Steven Brust - Iorich

A guy who spent too much time on his hair said, “Yes, m’lord,” and bowed to me, then led the way down the hall, clapped out­side the first door he came to, and, up­on re­ceiv­ing the word, opened the door for me. I went in­to a room where there was a wom­an be­hind a desk. It was a big­ger desk than the sergeant had.

I re­peat­ed my in­tro­duc­tion and said, “I re­quire a mes­sage de­liv­ered at once to Lord Mor­rolan. I wish him to meet me here. Find me a pri­vate room in which to wait, then let him know I’m there.”

She didn’t like my tone much, but or­ders, as they say, are or­ders. “Yes, my lord.” She pulled out a piece of pa­per, scrib­bled on it with a pen that went in­to a pen-​hold­er with a drag­on’s head etched on it, then af­fixed her seal and stood up. “If my lord will fol­low me?”

I don’t al­ways love throw­ing my weight around. But some­times, with some peo­ple, it’s just fun.

She showed me to a small, com­fort­able room, sur­round­ed by pic­tures of bat­tle, some of them ter­ri­bly re­al­is­tic-​look­ing. There was a lot of blood. I didn’t find it re­lax­ing. Al­so, they didn’t bring me any food or wine, which I got to re­sent­ing af­ter an hour or so. For­tu­nate­ly, it wasn’t much more than an hour be­fore there came a clap at the door. I rec­og­nized Mor­rolan’s hands slap­ping to­geth­er be­fore Loiosh said any­thing, which fact might dis­turb me if I let it.

I got up and let him in, then closed the door be­hind him. He said, “What is it?” That’s Mor­rolan, all full of flow­ery greet­ings and chitchat.

“Those guards who stand out­side the Wing. Are they be­ing pun­ished, or hon­ored?”

“What is it?” he re­peat­ed. I guess I’ll nev­er know.

“There’s some­one I need to know about.” I said, “Her name is De­saniek. She—”

“That’s the name of the Jus­ticer lead­ing Her Majesty’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Tir­ma.”

“Oh, you knew about that?”

“I just heard.”

“I thought I’d get to sur­prise you.”

“What about her?”

“The Jhereg is go­ing to kill her.”

“If the Jhereg does, there won’t be a Jhereg.”

I rolled my eyes. “It won’t look like they did it, Mor­rolan.”

“Oh? How are they go­ing to man­age that? A trag­ic, co­in­ci­den­tal ac­ci­dent? She’s go­ing to slip un­der a cart? Fall out of a build­ing? Drown in her bath­tub? Ac­ci­den­tal­ly stab her­self in the back while clean­ing her knife?”

I filled him in on some of the back­ground, then said, “It’s go­ing to be blamed on some id­iot group of East­ern­ers and Teck­la.”

He frowned. “Not the one—”

“No, a dif­fer­ent group.”

“How many are there?”

“Lots, I guess. Stir them up long enough and hard enough, and pret­ty soon they start lis­ten­ing to the guy telling them how to solve all their prob­lems.” I wasn’t sure if I be­lieved that my­self, but telling it to Mor­rolan was a nod to Cawti; I’d like to think she’d have ap­pre­ci­at­ed it.

“Do you know where and when?”

“No. That’s what I want your help with.”

He put on a “this is go­ing to be good” ex­pres­sion, and wait­ed.

I said, “I’ve been fol­low­ing her, hop­ing to pick up whichev­er as­sas­sin is fol­low­ing her, hop­ing to take him out be­fore he moves.”

“Well?”

“Well, no one is fol­low­ing her.”

He shrugged. “Maybe she has no pro­tec­tion spells on, and they’re trac­ing her move­ments with mag­ic.”

I kept my face ex­pres­sion­less and said, “I had the same thought. Can you find out?”

“Hm­mm? Oh, sure.”

“Good.”

“Now?”

“Up to you,” I said. “Now, or else af­ter she’s dead. Ei­ther way is fine.”

“And then,” he said, “there are times I don’t miss you so much.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Okay, a mo­ment.” He closed his eyes, opened them, looked dis­gust­ed, and said, “Oh, right. I’m in the Drag­on Wing. Wait here.”

He got up and walked out, so I missed see­ing the pow­er­ful sor­cer­er do­ing his pow­er­ful sor­cery, which would have in­volved him clos­ing his eyes and then, I don’t know, maybe tak­ing a deep breath or some­thing.

He was back a few min­utes lat­er. He sat down op­po­site me and said, “No one’s trac­ing her.”

“Re­al­ly. Well. Isn’t that in­ter­est­ing. Any chance they have a trace on her you don’t know about?”

“I checked for sor­cery, and witchcraft. I sup­pose it’s pos­si­ble, but it isn’t very like­ly. Does this mean you’re wrong?”

“I don’t know. It fit to­geth­er too well for me to think I got it wrong. But I don’t, as Perisil would say, have any ev­idence that would work in court.”

He con­sid­ered. “If you’re right, ig­nor­ing the lack of ev­idence, what hap­pens to Aliera?”

“Good ques­tion. In fact, that’s the ques­tion, isn’t it? I wish I had an an­swer. If they get away with it, the Em­press has to choose be­tween giv­ing in to the Jhereg, and sac­ri­fic­ing Aliera. I don’t know which way she’ll jump.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Hmm?”

“What if you stop them?”

“Oh. Then the Em­pire runs an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mas­sacre, and prob­ably drops all those bo­gus charges against Aliera. She was War­lord when it hap­pened; I have no idea how an in­ves­ti­ga­tion like that will work out.”

He con­sid­ered for a mo­ment. “I’d be in­clined to think there’d be no blame at­tached to her.”

“Should there be?”

“Par­don?”

“Well, she’s the War­lord. It hap­pened. How far up should the re­spon­si­bil­ity go?”

“Do you care?”

“Not re­al­ly. Just cu­ri­ous.”

“I’m not an Iorich.”

“Right.”

He said, “What are you go­ing to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe get out of town. I don’t want to be here when what­ev­er hap­pens hap­pens.”

He stared at me. “What, just give up?”

“I was think­ing about it.”

“That isn’t like you.”

“Mor­rolan, I’m lost. Some­time, some­how, they’re go­ing to take out De­saniek. And it will look like these East­ern­ers did it to protest the mas­sacre. It could be any­where. I’ve spent most of the last week fol­low­ing her. I count­ed more than thir­ty times and places that would have been great to nail her. How am I sup­posed to know which they’ll do? You can­not stop an as­sas­sin un­less you know the as­sas­sin and get to him first. If you have any sug­ges­tions on how to fig­ure that out, feel free to men­tion them. I’m beat.”

“Can’t help you,” he said, dry­ly. “You’re the on­ly as­sas­sin I know.”

“I know plen­ty of them, and I’m no bet­ter off. The oth­er pos­si­bil­ity is that I’m en­tire­ly wrong, and in that case I’m even more help­less be­cause I have no clue at all that points to what they’re plan­ning, and I can’t con­vince my­self they’re go­ing to just take this with­out mak­ing a move of some kind.”

He frowned. “We need to do some­thing.”

“I’m glad it’s ‘we’ now.”

His nos­trils flared, but he didn’t say any­thing; he knows when I’m just blow­ing sparks.

“Thanks for com­ing by,” I said.

“Need a tele­port any­where?”

“Yes, but I can’t risk it. Thanks, though.”

We both stood up. “If you come up with any­thing, and I can help—”

“I’ll let you know.”

He nod­ded and pre­ced­ed me out the door, head­ing deep­er in­to the Wing; pre­sum­ably to find a place he could tele­port from. I miss the small con­ve­niences, you know? I took my­self out and start­ed back to­ward my inn, think­ing a bit of rest wouldn’t be a bad idea.