Steven Brust - Iorich

The thing is, all of these rules have, at one time or an­oth­er, been vi­olat­ed; one rea­son I was in trou­ble with the Jhereg was for vi­olat­ing one of them. I’d had a bad day that day. The point is, I was cal­cu­lat­ing on them fol­low­ing the rules, at least this time, and for a while. If I was wrong, things were li­able to get ex­cit­ing.

I got to be ner­vous for about twen­ty min­utes be­fore the sor­cer­ess showed up. No as­sas­sins came with her. Score one for me. She had the dark com­plex­ion of the Athyra but her hair was such a light brown it was al­most blond, pro­duc­ing a slight­ly startling ef­fect. There was a vague look in her eyes that was com­mon if not uni­ver­sal among Athyra.

She gave the place a half-​in­ter­est­ed and dis­dain­ful look, then nod­ded at me. “Lord Tal­tos?” she said.

I nod­ded.

“Dzur Moun­tain,” she said. “Un­trace­able, with a brief lin­ger­ing cloud.”

I nod­ded again.

She looked like she might be con­sid­er­ing of­fer­ing me ad­vice on go­ing there, but she must have de­cid­ed not to, and just said, “Are you ready?”

I pulled the amulet from around my neck and put it away, thus, no doubt, alert­ing a dozen or so Jhereg sor­cer­ers. “Ready,” I said.

She didn’t even ges­ture, as far as I could see; for an in­stant the room seemed about to spin, but then it went through a fa­mil­iar slow fade, go­ing through all the col­ors from white to al­most-​white; in­ter­minable sec­onds went by when I was in two places at once, and I could feel my­self push­ing air out of the way. In that time, it sud­den­ly hit me that she might have been bribed, and be de­liv­er­ing me to an as­sas­sin. In that emp­ty, lin­ger­ing time-​space, I be­came so con­vinced of it that I was al­ready reach­ing for a dag­ger when the world set­tled down to a fa­mil­iar place on the low­er slopes of Dzur Moun­tain.

My first re­ac­tion was re­lief, my sec­ond was an­noy­ance. Yeah, this place was fa­mil­iar—I knew how to reach Sethra’s home from this spot: it in­volved climb­ing more stairs than ought to ex­ist in the world. I won­dered if the sor­cer­ess had brought me to this en­trance de­lib­er­ate­ly. I still won­der.

I re­placed the amulet then en­tered through a wood­en door that wasn’t near­ly as flim­sy as it ap­peared. You don’t clap when en­ter­ing Dzur Moun­tain—de­pend­ing on which door you use, at any rate. I’ve won­dered about that, and I think it’s be­cause in some way the moun­tain it­self isn’t her home, on­ly the parts of it that she claimed as her res­idence; and so I passed through the first door in­to the moun­tain, and start­ed climb­ing stairs. It seemed much loud­er this time, my feet on the stone stair­way made echoes and echoes of echoes; my mem­ory was do­ing the same thing.

You don’t need to hear about it; it was a long, long way up. Part­way up, I passed the place where Mor­rolan and I had al­most slaugh­tered each oth­er; it both­ered me a lit­tle that I couldn’t iden­ti­fy the ex­act spot.

Even­tu­al­ly I reached the top, clapped, and opened the door with­out wait­ing for a re­ply. Her res­idence doesn’t seem all that big once you’re aware of the size of the moun­tain; but then there’s prob­ably a lot I haven’t seen. And, at her age, I imag­ine she needs lots of space to store stuff she’s ac­cu­mu­lat­ed.

I wan­dered a bit, hop­ing to run in­to her, or her ser­vant, or some­one. The halls—dark stone here, pale wood there—all echoed strange­ly and gave me the sud­den feel­ing that Dzur Moun­tain was de­sert­ed. It wasn’t, ac­tu­al­ly—I came across her in one of the small­er sit­ting rooms that she put here and there. She was drink­ing a glass of wine and read­ing a thick, heavy book with a cov­er I couldn’t see. She wore a black gar­ment that seemed to wrap around her, pinned with a gold or cop­per bracelet at the left arm, and loop­ing through a jew­eled neck­lace high on her chest, with an­oth­er loop on her right hip with sim­ilar jew­els. She said, “Hel­lo, Vlad,” with­out look­ing up. I took that as a cue to stand there like an id­iot, so I did, and present­ly she marked the book with some­thing that looked like it had sil­ver trac­ings on it and gave me a nod. “I’ve been ex­pect­ing you.”

“It takes a while for word to reach the out­lands. That’s a nice dress you’re wear­ing. Are those sap­phires on the neck­lace?”

“A gift from the Necro­mancer. Have a seat. Tukko will bring you wine.”

I sat in a chair that faced her at a slight an­gle. “And I will drink it. Good. We have a plan.”

A cour­tesy smile came and went.

Tukko showed up with wine and a scowl. The wine was less of­fen­sive; a strong­ly fla­vored red that should have had some heav­ily spiced meat to go with it, but I didn’t com­plain. I sipped, nod­ded, and said, “So, what can you tell me?”

“I was go­ing to ask you that.”

“Heh. I just came in from out of town.”

“Yes, and found an ad­vo­cate, got Aliera to ac­cept him—which ought to rate you as a mas­ter sor­cer­er—and you’ve been snoop­ing around the Im­pe­ri­al Palace since then. So—what can you tell me?” She smiled sweet­ly.

I stared at her, re­mem­ber­ing things about her I some­times for­get. Then I said, “If you were try­ing to im­press me, it worked.”

“Per­mit me my small plea­sures.”

“I’d nev­er think of deny­ing them to you,” I said. “All right. In brief, the Em­press seems to be pros­ecut­ing Aliera to dis­tract at­ten­tion from some mas­sacre in some lit­tle town no one cares about. The mys­tery is that she picked Aliera, who I’ve al­ways fig­ured was a close friend. The charge, as far as I can tell, is non­sense.”

She nod­ded slow­ly. “It isn’t as if the Em­press hasn’t known about Aliera’s stud­ies for years.”

“Right.”

“When you spoke to Her Majesty, what was the Orb do­ing?”

“Eh? Float­ing over her head.”

“I mean, what col­or was it?”

“Green at first. Or­ange when I an­noyed her. It turned blue around the end of the con­ver­sa­tion. She said she had to go do some­thing.”

“What shade of blue?”

“Um, shade?”

“Did it seem cold, icy?”

“Sor­ry, I don’t have that good a mem­ory for col­ors.”

“All right,” she said.

“Can you ex­plain—?”

“Not re­al­ly. Just try­ing to learn ev­ery­thing I can. I wish I’d been there.”

“Yes. That brings up an­oth­er in­ter­est­ing point.” I cleared my throat. “Why weren’t you?”

“Beg par­don?”

“That’s what I re­al­ly want­ed to ask you. Why is this my job?”

She frowned. “No one is forc­ing you—”

“That’s not my point. Aliera has friends com­ing out her—Aliera has a lot of friends. Most of them are more in­flu­en­tial than an ex-​Jhereg East­ern­er on the run. What’s go­ing on here?”

She looked away from me. When ev­ery­thing in Sethra’s home is very qui­et, there is a soft, con­tin­uous sound, as of air slow­ly mov­ing down a tun­nel. It seemed to me I’d no­ticed it or al­most no­ticed it be­fore.

Fi­nal­ly she said, “You’ve spent a day or two with the Jus­ticers now. What do you think?”

That didn’t seem to have any­thing to do with my ques­tion, but I’ve known Sethra long enough to know that not ev­ery change of sub­ject is a change of sub­ject.

“They’re pret­ty ob­ses­sive,” I said.

“About what?”

“About the law, and its quirky lit­tle ins and outs.”