Iorich by Steven Brust Read Free Book Online Page B

and they were eating something dispensed by a tiny old Chreotha who seemed to be half asleep. I had unidentifiable soup that was too salty, yesterday’s bread, and something that had once been roast beef. I had water because Ididn’t trust her wine. She charged too much. I couldn’t figure why the place seemed so empty.
    Loiosh didn’t much like the stuff either, but he and Rocza ate it happily enough. Well, so did I, come to think of it. To be fair, it was, by this time, mid-afternoon; I imagined around lunchtime the place would be busier, and maybe the food fresher.
    I finished up and left with a glare at the merchant—I won’t call her a cook—that she missed entirely, and headed back to see my advocate. Aliera’s advocate. The advocate.
    At this point, I wish to make the observation that I had been spending the last several years wearing my feet out walking about the countryside, and I’ve known villages separated by mountain, river, and forest that weren’t as far apart as a place within the Imperial Palace and another within the House of the Iorich located next to it. Loiosh says I’m speaking figuratively, and he may be right, but I wouldn’t bet against the house on it.
    I did get there eventually, and, wonder of wonders, he was still there, the door open, looking like he never moved. Maybe he didn’t; maybe he had flunkies to do all his running around. I used to have flunkies to do all my running around. I liked it.
    I walked in and before I could ask him anything he said, “It’s all set up. Would you like to visit Aliera?”
    Now that, as it happened, wasn’t as easy a question as it might have sounded. But after hesitating only a moment I said, “Sure. The worst she can do is kill me.”
    That earned me an inquiring look which I ignored. “Are you coming along?” I asked him.
    “No, you have to convince her to see me.”
    “Okay. How did you work it?”
    “Her alleged refusal to see either a friend or an advocate could have indicated deliberate isolation on the part of the Empire with the cooperation of the Justicers.”
    I stared. “You think so?”
    “I said it could.”
    “Oh. But you don’t really think so?”
    “I am most certainly not going to answer that, and don’t ask it again.”
    “Oh. All right. But they believed it?”
    “They believed I had grounds for an investigation.”
    “Ah. All right.”
    He nodded. “Now, go and see her.”
    “Um. Where? How?”
    “Up one level, follow wrongwise until—here, I’ll write out the directions; they’re a bit involved.”
    They were. His scripting was painfully neat and precise, though he’d been fast enough writing it out. And I must have looked like an idiot, walking down the hall with two jhereg on my shoulders repeatedly stopping and reading the note and looking around. But those I passed were either as polite as Issola or as oblivious as Athyra, and eventually I got there: a pair of marble pillars guarded a pair of tall, wide doors engraved so splendidly with cavorting iorich that you might not notice the doors were bound in iron. You should go see them someday; cavorting iorich aren’t something one sees depicted every day, and for good reason. Before them were four guards who looked like they had no sense of humor, and a corporal whose job it was to find out if you had good reason for wanting them open.
    I convinced him by showing him that same coin I’d usedbefore, and there was a “clang” followed by invisible servants pulling invisible ropes and the doors opened for me. Morrolan worked things better.
    It was a little odd to walk through those portals. For one thing, the other side was more what I was used to; I’d been there before, and a cold shiver went through me as I set foot on the plain stone floors. I’m not going to talk about the last time I was in the Iorich dungeons. And I’m certainly not going to talk about the time before that.
    Just inside was a guard station, like a small hut with glass windows