Steven Brust - Orca

“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.”