Steven Brust - Hawk

“Excuse me?”

“What matters to you?”

“Why would you want to know that?”

“Pretend it’s important.”

“Um.” He got a strange expression on his face. “Is it really important?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“What I like is learning things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Almost anything. Anything that-” He paused. “Anything that makes me sit up straight.”

“I think I understand that.”

Daymar nodded.

“So, it’s about that moment when you suddenly understand something?”

“Not just that,” he said. “It’s also about getting there. Gathering facts, and the connections between them. I like that, too. You know I’m a desecrator?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

He nodded. “That’s what I like about it. Finding pieces of the past and figuring out how things happened.”

I asked more questions; he answered them. After a while I said, “That helps.”

“Helps what?”

“My project. We talked about it yesterday.”

“I remember. But what part of the project does it help?”

I guess his desire to draw conclusions stopped when it was a conclusion about what I didn’t want to talk about. Or he didn’t care that I didn’t want to talk about it. Or he hadn’t noticed. All of the possibilities equally likely.

“I need someone to think like a Hawk,” I said. “I figure there’s more to it than being randomly irritating and profoundly oblivious.”

Daymar considered. “No,” he said. “That’s most of it.”

“Who’d have thought he had a sense of humor, Boss?”

“You sure he’s joking?”

“Um.”

“You’ve been a lot of help,” I said. “Thanks.”

The corner of his mouth quirked-such a tiny thing I wasn’t entirely sure I’d seen it. “You’re welcome,” he said, and, without changing expression, vanished with an irritating pop of displaced air.

“So, that was useful, Boss.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“If you say so. What’s next?”

“Next I seek legal advice.”

“Seriously?”

“No. Sort of.”

“This will be good,” he said.

It wasn’t, really. I mean, it wasn’t anything exciting, dangerous, or even terribly interesting. I made my way to the Palace district and looked up an advocate named Perisil I’d had dealings with before. After a few pleasantries, he asked what I wanted.

I said, “I’ve come up with a way to eavesdrop on psychic communication. I need to make sure it’s illegal.”

He blinked at me. “You need it to be illegal?”

“If I’m going to sell it to-never mind. Can you find a way in which it’s against the law?”

He coughed. “Several, probably.”

“Good. I like having options. Run them down for me?”

“This is outside my field.”

“I know. But I need help.”

We went back and forth for a while, until he said, “I think what you want will be in the Imperial trade laws.”

“All right. Can you point me toward an expert on Imperial trade laws?”

He shook his head. “There aren’t any experts. It’s too complicated.”

“Then-”

“Here. Let me look something up.”

He found a book among his shelves, paged through it, nodded, and showed me a passage.

“Um.”

“I’ll explain,” he said.

He explained about the relationship between Imperial Secrets and commerce, and I nodded. “That’ll do it,” I said. “Can I borrow that?”

He put a bookmark in the page and handed me the book. I thanked him, and paid him for his time. I’d never before paid so much to sit and listen to someone talk. On the other hand, I had employed tags who made more for that service.

Loiosh and Rocza guided me back to the tunnel into my-that is, Kragar’s office.

Kragar said, “Should I order in some food? Sorry.”

“Bastard,” I said, and sat down again. “Yes. I’ll cover it. Jesco’s?”

“Someplace you’ve never eaten. Just in case.”

“Good idea.”

We ended up with a big bowl of rice with saffron and duck. I’d never had it before, and liked it a lot; Loiosh expressed the opinion that we should never eat anything else ever again. We sat around, ate, talked, and it hit me that I missed the times Kragar and I used to just sit and talk; and that, whatever happened, there wouldn’t be many more occasions like this. Then I stopped thinking about it-that’s the sort of crap that can get you killed. Kragar came up with a bottle of a white wine from Guinchen that I’d never had before. He put his feet up on my desk.

“We’ve been through some shit here, haven’t we?” he said.

“Shut up.”

He looked amused but didn’t say anything.

“I need to figure out a way to see my kid,” I said.

He rubbed his lower lip. “Shouldn’t it wait until this is over?”

“Too much chance I’ll be dead by then.”

“That doesn’t sound like you, Vlad.”

“What, fatalistic? I’ve always been a fatalist.”

“No, you’ve always talked like a fatalist. You’ve never acted like one.”

“Asshole,” I said.

He smirked and poured wine, then shut up and let me think.

Every time something in the Jhereg changes, everyone gets nervous and starts looking around. All negotiations come down to a balancing act between making trouble you don’t need and can’t afford, and looking weak. How much do you let someone push you around? How much pushing do you do? Where do you draw the line? Once negotiations are over and settled, everyone relaxes, because then you can get back to just doing business-until another ripple comes through that means there’s more or less of some limited and valuable thing, and everyone has to settle who gets how much.

I intended to cause a pretty big splash.

A little later Kragar raised his glass to me, drained it, and left me to decide on the next step.

Sorry. Left us to decide on the next step. Loiosh, as it happened, had a lot to say on the subject, none of it productive. I’ll spare you the details. In the end, we went out through the tunnel and I found Kiera’s drop spot, and, as promised, the lockpick was there. It fit neatly into my palm-just a pretty usual-looking hook pick, very small. It felt a little cold, and I might have sensed some magic in it if I weren’t wearing the Phoenix Stone. I was sure it would work; I could find my own torsion wrench easily enough. I wanted to take a moment to study it, but I was outside and nervous, so I went back into the tunnel, and emerged once more in Kragar’s office.

There were a couple of lounging toughs keeping track of the place. They nodded to me and I nodded back. I turned toward the room I was sleeping in and stopped, staring. After a moment, I said, “Hello, Cawti.”

“Hello, Vlad.”

“How did you know to find me here?”

“Kragar sent me a message.”

“Oh. Where is-”

“Norathar is watching him.”

I nodded, then wasn’t sure what to say.

She said, “We’re going to try to set up a time for you to see him, but I wanted-”

“I understand,” I said. “All right. Uh, should we sit down?”

“Probably.”

We found a couple of chairs. I was weirdly aware of the distance between us as we carried them into an empty room.

“You had an Imperial Guardsman outside your house.”

Her lips tightened and she nodded. “I’m working on that.”

“There were also a couple of Jhereg.”

“Wait. You were there?”

“Yeah. Three days ago.”