Steven Brust - Orca

The trouble was, I couldn’t go waltzing into Stony’s office and ask about it, because he’d kill me on the spot and because you’d be annoyed with me, which meant I’d have to work through either Vonnith or Loftis. From what you said, I had the impression that Vonnith would bolt if she got any more jumpy, and that might be inconvenient, so that left Loftis.

Loftis.

I have to tell you, Kiera: I wasn’t all that excited about going up against him straight, and I wasn’t very happy about trying to put anything past him again. You’ve met him, too, and you know what I’m talking about—I think we were both lucky the first time we ran into him.

The only thing I could think of was to keep him off balance long enough for me to learn what I needed to learn, and, with him alerted, I didn’t think much of my chances of shoving another barrel of lies at him. To the left, however, telling him the truth wouldn’t get me anywhere. So that left giving him some of the truth, and either feeding it to him a bit at a time—trading information, in other words—or hitting him with enough of the truth to make him stumble, and hoping to get something while he was recovering his balance, if you follow my metaphor. As for which of those I’d do, I didn’t know—I was just going to approach him, talk to him, keep my ideas in mind, and see how it went.

That, at any rate, was the plan—if you can so dignify vague intentions with the word. After arriving at this magnificent conclusion, I had to make some food, and then clean up, and then try to talk to Savn about something other than knives, which produced no response at all. Unfortunately, after all of that, there was still time to visit Loftis, and I couldn’t find any more reasons for putting it off, and Loiosh was making fun of me, so I got myself dressed up as myself—that is, an Easterner, although not a Jhereg—and headed into town.

I liked your method of finding a quiet place to talk, so I used it myself. When I’d located a suitable establishment, I paid for two rooms, across the hall from each other. The host probably wondered exactly what sort of bizarre activity I was going to engage in, but she didn’t ask and I didn’t volunteer the information. I found a kid to act as messenger and gave him a note to pass on to Loftis. The note said where I was, including the room number, and I signed it Margaret—I hope you don’t mind. Then I went into the room across the hall from the one I’d given him, and amused myself by talking to Loiosh, who was, by the way, waiting outside the building—I didn’t want to introduce that complication into things at this point, and I admit I was worried, because Loftis was potentially in touch with the Jhereg, and the Jhereg was looking for an Easterner with a pair of jhereg, so why take chances? The two-room bit, by the way, proved unnecessary. The idea was that if he decided to show up with a couple of additional blades, it would give me an edge to be behind him, but he had no such plans.

It took him about an hour and a half to get there, but eventually I heard him—that is, I heard one set of footsteps, and someone clapped outside the door. I moved the curtain back, and he turned quickly, and he saw me. Then he looked at me again, more closely, and I could see him start to put things together—Kaldor to the Easterner, the Easterner to Margaret, Margaret to the Empire, the Empire to Kaldor—and I took a certain pleasure in shocking him. I said, “I don’t like this place for conversations. Let’s walk. You lead.” Then, in spite of my words, I stepped in front of him and led the way out of the place. He followed.

“Anything?”

“All clear, boss.”

“Stay out of sight. I don’t know where we’re going, so—”

“I’ve done this before, boss. Honest.”

When we reached the street, I indicated that he should take us somewhere, and he set off in a direction where there would be less traffic. I didn’t want to give him too much time to think, so I said, “Margaret sends her regrets, but she was detained by the need to look into the Jhereg end of this—I assume you know about that?”

“Who are you?”

“Padraic,” I said.

“And you’re working with Margaret, is that it?”

I shrugged. “Things are happening faster than we’d thought they would, especially on the Jhereg side.”

“What is the Jhereg side?”

“Don’t play stupid, we don’t have time for it. Vonnith is ready to bolt, and Shortisle is getting jumpy.”

“Getting jumpy?”

“All right, getting even more jumpy. How soon can you close up shop?”

“We can finish tomorrow, if you don’t care about everyone figuring out that we didn’t run a real investigation. Now, I want to know—”

“I don’t care what you want to know,” I said. “What did Timmer say? Has she put it together?”

He fumed for a moment, then said, “If she has, she isn’t saying anything.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s probably wise.”

“How is it,” he said grimly, “that you, that an Easterner, came to be involved in the security of the Empire?”

“Perhaps,” I said, giving him a smile that was almost a leer, “Her Majesty doesn’t have the same feelings about Easterners that you do.” He scowled. He’s heard the rumors about Her Majesty’s lover, too, but perhaps hadn’t believed them. But then, I’m not sure if I believe them, either. Before he could come up with an answer, I said, “Are you aware how high this goes?”

“Yeah,” he said.

I wished I knew. “All right, then. No, don’t make it obvious, but hurry it up. Get your work done as fast as you can and get out.”

He held up his hand in a signal to stop, and he began looking around. I did, too, and didn’t see anything. The area we were walking through was almost empty of traffic and anything else—there were a couple of closed shops, a couple of houses with boards across the door, and a scattering of places that looked lived in. I said, “What is it?”

“Nothing special.”

I looked around again, but still saw nothing except a desolate neighborhood, of which I’d seen plenty in South Adrilankha. I said, “Where are we?”

“I just wanted you to see this.”

“What?”

“This area.”

“What about it?”

“Look.”

I’d been looking, but now I looked closer, and realized that the paint was new on most of the buildings and houses, and, furthermore, the houses, though small, looked like they’d been built for one family, and they were still in good condition. In fact, very good condition for how few people were here. I gave him a puzzled look.

He nodded. “When I got to town, just a couple of weeks ago, that place was open, and that place was open, and there were people living there, there, and there.”

“Where are they now?”

“Gone,” he said. “Maybe on the street, maybe moved to another town, maybe out in the woods hunting and living in tents. I don’t know.”

“Two weeks?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Fyres?”

“Yeah. The bank closings, and the closing of the three shipbuilders—”

“Three shipbuilders?”

“Yeah. He had a stake in about six or seven, and in three cases it was enough to shut them down. This area was developed about three hundred years ago by Sorenet and Family, Shipwrights, and pretty much everyone who lived around here worked for them. Some Orca, some Chreotha, mostly Teckla just in from your favorite village a generation ago. Now Sorenet is gone, and so is everyone who worked there.”

“I’ve never seen a neighborhood die so quickly,” I said.

“Nor have I.”

We started walking again. “You’ve surprised me in another way,” I said. “I hadn’t been convinced that Fyres was ever involved in anything real at all.”