Steven Brust - Iorich

“No, not him.”

“I am,” said Brinea, in an im­pres­sive­ly steady voice. She looked at me but didn’t say any­thing. Yeah, I know: I’d told her I was go­ing to just iden­ti­fy him. I’d been ly­ing. I do that some­times.

I stud­ied the Jhereg who were still alive, stand­ing there like id­iots the same way I was. One of them looked fa­mil­iar. I looked at him more close­ly, re­al­ized where I knew him from, and shook my head. He avoid­ed look­ing at me. I’m guess­ing he was dis­gust­ed with him­self be­cause my dis­guise had fooled him. I tried to feel smug about that but it wasn’t in me. I hate it when my plan goes blooey, even if the re­sults come out okay.

Oh, and to com­plete my hu­mil­ia­tion, the fel­low I’d no­ticed ear­li­er, and thought might be an as­sas­sin, was one of the Phoenix Guards.

Sheesh.

No­rathar said, “I’d like ev­ery­one’s name as wit­ness­es. Af­ter that, you are free to go on about your busi­ness. I think the ex­cite­ment is over, and Lord Caltho will be ar­riv­ing short­ly.”

Bri­ana agreed, and about then a cou­ple of coach­es pulled up. The three Jhereg were put in­to one, still with their weapons and un­bound; I got the oth­er. Loiosh and Rocza re­mained out­side, over­head, pro­vid­ing a winged es­cort.

No­rathar climbed in with me, and we start­ed off. I said, “Is there any law against im­per­son­at­ing a Phoenix Guard?”

“Why?”

“One of those Jhereg—the one with the flop­py hat—was one of the ones who beat me up.”

“Oh. He can be fined for that, and maybe dunked.”

“All right.” I sighed. “Got through it, any­way.”

“I sup­pose. But, Vlad, that was pret­ty slop­py. Now what? You’ve been seen killing some­one. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have slipped so far so fast.”

That was un­fair. For one thing, it wasn’t fast by my stan­dards; it had been years. For an­oth­er—

“I’ll point out that I was in dis­guise, and if you’d done what I said—”

“You’d ei­ther be dead, or have three Mor­gan­ti killings to ac­count for. I don’t know how we’ll keep you away from the Star as it is, but with that—”

“It shouldn’t be a prob­lem. He was a Jhereg as­sas­sin.”

No­rathar nod­ded. “Yes, so he was. He turned out to be not on­ly armed, but car­ry­ing a seal of the House with him.”

I nod­ded.

“The on­ly thing is,” said No­rathar, “that as­sas­sins don’t car­ry the House seal when they’re work­ing. I hap­pen to know.”

“This one did.”

“You say that like you knew.”

“I had a pret­ty good idea he would be.”

“How?”

“Be­cause I trust Kiera.”

“She plant­ed—?” She cut her­self off be­fore ask­ing the ques­tion. Drag­on Heir, act­ing War­lord, and ex-​as­sas­sin; had to be tough to be her.

I leaned my head against the hard wall of the coach.

She said, “He had three toughs with him for back­up.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I hadn’t ex­pect­ed that.”

“I had.”

I opened my eyes. “Why?”

“Be­cause they were go­ing to as­sas­si­nate a pub­lic fig­ure in a crowd­ed room. You’re used to—that is, you were used to a dif­fer­ent sort of thing.”

“I did jobs in pub­lic.”

“Dif­fer­ent sort of thing than tak­ing out a guy in the mid­dle of a restau­rant. With a pub­lic fig­ure like that, if you’re go­ing to get out of it alive and uniden­ti­fied, you need peo­ple to cre­ate enough con­fu­sion to get away.”

Great. Now I was get­ting lessons in as­sas­si­na­tion from the War­lord of the Em­pire. “You could have told me,” I said.

She shrugged. “How did you iden­ti­fy him?”

I ex­plained about the knife.

“How do you know the guy you got was the one go­ing to do the work, not one of the back­ups?”

“Why do I care?”

She in­haled deeply, then let her breath out slow­ly and nod­ded.

“Give me a mo­ment,” she said. “I’ll find out what hap­pened with the rest.”

A bit lat­er she said, “Mor­rolan brought the ad­vo­cate in to see the Em­press, pre­sent­ed the pe­ti­tion. The Em­press is now meet­ing with the Jus­ticer and Im­pe­ri­al Ad­vo­cate. Mor­rolan is con­fi­dent the charges will be dis­missed.”

I nod­ded. “And the in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“Aliera did noth­ing wrong as War­lord; she has noth­ing to fear from an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“All right.”

“As op­posed to you.”

“Me? I killed an as­sas­sin.”

“You al­so pub­licly bran­dished a Mor­gan­ti weapon. Which I ought to take from you, on­ly I know bet­ter.” She looked dis­gust­ed.

“Oh, right; car­ry­ing a Mor­gan­ti weapon is il­le­gal, isn’t it?”

“Very much il­le­gal.”

“In spite of Aliera, Mor­rolan, Sethra—”

“Yes, in spite of that.”

“Just like use of El­der Sor­cery is il­le­gal, but no one cares un­less—say, I just thought of some­thing. The law against car­ry­ing a Mor­gan­ti weapon, do you hap­pen to know if it is a Cod­ified Tra­di­tion, a Statute, or an Edict?”

She frowned. “I be­lieve it’s an Edict. Why?”

“I have a good ad­vo­cate,” I said.

Iorich

17

1. There were re­gret­table and even rep­re­hen­si­ble ac­tions tak­en by Im­pe­ri­al sol­diers in the vil­lage of Tir­ma on Ly­orn 2, 252.

2. Re­spon­si­bil­ity for these ac­tions must end with the in­di­vid­uals di­rect­ly in­volved (see Ap­pendix 23 for names and sug­gest­ed charges).

3. Any at­tempt to lay re­spon­si­bil­ity for this in­ci­dent on high­er lev­els of the Im­pe­ri­al mil­itary or­der will be in­con­sis­tent with jus­tice, and in ad­di­tion may have long-​term neg­ative con­se­quences for the Im­pe­ri­al army, and can­not there­fore be rec­om­mend­ed (see Part One, point 1).

I signed and sealed the oaths say­ing that as an Im­pe­ri­al Count I promised not to go any­where un­til my case had been dealt with, then was per­mit­ted to leave the Iorich Wing. My des­ti­na­tion was con­ve­nient­ly close, and by now fa­mil­iar.

I ran in­to Day­mar on the way to Perisil’s of­fice. I was go­ing to ask him where Kra­gar was, but I bethought my­self to take a look around and there he was. I stud­ied Day­mar in his black and gray, and thought about telling him he made a good Jhereg, but he didn’t so I didn’t.

I said, “How did it go?”

“Went well,” said Kra­gar. “I gave her a good runaround about ru­mors of new laws, and how could I prof­it from them, and she gave me a good runaround not an­swer­ing me. I don’t think she sus­pect­ed any­thing.”

“She will when some­one asks her why she was out of touch right when they need­ed her to get to the Em­press.”

“They might.” He didn’t seem con­cerned.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’m like you, Vlad; it just tick­les me to have Aliera owe me one.”

That was a mo­ti­va­tion I could un­der­stand.

We reached the of­fice. The door was open, and Mor­rolan and Perisil were there. I in­tro­duced Perisil to Day­mar and to Kra­gar, whom he hadn’t no­ticed come in.

Perisil said, “I’ve just got­ten word from the Jus­ticer. They’re re­leas­ing Aliera.”

“Good.”

“And they’ll be in­ves­ti­gat­ing the events in Tir­ma.”

“Okay.”

“And Her Majesty wants to see you.”

“Oh,” I said. I cleared my throat. “When does Aliera get out?”

“They’ve al­ready dis­patched the re­lease or­der; she should be out with­in the hour.”