Iorichby Steven Brust
   Cov­er
   Iorich
   Iorich
   IORICH
   Iorich
   BOOKS BY STEVEN BRUST
   The Dra­gaer­an Nov­els
   Broke­down Palace
   THE KHAAVREN RO­MANCES
   The Phoenix Guards
   Five Hun­dred Years Af­ter
   The Vis­count of Adri­lankha,
   which com­pris­es
   The Paths of the Dead,
   The Lord of Cas­tle Black,
   and
   Sethra Lavode
   THE VLAD TAL­TOS NOV­ELS
   Jhereg
   Or­ca
   Yen­di
   Drag­on
   Teck­la
   Is­so­la
   Tal­tos
   Dzur
   Phoenix
   Jhe­gaala
   Athyra
   Iorich
   Oth­er Nov­els
   To Reign in Hell
   The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
   Ag­yar
   Cow­boy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille
   The Gyp­sy (with Megan Lind­holm)
   Free­dom and Ne­ces­si­ty (with Em­ma Bull)
   Iorich
   STEVEN BRUST
   IORICH
   A TOM DO­HER­TY AS­SO­CIATES BOOK
   NEW YORK
   Iorich
   This is a work of fic­tion. All of the char­ac­ters, or­ga­ni­za­tions, and events
   por­trayed in this nov­el are ei­ther prod­ucts of the au­thor’s imag­ina­tion
   or are used fic­ti­tious­ly.
   IORICH
   Copy­right © 2009 by Steven Brust
   All rights re­served.
   Edit­ed by Tere­sa Nielsen Hay­den
   A Tor Book
   Pub­lished by Tom Do­her­ty As­so­ciates, LLC
   175 Fifth Av­enue
   New York, NY 10010
   www.tor-​forge.com
   Tor® is a reg­is­tered trade­mark of Tom Do­her­ty As­so­ciates, LLC.
   Li­brary of Congress Cat­aloging-​in-​Pub­li­ca­tion Da­ta
   Brust, Steven, 1955–
        Iorich / Steven Brust. — 1st ed.
            p. cm.
        “A Tom Do­her­ty As­so­ciates book.”
        IS­BN 978-0-7653-1208-2
        1. Tal­tos, Vlad (Fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter)—Fic­tion. I. Ti­tle.
     PS3552.R84I57 2010
     813'.54—dc22
   2009040414
   First Edi­tion: Jan­uary 2010
   Print­ed in the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica
   0   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1
   Iorich
   For Meridel Bian­ca
   Iorich
   AC­KNOWL­EDG­MENTS
   Thanks to Reesa Brown for pota­to pas­tries and oth­er things too nu­mer­ous to men­tion, and to Kit O’Con­nell for com­put­er and re­search help. Anne K. G. Mur­phy pro­vid­ed some emacs help for which I re­main grate­ful. Thanks to Brad Roberts and Thomas Bull for sig­nif­icant help in sur­viv­ing un­til this was done. Fi­nal­ly, my thanks to Alexx Kay for con­ti­nu­ity check­ing.
   Iorich
   Iorich
   IORICH
   Iorich
   PRO­LOGUE
   Even if things don’t work the way you’d planned, it’s good when you can take some­thing use­ful away from the ex­pe­ri­ence.
   They jumped me just as I was en­ter­ing a lit­tle vil­lage called Whitemill at the south­ern edge of the Push­ta. They had con­cealed them­selves be­hind the long, bro­ken hedge that bor­dered the Whitemill Pike be­fore it turned in­to the sin­gle road of the ham­let. It was a good place for an at­tack. The near­est dwelling was per­haps a quar­ter of a mile away, and night was just falling.
   There were three of them: Dra­gaer­ans, two men and a wom­an, wear­ing the col­ors of no spe­cial House. They all car­ried swords and knives. And they knew their busi­ness: the key to con­vinc­ing some­one to give up his cash is to be fast and very, very ag­gres­sive; you do not stand there and ex­plain to your client why he should do what you want, you try to get him in­to a po­si­tion where, be­fore he has time to think, much less re­spond, he is at your mer­cy and hop­ing that some­how he can get out of this alive. When he hands over his purse, he should be feel­ing grate­ful.
   Rocza took the man on the right, Loiosh flew in­to the face of the wom­an. I drew and dis­armed the one in front of me with a stop-​cut to the wrist, then took one step in and hit him in the nose with the pom­mel of my rapi­er. I took an­oth­er step in and kicked the side of his knee.
   He went down and I put the point at his throat. I said, “In­tent to rob, in­tent to as­sault, as­sault, and fail­ing to be se­lec­tive in your choice of vic­tim. Bad day for you.”
   He looked at me, wide-​eyed.
   I gave him a friend­ly sug­ges­tion: “Drop your purse.”
   The oth­er man had run off, Rocza fly­ing af­ter him; the wom­an was do­ing what I call the Loiosh dance—fu­tile­ly swing­ing her sword at him while he kept swoop­ing in at her face then back out of range. He could do that all day.
   The guy on the ground got his purse un­tied, though his fin­gers fum­bled. I knelt and picked it up, the point of my rapi­er nev­er mov­ing from his throat. I spoke to my fa­mil­iar.
   “Get Rocza back. Let the oth­er one go.”
   “She’s on it, Boss.”
   She re­turned and land­ed next to my client’s head and hissed.
   “As long as you don’t move, she won’t bite,” I said. He froze. I went to the wom­an, who was still flail­ing about, and now look­ing pan­icked. I said, “Drop it.”
   She glanced at Loiosh, then at me, then at her friend on the ground. “What about—”
   “He won’t hurt you if you drop your weapon. Nei­ther will I.”
   Her sword hit the ground, and Loiosh re­turned to my shoul­der.
   “Your purse,” I told her.
   She had less trou­ble un­ty­ing it than her friend. She held it out to me.
   “Just drop it,” I said.
   She was very oblig­ing.
   “Now get out of here. If I see you again, I’ll kill you. If you try to fol­low me, I will see you.”
   She sound­ed calm enough. “How did you—?”
   “Won­der about it,” I said.
   “Not a bad day’s work, Boss.”
   “Lucky you spot­ted them.”
   “Right. It was luck. Heh.”
   “May I stay and help my friend?”
   “No,” I said. “He’ll be along present­ly. You can pick up your weapons once I’m out of sight. I won’t hurt him.”
   He spoke for the first time. A very im­pres­sive and lengthy string of curs­es fin­ish­ing with, “What do you call this?”
   “A bro­ken nose,” I said. I gave him a friend­ly smile he may not have ap­pre­ci­at­ed.
   The wom­an gave me a glare, then just turned and walked away. I picked up the purse.
   “Be­ware of East­ern­ers with jhereg,” I told the guy with the bro­ken nose.
   “———!” he said.
   I nod­ded. “Even if things don’t work out the way you planned, it’s good when you can take some­thing use­ful away from the ex­pe­ri­ence.”
   I con­tin­ued in­to the vil­lage, which had its req­ui­site inn. It was an ug­ly thing, two sto­ries high and mis­shapen, as if bits and pieces had been added on at ran­dom. The room I en­tered was big and full of Teck­la, who smelled of ma­nure and sweat, mix­ing with the smells of fresh bread, roast­ed keth­na, to­bac­co smoke, dream­grass, and now and then a whiff of the harsh pun­gen­cy of opi­um, in­di­cat­ing there must be one or two no­bles in here, among all the Teck­la. Then I no­ticed that there were al­so a few mer­chants there. Odd. I won­dered about it—even in ru­ral inns, there gen­er­al­ly isn’t that much of a mix. The bar ran about half the length of the room, with ce­ram­ic and wood­en mugs on shelves be­hind it. At one end of the bar was a large knife, just ly­ing there—al­most cer­tain­ly the knife the innkeep­er used to cut fruit to put in wine punch, but that’s the sort of thing an as­sas­sin no­tices.
   I got a lot of looks be­cause I was hu­man and had a jhereg on each shoul­der, but none of the looks were threat­en­ing be­cause I had a sword at my side and a jhereg on each shoul­der. I ac­quired a glass of wine and a qui­et cor­ner. I’d ask about a room lat­er.
   Con­ver­sa­tion went on around me; I ig­nored it.
   “Smells like re­al food, Boss.”
   “Yep. Soon.”
   “How long since we’ve had re­al food?”
   “About a month. Soon.”
   “How did we do?”
   I set the wine down and checked the purs­es, us­ing my body to hide them from cu­ri­ous eyes. “Not great, but, you know, it’s pure prof­it. Strange place.”
   “They’re all talk­ing to each oth­er.”
   “Yeah.”
   It re­al­ly was in­ter­est­ing—you don’t nor­mal­ly find an inn where mer­chants and peas­ants talk freely with each oth­er, or no­ble­men and trades­men; even in the East, where it was more com­mon to see the mix of class­es in the same inn, they didn’t talk to each oth­er much. I didn’t even no­tice any spe­cial hos­til­ity be­tween the two ob­vi­ous aris­to­crats and the var­ious Teck­la. Odd. There was prob­ably a sto­ry there.