Steven Brust - Orca

He shrugged. “I wasn’t, either. I still don’t know how involved he was, or why, or what the mechanics are. That’s the sort of thing we’d be finding out, if we were really doing what we’re supposed to be doing.”

This neighborhood seemed about the same as where we’d stopped. It was making me nervous. Loiosh, who was staying out of sight behind me, reported that nothing terrible was about to happen. I said, “Do you really think you can keep the Tiassa from finding out what you’re up to?”

“Probably,” he said. “He won’t check on us—he trusts us.” There was enough bitterness in that remark to ruin a hundred gallons of ale.

I said, “It isn’t like you had a choice.”

“I could have resigned.”

“And done what? And what would you have told the Tiassa when he asked you why? And on top of it, you’d have known someone else was doing it, and probably bungling it—frankly, I don’t trust your man Domm.”

“The lieutenant’s all right,” he said quickly. “He has a bit of Waitman in him, but that just means he’ll lose a few times before the Stand at Spinning Lake, which is nothing to be ashamed of. Waitman got an Imperial title for that, which isn’t bad for someone with that sort of disposition.”

“Maybe,” I said. “And please don’t explain. The point is, they knew just how to put the screws in.”

“Sure,” he said. “And who to put them to.”

In case you’ve missed it, Kiera, I was now the one who was off balance; while showing me around the neighborhood, he’d had a chance to do some thinking, and now it was me who wanted some time to sort things out.

We had apparently sold Loftis on our story far more completely than I’d expected to, and that puzzled me. But more than that, I just couldn’t reconcile everything he was saying with the idea that he was the sort of guy who’d go in for this kind of action. There was a piece of this—a big piece of this—that didn’t make sense, and I was no longer at all sure how to proceed. I had this awful urge to just flat out ask him everything I needed to know, like, for example, who was behind this, and how exactly had the pressure been brought; but someone like Loftis is going to figure out more from the questions you ask than you will from the answers he gives, and if he figured out too much, he’d stop answering the questions at all. A damned tricky business, that made me long for the days when all I had to do was kill someone and not worry about it.

I needed a distraction.

I said, “There’s another thing that’s puzzling me.”

“There’s a lot that’s puzzling me.”

“Some of the smaller companies in Fyres’s little Empire—”

“Not so little, Padraic.”

“Yeah. Some of them hold land.”

“Sure.”

“And they’re selling the land.”

He nodded.

“And they’re going under.”

“Right.”

“So they’re not able to sell it.”

“I guess. What’s your point? If it’s the legalities of it—”

“No, no. We have more advocates than the Orb has facets. I’m trying to figure out what sort of business sense that makes, or what kind of other sense it makes that overrides business sense.”

“You think they have any choice?”

“Maybe.”

He shook his head. “If you’re going somewhere, I can’t see it. As far as I can tell, they’re bailing out as they go, and if that means they lose some property, they’ll let the property courts and the advocates worry about it later. I don’t think there’s any plan involved.”

This was all news to me. I said, “I’m not convinced.”

“You have a devious mind.”

“It goes with the job.”

“Do you have any evidence? Any reason to think so?”

“Just a feeling. That’s why I wanted to find out if you’d had any ideas about it.”

“No.”

“Okay,” I said.

We were heading back in the general direction from which we’d come. He said, “So, all right, what is it you wanted? You had me make contact with you for some reason, and so far all we’ve done is chat, along with a warning so general there’s no point in giving it, and a question you could have had a messenger ask. What are you after?”

Damn. I had certainly given him too much time to think. I said, “There’s someone who knows too much about what you’re doing, and I can’t find him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that something’s slipped, and I’m pretty sure it’s at the top, or near the top at any rate. I’m running into opposition, and I can’t pin it down.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t run into it yet. The only suspicious action I’ve seen so far has been you and your friend Margaret.”

Damn again. That wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted him thinking about.

“Look,” I said, “I’m going to have to trust you.”

“Trust all you want,” he said. “I haven’t shut you down, but I’m not under your orders.”

He was ahead of me again.

“And now I want a few answers.”

And gaining.

“Your friend Margaret claimed to have a certain hold on me.”

“The letters. Yes. They’re real.”

“I told her then they wouldn’t go very far, and this is as far as they go. Exactly who do you work for, and what is yourjob?”

“I know your job, friend Loftis; but if you want to put everything out in front, then let’s hear you say who you work for.” As I said that, I was desperately trying to remember the names of the different groups you’d mentioned, and figure out which one I could most reasonably claim to be part of.

“Heh. I am a lieutenant in the Imperial Army, Corps of the Phoenix Guards, Special Tasks Group.”

“And you know bloody well that wasn’t my question.”

“Are all Easterners psychically invisible, or just you? And is that why you were hired, or is it just a bonus?”

“It helps,” I said.

“Exactly what are you after?”

“I’ve told you that.”

“Yes, you have, haven’t you? You’ve told me just about everything my heart could desire, haven’t you?”

I shook my head. “Play all the games you want, Loftis, but I don’t have time to muck around, not if I’m going to do what I was sent here to do.”

“Shall we get something to eat?” he said.

Add another damn or two. He was pulling all of my tricks, and he was better at them than I was—which I suppose only made sense. I said, “I’ve been told that Undauntra always wanted her troops to fight hungry, whereas Sethra Lavode always wanted hers to fight with a full meal in them.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” he said. “But it isn’t true. About Sethra, that is.”

“I’ll take your word for it. I’m also told that when a Jhereg boss hires an assassin, the deal is usually made during a meal.”

“I can believe that.”

“And I happen to know that there is a curious custom in parts of the East of making a big ceremony out of the last meal someone eats before he’s executed. He’s given pretty much anything he wants, and it’s prepared and served quite carefully, and then they kill him. Isn’t that odd?”

“I suppose, but I think it’s rather nice, actually.”

I shook my head. “If I were about to be executed, I either wouldn’t be able to eat, or I’d lose the meal on the way to the Executioner’s Star, or the gallows, or the Pilgrim’s Block, or wherever they were to lead me.”

“I see your point,” he said. “But I think I’d like the meal, anyway.”

“Well, perhaps I would, too.”

“There’s got to be someplace around here.”

We stopped at the first place we came to, which meant nothing since he’d been leading the way. It was marked by a sign that was so faded I couldn’t make it out, and reached from the street by walking down three steps below a hostel. It had probably been on the street level a few hundred years earlier—it seemed old enough, at any rate.