Steven Brust - Iorich

“Hel­lo, Kiera. I hope you weren’t wait­ing long.”

She raised her head and her lips quirked. “What are you drink­ing?”

“Here? Some­thing white and in­of­fen­sive. I don’t trust them.”

“You’re a snob.”

“Yes. But I’ll pay; this is my meet­ing. Are we eat­ing?”

“Noth­ing for me.”

That was a shame. This was one of the few Dra­gaer­an places that had good food—a spe­cial­ty called “cure” which in­volved meat cov­ered in a spicy-​sweet sauce. Oth­er places made it, but here they’d been us­ing the same oven for more than eight hun­dred years; it’s hard to com­pete with some­thing like that. But it was my meet­ing, and she wasn’t eat­ing, so nei­ther would I. La­dy Tel­dra would have ap­proved.

Kiera got the at­ten­tion of a mid­dle-​aged Teck­la with ex­traor­di­nar­ily thick eye­brows and a slack mouth, who tight­ened up his mouth long enough to nod at the or­der. A guy with al­most no chin and wear­ing Jhereg col­ors came in and took a seat where he could os­ten­ta­tious­ly watch me. I ig­nored him; Kiera kept an eye on him with­out dis­cernible ex­pres­sion. “Is he the on­ly Jhereg in the place, Loiosh?”

“At the mo­ment. Give it two min­utes. They’ll be com­ing in the win­dows.”

“I don’t doubt it a bit.”

The wine ar­rived; it was as in­of­fen­sive as the Teck­la who de­liv­ered it.

Kiera nod­ded her thanks. “It’s been years,” she lied. “I trust I find you well?”

“My ass is small­er and my feet are flat­ter, but I’m all right oth­er than that.”

“And your purse? Is that flat­ter and small­er as well?”

“No, it’s all right. I still have most of what I got for Laris.”

She looked mild­ly star­tled. In this light, her eyes seemed al­most gray, and her com­plex­ion near­ly as dark as mine. She al­ways seemed a lit­tle small­er than she was. “When I heard you want­ed to meet me, I as­sumed you want­ed some­thing stolen. Is it in­for­ma­tion, then?”

“No, you were right. Well, both, re­al­ly. I want some­thing stolen. But not for rec­om­pense.”

“Ah. Of course.” She looked in­ter­est­ed. “Tell me more.”

“How long has it been since you broke in­to the Im­pe­ri­al Palace?”

“Oh,” she said. She fell silent, her eyes lid­ded. Then, “Are you sure you want a thief, and not a spy?”

“I want a spy,” I said. “But I don’t know any I can use right now.”

“They’re dif­fer­ent skills, you know.”

“I know.”

She nod­ded. “Go on, then.”

“There must be won­der­ful amounts of pa­per­work as­so­ci­at­ed with Aliera’s pros­ecu­tion.”

“Box­es, I’m sure. Steal­ing them will be less of a prob­lem than trans­port­ing them. Not to men­tion that some­one will no­tice they’re miss­ing.”

“I don’t need all of them. Just one.”

“Which?”

“That’s the kick­er. I don’t know.”

She gave me the eye­brow and wait­ed for me to con­tin­ue.

“Some­where,” I said, “among the ear­li­est pa­pers as­so­ci­at­ed with the case—maybe the very ear­li­est—I’m hop­ing there will be some­thing that will tell us how it start­ed. I want to know who thought of ar­rest­ing Aliera, or how the idea came up, or how hard it was to talk the Em­press in­to it, and who ob­ject­ed and why, and—”

“Why should such a thing ex­ist?”

“Be­cause—okay, look: I won’t claim to know the Em­press. We aren’t bud­dies. But I’ve met her, talked to her, and been there when Aliera and Mor­rolan and Sethra talked about her.”

She nod­ded. “Go on.”

“It wouldn’t have crossed her mind to solve her prob­lem by or­der­ing the ar­rest of a friend. I don’t think it would have crossed her mind to solve her prob­lem by or­der­ing an ar­rest.”

Kiera chewed her lip, then nod­ded. “I can see that. All right.”

“So some­one else came up with the idea. I want to know who it was.”

“You think that will be in one of the pa­pers in her case files?”

“I’m hop­ing to find some­thing to point me in the right di­rec­tion. I’m not ex­pect­ing a com­plete an­swer, just a hint about where to look.”

“You do want a spy.”

“Yes. Know any?”

“A few. But this sounds like a chal­lenge. I’d like to try it.”

“Good! How much?”

“Two thou­sand. What, too much?”

“No, no. Just star­tled me. But for what I’m ask­ing, pret­ty rea­son­able.” I pulled out bank draft and a pen­cil, wrote a lit­tle, and hand­ed it to her.

“I sup­pose you’re in a hur­ry?”

“Hard to say. Aliera’s in prison, so maybe she is.”

She nod­ded. “I’ll see what I can do. I’m look­ing for­ward to this.” She grinned the unique Kiera grin that brought back some mem­ories and drove out cer­tain oth­ers.

We drank our wine qui­et­ly; there was a low hum of con­ver­sa­tion around us. The door opened again be­hind me, and an in­of­fen­sive-​look­ing fel­low in Jhereg col­ors came in and took a ta­ble against the far wall. He leaned against the wall, stretched out his legs, and looked at me.

“Think the Jhereg knows I’m here?”

“Pos­si­bly,” she said. “Do you have a plan for get­ting out?”

“Not a plan as such. I mean, I can run a lot faster than you’d think.”

“Some­how, I don’t think you’d have come here if that was the best you had.”

I shrugged. “I can al­ways tele­port to Cas­tle Black. It isn’t of­fi­cial­ly safe, but the Jhereg isn’t go­ing to mess with a Drag­on.”

She nod­ded. “But they’ll know where you are, and they’ll be watch­ing for when you leave.”

“Yeah. I’ve got­ten kind of used to that, though.”

“If you’d pre­fer, I have an­oth­er idea.”

“Let’s hear it.”

She told me. I laughed. Loiosh laughed.

I re­moved La­dy Tel­dra’s sheath from my belt and slipped it in­to my cloak. “Do it,” I said.

She was qui­et for a mo­ment while she psy­chi­cal­ly spoke with a mu­tu­al friend, or maybe ac­quain­tance. At one point she looked at me and said, “Where do you want to end up?”

I con­sid­ered a few things, then told her. She nod­ded and again got that blank look. Even­tu­al­ly she fo­cused on me and said, “It’s all set.” Then we drank wine and got a bit caught up on lit­tle things that couldn’t mat­ter to any­one else.

Present­ly, the door opened be­hind me. Kiera fo­cused over my shoul­der and I turned my head. They were both wom­en, near­ly iden­ti­cal in ap­pear­ance, both wear­ing the black and sil­ver of the House of the Drag­on and the gold uni­form half-​cloak of the Phoenix Guards.

They took two steps for­ward un­til they were di­rect­ly be­hind me, and one of them said, “Count Vladimir Tal­tos of Szurke? Please sur­ren­der your weapon and come with us.”

I could feel ev­ery­one in the restau­rant star­ing at us. I didn’t look, but I could imag­ine the care­ful­ly ex­pres­sion­less faces of the two Jhereg. I gave the guards a big smile.

“Of course,” I said. I re­moved my sword belt and passed it back to them, then stood up slow­ly, my hands well clear of my body.

“It was a plea­sure, Kiera. Un­til next time.”

“Be well, Vlad.”

I turned and gave my cap­tors a nod. “I’m at your ser­vice.”

They es­cort­ed me out, one on ei­ther side, and di­rect­ly in­to a prison coach. The driv­er and an­oth­er guard were al­ready in po­si­tion. Loiosh and Rocza launched them­selves from my shoul­ders, which the guards pre­tend­ed not to no­tice; I guess they’d been in­formed that some­thing like that might hap­pen. I didn’t spot any as­sas­sins, but I wasn’t look­ing that hard, ei­ther. The guards climbed in, one next to me, the oth­er op­po­site. The door closed, and the lock snicked, and there was the shift­ing of the coach as the side­man took his po­si­tion next to the driv­er. Then the coach start­ed mov­ing and the Drag­onlord op­po­site me hand­ed me my weapon back.