Steven Brust - Iorich

So, there were twen­ty-​one who might be my tar­get; and none of them in­stant­ly jumped out at me. I had been think­ing I might take a look at their cal­lus­es, if I could see them; but it seems I’d stum­bled in­to the largest col­lec­tion of non-​la­bor­ing Teck­la ev­er as­sem­bled in one place. Some were mes­sen­gers, some were house-​ser­vants, some did me­nial jobs for mer­chants, but none looked like he ac­tu­al­ly did any work. It was ter­ri­bly dis­il­lu­sion­ing; I won­dered what it meant.

It seemed there were sev­er­al there who didn’t know each oth­er, so my be­ing a stranger turned out not to be that bad. Brinea made in­tro­duc­tions as peo­ple came in, and I watched a lot, spoke lit­tle, learned noth­ing.

“I wish I could see, Boss.”

“You think you can spot an as­sas­sin when I can’t?”

“Yes.”

“Ha.”

The chairs were ar­ranged in most of a cir­cle, three rows deep, on­ly an arc in front of the door­way and in­to the kitchen area left free. One chair, on the oth­er end of the arc, was un­oc­cu­pied, as if by un­spo­ken con­sent. Brinea sat in it and said, “Let’s get start­ed.”

It start­ed, and it went on for a long time. They spoke of pres­sur­ing the Em­pire, which struck me as an ex­er­cise in fu­til­ity, but what do I know? They spoke about guard­ing the in­ter­ests of “the peo­ple,” but weren’t ex­act­ly clear on what that in­volved. Most­ly, it went on for a long time. I took out the clasp knife I’d just bought. No one re­act­ed. Damn. I cleaned my nails with it, and no one seemed to no­tice. Noth­ing. Oh, well. I closed it and set down next to my chair.

Mean­while, they droned on, talk­ing about what Lord Caltho—they were care­ful to call him Lord Caltho—had to be told about and what stan­dards he had to be held to, and about in­sist­ing that all de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be made pub­lic. Let me know how that works out for you, I thought but didn’t say.

I was caught be­tween bore­dom and frus­tra­tion. I kept want­ing to flour­ish a dag­ger just to see who re­act­ed; and it might even have worked. But the thing is, it might not have, and then I’d have lost my chance.

It took a while—it took a very very long while—but at last Brinea said, “I think that cov­ers ev­ery­thing. I pro­pose we go there in a body. If we leave now, we’ll be a few min­utes ear­ly, and we can talk to any­one walk­ing by and ex­plain what we’re do­ing, then go in to­geth­er. Does any­one ob­ject?”

No one did, so we all stood up. I watched as close­ly as I could to see if any­one seemed un­usu­al­ly ath­let­ic or, well, slinky when stand­ing, if that makes any sense. And I half thought I no­ticed some­one, too. I stud­ied him as I stood: a guy with long, loopy arms wear­ing loose cloth­ing; and his hair was shag­gy enough to have maybe con­cealed a no­ble’s point. Maybe. The trick was to keep an eye on him, but not be so dis­tract­ed that I missed some­one else. It was hard, but not im­pos­si­ble. You have to trust your pe­riph­er­al vi­sion.

I con­trived to be the last one out the door ex­cept for Brinea and a fel­low I took to be her hus­band. No one else seemed in­ter­est­ed in who was the last one out the door. But I guess if you’d been watch­ing me, I wouldn’t have seemed in­ter­est­ed ei­ther.

We all trooped out to­ward the street to head to­ward the South Adri­lankha Speak­er’s Hall, which is what some­one had once built in­stead of the Speak­er’s House vil­lages have. It wasn’t far away, but at least one of us wasn’t go­ing to make it. They wait­ed for Brinea to take the lead, and, as she shut the door, I said, “I don’t have my pock­etknife.”

“You set it by your chair,” said a short, el­der­ly Teck­la who was about four paces from me.

We as­sas­sins no­tice things like that.

I nod­ded and opened my cloak as I cov­ered the dis­tance. Loiosh and Rocza flew out very quick­ly and sev­er­al peo­ple cried out, but by that time I had the stilet­to in my hand. I got him up un­der the chin. I hit him hard, too—I re­mem­ber feel­ing the hilt con­nect with his chin bone, though I most­ly re­mem­ber how much my ribs hurt when I struck. I left the knife there, and start­ed to step back, about to curl my­self up in­to a ball of pain and try to breathe when—

“Down!”

I hit the ground and rolled and felt some­thing go “whoosh” over my head. Some­one was re­act­ing aw­ful­ly fast for a Teck­la, and my mus­cles cried out to stop it and

“He has back­up, Boss! Three of them!”

Sheesh. Was the whole room full of as­sas­sins? What was he do­ing bring­ing back­up along? I nev­er did that. What sort of crap­py as­sas­sin wants wit­ness­es and needs pro­tec­tion? I’d have giv­en him a piece of my mind if I hadn’t left eight inch­es of steel in his.

I hoped one of them was the guy I’d picked out; that would make me feel bet­ter. There was a lot of scream­ing go­ing on as I con­tin­ued my roll; some of the scream­ing was from my rib. My hand found the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra, and I drew her and came to my feet, know­ing some­how I need­ed to duck to my left, and some­one yelled “Mor­gan­ti,” which was use­less, be­cause once I drew that blade, ev­ery­one with­in a mile who had any psy­chic sen­si­tiv­ity at all must have been aware of it.

She had tak­en the form of a rapi­er, which was aw­ful­ly nice, since that’s what I’m used to fight­ing with. She fit in­to my hand like my palm, hilt smooth, and it was like she was weight­less. I knew—some­how—that it was safe to take a step back­ward, and I did, tak­ing my first good look around.

There were sev­er­al hor­ri­fied faces, back­ing away. Brinea, to her cred­it, was see­ing to her peo­ple and try­ing to pull them away and speak­ing rapid­ly. Three of what ap­peared to be Teck­la were fac­ing me: each with a fight­ing knife, one with two of them. They were crouched, alert, and they were star­ing at La­dy Tel­dra. I didn’t blame them.

We stood there, watch­ing each oth­er for half a heart­beat, when a cou­ple of things hap­pened. First, I re­al­ized I didn’t hurt any­more. I al­most looked at La­dy Tel­dra my­self. You’d think some­one would have told me she could do things like that.

The sec­ond thing that hap­pened was some­one called out, “You will put up your weapons in the name of the Em­pire.”

I froze.

“What the—?”

“Two of them, Boss; they’ve pulled gold cloaks out of some­where and are toss­ing off wigs and such.”

“Great. Half the gath­er­ing were as­sas­sins, the oth­er half were Phoenix Guards. Per­fect.”

For a mo­ment, no one moved, then I heard an­oth­er voice, this one I rec­og­nized. “Vlad, put it away.”

I looked over. “No­rathar? Where did you come from?”

“Be­hind that tree over there.”

I want­ed to say that hadn’t been the plan, but she prob­ably wouldn’t have ap­pre­ci­at­ed it. I sheathed La­dy Tel­dra with a flour­ish.

“Now,” she said, “if you gen­tle­men will put yours up as well, let us all go to the Palace and talk this over. The wag­on will be here short­ly.”

There was a pause, but I had no doubts about what would hap­pen. These were Jhereg; they knew that, what­ev­er else, you do not fight with the Phoenix Guards. You can’t win. Af­ter a breath or two, there was a col­lec­tive sigh and cut­lery van­ished all over the place. No­rathar said, “Who is the lead­er here?”

I glanced at the corpse and said, “Uh, I’m afraid—”