Steven Brust - Orca

“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.