Iorich

“Boss, I don’t care what Kiera says, you’re in no shape—”

“I’m not go­ing to be en­gaged in any acts of vi­olence, Loiosh, so you can re­lax.”

“You’re not?”

“No, the plan changed.”

“When?”

“Yes­ter­day, when I was talk­ing to Mor­rolan.”

I set­tled back for the ride. It was a good coach—the jounc­ing didn’t make me scream.

I stepped out and paid the coach­man, who bowed as if I were Dra­gaer­an and a no­ble­man. She prob­ably thought it would in­crease her tip, and I guess it did at that.

I was now in a part of the City called the Bridges, prob­ably be­cause the main roads from three of the bridges all led to this area and crossed each oth­er at a place called Nine Mar­kets, which was in fact on­ly about a hun­dred yards from where I stood. Tym­brii’s shop was nes­tled in among the sim­ple three-​and four-​room hous­es of trades­men, with a few larg­er room­ing hous­es and an open-​air shrine to Kel­chor.

“Okay, you two get back in my cloak.”

“Do we have to?”

“I don’t need to walk in there with two in­stant iden­ti­fi­ca­tions on me.”

“You think they won’t know you just be­cause we aren’t with you?”

“Some­thing like that.”

“You’re dream­ing.”

“In, both of you.”

I felt him start to ar­gue, but he cut it off. The two of them ducked in­to my cloak as the coach pulled away.

The door it­self held a sign that sug­gest­ed I feel free to en­ter, so I did. It smelled a bit dusty, and there were oily smells mixed in. It was a sin­gle room, well lit, with bolts of cloth and those bunch­es of yarn that peo­ple who use yarn call skeins. There was an el­der­ly gen­tle­man sit­ting in a straight-​backed chair, look­ing as if he had been do­ing ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing un­til the door opened. Once I en­tered, he rose, took me in, and did the fa­cial dance I’d come to ex­pect from mer­chants who don’t know quite how to place me, fol­lowed by the po­lite bow of those who de­cide coins bring more hap­pi­ness than snub­bing one’s in­fe­ri­ors. That’s the dif­fer­ence, you know, be­tween a mer­chant and an aris­to­crat: The true aris­to­crat will al­ways pre­fer to snub his in­fe­ri­or.

“May I help you, my lord?”

“I hope so. I’m look­ing to see the mis­tress of the house.”

He frowned. “I beg your par­don?”

Clink. Clink. Clink.

“I’ll see if she’s avail­able.”

He van­ished through a door­way in back, and I looked around at bright­ly col­ored cloth. Ex­ot­ic. That’s what Cawti had called these col­ors: ex­ot­ic. I guess they were at that. Bright blues and sear­ing yel­lows and some as dark or­ange as the ocean-​sea.

I wait­ed.

He came out of the door again, bowed stiffly again, and said, “She will see you now. The door­way at the end of the hall.”

He stood aside, and I went past him through the open door. I felt un­com­fort­able as I did, like he was go­ing to bash my head in when I went through. He didn’t, though.

There was a short hall­way with a closed door to the side, and an­oth­er door in front of me. This one was open, so I en­tered.

She was of mid­dle years for a Dra­gaer­an, say a thou­sand or so, and dressed in the gray and black of the Jhereg. She was sit­ting be­hind a desk look­ing busi­ness-​like, and she rose as I en­tered. Noth­ing in her ex­pres­sion in­di­cat­ed she might know me, al­though that was hard­ly proof.

“May I be of ser­vice?” she said, with bare­ly con­cealed dis­taste. Now, she was an aris­to­crat.

“I seek knowl­edge, O wise one.”

She frowned. “Are you mock­ing me?”

“Yes, but on­ly in a friend­ly way.”

She sat down again, look­ing at me through nar­rowed eyes. “I’m not your friend. Do you have busi­ness for me, or don’t you?”

“I do. I’m af­ter in­for­ma­tion, there may be some spells to pre­vent eaves­drop­ping.”

She nod­ded. “Go on. What are the specifics?”

That set off all sorts of alarms in my head. Was she ex­pect­ing me to ask her to com­mit a crime, just like that? I mean, maybe the Left Hand did that sort of thing, but, if so, how did they stay in busi­ness?

I looked her in the eye. “I beg your par­don?”

“Be­fore I can ac­cept, I have to know who you want to lis­ten in on. I’ll need to get a dis­pen­sa­tion from the Jus­ticers.”

“Nat­ural­ly, I wouldn’t want you to do any­thing il­le­gal.”

“Nat­ural­ly.”

“So of course, you have to go through the court pro­ceed­ings.”

“Yes.”

“I as­sume there are spe­cial fees for the ad­vo­cate?”

“That is cor­rect.”

“How much.”

“One hun­dred.”

“That’s a lot,” I said.

“Yes.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll give you a draft on Har­brough.”

She nod­ded. She’d cer­tain­ly know Har­brough: he didn’t use names, which made him very pop­ular among the Jhereg—both sides, pre­sum­ably—and was the rea­son I still had mon­ey avail­able.

She passed over pen and ink and blot­ter, and I wrote out a stan­dard dis­pen­sa­tion then passed it to her. She stud­ied it care­ful­ly, I imag­ine send­ing the im­age to some­one who’d make sure the funds were there to cov­er it.

“All right,” she said. She moved the draft to a place be­tween us and put the inkwell on it; there seemed to be some­thing al­most rit­ual­is­tic about the act, al­though maybe my talk with Kiera had me imag­in­ing things. Then she bowed her head. “What’s the job?” All busi­ness; just like the Jhereg.

“What if I said Sethra Lavode?”

She snort­ed. “I’d give you your draft back and point you to the Nalarfi Home.”

“Just mak­ing sure you didn’t be­long there.”

“Yes, there are things I won’t do. Quit wast­ing my time. What’s the job?”

“There is a house at num­ber eleven Enoch Way in South Adri­lankha—”

“Are you jest­ing?”

“Why would I be?”

“You think a house in South Adri­lankha has pro­tec­tions against eaves­drop­ping?”

“I don’t know that they do, but they might.”

“They have the re­sources for that?”

“If they’ve got­ten sup­port from trades­men, func­tionar­ies, or any of the mi­nor no­bil­ity.”

“And what makes you think they have?”

“It’s a pos­si­bil­ity. I’ll pay to hear what’s go­ing on in there. If there’s no pro­tec­tion from eaves­drop­ping, then so much the eas­ier for you.”

She hes­itat­ed, then nod­ded. “All right.”

“Uh, how does this work?”

“How does what work?”

“How will I know what’s said?”

She looked dis­gust­ed. “How would you like to know?”

“I’d like to be able to lis­ten my­self, but I don’t think that’s pos­si­ble.”

“Why not?”

“Try cast­ing a lis­ten­ing spell on me, and see what hap­pens.” Her eyes nar­rowed, and her right hand twitched, and she said, “Phoenix Stone?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you aren’t will­ing to re­move it—”

“I’m not.”

“Then we can pro­vide you a sum­ma­ry, or a tran­script.”

“How long does that take?”

“You can have it with­in a day.”

“Boss—”

“Is there any way you can, uh, have my fa­mil­iar lis­ten in­stead of me?”

“I beg your par­don?”

I opened my cloak. Loiosh poked his head out, then climbed up to my left shoul­der; fol­lowed by Rocza, who climbed up to my right. I smiled apolo­get­ical­ly.

“See, Boss, you could have saved us all a lot of trou­ble if—”

“Shut up.”

“I’m not sure what you are ask­ing me to do.” She looked like I had of­fered to share my meal of fresh worms with her.

“Loiosh is ful­ly self-​aware, and trained to, well, if you can man­age to con­nect him to the spell, he can tell me what’s said.”

She didn’t much like the idea, but I pulled out my purse and set a nice stack of im­pe­ri­als in front of her. Mon­ey that clinks and glit­ters al­ways has more of an ef­fect than mon­ey that ex­ists on­ly in the­ory.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll need to, ah, to touch him.”

“Ewwww,” said Loiosh.

“Yeah, well.”

Aloud I said, “How long will this last?”

“If he is aware enough to ac­cept the spell, it will end when he wants it to, or it will fade on its own over the course of the next year or so.”

“All right.”

Loiosh flew down on­to her desk in front of her; she al­most man­aged not to flinch.

“Oh, one thing,” I said.

She had start­ed to reach to­ward him; now she stopped. “Yes?”

“If any­thing you do caus­es him any harm, there is no pow­er in the world that will keep your soul safe.”

“I dis­like threats. If you don’t want—”

“I just had to make sure you were in­formed.”

She shrugged. I re­al­ly don’t make threats very of­ten, so I re­sent it when I do make one and it doesn’t im­press the threat-​enee. But to the left, that’s prob­ably why I don’t make many.

Her hand was steady when she put three fin­gers on his back.

“I need a bath.”

“Feel any­thing?”

“Sor­cery, pret­ty mild.”

“All right.”

“You should be­gin to get sound by morn­ing.”

“All right. Be care­ful, the place is be­ing watched.”

“By whom?”

“The Jhereg. That is, the Right Hand, if you will.”

She snort­ed. “That won’t be a prob­lem.”

“All right,” I said. “Any­thing else?”

“Yes. One ques­tion: Who are you?”

“You think I’m go­ing to tell you?”

“You think I can’t find out?”

“If it means that much to you, feel free,” I said. Then I turned on my heel and left.

The gen­tle­man who sold cloth ig­nored me as I left, and I gave him the same cour­tesy, though it wasn’t a de­lib­er­ate snub on my part—I was busy ask­ing my­self why I hadn’t thought to have the coach wait. Loiosh, as was his cus­tom, wast­ed no time. “So tell me, Boss, if the whole idea was for her to be able to iden­ti­fy you, why couldn’t we be there?”

“It would have made it too ob­vi­ous that I want­ed to be iden­ti­fied.”

“So, in­stead, it just mat­ters that you walk in­to one of the busi­ness­es of peo­ple who are try­ing to kill you? Is this what you call high strat­egy?”

“That’s a Drag­on term. I nev­er use it.”

“Boss, won’t they fig­ure out that you want­ed them to iden­ti­fy you?”

“Maybe.”

“So, how is it that what you just did wasn’t stupid?”

“The busi­ness of con­vinc­ing your en­emies to do what you want them to is a tricky mat­ter, Loiosh. I wouldn’t ex­pect a jhereg to un­der­stand the sub­tleties.”

“I trust an ed­uca­tion in the sub­tleties will be­gin short­ly.”

“You’re start­ing to sound like Mor­rolan.”

I had to walk to the mar­ket to find a coach—a run-​down thing that found ev­ery rut and hole in the road. Served me right for lack of fore­thought, though. Things like not think­ing to have the coach wait­ing might seem small to you, but if I went ahead and ex­ecut­ed plans with­out see­ing to all the lit­tle de­tails, I was go­ing to make what was al­ready a tricky op­er­ation down­right im­pos­si­ble. I gave my­self a stern talk­ing-​to about it; my cracked rib and var­ious bruis­es em­pha­sized the point.

Kiera was, as promised, wait­ing in the court­yard. “Well?” she said.

“Well enough,” I said. “Maybe. Have to see.”

She frowned. “What did you do?”

“Start­ed a de­layed-​ac­tion ex­plo­sive spell.”

“Uh, let’s go up to your room.”

“I thought you’d nev­er ask.”

“What?”

“For­get it.”

I made my slow painful way to the room. I stretched out on the bed, Kiera took the chair.

“In­ter­est­ing noise,” she said.

“Hm­mm?”

“As you lay down. Some­where be­tween a groan and a sigh. I don’t think I’ve heard any­one do that be­fore. Are you sure you don’t want to be fixed up?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Un­less you have to move fast.”

“When have I ev­er need­ed to move fast?”

She didn’t even both­er to give me a look for that one. “What did you do?”

“I hired her.”

“To do what?”

“I need to know what’s go­ing on in a cer­tain lit­tle cot­tage in South Adri­lankha.”

“And that was the on­ly way to find out?”

“The best way, un­der the cir­cum­stances.”

“Why?”

“I’m try­ing to do two things at once.”

She nod­ded. “I once tried to steal two things at once. Want to hear what hap­pened?”

“On­ly if it worked.”

“I won’t talk about it, then.”

“There are two things go­ing on, Kiera. They’re prob­ably re­lat­ed, but I can’t know that.”

“Aliera’s pros­ecu­tion, and the ef­fort to set you up.”

“Right.”

“And the cot­tage in South Adri­lankha?”

“It’s a long shot, as far Aliera’s pros­ecu­tion, but it’s all I can come up with. My think­ing is this: If the Jhereg wants to blame the killing on one of these peo­ple, they’ll—”

“Wait. What?”

“The Jhereg is plan­ning to kill the Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tor, a cer­tain De­saniek, and blame it on a group of East­ern and Teck­la rebels.”

“How did you put that to­geth­er?”

“When I asked Cawti if she were still giv­ing read­ing lessons, she said, ‘un­til late­ly,’ which got me to think­ing—nev­er mind. It’s a long sto­ry. The point is, if they want to kill the in­ves­ti­ga­tor, and blame it on this group of rebels, they’ll need to know what the group is up to. If I know what they’re up to, maybe I’ll be able to fig­ure out where they’ll move.”

She looked doubt­ful. “That doesn’t seem like­ly.”

“I agree, but it’s all I’ve got.”

“What about the oth­er rea­son? How does this help you get out of a set­up?”

“It might not, but if she takes the trou­ble to find out who I am, and I did ev­ery­thing but beg her to, it’s go­ing to stir up the Jhereg, and maybe throw them off their game.”

“That is re­al­ly thin.”

“Not as thin as you think. Some­thing un­ex­pect­ed hap­pens when you’re af­ter some­one, you slow down and make sure you know what’s go­ing on. All I need is for them to slow down long enough to let me fin­ish this busi­ness and get back out of town.”

“That is very thin.”

“Like the oth­er, it’s what I have. Do you have any bet­ter ideas?”

“This is big­ger than you seem to re­al­ize, Vlad.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Eh? It’s the Left Hand of the Jhereg, the Jhereg, and the Or­ca ma­nip­ulat­ing Im­pe­ri­al pol­itics. How much big­ger—?”

“No, what makes you think I don’t re­al­ize how big it is?”

“You aren’t act­ing as if you do.”

“Kiera, af­ter you’ve been in bat­tle with gods, you get to the point where the af­fairs of mere mor­tals—”

“Can you be se­ri­ous for two words?”

“Not with­out ef­fort,” I said.

“Ap­ply your­self.”

I shrugged. “What do you want from me? Okay, it’s se­ri­ous. It’s big. I get that. But I came back here to help Aliera. If you can show me a bet­ter way to do that, I’m lis­ten­ing.”

“I’ll nev­er un­der­stand this pas­sion you have for mak­ing your­self a tar­get.”

“It isn’t a pas­sion, it’s more of an av­oca­tion.” She start­ed to say some­thing, but I cut her off. “I didn’t cre­ate the sit­ua­tion, and no one was do­ing a damned thing about it, ei­ther be­cause they didn’t want to of­fend the Em­press, or be­cause they didn’t want to of­fend Aliera. You couldn’t fit the hair of a nors­ka’s tail on how much I care about of­fend­ing ei­ther one. There’s a prob­lem, I’m fix­ing it.”

“You’re stub­born, Vlad.”

“Is that a com­pli­ment?”

“Some­times. Usu­al­ly. Right now, I’m not sure. How can I help?”

“You prob­ably can’t, but I’ll let you know if some­thing comes up.”

She sighed, start­ed to say some­thing else, then just shrugged and left me with her Kiera smile and soft kiss on the cheek. I lay on my back and tried not to move too much, and even­tu­al­ly got some rest.

Iorich

15

Your High­ness: I ur­gent­ly re­quest an im­me­di­ate re­view of the en­tire Im­pe­ri­al prison sys­tem. With the sui­cide of Bryn our in­ves­ti­ga­tion—an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Your High­ness, in­sti­gat­ed by the ex­press wish­es of Her Majesty—has been se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised. Per­mit me to urge Your High­ness in the strongest pos­si­ble terms to form a com­mit­tee of our own House and some of the more skilled Val­lista to see what can be done to make sure this doesn’t hap­pen again; it is hard­ly an over­state­ment to say that the hon­or of the House it­self is at stake. Any fur­ther event of this type and I will not an­swer for the com­mit­tee be­ing able to car­ry out its du­ties.

I Re­main, Your High­ness,

Your Loy­al and Re­spect­ful

Jus­ticer De­saniek

I woke up feel­ing still bet­ter. If this trend con­tin­ued, I’d be back in shape to fight in on­ly a month or so.

“Boss!”

That was when I re­al­ized what woke me up. “What is it?”

“Uh, this is weird. I’m hear­ing things.”

“Yeah, that’s what was sup­posed to hap­pen.”

“But, it’s weird.”

“It’s just for a day or two. Any­thing in­ter­est­ing?”

“De­pends how in­ter­est­ed you are in snor­ing.”

“Most­ly in­ter­est­ed in my own, but it’s too late for that, now.”

“Cry up a storm, Boss.”

I got up and slow­ly and painful­ly took care of morn­ing things. The plan for the day was, ac­tu­al­ly, to do noth­ing ex­cept to stay as safe as I could: there was noth­ing to do un­til and un­less I got some in­for­ma­tion from Loiosh, or un­til some­one made a move at me.

I had them bring me some food. There was kla­va—good kla­va—and some hen’s eggs part­ly boiled with salt, and bread with a lux­uri­ous amount of but­ter. They charged too much, but here and there were com­pen­sa­tions.

Loiosh re­port­ed con­ver­sa­tions that were on­ly re­mark­able in their triv­ial­ity—the best mar­kets, who had be­come preg­nant, whose un­cle had tak­en sick. Some­times he iden­ti­fied the voic­es as male, some­times fe­male, some­times mixed. At one point, two wom­en who spoke with an ac­cent that Loiosh re­mem­bered as be­ing from some East­ern king­dom got in­to a con­ver­sa­tion that made me blush when Loiosh re­peat­ed it. And I don’t blush easy.

By the evening, I was start­ing to won­der if the whole thing were a put-​up job—if some­one knew I was lis­ten­ing and was stag­ing the con­ver­sa­tions for my ben­efit. But then, I re­mind­ed my­self that most of these peo­ple worked eigh­teen hours a day or so, many of them at the slaugh­ter hous­es, so I wouldn’t ex­pect to hear any­thing of sub­stance un­til the evening.

And, in­deed, in the evening I start­ed hear­ing things that were more in­ter­est­ing: Loiosh re­port­ed a male voice say­ing, “They should be ar­riv­ing with­in the half hour, we should set the chairs up.”

I sent down for an­oth­er meal to pre­pare my­self; this one a whole fowl done in a sweet wine sauce. I don’t ac­tu­al­ly care much for sweet sauces, but it wasn’t bad.

“Pound­ing sounds, Boss. Doors. Peo­ple com­ing in. Voic­es.”

“What are the voic­es say­ing, Loiosh?”

“No idea. They’re all talk­ing at once. Greet­ings, I think.”

“Any East­ern ac­cents?”

“One or two, maybe. It’s hard to say.”

“All right.”

About half an hour lat­er he said, “They’re qui­et­ing down. Some­one’s talk­ing. Dra­gaer­an, or at least no ac­cent I can hear.”

“What’s he say­ing?”

“She. Blah blah blah the Em­pire blah blah blah Tir­ma blah blah blah or­ga­nize blah blah—”

“Loiosh.”

“Boss, when she ac­tu­al­ly says any­thing, I’ll tell you, okay? This hav­ing voic­es in my head is re­al­ly weird.”

“You should be used to it. I am.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Okay.”

About half an hour lat­er, he said, “They’re go­ing to be hav­ing some sort of meet­ing to­mor­row.”

“How thrilling.”

“With an Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive.”

“Oh. If it turns out to be De­saniek, this will sud­den­ly be too easy.”

“No idea who it is.”

“Guess I’d bet­ter find out.”

“They’re still talk­ing, Boss. Some­thing about meet­ing be­fore the meet­ing with the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, to, I don’t know, I couldn’t hear. Some­thing about uni­ty.”

“Where’s the meet­ing?”

“Which?”

“Both.”

“The one with the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive will be at Speak­er’s Hall at the fifth hour of the af­ter­noon. The ear­li­er one will be noon, at the cot­tage.”

“A meet­ing be­fore the meet­ing. Okay. Got it. I may have a bit of an idea, but I first need to make sure that it is De­saniek go­ing to that meet­ing.”

“What if it isn’t?”

“Then I’ll—”

I didn’t have to an­swer the ques­tion, be­cause a clap out­side the door in­ter­rupt­ed me.

“Who?”

“No one I know, Boss. Just one, though.”

I stirred my­self. I had for­got­ten about the damned rib and sat up di­rect­ly, in­stead of turn­ing on my side first. I re­solved not to do that again. I hoped I wasn’t go­ing to have to de­fend my­self, be­cause I just wasn’t in any shape to. Nev­er­the­less, I let a knife fall in­to my right hand, held it be­hind the door, and opened the door care­ful­ly.

My, my, my.

I didn’t rec­og­nize her, but I knew what she was. She had a face like a knife’s edge, hair swept back and tied, and wore black and gray and rings on ev­ery fin­ger in­clud­ing both thumbs.

I stepped back. “Well,” I said. “This is un­ex­pect­ed. Please come in.”

“Vladimir Tal­tos?”

“Some­thing like that,” I said. “And you are?”

“A mes­sen­ger.” She made no move to come in; the hall­way be­hind her was emp­ty.

“I can guess from whom.”

“You have a deal with us,” she said. “We have a project work­ing you know some­thing about. If you in­ter­fere with the project, the deal is off.”

Then she turned and walked down the hall.

I shut the door and put the knife away.

“Well,” I said af­ter a mo­ment. “I guess I’ve been warned.”

“I guess so. What are you go­ing to do?”

“Just what I was plan­ning to do.”

“Now?”

“Might as well.”

Loiosh and Rocza flew out of the door ahead of me, and an­nounced that things looked good. I made my way to the Palace. I still walked as if noth­ing hurt, and I still knew it wouldn’t make any dif­fer­ence. As we walked, Loiosh said, “Can I stop lis­ten­ing now?”

“Soon. Not yet.”

“It’s just more of the same, Boss.”

“Sor­ry. We’ll be done with this soon.”

Who would know? Well, the Em­press, of course, and I’d try again to see her if I had to, but one doesn’t sim­ply barge in on the Em­press to get a sim­ple ques­tion an­swered if one has any choice, so I took my­self to the Drag­on Wing to see if the tem­po­rary act­ing War­lord and Drag­on Heir to the throne hap­pened to have a spare mo­ment. Start small, that’s what I al­ways say.

I climbed the stairs to the tiny room that was al­most be­com­ing fa­mil­iar—yea, Vlad Tal­tos, ex-​as­sas­sin, ex–crime boss, want­ed by both sides of the law (that last isn’t true, but it sound­ed good, didn’t it?), walked in­to the in­ner sanc­tum of Im­pe­ri­al law en­force­ment. I clapped.

“Who by the fe­cal mat­ter of the Sev­en Wiz­ards is it now and what do you want that can’t wait half an hour?” came the cheer­ful re­ply from with­in.

“It’s Vlad,” I said.

“En­ter, then.” I did. “My day is now per­fect,” she sug­gest­ed.

“Who from the Em­pire is go­ing to meet with that group of East­ern­ers and Teck­la?” As I’ve said, I’m big on small talk.

Her eyes nar­rowed and her lips pressed to­geth­er. “Cawti?” she said.

“No. My own sources. Who will it be?”

“Why should I tell you?”

There were a num­ber of rea­sons, but I cut to the sim­plest one. “If it’s De­saniek, she’s go­ing to be as­sas­si­nat­ed there.”

That made an im­pres­sion of some sort, but I couldn’t judge what it was. “It isn’t,” she said at last. I’m not sure if I felt re­lieved or dis­ap­point­ed. It was too pat, any­way. No­rathar con­tin­ued, “It’s Caltho.”

“Who is that?”

“Iorich. De­saniek’s chief in­ves­ti­ga­tor.”

“I see.” Then. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“What would hap­pen if he were killed at that meet­ing?”

She blinked. “At that meet­ing? By an East­ern­er or a Teck­la?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off as she con­sid­ered it. “It wouldn’t be good,” she said fi­nal­ly. “What are your rea­sons for think­ing it will hap­pen?”

“You know about the Jhereg, Left Hand, and Or­ca pres­sure on Zeri­ka.”

“On Her Majesty,” she cor­rect­ed ab­sent­ly.

“An hon­est in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be ug­ly, but would take away their lever­age. An at­tempt on the part of rebel Teck­la to stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would sab­otage it, or at least de­lay it, and the pres­sure would be back on.”

She frowned. “I don’t know. That isn’t how the Jhereg op­er­ates.”

“The Left Hand does.” She start­ed to speak but I cut her off. “I don’t know a lot about the Left Hand, but I know how they op­er­ate, and it’s just like that. Not to men­tion the Or­ca.”

She nod­ded slow­ly. “Yes, I can see that. What do you sug­gest I do?”

“The ob­vi­ous thing is to ar­rest the rebels.”

“And you know as well as I do why I can’t.”

“The Em­press wouldn’t ap­prove?”

“And for good rea­son: that sort of thing just stirs them up and makes the rest think they must be right. Your peas­ant is a peace­ful, hap­py sort, nor­mal­ly, Vlad, and hav­ing a few mal­con­tents around gives him some­one to feel wis­er than. Knock ten of those on the head, and now you have a thou­sand in their place. We don’t need that.”

I wasn’t en­tire­ly sure about the whole peace­ful hap­py peas­ant thing, but I had to agree with the rest. “Can­cel the meet­ing?”

“The same prob­lem, on­ly not quite as bad.”

“Yeah. Well, break up this deal with the Or­ca and the Left Hand? Leave them no rea­son to go to the trou­ble? They’re prac­ti­cal sorts, you know.”

“How do you pro­pose do­ing that?”

“I don’t know. Ask nice­ly?”

“Can you be se­ri­ous for two words?”

“Not with­out great ef­fort.”

“Vlad—”

“Okay, I know how to do it. Maybe. I have to make some as­sump­tions, and af­ter learn­ing just now that the tar­get isn’t De­saniek, but—what’s his name?”

“Caltho.”

“Right. Af­ter learn­ing that, I’m not so sure about my abil­ity to make as­sump­tions, but I’m go­ing for it any­way.”

“What are you go­ing to do?”

“Iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin, and kill him.”

She drummed her fin­gers on her desk. Then, “All right,” she said. “Can I help?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been threat­ened by the Left Hand. Or, rather, Cawti has.”

Her eyes nar­rowed. “And you’re go­ing ahead with it?”

“You know her. Wouldn’t you?”

She nod­ded slow­ly. “All right. I’ll watch her.”

“She’ll need sor­cer­ous pro­tec­tion above all.”

“I’m not an id­iot, Vlad.”

“Sor­ry. It’s just—”

“I know. Any­thing else?”

I shook my head, stood, and took my leave.

“Boss, I will nev­er, ev­er un­der­stand flight­less peo­ple.”

All I had to do was find the as­sas­sin. Should be no prob­lem. Just look for the shifty eyes. Heh.

If you’re go­ing up against some­one, it’s al­ways best to as­sume he’s not as good as you, and a lit­tle bet­ter than you. You need to fig­ure you’re bet­ter, be­cause oth­er­wise you start sec­ond-​guess­ing your­self, and hes­itat­ing, and do­ing all sorts of oth­er things that don’t help at all. And bet­ter, be­cause if you un­der­es­ti­mate some skill he has, it could be very em­bar­rass­ing. It’s tricky do­ing both at once.

Put it this way: Could I dis­guise my­self well enough that I couldn’t tell I was an as­sas­sin?

Easy.

So, how would I get my­self to re­veal me, in a crowd­ed room? How crowd­ed? I had no idea. It wasn’t that big a cot­tage; you couldn’t get more than twen­ty or thir­ty peo­ple in there.

I ate, and I thought, and I didn’t come up with any­thing bet­ter than sud­den­ly pulling a knife and see­ing if any­one re­act­ed like he knew what he was do­ing. I didn’t much like it. Then it crossed my mind that per­haps it would be a sor­cer­ous at­tack, and I liked it even less.

Well, all right. The as­sas­sin would be there, or not; the as­sas­sin would be a sor­cer­er, or not. When you’re play­ing Shere­ba, and you re­al­ize that the on­ly way you can win is if your op­pos­ing knave is still in the deck, then you play as if it’s still in the deck. There­fore, the as­sas­sin would be there, and would not be a sor­cer­ess.

“Glad that’s set­tled.”

“Shut up.”

I did some more think­ing, and came up with noth­ing else, and even­tu­al­ly I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I hurt a lit­tle less, but I still had no in­ter­est in even mov­ing slow­ly; the idea of mov­ing fast just wasn’t any fun at all.

“Boss, if you spot the as­sas­sin, what are you go­ing to do?”

“I’m go­ing to say, ‘Pointy point, you’re the don­key.’ ”

“I prob­ably don’t want to know, do I?”

“I’m just wor­ried about the pos­si­bil­ity he nev­er played that as a kid. You don’t think about as­sas­sins ev­er be­ing kids, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s just what was on my mind.”

I stood up, slow­ly and painful­ly. “What if I was beat­en just for this? I mean, what if the whole point was to make it im­pos­si­ble for me to take out the as­sas­sin if I need­ed to?”

“Yeah, Boss. What if?”

I didn’t have an an­swer, so I slow­ly got dressed and ready, and then, Loiosh and Rocza scout­ing for me, I went down the stairs and out. I picked up some warm, crusty bread and smoky, crumbly goat cheese from a ven­dor out­side the inn. I love warm bread more than a lot of things you’d think would be high­er on the list, you know?

Af­ter I’d eat­en, I made my way to the West Palace Mar­ket, which is a good place to go for the best in­gre­di­ents, if you can make your­self get up that ear­ly in the morn­ing. I wasn’t there for in­gre­di­ents to­day, though. In the far south­west­ern cor­ner of the mar­ket, be­hind a stall that sells the best truf­fles in White-​crest is a rat­ty-​look­ing per­ma­nent store that sells pre-​rolled cop­per tub­ing, and nails, ham­mers, springs, and var­ious tools for us­ing the above. It’s run by a Tsalmoth named Liska who looks as old as Sethra is and scur­ries about at a fu­ri­ous pace, her back per­ma­nent­ly bent and her eyes look­ing up from be­neath hair so stringy she seems to have lost her no­ble’s point. She keeps her cash in a box be­neath the stool she us­es on the rare oc­ca­sions when she sits to dick­er with a cus­tomer, while the cus­tomer stands on the oth­er side of a wood­en plank set on two bar­rels; the plank is a light wood, well-​pol­ished, and carved with de­pic­tions of a tsalmoth in var­ious odd pos­es.

“What do you want?” she said when I walked in.

“A knife,” I told her.

She scur­ried on­to her stool. She knew me, but ad­mit­ting it would, I guess, give me a bar­gain­ing ad­van­tage over her. Some­thing like that. “What sort of knife?” she barked out.

“Noth­ing fan­cy; just some­thing to whit­tle with.”

She gave me a look that in­di­cat­ed enough sus­pi­cion to prove she knew who I was. I looked all in­no­cent and shit. She showed me a se­lec­tion, and I end­ed up pick­ing out a small clasp knife. I test­ed the edge be­cause it would have looked fun­ny not to, and made sure it opened and closed eas­ily, gave her an im­pe­ri­al and told her to keep it, and head­ed back out.

“Okay, Boss. I can’t wait to see what you’re go­ing to do with that.”

“It’s pret­ty small; I’ll most like­ly just lose it.”

I still had a cou­ple of hours be­fore the meet­ing was sup­posed to start. Not far from the West Palace Mar­ket is a hos­tel called the Ink­stand for a rea­son that was ex­plained to me once but I can’t re­mem­ber; I think it was some­thing his­tor­ical. There’s an ac­tor named Gi­naasa who lives there from time to time, and with whom I’ve done busi­ness be­fore. Since it was ear­ly in the morn­ing, I ex­pect­ed to wake him up, and I ex­pect­ed him to be sober. I was right on both counts, but he took it in good grace when I clinked some coins. I left there a bit lat­er with a cloth bag con­tain­ing a blond wig and a neat­ly trimmed match­ing beard, a bit of glue, and a jar of stuff to light­en my com­plex­ion a bit.

That done, I still had the hard part: if it worked, what then? How was I go­ing to ma­nip­ulate events to get what I want­ed, just in case that was a pos­si­bil­ity?

“Boss, where are you go­ing?”

“Huh? I don’t—oh, House of the Iorich, I guess.”

“You think he’ll know what to do?”

“I guess if we’re go­ing to go in­to this, we ought to find out what is li­able to hap­pen to Aliera. Re­mem­ber Aliera? She’s the one who got us in­volved in this?”

“Are you ex­pect­ing grat­itude?”

“No. I just know if it were me—”

“Yeah, yeah.”

We reached the house safe­ly, and I made the now-​fa­mil­iar trek to Perisil’s of­fice and clapped. He peered out the door, then opened it. I went in.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” he asked me. He looked gen­uine­ly cu­ri­ous.

“Nev­er mind.”

I took the chair op­po­site him and said, “I have some­thing go­ing that might do, um, some­thing. I need to check it with you.”

He nod­ded. “Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to give me at least one or two more de­tails than that if you want an in­tel­li­gent com­ment.”

It took me a mo­ment to re­al­ize he was jest­ing; I don’t know if that says some­thing about him, or about me. I said, “All right, just this once. Here’s the sit­ua­tion as I see it, stop me if I’m wrong about some­thing: The Jher—that is, cer­tain groups are try­ing to pres­sure the Em­press. The lever­age they have is the scan­dal about Tir­ma, which is go­ing to an­noy a lot of the peo­ple who mat­ter, al­though ex­act­ly why they care I couldn’t say.” He gave me a look, but didn’t in­ter­rupt.

I went on. “The Em­press, af­ter you and I start­ed mak­ing trou­ble and kick­ing things up, re­con­sid­ered, and de­cid­ed to have an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events. There will be an ef­fort to stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and cast blame at some id­iot group of Teck­la by as­sas­si­nat­ing Caltho.”

“De­saniek.”

“No, I was wrong about that. Her as­sis­tant, Caltho.”

“Hm­mm. That would work too.”

“Even bet­ter, be­cause it will hap­pen at a pub­lic meet­ing where he is sup­posed to an­swer ques­tions about what is hap­pen­ing and why.”

“I see.”

“All right, so, if I man­age to stop the as­sas­si­na­tion, does that give us any lever­age to get Aliera re­leased?”

He was qui­et for a mo­ment, then he said, “Stop it how?”

“By killing the as­sas­sin be­fore he can kill Caltho.”

He was qui­et for a bit longer, then. “It de­pends on a num­ber of things. How are you. . . where. . .” His voice trailed off and he looked un­com­fort­able. I’d nev­er seen him look un­com­fort­able be­fore; I think I en­joyed it.

“The way I see it go­ing down, I’ll take him be­fore he ev­er gets to the meet­ing.”

“Then, ex­cuse me, how will any­one know?”

“No one will know.”

“Then I don’t see how it will have any ef­fect on our case.”

“Uh. Yeah, there’s that. Okay, what if I made it more dra­mat­ic?”

“You mean, a res­cue at the last minute and all?”

I nod­ded. “I have no idea if I can, or how, but I might be able to pull some­thing like that off.”

He nod­ded slow­ly, rub­bing his chin, then said, “No.”

“No?”

“Legal­ly, it would have no stand­ing. Let me ex­plain. There are three ways this can go: She can be tried for what she was ar­rest­ed for, or she—”

“Wait, what she was re­al­ly ar­rest­ed for, or what the of­fi­cial charges were?”

He blinked, hes­itat­ed, and said, “I’ll start over. There are three ways this can go. One: She can be ar­rest­ed for prac­tic­ing El­der Sor­cery, she—”

“It’s crap.”

He shrugged. “That’s as may be. Two: She can be in­ves­ti­gat­ed for her role, if any, in the mas­sacre. Or, three: All charges could be dropped and she could be re­leased.”

“Eh? Well, that would be best. How can we get that to hap­pen?”

“I’ve no idea. I’m just list­ing the pos­si­bil­ities. Now, I can rep­re­sent her on the charge of El­der Sor­cery. If the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mas­sacre hap­pens, she should find an­oth­er ad­vo­cate, be­cause that falls un­der Mil­itary Code, or Im­pe­ri­al Re­spon­si­bil­ity, or some com­bi­na­tion, and in any case I know noth­ing about it.”

“Well, but get­ting her re­leased—”

“That isn’t some­thing we do; that’s just some­thing that could hap­pen if the Em­press takes it in­to her head to do it, or if the Jus­ticer de­cides there’s no case. Now, we’re go­ing to be ap­pear­ing be­fore Jus­ticer Moriv. I’ve tried cas­es with her be­fore, and we get along all right.”

“That’s im­por­tant, I as­sume.”

He nod­ded. “She’s easy­go­ing, for a Jus­ticer, but doesn’t tol­er­ate any de­vi­ations from strict code; that’s prob­ably why they picked her.”

“But she has to obey Im­pe­ri­al or­ders, right? I mean, if the Em­press tells her to drop the case, she has to drop it.”

He hes­itat­ed. “It isn’t that sim­ple.”

I sti­fled a groan.

“An or­der from the Im­pe­ri­al Ad­vo­cate would do it, cer­tain­ly.”

“Hm­mm?”

“The one rep­re­sent­ing the Em­pire in the pro­ceed­ings. My op­po­nent, if you will.”

“Oh. Is that some­thing li­able to hap­pen?”

“If he thinks he can’t win.”

“How do we con­vince him he can’t win?”

“In court.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“It’s what I’ve been work­ing on.”

“How’s it look­ing so far?”

“Not all that good, but there are a few points that might get us some­where.”

“And if the Em­press or­dered the, what was it? Im­pe­ri­al Ad­vo­cate? to stop the pros­ecu­tion?”

“Same as or­der­ing the Jus­ticer to. Tech­ni­cal­ly, they aren’t per­mit­ted to. But, ah, it would have a strong in­flu­ence. I can’t pre­dict what would hap­pen.”

“So we’re back to con­vinc­ing Her Majesty to drop it, and hop­ing for the best.”

He gave me a look. “Or I might win the case.”

“Right. Sor­ry.” I hes­itat­ed. “The Em­press is un­der a lot of pres­sure from a lot of dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. What hap­pens if she sees a way out?”

“Lead­ing ques­tion. She’ll take it, of course, bar­ring any sig­nif­icant fac­tors you haven’t men­tioned.”

“How would it work?”

“The best way is to present a re­quest to dis­miss to the Jus­ticer and the Im­pe­ri­al Ad­vo­cate, with a copy to Her Majesty. The trick is find­ing grounds for the re­quest. We don’t ac­tu­al­ly have any, which puts all of them in a tricky po­si­tion.”

“I have in­for­ma­tion that the idea of ar­rest­ing Aliera came from the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive; does that help?”

“Is it in­for­ma­tion from some­one who will say so un­der the Orb?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then it doesn’t help.” He hes­itat­ed. “Un­less.”

“Hm­mm?”

“The idea came from the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive—to whom?”

“Uh, to the Em­pire.”

“No, no. To whom did the rep­re­sen­ta­tive make—”

“Oh. To Her Majesty.”

“Ah. That’s dif­fer­ent. Then the Orb will re­mem­ber it, which means that it hap­pened legal­ly.”

“Um, and so?”

“So we present a claim on con­spir­acy against the Jhereg.”

“Oh, they’ll love me for that.”

He shrugged. “They have a lot of af­fec­tion for you now, do they?”

“Good point. How does it work?”

“We present a pe­ti­tion to have the Orb in­ter­ro­gat­ed about the source for the idea of ar­rest­ing Aliera—it doesn’t mat­ter how we know about it, as long as we’re spe­cif­ic about the re­quest. Then you have to show rea­son­able prob­abil­ity that there was a Jhereg as­sas­sin work­ing against the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“I can do that,” I said.

“If you get lucky.”

“Shut up.”

I asked him, “How does it work from there?”

“They grant the pe­ti­tion, look at the ev­idence of a Jhereg as­sas­sin, find rea­son­able grounds that the pros­ecu­tion was from a pri­vate con­spir­acy rather than cause of jus­tice—what?”

“Noth­ing. An in­vol­un­tary noise. Go on.”

“And when they’ve es­tab­lished that, they dis­miss the charges.”

“What about the Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion part? I mean, the re­al charges?”

“I have no con­trol over that, and if there is one, as I said, I’d be the wrong ad­vo­cate to han­dle it.”

I nod­ded. “All right. So my part is sim­ple—stop the as­sas­sin in such a way that it’s known he was an as­sas­sin.”

“When will this hap­pen?”

I checked the time with the Orb. “Four to six hours from now.”

“Oh! Well, if you’ll par­don me then, I need to get these pe­ti­tions draft­ed.”

I nod­ded and got out of there.

“Boss, how are you go­ing to iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin, much less prove what he is?”

“That isn’t what I’m wor­ried about, Loiosh. I’m wor­ried about how to stop the Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Why stop it? Will they re­al­ly con­vict Aliera just for killing a few Teck­la?”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll find out,” I said.

Iorich

16

To as­sert that fi­nal re­spon­si­bil­ity for ac­tions tak­en by Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tives rests with the Em­press is to state a tru­ism with­out sub­stance. In this case in par­tic­ular the dis­cov­er­ies of this com­mit­tee show that the prob­lem is, above all, that Im­pe­ri­al poli­cies are car­ried out by hu­man be­ings, who are nec­es­sar­ily flawed. While in­ci­dents such as this are re­gret­table, the facts do not sup­port blan­ket con­dem­na­tions of Im­pe­ri­al poli­cies with re­gard to re­bel­lion, much less the Em­pire it­self. Rather, in­ci­dents such as this must be ac­cept­ed as in some mea­sure un­avoid­able.

How­ev­er, there are, in the opin­ion of this com­mit­tee, cer­tain steps which can be tak­en to min­imize the fre­quen­cy and sever­ity of such events, which steps are list­ed in Ap­pendix 27.

The big ques­tion was whether I had enough time to set ev­ery­thing up: I on­ly had a cou­ple of hours left un­til the meet­ing, and if this was go­ing to work, I had to ar­rive ear­ly to try to con­vince them to let me at­tend, and to watch ev­ery­one ar­rive in hopes of spot­ting the dzur among the nors­ka.

The same sergeant was work­ing in the Drag­on Wing. He did not look pleased to see me.

“Same thing,” I said. “If you would be so kind as to in­form the Lord Mor­rolan that I wish to see him, and add that it is ur­gent.”

He scowled but agreed.

“And,” I said. “If I might trou­ble you for an ad­di­tion­al ser -vice, please have some­one find the War­lord and tell her the fol­low­ing: Vlad has a way out. I’ll be wait­ing in that same room I was in be­fore, if that is ac­cept­able.”

Then I wan­dered for a bit un­til I found an er­rand-​run­ner, part­ed with a few coins, and ar­ranged for a mes­sage to be de­liv­ered, fast, to a cer­tain innkeep­er in a cer­tain hostel­ry not far from Malak Cir­cle, near where I used to work.

Then I found the room where I’d wait­ed be­fore, and wait­ed again, drum­ming my fin­gers on the arm of the chair and hop­ing ev­ery­one would ar­rive in time.

No­rathar was the first to ar­rive. She en­tered with­out clap­ping and said, “What is it?” with­out even sit­ting down.

“I’ll tell you when the oth­ers are here,” I said.

“What oth­ers?”

“Just friends.”

She sat down fac­ing me, look­ing like she want­ed to read my plan on my face. If it were that easy to do, I’d have no trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing the as­sas­sin.

A few min­utes lat­er, there was a clap, and Mor­rolan en­tered. He looked at me, looked at No­rathar, and said, “Well?”

“We’re still wait­ing,” I said.

“For?”

“The oth­ers,” I said, just to be con­trary and be­cause turn­ing Mor­rolan’s bait is al­ways fun.

He rolled his eyes and sat next to No­rathar. Day­mar was there with­in about a minute. He looked around the room cu­ri­ous­ly, as if he hadn’t re­al­ized the Drag­on Wing had places to sit. The oth­ers, it seemed, didn’t know quite what to make of him. Well, nei­ther did I, for that mat­ter.

A few min­utes lat­er, there was a soft but firm clap, and Kiera en­tered; she was the one I’d been most wor­ried about reach­ing, so I re­laxed a bit. “Just one more,” I said.

“Who is that?” asked Kra­gar.

I stared at him. He smiled sweet­ly and said, “Ah, glo­ri­ous vengeance,” and smirked. I felt bet­ter see­ing that the oth­ers, in­clud­ing Kiera, were al­so star­tled. I did not give Kra­gar the sat­is­fac­tion of ask­ing when he’d ar­rived. I just said, “We’re all here now.”

“Good,” said No­rathar. “Get on with it.”

I out­lined the sit­ua­tion as I un­der­stood it, ex­cept that I made it sound gloomi­er than it was so it would be more dra­mat­ic when I an­nounced that I had a way out. It would have worked bet­ter if they didn’t know me so well. Kiera smiled a lit­tle, Mor­rolan stared off in­to space, and No­rathar said, “Get on with it” again.

So I did, mak­ing it as clear as pos­si­ble, and on­ly gloss­ing over the part where I had some doubts I could pull it off. I should have known bet­ter. “Vlad,” said Kiera. “How are you go­ing to iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin?”

“I have some ideas on that,” I said.

No­rathar said, “He’s go­ing to bran­dish a knife and see who re­acts as if he knows what he’s do­ing.” That hurt, be­cause I had been con­sid­er­ing that.

“There are prob­lems with that,” I said.

“Yes. Like, if no one re­acts right. Or if more than one do.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Now, Kiera—”

“Hm­mm?”

I glanced at No­rathar. “Uh, no rude­ness in­tend­ed, No­rathar, but in your of­fi­cial ca­pac­ity, you don’t want to hear this. I’ll whis­per.”

She rolled her eyes, and I stood up, leaned over to Kiera, and whis­pered.

She lis­tened, then said, “Sounds easy enough.”

Yeah, I’m sure it was, for any thief good enough to steal the mus­tache off an East­ern­er’s face. But I just nod­ded to her and sat down again.

Kra­gar said, “You nev­er men­tioned what I’m sup­posed to do.”

“Keep the Jhereg off-​bal­ance while we do the oth­er stuff. We don’t want them in­ter­fer­ing un­til Aliera is out, with pa­pers with a big Im­pe­ri­al seal on them say­ing the mat­ter is over.”

“Oh,” he said. “Any idea how?”

“Yes. Find the Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and keep her oc­cu­pied.”

“Just how am I go­ing to do that, when I can be in­ter­rupt­ed at any time?”

“Kra­gar, meet Day­mar.”

“We’ve met,” said Kra­gar. Day­mar, it seemed, missed the in­flec­tion in Kra­gar’s voice, and just nod­ded.

“What’s my part?” asked Day­mar.

“Dress up as a Jhereg, go with Kra­gar, and make sure the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive can’t get any psy­chic mes­sages. And doesn’t know it.”

“Dress up like a Jhereg?”

“Yes.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

He paused. Then, “All right.”

“Good.”

“What about send­ing?”

“She’s wel­come to talk to any­one she wants. I just don’t want any Jhereg telling her to go see the Em­press right now.” I stopped and looked at Kra­gar. “Just to be clear, if they fig­ure out what you’ve done, and I don’t see how to pre­vent that, you might be­come a tar­get.”

Kra­gar yawned. I shrugged. Then I winced.

“Still in pain?” said Kiera.

“Some.”

“Is it go­ing to—”

“I hope not. Mor­rolan, it’s clear enough?”

He nod­ded. “I go to the ad­vo­cate’s of­fice. What’s his name?”

“Perisil.”

“Right. I wait there for, uh, three more hours and a bit, then, if I haven’t heard from you, I take him in to see the Em­press. Sounds easy.”

“I hope so. War­lord?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sor­ry, High­ness.”

She stared at me. I re­al­ly, re­al­ly should learn not to bait Drag­onlords. It’s a bad habit, and one of these days it could get me in­to trou­ble. But it’s so much fun. I cleared my throat and said, “You know where to be, and when?”

“Yes. I’m to make sure no one tries to pre­vent Mor­rolan and the ad­vo­cate from reach­ing Her Majesty.”

I nod­ded.

“That’s it, then,” I said. I checked the time. I could make it if I hur­ried.

“Good luck, Vlad,” said Mor­rolan. Kiera just smiled her smile. Day­mar was lost in thought. No­rathar shrugged. They all got up, one at a time, and filed out. When I was alone, I pulled the dag­ger from my boot and stud­ied it and test­ed it. It was a stilet­to, my fa­vorite weapon for mak­ing some­one be­come dead. My fa­vorite tar­get, when pos­si­ble, is the left eye, be­cause it is back there that Dra­gaer­ans keep the part of their brains that per­mits psy­chic ac­tiv­ity. Not that I’m nec­es­sar­ily try­ing to cut off psy­chic ac­tiv­ity, but if you take it out, they go in­to shock in­stant­ly. That takes a weapon with rea­son­able length, and a good point. This one had that, though the edge wasn’t any­thing to brag about.

But I had no time to sharp­en it just now. I re­placed it in my boot, test­ed the draw, didn’t like it, and end­ed up ar­rang­ing a quick rig against my stom­ach on the left side, hid­den by my cloak. I test­ed it, and it worked, and it didn’t hurt much more than a whole lot. Fair enough.

I set out for the Stone Bridge, cut­ting around the Palace dis­trict, Loiosh and Rocza keep­ing an eye on the foot traf­fic to make sure no one was in­ter­est­ed in my move­ments.

I was a bit dis­tract­ed: For one thing, it hurt to move. For an­oth­er, the trick­iest part of the whole mat­ter was just com­ing up. I thought about ask­ing Cawti to help, but I had the im­pres­sion a rec­om­men­da­tion from her might not go over well with these peo­ple. I thought up sev­er­al pos­si­ble sto­ries and re­ject­ed them.

I still hadn’t made up my mind when I got near the cot­tage.

“Check.”

“On it, Boss.” And, “Dif­fer­ent guy, same spot.”

“All right.”

I stood be­hind an oak that would have tak­en three of me to wrap my arms around, and I rubbed a bit of stuff on­to my skin, glued on the beard, and set the wig in place.

“What do we do?”

“Your choice: cloak, or out­side.”

“Nei­ther?”

“Loiosh.”

“Cloak, I guess.”

“Get in, then.”

They did. I ap­proached the cot­tage and re­mem­bered to pound on the door with my fist, in­stead of clap­ping. That hurt, too.

The door opened, and a mid­dle-​aged wom­an, East­ern­er, opened the door. I couldn’t guess from look­ing which part of the East she drew her an­ces­try; she had a large mouth, and wide-​set eyes that were al­most per­fect­ly round, like a cat’s. The look in the eyes, at the mo­ment, was sus­pi­cious. “Yes?” she said.

“I’m called Savn,” I said, pulling the name more or less out of the air. “I’d like a few min­utes of con­ver­sa­tion with you be­fore the gath­er­ing here, if you don’t mind.”

“How do you know about the gath­er­ing here?”

“That’s the voice, Boss. The one do­ing most of the talk­ing.”

“All right.”

“I’m hear­ing dou­ble, Boss. Can I—?”

“All right.”

There came the psy­chic equiv­alent of a re­lieved sigh.

I said, “Many peo­ple know about the gath­er­ing here, and the one lat­er with Lord Caltho.”

“Ev­ery­one knows about that one.”

“Yes, in­clud­ing some peo­ple you would prob­ably rather didn’t.”

“The Em­pire?”

“Worse.”

She stud­ied me for a mo­ment, then said, “Come in.”

It was big­ger than it had seemed from out­side: one big room, with a stove in one cor­ner, and a loft over­head that I’m sure con­tained the sleep­ing quar­ters. There were a lot of plain wood­en chairs set out—at least twen­ty of them. I sus­pect­ed the chairs ac­count­ed for most of the ex­pense of the place.

She point­ed me to one. I sat; she re­mained stand­ing. Heh. Okay, so that’s how it was go­ing to be.

“Boss, should you be talk­ing out loud? Here? If I could lis­ten—”

“Um. Damn. Good point.”

“Mind if we take a walk?” I said. She looked even more sus­pi­cious. I said, “The Em­pire may be hear­ing ev­ery­thing we say here, and, worse, some­one else might be, too.”

She frowned, hes­itat­ed, then nod­ded abrupt­ly. I stood up, we walked out the door and down the street. When we were a good dis­tance away, I start­ed talk­ing, but she in­ter­rupt­ed be­fore I had a word out.

“Who are you?” she said.

“I gave you my name. What’s yours?”

“Brinea. Now who are you?”

“I’m what you’d call an in­de­pen­dent fac­tor. I’m not with the Em­pire—” she looked like she didn’t be­lieve that “—or with any­one else. I have a friend who’s caught in the mid­dle of it, which means I’m tem­porar­ily on your side.”

“My side is—”

“Spare me,” I said. “I have in­for­ma­tion you’ll want to know, and no in­ter­est what­ev­er in pol­itics, whether Im­pe­ri­al or an­ti-​Im­pe­ri­al.”

She pressed her lips to­geth­er and said, “What in­for­ma­tion is that?”

“Is to­day’s meet­ing, here, to plan for the meet­ing with Caltho?”

“That’s a ques­tion, not in­for­ma­tion.”

“All right. If it is, there is li­able to be a dis­guised Jhereg as­sas­sin here, who is plan­ning to kill Caltho and blame it on you.”

I sud­den­ly had her at­ten­tion. “Talk,” she said.

We turned a cor­ner; with Loiosh and Rocza still in the cloak, I felt ex­posed, but I tried to stay alert. I on­ly saw a few East­ern­ers.

“The Jhereg,” I told her, “is work­ing on a com­pli­cat­ed scheme, along with the Or­ca and the—and an­oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tion. To pull it off, they need to pres­sure the Em­press. To pres­sure the Em­press, they’re us­ing the mas­sacre in Tir­ma. If a le­git­imate in­ves­ti­ga­tion—”

“It won’t be a le­git­imate in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” she said. “They’ll just throw a black tarp over it and say it’s fine.”

“No, they’ll do a re­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Not be­cause they care, but be­cause the Em­press is try­ing to get out of a jam, and that’s the on­ly way to do it.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“The Jhereg needs to stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. To do that, they’re go­ing to make it look like your group killed As­sis­tant In­ves­ti­ga­tor Caltho. Much out­rage against you, prob­ably a lot of ar­rests, and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion gets put on hold. That’s how they’re go­ing to work it.”

She was qui­et for ten or twelve paces, then she said, “Maybe.”

“I agree with the maybe. I think I’m right, but I could be wrong.”

“How will you find out?”

“With your per­mis­sion, I’ll at­tend to­day’s meet­ing here, and try to iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin.”

“What makes you think you can do that?”

“I can some­times spot them,” I said.

“What is it you do?”

“Run from them.”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

“The Jhereg wants me dead for per­son­al rea­sons. So, most of my life is avoid­ing them. But that’s okay, I’ve been run­ning for so long it feels like walk­ing to me.”

She was qui­et again for a bit, then she said, “What will you do if you iden­ti­fy the as­sas­sin?”

“Tell you who he is, so you can do what­ev­er seems ap­pro­pri­ate.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I won’t be. I might not be able to spot him, but if I do spot him, I won’t be wrong.”

We turned a cor­ner and she start­ed lead­ing us back to­ward the house. No one had yet tried to kill me. Even­tu­al­ly she said, “All right. I’ll trust you on that part. You may as well re­lax; they’ll be here soon.”

We made it back to the house and closed the door and I felt re­lieved. I found a chair from which I could be watch­ing the door with­out ap­pear­ing to, and I wait­ed.

It was, in­deed, on­ly a few min­utes lat­er that they be­gan to ar­rive. The first to ar­rive ap­peared to be a Teck­la, and sus­pi­cious­ly like one straight out of some­one’s imag­ina­tion of what a peas­ant ought to look like: brown hair, roundish face, leath­ery-​look­ing skin, stur­dy. He greet­ed Brinea, who in­tro­duced me. He gave his name as Nicha, and sat down next to me and be­gan a con­ver­sa­tion about need­ing to watch for trick­ery at the meet­ing with the Em­pire. I grunt­ed agree­ing nois­es and kept watch­ing the door.

Short­ly af­ter, a pair of East­ern­ers came in: Kather­ine was tall for an East­ern­er, dark, and wore glass­es; Liam had the round face of a Teck­la, an odd hair col­or that wasn’t quite blond and wasn’t quite brown, and a nose that looked to have been bro­ken at least once. They car­ried fly­ers in their hands. I didn’t ask to see one be­cause I was afraid it was some­thing I was sup­posed to know about. They were both re­served with me; maybe they thought they should be the on­ly hu­mans there.

In fact, ex­cept for the three of us, ev­ery­one else was a Teck­la. I won’t give you all the names; there were twen­ty-​three of them, not in­clud­ing me or Brinea. Elim­inat­ing the two East­ern­ers, that meant twen­ty-​one who might be as­sas­sins. Nine of them were wom­en, and I al­most dis­missed them, but for one thing, there is the oc­ca­sion­al wom­an work­ing for the Jhereg (as I hap­pen to know bet­ter than most), and for an­oth­er, a Jhereg will­ing to dis­guise him­self as a Teck­la could just as eas­ily dis­guise his sex, right?

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—”

“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.”

“Good.”

“Good work, Vlad,” said Mor­rolan.

“And you. All of us.”

“I should have more chairs,” said Perisil.

“Will Aliera be join­ing us here?”

“I’ve no idea,” he said.

I nod­ded. “Be­cause she’d pre­fer to sit, I’m sure.” That earned me a look from Mor­rolan.

It was like the old days in Mor­rolan’s li­brary, ex­cept it wasn’t. For one thing, Aliera wasn’t there. I couldn’t de­cide if I want­ed to see her. Most like­ly, she wouldn’t want to see me. She knew and I knew that, what with one thing and an­oth­er, thanks weren’t ap­pro­pri­ate; but you can’t help when obli­ga­tion makes you un­com­fort­able.

But more than that was the un­com­fort­able feel­ing that, while it was over, it wasn’t over. We couldn’t all re­lax and laugh and make fun of each oth­er, be­cause there was too much un­fin­ished. What would hap­pen with the Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion? Would the Left Hand go af­ter Cawti, as they’d threat­ened? When would the Jhereg fi­nal­ly get me? And then there was the un­re­solved mat­ter of—

“Kra­gar,” I said. “Do some­thing for me?”

“Hm­mm?”

“Some ass­hole was just ar­rest­ed for im­per­son­at­ing a Phoenix Guard. He was one of the ones who beat me. Find him, learn who his friends were, and break a few bones.”

He nod­ded. “How are you feel­ing, by the way?”

“Me? Fine.”

“Oh, you healed?”

“I . . . yeah.”

He let it go. He knows me. They all know me. Some­times that’s not en­tire­ly com­fort­able. I know them, too, but I don’t mind that part so much.

Mor­rolan said, “I’ve just heard from Aliera. She went home. Care to join us?”

I shook my head. “I need to speak with my ad­vo­cate.”

“Oh?”

“Long sto­ry.”

He hes­itat­ed. “Will you be around long?”

“Un­less they catch up to me.”

“I meant, around town.”

“Oh. I’ll get back to you on that.”

“I’ll be go­ing,” said Day­mar. “Good to see you again, Vlad.”

“You too.”

“Haven’t seen you much these last few years. Where have you been?”

“Um. I’ll tell you about it some­time.”

“All right.” He waved and van­ished; my ears popped. Peo­ple shouldn’t tele­port out of small rooms.

Mor­rolan was more po­lite; he thanked Perisil again, bowed, and walked out the door, leav­ing me alone with my ad­vo­cate. Oh, and Kra­gar. I looked around. Nope, just the two of us.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

“Need an­oth­er client?”

I gave him the short ver­sion, and he agreed to take it on, and I paid him. I was start­ing to feel a bit of a squeeze with mon­ey, which was some­thing I hadn’t had to wor­ry about for sev­er­al years, and thought I’d nev­er have to wor­ry about again. A shame about that. But liv­ing on the run can be pret­ty cheap if you do it right; that’s one good thing about it.

We left it there while I head­ed over to the Palace to have a lit­tle chat with the rel­ative­ly ab­so­lute ruler of the Dra­gaer­an Em­pire.

I reached the place with no in­ci­dents, and there was Harn­wood, bow­ing as deeply as he could with­out hav­ing me think I was be­ing mocked, af­ter which he said, “If m’lord will ac­com­pa­ny me, Her Majesty will see you now.”

My good­ness. How the fall­en have be­come mighty.

He led me to a small (for the Palace, at any rate) room done in gray mar­ble, with a six-​sid­ed mar­ble ta­ble at which sat the Em­press, nib­bling on bread and cheese. As have done mil­lions be­fore me, be­fore I even bowed I couldn’t help but glance at the Orb to see if I could judge the Im­pe­ri­al Mood. I couldn’t, re­al­ly. It was a kind of rusty brown, which might mean any­thing.

“Your Majesty,” I said.

There was a soft click as Harn­wood shut the door be­hind him.

“Sit,” com­mand­ed the ruler. I did so. “Eat,” was the next com­mand. Now that wasn’t some­thing I need­ed to hear twice, so I helped my­self. The cheese was very sharp, and the sort I’d nor­mal­ly think too salty, but it seemed to work. The bread had a thin, hard crust and an odd slight­ly sour taste, re­mind­ing me of some­thing Cawti had once brought home years be­fore.

“Good, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“It comes from Naarsten Coun­ty, in the So­ran­nah. It’s from a spe­cial breed of goat, and on­ly the best of the breed. They make five pounds a year, and it on­ly comes here, to the Palace.”

“Im­pres­sive,” I said. Ac­tu­al­ly, the cheese wasn’t that good.

“Yes,” she said. “Oth­er than the cheese, there isn’t a whole lot about this job I like.”

“Makes the com­pen­sa­tions more valu­able, that there are few­er of them.”

She had an­oth­er bite of bread and cheese, and nod­ded. “By now, Aliera should be home.”

I nod­ded.

“Just like it nev­er hap­pened,” she said.

“Uh huh. What of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“She’ll be cleared of any wrong­do­ing, I’m sure.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Vlad, a squad of half-​drunk, frus­trat­ed, an­gry sol­diers in Coun­ty Nowhere go berserk, and we’re go­ing to blame the War­lord? She wasn’t even there.”

“The squad?”

“One was ca­reer mil­itary, used to see­ing civil­ians as ei­ther in­con­ve­nient undis­ci­plined id­iots, or else un-​uni­formed sneak killers. The oth­ers were peas­ant boys who weren’t used to see­ing their friends die with­out hav­ing any­one to take their frus­tra­tions out on. Peo­ple fight, peo­ple die, be­cause the al­ter­na­tive is to let some lo­cal baron set his own tar­iffs for pas­sage of ship­wood, which will out­rage the Ly­orn who own the forests and the Or­ca who buy the wood. I can’t risk of­fend­ing the Ly­orn be­cause they’re too high on the Cy­cle, or the Or­ca be­cause they’re al­ready look­ing to form al­liances with the Jhereg. So a few peas­ants have to die. More cheese?”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not bad.”

“So, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is rigged af­ter all?”

“Of course not. It doesn’t have to be rigged. It just needs to be run by some­one with a good sense of jus­tice. But not too good.”

“All right.”

“When it’s over, I’ll ask Aliera to be War­lord again. That way, she can have the plea­sure of re­fus­ing. I owe her that much, at least.”

The cheese re­al­ly was good.

“I can’t do any­thing for you, you know.”

“Your Majesty?”

“The Jhereg. The Left Hand. They’re go­ing to be af­ter you, and af­ter your wife. I can’t help you.”

I swal­lowed and nod­ded.

“I’ve done what I can,” she went on. “I’ve made some threats, but I can’t car­ry them out. They prob­ably know that.”

“Thanks, though.”

She nod­ded. “What are you go­ing to do?”

“I don’t know. If Cawti’s in dan­ger, I can’t re­al­ly leave town.”

“I’m sure she finds that very en­dear­ing.”

“As much as you would,” I said.

“Or Aliera.”

“Or Aliera.”

“It isn’t that they’re un­grate­ful.”

“I know. It’s just that no one wants to be the one be­ing res­cued, we all want to do the res­cu­ing.”

She nod­ded. “And this job is all about mak­ing ev­ery­one else do the res­cu­ing. Which is why you’re here right now.”

“You want me to res­cue some­one?”

“No. I just know that Aliera can’t thank you, and if she could, you couldn’t hear it. So I’m say­ing it. Thank you.”

“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!”

“Uh, what?”

“You have to get out of here, Vlad. You’ve land­ed in a Tim Pow­ers nov­el.”

I moaned even as I felt the Gate form.

Hard gray walls ap­peared around me, and I heard voic­es speak­ing a lan­guage I didn’t know. “Am I go­ing to be safe here?”

“Well,” she said, “Not, you know, safe ex­act­ly.”

“Whose nov­el are we in now?”

“Uh . . . John DeChancie’s, Vlad. Best I could do on short no­tice.”

I whim­pered. “You couldn’t man­age Louisa May Al­cott?”

Chap­ter Two, Im­pe­ri­al Palace, Page 51

“I’m glad you’ve of­fered,” said the Em­press. “Yes, there is a ser­vice you could do.”

“I’m lis­ten­ing.”

“Far, far to the East—well be­yond the king­doms you know—there is an­cient evil that is gath­er­ing pow­er to it­self. Its pow­er comes from an Amulet of Evil that dates back to be­fore the be­gin­ning of time. The pow­er of the Amulet grows with each act of cru­el­ty, or thought­less­ness to­ward an­oth­er, or abuse of pow­er, or greed. The sell-​out of the writ­ers’ strike didn’t do it any harm ei­ther. Soon it will be­come un­stop­pable, and us­ing it, the an­cient evil will en­slave the en­tire world for­ev­er. You must de­stroy the evil, and take the Amulet and cast it in­to the Place Be­yond Time.”

I nod­ded. “All right.”

It took six weeks to get there and an hour to do the job. For­tu­nate­ly, I was able to tele­port back.

“It is done,” I told Her Majesty.

“Thank you, Lord Szurke,” she said. “Evil has been ban­ished for­ev­er.”

“Un­til the se­quel, you mean.”

“Of course.”

I shrugged. “Just prov­ing I’m will­ing to serve Your Majesty.”

Chap­ter Five, Dzur Moun­tain Stair­way, Page 103

“Well met, friend.”

I looked around, and no­ticed a splotchy brown cat on the land­ing just above me. I stared at it.

“Some­thing wrong?” it said.

“What the hell are you?”

It rolled its eyes. “This is a fan­ta­sy nov­el. I’m the oblig­atory talk­ing cat. Get a clue.”

“Boss, can I—”

“Sure.”

When Loiosh and Rocza had fin­ished their meal, we con­tin­ued up the stairs.

Chap­ter Sev­en, South Adri­lankha, Page 143

“Boss, isn’t there sup­posed to be a scene here mak­ing fun of the old ‘weapons that drink souls’ thing that al­ways comes up in bad fan­ta­sy nov­els?”

“Loiosh, in case you haven’t no­ticed, there are weapons that drink souls in these books.”

“Oh. Yeah. Good point. Guess we stay away from that one, huh?”

“Prob­ably best.”

Chap­ter Eleven, South Adri­lankha, Page 209

“Maybe I’ll go walk up to the cot­tage and ask for sanc­tu­ary,” I said. “And then maybe mon­keys will fly out of my butt. Wait. I wouldn’t say that.”

YOU JUST DID.

“I don’t care. I wouldn’t say that. It isn’t even a Dra­gaer­an id­iom.”

IT IS NOW.

“That’s stupid. There aren’t any mon­keys here.”

SO NOW YOU’RE AN EX­PERT ON DRA­GAER­AN FAU­NA?

“I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

THAT’S WHAT I DO.

“Yeah, you and Tom Cruise. Just lose the mon­key bit, okay?”

I LIKE IT.

“You al­so like it when I fig­ure out how to get out of those mess­es you put me in. Now, you want me on your side, or not?”

YOU WANT TO BE ALIVE AT THE END OF THIS BOOK, OR NOT?

I sighed. “Maybe I’ll go walk up to the cot­tage and ask for sanc­tu­ary,” I said. “And then maybe mon­keys will fly out of my butt.”

Chap­ter Four­teen, Out­side the Im­pe­ri­al Palace, Page 262

I cut through the park, smil­ing at all the but­ter­flies. I start­ed skip­ping. It was such a beau­ti­ful day. A pup­py barked play­ful­ly at me and I stopped to pet it. It seemed so hap­py, I couldn’t help but sing a cheer­ful song to it be­fore I went on my way, still skip­ping.

Chap­ter Sev­en­teen, Perisil’s Of­fice, Page 307

“I have some­thing to tell you.”

“How, you have some­thing to tell me?”

“You have un­der­stood me ex­act­ly.”

“Well, I am lis­ten­ing.”

“Lis­ten­ing? Then, you wish me to tell you?”

“Yes, that is it. I am lis­ten­ing, and there­fore I wish you to tell me.”

“Shall I tell you now?”

“No.”

Iorich

Iorich­Cov­er

Ti­tle

Copy­right

Ded­ica­tion

Ac­knowl­edg­ments

Pro­logue

Chap­ter 1

Chap­ter 2

Chap­ter 3

Chap­ter 4

Chap­ter 5

In­ter­lude: Mem­ory

Chap­ter 6

Chap­ter 7

Chap­ter 8

Chap­ter 9

Chap­ter 10

Chap­ter 11

Chap­ter 12

Chap­ter 13

Chap­ter 14

Chap­ter 15

Chap­ter 16

Chap­ter 17

Epi­logue

Delet­ed Scenes