Steven Brust - Iorich

I thought about walk­ing to the Drag­on Wing and see­ing if I could have a long chat with No­rathar e’Lanya, the War­lord and Drag­on Heir. Once, she’d been a Jhereg as­sas­sin. She’d worked with the East­ern­er who be­came my wife.

My son would be about eight now. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been four. A lot goes on in those four years. By now—

No.

I stood still in a hall­way deep in the heart of the Palace that con­trolled the mighty Em­pire of Dra­gaer­ans, let­ting hu­man­ity (to use the term loose­ly) flow around me, and tried to con­vince my­self to at­tend to busi­ness. See­ing Cawti and my son would make me mis­er­able and put them in dan­ger. So, nat­ural­ly, it was ex­act­ly what I want­ed to do.

Cawti had named him Vlad No­rathar.

I sud­den­ly had the feel­ing that if I met with No­rathar—I mean, the War­lord—I’d smack her on the side of the head. Prob­ably best not to talk to her just now.

“Boss?”

“Mm­mm?”

“We should vis­it Sethra.”

“I know.”

“You don’t want to?”

“Part­ly that. Part­ly, I don’t want the whole Jhereg know­ing I went there. Cas­tle Black is one thing, but Dzur Moun­tain—”

“You think you’d be in dan­ger in Dzur Moun­tain?”

“No, not dan­ger. I just don’t feel com­fort­able hav­ing the Jhereg know I’m there; at least right away.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe there’s a way. . . okay, let’s do it.”

“Uh, how, Boss?”

“How what? How do we get there? I have a clever and de­vi­ous plan.”

“Oh, great.”

I worked my way around to the Athyra Wing and, even­tu­al­ly, out in­to the world. It was bright out there, mak­ing me think of the East where there’s no over­cast to pro­tect you from the Fur­nace. I blinked and wait­ed for my eyes to ad­just.

The Athyra Wing is usu­al­ly pret­ty qui­et and to­day was no ex­cep­tion; that meant that just in case there were any as­sas­sins who’d been fol­low­ing me wait­ing for an op­por­tu­ni­ty, I’d see them—par­don me, Loiosh would see them in plen­ty of time. I set out on the Street of the Athyra, turn­ing to pass the ob­sid­ian mono­lith (oh, yes, we’re so im­pres­sive) of the House of the Athyra on my right, con­tin­uing just a few score of yards be­yond it to Mawg Way. “Mawg,” I was once told, means “mer­chant” in some dis­used lan­guage that goes back to be­fore there were any such things as mer­chants. That makes you won­der, you know? I mean, “mawg.” An ug­ly word. Where did they get “mer­chant” out of that? Maybe there are peo­ple who study things like that. If so, they’re prob­ably Athyra.

A few doors down, on the left side, was a win­dow­less cot­tage built of round stones. It had a thick door bound in iron strips; the door was stand­ing open. Above the door­way was a par­tic­ular­ly de­tailed sign in which an Athyra was fly­ing over a map of the Em­pire.

“Boss, you aren’t se­ri­ous.”

“Why not?”

“Ev­er heard of the Left Hand of the Jhereg, Boss? You know, the sor­cer­ess­es?”

“Sounds fa­mil­iar.”

“Boss, the Left Hand doesn’t like you. And even if they did, the Jhereg could hire one of them to watch places like this. As soon as you tele­port, a sor­cer­er can. . . what are you laugh­ing about?”

“Just watch me, Loiosh.”

I went in. The en­try room was just big enough, and held a door op­po­site. A young la­dy of the House of the Athyra sat in a wood­en chair fac­ing the door, look­ing se­ri­ous and mys­ti­cal and very busi­ness-​like: she may as well have had “ap­pren­tice” sten­ciled on her fore­head.

She looked me over, de­cid­ed on just how no­ble I was (I was an East­ern­er, but I dared to wear a sword open­ly), and in­clined her head slight­ly. “Yes, sir?”

“How much is a tele­port?”

“One im­pe­ri­al, to a known lo­ca­tion.”

“How much to have the sor­cer­er come to me?”

“My lord? Oh, you mean to tele­port from some­where else? Two im­pe­ri­als, if it’s with­in the city.”

“And how much to have it done sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, and un­trace­ably? And add in a short-​term spell to make me sor­cer­ous­ly in­vis­ible.”

“How short-​term?”

“A minute. Half a minute.”

“Ten.”

“That’s fine. My name is Vladimir Tal­tos, I’ll be go­ing to Dzur Moun­tain, and I wish to have a sor­cer­er meet me in the Tem­ple of Ver­ra on Wa­ter­hill in South Adri­lankha.”

Her nose wrin­kled and she hes­itat­ed, look­ing for an ex­cuse to say no. Even­tu­al­ly she said, “I’ll have to ask.”

“I’ll wait here,” I said.

She gave me a sus­pi­cious look be­fore go­ing through the door. It isn’t like there was any­thing in the room to steal. She re­turned a mo­ment lat­er, asked for my name again. This time she wrote it on a small slab of some sort, and nod­ded. “She will meet you.”

“Want the mon­ey now?”

“If you please.”

I put two five-​im­pe­ri­al coins in­to her hand and sketched a bow. I opened the door, stand­ing far enough to the side not to be open to any­thing un­pleas­ant that might shoot through it, but not so far as to make it ob­vi­ous what I was do­ing. Loiosh flew out; I’d have loved to see the look on the ap­pren­tice’s face, but my back was to her. Loiosh said it was safe, so I stepped out on­to the street.

Crowd­ed streets make it hard­er to set some­thing up re­li­ably, but eas­ier to get the drop on your tar­get, and eas­ier to get away safe­ly af­ter­ward. Emp­ty streets, of course, have the op­po­site prob­lems. I com­pro­mised and took a mix of both, mak­ing my way to the Chain Bridge and so across to South Adri­lankha.

“So, Loiosh, you get it?”

“I know what you’re think­ing—the Jhereg won’t go af­ter you in a tem­ple.”

“Right.”

“But you still have to get to the tem­ple.”

“I have com­plete con­fi­dence in you.”

One thing that can­not be done psy­chi­cal­ly is mut­ter, but Loiosh took a pret­ty good run at it.

There are scores of shrines to Ver­ra in the city, and sev­er­al tem­ples to her in South Adri­lankha. The one I’d cho­sen was a low stonework af­fair, set back from the road, with a flag­stone walk flanked by scrawny trees. More­over, it was in a neigh­bor­hood with a lot of space be­tween the hous­es. Put it all to­geth­er, and there were no good places for as­sas­sins to hide. Even Loiosh grudg­ing­ly agreed, af­ter a few min­utes fly­ing around, that I could go ahead and ven­ture up to the doors—af­ter that, he made no guar­an­tees.

Open­ing the door was scary. I didn’t care how stupid I looked; I lis­tened, stood to the side, and was mov­ing when I flung it open.

No one was there. Yeah, I looked stupid. I might have got­ten some fun­ny glances from peo­ple pass­ing on the street, but I didn’t wait around to see, I just stepped in­side.

It was a sin­gle room, with a black al­tar op­po­site the door, about ten paces from me. I knew from mem­ory that there were small holes cut in­to the al­tar for can­dles, though I couldn’t see them from here. Be­yond that, the place was ut­ter­ly bare. The priest here be­lieved that one should bring noth­ing to the God­dess but the de­sire to serve, or some­thing like that. I don’t re­mem­ber ex­act­ly how he’d put it; it was years ago. Ser­vices here were held two or three times a week, I for­get the times and dates, and on the ob­vi­ous feast days.

I po­si­tioned my­self be­hind the al­tar and wait­ed for the sor­cer­er—or an as­sas­sin, if I’d mis­judged the Jhereg. Sor­ry, don’t mean to be mys­te­ri­ous. There are rules to how we op­er­ate: you don’t kill some­one in front of his fam­ily, you don’t mess with him in his home, you don’t touch him in a tem­ple or at a shrine.