Steven Brust - Orca

She shrugged. “Okay.”

I nodded. “Fyres gets scared by the idea of losing everything, because he’s done that twice before. If he, Fyres, is going to help Shortisle, he wants guarantees that he’s going to come out of this rich and powerful. Shortisle makes a counteroffer, saying Fyres will come out of this a free man, instead of spending the rest of his life in the Imperial prisons. That’s not good enough for our man Fyres—he’s on top now, and he sees no reason why he shouldn’t stay there. So he does something stupid: he threatens Shortisle. He tells him that he has contacts in the Jhereg—which he does—and that he, Shortisle, had better leave him alone.

“But Shortisle has a friend in the Jhereg, too; a fellow named Stony. Remember him? I promised we’d come back to him. Now, our dear friend Stony is extremely powerful in the Jhereg, and, just as important, he’s not directly in debt to Fyres, and, most important of all, he’s always, always, always willing to help out the Empire, because the Jhereg can’t function without help from the Empire.”

Timmer opened her mouth then, but I said, “No. I know what I’m talking about here. When I was a Jhereg, I regularly bribed the Phoenix Guards to overlook small illegalities. Nothing big, and nothing violent, you understand, but the little stuff that keeps the Jhereg earning, and keeps the Phoenix Guards in pocket change. It didn’t occur to me that the same thing was happening on a much larger scale all the way to the top until I messed with the official Jhereg contact to the Empire and I saw the heat that came down on me for it—that’s the main reason I’m on the run right now.”

She didn’t like it, but she said, “All right. Go on, then.”

“So one week later—”

“A week? What is this, a hard date, or more guessing?”

“A hard date. One week after Shortisle and Fyres have dinner together, Fyres goes out on his private boat to have a nice, relaxing sail with some business associates—how many of those aboard the boat were Jhereg, by the way?”

“Three,” she said.

“Okay. So he goes out sailing, and, late at night, he slips on the deck and—”

“Yes. I know that part.”

“Right. Okay, so Fyres is dead. Shortisle goes into action right away. Or, in fact, he’s probably ready to go into action before it even happens. He talks to Indus, explains the problem, and says they have to minimize the damage or everything falls apart, and there’s major chaos, and, just incidentally, Shortisle loses his job, because the Empress is a reborn Phoenix and doesn’t take people’s heads for incompetence.

“So someone—probably Indus—tells Domm, who works for her, that he has to just go through the motions of investigating Fyres’s death and conclude that it was an accident. Domm comes in, and, a week later, announces that everything is fine. The Empress hears about this, and the Warlord, and probably Khaavren, and they all immediately smell something funny, because there’s no way you could conclude something like that in a week. So, what do they do when there’s something fishy from one of the special Imperial groups? They send in the Tasks Group—yours, isn’t it?” I stopped and looked at her. “That’s what I’m betting my life on, you know. And I’m betting on it based on that one look you gave Domm. I don’t think you’re from Surveillance.”

She nodded once, quickly.

“Okay,” I said. I relaxed. “Good.”

“Keep talking,” she said.

I nodded. “So Khaavren tells Loftis to get a group together and find out what’s going on. Shortisle, who always knows what’s going on with the Empire, finds out about this and, instead of panicking, does something s,mart—he tells Indus about it.”

“Do you know that? I mean, couldn’t it have been Indus who found out about it in the first place, and she told Shortisle and it went from there?”

“Actually, yes,” I said. “I was just enjoying putting the story together my way. But it could well have happened the other way, and probably did, because the Minister of the Houses bears even more than the Minister of the Treasury.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” she said. “Go on with your story.”

“Okay. However it worked, Indus knows about the problem, and she knows how much trouble there will be, for her, too, now, if word gets out about what’s going on. I’m pretty sure that the Warlord or the Empress or both were involved in sending your group in, because if it was just Khaavren, Shortisle would probably have had him killed.”

Timmer looked shocked at that, and opened her mouth, but then she closed it again and nodded for me to continue.

I said, “Now, Indus, as we know, is very persuasive; she’s an Issola, after all. She finds Loftis, whom she knows somehow or other—”

“They worked together when our group was called in to find a security leak in Division Six during the Elde Island war.”

“Okay,” I said. I still wanted to wince every time someone mentioned the Elde Island war, but that wasn’t important now. “She persuades him to help behind Khaavren’s back, because they both know Khaavren wouldn’t go for anything like this, and they both know that, however much they dislike it, it’s the only way to keep the financial roof of the Empire from collapsing and to save both of their metaphorical heads.

“So you and Loftis show up in Northport, just the two of you, with three others in reserve. Is that right?”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter. Loftis told me there were six of you and three in reserve, and I think he was telling me a half-truth by including Domm and his people, just to test me.”

“Yes,” she said. “It was he and I, with some others on call if we needed them.”

“Okay,” I said. “Anyway, Domm is already here with Daythiefnest and three others, and they’ve bungled things up nicely. You and Loftis know the score, and Domm knows what’s going on, but no one else does. You and Loftis have probably done a lot of things you didn’t enjoy, but this has to be one of the worst—when Loftis and I were pumping each other for information, I got that out of him and I think he meant it. Your job was to cover up a murder, and, at the same time, cover up for the fact that the guy whose job it was to do the cover-up—Domm—had bungled it horribly by being impatient. That meant tracing every little indication that people thought the investigation wasn’t real, while, at the same time, keeping up the appearances of making the investigation, and still coming up with enough to convince, among others, the Empress, the Warlord, and your own chief that, no, really, Fyres’s death was an accident. Have I got that right?”

“Go on,” she said.

I wetted my throat again. “Just about this time, Loftis learns that Fyres’s home has been burglarized and his private notes taken. I’m sure he had words about that. Why didn’t Domm take those notes in the first place? And why wasn’t the house better protected against burglary? Answer: because Domm didn’t care. Maybe—I’m speculating again—maybe it was then that Loftis realized he only had one way to go: he had to throw Domm to the dzur. That is, he was going to have to make it look like Domm was just plain incompetent—which he is—and then do the investigation himself and come up, with a greater appearance of honesty, with the same results Domm got.

“The trouble was, Domm, whatever else he is, isn’t stupid. He figured that out, too.”

Timmer’s eyes got wide.

“You mean Domm—”

“Wait for it, Ensign. I’m not going anywhere, and neither is Domm.”

Her eyes narrowed then, but she said, “All right.” Then she said, “About Fyres’s death—”

“Yes?”