Steven Brust - Orca

“What’s on your mind, Vlad?”

He shrugged. “The same thing that’s on yours, of course—are we going to be able to solve our hostess’s problem without taking on, in effect, the whole Empire? And, if we do have to take on the Empire, how can we win? It’s bound to be tricky.”

“Tricky,” I said. I shook my head. “You’re nothing if not confident.”

He shrugged. “It shouldn’t be any problem. I’ll just work my way through these special Guardsmen, find out who their boss is, kill him, take his position, use that to get close to the Empress, kill her, take the Orb, and rule Dragaera myself, exploiting the Empire ruthlessly in order to enrich myself and punish those who have offended me throughout my life, in preparation for conquering the East and eventually making myself ruler of the entire world.” He paused from whipping the eggs, looked at me, and nodded somberly. “Then I’d meet some girls, I’ll bet.” He covered the pan. “Want to set the table for four?”

“Three,” said our hostess, who was still seated next to the boy but was now staring down at him while holding both of his shoulders. “Savn will be needing his rest.”

I looked at her, then at Savn, then at Vlad, who was looking at me. I opened my mouth to speak and then felt the casting of a spell. Vlad apparently felt it, too, or more accurately Loiosh did; in any case we both turned to watch, then looked again at each other. Vlad’s eyes were a bit wide, but he shrugged.

“Don’t let the food burn,” I said.

“I shan’t,” said Vlad, and turned his attention back to the skillet. I set the table. The feeling of sorcery went away about two minutes after it had started, and then the old woman joined us at the table and we ate. She didn’t seem quite comfortable with Loiosh and Rocza joining us and eating scraps from Vlad’s plate, even though she should have been used to it by now. But she didn’t say anything. Buddy sat next to the table and spoke most eloquently with his eyes but got nothing for his trouble, poor beast. The food was good and there was no conversation for quite some time, until I noticed that Vlad was watching me.

I said, “What is it?”

“Don’t you care for it?”

“Are you fishing for compliments?”

“No.”

I shrugged. “I like it quite a bit.”

“All right,” he said.

I don’t know anyone like Vlad: it’s like his mind never shuts off. Even Morrolan relaxes from time to time, but I’ve never seen Vlad when he wasn’t thinking. I very much wanted to know what he was thinking about just then, but there was no polite way to ask.

Vlad broke down before I did. He said, “Well, Mother?”

She said, “Yes?”

He cleared his throat. “How did—that is, is Savn all right?”

“You mean his injury?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I healed it. It isn’t difficult if you know what you’re doing. I’m not really a physicker, but I am a sorceress”—she looked at me as she said it, as if expecting me to argue—”and this is the sort of problem I’m most familiar with.”

“So it went well?” asked Vlad. Vlad needing reassurance was something outside of my experience.

“Quite well.”

“Uh, good,” he said.

“What now?” I asked her.

“Now? Well, repairing the physical damage ought to help him, so now we see if there’s any change in his behavior—better or worse. If not, then I’ll go back to trying to understand the inside of his head well enough to risk a dreamwalk. If there is a change, well, then we’ll just have to see what the change is and do our best from there.”

“Oh,” said Vlad. He glanced at Savn, who was sleeping peacefully, and fell silent.

We finished eating, and Vlad and I cleaned up. I took my time, because I wasn’t in a hurry to go back to talking about how we were going to approach the problem. Vlad also seemed to be moving a bit slowly, I suspect for the same reason. I drew the water, he set it to heating, then we took our time sorting things that went into the compost from things to be burned and things to feed to Buddy. When the water was hot, I started in on the dishes. Vlad cleaned the table and the stove.

As we were finishing up, I said, “How’s the arm?”

“Fine.”

“Let’s take a look at it.”

“When did you become a physicker?”

“One learns a bit of everything in my line of work—or in yours.”

“Yeah.”

He took his shirt off. His chest was still full of hairs; I tried not to react. I unwrapped the bandage. Some people look at their wounds, others look away. Vlad looked, but he seemed a bit queasy. The lower wrappings of the bandage were bloody, but not horribly so, and the wound itself showed no signs of infection.

I said, “If you want to take the Phoenix Stone off, I can have that healed up in—”

“No, thanks,” said Vlad.

“You’re probably right,” I said.

I washed it and rewrapped it. Hwdf rjaanci watched but made no effort to help—maybe blood made her queasy; maybe she considered herself too much of a specialist to be bothered with simple wounds.

I said, “Okay, if you’ve changed your mind about ruling the world, and you don’t want to ask anyone for help, what’s our next step?”

“I went through the notes again last night, after you left,” said Vlad.

“And?”

“And nothing. If we had all the files as well as the Imperial record, and maybe some of the records of a few Jhereg, and we combined those with what we’ve got, and we had a hundred accountants working full-time, we could probably find the answer—and maybe even find it soon enough to do some good. But we don’t, so we’re going to have to start from the other end.”

“And the other end is?”

“The investigation. We have a piece of something—all I can think of to do is follow it and see where it leads.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I was afraid it was going to come to that.”

“Meanwhile,” he said, “I’m going to see just how much money it will take to buy the land.”

I nodded. “Yes. The amount should tell us if you’re right about there being something valuable about this piece of property. If it comes down to nothing more than finding a sum of money, there are ways to do that.”

I noticed Hwdfrjaanci looking at us. Vlad said, “That, of course, is my end of things. What do you want to do?”

“I want to find out just who Loftis is working for, what his orders are, what he knows, what he guesses, and what he plans to do about it,” I said.

“Good thinking,” said Vlad. “How do you plan to go about it?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe I’d ask him.”

“I can’t see why that wouldn’t work.”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Vlad.

I finished bandaging him, and he put his shirt on, then his cloak, then his sword belt. He petted Buddy, recommended the cottage to him, collected Loiosh, and left with a sweeping bow.

“They’re disgusting,” said Hwdf rjaanci.

“Who?”

“Easterners,” she said.

I said, “Ah. I’ll tell him you said so, Mother.”

“Oh don’t,” she said, looking suddenly distressed. “It would hurt his feelings.”

I collected my things and stepped out of the door. Unlike Vlad, I had no reason not to teleport, so I did, arriving at a place I knew where I could change my garb a little, which I did. I arrived outside of City Hall at just about the tenth hour, which was when things ought to begin moving there. I took a position across the street, became inconspicuous, and waited.

I’d been there for more than an hour when Vlad showed up and went in, and then nothing happened for quite some time, and I was beginning to think I’d missed Loftis—that he’d gotten in early—when I saw him on the other side of the street, just approaching; from Vlad’s description, it had to be Loftis. I crossed over and walked past him, and even that brief a glance was enough to confirm that Vlad was right—this wasn’t someone to mess around with casually. He was frowning as he walked, like he had something on his mind; it wasn’t hard to guess what it was.