Steven Brust - Iorich

—De­saniek (not au­then­ti­cat­ed)

How do you stop an as­sas­sin?

Sounds like it’s about to be a joke, doesn’t it? But no, I was re­al­ly ask­ing my­self that.

You’d think, what with me hav­ing been one for a big chunk of my life, I’d have some pret­ty good ideas on how to go about stop­ping one, but it doesn’t work that way. When I thought up a way that would have stopped me, I thought up a way to counter it.

The point is, most as­sas­sins I know work pret­ty much the same way: get the pat­tern of your tar­get’s move­ments, se­lect a spot, pick a time, make an es­cape plan, choose a method, then, well, you do it. If you want to stop the as­sas­sin, and you don’t know who it is, you need to do pret­ty much the same thing and be there first. Good luck with that.

Or else—hm­mm—maybe find the as­sas­sin while he’s set­ting it up? Yeah, that had some pos­si­bil­ities.

“Well, Loiosh? Got any bet­ter ideas?”

“Your job is to find bet­ter ideas, mine is to cut holes in the ones you have, and you’ve al­ready done that pret­ty well.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I wan­dered around the Im­pe­ri­al Wing un­til I found a re­fresh­ing­ly snob­bish Teck­la who, for a bit of sil­ver, was will­ing to guide us to the of­fice of the Im­pe­ri­al Jus­ticer. Loiosh and Rocza hid in­side my cloak, which I should men­tion isn’t ter­ri­bly com­fort­able for any of us at the best of times, and with the added weight on my shoul­ders (lit­er­al­ly) now was flat no fun at all.

I was just as glad to have a guide—I’d nev­er have been able to find it on my own. I made a point of not­ing the twists, turns, and stair­ways, and when we got there (“Down this hall, the dou­ble doors with the iorich be­low the Im­pe­ri­al Phoenix there, you see, and the gold knobs? That one.”) I didn’t think I’d ev­er be able to find it again.

I dis­missed the Teck­la and walked in­to the of­fice, which was damn near as big as the throne room, and much more taste­ful­ly ap­point­ed, gold knobs notwith­stand­ing. A pleas­ant-​look­ing gen­tle­man with eye­brows that looked like he trimmed them sat be­hind a large high­ly pol­ished desk and in­quired as to my busi­ness, show­ing no signs of dis­com­fort at be­ing po­lite to me. I said, “I beg your par­don, m’lord, I’m in the wrong place.” I bowed low and humbly, as be­fit an East­ern­er, and walked out.

There was no one out­side the of­fice, so I took a good, slow look around. I was at the end of a long, wide hall­way; with no oth­er doors to the place, the in­sides prob­ably wrapped around, with a bunch of in­ter­nal of­fices, and al­so prob­ably went quite a ways back be­yond what I saw. There had been no win­dows in the room I was in.

Be­ing at the end of the hall­way like that was bad, be­cause there was no place to hide, but good be­cause it meant there was no oth­er way out—un­less there was a di­rect ex­it. I should have had Kiera steal the plans for the Palace, if there were any, and if I could have found a Val­lista to in­ter­pret them for me. Wide hall­ways mean im­por­tant peo­ple in the Palace, and maybe oth­er places too. I’ll make no com­ment on gold door­knobs; you de­cide.

It was marginal whether this would be a good place to find De­saniek; some­one im­por­tant is li­able to have an­oth­er en­trance or two, but not like­ly to use it most of the time; this is be­cause they usu­al­ly want to be seen com­ing and go­ing, and to check on those who work for them. Not al­ways, but chances were good she’d be com­ing out this way.

At the oth­er ex­treme of the hall—that is, past the stair­way—were three rooms and a small, short pas­sage end­ing in a door. I went and clapped at it—which hurt all through my chest and neck—and no one an­swered; tried the door and it was locked. I didn’t feel like be­ing caught pick­ing a lock in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace, so I didn’t.

I hate it when there’s no good place to hide; es­pe­cial­ly when I’m stand­ing around some­where I ob­vi­ous­ly don’t be­long. Here is where an in­vis­ibil­ity spell would have been use­ful, if I’d been able to cast one with­out re­mov­ing my pro­tec­tions, and if cast­ing it wouldn’t have set off ev­ery alarm in the Palace.

Yeah, well.

The ceil­ing pro­vid­ed no good place for Loiosh to hide, ei­ther.

“I beg to dif­fer.”

“The hang­ing lamp? You think you can use that?”

“I’d be con­cealed from one di­rec­tion, and in shad­ows from the oth­er.”

“You know what would hap­pen if you were spot­ted? A jhereg in the Palace? Some­one would scream, and they’d run and get ev­ery­body and—”

“Maybe they’d just shoo me out the near­est win­dow.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. And you won’t be able to fol­low her with­out be­ing spot­ted. And when­ev­er you leave, it’ll be prob­lem­at­ical.”

“Rocza will do it. All she has to do is let me know when she leaves, and which di­rec­tion she goes. And she can stay here un­til we can fetch her.”

“How do we—?”

“Oh, come on, Boss. There’s no one around. She can just fly up there.”

“You sure about this?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.”

I walked over to the place where the hall came to­geth­er, opened my cloak, and she flapped up to the lamp. I stud­ied her. I could see her, but I had to be look­ing. I felt a lit­tle bet­ter about the whole thing.

“What does she think about all of this?”

“She thinks it’s hot up there.”

A cou­ple of young-​look­ing Iorich walked by, ev­ident­ly on the way to see De­saniek, or maybe some oth­er busi­ness in that of­fice in­volv­ing sub­tleties of ju­rispru­dence. I bowed re­spect­ful­ly. They both glanced at me and kept walk­ing; one might have nod­ded slight­ly.

At the bot­tom of the stairs things be­came com­pli­cat­ed: There were pas­sages in three di­rec­tions, and I could make out fur­ther branch­ings on two of them; al­so the stairs kept go­ing down. I checked the near­est doors: one of them was a privy, which I took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use, be­cause if you’re go­ing to be fol­low­ing some­one for maybe hours, that’s a prob­lem you don’t need. An­oth­er was locked, and one was open and emp­ty—it would prob­ably be some­one’s of­fice when the need arose for le­gal ad­vice on com­par­ative flow­er ar­range­ment. I stepped in, shut the door, and let Loiosh out from my cloak; a great re­lief to us both.

“Oh, do we get to wait now, Boss? You know that’s my fa­vorite part.”

We wait­ed.

Loiosh kept up a stream of sug­ges­tions about how to dec­orate the emp­ty room, while I tried to think up cre­ative things to say if some­one hap­pened to come walk­ing in. Ev­ery once in a while, he’d re­as­sure me that Rocza was still undis­cov­ered, and that De­saniek hadn’t been by.

We wait­ed a long time.

Ei­ther she had a lot to do in the of­fice and was dis­gust­ing­ly ded­icat­ed, or she had an­oth­er way out. Af­ter four hours, with my stom­ach rum­bling, I’d about de­cid­ed it was the lat­ter. Af­ter five hours, I was pret­ty well sure of it. It had al­most been six hours when Loiosh said, “There she is! Com­ing to­ward us, Boss,” and we were off.

Loiosh ducked in­to my cloak again, and I stepped out of the hall and walked over to the stair­way.

“What’s Rocza do­ing?”

“Wait­ing.”

“Good. Tell her to stay with it.”

I turned so that when she walked past me I was go­ing the oth­er way; I made a slight bow. My pe­riph­er­al vi­sion told me on­ly that she was of av­er­age height, with a rather light com­plex­ion for an Iorich and a firm stride. Once she was well past me, I turned around and fol­lowed. This not on­ly per­mit­ted me to watch for any­one else who might be fol­low­ing her, but al­so showed me how to get out of the Palace.