Steven Brust - Iorich

“There’s noth­ing to tell.”

I gave her a brief dis­cus­sion of fer­til­iz­er. She seemed unim­pressed with my agri­cul­tur­al ex­per­tise. “Be­lieve what you like,” she said. It was good to have per­mis­sion, but I re­sist­ed telling her so.

“Ei­ther way,” I said. “If it was in­tend­ed by you or some­one else to make me stop look­ing in­to this, it isn’t go­ing to work.”

“I don’t care—”

“Not to men­tion that if there were noth­ing to it, why would any­one beat me up over it?”

“Are you sure that’s what it was about?”

“Seems like a good guess.”

“But you don’t ac­tu­al­ly know.”

I made a dis­gust­ed sound.

She start­ed to say some­thing, stopped, in­haled, and let it out slow­ly. “Very well. We’ll as­sume you’re right.”

“Thanks.”

She ig­nored the sar­casm. “I had no part in it,” she stat­ed.

“All right.” She still looked sus­pi­cious, as if she didn’t be­lieve I gen­uine­ly thought she might be in­volved. She’s a Drag­on; that doesn’t au­to­mat­ical­ly mean she’s an id­iot. Be­sides, she’d spent years in the Jhereg. I said, “Then they act­ed with­out your knowl­edge. Why? What is it ev­ery Drag­onlord knows that they don’t want a hum­ble East­ern­er to find out?”

“How should I know?”

I looked at her. I’m not an id­iot ei­ther.

She sighed. “There are things I’m not per­mit­ted to tell you.”

“I fig­ured that part out. What I’m work­ing at is, I’ll bet there are things you could tell me if you want­ed to. Things that might help Aliera. Things that might ex­plain why I just got a tooth loos­ened. Things that—”

“Shut up.”

I did so, and wait­ed.

She looked past me; I gave her time to think.

“It isn’t easy,” she said. “My loy­al­ties are di­vid­ed. I don’t think there are any right an­swers.”

I nod­ded.

“All right. I’ll tell you this much. Her Majesty is not very hap­py about all of this.”

“No­rathar. War­lord. Your High­ness. What­ev­er I’m sup­posed to call you. I picked up on that.”

She nod­ded, her eyes still fo­cused past me; I had the feel­ing that I wasn’t there. “Her friend­ship with Mor­rolan goes way back, you know.”

“Mor­rolan? How does Mor­rolan en­ter in­to this?”

She fo­cused on me, a puz­zled look on her face. Then she said, “I keep for­get­ting how much you don’t know.”

“So. fill me in on some of it?”

“You want a his­to­ry les­son?”

“No. I don’t. I re­al­ly, re­al­ly don’t. I think I’d rather have an­oth­er beat­ing. But if I need one to un­der­stand what’s go­ing on, then I’ll just sit here and take it.”

She made an ef­fort at a smile. “I think we can skip it, for now.”

See? My god­dess loves me. “Okay, what do I need to know. That you can tell me.”

She hes­itat­ed, then it came out quick­ly. “When she asked me to be War­lord, she ex­tract­ed a cou­ple of promis­es. One I’m break­ing now, by talk­ing to you. The oth­er is that Aliera is to es­cape.”

“Es­cape,” I re­peat­ed.

She nod­ded.

“I trust Aliera doesn’t know about this?”

“That is cor­rect.”

I sighed. “Well. And the Em­press is, you say, a re­born Phoenix?”

Her eyes nar­rowed. “Just what is that sup­posed—”

“Sor­ry. That was out of line. Be­ing stupid doesn’t mean be­ing deca­dent.”

She said, very pre­cise­ly, “I do not con­sid­er Her Majesty to be stupid.”

“No, I guess she isn’t. In fact, this shows how smart she is.”

“What are you talk­ing about?”

“A stupid per­son can make on­ly cer­tain, lim­it­ed types of er­rors; the mis­takes open to a clever fel­low are far broad­er. But to the one who knows how smart he is com­pared to ev­ery­one else, the pos­si­bil­ities for true id­io­cy are bound­less.”

“Vlad—”

“No­rathar. Nev­er, ev­er, will Aliera go along with this. To es­cape is to ad­mit guilt. Think about it.”

She start­ed to ar­gue, stopped, frowned. I let her work it through. It shouldn’t have tak­en that long.

“You’re right,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I have to speak with Her Majesty.”

“Good think­ing. Had a whole plan, didn’t you?”

She nod­ded. I was tempt­ed to smirk, but she might have killed me. Be­sides, it wasn’t all that fun­ny.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll get out of your way. This clears up a few things, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, doesn’t help me. But at least I’m con­vinced you didn’t or­der those Drag­onlords to at­tack me.”

“How do you know they were Drag­onlords?”

“Huh? Well, for starters, if they were Jhereg they’d have killed me.”

“And if they were Or­ca?”

I stared at her. She flushed; some­thing I could nev­er have imag­ined her do­ing.

“Well done, Boss!”

“Ev­ery once in a while, you get a break.”

I let her sit there for a mo­ment and re­flect on the dif­fi­cul­ty of un­say­ing some­thing. Then I said, “Don’t feel too bad. I’d been pret­ty sure of it, any­way.”

She cursed soft­ly un­der her breath.

“I feel your pain,” I said.

“You will soon,” she said.

“So, feel like fill­ing in the miss­ing piece?”

She glared. “And if I don’t?”

That took me a mo­ment, then I got it and shook my head. “No, no. I’m not go­ing to tell any­one any­thing about what you did or did not tell me. I’m ask­ing you to fill in the pieces I’m miss­ing. If you don’t, I’ll find out an­oth­er way; that’s all.”

She bit her lip, then nod­ded. “What ex­act­ly do you want to know?”

“I know the Jhereg and the Or­ca are work­ing to­geth­er. On what, ex­act­ly? And how are they forc­ing the Em­press to co­op­er­ate?”

“All right.” She took a deep breath. “It goes back to be­fore the In­ter­reg­num.”

I al­most made a re­mark about how I’d been promised no his­to­ry, but there are times not to be clever.

“The Jhereg had come up with a big mon­ey­mak­ing scheme that they nev­er got to pull off be­cause the world blew up be­fore they could try it. And maybe for oth­er rea­sons, too, I don’t know. Any­way, the Left Hand got wind of it a few years ago, start­ed col­lab­orat­ing with the Right Hand and the Or­ca, and have been try­ing to put it back.”

“And what is ‘it’?”

“Nar­cotics, hal­lu­cino­gens, psychedelics, dis­as­so­cia­tives—”

“No­rathar, I don’t know most of those words.”

“All right. Opi­um. Log­fun­gus. Dream­grass. Laugh­wort. Koelsh leaf. Pop­py ex­tract.”

“What about them?”

“What if they were sud­den­ly il­le­gal?”

“Huh?

“What if—”

“I heard you, I’m just try­ing to wrap my head around it.”

“What would hap­pen?”

“I don’t know. Um, well, it would drive the prices through the roof.”

“And who would sell it?”

“The Jhereg, of course. Yikes. What a scam! And the Or­ca?”

“They’d sup­ply it.”

“And the Left Hand?”

“Fa­cil­itat­ing de­liv—I hadn’t said any­thing about the Left Hand.”

“It was my own the­ory. Go on.”

“Fa­cil­itat­ing de­liv­ery and hid­ing and sell­ing spells to de­tect Im­pe­ri­al agents, the way they do now with gam­bling games.”

“I didn’t know they did that; I nev­er used them.”

“They do. And there is li­able to be Iorich in­volve­ment too—bribes for mild sen­tences, and so on.”