Steven Brust - Iorich

“I think you’re over­stat­ing it a bit.”

“I know. But it’s strange. Ev­er had some­one try that on you?”

“No. But then, I’ve been pret­ty scrupu­lous about Jhereg rules.”

I winced. I guess I had that com­ing. “My first re­ac­tion,” I said, “is to just find some Left Hand busi­ness some­where and start mess­ing it up, to see what they do. Pick one at ran­dom, so they can’t pre­dict it. It’ll give me some­thing to take my frus­tra­tions out on. I sup­pose that would be stupid. Un­less I can find some use­ful as­pect.”

“There are worse ideas.”

“Al­so bet­ter ones, I sus­pect. But if they re­al­ly have this planned based on pre­dict­ing my ac­tions—which I still don’t be­lieve—then do­ing some­thing un­pre­dictable might have some ben­efit.”

“Sup­pose I’m right—us­ing this to kill you is just a grace note in a larg­er con­cert.”

“All right. What then?”

“Who is play­ing the in­stru­ment? That is, who in the Left Hand have you es­pe­cial­ly pissed off?”

“Tri­esco,” I said.

“You don’t aim small, do you?”

“What’s the point of hav­ing weak en­emies? They just waste your time.”

“It would make sense,” said Kiera. “From what I know of her, she’s pow­er­ful, ruth­less, skilled, and not all that nice. And, yes, she’s quite ca­pa­ble of hatch­ing a plot like a Yen­di.”

“Match­es what I know,” I said. “Think it’s her?”

“If you an­noyed her, prob­ably.”

“Well, then.”

“So,” she said to the air. “How did it go down? What are they plan­ning? Or her, if it’s her.”

“Kiera?”

“Hm­mm?”

“Thanks.”

She nod­ded ab­sent­ly, her eyes fo­cused over my shoul­der, a frown of con­cen­tra­tion on her brow. “The more I think about it, the more I think your idea of ran­dom­ly mess­ing up a Left Hand cov­er busi­ness isn’t that bad. It’ll make them re­spond to some­thing new. It could cause a slip.”

“Hear that, Loiosh? It’s from Kiera. You can’t ar­gue.”

“Sure I can.”

“But you won’t.”

“Sure I will.”

Sure he would. “In that case,” I said, “I need to find out a few of their busi­ness­es, so I can pick one to mess up. I’m go­ing to en­joy this.”

“Are you in any shape to do any mess­ing? Or, rather, will you be to­mor­row?”

I grunt­ed. “Maybe not. Maybe that’s why they did it. Can’t ig­nore the pos­si­bil­ity that they beat me in or­der to beat me.”

She laughed. I hadn’t thought it was that fun­ny, but you nev­er know what will strike Kiera as amus­ing. “I’d vol­un­teer to help,” she said. “But mess­ing peo­ple up isn’t my tal­ent.”

“It isn’t a tal­ent, Kiera. It’s a learned skill.”

“I nev­er learned that skill, then.”

There was a lot I could have said to that, but noth­ing that would have been well re­ceived. “Do you hap­pen to know any of their places of busi­ness?”

“A cou­ple of the more ob­vi­ous ones: There’s a sor­cery sup­ply shop on Lock­wood, just west of the mar­ket. I’ve seen them go in and out of the place af­ter hours. And there’s a tin­smith on Den­cel that has to have some oth­er source of in­come, and I know it isn’t Jhereg—I mean, our Jhereg. But give me a day or so and I’ll see if I can find a few more, so you have a good list to pick from.”

I nod­ded. “I ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

“We have friends in com­mon,” she said.

“Yes.”

“For now, if you won’t re­move the amulet—”

She broke off with an in­quir­ing look. “I won’t,” I said.

She nod­ded. “Then I think you should get up and come with me.”

I gave her a sus­pi­cious look. “Where are we go­ing?”

“Down two flights of stairs.”

“Why?”

“Trust me,” she said.

Put that way, I had no choice. I reached for my shirt, but she said to leave it off, so I buck­led on my rapi­er and La­dy Tel­dra, and threw my cloak over my shoul­ders, feel­ing dis­tinct­ly odd with a cloak and no shirt. Then I fol­lowed her out the door.

We went back down to the main lev­el of the inn, then fol­lowed a vine-​cov­ered stone walk­way out­side and around, back in­to the build­ing, and down an­oth­er flight of stairs, at which point I be­gan to smell some­thing rot­ten and sharp—it near­ly stung my nose—and vague­ly fa­mil­iar.

“What am I smelling?”

“Brim­stone.”

“Oh. Uh, that doesn’t bode well.”

“Trust me.”

We emerged at last in­to what looked like a wide un­der­ground cav­ern, though some of the walls had been smoothed and there were sculp­tures here and there of im­pos­si­ble beasts, many of them with steam­ing wa­ter com­ing out of their mouths. There was a large pool in the mid­dle, and screens set about it. Kiera led me to one of the screens. Stuck in­to it was a small green flag, up­side down. She re­moved it, stuck it in right side up. “Af­ter you,” she said. I went past the screen, which she re­placed be­hind me. In front of me was a small pool; the brim­stone smell was very in­tense here, and the wa­ter was steam­ing heav­ily and bub­bling.

“Get in,” she said.

“What will this do?”

“Make you hurt less to­mor­row.”

“Re­al­ly?”

“Ei­ther that or boil the skin off you. One or the oth­er. Maybe both. Get in.”

I start­ed to ar­gue, stopped, shrugged, and re­moved my cloak. “Are you go­ing to turn your back?”

“No,” she said.

I re­moved my boots and pants with as much dig­ni­ty as I could; the pain helped keep my mind off my em­bar­rass­ment. “What about the ban­dage?”

“Keep it on. I’ll change it when you get out.”

Loiosh and Rocza com­plained about the smell and flew over to the side, stay­ing well away from the wa­ter. I couldn’t blame them.

My first re­ac­tion was that it was, in­deed, go­ing to boil the skin off me. But it was ei­ther im­merse my­self, or stand there naked in front of Kiera, and I’d rather hurt than look ab­surd.

It was very hot, and it al­so stank. I hoped like hell it would do enough good to be worth it.

Soak­ing your­self in hot, bub­bling wa­ter is odd: the first touch burns, then you find you can stand it, and then af­ter ten min­utes or so it gets too hot again. I have no idea why that is; I just knew I want­ed to get out. Kiera ex­plained that if I got out she’d push me back in again, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stop her. Loiosh thought the whole thing was pret­ty fun­ny.

I stayed in there for an­oth­er five min­utes or so, then Kiera pro­duced a tow­el from some­where and said, “That should do it.”

I stood up and wrapped the tow­el around my­self. “How many sor­cer­ers does it take to keep all this wa­ter so hot?”

“None,” she said. “It’s nat­ural.”

I looked at her face to see if she was kid­ding, but I couldn’t tell, so I let it drop.

“How do you feel?” she want­ed to know.

“Scald­ed.”

“I sup­pose.”

“But not bad, re­al­ly.”

“Good,” she said. “I heard some­where that East­ern­ers couldn’t take that much heat, that their hearts would ex­plode. But I didn’t be­lieve it.”

I stared at her. She smiled sweet­ly. I shook my head and de­cid­ed not to think about it too much.

“Go get some rest,” she said as I dressed my­self. “I’ll try to get you some use­ful in­for­ma­tion, and then we’ll fig­ure out what to do next.”

Odd­ly enough, I felt like I could rest. I still ached, but I felt re­laxed and a lit­tle drowsy. Maybe more than a lit­tle; I don’t re­mem­ber walk­ing back up the stairs, or even ly­ing down, ex­cept that I have a half-​mem­ory of Loiosh say­ing some­thing that, at the time, I didn’t think was very fun­ny.