Steven Brust - Iorich

We pret­ty quick­ly reached a place where there were lots of peo­ple, which wasn’t good for me. It’s too easy to fol­low some­one in a crowd, which means it’s hard to spot some­one else do­ing so. I didn’t lose her, of course; I can man­age to stay with some­one even with­out Loiosh, thank you very much. But it did get sim­pler once we left the Palace it­self, and I could take a mo­ment when I was un­ob­served to let him out.

The easy part was fol­low­ing De­saniek. The hard part was spot­ting some­one else fol­low­ing De­saniek. The scary part was leav­ing the con­fines of the Palace area and won­der­ing if I had some­one fol­low­ing me with un­friend­ly in­ten­tions. The painful part was walk­ing quick­ly enough to keep up with her.

She didn’t go far, as it hap­pened—just out­side the Palace dis­trict to a place I’d eat­en at once be­fore. The food was okay, but the wine list was amaz­ing. Among the things I hadn’t prac­ticed late­ly was fol­low­ing around some­one who was eat­ing bet­ter than I was.

To the left, how­ev­er, I could leave Loiosh there in case she was a fast eater, and go re­trieve Rocza.

“Which means you walk­ing through a lot of bad ar­eas with­out me spot­ting for you.”

“Twen­ty min­utes.”

“Think how much you could you do in twen­ty min­utes.”

“Did you see any­one on the way here?”

“No, but—”

“Hang tight. I’ll be back soon.”

And I was, too, be­lieve it or not. It took longer than it should have, be­cause I got lost try­ing to find the of­fice and had to ask di­rec­tions three times, but find it I did, and Rocza was there, and I had no trou­ble get­ting back out. It’s very strange how it can be hard to find your way to a place, but easy to find your way back.

“Okay, we’re about there. Is it safe?”

“You’re safe from ev­ery­one but Rocza, who’s hun­gry, over­heat­ed, and bad-​tem­pered.”

“I trust you to pro­tect me.”

“I charge for those ser­vices.”

I found a safe place to wait while De­saniek fin­ished eat­ing. Loiosh and Rocza scanned the area for any­one watch­ing ei­ther her or me.

“How will you tell which it is, Boss?”

“Just spot him, then we’ll wor­ry about it.”

“In oth­er words, you have no clue.”

“Some­thing like that.”

But we didn’t spot any­one. If there was any­one fol­low­ing her, he could be at the ta­ble next to her, eat­ing, and star­ing off in the op­po­site di­rec­tion; I’d done that be­fore.

So I wait­ed some more. Feh.

It might be in­ter­est­ing to give you the rest of what hap­pened that night in great de­tail if it had turned out to have been in­ter­est­ing, but in fact I nev­er spot­ted any­one. I was with her for about three more painful hours, as she vis­it­ed a pri­vate club where, I guess, high-​pow­ered Iorich like to re­lax; then even­tu­al­ly she went home. In the end, it was a big noth­ing.

I went back to the inn, got a lit­tle sleep and an ear­ly start, and wait­ed out­side her home. Loiosh spot­ted a Jhereg, but it was be­fore we got there, and he was ob­vi­ous­ly look­ing for me, based on how care­ful­ly he avoid­ed watch­ing the inn. Crap. We lost him on the way to De­saniek’s home.

She went straight to the of­fice; I had the jhereg in my cloak and all three of us wait­ed. She didn’t eat any morn­ing meal at all, and must have had lunch sent in. What she did in there for eigh­teen hours I don’t know, but there she was, and no one else seemed in­ter­est­ed. That night she ate in the same place, but went straight home af­ter­ward. She took the same route both times.

Back in my room at the inn, I got a note from Kiera that she had in­for­ma­tion for me; I wrote back ask­ing her to hold it for a day or two, since I had no time to do any­thing ex­cept fol­low De­saniek around.

Is it all right if I stop talk­ing about how much it hurt just to walk? You can’t be en­joy­ing hear­ing about it, and I don’t en­joy re­mem­ber­ing it. Let’s just say that, of all the times I’ve fol­lowed peo­ple around, this was the least pleas­ant.

You can re­peat the pat­tern for the day af­ter, ex­cept she went to a dif­fer­ent place af­ter she’d fin­ished, and ate with an Iorich who was prob­ably her lover—at least, they seemed to be on good terms, and he went home with her. They took a dif­fer­ent route, more scenic. I had the im­pres­sion they al­ways went this way.

The next day, no lover, no Jhereg in­ter­est­ed in her, and back to the first route, past one of my fa­vorite bak­ers, which made it es­pe­cial­ly try­ing.

When the same thing hap­pened the next day, I start­ed to get dis­gust­ed, not to men­tion wor­ried.

“What have I missed, Loiosh? They’re go­ing to take this Iorich out and make it look like those East­ern­ers are be­hind it. To do that, they have to know her move­ments ex­act­ly. Why aren’t they there?”

“Maybe they are, and you can’t see them.”

“In­vis­ible? I sup­pose. But some­one would have no­ticed an in­vis­ible guy walk­ing by. I’d think—”

“That’s not what I mean. She isn’t a Jhereg, Boss. She prob­ably doesn’t have any pro­tec­tion spells on.”

“What’s your point?”

“Maybe they’re us­ing sor­cery to trace her?”

I used sev­er­al of my fa­vorite oaths, run­ning them to­geth­er. I wish I could re­mem­ber ex­act­ly how I put it, be­cause it was very po­et­ic.

“Boss?”

“That’s cheat­ing.”

“Uh, Boss—”

“I know, I know. I’m just pissed be­cause I didn’t think of it.”

“That’s what you’ve got me around for.”

“Which you’ll nev­er let me for­get, which is the oth­er thing I’m pissed about. All right, there has to be a way to fig­ure this out. No, we don’t, we need to call for help.”

“Mor­rolan, or Sethra?”

“Yes.” Be­fore he could say some­thing snip­py, I added, “Who would be eas­ier to get to?”

“You could get Mor­rolan to come see you, in­stead of you go­ing there.”

“Yeah, good point.”

I took an­oth­er cir­cuitous route back to the Palace area, then went in­to the Drag­on Wing by one of the en­trances used by the no­bil­ity. Two guards in full uni­form stood out­side the en­trance; I won­dered if stand­ing out­side the Wing for hours at a time is an hon­or or a pun­ish­ment, but in any case I put on my full out­fit of ar­ro­gance and went breez­ing past them. This was go­ing to be fun.

There was a sergeant at a desk. I knew he was a sergeant be­cause I rec­og­nized the marks on his uni­form, and I knew it was a desk be­cause it’s al­ways a desk. There’s al­ways some­one at a desk, ex­cept when it’s a ta­ble that func­tions as a desk. You sit be­hind a desk, and ev­ery­one knows you’re sup­posed to be there, and that you’re do­ing some­thing that in­volves your brain. It’s an odd, spe­cial kind of im­por­tance. I think ev­ery­one should get a desk; you can sit be­hind it when you feel like you don’t mat­ter.

The Em­press didn’t have a desk. Mor­rolan didn’t have a desk. Sethra didn’t have a desk. They re­al­ly did mat­ter. Me, when I was run­ning my area for the Jhereg, I had a desk. Now I don’t. You can draw what­ev­er con­clu­sions you want to from that.

I went up to the sergeant be­hind the desk and said, “I am Count Szurke. This is my signet. I wish to see the en­sign on du­ty.”

He didn’t like it much. The on­ly peo­ple who are sup­posed to talk to you like that are the ones with big­ger desks. But the signet of an Im­pe­ri­al ti­tle car­ries some weight with the mil­itary, so he nod­ded and, how­ev­er painful it may have been for him, said, “Yes, my lord. At once.” Then he said, “Flips, bring my lord to the en­sign.”