Iorich

I didn’t need Loiosh to tell me when we ar­rived at In­no­cent’s Gate, as we call it in the Jhereg—the sud­den dip in­to the low­er floors where they bring pris­on­ers. We stopped, and there were a few words ex­changed in low tones, and then we start­ed for­ward again—some­thing I’d nev­er done.

“Go­ing through a tun­nel, Boss. Okay, now we’re in a kind of court­yard. They sure have a lot of those coach­es for pris­on­ers. Sta­bles, too.”

“Yeah, I can smell them.”

“Out of the tun­nel, and, okay, you’re head­ing away from the Palace.”

“In the right di­rec­tion, as agreed?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then.”

Or maybe not. I had mixed feel­ings about the whole thing.

The two guards­men in the car­riage with me seemed a lot more com­fort­able not talk­ing than I was. We clanked through the streets; it’s al­ways strange to ride in one of those, be­cause you know ev­ery­one is star­ing at you, but you al­so know they can’t see in­side the coach.

Even­tu­al­ly we reached our des­ti­na­tion. One of them tapped the ceil­ing—two, then one. The re­ply came back, three slow taps. The coach bounced more, there was a clank­ing, and the door opened, let­ting light in and me out. My legs were stiff.

I looked around and felt a mo­ment of pan­ic; I didn’t rec­og­nize the place. It was a lit­tle cot­tage in a neigh­bor­hood full of two-​sto­ry room­ing hous­es. I no­ticed a small ni­ball rac­quet, in front of it, on the nar­row walk­way be­tween the street and the front door.

The car­riage pulled away. Loiosh’s feet tight­ened briefly on my shoul­der.

I took three steps for­ward, start­ed to clap, and no­ticed a rope hang­ing from the eaves. I pulled it and heard the faint clack­ety-​clunk from with­in. I was feel­ing some­thing sim­ilar, but nev­er mind. The door opened.

“I’ve been ex­pect­ing you, Vladimir,” said Cawti. “Please come in.”

Iorich

7

Q: State your name, your House, and your city of res­idence.

A: Bryn, of Lock­head, Your Wor­ship.

Q: House?

A: I’m not cer­tain, Your Wor­ship.

Q: Not . . . You may ad­dress me as my lord. How is it you don’t know your House?

A: I was born in­to the House of the Teck­la, my lord, but I en­list­ed in the army, and—

Q: You are still of the Teck­la, son.

A: Thank you, my lord. Teck­la.

Q: How did you come to en­list?

A: For the hon­or of the Em­pire, my lord, and to serve Her Majesty.

Q: That’s very good, son. Why else?

A: My lord?

Q: Who con­vinced you to join the army?

A: The re­cruiter, my lord. He of­fered three im­pe­ri­als to any­one who’d en­list.

Q: That’s a lot of gold, isn’t it, son?

A: I’d nev­er seen, that is, yes my lord.

Q: What would you do for that much gold?

A: My lord? I don’t un­der­stand.

Q: You’ve ex­plained that this is a lot of gold to you.

A: Oh, yes!

Q: It would seem that for mon­ey like that, you would have been will­ing to do things you oth­er­wise wouldn’t.

A: All I had to do was fol­low—

Q: Nev­er­the­less, Bryn, isn’t it true that there are things you would have been will­ing to do for three im­pe­ri­als that might have seemed wrong be­fore you took such pay­ment?

A: I guess.

Q: Can you de­scribe what hap­pened on the first Mar­ket­day of Ly­orn of this year?

A: Yes, my lord. Dep­pi said we’d got­ten or­ders to—

Q: Just an­swer the ques­tion, son. De­scribe what hap­pened.

A: We were go­ing through a sort of ham­let about a mile west of Seer­point, when—

Q: What do you mean when you say “a sort of ham­let”?

A: About four or five cot­tages and a post sta­ble, my lord.

Q: Was it four or five cot­tages, Bryn?

A: (Hes­ita­tion) Five, I think.

Q: Very well. Ob­serve that it is im­por­tant we be ex­act in all de­tails. The Em­pire in­sists on no less.

A: Yes, my lord.

Q: Con­tin­ue, then. Did this ham­let have a name?

A: Tir­ma, my lord. It was called Tir­ma.

Q: Very well. And what hap­pened there?

A: The Stuffies were—

Q: Stuffies?

A: Your par­don, my lord. The, ah, the en­emy.

Q: Go on.

A: They were hid­den be­hind a stone wall on one side, and a row of jack­lenut bush­es on the oth­er.

Q: And what hap­pened?

A: It was a ’stoun, my lord. There must have been—

Q: Par­don me, son. A “ ’stoun”?

A: Um, a sur­prise? An am­bus­cade?

Q: I see. Go on.

A: They killed Jaf. He was on point, and at least three of them jumped him. They cut him to pieces, you know? Just hacked away, even af­ter he was dead. We couldn’t get to him.

Q: That must have made you an­gry.

A: Yes, my lord.

Q: Very an­gry.

A: Yes, my lord.

Q: So, what hap­pened then?

Her eyes were just the same, though maybe they looked a lit­tle big­ger than I re­mem­bered them. I stood look­ing at her.

“Nice place,” I man­aged.

A quick smile. “You haven’t even seen it yet.”

“From the out­side.”

She stood aside and I walked in.

“It’s nice in here. I like the hearth be­ing near the kitchen, so you can use it for cook­ing.”

“Not much of a kitchen, re­al­ly.”

“You have wa­ter.”

“When the pump works. When it doesn’t, there’s a well in back.”

“You share a room with, with the boy?”

“Yes. One oth­er room.”

“I re­mem­ber that chair.”

“Sit in it. I’ll get you some­thing.”

I didn’t re­al­ly want to sit in it, but I did. It seemed to re­mem­ber me. Rocza flew over and land­ed on Cawti’s shoul­der, rubbed against her cheek. I felt the most bizarre flash of jeal­ousy I can re­call, then chuck­led at my­self. Here and there, on coun­ters and man­tel­pieces, were things I re­mem­bered: the small white vase, the lant, the win­neasaurus book­ends. Oth­er things I didn’t rec­og­nize: a jar of a such a pure vi­olet col­or that it was al­most painful, a frame drum with at­tached beat­er, the books be­tween the book­ends.

She found a bot­tle and opened it. She was much bet­ter with the tongs and feath­er than she had been be­fore; I’d al­ways opened the bot­tles.

She poured a cou­ple of glass­es and brought them back, sat down op­po­site me. By turn­ing my head, I could see out­side, where there was a lit­tle gar­den; I couldn’t tell what was grow­ing, but I guessed a mix of bright-​bloom­ing flow­ers and veg­eta­bles.

I raised my glass to her. “You’ve be­come very do­mes­tic.”

She nod­ded. “Ne­ces­si­ty.”

“Yeah, that’ll do it.”

Rocza re­mained on her shoul­der, nuz­zling and get­ting reac­quaint­ed.

I said, “Where is Vlad No­rathar?”

“Out play­ing; I ex­pect him back soon.”

I nod­ded. “He has friends?”

“A few. And the lit­tle girl, De­vera, comes by from time to time.”

“Good,” I said.

I want­ed to ask if she missed me, on­ly I didn’t want to ask. I said, “Do you see much of No­rathar these days?”

“Yes,” she said. “She’s pret­ty much the boy’s oth­er par­ent.”

I nod­ded. “How’s that work­ing out?”

“Well. We haven’t got­ten to the po­lit­ical con­flicts yet.” She smiled a lit­tle. I tried to smile back, but I think it came out more of a gri­mace.

“This busi­ness with Aliera,” I said. “It must be hard on her.”

“I sup­pose.”

“I mean No­rathar.”

“Oh. Yes, it is.”

“How is it she was picked to be War­lord?”

“I don’t know; it isn’t some­thing I’m com­fort­able talk­ing about with her.”

“I guess.”

“And if it were, I don’t think she’d want me talk­ing about it with you.”

I nod­ded and drank some wine.

I said, “I trust ev­ery­thing is set­tled in South Adri­lankha.”

“I’m not in­volved, if that’s what you mean. Things are as they were, there. No bet­ter.”

“Are you still giv­ing read­ing lessons?”

“Twice a week, un­til late­ly.”

I nod­ded.

Var­ious ques­tions formed in my mind: “Do you miss me at all?” “Is it hard to raise him with­out me here?” “Does he ev­er ask about me, and if he does, what do you tell him?” I didn’t give them voice.

“Do you like the wine?” she asked.

“You know I do.”

“Just try­ing to make con­ver­sa­tion.”

“And avoid talk­ing.”

“Yes,” she said. “That too.”

I let out a breath. “Sor­ry. I didn’t in­tend to be dif­fi­cult. I just want­ed to see you. And the boy.”

She nod­ded. “And see if you could find out any­thing that might help your cur­rent project.”

I nod­ded. There was some­thing about how she said “project” that I could have ex­plored if I’d felt like it, but I didn’t.

She said, “If there was some­thing I could tell you that would help, I would.”

“I know.”

Cawti said, “What has hap­pened since you were here last?”

I laughed. “Could you an­swer that ques­tion?”

“Prob­ably not,” she said, gift­ing me with a small smile. “Any lovers?”

“One,” I said. “A Dra­gaer­an, odd­ly enough.”

“In­ter­est­ing. I’m sur­prised. How did that work out?”

“That’s hard to an­swer. I guess it still hasn’t, quite. You?”

“Lovers? A cou­ple, but not re­al­ly lovers as you and I un­der­stand the word.”

I nod­ded. “Al­so, I had a few things out with the De­mon God­dess.”

“Oh, re­al­ly? Set­tled to your sat­is­fac­tion?”

“No, but I learned yet more things to make me un­com­fort­able. On ac­count of I didn’t have enough un­com­fort­able in­for­ma­tion, I sup­pose.”

“I see. Do I want de­tails?”

That was a hard ques­tion. “No,” I fi­nal­ly said.

“I’ll trust your judg­ment.” She hes­itat­ed. “Can you beat them?”

“The Jhereg? No. Not in the long run. They’re go­ing to get me even­tu­al­ly. You know how it works, Cawti.”

“I do. I wasn’t sure you were will­ing to face it.”

“They’d have got­ten me al­ready if I weren’t.”

She hes­itat­ed again. “I sup­pose you’ve thought about the way to make sure they can’t use a Mor­gan­ti weapon on you.”

I nod­ded. “Sui­cide? Of course. I can’t do that. It isn’t in me.”

“So, what do you do in­stead?”

“You pack as much liv­ing as you can in be­tween de­lay­ing the in­evitable.”

“I guess that’s all you can do.”

“Un­less, of course, I can fix it.”

Her eyes flashed. “How?”

“I’m not sure, yet. I have some ideas.”

“Any­thing you can tell me about?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll be in­ter­est­ed, when you can.”

“Yeah, me too.”

At which point, Vlad No­rathar came burst­ing in the door, ob­vi­ous­ly about to say some­thing im­por­tant, then looked at me, stopped, and stood mo­tion­less. I don’t know what I ex­pect­ed; I know that a child changes from four years old to eight; but he had so lit­tle in com­mon with my mem­ory that it was startling. His face had thinned, his eyes weren’t so amaz­ing­ly large, though they were still bright. His hair, though not black, had be­come a much dark­er brown, and was long and curled just a lit­tle. And he’d be­come lanky where he had been chub­by.

I stood up. “Well met, Vlad No­rathar,” I told him.

Cawti said, “Shut the door, Vlad. Do you re­mem­ber your fa­ther? If not, do you re­mem­ber your man­ners? Ei­ther will do, for now.”

The boy shut his mouth, looked at me, then at Loiosh and Rocza, and said, “I re­mem­ber. Well met, sir. I’ve been study­ing the Art, as you sug­gest­ed.”

I re­mem­bered mak­ing no such sug­ges­tion, but I said, “I’m grat­ified to hear it.” I turned to Cawti. “Is he do­ing well?”

“Yes, very well, when he choos­es to ap­ply him­self.”

He came more ful­ly in­to the house. “I’m pleased they haven’t killed you yet.”

“Thank you, so am I, and you have a good a mem­ory.”

“You make an im­pres­sion,” said Cawti, with an ex­pres­sion that was a hard to de­ci­pher. Then she ad­dressed Vlad No­rathar and said, “You should get cleaned up.”

He nod­ded, and sketched me a bow, and went through to the oth­er room.

“He’s quite the boy,” I said.

She smiled. “Yes, he is.”

“He should meet his great-​grand­fa­ther.”

“I’m plan­ning a trip this sum­mer.”

“Good.”

“Any chance you can be there, meet us?”

“Maybe. If it seems safe.”

She nod­ded.

Vlad No­rathar came out again. He didn’t look any ti­di­er, but his moth­er gave a nod of ap­proval. He walked over and stood in front of me. “Sir,” he said. “May I touch the Jhereg?”

“Loiosh?”

“What, I have a choice?”

“This time.”

“Sure, all right.”

“Go ahead,” I said. Loiosh bent his neck down and suf­fered his head to be scratched.

“He’s so cold,” said the boy.

“In ev­ery way,” I agreed.

“Heh.”

He looked mo­men­tar­ily puz­zled, then he said, “I re­mem­ber you.”

“Good,” I said. “I’d hate for you to for­get.”

“I won’t,” he said, look­ing very se­ri­ous.

Cawti cleared her throat. “Vladimir, would you care to sup with us?”

“An­oth­er time, if I can,” I said. “There are things I need to do.” I stood up and solemn­ly bowed to my son. “Un­til I see you next, be well.”

“And you, sir.”

“It was good see­ing you again, Vladimir,” said Cawti.

“You too.”

“I miss you.”

I think I must have said some­thing there, and then I was walk­ing away from the house. I heard the door close. “Thud,” it said.

“No one. You’d think they’d have this place watched all the time.”

“Who? What?”

“The Jhereg, Boss. You know, the ones try­ing to kill you?”

“Oh, right. Them.”

“You okay, Boss?”

“Com­pared to what? Com­pared to how I’d be if there’d been as­sas­sins wait­ing out­side her house, I’m do­ing fine.”

“Boss, why wasn’t her house be­ing watched?”

“Eco­nomics. If they’re go­ing to watch here, there are at least ten oth­er places to watch. That’s more than thir­ty peo­ple they have to pay to stand around and not earn, on the chance that I’ll show up. They want me bad, but I don’t think they want me that bad.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Then they were here and I didn’t see them. Or they weren’t here for some oth­er rea­son. What’s the point in what-​ifs, Loiosh?”

“To get an­swers.”

“How?”

“Gee, Boss. Do you know any­one in the Jhereg who might be will­ing to talk to you?”

“Kra­gar.”

“Kra­gar.”

“So, how do we get there with­out telling the whole Jhereg where we are? Any sug­ges­tions for that, O wise one?”

He made a cou­ple of sar­cas­tic ones. I trust­ed him and Rocza to keep a care­ful watch for me; I let my mind wan­der to see if it hap­pened to stum­ble over a clue or some­thing. I was mak­ing my way to­ward the Stone Bridge when Loiosh said, “Let’s steer clear of Five Mar­kets, Boss. It’s too easy to miss some­thing.” It was a good plan, and I was hap­py to go along with it. My mind, in­stead of look­ing for clues, sent me down the best al­ter­nate route, which was along the Flint­way. Far­ther down, past where I was go­ing, the Flint­way would run in­to Malak Cir­cle, and from there it was just a step to my old area.

So I con­tin­ued un­til I reached the long, wind­ing Flint­way, which me­an­dered from the Chain Bridge to what had once been the Flint­wood Es­tates, far out of town. It was an un­com­fort­ably nar­row street, with room­ing hous­es of three and four sto­ries loom­ing over you and chan­nels cut in­to odd places for drainage. It changed its name three or four times dur­ing the walk, but to lo­cals it was al­ways the Flint­way. I walked past a wood­work­er’s shop. The door to the shop was flanked by the doors to two room­ing hous­es. In one of them, there had once lived the mis­tress of a s’yang-​stone banker who had thought he could make some ex­tra cash by feed­ing in­for­ma­tion to his boss’s com­peti­tor. I’d got­ten him as he emerged from vis­it­ing his mis­tress. Yep, that same odd mark in the grain of the door, like some­one had par­tial­ly squashed a pear.

A lit­tle far­ther down it joined Malak Cir­cle. From there I cut left; my feet knew the way. I felt an odd lit­tle jolt as I reached my des­ti­na­tion. I stepped in­side, ex­changed nods with the guy keep­ing the peace for the play­ers, and ges­tured up­stairs. He gave me an odd look as he nod­ded, like he might sus­pect who I was but wasn’t sure. I made my way up the nar­row stairs.

I didn’t rec­og­nize the sec­re­tary; he seemed rather small, friend­ly, in­gen­uous, and was prob­ably very dan­ger­ous. He asked if he might be of some ser­vice to me.

“Is Kra­gar around? That is, as­sum­ing you’d no­tice.”

He smiled as if it were a shared joke, just be­tween us. “I’m afraid he’s stepped out. If you’d care to wait?” He ges­tured to a chair.

“Sure,” I said.

I sat down and stretched out, mem­ories of this old place flood­ing back. Fun­ny, I’d nev­er no­ticed the smell be­fore: a mix from the herbal­ist shop across the street, the bak­er down the way, and the musky smell of an­cient fur­ni­ture. Kra­gar should get around to get­ting new fur­ni­ture one of these days. It was com­fort­able, though.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

He looked up, and smiled. “Yenth,” he said, or some­thing like that.

“A plea­sure,” I told him. “I’m Vlad.”

“Yes, I know,” he said pleas­ant­ly. “The jhereg on your shoul­ders were kind of a clue.”

“You could make a lot of mon­ey by let­ting cer­tain per­sons know I’m here.”

He nod­ded, still look­ing friend­ly. “I know that, too. But the boss might not be so hap­py with me.”

“He might not,” I agreed.

It was very strange hear­ing Kra­gar re­ferred to as “the boss.”

“Is it all right if I wait in his of­fice?”

He frowned. “Mind if I ask why?”

I gave him an hon­est an­swer.

“Ah,” he said, laugh­ing. “I can see that. Will you make it good for me with the boss, if need­ed?”

“Yeah, I think I can do that. Want some mon­ey to make it of­fi­cial that you were bribed?”

He chuck­led. “No, thanks. That might lead to ques­tions I wouldn’t care to an­swer.”

“Fair enough,” I said, and moved in­to what once had been my of­fice, with my desk, a new chair where mine had once been, and the same ug­ly view from my win­dow. Some­times I’d had that win­dow board­ed up, oth­er times I kept it open so Loiosh could use it. I took an­oth­er chair and shoved it in­to a cor­ner next to the coat rack and wait­ed, think­ing in­vis­ible thoughts.

The door opened, he came in and sat be­hind the desk, opened a draw­er, and pulled out a ledger. “Hey there,” I said, and I swear he al­most screamed.

He set­tled down and stared at me. “Vlad!”

“Hey, Kra­gar. You know, I’ve been want­ing to do that to you for more years than I can re­mem­ber. If the Jhereg gets me now, my last thought will be of the plea­sure I’ve just had.” I smiled.

“I think I’ll kill you be­fore the Jhereg gets to it. How did you get past Yenth?”

“I bribed him.”

“How much did it take?”

“No cash, he just want­ed in on the vi­car­ious plea­sure of see­ing you jump.”

“I’ll kill you both.”

“Don’t blame you.”

“But first I’m go­ing let my heart rate slow down to some­thing be­low the im­mi­nent death lev­el.”

“When that hap­pens, you can maybe tell me a few things.”

“Maybe. I’ll think about it. What do you want to know?”

“What’s up with Aliera?”

“She’s been ar­rest­ed.”

“I know that. Why?”

“Prac­tic­ing pre-​Em­pire sor­cery.”

“I know that,” I said. “Why?”

“Be­cause the Em­press needs to dis­tract at­ten­tion from the mess in Tir­ma.”

“And there was no oth­er way to do that than ar­rest a friend of hers?”

“How should I know? The Em­press hasn’t been tak­ing me in­to her con­fi­dence late­ly.”

“How about the Jhereg?”

“Hm­mm?”

“Do you know how they plan to get me?”

“You don’t know?”

“Well, I’ve had the thought that this whole thing with Aliera was con­coct­ed just to get me back here, but that seems a bit para­noid even for me.”

“Yeah, that may be go­ing over the edge.”

“For one thing, how do they get the Em­press to co­op­er­ate?”

“Right.”

“Un­less—”

“Hm­mm?”

“Kra­gar, have you heard any whis­pers or ru­mors of some­thing big be­ing up with the Jhereg in com­bi­na­tion with an­oth­er House, or more than one?”

He looked at me. I said, “That look tells me that the an­swer is yes.”

“How did you—?”

“What is it?”

“I asked first. How did you know?”

“I didn’t know. In fact, I as­sumed I was wrong. But if this is all a means of get­ting me back here, then the key el­ement is to con­vince the Em­press to do what they want.”

“Okay, I can see that.”

“The Jhereg is at the bot­tom of the Cy­cle. They aren’t in any po­si­tion to in­flu­ence the Im­peri­um, un­less—”

“—they work with an­oth­er House, maybe even two or three.”

“Right. Which means they have to have some­thing to of­fer, which means—”

“Some­thing big. Got it. I keep for­get­ting how de­vi­ous you are.”

“Me? I’m not the one who came up with it, what­ev­er it is. Which re­minds me, what is it?”

“Now that I can an­swer,” said Kra­gar, “I have no idea.”

Iorich

8

Yes, cer­tain­ly I’m will­ing to co­op­er­ate with your com­mit­tee, but I have no idea what you imag­ine I can tell you. As you know, I had no po­si­tion in the Im­pe­ri­al army at the time of in­ci­dent, and no knowl­edge of it be­yond ru­mor and what I was told by friends, none of whom were di­rect­ly in­volved ei­ther. If your ques­tion con­cerns mil­itary mat­ters in gen­er­al, cer­tain­ly I will give you my opin­ions, but it would seem there are oth­ers more qual­ified. In gen­er­al, such “tes­ti­mo­ny” as you want from me I can give right now: If you put sol­diers in a po­si­tion where the en­emy is the pop­ulace, you must ex­pect them to treat the pop­ulace as the en­emy. This does not re­quire knowl­edge of the high­er reach­es of the sor­cer­ous arts to devine.

Nev­er­the­less, as I said, I am will­ing to speak to your com­mit­tee at any time that my du­ties do not re­quire my pres­ence else­where. A mes­sage sent to me through the House of the Drag­on will reach me quick­ly, and a mes­sage sent to the Of­fice of the War­lord, Drag­on Wing, Im­pe­ri­al Palace, will reach me in­stant­ly.

—No­rathar (au­then­ti­cat­ed)

“What did you hear, and where did you hear it?”

“I didn’t ex­act­ly hear any­thing, but there have been a few Or­ca—”

“Or­ca!”

“—who have been ex­cep­tion­al­ly po­lite of late.”

“Um.”

“It bugged me enough that I set some­one to find out what was up, and all I learned was that there are or­ders from some of their House not to of­fend us.” Giv­en how eas­ily the Or­ca of­fend ev­ery­one, and how ha­bit­ual it seems with them to do so, that cer­tain­ly was sig­nif­icant—of some­thing.

“Um,” I said again.

“Maybe you think that’s nor­mal—”

“Heh. Yeah, okay. Some­thing is up.”

“I’m still not sure of your con­clu­sion, though.”

“You mean, that it’s all di­rect­ed at me?”

“Right. Some­thing that big—”

“I know. I may be a part of it, or maybe they just took the op­por­tu­ni­ty. But I’m go­ing to fol­low up my guess that some­where be­tween the Jhereg and the Or­ca, and maybe an­oth­er House too, some­one is putting pres­sure on the Em­press.”

“If we could find out who, or how—”

“Kiera is work­ing on that for me.”

An eye­brow went up, then he nod­ded. He kept look­ing at me.

I said, “What is it?”

“What’s what?”

“That look you’re giv­ing me.”

“Oh, sor­ry.”

“Um. Well?”

He hes­itat­ed. “You’re old­er,” he fi­nal­ly said.

“Yeah, that hap­pens.”

“I know. Just, faster than I’d thought it would.”

“That’s two of us.”

“Sor­ry.”

“No prob­lem; I need­ed cheer­ing up any­way. Be­sides, I don’t think old age is what’s go­ing to get me.”

“It is if it slows you down.”

“You are just full of cheer, aren’t you?”

“Lord Cheer­ful, that’s what they call me.”

“All right, Lord Cheer­ful. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to find out who is try­ing to do what. I take it you’re on that?”

“I’m not hope­ful, Vlad. This ob­vi­ous­ly goes all the way up to the Jhereg Coun­cil. They aren’t easy to crack.”

“Go in through the Or­ca.”

He nod­ded. “All right. I’ll take a run at it. What are you go­ing to be do­ing?”

“I’m not ex­act­ly sure. Give me a few min­utes to think about it.”

“Take all the time you need.” He sat back in his chair. I had to ad­mit, he looked like he be­longed there.

“Su­per­cil­ious,” I said. “That’s the word I’m look­ing for.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I had a good teach­er.”

There was noth­ing to say to that, so I stared out what used to be my win­dow. Some­times I’d found the an­swer to a prob­lem on the wall of the build­ing across the way. It didn’t work this time; I guess I had to be sit­ting be­hind the desk.

“Hun­gry?” he said.

“Come to think of it, yeah.”

“Should I round up body­guards or should I send out for some­thing?”

“Send out. I don’t trust your sec­re­tary; I think he’d take a bribe.”

“What are you hun­gry for?”

“Pret­ty much any­thing.”

He yelled for Yenth and in­struct­ed him to have lunch brought in. “And get your­self some moldy cheese and vine­gar,” he added. Yenth left with a smirk he must have learned from Kra­gar.

“How are things here?”

“Not like I ex­pect­ed.”

“Oh?”

“You have to keep push­ing. If you aren’t push­ing, you’re be­ing pushed.”

“That’s true, I guess.”

“It gets, uh, tir­ing.”

“If you want a break, we can swap places.”

“If we swapped places, nei­ther of us would have a prob­lem: you’d en­joy push­ing, and the Jhereg would nev­er no­tice me.”

“Good point.”

Present­ly, Yenth came back and de­liv­ered a big box con­tain­ing pas­tries from a ven­dor I re­mem­bered with long­ing, as well as a bot­tle of wine, a se­lec­tion of fruit, and a buck­et of fla­vored ice from the lo­cal sor­cery shop. I hadn’t had the fla­vored ice in years—I smiled when I saw it and won­dered why I nev­er treat­ed my­self to stuff like that any­more. Yenth held up a steam­ing pas­try and said, “Moldy cheese and vine­gar. They made it spe­cial for me.”

“Get out of here,” said Kra­gar.

I bit in­to a pas­try and burned my mouth. Chick­en, maize, tu­bers, and a thick gravy that was sweet­er than I’d have made it but still good. Kra­gar ges­tured, and the wine tongs be­gan to glow red.

“You’ve been prac­tic­ing.”

“On­ly the easy stuff.” He opened the wine and poured us each a glass. It was very dark and strong­ly fla­vored. We ate in si­lence, each with our own thoughts. Loiosh shift­ed on my shoul­der; Rocza hissed soft­ly at him.

“What do you know about No­rathar’s ap­point­ment as War­lord?”

Kra­gar looked up. “Vlad, you think I pay at­ten­tion to Court pol­itics?”

“I think you pay at­ten­tion to ev­ery­thing.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I’m not sure. She was act­ing fun­ny.”

“You saw her?”

“Yes. I got the feel­ing there was some­thing odd about the ap­point­ment.”

“It isn’t the first time the Heir has been War­lord dur­ing a Phoenix Reign, but it hasn’t hap­pened much.”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Two rea­sons: The sec­ond is con­ti­nu­ity—the more Court of­fi­cials who are con­tin­ued over be­tween reigns, the smoother the tran­si­tion is.”

“Right. Makes sense. And the first?”

He looked at me.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Sort of beg­ging for a coup, isn’t it?”

He nod­ded. “What was fun­ny about how No­rathar was act­ing?”

“Eh. Like she want­ed to tell me things, but didn’t. Like she was on both sides at once.”

“Just what about that seems any­thing oth­er than pre­dictable?”

“I know, I know. But there was some­thing else to it.”

He shrugged. “Like, maybe she knew what was go­ing on, and want­ed to tell you, but had, oh, I don’t know, sworn an oath that pre­vent­ed it, or some­thing like that, maybe?”

I called him some­thing my grand­fa­ther wouldn’t have ap­proved of. “Want to spend some more time show­ing how smart you are?”

“Sure.”

“What is it she want­ed to tell me?”

He waved his hands over the desk, like a jon­gleur in the mar­ket about to make some­thing van­ish “with no trace of sor­cery what­so­ev­er!” He said, “Mm­mm . . . the spir­its are be­ing ob­sti­nate. I must ca­jole them. Have you some to­ken I may give to them so they—”

I made a few sug­ges­tions about what sort of to­ken I had and what he and his spir­its could do with it.

He said, “It’s no se­cret that you’re try­ing to help Aliera. No­rathar has in­for­ma­tion that would be use­ful. She can’t give it to you. What’s the big mys­tery?”

“There are two: The first is, what does she know that she can’t tell me? The sec­ond is, how can I find it out? Got an an­swer for ei­ther of those, O Mys­tic One?”

“You could have Day­mar do a mind-​probe.” He smirked.

“The in­for­ma­tion wouldn’t do me much good if I were ground up in­to Vlad-​meal af­ter get­ting it.”

“Ev­ery­thing has to be per­fect for you.”

“I’m just that kind of guy.”

“So, what’s the next step?”

“I wait and see what Kiera can tell me. Af­ter that, I’ll see. Kill some­one, I sup­pose.”

“You’re so ro­man­tic. That’s why you get all the girls.”

“It’s such a tri­al fig­ur­ing out where to put them.” I stood up and start­ed pac­ing.

“It’s good to see you again,” said Kra­gar.

I stopped, looked at him, won­dered if he was be­ing sar­cas­tic, if I re­al­ly missed be­ing where he was, and if he’d yet got­ten a good enough of­fer to sell me out. “Thanks,” I said. “You too.”

“Your food’s get­ting cold.”

I got busy with the food again, feed­ing some to Loiosh and Rocza. When I get dis­tract­ed from eat­ing, it’s a pret­ty good sign that things have got­ten dif­fi­cult. When Loiosh and Roz­ca fail to re­mind me, it’s an even bet­ter sign.

I fin­ished the pas­try, drank some wine, and said, “I’ll tell you what I can’t fig­ure out: It’s too small.”

“Small?”

“For the Em­press. The way I’ve been read­ing it, the Em­press got in­to a mess be­cause some sol­diers no one knows any­thing about killed a few Teck­la no one cares any­thing about. So she ar­ranged this pros­ecu­tion of Aliera to dis­tract at­ten­tion, and Aliera is be­ing a good sol­dier and let­ting her­self be sac­ri­ficed.”

“Well, she was the War­lord when it hap­pened, so maybe she feels she de­serves it.”

“True, but be­side the point. I’m say­ing Zeri­ka wouldn’t do that just to save her­self from some un­pleas­ant­ness. Even from a lot of un­pleas­ant­ness.”

“I don’t know her.”

“I do, sort of.”

“Okay, Vlad. Say you’re right. What does it mean?”

“It means there is more at stake than what hap­pens to Zeri­ka. For her to do some­thing like that, she has to be pre­vent­ing some­thing much worse than any­thing that can hap­pen to her per­son­al­ly.”

“Like what?”

I spread my hands.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, you now know what you don’t know. See how much progress you’ve made?”

“Could you do some­thing for me?”

“If it in­volves a mind-​probe of the Em­press, no. Oth­er­wise, prob­ably.”

I reached over and found a blank piece of pa­per on his desk, right where I used to keep them. I wrote a name on it and passed it over to him. He looked at it and did a thing with his eye­brows. “Left Hand?”

“Yeah. I have an itch that tells me they’re in on this. I’d love to be wrong, but if I’m right, she’s prob­ably in it. Find out what you can about her.”

“I al­ready know more than I’d like to.”

“Start with that, then.”

“Madam Tri­esco is one of the high fig­ures in the Left Hand. She’s prob­ably rich­er than the Em­press. She an­swers to Cao­la, and I don’t think Cao­la would dirty her hands with this di­rect­ly. When some­one sells a trin­ket to in­flu­ence the roll of the stones, Tri­esco is get­ting some of it. If it doesn’t ac­tu­al­ly do any­thing, she’s get­ting more. Ev­ery ma­li­cious im­ita­tion spell in town, some of it goes to her. When­ev­er there’s an unau­tho­rized clair­voy­ance spell cast, she’s get­ting a piece. When—”

“Hey. Are we safe?”

“Hm­mm?”

“Could some­one be watch­ing or lis­ten­ing to us? How good are your pro­tec­tions?”

“They’re the same ones you had, Vlad. Three tied to two, dou­ble-​filled and locked. Cast for twen­ty years, re­mem­ber? Checked four times a year.”

“All right. Any­way, yeah, I know she’s big.”

“What else do you want to. . . oh.”

I shook my head. “Don’t jump to con­clu­sions. I just need to know things. I’m not ready to start in­dis­crim­inate­ly putting shines right and left.”

“All right. But you’ll let me know be­fore you do, so I can be some­where else?”

“I’ll send a spe­cial couri­er.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll check on her for me?”

“Just like the old days.”

“Ex­cept now you have peo­ple to do the leg­work for you.”

“Yeah, ex­cept for that, it’s just like the old days.”

“And you’re more sar­cas­tic than you used to be.”

“Right.”

“Which I didn’t think was pos­si­ble.”

“When you stop be­ing sur­prised, you’ve stopped liv­ing.”

“All right, all right. Can I get an es­cort back to the Im­pe­ri­al Palace?”

He called for Yenth, and said a cou­ple of names I didn’t rec­og­nize. I didn’t rec­og­nize their faces, ei­ther, when they showed up. Kra­gar gave them in­struc­tions that didn’t leave any room for doubt about the con­di­tion I was to ar­rive in, or what would hap­pen to them if I so much as stubbed my toe; they ap­peared to no­tice.

“Thanks, Kra­gar. I’ll be in touch.”

He gave me a salute, and my es­cort es­cort­ed me back down the stairs, out the door, and on­to the sweet-​sour smell of the part of the City I knew best. I’d have liked to have re­laxed more and en­joyed the walk, but I was too busy think­ing.

I made it back to the Palace, the Iorich Wing, and the over-​priced inn, giv­ing my es­corts a cou­ple of orbs to drink my con­tin­ued good health. The room was emp­ty, the bed was soft, I was tired.

I woke up with that ug­ly feel­ing you al­ways get when you sleep in your clothes—years on the run hadn’t in­ured me to it. I checked the Orb and found the time, tried to fig­ure how long I’d been asleep, and re­al­ized I had no idea what time it had been when I’d lain down. Was it light out? I couldn’t re­mem­ber. It was dis­ori­ent­ing and an­noy­ing.

“You’ve been out about six hours, Boss.”

“Okay. Was ev­ery­thing solved while I slept?”

“Al­most ev­ery­thing. Just a bit of cleanup left.”

“Good, then.”

I hauled my­self out and took my­self to the pub­lic baths near­est the Iorich Wing; over-​priced like the rest of the area, full of mar­ble and sor­cer­ous­ly cre­at­ed hot springs. I wrapped my things in my cloak, which I kept next to my hand, and had an at­ten­dant have ev­ery­thing else cleaned while I soaked for a long time. It helped.

I dried my­self off, picked up my cloak, slipped a hand on­to La­dy Tel­dra’s hilt, and went over to the at­ten­dant to pick up my clothes. I over-​tipped, be­cause I’m just that kind of guy. There was enough pri­va­cy near the priv­ies that I could re­place the sur­pris­es about my per­son—the few I still car­ried: dag­ger for each sleeve, throw­ing knife in a boot, gar­rote in the col­lar of the cloak, a cou­ple of darts in­side it, and so on. Then I strapped on my sword belt, with the rapi­er hang­ing from it in front of La­dy Tel­dra, and the cloak cov­er­ing the whole thing. There. Ready to face the world again. As­sas­sins? Bring ’em on.

No, ac­tu­al­ly, don’t. Skip that. Just kid­ding.

“Break­fast?”

“I’m not hun­gry.”

“Liar.”

“Okay, break­fast.”

I ne­go­ti­at­ed my way back to the Palace, fig­ur­ing to grab some­thing there and hop­ing to run in­to Pon­cer again. The din­ing area was much bus­ier now, and those I’d no­ticed be­fore were gone. I found a ven­dor sell­ing fresh, hot pota­to bread with an or­ange-​fla­vored mus­tard, about which you shouldn’t laugh un­til you’ve tried it. Loiosh and Rocza had theirs with­out mus­tard; I ex­plained that the looks they kept get­ting were be­cause of that, but I don’t think they bought it. There was no sign of Pon­cer.

I re­turned to the House of the Iorich and made my way to the ad­vo­cate’s of­fice. His door was open and there were no am­bigu­ous notes on it, so I clapped and went in.

He glanced up from the tome he was read­ing, his fin­ger guid­ing him, and said, “Lord Tal­tos.”

“High Coun­sel.”

He ges­tured to a chair. “What have you found out?”

“That was go­ing to be my ques­tion,” I said.

He grunt­ed and wait­ed.

I sighed. “I’m not sure how much to tell you.”

He shrugged. “Don’t tell me any­thing you want kept se­cret. I’m not about to with­hold in­for­ma­tion I’m com­pelled to dis­close.”

“I was afraid you’d say some­thing like that.”

“You can keep it hy­po­thet­ical, if you want.”

“Hy­po­thet­ical­ly, what would hap­pen if you were ques­tioned about this con­ver­sa­tion?”

“Hy­po­thet­ical­ly, I’d give eva­sive an­swers.”

“And then?”

“Hy­po­thet­ical­ly, ei­ther or both of us could find our­selves at the long end of a short slide.”

“Right. What if there were no hy­po­thet­ical sit­ua­tions?”

“Eh?”

“Nev­er mind. I don’t think telling you my cur­rent the­ory is a good idea.”

“I can’t ar­gue, but it makes my work hard­er.”

“I know. What have you learned?”

“They’re skip­ping sev­er­al steps.”

“Like what?”

“Seals on de­po­si­tions, ver­ifi­ca­tion of psiprint maps, char­ac­ter vet­ting of wit­ness­es—”

“So, that means they want to rush this through?”

“No, it isn’t that sim­ple.” He frowned. “I’ve been read­ing some his­to­ries of pros­ecu­tions with po­lit­ical mo­tives.”

“And?”

“They come in var­ious forms, but they usu­al­ly fall in­to two class­es: the ones they try to rush through, so it’s over be­fore there can be any out­cry, and those that make cer­tain all the for­mal­ities and niceties are ob­served, ah, scrupu­lous­ly, so it can stand up to any ex­am­in­ing among the no­bles who may ques­tion it.”

“And the pub­lic?”

“Hmm? Oh, you were jest­ing.”

“So, this is the for­mer?”

“Yes. And that’s what’s puz­zling me.”

“Go on.”

“There’s no point in rush­ing through it when ev­ery­thing is al­ready known, be­ing talked about in ev­ery the­ater, writ­ten about in stock sheets.”

“I see your point. So, why are they do­ing it?”

“Just what I was won­der­ing.”

“Any the­ories?”

He shook his head. “Could what you’re not telling me ac­count for it?”

“I don’t see how. But I don’t know enough to have an in­tel­li­gent opin­ion.”

“I do, but I don’t have the in­for­ma­tion you have.” He didn’t sound like he was mak­ing an ac­cu­sa­tion, just stat­ing facts.

“I don’t have in­for­ma­tion,” I told him. “Just the­ories.”

He grunt­ed. “Is there any­thing you can tell me?”

“I can ask you some­thing. What’s up with the new War­lord?”

“No­rathar? She’s al­so Drag­on Heir. Un­usu­al, though not un­heard-​of.”

“So I’m told. What does it mean?”

“You mean, aside from be­liev­ing her the best choice?”

“Was she? Why? Her ex­pe­ri­ence in the Jhereg?”

His eye­brows rose. “I heard some­thing about that. Is it true?”

I shrugged. “What makes her the best choice?”

He spread his hands. “I know noth­ing about what makes a good War­lord. I was just as­sum­ing the choice was based on mer­it.”

“Is that how things work in the Iorich?”

“Yes. Well, no. Not en­tire­ly.” He frowned. “It’s com­pli­cat­ed.”

“In­volv­ing pa­tron­age, fam­ily, wealth—”

“Let’s stay with the prob­lem, shall we? If you’re right, and there is some­thing odd about No­rathar’s ap­point­ment as War-​lord, then that’s some­thing we should look in­to.”

“We?”

“You.”

“How would I go about do­ing that?”

“I’d start with speak­ing to No­rathar.”

“I did. Didn’t get much.”

He grunt­ed. “Do you have oth­er sources?”

“I used to. I’ve been on the run for a while.”

“Can you—?”

“Maybe.” I’d al­ready asked Kra­gar. I could al­so ask Mor­rolan, but I found the idea dis­taste­ful; there was still the mat­ter of La­dy Tel­dra be­tween us. I re­al­ized Perisil wasn’t talk­ing. I cleared my throat. “There are av­enues I can pur­sue,” I said.

He nod­ded. “Pur­sue them.”

“I will. What will you be do­ing?”

“Study­ing le­gal his­to­ry, and try­ing to pick up on gos­sip.”

“Gos­sip?”

“We talk to each oth­er, you know.”

“You mean, the Im­pe­ri­al le­gal staff will tell you—”

“No, no. Noth­ing like that.” He shud­dered, as if the idea were ab­hor­rent at some deep lev­el. “No, but they’ll some­times make oblique re­marks to friends, and friends have friends, and I have friends who are friends of friends.”

“So, we’re talk­ing pre­cise in­for­ma­tion here.”

“No,” he said, ig­nor­ing my tone. “But pos­si­bly use­ful in­for­ma­tion.”

“All right.”

He frowned. “I’m not the en­emy.”

“I know that. If you were the en­emy I’d, ah, I’d not have come here.”

“I’m say­ing that if we’re go­ing to man­age an ac­quit­tal for Aliera, both of you are go­ing to have to trust me, at least a lit­tle.”

“But you just told me that I didn’t dare tell you any­thing I didn’t want the Em­pire know­ing about.”

He nod­ded. “That makes it hard, I know.”

“But you’re say­ing I should tell you any­way?”

He hes­itat­ed. “No. I wouldn’t care to take re­spon­si­bil­ity for that. When I said that if I were com­pelled, I’d re­veal any­thing you told me, I meant it.”

“Well then?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Just keep in mind what I said. This isn’t go­ing to be easy, and you’re both go­ing to have to trust me.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Where are you go­ing to start?”

“Back in the Palace. Drag­on Wing—my fa­vorite place. Lis­ten to gos­sip, see if I hear any­thing that will help.”

He nod­ded. “Best of luck.”

I stood up. “Thanks.”

“I’ll be here.”

As I turned away, he was al­ready study­ing his book again.

Iorich

9

In this ap­pendix, we will be ad­dress­ing some of the tan­gen­tial ru­mors that have been spread among var­ious sec­tions of the Court and the no­bil­ity re­lat­ing to the in­ci­dent. In par­tic­ular, we will look at the­ories of in­flu­ence by out­side par­ties on the events, and on the ef­fect of nar­cotics, psychedelics, de­pres­sants, stim­ulants, and hal­lu­cino­gens that may or may not have been in use by any of those in­volved.

The com­mit­tee wish­es to ob­serve that it ad­dress­es these is­sues un­der protest: it is our opin­ion that for the Em­pire or its rep­re­sen­ta­tives to re­spond to ru­mor and in­nu­en­do from un­re­li­able sources sets a prece­dent that can, in the long run, have no ef­fect but to give cre­dence to and en­cour­age such ru­mor and in­nu­en­do. That said, we now ex­am­ine the sub­stance. . . .

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, their sur­prise and tim­ing were per­fect; not even Loiosh could warn me. For­tu­nate­ly, they didn’t want to kill me. These facts were re­lat­ed: the Jhereg would not come af­ter you in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace, and cer­tain­ly not in the Drag­on Wing.

There were four of them. It was just like old times. They wore the stupid gold half-​cloak of the Phoenix Guards, and they were big and strong, as Drag­onlords usu­al­ly are. Two came up be­hind me, two came out of a door I was pass­ing and stepped in front of me. I thought about La­dy Tel­dra—how could I not?—but of course I didn’t draw her. Us­ing Mor­gan­ti weapons on Drag­onlords makes you very un­pop­ular, and even draw­ing her in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace would have caught the at­ten­tion of sev­er­al hun­dred trained fight­ers, all of whom would have seen it as in hor­ri­bly poor taste.

Be­sides, it would be wrong to de­stroy peo­ple’s souls when all they want to do is give you a good beat­ing, and you know how I am al­ways guid­ed by try­ing to do the right thing.

Heh.

Look, do you mind if I skip the de­tails? Yeah, I re­mem­ber them; but if I say them out loud, they’ll al­ways be vivid for me, be­cause that’s how my mem­ory works. And, re­al­ly, what do you need to know that can’t be told in gen­er­al?

There they were, two of them in front of me, and Loiosh told me about the two in back, and I knew what was go­ing to hap­pen, be­cause I’d been through it be­fore.

“Keep Rocza out of this.”

What Loiosh replied doesn’t read­ily trans­late, but in any case he got Rocza out of the way. He and I had been through this kind of thing a few times, back when I was run­ning my area. He knew by now that I didn’t want to hear any sym­pa­thet­ic words, or any­thing else; it was just a mat­ter of wait­ing un­til it was over.

It al­ways hap­pens so fast, you know? The times I’ve been jumped and man­aged to avoid it, I’d been out of the sit­ua­tion al­most be­fore I knew I was in it. This time, be­fore I re­al­ly knew what was hap­pen­ing, they’d pushed me in­to the room and were go­ing to work. I had time to de­cide what not to do, as I said, but that was about it.

They didn’t draw any weapons—just used their fists and their boots. And they could have made it much worse than they did, if they’d want­ed to: They cracked a rib, but oth­er than that didn’t break any bones. They al­so didn’t say any­thing—I as­sumed they took it for grant­ed I knew what it was about.

Even­tu­al­ly they got my arms pinned, though I did them some harm first. A lot of harm, if you re­mem­ber how much stronger than an East­ern­er a Dra­gaer­an is. I re­mem­ber be­ing re­al­ly an­noyed that I had no ac­cess to any of the mag­ic, East­ern or Dra­gaer­an, that would help me re­cov­er quick­ly, where­as they’d have their bruis­es seen to in an hour or so and be feel­ing fine. It didn’t seem fair, you know?

When they were fin­ished I let them have the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing me lie there, curled up on the floor, while they walked away. I might have been able to stand up, but if they’d tak­en it as a sig­nal to start again, I wasn’t sure I’d have the self-​con­trol to keep things non-​lethal.

“Just like the old days, eh?”

“You all right, Boss?”

“In ev­ery im­por­tant sense, yeah.”

I stood up, which took a long time, and wasn’t any fun; I had to use the wall for sup­port and push up against it, then when I made it up I leaned against it. Nice wall. Good wall. That wall was my new best friend.

Breath­ing hurt. So did a few oth­er things, though not as much as they were go­ing to. And I was shak­ing, of course; I al­ways shake af­ter I’ve been through some­thing ex­cit­ing, no mat­ter how I feel about it.

“Any idea what it was about?”

“One idea. If I’m right, then it may have been worth it just to find out.”

“Some­day, Boss, let’s talk about ways for you to learn things that don’t in­volve peo­ple kick­ing you.”

“Good plan.”

I was glad to be in the room—which may have been an un­used coat clos­et or some­thing—in­stead of out in the hall, be­cause I didn’t want any­one com­ing along and ask­ing ques­tions. Or, worse, be­ing sym­pa­thet­ic. Loiosh was care­ful­ly not sym­pa­thet­ic; he knows me.

I want­ed to get some­where to bind up my rib. Ev­er have a cracked rib? Avoid it if you can. Walk­ing hurts. Breath­ing hurts. Don’t cough. And for the love of your fa­vorite de­ity, don’t even think about sneez­ing. And if you make me laugh I’ll kill you. Lat­er.

When I’d caught my painful breath a bit, I pushed away from my friend the wall and wished I hadn’t.

“Where to now, Boss?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t de­cide if I ought to wait a day or two un­til the bruis­es are nice and pur­ple.”

“Wait for. . .?”

“Nah, too much is go­ing on to waste a day on cos­met­ics. This way.”

I strolled back in­to the hall­way, and then am­bled around the cor­ner, af­ter which I saun­tered. Any­thing to look like walk­ing didn’t hurt as much as it did. Which was okay; it didn’t hurt near­ly as much as it would to­mor­row. As I walked, my heart rate re­turned to nor­mal. My tongue played with a tooth that was wob­bly, but I didn’t think I’d lose it; punch­es to the face are the eas­iest to slip, if you don’t mind your neck snap­ping a lit­tle.

The few peo­ple I passed—Drag­onlords—glanced at me and then looked away, care­ful­ly un­con­cerned. Af­ter what seemed like a long, long time, I made it to the long, nar­row stair I was look­ing for. It seemed very, very long in­deed, just now. I start­ed up it, us­ing the time to plan. I knew what I want­ed to do, I just had to fig­ure out the nu­ances. The plan­ning dis­tract­ed me; it wasn’t too bad.

This time I clapped out­side of the of­fice. I heard a brusque “En­ter,” and did so, sud­den­ly re­al­iz­ing that she might not have been in, and I’d have made that climb for noth­ing. It would be smart if I thought of those things ahead of time, wouldn’t it?

She glanced up as I came in, and said, “What is—” then stopped and looked at me close­ly.

“I’d been think­ing,” I said, “of wait­ing a day so you could see the re­sults in all their splen­dor.”

“That eye is go­ing to swell shut,” she said.

“I imag­ine it will.”

“It can’t have been the Jhereg, or you’d be dead.”

“It wasn’t the Jhereg.”

“Do you know who?”

“Yes.”

She frowned. “Are we play­ing a game here?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I came up here to find out.”

“If you have a ques­tion, Vlad, just ask.”

“Did you send them?”

She looked shocked. I think she was shocked, which she shouldn’t have been, whether she was guilty or not. She went through some fa­cial con­tor­tions, then said, “What kind of game are you play­ing?”

The kind where I lose if you know the rules. “No game. I just want to know if they were yours.”

“They were Drag­ons?”

“Oh, yes. Phoenix Guards.”

“And you think I sent them?”

“It had crossed my mind. So I’d thought I’d ask if you did. And, if so, why you didn’t, I don’t know, drop me a note in­stead.”

“I didn’t send them,” she said.

“All right.”

“And I think you know that,” she added.

“I—”

“Which makes me won­der what you’re try­ing to do by ac­cus­ing me.”

“I didn’t ac­cuse you.”

“All right. Ask­ing me.”

She was study­ing me care­ful­ly, sus­pi­cious­ly.

I shrugged, which was a mis­take. “What am I sup­posed to think? I start ask­ing nosy ques­tions about you, and the next thing I know—”

“What ques­tions have you been ask­ing about me?”

“Your sud­den­ly be­ing made War­lord, of course. Why it hap­pened, what’s be­hind it. You wouldn’t tell me, so—”

“There’s noth­ing to tell.”

I gave her a brief dis­cus­sion of fer­til­iz­er. She seemed unim­pressed with my agri­cul­tur­al ex­per­tise. “Be­lieve what you like,” she said. It was good to have per­mis­sion, but I re­sist­ed telling her so.

“Ei­ther way,” I said. “If it was in­tend­ed by you or some­one else to make me stop look­ing in­to this, it isn’t go­ing to work.”

“I don’t care—”

“Not to men­tion that if there were noth­ing to it, why would any­one beat me up over it?”

“Are you sure that’s what it was about?”

“Seems like a good guess.”

“But you don’t ac­tu­al­ly know.”

I made a dis­gust­ed sound.

She start­ed to say some­thing, stopped, in­haled, and let it out slow­ly. “Very well. We’ll as­sume you’re right.”

“Thanks.”

She ig­nored the sar­casm. “I had no part in it,” she stat­ed.

“All right.” She still looked sus­pi­cious, as if she didn’t be­lieve I gen­uine­ly thought she might be in­volved. She’s a Drag­on; that doesn’t au­to­mat­ical­ly mean she’s an id­iot. Be­sides, she’d spent years in the Jhereg. I said, “Then they act­ed with­out your knowl­edge. Why? What is it ev­ery Drag­onlord knows that they don’t want a hum­ble East­ern­er to find out?”

“How should I know?”

I looked at her. I’m not an id­iot ei­ther.

She sighed. “There are things I’m not per­mit­ted to tell you.”

“I fig­ured that part out. What I’m work­ing at is, I’ll bet there are things you could tell me if you want­ed to. Things that might help Aliera. Things that might ex­plain why I just got a tooth loos­ened. Things that—”

“Shut up.”

I did so, and wait­ed.

She looked past me; I gave her time to think.

“It isn’t easy,” she said. “My loy­al­ties are di­vid­ed. I don’t think there are any right an­swers.”

I nod­ded.

“All right. I’ll tell you this much. Her Majesty is not very hap­py about all of this.”

“No­rathar. War­lord. Your High­ness. What­ev­er I’m sup­posed to call you. I picked up on that.”

She nod­ded, her eyes still fo­cused past me; I had the feel­ing that I wasn’t there. “Her friend­ship with Mor­rolan goes way back, you know.”

“Mor­rolan? How does Mor­rolan en­ter in­to this?”

She fo­cused on me, a puz­zled look on her face. Then she said, “I keep for­get­ting how much you don’t know.”

“So. fill me in on some of it?”

“You want a his­to­ry les­son?”

“No. I don’t. I re­al­ly, re­al­ly don’t. I think I’d rather have an­oth­er beat­ing. But if I need one to un­der­stand what’s go­ing on, then I’ll just sit here and take it.”

She made an ef­fort at a smile. “I think we can skip it, for now.”

See? My god­dess loves me. “Okay, what do I need to know. That you can tell me.”

She hes­itat­ed, then it came out quick­ly. “When she asked me to be War­lord, she ex­tract­ed a cou­ple of promis­es. One I’m break­ing now, by talk­ing to you. The oth­er is that Aliera is to es­cape.”

“Es­cape,” I re­peat­ed.

She nod­ded.

“I trust Aliera doesn’t know about this?”

“That is cor­rect.”

I sighed. “Well. And the Em­press is, you say, a re­born Phoenix?”

Her eyes nar­rowed. “Just what is that sup­posed—”

“Sor­ry. That was out of line. Be­ing stupid doesn’t mean be­ing deca­dent.”

She said, very pre­cise­ly, “I do not con­sid­er Her Majesty to be stupid.”

“No, I guess she isn’t. In fact, this shows how smart she is.”

“What are you talk­ing about?”

“A stupid per­son can make on­ly cer­tain, lim­it­ed types of er­rors; the mis­takes open to a clever fel­low are far broad­er. But to the one who knows how smart he is com­pared to ev­ery­one else, the pos­si­bil­ities for true id­io­cy are bound­less.”

“Vlad—”

“No­rathar. Nev­er, ev­er, will Aliera go along with this. To es­cape is to ad­mit guilt. Think about it.”

She start­ed to ar­gue, stopped, frowned. I let her work it through. It shouldn’t have tak­en that long.

“You’re right,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I have to speak with Her Majesty.”

“Good think­ing. Had a whole plan, didn’t you?”

She nod­ded. I was tempt­ed to smirk, but she might have killed me. Be­sides, it wasn’t all that fun­ny.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll get out of your way. This clears up a few things, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, doesn’t help me. But at least I’m con­vinced you didn’t or­der those Drag­onlords to at­tack me.”

“How do you know they were Drag­onlords?”

“Huh? Well, for starters, if they were Jhereg they’d have killed me.”

“And if they were Or­ca?”

I stared at her. She flushed; some­thing I could nev­er have imag­ined her do­ing.

“Well done, Boss!”

“Ev­ery once in a while, you get a break.”

I let her sit there for a mo­ment and re­flect on the dif­fi­cul­ty of un­say­ing some­thing. Then I said, “Don’t feel too bad. I’d been pret­ty sure of it, any­way.”

She cursed soft­ly un­der her breath.

“I feel your pain,” I said.

“You will soon,” she said.

“So, feel like fill­ing in the miss­ing piece?”

She glared. “And if I don’t?”

That took me a mo­ment, then I got it and shook my head. “No, no. I’m not go­ing to tell any­one any­thing about what you did or did not tell me. I’m ask­ing you to fill in the pieces I’m miss­ing. If you don’t, I’ll find out an­oth­er way; that’s all.”

She bit her lip, then nod­ded. “What ex­act­ly do you want to know?”

“I know the Jhereg and the Or­ca are work­ing to­geth­er. On what, ex­act­ly? And how are they forc­ing the Em­press to co­op­er­ate?”

“All right.” She took a deep breath. “It goes back to be­fore the In­ter­reg­num.”

I al­most made a re­mark about how I’d been promised no his­to­ry, but there are times not to be clever.

“The Jhereg had come up with a big mon­ey­mak­ing scheme that they nev­er got to pull off be­cause the world blew up be­fore they could try it. And maybe for oth­er rea­sons, too, I don’t know. Any­way, the Left Hand got wind of it a few years ago, start­ed col­lab­orat­ing with the Right Hand and the Or­ca, and have been try­ing to put it back.”

“And what is ‘it’?”

“Nar­cotics, hal­lu­cino­gens, psychedelics, dis­as­so­cia­tives—”

“No­rathar, I don’t know most of those words.”

“All right. Opi­um. Log­fun­gus. Dream­grass. Laugh­wort. Koelsh leaf. Pop­py ex­tract.”

“What about them?”

“What if they were sud­den­ly il­le­gal?”

“Huh?

“What if—”

“I heard you, I’m just try­ing to wrap my head around it.”

“What would hap­pen?”

“I don’t know. Um, well, it would drive the prices through the roof.”

“And who would sell it?”

“The Jhereg, of course. Yikes. What a scam! And the Or­ca?”

“They’d sup­ply it.”

“And the Left Hand?”

“Fa­cil­itat­ing de­liv—I hadn’t said any­thing about the Left Hand.”

“It was my own the­ory. Go on.”

“Fa­cil­itat­ing de­liv­ery and hid­ing and sell­ing spells to de­tect Im­pe­ri­al agents, the way they do now with gam­bling games.”

“I didn’t know they did that; I nev­er used them.”

“They do. And there is li­able to be Iorich in­volve­ment too—bribes for mild sen­tences, and so on.”

“Iorich do that?”

“Fun­ny guy.”

I shook my head. “This is huge. How are they con­vinc­ing the Em­press to go for it?”

“The mas­sacre at Tir­ma.”

“Huh?”

“Word is about to leak out that it hap­pened be­cause the sergeant was us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of koelsh leaves and pop­py.”

“Oh. Hm­mm. Pub­lic out­cry?”

The War­lord nod­ded.

“Is it true? Was he?”

“No.”

“Then why can’t he be made to tes­ti­fy to that?”

“In fact, once this be­comes pub­lic, that is ex­act­ly what will hap­pen.”

“Well, and?”

“And who will be­lieve it? It will be seen by the no­bles and the mid­dle class­es as a means of dis­tract­ing at­ten­tion from the lu­cra­tive trade in brain chem­icals.”

“How does ar­rest­ing Aliera help?”

“If Aliera is ar­rest­ed on an ob­vi­ous­ly bo­gus charge, it will add weight to the idea that the mas­sacre in Tir­ma came from or­ders on high. It will look like the Em­press blames Aliera, but knows she can’t get a con­vic­tion on the ac­tu­al charge, be­cause—”

“Be­cause it must be ap­proved by the Coun­cil of Princes, who wouldn’t ap­prove it, so the con­vic­tion must be on an Edict, which by­pass­es peer ap­proval.”

“Well, very good, Vlad. I had no idea you were so well ac­quaint­ed with the law.”

“I’ve man­aged to pick up a few pieces here and there,” I said mod­est­ly.

“So, now you know, and now I’ve be­trayed an oath by telling you.”

“Yeah. And now I know what’s go­ing on, and why, but I’m not sure it helps me.”

“On the con­trary,” she said, her eyes nar­row­ing. “It po­ten­tial­ly helps you a great deal.”

“How is that?”

“If you re­veal what I’ve told you—”

“Oh, come on, No­rathar. You know I won’t do that.”

She grunt­ed. “There’s an­oth­er thing it gets you, then: an al­ly.”

“You?”

“Yes. Any­thing I can do with­out be­tray­ing Her Majesty.”

“Hm­mm. That may be a bit like, ‘I’ll run any er­rand you want that doesn’t re­quire me to stand up.’ Still, I ap­pre­ci­ate the of­fer, and I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Do that,” she said.

So there I was: I’d un­cov­ered what was hid­den, I’d found the big se­cret, I’d turned over the key rock, and now I just had the mi­nor, unim­por­tant lit­tle de­tail of fig­ur­ing out what to do about it. Splen­did. I tried to re­call some of the vo­cab­ulary I’d picked up dur­ing my brief stint as a foot sol­dier, but you have to keep up with those skills or you lose them.

So, back to the be­gin­ning. I’d have to wait for Kiera to get some con­fir­ma­tions, and wait for Kra­gar to learn a few de­tails about the Left Hand. In the mean­time—

“Vlad?”

“Hm­mm?”

“I asked if there was any­thing else.”

“Oh, sor­ry. No. Thank you.”

She nod­ded and I took my leave. If the fates loved me, I’d make it back to my room alive, and Kiera would be wait­ing there. I did, and she wasn’t—make of that what you will.

I un­load­ed a few pounds of hard­ware next to the bed, and stretched out on it. It felt won­der­ful for about ten sec­onds, then I grad­ual­ly be­came aware of each bruise. Once, long be­fore and in a dif­fer­ent part of the world, I’d re­moved my amulets to per­form a sim­ple spell to get rid of some aches and pains. It had proved a mis­take for two rea­sons: It al­most got me killed, and it had giv­en Loiosh a chance to say I told you so. I was will­ing to risk the first, but I’d rather hurt than take a chance on the sec­ond.

I didn’t fall asleep, but to take my mind off how much I hurt, I spent some time wish­ing some­one would bring me some­thing to eat. Loiosh picked up on the thought, and made an of­fer of sorts which I re­ject­ed; I wasn’t that hun­gry.

“Boss, do we have a plan?”

“We will.”

“Oh, good. I feel so much bet­ter when we have a plan.”

“In that case, maybe you come up with one this time. One that doesn’t in­volve a dead teck­la.”

“Di­vi­sion of la­bor, Boss. That’s what makes this work, you know.”

“Yeah, I keep for­get­ting that. Di­vi­sion of la­bor. I come up with the plans, and you laugh at them.”

“Ex­act­ly.”

I closed my eyes, the bet­ter to con­cen­trate on ev­ery­thing that hurt. No, I don’t know why I do these things; stop ask­ing.

Af­ter a while, I heard a clap at the door and at al­most the same mo­ment Loiosh said, “It’s Kiera.”

Now, there was good news at a good time. “Please bring your sneaky and most wel­come self in­side,” I called out.

The door opened and she came in, look­ing wor­ried. “I heard you were beat­en,” she said.

“How did you hear that? Are there more of you than I know about?”

She gave me a re­proach­ful look.

“Sor­ry,” I said.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked me over care­ful­ly. Loiosh flew over to her, and she ab­sent­ly scratched un­der his chin while she stud­ied me. “They did a pret­ty thor­ough job, it seems,” she said ju­di­cious­ly.

“I guess. Want to tell me what you learned?”

“Just what you ex­pect­ed me to.”

My heart skipped a beat. Yes, I’d ex­pect­ed it. But I hadn’t re­al­ly, well, ex­pect­ed it. “De­tails?”

“Min­utes of a meet­ing called by Her Majesty to dis­cuss the mas­sacre in Tir­ma.”

“And?”

“The list of those present in­clude the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Jhereg.”

“Is that usu­al for some­thing like this?”

“No.”

“All right. And the rep­re­sen­ta­tive said?”

“Noth­ing that was record­ed.”

“Then—?”

“Did they hit you in the head a lot?”

“Yes, as a mat­ter of fact.”

She made a dis­gust­ed sound. “Work it out any­way.”

“They wouldn’t have had the Jhereg rep­re­sen­ta­tive there, ex­cept to hear some­thing, or to in­form the Em­press of some­thing.”

“Yes.”

“And ei­ther way, it means the Jhereg has their hand in this.”

“Which you knew.”

“Sus­pect­ed, then lat­er had con­firmed by—uh, I shouldn’t say.”

“All right. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why is the Jhereg in­volved.”

“Two rea­sons. I can’t talk about one, and I don’t need to talk about the oth­er.”

“You don’t need to? What do you mean?”

“Kiera, have you been beat­en too, late­ly?”

Her eyes nar­rowed as she con­cen­trat­ed, then she said, “Oh. You think it’s all about you?”

“I al­ways think it’s all about me. When I’m wrong I look stupid; when I’m right, I’m still alive to keep look­ing stupid.”

“It’s a lit­tle hard to be­lieve,” she said.

“Why?”

“En­gi­neer­ing a mas­sacre of peas­ants, em­broil­ing the Em­press in—”

“No, no. I don’t think that was about me. That just gave them the op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

“Ah. You mean, not the prob­lem, but the so­lu­tion.”

“Yes.”

“The Jhereg knew that if Aliera was in trou­ble, you’d find out and come back and they could get to you. They were do­ing some­thing else in­volv­ing the Em­press, and just grabbed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pull you in­to it.”

“Pret­ty much. You know the Jhereg. Does that seem far­fetched?”

“No,” she said with no hes­ita­tion.

“It doesn’t to me, ei­ther.”

“Do you have an idea of how to deal with it?”

“One. Tell the Em­press.”

“Vlad, do you know what hap­pens if you do that?”

“Some­thing pret­ty un­pleas­ant for the Jhereg. Do I care?”

“What about for the Em­pire?”

“Do I care about that?”

“And for Zeri­ka?”

“Like she cared how un­pleas­ant it was for Aliera?”

“She did, you know.”

“Stop, Kiera, be­fore you move me to tears. Oh, wait, no, that’s the pain from the beat­ing I got for ask­ing ques­tions about how much she cared.”

“I don’t think that’s why you got beat­en.”

“No, nei­ther do I. I think it was be­cause it’s con­sid­ered rude for East­ern­ers who are al­so Jhereg to go ask­ing ques­tions about the War­lord.”

“Maybe.”

“You have an­oth­er idea?”

“No, just a feel­ing.”

“A feel­ing.”

“The beat­ing. It doesn’t feel right.” I start­ed to make an ob­vi­ous re­mark but she cut me off. “No, lis­ten, Vlad. I’m se­ri­ous. Try to re­con­struct the se­quence in your head.”

“It isn’t that hard. I was ask­ing ques­tions about No­rathar, and—”

“Of whom?”

“Eh? Well, No­rathar, first of all. And Cawti. And a ser­vant in the Palace, who first told me No­rathar was now War­lord.”

She nod­ded. “Go on.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Is it? Where did these Drag­onlords hear about it?”

“I as­sume from the Teck­la. Or, in­di­rect­ly from the Teck­la.”

“That’s what’s both­er­ing me.”

“You didn’t even know about it.”

She didn’t deign to an­swer that. “Imag­ine how they heard it.”

“The Teck­la gos­sips to one of his friends, the Drag­onlord over­hears it—”

“When is the last time you knew of a Drag­on lis­ten­ing to a Teck­la’s gos­sip?”

I shrugged, which sent pain shoot­ing from my rib to the op­po­site shoul­der. “Okay, then the Teck­la men­tions it to some­one who some­one will lis­ten. Snake up a rope, as they say.”

“When did you speak to the Teck­la?”

“Yes­ter­day.”

“So, how long did this all take?”

“Kiera, how long does it take?”

“I’m not say­ing it’s im­pos­si­ble. I’m just sus­pi­cious.”

“What do you think hap­pened in­stead?”

“I would very much like to know.”

“If you’re of­fer­ing to look in­to it for me, you know I’m not go­ing to turn you down.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, cross-​legged, which was on­ly strange when I thought about it lat­er. “I’m not sure,” she said at last. “The fact is, I don’t want to look in­to it, I want to fig­ure it out.”

“I know that one.”

“So, any ideas?”

“Yeah, give up. At least, it’s nev­er worked for me.”

“Vlad—”

“Look, I still think it was just what it seemed to be. How can I fig­ure out what I don’t think hap­pened?”

“Work with me.”

I sighed. “All right, let’s as­sume you’re right. In the first place, if the beat­ing wasn’t a mes­sage not to in­ves­ti­gate the War­lord, then the mes­sage didn’t come across very well, be­cause I have no idea what it might be about.”

“I think we can as­sume they weren’t telling you not to help Aliera.”

“That sounds pret­ty safe.”

“So, what else have you been do­ing that might have of­fend­ed some­one?”

“Hid­ing from the Jhereg. And you know how much Drag­ons hate that.”

“Heh.” Then she said, “No, wait a minute.”

“Kiera, if Drag­onlords start car­ing about Jhereg busi­ness—”

“Vlad, what made you think they were Drag­ons?”

I sighed. “Ev­ery­body is ask­ing me that. Most­ly be­cause if they were Jhereg, I’d be dead. And if they were Or­ca, I’d have won.”

“Or­ca? What do Or­ca have to do with this?”

I waved it away. “If they weren’t Drag­onlords, who do you think they were?”

“I think they were Jhereg.”

“Then why didn’t they—”

“Be­cause they weren’t hired to kill you, just to beat you.”

“By whom?”

“The Left Hand,” she said.

Iorich

10

Q: Please state your name and house.

A: Efrin, Teck­la.

Q: Where do you live?

A: Nowhere. I used to live in Tir­ma.

Q: Ad­dress the Court as “my lord.” You say you live nowhere, how is that pos­si­ble?

A: My home was burned down on the same day my wife, my son, and my daugh­ters were mur­dered by butch­ers in uni­form.

Q: The wit­ness is re­mind­ed to ad­dress the Court as “my lord.” How is it you weren’t there when it hap­pened?

A: I was tak­ing the mule and the keth­na to Nu­vin’s, to keep them safe from the mon­sters.

Q: The wit­ness is re­mind­ed for the last time to ad­dress the Court with re­spect, and speak of the Im­pe­ri­al sol­diers—

A: Im­pe­ri­al mon­sters. [wit­ness is re­moved]

“All right,” I said at last. “Tell me about it.”

“How much do you know about the Left Hand of the Jhereg, Vlad?”

“Last time we spoke, about as much as you, and you knew noth­ing.”

“That was sev­er­al years ago. You made me cu­ri­ous. I’ve been learn­ing things.”

“Then maybe it’s time to fill me in on what you’ve learned?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have—”

“That isn’t fun­ny.”

“Yes it is.”

“Uh, all right. It is. But tell me any­way.”

She nod­ded. “You know how they start­ed?”

“I’ve heard sto­ries. Sor­cer­ess­es ex­pelled from dif­fer­ent Hous­es for il­le­gal sor­cery band­ing to­geth­er, that sort of thing.”

She nod­ded. “From me, as I re­call. Well, they’re pret­ty much true, as far as I can tell. And, yes, they’re in­volved in il­le­gal mag­ic; ev­ery­one knows that, and it’s even true.”

“Rare for some­thing ev­ery­one knows,” I sug­gest­ed.

“But they’re al­so—I don’t know how to say this with­out in­sult­ing your cul­ture, Vlad.”

“I have a pret­ty thick skin.”

“They have cus­toms like an East­ern cult.”

“Um. I’m less in­sult­ed than I am con­fused.”

“East­ern mag­ic—at least, in rep­uta­tion—is se­cre­tive, yes?”

I thought about my grand­fa­ther and start­ed to ob­ject, then re­mem­bered the oth­er witch­es I’d en­coun­tered, and grunt­ed an agree­ment.

“The Left Hand is like that, com­plete with oaths of si­lence and obe­di­ence and rit­uals of mem­ber­ship.”

“Huh. Doesn’t sound very busi­nesslike.”

“That was my thought, too.”

“If the Jhereg tried to op­er­ate that way, they’d be laughed—”

“We used to.”

“What?”

“Be­fore the In­ter­reg­num.”

“You’re kid­ding.”

“Nope.” She ex­tend­ed her hand and crossed her mid­dle fin­gers and in­toned, “For the breath of this life I bind my­self to pro­tect my pro­tec­tors, to pro­vide for my providers, to—”

“You’re kid­ding!”

She shook her head. “Not too many laughed about it, as it hap­pened.”

“Good thing I wasn’t around then. I’d have laughed, and chances are they wouldn’t have cared for that.”

“Chances are,” she agreed.

“All right, so they wal­low in child­like su­per­sti­tion in be­tween mak­ing peo­ple un­re­viv­ifi­able and eaves­drop­ping on pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions. What else?”

“All sorts of ar­cane rules.”

“Rules. The kind that are good for busi­ness, or the kind that in­ter­fere with busi­ness?”

“Some of one, some of the oth­er, and some that de­pend.”

“Dammit, don’t be coy.”

“I’m giv­ing you what in­for­ma­tion I have; you have to de­cide what’s use­ful and what isn’t. Isn’t that what you al­ways do?”

“Uh. I guess. So, the beat­ing?”

“The Left Hand doesn’t want you in­ter­fer­ing with their machi­na­tions.”

“Then why not kill me?”

She shook her head. “You aren’t their prob­lem. You’re the Right Hand’s prob­lem.”

“But—”

“And don’t make the mis­take of think­ing they’re all one co­he­sive whole, Vlad. In­di­vid­uals, fac­tions—some might have want­ed to take you out for the boun­ty, oth­ers don’t care about that, just want this in­ter­fer­ing East­ern­er out of the way. But the big thing is this: the Jhereg—our Jhereg, the Right Hand—wants it Mor­gan­ti. Hav­ing a few peo­ple dress up as Drag­onlords to beat you up is one thing; putting a dull shine on you in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace is some­thing else again.”

“A dull shine. I’ve nev­er heard that eu­phemism be­fore. It’s very, uh, vivid.”

She shrugged. “The fact that it has to be Mor­gan­ti is pro­tect­ing you. Isn’t that amus­ing?”

“I’m laugh­ing on the in­side; laugh­ing on the out­side hurts too much.”

She winced in sym­pa­thy. “Any­thing bro­ken?” she asked.

“A rib cracked, I think.”

“Let me bind it.”

“You know how to do that?”

“You pick up a bit of ev­ery­thing, af­ter a while. Take your shirt off.”

I sat up with­out as­sis­tance, but she helped in the shirt re­moval pro­cess. When a dag­ger dropped out from un­der my left armpit, she pre­tend­ed not to no­tice. She al­so pre­tend­ed not to no­tice var­ious things strapped to my wrist. She pressed on the bruise, and when I hissed, she nod­ded sage­ly, just like a re­al physick­er. She al­lowed as to how she’d be back short­ly, and then tele­port­ed out. She was back short­ly—un­der a minute—with a roll of ban­dages.

I de­clined her help in stand­ing up, for what rea­son I couldn’t say. Rais­ing my arms hurt a lot. The pro­cess of wrap­ping the ribs wasn’t any fun, but I did feel bet­ter af­ter­ward, and even re­mem­bered to tell her so. She said, “Good. I’d give you all sorts of in­struc­tions about what to do and not do, but I don’t ac­tu­al­ly know them, ex­cept for the ones you’re go­ing to ig­nore, and the ones you can’t help but fol­low, so let’s just pre­tend I did.”

“We al­so could have pre­tend­ed to do the part where you poked my cracked rib.”

“Then how could you have trust­ed me to bind it? Let’s get back to un­tan­gling this mess.”

“I’m not sure I can think about any­thing ex­cept breath­ing right now, but I’m will­ing to try.”

“If you’d take that amulet off for a minute, I could—”

“No, thanks.”

“As you please. So, why were you beat­en by peo­ple pre­tend­ing to be Drag­onlords?”

“Pre­tend­ing.”

“Yes.”

“You just seem aw­ful­ly con­vinced of that.”

She gave a Kiera shrug—more im­plied by the twitch of her lips than by any move­ment of her shoul­der—and said, “I won’t say I can’t be wrong. I just don’t think I am.”

“Then you think it was the Left Hand?”

“Thugs hired by them, yes. At least, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”

“So then, why?”

“To get you to do some­thing you wouldn’t oth­er­wise do. What did you do?”

“I saw No­rathar, and used the event to pry some in­for­ma­tion out of her.”

“What in­for­ma­tion? Oh, right. You won’t tell me.”

“I’d rather not. It wasn’t any­thing she want­ed to tell me.”

“So?”

“If you need to know—”

“I will nev­er, ev­er, un­der­stand East­ern­ers.”

“What, that we have scru­ples?”

“Not that you have them; where you keep them.”

Sethra would have un­der­stood com­plete­ly, but this time I kept my mouth shut about it. “So, any­way, there’s your an­swer: I was able to get in­for­ma­tion from No­rathar that I wouldn’t oth­er­wise get.”

She nod­ded. “And does the Left Hand know you well enough to have pre­dict­ed you’d do that?”

I start­ed to say no, stopped, con­sid­ered, and said, “It’s not im­pos­si­ble, I sup­pose. But it’s a lit­tle scary if they do. Think of how much they’d have to know, how many im­pli­ca­tions, how many pos­si­bil­ities.”

“Maybe. But, you know, they wouldn’t have had to know you’d do it. Just know­ing you might do it would be enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Vlad, I un­der­stand that you might not pay at­ten­tion to what I say, but you ought to pay at­ten­tion to what you say, don’t you think?”

“Kiera, you know I love you. But I swear by all I de­spise that I would hit you over the head with a chair if I could lift one right now. Please just ex­plain it? Please?”

“You’ve just said that, af­ter the beat­ing, you got No­rathar to tell you things she wouldn’t have oth­er­wise.”

“So? How does that ben­efit them?”

“The Left Hand, Vlad. What do they do?”

“Il­le­gal mag­ic. De­vices for gam­blers to cheat. De­feat­ing spells to pre­vent eaves­drop—oh.”

“Yes.”

“They were lis­ten­ing.”

“We’d best as­sume so.”

“No­rathar is go­ing to kill me.”

“I don’t much care about that,” said Kiera sweet­ly. “I’m wor­ried about who else she’s li­able to kill.”

“Oh. Yes. Um. If they’re clever enough to know what I’d do, aren’t they clever enough to know what No­rathar will do?”

“You’d think so.”

“Well?”

She spread her hands. “Maybe they’re count­ing on her years in the Jhereg to have giv­en her some sense. Or maybe they think it’s worth the gam­ble. Or maybe that’s ex­act­ly what they want.”

“Com­ing up with a com­plex plan that, if it works, will re­sult in your throat be­ing cut seems like a lot of wast­ed think­ing. But maybe that’s just me.”

“I don’t know, Vlad.”

“Can you find out?”

“How? I have no sources in the Left Hand. No one does. How­ev­er stupid you may think their rit­uals are, they work: No one who isn’t one of them knows any­thing.”

“Ugh,” I sug­gest­ed. I won­dered what had hap­pened to the side of my left shoul­der to make it hurt so bad; I didn’t re­mem­ber get­ting hit there. “You can’t do what they do with­out leav­ing a trace. That means there are ways to find out.”

She nod­ded. “Let me know how that works out for you.”

“Kiera—”

“What do you ex­pect me to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Kill some­one. Steal some­thing. Fig­ure some­thing out.”

“The first and last are your busi­ness. I’ll be glad to steal some­thing as soon as you tell me what you want me to steal.”

“Maybe I’ll hire Mario.”

“Heh. As if—” She stopped. “You might, you know.”

“And pay him with what?”

“Vlad, he’s Aliera’s lover.”

“Um. Yeah, I’ve heard that. Is it true?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. It might be worth find­ing out.”

Mario, in case you’ve nev­er heard of him, is to as­sas­sins what So­rami­ir is to sor­cer­ers. If you’ve nev­er heard of So­rami­ir, don’t feel bad; I hadn’t ei­ther un­til a few days ago.

I thought about it. “It’s cer­tain­ly some­thing to keep in mind. At the mo­ment, how­ev­er, I’m not sure just who I’d ask him to kill.”

She nod­ded.

I said, “This busi­ness of them guess­ing what I would do, and plan­ning on it, would make me un­com­fort­able if I be­lieved it. Like, I couldn’t do any­thing be­cause they’d know just what I’d do.”

“I think you’re over­stat­ing it a bit.”

“I know. But it’s strange. Ev­er had some­one try that on you?”

“No. But then, I’ve been pret­ty scrupu­lous about Jhereg rules.”

I winced. I guess I had that com­ing. “My first re­ac­tion,” I said, “is to just find some Left Hand busi­ness some­where and start mess­ing it up, to see what they do. Pick one at ran­dom, so they can’t pre­dict it. It’ll give me some­thing to take my frus­tra­tions out on. I sup­pose that would be stupid. Un­less I can find some use­ful as­pect.”

“There are worse ideas.”

“Al­so bet­ter ones, I sus­pect. But if they re­al­ly have this planned based on pre­dict­ing my ac­tions—which I still don’t be­lieve—then do­ing some­thing un­pre­dictable might have some ben­efit.”

“Sup­pose I’m right—us­ing this to kill you is just a grace note in a larg­er con­cert.”

“All right. What then?”

“Who is play­ing the in­stru­ment? That is, who in the Left Hand have you es­pe­cial­ly pissed off?”

“Tri­esco,” I said.

“You don’t aim small, do you?”

“What’s the point of hav­ing weak en­emies? They just waste your time.”

“It would make sense,” said Kiera. “From what I know of her, she’s pow­er­ful, ruth­less, skilled, and not all that nice. And, yes, she’s quite ca­pa­ble of hatch­ing a plot like a Yen­di.”

“Match­es what I know,” I said. “Think it’s her?”

“If you an­noyed her, prob­ably.”

“Well, then.”

“So,” she said to the air. “How did it go down? What are they plan­ning? Or her, if it’s her.”

“Kiera?”

“Hm­mm?”

“Thanks.”

She nod­ded ab­sent­ly, her eyes fo­cused over my shoul­der, a frown of con­cen­tra­tion on her brow. “The more I think about it, the more I think your idea of ran­dom­ly mess­ing up a Left Hand cov­er busi­ness isn’t that bad. It’ll make them re­spond to some­thing new. It could cause a slip.”

“Hear that, Loiosh? It’s from Kiera. You can’t ar­gue.”

“Sure I can.”

“But you won’t.”

“Sure I will.”

Sure he would. “In that case,” I said, “I need to find out a few of their busi­ness­es, so I can pick one to mess up. I’m go­ing to en­joy this.”

“Are you in any shape to do any mess­ing? Or, rather, will you be to­mor­row?”

I grunt­ed. “Maybe not. Maybe that’s why they did it. Can’t ig­nore the pos­si­bil­ity that they beat me in or­der to beat me.”

She laughed. I hadn’t thought it was that fun­ny, but you nev­er know what will strike Kiera as amus­ing. “I’d vol­un­teer to help,” she said. “But mess­ing peo­ple up isn’t my tal­ent.”

“It isn’t a tal­ent, Kiera. It’s a learned skill.”

“I nev­er learned that skill, then.”

There was a lot I could have said to that, but noth­ing that would have been well re­ceived. “Do you hap­pen to know any of their places of busi­ness?”

“A cou­ple of the more ob­vi­ous ones: There’s a sor­cery sup­ply shop on Lock­wood, just west of the mar­ket. I’ve seen them go in and out of the place af­ter hours. And there’s a tin­smith on Den­cel that has to have some oth­er source of in­come, and I know it isn’t Jhereg—I mean, our Jhereg. But give me a day or so and I’ll see if I can find a few more, so you have a good list to pick from.”

I nod­ded. “I ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

“We have friends in com­mon,” she said.

“Yes.”

“For now, if you won’t re­move the amulet—”

She broke off with an in­quir­ing look. “I won’t,” I said.

She nod­ded. “Then I think you should get up and come with me.”

I gave her a sus­pi­cious look. “Where are we go­ing?”

“Down two flights of stairs.”

“Why?”

“Trust me,” she said.

Put that way, I had no choice. I reached for my shirt, but she said to leave it off, so I buck­led on my rapi­er and La­dy Tel­dra, and threw my cloak over my shoul­ders, feel­ing dis­tinct­ly odd with a cloak and no shirt. Then I fol­lowed her out the door.

We went back down to the main lev­el of the inn, then fol­lowed a vine-​cov­ered stone walk­way out­side and around, back in­to the build­ing, and down an­oth­er flight of stairs, at which point I be­gan to smell some­thing rot­ten and sharp—it near­ly stung my nose—and vague­ly fa­mil­iar.

“What am I smelling?”

“Brim­stone.”

“Oh. Uh, that doesn’t bode well.”

“Trust me.”

We emerged at last in­to what looked like a wide un­der­ground cav­ern, though some of the walls had been smoothed and there were sculp­tures here and there of im­pos­si­ble beasts, many of them with steam­ing wa­ter com­ing out of their mouths. There was a large pool in the mid­dle, and screens set about it. Kiera led me to one of the screens. Stuck in­to it was a small green flag, up­side down. She re­moved it, stuck it in right side up. “Af­ter you,” she said. I went past the screen, which she re­placed be­hind me. In front of me was a small pool; the brim­stone smell was very in­tense here, and the wa­ter was steam­ing heav­ily and bub­bling.

“Get in,” she said.

“What will this do?”

“Make you hurt less to­mor­row.”

“Re­al­ly?”

“Ei­ther that or boil the skin off you. One or the oth­er. Maybe both. Get in.”

I start­ed to ar­gue, stopped, shrugged, and re­moved my cloak. “Are you go­ing to turn your back?”

“No,” she said.

I re­moved my boots and pants with as much dig­ni­ty as I could; the pain helped keep my mind off my em­bar­rass­ment. “What about the ban­dage?”

“Keep it on. I’ll change it when you get out.”

Loiosh and Rocza com­plained about the smell and flew over to the side, stay­ing well away from the wa­ter. I couldn’t blame them.

My first re­ac­tion was that it was, in­deed, go­ing to boil the skin off me. But it was ei­ther im­merse my­self, or stand there naked in front of Kiera, and I’d rather hurt than look ab­surd.

It was very hot, and it al­so stank. I hoped like hell it would do enough good to be worth it.

Soak­ing your­self in hot, bub­bling wa­ter is odd: the first touch burns, then you find you can stand it, and then af­ter ten min­utes or so it gets too hot again. I have no idea why that is; I just knew I want­ed to get out. Kiera ex­plained that if I got out she’d push me back in again, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stop her. Loiosh thought the whole thing was pret­ty fun­ny.

I stayed in there for an­oth­er five min­utes or so, then Kiera pro­duced a tow­el from some­where and said, “That should do it.”

I stood up and wrapped the tow­el around my­self. “How many sor­cer­ers does it take to keep all this wa­ter so hot?”

“None,” she said. “It’s nat­ural.”

I looked at her face to see if she was kid­ding, but I couldn’t tell, so I let it drop.

“How do you feel?” she want­ed to know.

“Scald­ed.”

“I sup­pose.”

“But not bad, re­al­ly.”

“Good,” she said. “I heard some­where that East­ern­ers couldn’t take that much heat, that their hearts would ex­plode. But I didn’t be­lieve it.”

I stared at her. She smiled sweet­ly. I shook my head and de­cid­ed not to think about it too much.

“Go get some rest,” she said as I dressed my­self. “I’ll try to get you some use­ful in­for­ma­tion, and then we’ll fig­ure out what to do next.”

Odd­ly enough, I felt like I could rest. I still ached, but I felt re­laxed and a lit­tle drowsy. Maybe more than a lit­tle; I don’t re­mem­ber walk­ing back up the stairs, or even ly­ing down, ex­cept that I have a half-​mem­ory of Loiosh say­ing some­thing that, at the time, I didn’t think was very fun­ny.

When I woke up, some un­known num­ber of hours lat­er, it was dark out­side. A check with the Im­pe­ri­al Orb told me it was still a few hours be­fore dawn, and a check with my body told me I hurt a lot. Log­ic and ex­pe­ri­ence con­vinced me I hurt less than I should have, but that was of strict­ly lim­it­ed com­fort. I guess those hot baths had done some­thing, any­way.

I stood up, and care­ful­ly—very care­ful­ly—went through what I re­mem­bered of the warm-​up ex­er­cis­es my grand­fa­ther had taught me when I was learn­ing sword­play. He’d told me they worked to loosen up tight mus­cles, and that no mag­ic was in­volved. I couldn’t do ev­ery­thing—my rib ob­ject­ed loud­ly to a lot of the po­si­tions be­fore I could even get in­to them; but what I did seemed to help. I took it slow, spend­ing over an hour stretch­ing care­ful­ly and field­ing com­ments from Loiosh about my new ca­reer as a dancer. I dis­cussed his new ca­reer as a wall dec­ora­tion, but he didn’t seem es­pe­cial­ly scared.

As I made my way in­to the court­yard, Loiosh spot­ted some­one who looked like he might be a Jhereg. I wait­ed in­side the door while he and Rocza scout­ed the area, and even­tu­al­ly found a cir­cuitous route out of the place and to the Palace, where no one was watch­ing. I mean, I don’t know it was a Jhereg, and it if was I don’t know that he was go­ing to do any more than watch my move­ments. But I didn’t feel in­clined to take chances.

I passed through the Palace like I’d been do­ing it all my life, out the Iorich Wing, and in­to the House of the Iorich. There were no mys­te­ri­ous notes out­side his door, and Loiosh said Perisil was in­side, or else some­one who breathed ex­act­ly the same. Loiosh once gave me a lec­ture on how to iden­ti­fy peo­ple by the sound of their breath­ing; I lis­tened to be po­lite.

I clapped. Af­ter a mo­ment, I clapped again. The door opened enough for him to look at me, then he grunt­ed and opened it more. We sat.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

Ei­ther his pow­ers of ob­ser­va­tion didn’t ex­tend to things like how slow­ly I was mov­ing or how gin­ger­ly I sat or the pur­plish bruis­es on my face, or else it just wasn’t some­thing he felt like talk­ing about. I said, “What do you mean?”

“About an hour ago, I got word that the pros­ecu­tion against Aliera was tem­porar­ily de­layed, while the Em­pire car­ried out ‘fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.’ ”

“Um,” I said. “Is that good?”

“I don’t know,” he said. His pe­cu­liar eyes nar­rowed a lit­tle and he cocked his head. “What did you do?”

“I spoke with the War­lord. She, it seems, had a plan with the Em­press to keep from hav­ing to ex­ecute Aliera, and I ex­plained why it wouldn’t work.”

He sat back. “Ah!” he said. “Well, that tells us at least that Her Majesty doesn’t want to ex­ecute Aliera.”

“We knew that al­ready.”

“Yes, I sup­pose we did.”

“Is there a re­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, or is it just some­thing they’re say­ing so they can slow things down?”

“Both. There’s a re­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but it isn’t about Aliera’s use of pre-​Em­pire sor­cery. They’re ac­tu­al­ly look­ing in­to the events at Tir­ma.”

I sat back, which hurt more than I’d have thought, and tried to fig­ure out ex­act­ly what that might mean. I failed. “There are a lot of an­gles to that,” I said.

“Yes. It means ev­ery­thing to our case if we can draw the con­nec­tion; noth­ing at all if we can’t. And in the mean­time, we can’t do any­thing un­til we know if the Em­pire is ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to fol­low up on the pros­ecu­tion.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

His eye­brows went up. “Go on.”

“I just mean we may not have things to do legal­ly, but on my end—”

“The things you won’t tell me about.”

“Right. On my end, I have a few things to fol­low up on.”

He stared at his desk, then looked up. “I don’t like be­ing kept in the dark about things that have an ef­fect on my case.”

“I don’t blame you.”

He grunt­ed. “All right. Do what you have to.”

I nod­ded and re­frained from say­ing that I ful­ly in­tend­ed to, what­ev­er he said. “Any­thing else?”

“Not for now. Keep me in­formed of any­thing you can keep me in­formed of.”

“You too.”

He grunt­ed and I made my way to my feet and left. He nev­er did re­mark about how I was mov­ing.

I tried to walk as if I wasn’t hurt; it made me feel less of a tar­get, though I guess there isn’t much log­ic be­hind that—any as­sas­sin worth his stone would as­sume I was in top form be­fore mak­ing a move any­way.

I need­ed to know what Cawti and her cute lit­tle band of would-​be rebels were up to; I al­so couldn’t ask her, since my at­ti­tude about them was what had led to our breakup.

I stopped just in­side the door of the Wing that would lead me back out to­ward the Palace. I saw no sign of any­one watch­ing me. That doesn’t prove there wasn’t any­one, but I’m pret­ty good at notic­ing such things when I look. The trick is re­mem­ber­ing to look.

“Where to now, Boss?”

“I need to see Cawti again. Right away.”

Then, “Sor­ry, Boss.”

“Yeah. Any ideas how to get there with­out draw­ing a crowd? I hate to re­peat a trick. Be­sides, I don’t think the Jhereg would fall for the same one twice.”

“You know I’m not much with the ideas, Boss.”

“I need to see Cawti, and I very much do not want to di­rect any­one there. Any­thing you can come up with—”

“Walk around un­til you’re sure you’ve been spot­ted, find who­ev­er is fol­low­ing you, and kill him?”

“I’ll con­sid­er that op­tion.”

Oth­er than Loiosh’s sug­ges­tion, I couldn’t come up with any great ideas, so I went the old tra­di­tion­al route of try­ing to lose some­one in a crowd, al­ter­nat­ing with emp­ty streets with a lot of turns so you can see if any­one is stay­ing with you. This can be very ef­fec­tive with one per­son tail­ing you; with two or more who are stay­ing in touch, it’s less re­li­able. But I had the Palace right at hand, which had the ad­di­tion­al ben­efit of be­ing pret­ty much off-​lim­its to any­one try­ing to take me down, es­pe­cial­ly Mor­gan­ti.

I spent a good cou­ple of hours at it, stop­ping on­ly to get some bread and sausage from a ven­dor I passed. When I was as con­vinced as pos­si­ble that I was un­ob­served, I ducked out through the Jhe­gaala Wing be­cause it had a nice shrub bor­der near where the coach­es were. Loiosh and Rocza re­mained out­side, fly­ing around and keep­ing watch. I switched coach­es once, near Bri­isan Cen­ter, then fi­nal­ly gave the ad­dress of Cawti’s house.

Iorich

11

Lord Carv­er, present­ly in the Iorich Wing await­ing ex­ecu­tion, has re­fused to speak to the com­mit­tee. We can, how­ev­er, rea­son­ably con­clude that his pri­ma­ry mo­tive was fi­nan­cial. It is clear both from the buildup of mil­itary force be­gin­ning in Zeri­ka 239 and what may be called pro­pa­gan­da ef­forts be­gin­ning in Zeri­ka 249 that the at­tempt to break away had been planned for some years. What is less cer­tain is that he ex­pect­ed sup­port from Count­ess Sicera and Barons High­hold and De­lo­ra. Whether he did ex­pect such sup­port, what rea­sons he may have had for such ex­pec­ta­tions, and why this sup­port was not forth­com­ing is be­yond the scope of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, save to note that, had he in fact had such sup­port the pos­si­bil­ity of suc­cess of his re­bel­lion would have been con­sid­er­ably strength­ened.

I had the coach drop me off a few hun­dred feet away, so Loiosh, Rocza, and I could take a last look around. It seemed clear, so I ap­proached the cot­tage. Vlad No­rathar was out front, us­ing the ni­ball rac­quet to keep a ball in the air. He was con­cen­trat­ing very hard, but even­tu­al­ly no­ticed me, stopped, and gave a hes­itant bow.

“Well met, sir,” I told him, giv­ing him my best sweep­ing bow. He grinned, mak­ing his whole face light up. The door opened and Cawti came out. “And well met to you as well, madam.”

“I didn’t ex­pect to see you back so soon,” she said, look­ing at me as if un­cer­tain whether to be pleased or wor­ried.

“Some things have come up. Ques­tions. Do you have time to talk?”

It was the mid­dle of the day; a lit­tle ways down the street a Teck­la wa­tered a gar­den, prob­ably for the crafts­man who owned the house. A cou­ple of chil­dren walked to­ward us, es­cort­ed by a bored-​look­ing nurse.

“Come in, then,” she said. “Come in­side, Vlad.” This last was to the boy, though it jarred me a bit when she said it. She held the door open for him, and I brought up the rear, Loiosh and Rocza land­ing on my shoul­der, at the same mo­ment, as we stepped through the door­way. Vlad No­rathar turned when he heard the wings flap­ping, and his eyes got big.

“Bloody damned show-​offs.”

Some­thing like a chuck­le came in­to my head.

Cawti asked if I want­ed some brandy, and I did. She poured it, neat, un­chilled, and got some­thing for her­self. She gave Vlad No­rathar what looked to be a glass of wine mixed with wa­ter. He sat in a full-​sized chair and wait­ed, ready to be part of the con­ver­sa­tion. I’d heard the ex­pres­sion “I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry,” but I hadn’t giv­en it much cred­it un­til that mo­ment.

Yeah, okay, what­ev­er.

“It’s good to see you,” she said.

“What hap­pened to your face?” said Vlad No­rathar.

“I was beat­en up.”

“By who?”

“Whom,” said Cawti.

“I’m not ex­act­ly cer­tain,” I said.

“Are you go­ing to find out, and then beat them up?”

I hes­itat­ed. When in doubt you can al­ways fall back on hon­esty. “If I have the chance to hurt them, I will.”

He nod­ded, and seemed about to ask more, but I guess Cawti didn’t like where the con­ver­sa­tion was go­ing. “So,” she said. “What is it?”

I tried to fig­ure out how to ex­press it. “Why am I al­ways in a po­si­tion where I need to know what’s go­ing on, and no one will tell me any­thing?”

“You aren’t ac­tu­al­ly ex­pect­ing me to an­swer that.” She phrased it as a state­ment.

“No, I’m not.”

“What is it, then?”

She was wear­ing an olive-​green dress, with a white half-​bodice, half-​vest that laced up in front; there were a few ruf­fles from her white shirt show­ing at the col­lar, and the sleeves were big and puffy. It was the kind of thing that made you ache to un­lace it. Her hair was look­ing es­pe­cial­ly black against it. Damn her, any­way. “Can you tell me any­thing at all about what, uh, what your peo­ple, your group, are do­ing about this mas­sacre?”

Her brows came to­geth­er and she looked gen­uine­ly puz­zled. “Vlad, there isn’t any se­cret about that. We’ve been ag­itat­ing about it since it hap­pened, and—”

“Pub­licly?”

“Of course.”

“What about pri­vate­ly?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” She said it as if she re­al­ly wasn’t. I hes­itat­ed, and she said, “Maybe you could give me an idea of why you need to know.”

“Um,” I said. “Some of this I can’t tell you.”

Her eyes sparkled for a mo­ment, just like they used to. “Ex­plain to me again what you were say­ing about need­ing to know things and no one be­ing will­ing to tell you any­thing.”

I felt my­self smil­ing. “Yeah.”

Vlad No­rathar re­mained in his chair, his eyes mov­ing from one of us to the oth­er as we spoke. He had some of his wine, hold­ing the mug in both hands, his eyes watch­ing me over the rim. I’ve been stared at by a lot scari­er guys who made me a lot less ner­vous. I cleared my throat.

“Ev­ery­thing ties in­to ev­ery­thing else,” I said.

She nod­ded. “Yes, we’ll start with the big gen­er­al­iza­tions. Okay, go on.”

I sup­pressed a growl. “The Jhereg is up to some­thing big and nasty,” I said. “They’re work­ing with the Or­ca. I don’t know how un­rest among Teck­la and East­ern­ers will play in­to it. It might work against what they’re do­ing, in which case your group will be a tar­get. Or it might work for it, in which case you’ll be help­ing them.”

“Vlad, I don’t know where you get the idea that we can con­trol pop­ular un­rest. We can’t. On the day we can, we’ll be liv­ing in a dif­fer­ent world.”

“Um. All right, sup­pose I ac­cept that. I don’t think the Jhereg will.”

She nod­ded. “I ap­pre­ci­ate the warn­ing; I’ll pass it on.”

“Good,” I said. “But that wasn’t ac­tu­al­ly what I was af­ter.”

“All right. What are you af­ter?”

“Try­ing to fig­ure out what will hap­pen, how the Jhereg will re­spond, how the Em­pire will re­spond to that, and how I have to re­spond to the Em­pire.”

She nod­ded. “Good luck with that.”

“I drown in the depths of your sym­pa­thy.”

“Vlad—”

I sighed. “Okay.”

“I just don’t know what I can tell you that would do you any good.”

“Do you ex­pect ri­ots?”

“I wish I knew. Peo­ple are an­gry enough. We’re do­ing all we can to stop them, but—”

“Stop them?”

She blinked. “Of course, Vlad. A ri­ot isn’t go­ing to do any­thing ex­cept get some heads bro­ken.”

“Um. Okay, looks like I need to re-​eval­uate.”

“Does this throw off your plan?”

“No, not that bad. I hadn’t got­ten as far as hav­ing a plan.”

She nod­ded; she knew my way of work­ing as well as any­one. Bet­ter than any­one. “We’re not the on­ly group work­ing in South Adri­lankha and among the Teck­la, you know.”

“Um. Ac­tu­al­ly, I didn’t know that.”

“There are at least six in­de­pen­dent or­ga­ni­za­tions.”

“Re­al­ly. Well. What would hap­pen if you all got to­geth­er?”

“To do what?”

“Eh, I don’t know.”

“If we all got to­geth­er, nei­ther would we. Since we have op­po­site ideas on what to do, ‘get­ting to­geth­er’ doesn’t seem like it would ac­com­plish a great deal, does it?”

“Okay, okay. I hadn’t meant to start some­thing. What are these oth­er groups up to?”

She rolled her eyes. “Var­ious things. Some of them are get­ting up pe­ti­tions to the Em­pire. Some are or­ga­niz­ing food and mon­ey to be sent to the sur­vivors in Tir­ma. Some are or­ga­niz­ing march­es de­mand­ing the Em­pire in­ves­ti­gate. Some are en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to in­di­vid­ual acts of vi­olence against Im­pe­ri­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Some—”

“Wait a minute. Acts of vi­olence?”

Her lips pressed to­geth­er and she nod­ded. “Po­lit­ical­ly naive is the kind­est thing you can say about it; sui­ci­dal is more ac­cu­rate.”

“Can you tell me what they’re plan­ning?”

She gave me a hard look. “From what I know of them, they aren’t plan­ning any­thing, they’re just en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to at­tack Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. And if they were plan­ning some­thing, I wouldn’t be in a po­si­tion to know what it is. And if I were in such a po­si­tion, I cer­tain­ly wouldn’t tell you about it.”

She’s very good with hard looks. I hadn’t no­ticed Vlad No­rathar re­act­ing to her voice, but he must have, be­cause Cawti reached out and stroked his head.

“Un­der­stood,” I said. “I won’t press you on that.”

“And if you’re go­ing to find them, you’ll do it with­out my—”

“I don’t plan to do that,” I said.

“All right.”

I didn’t, ei­ther. What­ev­er their chances were of killing some­one, their chances of ac­tu­al­ly af­fect­ing things were nil. But some­thing or some­one else might. Maybe. I need­ed to think.

“You look like you need to think,” she said.

I nod­ded.

She was qui­et. So was the boy, ex­cept that his eyes were very loud. I stood up and paced; he watched me. Af­ter a lit­tle bit, I said, “It isn’t the group that wants to kill Im­pe­ri­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that both­ers me. It’s the group press­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly,” said Cawti, “that’s some­thing we’re press­ing for, too. But we want an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by us, by the peo­ple; they want the Em­pire to in­ves­ti­gate it­self.”

I di­gest­ed that. “Do you think you’ll get any­where with your, ah, in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“I don’t think ask­ing the Em­pire to in­ves­ti­gate it­self is go­ing to get any­thing. Do you?”

“That,” I said, “is just what I’m try­ing to fig­ure out.”

She snort­ed. “Even if they could con­vince—”

“They don’t have to. It’s al­ready hap­pen­ing.”

She stopped. “Is it in­deed?”

“So I’m told.”

“I hadn’t heard about it.”

“It’s pret­ty new. Al­so, prob­ably, pret­ty se­cret.”

“A se­cret in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” she said. “Well, I think we can all have a lot of con­fi­dence in that.”

“I think the Em­press wants to know what hap­pened, and why.”

“I’d like to know my­self,” said Cawti.

“But there are oth­ers who don’t.”

She arched an eye­brow.

“The Jhereg,” I said.

“The Jhereg? Why would they care?”

“It might in­ter­fere with the schemes they’re try­ing to hatch.”

“What ex­act­ly are these fa­mous schemes?”

“That,” I said, “is ex­act­ly what I can’t talk about.”

She nod­ded.

“It’s bet­ter to talk about what’s both­er­ing you,” said Vlad No­rathar.

My first in­cli­na­tion was to ar­gue with him, which is fun­ny when you think about it. But I had the feel­ing Cawti wouldn’t have ap­pre­ci­at­ed that, so I just said, “You’re right, but some­times you have to not talk about things be­cause you don’t want to get some­one else in trou­ble.”

That seemed to make sense to him. He nod­ded.

“You have friends, you know,” said Cawti.

I nod­ded. “Hard to for­get; it’s the on­ly rea­son I’m still around to ir­ri­tate the Jhereg. Have you heard any­thing from the Left Hand?”

She shook her head. “They’re keep­ing the agree—why?” she asked, sud­den­ly look­ing alert.

“This might in­volve them, too.”

She sighed. “You cer­tain­ly do make a lot of en­emies for a lov­able guy.”

“It’s my bur­den.”

A smile came and went on her an­gu­lar face, framed in straight black hair, her eyes dark and deep. It was hard to be­lieve one face could con­vey such a range of—

“Boss, if you can’t fo­cus on the prob­lem, I’m go­ing to in­voke my ex­ec­utive au­thor­ity to get us out of this town.”

“When did you get ex­ec­utive au­thor­ity?”

“You should give me ex­ec­utive au­thor­ity.”

I stud­ied the ceil­ing over Cawti’s head. “How would I find these peo­ple?”

“They meet at the home of the lead­er, a print­er by trade. Her name is Brinea. She lives on Enoch Way, near Wood­cut­ter’s Mar­ket. A lit­tle cot­tage paint­ed an ug­ly green, with a pair of ev­er­greens in front.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you ac­tu­al­ly need to see them?”

“I’m not sure. There’s too much I’m not sure of right now.”

She nod­ded. “This is li­able to get bloody, Vlad.”

“Yeah, I had that same thought.”

“As long as you know.”

I shrugged. “I’ve done bloody be­fore.”

“How re­cent­ly?”

“I’ve been try­ing to use my head more and my knives less.”

“That’s what wor­ries me.”

“What, try­ing to shake my con­fi­dence?”

She shook her head. “Try­ing to re­as­sure my­self that you aren’t get­ting in­to some­thing you can’t han­dle.”

“I’m glad you care.”

“You know I care.”

“Yeah. I just like be­ing re­mind­ed from time to time.”

She looked at Vlad No­rathar. I fol­lowed her gaze; he was look­ing at me cu­ri­ous­ly.

“Okay,” I said. “I see your point.” I got up and opened the door. Loiosh and Rocza flew out. A cou­ple of min­utes lat­er, Loiosh let me know the area was safe.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said. “Vlad No­rathar, it is al­ways a plea­sure, sir.” I bowed.

He stood, care­ful­ly set his wine cup down, and did a cred­ible im­ita­tion of my bow, his leg back and his hand sweep­ing the floor. Then he straight­ened up and grinned.

Cawti smiled proud­ly at him, then walked me to the door.

“Un­til next time, Vlad,” she said, and the door closed soft­ly be­hind me.

I had nowhere in par­tic­ular to be, and rea­son to be­lieve I didn’t have a tail, and I felt like walk­ing; so I made my way to Wood­cut­ter’s Mar­ket in South Adri­lankha. Enoch Way wasn’t marked, but one of those East­ern wom­en who looks like ev­ery­one’s grand­moth­er grunt­ed and point­ed, then looked at me as if won­der­ing why I didn’t know some­thing so ob­vi­ous. I of­fered her a coin, which she re­fused with a snort.

Loiosh and Rocza flew above me, in cir­cles, watch­ing as I strolled down the street like any good cit­izen; ex­cept of course that not many East­ern­ers open­ly wore steel at their sides, and the cut of my clothes was bet­ter than most.

It was easy to find the cot­tage; it was just as Cawti had de­scribed it. I stood across the street, lean­ing against a dead tree in the front of a row of cheap hous­ing, and stud­ied the ug­ly green. I prob­ably should have been able to de­duce things about the per­son who lived there just by look­ing at it, but I couldn’t. I mean, yeah, the yard was neat; so what? Did she keep it that way, or did a hus­band, or had they hired some­one to do it? The paint was pret­ty new, but, same thing.

I watched the place a lit­tle longer, but no one came in or out. I thought about break­ing in. Maybe. Couldn’t think what I’d be li­able to learn, and to have some­one find me would be em­bar­rass­ing. But if there was some­thing to find—

“Boss, hide.”

I ducked be­hind the oak tree. “What?”

“You’ve been found. Dra­gaer­an, Jhereg col­ors, big but moves well. He’s got those eyes.”

I knew what he meant by that; there’s some­thing around the eyes of some­one who’s done “work.” I guess maybe I have that look, too. Or did. I don’t know.

“Find me a clean way out?”

“Look­ing.”

I re­mained still and wait­ed, my fin­gers tap­ping on La­dy Tel­dra’s hilt. I’d been in much scari­er sit­ua­tions than just one lone Jhereg. If this was more com­pli­cat­ed than that, well, I’d have to trust Loiosh to let me know in time; mean­while I was ready, but not ner­vous.

“Boss, uh, some­thing odd.”

“That isn’t use­ful.”

“He’s about twen­ty feet away from you, stopped, lean­ing against that emp­ty store­front, pret­ty well con­cealed from the street. He knows his stuff.”

“All right. And?”

“And when he got there, some­one else left the same spot.”

“We walked right by some­one?”

“Seems like. But that isn’t the thing. He’s watch­ing the house.”

“Oh.”

“You think he isn’t here for you?”

“Let’s stay here for a bit and watch the watch­er. What’s the oth­er guy do­ing?”

“Leav­ing, try­ing to look in­con­spic­uous. Do­ing all right at it.”

“What are the chances they rec­og­nized me?”

“How should I know, Boss? I mean, prob­ably not; you’re just an­oth­er East­ern­er here. But—”

“Right. We can’t know. Okay, let’s hang out and see what hap­pens.”

On re­flec­tion, it seemed that break­ing in­to the house would have been a bad idea af­ter all.

“Is there a way I can get in­to a po­si­tion to watch him?”

“I’ll check.” And, “All right. This way.” He land­ed on my shoul­der, and guid­ed me be­hind the row of hous­ing, through some yards with bits of dis­card­ed fur­ni­ture and bro­ken pot­tery, and then around. I hugged a house, set­tled in, and wait­ed, watch­ing.

Well now. Here was an in­ter­est­ing sit­ua­tion.

The so­lu­tion, of course, pre­sent­ed it­self at once, see­ing as I wasn’t in a hur­ry. If for what­ev­er rea­son you are un­able to speak with some­one psy­chi­cal­ly, there is a vi­tal tool that you must nev­er be with­out: a scrap of pa­per and a wax pen­cil.

“I’m run­ning an er­rand?”

“Yes, in­deed. Un­less Rocza can do it.”

“Bet­ter be me. Are we in a hur­ry?”

“On­ly be­cause I’m go­ing to be re­al­ly bored un­til you get back.”

I scratched out a note and hand­ed it to him. He took it in a claw and flew off. I squat­ted down and set­tled in to wait. I didn’t move; the guy I was watch­ing didn’t move. I oc­cu­pied my time with try­ing to de­cide whether I knew the guy, and, if so, from where. He looked vague­ly fa­mil­iar; I might have hired him for some­thing once. Or I might have just seen him at—

“Hel­lo, Vlad. You wished some­thing?”

I heard the voice at the same time I felt the pop of dis­placed air; I didn’t quite jump and scream. I’d have glared at him, but it was my own fault for not telling Loiosh to warn me, so in­stead I just glared.

“Hel­lo, Day­mar. Long time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nev­er mind. Yes, I’d like a fa­vor of you, if you aren’t busy.” He was float­ing, cross-​legged, about three feet off the ground. It’s an easy trick, and I can­not for the life of me imag­ine why he thinks it might be im­pres­sive. Maybe he just thinks it’s com­fort­able, but it doesn’t look com­fort­able.

I’d known him for, well, for years. Tall, dark, and a Hawk­lord, with all that im­plies. If it doesn’t im­ply any­thing for you, I’ll spell it out: He’s vague, ir­ri­tat­ing, very good at what he does, and com­plete­ly obliv­ious of any­thing that might be go­ing on around him un­less it ex­cites his par­tic­ular in­ter­est. It’s good to know peo­ple like Day­mar, even if it means putting up with peo­ple like Day­mar. But when it comes to mess­ing around with the in­side of some­one’s head, there’s no one bet­ter. I’ve used his skills in the past, and I’ll use them again if I don’t evis­cer­ate him in­stead.

I said, “See that fel­low over there?”

He looked. “No,” he said.

“Look again. There. No, where I’m point­ing. Just bare­ly around the cor­ner from the door.”

“Oh. Yes. What’s he do­ing?”

“Same thing I am. The ques­tion is, who is he do­ing it for?”

“Should I ask him?”

I took a breath, let it out again. “That wasn’t ex­act­ly what I had in mind.”

“Oh. You mean, some­thing more in­va­sive?”

“Yes.”

He paused. “He’s wear­ing pro­tec­tion.”

“Oh. Does that mean you can’t find out?”

He looked at me, as if try­ing to see if I was jok­ing. Then he said, “No.”

“Okay, but I don’t want him know­ing what hap­pened.”

That earned me an­oth­er look; which was fine, that’s why I’d said it.

I know, I know; it isn’t nice to ir­ri­tate some­one who is do­ing you a fa­vor. It prob­ably isn’t smart, ei­ther. But if you’d ev­er met Day­mar, you’d un­der­stand. Be­sides, this gave him an ex­cuse to show off, which was what he lived for.

No, that isn’t fair. It wasn’t about show­ing off for him, it was his fas­ci­na­tion with the thing he was do­ing—it was a chance to use his skill, to do what felt right for him to do. I could un­der­stand that; I used to feel the same way when set­ting up to put a shine on some­one. Not the killing, the set­ting up: that feel­ing of ev­ery­thing func­tion­ing the way it’s sup­posed to, of your mind go­ing above it­self, of—

“Got it,” he said.

I nod­ded. “What did you learn?”

“That he’s bored, that this is stupid, that noth­ing has been hap­pen­ing, and that he’s glad he doesn’t have to make the re­port.”

“Um. Let’s start with the last. He doesn’t have to make the re­port?”

“No, he’s just help­ing out some guy named Wid­ner.”

“And he doesn’t know who Wid­ner re­ports to?”

“Nope.”

I sug­gest­ed that my pa­tron god­dess should take sen­su­al plea­sure, though I didn’t put it quite in those terms. “Why doesn’t he want to make the re­port?”

“I can’t say ex­act­ly; I just got the im­pres­sion that who­ev­er the re­port is be­ing giv­en to, he wouldn’t like her.”

“Her.”

He nod­ded.

“Oh.”

I with­drew my sug­ges­tions about the De­mon God­dess.

Well now, that was all sorts of in­ter­est­ing. “Thank you, Day­mar. You’ve been most help­ful.”

“Al­ways a plea­sure, Vlad.”

There was a “whoosh” of air and he was gone, all abrupt and stuff, leav­ing me with my thoughts, such as they were.

Her.

If it was a “her” that Wid­ner was re­port­ing to, it was the Left Hand of the Jhereg.

Why was the Left Hand keep­ing a watch on what hap­pened in that lit­tle cot­tage?

Be­cause the Left Hand was in­volved in what­ev­er the Jhereg—the Right Hand, I mean—and the Or­ca were do­ing. And be­cause hav­ing Brinea and her peo­ple push­ing for the Em­pire to in­ves­ti­gate the mas­sacre in Tir­ma might mess up the plans.

Okay, fine. Why?

Be­cause the Em­pire, just on the off chance that they were hon­est (what­ev­er Cawti might say about that pos­si­bil­ity), would, by in­ves­ti­gat­ing, un­der­cut the pres­sure the Jhereg and the Or­ca were putting on them, and their scheme would fall through.

So, what would they do? They’d stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, if they could.

How? How do you go about stop­ping an Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion? And what did it have to do with some weird group of East­ern­ers gath­ered in a lit­tle cot­tage in South Adri­lankha?

Loiosh re­turned from his er­rand and land­ed on my shoul­der.

“Is he gone al­ready, Boss?”

“Yeah, and so are we. I have stuff to do.”

Iorich

12

Q: State your name and House.

A: Aliera e’Kieron, House of the Drag­on.

Q: What was your po­si­tion at the time of the in­ci­dent in Tir­ma?

A: As near as I can re­con­struct the mo­ment, I was sit­ting down.

Q: Please tell us your of­fi­cial po­si­tion with re­spect to the Em­pire.

A: Pris­on­er.

Q: Please tell us your of­fi­cial po­si­tion, with re­spect to the Em­pire, at the time of the in­ci­dent in Tir­ma.

A: War­lord, al­though in point of fact, my re­spect for the Em­pire is, at this mo­ment, un­der some­thing of a strain.

Q: Were the Im­pe­ri­al troops in Tir­ma act­ing un­der your or­ders?

A: I was the War­lord.

Q: I take that as an af­fir­ma­tive.

A: You can take that and—yes, they were act­ing un­der my or­ders.

Q: What or­ders did you give with re­spect to the re­bel­lion in the duchy of Carv­er?

A: To sup­press it.

Q: Were you spe­cif­ic as to the means of sup­press­ing it?

A: I thought per­haps a nice bou­quet of can­dle­bud sur­round­ing a bot­tle of Ailor would do the trick.

Q: The Court re­minds the wit­ness that copies of her or­ders are in the Court’s pos­ses­sion.

A: The wit­ness won­ders, then, why the Court is both­er­ing to ask ques­tions to which it knows the an­swers.

Q: The wit­ness is re­mind­ed that she may be held in con­tempt.

A: The feel­ing is mu­tu­al.

“Want to tell me about it, Boss?”

Just to be un­pre­dictable, I filled him in on what I’d put to­geth­er. When I’d fin­ished, he was qui­et for a while; maybe from shock. Then he said, “Okay, what now?”

“Can you think of any rea­son for the Left Hand to have that cot­tage watched, ex­cept for what I’m think­ing? They’re push­ing for an Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and the Left Hand doesn’t want that to hap­pen. Am I miss­ing some­thing?”

“Boss, you don’t know any­thing about those peo­ple. That’s one thing they’re do­ing. What if it’s some­thing else en­tire­ly?”

“Like what?”

“How should I know?”

“You re­al­ly think it’s some­thing else?”

“No, I think the same as you. But you don’t know.”

“Then let’s run with that for the mo­ment, and see where it gets us. If the Em­pire in­ves­ti­gates, the deal’s off, and the Jhereg, the Or­ca, and the Left Hand all lose. So, they don’t want the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to hap­pen.”

“But it’s hap­pen­ing any­way, hav­ing noth­ing to do with any­one in any lit­tle cot­tage. Where does that leave us?”

“That’s what I’m try­ing to work out.”

“Work away.”

“Okay. How do you stop an Im­pe­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“You know, Boss, that’s some­thing you ne­glect­ed to cov­er in my train­ing ses­sions.”

“Can’t pres­sure the Em­press di­rect­ly, we have noth­ing to pres­sure her with.”

“I don’t get it, Boss. Why is the Em­press do­ing this, any­way?”

“So she can get out from un­der the Jhereg; to look good to the no­bles, and maybe to the peo­ple too, I don’t know.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that.”

“So then, the thing to do is to dis­cred­it the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Good plan, Boss. How do you do it?”

“Spread ru­mors that these East­ern­ers are be­hind it? Maybe plant some ev­idence?”

“Pos­si­ble.” He didn’t sound con­vinced. Nei­ther was I, for that mat­ter.

“Boss, where are we go­ing?”

I stopped. As I had been think­ing and walk­ing, my feet had tak­en me over the Stone Bridge and were lead­ing me back to my old area—the worst place I could be. The chances of the Jhereg spot­ting me were too high to make me com­fort­able any­where in the city; in my old neigh­bor­hood it was near­ly cer­tain.

“Uh, nowhere. Back to the Palace, I guess.”

I changed di­rec­tion; Loiosh kept his com­ments to him­self.

I made it to the Palace with­out in­ci­dent, en­ter­ing through the Drag­on Wing just to be con­trary, and be­cause I was in a mood to glare back. I found some food, then crossed to the House of the Iorich.

I clapped, and, once again, he opened the door enough to peer out, then let me in. One of these days, I was go­ing to have to ask him why he does that.

I sat down and said, “The Em­press is launch­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events at Tir­ma.”

“Yes,” he said. “I seem to re­mem­ber telling you that. What about it?”

“Do you think it’s a re­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

He frowned. “As op­posed to what?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “A bunch of run­ning around, closed-​door tes­ti­mo­ny, fol­lowed by what­ev­er re­sult the Em­press wants.”

“I doubt it’s that, not from this em­press. I should find out who is in charge of it. That might tell us some­thing.” He stood up. “I may as well do it now.”

“Should I wait here?”

“Yes, but re­lax. This might take a while.”

I nod­ded. He slipped out. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I guess I fell asleep, or at least dozed. I had some vague­ly dis­turb­ing dream that I can’t re­mem­ber, and woke up when Perisil came back in.

“Were you sleep­ing?” He seemed amused.

“Just rest­ing my eyes,” I said. “What did you learn?”

“It’s be­ing run by La­dy Jus­ticer De­saniek.”

He sat down be­hind his desk and looked ex­pec­tant­ly at me. “Sor­ry,” I said. “I don’t know the name.”

“She’s one of the High Jus­ticers. I trust you know what that means?”

“More or less,” I said.

“I know her. She isn’t cor­rupt­ible. She’s a lit­tle fast and loose with her in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the tra­di­tions, but com­plete­ly unim­peach­able when it comes to judg­ment and sen­tenc­ing.”

“So you’re say­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is straight.”

“Prob­ably. She’d be an odd choice if the Em­press didn’t want to ac­tu­al­ly learn what hap­pened, and why.”

“Might there be oth­er pres­sures on her, less di­rect than or­ders to rig it?”

He hes­itat­ed. “Maybe.”

“So then, how would some­one stop it?”

“Stop it?” he said. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Not me. There are oth­ers.”

“Who?”

“Let’s say pow­er­ful in­ter­ests. How would they go about stop­ping it?”

“I can’t an­swer that un­less you give me more in­for­ma­tion. What in­ter­ests? Why do they want to stop it? Pow­er­ful in what way?”

“All good ques­tions,” I said. I paused to con­sid­er just what I could tell him. It was frus­trat­ing: he could al­most cer­tain­ly tell me use­ful things if I didn’t have to wor­ry about what he might be made to tell.

“Just sup­pose,” I said, “that there ex­ist­ed a large crim­inal or­ga­ni­za­tion.”

I hes­itat­ed there; he watched me, lis­ten­ing, not mov­ing.

“And sup­pose,” I said, “that they had come up with a great idea for chang­ing the law in such a way that they made a lot of mon­ey, and that they were work­ing with cer­tain oth­er very pow­er­ful in­ter­ests.”

“How pow­er­ful?”

“As pow­er­ful as you can be at the bot­tom of the Cy­cle.”

“Go on.”

“And sup­pose that this idea for chang­ing the law re­quired putting pres­sure on the Em­press, and that this in­ves­ti­ga­tion had a good like­li­hood of re­liev­ing that pres­sure.”

“I’m with you.”

“How would such a hy­po­thet­ical or­ga­ni­za­tion go about stop­ping or sab­otag­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

He was silent for a minute or two; I could al­most hear his brain bub­bling. Then he said, “I can’t think of any way.”

“Heh. Sup­pose they killed De­saniek?”

“Would they do that?”

“They might.”

“It wouldn’t work any­way. The Em­pire would find some­one else just as good, and make sure it doesn’t hap­pen again, and hunt down who­ev­er did it.”

“I sup­pose so. In any case, I apol­ogize; I un­der­stand this is out­side of your usu­al line of work.”

He shrugged and a wisp of a smile came and went. “It’s a wel­come break from think­ing about rules of ev­idence and forms of ar­gu­ment.”

“Oh? You don’t en­joy your work?”

“I do, re­al­ly. But it gets te­dious at times. This whole case has been a bit out of the or­di­nary for me, and I ap­pre­ci­ate that.”

“A plea­sure to be of ser­vice,” I said. “I can’t imag­ine do­ing what you do.”

“I can’t—that is—nev­er mind.”

“Do you care whether the per­son you’re de­fend­ing is ac­tu­al­ly in­no­cent or guilty?”

“In­no­cent and guilty are le­gal terms.”

“You’re evad­ing the ques­tion.”

“You should be an Iorich.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“The House has de­creed that, what­ev­er a per­son may or may not have done, he is en­ti­tled to be de­fend­ed. That is suf­fi­cient for me.”

“But if he tells you he did, doesn’t that—”

“No one would tell me that, be­cause I’d have to tes­ti­fy to that fact.”

“Oh, right, I knew that. But if, say, the per­son im­plies it, or hints at it—”

“I still give him the best de­fense I can, be­cause that’s what the House dic­tates, and what Im­pe­ri­al law de­crees as well.”

“And you feel good about that?”

He looked puz­zled for a minute. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Huh? Me? I’d feel bet­ter about it if the poor bas­tard was guilty. But I’m not an Iorich.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“It feels good if a guy walks away, then?”

“What are you get­ting at?”

“Noth­ing, re­al­ly. I’m mak­ing con­ver­sa­tion and let­ting the back of my head work on this prob­lem.”

“Oh.” He gave me an odd look, then said, “It feels good to make the best ar­gu­ments I can, and it feels good when, some­times, it ac­tu­al­ly has some­thing to do with jus­tice.”

“Jus­tice? What’s that?”

“Se­ri­ous ques­tion?”

“No, but an­swer it as if it were.”

“I don’t know. I don’t get in­to the deep­er, mys­ti­cal as­pects. Some do. But jus­tice? Edicts oc­ca­sion­al­ly have some­thing to do with jus­tice, but statutes al­most nev­er do.”

“Uh, what do they have to do with?”

“Prac­ti­cal­ity. For ex­am­ple, right here in Adri­lankha, when meat­pack­ing be­came such a big in­dus­try, they passed lo­cal statutes say­ing that any peas­ant who fell short for the year could be kicked off his land. The no­bles raised an out­cry, but didn’t have the clout to do any­thing about it.”

“I don’t un­der­stand what that has to do with meat­pack­ing.”

“Kick peas­ants off the land, there’s your la­bor force for the pack­ing plants. Along with a lot of East­ern­ers, of course.”

“Oh. Are they that, I don’t know, ob­vi­ous about it?”

“Some­times. In the area around Lake Shalo­mar—right where Tir­ma is—they dis­cov­ered sil­ver. First thing that hap­pened was an in­flux of min­ers, the sec­ond thing was an in­flux of mer­chants sell­ing to the mi­nors. So the Duke passed a statute tax­ing both the sale and the pur­chase of min­ing equip­ment, set tax­es to some ab­surd lev­el, and pro­vid­ed for the con­scrip­tion of any­one un­able to pay the tax. That’s how he re­cruit­ed his army. I don’t think you’d call that jus­tice.”

“Um. No, I imag­ine not.”

“There are worse cas­es. Around the Ko­rlaph, north of the Push­ta, they dis­cov­ered tin, and had a re­al la­bor short­age. The Count went on a statute ram­page, and by the time he was done, he not on­ly owned all the mines, but had made up the most ab­surd laws to have a few thou­sand lo­cals ar­rest­ed, and then sen­tenced them to work the mines.”

“He can do that?”

“Once in a while, some­one has enough fam­ily with enough mon­ey to bring a par­tic­ular case to the at­ten­tion of the Em­pire, and a par­tic­ular law gets over­turned.”

“And I thought the Jhereg was cor­rupt.”

“Law is a re­flec­tion of so­ci­ety, jus­tice is a re­flec­tion of an ide­al­iza­tion of that so­ci­ety.”

“You’re quot­ing some­one.”

He nod­ded. “Yurstov, Iorich Em­per­or of the Fifth Cy­cle, who tried to cre­ate an ac­tu­al jus­tice sys­tem. He failed, but he did some good.”

“And you stay with Edicts be­cause they aren’t as bad?”

He frowned. “I guess that’s part of it, though I don’t think of it in those terms. I had a client once who an­noyed some­one, and the some­one set him up to look like he’d com­mit­ted a crime. I got him off. That felt like jus­tice.”

“Was it? I mean, what had he done to an­noy the guy?”

Perisil shrugged. “I don’t know. As I said, the deep­er lev­els I leave to oth­ers. But that’s jus­tice to me. Sup­pose some poor fool of a Teck­la steals a chick­en from his land­lord be­cause he’s hun­gry. And some high-​and-​mighty Or­ca man­ages a scheme to cheat his crew out of half their pay. If the first guy gets off with a cou­ple of cuts, and the sec­ond goes to the Star, well, to me that’s jus­tice.”

“How of­ten does that hap­pen?”

“I don’t know; I don’t deal with those sorts of cas­es. Those have to do with tra­di­tion­al law, and I work with Edicts. More of­ten it’s the oth­er way around, I should think. Is there a point to all this, Lord Tal­tos?”

“I’m a cu­ri­ous guy, is all. And you’re—odd.”

“You’ve met ad­vo­cates be­fore.”

“Yes, but on­ly the ones in­ter­est­ed in mon­ey.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes, I sup­pose so.”

I stood up. “Sor­ry, I’ll let you work.”

“And you?”

“I need to think like a Jhereg.”

“I imag­ine that comes eas­ier to you than think­ing like an ad­vo­cate.”

“A lit­tle,” I said. “Oh, one oth­er thing. De­saniek. Where do I find her?”

His eyes nar­rowed. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m not sure. But I have no in­ten­tion of killing her.”

“If you even talk to her—”

“I doubt it will come to that.”

He hes­itat­ed, then said, “While she’s con­duct­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, she’ll be work­ing out of the Of­fice of the Im­pe­ri­al Jus­ticer in the Im­pe­ri­al Wing.”

“What does she look like?”

He frowned again. He clear­ly didn’t like the way this con­ver­sa­tion was go­ing.

“Re­al­ly,” I said. “I don’t in­tend to kill her. Or beat her. I don’t know what I’m go­ing to do, but it could end up that I’ll be sav­ing her life, de­pend­ing on how things shake out.”

“All right,” he said. “But I’m not very good at de­scrib­ing peo­ple.”

“What’s the first thing you no­tice about her?”

“Um. Her face?”

“Any­thing spe­cial about how she dress­es, or what she wears—”

“She keeps her hair up, and she al­ways wears a stick­pin in it with a lot of lit­tle di­amonds.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That should do it. And don’t wor­ry about it too much.”

I took my­self out of the of­fice and back up to the main floor of the House. I need­ed to think, and I need­ed to find a place to do it. I crossed over to the Iorich Wing, stared for a mo­ment at the sculpt­ed thing and won­dered what it sym­bol­ized, then end­ed up let­ting my feet car­ry me to­ward the pris­ons while I tried to put the pieces to­geth­er.

I hadn’t got­ten any­where when I reached the big gates; the same guard was there. He said, “You want to see Aliera?”

“Yes,” I said, though I hadn’t ac­tu­al­ly for­mu­lat­ed the idea.

I just had to sign and seal one pa­per, af­firm­ing that ev­ery­thing I’d signed be­fore still ap­plied. Some­one I’d nev­er seen be­fore guid­ed me in.

I clapped at the door be­fore the guard could; she opened the door and let me in, say­ing, “One hour.”

Aliera was in the same place, the same po­si­tion she’d been in be­fore. I had the im­pres­sion she hadn’t moved since I’d left. On the ta­ble next to the couch were sev­er­al wine bot­tles, all emp­ty.

“Well,” she said, glar­ing at me.

“Ver­ra!” I said. “First Sethra, now you. Great.”

“Huh?”

“When I spoke with Sethra, she was drunk, too.”

“Is there some­thing I should be do­ing in­stead?”

“An­swer­ing my ques­tions.”

“Ask them.”

“First ques­tion: Did you know the Em­press is start­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events in Tir­ma?”

“First an­swer: Why should I care?”

“Be­cause it was not want­ing to run that in­ves­ti­ga­tion that led to you be­ing ar­rest­ed.”

“So you say. And by the way, yes I knew. Some Iorich came in here and want­ed to ask me ques­tions about it.”

“And you were in just the shape you’re in now, right?”

She shrugged.

“Per­fect,” I said. “Can you re­mem­ber what she want­ed to know?”

“Sure. She want­ed to know if I en­joy slaugh­ter­ing in­no­cent Teck­la.”

“Did she ask that in so many words?”

Aliera made a vague sort of dis­miss­ing ges­ture.

I said, “You’re prob­ably too drunk for this to do any good, but I need to point out that if the Em­pire is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the re­al thing, then there’s no need for them to press fake charges against you.”

“And yet,” she said, “here I am.”

“Yes. I’m try­ing to fix that.”

She yawned. “Let me know how that works out.”

“If I come back to­mor­row, will you be sober?”

“If I stay drunk, will you stay away?”

I could have point­ed out that she wasn’t help­ing, but I was be­gin­ning to get the idea that this wouldn’t be a pow­er­ful ar­gu­ment. There needs to be a bet­ter word than “stub­born” to de­scribe a Drag­onlord whose pride has been of­fend­ed, and then a bet­ter word than that to de­scribe Aliera.

“So tell me,” I said. “Do you en­joy slaugh­ter­ing in­no­cent Teck­la?”

She stared at me for a minute, then burst out laugh­ing. Since I’d fig­ured it was ei­ther that or she’d kill me, I was just as pleased. She laughed for much longer than it was worth, but I at­tribut­ed that to her state. Even­tu­al­ly she wiped her eyes and said, “Yes, but not by proxy.”

“I doubt the Iorich would ac­cept that an­swer.”

“You nev­er know,” she said. “They might. I’ll ask my ad­vo­cate if we should base our de­fense on it.”

“Do that. I’ll ask the Em­press what she thinks.”

“Do that. I’m cu­ri­ous about what’s be­hind all of this.”

“Me too. That’s what I’m do­ing here.”

“What, you think I can tell you some­thing?”

“Al­most cer­tain­ly. And you might even be will­ing, if I knew what to ask.”

She swirled the wine in her glass and stared at it. “Maybe I would. What ex­act­ly is the prob­lem you’re try­ing to solve?”

I gave her a quick run­down about things as I saw it.

“So, you think the Jhereg,” she al­most spat the word, “are go­ing to sab­otage this in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“Have you ev­er known them, or the Or­ca, to give up a chance for prof­it if there was a way not to?”

“No. But I don’t see any­thing they can do that won’t back-​fire on them.”

“You aren’t re­al­ly drunk, are you?”

“No, not re­al­ly.”

“I should prob­ably tell No­rathar, or else the Em­press, about what I think is go­ing on.”

“Prob­ably.”

“Un­less you’d rather.”

“Why would I?”

“I don’t know. A way of say­ing there are no hard feel­ings?”

“What makes you think there are no hard feel­ings?”

“Okay, a way of play­ing pol­itics? My prob­lems aren’t the sort that can be solved by hav­ing the Em­pire owe me any­thing.”

“I don’t ac­tu­al­ly care.” She hes­itat­ed. “But thanks for the of­fer.”

“D’ski!tna.”

“What?”

“You owe me no debt.”

“I know what it means. When did you learn Se­ri­oli?”

“On­ly a cou­ple of words,” I said, feel­ing my face turn­ing red. “I met a bard who—nev­er mind.”

She shrugged. “Any­thing else, or can I get back to plot­ting my jail­break?”

“You can get back to it. Can I smug­gle you in a lit­tle blue stone or some­thing?”

“They’re ac­tu­al­ly pur­ple, and, yes, I’ll take three of them.”

“Heh.”

I stood up to go. She said, “Vlad.”

“Hm?”

I ex­pect­ed her to thank me for all my work. Or maybe an­nounce some­thing pro­found, like telling me about a vi­sion she’d had of the De­mon God­dess. What she said was, “I don’t mind my daugh­ter play­ing with your son.”

“Um. Okay, thanks.”

I had the guard let me out of the place.

Be­ing in the Palace any­way, I went back to the same ven­dor and found some sausages that weren’t too bad, and bread that could have been staler, then made my way back to my room. Loiosh told me it was emp­ty, so I went in. I lay down on the bed and tried to think. My stom­ach grum­bled a lit­tle. I won­dered if I was get­ting too old to be liv­ing on bread and sausage; that would be sad.

As I lay there, I found my hand stroking the tiny gold­en links on the hilt of La­dy Tel­dra. In the years I’d had her, I’d on­ly used her twice; I some­how thought that would please her. Those thoughts led me to an­oth­er Is­so­la I knew, but I pushed those away: I need­ed to con­cen­trate on busi­ness.

My hand kept stroking La­dy Tel­dra’s hilt.

Hey, you in there? Any ideas? Can you help?

Noth­ing.

I sud­den­ly missed her—I mean, the re­al per­son—very sharply. It’s all well and good to think of her per­son­al­ity be­ing pre­served in­side a weapon, but for one thing, I’d nev­er felt it that I could be sure of. And for an­oth­er, I didn’t en­tire­ly be­lieve it. I won­der if she would say mur­der­ing a bunch of Teck­la was im­po­lite. I won­dered if the fact that I didn’t much care made me a bad per­son. Prob­ably.

“I won­der if she’d say any­thing about ly­ing on top of the bed with your boots on.”

“Prob­ably.”

My mind wan­dered, which is a good thing, be­cause some­times it wan­ders to where it needs to go and un­cov­ers just the right rock. In this case, it wan­dered to High Coun­sel Perisil. An in­ter­est­ing fel­low. What I’d said to him had been true: None of the ad­vo­cates I’d run in­to be­fore had any in­ter­est oth­er than in mak­ing them­selves rich. This shouldn’t be seen as say­ing any­thing about the House over­all: it’s a par­tic­ular set of them who end up work­ing for the Jhereg. I don’t know, maybe the Jhereg ex­erts an in­flu­ence on some peo­ple, turn­ing them. Or maybe those with such in­cli­na­tions, in any House, are more sub­ject to work­ing for them, more sub­ject to tak­ing and giv­ing bribes, to stab­bing peo­ple in the back, to set­ting up some poor bas­tard the way Perisil had said—

Oh.

Well, sure. That would do it.

“You think, Boss?”

“Why not? What would hap­pen?”

“I don’t know. You fig­ure that out.”

“I al­ready have, Loiosh. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be stopped, at least for a while, and there would be all sorts of noise about round­ing up and sup­press­ing Teck­la and East­ern­ers, and the no­bles would blame Zeri­ka for let­ting it get out of hand, and it would be a round throw whether she’d be able to get things back in hand, or whether she’d have to cave to the Jhereg to get the pres­sure off.”

“That’s the part I don’t see, Boss. How does go­ing along with the Jhereg re­lieve the pres­sure on Zeri­ka?”

“Now that is an ex­cel­lent ques­tion, my fine jhereg friend. I think I’ll go ask her.”

“Now?”

“I’ll prob­ably have to wait for hours to see her; can you think of a rea­son not to start the wait?”

“Put that way, I guess not.”

It was ear­ly evening; just be­gin­ning to get dark. I didn’t know what hours Her Majesty kept, but it could do no harm in ask­ing, so long as no one pol­ished me up dur­ing the walk from the inn to the Palace.

Loiosh and Rocza kept care­ful watch, and I took the round­about path I’d tak­en be­fore, and made it to the Palace with­out in­ci­dent. I won’t bore you with a rep­eti­tion of mak­ing my way to As­skiss Al­ley. Harn­wood was still there; like Aliera, he seemed not to have moved.

“Count Szurke,” he said.

I bowed. “Good Lord Harn­wood, would it be pos­si­ble to find out if Her Majesty would con­sent to see me?”

His face gave no sign there was any­thing odd in the re­quest. “Is it ur­gent?”

“A few hours or a day will make no dif­fer­ence,” I said. “But I have new in­for­ma­tion.”

He didn’t ask about what. Maybe he knew, but more like­ly he knew it was none of his busi­ness. “I shall in­quire. Please have a chair.”

I did, and wait­ed maybe half an hour.

“The Em­press will see you.”

I start­ed to fol­low him, stopped, and said, “When back­ing away from Her Majesty at the end of the in­ter­view, how many steps do I take be­fore turn­ing around?”

He smiled; I think the ques­tion pleased him. “If you are here as a per­son­al friend of Her Majesty, then five. If you are here as Count Szurke, then sev­en. If as Baronet Tal­tos, then ten.”

“Thank you,” I said.

If I had the choice be­tween try­ing to fig­ure out an Is­so­la and try­ing to fig­ure out an Iorich, I think I’d take a nap.

Harn­wood led me through a dif­fer­ent route, short­er, and to a co­zi­er room; I had the strong feel­ing this was a part of her liv­ing quar­ters, which meant I was be­ing hon­ored, or else that I was ir­ri­tat­ing her, or both. She was wait­ing. Harn­wood bowed deeply to Her Majesty, less deeply to me. I bowed to Her Majesty, she nod­ded to me. It’s just like a dance.

She didn’t of­fer me a chair. I said, “Majesty, thank you for see­ing me. I hadn’t re­al­ized you knew the Necro­mancer.”

She frowned. “How did you—” then looked down at her gold­en out­fit. “You’ve seen Sethra re­cent­ly.”

“Your Majesty’s pow­ers of de­duc­tion are—”

“Leave it. What is this new in­for­ma­tion?”

“There is go­ing to be an ef­fort made to stop the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events in Tir­ma.”

She frowned. “What sort of at­tempt, and how do you know?”

I nod­ded. “Please ac­cept my com­pli­ments, Majesty. Those are good ques­tions. I rec­og­nize good ques­tions, be­cause I can come up with them my­self.”

Her brows came to­geth­er. “Are you bar­gain­ing with me, Tal­tos?”

“No, Majesty. I’ll an­swer yours in any case. I’m hop­ing Your Majesty’s grat­itude will—”

“I get it. I’ll think about it.”

Be­ing Em­press means be­ing able to in­ter­rupt any­one, at any time. La­dy Tel­dra wouldn’t have ap­proved, but I have to ad­mit it was the first thing about the job I’d ev­er found at­trac­tive.

I said, “An at­tempt will be made on the life of Jus­ticer De­saniek. I know by de­duc­tion, from hints I’ve got­ten, and be­cause I know how the Jhereg op­er­ates.”

She stared. “The Jhereg? They wouldn’t—”

“It will look like an at­tempt by a group of East­ern­ers and Teck­la; one of those out­fits of po­lit­ical mal­con­tents. It will be very con­vinc­ing.”

She sat back and her eyes half closed. The Orb slowed down over her head, and turned pur­ple. I’d nev­er seen it slow down be­fore. I won­dered what it meant. Af­ter about a minute, she looked up at me. “What are your ques­tions, Tal­tos?”

“Just one: Why would they do it?”

“Eh?”

“I know about their at­tempt to get you to pass de­crees out­law­ing cer­tain chem­icals—”

“How do you know that?”

I an­swered the ques­tion she want­ed an­swered, not what she’d asked. I said, “From the Jhereg side, Majesty, not from any­one to whom you en­trust­ed the knowl­edge.”

“Very well.”

“As I said, I know about that. And I un­der­stand that Your Majesty—”

“For­get the for­mal speech, Tal­tos. I’m too tired and too ir­ri­tat­ed.”

The Orb had, in­deed, turned icy blue. I bowed slight­ly and said, “I un­der­stand you’re try­ing to break out of the trap by bring­ing the truth out about the events in Tir­ma, and I ad­mire that. But I don’t un­der­stand the oth­er side of it. That is, how it is that if you co­op­er­ate with the Jhereg, make the de­crees they want and all that—how does that take the pres­sure off you?”

She was qui­et for a long time; the Orb grad­ual­ly chang­ing from blue to a non-​de­script green. “My first du­ty,” she said slow­ly, “is to keep the Em­pire run­ning. If I fail in that, noth­ing else mat­ters. To run the Em­pire, I need the co­op­er­ation of all of those I can’t co­erce, and to co­erce those who won’t co­op­er­ate. To do that, I need the con­fi­dence of the no­bles and the princes. If I lose the con­fi­dence of the no­bles, of the princes, I can­not run the Em­pire.”

“Sounds pret­ty sim­ple. Can the Jhereg re­al­ly cause the no­bles and princes to lose con­fi­dence in you?”

“A week ago I thought they could. Now—” She shrugged. “Now I guess we’ll put it to the test.”

I bowed to her, backed up sev­en steps, and left.

Iorich

13

Caltho—I un­der­stand Hen­ish has re­fused to tes­ti­fy of­fi­cial­ly. I don’t think that will be a prob­lem, but if we’re go­ing to do this, we need to know what he knows. Can you speak with him in­for­mal­ly and find out just what hap­pened? Let him know we aren’t out to stick a knife in him, we just need to know, from his point of view, what the se­quence was. In par­tic­ular, try to as­cer­tain:

1. Did the troops have rea­son to be­lieve the peas­ants in that shack were work­ing with the en­emy?

2. Did the peas­ants do any­thing that looked like it may have been an at­tack, or prepa­ra­tion for an at­tack?

3. Were they ques­tioned, and, if so, how did they re­spond?

4. Did the troops see any weapons or any­thing that looked like it could be used as a weapon?

5. Did they vi­olate or­ders, and, if so, at what point did they de­vi­ate from or­ders or ex­pect­ed pro­ce­dures?

Let him know that if we can get straight an­swers to these ques­tions, even un­of­fi­cial­ly, I’m pret­ty sure we can put this thing away, what­ev­er the an­swers are.

—De­saniek (not au­then­ti­cat­ed)

How do you stop an as­sas­sin?

Sounds like it’s about to be a joke, doesn’t it? But no, I was re­al­ly ask­ing my­self that.

You’d think, what with me hav­ing been one for a big chunk of my life, I’d have some pret­ty good ideas on how to go about stop­ping one, but it doesn’t work that way. When I thought up a way that would have stopped me, I thought up a way to counter it.

The point is, most as­sas­sins I know work pret­ty much the same way: get the pat­tern of your tar­get’s move­ments, se­lect a spot, pick a time, make an es­cape plan, choose a method, then, well, you do it. If you want to stop the as­sas­sin, and you don’t know who it is, you need to do pret­ty much the same thing and be there first. Good luck with that.

Or else—hm­mm—maybe find the as­sas­sin while he’s set­ting it up? Yeah, that had some pos­si­bil­ities.

“Well, Loiosh? Got any bet­ter ideas?”

“Your job is to find bet­ter ideas, mine is to cut holes in the ones you have, and you’ve al­ready done that pret­ty well.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I wan­dered around the Im­pe­ri­al Wing un­til I found a re­fresh­ing­ly snob­bish Teck­la who, for a bit of sil­ver, was will­ing to guide us to the of­fice of the Im­pe­ri­al Jus­ticer. Loiosh and Rocza hid in­side my cloak, which I should men­tion isn’t ter­ri­bly com­fort­able for any of us at the best of times, and with the added weight on my shoul­ders (lit­er­al­ly) now was flat no fun at all.

I was just as glad to have a guide—I’d nev­er have been able to find it on my own. I made a point of not­ing the twists, turns, and stair­ways, and when we got there (“Down this hall, the dou­ble doors with the iorich be­low the Im­pe­ri­al Phoenix there, you see, and the gold knobs? That one.”) I didn’t think I’d ev­er be able to find it again.

I dis­missed the Teck­la and walked in­to the of­fice, which was damn near as big as the throne room, and much more taste­ful­ly ap­point­ed, gold knobs notwith­stand­ing. A pleas­ant-​look­ing gen­tle­man with eye­brows that looked like he trimmed them sat be­hind a large high­ly pol­ished desk and in­quired as to my busi­ness, show­ing no signs of dis­com­fort at be­ing po­lite to me. I said, “I beg your par­don, m’lord, I’m in the wrong place.” I bowed low and humbly, as be­fit an East­ern­er, and walked out.

There was no one out­side the of­fice, so I took a good, slow look around. I was at the end of a long, wide hall­way; with no oth­er doors to the place, the in­sides prob­ably wrapped around, with a bunch of in­ter­nal of­fices, and al­so prob­ably went quite a ways back be­yond what I saw. There had been no win­dows in the room I was in.

Be­ing at the end of the hall­way like that was bad, be­cause there was no place to hide, but good be­cause it meant there was no oth­er way out—un­less there was a di­rect ex­it. I should have had Kiera steal the plans for the Palace, if there were any, and if I could have found a Val­lista to in­ter­pret them for me. Wide hall­ways mean im­por­tant peo­ple in the Palace, and maybe oth­er places too. I’ll make no com­ment on gold door­knobs; you de­cide.

It was marginal whether this would be a good place to find De­saniek; some­one im­por­tant is li­able to have an­oth­er en­trance or two, but not like­ly to use it most of the time; this is be­cause they usu­al­ly want to be seen com­ing and go­ing, and to check on those who work for them. Not al­ways, but chances were good she’d be com­ing out this way.

At the oth­er ex­treme of the hall—that is, past the stair­way—were three rooms and a small, short pas­sage end­ing in a door. I went and clapped at it—which hurt all through my chest and neck—and no one an­swered; tried the door and it was locked. I didn’t feel like be­ing caught pick­ing a lock in the Im­pe­ri­al Palace, so I didn’t.

I hate it when there’s no good place to hide; es­pe­cial­ly when I’m stand­ing around some­where I ob­vi­ous­ly don’t be­long. Here is where an in­vis­ibil­ity spell would have been use­ful, if I’d been able to cast one with­out re­mov­ing my pro­tec­tions, and if cast­ing it wouldn’t have set off ev­ery alarm in the Palace.

Yeah, well.

The ceil­ing pro­vid­ed no good place for Loiosh to hide, ei­ther.

“I beg to dif­fer.”

“The hang­ing lamp? You think you can use that?”

“I’d be con­cealed from one di­rec­tion, and in shad­ows from the oth­er.”

“You know what would hap­pen if you were spot­ted? A jhereg in the Palace? Some­one would scream, and they’d run and get ev­ery­body and—”

“Maybe they’d just shoo me out the near­est win­dow.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. And you won’t be able to fol­low her with­out be­ing spot­ted. And when­ev­er you leave, it’ll be prob­lem­at­ical.”

“Rocza will do it. All she has to do is let me know when she leaves, and which di­rec­tion she goes. And she can stay here un­til we can fetch her.”

“How do we—?”

“Oh, come on, Boss. There’s no one around. She can just fly up there.”

“You sure about this?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.”

I walked over to the place where the hall came to­geth­er, opened my cloak, and she flapped up to the lamp. I stud­ied her. I could see her, but I had to be look­ing. I felt a lit­tle bet­ter about the whole thing.

“What does she think about all of this?”

“She thinks it’s hot up there.”

A cou­ple of young-​look­ing Iorich walked by, ev­ident­ly on the way to see De­saniek, or maybe some oth­er busi­ness in that of­fice in­volv­ing sub­tleties of ju­rispru­dence. I bowed re­spect­ful­ly. They both glanced at me and kept walk­ing; one might have nod­ded slight­ly.

At the bot­tom of the stairs things be­came com­pli­cat­ed: There were pas­sages in three di­rec­tions, and I could make out fur­ther branch­ings on two of them; al­so the stairs kept go­ing down. I checked the near­est doors: one of them was a privy, which I took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use, be­cause if you’re go­ing to be fol­low­ing some­one for maybe hours, that’s a prob­lem you don’t need. An­oth­er was locked, and one was open and emp­ty—it would prob­ably be some­one’s of­fice when the need arose for le­gal ad­vice on com­par­ative flow­er ar­range­ment. I stepped in, shut the door, and let Loiosh out from my cloak; a great re­lief to us both.

“Oh, do we get to wait now, Boss? You know that’s my fa­vorite part.”

We wait­ed.

Loiosh kept up a stream of sug­ges­tions about how to dec­orate the emp­ty room, while I tried to think up cre­ative things to say if some­one hap­pened to come walk­ing in. Ev­ery once in a while, he’d re­as­sure me that Rocza was still undis­cov­ered, and that De­saniek hadn’t been by.

We wait­ed a long time.

Ei­ther she had a lot to do in the of­fice and was dis­gust­ing­ly ded­icat­ed, or she had an­oth­er way out. Af­ter four hours, with my stom­ach rum­bling, I’d about de­cid­ed it was the lat­ter. Af­ter five hours, I was pret­ty well sure of it. It had al­most been six hours when Loiosh said, “There she is! Com­ing to­ward us, Boss,” and we were off.

Loiosh ducked in­to my cloak again, and I stepped out of the hall and walked over to the stair­way.

“What’s Rocza do­ing?”

“Wait­ing.”

“Good. Tell her to stay with it.”

I turned so that when she walked past me I was go­ing the oth­er way; I made a slight bow. My pe­riph­er­al vi­sion told me on­ly that she was of av­er­age height, with a rather light com­plex­ion for an Iorich and a firm stride. Once she was well past me, I turned around and fol­lowed. This not on­ly per­mit­ted me to watch for any­one else who might be fol­low­ing her, but al­so showed me how to get out of the Palace.

We pret­ty quick­ly reached a place where there were lots of peo­ple, which wasn’t good for me. It’s too easy to fol­low some­one in a crowd, which means it’s hard to spot some­one else do­ing so. I didn’t lose her, of course; I can man­age to stay with some­one even with­out Loiosh, thank you very much. But it did get sim­pler once we left the Palace it­self, and I could take a mo­ment when I was un­ob­served to let him out.

The easy part was fol­low­ing De­saniek. The hard part was spot­ting some­one else fol­low­ing De­saniek. The scary part was leav­ing the con­fines of the Palace area and won­der­ing if I had some­one fol­low­ing me with un­friend­ly in­ten­tions. The painful part was walk­ing quick­ly enough to keep up with her.

She didn’t go far, as it hap­pened—just out­side the Palace dis­trict to a place I’d eat­en at once be­fore. The food was okay, but the wine list was amaz­ing. Among the things I hadn’t prac­ticed late­ly was fol­low­ing around some­one who was eat­ing bet­ter than I was.

To the left, how­ev­er, I could leave Loiosh there in case she was a fast eater, and go re­trieve Rocza.

“Which means you walk­ing through a lot of bad ar­eas with­out me spot­ting for you.”

“Twen­ty min­utes.”

“Think how much you could you do in twen­ty min­utes.”

“Did you see any­one on the way here?”

“No, but—”

“Hang tight. I’ll be back soon.”

And I was, too, be­lieve it or not. It took longer than it should have, be­cause I got lost try­ing to find the of­fice and had to ask di­rec­tions three times, but find it I did, and Rocza was there, and I had no trou­ble get­ting back out. It’s very strange how it can be hard to find your way to a place, but easy to find your way back.

“Okay, we’re about there. Is it safe?”

“You’re safe from ev­ery­one but Rocza, who’s hun­gry, over­heat­ed, and bad-​tem­pered.”

“I trust you to pro­tect me.”

“I charge for those ser­vices.”

I found a safe place to wait while De­saniek fin­ished eat­ing. Loiosh and Rocza scanned the area for any­one watch­ing ei­ther her or me.

“How will you tell which it is, Boss?”

“Just spot him, then we’ll wor­ry about it.”

“In oth­er words, you have no clue.”

“Some­thing like that.”

But we didn’t spot any­one. If there was any­one fol­low­ing her, he could be at the ta­ble next to her, eat­ing, and star­ing off in the op­po­site di­rec­tion; I’d done that be­fore.

So I wait­ed some more. Feh.

It might be in­ter­est­ing to give you the rest of what hap­pened that night in great de­tail if it had turned out to have been in­ter­est­ing, but in fact I nev­er spot­ted any­one. I was with her for about three more painful hours, as she vis­it­ed a pri­vate club where, I guess, high-​pow­ered Iorich like to re­lax; then even­tu­al­ly she went home. In the end, it was a big noth­ing.

I went back to the inn, got a lit­tle sleep and an ear­ly start, and wait­ed out­side her home. Loiosh spot­ted a Jhereg, but it was be­fore we got there, and he was ob­vi­ous­ly look­ing for me, based on how care­ful­ly he avoid­ed watch­ing the inn. Crap. We lost him on the way to De­saniek’s home.

She went straight to the of­fice; I had the jhereg in my cloak and all three of us wait­ed. She didn’t eat any morn­ing meal at all, and must have had lunch sent in. What she did in there for eigh­teen hours I don’t know, but there she was, and no one else seemed in­ter­est­ed. That night she ate in the same place, but went straight home af­ter­ward. She took the same route both times.

Back in my room at the inn, I got a note from Kiera that she had in­for­ma­tion for me; I wrote back ask­ing her to hold it for a day or two, since I had no time to do any­thing ex­cept fol­low De­saniek around.

Is it all right if I stop talk­ing about how much it hurt just to walk? You can’t be en­joy­ing hear­ing about it, and I don’t en­joy re­mem­ber­ing it. Let’s just say that, of all the times I’ve fol­lowed peo­ple around, this was the least pleas­ant.

You can re­peat the pat­tern for the day af­ter, ex­cept she went to a dif­fer­ent place af­ter she’d fin­ished, and ate with an Iorich who was prob­ably her lover—at least, they seemed to be on good terms, and he went home with her. They took a dif­fer­ent route, more scenic. I had the im­pres­sion they al­ways went this way.

The next day, no lover, no Jhereg in­ter­est­ed in her, and back to the first route, past one of my fa­vorite bak­ers, which made it es­pe­cial­ly try­ing.

When the same thing hap­pened the next day, I start­ed to get dis­gust­ed, not to men­tion wor­ried.

“What have I missed, Loiosh? They’re go­ing to take this Iorich out and make it look like those East­ern­ers are be­hind it. To do that, they have to know her move­ments ex­act­ly. Why aren’t they there?”

“Maybe they are, and you can’t see them.”

“In­vis­ible? I sup­pose. But some­one would have no­ticed an in­vis­ible guy walk­ing by. I’d think—”

“That’s not what I mean. She isn’t a Jhereg, Boss. She prob­ably doesn’t have any pro­tec­tion spells on.”

“What’s your point?”

“Maybe they’re us­ing sor­cery to trace her?”

I used sev­er­al of my fa­vorite oaths, run­ning them to­geth­er. I wish I could re­mem­ber ex­act­ly how I put it, be­cause it was very po­et­ic.

“Boss?”

“That’s cheat­ing.”

“Uh, Boss—”

“I know, I know. I’m just pissed be­cause I didn’t think of it.”

“That’s what you’ve got me around for.”

“Which you’ll nev­er let me for­get, which is the oth­er thing I’m pissed about. All right, there has to be a way to fig­ure this out. No, we don’t, we need to call for help.”

“Mor­rolan, or Sethra?”

“Yes.” Be­fore he could say some­thing snip­py, I added, “Who would be eas­ier to get to?”

“You could get Mor­rolan to come see you, in­stead of you go­ing there.”

“Yeah, good point.”

I took an­oth­er cir­cuitous route back to the Palace area, then went in­to the Drag­on Wing by one of the en­trances used by the no­bil­ity. Two guards in full uni­form stood out­side the en­trance; I won­dered if stand­ing out­side the Wing for hours at a time is an hon­or or a pun­ish­ment, but in any case I put on my full out­fit of ar­ro­gance and went breez­ing past them. This was go­ing to be fun.

There was a sergeant at a desk. I knew he was a sergeant be­cause I rec­og­nized the marks on his uni­form, and I knew it was a desk be­cause it’s al­ways a desk. There’s al­ways some­one at a desk, ex­cept when it’s a ta­ble that func­tions as a desk. You sit be­hind a desk, and ev­ery­one knows you’re sup­posed to be there, and that you’re do­ing some­thing that in­volves your brain. It’s an odd, spe­cial kind of im­por­tance. I think ev­ery­one should get a desk; you can sit be­hind it when you feel like you don’t mat­ter.

The Em­press didn’t have a desk. Mor­rolan didn’t have a desk. Sethra didn’t have a desk. They re­al­ly did mat­ter. Me, when I was run­ning my area for the Jhereg, I had a desk. Now I don’t. You can draw what­ev­er con­clu­sions you want to from that.

I went up to the sergeant be­hind the desk and said, “I am Count Szurke. This is my signet. I wish to see the en­sign on du­ty.”

He didn’t like it much. The on­ly peo­ple who are sup­posed to talk to you like that are the ones with big­ger desks. But the signet of an Im­pe­ri­al ti­tle car­ries some weight with the mil­itary, so he nod­ded and, how­ev­er painful it may have been for him, said, “Yes, my lord. At once.” Then he said, “Flips, bring my lord to the en­sign.”

A guy who spent too much time on his hair said, “Yes, m’lord,” and bowed to me, then led the way down the hall, clapped out­side the first door he came to, and, up­on re­ceiv­ing the word, opened the door for me. I went in­to a room where there was a wom­an be­hind a desk. It was a big­ger desk than the sergeant had.

I re­peat­ed my in­tro­duc­tion and said, “I re­quire a mes­sage de­liv­ered at once to Lord Mor­rolan. I wish him to meet me here. Find me a pri­vate room in which to wait, then let him know I’m there.”

She didn’t like my tone much, but or­ders, as they say, are or­ders. “Yes, my lord.” She pulled out a piece of pa­per, scrib­bled on it with a pen that went in­to a pen-​hold­er with a drag­on’s head etched on it, then af­fixed her seal and stood up. “If my lord will fol­low me?”

I don’t al­ways love throw­ing my weight around. But some­times, with some peo­ple, it’s just fun.

She showed me to a small, com­fort­able room, sur­round­ed by pic­tures of bat­tle, some of them ter­ri­bly re­al­is­tic-​look­ing. There was a lot of blood. I didn’t find it re­lax­ing. Al­so, they didn’t bring me any food or wine, which I got to re­sent­ing af­ter an hour or so. For­tu­nate­ly, it wasn’t much more than an hour be­fore there came a clap at the door. I rec­og­nized Mor­rolan’s hands slap­ping to­geth­er be­fore Loiosh said any­thing, which fact might dis­turb me if I let it.

I got up and let him in, then closed the door be­hind him. He said, “What is it?” That’s Mor­rolan, all full of flow­ery greet­ings and chitchat.

“Those guards who stand out­side the Wing. Are they be­ing pun­ished, or hon­ored?”

“What is it?” he re­peat­ed. I guess I’ll nev­er know.

“There’s some­one I need to know about.” I said, “Her name is De­saniek. She—”

“That’s the name of the Jus­ticer lead­ing Her Majesty’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Tir­ma.”

“Oh, you knew about that?”

“I just heard.”

“I thought I’d get to sur­prise you.”

“What about her?”

“The Jhereg is go­ing to kill her.”

“If the Jhereg does, there won’t be a Jhereg.”

I rolled my eyes. “It won’t look like they did it, Mor­rolan.”

“Oh? How are they go­ing to man­age that? A trag­ic, co­in­ci­den­tal ac­ci­dent? She’s go­ing to slip un­der a cart? Fall out of a build­ing? Drown in her bath­tub? Ac­ci­den­tal­ly stab her­self in the back while clean­ing her knife?”

I filled him in on some of the back­ground, then said, “It’s go­ing to be blamed on some id­iot group of East­ern­ers and Teck­la.”

He frowned. “Not the one—”

“No, a dif­fer­ent group.”

“How many are there?”

“Lots, I guess. Stir them up long enough and hard enough, and pret­ty soon they start lis­ten­ing to the guy telling them how to solve all their prob­lems.” I wasn’t sure if I be­lieved that my­self, but telling it to Mor­rolan was a nod to Cawti; I’d like to think she’d have ap­pre­ci­at­ed it.

“Do you know where and when?”

“No. That’s what I want your help with.”

He put on a “this is go­ing to be good” ex­pres­sion, and wait­ed.

I said, “I’ve been fol­low­ing her, hop­ing to pick up whichev­er as­sas­sin is fol­low­ing her, hop­ing to take him out be­fore he moves.”

“Well?”

“Well, no one is fol­low­ing her.”

He shrugged. “Maybe she has no pro­tec­tion spells on, and they’re trac­ing her move­ments with mag­ic.”

I kept my face ex­pres­sion­less and said, “I had the same thought. Can you find out?”

“Hm­mm? Oh, sure.”

“Good.”

“Now?”

“Up to you,” I said. “Now, or else af­ter she’s dead. Ei­ther way is fine.”

“And then,” he said, “there are times I don’t miss you so much.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Okay, a mo­ment.” He closed his eyes, opened them, looked dis­gust­ed, and said, “Oh, right. I’m in the Drag­on Wing. Wait here.”

He got up and walked out, so I missed see­ing the pow­er­ful sor­cer­er do­ing his pow­er­ful sor­cery, which would have in­volved him clos­ing his eyes and then, I don’t know, maybe tak­ing a deep breath or some­thing.

He was back a few min­utes lat­er. He sat down op­po­site me and said, “No one’s trac­ing her.”

“Re­al­ly. Well. Isn’t that in­ter­est­ing. Any chance they have a trace on her you don’t know about?”

“I checked for sor­cery, and witchcraft. I sup­pose it’s pos­si­ble, but it isn’t very like­ly. Does this mean you’re wrong?”

“I don’t know. It fit to­geth­er too well for me to think I got it wrong. But I don’t, as Perisil would say, have any ev­idence that would work in court.”

He con­sid­ered. “If you’re right, ig­nor­ing the lack of ev­idence, what hap­pens to Aliera?”

“Good ques­tion. In fact, that’s the ques­tion, isn’t it? I wish I had an an­swer. If they get away with it, the Em­press has to choose be­tween giv­ing in to the Jhereg, and sac­ri­fic­ing Aliera. I don’t know which way she’ll jump.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Hmm?”

“What if you stop them?”

“Oh. Then the Em­pire runs an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mas­sacre, and prob­ably drops all those bo­gus charges against Aliera. She was War­lord when it hap­pened; I have no idea how an in­ves­ti­ga­tion like that will work out.”

He con­sid­ered for a mo­ment. “I’d be in­clined to think there’d be no blame at­tached to her.”

“Should there be?”

“Par­don?”

“Well, she’s the War­lord. It hap­pened. How far up should the re­spon­si­bil­ity go?”

“Do you care?”

“Not re­al­ly. Just cu­ri­ous.”

“I’m not an Iorich.”

“Right.”

He said, “What are you go­ing to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe get out of town. I don’t want to be here when what­ev­er hap­pens hap­pens.”

He stared at me. “What, just give up?”

“I was think­ing about it.”

“That isn’t like you.”

“Mor­rolan, I’m lost. Some­time, some­how, they’re go­ing to take out De­saniek. And it will look like these East­ern­ers did it to protest the mas­sacre. It could be any­where. I’ve spent most of the last week fol­low­ing her. I count­ed more than thir­ty times and places that would have been great to nail her. How am I sup­posed to know which they’ll do? You can­not stop an as­sas­sin un­less you know the as­sas­sin and get to him first. If you have any sug­ges­tions on how to fig­ure that out, feel free to men­tion them. I’m beat.”

“Can’t help you,” he said, dry­ly. “You’re the on­ly as­sas­sin I know.”

“I know plen­ty of them, and I’m no bet­ter off. The oth­er pos­si­bil­ity is that I’m en­tire­ly wrong, and in that case I’m even more help­less be­cause I have no clue at all that points to what they’re plan­ning, and I can’t con­vince my­self they’re go­ing to just take this with­out mak­ing a move of some kind.”

He frowned. “We need to do some­thing.”

“I’m glad it’s ‘we’ now.”

His nos­trils flared, but he didn’t say any­thing; he knows when I’m just blow­ing sparks.

“Thanks for com­ing by,” I said.

“Need a tele­port any­where?”

“Yes, but I can’t risk it. Thanks, though.”

We both stood up. “If you come up with any­thing, and I can help—”

“I’ll let you know.”

He nod­ded and pre­ced­ed me out the door, head­ing deep­er in­to the Wing; pre­sum­ably to find a place he could tele­port from. I miss the small con­ve­niences, you know? I took my­self out and start­ed back to­ward my inn, think­ing a bit of rest wouldn’t be a bad idea.

“Was that true, Boss? Are you re­al­ly giv­ing up?”

“I don’t know. Prob­ably not. But I have no idea what to do.”

“I’m with Mor­rolan. Doesn’t seem like you to leave town with things un­fin­ished.”

“Would you be against it?”

“No! I’m all for it, Boss! This place scares me. But it seems like you show­ing good sense, and that’s not what I ex­pect.”

I sighed. “I prob­ably won’t.”

“You should.”

“I know.”

“You have no idea where they’re go­ing to hit, Boss. What can you do?”

“That’s what I’ve been say­ing. I on­ly know who they’re go­ing to nail, and who they’re go­ing to—oh.”

“What?”

I stopped in my tracks, and my mind raced. Then I said, “I know who they’re go­ing to blame it on.”

“What does that get you?”

“A walk to South Adri­lankha.”

“Uh, care to tell me why?”

“There might be things to learn from the peo­ple who are sup­posed to take the fall.”

“Like what?”

“If I learn them, I’ll let you know.”

“Oh, good.”

I was stand­ing in the mid­dle of the court­yard out­side of the Drag­on Wing of the Palace. The House of the Drag­on, dark and oh-​so-​im­pos­ing, loomed over me as if match­ing glares with the Wing. There were four or five walk­ways lead­ing out of the area, some to oth­er parts of the Palace, oth­ers to the City. For all I knew, there were as­sas­sins hang­ing around all of them wait­ing to make my skin glis­ten.

But I had some­thing to do, which is all any­one can ask.

“Yeah, Boss? What are we go­ing to do?”

“I’m go­ing to go back to the inn and drop a note to Kiera ask­ing her to bring by the names of what­ev­er Left Hand busi­ness­es she’s been able to find, then I’m go­ing to have a de­cent meal sent up, drink half a bot­tle of wine, and go to sleep.”

“Sounds like my kind of plan.”

“To­mor­row is a busy day. I know a cou­ple of places owned by the Left Hand. If Kiera doesn’t show up, we vis­it one.”

“Good. Then at least we don’t have to wor­ry about a plan for the day af­ter to­mor­row, be­cause nei­ther one of us will be around to see it.”

Iorich

14

M’la­dy: Just got word through your of­fice of the event. I’m per­fect­ly will­ing to at­tend and an­swer any ques­tions the mob has, though I can­not imag­ine what good H.M. imag­ines such a thing will do. They’re go­ing to be­lieve what they be­lieve, and I can talk un­til my voice is hoarse with­out chang­ing them; nor do I see what dif­fer­ence it makes what they think, un­less H.M. is afraid of more dis­or­ders like there were a few years ago. Of­fi­cial­ly, I have no opin­ion about that, of course (though un­of­fi­cial­ly a troop of guards will deal with how­ev­er many of them take to the street). My ques­tion is, if I’m go­ing to do this, how do you want me to han­dle it? I’d rather not have it in writ­ing. Let me know when a good time is, and I can be in your of­fices, or wher­ev­er else you’d like to meet.

—Un­signed (not au­then­ti­cat­ed)

I felt a bit bet­ter the next morn­ing. I stood up and stretched again, tak­ing it slow and easy. I was still try­ing to make my mus­cles obey when there was a clap out­side the door; Loiosh told me it was Kiera, I sug­gest­ed she en­ter. She asked how I was feel­ing, and I lied a lit­tle. “Did you find out any­thing?”

“I learned a few busi­ness­es that are cov­ers for Left Hand op­er­ations. Here.” She hand­ed me a sheet of pa­per with some names and ad­dress­es.

I held it out in front of her and tapped one. “You sure about this?”

She stud­ied it. “Tym­brii,” she said. “Pre-​spun cloth and yarn. What about them?”

“Noth­ing,” I said. “Ex­cept Cawti used to go there all the time. I had no idea.”

“I don’t know who the re­al own­er is, but it’s a good place to go if you want to be lis­ten­ing in on some­one who thinks he has spells that will pre­vent that.”

I nod­ded. “It’s just odd, is all. The num­ber of times I went in there, and nev­er knew.”

I looked over the rest of the list. There were places spread out all over the City, and I rec­og­nized a cou­ple from hav­ing walked past them, but there were no oth­ers I’d ac­tu­al­ly been in.

“Now what, Boss? Put the list on the wall, throw a knife at it, and see where it lands?”

“Some­thing like that, yeah.”

“This is li­able to get you killed, you know. You’re in no shape—”

“Sit on it.”

He psy­chi­cal­ly grum­bled, but shut up.

“What do you know of these?”

“What do you want to know?”

I hes­itat­ed. “I’m not sure what to ask. I know so lit­tle of the Left Hand.”

“As do I. As do they.”

“Hmm?”

“Part of the se­cre­cy thing; most of them know very lit­tle oth­er than their own busi­ness.”

“Oh. Um, how lit­tle do they know?”

“What kind of ques­tion is that?”

“I guess I’m ask­ing if I were to show up at one of these places, would the in­di­vid­ual run­ning it know who I am?”

She con­sid­ered. “I don’t know. Maybe. My guess is not, ex­cept by co­in­ci­dence. Don’t bet your life on that, though.”

I nod­ded. “Uh, how do I do this, Kiera?”

“You’re ask­ing me?”

“I don’t mean that part. But say, this one—” I tapped the list. “It’s an inn. Do I walk in and ask for a cer­tain drink? Or—”

“Oh. Sor­ry. I’d have thought you knew. If you want to reach some­one in the Left Hand, ask to see the mis­tress of the house, and de­liv­er three sil­ver coins, one at a time, with your left hand.”

“Left hand,” I said. “How clever.”

“Imag­ina­tive, even.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and con­sid­ered. I took the knife from my right boot, pulled the coarse stone from my pack, and start­ed work­ing as I thought.

“You aren’t lu­bri­cat­ing it,” said Kiera.

“Su­per­sti­tion,” I told her. “You don’t need to lu­bri­cate the stone, you just need to clean it when you’re done.”

“I know. I won­dered if you did. What sort of edge are you putting on that?”

“Five de­grees a side.” I stopped and stud­ied the knife. It was a wicked thing that I’d found in Short­rest, near Tabo. There was a cheap and worth­less en­chant­ment on it that was sup­posed to help it find a vi­tal spot, and the point wasn’t much, but it had a love­ly edge and the wrapped antler fit my hand like it had been made for an East­ern­er. I worked some more, checked the bev­el, switched to the oth­er side.

“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.

“Where did we first meet?” I asked her.

“Oh, right.”

I nod­ded. “Sharp­en­ing knives was what I first learned to do af­ter I learned to wash pots and pans, bring trash to the mid­den, and clear ta­bles. I had one knife I kept a du­al edge on: front three-​quar­ters for slic­ing, back quar­ter for cut­ting. Best knife I’ve ev­er had.”

“Where is it now?”

“Cawti has it. She still us­es it. I showed her how to do the du­al edge. She—” I stopped and went back to sharp­en­ing, switch­ing to the ex­trafine stone.

“Sor­ry,” she said.

“No, no. Don’t wor­ry about it.”

“If you slip and take a fin­ger off, I’ll feel bad.”

I held up my left hand. “That hap­pened once. I’ve learned my les­son.”

I fin­ished sharp­en­ing the knife, nod­ded to my­self, and stood up. My rib hurt like—it hurt.

Kiera hes­itat­ed, then said, “Do you want me to back you up?”

“Not your skill,” I said. “And it won’t be nec­es­sary. This should be pret­ty easy.”

“As you say.” She didn’t sound con­vinced.

She fol­lowed me out of the room, and walked down the stairs with me. I went slow­ly. She said, “I’ll be wait­ing in the court­yard to hear how it went.”

I nod­ded but didn’t say any­thing; most of my con­cen­tra­tion was in­volved in not moan­ing with each step. Rocza took off from my shoul­der and flew in slow cir­cles over­head; Loiosh re­mained on my oth­er shoul­der and was look­ing around con­stant­ly.

In the wide boule­vard in front of the Im­pe­ri­al Wing near the park, there is al­ways a line of coach­es; on one side those with mark­ings on the door, on the oth­er those that are for hire, all of which get spe­cial ex­emp­tions from the or­di­nance for­bid­ding hors­es near the Palace. I think there are so many ex­emp­tions they might as well not both­er with the or­di­nance, but maybe I’m wrong.

I spent some time study­ing the coach­es for hire, try­ing to de­cide which looked like the most com­fort­able, then picked one and made my painful way to it. The coach­man was a young wom­an, a Teck­la of course, with the cheery smile and easy ob­se­quious­ness of the hap­py peas­ant in a mu­si­cal satire on Fal­low Street. I climbed in and gave her the ad­dress. She looked at Loiosh, then Rocza as she joined me in the coach, but mere­ly bowed and climbed up to her sta­tion. Then she clucked and the horse start­ed plod­ding along, a lot like I’d been walk­ing.