Steven Brust - Orca

I shrugged. “I’m a thief, Lieutenant. I’m a thief who happens to know your name, your rank, your associate’s name and rank, and that you work for Lord Khaavren’s Special Tasks Group; and I’m so stupid that I took your purse but didn’t bother with a spell to prevent you from tracing the Signets, didn’t ditch the Signets, but instead just sat here waiting for you to arrive so I could hand the purse back to you. That’s right, Lieutenant, I’m a thief.”

He shrugged. “When someone starts reeling off what he knows like that, it always makes me wonder if I’m supposed to be so impressed that I’ll start reeling things off, too. What do you say?”

He wasn’t stupid. “That you’re not stupid. But you’re still pointing a sword at me, and I find that irritating.”

“Learn to live with it. Who are you and what do you want? If you really went through all of that just to get me here, you’re either very foolish or you have some explanation that—”

“Do you remember a certain affair three or four years ago, that started out with Division Six looking into the activities of a wizard working for, uh, a foreign kingdom, and ending up with a Jenoine at Dzur Mountain.”

He stared at me, licked his lips, and said, “I’ve heard about it.”

“Do you remember what you—your group—was assigned to do after Division Six had bungled it?”

He watched me very closely. “Yes,” he said.

“That’s what I’m here to do, only this time it’s you who are making a mess of things.”

He was silent for a moment. “Possible,” he said.

“Then let’s talk. I’m not armed—”

He laughed. “Sure you’re not. And Temping had no reserves at the Battle of Plowman’s Bridge.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. He said, “Eighth Cycle, two hundred and fifth year of the Tiassa Reign, the Whetstone Rising. The Warlord was—”

“I am not, in fact, armed,” I cut him off. “At least, not with a conventional weapon.”

He raised his eyebrows back at me.

I said, “What I’ve got for armament is a letter, being held quite safely, that is ready to go to Her Majesty if I fail to appear. The object, in fact, doesn’t have anything to do with you, it’s to make sure certain influential parties are disassociated from this affair, and appear clean when it blows up. What it will do to your career is, in fact, just a side effect, but that won’t change how it hits you when Lord Khaavren learns what you’ve been up to. You know him better than I do, my dear lieutenant—what will he do? And it won’t help to try to keep the letter from reaching the Imperial Palace the way you, or your people, did in the Berdoign business, because the letter is already in the Palace. I think that’s better than a conventional weapon, under the circumstances, don’t you?”

“You are very well informed,” he said. I could see him wondering if I was lying, then deciding he couldn’t take the chance. He smiled, bowed his head slightly, and sheathed his sword. “Let’s talk, then,” he said. “I’m listening.”

“Good. We’ll start with the basics. You’ve been given an assignment that you dislike—”

He snorted. “ ‘Dislike’ would cover it,” he said, “if stretched very thin.”

“Nevertheless,” I continued, “you’re doing what you were instructed to do. Whatever else you are, you’re a soldier.”

He shrugged.

I said, “I represent, as I said, certain interests very close to, but not quite the same as, those who required you to carry out this mission. I would prefer that our efforts were combined, to a limited extent, because my job, to put it simply, is to clean up after your efforts to clean up. I have a certain hold on you, but not, I know, a strong one—”

“You got that right,” he said, smiling.

“—in that you’d prefer Lord Khaavren didn’t learn what you’re up to.”

“Don’t think you can push that too far, lady,” he said.

“I know how far I can push it.”

“Maybe. And what do I call you, by the way?”

“Margaret,” I said. “I fancy Eastern names.”

“Heh. You and Her Majesty.”

He’d thrown that out, I assumed, to see if I was up on current gossip; I gave him a slight smile to show that I was. He said, “Very well, then, Margaret. For whom do you work?”

“For whom do you work?”

“But you know that—or, at least, you laid out a theory which I haven’t disputed.”

“No, I’ve told you that I know the organization you work for, not where the orders came from to slide through the Fyres’s investigation.”

“So do you know who gave those orders?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Loftis?”

He smiled. “So we’ve found a piece of information you lack.”

“Maybe,” I said, returning his smile. “And maybe I’m just trying to find out if you’re planning to be straight with me.”

“Trade?” he suggested.

“No,” I said. “You’d lie. I’d lie. Besides, in point of fact, I know, anyway.”

“Oh?”

“There’s only one possibility.”

He looked inscrutable. “If you say so.”

I shrugged.

He said, “All right, then. What do you want?”

“As I told you before, cooperation.”

“What sort of cooperation? Be specific. You don’t want to share information, because we’d both lie, and because you don’t seem to need any, and because there’s really nothing I need to know. So what do you want, exactly?”

“Wrong on several counts,” I said.

“Oh?”

“As I told you, I’m here to keep this business from getting out of hand. I’ll blow the whistle on you if I have to, but I, and those who’ve given me this job, would prefer I didn’t. Now, what we have—”

“What cleanup are you talking about, Margaret?”

“Oh, come on, Loftis. Your security’s been broken all over town. Didn’t you just have someone show up out of nowhere, interrogate your interrogators, lead your shadows all over the region, pump them some more, and then almost kill them in a public inn? Is that your idea of secrecy?”

He studied me carefully, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. He grunted and said, “My compliments on your sources, Margaret.”

“Well?”

“Okay, you’ve made your point. What do you want?”

“Let’s start with the basics,” I said. “I have to know what I’m working with.”

“Heh,” he said. “There’s something you don’t know?”

I smiled. “How many on your team?”

“Six, with another three on standby.”

“How many know what you’re up to?”

“Domm and I.”

“And Timmer,” I added, “as of last night.”

He frowned. “Are you sure?”

I shrugged. “She may not know precisely, but she knows something’s up, and, if she thinks about it, she’ll probably figure out most of it. She isn’t stupid.”

He nodded. “Okay. What else do you want to know?”

“What actually happened to Fyres.”

Loftis shrugged. “He was murdered.”

I shook my head. “I know that. But who killed him?”

“An assassin. A good one. Hundred to one it was a Jhereg, and another hundred to one that we wouldn’t catch him even if we were trying to.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Who had it done?”

“I don’t know,” said Loftis. “That isn’t what we were trying to find out.”

“Sure, but you probably have an idea.”

“An idea? Hell, yeah. His wife hated him, his son loathed him, one daughter wants to be rich and the other one wants to be left alone. Is that good enough for a start?”

“No,” I said.

He looked at me, then turned away. “Yeah, it wasn’t them. Or, at least, it wasn’t just them.”

“Well, then?”