Steven Brust - Iorich

“Who?”

“No one I know, Boss. Just one, though.”

I stirred my­self. I had for­got­ten about the damned rib and sat up di­rect­ly, in­stead of turn­ing on my side first. I re­solved not to do that again. I hoped I wasn’t go­ing to have to de­fend my­self, be­cause I just wasn’t in any shape to. Nev­er­the­less, I let a knife fall in­to my right hand, held it be­hind the door, and opened the door care­ful­ly.

My, my, my.

I didn’t rec­og­nize her, but I knew what she was. She had a face like a knife’s edge, hair swept back and tied, and wore black and gray and rings on ev­ery fin­ger in­clud­ing both thumbs.

I stepped back. “Well,” I said. “This is un­ex­pect­ed. Please come in.”

“Vladimir Tal­tos?”

“Some­thing like that,” I said. “And you are?”

“A mes­sen­ger.” She made no move to come in; the hall­way be­hind her was emp­ty.

“I can guess from whom.”

“You have a deal with us,” she said. “We have a project work­ing you know some­thing about. If you in­ter­fere with the project, the deal is off.”

Then she turned and walked down the hall.

I shut the door and put the knife away.

“Well,” I said af­ter a mo­ment. “I guess I’ve been warned.”

“I guess so. What are you go­ing to do?”

“Just what I was plan­ning to do.”

“Now?”

“Might as well.”

Loiosh and Rocza flew out of the door ahead of me, and an­nounced that things looked good. I made my way to the Palace. I still walked as if noth­ing hurt, and I still knew it wouldn’t make any dif­fer­ence. As we walked, Loiosh said, “Can I stop lis­ten­ing now?”

“Soon. Not yet.”

“It’s just more of the same, Boss.”

“Sor­ry. We’ll be done with this soon.”

Who would know? Well, the Em­press, of course, and I’d try again to see her if I had to, but one doesn’t sim­ply barge in on the Em­press to get a sim­ple ques­tion an­swered if one has any choice, so I took my­self to the Drag­on Wing to see if the tem­po­rary act­ing War­lord and Drag­on Heir to the throne hap­pened to have a spare mo­ment. Start small, that’s what I al­ways say.

I climbed the stairs to the tiny room that was al­most be­com­ing fa­mil­iar—yea, Vlad Tal­tos, ex-​as­sas­sin, ex–crime boss, want­ed by both sides of the law (that last isn’t true, but it sound­ed good, didn’t it?), walked in­to the in­ner sanc­tum of Im­pe­ri­al law en­force­ment. I clapped.

“Who by the fe­cal mat­ter of the Sev­en Wiz­ards is it now and what do you want that can’t wait half an hour?” came the cheer­ful re­ply from with­in.

“It’s Vlad,” I said.

“En­ter, then.” I did. “My day is now per­fect,” she sug­gest­ed.

“Who from the Em­pire is go­ing to meet with that group of East­ern­ers and Teck­la?” As I’ve said, I’m big on small talk.

Her eyes nar­rowed and her lips pressed to­geth­er. “Cawti?” she said.

“No. My own sources. Who will it be?”

“Why should I tell you?”

There were a num­ber of rea­sons, but I cut to the sim­plest one. “If it’s De­saniek, she’s go­ing to be as­sas­si­nat­ed there.”

That made an im­pres­sion of some sort, but I couldn’t judge what it was. “It isn’t,” she said at last. I’m not sure if I felt re­lieved or dis­ap­point­ed. It was too pat, any­way. No­rathar con­tin­ued, “It’s Caltho.”

“Who is that?”

“Iorich. De­saniek’s chief in­ves­ti­ga­tor.”

“I see.” Then. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“What would hap­pen if he were killed at that meet­ing?”

She blinked. “At that meet­ing? By an East­ern­er or a Teck­la?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off as she con­sid­ered it. “It wouldn’t be good,” she said fi­nal­ly. “What are your rea­sons for think­ing it will hap­pen?”

“You know about the Jhereg, Left Hand, and Or­ca pres­sure on Zeri­ka.”

“On Her Majesty,” she cor­rect­ed ab­sent­ly.

“An hon­est in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be ug­ly, but would take away their lever­age. An at­tempt on the part of rebel Teck­la to stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would sab­otage it, or at least de­lay it, and the pres­sure would be back on.”

She frowned. “I don’t know. That isn’t how the Jhereg op­er­ates.”

“The Left Hand does.” She start­ed to speak but I cut her off. “I don’t know a lot about the Left Hand, but I know how they op­er­ate, and it’s just like that. Not to men­tion the Or­ca.”

She nod­ded slow­ly. “Yes, I can see that. What do you sug­gest I do?”

“The ob­vi­ous thing is to ar­rest the rebels.”

“And you know as well as I do why I can’t.”

“The Em­press wouldn’t ap­prove?”

“And for good rea­son: that sort of thing just stirs them up and makes the rest think they must be right. Your peas­ant is a peace­ful, hap­py sort, nor­mal­ly, Vlad, and hav­ing a few mal­con­tents around gives him some­one to feel wis­er than. Knock ten of those on the head, and now you have a thou­sand in their place. We don’t need that.”

I wasn’t en­tire­ly sure about the whole peace­ful hap­py peas­ant thing, but I had to agree with the rest. “Can­cel the meet­ing?”

“The same prob­lem, on­ly not quite as bad.”

“Yeah. Well, break up this deal with the Or­ca and the Left Hand? Leave them no rea­son to go to the trou­ble? They’re prac­ti­cal sorts, you know.”

“How do you pro­pose do­ing that?”

“I don’t know. Ask nice­ly?”

“Can you be se­ri­ous for two words?”

“Not with­out great ef­fort.”

“Vlad—”

“Okay, I know how to do it. Maybe. I have to make some as­sump­tions, and af­ter learn­ing just now that the tar­get isn’t De­saniek, but—what’s his name?”

“Caltho.”

“Right. Af­ter learn­ing that, I’m not so sure about my abil­ity to make as­sump­tions, but I’m go­ing for it any­way.”

“What are you go­ing to do?”

“Iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin, and kill him.”

She drummed her fin­gers on her desk. Then, “All right,” she said. “Can I help?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been threat­ened by the Left Hand. Or, rather, Cawti has.”

Her eyes nar­rowed. “And you’re go­ing ahead with it?”

“You know her. Wouldn’t you?”

She nod­ded slow­ly. “All right. I’ll watch her.”

“She’ll need sor­cer­ous pro­tec­tion above all.”

“I’m not an id­iot, Vlad.”

“Sor­ry. It’s just—”

“I know. Any­thing else?”

I shook my head, stood, and took my leave.

“Boss, I will nev­er, ev­er un­der­stand flight­less peo­ple.”

All I had to do was find the as­sas­sin. Should be no prob­lem. Just look for the shifty eyes. Heh.

If you’re go­ing up against some­one, it’s al­ways best to as­sume he’s not as good as you, and a lit­tle bet­ter than you. You need to fig­ure you’re bet­ter, be­cause oth­er­wise you start sec­ond-​guess­ing your­self, and hes­itat­ing, and do­ing all sorts of oth­er things that don’t help at all. And bet­ter, be­cause if you un­der­es­ti­mate some skill he has, it could be very em­bar­rass­ing. It’s tricky do­ing both at once.

Put it this way: Could I dis­guise my­self well enough that I couldn’t tell I was an as­sas­sin?

Easy.

So, how would I get my­self to re­veal me, in a crowd­ed room? How crowd­ed? I had no idea. It wasn’t that big a cot­tage; you couldn’t get more than twen­ty or thir­ty peo­ple in there.