“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.”