Steven Brust: Iorich

Iorichby Steven Brust

Cov­er

Iorich

Iorich

IORICH

Iorich

BOOKS BY STEVEN BRUST

The Dra­gaer­an Nov­els

Broke­down Palace

THE KHAAVREN RO­MANCES

The Phoenix Guards

Five Hun­dred Years Af­ter

The Vis­count of Adri­lankha,

which com­pris­es

The Paths of the Dead,

The Lord of Cas­tle Black,

and

Sethra Lavode

THE VLAD TAL­TOS NOV­ELS

Jhereg

Or­ca

Yen­di

Drag­on

Teck­la

Is­so­la

Tal­tos

Dzur

Phoenix

Jhe­gaala

Athyra

Iorich

Oth­er Nov­els

To Reign in Hell

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

Ag­yar

Cow­boy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille

The Gyp­sy (with Megan Lind­holm)

Free­dom and Ne­ces­si­ty (with Em­ma Bull)

Iorich

STEVEN BRUST

IORICH

A TOM DO­HER­TY AS­SO­CIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

Iorich

This is a work of fic­tion. All of the char­ac­ters, or­ga­ni­za­tions, and events

por­trayed in this nov­el are ei­ther prod­ucts of the au­thor’s imag­ina­tion

or are used fic­ti­tious­ly.

IORICH

Copy­right © 2009 by Steven Brust

All rights re­served.

Edit­ed by Tere­sa Nielsen Hay­den

A Tor Book

Pub­lished by Tom Do­her­ty As­so­ciates, LLC

175 Fifth Av­enue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-​forge.com

Tor® is a reg­is­tered trade­mark of Tom Do­her­ty As­so­ciates, LLC.

Li­brary of Congress Cat­aloging-​in-​Pub­li­ca­tion Da­ta

Brust, Steven, 1955–

Iorich / Steven Brust. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

“A Tom Do­her­ty As­so­ciates book.”

IS­BN 978-0-7653-1208-2

1. Tal­tos, Vlad (Fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter)—Fic­tion. I. Ti­tle.

PS3552.R84I57 2010

813'.54—dc22

2009040414

First Edi­tion: Jan­uary 2010

Print­ed in the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Iorich

For Meridel Bian­ca

Iorich

AC­KNOWL­EDG­MENTS

Thanks to Reesa Brown for pota­to pas­tries and oth­er things too nu­mer­ous to men­tion, and to Kit O’Con­nell for com­put­er and re­search help. Anne K. G. Mur­phy pro­vid­ed some emacs help for which I re­main grate­ful. Thanks to Brad Roberts and Thomas Bull for sig­nif­icant help in sur­viv­ing un­til this was done. Fi­nal­ly, my thanks to Alexx Kay for con­ti­nu­ity check­ing.

Iorich

Iorich

IORICH

Iorich

PRO­LOGUE

Even if things don’t work the way you’d planned, it’s good when you can take some­thing use­ful away from the ex­pe­ri­ence.

They jumped me just as I was en­ter­ing a lit­tle vil­lage called Whitemill at the south­ern edge of the Push­ta. They had con­cealed them­selves be­hind the long, bro­ken hedge that bor­dered the Whitemill Pike be­fore it turned in­to the sin­gle road of the ham­let. It was a good place for an at­tack. The near­est dwelling was per­haps a quar­ter of a mile away, and night was just falling.

There were three of them: Dra­gaer­ans, two men and a wom­an, wear­ing the col­ors of no spe­cial House. They all car­ried swords and knives. And they knew their busi­ness: the key to con­vinc­ing some­one to give up his cash is to be fast and very, very ag­gres­sive; you do not stand there and ex­plain to your client why he should do what you want, you try to get him in­to a po­si­tion where, be­fore he has time to think, much less re­spond, he is at your mer­cy and hop­ing that some­how he can get out of this alive. When he hands over his purse, he should be feel­ing grate­ful.

Rocza took the man on the right, Loiosh flew in­to the face of the wom­an. I drew and dis­armed the one in front of me with a stop-​cut to the wrist, then took one step in and hit him in the nose with the pom­mel of my rapi­er. I took an­oth­er step in and kicked the side of his knee.

He went down and I put the point at his throat. I said, “In­tent to rob, in­tent to as­sault, as­sault, and fail­ing to be se­lec­tive in your choice of vic­tim. Bad day for you.”

He looked at me, wide-​eyed.

I gave him a friend­ly sug­ges­tion: “Drop your purse.”

The oth­er man had run off, Rocza fly­ing af­ter him; the wom­an was do­ing what I call the Loiosh dance—fu­tile­ly swing­ing her sword at him while he kept swoop­ing in at her face then back out of range. He could do that all day.

The guy on the ground got his purse un­tied, though his fin­gers fum­bled. I knelt and picked it up, the point of my rapi­er nev­er mov­ing from his throat. I spoke to my fa­mil­iar.

“Get Rocza back. Let the oth­er one go.”

“She’s on it, Boss.”

She re­turned and land­ed next to my client’s head and hissed.

“As long as you don’t move, she won’t bite,” I said. He froze. I went to the wom­an, who was still flail­ing about, and now look­ing pan­icked. I said, “Drop it.”

She glanced at Loiosh, then at me, then at her friend on the ground. “What about—”

“He won’t hurt you if you drop your weapon. Nei­ther will I.”

Her sword hit the ground, and Loiosh re­turned to my shoul­der.

“Your purse,” I told her.

She had less trou­ble un­ty­ing it than her friend. She held it out to me.

“Just drop it,” I said.

She was very oblig­ing.

“Now get out of here. If I see you again, I’ll kill you. If you try to fol­low me, I will see you.”

She sound­ed calm enough. “How did you—?”

“Won­der about it,” I said.

“Not a bad day’s work, Boss.”

“Lucky you spot­ted them.”

“Right. It was luck. Heh.”

“May I stay and help my friend?”

“No,” I said. “He’ll be along present­ly. You can pick up your weapons once I’m out of sight. I won’t hurt him.”

He spoke for the first time. A very im­pres­sive and lengthy string of curs­es fin­ish­ing with, “What do you call this?”

“A bro­ken nose,” I said. I gave him a friend­ly smile he may not have ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

The wom­an gave me a glare, then just turned and walked away. I picked up the purse.

“Be­ware of East­ern­ers with jhereg,” I told the guy with the bro­ken nose.

“———!” he said.

I nod­ded. “Even if things don’t work out the way you planned, it’s good when you can take some­thing use­ful away from the ex­pe­ri­ence.”

I con­tin­ued in­to the vil­lage, which had its req­ui­site inn. It was an ug­ly thing, two sto­ries high and mis­shapen, as if bits and pieces had been added on at ran­dom. The room I en­tered was big and full of Teck­la, who smelled of ma­nure and sweat, mix­ing with the smells of fresh bread, roast­ed keth­na, to­bac­co smoke, dream­grass, and now and then a whiff of the harsh pun­gen­cy of opi­um, in­di­cat­ing there must be one or two no­bles in here, among all the Teck­la. Then I no­ticed that there were al­so a few mer­chants there. Odd. I won­dered about it—even in ru­ral inns, there gen­er­al­ly isn’t that much of a mix. The bar ran about half the length of the room, with ce­ram­ic and wood­en mugs on shelves be­hind it. At one end of the bar was a large knife, just ly­ing there—al­most cer­tain­ly the knife the innkeep­er used to cut fruit to put in wine punch, but that’s the sort of thing an as­sas­sin no­tices.

I got a lot of looks be­cause I was hu­man and had a jhereg on each shoul­der, but none of the looks were threat­en­ing be­cause I had a sword at my side and a jhereg on each shoul­der. I ac­quired a glass of wine and a qui­et cor­ner. I’d ask about a room lat­er.