Steven Brust - Iorich

She looked doubt­ful. “That doesn’t seem like­ly.”

“I agree, but it’s all I’ve got.”

“What about the oth­er rea­son? How does this help you get out of a set­up?”

“It might not, but if she takes the trou­ble to find out who I am, and I did ev­ery­thing but beg her to, it’s go­ing to stir up the Jhereg, and maybe throw them off their game.”

“That is re­al­ly thin.”

“Not as thin as you think. Some­thing un­ex­pect­ed hap­pens when you’re af­ter some­one, you slow down and make sure you know what’s go­ing on. All I need is for them to slow down long enough to let me fin­ish this busi­ness and get back out of town.”

“That is very thin.”

“Like the oth­er, it’s what I have. Do you have any bet­ter ideas?”

“This is big­ger than you seem to re­al­ize, Vlad.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Eh? It’s the Left Hand of the Jhereg, the Jhereg, and the Or­ca ma­nip­ulat­ing Im­pe­ri­al pol­itics. How much big­ger—?”

“No, what makes you think I don’t re­al­ize how big it is?”

“You aren’t act­ing as if you do.”

“Kiera, af­ter you’ve been in bat­tle with gods, you get to the point where the af­fairs of mere mor­tals—”

“Can you be se­ri­ous for two words?”

“Not with­out ef­fort,” I said.

“Ap­ply your­self.”

I shrugged. “What do you want from me? Okay, it’s se­ri­ous. It’s big. I get that. But I came back here to help Aliera. If you can show me a bet­ter way to do that, I’m lis­ten­ing.”

“I’ll nev­er un­der­stand this pas­sion you have for mak­ing your­self a tar­get.”

“It isn’t a pas­sion, it’s more of an av­oca­tion.” She start­ed to say some­thing, but I cut her off. “I didn’t cre­ate the sit­ua­tion, and no one was do­ing a damned thing about it, ei­ther be­cause they didn’t want to of­fend the Em­press, or be­cause they didn’t want to of­fend Aliera. You couldn’t fit the hair of a nors­ka’s tail on how much I care about of­fend­ing ei­ther one. There’s a prob­lem, I’m fix­ing it.”

“You’re stub­born, Vlad.”

“Is that a com­pli­ment?”

“Some­times. Usu­al­ly. Right now, I’m not sure. How can I help?”

“You prob­ably can’t, but I’ll let you know if some­thing comes up.”

She sighed, start­ed to say some­thing else, then just shrugged and left me with her Kiera smile and soft kiss on the cheek. I lay on my back and tried not to move too much, and even­tu­al­ly got some rest.

Iorich

15

Your High­ness: I ur­gent­ly re­quest an im­me­di­ate re­view of the en­tire Im­pe­ri­al prison sys­tem. With the sui­cide of Bryn our in­ves­ti­ga­tion—an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Your High­ness, in­sti­gat­ed by the ex­press wish­es of Her Majesty—has been se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised. Per­mit me to urge Your High­ness in the strongest pos­si­ble terms to form a com­mit­tee of our own House and some of the more skilled Val­lista to see what can be done to make sure this doesn’t hap­pen again; it is hard­ly an over­state­ment to say that the hon­or of the House it­self is at stake. Any fur­ther event of this type and I will not an­swer for the com­mit­tee be­ing able to car­ry out its du­ties.

I Re­main, Your High­ness,

Your Loy­al and Re­spect­ful

Jus­ticer De­saniek

I woke up feel­ing still bet­ter. If this trend con­tin­ued, I’d be back in shape to fight in on­ly a month or so.

“Boss!”

That was when I re­al­ized what woke me up. “What is it?”

“Uh, this is weird. I’m hear­ing things.”

“Yeah, that’s what was sup­posed to hap­pen.”

“But, it’s weird.”

“It’s just for a day or two. Any­thing in­ter­est­ing?”

“De­pends how in­ter­est­ed you are in snor­ing.”

“Most­ly in­ter­est­ed in my own, but it’s too late for that, now.”

“Cry up a storm, Boss.”

I got up and slow­ly and painful­ly took care of morn­ing things. The plan for the day was, ac­tu­al­ly, to do noth­ing ex­cept to stay as safe as I could: there was noth­ing to do un­til and un­less I got some in­for­ma­tion from Loiosh, or un­til some­one made a move at me.

I had them bring me some food. There was kla­va—good kla­va—and some hen’s eggs part­ly boiled with salt, and bread with a lux­uri­ous amount of but­ter. They charged too much, but here and there were com­pen­sa­tions.

Loiosh re­port­ed con­ver­sa­tions that were on­ly re­mark­able in their triv­ial­ity—the best mar­kets, who had be­come preg­nant, whose un­cle had tak­en sick. Some­times he iden­ti­fied the voic­es as male, some­times fe­male, some­times mixed. At one point, two wom­en who spoke with an ac­cent that Loiosh re­mem­bered as be­ing from some East­ern king­dom got in­to a con­ver­sa­tion that made me blush when Loiosh re­peat­ed it. And I don’t blush easy.

By the evening, I was start­ing to won­der if the whole thing were a put-​up job—if some­one knew I was lis­ten­ing and was stag­ing the con­ver­sa­tions for my ben­efit. But then, I re­mind­ed my­self that most of these peo­ple worked eigh­teen hours a day or so, many of them at the slaugh­ter hous­es, so I wouldn’t ex­pect to hear any­thing of sub­stance un­til the evening.

And, in­deed, in the evening I start­ed hear­ing things that were more in­ter­est­ing: Loiosh re­port­ed a male voice say­ing, “They should be ar­riv­ing with­in the half hour, we should set the chairs up.”

I sent down for an­oth­er meal to pre­pare my­self; this one a whole fowl done in a sweet wine sauce. I don’t ac­tu­al­ly care much for sweet sauces, but it wasn’t bad.

“Pound­ing sounds, Boss. Doors. Peo­ple com­ing in. Voic­es.”

“What are the voic­es say­ing, Loiosh?”

“No idea. They’re all talk­ing at once. Greet­ings, I think.”

“Any East­ern ac­cents?”

“One or two, maybe. It’s hard to say.”

“All right.”

About half an hour lat­er he said, “They’re qui­et­ing down. Some­one’s talk­ing. Dra­gaer­an, or at least no ac­cent I can hear.”

“What’s he say­ing?”

“She. Blah blah blah the Em­pire blah blah blah Tir­ma blah blah blah or­ga­nize blah blah—”

“Loiosh.”

“Boss, when she ac­tu­al­ly says any­thing, I’ll tell you, okay? This hav­ing voic­es in my head is re­al­ly weird.”

“You should be used to it. I am.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Okay.”

About half an hour lat­er, he said, “They’re go­ing to be hav­ing some sort of meet­ing to­mor­row.”

“How thrilling.”

“With an Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive.”

“Oh. If it turns out to be De­saniek, this will sud­den­ly be too easy.”

“No idea who it is.”

“Guess I’d bet­ter find out.”

“They’re still talk­ing, Boss. Some­thing about meet­ing be­fore the meet­ing with the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, to, I don’t know, I couldn’t hear. Some­thing about uni­ty.”

“Where’s the meet­ing?”

“Which?”

“Both.”

“The one with the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive will be at Speak­er’s Hall at the fifth hour of the af­ter­noon. The ear­li­er one will be noon, at the cot­tage.”

“A meet­ing be­fore the meet­ing. Okay. Got it. I may have a bit of an idea, but I first need to make sure that it is De­saniek go­ing to that meet­ing.”

“What if it isn’t?”

“Then I’ll—”

I didn’t have to an­swer the ques­tion, be­cause a clap out­side the door in­ter­rupt­ed me.