Steven Brust - Iorich

Q: Please tell us your of­fi­cial po­si­tion with re­spect to the Em­pire.

A: Pris­on­er.

Q: Please tell us your of­fi­cial po­si­tion, with re­spect to the Em­pire, at the time of the in­ci­dent in Tir­ma.

A: War­lord, al­though in point of fact, my re­spect for the Em­pire is, at this mo­ment, un­der some­thing of a strain.

Q: Were the Im­pe­ri­al troops in Tir­ma act­ing un­der your or­ders?

A: I was the War­lord.

Q: I take that as an af­fir­ma­tive.

A: You can take that and—yes, they were act­ing un­der my or­ders.

Q: What or­ders did you give with re­spect to the re­bel­lion in the duchy of Carv­er?

A: To sup­press it.

Q: Were you spe­cif­ic as to the means of sup­press­ing it?

A: I thought per­haps a nice bou­quet of can­dle­bud sur­round­ing a bot­tle of Ailor would do the trick.

Q: The Court re­minds the wit­ness that copies of her or­ders are in the Court’s pos­ses­sion.

A: The wit­ness won­ders, then, why the Court is both­er­ing to ask ques­tions to which it knows the an­swers.

Q: The wit­ness is re­mind­ed that she may be held in con­tempt.

A: The feel­ing is mu­tu­al.

“Want to tell me about it, Boss?”

Just to be un­pre­dictable, I filled him in on what I’d put to­geth­er. When I’d fin­ished, he was qui­et for a while; maybe from shock. Then he said, “Okay, what now?”

“Can you think of any rea­son for the Left Hand to have that cot­tage watched, ex­cept for what I’m think­ing? They’re push­ing for an Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and the Left Hand doesn’t want that to hap­pen. Am I miss­ing some­thing?”

“Boss, you don’t know any­thing about those peo­ple. That’s one thing they’re do­ing. What if it’s some­thing else en­tire­ly?”

“Like what?”

“How should I know?”

“You re­al­ly think it’s some­thing else?”

“No, I think the same as you. But you don’t know.”

“Then let’s run with that for the mo­ment, and see where it gets us. If the Em­pire in­ves­ti­gates, the deal’s off, and the Jhereg, the Or­ca, and the Left Hand all lose. So, they don’t want the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to hap­pen.”

“But it’s hap­pen­ing any­way, hav­ing noth­ing to do with any­one in any lit­tle cot­tage. Where does that leave us?”

“That’s what I’m try­ing to work out.”

“Work away.”

“Okay. How do you stop an Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“You know, Boss, that’s some­thing you ne­glect­ed to cov­er in my train­ing ses­sions.”

“Can’t pres­sure the Em­press di­rect­ly, we have noth­ing to pres­sure her with.”

“I don’t get it, Boss. Why is the Em­press do­ing this, any­way?”

“So she can get out from un­der the Jhereg; to look good to the no­bles, and maybe to the peo­ple too, I don’t know.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that.”

“So then, the thing to do is to dis­cred­it the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Good plan, Boss. How do you do it?”

“Spread ru­mors that these East­ern­ers are be­hind it? Maybe plant some ev­idence?”

“Pos­si­ble.” He didn’t sound con­vinced. Nei­ther was I, for that mat­ter.

“Boss, where are we go­ing?”

I stopped. As I had been think­ing and walk­ing, my feet had tak­en me over the Stone Bridge and were lead­ing me back to my old area—the worst place I could be. The chances of the Jhereg spot­ting me were too high to make me com­fort­able any­where in the city; in my old neigh­bor­hood it was near­ly cer­tain.

“Uh, nowhere. Back to the Palace, I guess.”

I changed di­rec­tion; Loiosh kept his com­ments to him­self.

I made it to the Palace with­out in­ci­dent, en­ter­ing through the Drag­on Wing just to be con­trary, and be­cause I was in a mood to glare back. I found some food, then crossed to the House of the Iorich.

I clapped, and, once again, he opened the door enough to peer out, then let me in. One of these days, I was go­ing to have to ask him why he does that.

I sat down and said, “The Em­press is launch­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events at Tir­ma.”

“Yes,” he said. “I seem to re­mem­ber telling you that. What about it?”

“Do you think it’s a re­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

He frowned. “As op­posed to what?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “A bunch of run­ning around, closed-​door tes­ti­mo­ny, fol­lowed by what­ev­er re­sult the Em­press wants.”

“I doubt it’s that, not from this em­press. I should find out who is in charge of it. That might tell us some­thing.” He stood up. “I may as well do it now.”

“Should I wait here?”

“Yes, but re­lax. This might take a while.”

I nod­ded. He slipped out. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I guess I fell asleep, or at least dozed. I had some vague­ly dis­turb­ing dream that I can’t re­mem­ber, and woke up when Perisil came back in.

“Were you sleep­ing?” He seemed amused.

“Just rest­ing my eyes,” I said. “What did you learn?”

“It’s be­ing run by La­dy Jus­ticer De­saniek.”

He sat down be­hind his desk and looked ex­pec­tant­ly at me. “Sor­ry,” I said. “I don’t know the name.”

“She’s one of the High Jus­ticers. I trust you know what that means?”

“More or less,” I said.

“I know her. She isn’t cor­rupt­ible. She’s a lit­tle fast and loose with her in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the tra­di­tions, but com­plete­ly unim­peach­able when it comes to judg­ment and sen­tenc­ing.”

“So you’re say­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is straight.”

“Prob­ably. She’d be an odd choice if the Em­press didn’t want to ac­tu­al­ly learn what hap­pened, and why.”

“Might there be oth­er pres­sures on her, less di­rect than or­ders to rig it?”

He hes­itat­ed. “Maybe.”

“So then, how would some­one stop it?”

“Stop it?” he said. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Not me. There are oth­ers.”

“Who?”

“Let’s say pow­er­ful in­ter­ests. How would they go about stop­ping it?”

“I can’t an­swer that un­less you give me more in­for­ma­tion. What in­ter­ests? Why do they want to stop it? Pow­er­ful in what way?”

“All good ques­tions,” I said. I paused to con­sid­er just what I could tell him. It was frus­trat­ing: he could al­most cer­tain­ly tell me use­ful things if I didn’t have to wor­ry about what he might be made to tell.

“Just sup­pose,” I said, “that there ex­ist­ed a large crim­inal or­ga­ni­za­tion.”

I hes­itat­ed there; he watched me, lis­ten­ing, not mov­ing.

“And sup­pose,” I said, “that they had come up with a great idea for chang­ing the law in such a way that they made a lot of mon­ey, and that they were work­ing with cer­tain oth­er very pow­er­ful in­ter­ests.”

“How pow­er­ful?”

“As pow­er­ful as you can be at the bot­tom of the Cy­cle.”

“Go on.”

“And sup­pose that this idea for chang­ing the law re­quired putting pres­sure on the Em­press, and that this in­ves­ti­ga­tion had a good like­li­hood of re­liev­ing that pres­sure.”

“I’m with you.”

“How would such a hy­po­thet­ical or­ga­ni­za­tion go about stop­ping or sab­otag­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

He was silent for a minute or two; I could al­most hear his brain bub­bling. Then he said, “I can’t think of any way.”

“Heh. Sup­pose they killed De­saniek?”