Iorich

Iorich by 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.

Con­ver­sa­tion went on around me; I ig­nored it.

“Smells like re­al food, Boss.”

“Yep. Soon.”

“How long since we’ve had re­al food?”

“About a month. Soon.”

“How did we do?”

I set the wine down and checked the purs­es, us­ing my body to hide them from cu­ri­ous eyes. “Not great, but, you know, it’s pure prof­it. Strange place.”

“They’re all talk­ing to each oth­er.”

“Yeah.”

It re­al­ly was in­ter­est­ing—you don’t nor­mal­ly find an inn where mer­chants and peas­ants talk freely with each oth­er, or no­ble­men and trades­men; even in the East, where it was more com­mon to see the mix of class­es in the same inn, they didn’t talk to each oth­er much. I didn’t even no­tice any spe­cial hos­til­ity be­tween the two ob­vi­ous aris­to­crats and the var­ious Teck­la. Odd. There was prob­ably a sto­ry there.

Just be­cause I was cu­ri­ous, I picked out a cou­ple of mer­chants—both of them in the col­ors of the Tsalmoth—and bought them drinks. They gave me a sus­pi­cious look as I ap­proached, but mer­chants are al­ways aware they might be talk­ing to a fu­ture cus­tomer, so they don’t want to give of­fense.

“Par­don my in­tru­sion,” I said. “I’m Vlad.”

They gave me their names, but I don’t re­mem­ber them; they sound­ed al­most iden­ti­cal. Come to that, they looked pret­ty much the same, too—prob­ably broth­ers. “I’m just cu­ri­ous,” I told them. “I’m not used to inns where there is such a mix.”

“A mix?” said the one whose name end­ed in the hard­er con­so­nant.

“Teck­la, mer­chants, no­ble­men, all in the same inn.”

“Oh.” He smiled a lit­tle. “We get along bet­ter around here than most places, prob­ably.”

I nod­ded. “It seems odd.”

“It’s be­cause we all hate the navy.”

“The navy?”

He nod­ded. That didn’t ex­plain any­thing—Whitemill was hun­dreds of miles from the near­est port.

It took a few more ques­tions, but it fi­nal­ly emerged that, for what­ev­er rea­son, the Em­pire had giv­en con­trol of the lo­cal canals to the Im­pe­ri­al navy, in­stead of what­ev­er en­gi­neer­ing corps usu­al­ly han­dled such things. It was some­thing that had hap­pened long ago, when the Or­ca were high­er in the Cy­cle and so could ex­ert more eco­nom­ic pres­sure, and it had nev­er been re­voked even dur­ing the In­ter­reg­num.

“The whole re­gion lives off those canals, most­ly for wa­ter­ing the fields.”

“And the navy doesn’t main­tain them?”

“They do well enough, I sup­pose, when they need to.”

“I still don’t—”

“The navy,” he re­peat­ed. “They’re all Or­ca.”

“I know that.”

“Or­ca,” he re­peat­ed, as if I were miss­ing some­thing.

I glanced at one of the no­ble­men in the room, a wom­an hav­ing an an­imat­ed con­ver­sa­tion with the host; she wore the col­ors of the Tias­sa. “So, the barons are Tias­sa, but they need to deal with the Or­ca.”

He nod­ded. “And the Or­ca want to soak ev­ery cop­per pen­ny they can from the place.”

“So ev­ery­one hates them more than they hate each oth­er?”

He frowned. “We don’t hate each oth­er.”

“Sor­ry,” I said. “It’s just a bit odd.”

“You’d un­der­stand if you’d ev­er ir­ri­gat­ed on a navy canal, or shipped goods on a navy barge.”

“I al­ready un­der­stand,” I said. “I know Or­ca.”

They both smiled, and of­fered to buy me a drink. I ac­cept­ed. In case you don’t know, the House of the Or­ca is the House of sailors and naval war­riors, which is well enough, but it’s most­ly the House of bankers, and fi­nanciers. No one likes them; I don’t even think Or­ca like oth­er Or­ca. We trad­ed sto­ries of Or­ca we had known and hat­ed; they made a few po­lite probes about my his­to­ry and busi­ness, but didn’t press when I steered the dis­cus­sion else­where.

They filled me in on a few things I hadn’t heard about, hav­ing been away from “civ­iliza­tion” for a while: an up­ris­ing of a few mi­nor lordlings in the north­west, which would in­crease de­mand for spun wool; the re­cent re­peal of the chim­ney tax with­in the House of the Tsalmoth, which was on­ly a grain in a hectare; the re­cent de­ci­sion “by Charl­som over there, for­tune smile on his loins” to per­mit tav­erns to sell their own lo­cal­ly made brews with­out sur­charge; and the pro­posed Im­pe­ri­al land-​use loan, which would ob­vi­ous­ly be a catas­tro­phe for the peas­ants with­out help­ing the land­lords, or be a dis­as­ter for the land­lords with­out help­ing the peas­ants, or else have no ef­fect on any­thing. It was all from the point of view of the small mer­chant, which would in­ter­est me more if I were one. I nod­ded and smiled a lot while my mind wan­dered.

The con­ver­sa­tion in the room was a chat­ter­ing hum—no dis­cernible words, just a con­stant noise of voic­es of dif­fer­ing pitch­es and tones, punc­tu­at­ed by laughs and coughs. It’s al­ways strange when you’re hear­ing some­one speak in a tongue you don’t know, be­cause names of peo­ple or places that you do know sud­den­ly jump out. You hear, “blah blah blah Dra­gaera City blah blah,” and for just an in­stant you think you un­der­stand that lan­guage af­ter all.

It was just like that when amid the chit­ter­ing and buzzing of mean­ing­less noise I sud­den­ly heard, clear as a whis­tle, the words “Sethra Lavode.” I was in­stant­ly alert.

I shift­ed in my chair, but that didn’t help—the speak­er was at a ta­ble just be­hind the two Tsalmoth. I looked at my drink­ing com­pan­ions and said, “Do you know what they’re talk­ing about?”

“Who?”

I ges­tured to­ward the ta­ble I’d over­heard. “What they say star­tles me ex­treme­ly, and I would ad­mire to know if it’s true.”

Just so you don’t get the wrong idea—may the gods keep me from ev­er con­vey­ing a false im­pres­sion—I hadn’t heard a thing ex­cept the words “Sethra Lavode.”

They lis­tened for a mo­ment—be­ing a bit clos­er to the speak­er—then nod­ded. “Oh, that. It’s true enough. My cousin is a post in­spec­tor, and told me while he was pass­ing through on his way to Gate­hall from Adri­lankha.”

“In­deed,” I said, look­ing im­pressed.

“Ev­ery­one’s talk­ing about it; I’m sur­prised you hadn’t heard.”

“Are there any more de­tails?”

“No. Just the ar­rest.”

Ar­rest?

I said, “For­give me, did I un­der­stand you cor­rect­ly? Sethra Lavode is ar­rest­ed?”

He shook his head. “No, no. It is said that she has agreed to be a wit­ness.”

“For?”

“The ac­cused, my lord. Aliera e’Kieron.”

“Aliera e’Kieron.”

He nod­ded.

“Ar­rest­ed.”

He nod­ded again.

“For what, ex­act­ly?”

At that point, both of them spoke at once. It took a while to get the sto­ry out, but ap­par­ent­ly Aliera had tried to kill the Em­press, had loosed a de­mon in the House of the Drag­on, and had at­tempt­ed to be­tray the Em­pire to an East­ern army. I got the im­pres­sion that this was a part of the sto­ry they weren’t sure of. But there seemed to be one thing they were sure of: “The tri­al starts next month.”

“In­ter­est­ing in­deed,” I said. “How far are we from the Riv­er?” In this part of the Em­pire, “the Riv­er” can on­ly mean the Adri­lankha Riv­er. My Riv­er.

“About two leagues. From here, there’s no need to take a navy barge if you’re go­ing that way.”

“And the near­est dock?”

“Up­riv­er half a mile.”

“My thanks,” I said, and put a cou­ple of orbs on the ta­ble. “Have an­oth­er round on me.”

I stood, turned on my heel, and crossed the room be­fore they could start ask­ing ques­tions I didn’t want to an­swer.

I found the host and ar­ranged to get a room for the night.

Well, well. Aliera, ar­rest­ed. Now, that was in­ter­est­ing. She must have done some­thing pret­ty re­mark­able for the Em­press—a good friend of hers—to have per­mit­ted that to hap­pen. Or caused it to hap­pen?

I lay on my back on the hard but clean bed the inn pro­vid­ed; con­ver­sa­tion drift­ed up from be­low and the wind made the trees out­side hiss as I thought things over.

My first re­ac­tion had been to re­turn to Adri­lankha and see if I could help her. I could get there fast. Any­one in Adri­lankha would take more than a month to reach me here, bar­ring a tele­port or ac­cess to a re­al­ly ef­fi­cient post sys­tem. But I was on­ly a few days from Adri­lankha; rivers work like that.

Very lit­tle re­flec­tion was re­quired to re­al­ize how stupid that idea was—even Loiosh hadn’t felt the need to point it out. Adri­lankha was the cap­ital city, and the heart of the Em­pire, and the cen­ter of op­er­ations of a cer­tain crim­inal or­ga­ni­za­tion that very much want­ed me dead. I had spent sev­er­al years now avoid­ing them—suc­cess­ful­ly, with one or two ex­cep­tions.

Re­turn­ing would mean putting my­self in­to their hands, an ac­tion for which Aliera her­self would have noth­ing but scorn. And, in fact, what­ev­er sort of trou­ble Aliera was in, there was un­like­ly to be any­thing I could do about it any­way.

A stupid idea, to be sure.

Three days lat­er I stepped off a boat on­to North Mar­ket Pier Num­ber Four in Adri­lankha, smelling like fish and look­ing for trou­ble.

Iorich

1

For a State to in­ves­ti­gate the ac­tions of its own mil­itary is, as no less than Lanya point­ed out as far back as the Third Cy­cle, to ei­ther be­gin with a set of as­sump­tions that will ul­ti­mate­ly con­trol the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, or to tan­gle one’s self hope­less­ly in con­tra­dic­tion be­fore be­gin­ning. This re­port, then, will be­gin by stat­ing those as­sump­tions (see Part One).

The ques­tions this com­mit­tee was asked to ad­dress were as fol­lows:

1. What were the facts in and around the events in the vil­lage of Tir­ma in the coun­ty of Shalo­mar in­volv­ing Im­pe­ri­al troops on Ly­orn 2 of Zeri­ka 252?

2. Was there any moral or le­gal cul­pa­bil­ity at­tached to any Im­pe­ri­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives as­so­ci­at­ed with the in­ci­dent?

3. If so, who should be held to blame, for what, and how are the in­ter­ests of jus­tice best served in this mat­ter?

4. In­so­far as there was cul­pa­bil­ity, what steps might be tak­en in the fu­ture to pre­vent a rep­eti­tion of any un­for­tu­nate or re­gret­table events . . .

I felt con­fi­dent that the im­me­di­ate dock area was safe, be­cause I had sent Loiosh and Rocza ahead of me to look for any­one sus­pi­cious, and Loiosh is good at that sort of work. I’d come in on a boat filled with flour from the Push­ta and fish from the riv­er; though as I un­der­stood it, the main prof­it from the trip would come from the salt they’d bring back. Next to the dock was a small mar­ket area, where bak­ers would bid for the sacks of flour I’d slept among for the last cou­ple of nights.

I brushed brown flour off my brown leathers, ad­just­ed my cloak, and moved past the mar­ket, climb­ing the seem­ing­ly end­less flight of con­crete stairs that led up to street lev­el. It was morn­ing, and the streets were just start­ing to get busy. Loiosh and Rocza flew above me in wide cir­cles, keep­ing watch.

Adri­lankha.

My city.

Riv­er and ocean smells—en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent—bat­tled for at­ten­tion, along with flour and refuse of var­ious kinds. Trades­men were set­ting up, Teck­la were run­ning er­rands, coins were al­ready start­ing to clink all around me. This was my home, whether I liked it or not. In fact, I didn’t like it, at least at the mo­ment; but it was still home.

As if to em­pha­size the point, I be­came aware once more of the Im­pe­ri­al Orb, now close enough that its ef­fects pen­etrat­ed the Phoenix Stone amulet I wore about my neck. Its pres­ence in my mind was like a low shep­herd’s pipe play­ing qui­et­ly over the next hill.

From here, it was on­ly a cou­ple of miles to the most north­east­ern en­trance of the Im­pe­ri­al Palace; I didn’t think the Jhereg would be stupid enough to make a move on me once I was in­side. Even the Jhereg Wing would be safe—the thought of go­ing there just to taunt them was on­ly briefly tempt­ing.

“As stupid moves go, Boss, this one isn’t bad. I mean, com­par­ative­ly.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I knew you’d be re­lieved.”

Usu­al­ly, if you’re a pro­fes­sion­al and you’re go­ing to kill some­one, it takes a while to set things up—you need to be sure of where to find your tar­get, how you’re go­ing to take him, all the es­cape routes, and so on. Ar­riv­ing un­ex­pect­ed­ly in town like this, I fig­ured my chances of mak­ing it safe­ly to the Palace were pret­ty good. And if any­one did try any­thing, it would be a clum­sy, last-​minute ef­fort that I ought to be able to de­flect.

That, at any rate, was my think­ing. And, right or wrong, I did make it; tak­ing the Street of the Is­so­la to what is called the Im­pe­ri­al Wing, though in fact it is not a wing, but the heart of the Palace, to which the oth­er wings are at­tached. Once in­side, I had to ask di­rec­tions a few times, but even­tu­al­ly man­aged to walk quite near­ly all the way around the Im­pe­ri­al Wing. In fact, I’d en­tered rather close to the Iorich Wing, but the Jhereg Wing was in be­tween, and walk­ing in front of it didn’t feel like a smart move, so I took the long way.

The main en­trance to the Iorich Wing from the Im­pe­ri­al Wing is through ei­ther of a pair of twin arch­es with no door. Above one arch is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an emp­ty hand, palm open like a porter ex­pect­ing a gra­tu­ity; above the oth­er is a hand hold­ing an ax, like a porter mad at not get­ting one. These same sym­bols are on the op­po­site sides of the arch in the oth­er or­der, so you can’t es­cape the ax. This would, no doubt, be a pow­er­ful state­ment if I knew what the im­ages were sup­posed to sym­bol­ize. High above both of the arch­es is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an iorich, its toothy snout curv­ing back as if look­ing over its low shoul­der. Giv­en what the ug­ly thing is fa­mous for, that is an­oth­er bit of sym­bol­ism that doesn’t make sense to me. I could find out if I cared.

The Iorich like to make ev­ery­thing big­ger than it has to be, I guess to make you feel small­er than you’d like to be. It was a long walk through a big, emp­ty room where my foot­falls echoed loud­ly. The walls were dark, on­ly slight­ly lit by odd­ly shaped lamps hang­ing high over­head, and there were half a dozen mar­ble stat­ues—pure, white, gleam­ing mar­ble, about twen­ty feet tall—de­pict­ing fig­ures that I imag­ine were fa­mous with­in the House.

Loiosh gave no signs of be­ing im­pressed.

In front of me was a desk, el­evat­ed about two feet, with a square-​shoul­dered mid­dle-​aged Dra­gaer­an at it. Her straight hair glis­tened in the torch­light.

I went clack clack clack clack against the hard floor un­til I reached her; her eyes were slight­ly high­er than mine. She glanced at the jhereg on my shoul­ders, and her lips tight­ened. She hes­itat­ed, I sup­pose try­ing to think if she could come up with a law against their be­ing there. She fi­nal­ly gave up and said, “Name.”

Her voice and de­meanor—brisk and slight­ly bored—went with the sur­round­ings the way lemon juice goes with cream; she sound­ed more like an Im­pe­ri­al clerk in charge of tax rolls than a mag­is­trate of the House of jus­ticers. I said, “I want in­for­ma­tion about a case.”

“Name,” she re­peat­ed.

“Aliera e’Kieron, House of the Drag­on.”

“Your name,” she said, with the air of some­one try­ing very hard to be pa­tient in spite of provo­ca­tion.

But you can’t op­er­ate in the Jhereg with­out know­ing some of the ba­sics of the Im­pe­ri­al jus­tice sys­tem; no one but an id­iot breaks a law with­out know­ing that he’s do­ing it, and what he’s risk­ing, and the best ways to re­duce the risk. “I don’t choose to give it,” I said. “I want pub­lic in­for­ma­tion on the case of Aliera e’Kieron, whose name has been en­tered un­der Im­pe­ri­al Ar­ti­cles of In­dict­ment for Felo­nious Con­duct.” I paused. “Of course, if you wish, I can ask at the House of the Drag­on, and ex­plain that the House of the Iorich wasn’t will­ing to—”

I stopped be­cause she was glar­ing and writ­ing; con­tin­uing the bat­tle af­ter you’ve won just wastes en­er­gy. She hand­ed me a piece of pa­per; I didn’t both­er look­ing at it, be­cause I don’t know the sym­bols the House of the Iorich us­es in­stead of the per­fect­ly rea­son­able writ­ing the rest of us get by with.

“Room of the Dol­phin, see the clerk. He will an­swer your ques­tions. Good day.”

I walked down the hall. She hadn’t even ad­dressed me as my lord. Once. My feel­ings were hurt.

I’d been in the Halls of the Iorich of­ten enough to be­lieve I could find my way around, but not of­ten enough to ac­tu­al­ly do so. I saw a few Iorich as I walked—clerks, men-​at-​arms, and per­haps one was a mag­is­trate—but I didn’t feel like risk­ing a snub to ask any of them for di­rec­tions. Nev­er­the­less, af­ter most of an hour, I man­aged to find the cor­rect stair­way to the cor­rect hall­way to the cor­rect room. The man be­hind the desk in­side—very young, an ap­pren­tice of some sort, no doubt—glanced up as I came in, smiled, frowned, then looked puz­zled about just what sort of at­ti­tude he was sup­posed to adopt.

Be­fore he could de­cide I gave him the pa­per. He glanced at it, and said, “Of course,” stood up, and van­ished through a door on the far end of the room. He re­turned be­fore I had time to de­cide if I should sit down at the chair op­po­site his desk. He had a fair­ly large sheaf of pa­pers in his hand. The pa­pers all had two holes on the top with pieces of white yarn run­ning through them.

“Sit down, my lord,” he said, and I did. “Aliera e’Kieron,” he said.

I nod­ded.

“Ar­rest­ed on the ninth day of the month of the Hawk of this year, charged with vi­ola­tion of Im­pe­ri­al Edict Fo­lio nine­ty-​one part thir­ty para­graphs one and two. In­tent to In­dict filed with Her Im­pe­ri­al Majesty the tenth day of the month of the Hawk of this year. Writ of felony placed be­fore the Cir­cle of Mag­is­trates on—”

“Par­don me.”

He looked like a draft horse pulled to a stop just short of the barn door, but he man­aged, “Yes, my lord?”

“Would you mind telling me what Fo­lio nine­ty-​one. . . that is, what the charges are? I mean, in plain speech?”

“Oh. Use of El­der Sor­cery.”

“Barlen’s crack,” I mut­tered. “Nice work, Aliera.”

“Your par­don, my lord?”

“Noth­ing, noth­ing. I was talk­ing to my­self. Who ac­cused her?”

“Her Majesty.”

“Heh. Any­thing on how Her Majesty learned of the crime?”

“I’m not per­mit­ted to say, my lord.”

“All right. Go on, please.”

He did, but there was noth­ing use­ful in it, ex­cept that, yeah, she had been bound for judg­ment on a crime. A cap­ital crime.

“Does she have an ad­vo­cate?”

“She re­fused, my lord.”

I nod­ded. “Of course she did. Any friends of the de­fen­dant pre­sent­ed them­selves yet?”

“I’m not per­mit­ted to say, my lord.”

I sighed. “Well, you may as well add me. Szurke, Count.”

“House?”

“Im­pe­ri­al.” I dug out the ring and showed it to him. He was very im­pressed and so on.

He made some no­ta­tions, and pressed some seals on­to a doc­ument, then said, “It is done, my lord. You wish to see the pris­on­er?”

“Yes.”

“If the pris­on­er should agree, where can you be reached?”

“Cas­tle Black,” I said, hop­ing that was suf­fi­cient.

It was; he made a no­ta­tion.

“Has she re­ceived any vis­itors so far?”

“I’m not per­mit­ted . . .” Then he shrugged and con­sult­ed an­oth­er pa­per and said, “No.” I guess that one doesn’t mat­ter so much.

I thanked him, and that con­clud­ed my busi­ness in the House of the Iorich.

And, hav­ing ac­quired the bare min­imum of in­for­ma­tion—enough to know what I was deal­ing with—the next step was ob­vi­ous: I stopped on the stair­way, re­moved my amulet, and care­ful­ly made the tele­port to the court­yard of Cas­tle Black. I re­placed the amulet around my neck and spent a mo­ment tak­ing in my sur­round­ings. It had been years, but it still felt like home, in a dif­fer­ent way than Adri­lankha did. It’s hard to ex­plain.

I tapped the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra, won­der­ing if some­where down there she felt like she was home, too; but I didn’t feel a re­sponse. I think.

I didn’t ap­proach the doors right away; I took a good look around. Around; not down. I knew what was down: a long drop and un­for­giv­ing stone. I wear an amulet that pre­vents sor­cery from work­ing on me, and some­time af­ter I got it I came out here, to the court­yard, and it was on­ly a day or two lat­er that I re­al­ized I ought to have won­dered whether the amulet would in­ter­fere with the spells that kept me up in the air. I mean, it was fine; what­ev­er the na­ture of the court­yard, it doesn’t re­quire sor­cery to act on me di­rect­ly. But I re­al­ly should have thought about that be­fore walk­ing on­to it, you know?

There were pairs of guards sta­tioned at var­ious points along the walls. Al­ways pairs: one fight­er, one sor­cer­er. So far as I know, they’ve nev­er had any­thing to do since the In­ter­reg­num, but they’re al­ways there. Cushy job, I sup­pose. But bor­ing. Nice to know they still rec­og­nized me, though. At least, I as­sumed they rec­og­nized me, be­cause oth­er­wise they ought to have chal­lenged me or some­thing.

The walls were black; I could see the lit­tle veins of sil­ver run­ning through the ones near­est me. I turned, and the cas­tle it­self, al­so black, tow­ered over me, the high­est tur­rets were blurred and in­dis­tinct where they kissed the En­cloud­ing. I low­ered my eyes to the great dou­ble doors. How many times had I walked through them, to be greet­ed by La­dy Tel­dra, fol­lowed by con­ver­sa­tion deep or triv­ial, amus­ing or in­fu­ri­at­ing? La­dy Tel­dra wouldn’t greet me this time.

When I’d had my mo­ment of nos­tal­gia, I walked up to the doors, which opened for me in their usu­al grandiose, over­dra­mat­ic way. I’m a suck­er for that stuff, though, so I liked it. I stepped in­side, and be­fore me was a white-​haired Dra­gaer­an gen­tle­man, in a frilly white shirt with green ta­pered pants. I stared at him. Rude­ly, I sup­pose, though I didn’t think about it, and he didn’t act as if it were rude. He sim­ply bowed and said, “I am Skifra, and I wel­come you to Cas­tle Black. Am I cor­rect in that I have the hon­or to ad­dress my lord Mor­rolan’s ex­cel­lent friend Lord Tal­tos?”

I re­turned his bow by way of as­sent­ing that he did, in­deed, have that hon­or, such as it was.

He looked de­cid­ed­ly pleased and said, “If you would be so good as to fol­low me to the sit­ting room, I will in­form His Lord­ship of your pres­ence. May I get you wine?”

“That’d be great,” I said, fol­low­ing him to an­oth­er room I knew well.

I sat in a chair that was too big for me and drank a de­cent red wine that was slight­ly chilled, just the way I like it. That im­plied a great deal, which I set aside for lat­er ru­mi­nat­ing.

I ex­pect­ed him to re­turn in five min­utes or so to bring me to Mor­rolan, but in just about two min­utes, he him­self ap­peared: Mor­rolan e’Drien, Lord of Cas­tle Black, bear­er of Black­wand, and, well, stuff like that. I rec­og­nized his foot­steps—walk­ing quick­ly—be­fore the door opened, and I stood up.

“Vlad,” he said. “It’s been a while. A cou­ple of years, any­way.” He gave Loiosh a quick smile; Loiosh fluffed him­self on my shoul­der and dipped his head in a sort of greet­ing. Mor­rolan said, “You heard about Aliera, then?”

I nod­ded. “I’ve been to the Iorich Wing, got my name added to the list—”

“List?”

“Friends of the de­fen­dant.”

“What does that do?”

“Lets you see her, if she agrees.”

“Oh, that’s why. . . all right. Let’s go up to the li­brary.”

I fol­lowed him up the wide stair­way, got reac­quaint­ed with the paint­ings, then down the hall, past the pair of huge tomes chained to pedestals (an ex­pres­sion of Mor­rolan’s sense of hu­mor that I may ex­plain some day) to an­oth­er dou­ble door. Mor­rolan sure seems to like dou­ble doors a lot, for a skin­ny guy.

He shut the doors be­hind me, and we sat down in chairs that were like old friends, fac­ing each oth­er at an oblique an­gle, lit­tle ta­bles by our right hands.

“It’s good to see you again, Vlad.” He poured him­self some­thing pur­plish-​red from a cut-​glass de­canter. I still had my wine. “How have you been?”

“Same as al­ways. Still kick­ing, still run­ning.”

“Sounds un­pleas­ant.”

“You get used to it.”

“Any sto­ries worth telling?”

I shook my head. “Tell me about Aliera.” That’s me: straight to busi­ness.

“Right,” he said. He frowned in­to his wine. “I don’t know ex­act­ly. She was en­gaged in some ex­per­iments, and the Phoenix Guard ap­peared, ask­ing to see her. I showed them down to—”

“Wait. This was here?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“They ar­rest­ed her here?”

He nod­ded. “She lives here, you know.”

“Uh, okay, go on.”

“That’s about all I know. They came in, got her, took her away.”

“You let them?”

He cocked his head at me. “You ex­pect­ed me to launch a re­bel­lion against the Em­pire?”

I con­sid­ered that. “Yes,” I said.

“I chose not to.”

I dropped it. “What have you learned since?”

“Very lit­tle. I couldn’t find out any­thing. They wouldn’t let me in to see her.”

“You need to go to the Iorich Wing and de­clare your­self a friend, then you can get some in­for­ma­tion, and if she ap­proves it, you can get more, and you’ll be per­mit­ted to see her.”

“All right, I’ll do that.”

“Any idea why she re­fused an ad­vo­cate?”

“None.”

“Well, you’re pret­ty damned help­ful.”

He smirked. “It’s good to see you again, Vlad.”

“Mind if I ask what you have done?”

“I’ve spo­ken with No­rathar and Sethra.”

“Oh,” I said. Yes, the Drag­on Heir and the En­chantress of Dzur Moun­tain would be good peo­ple to start with. “Uh, have they been keep­ing you in­formed?”

“As much as you’d ex­pect.”

“So: no.”

“Right.”

“She was ar­rest­ed, ah, what was it? About two weeks ago?”

“A lit­tle more.”

I nod­ded. “Okay, we need to find her an ad­vo­cate.”

“How do you know so much about this stuff, Vlad?”

I looked at him.

“Oh,” he said. “All right, but didn’t she refuse an ad­vo­cate?”

“There may be a way to get one in to try to talk some sense in­to her.”

“How?”

“I’ve no idea. But ad­vo­cates are clever bas­tards. I’d have been Starred oth­er­wise.”

“Mon­ey isn’t a prob­lem,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t.”

He nod­ded. “Are you hun­gry?”

I re­al­ized I was, and said so.

“Let’s go to the pantries and see what we can find.”

We found some sausages in the style of some East­ern king­dom: oily and bit­ing, tast­ing of rose­mary. With it was crusty bread in long, thin loaves and a won­der­ful­ly sharp cheese. There was al­so a jug of red wine that was prob­ably too young but still had some body. We ate stand­ing up in Mor­rolan’s pantry, pass­ing the jug back and forth.

“Vlad, do you know what hap­pens if she’s con­vict­ed?”

“My un­der­stand­ing—which isn’t per­fect—is that ei­ther they ex­ecute her, or the Em­press has to com­mute the sen­tence, which will raise hav­oc among the Hous­es.”

Mor­rolan nod­ded.

We walked back to the li­brary, brush­ing crumbs off our­selves. “What are you go­ing to do?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it will prob­ably in­volve killing some­one.”

He chuck­led. “It usu­al­ly does.”

“Would Sethra know any­thing about this by now?”

“On­ly if she’s seen Aliera. I doubt she has.”

“Maybe I should go and see her.”

“Maybe.”

“Or else go straight to find­ing the ad­vo­cate.”

He nod­ded and glanced at my hip. “How is La­dy Tel­dra?”

I re­sist­ed the im­pulse to touch her. “I’m not sure how to an­swer that,” I said.

“Has there been . . . con­tact?”

I con­sid­ered. “Not as such. Feel­ings, some­times, per­haps.”

He nod­ded.

I said, “I know you two go back hun­dreds of years. I wish—”

“So do I.”

“She was more than just seneschal to you, wasn’t she?”

His jaw tight­ened a lit­tle. “I’m not sure how you mean that.”

“Sor­ry. None of my—”

“Once she stood guard over my body for near­ly a week, keep­ing it alive, while my mind and my soul trav­eled to Death­gate Falls and fought a bat­tle over the Paths of the Dead. Keep­ing it alive was nei­ther easy nor pleas­ant, un­der the cir­cum­stances.”

“Um. Sounds like there’s a sto­ry there.”

He shrugged. “Ask the Em­press; I’ve al­ready said too much.”

“I won’t press it, then.”

“Where are you go­ing next?”

“I guess I’d bet­ter try to find Aliera an ad­vo­cate, un­less you want to.”

“I’m will­ing, if you’ll tell me how.”

“I know what to look for, more or less. It’s eas­ier if I just do it.”

“Un­less,” he point­ed out, “you get killed try­ing.”

“Yeah, that would slow it down. But if I stay in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace, I should be safe. And if I stay close to it, I’ll stay close to safe.”

“You know best.”

I want­ed to note the time and date he’d said that. “They al­ready know I’m in town, be­cause I took the amulet off to get here. So they’ll know I’m in the Palace.” I shrugged. “Let them gnash their teeth. I know how to slip away when I need to.”

“Boss, you lie like an Is­so­la.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ev­er said to me.”

“All right,” said Mor­rolan. “I don’t know the Iorich Wing. Where should I set you down?”

“Any­where in the Palace they per­mit it that isn’t the Drag­on Wing or Jhereg Wing.”

He nod­ded. “Ready?”

I re­moved the amulet, put it in its pouch, sealed the pouch, and nod­ded.

He ges­tured, and time passed dur­ing which I was nowhere, then I was some­where else. I took the amulet out again, put it on, and looked around. Im­pe­ri­al Wing; good enough.

It took me a good hour to find my way out of the Palace, most­ly be­cause I want­ed to leave through the Iorich Wing, so I could cross to the House of the Iorich as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Yes, there’s a con­stant strain in know­ing you’re be­ing hunt­ed, but even that is some­thing you can get used to. You take sen­si­ble pre­cau­tions, and min­imize risk, and don’t let it get to you.

At least, that’s the the­ory.

The House of the Iorich (as op­posed to the Iorich Wing of the Palace—just so you don’t get con­fused. I wouldn’t want you to get con­fused) was dis­tin­guished by a high door with a gilt arch, over which stood the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the House; this one, un­like the one in the Wing of the Palace, look­ing for­ward. The door was open. The two guards, in the col­ors of the Iorich, glanced at me but let me walk past with­out say­ing any­thing.

An el­der­ly Dra­gaer­an in a sim­ple gown of brown and white ap­proached me, gave her name (which I don’t re­mem­ber), and asked how she could serve me. I told her I was in need of an ad­vo­cate, and she said, speak­ing in very low tones even though no one else was around, that if I cared to tell her the gen­er­al na­ture of the prob­lem, she could per­haps rec­om­mend some­one.

“Thank you,” I said. “That isn’t nec­es­sary, if you’d be so good as to tell me if La­dy Ard­we­na is avail­able.”

Her face closed up like the shut­ters of a house in the East, and she said, “Of course. Please come with me, and I’ll show you to a wait­ing room.”

I did and she did, with no fur­ther words be­ing ex­changed. I guess she knew what sort of clients La­dy Ard­we­na took, and she didn’t ap­prove. A blight on the House, I’ve no doubt.

The room was small and emp­ty; it felt com­fort­able, though, lit with a pair of or­nate oil lamps. While we wait­ed, I ex­changed re­marks about the decor with Loiosh, who didn’t have much to say about it.

Af­ter about five min­utes, she came in her­self, stop­ping at the door, look­ing at me, then step­ping in and clos­ing it. I stood up and gave her a slight bow. “La­dy Ard­we­na. It has been a few years.”

“I can do noth­ing for you,” she said. There was a lot of ten­sion in her voice. I couldn’t blame her, but nei­ther was I over­whelmed with sym­pa­thy.

“Just need some ques­tions an­swered.”

“I shouldn’t even do that.”

She wouldn’t have put it that way if she’d in­tend­ed not to; she wouldn’t even have seen me. I said, “It isn’t even about me. My prob­lems aren’t le­gal.”

“No,” she said. “They aren’t. Who is it about?”

“Aliera e’Kieron.”

Her eyes widened a lit­tle. “You know her?”

Heh. And here I’d thought ev­ery­one knew that. “Yes. She needs an ad­vo­cate. I need you to rec­om­mend one.”

“I’ve heard she’s re­fused ad­vice.”

“Yes, that makes it hard­er.”

She nod­ded and fell silent for a bit. “I’ve heard of the mat­ter, of course. Part thir­ty para­graphs one, two, and five, isn’t it?”

“Just one and two.”

She nod­ded. “They’re mov­ing on it quick­ly.”

“Which means?”

“Which means that they don’t like their case, or else they need it pros­ecut­ed for po­lit­ical rea­sons, and the is­sue isn’t the is­sue, as it were.”

“That’s good to know.”

She chewed on her low­er lip and sat down. I sat down too and wait­ed while she thought.

“You’ll need some­one who can han­dle a re­cal­ci­trant client, and some­one who’s done a lot of work with Fo­lio nine­ty-​one. Im­pe­ri­al Edicts are dif­fer­ent from both Cod­ified Tra­di­tions and Statutes. They’re a bit like Or­di­nances ex­cept with the full force of the Im­peri­um be­hind them, which makes them a bit of a niche. And then there’s the fact that the Em­pire is mov­ing so quick­ly. . . all right.” She pulled out a stub of pen­cil and a tiny square of pa­per. “See him. If he won’t do it, maybe he’ll be able to rec­om­mend some­one.”

“Thanks,” I said.

She stood up, nod­ded to me, and glid­ed out. With the amount of mon­ey I’d giv­en her over the years, I fig­ured she owed me at least this much. She prob­ably didn’t agree, but was afraid that I was in a po­si­tion to make life dif­fi­cult for her if she didn’t help me. And I was.

Iorich

2

By “The State” we mean that body that holds the monopoly on the use of vi­olence with­in a ge­ograph­ic re­gion and has the pow­er and au­thor­ity to de­ter­mine how much and in what man­ner and un­der what cir­cum­stances this monopoly will be del­egat­ed, au­tho­rized, or com­mis­sioned to oth­er bod­ies or in­di­vid­uals. This pow­er is ex­pressed and in­ter­pret­ed through the body’s var­ious le­gal sys­tems, cod­ed or un­cod­ed.

By this def­ini­tion, (cf. Lanya), it is clear that to ac­cept the ex­is­tence of a State is to ac­cept the monopoly on vi­olence, and so too in re­verse. The ques­tion, there­fore, of the le­git­ima­cy of any act of vi­olence by the State, whether de­lib­er­ate or ac­ci­den­tal, must first of all be de­ter­mined ac­cord­ing to:

1. The le­git­ima­cy of the State.

2. The le­git­ima­cy of the in­ter­ests of the State in which the vi­olence oc­curred.

3. The ap­pro­pri­ate­ness or lack there­of of the par­tic­ular acts of vi­olence in serv­ing those in­ter­ests.

It is for this rea­son that, for ex­am­ple, any vi­olence com­mit­ted by a re­bel­lious vas­sal is in­her­ent­ly il­le­git­imate; any act of vi­olence by agents of the State that are com­mit­ted for per­son­al mo­ti­va­tions are con­sid­ered crim­inal mis­ap­pro­pri­ation of au­thor­ity; and any act of vi­olence that, in in­tent, fails to ad­vance the cause of the State is con­sid­ered neg­li­gent.

The com­mit­tee be­gan its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events in Tir­ma on this ba­sis.

The name on the pa­per was Perisil. I’d nev­er heard of him, but then, the on­ly Iorich I’d ev­er heard of were those who were will­ing to take Jhereg as clients—a rel­ative­ly low num­ber.

I went and showed the name and got di­rec­tions to a sub­base­ment of the House, and from there to a nar­row side pas­sage that looked like an af­terthought to the con­struc­tion; it was mean­er and the ceil­ing was low­er and the light­ing not so good. Here, un­like in the rest of the House, there were names over the doors. I won­dered if some­how hav­ing your name over the door meant you were less im­por­tant. In any case, it helped me find the right one.

I clapped and wait­ed. Af­ter a while, I clapped again. I still heard noth­ing, but the door opened a lit­tle and a pair of odd vi­olet eyes were peer­ing at me, then at Loiosh and Rocza, then at me.

“Yes?” he said, or rather squeaked. His voice was high-​pitched and small; I couldn’t imag­ine him ar­gu­ing be­fore the Court. I mean, do you want the Jus­ticer laugh­ing at your ad­vo­cate? Well, I don’t know, maybe that would help.

“May I come in?”

He opened the door a bit more. He was on­ly a lit­tle taller than Aliera, who was on­ly a lit­tle taller than me. His shoul­ders were broad, and for a Dra­gaer­an he’d have been called stocky. His dress was ca­su­al, to the point where the laces on his dou­blet were on­ly loose­ly tied and his gloves were un­even­ly hang­ing on his belt. For an Iorich, that’s ca­su­al, okay? He said, “An East­ern­er. If you’re here on your own be­half, or one of your coun­try­men, I’ve nev­er done any­thing with the Sep­ara­tion Laws, though I’ve looked through them of course.”

The of­fice be­hind him was tiny and square, most­ly tak­en up by a wood­en desk that looked old and well-​used; it had grooves and scratch­es here and there, and it just bare­ly left room for a cou­ple of chairs that were ug­ly and met­al. There were white spaces on the wall where some pic­tures or some­thing had once hung, and there was some sort of framed of­fi­cial doc­ument hang­ing promi­nent­ly above and be­hind his chair. I said, “You were rec­om­mend­ed to me by La­dy Ard­we­na. My name is Vladimir Tal­tos. I’m here on be­half of Aliera e’Kieron.”

“Oh. Come in, then.” He stepped out of my way. He looked at Loiosh and Rocza again. “In­ter­est­ing pets you have.”

“Thank him for me, Boss. I al­ways love hear­ing my pets com­pli­ment­ed.”

I ig­nored Loiosh and stepped in­side. “New of­fice for you?” I said.

He nod­ded. “Just re­cent­ly per­mit­ted in­to the House from an out­side of­fice.” Then he stopped halfway in­to his chair. “How did you know that?”

He sat be­hind the desk. I sat in one of the chairs. It was ug­ly, but at least it was un­com­fort­able. “Aliera,” I prompt­ed.

“La­dy Ard­we­na for Aliera e’Kieron,” he re­peat­ed. “That’s an in­ter­est­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion. But then, I think I’ve heard of you.”

I made a sort of noise that could mean any­thing and let him talk. All the ad­vo­cates I’ve ev­er met are per­fect­ly will­ing to talk from Home­day to North­port. The best of them are will­ing to lis­ten, too.

He nod­ded as if to some in­ner voice. “You have pa­per­work?”

“None,” I said.

“Oh. Are you reg­is­tered as a friend?”

“Yes, but not con­firmed.”

“Hm­mm,” he said. “She doesn’t want to see her friends, and doesn’t want an ad­vo­cate.”

“Well, you know Drag­onlords.”

“Not many, not well. I’ve nev­er had one as a client.”

“Drag­onlords think there are two ways to solve any prob­lem, and the first is killing some­body.”

He nod­ded. “The sec­ond?”

“Most of them nev­er need to come up with one.”

He fold­ed his arms and sat back. “Tough sit­ua­tion,” he said. “Do you have mon­ey?”

“Yes.”

He named a fig­ure that was a sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of what I used to charge to kill some­one. I bor­rowed his pen and ink and blot­ter and I wrote out a draft on my bank and passed it over. He stud­ied it care­ful­ly, blew on it, then set it aside and nod­ded.

“Where can you be reached?”

“Cas­tle Black.”

“I know the place,” he said. He steepled his fin­gers and stared at noth­ing for a bit. “Am I cor­rect that you don’t know why she re­fus­es an ad­vo­cate or to see any­one?”

“I can spec­ulate,” I said, “know­ing Aliera.”

“She’s out­raged, of­fend­ed, and more full of pride than her fa­ther was be­fore he de­stroyed the world?”

“Oh, you know her?”

“Heard of her, of course.”

“Drag­ons,” I said.

“In­deed.”

“Can you ex­plain the laws that ap­ply here?”

“There isn’t much to ex­plain. El­der Sor­cery is for­bid­den by Im­pe­ri­al Edict.”

“Yeah, what does that mean?”

“That it isn’t a Cod­ified Tra­di­tion. Cod­ified Tra­di­tions are more fun.”

“Fun?”

“For an ad­vo­cate. With a tra­di­tion­al, we can al­ways find in­ter­est­ing ways to rein­ter­pret the tra­di­tion, or find an his­tor­ical con­text for its cre­ation that has changed, or ques­tion how it was cod­ified. That sort of thing is al­ways fun. Me, I work most­ly with Edicts.”

“Oh. Why?”

“I don’t know. I fell in­to it, I sup­pose. It suits me, though. If I were a Drag­on, I’d say it was be­cause they’re more of a chal­lenge. In fact, I sup­pose what I en­joy isn’t the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law as much as es­tab­lish­ing and ar­gu­ing about the facts. Most of the law in­volves de­tail work and sub­tleties of in­ter­pre­ta­tion. Edicts are yes or no, did or didn’t.”

In this case: did, I thought. “That this was an Edict means what, ex­act­ly?”

“It means it was ex­plic­it­ly de­clared by an Em­per­or at some point. Like a Statute, on­ly with the force of the Em­pire be­hind it. That one in par­tic­ular is about as old as the Em­pire.”

“What does it mean for us? In a prac­ti­cal sense.”

“It means there’s no way to at­tack the law it­self; the on­ly ques­tions are: did she do it, and if so, how harsh should the sen­tence be.”

“Can’t get any­where on the in­ter­pre­ta­tion?”

“How can you when the Em­press can just con­sult the Orb and ask?”

“Oh, right. Death is the max­imum sen­tence?”

“Yes.”

“You have to ad­mit, Boss; it would be fun­ny if Aliera end­ed up on the Star be­fore you did.”

“Yeah, I’ll just laugh my­self sick over that one, Loiosh.”

“What is the min­imum?”

“The min­imum? I sup­pose the min­imum would be the Em­press say­ing, ‘Don’t do that any­more.’ ”

“I see. And what would you ex­pect?”

“No way to tell. The Em­press knows Aliera, doesn’t she?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “If they’re friends, it will be hard­er for the Em­press to be le­nient.”

I nod­ded. Pol­itics.

He said, “It’s go­ing to be dif­fi­cult if I can’t get her co­op­er­ation, you know.”

“I know. I think I can get you her co­op­er­ation, if I can man­age to get in to see her.”

He brushed his hair back. “I might be able to man­age that.”

“I’m lis­ten­ing.”

“I’m not say­ing any­thing yet. Let me give it some thought.” I was good with that. He could do as much think­ing as he want­ed. His voice didn’t seem as odd af­ter you’d been lis­ten­ing to it for a while.

Af­ter a mo­ment, he said, as if to him­self, “Yes, that should work.”

“Hm­mm?”

“One op­tion is to pe­ti­tion, in your name, to have her de­clared in­com­pe­tent to man­age her af­fairs.”

I laughed. “Oh, she’ll love that!”

“No doubt.”

“I’ll tes­ti­fy, Boss. I’ve been say­ing for years—”

“Shut up.”

“Think they’ll go for it?”

He frowned. “Go for it?”

“I mean, will you be able to con­vince the Em­pire that she’s in­com­pe­tent.”

“Oh, of course not. That isn’t the point. The point is to con­vince her to ac­cept an ad­vo­cate. If she won’t in the dis­pute with the Em­pire, she might to prove she isn’t mad. If not, it might con­vince her to be will­ing to see you, and give you a chance to talk her in­to ac­cept­ing coun­sel.”

“Ah. Yes, that might work. Or it might just make her more stub­born. She’ll see through it, of course.” I con­sid­ered. “It’s hard to know how she’ll jump.”

“Hm­mm. There’s an­oth­er thing I might try first. It would be quick­er, at any rate.”

“If it’s al­so less like­ly to get me killed, that would be good, too. What is it?”

“Pro­ce­du­ral com­plaint to the Em­pire. If we start out at­tack­ing, we can al­ways back off; if we start on the de­fen­sive, it’s hard­er to change di­rec­tion.” He drummed his fin­gers on the desk­top. Then he nod­ded. “Yes, I’ll try that first. I should be able to get the pe­ti­tion writ­ten up and sub­mit­ted in an hour. We might get re­sults by the end of the day.”

“They don’t waste time.”

“Not with this. For what­ev­er rea­son, they’re in a hur­ry with this case.”

“Um, yeah,” I said. “So it seems. Why is that?”

“Good ques­tion. If you want to do some­thing use­ful, find out.”

“What makes you think I’d be able to do that?”

“I rec­og­nized your name.”

“Oh. I’m fa­mous.”

“If you wish.”

“Can you tell me where to start look­ing?”

“You could ask the Em­press.”

“Okay.”

His eye­brows rose a frac­tion of an inch. “I wasn’t se­ri­ous.”

“Oh?”

“You know the Em­press?”

“We’ve spo­ken.”

“Well, if you think you can get her tell you any­thing, I won’t stop you.”

“All right,” I said. “If that doesn’t work?”

“Lord Del­wick, of my House, might be able to tell you some things, if he’s will­ing to talk to you. He’s our Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tive.”

“Okay,” I said. “A word of ad­vice: Don’t do any­thing to mess up his re­la­tion­ship with the Em­pire. The House hates that.”

“So I’ve heard,” he said.

“All right, I’ll get start­ed, then.”

He opened up a desk draw­er, dug around for a while, and then hand­ed me what looked like a cop­per coin with the Iorich in­signia. “Show him this, and tell him I sent you.”

I ac­cept­ed it, put it in my pouch, and said, “I’ll check back with you from time to time.”

“Of course.”

I stood and gave him a bow, which he ac­knowl­edged with ges­ture of his head, then I let my­self out.

I made my way back to the en­try­way of the House with­out too much ef­fort, as­sist­ed by Loiosh, who has a pret­ty good mem­ory for twists and turns.

I sent him and Rocza out ahead of me to spot any as­sas­sins lurk­ing in the area, was told there weren’t any, and made a brisk walk across the way to the en­trance of the Palace. I went as straight through as the twists of the Wing would per­mit, and out in­to the Im­pe­ri­al Wing.

Wher­ev­er you are in the Im­pe­ri­al Wing (all right, wher­ev­er I’ve been) you’ll see pages and mes­sen­gers scur­ry­ing around, all with the Phoenix badge, usu­al­ly car­ry­ing a green fold­er, though some­times it will be a gold one, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly some­thing oth­er than a fold­er. I al­ways re­sent them, be­cause they give the im­pres­sion they know their way around the place, which is ob­vi­ous­ly im­pos­si­ble. Doors, cor­ri­dors, stair­ways are ev­ery­where, and go­ing off at ab­surd an­gles as if de­signed by a mad­man. You have no choice but to ask di­rec­tions of some­one, usu­al­ly a guards­man, who will of course let you know ex­act­ly what they think of East­ern­ers who can’t find their way around.

It’s an­noy­ing.

To the left, how­ev­er, find­ing one of the rooms where the Em­press is avail­able to courtiers is one of the eas­ier tasks, and af­ter on­ly a cou­ple of mi­nor hu­mil­ia­tions I ar­rived out­side that wide, open, chair­less room called the Im­pe­ri­al Au­di­ence Cham­ber or some­thing like that, but in­for­mal­ly known among the Jhereg as As­skiss Al­ley.

There were big dou­ble doors there, with a pair of guards out­side of them, and a well-​dressed man who could have been a rel­ative of La­dy Tel­dra—when she was alive—stand­ing at his ease with a half smile on his face. I want­ed to touch La­dy Tel­dra’s hilt, but re­strained my­self. In­stead, I placed my­self be­fore this wor­thy and bowed like I meant it.

“Vladimir Tal­tos, House Jhereg, and Count of Szurke, at your ser­vice.”

He re­turned my bow ex­act­ly. “Harn­wood,” he said, “House of the Is­so­la, at yours, my lord.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the pro­ce­dure”—he gave me an en­cour­ag­ing smile—“but I would have words with Her Majesty, who may wish to see me.”

If the re­quest was sur­pris­ing, he gave no in­di­ca­tion. “Of course, my lord. If you will come with me in­to the wait­ing room, I will in­quire.”

He led me to an emp­ty room paint­ed yel­low, with half a dozen com­fort­able chairs, al­so yel­low. They prob­ably called it the “yel­low room.” They’re cre­ative that way. He gave me an­oth­er smile, a bow, and closed the door be­hind him.

I sat and wait­ed, think­ing about how long it had been since I’d eat­en.

I hate wait­ing.

I hate be­ing hun­gry.

I shift­ed in the chair and chat­ted with Loiosh about our pre­vi­ous en­counter with Her Majesty—she had grant­ed me an Im­pe­ri­al ti­tle be­cause of ac­ci­den­tal ser­vices ren­dered. I sus­pect she knew they were ac­ci­den­tal, but felt like re­ward­ing me for her own rea­sons. I hap­pened to know she had an East­ern­er as a lover, maybe that had some­thing to do with it. Loiosh made a few oth­er sug­ges­tions for rea­sons, some of which were prob­ably trea­sonous.

Or maybe not. I’ve heard that in some East­ern king­doms it is a cap­ital crime to fail to treat the king with prop­er re­spect, but I had no idea if that was true in the Em­pire. I imag­ined that I could ask Perisil, and get an an­swer much longer than I want­ed that would come out to: some­times. Im­pe­ri­al law seems to work like that.

This close to the Orb, I could eas­ily feel my link to it, and knew when an hour had passed.

A lit­tle lat­er, Harn­wood re­turned with pro­fuse apolo­gies, a bot­tle of wine, some dried fruit, and word that Her Majesty begged me to be pa­tient, be­cause she did wish to speak with me. My heart quick­ened a bit when I heard that; isn’t that odd? I’d known Mor­rolan e’Drien, and Sethra Lavode, and had even been face-​to-​face with Ver­ra, the De­mon God­dess, and yet I still felt a thrill go through me that this wom­an want­ed to talk to me. Strange. I guess it shows what con­di­tion­ing can do.

Harn­wood left, and I drank the wine be­cause I was thirsty and ate the fruit be­cause it gave me some­thing to do and be­cause I was feel­ing half-​starved. Loiosh ate some for the same rea­sons (dried fruit not be­ing a fa­vorite of his); Rocza seemed to have no prob­lems with dried fruit.

Then I wait­ed some more.

It was most of an­oth­er hour be­fore Harn­wood came back, look­ing even more apolo­get­ic and say­ing, “She will see you now, Lord Szurke.”

That was in­ter­est­ing. She would see Lord Szurke, not Lord Tal­tos. I didn’t know what the sig­nif­icance of that was, but I was pret­ty sure there was sig­nif­icance. That’s the trou­ble with the Court, you know: Ev­ery­thing is sig­nif­icant but they don’t tell you ex­act­ly why, or how, or what it means un­til you’re swim­ming in it. Maybe in my next life I’ll be a Ly­orn and be taught all that stuff or an Is­so­la and know it in­stinc­tive­ly. More like­ly not, though.

I stood up, dis­cov­er­ing that sit­ting there for most of two hours had made my body stiff. I won­dered if I was get­ting old.

I fol­lowed Harn­wood out and down the hall, where we went past the door he’d been sta­tioned out­side of, then turned left, through a door­way, and in­to a much small­er hall­way that end­ed in a flight of eight stairs—two few for it to be a stair­way up to the next floor. I don’t know; I nev­er did fig­ure that out. But at the top was a door that was stand­ing open, and past it was a long, nar­row room with a few stuffed chairs set hap­haz­ard­ly about. At the far end was Her Majesty, speak­ing qui­et­ly with a man in the col­ors of the Iorich and a wom­an in the col­ors of the Drag­on. As I en­tered, all three glanced up at me, with uni­form lacks of ex­pres­sion.

The Orb as it cir­cled the Em­press’s head was a light green, which should have told me some­thing about her mood, but it didn’t. She turned to the two she’d been speak­ing with and said, “Leave us now. I wish to speak to this gen­tle­man.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aliera is a friend of mine,” I said.

“And mine,” she snapped.

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

She seemed to re­lax a lit­tle, and nod­ded.

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

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

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

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

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

“Per­haps.”

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

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

I nod­ded. “As Your Majesty says.”

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

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

“I thank Your Maj—”

“Oh, shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

“His name is Perisil.”

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

“I hope so.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mor­rolan, that’s all.”

“Has he, ah, said any­thing?”

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

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

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

“Not as nice as you’d think.”

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

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

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

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

“No, I sup­pose not.”

“And you know whose fault your predica­ment is.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sor­ry.”

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

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

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I had not been aware—”

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

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

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

“When did it stop?”

“When the Em­pire was formed. It was made il­le­gal. That was the first Im­pe­ri­al Edict.”

“An act of kind­ness from your an­ces­tor. Good way to start.”

“Not kind­ness, so much. She’d spo­ken to the gods, and knew the gods were ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent or hos­tile to the prac­tice. So call it prac­ti­cal­ity. I bring it up be­cause—” She stopped, and looked blank for a mo­ment, the Orb puls­ing blue over her head. “I’m sor­ry, it seems I must go run an Em­pire.”

I stood. “Thank you for see­ing me.” I made as good an obei­sance as I could; which isn’t too bad, I’m told.

“It is al­ways a plea­sure, Count Szurke.”

I backed away a few steps (there is a cor­rect num­ber of steps, but I didn’t know it), and turned away. She said, “Oh, and thank you, Vlad.”

“For—?”

“The doc­uments on mak­ing pa­per. I’m told they’re valu­able.”

“Oh, right. I’d for­got­ten about—how did you know they came from me?”

She smiled. “Un­til now, I didn’t.”

The men­tion of mak­ing pa­per brought back a com­plex set of mem­ories and par­tial mem­ories that I didn’t es­pe­cial­ly feel like dwelling on just then; but it was good of her to men­tion it. I gave her what I hoped was a friend­ly smile over my shoul­der and took my­self out of the room.

Iorich

3

Q: Please state your name, your House, and your city of res­idence.

A: Dornin e’Lanya, House of the Drag­on, Brick­er­stown.

Q: Rank and po­si­tion?

A: Sergeant, Im­pe­ri­al Army, Sec­ond Army, Fourth Le­gion, Com­pa­ny D.

Q: What were your or­ders on the sec­ond day of the month of the Ly­orn of this year?

A: We were to es­cort a sup­ply train from Nor­est to Swor­drock. On that day, we were pass­ing through Tir­ma, in the duchy of Carv­er.

Q: And what had you heard about Tir­ma?

A: We knew the en­tire duchy was in re­bel­lion.

Em­press: Did you know this of­fi­cial­ly, or through ru­mor?

A: It was com­mon knowl­edge, Your Majesty.

Q: An­swer Her Majesty’s ques­tion, Sergeant.

A: We were nev­er in­formed of­fi­cial­ly.

Orb shows false­hood

Q: Would you care to re­con­sid­er that an­swer, Sergeant Dornin?

A: No, my lord. That is my an­swer.

Q: Had any­thing un­usu­al hap­pened that day be­fore you reached Tir­ma?

A: There were the usu­al prob­lems with the wag­on train, but no at­tacks or in­ci­dents.

Q: De­scribe what hap­pened when you en­tered Tir­ma.

A: We were set on by a mob that was try­ing to take away the wag­ons, and we de­fend­ed our­selves.

Q: While you were in Tir­ma, were you or your com­mand in­volved in any fight­ing or vi­olence that did not in­volve de­fend­ing your­selves against an at­tack?

A: We were not.

Orb shows false­hood

Q: Would you care to re­con­sid­er your an­swer?

A: I would not.

Q: Are you aware of the penal­ties for ly­ing be­neath the Orb?

A: I am.

I went back down the half-​flight of stairs, down the hall, and stopped, try­ing to re­mem­ber the name I’d been giv­en.

“Del­wick.”

“I knew that.”

“Right.”

“Okay, I was about to re­mem­ber.”

“Right.”

“Shut up.”

I found my way back to where Harn­wood still wait­ed. He smiled as if he were glad to see me. I bowed as pre­cise­ly as I could man­age—not that he’d let me know if I missed my mark—and said, “Par­don me, do you know a Lord Del­wick?”

“Of course, my lord. Shall I take you to where he is?”

“If you’d be so kind.”

He would, in fact, be so kind. He ex­changed a few words with the guard sta­tioned by the door, and ges­tured with his hand that I was to fall in­to step with him. I did so. Hav­ing known La­dy Tel­dra so long—in the flesh, I mean—I wasn’t sur­prised that he made it seem ef­fort­less to short­en his strides to match my puny hu­man ones.

I won’t try to de­scribe the turn­ings we took, nor the stairs we went up on­ly to go down an­oth­er. I will men­tion one ex­treme­ly wide hall­way with what looked like gold trim­ming over ivory, and hung with the psiprints of some of the odd­est-​look­ing peo­ple I’ve ev­er seen, all of them look­ing enough like Day­mar to con­vince me they were Hawk­lords, and all of them star­ing out with the same ex­pres­sion: as if they were say­ing, “Just what man­ner of beast are you, any­way, and do you mind of if I study you for a while?”

We walked in­to a per­fect­ly square room around the size of my old flat off Low­er Kieron Road—it was a pret­ty big flat. The room was emp­ty. Harn­wood said, “This is where the var­ious rep­re­sen­ta­tives some­times gath­er to speak in­for­mal­ly.”

“Should I wait here?”

“No, we can find Lord Del­wick’s of­fices.”

I was glad the room was emp­ty. Meet­ing the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive would have been awk­ward. We passed through it to a door at the oth­er end, and stepped in­to a hall­way. He nod­ded to the right. “That way, fol­low­ing it around to the right, you’ll come back to the Im­pe­ri­al Au­di­ence Cham­ber, on the oth­er side. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this is the fastest way with­out go­ing through the Cham­ber, which is in­ap­pro­pri­ate.”

“I un­der­stand,” I lied.

He pre­tend­ed to be­lieve me and we turned left. There were a few doors on the right, and far­ther up the hall­way split, but be­fore that point he stopped out­side one of the doors and clapped. There was the sym­bol of the Iorich above it. By then I hadn’t eat­en any­thing ex­cept a lit­tle dried fruit in about three years, and I was in a wretched mood. I re­solved not to take it out on Lord Del­wick.

“I can’t wait—”

“Don’t.”

Rocza gave a lit­tle shiv­er that I’m pret­ty sure was laugh­ter.

The door opened, and an el­der­ly Dra­gaer­an with se­vere eye­brows and thin lips was look­ing at us, with the smile of the diplo­ma­tist—that is, a smile that means noth­ing.

“Well met, Del­wick.”

“And you, Harn­wood.” He looked an in­quiry at me.

“This is Lord Tal­tos, of House Jhereg, and he wish­es a few words with you.”

“Of course,” he said. “Please come in and sit down.” If he’d ev­er heard of me, he con­cealed it well.

Harn­wood took his leave amid the usu­al po­lite nois­es and ges­tures all around, af­ter which I ac­com­pa­nied Del­wick in­to his room—or ac­tu­al­ly suite, be­cause there were a cou­ple of doors that pre­sum­ably went to his pri­vate quar­ters or some­thing. It was nice enough: a thick pur­ple car­pet of the sort that comes from Keresh or there­abouts, with com­plex in­ter­lock­ing pat­terns that took longer to make than a hu­man usu­al­ly lives. There was no desk, which some­how struck me as sig­nif­icant; there were just sev­er­al stuffed chairs with ta­bles next to them, as if to say, “We’re on­ly hav­ing a lit­tle chat here, noth­ing to wor­ry about.”

Heh.

He point­ed to a chair, ex­cused him­self, and went through one of the doors, re­turn­ing in a mo­ment with a plate of bis­cuits and cheese. I could have kissed him.

I said, “I hope you don’t mind if I feed a bit to my friends here.”

“Of course not, my lord.”

I fed them, and my­self, try­ing not to ap­pear greedy, but al­so not wor­ry­ing about it too much; there are times when the Dra­gaer­an prej­udices about hu­mans can work for us. I didn’t eat enough to be sat­is­fied, but a few bis­cuits with even an ex­ces­sive­ly sub­tle (read: bland) cheese helped. He ate a few as well to keep com­pa­ny with me, as it were, while he wait­ed for me to state my busi­ness.

I found the coin Perisil had giv­en me, and showed it.

“Hm­mm,” he said. “All right.” He looked up at me and nod­ded. “Very well.” He sat back. “Tell me about it.”

“Why is the pros­ecu­tion of Aliera e’Kieron hap­pen­ing so quick­ly?”

He nod­ded a lit­tle. “I’ve won­dered my­self. So then, you have an ad­vo­cate for her?”

“Perisil,” I said.

“Hm­mm. I’m afraid I don’t rec­og­nize the name.”

“He has a base­ment of­fice.”

“Where?”

“In the House.”

“Ah, I see.”

It seemed that the best ad­vo­cates had quar­ters out­side of the House. Maybe that should have shak­en my con­fi­dence in Perisil, but I trust­ed his ad­vice, and I’d liked him, and Loiosh hadn’t made any es­pe­cial­ly nasty com­ments on him.

“I asked Her Majesty, and—”

“Par­don?”

“I asked Her Majesty about it, and she wouldn’t an­swer.”

Del­wick caught him­self and stopped star­ing. “I see.”

“I hope my ef­fort doesn’t make your task more dif­fi­cult.”

He smiled po­lite­ly. “We shall see,” he said.

“So, you’ll look in­to it?”

“Of course.” He seemed gen­uine­ly star­tled that I’d even ask. Those lit­tle coins must have some se­ri­ous au­thor­ity. In which case, why did an ad­vo­cate with of­fices in the base­ment of the House have one to throw around, or choose to use it on me?

Lat­er. Note it, and set it aside.

“How shall I reach you?”

“Ei­ther through Perisil, or at Cas­tle Black.”

“Cas­tle Black? Lord Mor­dran?”

“Mor­rolan.”

“Of course. All right. You’ll be hear­ing from me.”

“Thank you,” I said, stand­ing. “Ah . . .”

“Yes?”

“Is there any­where to eat here, in the Palace? I mean, for those of us who don’t work here?”

He smiled. “Scores. The near­est is just out my door to the right, fol­low the jog to the right, down the stairs, first left.”

“Thank you,” I said, mean­ing it.

He nod­ded as if he couldn’t tell the dif­fer­ence. I sup­pose if you hang around the Court long enough, you lose your abil­ity to de­tect sin­cer­ity.

There was, in­deed, food af­ter a fash­ion; a room with space enough for a bat­tal­ion held about four peo­ple, like a lone­ly jisweed on a rocky hill, and they were eat­ing some­thing dis­pensed by a tiny old Chreotha who seemed to be half asleep. I had uniden­ti­fi­able soup that was too salty, yes­ter­day’s bread, and some­thing that had once been roast beef. I had wa­ter be­cause I didn’t trust her wine. She charged too much. I couldn’t fig­ure why the place seemed so emp­ty.

Loiosh didn’t much like the stuff ei­ther, but he and Rocza ate it hap­pi­ly enough. Well, so did I, come to think of it. To be fair, it was, by this time, mid-​af­ter­noon; I imag­ined around lunchtime the place would be bus­ier, and maybe the food fresh­er.

I fin­ished up and left with a glare at the mer­chant—I won’t call her a cook—that she missed en­tire­ly, and head­ed back to see my ad­vo­cate. Aliera’s ad­vo­cate. The ad­vo­cate.

At this point, I wish to make the ob­ser­va­tion that I had been spend­ing the last sev­er­al years wear­ing my feet out walk­ing about the coun­try­side, and I’ve known vil­lages sep­arat­ed by moun­tain, riv­er, and for­est that weren’t as far apart as a place with­in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace and an­oth­er with­in the House of the Iorich lo­cat­ed next to it. Loiosh says I’m speak­ing fig­ura­tive­ly, and he may be right, but I wouldn’t bet against the house on it.

I did get there even­tu­al­ly, and, won­der of won­ders, he was still there, the door open, look­ing like he nev­er moved. Maybe he didn’t; maybe he had flunkies to do all his run­ning around. I used to have flunkies to do all my run­ning around. I liked it.

I walked in and be­fore I could ask him any­thing he said, “It’s all set up. Would you like to vis­it Aliera?”

Now that, as it hap­pened, wasn’t as easy a ques­tion as it might have sound­ed. But af­ter hes­itat­ing on­ly a mo­ment I said, “Sure. The worst she can do is kill me.”

That earned me an in­quir­ing look which I ig­nored. “Are you com­ing along?” I asked him.

“No, you have to con­vince her to see me.”

“Okay. How did you work it?”

“Her al­leged re­fusal to see ei­ther a friend or an ad­vo­cate could have in­di­cat­ed de­lib­er­ate iso­la­tion on the part of the Em­pire with the co­op­er­ation of the Jus­ticers.”

I stared. “You think so?”

“I said it could.”

“Oh. But you don’t re­al­ly think so?”

“I am most cer­tain­ly not go­ing to an­swer that, and don’t ask it again.”

“Oh. All right. But they be­lieved it?”

“They be­lieved I had grounds for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Ah. All right.”

He nod­ded. “Now, go and see her.”

“Um. Where? How?”

“Up one lev­el, fol­low wrong­wise un­til—here, I’ll write out the di­rec­tions; they’re a bit in­volved.”

They were. His script­ing was painful­ly neat and pre­cise, though he’d been fast enough writ­ing it out. And I must have looked like an id­iot, walk­ing down the hall with two jhereg on my shoul­ders re­peat­ed­ly stop­ping and read­ing the note and look­ing around. But those I passed were ei­ther as po­lite as Is­so­la or as obliv­ious as Athyra, and even­tu­al­ly I got there: a pair of mar­ble pil­lars guard­ed a pair of tall, wide doors en­graved so splen­did­ly with ca­vort­ing iorich that you might not no­tice the doors were bound in iron. You should go see them some­day; ca­vort­ing iorich aren’t some­thing one sees de­pict­ed ev­ery day, and for good rea­son. Be­fore them were four guards who looked like they had no sense of hu­mor, and a cor­po­ral whose job it was to find out if you had good rea­son for want­ing them open.

I con­vinced him by show­ing him that same coin I’d used be­fore, and there was a “clang” fol­lowed by in­vis­ible ser­vants pulling in­vis­ible ropes and the doors opened for me. Mor­rolan worked things bet­ter.

It was a lit­tle odd to walk through those por­tals. For one thing, the oth­er side was more what I was used to; I’d been there be­fore, and a cold shiv­er went through me as I set foot on the plain stone floors. I’m not go­ing to talk about the last time I was in the Iorich dun­geons. And I’m cer­tain­ly not go­ing to talk about the time be­fore that.

Just in­side was a guard sta­tion, like a small hut with glass win­dows in­side the wide cor­ri­dor. There were a cou­ple of couch­es there, I guess for them to sleep, and a ta­ble where the sergeant sat. There was a thick leather-​bound book in front of him. He said, “Your busi­ness?”

“To see Aliera e’Kieron, by re­quest of her ad­vo­cate.”

“Name?”

“Mine, or the ad­vo­cate’s?”

“Yours.”

“Szurke.”

“Seal?”

I dug it out and showed it to him. He nod­ded. “I was told you’d be by. You must ei­ther leave your weapons here, or sign and seal these doc­uments and take an oath promis­ing—”

“I know. I’ll sign the doc­uments and take the oath.”

He nod­ded, and we went through the pro­ce­dure that per­mit­ted me to keep La­dy Tel­dra, whom I was not about to give up. When ev­ery­thing was fi­nal­ly done, he said, “Limper, show him to num­ber eight.”

The wom­an who stood up and ges­tured to me was a bit short and had a pale com­plex­ion and showed no signs of limp­ing; no doubt there was a sto­ry there.

One thing about the dun­geons is that un­like the rest of the Iorich Wing, they were pret­ty sim­ple: a big square of doors, guard sta­tions at all four cor­ners, stair­ways in the mid­dle. It might in­volve a lot of walk­ing, but you wouldn’t get lost.

We took a stair­way up. I’d nev­er gone up from the main lev­el be­fore. The first thing I no­ticed was that the cells, though still made of the same iron-​bound wood, were much far­ther apart than the ones I’d had res­idence in. And they had clap­per ropes, for all love.

Limper used the rope, then dug out a key and used that with­out wait­ing for a re­sponse. I guess they felt that the oc­cu­pants of these elite cells de­served warn­ing about vis­itors, but still didn’t get a choice about whether they were ad­mit­ted. That made me feel a lit­tle bet­ter.

She opened the door and said, “You have an hour. If you want to leave soon­er, pull the knob at­tached to the in­side of the door.” I stepped in­side and the door closed be­hind me with a thud. I heard the bolt slide in­to place while I looked around.

When I was grow­ing up, the flat where my fa­ther and I lived was a great deal small­er than the “cell” Aliera was in, and con­sid­er­ably less lux­uri­ous. The floor was thick Se­ri­oli car­pet, with wavy pat­terns and hard-​an­gled lines all formed out of dots. The fur­nish­ings were all of the same blond hard­wood, and the light was from a chan­de­lier with enough can­dles to have il­lu­mi­nat­ed about fifty of the kind of cells I’d stayed in. I re­fer, of course, on­ly to the room I could see; there were at least two doors lead­ing off to oth­er rooms. Maybe one was a privy, and it was on­ly a two-​room suite.

I didn’t see Aliera at first; she was loung­ing on a long couch that her plain, black mil­itary garb blend­ed in­to; al­though I re­al­ly ought to have seen the sparks shoot­ing from her eyes as she gave me the sort of kind, friend­ly, wel­com­ing look I ex­pect­ed.

“What, by the thorns in Barlen’s ass, do you want?”

“Can we just let that oath stay un­ex­am­ined, Boss?”

“It’s al­ready gone, Loiosh.”

It was, too; be­cause while I was still search­ing for an an­swer, she said, “I didn’t give you per­mis­sion to vis­it.”

“Your ad­vo­cate ar­ranged it.”

“I don’t have an ad­vo­cate.”

“Turns out you do.”

“In­deed?” she said in a tone that would have put a lay­er of frost on Wynak’s burn­ing pri­vate parts.

“Some le­gal trick in­volved. I don’t un­der­stand that stuff.”

“And I have no say in the mat­ter?”

“You had no say in be­ing put here,” I said, shrug­ging.

“Very well,” she said. “Since they have tak­en Pathfind­er from me, if he dares show his face, I shall have to see what I can do with my bare hands.”

I nod­ded. “I knew you’d show sense.”

She glared. “Do you know why I don’t kill you right now?”

“Yes,” I said. “Be­cause to do so, you’d have to stand up. Once en­ter­ing the Iorich dun­geons, you are cut off from the Orb, and so you can’t lev­itate, so I’d see how short you re­al­ly are, and you couldn’t take the hu­mil­ia­tion. Go­ing to of­fer me some­thing to drink?” Just so you know, it had been years since she’d done that lev­itat­ing bit; I just said it to an­noy her.

She ges­tured with her head. “On the buf­fet. Help your­self.”

I did, to a hard cider that was pret­ty good, though it want­ed to be cold­er. I took a chair across from her and smiled pleas­ant­ly in­to her glare.

“So,” I said. “What’s new?”

Her re­sponse was more mar­tial than la­dy­like.

“Yes,” I said. “That part I sort of picked up on. But I was won­der­ing about the de­tails.”

“De­tails.” She said it like the word tast­ed bad.

“You were ar­rest­ed,” I said, “for the il­le­gal study and prac­tice—”

She had some sug­ges­tions about what I could do with my sum­ma­ry of her case.

I was com­ing to the con­clu­sion that she wasn’t in the best of moods for con­ver­sa­tion. I sipped some cider, let it roll around on my tongue, and looked around the room. She even had win­dows. They had bars on them, but they were re­al win­dows. When I was in “Jhereg stor­age” I didn’t have any win­dows. And they had done some­thing that pre­vent­ed psy­chic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, though I’d still been able to talk to Loiosh, which put me in a bet­ter po­si­tion than most.

“There is, I think, more go­ing on here than just the vi­ola­tion of a law.”

She stared at me.

I said, “You’ve been do­ing this for years, and ev­ery­one knows it. Why ar­rest you for it now? There has to be some­thing po­lit­ical go­ing on.”

“You think?”

I said, “Just catch­ing my­self up out loud.”

“Fine. Can you do it else­where? If there is any­one I want to see right now, it isn’t you.”

“Who is it?”

“Pathfind­er.”

“Oh. Well, yes.” I could imag­ine one miss­ing one’s Great Weapon. I touched the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra.

“Please leave,” she said.

“Naw,” I said.

She glared.

I said, “I need to get the de­tails if I’m go­ing to do any­thing about it. And I am go­ing to do some­thing about it.”

“Why?” She pret­ty much spat the word.

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “You know why. To gain the moral high ground on you. It’s what I live for. Just the idea of you ow­ing me—”

“Oh, shut up.”

I did, and took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pon­der. I need­ed an­oth­er way in. Once, years ago, I’d seen the room in Cas­tle Black where the Necro­mancer lived, if it could be called a room. It could hard­ly be called a clos­et. There was space for her to stand, and that was it. I couldn’t help but com­ment on how small it was, and she looked puz­zled for a mo­ment, then said, “Oh, but you on­ly per­ceive three di­men­sions, don’t you?” Yes, I’m afraid that’s all I per­ceive. And my usu­al way of per­ceiv­ing wasn’t go­ing to con­vince Aliera to tell me what was go­ing on.

“What are they feed­ing you here?”

She looked at me.

I said, “When I was here, I got this sort of soup with a few bread crusts float­ing in it. I think they may have waved a chick­en at it. I was just won­der­ing if they were treat­ing you any bet­ter.”

“When were you here?”

“A few times. Not here, ex­act­ly. Same build­ing, dif­fer­ent suite. Mine wasn’t so well ap­point­ed.”

“What, that gives you moral su­pe­ri­or­ity?”

“No, I get my moral su­pe­ri­or­ity from hav­ing been guilty of what they ar­rest­ed me for, and walk­ing out free a bit lat­er.”

She sniffed.

I said, “Well, a kind of moral su­pe­ri­or­ity any­way.”

She mut­tered some­thing about Jhereg. I imag­ine it wasn’t com­pli­men­ta­ry.

“But then,” I said, “you’re guilty too. Tech­ni­cal­ly, any­way. So I guess—”

“You know so much about it, don’t you?”

I got one of those quick flash­es of mem­ory you get, this one of me ly­ing on my back, un­able to move, while bits and pieces of the world turned in­to some­thing that ought not to ex­ist. “Not so much,” I said, “but more than I should.”

“I’ll agree with that.”

“The point is, what would make the Em­press sud­den­ly de­cide that a law she was turn­ing a blind eye to was now—”

“Ask her.”

“She prob­ably won’t an­swer me,” I said.

“And you think I will?”

“Why not?”

“I as­sume the ques­tion is rhetor­ical,” said Aliera.

She looked away and I wait­ed. I had some more cider. I love hav­ing a drink in my hand, be­cause it gives me some­thing to do while I’m wait­ing, and be­cause I look re­al­ly good hold­ing it, shift­ing from foot to foot, like the wait­er when the cus­tomer can’t de­cide be­tween the shrimp souf­flé and the lamb Fe­nar­ian. Okay, maybe I don’t look so good af­ter all. I went over and sat down in a chair fac­ing her, and took an­oth­er sip. Much bet­ter.

“Yes,” she said.

“Ex­cuse me?”

“The ques­tion was rhetor­ical.”

“Oh.” Then, “Mine wasn’t.”

She set­tled back a lit­tle on­to the couch. I let the si­lence con­tin­ue to see if she’d fi­nal­ly say some­thing. She did. “I don’t know.” She sound­ed qui­et, re­flec­tive. It was un­usu­al for her. I kept my mouth shut, sort of in hon­or of the nov­el­ty and to see if any­thing else would emerge.

“It isn’t that sim­ple,” she said, as if I’d been the oth­er par­ty in what­ev­er in­ter­nal di­alogue was go­ing on.

“Ex­plain, then.”

“You keep want­ing to make it friend­ship ver­sus pol­itics.”

I nod­ded to in­di­cate that I had no idea what she was talk­ing about.

“But it’s nev­er that clear-​cut. It’s all about how bad this would be, and what are the chances of that hap­pen­ing, and how sure are you that this or that will or won’t work.”

I nod­ded again. Hav­ing Aliera e’Kieron in an ex­pan­sive mood was too good a chance to mess up by speak­ing.

“But she wouldn’t have done it un­less—” She broke off and glared at me.

“Un­less what?” I said.

“Just shut up.”

“Don’t feel like it,” I said. “Will you talk to an ad­vo­cate?”

“Why?”

“So they don’t, I don’t know, kill you or some­thing?”

“You think I care about that?”

“I seem to re­call you fight­ing once as if you did. Maybe you were fak­ing it, though.”

“You know damned well that’s dif­fer­ent.”

“You know I’ve al­ways had trou­ble see­ing fine dis­tinc­tions.”

“You’ve al­ways had trou­ble see­ing any­thing that wasn’t of im­me­di­ate prac­ti­cal val­ue.”

“You say that like there’s some­thing wrong with it.”

She made a sound of dis­gust.

“All right,” I said. “Now prob­ably isn’t the time for phi­los­ophy. Will you talk to an ad­vo­cate?”

“No,” she said.

I took it as equiv­ocal.

“Afraid you might be found in­no­cent?”

She looked at me, then looked off. “Go away.” Am­bigu­ous.

“Sure. Mean­while, what do you know or sus­pect that would have led to this, ah, sit­ua­tion, that you don’t want re­vealed?”

“I’m not go­ing to tell you any­thing, Vlad. Leave me alone.”

It was hard to know how to re­act when she was be­ing so hes­itant about her wish­es.

“You’ve been ar­rest­ed for rea­sons of State,” I said as if I were sure. “You may not know what they are, but you know that’s what it is. And you’re afraid that if you de­fend your­self it will in­ter­fere with what­ev­er the Em­press is do­ing.”

“Drop dead.”

“It must not have oc­curred to you that the Em­press is count­ing on you to de­fend your­self, oth­er­wise she’d nev­er have used this de­vice to ac­com­plish what­ev­er she’s try­ing to ac­com­plish.”

She looked at me, and there was a flick­er of in­ter­est in her eyes. “How would you know?”

“She told me. She all but told me, by what she wouldn’t tell me.”

“You spoke to her?”

“I can do that. I have an Im­pe­ri­al ti­tle, you know.”

“And she said—”

“I got the feel­ing there were a lot of things go­ing on she couldn’t tell me.”

“You got the feel­ing.”

“Right.”

“So you’re guess­ing.”

“Less than cer­tain­ty, more than guess­work.”

She made a gen­er­al sound of dis­gust.

I wait­ed. Drag­onlords are much too stub­born to be con­vinced of any­thing by ar­gu­ment, so the trick to deal­ing with them is to avoid say­ing some­thing that will get you killed un­til they come around to your opin­ion on their own. This is more true of Aliera than most.

She said, “If Her Majesty had not wished for my con­vic­tion, she wouldn’t have be­gun the ar­rest pro­ceed­ings.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

Those were the last words spo­ken for some few min­utes. Spo­ken aloud, I mean; Loiosh spoke a bit in­to my mind, most­ly mak­ing ob­ser­va­tions about Aliera’s char­ac­ter. I’d heard them be­fore. I’d said them be­fore.

“I wish to reem­pha­size the one im­por­tant thing,” I said even­tu­al­ly.

“What. Is. That?”

“If you don’t have an ad­vo­cate, it’ll be pret­ty ob­vi­ous to ev­ery­one that you’re de­lib­er­ate­ly sac­ri­fic­ing your­self. If you are de­lib­er­ate­ly sac­ri­fic­ing your­self, that is li­able to un­do a great deal of what the Em­press is try­ing to ac­com­plish.”

She stared at me. I think she knew I was just try­ing to ma­neu­ver her in­to do­ing what I want­ed; the trou­ble was that it was a valid ar­gu­ment. Even­tu­al­ly she said, “Is the ad­vo­cate any good?”

“How would I know?” I said. “Prob­ably not.”

She glared. “All right. I’ll see him.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“Get out of here.”

That time I did.

Iorich

4

La­dy Otria e’Ter­ics re­port­ed that, while no weapons were found on the scene, save those in use by the Im­pe­ri­al army and so marked, and three per­son­al, un­marked weapons claimed by same, there were sev­er­al im­ple­ments in or near the cot­tage that could have been uti­lized as weapons. See list Ap­pendix 12. Up­on be­ing asked if there was ev­idence that they had been so uti­lized, La­dy Otria e’Ter­ics de­clined to an­swer. See De­po­si­tion 9.

There’s an inn called Dancer’s Rest not far from the Iorich Wing. It’s one of those places where they fig­ure if they fill the court­yard with mar­ble stat­ues and foun­tains and flow­ers that are bloom­ing off-​sea­son, they can charge two orbs a night for a nine-​cop­per room. It works, I guess. At least, I paid it. Some of the stat­ues were pret­ty. And, you know, when you’ve been away from civ­iliza­tion for a while, you val­ue a nine-​cop­per room at any price.

It had the oth­er ad­van­tage that, by Jhereg cus­tom, any­one stay­ing there was con­sid­ered at home. In the­ory, I should be safe there. In prac­tice, since one of the things the Jhereg want­ed me for was break­ing a rule like that, I prob­ably shouldn’t bet my soul on it.

It cost an­oth­er orb to have food sent up to my room, which had a win­dow from which I could see the up­per reach­es of the Iorich and the Chreotha Wings, the first with its sig­na­ture bell tow­er, the lat­ter with its mas­sive wall of bas-​re­lief jun­gle plants. I could see them well, be­cause the win­dow was glass. That’s the sort of thing you get for two orbs a night.

The bed was con­sid­er­ably soft­er than the ground I’d got­ten used to sleep­ing on, and there was even enough room to turn with my arms stretched out. That’s the thing about rooms near the Palace: They’re small; prob­ably de­signed to make the Palace seem big­ger, I don’t know.

“You ev­er plan­ning to fall asleep, Boss?”

“The walls are too thick. It’s too qui­et. I’m used to things chit­ter­ing and rustling all night.”

He didn’t an­swer, and some­where in there I fell asleep and had a con­fus­ing dream about thick walls that were in be­tween me and some­thing I want­ed, I don’t re­mem­ber what, and I kept try­ing to dig through them with the dull edge of a knife. Why the dull edge? How should I know; I was on­ly a spec­ta­tor.

I woke late the next morn­ing, feel­ing pret­ty good. Loiosh and Rocza scout­ed the area, de­cid­ed it was safe, and I went out look­ing for kla­va. Found some. Drank it. Was hap­py. I al­so picked up a warm sweet bun stuffed with keth­na, and it was good too. Then, with Loiosh and Rocza tak­ing pre­cau­tions for me, I made my way back to the Iorich Wing.

The ad­vo­cate’s door was closed and there was a note pinned to it with the ini­tial V in tight, care­ful script. I took down the note and un­fold­ed it to read, “Run­ning an er­rand; wait in my of­fice.”

I shrugged and reached for the door han­dle, and Loiosh said, “Boss!”

I froze. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

My hand brushed La­dy Tel­dra’s hilt, but I didn’t draw. Pulling a Mor­gan­ti weapon in the House of the Iorich is the sort of thing that gets you talked about, and I wasn’t go­ing to do it if I didn’t have to.

“Some­thing about that note both­ers me.”

“If you tell me you’ve sud­den­ly turned in­to a hand­writ­ing ex­pert—”

He didn’t an­swer; I could feel him think­ing, or at least do­ing some­thing with his mind, prob­ing or sens­ing in a way that I couldn’t feel. I wait­ed. I hoped no one walked by, be­cause I’d ei­ther kill him or feel like an id­iot for stand­ing out­side of this door not mov­ing. I stud­ied the note again. Was it the same hand­writ­ing I’d seen from Perisil? Pret­ty close. I start­ed to pull out the di­rec­tions he’d writ­ten out for me to com­pare the writ­ing, but Loiosh spoke be­fore I could.

“There’s some­one in­side.”

“Okay.”

“It isn’t him.”

“Okay. Any­one else around?”

“A few of the oth­er of­fices have peo­ple in them.”

“Send Rocza ahead.”

She left my shoul­der al­most be­fore the words were out of my metaphor­ical mouth. I turned and walked back the way I’d come—not too fast, not too slow, try­ing to stay alert for any sound, any flick­er of move­ment. It’s the sort of ex­pe­ri­ence that wakes up ev­ery par­ti­cle of your body. If it weren’t for the thrill of the thing, I’d just as soon skip it com­plete­ly.

“She says it’s clear ahead, Boss.”

The hall­way was much, much longer than it had been two min­utes be­fore when I was go­ing the oth­er way, and my foot­steps were much loud­er. Two Jus­ticers were walk­ing slow­ly to­ward me, deep in con­ver­sa­tion, and I gave them an ex­tra look even though I could tell they weren’t Jhereg from the frankly cu­ri­ous glance they gave me. I could feel Loiosh watch­ing them un­til they were well past.

I reached the stair­way at the far end of the hall­way with Rocza still scout­ing ahead. On the main floor I could re­lax a lit­tle; there were uni­formed arms­men there, and a few more peo­ple as well as more open space; it was a bad place for an as­sas­sin to make a move.

The same el­der­ly wom­an was in the same place near the door. Next to her was a Chreotha with a cart sell­ing food of some sort. I bought a hot and flaky pas­try filled with gar­licky pota­to. I stood off to the side eat­ing and think­ing.

I fed the re­main­ders to the jhereg; peo­ple around pre­tend­ed not to no­tice. La­dy Tel­dra would have been proud of them.

I brushed crumbs off my fin­gers.

“Okay, Boss. Now where?”

“Some­where safe.”

“Yeah, like I said.”

“This is pret­ty safe, but I think af­ter stand­ing here six or sev­en hours I’ll start to feel sil­ly.”

“When has that—”

“Of course, it might be fun to stand here un­til the as­sas­sin gives up and leaves, and then give him a big smile as he goes by.”

“Sure, Boss. What­ev­er floats your cas­tle.”

“The oth­er idea is not to do that.” I re­viewed a list of more prac­ti­cal pos­si­bil­ities, then ap­proached the wom­an be­hind the desk with a short bow. “Is there a com­mon wait­ing area?”

She frowned. “If you wish to see an ad­vo­cate, they each have of­fices.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’d rather wait else­where, if you don’t mind.”

She looked like she want­ed to ask why, but on­ly ges­tured to her right, say­ing, “Fourth door on the right. It should be open.”

“Can a note be de­liv­ered to Lord Perisil?”

She frowned again. “Would that be High Coun­sel Perisil?”

“Yes,” I said, while the ghost of La­dy Tel­dra prob­ably tsked at me for not know­ing the prop­er ti­tle and at her for cor­rect­ing me.

The clerk was kind enough to let me use a piece of coarse pa­per and a cheap pen­cil. I wrote a short note and hand­ed it over, not even both­er­ing to fold it. “I do not know the cus­toms of your House,” I said. “I trust this will go to his hand, and nowhere else?”

“That is cor­rect,” she said, a bit con­temp­tu­ous­ly. She prob­ably hat­ed her job, sit­ting there hour af­ter hour send­ing peo­ple one way or an­oth­er. I won­dered how long she’d been do­ing it. Since the In­ter­reg­num end­ed, to look at her.

She took the note and put it ca­su­al­ly on her desk un­der what looked like a piece of pol­ished stone. I turned away from her slow­ly, scan­ning the room: A few peo­ple, most­ly Iorich, were pass­ing by on busi­ness of their own. The jhereg got some cu­ri­ous glances.

The place she’d di­rect­ed me to was big and com­fort­able, most­ly done in a pale blue that was prob­ably cal­cu­lat­ed to make me feel some­thing or oth­er.

“You know, Boss, for some­one who hates wait­ing—”

“Oh, shut up.”

Not that he wasn’t right. I found a chair against a wall be­cause all of the chairs were against a wall. I stretched my legs out, closed my eyes, and tried to re­lax. Some­where be­low me, there was a Jhereg ex­pect­ing me to walk in­to Perisil’s of­fice so I could be killed. Was Perisil in on it? Un­like­ly. The Jhereg don’t like to use ad­vo­cates for il­le­gal stuff; and be­sides, if he’d been in on it the note wouldn’t have looked fun­ny.

Here’s the thing: Any­one can be shined. That’s just how it is. If you want some­one bad enough, you can get him. But if he knows you’re af­ter him, he can pret­ty much keep out of trou­ble as long as he stays alert. Which makes the ques­tion sim­ple: How long can some­one stay alert, al­ways watch­ing al­ley­ways, aware of any­one who is care­ful­ly not look­ing at you, keep­ing an eye out for a good place to make a move. How long can you keep that up?

For most peo­ple, the an­swer is: hours, maybe a day or two.

But it turns out that you can do it a lot longer if you have a pair of jhereg tak­ing shifts for you.

Did that mean I was safe? Not hard­ly. Soon­er or lat­er they were bound to get me. But thanks to Loiosh and Rocza, I had a pret­ty rea­son­able chance of mak­ing it lat­er rather than soon­er as long as I didn’t do too many stupid things.

I know what you’re think­ing, and you’re wrong; I’ve gone for months with­out do­ing any­thing stupid. Did I just sur­vive this time be­cause the as­sas­sin got slop­py? Maybe. I’d like to think that if it were me I’d have been more care­ful with the note. Per­haps not, though. No one can do ev­ery­thing per­fect­ly; mis­takes hap­pen. But we’re as­sas­sins: when we make mis­takes, peo­ple live.

From time to time some­one would come in­to the room, wait for a while, be met by some­one, and leave. I guess I was there for a cou­ple of hours be­fore Perisil came in. He nod­ded to me, and said, “You could have wait­ed in my of­fice.”

I stood up, nod­ded, and fol­lowed him back down the stairs. We didn’t see any­one in the long hall­way. He walked in, took a seat be­hind his desk, and gave me a ques­tion­ing look. I de­cid­ed it was a safe bet that if there’d been an as­sas­sin stand­ing there hold­ing a knife, he’d have re­act­ed some­how, so I went in af­ter him and took a seat.

“Want to ex­plain?” he said.

“Ex­plain what?”

“Nev­er mind, then.”

“You saw Aliera?”

“Just got back. She’s very, ah, proud,” he said.

“If you aren’t stat­ing the ob­vi­ous, then I’m miss­ing the point.”

“I’m stat­ing the ob­vi­ous.”

“All right.”

“Most­ly.” He sat down be­hind the desk as if he’d just been through a bat­tle. It was a very fa­mil­iar mo­tion, al­though when I sat down like that, the bat­tle had usu­al­ly been more phys­ical.

“Want to tell me about it?” I said.

“I got her to agree to let me de­fend her.”

“Well done.”

“But she won’t co­op­er­ate in the en­deav­or.”

“That would be a prob­lem.”

“Yes.”

“So, what are you go­ing to do?”

“Think about it.”

“I’ve tried that with Aliera.”

“Not much luck?”

“She isn’t sub­ject to what pass­es for log­ical thought in most peo­ple.”

He nod­ded. “I’ll see what I can come up with. Have you learned any­thing?”

“The Em­press was hit with some sort of dis­as­ter that re­flects bad­ly on her.”

“With whom?”

“Know­ing the Em­press, prob­ably his­to­ry. She’s nev­er seemed to care much about pub­lic opin­ion.”

“Can you be more spe­cif­ic?”

“Not very. Not yet.”

“You think it might be Tir­ma?”

“Maybe. Hard to say, since this is the first I’ve ev­er heard of Tir­ma.”

“Oh. That’s right, you’ve been out of the city, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I on­ly heard about Aliera’s ar­rest by a fluke.”

“Tir­ma is a vil­lage in the far north­west. There was some un­rest there, and a re­quest for Im­pe­ri­al troops. No one knows what hap­pened, but some peas­ants were slaugh­tered.”

“In­no­cent ones?”

“Some say.”

“I’ll bet Kel­ly has a lot to say on the sub­ject.”

“Who?”

“Nev­er mind. How does ar­rest­ing Aliera help? A dis­trac­tion?”

“Maybe.”

He looked like he was think­ing, so I let him alone. Af­ter a minute or two he said, “The big­ger ques­tion is, how does Aliera think it helps?”

“Yeah,” I said. “As­sum­ing all our spec­ula­tions are right.”

“We have to find out for sure.”

“You’re telling me that’s my job.”

“I’m say­ing I ex­pect your help.”

I grunt­ed. “I guess that’s fair.”

He nod­ded.

I sup­pose I could have told him that the Jhereg al­ready knew I was back in town, and it wouldn’t be safe for me to go sniff­ing around places. But then what? I mean, it had to be done.

“Sure, Boss. But do you have to be the one to do it?”

“Seems like.”

“Why?”

“No one else is.”

“Right, Boss. Why?”

“Oh.”

“. . .and un­til then, I’m not go­ing to be able to—”

“Sor­ry, I was dis­tract­ed. Start over?”

He gave me an odd look. “I was say­ing that I need some­thing I can take to a Jus­ticer.”

“What do you mean, take to a Jus­ticer?”

“I mean send­ing a Pe­ti­tion of Re­lease, or make a case for Dis­hon­or­able Pros­ecu­tion.”

“Dis­hon­or­able Pros­ecu­tion? They have that?”

“It’s in the books.”

“How many times has it been brought?”

“Suc­cess­ful­ly?”

“At all.”

“Twen­ty-​sev­en.”

“Suc­cess­ful­ly?”

“Nev­er.”

“You’d bring that against the Em­press?”

“Against the Em­pire, but, in ef­fect, yes.”

“For­get it. Aliera will nev­er per­mit it.”

He nod­ded as if he’d come to the same con­clu­sion. “Prob­ably true, but I want to have it there any­way.”

“What­ev­er you think,” I said.

“What I think is that this is very odd.”

“Seems like it to me, too. The Em­press pros­ecut­ing a friend isn’t—”

“No, that’s not what’s odd; Em­per­ors do what they have to do, and be­ing a friend to an Em­per­or some­times means los­ing your head. It’s al­ways been like that.”

“All right, then. What’s odd?”

“The law they’re pros­ecut­ing her with. It isn’t in­tend­ed to be used against high no­bles whose House is near the top of the Cy­cle.”

“Ah, you’ll have to ex­plain that.”

“What’s to ex­plain?”

“Some laws ap­ply to high no­bles, and some not?”

“How else?”

“Um. I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”

“To pros­ecute a no­ble un­der the Code, you have to get a ma­jor­ity vote of the princes. The princes aren’t go­ing to vote against a no­ble when the House is pow­er­ful with­out a more com­pelling case than this is.”

“So this is a waste of time?”

“No, no—you mis­un­der­stand. That’s un­der the Code. This is an Im­pe­ri­al Edict, which means the Em­press and the High Jus­ticer make the de­ci­sion. That’s why they can get a con­vic­tion.”

“Well then, what’s—”

“But us­ing the Edicts against a no­ble, at a time when you couldn’t get a con­vic­tion, is go­ing to raise quite a stink among the princes. The High Jus­ticer has to know that, and so does the Em­press.”

“Would they let that in­ter­fere with jus­tice?”

“Are you be­ing fun­ny?”

“Yes.”

“Eh. I guess it was a lit­tle fun­ny at that. But, you know, there is mak­ing the law, and en­forc­ing the law, and in­ter­pret­ing the law, and they all mix up to­geth­er, and it’s peo­ple who do those things, and the peo­ple all mix up to­geth­er. You can’t sep­arate them.”

“It’d be in­ter­est­ing to try.”

He waved it aside. “The point is, this will cre­ate lots of bad feel­ings among those who mat­ter. And bad feel­ings are bad states­man­ship, and the Em­press isn’t known for bad states­man­ship.”

“Um. Okay, I think I get the idea. What’s your con­clu­sion?”

“My con­clu­sion is that I want to know what’s go­ing on. I’ll look at it from my end, you look at it from yours.”

“All right.”

“Do you know how you’re go­ing to start?”

“Of course not.”

He nod­ded like he’d have been sur­prised to get any oth­er an­swer. “Are you open to sug­ges­tions?”

“Sure.”

“Stay away from the Em­press.”

“That part is easy. I don’t have that much call to see her, you know. But that on­ly tells me what not to do.”

“I’m sure we can find more things for you not to do if we put our minds to it.”

“See, Boss? He does have a sense of hu­mor.”

“Such as it is.” Aloud, I said, “You need some­thing that will pro­vide a le­gal an­gle for Aliera.”

He nod­ded.

“Yeah, well, I know about as much about the law as you know about—that is, I don’t know much about the law.”

“You don’t need to. Find out why they’re pros­ecut­ing Aliera, and be able to prove it.”

“Prove it. What does that mean, ex­act­ly?”

“Find peo­ple who saw or heard things, and will swear to it be­neath the Orb.”

“Oh, and where would I—oh.”

“Right. But stay away from the Em­press.”

“Great. And what will you be do­ing?”

“Same as you, on­ly to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. And I’ll be re­view­ing the laws, and look­ing through de­ci­sions and case his­to­ries. You aren’t go­ing to be too use­ful for that part.”

“I imag­ine not.” I stood and head­ed out.

Let me ex­plain again some­thing I’ve al­ready men­tioned: The way an as­sas­sin op­er­ates in­volves pick­ing a time and a place, set­ting up what­ev­er is nec­es­sary (which usu­al­ly means mak­ing sure you have a good edge on your knife), and strik­ing. If for some rea­son things go wrong—like, say, the guy gets sus­pi­cious about the hand­writ­ing of a note—then you go back and start over. All of which means that no one was go­ing to be mak­ing a move on me for a day at least. Which means I should have been able to re­lax as I left the wait­ing room and head­ed to­ward the Palace.

Yeah, well, you try it some­time and see how re­laxed you are.

Loiosh was pret­ty tense too, ei­ther be­cause he sensed that I was, or be­cause he knew what was go­ing on. It’s pret­ty crazy, that feel­ing of walk­ing through a big, wide cor­ri­dor, your boots echo­ing, al­most no one in sight, think­ing you’re safe, but feel­ing any­thing but. I stopped just in­side the door to cross the wide pave­ment to the Iorich Wing, and let Loiosh and Rocza ex­plore care­ful­ly. The trees that dot­ted the pave­ment were too thin for any­one to hide be­hind, but I stud­ied them any­way.

I kept an even walk­ing pace across the long, long, long paved prom­enade be­tween the House of the Iorich and the Palace.

“Boss, no one is go­ing to make a move in the mid­dle of the day, out in the open, in front of the Im­pe­ri­al Palace.”

“Who are you try­ing to con­vince?”

“Me, of course.”

“Just check­ing.”

“But you have to fig­ure you’re be­ing watched.”

“I know.”

I got in­side, and start­ed to­ward the Im­pe­ri­al Wing. I had the idea that it would be fun to count the num­ber of dis­dain­ful looks I got on the way, but I for­got to ac­tu­al­ly do it. I’m still not sure how I got lost; I thought I had the route mem­orized. I wasn’t even aware of hav­ing gone wrong un­til I stepped in­to a large open area I hadn’t re­al­ized ex­ist­ed, and heard the drone of voic­es and saw strange and won­drous things: a shoe­mak­er’s shop, a tai­lor’s, a wine sell­er’s, a sor­cer­er’s sup­ply, a sil­ver­smith. The ceil­ing, if you can call it that, was high and domed, and some­how the dome’s sil­very white col­or made it seem even high­er.

“Boss, there’s a whole town here.”

“I think I should have gone up that flight of stairs I went down.”

“Or maybe down the one you went up?”

“This is a whole city.”

“There’s prob­ably an inn with bet­ter food than that place yes­ter­day.”

“I can al­ways count on you to get right to the im­por­tant stuff.”

“The im­por­tant stuff is find­ing your way back to where you want to be.”

“The im­por­tant stuff is not to get killed. This is a good place to shine some­one up.”

“Oh,” he said. And, “It is, isn’t it?”

“It’s still too soon for them to have set any­thing up, but—”

“We’re watch­ing, Boss.”

I tried to be in­con­spic­uous—which I’m not bad at, by the way, even with a pair of jhereg on my shoul­ders—and looked for some­one to ask di­rec­tions of.

A girl who was too young to work for the Jhereg came along, car­ry­ing a box full of some­thing that steamed. Prob­ably some­one’s lunch that I was go­ing to make cold.

“I beg your par­don, la­dy,” I said. Teck­la es­pe­cial­ly like be­ing called “la­dy” when they’re too young to be. “Can you tell me how to get out of here?”

She stopped. “Out of where?”

“To the Palace.”

“You’re in the Palace, sir.” Her tone said she thought I was de­ranged or else stupid.

“The Im­pe­ri­al Wing.”

“Oh.” She ges­tured with her chin. “That way un­til you see the three pil­lars, then left to the wide stair­way, and up. You’ll be right there.”

“You have my thanks.”

There were streets, build­ings, push­carts with food, and I think I even saw a beg­gar. What I didn’t see were three pil­lars, un­til I fi­nal­ly no­ticed what looked like an inn in minia­ture—chairs and ta­bles set in a small court­yard near a long bar—that spread be­neath a hang­ing sign show­ing three pil­lars. Yeah, all right.

Af­ter that it was easy enough to find the stair­way (I climbed a lot of stairs, but not as many as it seemed I should have climbed to get above that domed ceil­ing; there’s some weird ge­om­etry with that place), and a bit lat­er I found a page in Tias­sa liv­ery who was kind enough to point me in the right di­rec­tion. Ten min­utes or so lat­er I was once more in an area that looked fa­mil­iar—for the sym­bols of the Im­pe­ri­al Phoenix that marked ev­ery door, if for no oth­er rea­son.

It was the mid­dle of the day, and it was busy—Phoenix Guards look­ing im­pas­sive, ad­vis­ers look­ing se­ri­ous, ad­ju­tants look­ing im­por­tant, courtiers look­ing court­ly, and all of them mov­ing past me like I was stand­ing in the mid­dle of a stream that flowed around me as if I were of no in­ter­est, and it might sweep me off if it felt in­clined. I looked for some­one who wasn’t in a hur­ry, be­cause rush­ing down a hall­way filled with teem­ing func­tionar­ies isn’t the best way to have a con­ver­sa­tion.

Af­ter about fif­teen min­utes, I gave up and start­ed drift­ing along in what I was pret­ty sure was the di­rec­tion of the throne room.

“Not to make you ner­vous or any­thing, Boss, but some­one who could nail you here, right in the Im­pe­ri­al Wing, would earn him­self quite the rep­uta­tion.”

“Yeah.”

The hall­ways of the Im­pe­ri­al Wing near the throne room are wide and tall and cop­per-​col­ored, and you can’t imag­ine there be­ing a time of day or night when they aren’t full of peo­ple scur­ry­ing about look­ing im­por­tant. Here and there were wide arch­ways or nar­row doors, and from time to time some­one will van­ish in­to one or pop out and en­ter the flow. I didn’t go out of my way to call at­ten­tion to my­self, but I didn’t try to fit in, ei­ther, be­cause that would have in­volved be­com­ing part of the con­stant move­ment, and I want­ed to take some time to just ob­serve.

Even­tu­al­ly I found a place I rec­og­nized—I’d eat­en there yes­ter­day. I didn’t care to make that mis­take again, but a num­ber of oth­ers weren’t so par­tic­ular: this time the place was do­ing a pret­ty good busi­ness. There was a low, steady hum of voic­es punc­tu­at­ed by met­al trays and uten­sils.

I stood off the side for a while and just watched. On the oth­er side, all alone at a ta­ble, there was a Dra­gaer­an of mid­dle years—say a thou­sand or so—who had the pale com­plex­ion and round face of the House of the Teck­la. I stud­ied him for a mo­ment; he was drink­ing slow­ly, and seemed re­laxed and maybe lost in thought. I ap­proached and said, “Mind if I join you?”

He jumped a bit and start­ed to rise, took in my mus­tache, the jhereg on my shoul­ders, and my sword. He hes­itat­ed and frowned; I ges­tured to him to re­main sit­ting to make it easy for him. Teck­la are nev­er ex­act­ly sure whether they are above or be­low a no­ble­man who hap­pens to be an East­ern­er—we throw off all of their cal­cu­la­tions just by ex­ist­ing.

“By all means, my l . . . ah, sir.”

“Thanks,” I pulled up a chair. “I’ll buy you an­oth­er of what­ev­er you have there, if you don’t mind. What does the yel­low arm­band sig­ni­fy?”

He had light brown hair peek­ing out from un­der a hat that was too tall and not wide enough to look any­thing but ab­surd. He glanced at the arm­band as if he didn’t re­al­ize it was there, then said, “Oh, I’m a mes­sage-​run­ner.”

“For whom?”

“For hire, sir. Did you wish a mes­sage sent some­where with­in the Palace? If it is out­side the Palace it­self, I have to charge more, be­cause I pass it on to—”

“No, no. I was just cu­ri­ous about what it meant.”

He nod­ded, held up his mug, and ges­tured in the di­rec­tion of a young Chreotha who seemed to be work­ing for the old­er wom­an who was still there, on­ly now much more awake.

“I’m Vlad,” I said. “Baronet of this, Im­pe­ri­al Count of that, but skip all that.” He wouldn’t, of course. He’d be in­ca­pable of skip­ping it.

“I’m Pon­cer,” he said.

“Well met.”

He gave Loiosh and Rocza a look, but then his drink ar­rived—it smelled like the sort of dark beer that makes me hate beer—and that dis­tract­ed him.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he asked af­ter a swal­low.

“Tell me what you know.”

“Sir?”

I smiled. “Do you need to be any­where for the next cou­ple of hours?”

“Well, I should look for work—”

“How much do you earn?”

“Three pen­nies with­in the Im­pe­ri­al Wing. If I have to—”

I gave him an im­pe­ri­al.

He stared at it, then at me, then back to it, then he took it and put in­to a pouch at his side.

I now had his at­ten­tion.

Iorich

5

The or­ders from the War­lord to Gen­er­al La­dy Fardra e’Baritt were not put in spe­cif­ic terms (see Ap­pendix 2), but did in­clude the phrase “min­imal dam­age to prop­er­ty and non-​com­bat­ants in the re­gion is a pri­or­ity sec­ond on­ly to sup­pres­sion of the dis­or­ders.” One ques­tion be­fore this com­mit­tee, then, is to con­sid­er what “min­imal” means in this con­text, and who is a non-​com­bat­ant, and who can rea­son­ably be as­sumed to be a non-​com­bat­ant by in­di­vid­ual sol­diers of var­ious ranks and re­spon­si­bil­ities in high-​risk ar­eas.

“You see peo­ple,” I told him.

“My lord?”

I’m not com­plete­ly sure how much the ti­tles and how much the im­pe­ri­al had to do with me be­com­ing “my lord.” I said, “I’m try­ing to learn my way around this place, and who’s who, so I don’t make a fool of my­self when I meet strangers.”

He nod­ded as if it were a great idea, and he was just the man for the job.

“Who do you want to know about first?” He had a se­ri­ous, busi­ness-​like ex­pres­sion. I avoid­ed laugh­ing in his face be­cause it would have been un­pro­duc­tive, not to men­tion rude.

“Who is close to Her Majesty?”

“Close?” he said, as if I’d men­tioned some­thing scan­dalous.

“Who does she lis­ten to?”

“Oh,” he said, and looked thought­ful again. “Well, first, there’s La­dy Mi­faant.”

“Who is she?”

“An Is­so­la. She doesn’t have, ah, an of­fice or any­thing. I mean, there’s no name for it. But she’s Her Majesty’s, um, I don’t know the word. The per­son the Em­press goes to when some­thing is both­er­ing her.”

“Con­fi­dant? Best friend?”

Some­thing about that both­ered him—like, I don’t know, maybe the Em­press isn’t sup­posed to have friends—but he fi­nal­ly gave a hes­itant nod.

“Who else?”

“Neru­lan, of course. Her physick­er.”

I nod­ded.

“And her, well—” He hes­itat­ed, and turned a lit­tle red.

“Hm­mm?”

“You know.”

“I don’t, ac­tu­al­ly. Un­less you mean she has a lover.”

He nod­ded once, watch­ing me care­ful­ly, as if for a clue as to what sort of ex­pres­sion he should have.

“Who is he? Or she?”

“He. He’s, um, he’s . . .” His voice trailed off and looked a lit­tle des­per­ate.

“An East­ern­er?” I said. In fact, I knew very well, but the less I ad­mit­ted to know­ing, the more he’d tell me.

He nod­ded.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d heard ru­mors. What’s his name?”

“Las­zló,” he said. I nod­ded. Pon­cer dropped his voice and said, “He’s a witch.”

“Well,” I said. “In­ter­est­ing.”

And it was.

“He’s been alive for, well, longer than they’re sup­posed to live, any­way.” He looked at me, red­dened again, and be­came very in­ter­est­ed in his drink.

I gave him what I cal­cu­lat­ed to be a friend­ly, re­as­sur­ing chuck­le. “What does he look like?”

He frowned. “Like you,” he said. “His skin is your col­or, and he has hair grow­ing like you have, above his lip. More hair, though, and curli­er.”

“I take it he’s usu­al­ly sur­round­ed by courtiers?”

“They try,” he said.

“Yeah, they would.”

“He tries to stay away from them, though.”

“I don’t blame him. So, how do I man­age to talk to him?”

“Um,” he said. I think the ques­tion star­tled him. Gos­sip was one thing; ac­tu­al­ly us­ing the gos­sip seemed to make him un­com­fort­able. I wait­ed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t think of any way.”

I wait­ed some more.

“It won’t help,” he said, “but there are ru­mors . . .”

“Yes?”

“There are ru­mors that he knows the En­chantress of Dzur Moun­tain.”

I didn’t have to pre­tend to look star­tled.

“Easy, Boss. ‘Ru­mors,’ re­mem­ber?”

“But still—”

“And if she knew him, why didn’t she ev­er men­tion it?”

“Oh, come on, Loiosh. She’s Sethra.”

“That’s good to know,” I told Pon­cer. “Who else sees the Em­press? Does she have a Prime Min­is­ter?”

“No,” he said. “Well, some say she does, but it’s se­cret.”

“She must have ad­vis­ers she con­sults reg­ular­ly.”

“The War­lord, for any­thing about the army. And the La­dy of the Chairs for any­thing to do with the Coun­cil of Princes. And then for fi­nances and stuff—”

“The War­lord.”

He nod­ded.

“I thought the War­lord was un­der ar­rest.”

“The new War­lord.”

“Who is the new War­lord?”

“Her High­ness No­rathar,” he said.

I stared at him. Af­ter a mo­ment, I said, “I thought she was Drag­on Heir.”

“She’s both.”

“In­ter­est­ing. And they see each oth­er of­ten?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is La­dy of the Chairs?”

“Lord Avis­sa.”

“House?”

“Is­so­la. The La­dy of the Chairs is al­ways an Is­so­la.”

“Oh. Of course.” I al­most touched the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra, but I didn’t want to make Pon­cer any more ner­vous than I had to.

We talked a lit­tle longer about in­con­se­quen­tial things, and I bought him an­oth­er beer, dodged a few po­lite ques­tions, and took my leave. I’m much bet­ter at get­ting in­for­ma­tion from Teck­la than I used to be, thanks to a ghost and a knife, in that or­der. Long sto­ry, nev­er mind.

No­rathar and Sethra. Yeah, I shouldn’t be sur­prised that two of the Em­press’s se­cret con­fi­dants were peo­ple I knew. Aliera her­self was a third, for that mat­ter. I had sur­round­ed my­self with those types by a com­plex pro­cess that had start­ed years ago when a mi­nor but­ton-​man start­ed skim­ming from me. And no, I’m not about to give you any more de­tails. Get over it.

I thought about walk­ing to the Drag­on Wing and see­ing if I could have a long chat with No­rathar e’Lanya, the War­lord and Drag­on Heir. Once, she’d been a Jhereg as­sas­sin. She’d worked with the East­ern­er who be­came my wife.

My son would be about eight now. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been four. A lot goes on in those four years. By now—

No.

I stood still in a hall­way deep in the heart of the Palace that con­trolled the mighty Em­pire of Dra­gaer­ans, let­ting hu­man­ity (to use the term loose­ly) flow around me, and tried to con­vince my­self to at­tend to busi­ness. See­ing Cawti and my son would make me mis­er­able and put them in dan­ger. So, nat­ural­ly, it was ex­act­ly what I want­ed to do.

Cawti had named him Vlad No­rathar.

I sud­den­ly had the feel­ing that if I met with No­rathar—I mean, the War­lord—I’d smack her on the side of the head. Prob­ably best not to talk to her just now.

“Boss?”

“Mm­mm?”

“We should vis­it Sethra.”

“I know.”

“You don’t want to?”

“Part­ly that. Part­ly, I don’t want the whole Jhereg know­ing I went there. Cas­tle Black is one thing, but Dzur Moun­tain—”

“You think you’d be in dan­ger in Dzur Moun­tain?”

“No, not dan­ger. I just don’t feel com­fort­able hav­ing the Jhereg know I’m there; at least right away.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe there’s a way. . . okay, let’s do it.”

“Uh, how, Boss?”

“How what? How do we get there? I have a clever and de­vi­ous plan.”

“Oh, great.”

I worked my way around to the Athyra Wing and, even­tu­al­ly, out in­to the world. It was bright out there, mak­ing me think of the East where there’s no over­cast to pro­tect you from the Fur­nace. I blinked and wait­ed for my eyes to ad­just.

The Athyra Wing is usu­al­ly pret­ty qui­et and to­day was no ex­cep­tion; that meant that just in case there were any as­sas­sins who’d been fol­low­ing me wait­ing for an op­por­tu­ni­ty, I’d see them—par­don me, Loiosh would see them in plen­ty of time. I set out on the Street of the Athyra, turn­ing to pass the ob­sid­ian mono­lith (oh, yes, we’re so im­pres­sive) of the House of the Athyra on my right, con­tin­uing just a few score of yards be­yond it to Mawg Way. “Mawg,” I was once told, means “mer­chant” in some dis­used lan­guage that goes back to be­fore there were any such things as mer­chants. That makes you won­der, you know? I mean, “mawg.” An ug­ly word. Where did they get “mer­chant” out of that? Maybe there are peo­ple who study things like that. If so, they’re prob­ably Athyra.

A few doors down, on the left side, was a win­dow­less cot­tage built of round stones. It had a thick door bound in iron strips; the door was stand­ing open. Above the door­way was a par­tic­ular­ly de­tailed sign in which an Athyra was fly­ing over a map of the Em­pire.

“Boss, you aren’t se­ri­ous.”

“Why not?”

“Ev­er heard of the Left Hand of the Jhereg, Boss? You know, the sor­cer­ess­es?”

“Sounds fa­mil­iar.”

“Boss, the Left Hand doesn’t like you. And even if they did, the Jhereg could hire one of them to watch places like this. As soon as you tele­port, a sor­cer­er can. . . what are you laugh­ing about?”

“Just watch me, Loiosh.”

I went in. The en­try room was just big enough, and held a door op­po­site. A young la­dy of the House of the Athyra sat in a wood­en chair fac­ing the door, look­ing se­ri­ous and mys­ti­cal and very busi­ness-​like: she may as well have had “ap­pren­tice” sten­ciled on her fore­head.

She looked me over, de­cid­ed on just how no­ble I was (I was an East­ern­er, but I dared to wear a sword open­ly), and in­clined her head slight­ly. “Yes, sir?”

“How much is a tele­port?”

“One im­pe­ri­al, to a known lo­ca­tion.”

“How much to have the sor­cer­er come to me?”

“My lord? Oh, you mean to tele­port from some­where else? Two im­pe­ri­als, if it’s with­in the city.”

“And how much to have it done sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, and un­trace­ably? And add in a short-​term spell to make me sor­cer­ous­ly in­vis­ible.”

“How short-​term?”

“A minute. Half a minute.”

“Ten.”

“That’s fine. My name is Vladimir Tal­tos, I’ll be go­ing to Dzur Moun­tain, and I wish to have a sor­cer­er meet me in the Tem­ple of Ver­ra on Wa­ter­hill in South Adri­lankha.”

Her nose wrin­kled and she hes­itat­ed, look­ing for an ex­cuse to say no. Even­tu­al­ly she said, “I’ll have to ask.”

“I’ll wait here,” I said.

She gave me a sus­pi­cious look be­fore go­ing through the door. It isn’t like there was any­thing in the room to steal. She re­turned a mo­ment lat­er, asked for my name again. This time she wrote it on a small slab of some sort, and nod­ded. “She will meet you.”

“Want the mon­ey now?”

“If you please.”

I put two five-​im­pe­ri­al coins in­to her hand and sketched a bow. I opened the door, stand­ing far enough to the side not to be open to any­thing un­pleas­ant that might shoot through it, but not so far as to make it ob­vi­ous what I was do­ing. Loiosh flew out; I’d have loved to see the look on the ap­pren­tice’s face, but my back was to her. Loiosh said it was safe, so I stepped out on­to the street.

Crowd­ed streets make it hard­er to set some­thing up re­li­ably, but eas­ier to get the drop on your tar­get, and eas­ier to get away safe­ly af­ter­ward. Emp­ty streets, of course, have the op­po­site prob­lems. I com­pro­mised and took a mix of both, mak­ing my way to the Chain Bridge and so across to South Adri­lankha.

“So, Loiosh, you get it?”

“I know what you’re think­ing—the Jhereg won’t go af­ter you in a tem­ple.”

“Right.”

“But you still have to get to the tem­ple.”

“I have com­plete con­fi­dence in you.”

One thing that can­not be done psy­chi­cal­ly is mut­ter, but Loiosh took a pret­ty good run at it.

There are scores of shrines to Ver­ra in the city, and sev­er­al tem­ples to her in South Adri­lankha. The one I’d cho­sen was a low stonework af­fair, set back from the road, with a flag­stone walk flanked by scrawny trees. More­over, it was in a neigh­bor­hood with a lot of space be­tween the hous­es. Put it all to­geth­er, and there were no good places for as­sas­sins to hide. Even Loiosh grudg­ing­ly agreed, af­ter a few min­utes fly­ing around, that I could go ahead and ven­ture up to the doors—af­ter that, he made no guar­an­tees.

Open­ing the door was scary. I didn’t care how stupid I looked; I lis­tened, stood to the side, and was mov­ing when I flung it open.

No one was there. Yeah, I looked stupid. I might have got­ten some fun­ny glances from peo­ple pass­ing on the street, but I didn’t wait around to see, I just stepped in­side.

It was a sin­gle room, with a black al­tar op­po­site the door, about ten paces from me. I knew from mem­ory that there were small holes cut in­to the al­tar for can­dles, though I couldn’t see them from here. Be­yond that, the place was ut­ter­ly bare. The priest here be­lieved that one should bring noth­ing to the God­dess but the de­sire to serve, or some­thing like that. I don’t re­mem­ber ex­act­ly how he’d put it; it was years ago. Ser­vices here were held two or three times a week, I for­get the times and dates, and on the ob­vi­ous feast days.

I po­si­tioned my­self be­hind the al­tar and wait­ed for the sor­cer­er—or an as­sas­sin, if I’d mis­judged the Jhereg. Sor­ry, don’t mean to be mys­te­ri­ous. There are rules to how we op­er­ate: you don’t kill some­one in front of his fam­ily, you don’t mess with him in his home, you don’t touch him in a tem­ple or at a shrine.

The thing is, all of these rules have, at one time or an­oth­er, been vi­olat­ed; one rea­son I was in trou­ble with the Jhereg was for vi­olat­ing one of them. I’d had a bad day that day. The point is, I was cal­cu­lat­ing on them fol­low­ing the rules, at least this time, and for a while. If I was wrong, things were li­able to get ex­cit­ing.

I got to be ner­vous for about twen­ty min­utes be­fore the sor­cer­ess showed up. No as­sas­sins came with her. Score one for me. She had the dark com­plex­ion of the Athyra but her hair was such a light brown it was al­most blond, pro­duc­ing a slight­ly startling ef­fect. There was a vague look in her eyes that was com­mon if not uni­ver­sal among Athyra.

She gave the place a half-​in­ter­est­ed and dis­dain­ful look, then nod­ded at me. “Lord Tal­tos?” she said.

I nod­ded.

“Dzur Moun­tain,” she said. “Un­trace­able, with a brief lin­ger­ing cloud.”

I nod­ded again.

She looked like she might be con­sid­er­ing of­fer­ing me ad­vice on go­ing there, but she must have de­cid­ed not to, and just said, “Are you ready?”

I pulled the amulet from around my neck and put it away, thus, no doubt, alert­ing a dozen or so Jhereg sor­cer­ers. “Ready,” I said.

She didn’t even ges­ture, as far as I could see; for an in­stant the room seemed about to spin, but then it went through a fa­mil­iar slow fade, go­ing through all the col­ors from white to al­most-​white; in­ter­minable sec­onds went by when I was in two places at once, and I could feel my­self push­ing air out of the way. In that time, it sud­den­ly hit me that she might have been bribed, and be de­liv­er­ing me to an as­sas­sin. In that emp­ty, lin­ger­ing time-​space, I be­came so con­vinced of it that I was al­ready reach­ing for a dag­ger when the world set­tled down to a fa­mil­iar place on the low­er slopes of Dzur Moun­tain.

My first re­ac­tion was re­lief, my sec­ond was an­noy­ance. Yeah, this place was fa­mil­iar—I knew how to reach Sethra’s home from this spot: it in­volved climb­ing more stairs than ought to ex­ist in the world. I won­dered if the sor­cer­ess had brought me to this en­trance de­lib­er­ate­ly. I still won­der.

I re­placed the amulet then en­tered through a wood­en door that wasn’t near­ly as flim­sy as it ap­peared. You don’t clap when en­ter­ing Dzur Moun­tain—de­pend­ing on which door you use, at any rate. I’ve won­dered about that, and I think it’s be­cause in some way the moun­tain it­self isn’t her home, on­ly the parts of it that she claimed as her res­idence; and so I passed through the first door in­to the moun­tain, and start­ed climb­ing stairs. It seemed much loud­er this time, my feet on the stone stair­way made echoes and echoes of echoes; my mem­ory was do­ing the same thing.

You don’t need to hear about it; it was a long, long way up. Part­way up, I passed the place where Mor­rolan and I had al­most slaugh­tered each oth­er; it both­ered me a lit­tle that I couldn’t iden­ti­fy the ex­act spot.

Even­tu­al­ly I reached the top, clapped, and opened the door with­out wait­ing for a re­ply. Her res­idence doesn’t seem all that big once you’re aware of the size of the moun­tain; but then there’s prob­ably a lot I haven’t seen. And, at her age, I imag­ine she needs lots of space to store stuff she’s ac­cu­mu­lat­ed.

I wan­dered a bit, hop­ing to run in­to her, or her ser­vant, or some­one. The halls—dark stone here, pale wood there—all echoed strange­ly and gave me the sud­den feel­ing that Dzur Moun­tain was de­sert­ed. It wasn’t, ac­tu­al­ly—I came across her in one of the small­er sit­ting rooms that she put here and there. She was drink­ing a glass of wine and read­ing a thick, heavy book with a cov­er I couldn’t see. She wore a black gar­ment that seemed to wrap around her, pinned with a gold or cop­per bracelet at the left arm, and loop­ing through a jew­eled neck­lace high on her chest, with an­oth­er loop on her right hip with sim­ilar jew­els. She said, “Hel­lo, Vlad,” with­out look­ing up. I took that as a cue to stand there like an id­iot, so I did, and present­ly she marked the book with some­thing that looked like it had sil­ver trac­ings on it and gave me a nod. “I’ve been ex­pect­ing you.”

“It takes a while for word to reach the out­lands. That’s a nice dress you’re wear­ing. Are those sap­phires on the neck­lace?”

“A gift from the Necro­mancer. Have a seat. Tukko will bring you wine.”

I sat in a chair that faced her at a slight an­gle. “And I will drink it. Good. We have a plan.”

A cour­tesy smile came and went.

Tukko showed up with wine and a scowl. The wine was less of­fen­sive; a strong­ly fla­vored red that should have had some heav­ily spiced meat to go with it, but I didn’t com­plain. I sipped, nod­ded, and said, “So, what can you tell me?”

“I was go­ing to ask you that.”

“Heh. I just came in from out of town.”

“Yes, and found an ad­vo­cate, got Aliera to ac­cept him—which ought to rate you as a mas­ter sor­cer­er—and you’ve been snoop­ing around the Im­pe­ri­al Palace since then. So—what can you tell me?” She smiled sweet­ly.

I stared at her, re­mem­ber­ing things about her I some­times for­get. Then I said, “If you were try­ing to im­press me, it worked.”

“Per­mit me my small plea­sures.”

“I’d nev­er think of deny­ing them to you,” I said. “All right. In brief, the Em­press seems to be pros­ecut­ing Aliera to dis­tract at­ten­tion from some mas­sacre in some lit­tle town no one cares about. The mys­tery is that she picked Aliera, who I’ve al­ways fig­ured was a close friend. The charge, as far as I can tell, is non­sense.”

She nod­ded slow­ly. “It isn’t as if the Em­press hasn’t known about Aliera’s stud­ies for years.”

“Right.”

“When you spoke to Her Majesty, what was the Orb do­ing?”

“Eh? Float­ing over her head.”

“I mean, what col­or was it?”

“Green at first. Or­ange when I an­noyed her. It turned blue around the end of the con­ver­sa­tion. She said she had to go do some­thing.”

“What shade of blue?”

“Um, shade?”

“Did it seem cold, icy?”

“Sor­ry, I don’t have that good a mem­ory for col­ors.”

“All right,” she said.

“Can you ex­plain—?”

“Not re­al­ly. Just try­ing to learn ev­ery­thing I can. I wish I’d been there.”

“Yes. That brings up an­oth­er in­ter­est­ing point.” I cleared my throat. “Why weren’t you?”

“Beg par­don?”

“That’s what I re­al­ly want­ed to ask you. Why is this my job?”

She frowned. “No one is forc­ing you—”

“That’s not my point. Aliera has friends com­ing out her—Aliera has a lot of friends. Most of them are more in­flu­en­tial than an ex-​Jhereg East­ern­er on the run. What’s go­ing on here?”

She looked away from me. When ev­ery­thing in Sethra’s home is very qui­et, there is a soft, con­tin­uous sound, as of air slow­ly mov­ing down a tun­nel. It seemed to me I’d no­ticed it or al­most no­ticed it be­fore.

Fi­nal­ly she said, “You’ve spent a day or two with the Jus­ticers now. What do you think?”

That didn’t seem to have any­thing to do with my ques­tion, but I’ve known Sethra long enough to know that not ev­ery change of sub­ject is a change of sub­ject.

“They’re pret­ty ob­ses­sive,” I said.

“About what?”

“About the law, and its quirky lit­tle ins and outs.”

“And what do you think about the law?”

“Most of my thoughts about the law in­volve ways to cir­cum­vent it,” I said.

She smiled. “I al­ways knew you had the mak­ings of an Em­per­or.”

“Eh?”

She waved it aside. “What are all those laws for?”

“Oh, come on, Sethra. I know bet­ter than to try to an­swer a ques­tion like that, from you of all peo­ple.”

“Fair point.” She frowned and fell in­to thought for a mo­ment. Then she said, “Some peo­ple think the law is about pro­tec­tion—you have the Im­pe­ri­al Guard and the lo­cal con­stab­ulary to make sure the in­no­cents are pro­tect­ed. Oth­ers think it is about jus­tice—mak­ing sure no one can do any­thing bad with­out get­ting what he de­serves. Still oth­ers see it as re­venge: giv­ing peace to the vic­tim by hurt­ing the per­pe­tra­tor.”

She stopped. I wait­ed.

“The House of the Iorich is near the bot­tom of the Cy­cle right now,” she said.

I nod­ded. I al­ways for­got about that stuff. Well, I mean, ob­vi­ous­ly since I’m un­like­ly to live long enough to see the Cy­cle move even once, where­as a Dra­gaer­an might live to see it shift two or three times. And then there’s Sethra; we won’t talk about her.

“Okay, I trust that ties in­to this some­how?”

She nod­ded. “The Iorich is the House of jus­tice.”

“Yes, I know. The courts, the ad­vo­cates, the law-​scribes, all of that.”

She shook her head. “That isn’t jus­tice; that’s the law.”

“If you’re telling me that the law has noth­ing to do with jus­tice, you aren’t giv­ing me any new in­for­ma­tion.”

“What I’m telling you is that some­times it does.”

“Um. That would be when the Iorich are near the top of the Cy­cle?”

She nod­ded.

“Okay. And what hap­pens the rest of the time?”

“What pass­es for jus­tice is the re­sult of machi­na­tions among the no­bles.”

“That sound­ed like it should have made sense.”

She chuck­led and Tukko ap­peared with a small glass of some­thing clear. She threw it down like a sol­dier and nod­ded. “I know what you mean.”

“Maybe you could—”

“The Em­pire per­pet­uates it­self. It pro­tects the no­bles who sup­port it, and the ma­chin­ery of state it needs to keep it­self go­ing. Any­one who threat­ens those things gets ground up.”

“Ex­cept dur­ing an Iorich reign?”

She nod­ded.

“The Iorich reign must be an in­ter­est­ing time.”

“Fol­lows the Jhereg, you know.”

“Oh, right. So they have plen­ty to keep them­selves busy.”

She nod­ded.

“So then,” I said. “What did Aliera do that threat­ened the Em­pire?”

“Noth­ing,” she said.

“Noth­ing?”

“Wrong place at the wrong time, if you want to call it that. Or, she was con­ve­nient. Or some­thing.”

“Sethra, are you drunk?”

“A lit­tle.”

Okay. Well. This was a new one for me. I wasn’t ex­act­ly sure how to deal with it. The most pow­er­ful sor­cer­ess in the world: sloshed. Aren’t there laws against that sort of thing?

“Sethra, are you say­ing that to de­fend Aliera is to at­tack the Em­pire?”

“I thought that was ob­vi­ous.”

Maybe I should get drunk, too.

“And that’s why none of Aliera’s friends will step in?”

“She’s pret­ty much for­bid­den it.”

“Mor­rolan must be about ready to burst.”

“He’s not do­ing well.”

I nod­ded. “So that’s where I come in. But, okay, I still don’t see why the Em­press chose Aliera to do this to.”

“Who would you sug­gest?”

“Sethra, there must be hun­dreds, thou­sands of peo­ple who are vi­olat­ing some law that can be used to dis­tract at­ten­tion from what­ev­er the Em­press wants peo­ple not to no­tice.”

“Not re­al­ly,” she said. She drew her fin­ger through a spot in the air in front of her, and a small slash of white light re­mained. “Aliera is wide­ly known, even among the Teck­la, as wit­ness the fact that you heard about it from wher­ev­er you were.” She made an­oth­er slash next to the first. “She is wide­ly known to be a friend of the Em­press.” She made a third slash—I need to learn how to do that. “It’s com­mon knowl­edge that the Em­pire turns a blind eye to her ac­tiv­ities. Who else can all that be said of?”

I felt my­self scowl­ing. “Yeah, all right. So it’s on me. How do I do it?”

“I un­der­stand the ad­vo­cate you found is very good. Re­ly on him.”

“He is?”

“With­in his spe­cial­ty.”

“That’s good to know. He’s got me—you know what he’s got me do­ing.”

“Yes. It seems wise.”

“I’m go­ing to have to speak to No­rathar.”

“Oh,” she said. Then, “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“All right,” she said af­ter a mo­ment. “I’ll ar­range it.”

“Thank you.”

I drank some more wine with­out tast­ing it. We sat there un­til the com­fort­able si­lence be­came un­com­fort­able. Then I said, “Sethra, who else are you?”

“Hm­mm?”

“I mean, you must have oth­er, ah, iden­ti­ties, be­sides—”

“Oh. No one you’ve ev­er met. Or heard of, I imag­ine.”

“It must be dif­fi­cult.”

“Some­times. Some­times it’s the on­ly fun I ev­er have.”

I nod­ded. I want­ed to ask her about some of the oth­er peo­ple she was, but it was pret­ty ob­vi­ous she didn’t want to talk about it, so I fin­ished my wine and fell silent.

A lit­tle lat­er she said, “No­rathar has agreed to see you.”

“When?”

“Now, if it’s con­ve­nient.”

“Con­ve­nient,” I said. “Heh. All right. Lat­er, I’d like. . .”

She frowned. “What?”

“Noth­ing. I’m go­ing to see No­rathar. Af­ter that, I think I’d like some food.”

She looked away. “Val­abar’s is watched con­stant­ly.”

“So I’d as­sumed. I was think­ing about some­where safer. Like, say, the Punc­tured Lung.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know it,” she said.

“Sor­ry, Jhereg slang. The Punc­tured Jug.”

“Ah. Yes, by Clover Ring.”

“It’s Jhereg owned, so it’s safe. Nis­can used to eat there when half the city was walk­ing around with em­balm­ing oil for him.”

She nod­ded. “As long as it’s safe. I wouldn’t want any­thing to hap­pen to you.”

“Kind of you to say.” I stood up and nod­ded.

“I’ll do the tele­port,” she said.

How do you ask the En­chantress of Dzur Moun­tain if she’s too drunk to man­age a tele­port safe­ly? An­swer: You don’t.

“Thanks,” I told her.

Iorich

IN­TER­LUDE: MEM­ORY

It came back sharp and clear, all the edges dis­tinct, the col­ors vivid, even the sounds echo­ing in my ears. I had stood there, look­ing at where she lived then, and un­able to speak. I had just fin­ished prov­ing I wasn’t a hero. Kra­gar came along that time, to pro­vide moral sup­port or some­thing, but had wait­ed a bit down the street so I could meet the boy by my­self first.

She in­vit­ed me in.

“Where is—?”

“It’s his nap time.”

“Oh.”

“He’ll be up again in a bit.”

We sat and talked about noth­ing for a while. Then there was a sound in the next room like a cat whose tail has been stepped on, and my heart did a thing.

“I’ll be right back,” said Cawti.

Across from me was psiprint of Noish-​pa, look­ing haughty and for­bid­ding, which shows you how false psiprints can be. It was a long two or three min­utes be­fore she re­turned.

A tod­dler tod­dled be­hind her. He wore short pants and a gray frock, and his dark hair was neat­ly brushed. His eyes were huge and re­mind­ed me of Cawti’s. She said, “Vlad, this is your fa­ther.”

The boy stared at me for a mo­ment, then turned and pressed him­self against Cawti’s legs. She gave me an apolo­get­ic smile. “He’s bash­ful around strangers,” she said. I nod­ded. “Just ig­nore him,” she said. “He’ll come around.”

Ig­nore him. Yeah. “All right,” I said.

“Come on, Vlad. Shall we find your tur­tle?”

He nod­ded in­to her knees. She took his hand and led him over to a long, red­dish wood­en box un­der the win­dow. I knew that box; it had once held weapons. Now, it seems, it held a cloth tur­tle stuffed with I know not what.

I ex­pect­ed him to hug it, but he didn’t; he walked in­to a cor­ner, sat down, and be­gan study­ing it. Cawti sat on the edge of a short couch I didn’t rec­og­nize and picked up her glass. We watched him.

“What’s he do­ing?” I asked in a low tone.

“Fig­ur­ing out how it’s put to­geth­er,” she said.

“Oh. Is it that dif­fi­cult?”

“It’s a sort of puz­zle. The cloth folds over in cer­tain ways to make a tur­tle, and if you un­fold it right you get some­thing else. The first one was a ly­orn, the sec­ond a day­ocat. I don’t know what this one is. I guess we’ll find out.”

I smiled. “He solved the first two?”

“Quick.”

I smiled more. “Where did you find the toy?”

“A lit­tle girl makes them, and brings them around. I don’t know why, but she seems harm­less.”

“A lit­tle girl? Does she have a name?”

“De­vera.”

I nod­ded.

“Do you know her?” she asked.

“Um. Yes and no. But you’re right; she wouldn’t hurt him.”

That seemed to sat­is­fy Cawti. We watched my son a lit­tle more. If he was aware that we were watch­ing him, he chose to ig­nore it. It was hard to talk about him as if he weren’t there. Prob­ably a bad idea, too.

Vlad No­rathar walked over to his moth­er and pre­sent­ed her with an ob­ject. “That’s very good,” she said. “Do you know what it is?”

“It’s a horse,” he ex­plained.

She nod­ded. “Show your fa­ther.”

He turned and gave me an eval­uat­ing look; I wished I could have de­cid­ed what ex­pres­sion to have on my face. I set­tled on try­ing to look in­ter­est­ed but not de­mand­ing, and it must have worked be­cause he marched over and showed me the horse.

“That’s very good,” I said. “But the tur­tle must be pret­ty crunched in­side it.”

He frowned and con­sid­ered that. “You’re sil­ly,” he ex­plained.

I’d nev­er been called sil­ly be­fore; I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Good, I think.

He tucked the horse’s ears back in and out a few times, sat­is­fy­ing him­self that he had the se­cret, then he went over and sat on the box and set about turn­ing it in­to a tur­tle again. Cawti and I watched him.

“He’s very bright,” I said.

She smiled.

We watched Vlad No­rathar a lit­tle longer. With no warn­ing, he turned to me and said, “I have a hawk.”

“I’d like to see it,” I said.

He dug in the box and came out with a porce­lain fig­ure about a foot high, and very life­like. He walked over and hand­ed it to me with­out hes­ita­tion. I stud­ied it care­ful­ly. At last I said, “This is the bird that is called a vah­ndoor in the lan­guage of our an­ces­tors.”

He stud­ied me. “Are you be­ing sil­ly?”

“Not this time,” I said. “There are lots of lan­guages. Peo­ple speak dif­fer­ent.”

“Why?”

“Now that is a fine ques­tion. Maybe be­cause they in­vent­ed talk­ing in dif­fer­ent places, or else moved away from each oth­er so far that they start­ed talk­ing dif­fer­ent­ly. In this lan­guage, the one we’re speak­ing, there is on­ly one word for all sorts of birds of prey. In Fe­nar­ian, each sort of bird has its own name.”

“Does each bird have its own name too?”

“If some­one names it.”

“Don’t they name them­selves?”

“No, they don’t. Well, maybe they do, come to think of it. I’m not sure.”

“What sort of bird is that?”

“Okay, now I’m in­sult­ed.”

“It isn’t a bird, it’s a jhereg. A sort of fly­ing rep­tile that eats dead things and makes sar­cas­tic com­ments.”

“What does that mean?”

Me and my big mouth.

“It means some­times he says things he doesn’t mean be­cause he thinks they’re fun­ny.”

“He talks?”

“In­to my mind.”

“What’s he say­ing now?”

“He isn’t say­ing any­thing just this minute.”

“Does he like me?”

“How would I know? I haven’t tast­ed him.”

“Don’t.”

“Sor­ry, Boss.”

“You can touch him if you wish.”

“What is that, pun­ish­ment?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head fu­ri­ous­ly, his eyes wide. I smiled. “It’s all right.” I went back to study­ing his hawk. I hand­ed it back to him. He took it and brought it over to Cawti, and spent some time study­ing Rocza, perched on her shoul­der. Af­ter a mo­ment, Rocza stretched her neck out to­ward him and low­ered her head. He hes­itat­ed, then reached out a fin­ger and touched her head as if it were a hot stove. When she didn’t move, he stroked the top of her head once.

“I’m try­ing to fig­ure out if I should be jeal­ous,” said Loiosh.

“Let me know when you’ve de­cid­ed.”

“I want one of my own,” an­nounced Vlad No­rathar.

I looked at Cawti, who looked back at me and shrugged. “These are very spe­cial an­imals,” she said. “You have to study a long time to be able to have one.”

He looked stub­born.

“If you want one,” she con­tin­ued, “we’ll start you on the train­ing.”

He looked at her and nod­ded once, then went back to his box of toys. Was he too young to start train­ing as a witch? Maybe. It wasn’t my de­ci­sion.

“You’re look­ing good,” I said.

“Thank you.”

Vlad No­rathar turned around from the box and said, “Why aren’t you liv­ing with us?”

I met his eyes, which was more dif­fi­cult than a lot of oth­er eyes I’ve had to meet. “There are peo­ple who want to kill me. If I stay here, they’ll find me.”

“Oh,” he said. He con­sid­ered it care­ful­ly. “Why don’t you kill them in­stead?”

I stroked the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra in­side my cloak and said, “You know, I’ve asked my­self that same ques­tion.”

Cawti said, “You can’t al­ways solve prob­lems by killing some­one. In fact, as your fa­ther can tes­ti­fy, most of the time killing some­one just makes things worse.”

“That,” I said, “is un­for­tu­nate­ly true. But, hey, it’s a liv­ing.”

“Your fa­ther is teas­ing,” said Cawti.

I nod­ded. “I do that some­times.”

“Why?” said Vlad No­rathar.

“An­oth­er good ques­tion,” I said.

“I could an­swer it,” said Cawti. “But I shan’t.”

“Prob­ably best.”

He looked puz­zled for a mo­ment, but let it go—a trait that he’d cer­tain­ly find very use­ful lat­er in life. He said, “Why do they want to kill you?”

I start­ed to say some­thing about break­ing the rules, but Cawti cut me off with, “He was sav­ing my life.” Was there an edge of bit­ter­ness when she said it, or was it pure­ly my imag­ina­tion?

“He did?”

“Yes,” she said.

“They want to kill him for that?”

“Yes.”

Vlad No­rathar said, “That isn’t fair.”

“No,” said Cawti. “It isn’t.”

I re­sist­ed the urge to make some trite re­mark about how life wasn’t fair, and in­stead let the kid think about it.

He pulled a ly­orn out of the box, held it in one hand with the horse in the oth­er and stud­ied them care­ful­ly. Then he put the horse down and be­gan play­ing with the ly­orn’s horn, push­ing it in and out. It seemed to me he was still think­ing about our con­ver­sa­tion, but maybe that was my imag­ina­tion.

I said, “Kra­gar would like to meet him, too.”

She frowned. “I have no ob­jec­tion, but an­oth­er time would be bet­ter.”

“All right.”

I stood up. “I should be go­ing.”

Cawti nod­ded. “Say good-​bye to your fa­ther, Vlad.”

He got bash­ful again and hid his face. Cawti gave me an apolo­get­ic smile and the two of them walked me to the door. Rocza rubbed Cawti’s face then flew over to my left shoul­der.

I turned and walked back to where Kra­gar wait­ed.

Iorich

6

Luk­ka, I just had a talk with Nurik, and it was made pret­ty clear that we’re sup­posed to dump this all on the low­est ranks we think we can get away with. I told him if he want­ed that sort of game played, he’d have to get some­one else to run the thing, be­cause I won’t go there. If I re­sign, you’re the ob­vi­ous choice to take over, so think hard about how you’ll han­dle this. I know what sort of pres­sures N. can bring, so if you go with it, I’ll stay mute, but it’s worth con­sid­er­ing. I know Pa­pacat and the new War­lord do not fa­vor any such ar­range­ment, and you should re­mem­ber that HM is, so far as I know, not in on it ei­ther; I think she wants the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be forthright, most­ly be­cause she wants to know if it’s all her fault. I’d tell her if I knew. Maybe in an­oth­er week, if I’m still run­ning this thing. But if you want a ca­reer, you can’t ig­nore N., you know it and I know it. Any­way, give it some thought.

—Pri­vate note in the hand­writ­ing of De­saniek

(not au­then­ti­cat­ed)

I ducked in­to the door­way in front of me with­out wait­ing to fig­ure out where it went. I was in a nar­row hall­way with a flight of stairs at the end. I went up with­out stop­ping, swal­low­ing the acidic pan­ic that comes with on­ly hav­ing one di­rec­tion to go when you know some­one is af­ter you. If Sethra had been sober, she’d have thought of that, dammit.

There was a door at the end of the hall­way. I opened it with­out clap­ping, my right hand brush­ing the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra.

The War­lord seemed to have been nap­ping; her head snapped for­ward and she stared at me. If she’d gone for a weapon, which wouldn’t have been all that un­think­able, there would sud­den­ly have been a lot more peo­ple than the Jhereg look­ing for me—or else no one at all.

She blinked a cou­ple of times as I caught the door and shut my breath, or what­ev­er I did.

“Vlad,” she said.

I stood there, try­ing to nei­ther pant nor shake. “Hi there,” I said.

Her of­fice was tiny; just enough room for her, a chair, and a small ta­ble. There was an­oth­er door to her left.

“I must have dozed off,” she said. “Sor­ry.”

“It’s noth­ing. As you see, I came in any­way.”

“Shall we find some­where more com­fort­able to talk?”

“I don’t mind stand­ing. Thanks for see­ing me, by the way.”

She nod­ded and looked up at me—an un­usu­al ex­pe­ri­ence for both of us. “Last I heard,” I said, “you were Drag­on Heir. I guess con­grat­ula­tions are in or­der.”

She gave some­thing that could have been a laugh. “I guess.”

“Are you ad­dressed as War­lord, or as Your High­ness now?”

“De­pends on the sub­ject.”

“Is there a sto­ry there? I mean, in how it is that you hap­pened to be­come War­lord?”

“Not one I’m in­clined to talk about.”

“Is your be­com­ing War­lord re­lat­ed?”

“To what?”

“Eh, I thought you knew why I was here.”

“Sethra said you want­ed to see me about Aliera.”

“Yes.”

“To that.”

“What is it you want­ed to see me about ex­act­ly?”

“Aliera’s sit­ua­tion.”

She hadn’t an­swered my ques­tion. Just want­ed to let you know I caught that. Can’t get one past me.

“I’m not sure how much I can tell you,” she said.

“Lack of knowl­edge, or are there things you aren’t per­mit­ted to say?”

“Both. And maybe things I could say but choose not to.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, I’ll ask, you tell me what you can.”

“It isn’t that I don’t care about Aliera,” she said.

I nod­ded, feel­ing sud­den­ly un­com­fort­able. It wasn’t like No­rathar to feel she had to jus­ti­fy her­self to me. I leaned against a wall, try­ing to look re­laxed. When she didn’t say any­thing, I cleared my throat and said, “In my own way, I have some un­der­stand­ing of du­ty.”

She nod­ded, star­ing past me.

“So, what hap­pened?”

She blinked and seemed to come back from wher­ev­er she was.

“Aliera was caught prac­tic­ing El­der Sor­cery, which is il­le­gal. For good rea­son, by the way. It was used to de­stroy the Em­pire. By Aliera’s fa­ther. The Em­pire frowns on be­ing de­stroyed. It tends not to like things that can do that.”

“Yeah, I know. That adds a cer­tain—uh. Wait. How much of this is be­cause of her fa­ther?”

“I don’t know. That’s prob­ably what made her the per­fect—I mean, that may be why. . .”

She trailed off.

I should have thought of that soon­er.

“And how does she—I mean the Em­press—feel about it?”

“Beg par­don?”

“She’s Aliera’s friend. How does she—?”

“You know I can’t give you per­son­al de­tails about Her Majesty.”

Since it was ex­act­ly the per­son­al de­tails I was look­ing for, it was a lit­tle sad to hear that. “All right,” I said. “Did you hear about Aliera’s ar­rest be­fore it hap­pened?”

“I don’t un­der­stand.” She was giv­ing me a sus­pi­cious look, as if I might be mock­ing her but she wasn’t sure.

“Oh,” I said. “You were giv­en the or­der.”

She nod­ded.

“I don’t know how these things work, but that seems un­usu­al. I mean, ar­rest­ing crim­inals isn’t what I think of as the War­lord’s job.”

“It usu­al­ly isn’t,” she said. Her lips were pressed tight­ly to­geth­er.

“But—?”

“With some­one like Aliera, I can’t see it hap­pen­ing any oth­er way. She wasn’t go­ing to dis­patch a, a con­sta­ble to do it.”

“It would be dis­re­spect­ful to her po­si­tion.”

She nod­ded. I need to work hard­er on com­mu­ni­cat­ing irony.

I said, “Who car­ried out the ar­rest?”

“I did.”

I grunt­ed. “Must have been fun.”

She gave me a look.

“Sor­ry,” I said. “Was she sur­prised?”

“Is this nec­es­sary?”

“I want to know if she had any warn­ing.”

“Oh. Yes, she was sur­prised. She thought I was jok­ing. She said—”

The wall over her head was blank, a pasty col­or. She should put some­thing there. I re­solved not to tell her that.

“Sor­ry,” she said.

“How long was it from the time you were giv­en the or­der un­til the ar­rest?”

“Ten min­utes.”

“Had you ex­pect­ed the or­der?”

She stud­ied me care­ful­ly. “No,” she said. “I was told I was now War­lord, and or­dered to ar­rest Aliera, and to de­liv­er the com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­liev­ing her of her po­si­tion.”

I tried to imag­ine that scene, but I couldn’t do it. I was glad I hadn’t been there to see it.

“Had you ex­pect­ed some­thing like this to hap­pen?”

“What do you mean?”

“Aliera was ar­rest­ed to dis­tract at­ten­tion from some­thing the Em­press doesn’t want peo­ple think­ing about. Had you ex­pect­ed—”

“That’s your the­ory,” she said, as if re­fut­ing it.

“Uh, yeah. That’s my the­ory. Had you been ex­pect­ing Zeri­ka—”

“Her Majesty.”

“—Her Majesty to do some­thing like this?”

“I don’t con­cede your premise,” she said.

“Um. Okay.” I looked around the room. Maybe one of the walls had se­cret writ­ing that would tell me how to pull the in­for­ma­tion I need­ed from No­rathar. Nope, guess not. “I’d have thought the War­lord would have a big­ger of­fice.”

“This isn’t the of­fice, it’s more of a pri­vate re­treat. The of­fice is through there.” She in­di­cat­ed the door to her left.

“Is this a tem­po­rary po­si­tion for you?”

An eye­brow went up. “Well, it cer­tain­ly won’t last longer than the next Drag­on Reign.”

“I meant more tem­po­rary than that.”

“I don’t know.”

“How did it hap­pen in the first place?”

“How did what hap­pen?”

“The in­ci­dent that start­ed it all. You’re the War­lord now, you must have ac­cess to—”

“I can’t dis­cuss that.”

“I don’t mean the de­tails.”

“Then what? Get­ting philo­soph­ical on me?”

“Sar­casm aside, yes.”

“Are you se­ri­ous?”

“Yes.”

“How does it hap­pen? I’m told you served in the army, in wartime, in the line.”

“Briefly.”

“In com­bat.”

“Briefly.”

“And you need to ask how some­thing like that hap­pens?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

She shook her head. “Pay no mind. If that’s all, Lord Szurke, I’m rather busy.”

I won­dered if “Lord Szurke” were in­tend­ed as a cut, and if so what the in­sult was sup­posed to be. “I’ll try to be brief,” I said.

She did the lip thing again. “Very well.”

“If I can’t ask about the Em­press, I’ll ask about you.”

“Hm­mm?”

“What are you hop­ing will hap­pen?”

“I have no hope.” Nor much in­flec­tion in her voice, ei­ther.

“Things were eas­ier in the Jhereg, weren’t they?”

She looked up at me, eyes nar­rowed; then she shrugged. “Dif­fer­ent, any­way.”

“Gen­er­al­ly, the on­ly ones who get it are those who de­serve it.”

“And not all of them,” she said.

“Fair point.”

“What else?”

I hes­itat­ed. “Does it seem odd to you that this law is be­ing used against some­one in Aliera’s po­si­tion?”

She shrugged. “There’s been talk about that at Court. I don’t pay much at­ten­tion.”

“So you can’t ex­plain it?”

“If I have any guess­es, I don’t care to share them with you.”

“No­rathar, are we en­emies all of a sud­den?”

“I serve the Em­pire. That means I serve the Em­press.”

“You didn’t an­swer my ques­tion.”

Her fin­gers rolled on the table­top. “No,” she said. “We aren’t en­emies.”

“Good, then—”

“We’re op­po­nents.”

“Um,” I ex­plained. “I’m try­ing to get Aliera out of this mess. Aren’t you her friend?”

“If you can find a way to do that with­out un­ac­cept­able con­se­quences, I’ll be glad to work with you.”

“That’s ex­act­ly what I’m hop­ing you’ll help me find.”

“I know.”

“No­rathar, you aren’t giv­ing me a lot of help here.”

“Is there a rea­son why I should?”

“I don’t know. Old times’ sake? I mean, my son is named af­ter you.”

She looked down and drew a cir­cle with her fin­ger on the ta­ble. I did the same thing, back when I had a desk; it was a lit­tle strange see­ing her do it. She said, “Cawti would like to see you.”

Af­ter a bit, I man­aged, “Are you sure?”

“No,” she said. “But she said so.”

“When?”

“Yes­ter­day.”

“She knows I’m in town?”

“Ev­ident­ly.”

Af­ter a bit she said, “Will you see her?”

“Yes,” I said. “If I can do so with­out get­ting her killed.”

“I think she can look af­ter her­self, don’t you?”

“You think so? Against the Jhereg? If they de­cide to take af­ter her to get at me? Not to men­tion the Bitch Pa­trol, who de­vel­oped a sud­den in­ter­est in her ac­tiv­ities a few years ago, and who don’t like me much.”

“They guar­an­teed to leave her alone. And they’ve done so.”

I nod­ded. “So far.”

She scowled. “If they don’t—”

“What will you do? Bring the House of the Drag­on against them? Or the Em­pire?”

“I’ll bring me against them.”

I nod­ded. “And the Jhereg quakes in fear.”

“You, least of all, should mock me.”

I clenched my teeth and nod­ded again. “I’ll go see her,” I said.

That marked the end of the in­ter­view. I gave her a bow that I tried to make de­void of irony and start­ed to leave the way I came, on­ly she stopped me.

“Use the oth­er door. You can get in­to the Palace that way; the way you’re go­ing leads out­side.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Nice to know you haven’t for­got­ten some things.”

“There are things you don’t for­get,” said Her High­ness.

I went out the way she in­di­cat­ed, got lost in the Drag­on Wing, got lost in the Palace, and even­tu­al­ly made my way on­to the streets of the City, where I hailed the fourth closed foot­cab to come by, and gave di­rec­tions to the Punc­tured Jug in the Sum­mer­gate sec­tion of Adri­lankha. Loiosh and Rocza flew above the cab, watch­ing and com­plain­ing.

This was a place I’d been to a few times. I’d heard a few dif­fer­ent sto­ries about who ac­tu­al­ly owned it. It was var­ious­ly put as (1) be­long­ing to ev­ery­one on the Coun­cil, op­er­at­ing through shells; (2) be­long­ing to a guy with no ties to the Or­ga­ni­za­tion, but lots of pull at Court; or (3) owned joint­ly by the Coun­cil, so there’d al­ways be a safe meet­ing place. Whichev­er; it was one of a dozen or so places in the City where you could eat with­out wor­ry­ing about un­pleas­ant­ness, no mat­ter who was af­ter you.

Of course, walk­ing out the door af­ter­ward was your prob­lem.

There’s an L-​shaped bar run­ning the length of the wall to the right and con­tin­uing to the far wall. The rest of the room is filled with chairs and a score of ta­bles al­most big enough for two peo­ple, all of which have four chairs in front of them; you usu­al­ly end up hold­ing your plate on your lap and keep­ing just your drink on the ta­ble. A row of small win­dows high on the wall lets in a to­ken amount of light. The rest is pro­vid­ed by two mas­sive can­de­labra be­hind the bar, and I imag­ine those who work there ac­quire a good num­ber of head-​bumps as well as a few odd burns un­til they get to know the place.

It was the mid­dle of the day and not very crowd­ed; about a third of the ta­bles were oc­cu­pied, most­ly with the Chreotha and Jhe­gaala trades­men that you’d think com­prised most of the pop­ula­tion of the City if your eyes pass over the in­nu­mer­able Teck­la. A hood­ed wom­an in dark cloth­ing, with noth­ing to in­di­cate her House, sat alone at a ta­ble near the door. I sat down op­po­site her; Rocza turned around on my shoul­der to watch the door.

“Hel­lo, Kiera. I hope you weren’t wait­ing long.”

She raised her head and her lips quirked. “What are you drink­ing?”

“Here? Some­thing white and in­of­fen­sive. I don’t trust them.”

“You’re a snob.”

“Yes. But I’ll pay; this is my meet­ing. Are we eat­ing?”

“Noth­ing for me.”

That was a shame. This was one of the few Dra­gaer­an places that had good food—a spe­cial­ty called “cure” which in­volved meat cov­ered in a spicy-​sweet sauce. Oth­er places made it, but here they’d been us­ing the same oven for more than eight hun­dred years; it’s hard to com­pete with some­thing like that. But it was my meet­ing, and she wasn’t eat­ing, so nei­ther would I. La­dy Tel­dra would have ap­proved.

Kiera got the at­ten­tion of a mid­dle-​aged Teck­la with ex­traor­di­nar­ily thick eye­brows and a slack mouth, who tight­ened up his mouth long enough to nod at the or­der. A guy with al­most no chin and wear­ing Jhereg col­ors came in and took a seat where he could os­ten­ta­tious­ly watch me. I ig­nored him; Kiera kept an eye on him with­out dis­cernible ex­pres­sion. “Is he the on­ly Jhereg in the place, Loiosh?”

“At the mo­ment. Give it two min­utes. They’ll be com­ing in the win­dows.”

“I don’t doubt it a bit.”

The wine ar­rived; it was as in­of­fen­sive as the Teck­la who de­liv­ered it.

Kiera nod­ded her thanks. “It’s been years,” she lied. “I trust I find you well?”

“My ass is small­er and my feet are flat­ter, but I’m all right oth­er than that.”

“And your purse? Is that flat­ter and small­er as well?”

“No, it’s all right. I still have most of what I got for Laris.”

She looked mild­ly star­tled. In this light, her eyes seemed al­most gray, and her com­plex­ion near­ly as dark as mine. She al­ways seemed a lit­tle small­er than she was. “When I heard you want­ed to meet me, I as­sumed you want­ed some­thing stolen. Is it in­for­ma­tion, then?”

“No, you were right. Well, both, re­al­ly. I want some­thing stolen. But not for rec­om­pense.”

“Ah. Of course.” She looked in­ter­est­ed. “Tell me more.”

“How long has it been since you broke in­to the Im­pe­ri­al Palace?”

“Oh,” she said. She fell silent, her eyes lid­ded. Then, “Are you sure you want a thief, and not a spy?”

“I want a spy,” I said. “But I don’t know any I can use right now.”

“They’re dif­fer­ent skills, you know.”

“I know.”

She nod­ded. “Go on, then.”

“There must be won­der­ful amounts of pa­per­work as­so­ci­at­ed with Aliera’s pros­ecu­tion.”

“Box­es, I’m sure. Steal­ing them will be less of a prob­lem than trans­port­ing them. Not to men­tion that some­one will no­tice they’re miss­ing.”

“I don’t need all of them. Just one.”

“Which?”

“That’s the kick­er. I don’t know.”

She gave me the eye­brow and wait­ed for me to con­tin­ue.

“Some­where,” I said, “among the ear­li­est pa­pers as­so­ci­at­ed with the case—maybe the very ear­li­est—I’m hop­ing there will be some­thing that will tell us how it start­ed. I want to know who thought of ar­rest­ing Aliera, or how the idea came up, or how hard it was to talk the Em­press in­to it, and who ob­ject­ed and why, and—”

“Why should such a thing ex­ist?”

“Be­cause—okay, look: I won’t claim to know the Em­press. We aren’t bud­dies. But I’ve met her, talked to her, and been there when Aliera and Mor­rolan and Sethra talked about her.”

She nod­ded. “Go on.”

“It wouldn’t have crossed her mind to solve her prob­lem by or­der­ing the ar­rest of a friend. I don’t think it would have crossed her mind to solve her prob­lem by or­der­ing an ar­rest.”

Kiera chewed her lip, then nod­ded. “I can see that. All right.”

“So some­one else came up with the idea. I want to know who it was.”

“You think that will be in one of the pa­pers in her case files?”

“I’m hop­ing to find some­thing to point me in the right di­rec­tion. I’m not ex­pect­ing a com­plete an­swer, just a hint about where to look.”

“You do want a spy.”

“Yes. Know any?”

“A few. But this sounds like a chal­lenge. I’d like to try it.”

“Good! How much?”

“Two thou­sand. What, too much?”

“No, no. Just star­tled me. But for what I’m ask­ing, pret­ty rea­son­able.” I pulled out bank draft and a pen­cil, wrote a lit­tle, and hand­ed it to her.

“I sup­pose you’re in a hur­ry?”

“Hard to say. Aliera’s in prison, so maybe she is.”

She nod­ded. “I’ll see what I can do. I’m look­ing for­ward to this.” She grinned the unique Kiera grin that brought back some mem­ories and drove out cer­tain oth­ers.

We drank our wine qui­et­ly; there was a low hum of con­ver­sa­tion around us. The door opened again be­hind me, and an in­of­fen­sive-​look­ing fel­low in Jhereg col­ors came in and took a ta­ble against the far wall. He leaned against the wall, stretched out his legs, and looked at me.

“Think the Jhereg knows I’m here?”

“Pos­si­bly,” she said. “Do you have a plan for get­ting out?”

“Not a plan as such. I mean, I can run a lot faster than you’d think.”

“Some­how, I don’t think you’d have come here if that was the best you had.”

I shrugged. “I can al­ways tele­port to Cas­tle Black. It isn’t of­fi­cial­ly safe, but the Jhereg isn’t go­ing to mess with a Drag­on.”

She nod­ded. “But they’ll know where you are, and they’ll be watch­ing for when you leave.”

“Yeah. I’ve got­ten kind of used to that, though.”

“If you’d pre­fer, I have an­oth­er idea.”

“Let’s hear it.”

She told me. I laughed. Loiosh laughed.

I re­moved La­dy Tel­dra’s sheath from my belt and slipped it in­to my cloak. “Do it,” I said.

She was qui­et for a mo­ment while she psy­chi­cal­ly spoke with a mu­tu­al friend, or maybe ac­quain­tance. At one point she looked at me and said, “Where do you want to end up?”

I con­sid­ered a few things, then told her. She nod­ded and again got that blank look. Even­tu­al­ly she fo­cused on me and said, “It’s all set.” Then we drank wine and got a bit caught up on lit­tle things that couldn’t mat­ter to any­one else.

Present­ly, the door opened be­hind me. Kiera fo­cused over my shoul­der and I turned my head. They were both wom­en, near­ly iden­ti­cal in ap­pear­ance, both wear­ing the black and sil­ver of the House of the Drag­on and the gold uni­form half-​cloak of the Phoenix Guards.

They took two steps for­ward un­til they were di­rect­ly be­hind me, and one of them said, “Count Vladimir Tal­tos of Szurke? Please sur­ren­der your weapon and come with us.”

I could feel ev­ery­one in the restau­rant star­ing at us. I didn’t look, but I could imag­ine the care­ful­ly ex­pres­sion­less faces of the two Jhereg. I gave the guards a big smile.

“Of course,” I said. I re­moved my sword belt and passed it back to them, then stood up slow­ly, my hands well clear of my body.

“It was a plea­sure, Kiera. Un­til next time.”

“Be well, Vlad.”

I turned and gave my cap­tors a nod. “I’m at your ser­vice.”

They es­cort­ed me out, one on ei­ther side, and di­rect­ly in­to a prison coach. The driv­er and an­oth­er guard were al­ready in po­si­tion. Loiosh and Rocza launched them­selves from my shoul­ders, which the guards pre­tend­ed not to no­tice; I guess they’d been in­formed that some­thing like that might hap­pen. I didn’t spot any as­sas­sins, but I wasn’t look­ing that hard, ei­ther. The guards climbed in, one next to me, the oth­er op­po­site. The door closed, and the lock snicked, and there was the shift­ing of the coach as the side­man took his po­si­tion next to the driv­er. Then the coach start­ed mov­ing and the Drag­onlord op­po­site me hand­ed me my weapon back.

“I trust that went as re­quest­ed?”

“Yes,” I said. “My thanks.”

She shrugged. “Or­ders are or­ders. I don’t need to un­der­stand them.”

That was my in­vi­ta­tion to ex­plain what this was all about; I de­clined.

We rat­tled off. I couldn’t see where we were, but Loiosh kept me in­formed. Not speak­ing with my “cap­tors” be­came un­com­fort­able, so I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. That last­ed un­til the first jolt cracked the back of my head against the hard wood of the coach. Af­ter that I stared straight ahead, and just wait­ed.