Steven Brust - Iorich

“Why not?”

“I as­sume the ques­tion is rhetor­ical,” said Aliera.

She looked away and I wait­ed. I had some more cider. I love hav­ing a drink in my hand, be­cause it gives me some­thing to do while I’m wait­ing, and be­cause I look re­al­ly good hold­ing it, shift­ing from foot to foot, like the wait­er when the cus­tomer can’t de­cide be­tween the shrimp souf­flé and the lamb Fe­nar­ian. Okay, maybe I don’t look so good af­ter all. I went over and sat down in a chair fac­ing her, and took an­oth­er sip. Much bet­ter.

“Yes,” she said.

“Ex­cuse me?”

“The ques­tion was rhetor­ical.”

“Oh.” Then, “Mine wasn’t.”

She set­tled back a lit­tle on­to the couch. I let the si­lence con­tin­ue to see if she’d fi­nal­ly say some­thing. She did. “I don’t know.” She sound­ed qui­et, re­flec­tive. It was un­usu­al for her. I kept my mouth shut, sort of in hon­or of the nov­el­ty and to see if any­thing else would emerge.

“It isn’t that sim­ple,” she said, as if I’d been the oth­er par­ty in what­ev­er in­ter­nal di­alogue was go­ing on.

“Ex­plain, then.”

“You keep want­ing to make it friend­ship ver­sus pol­itics.”

I nod­ded to in­di­cate that I had no idea what she was talk­ing about.

“But it’s nev­er that clear-​cut. It’s all about how bad this would be, and what are the chances of that hap­pen­ing, and how sure are you that this or that will or won’t work.”

I nod­ded again. Hav­ing Aliera e’Kieron in an ex­pan­sive mood was too good a chance to mess up by speak­ing.

“But she wouldn’t have done it un­less—” She broke off and glared at me.

“Un­less what?” I said.

“Just shut up.”

“Don’t feel like it,” I said. “Will you talk to an ad­vo­cate?”

“Why?”

“So they don’t, I don’t know, kill you or some­thing?”

“You think I care about that?”

“I seem to re­call you fight­ing once as if you did. Maybe you were fak­ing it, though.”

“You know damned well that’s dif­fer­ent.”

“You know I’ve al­ways had trou­ble see­ing fine dis­tinc­tions.”

“You’ve al­ways had trou­ble see­ing any­thing that wasn’t of im­me­di­ate prac­ti­cal val­ue.”

“You say that like there’s some­thing wrong with it.”

She made a sound of dis­gust.

“All right,” I said. “Now prob­ably isn’t the time for phi­los­ophy. Will you talk to an ad­vo­cate?”

“No,” she said.

I took it as equiv­ocal.

“Afraid you might be found in­no­cent?”

She looked at me, then looked off. “Go away.” Am­bigu­ous.

“Sure. Mean­while, what do you know or sus­pect that would have led to this, ah, sit­ua­tion, that you don’t want re­vealed?”

“I’m not go­ing to tell you any­thing, Vlad. Leave me alone.”

It was hard to know how to re­act when she was be­ing so hes­itant about her wish­es.

“You’ve been ar­rest­ed for rea­sons of State,” I said as if I were sure. “You may not know what they are, but you know that’s what it is. And you’re afraid that if you de­fend your­self it will in­ter­fere with what­ev­er the Em­press is do­ing.”

“Drop dead.”

“It must not have oc­curred to you that the Em­press is count­ing on you to de­fend your­self, oth­er­wise she’d nev­er have used this de­vice to ac­com­plish what­ev­er she’s try­ing to ac­com­plish.”

She looked at me, and there was a flick­er of in­ter­est in her eyes. “How would you know?”

“She told me. She all but told me, by what she wouldn’t tell me.”

“You spoke to her?”

“I can do that. I have an Im­pe­ri­al ti­tle, you know.”

“And she said—”

“I got the feel­ing there were a lot of things go­ing on she couldn’t tell me.”

“You got the feel­ing.”

“Right.”

“So you’re guess­ing.”

“Less than cer­tain­ty, more than guess­work.”

She made a gen­er­al sound of dis­gust.

I wait­ed. Drag­onlords are much too stub­born to be con­vinced of any­thing by ar­gu­ment, so the trick to deal­ing with them is to avoid say­ing some­thing that will get you killed un­til they come around to your opin­ion on their own. This is more true of Aliera than most.

She said, “If Her Majesty had not wished for my con­vic­tion, she wouldn’t have be­gun the ar­rest pro­ceed­ings.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

Those were the last words spo­ken for some few min­utes. Spo­ken aloud, I mean; Loiosh spoke a bit in­to my mind, most­ly mak­ing ob­ser­va­tions about Aliera’s char­ac­ter. I’d heard them be­fore. I’d said them be­fore.

“I wish to reem­pha­size the one im­por­tant thing,” I said even­tu­al­ly.

“What. Is. That?”

“If you don’t have an ad­vo­cate, it’ll be pret­ty ob­vi­ous to ev­ery­one that you’re de­lib­er­ate­ly sac­ri­fic­ing your­self. If you are de­lib­er­ate­ly sac­ri­fic­ing your­self, that is li­able to un­do a great deal of what the Em­press is try­ing to ac­com­plish.”

She stared at me. I think she knew I was just try­ing to ma­neu­ver her in­to do­ing what I want­ed; the trou­ble was that it was a valid ar­gu­ment. Even­tu­al­ly she said, “Is the ad­vo­cate any good?”

“How would I know?” I said. “Prob­ably not.”

She glared. “All right. I’ll see him.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“Get out of here.”

That time I did.

Iorich

4

La­dy Otria e’Ter­ics re­port­ed that, while no weapons were found on the scene, save those in use by the Im­pe­ri­al army and so marked, and three per­son­al, un­marked weapons claimed by same, there were sev­er­al im­ple­ments in or near the cot­tage that could have been uti­lized as weapons. See list Ap­pendix 12. Up­on be­ing asked if there was ev­idence that they had been so uti­lized, La­dy Otria e’Ter­ics de­clined to an­swer. See De­po­si­tion 9.

There’s an inn called Dancer’s Rest not far from the Iorich Wing. It’s one of those places where they fig­ure if they fill the court­yard with mar­ble stat­ues and foun­tains and flow­ers that are bloom­ing off-​sea­son, they can charge two orbs a night for a nine-​cop­per room. It works, I guess. At least, I paid it. Some of the stat­ues were pret­ty. And, you know, when you’ve been away from civ­iliza­tion for a while, you val­ue a nine-​cop­per room at any price.

It had the oth­er ad­van­tage that, by Jhereg cus­tom, any­one stay­ing there was con­sid­ered at home. In the­ory, I should be safe there. In prac­tice, since one of the things the Jhereg want­ed me for was break­ing a rule like that, I prob­ably shouldn’t bet my soul on it.

It cost an­oth­er orb to have food sent up to my room, which had a win­dow from which I could see the up­per reach­es of the Iorich and the Chreotha Wings, the first with its sig­na­ture bell tow­er, the lat­ter with its mas­sive wall of bas-​re­lief jun­gle plants. I could see them well, be­cause the win­dow was glass. That’s the sort of thing you get for two orbs a night.

The bed was con­sid­er­ably soft­er than the ground I’d got­ten used to sleep­ing on, and there was even enough room to turn with my arms stretched out. That’s the thing about rooms near the Palace: They’re small; prob­ably de­signed to make the Palace seem big­ger, I don’t know.

“You ev­er plan­ning to fall asleep, Boss?”

“The walls are too thick. It’s too qui­et. I’m used to things chit­ter­ing and rustling all night.”