Steven Brust - Iorich

“Uh. Yeah, there’s that. Okay, what if I made it more dra­mat­ic?”

“You mean, a res­cue at the last minute and all?”

I nod­ded. “I have no idea if I can, or how, but I might be able to pull some­thing like that off.”

He nod­ded slow­ly, rub­bing his chin, then said, “No.”

“No?”

“Legal­ly, it would have no stand­ing. Let me ex­plain. There are three ways this can go: She can be tried for what she was ar­rest­ed for, or she—”

“Wait, what she was re­al­ly ar­rest­ed for, or what the of­fi­cial charges were?”

He blinked, hes­itat­ed, and said, “I’ll start over. There are three ways this can go. One: She can be ar­rest­ed for prac­tic­ing El­der Sor­cery, she—”

“It’s crap.”

He shrugged. “That’s as may be. Two: She can be in­ves­ti­gat­ed for her role, if any, in the mas­sacre. Or, three: All charges could be dropped and she could be re­leased.”

“Eh? Well, that would be best. How can we get that to hap­pen?”

“I’ve no idea. I’m just list­ing the pos­si­bil­ities. Now, I can rep­re­sent her on the charge of El­der Sor­cery. If the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mas­sacre hap­pens, she should find an­oth­er ad­vo­cate, be­cause that falls un­der Mil­itary Code, or Im­pe­ri­al Re­spon­si­bil­ity, or some com­bi­na­tion, and in any case I know noth­ing about it.”

“Well, but get­ting her re­leased—”

“That isn’t some­thing we do; that’s just some­thing that could hap­pen if the Em­press takes it in­to her head to do it, or if the Jus­ticer de­cides there’s no case. Now, we’re go­ing to be ap­pear­ing be­fore Jus­ticer Moriv. I’ve tried cas­es with her be­fore, and we get along all right.”

“That’s im­por­tant, I as­sume.”

He nod­ded. “She’s easy­go­ing, for a Jus­ticer, but doesn’t tol­er­ate any de­vi­ations from strict code; that’s prob­ably why they picked her.”

“But she has to obey Im­pe­ri­al or­ders, right? I mean, if the Em­press tells her to drop the case, she has to drop it.”

He hes­itat­ed. “It isn’t that sim­ple.”

I sti­fled a groan.

“An or­der from the Im­pe­ri­al Ad­vo­cate would do it, cer­tain­ly.”

“Hm­mm?”

“The one rep­re­sent­ing the Em­pire in the pro­ceed­ings. My op­po­nent, if you will.”

“Oh. Is that some­thing li­able to hap­pen?”

“If he thinks he can’t win.”

“How do we con­vince him he can’t win?”

“In court.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“It’s what I’ve been work­ing on.”

“How’s it look­ing so far?”

“Not all that good, but there are a few points that might get us some­where.”

“And if the Em­press or­dered the, what was it? Im­pe­ri­al Ad­vo­cate? to stop the pros­ecu­tion?”

“Same as or­der­ing the Jus­ticer to. Tech­ni­cal­ly, they aren’t per­mit­ted to. But, ah, it would have a strong in­flu­ence. I can’t pre­dict what would hap­pen.”

“So we’re back to con­vinc­ing Her Majesty to drop it, and hop­ing for the best.”

He gave me a look. “Or I might win the case.”

“Right. Sor­ry.” I hes­itat­ed. “The Em­press is un­der a lot of pres­sure from a lot of dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. What hap­pens if she sees a way out?”

“Lead­ing ques­tion. She’ll take it, of course, bar­ring any sig­nif­icant fac­tors you haven’t men­tioned.”

“How would it work?”

“The best way is to present a re­quest to dis­miss to the Jus­ticer and the Im­pe­ri­al Ad­vo­cate, with a copy to Her Majesty. The trick is find­ing grounds for the re­quest. We don’t ac­tu­al­ly have any, which puts all of them in a tricky po­si­tion.”

“I have in­for­ma­tion that the idea of ar­rest­ing Aliera came from the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive; does that help?”

“Is it in­for­ma­tion from some­one who will say so un­der the Orb?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then it doesn’t help.” He hes­itat­ed. “Un­less.”

“Hm­mm?”

“The idea came from the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive—to whom?”

“Uh, to the Em­pire.”

“No, no. To whom did the rep­re­sen­ta­tive make—”

“Oh. To Her Majesty.”

“Ah. That’s dif­fer­ent. Then the Orb will re­mem­ber it, which means that it hap­pened legal­ly.”

“Um, and so?”

“So we present a claim on con­spir­acy against the Jhereg.”

“Oh, they’ll love me for that.”

He shrugged. “They have a lot of af­fec­tion for you now, do they?”

“Good point. How does it work?”

“We present a pe­ti­tion to have the Orb in­ter­ro­gat­ed about the source for the idea of ar­rest­ing Aliera—it doesn’t mat­ter how we know about it, as long as we’re spe­cif­ic about the re­quest. Then you have to show rea­son­able prob­abil­ity that there was a Jhereg as­sas­sin work­ing against the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“I can do that,” I said.

“If you get lucky.”

“Shut up.”

I asked him, “How does it work from there?”

“They grant the pe­ti­tion, look at the ev­idence of a Jhereg as­sas­sin, find rea­son­able grounds that the pros­ecu­tion was from a pri­vate con­spir­acy rather than cause of jus­tice—what?”

“Noth­ing. An in­vol­un­tary noise. Go on.”

“And when they’ve es­tab­lished that, they dis­miss the charges.”

“What about the Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion part? I mean, the re­al charges?”

“I have no con­trol over that, and if there is one, as I said, I’d be the wrong ad­vo­cate to han­dle it.”

I nod­ded. “All right. So my part is sim­ple—stop the as­sas­sin in such a way that it’s known he was an as­sas­sin.”

“When will this hap­pen?”

I checked the time with the Orb. “Four to six hours from now.”

“Oh! Well, if you’ll par­don me then, I need to get these pe­ti­tions draft­ed.”

I nod­ded and got out of there.

“Boss, how are you go­ing to iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin, much less prove what he is?”

“That isn’t what I’m wor­ried about, Loiosh. I’m wor­ried about how to stop the Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Why stop it? Will they re­al­ly con­vict Aliera just for killing a few Teck­la?”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll find out,” I said.

Iorich

16

To as­sert that fi­nal re­spon­si­bil­ity for ac­tions tak­en by Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tives rests with the Em­press is to state a tru­ism with­out sub­stance. In this case in par­tic­ular the dis­cov­er­ies of this com­mit­tee show that the prob­lem is, above all, that Im­pe­ri­al poli­cies are car­ried out by hu­man be­ings, who are nec­es­sar­ily flawed. While in­ci­dents such as this are re­gret­table, the facts do not sup­port blan­ket con­dem­na­tions of Im­pe­ri­al poli­cies with re­gard to re­bel­lion, much less the Em­pire it­self. Rather, in­ci­dents such as this must be ac­cept­ed as in some mea­sure un­avoid­able.

How­ev­er, there are, in the opin­ion of this com­mit­tee, cer­tain steps which can be tak­en to min­imize the fre­quen­cy and sever­ity of such events, which steps are list­ed in Ap­pendix 27.

The big ques­tion was whether I had enough time to set ev­ery­thing up: I on­ly had a cou­ple of hours left un­til the meet­ing, and if this was go­ing to work, I had to ar­rive ear­ly to try to con­vince them to let me at­tend, and to watch ev­ery­one ar­rive in hopes of spot­ting the dzur among the nors­ka.