I GOT OUT of there in a hurry, before anyone in the place could think to stop me.
Loiosh said, “Should I follow them? Oh, never mind; they’ve just teleported. I can show you where they teleported from if you want.”
“I have no intention of tracing anyone’s teleport, Loiosh; I just want to get out of here. Keep watching.”
“Okay, boss.”
I crossed the street and turned right at the first corner I came to, then right again, then left, then left again, and then right, then I went straight for a while, then I stopped and looked around, having gotten myself lost enough to have a chance of confusing anyone else.”
“Well?”
“All clear, boss.”
“Okay, back home, then.”
“I’ll keep watching.”
We made it back to the cottage, both of us looking around fairly often. Buddy seemed happy to see me, Rocza seemed happy to see Loiosh, the old woman didn’t seem happy about anything, and Savn didn’t seem to care one way or another. I sat down at the table, closed my eyes, and took my first deep breath in what seemed like a year or so.
The old woman looked at me and didn’t ask any questions, wherefore I gave her no answers. I really wished you were here, Kiera, because I felt the need to confess and to have some help sorting out what had just happened. It had all made sense—Loftis figuring it out, sitting me down where he could give me one chance to come clean, and then having his people arrest me—up to the point where they’d killed him.
They’d killed him.
Had he been surprised by who came through the door? Or that anyone showed up? Or only by what they did?
He didn’t break the stick.
That was a good one; I’d love to have found out what it meant, but there was no one around to ask. If I’d understood it, no doubt it would turn out to be the code phrase that made everything clear, and indicated exactly what I should do next. More probably, it went back to his childhood and had something to do with being hurt—at least, that’s the sort of thing that went through my head when I decided I was about to become damaged, or maybe dead.
I regretted him. He was an honest son of a bitch, in spite of what he was doing, and he’d struck me as good at his job, although the only trace of evidence for that was that he’d hit you the same way, Kiera, so maybe he was really just a fool who knew how to impress people like us.
I wished his last meal had been better, though.
I said, “How’s the boy, Mother?”
“No change,” she said.
I said, “Savn?” He didn’t seem to hear me. He was staring into the hearth as if it was the only thing in the world. At least there weren’t any knives in it. I said, “Do you have any great ideas?”
She glared at me, then stood up, which took her quite a while. She came over and sat beside me, saying in a low voice, “I don’t think I’m going to attempt the dreamwalk; at least, not for a while. He is responding, in a way, so that’s some improvement. I want to know how far we’ll get. I want to know if we can get him talking about something other than knives.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’ve been talking to him. You could try it too.”
“Just talking to him?”
“Yes.”
“Even though he doesn’t respond?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” I said.
She nodded, and I went over and sat down next to him. “So how are you, boy?” I said. He didn’t respond. “I hope you’re feeling well physically, at least.” I felt like an idiot. The old woman got up and went outside, taking Buddy with her.
“It’s been about a year now, Savn.” I said. “Look, I hope you know that I’m sorry about what happened. You were never supposed to get involved in it.”
He stared at the hearth and didn’t move.
“You saved my life, you know. Twice. First, when I was injured, and then again. That isn’t something I forget. And all those things you said to me, they were hard to hear, but it was probably good for me.” I laughed a little. “Most things that are good for you hurt, maybe. To the left, though, most things that hurt aren’t good for you. There’s a nice riddle, if you want one. Do you like riddles? Do you like puzzles? I’m working on a puzzle now, Savn, and it has me pretty thoroughly stumped. I’d like to talk it over with you. You’re a pretty sharp kid, you know.
“Why was Loftis killed? That’s a puzzler, isn’t it? He was working for someone in the Empire who was trying to hide the fact that Fyres was murdered, because if Fyres was murdered, they’d have to look into who killed him, and they’d probably never find out, but they would find out who wanted him dead, and that was a lot of people with a lot of connections to some of the people who keep our Empire chugging along. So maybe someone didn’t want the information hidden. I can imagine that, Savn. But that’s no reason to kill Loftis—it would be much easier, and probably cheaper, just to let someone, say the Warlord, or Lord Khaavren, or even Her Majesty, know what was going on. Killing Loftis doesn’t make any sense.
“And it couldn’t be to help hide what he was doing, because now they’re going to have to investigate that, and that will almost certainly lead them to find out everything. But if that was the goal, it was going about it the hard way, and the dangerous way, and people don’t do that when there’s a safe way and an easy way to do things—except maybe Dzurlords, and they don’t get into the sort of subtle thinking that goes along with it. I just can’t make it fit, Savn. What do you think?”
Evidently he thought the hearth was fascinating.
“There’s got to be a piece of this I’m not seeing—a piece of information I don’t have. I wish I had more sources, like I used to. It used to be I could just snap my fingers and people would go scurrying to discover everything I needed to know. Now all I’ve got is what I can learn myself (with the help of Loiosh and Rocza, and a few minstrels). Should I go find a minstrel and talk to him, Savn? You were there the last time I did that, and I got some useful information, too. Remember her? She was quite something, wasn’t she? I remember thinking you were getting a crush on her, and I couldn’t blame you. I was, too, if truth be known, but she’s Dragaeran, and I’m an Easterner, and there you have it. Besides, I imagine she doesn’t think much of me now, with what I’ve done to you. I suspect she blames me, and she’s right to. I blame me, too.”
I sat next to him and stared at the hearth. It was getting a bit chilly; maybe I should get a fire started. Back where Savn had come from, they were harvesting flax about now. They probably missed him.
“All right,” I told him. “I’ll go find a minstrel, and I’ll see what the word is about Fyres, and about the investigation, and about the banks. Maybe I’ll learn something. At least it’ll keep me busy.”
I stood up. “I’ll talk to you later, all right?” He didn’t object, so I headed out the door. The old woman was sitting on a wicker chair in front of the house, Buddy curled up beside her. I had the uncomfortable feeling she’d heard everything I said. I wondered if her whole reason for having me talk to him was so she could listen in, but I dismissed the thought; if there was one person in the whole mess who wasn’t devious, it was her. But this affair was enough to make anyone paranoid, so I acquitted myself of paranoia and wrapped my cloak a little tighter around myself, because it was getting cold. Why is it you notice the weather more when you’re out of town? I don’t remember paying much attention to the weather when I lived in Adrilankha, even though I spent a lot of time walking around outside.
Minstrels, I’ve found, are rather like boot hooks—you keep running into them every time you go into your closet to find something else, but the minute you realize you need one they vanish without a trace. After walking all the way into Northport, I must have spent three hours going from one inn to another, and nowhere was there anyone singing for his supper, or telling stories in exchange for a room, or even sitting passed-out in the corner with a reed-pipe on his lap.
But diligence is sometimes rewarded. Seven times I asked locals where I might find some music. One didn’t know, three didn’t bother talking to me, and two were rude enough that I felt obligated to give them some minor damage as a lesson in courtesy. The seventh, however, was a pleasant young Teckla woman with flowing skirts and amazing black eyes who directed me to a public house about half a mile away, with feathers on its sign. I found it with no trouble (which surprised me just a little, as I’d become pessimistic about the whole adventure by that point) and I made my way into the small, smoke-filled little inn, in amongst a large crowd of mostly Teckla, with a couple of Orca and Chreotha surrounded by the entourage the minor nobility invariably attracts in such places, and, at the far end, a middle-aged Teckla playing a fretted gordstring as softly as such a twangy instrument can be played, and actually fairly well.
One part of a bench in the middle of the room was open, and I took it. Loiosh was with me, which may have accounted for some of the looks I got, but more likely they just weren’t used to Easterners in there. The singer’s voice was high and probably would have been unpleasant, but he picked songs that fit it—I suppose that’s part of being a minstrel, just like part of being an assassin is knowing which jobs to take and which ones to leave alone. Eventually someone came by and brought me some wine, which I drank quickly because it wasn’t very good, and some time later the minstrel stopped playing.
He stayed where he was and drank, and after a while I approached him. He looked at me, looked at Loiosh, and seemed uncomfortable, which was only natural. I said quietly, “My name is Vlad,” and watched his face very closely for any sign of recognition.
“Yes?” he said. No, he didn’t seem to recognize the name, which was good news. The first time a minstrel recognizes my name is the last time I can pull this stunt.
“Can we talk for a few minutes?”
“About what?”
I showed him the ring, then quickly put it away. The ring, by the way, represented one of the last things I arranged before I left Adrilankha; its design is a recognition symbol for the Minstrels’ Guild, so when I showed it to him, he just said, “I see” and “Yes.”
“I’m going to walk outside and cross the street. Meet me in twenty minutes, all right?”
“All right. Yes. How much—?”
“Ten imperials, or maybe more if you can help me.”
“All right.”
I nodded and left the place, walking around for a little while and eventually circling back. Loiosh flew around to look for signs of someone setting something up, but I didn’t expect anything like that, and there wasn’t.
After twenty minutes, he left the inn and crossed the street, and I stepped up next to him. “Let’s walk together,” I said, handing him ten coins. I’d said that to someone earlier that day, too.
We strolled together through the dark and quiet streets. This part of the city was far from the docks, and very narrow, and looked nothing at all like anywhere in Adrilankha, which I rather liked. I said, “What have you heard about Fyres?”
“The Orca?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I mean, you know that he’s dead.”
“Yes. How did he die?”
“An accident on his yacht.”
“Are you certain?”
We walked a little further. He said, “I’ve heard rumors, whispers. You know.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t. Tell me.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of the Guild.”
“Is there going—? That is, am I—?”
“In danger? No, as long we aren’t seen together, and probably not even if we are.”
“Probably not?”
“That’s why we aren’t talking inside, and why we’re staying to areas without much light. Now, you were saying?”
“There’s been talk that he was murdered.”
“By whom?”
“People.”
“What sort of people?”
“Just people.”
“Why do they think so?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you something: every time someone famous dies, however he dies, people say he was murdered.”
“You think that’s all it is?”
“Yeah. Am I wrong?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to find out. I’m asking you questions to find out. And I’m paying you. You have no reason to suspect—uh—foul play?”
“Not really, no.”
“All right. What about all these bank closings?”
“It’s the Empire.”
“The Empire closed the banks?”
“No, but they allowed it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they aren’t supposed to do that—let banks just close, anytime they want to; they’re supposed to protect people.”
“Because the bankers paid them.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“How?”
He didn’t answer. I said, “How much did you lose?”
“Almost eight hundred imperials.”
“I see. Is that how you know?”
He didn’t answer. I sighed. I wasn’t getting a whole lot that I could use. I said, “What about the Jhereg?”
“What about them?”
“Are they involved?”
“With the banks? I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Oh, good. I was supposed to be tracking down rumors, and instead I was starting them. What I wanted to say was, “Can you tell me anything useful?” but that wasn’t likely to produce results. I said, “What can you tell me about the people being kicked off their land?”
“Just what everyone knows,” he said. “It’s happening a lot, and no one knows why.”
“What do you mean, no one knows why?”
He shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t make any sense, does it? You get a notice of eviction, and then you go see if you can buy the place, and the owners have gone out of business.”
“That’s been happening a lot?”
“Sure. All over the place. I’m one of the lucky ones: we’re still on Lord Sevaana’s land, and he’s still all right, as far as anyone knows. But I have friends and relatives who don’t know what’s going on, or what to do about it, or anything.”
I don’t know why I’d assumed the old woman’s case was unique, but apparently I was wrong. That was certainly interesting. Who could stand to gain by forcing people to leave their land so it could be sold and then not selling it? And why force them to move before offering them the chance to buy it themselves? And how could Fyres’s death have set all this off? And who wanted Loftis dead, and why? And—
No, wait a minute.
“Has anyone actually been made to move off his land yet?”
“Huh? Not this soon. No one could move that quickly, even if they made us.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” But still . . .
“Is there anything else?” said the minstrel.
“Huh? What? On, no. Here. Vanish.” I gave him another ten imperials. He vanished.
“What is it, boss?”
“The inkling of the germ of a thread that might lead to the beginning of an idea.”
“Sure, boss. Whatever you say.”
“I think I might have a piece of something, anyway. Let me think for a minute.”
He was polite enough not to make any of the obvious rejoinders, so I thought as I strolled. It isn’t all that easy to just think, keeping your mind concentrated on the subject, unless you’re talking to someone or writing things down, which is one reason I like to talk to Loiosh as I’m putting things together, but what I had right then wouldn’t fit itself into words because it wasn’t precise enough—it was just the vague, unformed notion that I’d, well, not exactly missed something, but that I’d been putting the wrong slant on things.
After a while I said, “The trouble is, Loiosh, that the way Kiera and I got involved in this was through whatever oddity is involved in this business of putting what’s-her-name’s land on the market and then making it hard to track down, followed by impossible to track down. Just because that’s where we started doesn’t make that an important piece of whatever it is that’s going on.”
“You knew that already, boss.”
“Sure. But knowing it is one thing; being aware of it as you work and taking it into account whenever you look at new information—”
“What are you saying?”
“Heh. That I’ve been looking at this thing skewed by what I knew about it. I have to look at it straight on. And I have a theory.”
“Oh, good. Only that was missing. All right, then, where to now?”
“I don’t know.” And, in my mind, Loiosh spoke the words as I did. “You’re funny, Loiosh,” I told him. “Do you have any great ideas?”
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”
I looked around, but didn’t see anything.
“No,” he said. “This city. This area. It isn’t good, boss. They’re still looking for you, and when you’re in a city like this, you’re too easy to find. I don’t like it.”
Neither did I, come to that. “Soon,” I told him. “As soon as we get this settled.”
“You can’t do Savn any good with a Morganti knife between your shoulder blades.”
“True.”
“If I’d known we were going to be here this long, and that we’d be going around stirring up—”
“Okay, okay. I get the point.” I’d thought about it, of course. Loiosh was right: a city, even one as small as Northport, was not a good place for me to hide when the whole Organization was looking for me. And, if what I’d just figured out was true, then I’d pretty much done what I’d agreed to do—the old woman would be able to stay on her land, and everything was fine.
“Where would we go instead?”
“The East.”
“We’ve been there, remember?”
“It’s big, there are lots of places. And no one would find us.”
“Good point.” There really wasn’t any reason to stay here, if I could be certain that what I’d just figured out was true, and I could probably find that out.
Except that someone had cut Loftis down right in front of me, and there were neighborhoods full of people who had to leave because they no longer had any work, and I didn’t understand why any of it was happening.
I said, “The old woman is doing so well with Savn, it would be a shame to take him away so soon.”
“Boss—”
“Let’s just take a few more days, all right?”
“You’re the boss.”
I wondered what you were finding out, Kiera; what would we learn about Fyres from the Jhereg? And, come to that, how heavily were the Jhereg involved? And if he’d gotten the Jhereg into it, why did he need the banks?
Did he need the banks at all?
There was only one banker we knew for certain was involved with Fyres, and that was Vonnith, and we knew she was bribing Imperial officials, which almost made her a Jhereg, too. Did I know of any legitimate banks that had made loans to Fyres? Did I even have any reason to suspect there were any?
How could I find out? Walking around pretending to be someone else has its uses, and we’d gotten some information that way, but there’s a time for just being who you are. Had we reached it yet? Who was I, anyway?
Hmmm.
“Could work, boss.”
“It’s worth a shot.”
“And even if it doesn’t work, I’ll enjoy it.”
“Yeah, you probably will.”
“And you won’t?”
It wasn’t easy finding a tailor’s shop that was open at this hour—in fact, there were none. But after disturbing the tailor, it was easy enough to get what I wanted just by setting an appropriately large number of coins in front of him. My reserves of cash had been getting a bit low lately, and I wasn’t excited about going to any of the places I’d need to in order to retrieve more of my wealth—for one thing, I’d have to remove the gold Phoenix Stone in order to teleport—but I could do it if I had to.
However, I was able to put in the order and he promised that he’d have what I needed early in the morning. That done, I wandered for a while, thinking over the plan and refining it in conversation with Loiosh.
I discovered that my feet were taking me back toward the cottage, and I decided to let them have their way, now that I had a plan for tomorrow. I walked, and I thought, and Loiosh flew above me, or sometimes sat on my shoulder, but kept watching so that I had the freedom to let ideas roll around in my head and turn into conclusions. I thought about stopping and performing a quick spell to make my feet hurt less, but I’d have to remove one of the Phoenix Stones or the other, and Loiosh gave me the benefit of his opinion on the wisdom of that, so by the time I reached the cottage I’d come to the conclusion that I was very tired of walking. I explained this to Buddy when he came out to greet me. He wagged his tail and sneezed in sympathy. Good dog.
Savn was sitting next to the hearth this time, not facing it. The old woman was next to him, talking to him softly. As I came in I waited to see if he would acknowledge my presence, but it was as if I didn’t exist, as if nothing existed, even the old woman who was talking to him.
I walked over. “Hello, Savn,” I said.
He didn’t look at me, but he said, “Do you have a knife?”
I said, “Do you know my name?”
“You have a knife, don’t you?”
“You know who I am, don’t you Savn?”
“I . . . I lost Paener’s knife, you know. I let it—”
“It’s all right, Savn. No one is angry about that. Do you know who I am?”
“It was a good knife. It was very sharp.”
“Let’s talk about something else, Savn.”
“I used it to cut—to cut things.”
The old woman said, “Savn, your sister is all right.”
He didn’t seem to hear her any more than he’d heard me, but his hands started opening and closing. We sat there, but he didn’t say anything else.
I looked at the old woman, who shrugged and stood up. She pulled me over to a corner and spoke in a low voice, saying, “I’m beginning to understand what’s going on with him.”
“His sister?”
She nodded. “She’s the key. He thinks he killed her, or something. I’m not sure. He isn’t really rational, you know. He doesn’t know when he’s dreaming and when he’s really experiencing things.”
“I could bring him back and show her to him.”
She shook her head. “Not yet. He’d just think it was a dream.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Just what we’ve been doing. We keep talking to him, even though he only wants to talk about knives and cutting, and we try to get him to talk about other things.”
“Will that work?”
She shrugged. “If I’m right about what’s going on in his head, then it should help, eventually. But I don’t know what you mean by work. There’s no way to know how much he’ll recover, or what he’ll be like. But we might be able to get him to the point where he responds to us, and then maybe we can teach him to look after himself.”
“That would be good,” I said.
“How about my problem?”
“You mean, about the cottage?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure. I think I’ve figured out some of it. If my theories are right, you don’t have anything to worry about. But you ought to worry about the possibility that my theories are wrong.”
“All right,” she said. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.