Steven Brust - Iorich

There were four of them. It was just like old times. They wore the stupid gold half-​cloak of the Phoenix Guards, and they were big and strong, as Drag­onlords usu­al­ly are. Two came up be­hind me, two came out of a door I was pass­ing and stepped in front of me. I thought about La­dy Tel­dra—how could I not?—but of course I didn’t draw her. Us­ing Mor­gan­ti weapons on Drag­onlords makes you very un­pop­ular, and even draw­ing her in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace would have caught the at­ten­tion of sev­er­al hun­dred trained fight­ers, all of whom would have seen it as in hor­ri­bly poor taste.

Be­sides, it would be wrong to de­stroy peo­ple’s souls when all they want to do is give you a good beat­ing, and you know how I am al­ways guid­ed by try­ing to do the right thing.

Heh.

Look, do you mind if I skip the de­tails? Yeah, I re­mem­ber them; but if I say them out loud, they’ll al­ways be vivid for me, be­cause that’s how my mem­ory works. And, re­al­ly, what do you need to know that can’t be told in gen­er­al?

There they were, two of them in front of me, and Loiosh told me about the two in back, and I knew what was go­ing to hap­pen, be­cause I’d been through it be­fore.

“Keep Rocza out of this.”

What Loiosh replied doesn’t read­ily trans­late, but in any case he got Rocza out of the way. He and I had been through this kind of thing a few times, back when I was run­ning my area. He knew by now that I didn’t want to hear any sym­pa­thet­ic words, or any­thing else; it was just a mat­ter of wait­ing un­til it was over.

It al­ways hap­pens so fast, you know? The times I’ve been jumped and man­aged to avoid it, I’d been out of the sit­ua­tion al­most be­fore I knew I was in it. This time, be­fore I re­al­ly knew what was hap­pen­ing, they’d pushed me in­to the room and were go­ing to work. I had time to de­cide what not to do, as I said, but that was about it.

They didn’t draw any weapons—just used their fists and their boots. And they could have made it much worse than they did, if they’d want­ed to: They cracked a rib, but oth­er than that didn’t break any bones. They al­so didn’t say any­thing—I as­sumed they took it for grant­ed I knew what it was about.

Even­tu­al­ly they got my arms pinned, though I did them some harm first. A lot of harm, if you re­mem­ber how much stronger than an East­ern­er a Dra­gaer­an is. I re­mem­ber be­ing re­al­ly an­noyed that I had no ac­cess to any of the mag­ic, East­ern or Dra­gaer­an, that would help me re­cov­er quick­ly, where­as they’d have their bruis­es seen to in an hour or so and be feel­ing fine. It didn’t seem fair, you know?

When they were fin­ished I let them have the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing me lie there, curled up on the floor, while they walked away. I might have been able to stand up, but if they’d tak­en it as a sig­nal to start again, I wasn’t sure I’d have the self-​con­trol to keep things non-​lethal.

“Just like the old days, eh?”

“You all right, Boss?”

“In ev­ery im­por­tant sense, yeah.”

I stood up, which took a long time, and wasn’t any fun; I had to use the wall for sup­port and push up against it, then when I made it up I leaned against it. Nice wall. Good wall. That wall was my new best friend.

Breath­ing hurt. So did a few oth­er things, though not as much as they were go­ing to. And I was shak­ing, of course; I al­ways shake af­ter I’ve been through some­thing ex­cit­ing, no mat­ter how I feel about it.

“Any idea what it was about?”

“One idea. If I’m right, then it may have been worth it just to find out.”

“Some­day, Boss, let’s talk about ways for you to learn things that don’t in­volve peo­ple kick­ing you.”

“Good plan.”

I was glad to be in the room—which may have been an un­used coat clos­et or some­thing—in­stead of out in the hall, be­cause I didn’t want any­one com­ing along and ask­ing ques­tions. Or, worse, be­ing sym­pa­thet­ic. Loiosh was care­ful­ly not sym­pa­thet­ic; he knows me.

I want­ed to get some­where to bind up my rib. Ev­er have a cracked rib? Avoid it if you can. Walk­ing hurts. Breath­ing hurts. Don’t cough. And for the love of your fa­vorite de­ity, don’t even think about sneez­ing. And if you make me laugh I’ll kill you. Lat­er.

When I’d caught my painful breath a bit, I pushed away from my friend the wall and wished I hadn’t.

“Where to now, Boss?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t de­cide if I ought to wait a day or two un­til the bruis­es are nice and pur­ple.”

“Wait for. . .?”

“Nah, too much is go­ing on to waste a day on cos­met­ics. This way.”

I strolled back in­to the hall­way, and then am­bled around the cor­ner, af­ter which I saun­tered. Any­thing to look like walk­ing didn’t hurt as much as it did. Which was okay; it didn’t hurt near­ly as much as it would to­mor­row. As I walked, my heart rate re­turned to nor­mal. My tongue played with a tooth that was wob­bly, but I didn’t think I’d lose it; punch­es to the face are the eas­iest to slip, if you don’t mind your neck snap­ping a lit­tle.

The few peo­ple I passed—Drag­onlords—glanced at me and then looked away, care­ful­ly un­con­cerned. Af­ter what seemed like a long, long time, I made it to the long, nar­row stair I was look­ing for. It seemed very, very long in­deed, just now. I start­ed up it, us­ing the time to plan. I knew what I want­ed to do, I just had to fig­ure out the nu­ances. The plan­ning dis­tract­ed me; it wasn’t too bad.

This time I clapped out­side of the of­fice. I heard a brusque “En­ter,” and did so, sud­den­ly re­al­iz­ing that she might not have been in, and I’d have made that climb for noth­ing. It would be smart if I thought of those things ahead of time, wouldn’t it?

She glanced up as I came in, and said, “What is—” then stopped and looked at me close­ly.

“I’d been think­ing,” I said, “of wait­ing a day so you could see the re­sults in all their splen­dor.”

“That eye is go­ing to swell shut,” she said.

“I imag­ine it will.”

“It can’t have been the Jhereg, or you’d be dead.”

“It wasn’t the Jhereg.”

“Do you know who?”

“Yes.”

She frowned. “Are we play­ing a game here?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I came up here to find out.”

“If you have a ques­tion, Vlad, just ask.”

“Did you send them?”

She looked shocked. I think she was shocked, which she shouldn’t have been, whether she was guilty or not. She went through some fa­cial con­tor­tions, then said, “What kind of game are you play­ing?”

The kind where I lose if you know the rules. “No game. I just want to know if they were yours.”

“They were Drag­ons?”

“Oh, yes. Phoenix Guards.”

“And you think I sent them?”

“It had crossed my mind. So I’d thought I’d ask if you did. And, if so, why you didn’t, I don’t know, drop me a note in­stead.”

“I didn’t send them,” she said.

“All right.”

“And I think you know that,” she added.

“I—”

“Which makes me won­der what you’re try­ing to do by ac­cus­ing me.”

“I didn’t ac­cuse you.”

“All right. Ask­ing me.”

She was study­ing me care­ful­ly, sus­pi­cious­ly.

I shrugged, which was a mis­take. “What am I sup­posed to think? I start ask­ing nosy ques­tions about you, and the next thing I know—”

“What ques­tions have you been ask­ing about me?”

“Your sud­den­ly be­ing made War­lord, of course. Why it hap­pened, what’s be­hind it. You wouldn’t tell me, so—”