Steven Brust - Iorich

“Was that true, Boss? Are you re­al­ly giv­ing up?”

“I don’t know. Prob­ably not. But I have no idea what to do.”

“I’m with Mor­rolan. Doesn’t seem like you to leave town with things un­fin­ished.”

“Would you be against it?”

“No! I’m all for it, Boss! This place scares me. But it seems like you show­ing good sense, and that’s not what I ex­pect.”

I sighed. “I prob­ably won’t.”

“You should.”

“I know.”

“You have no idea where they’re go­ing to hit, Boss. What can you do?”

“That’s what I’ve been say­ing. I on­ly know who they’re go­ing to nail, and who they’re go­ing to—oh.”

“What?”

I stopped in my tracks, and my mind raced. Then I said, “I know who they’re go­ing to blame it on.”

“What does that get you?”

“A walk to South Adri­lankha.”

“Uh, care to tell me why?”

“There might be things to learn from the peo­ple who are sup­posed to take the fall.”

“Like what?”

“If I learn them, I’ll let you know.”

“Oh, good.”

I was stand­ing in the mid­dle of the court­yard out­side of the Drag­on Wing of the Palace. The House of the Drag­on, dark and oh-​so-​im­pos­ing, loomed over me as if match­ing glares with the Wing. There were four or five walk­ways lead­ing out of the area, some to oth­er parts of the Palace, oth­ers to the City. For all I knew, there were as­sas­sins hang­ing around all of them wait­ing to make my skin glis­ten.

But I had some­thing to do, which is all any­one can ask.

“Yeah, Boss? What are we go­ing to do?”

“I’m go­ing to go back to the inn and drop a note to Kiera ask­ing her to bring by the names of what­ev­er Left Hand busi­ness­es she’s been able to find, then I’m go­ing to have a de­cent meal sent up, drink half a bot­tle of wine, and go to sleep.”

“Sounds like my kind of plan.”

“To­mor­row is a busy day. I know a cou­ple of places owned by the Left Hand. If Kiera doesn’t show up, we vis­it one.”

“Good. Then at least we don’t have to wor­ry about a plan for the day af­ter to­mor­row, be­cause nei­ther one of us will be around to see it.”

Iorich

14

M’la­dy: Just got word through your of­fice of the event. I’m per­fect­ly will­ing to at­tend and an­swer any ques­tions the mob has, though I can­not imag­ine what good H.M. imag­ines such a thing will do. They’re go­ing to be­lieve what they be­lieve, and I can talk un­til my voice is hoarse with­out chang­ing them; nor do I see what dif­fer­ence it makes what they think, un­less H.M. is afraid of more dis­or­ders like there were a few years ago. Of­fi­cial­ly, I have no opin­ion about that, of course (though un­of­fi­cial­ly a troop of guards will deal with how­ev­er many of them take to the street). My ques­tion is, if I’m go­ing to do this, how do you want me to han­dle it? I’d rather not have it in writ­ing. Let me know when a good time is, and I can be in your of­fices, or wher­ev­er else you’d like to meet.

—Un­signed (not au­then­ti­cat­ed)

I felt a bit bet­ter the next morn­ing. I stood up and stretched again, tak­ing it slow and easy. I was still try­ing to make my mus­cles obey when there was a clap out­side the door; Loiosh told me it was Kiera, I sug­gest­ed she en­ter. She asked how I was feel­ing, and I lied a lit­tle. “Did you find out any­thing?”

“I learned a few busi­ness­es that are cov­ers for Left Hand op­er­ations. Here.” She hand­ed me a sheet of pa­per with some names and ad­dress­es.

I held it out in front of her and tapped one. “You sure about this?”

She stud­ied it. “Tym­brii,” she said. “Pre-​spun cloth and yarn. What about them?”

“Noth­ing,” I said. “Ex­cept Cawti used to go there all the time. I had no idea.”

“I don’t know who the re­al own­er is, but it’s a good place to go if you want to be lis­ten­ing in on some­one who thinks he has spells that will pre­vent that.”

I nod­ded. “It’s just odd, is all. The num­ber of times I went in there, and nev­er knew.”

I looked over the rest of the list. There were places spread out all over the City, and I rec­og­nized a cou­ple from hav­ing walked past them, but there were no oth­ers I’d ac­tu­al­ly been in.

“Now what, Boss? Put the list on the wall, throw a knife at it, and see where it lands?”

“Some­thing like that, yeah.”

“This is li­able to get you killed, you know. You’re in no shape—”

“Sit on it.”

He psy­chi­cal­ly grum­bled, but shut up.

“What do you know of these?”

“What do you want to know?”

I hes­itat­ed. “I’m not sure what to ask. I know so lit­tle of the Left Hand.”

“As do I. As do they.”

“Hmm?”

“Part of the se­cre­cy thing; most of them know very lit­tle oth­er than their own busi­ness.”

“Oh. Um, how lit­tle do they know?”

“What kind of ques­tion is that?”

“I guess I’m ask­ing if I were to show up at one of these places, would the in­di­vid­ual run­ning it know who I am?”

She con­sid­ered. “I don’t know. Maybe. My guess is not, ex­cept by co­in­ci­dence. Don’t bet your life on that, though.”

I nod­ded. “Uh, how do I do this, Kiera?”

“You’re ask­ing me?”

“I don’t mean that part. But say, this one—” I tapped the list. “It’s an inn. Do I walk in and ask for a cer­tain drink? Or—”

“Oh. Sor­ry. I’d have thought you knew. If you want to reach some­one in the Left Hand, ask to see the mis­tress of the house, and de­liv­er three sil­ver coins, one at a time, with your left hand.”

“Left hand,” I said. “How clever.”

“Imag­ina­tive, even.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and con­sid­ered. I took the knife from my right boot, pulled the coarse stone from my pack, and start­ed work­ing as I thought.

“You aren’t lu­bri­cat­ing it,” said Kiera.

“Su­per­sti­tion,” I told her. “You don’t need to lu­bri­cate the stone, you just need to clean it when you’re done.”

“I know. I won­dered if you did. What sort of edge are you putting on that?”

“Five de­grees a side.” I stopped and stud­ied the knife. It was a wicked thing that I’d found in Short­rest, near Tabo. There was a cheap and worth­less en­chant­ment on it that was sup­posed to help it find a vi­tal spot, and the point wasn’t much, but it had a love­ly edge and the wrapped antler fit my hand like it had been made for an East­ern­er. I worked some more, checked the bev­el, switched to the oth­er side.

“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.

“Where did we first meet?” I asked her.

“Oh, right.”

I nod­ded. “Sharp­en­ing knives was what I first learned to do af­ter I learned to wash pots and pans, bring trash to the mid­den, and clear ta­bles. I had one knife I kept a du­al edge on: front three-​quar­ters for slic­ing, back quar­ter for cut­ting. Best knife I’ve ev­er had.”

“Where is it now?”

“Cawti has it. She still us­es it. I showed her how to do the du­al edge. She—” I stopped and went back to sharp­en­ing, switch­ing to the ex­trafine stone.

“Sor­ry,” she said.

“No, no. Don’t wor­ry about it.”

“If you slip and take a fin­ger off, I’ll feel bad.”

I held up my left hand. “That hap­pened once. I’ve learned my les­son.”

I fin­ished sharp­en­ing the knife, nod­ded to my­self, and stood up. My rib hurt like—it hurt.