Steven Brust - Iorich

I had the coach drop me off a few hun­dred feet away, so Loiosh, Rocza, and I could take a last look around. It seemed clear, so I ap­proached the cot­tage. Vlad No­rathar was out front, us­ing the ni­ball rac­quet to keep a ball in the air. He was con­cen­trat­ing very hard, but even­tu­al­ly no­ticed me, stopped, and gave a hes­itant bow.

“Well met, sir,” I told him, giv­ing him my best sweep­ing bow. He grinned, mak­ing his whole face light up. The door opened and Cawti came out. “And well met to you as well, madam.”

“I didn’t ex­pect to see you back so soon,” she said, look­ing at me as if un­cer­tain whether to be pleased or wor­ried.

“Some things have come up. Ques­tions. Do you have time to talk?”

It was the mid­dle of the day; a lit­tle ways down the street a Teck­la wa­tered a gar­den, prob­ably for the crafts­man who owned the house. A cou­ple of chil­dren walked to­ward us, es­cort­ed by a bored-​look­ing nurse.

“Come in, then,” she said. “Come in­side, Vlad.” This last was to the boy, though it jarred me a bit when she said it. She held the door open for him, and I brought up the rear, Loiosh and Rocza land­ing on my shoul­der, at the same mo­ment, as we stepped through the door­way. Vlad No­rathar turned when he heard the wings flap­ping, and his eyes got big.

“Bloody damned show-​offs.”

Some­thing like a chuck­le came in­to my head.

Cawti asked if I want­ed some brandy, and I did. She poured it, neat, un­chilled, and got some­thing for her­self. She gave Vlad No­rathar what looked to be a glass of wine mixed with wa­ter. He sat in a full-​sized chair and wait­ed, ready to be part of the con­ver­sa­tion. I’d heard the ex­pres­sion “I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry,” but I hadn’t giv­en it much cred­it un­til that mo­ment.

Yeah, okay, what­ev­er.

“It’s good to see you,” she said.

“What hap­pened to your face?” said Vlad No­rathar.

“I was beat­en up.”

“By who?”

“Whom,” said Cawti.

“I’m not ex­act­ly cer­tain,” I said.

“Are you go­ing to find out, and then beat them up?”

I hes­itat­ed. When in doubt you can al­ways fall back on hon­esty. “If I have the chance to hurt them, I will.”

He nod­ded, and seemed about to ask more, but I guess Cawti didn’t like where the con­ver­sa­tion was go­ing. “So,” she said. “What is it?”

I tried to fig­ure out how to ex­press it. “Why am I al­ways in a po­si­tion where I need to know what’s go­ing on, and no one will tell me any­thing?”

“You aren’t ac­tu­al­ly ex­pect­ing me to an­swer that.” She phrased it as a state­ment.

“No, I’m not.”

“What is it, then?”

She was wear­ing an olive-​green dress, with a white half-​bodice, half-​vest that laced up in front; there were a few ruf­fles from her white shirt show­ing at the col­lar, and the sleeves were big and puffy. It was the kind of thing that made you ache to un­lace it. Her hair was look­ing es­pe­cial­ly black against it. Damn her, any­way. “Can you tell me any­thing at all about what, uh, what your peo­ple, your group, are do­ing about this mas­sacre?”

Her brows came to­geth­er and she looked gen­uine­ly puz­zled. “Vlad, there isn’t any se­cret about that. We’ve been ag­itat­ing about it since it hap­pened, and—”

“Pub­licly?”

“Of course.”

“What about pri­vate­ly?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” She said it as if she re­al­ly wasn’t. I hes­itat­ed, and she said, “Maybe you could give me an idea of why you need to know.”

“Um,” I said. “Some of this I can’t tell you.”

Her eyes sparkled for a mo­ment, just like they used to. “Ex­plain to me again what you were say­ing about need­ing to know things and no one be­ing will­ing to tell you any­thing.”

I felt my­self smil­ing. “Yeah.”

Vlad No­rathar re­mained in his chair, his eyes mov­ing from one of us to the oth­er as we spoke. He had some of his wine, hold­ing the mug in both hands, his eyes watch­ing me over the rim. I’ve been stared at by a lot scari­er guys who made me a lot less ner­vous. I cleared my throat.

“Ev­ery­thing ties in­to ev­ery­thing else,” I said.

She nod­ded. “Yes, we’ll start with the big gen­er­al­iza­tions. Okay, go on.”

I sup­pressed a growl. “The Jhereg is up to some­thing big and nasty,” I said. “They’re work­ing with the Or­ca. I don’t know how un­rest among Teck­la and East­ern­ers will play in­to it. It might work against what they’re do­ing, in which case your group will be a tar­get. Or it might work for it, in which case you’ll be help­ing them.”

“Vlad, I don’t know where you get the idea that we can con­trol pop­ular un­rest. We can’t. On the day we can, we’ll be liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent world.”

“Um. All right, sup­pose I ac­cept that. I don’t think the Jhereg will.”

She nod­ded. “I ap­pre­ci­ate the warn­ing; I’ll pass it on.”

“Good,” I said. “But that wasn’t ac­tu­al­ly what I was af­ter.”

“All right. What are you af­ter?”

“Try­ing to fig­ure out what will hap­pen, how the Jhereg will re­spond, how the Em­pire will re­spond to that, and how I have to re­spond to the Em­pire.”

She nod­ded. “Good luck with that.”

“I drown in the depths of your sym­pa­thy.”

“Vlad—”

I sighed. “Okay.”

“I just don’t know what I can tell you that would do you any good.”

“Do you ex­pect ri­ots?”

“I wish I knew. Peo­ple are an­gry enough. We’re do­ing all we can to stop them, but—”

“Stop them?”

She blinked. “Of course, Vlad. A ri­ot isn’t go­ing to do any­thing ex­cept get some heads bro­ken.”

“Um. Okay, looks like I need to re-​eval­uate.”

“Does this throw off your plan?”

“No, not that bad. I hadn’t got­ten as far as hav­ing a plan.”

She nod­ded; she knew my way of work­ing as well as any­one. Bet­ter than any­one. “We’re not the on­ly group work­ing in South Adri­lankha and among the Teck­la, you know.”

“Um. Ac­tu­al­ly, I didn’t know that.”

“There are at least six in­de­pen­dent or­ga­ni­za­tions.”

“Re­al­ly. Well. What would hap­pen if you all got to­geth­er?”

“To do what?”

“Eh, I don’t know.”

“If we all got to­geth­er, nei­ther would we. Since we have op­po­site ideas on what to do, ‘get­ting to­geth­er’ doesn’t seem like it would ac­com­plish a great deal, does it?”

“Okay, okay. I hadn’t meant to start some­thing. What are these oth­er groups up to?”

She rolled her eyes. “Var­ious things. Some of them are get­ting up pe­ti­tions to the Em­pire. Some are or­ga­niz­ing food and mon­ey to be sent to the sur­vivors in Tir­ma. Some are or­ga­niz­ing march­es de­mand­ing the Em­pire in­ves­ti­gate. Some are en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to in­di­vid­ual acts of vi­olence against Im­pe­ri­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Some—”

“Wait a minute. Acts of vi­olence?”

Her lips pressed to­geth­er and she nod­ded. “Po­lit­ical­ly naive is the kind­est thing you can say about it; sui­ci­dal is more ac­cu­rate.”

“Can you tell me what they’re plan­ning?”

She gave me a hard look. “From what I know of them, they aren’t plan­ning any­thing, they’re just en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to at­tack Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. And if they were plan­ning some­thing, I wouldn’t be in a po­si­tion to know what it is. And if I were in such a po­si­tion, I cer­tain­ly wouldn’t tell you about it.”