Steven Brust - Iorich

I ate, and I thought, and I didn’t come up with any­thing bet­ter than sud­den­ly pulling a knife and see­ing if any­one re­act­ed like he knew what he was do­ing. I didn’t much like it. Then it crossed my mind that per­haps it would be a sor­cer­ous at­tack, and I liked it even less.

Well, all right. The as­sas­sin would be there, or not; the as­sas­sin would be a sor­cer­er, or not. When you’re play­ing Shere­ba, and you re­al­ize that the on­ly way you can win is if your op­pos­ing knave is still in the deck, then you play as if it’s still in the deck. There­fore, the as­sas­sin would be there, and would not be a sor­cer­ess.

“Glad that’s set­tled.”

“Shut up.”

I did some more think­ing, and came up with noth­ing else, and even­tu­al­ly I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I hurt a lit­tle less, but I still had no in­ter­est in even mov­ing slow­ly; the idea of mov­ing fast just wasn’t any fun at all.

“Boss, if you spot the as­sas­sin, what are you go­ing to do?”

“I’m go­ing to say, ‘Pointy point, you’re the don­key.’ ”

“I prob­ably don’t want to know, do I?”

“I’m just wor­ried about the pos­si­bil­ity he nev­er played that as a kid. You don’t think about as­sas­sins ev­er be­ing kids, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s just what was on my mind.”

I stood up, slow­ly and painful­ly. “What if I was beat­en just for this? I mean, what if the whole point was to make it im­pos­si­ble for me to take out the as­sas­sin if I need­ed to?”

“Yeah, Boss. What if?”

I didn’t have an an­swer, so I slow­ly got dressed and ready, and then, Loiosh and Rocza scout­ing for me, I went down the stairs and out. I picked up some warm, crusty bread and smoky, crumbly goat cheese from a ven­dor out­side the inn. I love warm bread more than a lot of things you’d think would be high­er on the list, you know?

Af­ter I’d eat­en, I made my way to the West Palace Mar­ket, which is a good place to go for the best in­gre­di­ents, if you can make your­self get up that ear­ly in the morn­ing. I wasn’t there for in­gre­di­ents to­day, though. In the far south­west­ern cor­ner of the mar­ket, be­hind a stall that sells the best truf­fles in White-​crest is a rat­ty-​look­ing per­ma­nent store that sells pre-​rolled cop­per tub­ing, and nails, ham­mers, springs, and var­ious tools for us­ing the above. It’s run by a Tsalmoth named Liska who looks as old as Sethra is and scur­ries about at a fu­ri­ous pace, her back per­ma­nent­ly bent and her eyes look­ing up from be­neath hair so stringy she seems to have lost her no­ble’s point. She keeps her cash in a box be­neath the stool she us­es on the rare oc­ca­sions when she sits to dick­er with a cus­tomer, while the cus­tomer stands on the oth­er side of a wood­en plank set on two bar­rels; the plank is a light wood, well-​pol­ished, and carved with de­pic­tions of a tsalmoth in var­ious odd pos­es.

“What do you want?” she said when I walked in.

“A knife,” I told her.

She scur­ried on­to her stool. She knew me, but ad­mit­ting it would, I guess, give me a bar­gain­ing ad­van­tage over her. Some­thing like that. “What sort of knife?” she barked out.

“Noth­ing fan­cy; just some­thing to whit­tle with.”

She gave me a look that in­di­cat­ed enough sus­pi­cion to prove she knew who I was. I looked all in­no­cent and shit. She showed me a se­lec­tion, and I end­ed up pick­ing out a small clasp knife. I test­ed the edge be­cause it would have looked fun­ny not to, and made sure it opened and closed eas­ily, gave her an im­pe­ri­al and told her to keep it, and head­ed back out.

“Okay, Boss. I can’t wait to see what you’re go­ing to do with that.”

“It’s pret­ty small; I’ll most like­ly just lose it.”

I still had a cou­ple of hours be­fore the meet­ing was sup­posed to start. Not far from the West Palace Mar­ket is a hos­tel called the Ink­stand for a rea­son that was ex­plained to me once but I can’t re­mem­ber; I think it was some­thing his­tor­ical. There’s an ac­tor named Gi­naasa who lives there from time to time, and with whom I’ve done busi­ness be­fore. Since it was ear­ly in the morn­ing, I ex­pect­ed to wake him up, and I ex­pect­ed him to be sober. I was right on both counts, but he took it in good grace when I clinked some coins. I left there a bit lat­er with a cloth bag con­tain­ing a blond wig and a neat­ly trimmed match­ing beard, a bit of glue, and a jar of stuff to light­en my com­plex­ion a bit.

That done, I still had the hard part: if it worked, what then? How was I go­ing to ma­nip­ulate events to get what I want­ed, just in case that was a pos­si­bil­ity?

“Boss, where are you go­ing?”

“Huh? I don’t—oh, House of the Iorich, I guess.”

“You think he’ll know what to do?”

“I guess if we’re go­ing to go in­to this, we ought to find out what is li­able to hap­pen to Aliera. Re­mem­ber Aliera? She’s the one who got us in­volved in this?”

“Are you ex­pect­ing grat­itude?”

“No. I just know if it were me—”

“Yeah, yeah.”

We reached the house safe­ly, and I made the now-​fa­mil­iar trek to Perisil’s of­fice and clapped. He peered out the door, then opened it. I went in.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” he asked me. He looked gen­uine­ly cu­ri­ous.

“Nev­er mind.”

I took the chair op­po­site him and said, “I have some­thing go­ing that might do, um, some­thing. I need to check it with you.”

He nod­ded. “Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to give me at least one or two more de­tails than that if you want an in­tel­li­gent com­ment.”

It took me a mo­ment to re­al­ize he was jest­ing; I don’t know if that says some­thing about him, or about me. I said, “All right, just this once. Here’s the sit­ua­tion as I see it, stop me if I’m wrong about some­thing: The Jher—that is, cer­tain groups are try­ing to pres­sure the Em­press. The lever­age they have is the scan­dal about Tir­ma, which is go­ing to an­noy a lot of the peo­ple who mat­ter, al­though ex­act­ly why they care I couldn’t say.” He gave me a look, but didn’t in­ter­rupt.

I went on. “The Em­press, af­ter you and I start­ed mak­ing trou­ble and kick­ing things up, re­con­sid­ered, and de­cid­ed to have an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events. There will be an ef­fort to stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and cast blame at some id­iot group of Teck­la by as­sas­si­nat­ing Caltho.”

“De­saniek.”

“No, I was wrong about that. Her as­sis­tant, Caltho.”

“Hm­mm. That would work too.”

“Even bet­ter, be­cause it will hap­pen at a pub­lic meet­ing where he is sup­posed to an­swer ques­tions about what is hap­pen­ing and why.”

“I see.”

“All right, so, if I man­age to stop the as­sas­si­na­tion, does that give us any lever­age to get Aliera re­leased?”

He was qui­et for a mo­ment, then he said, “Stop it how?”

“By killing the as­sas­sin be­fore he can kill Caltho.”

He was qui­et for a bit longer, then. “It de­pends on a num­ber of things. How are you. . . where. . .” His voice trailed off and he looked un­com­fort­able. I’d nev­er seen him look un­com­fort­able be­fore; I think I en­joyed it.

“The way I see it go­ing down, I’ll take him be­fore he ev­er gets to the meet­ing.”

“Then, ex­cuse me, how will any­one know?”

“No one will know.”

“Then I don’t see how it will have any ef­fect on our case.”