Steven Brust - Iorich

“I’ll have some more cheese.”

“Please do. It’s where your tax­es go.”

“I’ve nev­er ac­tu­al­ly paid much in the way of tax­es.”

“Then you should en­joy it even more.”

“And the Teck­la in Tir­ma are still dead.”

“Yes, they are. Do you care?”

“No. Do you?”

“Yes.”

I nod­ded.

“The Em­pire has com­pen­sat­ed the fam­ilies, of course.”

“Good work. We used to do that sort of thing in the Jhereg.”

“How’d it work out?”

“Not bad, but peo­ple trust the Jhereg, so we had an ad­van­tage.”

She poured some white wine out of a tall, el­egant bot­tle in­to a sim­ple blue ce­ram­ic cup. She passed the cup to me, and I drank, then passed it back.

“I’ll let the Im­pe­ri­al Ad­vo­cate know to hur­ry up the case, so you can get out of town fast,” she said.

“I just said—”

“I know what you said. Don’t ar­gue with your Em­press.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

“That’s bet­ter.”

I leave town for a few years, and when I come back, ev­ery­one I know starts drink­ing to the point of se­mi-​in­co­heren­cy. Was it that ev­ery­thing was too bor­ing when I was gone? I some­how doubt­ed that. On re­flec­tion, I de­cid­ed it was a good idea not to ask Her Majesty if she was drunk. I put the plan in­to ac­tion at once.

We passed the cup back and forth a cou­ple of times, and she re­filled it. “You can’t do any­thing to pro­tect Cawti?” I said.

“No­rathar has promised to watch out for her, I can’t do bet­ter than that.”

“All right.”

“You know the dif­fer­ence be­tween a deca­dent Phoenix and a re­born Phoenix, Vlad?”

“Is this about to be a joke?”

“No. Or maybe yes, but no.”

“Go ahead.”

“A re­born Phoenix knows to get out be­fore the bad de­ci­sions start, that’s all.” I nod­ded. She said, “I’ve spent much of the last few days con­sult­ing the Orb, look­ing at mem­ories. As far as I can tell, that’s the on­ly dif­fer­ence. Once you start mak­ing bad de­ci­sions, one things leads to an­oth­er, and then there are more dead Teck­la that you don’t care about.”

“Do you think you made bad de­ci­sions?”

“No.”

I nod­ded. “Good, then. The idea of the Em­press mak­ing bad de­ci­sions wor­ries me. What about the Jhereg, the Left Hand, and the Or­ca? Are they go­ing to get away with it?”

“No, I think you stopped them.”

“Me?”

“I should give you an­oth­er Im­pe­ri­al ti­tle, but what would you do with it?”

“Yes, and how would you ex­plain it?”

“Good point. There’s still some cheese left.”

“Zeri­ka, are you plan­ning to ab­di­cate?”

“That isn’t the prop­er word. I’m think­ing it may be time for the Cy­cle to turn.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“It would look bad.”

“Do you think I care?”

“You should. The Em­pire is all about ap­pear­ances.”

She was qui­et for a long time af­ter that, then she seemed to sigh. If I had just talked the Em­press out of step­ping down, then I had just added to my tal­ly on do­ing good for the world, and sub­tract­ed from my tal­ly of help­ing friends. How would the Lords of Judg­ment weigh these things? I’d prob­ably nev­er know.

I de­cid­ed that, what­ev­er the Em­press de­cid­ed to do, my words made no dif­fer­ence. It was eas­ier think­ing that.

I cleared my throat. “The fact is, I’m safe enough if I stay at the inn—”

“As if you will.”

“—but that says noth­ing about Cawti. Can No­rathar pro­tect her and the boy?”

“I hope so. No­rathar wants to pro­tect her just as much as she wants to not be pro­tect­ed. And you may re­call, she isn’t ex­act­ly help­less.”

“I know.” I sighed. “The more I do what I have to, the more bar­ri­ers I put be­tween me and ev­ery­one I care about.”

She nod­ded. “And now you know the oth­er rea­son I asked you here. Wel­come to my world. It’s bet­ter with com­pa­ny. I’m go­ing to ask Las­zló to keep an eye on her, too, but I’d rather you didn’t men­tion that to her.”

“All right. And thank you. Who is Las­zló?”

“An East­ern­er. A witch. He’s very good at what he does.” A ghost of a smile crept over her fea­tures and I didn’t press the is­sue.

“I’ll look for­ward to meet­ing him,” I said.

She nod­ded. “Are you plan­ning to say farewell to No­rathar as you leave the Palace?”

Ac­tu­al­ly, I hadn’t thought about it at all, but I nod­ded.

“Don’t,” she said.

Right. Add her to the list. “All right.”

A lit­tle lat­er she said, “The cheese is gone.”

I nod­ded, rose, bowed, took five steps back­ward, turned, and left her alone.

Iorich

EPI­LOGUE

It was no sur­prise to any­one that, when the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed, ev­ery­one was cleared of any wrong­do­ing, ex­cept maybe the peas­ants, who were con­vict­ed of be­ing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was no sur­prise to any­one that there were ri­ots in South Adri­lankha in re­sponse. It was no sur­prise to any­one that there was a lot of blood in­volved in sup­press­ing them. The on­ly sur­prise was that Aliera agreed to be­come War­lord again a week or two lat­er, but I think that was as a fa­vor to No­rathar.

Aliera has a strong sense of obli­ga­tion.

Perisil moved out of his base­ment of­fice and re­turned to a pri­vate of­fice in the City it­self, where he’s al­ready do­ing much bet­ter than his first at­tempt. Rep­uta­tion mat­ters al­most as much to an ad­vo­cate as to an as­sas­sin or an Em­press.

Two weeks ago I got word that I was cleared of all charges re­lat­ing to the in­ci­dent, which is good, but I was pret­ty much ex­pect­ing it. So that’s done, and those four bas­tards who pound­ed me got what they de­served too, which is an­oth­er one I owe Kra­gar.

I could leave now that ev­ery­thing’s over.

I could. Maybe I will.

I’m still stay­ing here at Dancer’s Rest, and mon­ey is start­ing to get tight. Ev­ery few days, I find a new way to sneak out and vis­it Cawti and the boy, and ev­ery few days it be­comes hard­er to do so safe­ly, and ev­ery few days Cawti says I should get out of town. It’s nice that she wor­ries about me, I guess. I hope she thinks it’s nice that I wor­ry about her.

We are what we wor­ry about, maybe that’s the les­son of the whole thing.

Nah.

If there were jus­tice, some­one would have paid for what hap­pened in Tir­ma. If there were jus­tice, a bunch of East­ern­ers and Teck­la in South Adri­lankha wouldn’t have had their heads stove in. If there were jus­tice, Cawti and the boy wouldn’t have to wor­ry about their lives.

If there were jus­tice, I’d be dead.

Iorich

DELET­ED SCENES

Var­ious scenes had to be delet­ed for length or con­tent. I thought some of you might be in­ter­est­ed in them. They may ap­pear when I re­lease the Di­rec­tor’s Cut of this book. But don’t hold your breath.

—SKZB

Pro­logue, Out­side Whitemill, Page 13

I pulled the ar­row from my eye, hear­ing my­self scream. At that mo­ment, a blast of mag­ic from one of them hit me, and I saw my leg fly off at the knee. I fell to the ground, reach­ing for La­dy Tel­dra, but one of them came in with an ax and took my right hand off at the wrist.

The air seemed to take on an odd gold­en shim­mer, and I heard the Necro­mancer’s voice come out of nowhere. “Through the Gate, Vlad. Hur­ry!”