Steven Brust - Iorich

Nev­er­the­less, as I said, I am will­ing to speak to your com­mit­tee at any time that my du­ties do not re­quire my pres­ence else­where. A mes­sage sent to me through the House of the Drag­on will reach me quick­ly, and a mes­sage sent to the Of­fice of the War­lord, Drag­on Wing, Im­pe­ri­al Palace, will reach me in­stant­ly.

—No­rathar (au­then­ti­cat­ed)

“What did you hear, and where did you hear it?”

“I didn’t ex­act­ly hear any­thing, but there have been a few Or­ca—”

“Or­ca!”

“—who have been ex­cep­tion­al­ly po­lite of late.”

“Um.”

“It bugged me enough that I set some­one to find out what was up, and all I learned was that there are or­ders from some of their House not to of­fend us.” Giv­en how eas­ily the Or­ca of­fend ev­ery­one, and how ha­bit­ual it seems with them to do so, that cer­tain­ly was sig­nif­icant—of some­thing.

“Um,” I said again.

“Maybe you think that’s nor­mal—”

“Heh. Yeah, okay. Some­thing is up.”

“I’m still not sure of your con­clu­sion, though.”

“You mean, that it’s all di­rect­ed at me?”

“Right. Some­thing that big—”

“I know. I may be a part of it, or maybe they just took the op­por­tu­ni­ty. But I’m go­ing to fol­low up my guess that some­where be­tween the Jhereg and the Or­ca, and maybe an­oth­er House too, some­one is putting pres­sure on the Em­press.”

“If we could find out who, or how—”

“Kiera is work­ing on that for me.”

An eye­brow went up, then he nod­ded. He kept look­ing at me.

I said, “What is it?”

“What’s what?”

“That look you’re giv­ing me.”

“Oh, sor­ry.”

“Um. Well?”

He hes­itat­ed. “You’re old­er,” he fi­nal­ly said.

“Yeah, that hap­pens.”

“I know. Just, faster than I’d thought it would.”

“That’s two of us.”

“Sor­ry.”

“No prob­lem; I need­ed cheer­ing up any­way. Be­sides, I don’t think old age is what’s go­ing to get me.”

“It is if it slows you down.”

“You are just full of cheer, aren’t you?”

“Lord Cheer­ful, that’s what they call me.”

“All right, Lord Cheer­ful. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to find out who is try­ing to do what. I take it you’re on that?”

“I’m not hope­ful, Vlad. This ob­vi­ous­ly goes all the way up to the Jhereg Coun­cil. They aren’t easy to crack.”

“Go in through the Or­ca.”

He nod­ded. “All right. I’ll take a run at it. What are you go­ing to be do­ing?”

“I’m not ex­act­ly sure. Give me a few min­utes to think about it.”

“Take all the time you need.” He sat back in his chair. I had to ad­mit, he looked like he be­longed there.

“Su­per­cil­ious,” I said. “That’s the word I’m look­ing for.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I had a good teach­er.”

There was noth­ing to say to that, so I stared out what used to be my win­dow. Some­times I’d found the an­swer to a prob­lem on the wall of the build­ing across the way. It didn’t work this time; I guess I had to be sit­ting be­hind the desk.

“Hun­gry?” he said.

“Come to think of it, yeah.”

“Should I round up body­guards or should I send out for some­thing?”

“Send out. I don’t trust your sec­re­tary; I think he’d take a bribe.”

“What are you hun­gry for?”

“Pret­ty much any­thing.”

He yelled for Yenth and in­struct­ed him to have lunch brought in. “And get your­self some moldy cheese and vine­gar,” he added. Yenth left with a smirk he must have learned from Kra­gar.

“How are things here?”

“Not like I ex­pect­ed.”

“Oh?”

“You have to keep push­ing. If you aren’t push­ing, you’re be­ing pushed.”

“That’s true, I guess.”

“It gets, uh, tir­ing.”

“If you want a break, we can swap places.”

“If we swapped places, nei­ther of us would have a prob­lem: you’d en­joy push­ing, and the Jhereg would nev­er no­tice me.”

“Good point.”

Present­ly, Yenth came back and de­liv­ered a big box con­tain­ing pas­tries from a ven­dor I re­mem­bered with long­ing, as well as a bot­tle of wine, a se­lec­tion of fruit, and a buck­et of fla­vored ice from the lo­cal sor­cery shop. I hadn’t had the fla­vored ice in years—I smiled when I saw it and won­dered why I nev­er treat­ed my­self to stuff like that any­more. Yenth held up a steam­ing pas­try and said, “Moldy cheese and vine­gar. They made it spe­cial for me.”

“Get out of here,” said Kra­gar.

I bit in­to a pas­try and burned my mouth. Chick­en, maize, tu­bers, and a thick gravy that was sweet­er than I’d have made it but still good. Kra­gar ges­tured, and the wine tongs be­gan to glow red.

“You’ve been prac­tic­ing.”

“On­ly the easy stuff.” He opened the wine and poured us each a glass. It was very dark and strong­ly fla­vored. We ate in si­lence, each with our own thoughts. Loiosh shift­ed on my shoul­der; Rocza hissed soft­ly at him.

“What do you know about No­rathar’s ap­point­ment as War­lord?”

Kra­gar looked up. “Vlad, you think I pay at­ten­tion to Court pol­itics?”

“I think you pay at­ten­tion to ev­ery­thing.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I’m not sure. She was act­ing fun­ny.”

“You saw her?”

“Yes. I got the feel­ing there was some­thing odd about the ap­point­ment.”

“It isn’t the first time the Heir has been War­lord dur­ing a Phoenix Reign, but it hasn’t hap­pened much.”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Two rea­sons: The sec­ond is con­ti­nu­ity—the more Court of­fi­cials who are con­tin­ued over be­tween reigns, the smoother the tran­si­tion is.”

“Right. Makes sense. And the first?”

He looked at me.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Sort of beg­ging for a coup, isn’t it?”

He nod­ded. “What was fun­ny about how No­rathar was act­ing?”

“Eh. Like she want­ed to tell me things, but didn’t. Like she was on both sides at once.”

“Just what about that seems any­thing oth­er than pre­dictable?”

“I know, I know. But there was some­thing else to it.”

He shrugged. “Like, maybe she knew what was go­ing on, and want­ed to tell you, but had, oh, I don’t know, sworn an oath that pre­vent­ed it, or some­thing like that, maybe?”

I called him some­thing my grand­fa­ther wouldn’t have ap­proved of. “Want to spend some more time show­ing how smart you are?”

“Sure.”

“What is it she want­ed to tell me?”

He waved his hands over the desk, like a jon­gleur in the mar­ket about to make some­thing van­ish “with no trace of sor­cery what­so­ev­er!” He said, “Mm­mm . . . the spir­its are be­ing ob­sti­nate. I must ca­jole them. Have you some to­ken I may give to them so they—”

I made a few sug­ges­tions about what sort of to­ken I had and what he and his spir­its could do with it.

He said, “It’s no se­cret that you’re try­ing to help Aliera. No­rathar has in­for­ma­tion that would be use­ful. She can’t give it to you. What’s the big mys­tery?”

“There are two: The first is, what does she know that she can’t tell me? The sec­ond is, how can I find it out? Got an an­swer for ei­ther of those, O Mys­tic One?”

“You could have Day­mar do a mind-​probe.” He smirked.

“The in­for­ma­tion wouldn’t do me much good if I were ground up in­to Vlad-​meal af­ter get­ting it.”