Steven Brust - Iorich

“Are you jest­ing?”

“Why would I be?”

“You think a house in South Adri­lankha has pro­tec­tions against eaves­drop­ping?”

“I don’t know that they do, but they might.”

“They have the re­sources for that?”

“If they’ve got­ten sup­port from trades­men, func­tionar­ies, or any of the mi­nor no­bil­ity.”

“And what makes you think they have?”

“It’s a pos­si­bil­ity. I’ll pay to hear what’s go­ing on in there. If there’s no pro­tec­tion from eaves­drop­ping, then so much the eas­ier for you.”

She hes­itat­ed, then nod­ded. “All right.”

“Uh, how does this work?”

“How does what work?”

“How will I know what’s said?”

She looked dis­gust­ed. “How would you like to know?”

“I’d like to be able to lis­ten my­self, but I don’t think that’s pos­si­ble.”

“Why not?”

“Try cast­ing a lis­ten­ing spell on me, and see what hap­pens.” Her eyes nar­rowed, and her right hand twitched, and she said, “Phoenix Stone?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you aren’t will­ing to re­move it—”

“I’m not.”

“Then we can pro­vide you a sum­ma­ry, or a tran­script.”

“How long does that take?”

“You can have it with­in a day.”

“Boss—”

“Is there any way you can, uh, have my fa­mil­iar lis­ten in­stead of me?”

“I beg your par­don?”

I opened my cloak. Loiosh poked his head out, then climbed up to my left shoul­der; fol­lowed by Rocza, who climbed up to my right. I smiled apolo­get­ical­ly.

“See, Boss, you could have saved us all a lot of trou­ble if—”

“Shut up.”

“I’m not sure what you are ask­ing me to do.” She looked like I had of­fered to share my meal of fresh worms with her.

“Loiosh is ful­ly self-​aware, and trained to, well, if you can man­age to con­nect him to the spell, he can tell me what’s said.”

She didn’t much like the idea, but I pulled out my purse and set a nice stack of im­pe­ri­als in front of her. Mon­ey that clinks and glit­ters al­ways has more of an ef­fect than mon­ey that ex­ists on­ly in the­ory.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll need to, ah, to touch him.”

“Ewwww,” said Loiosh.

“Yeah, well.”

Aloud I said, “How long will this last?”

“If he is aware enough to ac­cept the spell, it will end when he wants it to, or it will fade on its own over the course of the next year or so.”

“All right.”

Loiosh flew down on­to her desk in front of her; she al­most man­aged not to flinch.

“Oh, one thing,” I said.

She had start­ed to reach to­ward him; now she stopped. “Yes?”

“If any­thing you do caus­es him any harm, there is no pow­er in the world that will keep your soul safe.”

“I dis­like threats. If you don’t want—”

“I just had to make sure you were in­formed.”

She shrugged. I re­al­ly don’t make threats very of­ten, so I re­sent it when I do make one and it doesn’t im­press the threat-​enee. But to the left, that’s prob­ably why I don’t make many.

Her hand was steady when she put three fin­gers on his back.

“I need a bath.”

“Feel any­thing?”

“Sor­cery, pret­ty mild.”

“All right.”

“You should be­gin to get sound by morn­ing.”

“All right. Be care­ful, the place is be­ing watched.”

“By whom?”

“The Jhereg. That is, the Right Hand, if you will.”

She snort­ed. “That won’t be a prob­lem.”

“All right,” I said. “Any­thing else?”

“Yes. One ques­tion: Who are you?”

“You think I’m go­ing to tell you?”

“You think I can’t find out?”

“If it means that much to you, feel free,” I said. Then I turned on my heel and left.

The gen­tle­man who sold cloth ig­nored me as I left, and I gave him the same cour­tesy, though it wasn’t a de­lib­er­ate snub on my part—I was busy ask­ing my­self why I hadn’t thought to have the coach wait. Loiosh, as was his cus­tom, wast­ed no time. “So tell me, Boss, if the whole idea was for her to be able to iden­ti­fy you, why couldn’t we be there?”

“It would have made it too ob­vi­ous that I want­ed to be iden­ti­fied.”

“So, in­stead, it just mat­ters that you walk in­to one of the busi­ness­es of peo­ple who are try­ing to kill you? Is this what you call high strat­egy?”

“That’s a Drag­on term. I nev­er use it.”

“Boss, won’t they fig­ure out that you want­ed them to iden­ti­fy you?”

“Maybe.”

“So, how is it that what you just did wasn’t stupid?”

“The busi­ness of con­vinc­ing your en­emies to do what you want them to is a tricky mat­ter, Loiosh. I wouldn’t ex­pect a jhereg to un­der­stand the sub­tleties.”

“I trust an ed­uca­tion in the sub­tleties will be­gin short­ly.”

“You’re start­ing to sound like Mor­rolan.”

I had to walk to the mar­ket to find a coach—a run-​down thing that found ev­ery rut and hole in the road. Served me right for lack of fore­thought, though. Things like not think­ing to have the coach wait­ing might seem small to you, but if I went ahead and ex­ecut­ed plans with­out see­ing to all the lit­tle de­tails, I was go­ing to make what was al­ready a tricky op­er­ation down­right im­pos­si­ble. I gave my­self a stern talk­ing-​to about it; my cracked rib and var­ious bruis­es em­pha­sized the point.

Kiera was, as promised, wait­ing in the court­yard. “Well?” she said.

“Well enough,” I said. “Maybe. Have to see.”

She frowned. “What did you do?”

“Start­ed a de­layed-​ac­tion ex­plo­sive spell.”

“Uh, let’s go up to your room.”

“I thought you’d nev­er ask.”

“What?”

“For­get it.”

I made my slow painful way to the room. I stretched out on the bed, Kiera took the chair.

“In­ter­est­ing noise,” she said.

“Hm­mm?”

“As you lay down. Some­where be­tween a groan and a sigh. I don’t think I’ve heard any­one do that be­fore. Are you sure you don’t want to be fixed up?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Un­less you have to move fast.”

“When have I ev­er need­ed to move fast?”

She didn’t even both­er to give me a look for that one. “What did you do?”

“I hired her.”

“To do what?”

“I need to know what’s go­ing on in a cer­tain lit­tle cot­tage in South Adri­lankha.”

“And that was the on­ly way to find out?”

“The best way, un­der the cir­cum­stances.”

“Why?”

“I’m try­ing to do two things at once.”

She nod­ded. “I once tried to steal two things at once. Want to hear what hap­pened?”

“On­ly if it worked.”

“I won’t talk about it, then.”

“There are two things go­ing on, Kiera. They’re prob­ably re­lat­ed, but I can’t know that.”

“Aliera’s pros­ecu­tion, and the ef­fort to set you up.”

“Right.”

“And the cot­tage in South Adri­lankha?”

“It’s a long shot, as far Aliera’s pros­ecu­tion, but it’s all I can come up with. My think­ing is this: If the Jhereg wants to blame the killing on one of these peo­ple, they’ll—”

“Wait. What?”

“The Jhereg is plan­ning to kill the Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tor, a cer­tain De­saniek, and blame it on a group of East­ern and Teck­la rebels.”

“How did you put that to­geth­er?”

“When I asked Cawti if she were still giv­ing read­ing lessons, she said, ‘un­til late­ly,’ which got me to think­ing—nev­er mind. It’s a long sto­ry. The point is, if they want to kill the in­ves­ti­ga­tor, and blame it on this group of rebels, they’ll need to know what the group is up to. If I know what they’re up to, maybe I’ll be able to fig­ure out where they’ll move.”