Steven Brust - Iorich

I still hadn’t made up my mind when I got near the cot­tage.

“Check.”

“On it, Boss.” And, “Dif­fer­ent guy, same spot.”

“All right.”

I stood be­hind an oak that would have tak­en three of me to wrap my arms around, and I rubbed a bit of stuff on­to my skin, glued on the beard, and set the wig in place.

“What do we do?”

“Your choice: cloak, or out­side.”

“Nei­ther?”

“Loiosh.”

“Cloak, I guess.”

“Get in, then.”

They did. I ap­proached the cot­tage and re­mem­bered to pound on the door with my fist, in­stead of clap­ping. That hurt, too.

The door opened, and a mid­dle-​aged wom­an, East­ern­er, opened the door. I couldn’t guess from look­ing which part of the East she drew her an­ces­try; she had a large mouth, and wide-​set eyes that were al­most per­fect­ly round, like a cat’s. The look in the eyes, at the mo­ment, was sus­pi­cious. “Yes?” she said.

“I’m called Savn,” I said, pulling the name more or less out of the air. “I’d like a few min­utes of con­ver­sa­tion with you be­fore the gath­er­ing here, if you don’t mind.”

“How do you know about the gath­er­ing here?”

“That’s the voice, Boss. The one do­ing most of the talk­ing.”

“All right.”

“I’m hear­ing dou­ble, Boss. Can I—?”

“All right.”

There came the psy­chic equiv­alent of a re­lieved sigh.

I said, “Many peo­ple know about the gath­er­ing here, and the one lat­er with Lord Caltho.”

“Ev­ery­one knows about that one.”

“Yes, in­clud­ing some peo­ple you would prob­ably rather didn’t.”

“The Em­pire?”

“Worse.”

She stud­ied me for a mo­ment, then said, “Come in.”

It was big­ger than it had seemed from out­side: one big room, with a stove in one cor­ner, and a loft over­head that I’m sure con­tained the sleep­ing quar­ters. There were a lot of plain wood­en chairs set out—at least twen­ty of them. I sus­pect­ed the chairs ac­count­ed for most of the ex­pense of the place.

She point­ed me to one. I sat; she re­mained stand­ing. Heh. Okay, so that’s how it was go­ing to be.

“Boss, should you be talk­ing out loud? Here? If I could lis­ten—”

“Um. Damn. Good point.”

“Mind if we take a walk?” I said. She looked even more sus­pi­cious. I said, “The Em­pire may be hear­ing ev­ery­thing we say here, and, worse, some­one else might be, too.”

She frowned, hes­itat­ed, then nod­ded abrupt­ly. I stood up, we walked out the door and down the street. When we were a good dis­tance away, I start­ed talk­ing, but she in­ter­rupt­ed be­fore I had a word out.

“Who are you?” she said.

“I gave you my name. What’s yours?”

“Brinea. Now who are you?”

“I’m what you’d call an in­de­pen­dent fac­tor. I’m not with the Em­pire—” she looked like she didn’t be­lieve that “—or with any­one else. I have a friend who’s caught in the mid­dle of it, which means I’m tem­porar­ily on your side.”

“My side is—”

“Spare me,” I said. “I have in­for­ma­tion you’ll want to know, and no in­ter­est what­ev­er in pol­itics, whether Im­pe­ri­al or an­ti-​Im­pe­ri­al.”

She pressed her lips to­geth­er and said, “What in­for­ma­tion is that?”

“Is to­day’s meet­ing, here, to plan for the meet­ing with Caltho?”

“That’s a ques­tion, not in­for­ma­tion.”

“All right. If it is, there is li­able to be a dis­guised Jhereg as­sas­sin here, who is plan­ning to kill Caltho and blame it on you.”

I sud­den­ly had her at­ten­tion. “Talk,” she said.

We turned a cor­ner; with Loiosh and Rocza still in the cloak, I felt ex­posed, but I tried to stay alert. I on­ly saw a few East­ern­ers.

“The Jhereg,” I told her, “is work­ing on a com­pli­cat­ed scheme, along with the Or­ca and the—and an­oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tion. To pull it off, they need to pres­sure the Em­press. To pres­sure the Em­press, they’re us­ing the mas­sacre in Tir­ma. If a le­git­imate in­ves­ti­ga­tion—”

“It won’t be a le­git­imate in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” she said. “They’ll just throw a black tarp over it and say it’s fine.”

“No, they’ll do a re­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Not be­cause they care, but be­cause the Em­press is try­ing to get out of a jam, and that’s the on­ly way to do it.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“The Jhereg needs to stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. To do that, they’re go­ing to make it look like your group killed As­sis­tant In­ves­ti­ga­tor Caltho. Much out­rage against you, prob­ably a lot of ar­rests, and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion gets put on hold. That’s how they’re go­ing to work it.”

She was qui­et for ten or twelve paces, then she said, “Maybe.”

“I agree with the maybe. I think I’m right, but I could be wrong.”

“How will you find out?”

“With your per­mis­sion, I’ll at­tend to­day’s meet­ing here, and try to iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin.”

“What makes you think you can do that?”

“I can some­times spot them,” I said.

“What is it you do?”

“Run from them.”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

“The Jhereg wants me dead for per­son­al rea­sons. So, most of my life is avoid­ing them. But that’s okay, I’ve been run­ning for so long it feels like walk­ing to me.”

She was qui­et again for a bit, then she said, “What will you do if you iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin?”

“Tell you who he is, so you can do what­ev­er seems ap­pro­pri­ate.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I won’t be. I might not be able to spot him, but if I do spot him, I won’t be wrong.”

We turned a cor­ner and she start­ed lead­ing us back to­ward the house. No one had yet tried to kill me. Even­tu­al­ly she said, “All right. I’ll trust you on that part. You may as well re­lax; they’ll be here soon.”

We made it back to the house and closed the door and I felt re­lieved. I found a chair from which I could be watch­ing the door with­out ap­pear­ing to, and I wait­ed.

It was, in­deed, on­ly a few min­utes lat­er that they be­gan to ar­rive. The first to ar­rive ap­peared to be a Teck­la, and sus­pi­cious­ly like one straight out of some­one’s imag­ina­tion of what a peas­ant ought to look like: brown hair, roundish face, leath­ery-​look­ing skin, stur­dy. He greet­ed Brinea, who in­tro­duced me. He gave his name as Nicha, and sat down next to me and be­gan a con­ver­sa­tion about need­ing to watch for trick­ery at the meet­ing with the Em­pire. I grunt­ed agree­ing nois­es and kept watch­ing the door.

Short­ly af­ter, a pair of East­ern­ers came in: Kather­ine was tall for an East­ern­er, dark, and wore glass­es; Liam had the round face of a Teck­la, an odd hair col­or that wasn’t quite blond and wasn’t quite brown, and a nose that looked to have been bro­ken at least once. They car­ried fly­ers in their hands. I didn’t ask to see one be­cause I was afraid it was some­thing I was sup­posed to know about. They were both re­served with me; maybe they thought they should be the on­ly hu­mans there.

In fact, ex­cept for the three of us, ev­ery­one else was a Teck­la. I won’t give you all the names; there were twen­ty-​three of them, not in­clud­ing me or Brinea. Elim­inat­ing the two East­ern­ers, that meant twen­ty-​one who might be as­sas­sins. Nine of them were wom­en, and I al­most dis­missed them, but for one thing, there is the oc­ca­sion­al wom­an work­ing for the Jhereg (as I hap­pen to know bet­ter than most), and for an­oth­er, a Jhereg will­ing to dis­guise him­self as a Teck­la could just as eas­ily dis­guise his sex, right?