Steven Brust - Orca

“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—”