Steven Brust - Iorich

One thing about the dun­geons is that un­like the rest of the Iorich Wing, they were pret­ty sim­ple: a big square of doors, guard sta­tions at all four cor­ners, stair­ways in the mid­dle. It might in­volve a lot of walk­ing, but you wouldn’t get lost.

We took a stair­way up. I’d nev­er gone up from the main lev­el be­fore. The first thing I no­ticed was that the cells, though still made of the same iron-​bound wood, were much far­ther apart than the ones I’d had res­idence in. And they had clap­per ropes, for all love.

Limper used the rope, then dug out a key and used that with­out wait­ing for a re­sponse. I guess they felt that the oc­cu­pants of these elite cells de­served warn­ing about vis­itors, but still didn’t get a choice about whether they were ad­mit­ted. That made me feel a lit­tle bet­ter.

She opened the door and said, “You have an hour. If you want to leave soon­er, pull the knob at­tached to the in­side of the door.” I stepped in­side and the door closed be­hind me with a thud. I heard the bolt slide in­to place while I looked around.

When I was grow­ing up, the flat where my fa­ther and I lived was a great deal small­er than the “cell” Aliera was in, and con­sid­er­ably less lux­uri­ous. The floor was thick Se­ri­oli car­pet, with wavy pat­terns and hard-​an­gled lines all formed out of dots. The fur­nish­ings were all of the same blond hard­wood, and the light was from a chan­de­lier with enough can­dles to have il­lu­mi­nat­ed about fifty of the kind of cells I’d stayed in. I re­fer, of course, on­ly to the room I could see; there were at least two doors lead­ing off to oth­er rooms. Maybe one was a privy, and it was on­ly a two-​room suite.

I didn’t see Aliera at first; she was loung­ing on a long couch that her plain, black mil­itary garb blend­ed in­to; al­though I re­al­ly ought to have seen the sparks shoot­ing from her eyes as she gave me the sort of kind, friend­ly, wel­com­ing look I ex­pect­ed.

“What, by the thorns in Barlen’s ass, do you want?”

“Can we just let that oath stay un­ex­am­ined, Boss?”

“It’s al­ready gone, Loiosh.”

It was, too; be­cause while I was still search­ing for an an­swer, she said, “I didn’t give you per­mis­sion to vis­it.”

“Your ad­vo­cate ar­ranged it.”

“I don’t have an ad­vo­cate.”

“Turns out you do.”

“In­deed?” she said in a tone that would have put a lay­er of frost on Wynak’s burn­ing pri­vate parts.

“Some le­gal trick in­volved. I don’t un­der­stand that stuff.”

“And I have no say in the mat­ter?”

“You had no say in be­ing put here,” I said, shrug­ging.

“Very well,” she said. “Since they have tak­en Pathfind­er from me, if he dares show his face, I shall have to see what I can do with my bare hands.”

I nod­ded. “I knew you’d show sense.”

She glared. “Do you know why I don’t kill you right now?”

“Yes,” I said. “Be­cause to do so, you’d have to stand up. Once en­ter­ing the Iorich dun­geons, you are cut off from the Orb, and so you can’t lev­itate, so I’d see how short you re­al­ly are, and you couldn’t take the hu­mil­ia­tion. Go­ing to of­fer me some­thing to drink?” Just so you know, it had been years since she’d done that lev­itat­ing bit; I just said it to an­noy her.

She ges­tured with her head. “On the buf­fet. Help your­self.”

I did, to a hard cider that was pret­ty good, though it want­ed to be cold­er. I took a chair across from her and smiled pleas­ant­ly in­to her glare.

“So,” I said. “What’s new?”

Her re­sponse was more mar­tial than la­dy­like.

“Yes,” I said. “That part I sort of picked up on. But I was won­der­ing about the de­tails.”

“De­tails.” She said it like the word tast­ed bad.

“You were ar­rest­ed,” I said, “for the il­le­gal study and prac­tice—”

She had some sug­ges­tions about what I could do with my sum­ma­ry of her case.

I was com­ing to the con­clu­sion that she wasn’t in the best of moods for con­ver­sa­tion. I sipped some cider, let it roll around on my tongue, and looked around the room. She even had win­dows. They had bars on them, but they were re­al win­dows. When I was in “Jhereg stor­age” I didn’t have any win­dows. And they had done some­thing that pre­vent­ed psy­chic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, though I’d still been able to talk to Loiosh, which put me in a bet­ter po­si­tion than most.

“There is, I think, more go­ing on here than just the vi­ola­tion of a law.”

She stared at me.

I said, “You’ve been do­ing this for years, and ev­ery­one knows it. Why ar­rest you for it now? There has to be some­thing po­lit­ical go­ing on.”

“You think?”

I said, “Just catch­ing my­self up out loud.”

“Fine. Can you do it else­where? If there is any­one I want to see right now, it isn’t you.”

“Who is it?”

“Pathfind­er.”

“Oh. Well, yes.” I could imag­ine one miss­ing one’s Great Weapon. I touched the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra.

“Please leave,” she said.

“Naw,” I said.

She glared.

I said, “I need to get the de­tails if I’m go­ing to do any­thing about it. And I am go­ing to do some­thing about it.”

“Why?” She pret­ty much spat the word.

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “You know why. To gain the moral high ground on you. It’s what I live for. Just the idea of you ow­ing me—”

“Oh, shut up.”

I did, and took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pon­der. I need­ed an­oth­er way in. Once, years ago, I’d seen the room in Cas­tle Black where the Necro­mancer lived, if it could be called a room. It could hard­ly be called a clos­et. There was space for her to stand, and that was it. I couldn’t help but com­ment on how small it was, and she looked puz­zled for a mo­ment, then said, “Oh, but you on­ly per­ceive three di­men­sions, don’t you?” Yes, I’m afraid that’s all I per­ceive. And my usu­al way of per­ceiv­ing wasn’t go­ing to con­vince Aliera to tell me what was go­ing on.

“What are they feed­ing you here?”

She looked at me.

I said, “When I was here, I got this sort of soup with a few bread crusts float­ing in it. I think they may have waved a chick­en at it. I was just won­der­ing if they were treat­ing you any bet­ter.”

“When were you here?”

“A few times. Not here, ex­act­ly. Same build­ing, dif­fer­ent suite. Mine wasn’t so well ap­point­ed.”

“What, that gives you moral su­pe­ri­or­ity?”

“No, I get my moral su­pe­ri­or­ity from hav­ing been guilty of what they ar­rest­ed me for, and walk­ing out free a bit lat­er.”

She sniffed.

I said, “Well, a kind of moral su­pe­ri­or­ity any­way.”

She mut­tered some­thing about Jhereg. I imag­ine it wasn’t com­pli­men­ta­ry.

“But then,” I said, “you’re guilty too. Tech­ni­cal­ly, any­way. So I guess—”

“You know so much about it, don’t you?”

I got one of those quick flash­es of mem­ory you get, this one of me ly­ing on my back, un­able to move, while bits and pieces of the world turned in­to some­thing that ought not to ex­ist. “Not so much,” I said, “but more than I should.”

“I’ll agree with that.”

“The point is, what would make the Em­press sud­den­ly de­cide that a law she was turn­ing a blind eye to was now—”

“Ask her.”

“She prob­ably won’t an­swer me,” I said.

“And you think I will?”