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.”
“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.
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.”