Steven Brust - Iorich

When I woke up, some un­known num­ber of hours lat­er, it was dark out­side. A check with the Im­pe­ri­al Orb told me it was still a few hours be­fore dawn, and a check with my body told me I hurt a lot. Log­ic and ex­pe­ri­ence con­vinced me I hurt less than I should have, but that was of strict­ly lim­it­ed com­fort. I guess those hot baths had done some­thing, any­way.

I stood up, and care­ful­ly—very care­ful­ly—went through what I re­mem­bered of the warm-​up ex­er­cis­es my grand­fa­ther had taught me when I was learn­ing sword­play. He’d told me they worked to loosen up tight mus­cles, and that no mag­ic was in­volved. I couldn’t do ev­ery­thing—my rib ob­ject­ed loud­ly to a lot of the po­si­tions be­fore I could even get in­to them; but what I did seemed to help. I took it slow, spend­ing over an hour stretch­ing care­ful­ly and field­ing com­ments from Loiosh about my new ca­reer as a dancer. I dis­cussed his new ca­reer as a wall dec­ora­tion, but he didn’t seem es­pe­cial­ly scared.

As I made my way in­to the court­yard, Loiosh spot­ted some­one who looked like he might be a Jhereg. I wait­ed in­side the door while he and Rocza scout­ed the area, and even­tu­al­ly found a cir­cuitous route out of the place and to the Palace, where no one was watch­ing. I mean, I don’t know it was a Jhereg, and it if was I don’t know that he was go­ing to do any more than watch my move­ments. But I didn’t feel in­clined to take chances.

I passed through the Palace like I’d been do­ing it all my life, out the Iorich Wing, and in­to the House of the Iorich. There were no mys­te­ri­ous notes out­side his door, and Loiosh said Perisil was in­side, or else some­one who breathed ex­act­ly the same. Loiosh once gave me a lec­ture on how to iden­ti­fy peo­ple by the sound of their breath­ing; I lis­tened to be po­lite.

I clapped. Af­ter a mo­ment, I clapped again. The door opened enough for him to look at me, then he grunt­ed and opened it more. We sat.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

Ei­ther his pow­ers of ob­ser­va­tion didn’t ex­tend to things like how slow­ly I was mov­ing or how gin­ger­ly I sat or the pur­plish bruis­es on my face, or else it just wasn’t some­thing he felt like talk­ing about. I said, “What do you mean?”

“About an hour ago, I got word that the pros­ecu­tion against Aliera was tem­porar­ily de­layed, while the Em­pire car­ried out ‘fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.’ ”

“Um,” I said. “Is that good?”

“I don’t know,” he said. His pe­cu­liar eyes nar­rowed a lit­tle and he cocked his head. “What did you do?”

“I spoke with the War­lord. She, it seems, had a plan with the Em­press to keep from hav­ing to ex­ecute Aliera, and I ex­plained why it wouldn’t work.”

He sat back. “Ah!” he said. “Well, that tells us at least that Her Majesty doesn’t want to ex­ecute Aliera.”

“We knew that al­ready.”

“Yes, I sup­pose we did.”

“Is there a re­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, or is it just some­thing they’re say­ing so they can slow things down?”

“Both. There’s a re­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but it isn’t about Aliera’s use of pre-​Em­pire sor­cery. They’re ac­tu­al­ly look­ing in­to the events at Tir­ma.”

I sat back, which hurt more than I’d have thought, and tried to fig­ure out ex­act­ly what that might mean. I failed. “There are a lot of an­gles to that,” I said.

“Yes. It means ev­ery­thing to our case if we can draw the con­nec­tion; noth­ing at all if we can’t. And in the mean­time, we can’t do any­thing un­til we know if the Em­pire is ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to fol­low up on the pros­ecu­tion.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

His eye­brows went up. “Go on.”

“I just mean we may not have things to do legal­ly, but on my end—”

“The things you won’t tell me about.”

“Right. On my end, I have a few things to fol­low up on.”

He stared at his desk, then looked up. “I don’t like be­ing kept in the dark about things that have an ef­fect on my case.”

“I don’t blame you.”

He grunt­ed. “All right. Do what you have to.”

I nod­ded and re­frained from say­ing that I ful­ly in­tend­ed to, what­ev­er he said. “Any­thing else?”

“Not for now. Keep me in­formed of any­thing you can keep me in­formed of.”

“You too.”

He grunt­ed and I made my way to my feet and left. He nev­er did re­mark about how I was mov­ing.

I tried to walk as if I wasn’t hurt; it made me feel less of a tar­get, though I guess there isn’t much log­ic be­hind that—any as­sas­sin worth his stone would as­sume I was in top form be­fore mak­ing a move any­way.

I need­ed to know what Cawti and her cute lit­tle band of would-​be rebels were up to; I al­so couldn’t ask her, since my at­ti­tude about them was what had led to our breakup.

I stopped just in­side the door of the Wing that would lead me back out to­ward the Palace. I saw no sign of any­one watch­ing me. That doesn’t prove there wasn’t any­one, but I’m pret­ty good at notic­ing such things when I look. The trick is re­mem­ber­ing to look.

“Where to now, Boss?”

“I need to see Cawti again. Right away.”

Then, “Sor­ry, Boss.”

“Yeah. Any ideas how to get there with­out draw­ing a crowd? I hate to re­peat a trick. Be­sides, I don’t think the Jhereg would fall for the same one twice.”

“You know I’m not much with the ideas, Boss.”

“I need to see Cawti, and I very much do not want to di­rect any­one there. Any­thing you can come up with—”

“Walk around un­til you’re sure you’ve been spot­ted, find who­ev­er is fol­low­ing you, and kill him?”

“I’ll con­sid­er that op­tion.”

Oth­er than Loiosh’s sug­ges­tion, I couldn’t come up with any great ideas, so I went the old tra­di­tion­al route of try­ing to lose some­one in a crowd, al­ter­nat­ing with emp­ty streets with a lot of turns so you can see if any­one is stay­ing with you. This can be very ef­fec­tive with one per­son tail­ing you; with two or more who are stay­ing in touch, it’s less re­li­able. But I had the Palace right at hand, which had the ad­di­tion­al ben­efit of be­ing pret­ty much off-​lim­its to any­one try­ing to take me down, es­pe­cial­ly Mor­gan­ti.

I spent a good cou­ple of hours at it, stop­ping on­ly to get some bread and sausage from a ven­dor I passed. When I was as con­vinced as pos­si­ble that I was un­ob­served, I ducked out through the Jhe­gaala Wing be­cause it had a nice shrub bor­der near where the coach­es were. Loiosh and Rocza re­mained out­side, fly­ing around and keep­ing watch. I switched coach­es once, near Bri­isan Cen­ter, then fi­nal­ly gave the ad­dress of Cawti’s house.

Iorich

11

Lord Carv­er, present­ly in the Iorich Wing await­ing ex­ecu­tion, has re­fused to speak to the com­mit­tee. We can, how­ev­er, rea­son­ably con­clude that his pri­ma­ry mo­tive was fi­nan­cial. It is clear both from the buildup of mil­itary force be­gin­ning in Zeri­ka 239 and what may be called pro­pa­gan­da ef­forts be­gin­ning in Zeri­ka 249 that the at­tempt to break away had been planned for some years. What is less cer­tain is that he ex­pect­ed sup­port from Count­ess Sicera and Barons High­hold and De­lo­ra. Whether he did ex­pect such sup­port, what rea­sons he may have had for such ex­pec­ta­tions, and why this sup­port was not forth­com­ing is be­yond the scope of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, save to note that, had he in fact had such sup­port the pos­si­bil­ity of suc­cess of his re­bel­lion would have been con­sid­er­ably strength­ened.