Steven Brust - Iorich

“Find peo­ple who saw or heard things, and will swear to it be­neath the Orb.”

“Oh, and where would I—oh.”

“Right. But stay away from the Em­press.”

“Great. And what will you be do­ing?”

“Same as you, on­ly to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. And I’ll be re­view­ing the laws, and look­ing through de­ci­sions and case his­to­ries. You aren’t go­ing to be too use­ful for that part.”

“I imag­ine not.” I stood and head­ed out.

Let me ex­plain again some­thing I’ve al­ready men­tioned: The way an as­sas­sin op­er­ates in­volves pick­ing a time and a place, set­ting up what­ev­er is nec­es­sary (which usu­al­ly means mak­ing sure you have a good edge on your knife), and strik­ing. If for some rea­son things go wrong—like, say, the guy gets sus­pi­cious about the hand­writ­ing of a note—then you go back and start over. All of which means that no one was go­ing to be mak­ing a move on me for a day at least. Which means I should have been able to re­lax as I left the wait­ing room and head­ed to­ward the Palace.

Yeah, well, you try it some­time and see how re­laxed you are.

Loiosh was pret­ty tense too, ei­ther be­cause he sensed that I was, or be­cause he knew what was go­ing on. It’s pret­ty crazy, that feel­ing of walk­ing through a big, wide cor­ri­dor, your boots echo­ing, al­most no one in sight, think­ing you’re safe, but feel­ing any­thing but. I stopped just in­side the door to cross the wide pave­ment to the Iorich Wing, and let Loiosh and Rocza ex­plore care­ful­ly. The trees that dot­ted the pave­ment were too thin for any­one to hide be­hind, but I stud­ied them any­way.

I kept an even walk­ing pace across the long, long, long paved prom­enade be­tween the House of the Iorich and the Palace.

“Boss, no one is go­ing to make a move in the mid­dle of the day, out in the open, in front of the Im­pe­ri­al Palace.”

“Who are you try­ing to con­vince?”

“Me, of course.”

“Just check­ing.”

“But you have to fig­ure you’re be­ing watched.”

“I know.”

I got in­side, and start­ed to­ward the Im­pe­ri­al Wing. I had the idea that it would be fun to count the num­ber of dis­dain­ful looks I got on the way, but I for­got to ac­tu­al­ly do it. I’m still not sure how I got lost; I thought I had the route mem­orized. I wasn’t even aware of hav­ing gone wrong un­til I stepped in­to a large open area I hadn’t re­al­ized ex­ist­ed, and heard the drone of voic­es and saw strange and won­drous things: a shoe­mak­er’s shop, a tai­lor’s, a wine sell­er’s, a sor­cer­er’s sup­ply, a sil­ver­smith. The ceil­ing, if you can call it that, was high and domed, and some­how the dome’s sil­very white col­or made it seem even high­er.

“Boss, there’s a whole town here.”

“I think I should have gone up that flight of stairs I went down.”

“Or maybe down the one you went up?”

“This is a whole city.”

“There’s prob­ably an inn with bet­ter food than that place yes­ter­day.”

“I can al­ways count on you to get right to the im­por­tant stuff.”

“The im­por­tant stuff is find­ing your way back to where you want to be.”

“The im­por­tant stuff is not to get killed. This is a good place to shine some­one up.”

“Oh,” he said. And, “It is, isn’t it?”

“It’s still too soon for them to have set any­thing up, but—”

“We’re watch­ing, Boss.”

I tried to be in­con­spic­uous—which I’m not bad at, by the way, even with a pair of jhereg on my shoul­ders—and looked for some­one to ask di­rec­tions of.

A girl who was too young to work for the Jhereg came along, car­ry­ing a box full of some­thing that steamed. Prob­ably some­one’s lunch that I was go­ing to make cold.

“I beg your par­don, la­dy,” I said. Teck­la es­pe­cial­ly like be­ing called “la­dy” when they’re too young to be. “Can you tell me how to get out of here?”

She stopped. “Out of where?”

“To the Palace.”

“You’re in the Palace, sir.” Her tone said she thought I was de­ranged or else stupid.

“The Im­pe­ri­al Wing.”

“Oh.” She ges­tured with her chin. “That way un­til you see the three pil­lars, then left to the wide stair­way, and up. You’ll be right there.”

“You have my thanks.”

There were streets, build­ings, push­carts with food, and I think I even saw a beg­gar. What I didn’t see were three pil­lars, un­til I fi­nal­ly no­ticed what looked like an inn in minia­ture—chairs and ta­bles set in a small court­yard near a long bar—that spread be­neath a hang­ing sign show­ing three pil­lars. Yeah, all right.

Af­ter that it was easy enough to find the stair­way (I climbed a lot of stairs, but not as many as it seemed I should have climbed to get above that domed ceil­ing; there’s some weird ge­om­etry with that place), and a bit lat­er I found a page in Tias­sa liv­ery who was kind enough to point me in the right di­rec­tion. Ten min­utes or so lat­er I was once more in an area that looked fa­mil­iar—for the sym­bols of the Im­pe­ri­al Phoenix that marked ev­ery door, if for no oth­er rea­son.

It was the mid­dle of the day, and it was busy—Phoenix Guards look­ing im­pas­sive, ad­vis­ers look­ing se­ri­ous, ad­ju­tants look­ing im­por­tant, courtiers look­ing court­ly, and all of them mov­ing past me like I was stand­ing in the mid­dle of a stream that flowed around me as if I were of no in­ter­est, and it might sweep me off if it felt in­clined. I looked for some­one who wasn’t in a hur­ry, be­cause rush­ing down a hall­way filled with teem­ing func­tionar­ies isn’t the best way to have a con­ver­sa­tion.

Af­ter about fif­teen min­utes, I gave up and start­ed drift­ing along in what I was pret­ty sure was the di­rec­tion of the throne room.

“Not to make you ner­vous or any­thing, Boss, but some­one who could nail you here, right in the Im­pe­ri­al Wing, would earn him­self quite the rep­uta­tion.”

“Yeah.”

The hall­ways of the Im­pe­ri­al Wing near the throne room are wide and tall and cop­per-​col­ored, and you can’t imag­ine there be­ing a time of day or night when they aren’t full of peo­ple scur­ry­ing about look­ing im­por­tant. Here and there were wide arch­ways or nar­row doors, and from time to time some­one will van­ish in­to one or pop out and en­ter the flow. I didn’t go out of my way to call at­ten­tion to my­self, but I didn’t try to fit in, ei­ther, be­cause that would have in­volved be­com­ing part of the con­stant move­ment, and I want­ed to take some time to just ob­serve.

Even­tu­al­ly I found a place I rec­og­nized—I’d eat­en there yes­ter­day. I didn’t care to make that mis­take again, but a num­ber of oth­ers weren’t so par­tic­ular: this time the place was do­ing a pret­ty good busi­ness. There was a low, steady hum of voic­es punc­tu­at­ed by met­al trays and uten­sils.

I stood off the side for a while and just watched. On the oth­er side, all alone at a ta­ble, there was a Dra­gaer­an of mid­dle years—say a thou­sand or so—who had the pale com­plex­ion and round face of the House of the Teck­la. I stud­ied him for a mo­ment; he was drink­ing slow­ly, and seemed re­laxed and maybe lost in thought. I ap­proached and said, “Mind if I join you?”

He jumped a bit and start­ed to rise, took in my mus­tache, the jhereg on my shoul­ders, and my sword. He hes­itat­ed and frowned; I ges­tured to him to re­main sit­ting to make it easy for him. Teck­la are nev­er ex­act­ly sure whether they are above or be­low a no­ble­man who hap­pens to be an East­ern­er—we throw off all of their cal­cu­la­tions just by ex­ist­ing.