Steven Brust - Iorich

Oh.

Well, sure. That would do it.

“You think, Boss?”

“Why not? What would hap­pen?”

“I don’t know. You fig­ure that out.”

“I al­ready have, Loiosh. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be stopped, at least for a while, and there would be all sorts of noise about round­ing up and sup­press­ing Teck­la and East­ern­ers, and the no­bles would blame Zeri­ka for let­ting it get out of hand, and it would be a round throw whether she’d be able to get things back in hand, or whether she’d have to cave to the Jhereg to get the pres­sure off.”

“That’s the part I don’t see, Boss. How does go­ing along with the Jhereg re­lieve the pres­sure on Zeri­ka?”

“Now that is an ex­cel­lent ques­tion, my fine jhereg friend. I think I’ll go ask her.”

“Now?”

“I’ll prob­ably have to wait for hours to see her; can you think of a rea­son not to start the wait?”

“Put that way, I guess not.”

It was ear­ly evening; just be­gin­ning to get dark. I didn’t know what hours Her Majesty kept, but it could do no harm in ask­ing, so long as no one pol­ished me up dur­ing the walk from the inn to the Palace.

Loiosh and Rocza kept care­ful watch, and I took the round­about path I’d tak­en be­fore, and made it to the Palace with­out in­ci­dent. I won’t bore you with a rep­eti­tion of mak­ing my way to As­skiss Al­ley. Harn­wood was still there; like Aliera, he seemed not to have moved.

“Count Szurke,” he said.

I bowed. “Good Lord Harn­wood, would it be pos­si­ble to find out if Her Majesty would con­sent to see me?”

His face gave no sign there was any­thing odd in the re­quest. “Is it ur­gent?”

“A few hours or a day will make no dif­fer­ence,” I said. “But I have new in­for­ma­tion.”

He didn’t ask about what. Maybe he knew, but more like­ly he knew it was none of his busi­ness. “I shall in­quire. Please have a chair.”

I did, and wait­ed maybe half an hour.

“The Em­press will see you.”

I start­ed to fol­low him, stopped, and said, “When back­ing away from Her Majesty at the end of the in­ter­view, how many steps do I take be­fore turn­ing around?”

He smiled; I think the ques­tion pleased him. “If you are here as a per­son­al friend of Her Majesty, then five. If you are here as Count Szurke, then sev­en. If as Baronet Tal­tos, then ten.”

“Thank you,” I said.

If I had the choice be­tween try­ing to fig­ure out an Is­so­la and try­ing to fig­ure out an Iorich, I think I’d take a nap.

Harn­wood led me through a dif­fer­ent route, short­er, and to a co­zi­er room; I had the strong feel­ing this was a part of her liv­ing quar­ters, which meant I was be­ing hon­ored, or else that I was ir­ri­tat­ing her, or both. She was wait­ing. Harn­wood bowed deeply to Her Majesty, less deeply to me. I bowed to Her Majesty, she nod­ded to me. It’s just like a dance.

She didn’t of­fer me a chair. I said, “Majesty, thank you for see­ing me. I hadn’t re­al­ized you knew the Necro­mancer.”

She frowned. “How did you—” then looked down at her gold­en out­fit. “You’ve seen Sethra re­cent­ly.”

“Your Majesty’s pow­ers of de­duc­tion are—”

“Leave it. What is this new in­for­ma­tion?”

“There is go­ing to be an ef­fort made to stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events in Tir­ma.”

She frowned. “What sort of at­tempt, and how do you know?”

I nod­ded. “Please ac­cept my com­pli­ments, Majesty. Those are good ques­tions. I rec­og­nize good ques­tions, be­cause I can come up with them my­self.”

Her brows came to­geth­er. “Are you bar­gain­ing with me, Tal­tos?”

“No, Majesty. I’ll an­swer yours in any case. I’m hop­ing Your Majesty’s grat­itude will—”

“I get it. I’ll think about it.”

Be­ing Em­press means be­ing able to in­ter­rupt any­one, at any time. La­dy Tel­dra wouldn’t have ap­proved, but I have to ad­mit it was the first thing about the job I’d ev­er found at­trac­tive.

I said, “An at­tempt will be made on the life of Jus­ticer De­saniek. I know by de­duc­tion, from hints I’ve got­ten, and be­cause I know how the Jhereg op­er­ates.”

She stared. “The Jhereg? They wouldn’t—”

“It will look like an at­tempt by a group of East­ern­ers and Teck­la; one of those out­fits of po­lit­ical mal­con­tents. It will be very con­vinc­ing.”

She sat back and her eyes half closed. The Orb slowed down over her head, and turned pur­ple. I’d nev­er seen it slow down be­fore. I won­dered what it meant. Af­ter about a minute, she looked up at me. “What are your ques­tions, Tal­tos?”

“Just one: Why would they do it?”

“Eh?”

“I know about their at­tempt to get you to pass de­crees out­law­ing cer­tain chem­icals—”

“How do you know that?”

I an­swered the ques­tion she want­ed an­swered, not what she’d asked. I said, “From the Jhereg side, Majesty, not from any­one to whom you en­trust­ed the knowl­edge.”

“Very well.”

“As I said, I know about that. And I un­der­stand that Your Majesty—”

“For­get the for­mal speech, Tal­tos. I’m too tired and too ir­ri­tat­ed.”

The Orb had, in­deed, turned icy blue. I bowed slight­ly and said, “I un­der­stand you’re try­ing to break out of the trap by bring­ing the truth out about the events in Tir­ma, and I ad­mire that. But I don’t un­der­stand the oth­er side of it. That is, how it is that if you co­op­er­ate with the Jhereg, make the de­crees they want and all that—how does that take the pres­sure off you?”

She was qui­et for a long time; the Orb grad­ual­ly chang­ing from blue to a non-​de­script green. “My first du­ty,” she said slow­ly, “is to keep the Em­pire run­ning. If I fail in that, noth­ing else mat­ters. To run the Em­pire, I need the co­op­er­ation of all of those I can’t co­erce, and to co­erce those who won’t co­op­er­ate. To do that, I need the con­fi­dence of the no­bles and the princes. If I lose the con­fi­dence of the no­bles, of the princes, I can­not run the Em­pire.”

“Sounds pret­ty sim­ple. Can the Jhereg re­al­ly cause the no­bles and princes to lose con­fi­dence in you?”

“A week ago I thought they could. Now—” She shrugged. “Now I guess we’ll put it to the test.”

I bowed to her, backed up sev­en steps, and left.

Iorich

13

Caltho—I un­der­stand Hen­ish has re­fused to tes­ti­fy of­fi­cial­ly. I don’t think that will be a prob­lem, but if we’re go­ing to do this, we need to know what he knows. Can you speak with him in­for­mal­ly and find out just what hap­pened? Let him know we aren’t out to stick a knife in him, we just need to know, from his point of view, what the se­quence was. In par­tic­ular, try to as­cer­tain:

1. Did the troops have rea­son to be­lieve the peas­ants in that shack were work­ing with the en­emy?

2. Did the peas­ants do any­thing that looked like it may have been an at­tack, or prepa­ra­tion for an at­tack?

3. Were they ques­tioned, and, if so, how did they re­spond?

4. Did the troops see any weapons or any­thing that looked like it could be used as a weapon?

5. Did they vi­olate or­ders, and, if so, at what point did they de­vi­ate from or­ders or ex­pect­ed pro­ce­dures?

Let him know that if we can get straight an­swers to these ques­tions, even un­of­fi­cial­ly, I’m pret­ty sure we can put this thing away, what­ev­er the an­swers are.