Orca

Orca

Vlad Taltos, Book 7

Steven Brust

In memory of my brother, Leo Brust, 1954-1994

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the Scribblies: Emma Bull, Pamela Dean, and Will Shetterly fortheir help with this one, and also to Terri Windling, Susan Allison, and Fred A. Levy Haskell. Thanks as well to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who recommended a book that turned out to be vital; to David Green, for sharing some theories; and, as always, to Adrian Charles Morgan.

And to the fan who actually suggested the whole thing in the first place: Thanks, Mom. Prologue

My Dear Cawti:

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to answer your letter, but the gods of Coincidence make bad correspondents of us all; I am not unaware that the passing of a few weeks to you is a long time—as long as the passing of years is to me, and this is long indeed when one is uncertain—so I will plead the excuse that I found your note when I returned from traveling, and will answer your question at once: Yes, I have seen your husband, or the man who used to be your husband, or however you would describe him. Yes, I have seen Vlad—and that is why it has taken me so long to write back to you; I was just visiting him in response to his request for assistance in a small matter.

I can understand your concern for him, Cawti; indeed, I will not try to pretend that he isn’t still in danger from the Organization with which we are both, one way or another, still associated. They want him, and I fear someday they will get him, but as of now he is alive and, I can even say, well.

I don’t pretend that I think this knowledge will satisfy you. You will want the details, or at least those details I can divulge. Very well, I consent, both for the sake of our friendship and because we share a concern for the mustached fellow with reptiles on his shoulders. We will arrange a time and a place; I will be there and tell you what I can—in person, because some things are better heard face-to-face than page-to-eye. And, no, I will not tell you everything, because, just as there are things that you wouldn’t want me to tell him, there are things he wouldn’t want me to tell you—and, come to that, there are things I don’t want to tell you, either. It is a mark of my love for you both that I keep these secrets, and trust you with those I can, so don’t be angry!

Come, dear Cawti, write back at once (you remember that I prefer not to communicate psychically), and we will arrange to be alone and I will tell you enough—I hope—for your peace of mind. I look forward to seeing you and yours again, and, until that time, I remain,

Faithfully, Kiera

Chapter One

Vlad knew almost at once that I was in disguise, because I told him so. When he called out my name, I said, “Dammit, Vlad, I’m in disguise.”

He looked me over in that way of his—eyes flicking here and there apparently at random—then said, “Me, too.”

He was wearing brown leather, rather than the grey and black of the House of the Jhereg he’d been wearing when I last saw him; but he was still an Easterner, still had his mustache, and still had a pair of jhereg on his shoulders. He was, I assumed, letting me know that my disguise wasn’t terribly effective. I didn’t press the issue, but said, “Who’s the boy?”

“My catamite,” he said, deadpan. He faced him then and said, “Savn, meet Kiera the Thief.”

The boy made no response at all—didn’t even seem to hear—which was a bit creepy.

I said, “You’re joking, right?”

He smiled sadly and said, “Yes, Kiera, I’m joking.”

Loiosh, the male jhereg, shifted its weight and was probably laughing at me. I held out my arm to it; it flew across the four feet that separated us and allowed me to scratch its snakelike chin. The female, Rocza, watched us closely but made no move; perhaps she didn’t remember me.

“Why the disguise?” he said.

“Why do you think?”

“You don’t want to be seen with me?”

I shrugged.

He said, “Well, in any case, our disguises match.”

He was referring to the fact that I was wearing a green blouse and white pants, rather than the same black and grey he’d once worn. My hair was also different—I’d brushed it forward to conceal my noble’s point so I’d look more like a peasant. But perhaps he didn’t notice that; for an assassin, he can be amazingly unobservant sometimes. Still, you wear a disguise, first, from the inside, and perhaps that can in part explain the fact that my disguise didn’t fool Vlad; I’ve always trusted him, even before I had reason to.

“It’s been a long time, Vlad,” I said, because I knew that to him, who could only expect to live sixty or seventy years, it would have seemed like a long time.

“Yes, it has,” he agreed. “How odd that we should just happen to run into each other.”

“You haven’t changed.”

“There’s less of me,” he said, holding up his left hand and showing me that the last finger was missing.

“What happened?”

“A very heavy weight.”

I winced in sympathy. “Is there someplace we can talk?” I said.

He looked around. We were in Northport, quite a distance from Adrilankha, but it was the same ocean, and the docks, if older, were pretty much the same. There was a small, two-masted cargo ship unloading about fifty yards away, and there was a fishermen’s market nearby; between them, on the very edge of the ocean, we were in plain view of hundreds of people, but no one was near us. “What’s wrong with here?”

“You don’t trust me,” I said, feeling a bit hurt.

I could see a snappy answer get as far as his teeth and stop there. Vlad and I had a great deal of history; none of it should have given him any reason to be suspicious of me.

“Last I heard,” he said, “the Organization wanted very badly to kill me; you still work for the Organization. Excuse me if I’m a bit jumpy.”

“Oh, yes,” I agreed. “They want you very badly indeed.”

The water lapped and gurgled against the dock that had stood since the end of the Interregnum; I could feel the spells that kept the wood from rotting. The air was thick with the smell of ocean: salt water and dead fish; I’ve never really liked either.

“Who is the boy?” I asked him, as much to give him time to think as because I wanted to know. Savn, as Vlad had called him, seemed to be a handsome Teckla youth, probably not more than ninety years old. He still had that look of strength and energy that begins to diminish during one’s second century, and his hair was the same dusky brown as his eyes. It annoyed me that I could conceive of him as a catamite. He still hadn’t responded to me or to anything else.

“A debt of honor,” said Vlad, in the tone he uses when he is trying to be ironic. I realized that I’d missed him. I waited for him to continue. He said, “Savn was damaged, I guess you’d say, saving my life.”

“Damaged?”

“Oh, the usual—he used a Morganti weapon to kill an undead wizard.”

“When was this?”

“Last year. Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.”

“I’m glad you got my message, and I’m glad you came.”

“You’re still psychically invisible, you know.”

“I know. Phoenix Stone.”

“Yes.”

“How is Aibynn?”

Aibynn was one of the last people Vlad wanted to ask about; he knew it and I knew it. “Fine as far as I know. I don’t see him much.”

He nodded. We watched the bay for a while, but it didn’t do much. I turned back to Vlad and said, “Well? I’m here. What is it?”

He smiled. “Maybe I’ve come up with a way to get the Organization to forgive and forget.”

I laughed. “My dear Vlad, if you managed to loot the Dragon Treasury to the last orb and deposited it all at the feet of the Council they wouldn’t forgive you.”

His smile disappeared. “There’s that.”

“Well then?”

He shrugged. He wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. That was all right, I can be a very patient woman.

“You know,” I said, “there aren’t all that many Easterners who walk around with a pair of jhereg on their shoulders; are you quite certain you aren’t too conspicuous?”

“Yeah. No professional would try anything in a place like this, and any amateur who wants to is welcome to take a shot. And by the time word gets around so someone who knows his business can set up something, I’ll be gone.”

“But they’ll know where you are.”

“I don’t plan on being here for more than a few days.”

I nodded.

He said hesitantly, “Any news from home?”

“None I can tell you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re asking about Cawti.”

“Well—”

“I’ve promised not to say anything except that she’s fine.”

“Oh.” I watched his mind work, but he didn’t say anything else. I very badly wanted to tell him what was going on, but a promise is a promise, even to a thief. Especially to a thief.

I said, “How have you been getting by?”

“It’s been harder since I acquired the boy, but I’ve managed.”

“How?”

“I mostly stay away from towns, and you know the forests are filled with bandits of one sort or another.”

“You’ve become one?”

“No, I rob them.”

I laughed. “That sounds like you.”

“It’s a living.”

“That sounds like you, too.”

He shifted his weight as if his feet were causing him pain; it made me think about the amount of walking he must have been doing in these past three years and more. I said, “Do you want to sit down?”

“You don’t miss much,” he said. “No, I’m fine. Ever heard of a man named Fyres?”

“Yes. He died a couple of weeks ago.”

“Other than that, what do you know about him?”

“He had a great deal of money.”

“Yes. What else?”

“He was, what, a baron? House of the, uh, Chreotha?”

“Orca.”

“All right. Then that tells you what I know about him.”

Vlad didn’t answer, which meant that I was supposed to ask him a question. I thought over a number of things I’d have liked to know, then settled on, “How did he die?”

“They’ve found no evidence of murder.”

“That’s not—Wait. You?”

He shook his head. “I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”

“All right,” I said. Vlad has always had the ability to make me believe him, even though I know what a liar he is. “Then what do you think happened?”

His eyes were in constant motion, and the jhereg, too, never stopped looking around. “I don’t know,” he said, “and I have to find out.”

“Why?”

For just an instant he looked embarrassed, and “Oh ho!” passed through my head, but I sent it on its way—Vlad could be embarrassed by the oddest things.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Let me tell you what I’d like you to do.”

“I’m listening.”

One thing I like about Vlad is that he understands details. He not only gave me every detail of every alarm I was likely to encounter but also told me how he found out, so I could do my own checking. He told me where the stuff was likely to be and why he thought so, and the other places it might be located if he was wrong. He gave me the schedules of the patrols in the area and explained exactly what he hadn’t been able to discover. It took about an hour, at the end of which time I knew the job would be well within my capabilities—not that there are many jobs that aren’t, if they involve stealing.

I said, “There will be a price.”

“Of course,” he said, trying to hide that I’d hurt his feelings.

“You have to tell me why you want it.”

He bit his lip and looked at me carefully; I kept my face expressionless, because I didn’t want him learning too much. He nodded abruptly, and the deal was made.

It took me two days to check everything Vlad had told me—two days that I spent working out of a reasonably comfortable room in a hotel in the middle of Northport; on the third I went to work. The place I was to burgle was situated a couple of miles east of Northport, and the walk there was the most chancy part of the operation—if anyone saw me and saw through my disguise as easily as Vlad had, it would arouse curiosity, and that would lead to investigations and that would lead to this and that. I solved the problem by staying off the roads and sticking as much as I could to the thin-wooded areas to the side. I didn’t get lost, but it was several hours before I reached the bottom of a small hill, with Fyres’s mansion looming above me.

I spent a couple of hours walking a wide circuit around it, taking a long, slow look at the place. One of the things Vlad hadn’t given me was a set of blueprints, but with this newer work you can almost create the inside by seeing the outside; for some reason post-Interregnum architects object to having rooms without windows, which means the dimensions indicate the layout. You can also identify windowed corridors because (again, I don’t know why) the windows are invariably smaller than those in rooms. By the time I’d finished my walk, I pretty much knew what it looked like, and I’d found the most obvious places for an office.

I spent the last hours of daylight watching for any signs of activity. There were none, which was as it should be—Fyres’s family (a wife and three children) didn’t live there, his mistress had abandoned the place, the staff were, no doubt, ensconced within, and all of the remaining protection was sorcerous and automatic. I took out a few of the devices I use to identify such things and set to work.

Darkness came as it always does, with shadows becoming dusk—shadows that were a bit sharper here than in Adrilankha, I suppose because the westerly winds thin out the overcast, so the Furnace is more apparent. Everything is brighter in the west of the Empire, as it is in the far east; all of which makes the darkness seem even darker.

The protections weren’t bad, but not as thorough as I would have expected. The first was very general and nearly useless—all you had to do was pretend you belonged there and it would let you burn down the place without raising a fuss. The recognition spell was only marginally trickier, requiring me to cause it to bend around and past me; but there was no spell monitoring whether the recognition spell was being bent, so, really, they might as well not have bothered with it. There were the usual integrity detectors on the doors and windows, but these are easily defeated by transferring the one you want to pass to another door or window. These, in fact, did have monitor spells to watch for just this, but they’d been cast almost as an afterthought and without anything to let the security people know the monitor had been removed—I could take it down just by identifying the energy committed to that spell and absorbing it into a working of my own.

I considered the significance of how poorly the mansion was protected. It might mean that since the place was abandoned and its owner was dead, no one felt the need to use high-level protections. It might also mean that the Orca weren’t as sophisticated as the Jhereg. Or it might mean that there were some traps concealed that I hadn’t found yet. That possibility was worth an extra hour of checking, and I took it.

I went through enough gear to stock a small sorcery shop and found fertility spells that had probably been placed on the ground before the mansion was built, spells that kept the latrines from smelling, spells that kept the mansion from sinking into the ground, spells that kept the stonework from crumbling, and spells to make the row of rednut trees that flanked the road grow just so—but nothing else that had anything to do with security. I even used a blue stone I’d picked from the pocket of Vlad’s friend Aliera, but the only signs of elder sorcery were distant echoes from the explosion that had dissolved Dragaera City at the start of the Interregnum.

I was satisfied. I climbed the hill slowly, keeping my eyes open for more mundane traps, although I didn’t expect to find any, and I didn’t. I eventually reached the edge of the mansion, which, I suppose I should have mentioned, demonstrated the sort of post-Interregnum aesthetic that thinks monoliths attractive for their own sake, producing big blocks of stone with the occasional bit of decoration, usually a wrought-iron animal, sticking out as an afterthought. Buildings like this are exceedingly easy to burglarize, because you know exactly where everything is relative to everything else, and because the regularity of the construction makes those who live there believe that it is difficult to conceal oneself while climbing up a wall, which is silly—I once challenged three friends to try to spot me while I scaled three stories of a blank wall, after telling them which wall I was going up and when I was going to do it. They couldn’t find me. So much for the difficulty of concealment.

It took me about ten seconds to levitate up to the level of the window; I rested on the ledge and considered that idiotic spell I already mentioned that was supposed to make certain the integrity of the window wasn’t broken. There was, indeed, nothing fancy about it, but I was careful and spent some time circumventing the alarm. The window, by the way, was filled in, as were all of them, with a solid sheet of glass cunningly worked into slots in a wood and leather contrivance that, in turn, fitted snugly into the window; a silly luxury that would need to be replaced in a hundred years or so, even if the fragile thing weren’t broken in the meantime.

I broke it carefully, first covering it with a large sheet of paper smeared with an extremely tacky gel and then pushing slowly until the glass gave and the shards stuck to the paper rather than falling and making noise. There were jagged bits of the stuff all around the wooden frame so I had to be careful entering the room, but I was able to enter without cutting myself; then I hung the paper in the window where the glass had been so I could illuminate the room without the light appearing to anyone outside (if there was, by chance, someone outside).

I used another several seconds sensing for spells in the room, then lit a candle, squinted against the glare, and glanced around quickly. No matter how many times you’ve been through this, you always half expect to see someone sitting in the room waiting for you with all sorts of arguments to hand. It has never happened, and it didn’t this time, but it’s one of those things that pass through your mind.

I closed my eyes and stood very still for a while, listening for anyone moving around and for whatever creaks and groans might be usual for this building. After a minute, I opened my eyes and took a good look.

Office or study, said that part of my brain that wants to rush in and categorize before all of the details are individually assimilated. I let it have its way, ignored its opinion, and made some mental notes.

The room was dominated by two large cabinets against the far wall, both of some dark wood, probably cherry, and showing signs of careful but uninspired construction. In front of them was a small desk, facing the room’s other window, with a chair behind it. From the chair, the occupant, presumably Fyres, could reach back to either cabinet. On top of the desk were a set of books that would probably reward some study, several sheets of paper, blotter, inkwell, and quill; several other quills were all set in a row to one side, as if awaiting their call. The desk and the room were neither unusually tidy nor remarkably messy, except for between one and four weeks’ worth of dust over everything, which would be about right if no one had been in here since his death. Why would no one have been in his office since his death? No, questions later.

I checked all the desk drawers and cabinets and found both sorcerous alarms on each. None of them were terribly complicated and I wasn’t in a big hurry, so I took my time disabling them (unnecessarily in all probability—they were almost certainly keyed directly to Fyres, who wouldn’t be receiving any messages—but it is always best to be certain). I also looked for more mundane sorts of alarms—easily identified by thin wires hidden against desk legs or along walls—but there weren’t any. It occurs to me now, as I relate this, that it may seem as if Fyres took insufficient precautions against theft, and I ought to correct this impression; most of his precautions probably involved guards, and, chances are, the guard schedule had been obliterated with Fyres’s life. And the magical alarms were really quite good; it’s just that I’m better.

It took maybe two minutes to assure myself that there were no secret drawers in the desk, another ten to be certain about the cabinets. The rest of the room took an hour, which is a long time to be on the scene, but I didn’t think the risk was too great.

Once I was certain I hadn’t missed anything, I began going through his papers, looking for anything that seemed like what Vlad was after. The longer I sat there, the harder it was to make myself go slowly and be careful not to miss anything, but, after four hours or so, I was pretty sure I had the information. It made a neat little bundle, which I tied up and slung over my back. I still had an hour or so before dawn.

I restored order to the papers and books I’d messed up, then slipped across the hall to the master bedroom. Everything was very still, and I could hear—or maybe I just imagined it—servants breathing from their quarters above me. The bed was made, the clothes were neatly arranged in the wardrobe, and, unlike the office, everything was freshly dusted—obviously the staff had been given orders to stay out of the other room, and they were still scrupulously following them. I opened drawers and scattered things about as if a thief had been looking for valuables. I did, in fact, find a safe, so I spent a few minutes marking it up as if I’d attempted to open it, then I went back to the study, out the window, and down.

I was back in town before the first light. I found my hotel and climbed into my second-story window so I wouldn’t have to go past the desk clerk. I put the booty under my pillow and slept for nine hours.

My rendezvous with Vlad took place in one of those dockside inns that feature thick beer and harshly spiced fish stew. Vlad availed himself of the latter; I abstained. It was too early in the day for there to be much business; only a table or two was filled. Neither of us attracted much attention. I’ve always wondered how Vlad (even with a jhereg on his shoulder—only one today) managed to avoid making himself conspicuous wherever he went.

“Where’s the boy?”

“With friends.”

“You have friends?” I said, not entirely being sarcastic.

He gave me a brief smile and said, “Rocza is watching him.”

He accepted the bundle of ledgers and papers, trying not to look eager. I made faces at Loiosh while he perused them; at last he looked up and nodded. “This is what I’m after,” he said. “Thanks.”

“What do they mean?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“Then how do you know—?”

“From the notations at the top of the columns.”

“I see,” I lied. “Well, then—”

“What am I after?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me. I’d seen Vlad happy, sad, frightened, angry, and hurt; but I’d never before seen him look uncomfortable. At last he said, “All right,” and began speaking.

Chapter Two

On the wall of a small hostelry just outside of Northport someone had written in black, sloppy letters: “When the water is clean, you see the bottom; when the water is dirty, you see yourself.”

“Deep philosophy,” I remarked to Loiosh. “Probably a brothel.”

He didn’t laugh. Call me superstitious, but I decided to find another place. I nodded to the boy to follow. I’m not sure when he started responding to nonverbal cues; I hadn’t been paying that much attention. But it was a good sign. On the other hand, that had been the only improvement in the year he’d been with me and that was a bad sign.

Wait for it, Kiera; wait for it. I’ve done this before. I know how to tell a Verra-be-damned story, okay?

So I kept walking, getting closer to Northport. I’d come to Northport because Northport is the biggest city in the world—okay, in the Empire—that doesn’t have any sort of university. No, I have nothing against universities, but you must know how they work—they act like magnets to pull in the best brains in an area, as well as the richest and most pretentious. They are seats of great learning and all that. Now I had a problem that required someone of great, or maybe not-so-great learning, but walking into a university, well, I didn’t like the idea. I don’t know how to go about it, and that means I don’t know how to go about it without getting caught. For example, what happens if I go to, say, Candletown, and inquire at Lady Brindlegate’s University, and someone is rude to me, and I have to drop him? Then what? It makes a big stink, and the wrong people hear about it, and there I am running again.

But I figured, what if I find a place with a lot of people but no institution to suck up the talented ones? It means it’s going to be a place with a lot of hedge-wizards, and wise old men, and greatwives. And that’s just what I was looking for—what I had been looking for for most of a year, and not finding, until I hit on this idea.

I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it. Trust me.

I got a little closer to town, stopped at an inn, and—look, you don’t need to hear all this. I stayed out of a fight, listened to gossip, pumped a few people, went to another inn, did the same, repeat, repeat, and finally found myself at a little blue cottage in the woods. Yes, blue—a blue lump of house standing out from all the greens of the woods surrounding Northport. It was one of the ugliest objects I’ve ever seen.

The first thing that happened was a dog came running out toward us. I was stepping in front of Savn and reaching for a knife before Loiosh said, “His tail is wagging, boss.”

“Right. I knew that.”

It was some indeterminate breed with a bit of hound in it—the sleek build of a lyorn with the sort of long, curly, reddish hair that needed cleaning and combing, a long nose, and floppy ears. It didn’t come up to my waist, and it generally seemed pretty nonthreatening. It stopped in front of me and started sniffing. I held out my left hand, which it approved, then it gave a half-jump up toward Loiosh, then one toward Rocza, went down on its front legs, barked twice, and stood in front of me waiting and wagging. Rocza hissed; Loiosh refused to dignify it by responding.

The door opened, and a woman called, “Buddy!” The dog looked back at her, turned in a circle, and ran up to her, then rose on its hind legs and stayed there for a moment. The woman was old and a foot and a half taller than me. She had grey hair and an expression that would sour your favorite dairy product. She said, “You’re an Easterner,” in a surprisingly flutelike voice.

“Yes,” I said. “And your house is painted blue.”

She let that go. “Who’s the boy?”

“The reason I’m here.”

“He’s human.”

“And to think I hadn’t noticed.”

Loiosh chuckled in my head; the woman didn’t. “Don’t be saucy,” she said. “No doubt you’ve come for help with something; you ought to be polite.” The dog sat down next to her and watched us, his tongue out.

I tried to figure out what House she was and decided it was most likely Tsalmoth, to judge by her complexion and the shape of her nose—her green shawl, dirty white blouse, and green skirt were too generic to tell me anything.

“Why do you care?” said Loiosh.

“Good question.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be polite. You’re a—do you find the term ‘hedge-wizard’ objectionable?”

“Yes,” she said, biting out the word.

“What do you prefer?”

“Sorcerer.”

She was a sorcerer the way I was a flip-dancer. “All right. I’ve heard you are a sorcerer, and that you are skilled in problems of the mind.”

“I can sometimes help, yes.”

“The boy has brain fever.”

She made a harrumphing sound. “There is no such thing.”

I shrugged.

She looked at him, but still didn’t step out of her door, nor ask us to approach. I expected her to ask more questions about his condition, but instead she said, “What do you have to offer me?”

“Gold.”

“Not interested.”

That caught me by surprise. “You’re not interested in gold?”

“I have enough to get by.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Offer her her life, boss.”

“Grow up, Loiosh.”

She said, “There isn’t anything I want that you could give me.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said.

She studied me as if measuring me for a bier and said, “I haven’t known many Easterners.”

The dog scratched its ear, stood, walked around in a circle, sat down in the same place it had been, and scratched itself again.

“If you’re asking if you can trust me,” I said, “there’s no good answer I can give you.”

“That isn’t the question.”

“Then—”

“Come in.”

I did, Savn following along dutifully, the dog last. The inside was worse than the outside. I don’t mean it was dirty—on the contrary, everything was neat, clean, and polished, and there wasn’t a speck of dust; no mean trick in a wood cottage. But it was filled with all sorts of magnificently polished wood carvings—magnificent and tasteless. Oil lamps, chairs, cupboards, and buffets were all of dark hardwood, all gleaming with polish, and all of them horribly overdone, like someone wanted to put extra decorations on them just to show that it could be done. It almost made it worse that the wood nearly matched the color of the dog, who turned around in place three times before curling up in front of the door.

I studied the overdone mantelpiece, the tasteless candelabra, and the rest. I said, “Your own work?”

“No. My husband was a wood-carver.”

“A quite skillful one,” I said truthfully.

She nodded. “This place means a lot to me,” she said. “I don’t want to leave.”

I waited.

“I’m being asked to leave—I’ve been given six months.”

Rocza shifted uneasily on my right shoulder. Loiosh, on my left, said, “I don’t believe this, boss. The widow being kicked out of her house? Come on.”

“By whom?”

“The owner of the land.”

“Who owns the land?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why does he want you to leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you been offered compensation?”

“Eh?”

“Did he say he’d pay you?”

“Oh. Yes.” She sniffed. “A pittance.”

“I see. How is it you don’t know who owns the land?”

“It belongs to some, I don’t know, organization, or something.”

I instantly thought, the Jhereg, and felt a little queasy. “What organization?”

“A business of some kind. A big one.”

“What House?”

“Orca.”

I relaxed. “Who told you you have to move?”

“A young woman I’d never seen before, who worked for it. She was an Orca, too, I think.”

“What was her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you don’t know the name of the organization she works for?”

“No.”

“How do you know she really worked for them?”

The old woman sniffed. “She was very convincing.”

“Do you have an advocate?”

She sniffed again, which seemed to pass for a “no.”

“Then finding a good one is probably where we should start.”

“I don’t trust advocates.”

“Mmmm. Well, in any case, we’re going to have to find out who holds the lease to your land. How do you pay it, anyway?”

“My husband paid it through the next sixty years.”

“But—”

“The woman said I’d be getting money back.”

“Isn’t there a land office or something?”

“I don’t know. I have the deed somewhere in the attic with my papers; it should be there.” Her eyes narrowed. “You think you can help me?”

“Yes.”

“Sit down.”

I did. I helped Savn to a chair, then found one myself. It was ugly but comfortable. The dog’s tail thumped twice against the floor, then it put its head on its paws.

“Tell me about the boy,” she said.

I nodded. “Have you ever encountered the undead?”

Her eyes widened and she nodded once.

“Have you ever fought an Athyra wizard? An undead Athyra wizard with a Morganti weapon?”

Now she looked skeptical. “You have?”

“The boy has. The boy killed one.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Look at him.”

She did. He sat there, staring at the wall across from him.

“And he’s been like this ever since?”

“Ever since he woke up. Actually, he’s improved a little—he follows me now without being told, and if I put food in front of him, he eats it.”

“Does he keep himself—?”

“Yes, as long as I remember to tell him to every once in a while.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“He took a bash on the head at the same time. That may be part of the problem.”

“When did it happen?”

“About a year ago.”

“You’ve been wandering around with him for a year?”

“Yeah. I’ve been looking for someone who could cure him. I haven’t found anyone.”

I didn’t tell her how hard I’d been looking for someone willing and able to help; I spared her the details of disappointments, dead ends, aimless searches, and trying to balance my need to help him with my need to stay away from anywhere big enough for the Jhereg to be a danger—anywhere like Northport, say. I didn’t tell her, in other words, that I was getting desperate.

“Why haven’t you gone to a real sorcerer?” There was more than a hint of bitterness there.

“I’m on the run.”

“From whom?”

“None of your business.”

“What did you do?”

“I helped the boy kill an undead Athyra wizard.”

“Why did he kill him?”

“To save my life.”

“Why was the wizard trying to kill you?”

“You ask too many questions.”

She frowned, then said, “We’ll begin by looking at his head wound.”

“All right. And tomorrow I’ll start on your problem.”

She spread out a few blankets on the floor for us, and that’s where we slept. I woke up once toward morning and saw that the dog had curled up next to Savn. I hoped it didn’t have fleas.

A few hours later I woke up for real and got to work. The old woman was already awake and holding a candle up to Savn’s eyes, either to see if he’d respond to the light or to look into his mind, or for some other reason. Rocza was on the mantel, looking down anxiously; she’d developed a fondness for Savn and I think was feeling protective. The dog lay there watching the procedure and thumping its tail whenever the old woman moved.

I said, “Where are the papers?”

She turned to me and said, “If you’d like coffee first, help yourself.”

“Do you have klava?”

“You can make it. The deed and the rest of my papers are in boxes up there.” She gestured toward the ceiling above the kitchen, where I noticed a square door.

I made the klava and filled two cups. Then I found a ladder and a lamp, and took myself up to a large attic filled—I mean filled—with wooden crates, all of which were filled with junk, most of the junk being papers of one sort or another. I grabbed a crate at random, brought it back down, and started going through it.

In the course of my career, Kiera, I’ve done a few odd things here and there. I mean, there was the time I spent half a day under a pile of refuse because it was the only place to hide. There was the time I took a job selling fish in the market. Once I ended up impersonating a corporal in the Imperial Guard and had to arrest someone for creating a disturbance in a public place. But I hope I never have to spend another week going through a thousand or more years’ worth of an old lady’s private papers and letters, just to find the name of her landlord, so I could sweet-talk, threaten, or intimidate him into letting her stay on the land, so she’d be willing to cure—Oh, skip it. It was a long week, and it was odd finding bits of nine-hundred-year-old love letters, or scraps of advice on curing hypothermia, or how to tell if an ingrown toenail is the result of a curse.

I spent about fourteen hours a day grabbing a crate, going through the papers in it, arranging them neatly, then bringing the crate back up to the attic and setting it in the stack of those I’d finished while getting another. I discovered to my surprise that it was curiously satisfying work, and that I was going to be disappointed when I found what I was looking for and would have to leave the rest of the papers unsorted.

Sometimes locals would show up, no doubt with some problem or another, and on those occasions I’d leave them alone and go walking around outside, which helped to clear my head from all the paperwork. If any of her customers had a problem with the boy or the jhereg, I never heard about it, and I enjoyed the walks. I got so I knew the area pretty well, but there isn’t much there worth knowing. One day when I got back after a long walk the old woman was standing in front of the fireplace holding a crumpled-up piece of paper. I said, “Is that it?”

She threw the paper into the fire. “No,” she said. She didn’t face me.

I said, “Is there something wrong?”

“Let’s get back to our respective work, shall we?”

I said, “If it turns out the lease isn’t in any of these boxes—”

“You’ll find it,” she said.

“Heh.”

But I did find it at last, late on the fifth day after going through about two-thirds of the crates: a neat little scroll tied up with green ribbon, and stating the terms of the lease, with the rent payable to something called Westman, Niece, and Nephew Land Holding Company.

“I found it,” I announced.

The old woman, who turned out to have some strange Kanefthali name that sounded like someone sneezing, said, “Good.”

“I’ll go visit them tomorrow morning. Any progress?”

She glared at me, then said, “Don’t rush me.”

“I’m just asking.”

She nodded and went back to what she was doing, which was testing Savn’s reflexes by tapping a stick against his knee, while watching his eyes.

Buddy watched us both somberly and decided there was nothing that had to be done right away. He got up and padded over to his water bowl, drank with doglike enthusiasm, and nosed open the door.

“Are we going to kill someone tomorrow, boss?”

“I doubt it. Why? Bored?”

“Something like that.”

“Exercise patience.”

Loiosh and I went outside and tasted the air. He flew around while I sat on the ground. Buddy came up, nosed me, and scratched at the door. The old woman let him in. Loiosh landed on my shoulder.

“Worried about Savn, boss?”

“Some. But if this doesn’t work, we’ll try something else, that’s all.”

“Right.”

I started to get cold. A small animal moved around in the woods near the house. I realized with something of a start not only that I’d come outside without my sword but that I didn’t even have a dagger on me. The idea made me uncomfortable, so I went back inside and sat in front of the fire. A little later I went to bed.

I’d been to Northport a few years before, and I’d been hanging around the edges these last few days, but that next morning was really the first time I’d seen it. It’s a funny town—sort of a miniature Adrilankha, the way it’s built in the center of those three hills the way Adrilankha is built between the cliffs, and both of them jutting up against the sea. Northport has its own personality, though. One gets the impression, looking at the three-story inns and the five-story Lumber Exchange Building and the streets that start out wide and straight and end up narrow and twisting, that someone wanted it to be a big city but it never made it. The first section I came to was one of the new parts, with a lot of wood houses where tradesmen lived and had shops, but as I got closer to the docks the buildings got smaller and older, and were made of good, solid stonework. And the people of Northport seem to have this attitude—I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too—that wants to convince you what a great place they’re living in. They spend so much time talking about how easygoing everyone is that it gets on your nerves pretty quickly. They talk so much about how it’s only around Northport that you can find the redfin or the fatfish that you end up not wanting to taste them just to spite the populace, you know what I mean?

It was harder to find Westman than it should have been, because there was no address in the city hall for a Westman company. They did exist, they just didn’t have an address registered. I thought that was odd, but the clerk didn’t; I guess he’d run into that sort of thing before. The owner was listed, though, and his name wasn’t Westman. It was something called Brugan Exchange. Did Brugan Exchange have an address? No. Was there an owner listed? Yeah. Northport Securities. What does Northport Securities do? I have no idea. You understand that the clerk didn’t kill himself being helpful—he just pointed to where I should look and left it up to me, and it took three imperials before he was willing to do that. So I dug through musty old papers; I’d been doing that a lot lately.

Northport Securities didn’t have an owner listed. Nothing. Just a blank space where the Articles of Embodiment asked for the owner’s name, and an illegible scrawl for a signature. But, wonder of wonders, it did have an address—it was listed as number 31 in the Fyres Building.

Ah. I see your eyes light up. We have found our connection with Fyres, you think. Sort of.

I found the Fyres Building without any trouble—the clerk told me where it was, after giving me a look that indicated I must be an idiot for needing to ask. It was at the edge of Shroud Hill, which means it was almost out of town, and it was high enough so that it had a nice view. A very nice view, from the top—it was six stories high, Kiera, and reeked of money from the polished marble of the base to the glass windows on the top floor. The thought of walking into the place made me nervous, if you can believe it—it was like the first time I went to Castle Black; not as strong, maybe, but the same feeling of being in someone’s seat of power.

Loiosh said, “What’s the problem, boss?” I couldn’t answer him, but the question was reassuring, in a way. There was a single wooden door in front, with no seal on it, but above the doorway “FYRES” was carved into the stonework, along with the symbol of the House of the Orca.

Once inside, there was nothing and no one to tell me where to go. There were individual rooms, all of them marked with real doors and all of which had informative signs like “Cutter and Cutter.” I walked around the entire floor, which was laid out in a square with an open stairway at the far end. I said, “Loiosh.”

“On my way, boss.”

I waited by the stairs. A few well-dressed citizens, Orca, Chreotha, and a Lyorn, came down or up the stairs and glanced at me briefly, decided that they didn’t know what to make of the shabbily dressed Easterner, and went on without saying anything. One woman, an Orca, asked if I needed anything. When I said I didn’t, she went on her way. Presently Loiosh returned.

“Well?”

“The offices are smaller on the next floor, and they keep getting smaller as you go up, all the way until the sixth, which I couldn’t get into.”

“Door?”

“Yeah. Locked.”

“Ah ha.”

“Number thirty-one is on the fifth floor.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

We went up five flights, and Loiosh led the way to a tacked-up number 31, which hung above a curtained doorway. Also above the doorway was a plain black-lettered sign that read, “Brownberry Insurance.” I entered without clapping.

There was a man at the desk, a very pale Lyorn, who was going over a ledger of some sort while checking it against the contents of a small box filled with cards. He looked up, and his eyes widened just a little. He said, “May I be of service to you?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Is your name Brownberry?”

“No, but I do business as Brownberry Insurance. May I help you?”

He volunteered no more information, but kept a polite smile of inquiry fixed in my direction. He kept glancing at Loiosh, then returning his gaze to me.

I said, “I was actually looking for Northport Securities.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, I can help you there, as well.”

“Excellent.”

The office was small, but there was another curtained doorway behind it—no doubt there was another room with another desk, perhaps with another Lyorn looking over another ledger.

“I understand,” I said carefully, “that Northport Securities owns Brugan Exchange.”

He frowned. “Brugan Exchange? I’m afraid I’ve never heard of it. What do they do?”

“They own Westman, Niece, and Nephew Land Holding Company.”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that.”

The curtain moved and a woman poked her head out, then walked around to stand next to the desk. Definitely an Orca; and I’d put her at about seven hundred years. Not bad if you like Dragaerans. She wore blue pants and a simple white blouse with blue trim, and had short hair pulled back severely. “Westman Holding?” she said.

“Yes.”

The man said, “It’s one of yours, Leen?”

“Yes.” And to me, “How may I help you?”

“You hold the lease for a lady named, uh, Hujaanra, or something like that?”

“Yes. I was just out to see her about it. Are you her advocate?”

“Something like that.”

“Please come back here and sit down. I’m called Leen. And you?”

“Padraic,” I said. I followed her into a tiny office with just barely room for me, her, her desk, and a filing cabinet. Her desk was clean except for some writing gear and a couple large black books, probably ledgers. I sat on a wooden stool.

“What may I do for you?” she said. She was certainly the most polite Orca I’d ever encountered.

“I’d like to understand why my client has to leave her land.”

She nodded as if she’d been expecting the question. “Instructions from the parent company,” she said. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly why. We think the offer we made is quite reasonable—”

“That isn’t the issue,” I said.

She seemed a bit surprised. Perhaps she wasn’t used to being interrupted by an Easterner, perhaps she wasn’t used to being interrupted by an advocate, perhaps she wasn’t used to people who weren’t interested in money.

“What exactly is the issue?” she said in the tone of someone trying to remain polite in the face of provocation.

“She doesn’t want to leave her land.”

“I’m afraid she must. The parent company—”

“Then can I speak to someone in the parent company?”

She studied me for a moment, then said, “I don’t see why not.” She scratched out a name and address on a small piece of paper, blew on it until the ink dried, and gave it to me.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You are most welcome, Sir Padraic.”

I nodded to the man in the office, who was too absorbed in his ledger to notice, then stopped past the door, looked at the card, and laughed. It said, “Lady Cepra, Cepra Holding Company, room 20.” No building, which, of course, meant it was this very building. I shook my head and went down the stairs, sending Loiosh ahead of me.

He was back in about a minute. “Third floor,” he said.

“Good.”

So I headed down to the third floor.

Do you get the idea, Kiera? Good. Then there’s no need to go into the rest of the day, it was more of the same. I never met any resistance, and everyone was very polite, and eventually I got my answer—sort of.

It was well after dark when I returned to the cottage. Buddy greeted me with a tail wag that got his whole back half moving. It was nice to be missed.

“As long as you aren’t fussy about the source.”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

I walked in the door and saw Savn was asleep on his pile of blankets. The old woman was sitting in front of the fire, drinking tea. She didn’t turn around when I came in. Loiosh flew over and greeted Rocza, who was curled up next to Savn.

I said, “What did you learn about the boy?”

“I don’t know enough yet. I can tell you that there’s more wrong with him than a bump on the head, but the bump on the head triggered it. I’ll know more soon, I hope.”

“What about curing him?”

“I have to find out what’s wrong first.”

“All right.”

“What about you?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

She turned and glared at me. “What did you find out?”

I sat down at what passed for a kitchen table. “You,” I said, “are a tiny, tiny cog in the great big machine.”

“What does that mean?”

“A man named Fyres died.”

“So I heard. What of it?”

“He owned a whole lot of companies. When he died, it turned out that most of them had no assets to speak of, except for office furnishings and that sort of thing.”

“I heard something of that, too.”

“Your land is owned by a company that’s in surrender of debts, and has to sell it before the court orders it sold. What we have to do is buy the place ourselves. You said you have money—”

“Well, I don’t,” she snapped.

“Excuse me?”

“I thought I did, but I was wrong.”

“I don’t understand.”

She turned back to the fire and didn’t speak for several minutes. Then she said, “All of my money was in a bank. Two days ago, while you were out, a messenger showed up with information that—”

“Oh,” I said. “The bank was another one? Fyres owned it?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s all gone.”

“I might be lucky enough to get two orbs for each imperial.”

“Oh,” I said again.

I sat thinking for a long time. At last I said, “All right, that makes it harder, but not much. I have money.”

She looked at me once more, her lined face all but expressionless. I said, “Somewhere there’s someone who owns this land, and somewhere there’s someone who is responsible for that bank—”

“Fyres,” she said. “And he’s dead.”

“No. Someone is taking charge of these things. Someone is handling the estate. And, more important, there’s some very wealthy son of a bitch who just needs the right sort of pressure put on him in order to make the right piece of paper say the right thing. It shouldn’t disrupt anything—there are advantages to being a small cog in a big machine.”

“How are you going to find this mythical rich man?”

“I don’t know exactly. But the first step is to start tracing the lines of power from the top.”

“I don’t think that information is public,” she said.

“Neither do I.”

I closed my eyes, thinking of several days’ worth of my least favorite sort of work: digging into plans, tracing guard routes, finagling trivial information out of people without letting them know I was doing it, and all that just so we could perhaps get a start on how to address the problem. I shook my head in self-pity.

“Well?” said the old woman when she’d waited long enough and decided I wasn’t going to say any more. “What are you going to do? Steal Fyres’s private papers?”

“Do I look like a thief?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She sniffed.

“Unfortunately,” I added, “I’m not.”

“Well, then?”

“I do, however, know one.” Interlude

“I suppose, if one must lose a finger—”

“Yes. And it had healed cleanly.”

“It hurts to think about it. I wonder what fell on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“He didn’t seem inclined to talk about it. You know how he gets when there’s something he doesn’t want to talk about.”

“Yes. A lot like you.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s a lot you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”

“I suppose. Not deliberately—at least not yet. Later, there may be things I’d sooner not discuss. But if I told you everything I remember as I remember it, we’d still be here—”

“I understand. Hmmm.”

“What is it?”

“I was just thinking how pleased he’d be if he knew we were spending a whole afternoon just talking about him.”

“I shan’t tell him.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Should I go on?”

“Let’s order some more tea first.”

“Very well.”

Chapter Three

I looked at him after he’d finished speaking, struck by several things but not sure what to say or to ask. For one thing, I’d forgotten that when Vlad starts telling a story, you had best get yourself a tall glass of something and settle in for the duration. I thought this over, and all that he’d told me, and finally said, “Who did the boy kill?”

“A fellow named Loraan.”

I controlled my reaction, stared at Vlad, and waited. He said, “I take it you know who he was?”

“Yes. I follow your career, you know. I’d thought he was pretty permanently dead.”

Vlad shrugged. “Take it up with Morrolan. Or rather with Blackwand.”

I nodded. “The boy saved your life?”

“The simple answer is yes. The more complicated answer would take a week.”

“But you owe him.”

“Yes.”

“I see. What happened while you were waiting for me?”

“I learned everything about Fyres that was public knowledge, and a little that wasn’t.”

“What did you learn?”

“Not much. He liked being talked about, he liked owning things, he didn’t like anyone knowing what he was up to. The accountants are going to be hard at work to figure out exactly what he owed and what he was worth—I imagine his heirs are pretty nervous.”

“It’ll be harder without those papers.”

“Yeah. But I’ll probably return them when I’m done. I’m in more of a hurry than they are.”

“What else has happened?”

“Who do you mean?”

“With the boy.”

“Oh. Nothing. She’s still trying to figure it out. I guess it isn’t easy to know what’s going on in someone’s head.”

That, of course, was the understatement of Vlad’s life.

“What’s she done?”

“Stared into his eyes a lot.”

“Notice any sorcery?”

“No.”

I thought for a minute, then, “Take me to the cottage,” I said. “I want to see it, and I want to meet this woman, and we can go over the information there as well as anywhere else.”

“We?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

We struck out for the cottage, walking. I like walking; I don’t do enough of it. It was about four miles, deep in the woods, and the cottage really was painted bright blue so that it showed against the greens of the woods to a truly horrifying effect.

As we approached, a reddish dog ran out the door and stood in front of us, wagging its tail and letting its tongue hang out. It sniffed me, backed away with its head cocked, barked twice, and sniffed me again. After consulting with its canine sensibilities, it decided I was provisionally all right and asked us if we wanted to play. When we took too long to decide, it ran back toward the house. The door opened again, and a matron came out.

Vlad said, “This is my friend, Kiera. I’m not going to try to pronounce your name.”

She looked at me, then nodded. “Hwdf rjaanci,” she said.

“Hwdf rjaanci,” I repeated.

“Kiera,” she said. “You look like a Jhereg.”

I could feel Vlad not looking at me and not grinning. I shrugged.

She said, “Call me Mother; everyone around here does.”

“All right, Mother.”

She asked Vlad, “Did you learn anything?”

“Not yet.” He held up the parcel I’d given him. “We’re just going to look things over now.”

“Come in, then.”

We did, the dog following behind. The inside was even worse than Vlad had described it. I didn’t comment. Savn was sitting on a stool with his back to the fire, staring straight ahead. It was creepy. It was sad. “Battle shock,” I murmured under my breath.

“What?” said the old woman.

I shook my head. Savn wasn’t a bad-looking young man, for a Teckla—thin, maybe a bit wan, but good bones. Hwdf rjaanci was sitting next to him, stroking the back of his neck while watching his face.

Hwdf rjaanci said, “Will you be staying here?”

“I have a place in town.”

“All right.”

Vlad went over to the table, took out the papers, and began studying them. I knelt down in front of the boy and looked into his eyes; saw my own reflection and nothing else. His pupils were a bit large, but the room was dark, and they were the same size. A bit of spell-casting tempted me, but I stayed away from it. Thinking along those lines, I realized that there wasn’t much of an air of sorcery in the room; a few simple spells to keep the dust and insects away, and the dog had a ward against vermin, but that was about it.

I felt the woman watching. I kept looking into the boy’s eyes, though I couldn’t say what I was looking for. The woman said, “So you’re a thief, are you?”

“That’s what they say.”

“I was robbed twice. The first time was years ago. During the Interregnum. You look too young to remember the Interregnum.”

“Thank you.”

She gave a little laugh. “The second time was more recent. I didn’t enjoy being robbed,” she added.

“I should think not.”

“They beat my husband—almost killed him.”

“I don’t beat people, Mother.”

“You just break into their homes?”

I said, “When you’re working with the mentally sick, do you ever worry about being caught in the disease?”

“Always,” she said. “That’s why I have to be careful. I can’t do anyone any good if I tangle my own mind instead of untangling my patient’s.”

“That makes sense. I take it you’ve done a great deal of this?”

“Some.”

“How much?”

“Some.”

“You have to go into his mind, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

I looked at her. “You’re frightened, aren’t you?”

She looked away.

“I would be, too,” I told her. “Breaking into homes is much less frightening than breaking into minds.

“More profitable, too,” I added after a moment.

I felt Vlad looking at me, and looked back. He’d overheard the conversation and seemed to be trying to decide if he wanted to get angry. After a moment, he returned to looking at the papers.

I stood up, went over to the dog, and got acquainted. It still seemed a bit suspicious of me, but was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Presently Hwdf rjaanci said, “All right. I’ll start tomorrow.”

By the time I got there the next morning, Vlad had covered the table with a large piece of paper—I’m not sure where he got it—which was covered with scrawls and arrows. I stood over him for a moment, then said, “Where’s the boy?”

“He and the woman went out for a walk. They took Rocza and the dog with them.”

“Loiosh?”

“Flying around outside trying to remember if he knows how to hunt.”

He got that look on his face that told me he’d communicated that remark to Loiosh, too, and was pleased with himself.

I said, “Any progress?”

He shrugged. “Fyres didn’t like to tell his people much.”

“So you said.”

“Even less than I’d thought.”

“Catch me up.”

“Fyres and Company is a shipping company that employs about two hundred people. That’s all, as far as I can tell. Most of the rest of what he owned isn’t related to the shipping company at all, but he owned it through relatives—his wife, his son, his daughters, his sister, and a few friends. And most of those are in surrender of debts and have never really been solvent—it’s all been a big fraud from the beginning, when he conned banks into letting him take out loans, and used the loans to make his companies look big so that he could take out more loans. That’s how he operated.”

“You know this?”

“Yeah.”

“You aren’t even an accountant.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have to prove it—I’ve learned it because I’ve found out what companies he was keeping track of and looked at the ownership and read his notes. There’s nothing incriminating about it, but it gives the picture pretty clearly if you’re looking for it.”

“How big?”

“I can’t tell. Big enough, I suppose.”

“What’s the legal status?”

“I have no idea. I’m sure the Empire will try to sort it all out, but that’ll take years.”

“And in the meantime?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to have to do something, but I don’t know what.”

Savn and Hwdfrjaanci returned then and sat down on the floor near the fire. The woman’s look discouraged questions as she took Savn’s hands in hers and began rubbing them. Vlad watched; I could feel his tension.

I said, “You have to do something soon, don’t you?”

He gave me a half-smile. “It would be nice. But this isn’t the sort of thing I can stumble into. I should know what I’m doing first. That makes it trickier.” Then he said, “Why are you helping me, anyway?”

I said, “I assume you’ve been making a list of all the companies you know about and who their owners are.”

“Yeah. They’ve gotten to know my face real well at City Hall.”

“That may be a problem later on.”

“Maybe. I hope not to be around here long enough for it to matter.”

“Good idea.”

“Yes.”

“No help for it, I suppose. Do you think it might be wise to pick one of these players and pay a visit?”

“Sure, if I knew what to ask. I need to figure out who really owns this land and—”

Loiosh and I reacted at once to the presence of sorcery in the room, Vlad just an instant later. Our heads turned toward Hwdf rjaanci, who was holding Savn’s shoulders and speaking under her breath. We watched for maybe a minute, but there was no point in talking about it. I cleared my throat. “What were you saying?”

Vlad turned back to me, looking blank. Then he said, “I don’t remember.”

“Something about needing to find out who really owns this land.”

“Oh, right.” I could see him mentally shaking himself. “Yeah. What I really want is to get the picture of this thing as it’s going to emerge when the Empire finishes its investigations, say two hundred years from now. But I can’t wait that long.”

“I might be able to learn something.”

“How?”

“The Jhereg.”

Vlad frowned. “How would the Jhereg be involved?”

“I don’t know that we are. But if what Fyres was doing was illegal, and it was making a lot of money, there’s a good chance for a Jhereg connection somewhere along the line.”

“Good point,” said Vlad.

Loiosh was still staring at the woman and the boy. Vlad was silent for a moment; I wondered what Vlad and Loiosh were saying to each other. I wondered if they spoke in words, or if it was some sort of communication that didn’t translate. I’ve never had a familiar, but then, I’m not a witch. Vlad said, “You have local connections?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” he said. “Do it. I’ll keep trying to put this thing together.”

The woman said, “Cold. So cold. Cold.”

Vlad and I looked at her. She wasn’t shivering or anything, and the cottage was quite warm. Her hands were still on Savn’s shoulders and she was staring at him.

“Can’t keep it away,” she said. “Can’t keep it away. Find the cold spot. Can’t keep it away.” After that she fell silent.

I looked at Vlad and turned my palms up. “I might as well go now,” I said.

He nodded, and went back to his paperwork. I headed out the door. The dog gave its tail a half-wag and put its head down between its paws again.

It was over two or three miles to Northport, but I had been there often enough to learn a couple of teleport points, so I went ahead and put myself into an alley that ran past the back of a pawnbroker’s shop, startling a couple of local urchins when I appeared. They stared at me for a second, then went back to urchining, or whatever it is they do. I walked around the corner and into the dark little shop. The middle-aged man behind the counter looked up at me, but before he could say a word I said, “Sorry to disappoint you, Dor.”

“What, you don’t have anything for me?”

“Nope. I just want to see the upstairs man.”

“For a minute there—”

“Next time.”

He shrugged. “You know the way.”

Poor Dor. Usually when I come into his place it’s because I have something that’s too hot to unload in Adri-lankha, which means he’s going to get something good for a great price. But not today. I walked past him into the rear of the shop, up the stairs, and into a nice, plain room where a couple of toughs waited. One, a very dark fellow with a pointy head, like someone had tried to fit him through a funnel, was sitting in front of the room’s other door; the other one had arms that hung out like a mockman and he looked about as intelligent, although looks can be deceiving; he was leaning against a wall. They didn’t seem to recognize me.

I said, “Is Stony in?”

“Who wants to know?” said Funnel-head.

I smiled brightly. “Why, I do.”

He scowled.

I said, “Tell him it’s Kiera.”

Their eyes grew just a little bit wider. That always happens. It is very satisfying. The one stood up, moved his chair, opened the door, and stuck his head into the other room. I heard him speaking softly, then I heard Stony say, “Really? Well, send her in.” There was a little more conversation, followed by, “I said send her in.”

The tough turned back to me and stood aside. I dipped him a curtsy as I stepped in past him—a curtsy looks silly when you’re wearing trousers, but I couldn’t resist. He stayed well back from me, as if he were afraid I’d steal his purse as I walked by. Why are people who will walk into potentially lethal situations without breaking a sweat so often frightened around someone who just steals things? Is it the humiliation? Is it just that they don’t know how I do it? I’ve never figured that out. Many people have that reaction. It makes me want to steal their purses.

Stony’s office was deceptively small. I say deceptive because he was a lot bigger in the Organization than most people thought—even his own employees didn’t know; he felt safer that way. I’d only found out by accident and guesswork, starting when someone had hired me to lighten one of Stony’s button men and I’d come across pieces of his security system. Stony himself was pretty deceptive, too. He looked, and acted, like the sort of big, mean, stupid, and brutal thug that the Left Hand thinks we all are. In fact, I’d never known him to do anything that wasn’t calculated—even his famous rages always seemed to result in just the right people disappearing, and no more. Over the years, I’d tried to puzzle him out, and my opinion at the moment was that he wasn’t in this for the power, or for the pleasure of putting things over on the Guard, or anything else—he wanted to acquire a great deal of money, and a great deal of security, and then he planned to retire. I couldn’t prove it, I reflected, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someday he just packed up and vanished, and spent the rest of his life collecting seashells or something on some tiny island he owned.

Over the years, I had gradually let him know that I knew where he stood in the Organization, and he had gradually stopped pretending otherwise when we were alone. It was possible that he liked having someone with whom he could drop the game a little, but I doubt it.

All of this flashed through my mind as I sat in the only other chair in the room—the room just big enough to contain my chair, his chair, and the desk. He said, “Must be something big, for you to come here.” His voice was rough and harsh, and fitted the personality he pretended to; I assumed it was contrived, but I’ve never heard him break out of it.

“Yes and no,” I said.

“There a problem?”

“In a way.”

“You need help?”

“Something like that.”

He shook his head. “That’s what I like about you, Kiera. Your way of explaining everything so clearly.”

“My part isn’t big, and what I need isn’t big, but it’s part of something big. I didn’t want to ask you to meet me somewhere because I’m asking for a favor, and you don’t get anything from it, so I didn’t want to put you out. But it isn’t a favor for me, it’s for someone else.”

He nodded. “That makes everything completely clear, then.”

“What do you know of Fyres?”

That startled him a little. “The Orca?”

“Yes.”

“He’s dead.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He owned a whole lot of stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“Most of it will end up in surrender of debts.”

“That’s what I like about you, Stony. The way you have of reeling out information no one else knows.”

He made a loose fist with his right hand and drummed his fingernails on the desk while looking at me. “What exactly do you want to know?”

“The Organization’s interest in him and his businesses.”

“What’s your interest?”

“I told you, a favor for a friend.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it some big secret, Stony?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

“It goes up pretty high?”

“Yeah, and there’s a lot of money involved.”

“And you’re trying to decide how much to tell me just as a favor.”

“Right.”

I waited. Nothing I could say would help make up his mind for him.

“Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll tell you this much. A lot of people had paper on the guy. Shards. Everybody had paper on the guy. There are going to be some big banks going down, and there are going to be some Organization people taking sudden vacations. It isn’t just me, but we’re in it.”

“How about you?”

“I’m not directly involved, so I may be all right.”

“If you need anything—”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“How did he die?”

Stony spread his hands. “He was out on his Verra-be-damned boat and he slipped and hit his head on a railing.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

He shook his head. “No one wanted him dead, Kiera. I mean, the only chance most of us had to ever see our investment back was if his stuff earned out, and with him dead there’s no way of it ever earning out.”

“You sure?”

“Who can be sure of anything? I didn’t want him dead. I don’t know anyone who wanted him dead. The Empire sent their best investigators, and they think it was an accident.”

“All right,” I said. “What was he like?”

“You think I knew him?”

“You lent him money, or at least thought about it; you knew him.”

He smiled, then the smile went away and he looked thoughtful—an expression I doubt most people would ever have seen. “He was all surface, you know?”

“No.”

“It was like he made himself act the way he thought he should—you could never get past it.”

“That sounds familiar.”

He ignored that. “He tried to be polished, professional, calculating—he wanted you to believe he was the perfect bourgeois. And he wanted to impress you—he always wanted to impress you.”

“With how rich he was?”

Stony nodded. “Yeah, that. And with all the people he knew, and with how good he was at what he did. I think that part of it—being impressive—was more important to him than the money.”

I nodded encouragingly. He smiled. “You want more?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’d better know why.”

“It’s a little embarrassing,” I said.

“Embarrassing?” He looked at me the way I must have been looking at Vlad when I realized that he was embarrassed.

“I have this friend—”

“Right.”

I laughed. “Okay, skip it. I owe someone a favor,” I amended untruthfully. “She’s an old woman who is about to be kicked off her land because everybody is selling off everything to stave off surrender of debts because of this mess with Fyres.”

“An old woman being foreclosed on? Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Would I make up something like that?”

He shook his head, chuckling to himself. “No, I suppose not. So what do you plan to do about it?”

“I don’t know yet. Just find out what I can and then think about it.” Or, at any rate, if Vlad had had any other plan, he hadn’t mentioned it to me. “What else can you tell me?”

“Well, he was about fourteen hundred years old. No one heard of him before the Interregnum, but he rose pretty quickly after it ended.”

“How quickly?”

“He was a very wealthy man by the end of the first century.”

“That is quick.”

“Yeah. And then he lost it all forty or fifty years later.”

“Lost it all?”

“Yep.”

“And came back?”

“Twice more. Each time bigger, each time the collapse was worse.”

“Same problem? Same sort of paper castles?”

“Yep.”

“Shipping?”

“Yep. And shipbuilding. Those have been his foundations all along.”

“You’d think people would learn.”

“Is there an implied criticism there, Kiera?” His look got just the least bit hard.

“No. Curiosity. I know you aren’t stupid. Most of the people he’d be borrowing from aren’t, either. How did he do it?”

Stony relaxed. “You’d have to have seen him work.”

“What do you mean? Good salesman?”

“That, and more. Even when he was down, you’d never know it. Of course, when someone that rich goes down, it doesn’t have much effect on how he lives—he’ll still have his mansion, and he’ll still be at all the clubs, and he’ll still have his private boat and his big carriages.”

“Sure.”

“So he’d trade on those things. You get to talking with him for five minutes, and you forget that he’d just taken a fall. And then his secretaries would keep running in with papers for him to sign, or with questions about some big deal or another, and it looked like he was on top of the world.” Stony shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve wondered if he didn’t have those secretaries pull that sort of thing just to look good; but it worked. You’d always end up convinced that he was in some sort of great position and you might as well jump on the horse and ride it yourself before someone else did.”

“And there were a lot of us on the horse.”

“A lot of Jhereg? Yeah.”

“And in deep.”

“Yeah.”

“That isn’t good for my investigation.”

“You worried you might bump into the Organization? Is that it?”

“That’s part of it.”

“It might happen,” he said.

“All right.”

“What if it does?”

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to see you get hurt, Kiera.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “How far beyond Northport does this thing go?”

“Hard to say. It’s all centered here, but he’d begun spreading out. He has offices other places, of course—you have to if you’re in shipping. But I can’t say how much else.”

“What was going on before he died?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have the impression things were getting shaky for him.”

“Very. He was scrabbling. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but there were rumors that he’d stepped too far out and it was all going to crumble.”

“Hmmm.”

“Still wondering if someone put a shine on him?”

“Seems like quite a coincidence.”

“I know. But I don’t think so. As I said, I never heard any whispers, and the Empire investigated; they’re awfully good at this sort of thing.”

I nodded. That much was certainly true. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. If there’s anything else, let me know.”

“I will.” I stood up.

“Oh, by the way.”

“Yes?”

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “Seen anything of that Easterner you used to hang around with?”

“You mean Vlad Taltos? The guy who screwed up the Organization representative to the Empire? The guy everyone wants to put over the Falls? The guy with so much gold on his head that his hair is sparkling? The guy the Organization wants so bad that anyone seen with him is likely to disappear for a long session of question and answer with the best information-extraction specialists the Organization can find? Him?”

“Yep.”

“Nope.”

“I hadn’t thought so. See you around, Kiera.”

“See you around, Stony.”

Chapter Four

My first step was to fill Vlad in on what I’d learned; but I took a long, circuitous route back just in case I was being followed, so it took me almost until evening to get back to the cottage. When I turned the last corner of the path, Vlad was waiting for me, on the path, about fifty meters from the cottage. That startled me just a bit, as I’m not used to being seen so quickly even when I’m not trying to sneak, until I realized that Loiosh must have spotted me. I must remember to be careful if I ever have to sneak up on that Easterner.

He stood clothed only in pants and boots, his upper body naked and full of curly hairs, and he was sweating heavily, although he didn’t seem to be breathing hard.

“Nice evening,” I told him.

He nodded.

I said, “What have you been doing?”

“Practicing,” he said, pointing at a tree some distance away. I noticed several knives sticking out of it. Then he touched his rapier, sheathed at his side, and said, “I’ve also punctured my shadow several times.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Only when I missed.”

“Did it get any cuts in?”

“No. But almost.”

“Good to see you’re keeping your hand in.”

“Actually, I haven’t been lately, but I thought it might be time to again.”

“Hranun.”

“Besides, I needed to get out.”

“Oh?”

“It’s ugly in there,” he said, gesturing toward the cottage.

“Oh?” I said again.

“The old woman is doing what she promised.”

“And?”

He shook his head.

“Tell me,” I said.

“He’s all screwed up.”

“That’s news?”

Vlad looked at me.

“Sorry,” I said.

“He keeps thinking he killed his sister, or he has to save her, or something.”

“Sister?”

“Yeah, she was involved, too. He feels guilty about her.”

“What else?”

“Well, he’s a Teckla, and Loraan was his lord, and if you’re a peasant, you don’t do what he did. Deathgate, Kiera. Even touching a Morganti weapon—”

“Right.”

“So if he didn’t kill Loraan, he must have killed his sister.”

I said, “I don’t follow that.”

“I’m not sure I do, either,” said Vlad. “But that’s what we’re seeing. Or what we think we’re seeing. It isn’t too clear, and we’ve been doing a lot of guesswork, but that’s how it looks at the moment. And then there’s the bash on the head.”

“What did that do?”

“She thinks there may be a partial memory loss that’s contributing to the whole thing.”

“Better and better.”

“Yeah.”

“What now?”

“I don’t know. The old woman thinks we have to find some way of communicating with him, but she doesn’t know how.”

“Does he hear us when we talk? See us?”

“Oh, sure. But we’re like dream images, so what we say isn’t important.”

“What is important? I mean, she probed him, right? What’s he doing in there?”

He shrugged. “Trying to keep his sister away from me, or away from Loraan, or something like that.”

“A constant nightmare.”

“Right.”

“Ugly.”

“Yes.”

“And there’s nothing you can do.”

“Nothing I can do about that, anyway.”

“If you could go in there yourself, I mean, into his mind—”

“Sure, I’d do it. In a minute.”

I nodded. “Then I might as well tell you what I learned today.”

“Do.”

“Do you want to go inside?”

“No.”

“All right.” He put his shirt on and nodded to me and I told him. He was a good listener; he stood completely still, leaning against a tree; his only motion was to nod slightly every once in a while; and he was spare with his questions, just asking me to amplify a point every now and then. Loiosh settled on his left shoulder, and even the jhereg appeared to be listening. It’s always nice to have an audience.

When I was finished, Vlad said, “Well. That’s interesting. Surprising, too.”

“That the Organization is involved?”

“No, no. Not that.”

“What?”

He shook his head and appeared to be lost in thought—like I’d told him more than I thought I had, which was certainly possible. So I gave him a decent interval, then said, “What is it?”

He shook his head again. I felt a little irritated but I didn’t say anything. He said, “It doesn’t make sense, that’s all.”

“What doesn’t?”

“How well do you know Stony?”

“Quite.”

“Would he lie to you?”

“Certainly.”

“Maybe that’s it, then. In any case, someone lied, somewhere along the line.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me think about this, all right? And do some checking on my own. I want to follow something up; I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

I shrugged. There’s no reasoning with Vlad when he gets a mood on him. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

He nodded. Then he said, “Kiera?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

I slept late the next day, because there was no reason not to. It was around noon when I got to the cottage, and no one was there except the dog. It shuffled away from me. I devoted some effort to making friends with it, and of course I succeeded. I talked to it for a while. Most cat owners talk to their cats, but all dog owners talk to their dogs; I don’t now why that is.

I’d been there an hour or so when the dog jumped up suddenly and bolted out the door, and a minute or so later Hwdf’rjaanci returned with Savn. I said, “Good day, Mother. I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. I’ve made some klava.”

She nodded and had the boy sit down, then she closed the shutters. I realized that each time I’d been there during the day the windows had been shut. I got her some klava, which she drank bitter.

I said, “What have you learned, Mother?”

“Not as much as I wish,” she said. I waited. She said, “I think the two biggest problems are the bump on the head and the sister.”

“Can’t the bump be healed?”

“It has healed, on the outside. But there was some damage to his brain.”

“No, I mean, can’t the damage be healed? I know there are sorcerers—”

“Not yet. Not until I’m sure that, if I heal him, I won’t be sealing in the problem.”

“I think I understand. What about the sister?”

“He feels guilty about her—about her being exposed to whatever it was that happened.”

She nodded. “That’s the real problem. I think he’s somehow using guilt about his sister to keep from facing that. He creates fantasies of rescuing her, but always shies away from what he’s rescuing her from. And then he loses control of the fantasies and they turn into nightmares. It’s worse, I think, because he used to be apprenticed to a physicker, so he’s even more tormented about what he did than most peasant boys would be.”

I nodded. Speaking like this, she’d changed somehow—she wasn’t an old woman in a cottage full of ugly polished wood carvings, she was a sorcerer and a skilled physicker of the mind. It now seemed entirely reasonable that, as Vlad had told me, the locals would come by from time to time to consult with her on whatever their problems might be.

“Do you have a plan?”

“No. There’s too much I don’t understand. If I just go blundering in, I might destroy him—and myself.”

“I understand.” I opened my mouth and closed it again. I said, “What are the walks for?”

“I think he’s used to walking. He gets restless when he’s sitting for too long.”

“And the closed shutters? Are they for him, or do you just like it that way?”

“For him. He’s had too much experience, there have been too many things for him to see and hear and feel all at once—I want to limit them.”

“Limit them? But if he’s trapped in his head, won’t it help to give him things outside his head to respond to?”

“You’d think so, and you may even turn out to be right. But more often than not, it works best the other way. It’s as if he’s trying to escape from pressure, and everything he perceives adds to the pressure. If I was more certain, I’d create a field around him that shut him off from the world entirely. It may yet come to that.”

“You’ve had cases like this before?”

“You mean people who were so pulled into themselves that they were out of touch with the world? Yes, a few. Some of them worse than Savn.”

“Were you able to help them?”

“There were two I was able to help. Three I couldn’t.” Her voice was carefully neutral.

One way of looking at it was that the odds were against success. Another way was that she was due to win one. Neither was terribly productive, so I said, “How did you proceed?”

“I tried to learn as much as I could about how they got that way, I healed any physical damage when there was some, and then, when I thought they were ready, I took them on a dreamwalk.”

“Ah.”

“You know about dreamwalking?”

“Yes. What sort of dreams did you give them?”

“I tried to guide them through whatever choice they made that put them in a place they couldn’t get out of, and give them another choice instead.”

“And in three cases it didn’t work.”

“Yes. In at least one of those, it was because I didn’t know enough when I went in.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It was. I almost lost my mind, and the patient became worse. He lost the ability to eat or drink, even with assistance, and he soon died.”

I kept my face expressionless, which took some effort. What a horrible way to die, and what a horrible knowledge to cany around with you, if you were the one who had tried to cure him. “What had happened to him?”

“He’d been badly beaten by robbers.”

“I see.” I almost asked the next obvious question, but then I decided not to. “That must not be an easy thing to live with.”

“Better for me than for him.”

“Not necessarily,” I said, thinking of Deathgate Falls.

“Maybe you’re right.”

“In any case, I understand why you want to be careful.”

“Yes.”

She went over and sat down in front of Savn once again, staring at him and holding his shoulders. In a little while she said, “He seems to be a nice young man, somewhere inside. I think you’d like him.”

“I probably would,” I said. “I like most people.”

“Even the ones you steal from?”

“Especially the ones I steal from.”

She didn’t laugh. Instead she said, “How do you know I won’t turn you over to the Empire?”

That startled me, although I don’t know why it should have. “Will you?” I said.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be telling me that.”

She shook her head. “You aren’t a killer,” she said.

“You know that?”

“Yes.” She added, “The other one, the Easterner, he’s a killer.”

I shrugged. “What could you tell the Empire, anyway? That I’m a thief? They know that; they’ve heard of me. That I stole something? They’ll ask what I stole. You’ll tell them, by which time Vlad will have hidden it, or maybe even returned it. Then what? Do you expect them to be grateful?”

She glared at me. “I wasn’t actually going to tell them, anyway.”

I nodded.

A few minutes later she said, “You can’t have known the Easterner long—they don’t live long enough. Yet you treat him as a friend.”

“He is a friend.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t know, either,” I said.

“But—”

“What you’re asking,” I said, “is whether he can really do what he says he can do.”

“And whether he will,” she agreed.

“Right. I think he can; he’s good at putting things together. In any case, I know that he’ll try. In fact, knowing Vlad ...”

“Yes?”

“He might very well try so hard he gets himself killed.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that, so she turned her attention back to Savn. Thinking about Savn didn’t help me any, and thinking about Vlad getting killed was worse, so I went out and took a walk. Buddy came along, either because he liked my company or because he didn’t trust me and wanted to keep an eye on me.

Good dog, either way.

By the time we returned, it was getting dark, and Vlad was sitting at the kitchen table, with a bandage wrapped around his left forearm and no hair growing above his lip. I’m not sure which surprised me more. I think it was the lack of hair.

There was some blood leaking through the bandage, but Vlad didn’t seem to be weak or even greatly disturbed. Buddy bounded up to him, asked him to play, sniffed at his wound, and looked hurt when Vlad pulled his arm out of reach. Loiosh watched the display with what I would have guessed to be disdain if I ever knew what jhereg were thinking.

He saw me looking at him and said, “Don’t worry. It’ll grow back.”

“Well,” I said. “You seem to have been busy.”

“Yes.”

“How long since you’ve returned?”

“Not long. Half an hour or so.”

“Learn anything?”

“Yes.”

I sat down opposite him. Savn was on the floor, resting. The old woman sat beside him, watching us.

“Shall we start at the beginning?”

“I’d like a glass of water first.”

The old woman started to get up, but I motioned her to sit, went outside to the well, filled a pitcher, brought it in, filled a cup, and gave it to Vlad. He drank it all, slowly and carefully.

“More?” I said.

“Please.”

I brought him more; he drank some of it, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and nodded to me.

I said, “Well?”

He shrugged. “The beginning was your own story.”

“Go on.”

He said, “It didn’t make sense.”

“So I gathered at the time. What part of it didn’t make sense?”

He frowned and said, “Kiera, have you ever been involved in investigating someone’s death—in trying to determine cause of death?”

“No, I can’t say I have. Have you?”

“No, but I’ve been concerned with several, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean. And I have an idea of what’s involved in an investigation like that.” I shrugged. “What about it?”

“How long does it take to decide that someone wasn’t murdered?”

“Wasn’t murdered?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Looking at the body—”

“Takes a day, maybe two, if he was murdered.”

“Well, yes, but to prove a negative—”

“Exactly.”

“They’d have to go over him pretty carefully, I suppose.”

“Yes. Very carefully. And they look at everything else, too—such as if he was the sort of person likely to be murdered, or if there is anything suspicious in the timing of his death, or—”

“Exactly the sort of circumstances that surrounded Fyres’s death.”

“Yes. Fyres’s death would set off every alarm they have. If you were the chief investigator, wouldn’t you want to be extra careful before putting your chop on a report that stated he died of mischance attributable to no human agency, or however they put it?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Your friend the Jhereg told you that the Imperial investigators had determined the cause of death to be accidental.”

“And?”

“And when did Fyres die?”

“A few weeks ago.”

He nodded. “Exactly. A few weeks ago. Kiera, they can’t have decided that this quickly. The only thing they could know this quickly is if it was a murder.”

“I see your point. What’s your conclusion?”

“That either your friend Stony lied to you or—”

“Or someone lied to Stony.”

“Yes. And who would lie to Stony about something like this? Of those, who would he believe?”

“No one.”

“Tsk.”

“He’s a naturally suspicious fellow.”

“Well, but who would he believe?”

I shrugged. “The Empire, I suppose.”

“Exactly.”

“But the Empire wouldn’t lie.”

Vlad raised his eyebrows eloquently.

I shook my head. “You can’t be implying that the Imperial investigators—”

“Yep.”

“No.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“Why would they? How could they hope to get away with it? How many of them would have to be bought off, and how much would it cost? And consider how closely their report is going to be looked at, and think about the risks they run. They’d have to know they’d get caught eventually.”

Vlad nodded. “Certainly valid points, Kiera. That’s exactly what was bothering me yesterday when you told me about your conversation with Stony.”

“Well, then—”

“Kiera, how about if I just tell you what I’ve been up to, and you form your own conclusions?”

I nodded. “Okay, I’m listening. No, wait a minute.” I helped myself to a glass of water, set the pitcher next to me, sat down, and stretched out. “Okay,” I said. “Go ahead.”

Vlad took another drink of water, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and began speaking.

Chapter Five

First, of course, I had to find out who had carried out the investigation. I was afraid that the Empire had brought people in from Adrilankha and that these people had already returned, which meant a teleport to our beloved capital, about which idea I was less than thrilled, as you can imagine.

But one step at a time. I could have found a minstrel—I have an arrangement with their Guild—but news travels in both directions by that source, so I tried something different.

I made the tentative assumption that some things are universal, so I walked around until I found the seediest-looking barbershop in the area. Barbershops are more common in the East and in the Easterners’ section of Adrilankha—barbers cut whiskers as well as head hair—but they exist everywhere. I’ll bet you’d never thought of that, Kiera; whiskers aren’t just a distinguishing feature; they have to be tended to. Fortunately, I have sharp enough blades that I don’t have to go to barbershops for my own whiskers, but most Easterners don’t have knives that sharp. But even in the East, Noish-pa tells me, barbershops are pretty much the same as they are here.

The barber, who seemed to be a Vallista, and a particularly ugly one at that, looked at me, looked at Loiosh, looked at my rapier, and opened his mouth—probably to explain that he didn’t serve Easterners—but Loiosh hissed at him before he had a chance to say anything. While he was trying to come up with an answer for Loiosh, I walked over to the chairs where customers waited. There was a little table next to them, and I found what I was looking for in about two seconds.

It had a title, Rutter’s Rag, in big, hand-scrawled letters along the top, and it was mostly full of nasty remarks about city officials I’d never heard of, and it asked the Empire questions about its tax policy, implying that certain pirates were taking lessons from the Empire. It had a list of the banks that had closed suddenly—I assume it included the one our hostess used—and suggested that they were having a race to see which of them could clear out and vanish quickest, while wondering if the Empire, which allowed them to shut their doors on people who had their life savings in them, was really incompetent enough not to have known they were going under, or if this was now to be considered official Imperial policy.

It also, interestingly enough, made some ironic comments about Fyres’s death—suggesting that those who had invested in his companies had gotten what they deserved. But that wasn’t what I was after. Of course, it didn’t give the real name of whoever produced it, but that didn’t matter.

“What do you want?” said the barber.

“I want to know who delivers this to you.”

That confused him, because I didn’t look like a Guardsman, and, besides, they don’t really care about sheets like this. But printing it was technically illegal, and those involved in it certainly wouldn’t want to be known, so I knew I was going to have to persuade him. I tossed an imperial his way just as he was starting to shake his head. He caught it, opened his mouth, closed it, and started to toss it back. I put a couple of knives into the wall on either side of his head. Good thing I’d been practicing or I might have cut his hair. In any case, I do believe I frightened the man, judging by the squeaks he made.

He said, “A kid named Tip.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I don’t know.”

I pulled another throwing knife (my last one, actually—I’d just recently bought them) and waited.

“He lives around here somewhere,” squeaked the barber. “Ask around. You’ll find him.”

“If I don’t,” I said, “when do you expect him to deliver another one of these?”

“A couple of weeks,” he said. “But I don’t know exactly when. I never know when they’ll show up.”

“Good enough,” I said. I took a step toward him and he moved away, but I was only going to get my knives. I put them away and walked back out, turned right at random, and stepped into the first alley I got to. And there they were—another eight urchins, mixed sexes, mixed Houses. Street kids don’t seem to care much what your House is. There may be a moral there, but probably not.

I walked up to them and waited a moment to give them a good look. They studied me with a lot of suspicion, a little curiosity, but not much fear. I mean, I was only an Easterner, and maybe I had a sword, but there were still eight of them. Then I said, “Do any of you know Tip?”

A girl, who seemed to be about seventy and might have been the leader and might have been a Tiassa, said, “Maybe.”

A boy said, “What you want him for? He in trouble?”

Someone else said, “You a bird?”

Someone else asked to see my sword.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m a bird. I’m going to arrest him as a threat to Imperial security, and then I’m going to haul him away and torture him. Any other questions?”

There were a few chuckles.

“Who are you?” said the girl.

I shrugged and took out an imperial. “A rich man who wants to spread his wealth around. Who are you?”

They all turned to look at the girl. Yes, she was definitely in charge. “Laache,” she said. “Is that thing your pet?” she asked.

“Go ahead, explain it, boss.”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

“His name is Loiosh,” I said. “He’s my friend. He flies around and looks at things for me.”

“What does he look at?”

“For example, if I were to give this imperial to someone to bring Tip back, he’d fly around and make sure whoever I gave it to didn’t scoot off with it. If someone took this imperial and told me where Tip could be found, Loiosh would wait with that person until I was certain I hadn’t been fooled.”

One of the boys said, “He can’t really tell you where someone went, can he?”

Laache grinned at me. “You think we’d do something like that?”

“Nope.”

“What reason do I give Tip for showing up?”

I brought forth another imperial. “For him,” I said.

“You sure he isn’t in trouble?”

“No. I’ve never seen him before. For all I know, he might have robbed the Imperial Treasury.”

She gave me a very adultlike smile and held out her hand; I gave her one of the coins.

“Wait here,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

When she left, Loiosh flew off and followed her, which elicited a gasp from the assembled urchinhood.

With her gone, the mood changed—the rest of them seemed suddenly uncomfortable, like they didn’t know quite what to do with me. That worked out all right, because I didn’t know what to do with them, either. I leaned against a wall and tried to look self-assured; they clumped together and held quiet conversations and pretended they were ignoring me.

After about fifteen minutes, Loiosh said, “She’s found someone, boss. She’s talking to him.”

“And ... ?”

“Okay, they’re coming.”

“Hooray. Where are they now?”

“Just around the corner.”

I said, “Laache and Tip will be here soon.”

They looked at me, and one of them said, “How d’you—” and cut himself off. I smiled enigmatically, noticing the looks of respect and fear. Sort of the way my employees used to look at me, way back when. I wondered if I’d come down in the world. If I handled things just right, I could maybe take the gang over from Laache. Vlad Taltos—toughest little kid on the block. I was the youngest, too.

They appeared then—Laache with a young man who seemed to be about the same age as her, and who I’d have guessed to be an Orca—a bit squat for a Dragaeran, with a pale complexion, light brown hair, and blue eyes. Old memories of being harassed by Orca just about his age came up to annoy me, but I ignored them—what was I going to do, beat him up?

He was looking a bit leery and keeping his distance. Before he could say anything, I flipped him an imperial. He made it vanish.

“What do you want?” he said.

“You’re Tip?”

“What if I am?”

“Let us walk together and talk together, one with the other, out of range of the eager ears of those who would thwart our intentions.”

“Huh?”

“Come here a minute, I want to ask you something.”

“Ask me what?”

“I’d rather not say out here where everyone can hear me.”

Someone whispered something, and someone else giggled. Tip scowled and said, “All right.”

I walked up to him and we walked down the alley about twenty yards, and I said, “I’ll give you another imperial if you’ll take me to the man who prints Rutter’s Rag,” and he was off down the alley as fast as his feet could carry him. He turned the corner and was gone.

“You know what to do, Loiosh.”

“Yeah, yeah. On my way, boss.”

I turned back and the kids were all looking at me—and looking at Loiosh flying off into the city.

“Thanks for your help,” I called to them. “See you again, maybe.”

I strolled on down the alley. It was, of course, possible that Laache had told Tip about Loiosh, but, as we followed him, he didn’t seem to be watching above him.

He stayed with the alleys and finally, after looking around him carefully, stepped into a little door. Loiosh returned to me and guided me along the same path he’d taken, and to the door. It wasn’t locked.

It seemed to be a storeroom of some sort; a quick check revealed that what was stored included a great deal of paper and drums of what had to be ink, judging by the smell coming off them and filling up the room.

“Ah ha,” I told Loiosh.

“Lucky,” he said.

“Clever,” I suggested.

“Lucky.”

“Shut up.”

I heard voices coming from my right, where there was a narrow, dark stairway. I took the stairs either silently or carefully—they tend to be the same thing. But you know that, Kiera. When I reached the bottom, I saw them, illuminated by a small lamp. One was Tip, the other was an old man who seemed to be a Tsalmoth, to judge from the ruddiness of his complexion and his build. I couldn’t see what colors he wore. He didn’t see me at all. The man was seated in front of a desk that was filled with desk things. Tip was standing next to him, saying, “I’m sure he was an Easterner. I know an Easterner when I see one,” which was too good an entrance line for me to ignore.

I said, “Judge for yourself,” and had the satisfaction of seeing them both jump.

I gave them my warmest smile, and the Tsalmoth scrabbled around in a drawer in his desk and came out with a narrow rod that, no doubt, had been prepared with some terrible, nasty killing thing. I said, “Don’t be stupid,” and took my own advice by allowing Spellbreaker to fall into my hand.

He pointed the rod at me and said, “What do you want?”

“Don’t blame the boy,” I said. “I’m very hard to lose when I want to follow someone.”

“What do you want?” he said again. His dialogue seemed pretty limited.

“Actually,” I said, “not very much. It won’t even be inconvenient, and I’ll pay you for it. But if you don’t put that thing down, I’m likely to become frightened, and then I’m likely to hurt you.”

He looked at me, then looked at Spellbreaker, which to all appearances is just a length of gold-colored chain, and said, “I think I’ll keep it in hand, if you don’t mind.”

“I mind,” I said.

He looked at me some more. I waited. He put the rod down. I wrapped Spellbreaker back around my left wrist.

“What is it, then?”

“Perhaps the boy should take a walk.”

He nodded to Tip, who seemed a little nervous about walking past me, so I stepped to the side. He almost ran to the stairs, stopping just long enough to take the imperial I threw to him. “Don’t squander it,” I said as he raced past me.

There was another chair near the desk, so I sat down in-it, crossed my legs, and said, “My name is Padraic.” Quit laughing, Kiera; it’s a perfectly reasonable Eastern name, and no Dragaeran in the world is going to look at me and decide I don’t look right. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I said, “My name is Padraic.”

He grunted and said, “My name is Tollar, but you might as well call me Rutter; there’s no point in my denying it, I suppose.”

He was a frightened man trying to be brave; I’ve always had a certain amount of sympathy for that type. From this close, he didn’t seem as old as I’d first thought him, but he didn’t seem especially healthy, either, and his hair was thin and sort of wispy—you could see his scalp in places, like an Easterner who is just beginning to go bald.

He said, “You have me at a disadvantage.”

“Sure,” I said. “But there’s no need to worry about it. I just need to find out a couple of things, and I took the easiest method I could think of.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I ask you a couple of questions that you have no reason not to answer, and then I’m going to give you a couple of imperials for your trouble, and then I’m going to go away. And that’s it.”

“Yeah?” He seemed skeptical. “What sort of questions, and why are you asking me?”

“Because you have that rag of yours. That means you hear things. You pick up gossip. You have ways of finding out things.”

He started to relax a little. “Well, yeah. Some things. Where should I start?”

I shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. What’s the good gossip since the last rag came out?”

“Local?”

“Or Imperial.”

“The Empress is missing.”

“Again?”

“Yeah. Rumor is she’s off with her lover.”

“That’s four times in three years, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“But she always comes back.”

“First time it was for three days, second time for nine days, the third time for six days.”

“What else?”

“Imperial?”

“Yeah.”

“Someone high up in the Empire dipped his hand into the war chest during the Elde Island war. No one knows who, and probably not for very much, but the Empress is a bit steamed about it.”

“I can imagine.”

“More?”

“Please.”

“I’m better on local things.”

“Know anything that’s both local and Imperial?”

“Well, the whole Fyres thing.”

“What do you know about that?”

“Not much, really. There’s confirmation that his death was accidental.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“That’s what I hear.”

“I hear the Empire is investigating his death.”

He snorted. “Who doesn’t know that?”

“Right. Who’s doing the investigating?”

He looked at me, and I could see him going, “Ah ha!” just like me. He said, “You mean, their names?”

“Yeah.”

“I have no idea.”

I looked at him. He didn’t seem to be lying. I said, “Where are they working out of?”

“You mean, where do they meet?”

“Right.”

“City Hall.”

“Where in City Hall?”

“Third floor.”

“The whole floor?”

“No, no. The third floor is where the officers of the Phoenix Guard are stationed. There are a couple of rooms set aside for any senior officials who might show up. They’re using those.”

“Which rooms?”

“Two rooms at the east end of the building, one on each side of the hall.”

“And they haven’t gone back to Adrilankha yet?”

“No, no. They’re still hard at it.”

“How could they still be hard at it if they already know what the answer is?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I imagine they’re just tying up loose ends and doing their final checking. But that’s just a guess.”

“Which wouldn’t stop you from printing it as a fact.”

He shrugged.

I said, “Heard anything about their schedule?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean when they expect to be finished.”

“Oh. No, I haven’t.”

“Okay.” I dug out three imperials and handed them to him. “See?” I said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He wasn’t worried anymore. He said, “Why is it you want to know all of this?”

I shook my head. “That’s a dangerous question.”

“Oh?”

“If you ask it, I might answer it. And if I answered it, the answer might appear as gossip in your lovely little sheet. And if that happened, I would have to kill you.”

He looked at me and seemed like a frightened old man again. I stood up and walked out without a backward glance.

I told you they were getting tired of seeing me at City Hall, which was another problem, so I tried out a disguise. The first problem was my mustache, so it went. It took a lot of time, too, because even after you shave it off, you have to scrape quite a bit at the whiskers to make sure they don’t show at all. The next problem was my height. I found a cobbler who sold me some boots which he then put about eight extra inches on, leaving me about Aliera’s height, which I hoped would be good enough. Then I had to practice walking in them and taking long strides. Have you ever tried walking in boots with eight extra inches of sole? Don’t. Then I broke into a theater to steal a wig with a noble’s point and get some powder to hide the traces of whiskers, then I bought some new clothes, including trousers long enough to hide the shoes but not long enough to trip on. I practiced swaggering just a bit. Kiera, this was not easy—I had to keep my balance, take strides long enough so it wouldn’t look funny with my height, and swagger, for the love of Verra. I felt like a complete idiot. On the other hand, I didn’t draw any funny looks while I was walking around, so I figured I had a chance of pulling it off.

I hid my clothes and my blade behind a handy public house half a mile or so from City Hall. So I did all that, dressing myself up like a Chreotha so people would feel free to push me around. You can learn a lot letting people push you around, and it’s always nice knowing that you can push back whenever you want.

I told Loiosh to wait for me outside, which he didn’t like but was unavoidable. Then I walked into the place like I knew my business, went up a flight of stairs to take me past the nice Lyorn who’d been helping me so far, found another flight of stairs, turned right, and looked down to the end of the hall. There were three or four people sitting on plain wooden chairs in the hall. Three men, one woman, all of them Orca except for one poor fellow who seemed to be a Teckla.

I leaned against a wall and watched for a while, until the right-hand door opened and a middle-aged Orca walked out. A moment later, as she was walking past me, one of those waiting went in. I walked past and entered the door to the left.

There was a sharp-looking young Dragonlord sitting at a desk. He said, “Good day, my lord.”

How long was I a Jhereg, Kiera? Hard to say, I suppose; it depends when you start counting and when you stop. But a long time, anyway, and that’s a long time spent getting so you can smell authority—so you know you’re looking at an officer of the Guard before you really know how you know. Well, I walked through that door, and I knew.

He was, as I said, a Dragonlord, and one who worked for the Phoenix Guards, or for the Empire; yet he was dressed in plain black pants and shirt with only the least bit of silver; his hair was very short, his complexion just a bit dark, his nose just a bit aquiline; he rather looked like Morrolan, now that I think of it. But I’ve never seen Morrolan’s eyes look quite that cold and that calculating; I’ve never seen anyone look like that except for an assassin named Ishtvan, who I used a couple of times and killed not long ago. It took me about a quarter of a second to decide that I didn’t want to go up against this guy if I could avoid it.

I said, “My lord, you are looking into the death of Lord Fyres?”

“That’s right. Who called you in?”

“No one, my lord,” I said, trying to sound humble.

“No one?”

“I came on my own, when I heard about it.”

“Heard about what?”

“The investigation.”

“How did you hear?”

I had no idea how to answer that one, so I shrugged helplessly.

He was starting to look very hard at me. “What’s your name?” he said. I was no longer his lord.

“Kaldor,” I said.

“Where do you live, Kaldor?”

“Number six Coattail Bend, my lord.”

“That’s here in Northport?”

“Yes, my lord, in the city.”

He wrote something down on a piece of paper and said, “My name is Loftis. Wait in the hall; we’ll call you.”

“Yes, my lord.”

I gave him a very humble bow and stepped back into the hall, feeling nervous. I’m a good actor, and I’m okay with disguises, but that guy scared me. I guess I’d been working on the assumption that the Imperial investigators were on the take, and I’d gone from there to the assumption that they must be pretty lousy investigators. Actually, that was stupid; I know from my own dealings with the Guard that just because one of them is on the take doesn’t mean he can’t do his job, but I hadn’t thought it through, and now I was worried; Loftis didn’t seem to be someone I could put much over on, at least not without a lot more work than I’d put in.

So, of course, I listened. I assumed that they’d be able to detect sorcery, but I doubted they’d be looking for witchcraft, so I took the black Phoenix Stone off and slipped it into my pouch—hoping, of course, that the Jhereg wouldn’t pick that moment to attempt a psychic location spell. I leaned my head back against the wall, closed my eyes, and concentrated on sending my hearing through the wall. It took some work, and it took some time, but soon I could hear voices, and after a bit I could distinguish words.

“Who do you think sent him?” I wasn’t sure if that was Loftis.

“Don’t be stupid.” That was Loftis.

“What, you’re saying it was the Candlestick?”

“In the first place, Domm, when you’re around me, you’ll be respectful when speaking of Her Majesty.”

“Oh, well pardon my feet for touching the ground.”

“And in the second place, no. I mean we have no way of knowing who sent him, and if we’re going to do this—”

“We’re going to do this.”

“—we should at least be careful about it. And being careful means finding out.”

“He could have given us his right address.”

“Sure. And he could be the King of Elde Island, too. You follow him, Domm. And don’t let him pick up on you.”

“You want to put those orders in writing, Lieutenant?”

“Would you like to eat nine inches of steel, Lieutenant?”

“Don’t push me, Loftis.”

“Or we could just dump the whole thing on Papa-cat’s lap and let him decide our next step. Want to do that? How do you think he’d feel about it?”

“I could tell him it was your idea.”

“Sure. Do it. I’m sure he’ll believe you, too. You know as sure as Verra’s tits I’ll roll on this as soon as I have a good excuse. Go ahead. My protests are down in writing, Domm. How about you? Did you just shrug and say, ‘Hey, sure, sounds like fun’? Probably. So go ahead.”

“Lieutenant, sir, with all respect, my lord, you tire me.”

“Tough. You’ve got your orders, my lord lieutenant. Carry them out.”

“All right, all right. You know how much I love legwork, and I know how much you care about what I love. I’ll wait until his interview is over, then pick him up. Should I bring some backup?”

“Yeah. Take Timmer; she’s good at tailing, and she hasn’t stirred her butt since she’s been here.”

“Okay. What should I tell Birdie about the interview?”

“Play it straight, see what he has to say, and try to keep the bell ringing.”

“Huh?”

“Battle of Waterford Landing, Domm. Tenth Cycle, early Dragon Reign. A border skirmish between a couple of Lyorn over rights to—”

“Oh, now that’s extremely useful, Loftis. Thanks. Why don’t you skip the history, and the obscure references, and just tell me what you want Birdie to do.”

“I mean Birdie should try to get him talking, and then just keep drawing him out until there isn’t anything left to draw.”

“And if he won’t be drawn?”

“Then that’ll tell us something, too.”

“Okay.”

“You got to admit this is better than just sitting here day after day pretending. At least it’s doing something.”

“I suppose. Mind if I put him in front of the queue so I don’t have to wait all night?”

“Yeah, I mind. Nothing to make him suspicious. You can put him in front of the Teckla if you want.”

“Okay. Hey, Loftis.”

“Yeah?”

“You ever wonder why?”

“Why what? Why we got the word?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a laugh. I haven’t been doing anything but wondering why for the last two weeks.”

“Yeah.”

They stopped talking. I moved my head forward, replaced the Phoenix Stone around my neck, and didn’t look as someone I didn’t recognize walked out of the door and across the hall. An instant later he came back. I watched him, as did all of the others who were waiting, but he didn’t look at me at all. Assuming that was Domm, my opinion of him went up a bit—it isn’t easy to avoid taking even a quick glance at someone you’re going to be following in a few minutes. I got the uncomfortable feeling that I was dealing with professionals here.

I sat there trying to decide if I should skip out now, which would mean I wouldn’t have to worry about losing the tail and would give them something to wonder about, or if I should go ahead and let them interview me, and hope to pick up more information that way. I decided to gamble, because, now that I had a better idea of what was going on, as well as how they were going to handle me, I felt like I could maybe learn a bit. I was glad Domm had demanded the explanation for “keep ringing the bell,” because it would have been a mistake to have asked Loftis myself.

Someone else showed up, went into the room I’d just come out of, then emerged and took a seat next to me. We didn’t speak. None of us had so much as made eye contact with any of the others. But as I sat there waiting for about an hour and a half planning what kind of story I was going to tell them, I didn’t get any less nervous.

When they finally called out “Kaldor,” it took me a moment to realize that was the name I’d given them. I tell you, Kiera, I’m not made for a life of deception. But I shuffled into the office, still taking long strides and swaggering, but shuffling, too, if you can imagine it, where sat a fairly young, competent-looking Lyorn behind yet another desk. I’ve been seeing a great number of desks lately—it makes me miss my own. I don’t know what it is about a desk that gives one a feeling of power—perhaps it is that, when you are facing someone behind a desk, you don’t know what is concealed within it; the contents of a desk can be worse than a nest of yendi.

The chair he pointed me to was another of the inevitable plain, wooden chairs—there’s something about those, too, now that I think of it.

He said, “I am the Baron of Daythiefnest. You are Kaldor?”

Daythiefnest? Birdie. I didn’t laugh. “Yes, my lord.”

“Number three Coattail Bend?”

“Number six, my lord.” Heh. Caught that one, at least.

“Right, sorry. And you have come in on your own?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Why?”

“My lord?”

“What brought you here?”

“The investigation, my lord. I have information.”

“Ah. You have information about Fyres’s death?”

“Yes, my lord.”

He studied me carefully, but, as far as intimidation went, he was nothing compared to Loftis. Of course, it wouldn’t do to tell him so; it might hurt his feelings.

“And what is this information?”

“Well, my lord, after work—”

“What sort of work do you do, Kaldor?”

“I mend things, my lord. That is, I mend clothes, and sometimes I mend pots and pans, except my tools got took, which I reported to the Guard, my lord, and I mend sails for sailors sometimes, and—”

“Yes, I understand. Go on.”

“I know that you aren’t the gentlemen who are going to get my tools back, that’s a different outfit.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“Go on?”

“After work ...”

“Oh, right. Well, after work, on the days I have work, I like to go into the Riversend. Do you know where that is?”

“I can find it.”

“Oh, it’s right nearby. You just take Kelp down to where it curves—”

“Yes, yes. Go on.”

“Right, my lord. Well, I was in there having a nice glass of ale—”

“When was this?”

“Last Marketday, my lord.”

“Very well.”

“Well, I’d been drinking a fair bit, and I’d gotten a kind of early start, so before I knew it I was seeing the room go spinning around me, the way it does when you know you’ve had more than maybe you should?”

“Yes. You were drunk.”

“That’s it, my lord. I was drunk. And then the room spun, and then I must have fallen asleep.”

“Passed out.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Well?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Get on with it.”

“Oh. Yes, my lord. I must have been sleeping five, six hours, because when I woke up, needing to relieve myself, you understand, I wasn’t nearly so drunk, and I was lying on one of the benches they have in back, and the place was almost empty—there was Trim, the host, who was in the far corner cleaning up, and there was me, and there were these two gentlemen sitting at a table right next to me, and they were talking kind of quiet, but I could hear them, you know, my lord? And it was pretty dark, and I wasn’t moving, so I don’t think they knew I was there.”

“Well, go on.”

“One of them said, ‘If you ask me, they didn’t get anything.’ And the other one said, ‘Oh, no? Well, I’ll tell you something, they got a lot, and it’s going on the market next week,’ and the first one said, ‘What’s it going for?’ and the other one said, ‘A lot. It has to be a lot. If someone is going to lighten Fyres, especially after he’s dead, and not take anything but a bunch of papers, they must be important.’ And the first one said, ‘Maybe that’s what he was killed for?’ And the other one said, ‘Killed? Naw, he just fell and hit his head.’ And then, my lord, I sort of figured out what they were saying, even though I was still maybe a bit woozy, and I knew I didn’t want to hear any more, so I moaned like I was just waking up, and they saw me, and they stopped talking right then. And I tumbled out of there, singing to myself like I was even drunker than I was, and I went out the back way and I beat it for home as quick as I could, and I didn’t even settle up with Trim until the next day. But, as I was walking out, just at the last minute, I took a quick look at the two gentlemen. I couldn’t see their faces too well, but I could see their colors, and they were both Jhereg. I’ll swear it. And that’s what I have, my lord.”

“That’s what you have?”

“Yes, my lord.”

He stared at me like I was a rotten pear and he’d just bit into me, and he thought for a while. “Why did you come and see us now, and not two weeks ago?”

“Well, because I heard of the reward, and I was thinking about my tools that got stole, and—”

“What reward?”

“The reward for anyone who gives evidence about how Fyres died.”

“There’s no reward.”

“There’s no reward?”

“Not at all. Where did you hear such a thing?”

“Why, just yesterday, down at the Riversend, a lady told me that she’d heard—”

“She was deceived, my friend. And so were you.”

“My lord?”

“There isn’t any reward for anything. We’re just trying to find out what happened.”

“Oh.” I tried to look disappointed.

He said, “How did you learn to come here, by the way?”

“How, my lord?”

“Yes.”

“Why, the lady, she was a Tsalmoth, and she told me.”

“I see. Who was this lady?”

“Well, I don’t know, my lord. I’d never seen her before, but she was—” I squinted as if I was trying to remember. “Oh, she was about eight hundred, and sort of tall, and her hair curled, and she was, you know, a Tsalmoth.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there isn’t any reward.”

I looked disappointed but said, “Well, that’s all right, my lord; I’m just glad to have done the right thing.”

“Yes, indeed. Well, we know where to reach you if we have any more questions.”

I stood up and bowed. “Yes, my lord. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he said, and that was it for the interview.

I walked out the door without seeing anyone except those who were waiting for their turn, and I took my time going down the stairs. As I went, I said, “Loiosh?”

“Right here, boss.”

“I’m going to be followed, so stay back for a while.”

“Okay. Who’s going to follow you, boss?”

“I don’t know, but I think the enemy.”

“Oh, we have an enemy now?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“It’s nice to have an enemy, boss. Where are you taking them?”

“Good question,” I said. “I’ll let you know when we get there.”

Chapter Six

I stood on the street, just outside City Hall, not looking behind me and trying to stay in character while figuring out where to go and what to do. You don’t get tailed all that often, at least when you know it’s happening, and an opportunity like that ought not to be wasted.

“I’ve spotted ‘em, boss. Two of ‘em. Pros.”

“What are they doing?”

“Waiting for you to do something.”

“Good. Let them wait.”

I’d done what I actually set out to do, of course—it was easy to fill in the missing pieces of Loftis’s conversation with Domm, and the missing pieces said that they were faking their way through the investigation and putting out the results they were told to, and that was confirmed by the way the other one, Daythiefnest, had been more concerned with how I knew enough to find them and why I wanted to than with the information itself. But what now? Knowing the investigation was faked brought up the possibility (although not the certainty by any means) that Fyres was, in fact, murdered, but it got me no closer to learning who was pulling the financial strings, or who in the next few months and years would be.

But more than that, Kiera, I was bothered, just as you were when I first suggested it. Why would the Empire do something like that? I’d never heard of it being done, and it would take, well, someone very highly placed in the Empire, and a very strong need, to attempt it. The question was who—who in the Empire and who in Fyres’s world? And I didn’t know anyone who inhabited either realm.

I mentally ran through the notes I’d made when reading the files you lightened Fyres of. Based on what I picked up from the files, and based on what your friend Stony told you, I’d guess that Fyres’s children were somewhere near the center of things—that is, he was certainly going to leave his kids in charge of as much as possible, divided up according to his best guess about who could handle what and how much. He had a wife, one son, and two daughters, as well as a few other scattered relatives.

The wife, I heard somewhere, used to be third mate in a man-o’-war, which might indicate leadership qualities, but according to the files, he never seemed to trust her; and she never had anything to do with his business. There was just enough gossip floating around about his son for me to get the idea that everything he touched turned to mud; over the years, Fyres trusted him with less and less. If I had to guess about the will, I’d say Fyres left him with a house or two, a bunch of cash, and nothing else.

That left the daughters: the younger, Baroness of Reega, and the older, the Countess of Endra. It seemed from Fyres’s notes that, as time went on, he was giving them more and more responsibility and working them into his businesses. Right then, Kiera, I really wished I had my old organization, because I could have made one remark to Kragar—how’s he doing, by the way?—and in two days I would know everything possible about them. I hate doing the leg work myself, and, more important, I just didn’t have time to do it.

Well, if all I could do was blunder about, I might as well get to it, I decided, and I turned around and back into City Hall I went. I didn’t see those tailing me scramble out of my way; in fact, I didn’t see them at all.

The nice Lyorn didn’t recognize me and were far more helpful to Kaldor the Chreotha than they’d been to Padraic the Easterner—what they would have thought of Vlad the Jhereg I don’t even want to think about. Oh, and they weren’t all Lyorn, either, just for the record—but the ones who weren’t looked like they wanted to be. Enough said.

In two minutes I was in front of the collection of city maps, and it took me about half an hour to determine that neither a barony of Reega nor a county of Endra could be found in the area. So I puttered around some more and found out that neither one actually existed—they were titles without places to go with them, which I suppose I should have expected of Orca. I then dug into the citizen rolls, which took a fair bit of time. I could have done it faster by asking for help, but then, no doubt, my shadows would have been able to find out what I was up to and I wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

Endra—that is, the person—lived high on Vantage Hill, overlooking a little town called Harper on the outskirts of Northport. It was, I calculated, only an hour’s walk, and I liked the idea of Domm and Timmer getting blisters on their feet; besides, you know how I feel about horses. So I set out. The day was nice, with a mild breeze blowing in from the sea. As I walked, I made a few minor but important adjustments to my costume—you know, I turned up the collar, I fixed my hair, I straightened my buttons, and, generally, I made myself appear more prosperous, because I figured I had to reach a certain social level before I’d have a chance that Endra—or, more likely, whoever answered the door for her—would even consider letting me see her.

One thing I’d forgotten when I set out was that, since I was still in my disguise, I was wearing the platform boots that didn’t fit me very well; about halfway there I started calling myself names, and Loiosh, trailing behind to keep an eye on my shadows, starting laughing at me. And I was a bit worried about not having my sword with me. And it made me nervous to know there were two people following me. In other words, I was not in a good mood by the time I reached Vantage Hill.

Endra’s place was pretty simple, actually. It was a plain house, standing by itself on a little hillock, but it was certainly well built, and it struck me as comfortable. The grounds were well manicured with some nicely behaved trees in a neat row and trimmed grass and patches of garden, but not molded and tended like the Imperial Palace, or like The Demon’s place, if you’ve ever been to—Oh, of course you’ve been there. Sorry.

I don’t know. As I approached it, I was thinking that maybe I’d been spoiled by Castle Black and Dzur Mountain, but I had expected something more—I guess ostentatious is the word. But then I remembered your description of Fyres’s place—the one he actually lived in as opposed to one of the places he used to impress people—and it wasn’t as big and impressive as it could have been either, was it? I figured maybe it’s a family trait. It was also interesting that there seemed to be no guards patrolling the area. Fyres’s place had had plenty, but did one generation cause that big a drop-off in the need for security? I hate dealing with things I don’t understand.

I pulled the door clapper and waited. Presently someone opened the door and frowned at me. I bowed and gave him Kaldor as a name, and asked if it would be possible for his mistress to spare me a few minutes of conversation.

He stared at me for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard me correctly. Then he said, “May I ask what your business is with the Countess?”

“I’m afraid it’s private,” I said.

He looked doubtful. I tried to look like I knew my business, which wasn’t as easy as a Chreotha as it would have been in my usual guise, nor was he responding as well as I’d have expected when I looked like myself; I’m not certain why that is. Maybe there’s more shock value in seeing an Easterner at one’s door. Maybe I’d have been better off pretending to be a Dragonlord, but then I probably wouldn’t have learned as much from the Imperial investigators.

Eventually, however, he let me in, and bid me wait while he found out if the Countess was available. I did what everyone has always done in that situation—I looked around. It was big, and it was impressive, and the stairway was white marble that swept up in a gracious curve and complemented the white, white walls broken by—ah, Kiera, my dear, if you’d been there, you’d still be drooling. I don’t have the disposition of a thief, but I was tempted. There were gold plates on the wall, marble busts, crystal sculpture, a tapestry made of bloody damn pearls that would have made you cry. Stained glass embedded with gems. The place didn’t speak of wealth, it screamed it. All of the ostentation I’d looked for on the outside was reserved for the inside, where it destroyed all my little notions about what a plain, simple, unassuming lifestyle this family chose. It was very strange, Kiera, and I couldn’t help wondering at the sort of mind that had produced it.

And then it occurred to me that there was a similarity between the outside and the inside—and that was how little they said. I mean, sure, they screamed money, but what else? You can tell a lot about someone by seeing his home, right? Well, not these people. The place said nothing, really, except that she was rich. Was that because she was shallow, or because she didn’t want anyone to know anything about her?

The servant appeared as I was considering this and said, “The Countess can spare you a few moments. She’s in the library. Please follow me.”

I did so.

The library. Yeah.

Remember those traps Morrolan has in his library? Oh, I imagine you do. Did you ever fall for them? No, I withdraw the question; sorry. But, yeah, everything in the library looked like Morrolan’s traps—great huge tomes with jewel-encrusted covers chained to pedestals. Well, okay, so I’m overstating it a bit. But that was how the library felt—everything looked good, but it didn’t give you the feeling you wanted to sit down and read anything. The library wasn’t for reading, it was for meeting people in an atmosphere that tried to be intellectual. Or that’s how it struck me, at any rate. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve just never known enough rich people to have an opinion—maybe they have their own rules, or maybe they’re trying to make up with money what they’ve been denied by birth; I don’t know. I’m just giving it to you as it hit me at the time.

She was sitting at a table—not a desk, for a change—and reading a book, or pretending to. She looked up as I came in and gave me a quizzical half-smile, then rose to greet me; she was quite thin and had very short, light-colored straight hair—a “warrior’s cut,” in fact, which went oddly with her dress, which was a flowing blue gown. She had the Orca eyebrows—almost invisible—a largish mouth and thin lips, narrow, wide-set eyes, and a strong chin.

Her voice had a bit of the twang of the region, but not as much as our hostess has, or most of the people we’ve been running into around here, and it was quite musical sounding. She said, “Your name again was—?”

“Kaldor, my lady.”

“You wished to speak to me?”

“Yes, my lady, if I may have a few moments.”

“You may. Please sit. Here. What is your business?”

And here, Kiera, is where I paid the price of deceit. Maybe. Because it occurred to me that I might just be able to come out and ask her if she’d be willing to let us buy this land, or at least plead the case. But if she said no, and she was then questioned by Domm, they’d have no trouble tracing me back, and that could be unhealthy.

I said, “My condolences, my lady, on the death of your father.”

She raised an eyebrow—it looked like a practiced maneuver—and said, “Yes, certainly.”

I said, “It is the death of your father that brings me here.”

She nodded again.

I said, “I have reason to believe the Empire is not looking into his death as seriously as they should.”

“That’s absurd.”

“I don’t think so, my lady.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you exactly.”

“You can’t tell me?”

I shook my head. I said, “If you would like, though, a friend of mine who knows something about it will come by, and he can tell you more—he just wanted me to find out if you cared.”

“I care,” she said. “But I don’t believe it.”

“But will you talk to my friend?”

She stared at me very hard, then said, “All right. When can I expect him?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What’s his name?”

“I’m not to say, my lady. He’ll identify himself as my friend, though.”

She looked at me for quite a while, then nodded and said, “All right.”

I stood up and bowed. “I’ve taken enough of your time, I think.”

She stood, which was a courtesy I hadn’t expected, and as I left, the servant came and escorted me to the door. I left the way I’d come and began walking back to town.

What had I accomplished? I’m not certain, but I had left a way open for me to return in some other guise, even as myself, if it seemed appropriate.

I considered the matter as I walked. The day was still young, and I had a long way to go to reach the Baroness of Reega, and my feet were killing me.

Reega lived on a hill—I guess the rich always live on hills, maybe because the aristocrats do—called Winteroak, which was on the northern edge of Northport, overlooking the Kanefthali River Valley. It was quite a hike, so as soon as I was out of sight of Endra’s place I sat down long enough to remove the black Phoenix Stone and perform a quick spell to make my feet feel better. I couldn’t do a whole lot without letting the watchers know what I was up to, but it helped. I put the Phoenix Stone back on and continued. If they were like me when I was following someone, they would have noticed at once that they couldn’t locate me either psychically or sorcerously, and they’d wonder about that, but my luck would have to be awfully bad for them to pick that moment to try again. Sometimes it’s worth a certain amount of risk to alleviate discomfort.

This is a funny part of the world, Kiera. Have you noticed it? The landscape, I mean. Maybe it’s because we’re so far north of the equator, or because the Kanefthali Mountains start only a few hundred miles away—-though I don’t see how that can have anything to do with it. But it seems odd to me that you can walk from the east side of Northport to the west, or from hills overlooking the docks straight north, and you’ll have four completely different landscapes. I mean, along the coast, it might as well be Adrilankha—you’ve got the same kind of ugly red cliffs and the sort of dirt that makes you think nothing could ever grow there no matter what you did. But just a little ways to the east you have these prairies that look like the area around Castle Black and west of Dzur Mountain, and there’s lots of water and it looks like it might be good farmland. And the country around Endra’s is all rocky and hard and pretty in the same way the southern tip of Suntra is pretty—unforgiving, but attractive, anyway. So you head north, along the river to where Reega lives, and it’s like the big forests to the east of Dzur Mountain, almost jungle, only they’ve been cut back because there are a lot of people there, but it isn’t hard to imagine running into a dzur or a tiassa prowling around. Isn’t that strange? I wonder if there’s some magic about it, or if it just happened that way.

But sorry, I’ve wandered away from the point. Reega’s place was nestled in among a lot of trees and stuff, and looked completely untended—there were a good number of other houses in the area, so I had to ask directions a few times to figure out which it was. It was nice, Kiera. I mean it was smaller than Fyres’s or Endra’s, though still quite a bit bigger than this place, but it seemed to want to be a house, instead of a mansion that wanted to be a castle.

Looking at it, I figured that when I clapped she’d answer the door herself, and, as a matter of fact, that’s just what happened.

She was a bit shorter and a bit heavier than her sister, and her hair was longer and curled quite a bit, but they had pretty much the same face. She looked at me the way someone who lived in a house like that ought to look at you, as if she was a bit curious about why someone would want to talk to her—by which I mean, not like the daughter of someone as rich as Fyres ought to look at you. I wondered if I was at the wrong place. I said, “Baroness Reega?”

“That’s right,” she said. “And you are—?”

“Kaldor. May I speak to you for a moment?”

“Concerning what?” she asked. She still seemed polite and friendly, but she hadn’t invited me in.

“Your father.”

“My father?”

“You are the daughter of Lord Fyres, aren’t you?”

“Why, yes I am.”

“Well, then, what I have to say concerns you.”

She gave me a contemplative look and said, “What is it, then?”

It seemed odd to be discussing this standing outside of her house, but it was her choice. I said, “I have reason to believe that the Empire is not looking into his death as thoroughly as they ought to be.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits, and she studied me, and I was suddenly not at all sure of my disguise. She said, “Oh you do, do you?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“And what business is that of yours?”

Ah ha. If you’ve been counting, Kiera, that was the third “ah ha” of the day.

“My lady?”

“Why do you care?”

“Well, I was hoping, you know, that ... uh ...”

“That there would be a reward in it for you?”

“Well—”

She gestured with her hand toward the road behind me. “You may leave now.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I bowed and left. It had been a long walk for a short conversation, but no walk is wasted if there’s an “Ah ha” at the end of it. I shared this thought with Loiosh, who suggested that he could supply me with as many “ah ha’s” as I wanted. I didn’t have an answer handy, so I just headed back to town.

My next stop was the Riversend, because I figured that would give my story some verisimilitude with my shadows, and because it had a back door in case I wanted to use it, and because I had my clothes and my weapons stashed there. If I needed to visit the son and the widow, I figured it would wait, because evening was coming on and my feet were hurting like blazes, and I wanted a good meal and a drink, which was another reason to stop at the Riversend.

But first things first. I asked Loiosh what my shadows were up to. He said, “One’s going around to the back, boss.”

“Is the other one coming in?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

I walked through the tavern, opened up the back door, moved a few empty crates, recovered the bundle that I’d made of my possessions, recovered my sword from behind the garbage pile, and slipped back inside before Timmer or Domm or whoever it was got there. The inn wasn’t very crowded, but no one particularly noticed me, anyway.

I sat down at a table and caused the host (whose name really is Trim, by the way) to bring me some wine, a bowl of fish soup, and whatever fowl they had roasting away over the spit and producing those amazing smells. They were apparently basting it with some sort of honey and lemon mixture that made the fire dance very prettily and made my stomach growl like a dzur.

Trim’s service was very fast, and his food was very good; I hoped that they wouldn’t question the poor bastard, or if they did, that they were nice about it.

I ate, drank, rested, and tried to figure out my next step. The last was the hard part, the others come pretty easy if you practice long enough. Loiosh was getting hungry, too, which I felt bad about, but I needed him to keep watching, so my meal was accompanied by his running complaints. I didn’t allow this to detract from the food, however.

Then Loiosh said, “Boss, the guy’s coming inside.”

“Okay,” I said, and I placed the sword against the wall behind me, resting it against a support beam where it would be, if not hidden, at least not horribly obvious. I made sure I had a dagger near to hand, then I finished sopping up the meal with the remains of the bread—a good black bread made with seeds of some kind.

In fact, they both came in—the man and the woman—and planted themselves in front of me; no doubt they’d received instructions from headquarters. I looked up at them with an expression of profound innocence, to which I tried to mix in a certain amount of alarm.

“Lord Kaldor?” said the man.

I nodded.

“May we speak with you for a moment?”

I nodded again.

“I’m Lieutenant Domm, this is Ensign Timmer, of Her Imperial Majesty’s Guard.”

I nodded for the third time. I was getting good at it.

They sat down, even though I hadn’t invited them to; I think they felt that standing while I sat would make it harder for them to intimidate me. Meanwhile, I tried to act like I was intimidated but trying to act like I wasn’t. I don’t think I did very well—it’s a lot easier to pretend to be tough when you’re scared than to pretend to be scared when you’re tough. Or, at least, it is for me.

“Needany help, boss?”

“Not yet, Loiosh.”

“We’d just like to ask you some questions. We understand that you’ve been telling people that we’re not conducting a thorough investigation into a certain matter. We’d like to know why you think so.”

I was betting on Reega over Endra, so I said, “My lord, I went over to the city hall today, where they’re—you’re—talking to everyone, and I told them what I knew, and they didn’t care, so I figured that must mean—”

“Bullshit,” said Timmer, opening her mouth for the first time. “What’s the real reason?”

“That’s the only—”

She turned to Domm and said, “Let’s take him back and work on him for a while. We don’t have time for this.”

“Be patient,” said Domm. “I think he’ll talk to us.”

“Why bother? We can peel him like an onion.”

Domm shook his head. “Not unless we have to. The big guy doesn’t like us destroying people’s brains unless there’s no other choice.”

“So who’s going to tell him?”

“Let’s try it my way first.”

“Okay. You’re the boss.”

He nodded and turned back to me. It was becoming harder and harder to try to look frightened. People all around us in the inn had now moved away and Trim was giving us uneasy glances. A reassuring wave, I thought, would probably not be a good idea. Domra leaned over the table to bring his face right up to mine.

“Who are you, what do you know, how do you know it, and what are you after?”

I sank back into the chair and made my eyes get wide, which is as good as I can do at pretending to be afraid. I tried to figure out if there was any way to talk my way out of this without giving them anything. Nothing came instantly to mind. Domm said, “Am I going to have to let Timmer here work on you? It isn’t how I like to do things, but if you don’t give me any choice, I’m going to have to give you to her.”

It suddenly occurred to me that, if they believed I was a professional, they wouldn’t be trying to pull stuff like that on me—I was in a better position than I’d thought I was.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I know.”

Domm sat down again and waited, but kept his eyes fixed on me. I’ll bet he’s pretty good at telling when people are lying. But then, I’m pretty good at lying.

I said, “There was this man.” He asked me if I wanted to make some money—fifty imperials, he said, to go to a room in the city hall, say all these things, then walk around to a couple of places and say some more things. He told me what to say.”

“Who is he?” snapped Timmer.

“I don’t know. I’d never seen him before.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Here—right here.”

Domm said, “How did he know to talk to you?” He was good, this guy.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Oh, come on. You can do better than that. Do you expect us to believe he just walked in here and picked the first guy he saw to make this offer to?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Domm said, “What House was he?”

“Orca,” I said. They looked at each other, which gave me the impression I’d scored a hit, although it was a pretty obvious thing to say.

Timmer said, “What did he look like?”

I started to make something up, then decided that Kaldor wasn’t all that observant, and they could work for what they got. “I don’t know, he was just, you know, just someone.”

“How old do you think he is?”

“I don’t know. Not too old. Twelve hundred or so.”

“Tall? Short?”

“I don’t know.”

“Taller than you?”

“Oh, yes. Everyone’s taller than me.”

Domm stood up. “Taller than me?”

“Uh, I think so.”

He sat down again. “Heavy-set?”

“No, no. Skinny.”

“Long hair? Short hair? Straight? Curly?”

And so on. Eventually they got a pretty good description of the nonexistent Orca, and I told them I hadn’t realized I was so observant.

“All right,” said Domm, nodding slowly after I’d finished. Then he paused, as if thinking things over, then he said, “Now let’s have the rest of it.”

“Huh?” I said, pretending to be startled.

“Who are you, and why did he come to you?”

Okay, this was the tricky part. As far as they were concerned, they’d gotten me beat, and it was just a matter of squeezing a little to get everything out of me. So I had to keep letting them think that, while still trying to pull my own game. This was, of course, made more difficult by the fact that I didn’t know what my own game was—I was still trying to find out as much as I could about what was going on.

I gave a sigh, let my lips droop, and covered my face with my hands. “None of that,” snapped Domm. “You know who we are, and you know what we can do to you. You have one chance to make this easy on yourself, and that’s by telling us everything, right now.”

I nodded into my hands. “Okay,” I said to the table.

“Start with your name.”

I looked up and, trying to make my voice small, I said, “What’s going to happen to me?”

“If you tell us the truth, nothing. We may take you in for more questioning, and we’ll need to know where we can reach you, but that’ll be all—if you tell us the truth and the whole truth.”

I gave Timmer a suspicious look.

“She won’t do anything,” said Domm.

“I want to hear her say it.”

She smiled just a bit and said, “I stand by what the lieutenant said. If you tell us the truth.”

Lying bastards, both of them. I gave them a suspicious look. “What about your commander? Will he go for it?”

Domm started to look impatient, but Timmer said, “If we give him the answers, he won’t care how we got them.”

“Is that the one I first talked to? What was his name, Loftis?”

“Yeah. He’ll go for it.”

I nodded, as if I was satisfied. I could feel them relax. “I should never have done this,” I said in the tones of a man about to spill his guts. “I’m just a thief, you know? I mean, I’ve never hurt anyone. I know a couple of Jhereg who buy what I steal, but—wait a minute. You don’t have to know the names of the Jhereg, do you?”

“I doubt it,” said Domm.

“They’ll kill me.”

“It shouldn’t be necessary,” said Timmer comfortingly. “And we can protect you, anyway,” she lied.

“All right,” I said. “Anyway, it was stupid. I should have known better. But fifty imperials!”

“Tempting,” said Domm.

“That’s the truth,” I said. “Anyway, my real name is Vaan. I was named after my uncle, who built—But you don’t want to hear about that. Right?” I stopped and shook my head sadly. “I’m really in trouble, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” said Timmer.

“But you can get out of it,” said Domm.

“Do you do this a lot? I mean, track people down and question them?”

They shrugged.

“That must be fun.”

Domm permitted himself a half-smile. “You were saying?”

“Uh, right.” I remembered I had a glass with some wine still in it, so I drank some and wiped my face with the back of my hand. “You got onto me from the locals, didn’t you? I mean, you’re from Adrilankha—anyone can hear it from your voice—but you checked on me with the locals and they told you about me.”

They grunted, which could mean anything, except that Timmer let slip a look that said they’d rather die than have anything to do with the locals. That was important, although it wasn’t the big thing I wanted to find out. But I had them going now. They’d broken me, and they knew that I would tell them everything I knew about everything if they handled me right, and handling me right meant letting me talk, only nudging me if I got too far off course. So now I had to stay almost on course, and let them drift with me just for a bit.

I said, “The local Guards had me in once or twice, you know. They let me go because they could never be sure, but they know about me. They beat me once, too—they thought I knew something about some big job or another, but I didn’t know anything about it. I never know anything about big jobs. Big jobs scare me. This one scared me, and I guess I was right to be scared.” I drank some more wine and risked a look at them. They were relaxed now, and not paying all that strict attention—in other words, set up.

I shook my head. “I should have listened to my instincts, you know? I was telling some friends of mine just the other day that I had a bad feeling—”

All of a sudden Domm was no longer relaxed. “What friends?” he snapped. “What did you tell them?” Then he caught himself and looked at Timmer, who was looking at him and frowning. And that made the fourth “Ah ha” of the day, which I decided would have to be enough, especially because one of the things I learned from this one was that they—or at least Domm—had no intention of leaving me alive.

I reached back, grabbed my sword, and nailed Domm in the side of the head with the flat, trying to knock him both out and into Timmer, but I couldn’t get quite enough power for either to work with my thin little blade. Timmer was fast. Really fast. She was up, weapon out, and coming at me before I’d stood up, and I had to squeeze into the corner and parry with both hands or she’d have spitted me; as it was she did violence to my arm, which I resented. But before she could withdraw her steel I cut at her forearm, then sliced up at her head, and—because of one move or the other—her blade fell to the floor. She bent over to pick up her weapon while I reached down and got my parcel of clothes from next to my chair. Among other things, it had my boots in it.

Domm was shaking his head—I’d at least slowed him down. Timmer came at me again, but I knocked her sword aside with my parcel, then hit her with the parcel, and I came up over the table and on the way by I thumped Domm’s head with the pommel of my rapier. As I came over the table it tipped and I was able to put it between me and Timmer for a second, which then I used to turn and dash out the back door. I couldn’t go as fast as I’d have liked, because of those Verra-be-damned boots, but I made it before they caught up with me.

I’d had an escape route planned, but I hadn’t intended to be bleeding when I took it. I headed out of the alley and into another one while sheathing my weapon. I heard footsteps and I knew that Timmer was behind me. I wasn’t terribly keen on killing her—you know as well as I do what sort of heat it brings to kill a Guardsman—but I was even less keen on her killing me, and there was no way I could escape her by running—not in those boots. And if I tele-ported, of course, she’d just trace the teleport; no future in that.

I was just considering where I should make a stand when I got lucky. I turned a corner and someone vanished—some guy had just stepped out of some shop and teleported home with his purchases. If I hadn’t been wearing the black Phoenix Stone, which prevents Devine contact, I would have given a prayer of thanks to Verra; as it was, I ran right through the spot where he’d teleported from, held my arm against the parcel of clothes in the hopes that I wouldn’t drip any more blood, and ran another twenty feet and through the curtained entrance to the shop.

It turned out to be a clothier, and there were a couple of customers in it. The man behind the counter—a real Chreotha—said, “May I be of some service to you, my lord?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “Do you have something in red?”

“You’re bleeding!” said one of the customers.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s the fashion, you know.”

“My dear sir—” said the proprietor.

“A moment,” I said, and I pulled the curtain aside just a hair, just enough to see the end of Timmer’s teleport. “Never mind,” I said. “I think I like the pattern it’s making. Good day.”

I went back into the alley, and then to another one, and did my best not to leave a trail of blood. With any luck at all I had a good couple of minutes before Timmer realized that she’d followed the wrong man, and, I hoped, Domm was too far out of it to be a problem.

“Well, Loiosh?”

“You’re in the clear for the moment, boss.”

“Okay. Hang on for another minute, then join me.”

I found a little nook I’d noticed before, and spent a minute and a half becoming a bleeding Easterner instead of a bleeding Chreotha. I put the remains of the Chreotha disguise in the bag, took off the gold Phoenix Stone, and tele-ported the bag to a spot I knew well just off the coast of Adrilankha, where it went to join a couple of bodies who wouldn’t mind the intrusion. Loiosh arrived on my shoulder with a few choice words about how clever I thought I was compared to what a fool I’d been acting like. I thanked him for sharing his opinion with me.

Since I’d taken the chain off, anyway, there was no reason not to teleport back here, so I arrived at a point I’d memorized a little ways away into the wood, and here I am, Kiera, happy to see you as always, and has anyone ever told you that you’re lovely when you’re disgusted? Interlude

“I’ve never heard of that Stony you talked to. If he’s just sort of midlevel in Northport, what made you think he’d know anything about Fyres?”

“That’s one of the things I can’t tell you.”

“Oh. There are a lot of things like that, aren’t there?”

“I told you there would be, Cawti.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve never known Vlad to use disguises before.”

“Neither had I. It was probably something he picked up while traveling.”

“What about the old woman? How was she taking all of this?”

“I suspect it bothered her a great deal, but she never let on. In fact, the whole time she had an attitude like none of it had anything to do with her.”

“I can’t blame her, I guess. It would be strange.”

“Yes.”

“It’s funny, you’re summarizing for me Vlad’s report to you about his conversations with others, which is three steps removed from the actual conversations, but I can still almost hear him talking.”

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“He misses you, Cawti.”

“Let’s not start on that, all right?”

“If you wish.”

“It’s complicated, Kiera. It’s difficult. I don’t know any of the answers. Yes, I miss him. But we couldn’t live together.”

“He’s changed, you know.”

“Are you trying to get us back together, Kiera?’

“I don’t know. I think at least he should know about—”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“All right. Maybe I should summarize even more.”

“No, you’re doing fine.”

“I have to say, though, that I don’t have a very good memory for conversations, so a lot of this I’m reconstructing and making up. But you get the gist of it.”

“I do indeed. You must have had a few words for him when he got back to the house. I know I would have.”

“Oh, yes.”

Chapter Seven

“Well,” I said slowly. “Congratulations, Vlad.” He looked at me and waited for the punch line. I said, “You’ve now not only got the Jhereg after you but also the Empire, and, as soon as they tie you to the documents we stole, the House of the Orca will want you, too—and me, by the way. That leaves only fourteen more Houses to go and you’ll have the set. Then you can start on the Easterners and the Serioli. Good work.”

“It’s a talent,” he said. “I can’t take credit for it.” I studied him while considering his story. He was looking—I don’t know, smug wasn’t quite right, but maybe something like, amused with a veneer of self-satisfaction. Sometimes I forget just how devious he is, and how good he is at improvising, and his skill at calculating odds and pulling off improbable gambits. Sometimes he thinks he’s better at these things than he actually is, and it is likely to get him killed one of these days—especially now, when, between the gold and the black Phoenix Sx he wears, he is entirely cut off from those who would be most willing and able to help him.

“All right,” I said. “Either Fyres was murdered or the Empire is afraid Fyres was murdered, and, in either case, the Empire doesn’t want it known.”

“Someone in the Empire,” Vlad amended.

“No,” I said. “The Empire.”

“You mean the Empress—”

“I wouldn’t say the Empress knows, but it doesn’t matter either way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If it isn’t the Empress, it’s someone almost as important, and it’s with the cooperation of the highest level of government.”

“What makes you so sure? An hour ago you didn’t even believe—”

“Your story was very convincing,” I said. “And you told me things you probably didn’t know you were telling me.” I frowned. “The way Loftis talked to Domm, and the way Domm and Timmer talked to each other, tell me—”

“That Timmer doesn’t—or, perhaps, didn’t—know about it.”

“That’s not the point, Vlad. They were acting under orders, and they have support that not only goes high, it goes broad—widespread. At the Imperial level, too many people are involved for there to be just one person pulling the strings from behind a closet.”

“Hmmm. I see your point. But with that many involved, how can it stay secret?”

“There’s secret, and then there’s secret, Vlad. If, in a year or two, the Empress starts to hear whispers about so-and-so having pulled a scam in the Fyres’s investigation, there won’t be much she can do about it, depending on who so-and-so is.”

“In other words, it can leak, as long as it doesn’t break.”

“Something like that.” I shrugged. “I’m just speculating, based on what I know about the Court, but it’s a pretty good guess. You know,” I added, “you’re in over your head, Vlad. I’d call for help.”

Vlad laughed without humor. “Call for help? From whom? Sethra Lavode? She’s taken on the whole Empire before. You think she’d do it now? Without knowing why, or what’s involved? And just what exactly are Iceflame and the power of Dzur Mountain going to do against a snotty little intrigue? Or maybe you mean Morrolan. He could solve the whole thing by inviting our hostess to move into Castle Black, but I don’t think she’ll go for it, and he doesn’t have any connections in the House of the Orca. Aliera would love to go charging into this, Kiera, but subtlety isn’t her strong suit—she’d just kill everyone who was acting dirty, and we’d have the same mess with a bunch of bodies to complicate things. Norathar would be the one who could solve it—if this was the Dragon Reign. But, last I heard, Zerika is still on the throne—at least technically.”

I didn’t quite know how to answer that, so I didn’t. He said, “And remember, I don’t really care what the Empire is doing or to whom, as long I can do what I promised Hid—Hwid—the old woman I’d do and she can help Savn. Do you care?”

That was tough. I did care—but .. . “No,” I said. “You’re right. But it may be that we have to deal with the whole thing in order to solve our little problem. I don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” said Vlad.

“What do we know, then?”

“We know the Empire is covering up something—very possibly murder. We know that not all of the investigators know about it, and we know that not all of the ones who do are happy about it, but that the orders include killing anyone who knows what’s going on. We know that there is a big tangle about who owns what parts of Fyres’s property, and that finding out who owns this blue cottage and its environs is not going to be easy. And we know that something, somewhere, is very wrong.”

“Wrong how?” I said.

“The timing—it’s funny and I’m not laughing.”

“Go on,” I said, though I was starting to realize that I knew—that I’d been subconsciously aware of something being strange about how things had been happening.

“What’s the hurry? When someone as rich as Fyres dies, it’s sort of expected to take fifty or a hundred or two hundred years to sort out who owns what. But they’re not only putting a coat of paint over this investigation, they’re doing it in an awful hurry. And not just the Empire—everyone associated with it.”

“What do you mean by everyone?”

“I mean,” he said carefully, “that Fyres had been dead for maybe a week when our hostess was told to vacate, and she was given six months in which to do it. Now, that doesn’t make any sense at all, unless there are two things going on: one, the land is valuable somehow; and, two, someone, somewhere, is panicking.”

I nodded. Yeah, that was it. I said, “Almost. I agree about the panic, but the land doesn’t have to be particularly valuable.”

“Oh? Then why—”

“Someone wants to take it, get as much cash as he can for it, and be gone before it comes out that it wasn’t his land to sell in the first place.”

“Ah,” said Vlad. “Yes, that makes sense.” He thought for a moment. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t help—it doesn’t point to anyone in particular, and it doesn’t even eliminate anyone.”

“True,” I said.

“Which still leaves us with the problem of finding out, which, in turn, brings up the next question: What now?”

I was able to answer that one, anyway. “Now,” I said, “we sleep on it. It’s late, and my brain is tired. We’ll talk again in the morning.”

“Okay. Meet here?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll cook breakfast.”

“I’ll bring something to cook.”

“It’s a pleasure working with you, Kiera.”

I spent the night trying to make sense of everything I’d learned; I’d have bet Juinan’s Pearl against a pound of tea that Vlad did the same. And I’d have won, judging by the look on his face when I got there the next morning.

“Not much sleep?” I suggested sweetly.

He scowled and went back to making klava. I put the groceries on the counter next to him and said, “Goose eggs, sneershrimp, endive, cynth, orange and black fungus, and various sweet and hot peppers. Also a pound of flatbread. Make breakfast.”

“Onions?”

“She has them growing in back.”

“Garlic?”

“Hanging in a basket about six centimeters from your right hand. Observant, aren’t we?”

“You can talk to Loiosh,” he said.

Loiosh, curled up with Rocza near the cold hearth, twitched and probably said something to Vlad. Hwdf rjaanci emerged from the back, toweling her hair dry. “You’ve made the klava,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Vlad. “I hope it isn’t too strong.”

“Don’t make jokes,” she said.

Savn was still wrapped up in his furs, but he was awake and staring at the ceiling. I noticed that Vlad was looking at him, too. The old woman said, “I’m going to go in today.”

I heard Vlad’s sharp intake of breath—or maybe it was mine. “Dreamwalk?” I said.

“No, I’m just going to heal the physical damage. There isn’t much of it, and I’ve looked carefully—it won’t hurt him, and it might start the healing process.”

Vlad nodded, turned back to the kitchen, and began to prepare breakfast. Hwdf rjaanci sat on the floor near Savn’s head. I chopped things and sampled them. He didn’t make any comments about my doing so, which meant either he was unique in my experience with cooks, or he was distracted, or he was uncomfortable because no one had done that since he and Cawti had broken up. I felt a little bad for him, but not bad enough to stop sampling things. The peppers were exquisite.

He said, “There are few sounds more beautiful than that made by a mess of onions landing on a cast-iron skillet with a layer of hot oil. The trick is getting them to just the right degree of done before you start adding other things, and then to not let them go too much further before you add the eggs—the eggs have to be last because they don’t take as long—”

“What’s on your mind, Vlad?”

He shrugged. “The same thing that’s on yours, of course—are we going to be able to solve our hostess’s problem without taking on, in effect, the whole Empire? And, if we do have to take on the Empire, how can we win? It’s bound to be tricky.”

“Tricky,” I said. I shook my head. “You’re nothing if not confident.”

He shrugged. “It shouldn’t be any problem. I’ll just work my way through these special Guardsmen, find out who their boss is, kill him, take his position, use that to get close to the Empress, kill her, take the Orb, and rule Dragaera myself, exploiting the Empire ruthlessly in order to enrich myself and punish those who have offended me throughout my life, in preparation for conquering the East and eventually making myself ruler of the entire world.” He paused from whipping the eggs, looked at me, and nodded somberly. “Then I’d meet some girls, I’ll bet.” He covered the pan. “Want to set the table for four?”

“Three,” said our hostess, who was still seated next to the boy but was now staring down at him while holding both of his shoulders. “Savn will be needing his rest.”

I looked at her, then at Savn, then at Vlad, who was looking at me. I opened my mouth to speak and then felt the casting of a spell. Vlad apparently felt it, too, or more accurately Loiosh did; in any case we both turned to watch, then looked again at each other. Vlad’s eyes were a bit wide, but he shrugged.

“Don’t let the food burn,” I said.

“I shan’t,” said Vlad, and turned his attention back to the skillet. I set the table. The feeling of sorcery went away about two minutes after it had started, and then the old woman joined us at the table and we ate. She didn’t seem quite comfortable with Loiosh and Rocza joining us and eating scraps from Vlad’s plate, even though she should have been used to it by now. But she didn’t say anything. Buddy sat next to the table and spoke most eloquently with his eyes but got nothing for his trouble, poor beast. The food was good and there was no conversation for quite some time, until I noticed that Vlad was watching me.

I said, “What is it?”

“Don’t you care for it?”

“Are you fishing for compliments?”

“No.”

I shrugged. “I like it quite a bit.”

“All right,” he said.

I don’t know anyone like Vlad: it’s like his mind never shuts off. Even Morrolan relaxes from time to time, but I’ve never seen Vlad when he wasn’t thinking. I very much wanted to know what he was thinking about just then, but there was no polite way to ask.

Vlad broke down before I did. He said, “Well, Mother?”

She said, “Yes?”

He cleared his throat. “How did—that is, is Savn all right?”

“You mean his injury?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I healed it. It isn’t difficult if you know what you’re doing. I’m not really a physicker, but I am a sorceress”—she looked at me as she said it, as if expecting me to argue—”and this is the sort of problem I’m most familiar with.”

“So it went well?” asked Vlad. Vlad needing reassurance was something outside of my experience.

“Quite well.”

“Uh, good,” he said.

“What now?” I asked her.

“Now? Well, repairing the physical damage ought to help him, so now we see if there’s any change in his behavior—better or worse. If not, then I’ll go back to trying to understand the inside of his head well enough to risk a dreamwalk. If there is a change, well, then we’ll just have to see what the change is and do our best from there.”

“Oh,” said Vlad. He glanced at Savn, who was sleeping peacefully, and fell silent.

We finished eating, and Vlad and I cleaned up. I took my time, because I wasn’t in a hurry to go back to talking about how we were going to approach the problem. Vlad also seemed to be moving a bit slowly, I suspect for the same reason. I drew the water, he set it to heating, then we took our time sorting things that went into the compost from things to be burned and things to feed to Buddy. When the water was hot, I started in on the dishes. Vlad cleaned the table and the stove.

As we were finishing up, I said, “How’s the arm?”

“Fine.”

“Let’s take a look at it.”

“When did you become a physicker?”

“One learns a bit of everything in my line of work—or in yours.”

“Yeah.”

He took his shirt off. His chest was still full of hairs; I tried not to react. I unwrapped the bandage. Some people look at their wounds, others look away. Vlad looked, but he seemed a bit queasy. The lower wrappings of the bandage were bloody, but not horribly so, and the wound itself showed no signs of infection.

I said, “If you want to take the Phoenix Stone off, I can have that healed up in—”

“No, thanks,” said Vlad.

“You’re probably right,” I said.

I washed it and rewrapped it. Hwdf rjaanci watched but made no effort to help—maybe blood made her queasy; maybe she considered herself too much of a specialist to be bothered with simple wounds.

I said, “Okay, if you’ve changed your mind about ruling the world, and you don’t want to ask anyone for help, what’s our next step?”

“I went through the notes again last night, after you left,” said Vlad.

“And?”

“And nothing. If we had all the files as well as the Imperial record, and maybe some of the records of a few Jhereg, and we combined those with what we’ve got, and we had a hundred accountants working full-time, we could probably find the answer—and maybe even find it soon enough to do some good. But we don’t, so we’re going to have to start from the other end.”

“And the other end is?”

“The investigation. We have a piece of something—all I can think of to do is follow it and see where it leads.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I was afraid it was going to come to that.”

“Meanwhile,” he said, “I’m going to see just how much money it will take to buy the land.”

I nodded. “Yes. The amount should tell us if you’re right about there being something valuable about this piece of property. If it comes down to nothing more than finding a sum of money, there are ways to do that.”

I noticed Hwdfrjaanci looking at us. Vlad said, “That, of course, is my end of things. What do you want to do?”

“I want to find out just who Loftis is working for, what his orders are, what he knows, what he guesses, and what he plans to do about it,” I said.

“Good thinking,” said Vlad. “How do you plan to go about it?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe I’d ask him.”

“I can’t see why that wouldn’t work.”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Vlad.

I finished bandaging him, and he put his shirt on, then his cloak, then his sword belt. He petted Buddy, recommended the cottage to him, collected Loiosh, and left with a sweeping bow.

“They’re disgusting,” said Hwdf rjaanci.

“Who?”

“Easterners,” she said.

I said, “Ah. I’ll tell him you said so, Mother.”

“Oh don’t,” she said, looking suddenly distressed. “It would hurt his feelings.”

I collected my things and stepped out of the door. Unlike Vlad, I had no reason not to teleport, so I did, arriving at a place I knew where I could change my garb a little, which I did. I arrived outside of City Hall at just about the tenth hour, which was when things ought to begin moving there. I took a position across the street, became inconspicuous, and waited.

I’d been there for more than an hour when Vlad showed up and went in, and then nothing happened for quite some time, and I was beginning to think I’d missed Loftis—that he’d gotten in early—when I saw him on the other side of the street, just approaching; from Vlad’s description, it had to be Loftis. I crossed over and walked past him, and even that brief a glance was enough to confirm that Vlad was right—this wasn’t someone to mess around with casually. He was frowning as he walked, like he had something on his mind; it wasn’t hard to guess what it was.

I found an inn that let rooms by the hour and rented one—this is a good way to find a place where you won’t be disturbed and won’t be talked about, even if you don’t use the room for the reasons they expect you to. They had put in a real door, to ensure the guests had privacy, and I liked that, too. Instead of a tag, it was Loftis’s papers and possessions that I spread out on the bed; then I commenced to study them. He had not, in fact, been polite enough to be carrying a note that spelled out what he’d been asked to do, the reasons behind it, and the name of his superior officer, but we make do with what we have, and the pouch of an Imperial investigator can hardly fail to be revealing.

His name was, indeed, Loftis, a Dragonlord of the e’Drien line, same as Morrolan; and he was the Viscount of Clovenrocks Wood, which was in a far northeastern province, if I could trust a memory that wasn’t my own. He had three Signets. I knew he’d have at least one, I was counting on it—but three indicated he was, indeed, high up in the counsels of the great and powerful who ran the Empire. And the oldest of the Signets—which included authorization to make arrests—was two hundred years old, which meant he’d have to have been in the Imperial Service at least two hundred and fifty years, which is a long time to only be a lieutenant—unless, of course, he was in one of those branches of the service where traditional ranks were meaningless, which would explain the irony Vlad had detected when he and Domm had called each other by their ranks.

I knew about four such services, all of them more or less independent. Well, there was a fifth, but that hadn’t existed in some years except for one person—and whoever Loftis was, he wasn’t Sethra Lavode. I considered the four services I knew about, and speculated uncomfortably about the possibility of there being one I hadn’t heard of.

One of them was the Imperial Surveillance Corps. They were responsible to the Prime Minister, when there was one, or to the Minister of the Houses when there wasn’t. The Minister of the Houses was presently an Issola named Indus, and I’d play cards with her only as long as she never got near the deck. She was tricky, but she was loyal—she’d do something like this if she was ordered to, and it might well fall within her province, but the order would have to come from Zerika. If anyone but the Empress tried to use Indus ... well, anyone who knew enough about her to ask would know better than to try. So either it wasn’t Indus, or the order came from the Empress, and I was convinced the order hadn’t come from the Empress.

The same argument applied to “Third Floor Relic,” which was named for the room where they supposedly met with Her Majesty. There were only about twenty or thirty of them at any one time, and, while they were very good at what they did, it took the Empress’s orders to get them to do it. Also, it seemed unlikely that they’d be involved in something this widespread—narrow and specific objectives were more their style.

The other two units I knew about were both part of the military. One of them, the one that was publicly acknowledged to exist, was Division Six of the Imperial Army General Staff Consultants. They did most of their work on foreign soil, but could certainly be used in the Empire if the situation warranted. They were big, unwieldy, often confused, sometimes brilliant, and responsible to the Warlord. The Warlord wouldn’t allow them to be used this way if the Empress didn’t approve, but they were big enough that it just might be possible for someone in the hierarchy to have been corrupted. If it was Division Six, though, they’d be unlikely to be able to keep it secret very long—at least, not secret from those who knew where to look.

And then there was the Special Tasks Group, which was small, very well trained, easily capable of covering up mistakes by the other groups (and was often used for exactly that), and, in fact, perfect for jobs like this. But they reported to Lord Khaavren—he would never allow them to be used this way without orders from the Empress, and if the Empress did give such an order, he’d have another one of his temper tantrums and resign again.

I chewed it over as I put the contents of Loftis’s pouch back together. Then I sat on the bed (the only piece of furniture in the room) and continued thinking it over. There were good reasons why it couldn’t be any of those groups, but it seemed very unlikely that there was another team involved that I hadn’t heard of—I keep very well abreast of what’s happening around the Palace, on both sides of the walls, as they say.

I tried to remember everything Vlad had told me about his dealings with the group, including every nuance of expression he’d picked up. Of course, it isn’t easy when you’re twice removed from the conversation. And I didn’t have long to figure it out, either. I checked the time. No, I didn’t have long at all.

I went over all the information again and shook my head. If I had to guess, I’d say Surveillance, just because it involved the Empire and the House of the Orca and, above all, because under normal circumstances they’re the ones who would conduct such an investigation—being checked up on, no doubt, by the Third Floor group. But it still didn’t make sense. Could it be Division Six? While they were the most likely in that they’d think they could get away with it, they just didn’t have the reputation for switching so easily from pulling cover-up jobs to rough stuff—they were mostly a bunch of clerks with a big budget, some half-competent thieves, and a lot of people who knew how to spread money around. No, Surveillance was more likely, only I had trouble squaring that with what I knew about Lady Indus—if a request like that fell into her lap, she’d—

Now, what did that remind me of?

Or we could just dump the whole thing on Papa-cat’s lap.

That had been a threat. A threat to tell the man in charge what they were doing—which meant, first, that, although they were acting under orders, they weren’t acting under orders of their own chief. And, second, that the man in charge was, in fact, a man, which neatly eliminated Indus.

Papa-cat.

Cat.

Tiassa.

Lord Khaavren.

As Vlad would say, “Ah ha.”

There was the sound of heavy boots outside the room, and the door went crashing down. I was looking at a man and a woman, both of whom had swords drawn and pointed at me. I tossed the purse to the man and said, “In the first place, Loftis, tell Timmer to go back to City Hall, it’s you I want to talk to. And in the second place, you’ll be paying for that door out of your own pocket; I don’t think Papa-cat will authorize it when he hears what it’s for—if he hears what it’s for.”

They stared at me.

I said, “Well? What are you waiting for? Lose your associate, come in here, and sit down. Oh, Ensign, on your way out, set up a sound field around this room—I assume you’re equipped for that, aren’t you? And take care of anyone who might be coming up to look into the noise of the door breaking. Tell the host it’s all right and your friend will pay for the damages. Which he will,” I added.

She looked at Loftis. He gave her a bit of a half-smile, as if to say, “Whatever this is, it’s bound to be good,” then nodded. She gave me one quick glance, and I could see her committing me to memory, then she was gone. Loftis came in and leaned against the far wall, still holding his sword.

I said, “Put that thing away.”

He said, “Sure. As soon as you explain why I shouldn’t arrest you.”

I rolled my eyes. “You think I’m a thief?”

He shook his head. “I know you’re a thief—and quite an accomplished one, since you got this off me just passing in the street. But I don’t know what else you are.”

I shrugged. “I’m a thief, Lieutenant. I’m a thief who happens to know your name, your rank, your associate’s name and rank, and that you work for Lord Khaavren’s Special Tasks Group; and I’m so stupid that I took your purse but didn’t bother with a spell to prevent you from tracing the Signets, didn’t ditch the Signets, but instead just sat here waiting for you to arrive so I could hand the purse back to you. That’s right, Lieutenant, I’m a thief.”

He shrugged. “When someone starts reeling off what he knows like that, it always makes me wonder if I’m supposed to be so impressed that I’ll start reeling things off, too. What do you say?”

He wasn’t stupid. “That you’re not stupid. But you’re still pointing a sword at me, and I find that irritating.”

“Learn to live with it. Who are you and what do you want? If you really went through all of that just to get me here, you’re either very foolish or you have some explanation that—”

“Do you remember a certain affair three or four years ago, that started out with Division Six looking into the activities of a wizard working for, uh, a foreign kingdom, and ending up with a Jenoine at Dzur Mountain.”