Steven Brust - Iorich

I hadn’t got­ten any­where when I reached the big gates; the same guard was there. He said, “You want to see Aliera?”

“Yes,” I said, though I hadn’t ac­tu­al­ly for­mu­lat­ed the idea.

I just had to sign and seal one pa­per, af­firm­ing that ev­ery­thing I’d signed be­fore still ap­plied. Some­one I’d nev­er seen be­fore guid­ed me in.

I clapped at the door be­fore the guard could; she opened the door and let me in, say­ing, “One hour.”

Aliera was in the same place, the same po­si­tion she’d been in be­fore. I had the im­pres­sion she hadn’t moved since I’d left. On the ta­ble next to the couch were sev­er­al wine bot­tles, all emp­ty.

“Well,” she said, glar­ing at me.

“Ver­ra!” I said. “First Sethra, now you. Great.”

“Huh?”

“When I spoke with Sethra, she was drunk, too.”

“Is there some­thing I should be do­ing in­stead?”

“An­swer­ing my ques­tions.”

“Ask them.”

“First ques­tion: Did you know the Em­press is start­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events in Tir­ma?”

“First an­swer: Why should I care?”

“Be­cause it was not want­ing to run that in­ves­ti­ga­tion that led to you be­ing ar­rest­ed.”

“So you say. And by the way, yes I knew. Some Iorich came in here and want­ed to ask me ques­tions about it.”

“And you were in just the shape you’re in now, right?”

She shrugged.

“Per­fect,” I said. “Can you re­mem­ber what she want­ed to know?”

“Sure. She want­ed to know if I en­joy slaugh­ter­ing in­no­cent Teck­la.”

“Did she ask that in so many words?”

Aliera made a vague sort of dis­miss­ing ges­ture.

I said, “You’re prob­ably too drunk for this to do any good, but I need to point out that if the Em­pire is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the re­al thing, then there’s no need for them to press fake charges against you.”

“And yet,” she said, “here I am.”

“Yes. I’m try­ing to fix that.”

She yawned. “Let me know how that works out.”

“If I come back to­mor­row, will you be sober?”

“If I stay drunk, will you stay away?”

I could have point­ed out that she wasn’t help­ing, but I was be­gin­ning to get the idea that this wouldn’t be a pow­er­ful ar­gu­ment. There needs to be a bet­ter word than “stub­born” to de­scribe a Drag­onlord whose pride has been of­fend­ed, and then a bet­ter word than that to de­scribe Aliera.

“So tell me,” I said. “Do you en­joy slaugh­ter­ing in­no­cent Teck­la?”

She stared at me for a minute, then burst out laugh­ing. Since I’d fig­ured it was ei­ther that or she’d kill me, I was just as pleased. She laughed for much longer than it was worth, but I at­tribut­ed that to her state. Even­tu­al­ly she wiped her eyes and said, “Yes, but not by proxy.”

“I doubt the Iorich would ac­cept that an­swer.”

“You nev­er know,” she said. “They might. I’ll ask my ad­vo­cate if we should base our de­fense on it.”

“Do that. I’ll ask the Em­press what she thinks.”

“Do that. I’m cu­ri­ous about what’s be­hind all of this.”

“Me too. That’s what I’m do­ing here.”

“What, you think I can tell you some­thing?”

“Al­most cer­tain­ly. And you might even be will­ing, if I knew what to ask.”

She swirled the wine in her glass and stared at it. “Maybe I would. What ex­act­ly is the prob­lem you’re try­ing to solve?”

I gave her a quick run­down about things as I saw it.

“So, you think the Jhereg,” she al­most spat the word, “are go­ing to sab­otage this in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“Have you ev­er known them, or the Or­ca, to give up a chance for prof­it if there was a way not to?”

“No. But I don’t see any­thing they can do that won’t back-​fire on them.”

“You aren’t re­al­ly drunk, are you?”

“No, not re­al­ly.”

“I should prob­ably tell No­rathar, or else the Em­press, about what I think is go­ing on.”

“Prob­ably.”

“Un­less you’d rather.”

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know. A way of say­ing there are no hard feel­ings?”

“What makes you think there are no hard feel­ings?”

“Okay, a way of play­ing pol­itics? My prob­lems aren’t the sort that can be solved by hav­ing the Em­pire owe me any­thing.”

“I don’t ac­tu­al­ly care.” She hes­itat­ed. “But thanks for the of­fer.”

“D’ski!tna.”

“What?”

“You owe me no debt.”

“I know what it means. When did you learn Se­ri­oli?”

“On­ly a cou­ple of words,” I said, feel­ing my face turn­ing red. “I met a bard who—nev­er mind.”

She shrugged. “Any­thing else, or can I get back to plot­ting my jail­break?”

“You can get back to it. Can I smug­gle you in a lit­tle blue stone or some­thing?”

“They’re ac­tu­al­ly pur­ple, and, yes, I’ll take three of them.”

“Heh.”

I stood up to go. She said, “Vlad.”

“Hm?”

I ex­pect­ed her to thank me for all my work. Or maybe an­nounce some­thing pro­found, like telling me about a vi­sion she’d had of the De­mon God­dess. What she said was, “I don’t mind my daugh­ter play­ing with your son.”

“Um. Okay, thanks.”

I had the guard let me out of the place.

Be­ing in the Palace any­way, I went back to the same ven­dor and found some sausages that weren’t too bad, and bread that could have been staler, then made my way back to my room. Loiosh told me it was emp­ty, so I went in. I lay down on the bed and tried to think. My stom­ach grum­bled a lit­tle. I won­dered if I was get­ting too old to be liv­ing on bread and sausage; that would be sad.

As I lay there, I found my hand stroking the tiny gold­en links on the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra. In the years I’d had her, I’d on­ly used her twice; I some­how thought that would please her. Those thoughts led me to an­oth­er Is­so­la I knew, but I pushed those away: I need­ed to con­cen­trate on busi­ness.

My hand kept stroking La­dy Tel­dra’s hilt.

Hey, you in there? Any ideas? Can you help?

Noth­ing.

I sud­den­ly missed her—I mean, the re­al per­son—very sharply. It’s all well and good to think of her per­son­al­ity be­ing pre­served in­side a weapon, but for one thing, I’d nev­er felt it that I could be sure of. And for an­oth­er, I didn’t en­tire­ly be­lieve it. I won­der if she would say mur­der­ing a bunch of Teck­la was im­po­lite. I won­dered if the fact that I didn’t much care made me a bad per­son. Prob­ably.

“I won­der if she’d say any­thing about ly­ing on top of the bed with your boots on.”

“Prob­ably.”

My mind wan­dered, which is a good thing, be­cause some­times it wan­ders to where it needs to go and un­cov­ers just the right rock. In this case, it wan­dered to High Coun­sel Perisil. An in­ter­est­ing fel­low. What I’d said to him had been true: None of the ad­vo­cates I’d run in­to be­fore had any in­ter­est oth­er than in mak­ing them­selves rich. This shouldn’t be seen as say­ing any­thing about the House over­all: it’s a par­tic­ular set of them who end up work­ing for the Jhereg. I don’t know, maybe the Jhereg ex­erts an in­flu­ence on some peo­ple, turn­ing them. Or maybe those with such in­cli­na­tions, in any House, are more sub­ject to work­ing for them, more sub­ject to tak­ing and giv­ing bribes, to stab­bing peo­ple in the back, to set­ting up some poor bas­tard the way Perisil had said—