Steven Brust - Iorich

The same sergeant was work­ing in the Drag­on Wing. He did not look pleased to see me.

“Same thing,” I said. “If you would be so kind as to in­form the Lord Mor­rolan that I wish to see him, and add that it is ur­gent.”

He scowled but agreed.

“And,” I said. “If I might trou­ble you for an ad­di­tion­al ser -vice, please have some­one find the War­lord and tell her the fol­low­ing: Vlad has a way out. I’ll be wait­ing in that same room I was in be­fore, if that is ac­cept­able.”

Then I wan­dered for a bit un­til I found an er­rand-​run­ner, part­ed with a few coins, and ar­ranged for a mes­sage to be de­liv­ered, fast, to a cer­tain innkeep­er in a cer­tain hostel­ry not far from Malak Cir­cle, near where I used to work.

Then I found the room where I’d wait­ed be­fore, and wait­ed again, drum­ming my fin­gers on the arm of the chair and hop­ing ev­ery­one would ar­rive in time.

No­rathar was the first to ar­rive. She en­tered with­out clap­ping and said, “What is it?” with­out even sit­ting down.

“I’ll tell you when the oth­ers are here,” I said.

“What oth­ers?”

“Just friends.”

She sat down fac­ing me, look­ing like she want­ed to read my plan on my face. If it were that easy to do, I’d have no trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing the as­sas­sin.

A few min­utes lat­er, there was a clap, and Mor­rolan en­tered. He looked at me, looked at No­rathar, and said, “Well?”

“We’re still wait­ing,” I said.

“For?”

“The oth­ers,” I said, just to be con­trary and be­cause turn­ing Mor­rolan’s bait is al­ways fun.

He rolled his eyes and sat next to No­rathar. Day­mar was there with­in about a minute. He looked around the room cu­ri­ous­ly, as if he hadn’t re­al­ized the Drag­on Wing had places to sit. The oth­ers, it seemed, didn’t know quite what to make of him. Well, nei­ther did I, for that mat­ter.

A few min­utes lat­er, there was a soft but firm clap, and Kiera en­tered; she was the one I’d been most wor­ried about reach­ing, so I re­laxed a bit. “Just one more,” I said.

“Who is that?” asked Kra­gar.

I stared at him. He smiled sweet­ly and said, “Ah, glo­ri­ous vengeance,” and smirked. I felt bet­ter see­ing that the oth­ers, in­clud­ing Kiera, were al­so star­tled. I did not give Kra­gar the sat­is­fac­tion of ask­ing when he’d ar­rived. I just said, “We’re all here now.”

“Good,” said No­rathar. “Get on with it.”

I out­lined the sit­ua­tion as I un­der­stood it, ex­cept that I made it sound gloomi­er than it was so it would be more dra­mat­ic when I an­nounced that I had a way out. It would have worked bet­ter if they didn’t know me so well. Kiera smiled a lit­tle, Mor­rolan stared off in­to space, and No­rathar said, “Get on with it” again.

So I did, mak­ing it as clear as pos­si­ble, and on­ly gloss­ing over the part where I had some doubts I could pull it off. I should have known bet­ter. “Vlad,” said Kiera. “How are you go­ing to iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin?”

“I have some ideas on that,” I said.

No­rathar said, “He’s go­ing to bran­dish a knife and see who re­acts as if he knows what he’s do­ing.” That hurt, be­cause I had been con­sid­er­ing that.

“There are prob­lems with that,” I said.

“Yes. Like, if no one re­acts right. Or if more than one do.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Now, Kiera—”

“Hm­mm?”

I glanced at No­rathar. “Uh, no rude­ness in­tend­ed, No­rathar, but in your of­fi­cial ca­pac­ity, you don’t want to hear this. I’ll whis­per.”

She rolled her eyes, and I stood up, leaned over to Kiera, and whis­pered.

She lis­tened, then said, “Sounds easy enough.”

Yeah, I’m sure it was, for any thief good enough to steal the mus­tache off an East­ern­er’s face. But I just nod­ded to her and sat down again.

Kra­gar said, “You nev­er men­tioned what I’m sup­posed to do.”

“Keep the Jhereg off-​bal­ance while we do the oth­er stuff. We don’t want them in­ter­fer­ing un­til Aliera is out, with pa­pers with a big Im­pe­ri­al seal on them say­ing the mat­ter is over.”

“Oh,” he said. “Any idea how?”

“Yes. Find the Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and keep her oc­cu­pied.”

“Just how am I go­ing to do that, when I can be in­ter­rupt­ed at any time?”

“Kra­gar, meet Day­mar.”

“We’ve met,” said Kra­gar. Day­mar, it seemed, missed the in­flec­tion in Kra­gar’s voice, and just nod­ded.

“What’s my part?” asked Day­mar.

“Dress up as a Jhereg, go with Kra­gar, and make sure the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive can’t get any psy­chic mes­sages. And doesn’t know it.”

“Dress up like a Jhereg?”

“Yes.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

He paused. Then, “All right.”

“Good.”

“What about send­ing?”

“She’s wel­come to talk to any­one she wants. I just don’t want any Jhereg telling her to go see the Em­press right now.” I stopped and looked at Kra­gar. “Just to be clear, if they fig­ure out what you’ve done, and I don’t see how to pre­vent that, you might be­come a tar­get.”

Kra­gar yawned. I shrugged. Then I winced.

“Still in pain?” said Kiera.

“Some.”

“Is it go­ing to—”

“I hope not. Mor­rolan, it’s clear enough?”

He nod­ded. “I go to the ad­vo­cate’s of­fice. What’s his name?”

“Perisil.”

“Right. I wait there for, uh, three more hours and a bit, then, if I haven’t heard from you, I take him in to see the Em­press. Sounds easy.”

“I hope so. War­lord?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sor­ry, High­ness.”

She stared at me. I re­al­ly, re­al­ly should learn not to bait Drag­onlords. It’s a bad habit, and one of these days it could get me in­to trou­ble. But it’s so much fun. I cleared my throat and said, “You know where to be, and when?”

“Yes. I’m to make sure no one tries to pre­vent Mor­rolan and the ad­vo­cate from reach­ing Her Majesty.”

I nod­ded.

“That’s it, then,” I said. I checked the time. I could make it if I hur­ried.

“Good luck, Vlad,” said Mor­rolan. Kiera just smiled her smile. Day­mar was lost in thought. No­rathar shrugged. They all got up, one at a time, and filed out. When I was alone, I pulled the dag­ger from my boot and stud­ied it and test­ed it. It was a stilet­to, my fa­vorite weapon for mak­ing some­one be­come dead. My fa­vorite tar­get, when pos­si­ble, is the left eye, be­cause it is back there that Dra­gaer­ans keep the part of their brains that per­mits psy­chic ac­tiv­ity. Not that I’m nec­es­sar­ily try­ing to cut off psy­chic ac­tiv­ity, but if you take it out, they go in­to shock in­stant­ly. That takes a weapon with rea­son­able length, and a good point. This one had that, though the edge wasn’t any­thing to brag about.

But I had no time to sharp­en it just now. I re­placed it in my boot, test­ed the draw, didn’t like it, and end­ed up ar­rang­ing a quick rig against my stom­ach on the left side, hid­den by my cloak. I test­ed it, and it worked, and it didn’t hurt much more than a whole lot. Fair enough.

I set out for the Stone Bridge, cut­ting around the Palace dis­trict, Loiosh and Rocza keep­ing an eye on the foot traf­fic to make sure no one was in­ter­est­ed in my move­ments.

I was a bit dis­tract­ed: For one thing, it hurt to move. For an­oth­er, the trick­iest part of the whole mat­ter was just com­ing up. I thought about ask­ing Cawti to help, but I had the im­pres­sion a rec­om­men­da­tion from her might not go over well with these peo­ple. I thought up sev­er­al pos­si­ble sto­ries and re­ject­ed them.