Steven Brust - Iorich

“Iorich do that?”

“Fun­ny guy.”

I shook my head. “This is huge. How are they con­vinc­ing the Em­press to go for it?”

“The mas­sacre at Tir­ma.”

“Huh?”

“Word is about to leak out that it hap­pened be­cause the sergeant was us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of koelsh leaves and pop­py.”

“Oh. Hm­mm. Pub­lic out­cry?”

The War­lord nod­ded.

“Is it true? Was he?”

“No.”

“Then why can’t he be made to tes­ti­fy to that?”

“In fact, once this be­comes pub­lic, that is ex­act­ly what will hap­pen.”

“Well, and?”

“And who will be­lieve it? It will be seen by the no­bles and the mid­dle class­es as a means of dis­tract­ing at­ten­tion from the lu­cra­tive trade in brain chem­icals.”

“How does ar­rest­ing Aliera help?”

“If Aliera is ar­rest­ed on an ob­vi­ous­ly bo­gus charge, it will add weight to the idea that the mas­sacre in Tir­ma came from or­ders on high. It will look like the Em­press blames Aliera, but knows she can’t get a con­vic­tion on the ac­tu­al charge, be­cause—”

“Be­cause it must be ap­proved by the Coun­cil of Princes, who wouldn’t ap­prove it, so the con­vic­tion must be on an Edict, which by­pass­es peer ap­proval.”

“Well, very good, Vlad. I had no idea you were so well ac­quaint­ed with the law.”

“I’ve man­aged to pick up a few pieces here and there,” I said mod­est­ly.

“So, now you know, and now I’ve be­trayed an oath by telling you.”

“Yeah. And now I know what’s go­ing on, and why, but I’m not sure it helps me.”

“On the con­trary,” she said, her eyes nar­row­ing. “It po­ten­tial­ly helps you a great deal.”

“How is that?”

“If you re­veal what I’ve told you—”

“Oh, come on, No­rathar. You know I won’t do that.”

She grunt­ed. “There’s an­oth­er thing it gets you, then: an al­ly.”

“You?”

“Yes. Any­thing I can do with­out be­tray­ing Her Majesty.”

“Hm­mm. That may be a bit like, ‘I’ll run any er­rand you want that doesn’t re­quire me to stand up.’ Still, I ap­pre­ci­ate the of­fer, and I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Do that,” she said.

So there I was: I’d un­cov­ered what was hid­den, I’d found the big se­cret, I’d turned over the key rock, and now I just had the mi­nor, unim­por­tant lit­tle de­tail of fig­ur­ing out what to do about it. Splen­did. I tried to re­call some of the vo­cab­ulary I’d picked up dur­ing my brief stint as a foot sol­dier, but you have to keep up with those skills or you lose them.

So, back to the be­gin­ning. I’d have to wait for Kiera to get some con­fir­ma­tions, and wait for Kra­gar to learn a few de­tails about the Left Hand. In the mean­time—

“Vlad?”

“Hm­mm?”

“I asked if there was any­thing else.”

“Oh, sor­ry. No. Thank you.”

She nod­ded and I took my leave. If the fates loved me, I’d make it back to my room alive, and Kiera would be wait­ing there. I did, and she wasn’t—make of that what you will.

I un­load­ed a few pounds of hard­ware next to the bed, and stretched out on it. It felt won­der­ful for about ten sec­onds, then I grad­ual­ly be­came aware of each bruise. Once, long be­fore and in a dif­fer­ent part of the world, I’d re­moved my amulets to per­form a sim­ple spell to get rid of some aches and pains. It had proved a mis­take for two rea­sons: It al­most got me killed, and it had giv­en Loiosh a chance to say I told you so. I was will­ing to risk the first, but I’d rather hurt than take a chance on the sec­ond.

I didn’t fall asleep, but to take my mind off how much I hurt, I spent some time wish­ing some­one would bring me some­thing to eat. Loiosh picked up on the thought, and made an of­fer of sorts which I re­ject­ed; I wasn’t that hun­gry.

“Boss, do we have a plan?”

“We will.”

“Oh, good. I feel so much bet­ter when we have a plan.”

“In that case, maybe you come up with one this time. One that doesn’t in­volve a dead teck­la.”

“Di­vi­sion of la­bor, Boss. That’s what makes this work, you know.”

“Yeah, I keep for­get­ting that. Di­vi­sion of la­bor. I come up with the plans, and you laugh at them.”

“Ex­act­ly.”

I closed my eyes, the bet­ter to con­cen­trate on ev­ery­thing that hurt. No, I don’t know why I do these things; stop ask­ing.

Af­ter a while, I heard a clap at the door and at al­most the same mo­ment Loiosh said, “It’s Kiera.”

Now, there was good news at a good time. “Please bring your sneaky and most wel­come self in­side,” I called out.

The door opened and she came in, look­ing wor­ried. “I heard you were beat­en,” she said.

“How did you hear that? Are there more of you than I know about?”

She gave me a re­proach­ful look.

“Sor­ry,” I said.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked me over care­ful­ly. Loiosh flew over to her, and she ab­sent­ly scratched un­der his chin while she stud­ied me. “They did a pret­ty thor­ough job, it seems,” she said ju­di­cious­ly.

“I guess. Want to tell me what you learned?”

“Just what you ex­pect­ed me to.”

My heart skipped a beat. Yes, I’d ex­pect­ed it. But I hadn’t re­al­ly, well, ex­pect­ed it. “De­tails?”

“Min­utes of a meet­ing called by Her Majesty to dis­cuss the mas­sacre in Tir­ma.”

“And?”

“The list of those present in­clude the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Jhereg.”

“Is that usu­al for some­thing like this?”

“No.”

“All right. And the rep­re­sen­ta­tive said?”

“Noth­ing that was record­ed.”

“Then—?”

“Did they hit you in the head a lot?”

“Yes, as a mat­ter of fact.”

She made a dis­gust­ed sound. “Work it out any­way.”

“They wouldn’t have had the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive there, ex­cept to hear some­thing, or to in­form the Em­press of some­thing.”

“Yes.”

“And ei­ther way, it means the Jhereg has their hand in this.”

“Which you knew.”

“Sus­pect­ed, then lat­er had con­firmed by—uh, I shouldn’t say.”

“All right. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why is the Jhereg in­volved.”

“Two rea­sons. I can’t talk about one, and I don’t need to talk about the oth­er.”

“You don’t need to? What do you mean?”

“Kiera, have you been beat­en too, late­ly?”

Her eyes nar­rowed as she con­cen­trat­ed, then she said, “Oh. You think it’s all about you?”

“I al­ways think it’s all about me. When I’m wrong I look stupid; when I’m right, I’m still alive to keep look­ing stupid.”

“It’s a lit­tle hard to be­lieve,” she said.

“Why?”

“En­gi­neer­ing a mas­sacre of peas­ants, em­broil­ing the Em­press in—”

“No, no. I don’t think that was about me. That just gave them the op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

“Ah. You mean, not the prob­lem, but the so­lu­tion.”

“Yes.”

“The Jhereg knew that if Aliera was in trou­ble, you’d find out and come back and they could get to you. They were do­ing some­thing else in­volv­ing the Em­press, and just grabbed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pull you in­to it.”

“Pret­ty much. You know the Jhereg. Does that seem far­fetched?”

“No,” she said with no hes­ita­tion.

“It doesn’t to me, ei­ther.”

“Do you have an idea of how to deal with it?”

“One. Tell the Em­press.”