cat­ed de­lib­er­ate iso­la­tion on the part of the Em­pire with the co­op­er­ation of the Jus­ticers.”

I stared. “You think so?”

“I said it could.”

“Oh. But you don’t re­al­ly think so?”

“I am most cer­tain­ly not go­ing to an­swer that, and don’t ask it again.”

“Oh. All right. But they be­lieved it?”

“They be­lieved I had grounds for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Ah. All right.”

He nod­ded. “Now, go and see her.”

“Um. Where? How?”

“Up one lev­el, fol­low wrong­wise un­til—here, I’ll write out the di­rec­tions; they’re a bit in­volved.”

They were. His script­ing was painful­ly neat and pre­cise, though he’d been fast enough writ­ing it out. And I must have looked like an id­iot, walk­ing down the hall with two jhereg on my shoul­ders re­peat­ed­ly stop­ping and read­ing the note and look­ing around. But those I passed were ei­ther as po­lite as Is­so­la or as obliv­ious as Athyra, and even­tu­al­ly I got there: a pair of mar­ble pil­lars guard­ed a pair of tall, wide doors en­graved so splen­did­ly with ca­vort­ing iorich that you might not no­tice the doors were bound in iron. You should go see them some­day; ca­vort­ing iorich aren’t some­thing one sees de­pict­ed ev­ery day, and for good rea­son. Be­fore them were four guards who looked like they had no sense of hu­mor, and a cor­po­ral whose job it was to find out if you had good rea­son for want­ing them open.

I con­vinced him by show­ing him that same coin I’d used be­fore, and there was a “clang” fol­lowed by in­vis­ible ser­vants pulling in­vis­ible ropes and the doors opened for me. Mor­rolan worked things bet­ter.

It was a lit­tle odd to walk through those por­tals. For one thing, the oth­er side was more what I was used to; I’d been there be­fore, and a cold shiv­er went through me as I set foot on the plain stone floors. I’m not go­ing to talk about the last time I was in the Iorich dun­geons. And I’m cer­tain­ly not go­ing to talk about the time be­fore that.

Just in­side was a guard sta­tion, like a small hut with glass win­dows in­side the wide cor­ri­dor. There were a cou­ple of couch­es there, I guess for them to sleep, and a ta­ble where the sergeant sat. There was a thick leather-​bound book in front of him. He said, “Your busi­ness?”

“To see Aliera e’Kieron, by re­quest of her ad­vo­cate.”

“Name?”

“Mine, or the ad­vo­cate’s?”

“Yours.”

“Szurke.”

“Seal?”

I dug it out and showed it to him. He nod­ded. “I was told you’d be by. You must ei­ther leave your weapons here, or sign and seal these doc­uments and take an oath promis­ing—”

“I know. I’ll sign the doc­uments and take the oath.”

He nod­ded, and we went through the pro­ce­dure that per­mit­ted me to keep La­dy Tel­dra, whom I was not about to give up. When ev­ery­thing was fi­nal­ly done, he said, “Limper, show him to num­ber eight.”

The wom­an who stood up and ges­tured to me was a bit short and had a pale com­plex­ion and showed no signs of limp­ing; no doubt there was a sto­ry there.