Steven Brust - Orca

After a while I said, “The trouble is, Loiosh, that the way Kiera and I got involved in this was through whatever oddity is involved in this business of putting what’s-her-name’s land on the market and then making it hard to track down, followed by impossible to track down. Just because that’s where we started doesn’t make that an important piece of whatever it is that’s going on.”

“You knew that already, boss.”

“Sure. But knowing it is one thing; being aware of it as you work and taking it into account whenever you look at new information—”

“ What are you saying ? “

“Heh. That I’ve been looking at this thing skewed by what I knew about it. I have to look at it straight on. And I have a theory.”

“Oh, good. Only that was missing. All right, then, where to now?”

“I don’t know.” And, in my mind, Loiosh spoke the words as I did. “You’re funny, Loiosh,” I told him. “Do you have any great ideas?”

“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

I looked around, but didn’t see anything.

“No,” he said. “This city. This area. It isn’t good, boss. They’re still looking for you, and when you’re in a city like this, you’re too easy to find. I don’t like it.”

Neither did I, come to that. “Soon,” I told him. “As soon as we get this settled.”

“You can’t do Savn any good with a Morganti knife between your shoulder blades.”

“True.”

“If I’d known we were going to be here this long, and that we’d be going around stirring up—”

“Okay, okay. I get the point.” I’d thought about it, of course. Loiosh was right: a city, even one as small as Northport, was not a good place for me to hide when the whole Organization was looking for me. And, if what I’d just figured out was true, then I’d pretty much done what I’d agreed to do—the old woman would be able to stay on her land, and everything was fine.

“ Where would we go instead? “

“The East.”

“We’ve been there, remember?”

“It’s big, there are lots of places. And no one would find us.”

“Good point.” There really wasn’t any reason to stay here, if I could be certain that what I’d just figured out was true, and I could probably find that out.

Except that someone had cut Loftis down right in front of me, and there were neighborhoods full of people who had to leave because they no longer had any work, and I didn’t understand why any of it was happening.

I said, “The old woman is doing so well with Savn, it would be a shame to take him away so soon.”

“Boss—”

“Let’s just take a few more days, all right?”

“You’re the boss.”

I wondered what you were finding out, Kiera; what would we learn about Fyres from the Jhereg? And, come to that, how heavily were the Jhereg involved? And if he’d gotten the Jhereg into it, why did he need the banks?

Did he need the banks at all?

There was only one banker we knew for certain was involved with Fyres, and that was Vonnith, and we knew she was bribing Imperial officials, which almost made her a Jhereg, too. Did I know of any legitimate banks that had made loans to Fyres? Did I even have any reason to suspect there were any?

How could I find out? Walking around pretending to be someone else has its uses, and we’d gotten some information that way, but there’s a time for just being who you are. Had we reached it yet? Who was I, anyway?

Hmmm.

“Could work, boss.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“And even if it doesn’t work, I’ll enjoy it.”

“Yeah, you probably will.”

“Andyou won’t?”

It wasn’t easy finding a tailor’s shop that was open at this hour—in fact, there were none. But after disturbing the tailor, it was easy enough to get what I wanted just by setting an appropriately large number of coins in front of him. My reserves of cash had been getting a bit low lately, and I wasn’t excited about going to any of the places I’d need to in order to retrieve more of my wealth—for one thing, I’d have to remove the gold Phoenix Stone in order to tele-port—but I could do it if I had to.

However, I was able to put in the order and he promised that he’d have what I needed early in the morning. That done, I wandered for a while, thinking over the plan and refining it in conversation with Loiosh.

I discovered that my feet were taking me back toward the cottage, and I decided to let them have their way, now that I had a plan for tomorrow. I walked, and I thought, and Loiosh flew above me, or sometimes sat on my shoulder, but kept watching so that I had the freedom to let ideas roll around in my head and turn into conclusions. I thought about stopping and performing a quick spell to make my feet hurt less, but I’d have to remove one of the Phoenix Stones or the other, and Loiosh gave me the benefit of his opinion on the wisdom of that, so by the time I reached the cottage I’d come to the conclusion that I was very tired of walking. I explained this to Buddy when he came out to greet me. He wagged his tail and sneezed in sympathy. Good dog.

Savn was sitting next to the hearth this time, not facing it. The old woman was next to him, talking to him softly. As I came in I waited to see if he would acknowledge my presence, but it was as if I didn’t exist, as if nothing existed, even the old woman who was talking to him.

I walked over. “Hello, Savn,” I said.

He didn’t look at me, but he said, “Do you have a knife?”

I said, “Do you know my name?”

“You have a knife, don’t you?”

“You know who I am, don’t you Savn?”

“I ... I lost Paener’s knife, you know. I let it—”

“It’s all right, Savn. No one is angry about that. Do you know who I am?”

“It was a good knife. It was very sharp.”

“Let’s talk about something else, Savn.”

“I used it to cut—to cut things.”

The old woman said, “Savn, your sister is all right.”

He didn’t seem to hear her any more than he’d heard me, but his hands started opening and closing. We sat there, but he didn’t say anything else.

I looked at the old woman, who shrugged and stood up. She pulled me over to a corner and spoke in a low voice, saying, “I’m beginning to understand what’s going on with him.”

“His sister?”

She nodded. “She’s the key. He thinks he killed her, or something. I’m not sure. He isn’t really rational, you know.

He doesn’t know when he’s dreaming and when he’s really experiencing things.”

“I could bring him back and show her to him.”

She shook her head. “Not yet. He’d just think it was a dream.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Just what we’ve been doing. We keep talking to him, even though he only wants to talk about knives and cutting, and we try to get him to talk about other things.”

“Will that work?”

She shrugged. “If I’m right about what’s going on in his head, then it should help, eventually. But I don’t know what you mean by work. There’s no way to know how much he’ll recover, or what he’ll be like. But we might be able to get him to the point where he responds to us, and then maybe we can teach him to look after himself.”

“That would be good,” I said.

“How about my problem?”

“You mean, about the cottage?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure. I think I’ve figured out some of it. If my theories are right, you don’t have anything to worry about. But you ought to worry about the possibility that my theories are wrong.”

“All right,” she said. “What if you’re wrong?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

I was up early, and, after almost enough klava, I stopped by the tailor’s to retrieve the items that I’d ordered. The tailor had, evidently, been thinking, which can be unhealthy, but it had only frightened him, which is a natural survival reaction. I reassured him with words and coins, got the items, and left him reasonably content. Then I went by a weaponsmith and picked up a few things. Then I found an inn that was serving breakfast, stepped into the privy, and, amid odors that I will not bother describing, I spent some time getting dressed and set—it took me a while to remember how to conceal knives about my person without them showing, which surprised me a little. I covered everything, including the cloak, with my regular, nondescript brown cloak, which was far too hot for inside the privy, but would be only slightly too warm for the walk out to Vonnith’s place.