Steven Brust - Iorich

Vlad No­rathar said, “That isn’t fair.”

“No,” said Cawti. “It isn’t.”

I re­sist­ed the urge to make some trite re­mark about how life wasn’t fair, and in­stead let the kid think about it.

He pulled a ly­orn out of the box, held it in one hand with the horse in the oth­er and stud­ied them care­ful­ly. Then he put the horse down and be­gan play­ing with the ly­orn’s horn, push­ing it in and out. It seemed to me he was still think­ing about our con­ver­sa­tion, but maybe that was my imag­ina­tion.

I said, “Kra­gar would like to meet him, too.”

She frowned. “I have no ob­jec­tion, but an­oth­er time would be bet­ter.”

“All right.”

I stood up. “I should be go­ing.”

Cawti nod­ded. “Say good-​bye to your fa­ther, Vlad.”

He got bash­ful again and hid his face. Cawti gave me an apolo­get­ic smile and the two of them walked me to the door. Rocza rubbed Cawti’s face then flew over to my left shoul­der.

I turned and walked back to where Kra­gar wait­ed.

Iorich

6

Luk­ka, I just had a talk with Nurik, and it was made pret­ty clear that we’re sup­posed to dump this all on the low­est ranks we think we can get away with. I told him if he want­ed that sort of game played, he’d have to get some­one else to run the thing, be­cause I won’t go there. If I re­sign, you’re the ob­vi­ous choice to take over, so think hard about how you’ll han­dle this. I know what sort of pres­sures N. can bring, so if you go with it, I’ll stay mute, but it’s worth con­sid­er­ing. I know Pa­pacat and the new War­lord do not fa­vor any such ar­range­ment, and you should re­mem­ber that HM is, so far as I know, not in on it ei­ther; I think she wants the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be forthright, most­ly be­cause she wants to know if it’s all her fault. I’d tell her if I knew. Maybe in an­oth­er week, if I’m still run­ning this thing. But if you want a ca­reer, you can’t ig­nore N., you know it and I know it. Any­way, give it some thought.

—Pri­vate note in the hand­writ­ing of De­saniek

(not au­then­ti­cat­ed)

I ducked in­to the door­way in front of me with­out wait­ing to fig­ure out where it went. I was in a nar­row hall­way with a flight of stairs at the end. I went up with­out stop­ping, swal­low­ing the acidic pan­ic that comes with on­ly hav­ing one di­rec­tion to go when you know some­one is af­ter you. If Sethra had been sober, she’d have thought of that, dammit.

There was a door at the end of the hall­way. I opened it with­out clap­ping, my right hand brush­ing the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra.

The War­lord seemed to have been nap­ping; her head snapped for­ward and she stared at me. If she’d gone for a weapon, which wouldn’t have been all that un­think­able, there would sud­den­ly have been a lot more peo­ple than the Jhereg look­ing for me—or else no one at all.

She blinked a cou­ple of times as I caught the door and shut my breath, or what­ev­er I did.

“Vlad,” she said.

I stood there, try­ing to nei­ther pant nor shake. “Hi there,” I said.

Her of­fice was tiny; just enough room for her, a chair, and a small ta­ble. There was an­oth­er door to her left.

“I must have dozed off,” she said. “Sor­ry.”

“It’s noth­ing. As you see, I came in any­way.”

“Shall we find some­where more com­fort­able to talk?”

“I don’t mind stand­ing. Thanks for see­ing me, by the way.”

She nod­ded and looked up at me—an un­usu­al ex­pe­ri­ence for both of us. “Last I heard,” I said, “you were Drag­on Heir. I guess con­grat­ula­tions are in or­der.”

She gave some­thing that could have been a laugh. “I guess.”

“Are you ad­dressed as War­lord, or as Your High­ness now?”

“De­pends on the sub­ject.”

“Is there a sto­ry there? I mean, in how it is that you hap­pened to be­come War­lord?”

“Not one I’m in­clined to talk about.”

“Is your be­com­ing War­lord re­lat­ed?”

“To what?”

“Eh, I thought you knew why I was here.”

“Sethra said you want­ed to see me about Aliera.”

“Yes.”

“To that.”

“What is it you want­ed to see me about ex­act­ly?”

“Aliera’s sit­ua­tion.”

She hadn’t an­swered my ques­tion. Just want­ed to let you know I caught that. Can’t get one past me.

“I’m not sure how much I can tell you,” she said.

“Lack of knowl­edge, or are there things you aren’t per­mit­ted to say?”

“Both. And maybe things I could say but choose not to.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, I’ll ask, you tell me what you can.”

“It isn’t that I don’t care about Aliera,” she said.

I nod­ded, feel­ing sud­den­ly un­com­fort­able. It wasn’t like No­rathar to feel she had to jus­ti­fy her­self to me. I leaned against a wall, try­ing to look re­laxed. When she didn’t say any­thing, I cleared my throat and said, “In my own way, I have some un­der­stand­ing of du­ty.”

She nod­ded, star­ing past me.

“So, what hap­pened?”

She blinked and seemed to come back from wher­ev­er she was.

“Aliera was caught prac­tic­ing El­der Sor­cery, which is il­le­gal. For good rea­son, by the way. It was used to de­stroy the Em­pire. By Aliera’s fa­ther. The Em­pire frowns on be­ing de­stroyed. It tends not to like things that can do that.”

“Yeah, I know. That adds a cer­tain—uh. Wait. How much of this is be­cause of her fa­ther?”

“I don’t know. That’s prob­ably what made her the per­fect—I mean, that may be why. . .”

She trailed off.

I should have thought of that soon­er.

“And how does she—I mean the Em­press—feel about it?”

“Beg par­don?”

“She’s Aliera’s friend. How does she—?”

“You know I can’t give you per­son­al de­tails about Her Majesty.”

Since it was ex­act­ly the per­son­al de­tails I was look­ing for, it was a lit­tle sad to hear that. “All right,” I said. “Did you hear about Aliera’s ar­rest be­fore it hap­pened?”

“I don’t un­der­stand.” She was giv­ing me a sus­pi­cious look, as if I might be mock­ing her but she wasn’t sure.

“Oh,” I said. “You were giv­en the or­der.”

She nod­ded.

“I don’t know how these things work, but that seems un­usu­al. I mean, ar­rest­ing crim­inals isn’t what I think of as the War­lord’s job.”

“It usu­al­ly isn’t,” she said. Her lips were pressed tight­ly to­geth­er.

“But—?”

“With some­one like Aliera, I can’t see it hap­pen­ing any oth­er way. She wasn’t go­ing to dis­patch a, a con­sta­ble to do it.”

“It would be dis­re­spect­ful to her po­si­tion.”

She nod­ded. I need to work hard­er on com­mu­ni­cat­ing irony.

I said, “Who car­ried out the ar­rest?”

“I did.”

I grunt­ed. “Must have been fun.”

She gave me a look.

“Sor­ry,” I said. “Was she sur­prised?”

“Is this nec­es­sary?”

“I want to know if she had any warn­ing.”

“Oh. Yes, she was sur­prised. She thought I was jok­ing. She said—”

The wall over her head was blank, a pasty col­or. She should put some­thing there. I re­solved not to tell her that.

“Sor­ry,” she said.

“How long was it from the time you were giv­en the or­der un­til the ar­rest?”

“Ten min­utes.”

“Had you ex­pect­ed the or­der?”

She stud­ied me care­ful­ly. “No,” she said. “I was told I was now War­lord, and or­dered to ar­rest Aliera, and to de­liv­er the com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­liev­ing her of her po­si­tion.”