Iorich (28 page)

“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.