Steven Brust - Iorich

They gave her a deep bow, me a rather shal­low­er one, backed up, and left by a door at the far end.

The Em­press sat in a chair and mo­tioned me to stand in front of her. I made an obei­sance and wait­ed, not en­tire­ly sure of the eti­quette, and wish­ing I had La­dy Tel­dra in the flesh, as it were, to tell me what I was sup­posed to do. Zeri­ka didn’t look as if I’d vi­olat­ed any sort of pro­to­col. I re­flect­ed that the Em­pire did things rather more sim­ply than these things were done in the East.

“Tal­tos Vladimir,” she said, a smile flick­ing over her lips. She still looked im­pos­si­bly young to be an Em­press, but looks are de­ceiv­ing. “What hap­pened to your hand?”

I glanced at my left hand, miss­ing the least fin­ger. “A mi­nor in­sect bite fol­lowed by a ma­jor in­fec­tion,” I said. I forced my­self to not glance at the Orb while I said it; the Orb, I’ve been told, on­ly de­tects false­hood when asked to do so, and even then it can some­times be beat­en, as I’ve rea­son to know.

She said, “You couldn’t cure it with your arts?”

I touched the amulet hang­ing about my neck. “I’m not sure how much Your Majesty knows of—”

“Oh, of course,” she said. “I had for­got­ten.”

“It is kind of Your Majesty to re­mem­ber at all.”

“Yes. I am the per­son­ifi­ca­tion of kind­ness, as well as mer­cy and jus­tice, which as you know al­ways match steps. What brings you back to the City, un­der the cir­cum­stances?”

Okay, well, she knew about the “cir­cum­stances.” I was on­ly sur­prised that she cared enough to, and I won­dered why.

“Aliera is a friend of mine,” I said.

“And mine,” she snapped.

I al­most jumped. It isn’t good when the Em­press is mad at you—ask any­one. I said, “Well, nat­ural­ly, I want­ed to see her.”

She seemed to re­lax a lit­tle, and nod­ded.

“And help her if I can,” I added. “I trust you have no ob­jec­tions?”

“That de­pends,” she said care­ful­ly, “on just ex­act­ly what you mean by ‘help­ing’ her.”

“I had in mind hir­ing an ad­vo­cate, to start with.”

She nod­ded. “I would have no ob­jec­tion to that, of course.”

“Per­haps Your Majesty would be will­ing to tell me some­thing.”

“Per­haps.”

“It may be my imag­ina­tion, but it seems that the pros­ecu­tion of Aliera is, ah, be­ing ex­pe­dit­ed. If that’s true, then—”

“It isn’t,” she said. She was terse. She was glar­ing. She was ly­ing. It’s some­thing to make an Em­press lie to you, isn’t it?

I nod­ded. “As Your Majesty says.”

She glared and I stared at a place on the wall above and be­hind her right ear. The Orb had turned a sort of orangish, red­dish col­or. I wait­ed. This isn’t one of those sit­ua­tions where I need to ex­plain why I kept my mouth shut.

At length, she ges­tured to­ward a chair. “Sit,” she said.

“I thank Your Maj—”

“Oh, shut up.”

I sat down. The chair was com­fort­able; I was not.

She let out a long breath. “Well,” she said. “Now we have quite the sit­ua­tion here.”

One thing I’d hoped to find a way to say to her was, “Look, you’ve known for years that Aliera and Mor­rolan dab­bled in El­der Sor­cery. Why is it such a big deal now all of a sud­den?” I was now con­vinced there was go­ing to be no way to ask it at all. The Orb cir­cled her head, its col­or grad­ual­ly fad­ing back to a sick shade of green. It must be an­noy­ing to be un­able to con­ceal your feel­ings.

“Was the Orb de­signed to dis­play the Im­pe­ri­al mood, or is it a by-​prod­uct of some­thing else?”

She pre­tend­ed not to hear the ques­tion. “Who have you hired as an ad­vo­cate?”

“His name is Perisil.”

“I don’t know him. Will he man­age to get you in to see her?”

“I hope so.”

“Let her know that if she con­fess­es, she’ll be shown mer­cy.”

I start­ed to re­ply, then re­cast it in terms I hoped more suit­able for the Im­pe­ri­al pres­ence: “Is Your Majesty pleased to jest?”

She sighed. “No, but I see your point.”

I was try­ing to imag­ine Aliera e’Kieron beg­ging for mer­cy of any­one for any rea­son, and my mind just wouldn’t ac­cept it.

She said, “I should have men­tioned it be­fore, but I’m glad you’re not—that is, I’m glad you’re still alive.”

“Me too. I mean, I thank Your Majesty.”

“Who have you seen since you’ve back in town?”

“Mor­rolan, that’s all.”

“Has he, ah, said any­thing?”

“You mean, made dis­loy­al re­marks about his sovereign? No.”

“I could put the Orb over you and make you re­peat that.”

“Must be nice to be able to do that when­ev­er you want, Majesty.”

“Not as nice as you’d think.”

I cleared my throat. “With all due re­spect, Your Maj—”

“Oh, stuff your re­spect. What is it?”

“Some­one in my po­si­tion is hard­ly like­ly to over­flow with sym­pa­thy for some­one in yours.”

“I wasn’t ask­ing for sym­pa­thy,” said Her Majesty.

“No, I sup­pose not.”

“And you know whose fault your predica­ment is.”

“Yes. Can the same be said for yours?”

“Not with­out ex­plor­ing meta­physics, which I haven’t the pa­tience for just now.”

I smiled a lit­tle. “I can imag­ine Your Majesty in the li­brary of Cas­tle Black fu­ri­ous­ly ar­gu­ing meta­physics with Mor­rolan.”

“So can I,” she said, grant­ing me a brief smile.

It was like half the time I was be­ing in­vit­ed to talk with Zeri­ka, and half the time to speak with the Em­press. It was hard to keep up with.

I said, “It must be a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion.”

“I said I wasn’t ask­ing for sym­pa­thy.”

“Sor­ry.”

She sighed. “Yes, it is. Be­tween jail­ing a friend and vi­olence in the—” She broke off and shook her head. “Well, I knew what I was get­ting in­to when I took the Orb.”

Nei­ther of us men­tioned that at the time she had tak­en the Orb there was, quite lit­er­al­ly, no one else to do it. I said, “You know I’m still will­ing to serve Your Majesty.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“As long as it doesn’t mean a dis­ser­vice to your friends, as usu­al?” She sound­ed a lit­tle scorn­ful.

“Yes,” I said, not let­ting her know that her tone had stung a bit.

“I’m afraid,” she said, “that this is an oc­ca­sion when you’re go­ing to have to choose whom to help.”

“Eh. Be­tween my friends and the Em­pire? I’m sor­ry, that isn’t that hard a choice. Can you give me enough of an idea of what’s go­ing on that I can at least un­der­stand why it has to be that way?”

Af­ter a mo­ment, she said, “Do you know, Vlad, that from the best knowl­edge we have, it seems al­most cer­tain that at least five of the orig­inal six­teen tribes prac­ticed hu­man sac­ri­fice?”

“I had not been aware—”

“There are many who as­sume that be­cause we have ev­idence from the five, it is safe to make as­sump­tions about the oth­er eleven. I don’t know if they’re right, but I can’t prove them wrong.”

I cleared my throat, just as if I had some­thing to say to that. She looked at me ex­pec­tant­ly, so I had to come up with some­thing. “Um, how did they choose the lucky per­son?”

“Dif­fer­ent ways for dif­fer­ent tribes. Cap­tives in bat­tle, se­lect­ed for spe­cial hon­or, pun­ish­ment, re­ward, au­guries.”