Steven Brust - Iorich

“Dammit, don’t be coy.”

“I’m giv­ing you what in­for­ma­tion I have; you have to de­cide what’s use­ful and what isn’t. Isn’t that what you al­ways do?”

“Uh. I guess. So, the beat­ing?”

“The Left Hand doesn’t want you in­ter­fer­ing with their machi­na­tions.”

“Then why not kill me?”

She shook her head. “You aren’t their prob­lem. You’re the Right Hand’s prob­lem.”

“But—”

“And don’t make the mis­take of think­ing they’re all one co­he­sive whole, Vlad. In­di­vid­uals, fac­tions—some might have want­ed to take you out for the boun­ty, oth­ers don’t care about that, just want this in­ter­fer­ing East­ern­er out of the way. But the big thing is this: the Jhereg—our Jhereg, the Right Hand—wants it Mor­gan­ti. Hav­ing a few peo­ple dress up as Drag­onlords to beat you up is one thing; putting a dull shine on you in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace is some­thing else again.”

“A dull shine. I’ve nev­er heard that eu­phemism be­fore. It’s very, uh, vivid.”

She shrugged. “The fact that it has to be Mor­gan­ti is pro­tect­ing you. Isn’t that amus­ing?”

“I’m laugh­ing on the in­side; laugh­ing on the out­side hurts too much.”

She winced in sym­pa­thy. “Any­thing bro­ken?” she asked.

“A rib cracked, I think.”

“Let me bind it.”

“You know how to do that?”

“You pick up a bit of ev­ery­thing, af­ter a while. Take your shirt off.”

I sat up with­out as­sis­tance, but she helped in the shirt re­moval pro­cess. When a dag­ger dropped out from un­der my left armpit, she pre­tend­ed not to no­tice. She al­so pre­tend­ed not to no­tice var­ious things strapped to my wrist. She pressed on the bruise, and when I hissed, she nod­ded sage­ly, just like a re­al physick­er. She al­lowed as to how she’d be back short­ly, and then tele­port­ed out. She was back short­ly—un­der a minute—with a roll of ban­dages.

I de­clined her help in stand­ing up, for what rea­son I couldn’t say. Rais­ing my arms hurt a lot. The pro­cess of wrap­ping the ribs wasn’t any fun, but I did feel bet­ter af­ter­ward, and even re­mem­bered to tell her so. She said, “Good. I’d give you all sorts of in­struc­tions about what to do and not do, but I don’t ac­tu­al­ly know them, ex­cept for the ones you’re go­ing to ig­nore, and the ones you can’t help but fol­low, so let’s just pre­tend I did.”

“We al­so could have pre­tend­ed to do the part where you poked my cracked rib.”

“Then how could you have trust­ed me to bind it? Let’s get back to un­tan­gling this mess.”

“I’m not sure I can think about any­thing ex­cept breath­ing right now, but I’m will­ing to try.”

“If you’d take that amulet off for a minute, I could—”

“No, thanks.”

“As you please. So, why were you beat­en by peo­ple pre­tend­ing to be Drag­onlords?”

“Pre­tend­ing.”

“Yes.”

“You just seem aw­ful­ly con­vinced of that.”

She gave a Kiera shrug—more im­plied by the twitch of her lips than by any move­ment of her shoul­der—and said, “I won’t say I can’t be wrong. I just don’t think I am.”

“Then you think it was the Left Hand?”

“Thugs hired by them, yes. At least, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”

“So then, why?”

“To get you to do some­thing you wouldn’t oth­er­wise do. What did you do?”

“I saw No­rathar, and used the event to pry some in­for­ma­tion out of her.”

“What in­for­ma­tion? Oh, right. You won’t tell me.”

“I’d rather not. It wasn’t any­thing she want­ed to tell me.”

“So?”

“If you need to know—”

“I will nev­er, ev­er, un­der­stand East­ern­ers.”

“What, that we have scru­ples?”

“Not that you have them; where you keep them.”

Sethra would have un­der­stood com­plete­ly, but this time I kept my mouth shut about it. “So, any­way, there’s your an­swer: I was able to get in­for­ma­tion from No­rathar that I wouldn’t oth­er­wise get.”

She nod­ded. “And does the Left Hand know you well enough to have pre­dict­ed you’d do that?”

I start­ed to say no, stopped, con­sid­ered, and said, “It’s not im­pos­si­ble, I sup­pose. But it’s a lit­tle scary if they do. Think of how much they’d have to know, how many im­pli­ca­tions, how many pos­si­bil­ities.”

“Maybe. But, you know, they wouldn’t have had to know you’d do it. Just know­ing you might do it would be enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Vlad, I un­der­stand that you might not pay at­ten­tion to what I say, but you ought to pay at­ten­tion to what you say, don’t you think?”

“Kiera, you know I love you. But I swear by all I de­spise that I would hit you over the head with a chair if I could lift one right now. Please just ex­plain it? Please?”

“You’ve just said that, af­ter the beat­ing, you got No­rathar to tell you things she wouldn’t have oth­er­wise.”

“So? How does that ben­efit them?”

“The Left Hand, Vlad. What do they do?”

“Il­le­gal mag­ic. De­vices for gam­blers to cheat. De­feat­ing spells to pre­vent eaves­drop—oh.”

“Yes.”

“They were lis­ten­ing.”

“We’d best as­sume so.”

“No­rathar is go­ing to kill me.”

“I don’t much care about that,” said Kiera sweet­ly. “I’m wor­ried about who else she’s li­able to kill.”

“Oh. Yes. Um. If they’re clever enough to know what I’d do, aren’t they clever enough to know what No­rathar will do?”

“You’d think so.”

“Well?”

She spread her hands. “Maybe they’re count­ing on her years in the Jhereg to have giv­en her some sense. Or maybe they think it’s worth the gam­ble. Or maybe that’s ex­act­ly what they want.”

“Com­ing up with a com­plex plan that, if it works, will re­sult in your throat be­ing cut seems like a lot of wast­ed think­ing. But maybe that’s just me.”

“I don’t know, Vlad.”

“Can you find out?”

“How? I have no sources in the Left Hand. No one does. How­ev­er stupid you may think their rit­uals are, they work: No one who isn’t one of them knows any­thing.”

“Ugh,” I sug­gest­ed. I won­dered what had hap­pened to the side of my left shoul­der to make it hurt so bad; I didn’t re­mem­ber get­ting hit there. “You can’t do what they do with­out leav­ing a trace. That means there are ways to find out.”

She nod­ded. “Let me know how that works out for you.”

“Kiera—”

“What do you ex­pect me to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Kill some­one. Steal some­thing. Fig­ure some­thing out.”

“The first and last are your busi­ness. I’ll be glad to steal some­thing as soon as you tell me what you want me to steal.”

“Maybe I’ll hire Mario.”

“Heh. As if—” She stopped. “You might, you know.”

“And pay him with what?”

“Vlad, he’s Aliera’s lover.”

“Um. Yeah, I’ve heard that. Is it true?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. It might be worth find­ing out.”

Mario, in case you’ve nev­er heard of him, is to as­sas­sins what So­rami­ir is to sor­cer­ers. If you’ve nev­er heard of So­rami­ir, don’t feel bad; I hadn’t ei­ther un­til a few days ago.

I thought about it. “It’s cer­tain­ly some­thing to keep in mind. At the mo­ment, how­ev­er, I’m not sure just who I’d ask him to kill.”

She nod­ded.

I said, “This busi­ness of them guess­ing what I would do, and plan­ning on it, would make me un­com­fort­able if I be­lieved it. Like, I couldn’t do any­thing be­cause they’d know just what I’d do.”